Settling in for the long read

So I’m 94 pages into this book…total 483.

I better get to reading if I’m going to wrap this up before the little guy arrives!

Reading at night is tough. I’m usually pretty tired by the time dinner is over and after M and I have returned from our evening walk. It’s tough to settle down in my nice comfortable (reclining) chair, pick up a book and read.

It’s so much easier to just lay back, put on a mindless TV program and drift off.

But, surprisingly, I’ve found “Resurrection” holding my attention. I was worried when I first started reading this book (and given my past history with it) that it would be hard to mentally hold this book because I really haven’t read literature in translation from this period in quite some time. My reading of short stories from the late 70s and the early 80s has really set my head in a certain frame of reading. – Does that make any sense?

In preparation and during the reading of Resurrection and for future Tolstoy novels, I have been reading opinions on the book and on his writing. I ran across this thread on a literature discussion board.

The question was asked – “Why do we study literature?” The question sounds like a student attempting to get some good answers to use as their own for the next day’s class…but I found the answers – especially the first (and the author cited was quite fitting) one to be a wonderful reason for the existence of this journal.

“I think it was Leo Tolstoy who argued that all of literature, quality literature, revolves around two central issues: Who are we and how shall we live? These two questions strike at the heart of literature and provide answers to why we study literature. If we take Tolstoy's paradigm and study it, we understand why a study of literature is vital to our understanding of ourselves and our world. All literature does, to a large extent, address both questions in different ways. The answers derived help us understand our identities and purposes in this life. The manner in which these questions are answered may vary from text to text, yet the underlying premise behind why we study literature comes back to Tolstoy's predicament: We seek answers to who we are and how we shall live.”

Tolstoy and his morals – I’ll be sure to include some of what John Gardner and DFW had to say about him and those in a later entry.

Here is a lovely passage – one that someday I may be able to explain to you. It’s a passage that touched my heart and took me back…

“In the love between a man and a woman there always comes a moment when this love has reached its zenith—a moment when it is unconscious, unreasoning, and with nothing sensual about it. Such a moment had come for Nekhlyudov on that Easter eve. When he brought Katusha back to his mind, now, this moment veiled all else; the smooth glossy black head, the white tucked dress closely fitting her graceful maidenly form, her, as yet, un-developed bosom, the blushing cheeks, the tender shining black eyes with their slight squint heightened by the sleepless night, and her whole being stamped with those two marked features, purity and chaste love, love not only for him (he knew that), but for everybody and everything, not for the good alone, but for all that is in the world, even for that beggar whom she had kissed.”

Katusha at the Easter service

I am quite fascinated with the character of Katusha. I think that because of my time in Romania… and honestly my fascination with the peasants, I can picture Katusha quite clearly.

Now, Katusha is not a peasant, she is more of a “house maid”…but I cannot seem to disassociate my mental picture of her as more of a peasant.

Again, I think that this is another wonderful aspect of literature – the author goes to great lengths to develop the character - their physical being as well as their personality and soul. It is the reader that may unconsciously assign smaller characteristics to the players in the novel as they read simply because of their own background and the filter that the story passes through in their mind colors the story in a shade that is the most pleasant to them.

Most of the action in the story since my last post has taken place in the courtroom. There was the “flashback” to the whole affair between Katusha and Nekhlyudov but it’s really hard for me to decide which was more compelling.

Katusha in court

Finally, here is another WTFED.

“There is only one type of treasure that does not get smaller when you give it to others. You can give away as much as you want, and it only grows bigger. It is the treasure of wisdom.”