SOURCE: "Solzhenitsyn's 'Sketches'," in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Critical Essays and Documentary Materials, edited by John B. Dunlop, Richard Haugh, and Alexis Klimoff, Collier Books, 1973, pp. 317-25.

In the following essay, originally published in 1972, Dunlop examines Solzhenitsyn's short sketches, or prose poems, as works "primarily concerned with the spiritual inadequacy of modern life."

In a rare interview granted in 1967 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn remarked that he had completed sixteen stories of from fifteen to twenty lines each. These stories, he said, immediately acquired enormous popularity within the Soviet Union.¹ On another occasion he stated: "Barely had I given them [i.e. the stories] to people to read when they quickly reached various cities in the Soviet Union. And then the editors of Novyi mir received a letter from the West that these stories had already been published there."²

At present it is unclear when exactly Solzhenitsyn committed his stories or "sketches" to...