408 RüdigerKunow
autobiographical references: like Kostoglotov,^103 Solzhenitsyn himself
had been sent to a labor camp; and like his fictional creation, he had,
after his release from the gulag, been diagnosed with a tumor but
apparentlynotamalignantone,andhadalsobeentreatedinahospitalin
theAsianpartofthecountry(Blaken.pag.;Meyers56).
The years immediately following publication ofCancer Ward in
English were a time when the Cold War was once again raging
intensely; and so, reviewers and critics were quick to highlight the
autobiographical and political dimensions of the text and also the
various political innuendos interspersed throughout the novel (allusions
to Stalinism 53, 66, 304). One of them says: "In spite of Solzhenitsyn's
clinicalpreoccupations,thereadermuststrainhardto readthisnovelas
a book aboutcancer" (Blake n.pag.).^104 This pretty much summarizes a
criticalconsensuswhichhaslastedwellintotheturnofthecentury.
In spite of such an overdetermined reception ofCancer Ward, the
present interest will be with its medical side, at least for starters. The
basis for such a reading is provided by the novel's sweeping realism.
The narrative details the various treatment procedures, sometimes with
rhetorical flourish (77); it offers insight into the minds of the medical
personnel, doctors, nurses, and medical students, and into the
conversations among the patients. It also represents different emotional
responses to cancer. Like Lorde, Solzhenitsyn insists that cancer
becomes the new normal for its sufferers: "you felt the door to all your
pastlifehadbeenslammedbehindyou..."(17).Andso,tobeinWard
No. 13 is to have "the tiny wire linking him [Rusanov] with the outside
world... snapped" (27-28). The narrowly circumscribed daily routines
ofthepatientssetasideallothermundaneconcernsandreducethemtoa
precarious corporeality, always threatened by the inscrutable workings
ofcancer.
(^103) Perhaps not accidentally, throughout the novel, Kostoglotov functions as the
mouthpieceformoreorlessguardedcritiqueoftheSovietsystem,especiallyof
thepurgesofthe1930s(464-67).
(^104) According to the same source, Solzhenitsyn himself had made the very
opposite point, insisting that his novel was about cancer and nothing else: "I
have given my novel to important cancer specialists asking their opinion. They
repliedthatfromthemedicalpointofviewitisunchallengeableandup-to-date.
Itisaboutcancer,cancerassuch..."(qtd.inBlaken.pag.).