![]() ![]() Had his diary been discovered, Chistyakov would have faced severe punishment, possibly execution. Ivan Petrovich Chistyakov exists because of the notebooks he furtively kept while serving as a senior guard in 1935–’36 at the Baikal Amur Corrective Labor Camp, one circle in the vast hell of the Gulag. ![]() At the end of the same lengthy, detailed paragraph he writes: “A tardy ray flashes out, as if hastening after the sun and, as it vanishes, bestows a smile, like a girl who has said goodbye and, walking away, looks back from a distance.”Ībout the writer we know little, not even his precise age. Sunset brings a sense of hopelessness with its beauty, but by cataloging its effects he preserves a sliver of his humanity. ![]() At twilight, he notes subtle shifts of color: “The horizon, a red line, burns ever brighter until it overflows and spills out, flooding the sky and turning everything purple.” Each sunset is beautiful and each is different, yet our writer is no aesthete or nature mystic. OUR WRITER has an eye for nature and a lyrical touch. ![]()
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