As imperceptibly as Grief
by Emily Dickinson

As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—
Too imperceptible at last,
To seem like Perfidy—
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon—
The Dusk drew earlier in—
The Morning foreign shone—
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone—
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.


“As imperceptibly as Grief” by Emily Dickinson. Public Domain. (buy now)

London's Westminster Abbey was consecrated on this date in 1065. There has been a church on the site since the late 8th century, when a small community of monks formed a monastery there; it's possible the site dates back as far as the early seventh century, to the time of the first Christian king of the Saxons, Saberht. King Edward I (later known as Edward the Confessor) decided to expand the Benedictine monastery around 1040, and ordered construction of a new stone church in honor of Saint Peter. The church became known as "west minster" to distinguish it from Saint Paul's Cathedral, which was the "east minster." By the time the church was consecrated 25 years later, Edward was too ill to attend, and he died a few weeks later. He was buried in front of the high altar.

Most of the original abbey was lost when Henry III decided to remodel it in the new Gothic style during the 13th century.

Beginning with William the Conqueror in 1066, Westminster Abbey has witnessed all but two coronations. It has hosted 16 royal weddings, and houses the remains of 17 monarchs. It is also the final resting place of many notable writers, poets, scientists, and politicians.

It’s the birthday of novelist Charles Portis (books by this author), born in El Dorado, Arkansas (1933). He was the London correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune from 1960 to 1964, when he left to write fiction. His first novel, Norwood (1966), received some notice, but it was his second book, True Grit (1968), that brought him critical and popular success. It’s the story of an Arkansas 14-year-old named Mattie Ross who wants to avenge the murder of her father. She enlists the aid of Rooster Cogburn, a washed-out but still tough United States marshal.

It was on this day in 1895 that Auguste and Louis Lumière had the first commercial movie screening at the Grand Café in Paris. An audience paid to watch their film “Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory.” It was short, 46 seconds long, a single shot with a static camera. It showed a concierge at the end of the day’s work opening the factory gates, from which dozens of workers poured into the street, some walking, some on bicycle. It ended with the concierge closing the gates again.

It was on this day in 1973 that Alexander Solzhenitsyn published The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956, a searing account of the Soviet Union’s notorious “gulags,” or forced labor camps. Solzhenitsyn used his own recollections of his eight years in the gulags and the testimony of other prisoners to write the book. He said, “No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause, I am prepared to accept even death.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was serving on the front lines during World War II in East Prussia when he was accused of spreading anti-Soviet propaganda. In his private letters, he’d referred to Joseph Stalin as “the man with the mustache.” He was sentenced to eight years in the labor camps, which the government used as tools for repression and re-education. The camps were spread all over Russia, like little islands, which is where Solzhenitsyn got the idea for using “archipelago” in the title of his book. Millions of people were imprisoned and many died in the gulags. They were forced to work as miners, bricklayers, and foundrymen. Food was rationed, and heat and medicine were scarce.

Any writing could be seized as contraband, so Solzhenitsyn borrowed a trick from the Lithuanian Catholics, who made prayer beads out of string and pieces of chewed bread. For Solzhenitsyn, each piece of bead-bread was a passage of writing. By the end of his prison sentence, he estimated he’d committed more than 12,000 lines of writing to memory.

He was living in exile as a poor, obscure high school science teacher when his novel about the gulags, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), was published in the Soviet Union. It was an instant sensation, but it also brought him to the attention of the KGB, who began harassing him by sending him photos of car accidents and brain surgeries. He was so afraid he began sleeping with a pitchfork next to his bed.

Microfilm and carbon copies of The Gulag Archipelago had been smuggled out of the Soviet Union. A complete manuscript was buried at the countryside home of friends in Estonia for twenty-two years. In 1970, Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in literature, but was afraid to travel to Sweden for the ceremony, fearing he wouldn’t be let back into his country. Writers like Arthur Miller and Jean-Paul Sartre came to Solzhenitsyn’s defense.

The Gulag Archipelago was published (1973) in the original Russian in Paris and quickly became a worldwide sensation. Solzhenitsyn was promptly declared a non-person and deported in 1974. Flying out of West Germany, he deliberately wore the same ratty cap and threadbare sheepskin coat he’d worn during his exile. After the KGB interrogated his typist, she hanged herself.

Stanford University invited him to the United States. With his crabby demeanor and thick, long beard, he became a popular symbol of rebellion, though he never liked the U.S. He eventually settled in Vermont, where his neighbors were very protective of him and his family, hanging signs that read, “No directions to the Solzhenitsyns.” He thought Americans were materialistic, American music was intolerable, and he refused to become fluent in English. He wrote a 5000-page epic historical, several-volume novel called The Red Wheel (1985) while he lived in Vermont. His other books include Cancer Ward (1968) and The Oak and the Calf (1975).

In 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the Soviet Union, offered to restore Solzhenitsyn’s citizenship and allow publication of his novels in Russia. Solzhenitsyn refused the offer of citizenship, though he and his wife returned to Russia in 1994. For a short time, he hosted his own television show, in which he delivered a scathing 15-minute monologue twice a month. He died in 2008. The Gulag Archipelago has sold over 30 million copies worldwide.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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