I once made a passing remark about how nobody does deathbed scenes like Tolstoy. It happened again to me in the last half of “Anna Karenina,” with the death of Levin’s brother. Deep into that scene, I felt the book was gripping me more tightly than ever, and it's actually hard to explain. Death is … Continue reading Finishing Anna Karenina
“Anna Karenina” is not a book you can read quickly. It just doesn’t move at a hungry pace. You can read a couple of chapters and feel like you’ve moved into a single character’s soul; and you’ve got more than enough to digest for one night, without thinking of moving out into some other character. … Continue reading Anna Karenina – Parts 3 and 4 (of 8)
A few years after finishing “Anna Karenina,” Tolstoy sank into a spiritual funk or crisis that resulted in his work, “A Confession.” In the latter work, he shares the following recollection from his formative years: The kind aunt with whom I lived, herself the purest of beings, always told me that there was nothing she … Continue reading Anna Karenina – Parts 1 and 2 (of 8)
February 1, 2021 Reading “Koheleth” and Tolstoy's “Confession” back-to-back lifts both works for me. Both works struggle with the fact that death is coming for everyone. Both observe constantly how the good and the wicked have random rewards in this life; both hang on to the idea of knowledge/wisdom while questioning both its extent and … Continue reading Koheleth and Tolstoy
January 31, 2021 I keep running back into "War and Peace", in my re-read of Reinhold Niebuhr's "Moral Man and Immoral Society". This is from chapter 1: The growing intelligence of mankind and the increased responsibility of monarchs to their people have placed a check upon the caprice, but not upon the self-interest, of the … Continue reading Niebuhr and Tolstoy
January 28, 2021 I took this Quiz: Fox or Hedgehog? My score is +47. I gave negative numbers -- hedgehog numbers -- only for questions #12 and #13. All my other answers are fox numbers. I didn’t answer question #1, partly because I thought it would tip the scales with an answer that could easily … Continue reading You might be a fox if … (QUIZ)
January 27, 2021 I’ve reread “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Isaiah Berlin’s essay about Tolstoy’s view of history. I had read it in the mid-90s, but without reading any of Tolstoy apart from the historical essay that ends “War and Peace” (the second half of the epilogue). A description of Berlin’s essay, from kobo.com: "The … Continue reading Hedgehogs and Foxes
September 24, 2020 “War and Peace” might be having long-term effects on me. Possibly. - I am more forgiving of myself when I am confused by a situation, whether personal or intellectual, or even when I’m just looking out physically and finding the things in front of me confusing. Tolstoy hammered home the point that … Continue reading Digesting Big Books
September 1, 2020 Reading “War and Peace” and watching Epic History TV’s documentaries about Napoleon and Alexander the Great (see below), I’m struck by some parallels between the two men. Alexander’s conquests spread Hellenistic culture and some Greek ideas about democracy. Napoleon’s conquests are said to have exported some of the ideas of the French … Continue reading Napoleon and Alexander the Greats?
August 30, 2020 I’ve finished the novel. One disadvantage of reading out-of-sequence is that when I came to the second half, I had already read most of the truly great stuff in that half. I was then able to skip over those passages as I did my read-through, but that meant that I was only … Continue reading Finishing War and Peace
