In the Circle - A Son's Reflections

Ignat Solzhenitsyn, acclaimed pianist and conductor, middle son of the legendary author, shares his thoughts on the re-release of In the First Circle (noted on this blog previously here) and a bit about growing up in America with The Times Online's Daniel Kalder today.

Ignat Solzhenitsyn

If even a fraction of this ferociously defiant, contrarian attitude had rubbed off on his son, then I was in for a difficult interview. And yet Ignat, 37, a big, burly man, was open, warm, and gregarious and entirely lacking in pretension or pomposity. Did he or his two brothers ever find their father overwhelming? “No. You hear about quirks and deviations with artists, but we were very fortunate. I can’t imagine a great man being more normal than he was.”
Normal: not a word that featured in any of the obituaries published when Solzhenitsyn died in August 2008 aged 89. Opinion was divided over his achievements, as it still is. Was he the literary heir to Tolstoy and a hero? Or was he a “Russian Khomeini” with “virulently reactionary” political views?

It is good to hear that even a "great man" might be viewed, even by one of his own children, as "normal."

Hope for us all.

A bit of Ignat in performance can be found here.

And for the rest of today's Times story go here.