On the left is the dormitory where I lived for 5 years, from 1991 to 1995. On the right – windows through which Alexander Solzhenitsyn looked for just under 12 years, from 1956 to 1968, and wrote “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. At that time, the house was pink.
There is a small courtyard with a garden by the house. In the far corner, near a solid fence, where an old apple tree forms a “gazebo”, Solzhenitsyn built a bench and a table.
“…I stand under a blossoming apple tree—and breathe. Not just the apple tree, but also the grass around it exudes sweetness after the rain—there’s no name for that sweet fragrance that saturates the air. I draw it deep into my lungs, sensing the aroma with all my chest, breathing, breathing, now with open eyes, now with closed—I don’t know which is better. Here, perhaps, is that freedom—the only, but most precious freedom—that prison deprives us of: to breathe like this, to breathe here. No food on earth, no wine, not even a woman’s kiss is sweeter to me than this air, this air, laden with bloom, dampness, freshness…,” described Solzhenitsyn about the joy of encountering this Ryazan garden after years of camps and exile. (“Tiny Bits” is a cycle of miniatures in prose by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Literary experts classify these works as a genre of “prose poetry”).
The apple tree—in the comments. Essentially, now this place only reminds of Solzhenitsyn by two memorial plaques – on the house and on the apple tree.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 