Word: solzhenitsyns
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David A. Aloian '49, Executive Director of the Harvard Alumni Association--the official sponsor of the afternoon exercises--missed Marshall's speech by two years. However, he recalls an equally famous address by Russian defector and author Alexsandr I. Solzhenitsyn...
...Solzhenitsyn's polemical essay, read by a translator as a light drizzle fell on the crowd, made enormous waves in the intellectual community. The Nobel Prize-winning writer who built his reputation declaiming the evils of communism stunned the world with a diatribe on the evils of capitalism, leaving Harvard seniors and their parents with a chilling forecast or Western Civilization's demise...
...great occasion," Aloian says of Solzhenitsyn's appearance, adding, "It was exactly what a Harvard Commencement should be, a wonderful and profound individual dealing eloquently with a major issue...
...classics are not the only works subject to constant reinterpretation. Some modern books have gone through several translations. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, dissatisfied with some of the first English versions of his works, insisted upon new ones as soon as he emigrated to the U.S. Other demanding authors, who possess a greater command of foreign tongues, have decided that self-translation is best. Nabokov, whose early work was written in Russian, rendered Laughter in the Dark into English. He also turned Lolita, which was written in English, into Russian. Samuel Beckett, an Irishman who writes mostly in French, has translated his plays...
...that was before 1969, when she and her husband, Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, offered sanctuary to the dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Many Soviet musicians joined in the official chorus denouncing Solzhenitsyn; the couple remained unyielding in his defense. As a result, Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich found that their concert and recording dates had been canceled by the Soviet authorities. After these two celebrated Soviet performers had emigrated to the West in desperation, their names were systematically expunged from the annals of Russian music...