The following address was delivered when Solzhenitsyn was awarded the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature in 1993. It was translated by Solzhenitsyn's sons, Ignat and Stephan. The title was provided by The New York Times, where the essay was first printed.
By Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Nothing worthy can be built on a neglect of higher meanings and on a relativistic view of concepts and culture as a whole.
There is a long accepted truth about art that "style is the man" ("le style est l'homme”). This means that every work of a skilled Musician, Artist or Writer is shaped by an absolutely unique combination of personality traits, creative abilities and individual as well as national experience. And since such a combination can never be recreated, art (but I shall here speak primarily of literature) possesses infinite variety across the ages and among different peoples.
