When I look back, I cannot fail to recognize that the past six years, at Five Brooks [the name the Solzhenitsyns gave to their Cavendish, Vermont property–Ed.], have been the happiest of my life. Some disagreeable Western problems descended on us—and passed by, an insignificant froth. It was just then, in those years, that the invective increased—but it didn’t spoil a single working day for me; I didn’t even notice it, following the advice of the proverb, “hear no evil, see no evil.” Sometimes it’s better not to know what people are saying about you. Alya [Solzhenitsyn’s second wife, Natalia Solzhenitsyna–Ed.], whenever she entered my office, always found me in a joyful, even radiant mood—so well was my work coming along. I’ve been piling that abuse, those magazines, on a shelf and haven’t read it for all these years—until now. For the first time I am now, for Between Two Millstones, thinking of reading and simultaneously contesting it, to save time.
When you are immersed in a once-in-a-lifetime piece of work, you don’t notice, aren’t aware of any other tasks. At various times in that period my plays were produced, in Germany, Denmark, England, and the States, and I was invited to the premieres—but I never went. And as for the various gatherings, meetings, these are madness to me, just fruitless reeling in a New York or Paris whirlwind—while to them it’s my eccentricity that’s mad, retreating from the world to dig my grave. Some American literary critics, judging me by their own standards, decided that it was “well-organized publicity.” (Critics! Do they not understand what the writer’s work consists of? Every one of us who has something to say dreams of going into seclusion to work. I’ve been told that’s exactly what the intelligent ones do, here in Vermont and environs—Robert Penn Warren, Salinger. At one time Kipling lived right here for four years. Now, if I accepted all the invitations and spoke at the events—that would certainly be advertising myself.)
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