ABSTRACT
The journey up to Solzhenitsyn’s house through New England is very beautiful and gives one a sense of how successfully the spot was chosen. Solzhenitsyn’s house is situated about four miles past Cavendish, up a narrow, winding road that runs beside a swift mountain stream. There are a few scattered houses and farms, a graveyard clings to a hill above the road to the left, a few local people wave when the Solzhenitsyn family car drives past. Solzhenitsyn detests formality, luxury, elaborateness of any kind. For almost all the rest of the time Solzhenitsyn worked, as did everyone else in the house, which gave an aura of seriousness to the whole establishment. Solzhenitsyn has freely admitted that the example of Tolstoy was decisive in leading him to undertake his historical epic.
