Can one imagine a famous British author bringing out a poem about his wartime experiences in the style of Henry V, or Paradise Lost, or Childe Harold? And having composed it while serving a ten-year prison sentence, committing it to memory, as he could not write it down? And, most unlikely of all, that it would be a marvellous poem, with some of the fiery freshness and energy of its great originals?

That, roughly speaking, is what Solzhenitsyn has done in Prusskiye Nochi, Prussian Nights. The title itself recalls Pushkin, who wrote a poetic fantasy called Egyptian Nights…. And the metre is a freer version of Pushkin's agile rhyming octosyllabics that tear along like the wind, fiercely exultant, but with nothing crude or makeshift in the variety and flexibility of their rhythms. Solzhenitsyn is not a poet of today in the sense that Brodsky or Voznesensky are. He...