feeling wowed all over again.....

it's one of my favorite books.
i've been saying so for about THIRTY years!
(ohmygosh!)

but that's when i read it..about 30 years ago.
it had a tremendous impact on me and is one of the books i've put
on my 'life changing book' lists.

it's 'the first circle' by aleksandr solzhenitsyn.

i was in a 'russian phase' and read a ton of russian classics -
yes! including 'war and peace'! and this one was my favorite by far.
he is more famous for 'the gulag archipelago' which i could never read.
i tried several times, but it just broke my heart and i couldn't get past
a certain section. (i tried THREE times and just couldn't do it)

'the first circle' was a little easier with the brutality. while both were
about the prison camps in russia, 'the first circle' was about a camp which
was one of the 'better' of the camps.

is it dante who talks of the cirlces of hell? that's where the title comes from -
it's the first circle of hell.

anyway.....one of my sons showed an interest in reading it, so i thought it'd
be a good chance to share a book together. and so i started it again.

and it's even better than i remember! i guess the experience is going to be
different depending on your age and your stage of life. well, it's hitting me
more profoundly than ever.

and! beyond that.........the art of his writing is knocking me flat.

last nite i was so taken with his writing that i truly just kept gasping as i read.
and i felt like i was looking at an incredible art piece.

and i felt like i had been 'great writing deprived' for far too long.
wow.
how incredible to read a great piece of literature.
seriously.
it's like inhaling art.

and it's been far too long.
and i think maybe because of that, my senses are reawakening and the
experience is magnified.

i popped over to wikipedia and reviewed solzhenitsyn's life.........

the man had to write in secret.....some of the stuff in bits where he never saw
the bits all together at once as he wrote.....he didn't think he'd ever see a line
of his writing published and then won the nobel prize in literature.

there's a lot in that tiny little sum up i just did......
think about  it.
it had to be just flooding inside of him and he HAD to write it down, ya know?
and when you think of the volumes and volumes he wrote.....and never thinking
anything would be published....AND not being able to share it with ANYONE....
and yet still he wrote.

anyone feelin' like they just don't have the time to create?
need a little push somehow?
i encourage you to start here at wikipedia........
and read about this guy.
i haven't finished.
i'm heading back there right now.
then gonna poke around some more.

cause his drive to write is only a tiny bit of the inspiration........
and what he created.......and how he touches my soul.......and how when i hold
this book that's fallilng apart, yellowed, and has the cover torn off (i taped it together
last nite) and feel like i'm holding one of the world's greatest art pieces.......

i get pretty inspired.

got a minute?
check him out...