Violence and the Lie

 People will ask what literature can do in the face of pitiless assault of open violence? Well, let us not forget that violence does not have its own separate existence and is, in fact, incapable of having it: it is invariably interwoven with THE LIE. They have the closest of kinship, the most profound natural tie: violence has nothing with which to cover itself except the lie, and the lie has nothing to stand on other than violence. Once someone has proclaimed violence as his METHOD, he must inexorably select the lie as his PRINCIPLE. At its birth violence acts openly and even takes pride in itself. But as soon as it is reinforced and it’s position is strengthened, it begins to sense the rarefied atmosphere around it, and it can go further only when fogged about with lies, cloaked in honeyed, hypocritical words. It doesn’t always nor invariably choke its victims; more often it demands of them only oath of the lie, only participation in the lie.

Simple is the ordinary courageous human being’s act of not participating in the lie, of not supporting false actions! What his stand says is: “So be it that this takes place in the world, that it even reigns in the world— but let it not be with my complicity.” Writers and artists have a greater opportunity: TO CONQUER THE LIE! In battle with the lie, art has always been victorious, always wins out, visibly incontrovertibly  for all ! The lie can stand up and win out over much in the world — but not over art.

 And as soon as the lie  is dispersed, the repulsive nakedness of violence is exposed, and violence will collapse in impotence.

 And that is why, my friends, I think that we are capable of of helping the world in its white-hot hour of trial. We must not reconcile ourselves to being defenceless and disarmed; we must not sink into a heedless, feckless life —but go out to the field of battle.

In the Russian language there are some favourite proverbs on TRUTH. They express enduringly the immense folk experience, and are sometimes quite surprising:

“ONE WORD OF TRUTH OUTWEIGHS THE WHOLE WORLD.”

And so it is that my own activity is founded on so apparently fantastic a violation of the law of the conservation of energy and mass, as is my appeal to the writers of the whole world.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn ( from Nobel Prize acceptance speech)