One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch Literary Techniques
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's style of writing is economical and unornamental.
This is particularly true of One Day. This would seemingly cause little
difficulty in translating One Day were it not for the great amount of prison
jargon contained in the dialogues and discussion of life in the camp.
The author's motto might well be, "wie es eigentlich gewesen," or "tell
it like it is." In believing as he does in honest realism and not the
propaganda slogan of "socialist realism," Solzhenitsyn wishes to render the
real-life situations he describes in so many of his writings-but especially in
One Day-in real-life language. The author did not have to use any glossaries
of prison argot, although the translator must; Solzhenitsyn simply drew on his
own 8-years' experience in corrective labor camps.
Artistic Use Of Blunt Language
Many "unprintable" Russian words turn up in One Day, as it was first
published in Novy Mir. Words like khub kren, yebat', govno and der'mo, khui,
pizda, etc., would make Beelzebub himself blush, but since they are part of a
zek's vocabulary, they appear in the novella. In the half-dozen extant
English translations of the work, these words are rendered with the frankness
of a Henry Miller novel. In Solzhenitsyn's case, the reader gets the
impression that far from wishing to be shocking or sensational, the author has
used these obscenities to show how debased humans can become. In any case,
most of the smutty language comes out of the mouths of the camp authorities.
This undoubtedly is the author's way of illustrating the source of the
debasement, debasement not only of language but of human beings.
In a brilliantly written essay, L. Rzhevsky notes how the blunt language
lends an "immediacy and sincerity of tone" to the story (in Tvorets i Podvig:
Ocherki po Tvorchestvu Aleksandra Solzhenitsyna [The Artist and His
Accomplishments: Notes on the Writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn],
Possev-Verlag, Frankfurt/Main). "The simplicity and credibility of the story"
are enhanced by this device, whether the scene be in the barracks, at the
construction site, or during the friskings and body counts. Professor
Christopher Moody speaks in his book (see Bibliography) of the author's own
familiarity with Russian peasant life; he has learned how to convey the "idiom
of the common people." Solzhenitsyn studied philological texts (such as Dal's
famous dictionary) to verify expressions that he heard, and he took copious
notes, as Dostoyevsky had done before him, as found in Dostoyevsky's Diary of
a Writer. Some of Solzhenitsyn's proverbs appear to be lifted from Dal. Moody
cites and proverb found in One Day, "How can you expect a man who is warm to
understand a man who is cold" (from the infirmary scene where Shukhov is
commenting about Kolya upon leaving the hospital). But the Dal original
renders it, "A man who is satisfied cannot understand one who is hungry." So
in these and other cases, Solzhenitsyn did not reproduce Dal but only adapted
Dal to his own purposes. Moody notes also Solzhenitsyn's folk-tale (skaz)
flavor. He cites the "stitch-stitch-stitch" line when Shukhov is sewing into
his mattress the remaining half of a piece of bread; one might also mention
the top-top, skrip-skrip onomatopoeia, which is Russian folk speech.
Moody also notes how Solzhenitsyn's descriptions do not retard the pace
of One Day. The story's tempo is not slowed down, "nor does the rhythm become
monotonous." The wealth of detail is combined with the lively pace of
narration in which broken phrases, a wealth of emotionally-colored
interrogatory and exclamatory figures, expressive parenthetical words and
phrases, ellipses and unusual word order are used to best advantage.
"Skaz" Story-Telling
As to the folk-tale manner of One Day, Professor Moody and others note
how Solzhenitsyn fits into the Russian tradition of Pilniak, Zamyatin, and
Babel, not to mention prerevolutionary writers like Leskov and Gogol. In the
skaz, the story-teller, or narrator, is one the same level as the main
characters in the story. He think their thoughts and uses their language. The
skaz strategy for telling the story permits the author to tailor in a great
deal of "local color," to lend the story an eye-witness flavor through the
making of astute, sometimes humorous and sardonic observations or
commentaries. The narration in One Day permits the reader along with the
author vicariously to dart in and out of the situations or conversations, as
if he were there, both participating as well as describing goings-on. One
Day's narration is enhanced by the fact that the language is at times simple
and slangy and full of zek argot. The "darting-in-and-out" technique is
accomplished by Solzhenitsyn without establishing any clear dividing line
between Shukhov's speaking and the author's speaking. Moody notes that the
voices "interchange so imperceptibly that the reader is often uncertain which
is speaking." At times it will necessitate extreme care on the part of the
reader to disentangle an unspoken monologue of Shukhov from an exterior
observation made by the author through the unseen narrator, who is in the
third person.
Moreover, the Shukhov himself is speaking, in a dialogue for example, it
is sometimes difficult to know whether he is speaking to us, the readers, or
to another character in the dialogue. At this juncture, the author, via the
narrator, may step in to wrap up a scene with a comment or observation.
In brief, the author has employed a number of techniques to achieve
his overall strategy in One Day. Above all, he wants to tell us the
truth in the manner in which we are generally acquainted with raw truth:
as a blunt, lopsided thing which we have no other choice but to accept.
Avoiding as he does ornamentation or lengthy sentences and description (in
the Dickensian or Dostoyevskian manner), Solzhenitsyn accomplishes a stoic
austerity which somehow suits the equally stark scenes, lean figures, and
cleanshaven heads of the zeks etched against the bleak white background
of the Siberian camp.
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