Masueng, Marie Nichole B.

World Literature

The One Great Heart

By Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The starting sentence in Solzhenitsyn’s essay was, “I am, however, encouraged by a keen
sense of WORLD LITERATURE as the one great heart that beats for the cares and the
misfortunes of our world, even though each corner sees and experiences them in a different
way.” Now, I’ve thought about what Solzhenitsyn meant by the metaphor of world literature
being “the one great heart”, and understood that the Bible, the works of great world poets, novels
of Hemingway, tales of the Grimm brothers and all the other writings lead us to a deeper
understanding of life. Each literature mentioned above gave us a view, or told us a story or a part
of history, or just made up texts from someone else’s imaginative mind. What I mean is,
literature is everywhere, and everyone reads literature: from those preschool kids, with their
illustrated books, from elementary and high school students who studies the different poets from
different parts of the world, to the college students and adults around the world. We start reading
literature from an early age and as we grow older, begin to discuss serious ideas that permeate
the world and the human condition. We begin to move toward an understanding of the world and
toward an understanding that ideas of one culture may differ from those of our own culture. And
we also begin to understand that historical documents have the power to define cultures of the
world. We begin to understand that sacred, scientific, and other writings help show how the
elements of life on earth work together.

Solzhenitsyn said, “Literature, one of the most sensitive and responsive tools of human
existence, has been the first to pick up, adopt, and assimilate this sense of the growing unity of
mankind. I therefore confidently turn to the world literature of the present, to hundreds of friends
of whom I have not met face to face and perhaps will never see.” Literature is one way of uniting
people from different parts of the world, connecting and creating a bond between people from
the North and South, East and West. Works of literature travel across the globe. He believed that
even if we are torn from differences with our cultural beliefs, we can find ways to help each
other and not tear down each other. Because even if we came from those 200 different countries
from those 7 continents, we all have one thing in common; literature was part of our lives from
infancy to the present. We might read the same books but in different languages, but the message
of the work we read was just the same. For example, the Bible is translated into hundreds of
languages, but the content of the Chinese version is of course not different from the content of
the English one. The last part of his sentence says, “Hundreds of friends of whom I have not met
face to face and perhaps will never see.” He knows that his work travels across the globe, and
people, not from his same origin has read his works. This proves that literature really does create
a bond between people who haven’t met in person, because Solzhenitsyn may have wrote
something that a Filipino would agree to, thus creating an understanding even though they are
miles away from each other. He also said that the writers and spokesmen of a national language
are the chief ties that are binding the nation, the very soil which the people inhibit, and, in
fortunate circumstances, the nation’s spirit too. I think what he meant by writing this sentence
was, it is up to the writers of literature to write and the spokesperson of a native language to
translate and explain truthfully what the writers really wanted to say, because literature has the
power to expose the truth, when no one else can, because if not writers, who will write about the
truth and help the people see? Was what he wants to say. Nowadays, it is true that literature can
be used to lie to the people, because usually people believe what is written or what they read.
And writing lies can confuse the people about the truth. What Alexander Solzhenitsyn wants is
for the writers to stand up and write about the truth and the truth alone because only they have
that kind of power. They could help the people see the truth behind the lies, and thus could end
violence. “One word of truth outweighs the world.” He said in his essay.

At first, I didn’t get why the title was called “The One Great Heart” and the content is
about literature, but as I finished reading, I understood and realized that literature really is vital in
our existence. This essay really deserved the Nobel Prize it got in 1970, because it showed
people how vital literature is, everywhere in the world. It made us see its importance, its
characteristics and how powerful it is. The essay was short but the content was very meaningful.
He wrote in a way which everybody could understand, he didn’t use jargon words or words that
are very deep to understand. The way he wrote it was really for people to understand the
importance and power of the literature. His use of grammar, punctuation marks, and capital
letters when emphasizing something are on point. Overall, this is an essay that is easy to read and
understand. Alexander Solzhenitsyn would say that literature is just as important to our mind and
spirit as the heart is to our body. And maybe, with the efforts of all of us, maybe a few of the
“cares and misfortunes of the world” will be eased in some way with the use of literature.