Humanities & Social Sciences 7 (2015 8) 1436-1442 ~ ~ ~ УДК 82′06 The Truth of the Literary Past: (on the Issue of the Narrative Peculiarity in A. Solzhenitsyn’s Epic ‘The Red Wheel’) Monika Sidor* The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin 14 Al. <...> Raclawickie, 20-950 Lublin, Poland Received 11.02.2015, received in revised form 17.03.2015, accepted 16.04.2015 The present article tackles the artistic method used by Solzhenitsyn in his work “The Red Wheel”. <...> The starting point for consideration is the writer’s statement that this work of art is not an ordinary historical novel and it realizes totally exceptional artistic goals. <...> The author of the article proposes to analyze some of Solzhenitsyn’s theoretical explanations, which might have affected the specifi c character of the world presented in “The Red Wheel”. <...> The research of those explanations makes it possible to fi gure out certain parallels between the concept of artistic perception of Solzhenitsyn’s world and classical refl ections on the subject of tasks of literature and the role of an artist. <...> An exceptional role in this system of literary values is played by the truth of literature understood as authentic historical evidence, and a writer who takes on the role of a historian and is aimed at fi nding the meaning of historical events. <...> Keywords: artistic method, vision of an artist, history in literature, truth. <...> Despite this, the author considered this work as the main task of his life, and the fi nal parts of the epic as his most important achievement. <...> It is known that the plot of the work originated in his youth, when, as a student of physics and mathematics, Solzhenitsyn decided to write a work about the Russian revolution. © Siberian Federal University. <...> The article proposes a combined research approach that does not involve the analysis of only literary facts in the perspective of determining a type Monika Sidor. <...> We will focus mainly on identifying the ethical, psychological and didactic prerequisites of the individual method of Solzhenitsyn. “The Red Wheel” quite distinctly reveals the extraordinary understanding of the literary truth. <...> This task went far beyond the usual historical novel, the plot of which is usually centred on a particular person or event. <...> Let us remember that it is contact with the authentic, direct evidence concerning specifi <...>