Cancer Ward | Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | A masterpiece old-school Russian style...

Cancer Ward | Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | Solzhenitsyn was right; New York Times was terribly wrong

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Cancer Ward

	Cancer Ward Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991 - 560 pages average customer review:based on 40 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Cancer Ward examines the relationship of a group of people in the cancer ward of a provincial Soviet hospital in 1955, two years after Stalin's death. We see them under normal circumstances, and also reexamined at the eleventh hour of illness. Together they represent a remarkable cross-section of contemporary Russian characters and attitudes. The experiences of the central character, Oleg Kostoglotov, closely reflect the author's own: Solzhenitsyn himself became a patient in a cancer ward in the mid-1950s, on his release from a labor camp, and later recovered. Translated by Nicholas Bethell and David Burg.

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A masterpiece old-school Russian style...

No one writes a fat, sprawling, old-fashioned Russian novel quite like a Russian. To the ranks of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, you can add Solzhenitsyn and to novels like *The Brothers Karamazov* and *Anna Karenina* you can add *Cancer Ward.* In fact, *Cancer Ward,* like Tolstoy's slim but immensely profound *The Death of Ivan Illych* begins in much the same fashion: a married, middle-aged career man is suddenly confronted with the most immediate and terrifying thing of all: his own mortality.

Although in *Cancer Ward* instead of the self-absorption of bourgeoisie society, the setting is Soviet Russia in the two years after Stalin's demise. It's still a world of repression, imprisonment, suspicion, fear, lies, exile--and, most of all, the ever-lurking presence of death. These conditions are allegorized in the cancer ward itself, in the doctor's who must have faith in their largely ineffective treatment and--all appearances to the contrary--who never tell their patients the truth about their condition...which leads to the absurdity that Solzhenitsyn uses as the title of the first chapter of *Cancer Ward*: a patient sent to the cancer ward assured by his doctor that he has "no cancer whatsoever."

What is allegorized is a people who've been systematically brutalized into the deepest self-denial, terrorized into ignoring the cancer destroying their society.

But for all the allusions--evident or oblique--to the secret police, the Gulag, and the totalitarian state, as well as the impassioned outcries against Stalinism, *Cancer Ward* is about the universal and timeless problems of death, of faith, of freedom, and of how we should live our lives and what might give them meaning.

Like all the greatest Russian novelists, Solzhenitsyn tackles the biggest questions. *Cancer Ward* is a philosophical novel in the best Dostoyevskian sense of the term. Filled with passion, pathos, humor, and heart, as well as a vivid cast of memorable characters to embody every idea, every human emotion, *Cancer Ward* is a masterpiece and Solzhenitsyn a writer rare in our age who still dares to deal with serious things seriously and compels you, by the sheer unquestionable moral force of his conviction, to take them seriously, too.

This is perhaps the best book I've read in recent memory. Don't miss it.

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Solzhenitsyn was right; New York Times was terribly wrong

It is almost unbelievable how the liberal elite in America covered Stalin's crimes until Solzhenitsyn's prophetic writings emerged. And not to be outdone, President Ford and Henry Kissinger refused to welcome the greatest writer of the 20th Century in order to placate the Soviets. May Solzhenitsyn rest peacefully in the assurance that one honest man changed the world. And may his literary works live forever.

Thinking about health care

The forward explains how the writer was treated in Tashkent for cancer while serving a sentence of forced labor exile. Post World War II Tashkent was cosmopolitan. The story takes place in February and March 1955 in a city like Tashkent. By then Stalin had died, Beria had been executed, and Malenkov had fallen from office.

The number of the cancer ward is thirteen. An official is to be treated for a tumor at the hospital. He resents the squalor of his surroundings. He consents, nonetheless, to undergo treatments. Dr. Dontsova has three residents. They call her Mama.

The bureaucracy insists that Dontsova dismiss indeterminate cases, cases where there is no improvement. Dontsova is troubled herself by stomach pains. Guilt she feels, though, is triggered by the existence of radiation sickness since she is an oncologist and radiologist. She cleans and shops and cooks for her family consisting of her husband and son.

One evening the male patients have an argument about moral perfectionism. It is claimed that Gorky, Stalin, and Lenin all thought that Tolstoy's doctrine was dangerous. Continuing their discussion, the male cancer patients are happy to think of traditional peasant remedies. Illness levels. The functionary and the exile are similarly situated.

Sickness provides respite from work and citizenly duties. Centers for treatment draw a cosmopolitan mix of people. Many people had lives interrupted in war service. Fairly detailed descriptions of the soviet medical system are given. Shortages of cleaning rags and other dysfunctions are common. Attempts to rationalize procedures and safeguard limited resources slow progress and create inefficiencies.

Oleg Filimonovich Kostoglotov, one of the points through which consciousness flows in the novel, resides in Ush-Terek, a virgin lands territory, and is a topographer but works as a land surveyor. The Ministry of Internal Affairs required that he live there. He was administratively exiled.

Pavel Nikolayevich Rusanov, the official being treated, strives to be optimistic as Gorky couseled. He looks forward to the visits of his wife, Kapitolina Matveyena. At first a geologist, Vadim, thought that Oleg Kostoglotov was a rude loud-mouth. (Vadim was collected, proud, and polite.) He saw that Rusanov was a standard sort of bureaucrat. Later Vadim discovered that Oleg was not arrogant. In fact, he was even generous.

Oleg discovered that after the world of the camps, exile could not be cruel. He was thirty-four and now too old too obtain a university education. He felt he could be content in exile if only he had his health. Oleg's good friends in Ush-Terek were a pediatrician and his wife. Oleg admired the chief surgeon at the facility. He had worked in the camps. Oleg picked up this piece of biography through the surgeon's choice of words. Oleg accused Rusanov of not being patriotic, of not having a love for country, but rather of wanting a fat pension.

Someone cites a writing of Lenin that an official should be paid a wage equal to the amount paid to a good worker. An older man tells Oleg that with his history he is fortunate since he has had to lie less. The man, a scientist, had been forced to follow the faulty teachings of Lysenko.

Dontsova had dealt with the ailments of other for thirty years. Now she has been diagnosed. She is to take sick leave and proceed to the Moscow Institute She makes her final rounds. Rusanov is released. He believes that he is cured. Oleg is discharged to recover from the treatment and to return to Ush-Terek. This is a masterpiece.

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Excellent book

This book is written in the true Russian style. It's poignant and shocking and hard to put down.

An incomparably rich and beautiful novel

So much serious stuff has been written about this famous novel that first-time readers may be surprised that the first of the two parts of the book is actually an easy read with a light touch and plenty of humour despite the utterly gloomy and sad premise: a group of cancer patients in a decrepit, impoverished cancer hospital. Not much action, but vivid and touching dialogues abound. The second half of the book is a bit more demanding, with lengthy philosophical reflections on life and humankind. But it's worth it: some of the most haunting and moving passages of modern writing are found here. When Solzhenitsyn lets his protagonist compare life to the rivers of Siberia "running into the sand", he may just have created the most beautiful metaphor of life ever put on paper. Please, do read this book.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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