[In] The Oak and the Calf, as in Gulag Archipelago, we have in fact two Solzhenitsyns at work. While the field-marshal surveys his battle formations and issues his orders, the shrewd and sceptical novelist is standing at his side, noting down all his inconsistencies and foibles. One must never underestimate Solzhenitsyn's capacity for 'polyphony', that is to say, for assuming two or more narrative voices almost simultaneously, allowing each to reflect on and question the other. This is true of all his best works, early and late. There is a good example of it in his account of his eventual arrest and expulsion from the Soviet Union …: here the self-appointed positive hero is continually being restrained by the keenly observant, self-aware novelist…. [Even] as he braces himself for the imagined negotiations with Brezhnev and the Politburo, in which the future of the Soviet Union will be decided, he is simultaneously laughing at himself for imagining that the walls of the Kremlin will collapse at the first blast of his trumpet. (p. 21)
Solzhenitsyn has, it seems to me, always been at his best when he is able to function as a 'voice from the chorus', letting other voices mingle with his own, not letting the 'Olympian narrator' within himself gain the upper hand. This was pre-eminently true … of Ivan Denisovich and Gulag Archipelago. It is also true of the best parts of these memoirs, and not least perhaps of the picture of Tvardovsky, who somehow succeeds in bouncing back from the body blows Solzhenitsyn the 'Olympian narrator' directs at him and standing out as a fully rounded personality. In spite of himself, Solzhenitsyn responds to Tvardovsky's greatness and communicates it.
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