Stanislav Lem and his novel "Solaris"

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

1961 was marked not only by the first manned flight into space, but also by the fact that the novel Solaris was published that year for the first time. The author of this fantastic work was a Polish writer of Jewish origin Stanislaw Lem. "Solaris" was destined to become not only the most famous of the writer's works, but also to leave an indelible mark on the fantastic literature of the whole world.

Stanislav Lem, author of Solaris

Stanisław Lem, or as they call him in his homeland Stanisław Lem, was born in the Ukrainian city of Lvov, which at that time belonged to Poland.

The childhood of the future writer passed in the same place. After leaving school, young Stanislav chose the profession of a physician and went to study medicine at Lviv University. However, with the outbreak of World War II, Lem was forced to leave his studies and get a job as a welder.

The writer and his parents were Jews. However, they were able to avoid deportation, as well as imprisonment in concentration camps thanks tocounterfeit documents.

After the end of the war, Lviv became part of the USSR, and Lem, being a Pole, was forced to leave his native city and move to Krakow. Here he continued his studies at the Jagiellonian University.

In the difficult post-war period, Stanislav Lem's earnings were small. In order to earn extra money, in his free time from official work, he began to write short fantastic stories. Soon Lem's talent was appreciated, the additional side job became his main job.

In 1951, the writer publishes his first major work - the science fiction novel "The Astronauts". This work makes Lem famous not only in Poland, but throughout the world. Astronauts is translated into other languages and often reprinted.

In subsequent years, many works of the writer are published. The novels Magellanic Cloud, Investigation, Eden, Return from the Stars, Manuscript Found in the Bathtub, Invincible, The Voice of the Lord, Cathar, and others. A cycle of humorous stories about the adventures of the astronaut "The Star Diaries of Iyon the Quiet", a collection of essays "Dialogues", a humorous story "Invasion from Aldebaran". A series of stories "Tales of Robots", "Cyberiad", "Tales of the Pilot Pirks", "Absolute Void" and much more. Among the author's works there is also an autobiographical novel about childhood in Lviv "The High Castle" and the world's most famous philosophical fantasy novel "Solaris".

The writer died in March 2006 from heart problems and was buried in Krakow.

Solaris Summary

In the near future, humanityis actively exploring space.

One hundred and thirty years before the beginning of the story, scientists discovered the planet Solaris. At first, people thought it was uninhabited. However, humanity soon learned that the jelly-like ocean that covers the entire surface of the planet is a living being. People were delighted and began to look for a way to establish contact with this mind. But a century has passed, and it has not been possible to do this.

A new employee arrives at the research station on Solaris - psychologist Chris Kelvin. The behavior of other station workers - Snaut and Sartorius - seems very strange to him. Moreover, a third employee named Gibarian committed suicide shortly before Chris arrived.

Before Calvin had time to digest all the news, his ex-girlfriend Hari appears from nowhere. However, it could not be her, since the girl once committed suicide. All attempts by Chris to get rid of Hari are unsuccessful - the girl comes back again and again. Soon the psychologist learns that each crew member has a similar uninvited "guest" from the past. It turns out that at the time when people are studying Solaris, the planet also began to conduct "experiments" on its researchers. To do this, she materializes objects from the sad or shameful memories of people on the planet.

Kelvin and his comrades in misfortune are actively looking for a way to get rid of their "guests", called phantoms. However, they fail. Meanwhile, Chris begins to become attached to Hari, who becomes more and more human and soon herself guesses aboutits origin. Realizing what she is, the girl tries to kill herself, but nothing comes of it.

Soon Kelvin stops looking for a way to get rid of Hari. But his comrades, together with the girl, secretly continue their research. They manage to succeed and destroy all the phantoms on the station, including Hari.

Chris is very worried about this loss. His colleagues are afraid that he will do something rash - blow up the planet or commit suicide. But hard to rethink what happened, Calvin decides to stay on Solaris and continue research.

History of writing a novel

The novel "Solaris" was far from Lem's first major fantasy work. However, in it the writer began to move away from the utopian image of the future, characteristic of his earlier robots.

The main part of Solaris was written in the summer of 1959, when Stanisław Lem was vacationing in southern Poland. But, having returned home, the writer abandoned the unfinished manuscript for almost a year. In 1960, Lem decides to finish the Solaris novel. To do this, he completes the last chapter, and also edits the previously written text. In 1961, the novel was published in Poland, and in subsequent years it began to be actively translated into other languages.

As Lem himself later wrote in his autobiographical books, many things in his novel Solaris were inexplicable to him. While working on the novel, the writer sometimes felt that someone else was telling him how and what to write.

Screenings

In 1963 Solaris was translated into Russian. The Soviet liked the novel so muchreaders that just five years after its publication, a television play starring Vasily Lanov was filmed based on it.

In 1972, Andrei Tarkovsky made a full-fledged film based on Lem's novel with Donatas Banionis as Kelvin.

Meanwhile, the author of the novel himself reacted rather negatively to Tarkovsky's rethinking of Solaris, saying that the great director did not understand his intention.

At the beginning of the 2000s, Stanislav Lem was offered to film his novel in Hollywood.

After the failure with Tarkovsky, the writer hesitated for a long time, but agreed. And in 2002, the third film adaptation of the novel "Solaris" was released. Unfortunately, it turned out to be even more distant from the original than the 1972 motion picture.

2016 marks the 55th anniversary of the publication of Stanislav Lem's book Solaris. The novel for all these years has not lost its relevance and continues to excite the minds of more and more new generations of readers.