As part of our ongoing story reading sessions, we read today O.Henry‘s ‘The Count and the Wedding Guest‘…. This is the 11th story of his we have read in our group. The previous ones include such classics like : After Twenty Years, The Gift of the Magi, The Cop and the Anthem, Retrieved Reformation, The Guilty Party, While the Auto Waits, Witches’ Loaves, The Last Leaf, Friends in San Rosario, The Furnished Room.
A young and comely girl, Miss Donovan, pretends to be in mourning for the death of her fiance who according to her is a Count in Italy. She cooks up this story due to peer pressure and her liking for dressing in all black. Her story falls apart when she shows the picture of the non existent count to Andy whom she is about to marry. Turns out that the picture she showed to Andy is “Big Mike Sullivan” who is a close acquiantance of Andy.
O.Henry builds out the story quite nicely and we get to know of the twist in the last sentence:
“Andy,” said Maggie, with a somewhat shy smile, after she had been thoroughly assured of forgiveness, “did you believe all that story about the Count?”
“Well, not to any large extent,” said Andy, reaching for his cigar case, “because it’s Big Mike Sullivan’s picture you’ve got in that locket of yours.”
O.Henry is one of the most read authors in our group and children keep asking for more. It is a pleasure to read his stories for them and also deepen the awareness of O.Henry’s originality and uniqueness as a great short story writer.
A well attended session and a well received story.
While reading a story, I very often throw quirky sentences at children and ask them to interpret it for the group. In today’s story we came across the following sentence:
“He threw away the remaining inch-and-a-quarter of his cigar, that would have been good for eight minutes yet, and quickly shifted his center of gravity to his low cut patent leathers.”
One of members of our group who is in class VI got it spot on….
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions, we read today Oscar Wilde‘s ‘The Star Child.’ This is a typical fairy tale in which a changeling transforms from being vain and proud to a being full of kindness and humility facing a great amount of strife and tribulation.
A large majority of the children in our group have grown beyond the traditional plots and themes that fairy tales have to offer. Despite knowing this, I risked choosing this story primarily to introduce a writing style which is quaint and at places extremely attractive.
As expected the reaction was a mixed one. While older participants gave a thumbs-down, newer and younger members voted for the story.
Notwithstanding changing tastes, striking a fine balance between content selection and expanding diversity of sources is always a non-trivial challenge.
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions we read the following today:
1. The Pumpernickel – Ray Bradbury
2. The Owl Who Was God & The Moth and the Star from ‘Fables for our Time’ – James Thurber
‘The Pumpernickel‘ is a subtle take on aging, memories and the weight of nostalgia on humans. Returning from a late night movie show, Mr. Welles is flooded with nostalgia of his youthful, carefree halcyon days triggered by a pumpernickel bread loaf he sees in the delicatessen. He is also reminded of how all his close friends carved their names on a slice of pumpernickel bread on the parting lakeside picnic they all were part to. In a burst of youthful enthusiasm, Mr.Welles picks the entire loaf of bread with an idea of sending a slice of pumpernickel bread to his friends across the US for them to once again write their names on it and send it back to him. Turns out that the energy and enthusiasm is shortlived and strong enough to last just a night long. Next day morning his wife carves slices out of the pumpernickel loaf which he eats without any thought to his previous plan.
Ray demonstrates a master subtlety in the way he handles the narrative.
The Owl Who Was God & The Moth and the Star are from ‘Fables for our Time‘ by James Thurber – an interesting retelling of age old fables with a twist in their moral conclusions.
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions we read today American writer W.C.Morrow‘s “A Game of Honour“
A team of five set sail to the tropics to hunt for a fabulous treasure with a pre-agreed code of honour of unflinching integrity. The designated punishment for violating the code would be to let the person who commits it adrift in a boat with a single oar in a shark infested ocean. One Rositter turns out to be the culprit and accepts the punishment. He is adrift in the ocean without water and food for four days tenaciously followed by a shark. Driven by the primal forces of hunger and thirst, he gets delusional and plays a betting game with his visitng card with the shark which has been following him. According to the game he should jump into the ocean to be devoured by the shark if he loses the betting game. He loses the bet to the shark. In the meanwhile a steamer spots him and drops a resuce boat along with a team to resuce him from the shark. But Rositter sees an opportunity of redemption in his own eyes and jumps into the ocean to keep his terms of the bet. The rescue team does not understand why he resorts to this extreme measure.
Morrow describes Rositter’s state of mind very well when he makes him say these words:
“It isn’t the hot sun broiling you and covering you with bursting blisters, and changing the marrow of your bones to melted iron and your blood to hissing lava–it isn’t the sun that hurts; and the hunger that gnaws your intestines to rags, and the thirst that changes your throat into a funnel of hot brass, and blinding bursts of red fire in your head, and lying dead in the waist of the boat while the sun steals thirty degrees of time out the sky, and a million fiery tadpoles darting through the air–none of them hurts so much as something infinitely deeper and more cruel,–your broken pledge of honor to your mother, your God, yourself, and your friends. That is what hurts, my friend.”
The story was fairly well received by the children. A couple of our members expressed a view that he should have taken his gift of life, gone back to land and lived a life of redemption and integrity. I felt it was a fair argument….
Besides entertaining, good stories should make one think on life’s imponderables and W.C.Morrow‘s “A Game of Honour” did that to a certain extent – I felt.
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions, we read today 2 stories:
1. Uncle Marcos – Isabelle Allende ( This is an extract from her first novel “The House of Spirits”)
2. The Immortal Bard – Isaac Asimov
I chose “Uncle Marcos” – a well translated piece from Isabelle Allende’s oeuvre with the aim of introducing the “Magic Realism” genre to members of our group. It did not go well. The only consolation I had here was that I could bring to focus the Greek myth of Icarus as an introduction to this story. It has been a good reminder to me never to take eye away from the entertainment quotient of a story in the quest for diversifying genres and writers.
The Immortal Bard by Isaac Asimov is a tongue in cheek take on how a physicist capable of bringing famous persons in history back to life through time travel gets Shakespeare back to modern day because he strongly believes that the bard is truly a person for all seasons and times and yet is forced to send him back to past because his colleague in the English department at the University flunks Shakespeare in Hamlet…
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions we read today Arthur C Clarke‘s ‘The Forgotten Enemy.’
The world is enveloped by snow. Humans (and animals) who flee from northern hemisphere to southern hemisphere in the hope of catching the warmer climes are not spared by the snow blanket. In such an environment one Prof. Millward decides to stay back in the now uninhabited, snow laden city of London to protect a vast trove of books (he calls them treasures of civilization) that people have left behind while fleeing. Given the vast stores of food and clothing left behind, staying alive is not an issue for the professor. However, after about two decades of a life loneliness, the professor begins to hear strange noises from the north which kindle in him a hope that humans may be returning. The sustained noises from the north are followed by the appearance of various polar animals in London which are actually on an onward migration as if they are being driven by an unknown force. Progressively the noises become nearer and louder raising hopes in the professor. But as is with hopes, they crash to the ground when the professor realises that the sounds he has been hearing are sounds of primordial glaciers arriving from the north to city of London and beyond. The last sentence where the reality dawns on the professor (and the readers) is beautifully written and goes like this: “Out of the north, their ancient home, returning to the lands they had once possessed, the glaciers had come again.“
I chose this story for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to up the game of content sophistication and secondly I wanted to demonstrate the power of atmospherics and how accomplished writers use it in story telling. Clarke does a brilliant job in building the atmospherics of an abandoned, silent, snow laden world in general and the city of London in particular.
It was a full house today. We not only had 3 new members but also observers/volunteers from other apartment complexes who intend to start their own story reading groups.
A minor but extremely satisfying aspect of this story was the inbuilt opportunity in the narrative for some unstructured learning: We had ample scope to discuss some important streets of London and the historical underpinnings of their fame and also the famous Greek myth – “Damocles Sword.”
The story was overwhelmingly well received by the group.
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions we read today Ray Bradbury‘s ‘On the Orient, North.’
Minerva Halliday – is a kind, wise and experienced nurse traveling on Orient Express from Venice in Italy to Dover in UK via Paris and Calais in France and spots an enervated and sick ghost who is a co-passenger. Minerva quickly realizes that the sickness the ghost is afflicted with is due to the general disbelief in ghosts growing among people. The ghost is running away from Continental Europe to Scotland where it thinks people still believe in ghosts due to prevlance of haunted castles. Minerva nurses the self belief and confidence in the ghost by pointing to great writers and their works which revolved around ghosts. She refers to Shakespeare‘s ‘Hamlet‘, Dickens’s ‘Christmas Carol,’ Henry James‘s ‘ The Turn of the Screw,’ Rudyard Kipling‘s “The Phantom Rickshaw,’ Daphne Dumaurier‘s ‘Rebecca,’ Conan Doyle‘s ‘The Hound of Baskervilles,’ Wilkie Collins‘s ‘A Woman in White‘ and W.W.Jacob‘s ‘The Monkey’s Paw‘ (children were thrilled to get to see their all time favourite story being referred to their favourite writer). Enroute Minerva takes the ghost to ‘Pere’ Lachaise Cemetery’ for a picnic where great writers who believed in ghosts are buried. Also on the ferry between Calais and Dover, Minerva takes the ghost to a nursery where a bunch of children reinforce the faith of the ghost through their total and unsullied belief in existence of ghosts. With confidence regained, the ghost and Minerva reach Dover but Minerva meets with an accident and she herself ends up becoming a ghost and joins her friend in his onward journey to castles of Scotland.
In introducing them to young minds of our group, some stories fill me with a sense of pride and happiness and Ray Bradbury‘s ‘On the Orient, North‘ is one of them. This story in addition to being a wonderful entertainer turned out to be a happy lesson in Travel, Geography and Literature…. I started by explaing the various routes of Orient Express and the major cities of Europe from London to Istanbul the train covers in its journey. We also had an opportunity to discuss some great books and writers referred to by Ray and also an opportunity to discuss the historical significance of ‘Pere’ Lachaise Cemetery.’
Overall, the story was very well received and every single child in the group voted for it favourably. A few children could relate this story title with Agatha Christie‘s “Murder on Orient Express” novel and the movie versions of it.
(Will keep this blogpost a running one and add more of my impressions as I go through the book)
March 29, 2023
At last, completed reading Tolstoy‘s ‘War & Peace‘ – nearly 2 weeks behind our book club schedule.
To start with, I am not even sure if one can call this book a ‘novel’ in the conventional sense of the word. It encompasses many things giving us a deep exposure to the capacious mind of Tolstoy. Set between the years of 1805 – 1820, the book covers Napolean’s successful thrust to occupy Moscow and his reversals with Russians reclaiming their conquered land. Against this backdrop, Tolstoy outlines the fortunes of five aristocratic families viz. The Rostovs, The Bezhukovs, The Bolkonskis, The Kuragins and The Drubetskoys supported by a plethora of other characters.
I opted to read Louise and Aylmer Maude‘s translation and found it very satisfying. Structurally the book is divided into 3 volumes with multiple books in each volume and multiple chapters in each book along with 2 epilogues.
Tolstoy’s idea of history is a unique one. He essentially posits that what we call as history and its march is an unpredictable phenomena and an outcome of the motives and actions of millions of ordinary people and the so called great people are but pawns and tools which history uses as it needs. He makes it sound credible and convincing. Since I do not know or have not read what the counter arguments are, I shall reserve my opinion on this. Surprisingly, the core enunciation and detailing of his central theme on history is reserved to the fag end of the book and the entire second epilogue is dedicated to this – which is a small fraction of the whole book. However, through the book Tolstoy gives us glimpses of his view on history and to a certain extent aligns his characters and the narrative flow to demonstrate his theory. But that is occasional at best in comparision to the sprawl of the novel.
What really impressed me is the rest of the book covering the three volumes and the first epilogue. It is here that Tolstoy demonstrates his marvelous talents as a writer. The consistency of his characters despite their profusion, the elevated and insightful prose, the understanding of human psyche and its depiction, the behaviour of aristocracy, the nature description, the stunning similies, the environment that existed in Russia and central Europe of those times are presented in a way that lends complete justice to Isaac Babel‘s statement “If the world could write itself, it would write like Tolstoy.” A standout chracter of Tolstoy’s writing in ‘War & Peace,’ is his attention to detail – a characteristic I find uniquely heightened in Slav writers. And there too Tolstoy is top of the heap – justifying literary critic James Wood‘s assertion that Tolstoy is ‘the great writer of physical involuntariness.’ And that without a doubt he is.
So, is ‘War & Peace‘ the greatest novel (?) as some people claim? My answer: I do not know for I have not read the other great works of fiction out there. And I find the question a tad silly and irrelevant to my scheme of things and reading preferences. One of the malaises of our times is the easy currency of superlatives. Everything is coated with a varnish of superlatives. ‘Fantastic,’ ‘awesome,’ ‘superb,’ ‘extraordinary,’ ‘brilliant,’ are some words that are dropped as loose change without a care – leading to the destruction of a genuine mental scale of pegging. I neither have the ability nor energy to construct a scale of greatness measurement in fiction. All I can say is that as a work of fiction this book will remain etched in my mind forever and given time, opportunity and mental strength, I would like to read this book once again.
(On a very mundane and on a different context, this book has tested me as a reader on many fronts. It demonstrated to me what a lowly scatterbrained person I have become over a period of time (diversions in the form of social media, focus on politics, economy, technology etc) and have been fooling myself that it is an ability to multitask. It was tough to concentrate for stretches of sustained reading which was never a challenge for me before. Thankfully, as the reading progressed it improved quite a lot. It was both a wakeup call and warning.)
March 29, 2023
For me the essential characteristic of any book to be eligible to be called ‘Good’ or ‘Great’ or even a ‘Classic’ is that atleast some parts of the book have to be relevant to us over longer stretches of time irrespective of the changes around us. Equally important is that it has to be accessible. ‘War & Peace’ for me is one such book….. There are atleast a couple of dozen social issues that Tolstoy raises in the book which made me stop in my tracks & think. The beauty of it all is that Tolstoy puts forward his point of view in a very convincing way….. Had I heard the same argument expressed in a different way I would have downright condemned it as ‘regressive’ by contemporary standards.
A good example is the topic of family life as Tolstoy portrays in Epilogue I ….. My heart was saying that there is truth in it but my mind was arguing that it smacks of orthodoxy….. I have not resolved it one way or the other….. It is this nicely balanced feeling of ambivalence which elevates good writing to great writing, I feel.
March 28, 2023
Books made out of books
In an interview given to NYTimes Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men, Blood Meridian fame) once said:
“The ugly fact is books are made out of books, the novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.”
I think there is some/definite truth in this observation.
The centerpiece of Tolstoy‘s ‘War & Peace‘ is the Battle of Borodino. It is not only a masterpiece of descriptive writing but also a critical event in the book whose echoes are heard down to the last of this 1500+ page book. But a surprising fact I learnt is that Tolstoy was inspired and modeled his writing of this event from the description of ‘Battle of Waterloo‘ which Stendahl has incorporated in his book ‘The Charterhouse of Parma.’ Stendahl – a pioneering French literary figure – was also part of Napolean’s campaigns and hence had the first hand experience of battles and campaigns. Tolstoy studied his works carefully and then deployed all his extraordinary writing talents in his magnum opus.
On the other hand, George Orwell was inspired by Tolstoy‘s descriptions of the lengthy execution scene by the French of the so called Russian incendiaries as observed by Pierre and incorporated a few things from there in his classic essay ‘A Hanging‘….. if Tolstoy makes one of his characters adjust the blindfold before being shot, Orwell makes his prisoner side step a puddle on the way to gallows – small details they may appear to be but make a huge impact on us as readers. This detailing makes us wonder about this creature called ‘Human’ which is actually a creature rooted in habits and conventions even as it approaches its complete extermination. Some observers say that Orwell was almost coached by Tolstoy through his writing….. giving credence to the ugly fact that McCarthy points to……
March 21, 2023
Tolstoy is a profound storyteller of complex themes. He is also a master craftsmen of sentences. Sentences which will remain etched in your mind and will always have a special place in your memory.
The young Prince Andrew has just died. His death means many things to many people. For Natasha who was once engaged to him and to his sister Princess Mary it means something very different. Here is how Tolstoy describes it: “Natásha and Princess Márya also wept now, but not because of their own personal grief; they wept with a reverent and softening emotion which had taken possession of their souls at the consciousness of the simple and solemn mystery of death that had been accomplished in their presence.”
What elevates this sentence is the word “accomplished” so thoughtfully and perceptively used….. suddenly death does not look so scary… it looks as if it is a profoundly great thing to be accomplished…. an item in the bucket list of most important things in the life of a human.
Similar is another instance where action, expectation and reaction/s – all get so delicately incorporated into one single sentence. . Countess Rostov is desirous that her son Prince Nicholai does not marry the poor Sonya but a rich heiress and the Countess asks Sonya to write a letter to that effect to Nicholai but is worried about Sonya’s reaction and here is how our man describes: “Those eyes expressed entreaty, shame at having to ask, fear of a refusal, and readiness for relentless hatred in case of such refusal.”
In the unfolding of the vast panorama in ‘War & Peace,’ Tolstoy writes hundreds of such sentences…..
March 18, 2023
The striking aspect of a work like ‘War & Peace’ is that is astonishingly capacious and doggedly consistent in pointing to the diverse human motivations which drove the collective societal behaviour of the times it was set in. But the true genius of the work lies in its prescience. From then to now the human motivations have remained the same. Very little has changed in the nature of our motivations. If anything those motivations and behaviours have deepened and hardened. When I think of this aspect of us, it kind of frightens me big time.
Tolstoy argues and almost convinces us that what we call as ‘History’ is not made by great people but it is the outcome of the collective behaviour of the general population driven by a myriad of human motivations – a lot of which are self serving. That raises a bafflingly profound moral question on the efficacy of our role, duty and impact as citizens. Do we matter at all in the flow of history? If so in what way? And more importantly can we do anything meaningful to stop the inequities that we see? Tolstoy appears to suggest that there is very little one can do….. but he also does not explicitly say “Go with the flow” – an ambivalent proposition I am finding hard to accept….. Guess I need to think a lot more on this in coming days….
One good thing the reading of ‘War & Peace’ has done to me is that it now equips me to tackle Isiah Berlin’s classic ‘The Hedgehog and Fox’ – Hope to find some answers there…..
March 15, 2023
One of the saddest things in life is this: You read a great book and you want to talk about it, pour your heart out the feelings you have for the book and the impressions it made on you and you find no one around, despite your desperate search, who shares your thought process…. that loneliness in crowds is a sad thing, really sad thing.
Even a great writer like J.D. Salinger felt it that way…. Not for nothing does Holden Caulfield say the following in ‘ The Catcher in the Rye’:
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”
March 12, 2023
Tolstoy and his similes (Chapter 20, Book 11, Volume 3)
A striking thing about Tolstoy’s writing in War & Peace is his deployment of similes: profuse, profound, effortless and expressed in some memorably fine descriptive prose. I have never come across anything like this in my reading life till date. It is 1812, Napolean is mowing across Europe, parts of Russia have already keeled over and he has reached the outskrits of Moscow and pretty well knows that Moscow is at his mercy and for his taking. Looking at magnificent Moscow from the heights of Poklonny hills, Napolean begins to feel remorseful and out of that remorse emerges a feeling of generosity mingled with a feeling of pardon. In the meanwhile Moscovites are fleeing their city to interiors of Russia. The city’s population is reduced to 1/50th of its original. It is here Tolstoy deploys a simile of comparing the deserted and enfeebled city with that of a dying bee-hive. The entire comparison is spread over two long pages and is beautiful, moving and perversely engrossing. An absolute marvel of writing. Here it is:
‘Meanwhile Moscow was empty. There were still people in it, perhaps a fiftieth part of its former inhabitants had remained, but it was empty. It was empty in the sense that a dying queen less hive is empty.
In a queen less hive no life is left though to a superficial glance it seems as much alive as other hives.
The bees circle round a queen less hive in the hot beams of the midday sun as gaily as around the living hives; from a distance it smells of honey like the others, and bees fly in and out in the same way. But one has only to observe that hive to realize that there is no longer any life in it. The bees do not fly in the same way, the smell and the sound that meet the beekeeper are not the same. To the beekeeper’s tap on the wall of the sick hive, instead of the former instant unanimous humming of tens of thousands of bees with their abdomens threateningly compressed, and producing by the rapid vibration of their wings an aerial living sound, the only reply is a disconnected buzzing from different parts of the deserted hive. From the alighting board, instead of the former spirituous fragrant smell of honey and venom, and the warm whiffs of crowded life, comes an odor of emptiness and decay mingling with the smell of honey. There are no longer sentinels sounding the alarm with their abdomens raised, and ready to die in defense of the hive. There is no longer the measured quiet sound of throbbing activity, like the sound of boiling water, but diverse discordant sounds of disorder. In and out of the hive long black robber bees smeared with honey fly timidly and shiftily. They do not sting, but crawl away from danger. Formerly only bees laden with honey flew into the hive, and they flew out empty; now they fly out laden. The beekeeper opens the lower part of the hive and peers in. Instead of black, glossy bees —tamed by toil, clinging to one another’s legs and drawing out the wax, with a ceaseless hum of labor —that used to hang in long clusters down to the floor of the hive, drowsy shriveled bees crawl about separately in various directions on the floor and walls of the hive. Instead of a neatly glued floor, swept by the bees with the fanning of their wings, there is a floor littered with bits of wax, excrement, dying bees scarcely moving their legs, and dead ones that have not been cleared away.
The beekeeper opens the upper part of the hive and examines the super. Instead of serried rows of bees sealing up every gap in the combs and keeping the brood warm, he sees the skillful complex structures of the combs, but no longer in their former state of purity. All is neglected and foul. Black robber bees are swiftly and stealthily prowling about the combs, and the short home bees, shriveled and listless as if they were old, creep slowly about without trying to hinder the robbers, having lost all motive and all sense of life. Drones, bumblebees, wasps, and butterflies knock awkwardly against the walls of the hive in their flight. Here and there among the cells containing dead brood and honey an angry buzzing can sometimes be heard. Here and there a couple of bees, by force of habit and custom cleaning out the brood cells, with efforts beyond their strength laboriously drag away a dead bee or bumblebee without knowing why they do it. In another corner two old bees are languidly fighting, or cleaning themselves, or feeding one another, without themselves knowing whether they do it with friendly or hostile intent. In a third place a crowd of bees, crushing one another, attack some victim and fight and smother it, and the victim, enfeebled or killed, drops from above slowly and lightly as a feather, among the heap of corpses.
The keeper opens the two center partitions to examine the brood cells. In place of the former close dark circles formed by thousands of bees sitting back to back and guarding the high mystery of generation, he sees hundreds of dull, listless, and sleepy shells of bees. They have almost all died unawares, sitting in the sanctuary they had guarded and which is now no more. They reek of decay and death. Only a few of them still move, rise, and feebly fly to settle on the enemy’s hand, lacking the spirit to die stinging him; the rest are dead and fall as lightly as fish scales. The beekeeper closes the hive, chalks a mark on it, and when he has time tears out its contents and burns it clean.’
What a great observer Tolstoy was !!
March 08, 2023
More on Tolstoy’s Characters
One of the very impressive things about Tolstoy is the way he marshals hundreds of characters in ‘War & Peace.’ Some of them stay through the book till the end but some appear a couple of times and then vanish never to surface again. Yet Tolstoy sketches them in a way that they remain with us long after the last page of the book is done.
James Wood, a literay critic from whom I gained many insights into the working of fiction cautions us to avoid slotting of characters into ‘minor’ & ‘major’ categories. His argument being that the measure of a good character lies in its memorability and not how many times or how often a character appears in the book. As I read along, I have been carefuly observing what Tolstoy does with his characters and it is simply fascinating to see how he gets them in and out of the narrative to create an environment which serves the larger purpose of his work. One such character I really loved is Márya Dmítrievna Akhrosímova (Godmother of Princess Natalia) – a garrulous, common-sensical, plain speaking and very feared lady for the tongue lashing she gives folks in her know…. In the sprawling spread of the novel, she appears just twice and yet makes an uncommon impression for the way she burns a few with her comments
The best of Márya Dmítrievna’s sarcastic comments are reserved for Elen (Helene’) who is trying to divorce the gentle Pierre and marry a French royal and here is how Tolstoy describes:
“Only Márya Dmítrievna Akhrosímova, who had come to Petersburg that summer to see one of her sons, allowed herself plainly to express an opinion contrary to the general one. Meeting Elèn at a ball she stopped her in the middle of the room and, amid general silence, said in her gruff voice: “So wives of living men have started marrying again! Perhaps you think you have invented a novelty? You have been forestalled, my dear! It was thought of long ago. It is done in all the brothels,” and with these words Márya Dmítrievna, turning up her wide sleeves with her usual threatening gesture and glancing sternly round, moved across the room.”
Another thing that Tolstoy does is to assign a peculiar gesture, phrase or expression to a character and repeat it again and again when ever he brings the character into the narrative flow. Marya is highlighted by her habit to “turn up her wide sleeves”…. This he does with all his characters.
It is also said that a hallmark of a good writer lies in how well he does the characters of opposite sex…. Tolstoy is incomparable in that department.
March 08, 2023
Tolstoy and French Language in War & Peace
A slightly unusual thing I noticed while reading ‘War & Peace’ is the profusion of French expressions Tolstoy makes his characters employ in expressing their points of view, ideas and arguments. So densely littered are the hundreds of French expressions in the book that they act as irritating roadblocks in the reading flow. I began to wonder why a writer of such supreme talent – who could practically do anything he wanted with his writing – resort to such an approach? I could think of two things:
First, the easy answer: Tolstoy was reflecting the vogues of his time….. the elite of Russia were given to a thinking that French was the “in-thing/chic” and more spohisticated than Russian language was… and hence the tendency to employ French.
Second, could Tolstoy have realized the inherent limitation in the capacity of Russian language to accurately express his vision of the novel? I am coming to believe that this could also be a possibility….. Here is a snippet of conversation from Princess Kuragina and her daughter Helene who is contemplating a second marriage…
Having listened to her mother’s objections, Elèn smiled blandly and ironically. “But it says plainly: ‘Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced …’ ” said the old princess. “Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de bêtises. Vous ne comprenez rien. Dans ma position j’ai des devoirs,” said Elèn changing from Russian, in which language she always felt that her case did not sound quite clear, into French which suited it better. (“Oh, Mamma, don’t talk nonsense! You don’t understand anything. In my position I have obligations.”)
That brings me to another different question… the efficacy of translations… Dozens of accomplished translators have dedicated the better parts of their lives to translate many Russian classics into English but what they did was to translate directly from source (Russian) into English…. Most of the translations I find in Telugu are tranlsations from English which are themselves translated from Russian….. leaving me to believe that the losses in translation must be immense….
Feb 18, 2023
Tolstoy is a great master of deflection and integration in his narrative….. In Chapter 22 of Book 8 of Vol 2 he demonstrates this supremely. In the chapters preceding to this he describes the frustrating and sinking proceedings of Natasha’s breaking of her engagement and planning to elope with a ruffian like Anatole which is now foiled….. Rumours about these ugly proceedings are floating all over and members of the Rostov family are flustered, irritated and disappointed…. In all this Pierre accidentally sees a hope and redemption for himself and here is how Tolstoy describes it…..
It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets, above the black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only looking up at the sky did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been raised. At the entrance to the Arbát Square an immense expanse of dark starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it, above the Prechístenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant comet of 1812 — the comet which was said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre, however, that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly —like an arrow piercing the earth — to remain fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and displaying its white light amid countless other scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life.
Tolstoy does not spare even the comet of 1812… he happily integrates it into his narrative flow and makes it significant.
Feb 02, 2023
Tolstoy and Landscape Description
The little non-Indian writing that I have read till date, I have observed that landscape description forms an important and integral part of the narrative flow. Most of Western writers I have read enmesh landscape quite effortlessly into their story telling. Even among them I feel that Slavic writers in general are a notch ahead of others. Turgenev, Pasternak, Leskov, Sholokov, Aitmatov, Chekov (one ought to read his “The Steppe”) demonstrate a kind of mastery which is impressive, enjoyable and memorable. Even Tolstoy is no less…. Here is something I found in his ‘War & Peace’ which I enjoyed reading…. In the vast panorama that this great novel covers, landscape is a small part and yet Tolstoy details it with his writerly skills in a way that it acquires a cinematic quality:
They went through the muddy village, past threshing floors and green fields of winter rye, downhill where snow still lodged near the bridge, uphill where the clay had been liquefied by the rain, past strips of stubble land and bushes touched with green here and there, and into a birch forest growing on both sides of the road. In the forest it was almost hot, no wind could be felt. The birches with their sticky green leaves were motionless, and lilac colored flowers and the first blades of green grass were pushing up and lifting last year’s leaves. The coarse evergreen color of the small fir trees scattered here and there among the birches was an unpleasant reminder of winter. On entering the forest the horses began to snort and sweated visibly.
At the edge of the road stood an oak. Probably ten times the age of the birches that formed the forest, it was ten times as thick and twice as tall as they. It was an enormous tree, its girth twice as great as a man could embrace, and evidently long ago some of its branches had been broken off and its bark scarred. With its huge ungainly limbs sprawling unsymmetrically, and its gnarled hands and fingers, it stood an aged, stern, and scornful monster among the smiling birch trees. Only the dead looking evergreen firs dotted about in the forest, and this oak, refused to yield to the charm of spring or notice either the spring or the sunshine.
“Spring, love, happiness!” this oak seemed to say. “Are you not weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always the same and always a fraud? There is no spring, no sun, no happiness! Look at those cramped dead firs, ever the same, and at me too, sticking out my broken and barked fingers just where they have grown, whether from my back or my sides: as they have grown so I stand, and I do not believe in your hopes and your lies.”
As he passed through the forest Prince Andréy turned several times to look at that oak, as if expecting something from it. Under the oak, too, were flowers and grass, but it stood among them scowling, rigid, misshapen, and grim as ever. “Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right,” thought Prince Andréy. “Let others the young —yield afresh to that fraud, but we know life, our life is finished!”
……. A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but mournfully pleasant, rose in his soul in connection with that tree. During this journey he, as it were, considered his life afresh and arrived at his old conclusion, restful in its hopelessness: that it was not for him to begin anything anew —but that he must live out his life, content to do no harm, and not disturbing himself or desiring anything.
Feel privileged to have the time and inclination to read this marvelous book. There was a time when I aspired to be a writer but looking at the works of some great writers my aspiration has changed: All now I want to be is a perceptive reader who can get to the core of any great book on the first read. Even that is turning out to be a tough challenge. 😦 😦
Jan 30, 2023
Towards the end of Volume 1 of ‘War & Peace,’ Tolstoy introduces us to a very important point of view on the disjointedness of the motivations of various participants (it is an ensemble) that take part in a battle/war. At the top are rulers whose drivers are predominantly in the realms of power and its ownership, then there is a massive organisation of the military machine with its peculiar code of ethics and honour, bureaucracy, the layered power structure with its rituals and across the levels are individuals and their families and friends….. A war/battle means different things to different people in this ensemble. The kind of questioning that happens at different levels is different. In Chapter 21 of Book 5 of Volume 1, Tolstoy portrays this movingly… Commander Denisov is hospitalized and is in piteous condition. His friend Count Rostov goes out looking for him. The suffering for both of them is enormous. In the meanwhile Emperor Alexander – the Czar of Russia and Napoelan have called for truce and are ready to have a gala dinner as if nothing has happened before and as if they are comrades… Here is how Tolstoy describes it all through the eyes of Count Rostov:
“Rostóv stood at that corner for a long time, watching the feast from a distance. In his mind, a painful process was going on which he could not bring to a conclusion. Terrible doubts rose in his soul. Now he remembered Denísov with his changed expression, his submission, and the whole hospital, with arms and legs torn off and its dirt and disease. So vividly did he recall that hospital stench of dead flesh that he looked round to see where the smell came from. Next he thought of that self-satisfied Bonaparte, with his small white hand, who was now an Emperor, liked and respected by Alexander. Then why those severed arms and legs and those dead men? … Then again he thought of Lázarev rewarded and Denísov punished and unpardoned. He caught himself harboring such strange thoughts that he was frightened…………. “
“We are not diplomatic officials, we are soldiers and nothing more,” he went on. “If we are ordered to die, we must die. If we’re punished, it means that we have deserved it, it’s not for us to judge. If the Emperor pleases to recognize Bonaparte as Emperor and to conclude an alliance with him, it means that that is the right thing to do. If once we begin judging and arguing about everything, nothing sacred will be left! That way we shall be saying there is no God —nothing!………………….. Our business is to do our duty, to fight and not to think! That’s all. …”
In the recent past no book has moved me so much as “War & Peace” is doing…… What a read it is turning out to be !!
Jan 24, 2023
Similes/Metaphors of Melville & Tolstoy
Herman Melville & Tolstoy are two unmatched masters in using similes/metaphors in their prose. Melville is brilliantly focused – a long and absorbing description of an event or a scene terminates in a simile/metaphor which is illuminating. Here is Melville describing the try-works (from the Chapter ‘Try Works’ in Moby Dick) which are used on a whaling ship to extract the oil/blubber from a hunted whale:
“Here be it said that in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed for a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of quick ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out, the crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still contains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters feed the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit.”
Tolstoy usage of similes and metaphors is simply versatile. He can be direct & forceful or casual & drawn out and yet still be wonderfully impressive. Here he is (Chapter 11, Book 3 Volume 1) comparing battle preparations to the workings of a clock:
The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor’s headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that followed was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large tower clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and a third, and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and cogwheels to work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands to advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity.
Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their movement, but a neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when the lever catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak and joins in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.
Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human activities of 160,000 Russians and French —all their passions, desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and enthusiasm —was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the three Emperors —that is to say, a slow movement of the hand on the dial of human history.
War & Peace has an overflowing abundance of such writing. A joy to read.
Jan 22, 2023
Tolstoy and his artistic vision
As I keep plodding through Tolstoy’s ‘War & Peace,’ the expression “Artistic Vision” keeps coming to my mind again and again. In this magnum opus of his, Tolstoy among other things is trying to communicate his understanding and point of view on the mechanics of the unfolding of history to the world at large. What is staggeringly impressive is that he is endowed with extraordinary “artistic skills” commensurate to his artistic vision. Till so far that I have read, I am yet to come across anything that is meandering, superfluous or rambling in the narrative. The mosaic of his vision is being developed thread by thread, character by character, scene by scene, event by event, detail by detail, chapter by chapter, book by book, volume by volume and while at it the narrative coherence is being sustained in a way that leaves me with a sense of marvel, wonderment and a kind of humble and heartfelt gratitude for his contribution to world literature. I feel as if I am in the presence of something ineluctably awesome.
His prose has a quality which is intensely visual… One feels as if one is watching a highly pixellated colour movie in which no detail is missed and while he is at it he also develops the metaphorical side of the narrative to register his artistic vision at a far deeper level (mentally) with his readers.
One thing is certain: By the time I complete this book, I will be a person transformed in more ways than I will be consciously aware of….
Jan 14, 2023
Tolstoy and History
History has always been a fertile battleground for narratives and counter narratives resulting in some profound comments about its nature. If one took a position that “history will always be written by victors,” another took a view that it is also the “delusion of the defeated” while another took a view that it is “that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation,” then another frustrated one expressed a view that history is simply “one bloody thing after another.” And one of the most influential social philosophers Karl Marx tended to view history as a product that evolved at the interaction of capital and markets and Francis Fukuyama had his own views on political systems as products of historical evolution and therefore mankind arriving at the end to history in a particular dimension.
Tolstoy also had a view about history and here is an extract from introduction to War & Peace which sums up his view and its ideological roots “Tolstoy’s reading of the works of Joseph de Maistre, the Sardinian ambassador in St. Petersburg between 1803-17 helped form his sense that historical events are not shaped by the individual will, no matter how much that will sees itself as the shaping force. This thesis governs his attempts to refute the theory that “great men” dictate the course of historical events.”
So how does Tolstoy portray this thought in the narrative of War & Peace? A good place to look for an answer is in the battlefield scenes in Book 2 of Volume 1.
“Prince Andréy listened attentively to Bagratión’s colloquies with the commanding officers and the orders he gave them and, to his surprise, found that no orders were really given, but that Prince Bagratión tried to make it appear that everything done by necessity, by accident, or by the will of subordinate commanders was done, if not by his direct command, at least in accord with his intentions. Prince Andréy noticed, however, that though what happened was due to chance and was independent of the commander’s will, owing to the tact Bagratión showed, his presence was very valuable.“
There are other places in the book where he hammers home this point but very subtly
When we think of wars/battles in history and the outcomes they produce/produced, we tend to think of military forces being directed by the diktats of some visionary minds, supported by clever strategy and deep insight but Tolstoy’s portrayal does not support such a view. He thinks a lot happens randomly and very much out of sync with the intended diirections of superiors. This is not an idea which I can digest and accept easily and I am also not saying that Tolstoy is the final answer on the paradigm of history. It is a point of view which appears to be well argued and not be dismissed lightly…..
Jan 13, 2023
Tolstoy and Characterization
One of the impressive things about Tolstoy in general and ‘War & Peace’ in particular is the depth of portrayal of characters. Tolstoy never appears to draw a distinction between ‘major’ characters and ‘minor’ characters. In the vast panorama which his narrative covers, many characters appear sparingly and fleetingly and still Tolstoy never appears to have spared any effort in detailing even such short lived characters.
A peculiar facet of his characterization, I noticed, is that he picks an idiosyncratic feature of a character and highlights it again and again e.g. the downy upper lip of the Prince Andrew’s wife, the creased and crinkled forehead of a general Kutuzov, the diamond ring on the forefinger of a colonel, Bilbin’s behaviour as a diplomat etc… The detailing is never lopsided or unnatural and Tolstoy ensures that a character never gets reduced to a caricature despite the highlighting and the incessant repetition (caricatures/cartoons tend to survive on this lopsidedness of feature highlighting/ exaggeration). Every character is real, throbbing, unforgettable and pulsating with life and integrates into the flow of narrative seamlessly.
Jan 12, 2023
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” – Albert Camus….
How deep and how insightful !! The truth in Camus’s observation has begun to clarify as I read the following extract from Tolstoy’s WAR & PEACE…. (CHAPTER 16 – BOOK 2 VOLUME 1). Waiting to repel Napoelan’s attack, General Kutuzov’s adjutant Prince Andrew who is inspecting the state of Russian troops overhears this conversation….
“Suddenly, however, he was struck by a voice coming from the shed, and its tone was so sincere that he could not but listen. “No, friend,” said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince Andréy, a familiar voice, “what I say is that if it were possible to know what is beyond death, none of us would be afraid of it. That’s so, friend.” Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: “Afraid or not, you can’t escape it anyhow.” “All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people,” said a third manly voice interrupting them both. “Of course you artillery men are very wise, because you can take everything along with you — vodka and snacks.” And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an infantry officer, laughed. “Yes, one is afraid,” continued the first speaker, he of the familiar voice. “One is afraid of the unknown, that’s what it is. Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky … we know there is no sky but only an atmosphere.” The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer. “Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Túshin,” it said. “Why,” thought Prince Andréy, “that’s the captain who stood up in the sutler’s hut without his boots.” He recognized the agreeable, philosophizing voice with pleasure. “Some herb vodka? Certainly!” said Túshin. “But still, to conceive a future life …”
My point is this: Do soldiers and their superiors talk to one another like the above in an impending war situation? Does it happen in real life like this? As a reader I am deeply sceptical.. yet I find this wonderful and elevating in how Tolstoy mixes up things ethereal (Soul, Death) with mundane (Vodka, Snacks… ( for many Vodka is not mundane though… ) and makes his characters say things which are important to us as humans and affect us deeply when we enounter such things in the flow of our reading. All good writers do this… that is why fiction is so alluring to mind and that is also why I think Camus is right when he said what he said about fiction….
In ‘War and Peace‘ Tolstoy spoils the reader with abundance of such examples….
Reading ‘War & Peace,’ one gets a feeling that one is not reading a novel or a large tome; it is more like watching a grand movie. Tolstoy’s eyes, mind, philosophical perspectives, humanistic bent and epic writerly talents observe everything, give a form of words to his thoughts resulting in a kind of prose that just flows. Now I have begun to understand the meaning and depth of Isaac Babel‘s comment: “If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy“
The challenge I am facing right now is the need to remember the characters and their relationships with one another and War & Peace has an unusual profusion of characters. Russians have long original names with unique family names and short pet names. Tolstoy keeps using the names interchangeably in descriptions and conversations creating a maze. A way out of this is to be patient and keep going back to family trees to fix the characters in mind. Once this is done the pace of reading improves and the way the novel begins to play out gives one a feeling of awe. One realizes that one is in contact with something very profound and magnificent.
Anna Karenina, Kruetzer’s Sonata, Death of Ivan Illyich, Resurrection are great, but they revolve around limited characters and are more of moral explorations…. War & Peace on the other hand demands some understanding/knowledge of the mid and latter 18th century history of Central Europe.
All in all a fascinating start for my reading in 2023 !!
As part of our ongoing story reading sessions, we read today Oscar Wilde‘s “The Remarkable Rocket.”
In society we find different kinds of people: humble who do their work and show results; arrogant who talk a lot but in the end have nothing to show for their contribution. This is the crux of ‘The Remarkable Rocket‘ and Oscar Wilde in his inimitably remarkable style makes it ironical and funny by casting various kinds fireworks e.g Squibs, Bengal Lights, Catherine Wheels, Fire Balloons, Roman Candles, Crackers and a Rocket into human roles to demonstrate this point.
It was a mixed reaction from the children with many expressing a view that this story is not as interesting as the other Wilde‘s stories like ‘The Selfish Giant,’ ‘The Model Millionnaire,’ ‘The Happy Prince,’ and ‘The Rose and the Nightingale‘ we had read in the past.
The gratifying part of the session was the presence of two new members and two adults who experienced the proceedings for the first time and their feedback was encouraging.
Excursions Of A Bibliophile 