Alexander Solzhenitsyn: 1918 - 2008
The Russian novelist and historian Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose works detailed the Soviet labor camp system, has died at 89, Russian news agencies reported Monday.Posted by Vox at August 3, 2008 05:59 PM | R.I.P.
Here is an amazing fact about Solzhenitsyn on in the NY Times Obituary that I saw on Freakonomics.
At Ekibastuz, any writing would be seized as contraband. So he devised a method that enabled him to retain even long sections of prose. After seeing Lithuanian Catholic prisoners fashion rosaries out of beads made from chewed bread, he asked them to make a similar chain for him, but with more beads. In his hands, each bead came to represent a passage that he would repeat to himself until he could say it without hesitation. Only then would he move on to the next bead. He later wrote that by the end of his prison term, he had committed to memory 12,000 lines in this way.
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/memory-then-and-now/
Amazing.
Posted by: Michelle at August 4, 2008 07:38 AM