MEETING WITH THE BOOK IN “THE CANCER WARD” BY A.I. SOLZHENITSYN

The article examines the role of the meeting Efrem Podduev, one of the characters in Solzhenitsyn’s The Cancer Ward, with the Leo Tolstoy’s book sig nificant for the situation in which he found himself. Acutely experiencing the ex pectation of imminent death, he perceives this meeting as the most important event in his life, the meaning of which is revealed to him as he understands what he has read and relates it to his life story. The book, as it turns out in the process of getting to know it and delving into its content, contains the answer to the question that tormented him about preparing for death. The solution to this question is contained in the story “What People Live by”, which causes profound changes in his inner world. In the story, the theme of a meeting that transforms a person (the heroes meet an angel who disobeyed God and was sent to earth to learn important “words” about man) is revealed, defining its didactic potential as an event that can happen with oth ers. This is fixed by its parable-like construction, with an emphasis on the universal content of the story. For Podduev, the encounter with the book awakens the desire not only to get to the bottom of his human essence, hidden from him for so long, but to try to return to it. Everything that he thought through and understood about his previous life and about himself allows him to gain the knowledge that he needed.