{"id":3879,"date":"2021-04-03T12:08:08","date_gmt":"2021-04-03T12:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vocilibereurss.fupress.net\/nel-primo-cerchio\/"},"modified":"2021-12-18T18:16:13","modified_gmt":"2021-12-18T18:16:13","slug":"in-the-first-circle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vocilibereurss.fupress.net\/en\/in-the-first-circle\/","title":{"rendered":"In the First Circle (A. Solzhenitsyn)"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column_text]\n
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Detail of the cover of “In the First Circle” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Titolo:\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>
\nV kruge pervom [In the First Circle]\n

Author: <\/strong><\/em>Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn<\/p>\n

Year: <\/em><\/strong>1968<\/p>\n

Publisher: <\/strong><\/em>Mondadori<\/p>\n

Place: <\/em><\/strong>Milan<\/p>\n

Description:
\n<\/em><\/strong>When in July 1968 Arnoldo Mondadori published Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novel Nel primo cerchio <\/em>(In the First Circle) (cf. Sol\u017eenicyn 1968a), the author was already known to Italian readers for his Una giornata di Ivan Denisovi\u010d<\/em> (One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich<\/a>) (cf. Sol\u017eenicyn 1963) and Divisione Cancro<\/em> (Cancer ward) (cf. Anonimo 1968), published anonymously by Il Saggiatore only a few months earlier. By the mid-1960s, Solzhenitsyn\u2019s favour in his home country had diminished due to his constant denunciation of the repressive Soviet regime and the Gulag system, and his works were banned, making their publication in the USSR impossible.
\nThe subject of the novel (V kruge pervom<\/em> in the original title), refers to the author’s experience of imprisonment in special prison number 16 (Marfino’s Sharashka<\/em>), on the outskirts of Moscow. Here, scientists and technicians, detained for political offences, worked on projects of national importance, in less harsh living conditions than in ordinary Soviet detention camps, as the title which refers to Dante’s limbo suggests.
\nThe composition of the novel, which was begun in 1955, at the time of Solzhenitsyn’s confinement in Kok Terek (Kazakhstan), was subsequently subjected to a series of revisions until the seventh and final version was completed in 1968 with 98 chapters. The fifth revision made some structural (reduction to 87 chapters) and thematic changes to the original version, replacing nuclear secrets by the betrayal of a doctor. This version, although approved by Tvardovskii (at the time editor-in-chief of “Novyi Mir”), did not pass the censorship block: in 1965 it was seized by the KGB together with the writer’s archive and circulated in the USSR in samizdat<\/em>. The sixth version, also of 87 chapters, was smuggled abroad by the author via clandestine channels.
\nRights to the work in the West were held by the American Harper & Row, which signed agreements with other literary agencies and foreign publishers. In Italy, the agreement holders were the Agenzia Letteraria Internazionale (ALI) and the publisher Mondadori. After the seizure of his archive in 1965 and the beginning of the defamatory campaign against him, Solzhenitsyn’s no longer had any control over tamizdat<\/em> editions, nor could he be sure of their authenticity.\u00a0 On the whole he expressed negative views about the quality of the works printed before his exile.
\nAfter acquiring exclusive rights for Italy from Harper & Row, Mondadori<\/a> requested an opinion on the book from Pietro Zveteremich, who then translated it in great secrecy within a short time. After the publication of the Russian text, printed in June in Zurich by agreement with the American publisher, a ‘pilot’ chapter was published in July in the magazine “Epoca” (cf. Sol\u017eenicyn 1968b) at the same time as the entire novel was released, in over 14,000 hard copies, followed by 13 editions in six years (cf. Garetto, Mazzucchelli 2019). The novel was in the list of the five best-selling books of the week for three months from 1 August to 31 October 1968, at times in first place (ranking compiled by Agenzia Ansa, \u201cLa Fiera Letteraria\u201d 1968), but it was not given much space in the Italian press, although many national periodicals often reported on Solzhenitsyn and other Soviet writers.
\nOne of the first reviews was by Guido Piovene in \u201cLa Stampa\u201d on 20 July 1968, which defined the protest presented in the pages of Nel primo cerchio<\/em> as ‘different’ from that presented in other literature of the time, because it was rooted in an ancient morality meaning that in Solzhenitsyn’s work horror does not affect the soul and \u201copposition finds its place, not so much in the pride of one’s rights, as in a patient religiosity\u201d (Piovene 1968: 3). \u201cL’Espresso\u201d, while recommending reading the work and defining the author as “the greatest living Soviet novelist, as well as the most hampered and by far the most courageous”, criticized Solzhenitsyn for failing to offer a comprehensive interpretation of Stalinist tyranny and the repression of millions of Russians (Milano 1968: 19). The weekly \u201cLa Fiera Letteraria<\/a>\u201d reported the novel’s publication and recommended it, but the following review, without expressing any opinion on its literary value, underlined the novel’s lack of incisiveness about the course of Russian history and the opinions of Western communists (cf. Carpendras 1968: 32). Luigi Baldacci, writing in \u201cEpoca\u201d, warned readers and critics against underestimating the novel, describing it as a “literary work of a high level, essential within the framework of Soviet production, and certainly important in the broader context of twentieth-century Europe” (Baldacci 1968: 85).
\nThe final version of the novel, edited by the author, was published in the second volume of his Complete Works (YMCA Press 1978) with a note in which Solzhenitsyn specified that this was the first edition of the final text, which had never been published in volume form or circulated in samizdat<\/em> (cf. Solzhenitsyn 1978: 6). A series of editions in Russia and various Western countries followed, while in Italy the first complete translation was only published in December 2018 (cf. Sol\u017eenicyn 2018).<\/p>\n

Elda Garetto, Sara Mazzucchelli
\n<\/em><\/strong>[30th June 2021]\n

Bibliography<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n