Leo Tolstoy was a delusional bipolar megalomaniac who needed a good ass whipping. And we love his work. It is embarrassing to be an apologist as one attempts to separate his life from his labor. If there were ever a movement that sought to ban the art of incorrigible, insatiable, super-arrogant assholes, then Tolstoy would serve as poster boy for the movement. I see similarities of him in myself. But I am a better writer. I have won over him, amazingly. I never imagined it was possible. It happened by natural inclinations, or the divine movement of God (according to him), and because I work harder: I am nicer than he is, I have tamed the wild beast, I do not ruin people, subjugate people, ignore and abuse half of the human race, I do not believe in God (which automatically makes me superior), a sordid fact that kept him mired in the mud of sniveling, desperate humanity, a humanity, in fact, that had not, and still has not, seen the light; subsequently, my books are better than his are, morally superior, more humanistically evolved and artistically advanced, funnier, spicier, juicier, livelier, more meaningful. Poor Tolstoy: Only, he is beyond our pity. What did he prove? That a monster could during occasional lapses of brilliance and beauty create lasting art? Monsters are people, too? Ah, Tolstoy, fuck him. I would not have demurred and obsequied like Turgenev or Chekhov had he been my contemporary: I would have physically beaten him, humiliated him, out-insulted him, stared down his “icy, chilly eye,” – oh, like I’m scared – and relegated him to the mud of springtime Russia that he so loved, relegated him to the orphan, bastard peasant that he was, facial features big hands and feet.
Chekhov makes Microsoft Word spellcheck and Turgenev does not. It is a sunshine day. I must go now and read some Tolstoy short stories.
I enjoyed “God Sees The Truth, But Waits.” A good, tragic moral tale. I enjoyed better the folk tale “The Three Hermits.” No man is an island. “Three are ye, three are we, have mercy upon us.” Mercy indeed. Watch how you pray to God; observe how you beg for sanity down here. Did Tolstoy steal the story from St. Augustine? I enjoyed more Donald Barthelme’s “At the Tolstoy Museum,” an example of prose collage portraiture that sustains me. And finally, the long and interesting chapter on Tolstoy in Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals. His last sentence scathes, when one considers where Russia was headed on the heels of Tolstoy’s work, life and death: “By a hateful irony, the principal victims of the New Jerusalem thus brought about were his beloved peasants, twenty million of whom were led to mass slaughter on the sacrificial alter of ideas.”
The human monkey continues. Am I the only one who sees the folly? Am I the only one who refuses to apologize for Tolstoy’s monkey behavior, his actual inability to better himself after all the shit he talked, which is ultimately always the problem with homo sapiens, secular and theological? Yes, repent, and, why not, let’s forgive, do. Perhaps our stay in a mythical heaven will be better than the springtime mud down here. Not somehow, not maybe, but clearly, succinctly: I doubt it.
- - -
Look where Tolstoy is today! Look how far he’s come. I’m sure he never thought he’d make it to St. Louis: his spirit, his words, his corporeal essence spilling into me. And I brought him here, bound, on a fantastic vision, a side-step from normal life, an adventure an event. Tolstoy grumpily and eagerly (both) finds himself on the 36th floor of a skyscraper in St. Louis, smack-dab on the Mississippi River, on a Monday, when he should be with me in Santa Barbara, California. We are concerned because we have to make his class at 2 p.m. tomorrow, and we’ll land in Los Angeles at noon. Nip and tuck, as he used to call it. On the 36th floor of Bryan Cave, one of the world’s largest law firms, in a huge conference suite that looks east.
Now, if you’re gazing east from downtown St. Louis, then you’re looking into Illinois, across the Mississippi, and if that’s the case you peer straight at, down up, into the world-famous Gateway Arch, and the ant-sized tourists walking down below, there’s a billowing American flag, there are other skyscrapers. Tolstoy, deep inside my briefcase, contained in his own stories, was as impressed as I was with the interior three-story marble-glass-and-gold foyer of this corporate superstructure in the middle of the North American continent on that mighty river. Tolstoy with me in the elevator heading upwardly toward the clouds! We gaze at humanity before us, the shining Arch, a Richard Serra sculpture down there that half hates, a quarter loves and about which another quarter appears ambivalent, overlooking factories and office buildings and riverboat gambling casinos and one struggling barge pushing upriver, a brown river, a brown large and long river; and bridges and brick factories and East St. Louis there in Illinois, and bare other-side-of-winter trees, and cars and cops and basketball fans waiting for the Championship Game tonight.
Tolstoy loves basketball! Did you not know it? The other night, on Saturday, after rising very early with me in order to fly across most of the country, Tolstoy attended what Americans call the Final Four, the NCAA men’s basketball semi-finals. One of the largest sporting events in the country, a large, wealthy country, peaking as an empire some say, past its peak say others. And there was Tolstoy, in the Edward Jones Dome, a football dome playing host to basketball. We were so high up - in row WW - that we could see the nails in the roof. The players were the size of, well, the size that they are on television: about a thumbnail’s length. But it was worth it, to be a part of the event, to spectate as an enthusiastic observer of humankind. During timeouts and during halftime and during the break between the two games (save for a long line of men at the urinals, a communal pee, all elements of propriety tossed) I read his words, I believed in his stories. And today, on the 36th floor, over-gazing the world in the groin of corporate America, about to attend the final game tonight, an event that only the rich can afford, I read Tolstoy in a leather armchair with fifty feet of glass windows in front of me, as if I were a monolithic robot marching slowly across the Plains. A secretary asks me if I’d like coffee. The internet guy inquires into my “hook-up.” My father-in-law wants to know precisely how and when Tolstoy studied the law. The Pope is gone to his gilded home in the sky, where Tolstoy would have wanted him to go. Humanity, seen from this height in this city, seems to be caught in a perpetual frenzy. Do we have time to notice the Bradford pear trees in blossom? Tolstoy whispers in my ear.
I thoroughly enjoyed the narrative structure and tone in the Sevastopol stories, that being the second person familiar, a guide leading us (each individual reader) through the battle zones, the town, meeting the people, feeling the emotional swings from pride to elation to horror. Without ever having read this style in Tolstoy before I’d been writing short stories in this manner. Thus, to find the style and method validated in a great artist gives me comfort, no matter that my agent and editor say “That was the nineteenth century.” And what a way to incorporate autobiographical information into a fictional format! Take a sketch that may have happened to you, pieces of real life, and weave it into a viable prose portrait. The stories were also very similar to quality prose poems: there is a lyrical element, an emotional level, to the stories. For example, the first one ends with this bit of evocative sweetness: “Evening is closing in. Just before setting, the sun emerges from behind grey clouds that covered the sky and suddenly lights up with its bright red glow the purple clouds, the greenish sea with ships and boats rocking on its broad even swell, the white buildings of the town, and people moving in the streets. The sound of some old tune played by a military band on the boulevard is carried across the water and mingles strangely with the sound of firing on the bastions.” Now there is the caring poet in Tolstoy straining to get out.
I also enjoyed the portrayal of the Russian people, the spirit of the Russian soldier, and not necessarily ideas of brilliant military tactics or strategy. No, the narrator, and we, are able to see “the chief characteristics of Russian strength – simplicity and obstinacy (p. 11).”
We visit the wounded among horrid conditions. We try to be brave. We are there to see the grandeur, the spectacle of war, and we want to immerse ourselves in all of it. I ponder the plight of man; I worry about us down here sometimes, still in the mire: the thinking beast that comes up with all manner of psychological tap dancing in order to endure either the sufferings or banalities of living. A wounded soldier has had his leg amputated. Our narrator – ourselves – ask him questions. We want to know how he’s doing, how it happened. We have ourselves a little chat. Everyone is doing their bit. I’m reminded of Not So Quiet . . . by Helen Zenna Smith. How is the pain? The soldier answers: “The chief thing, your Honor, is not to think; if you don’t think it’s nothing much. It’s most because a man thinks.” And there is truth here, what Harold Bloom calls “wisdom writing.” It is, after all, why we pay attention to the canon at all, why we revere our truth-sayers and visionaries. The grass is or is not greener, just there, over there: you decide, thinker therefore manifest. Ha ha ha.
For me literature is about love: love for Insight, love for the written word, love for Art, and, lastly, most powerfully, a love for Life. Therefore, I’m enthusing right now, during halftime of the Championship Game, stuffing my face with white-man-in-khakis fried food (which I never would engage with behind the tofu curtain with my wife), drinking Busch beer products, given that we’re in St. Louis.
My father-in-law made me shave. He had a TWA travel kit from some First Class flight somewhere, and he tossed it to me. “Are you serious?” I asked. I only had three days’ growth. “I’m totally serious,” he said. “This is big time, this is corporate America.” And in order to be able to sit in the hotshot suite, I had to play a role. I was Bryan Weber, Second Chief Counsel of First American, and thus Capitol One. I reviewed two of “my” top three current cases; I was briefed; I recalled everything that my wife said about law school; I practiced my handshake. These business types, in their elevators, are the hand-shakingest group of people on the planet. Academics do not introduce themselves as eagerly as these people do. I played the part admirably and was allowed to drink my Bud and eat my sausage on a roll and watch one hell of a final game. While reading Tolstoy, of course . . . For in the suite I read “Diary for 1855,” and I loved it: that’s why I mentioned love at the beginning of this section. Tolstoy, poor guy with his gambling and his need for God. “Time, time, youth, dreams, thoughts – everything is being lost without a trace. I’m squandering my life, not living.” There’s the thinking human again. I know what squandering something is. I know of a lust for the other. I had and still have super-extra-large dreams. And an aunt said that I’m not ambitious . . . Ha! An adamantine push toward some kind of meaning. Therefore, yes, I read the diary, and finally there is that bit in the Reader . . . I’ve not gotten to it yet. It is late Monday night. My flight is at seven in the morning. I’ll read it on the plane, drive the pell-mellish hour and forty minutes from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, thinking about Tolstoy, book-on-taping with Tolstoy, racing to get to my Tolstoy class on time. And it’s for love, of learning, of the printed word, of art – and here it is again – of life. Let’s all smile down here, let’s.
- - -
Bibliophile. I believe in the book. I’m taking a promseminar on The Book. From China to Gutenberg in Mainz, along the Rhine. I believe in literature. I love the word and art that makes it through censorship and suppression. I don’t like oppressive, restrictive autocratic regimes that attempt to control the word of the people. I don’t like injustice, and I love all words/people/books/art that fight against all the injustices of the world. I am a freedom fighter. I look to my comrades-in-pens for support.
Saw the Russian movie “Prisoner of the Mountains” last night. Rented it from Video Shmideo as I’m not going to be able to make the screening tonight in class. My brother is flying in from Asheville, North Carolina. My brother is a poet. He attends some seminar on mythology somewhere in the Santa Ynez mountains. I was unable to pinpoint exactly where over the phone. My nephew kept chattering. Life is not confusing; it’s simply busy. The movie is based on Tolstoy’s short story “Prisoner of the Caucasus.” There are hints of the upcoming – later in Tolstoy’s life – Hadji Murad.
The story is about perseverance and about faith, about doing the right thing, choosing the right way, a moral way, an honest way. Zhilin does not abandon Kostylin when they are attempting to escape. In fact, he carries Kostylin on his back. Kostylin is overweight. Earlier in the story Kostylin had abandoned Zhilin, did not help defend him when the Tatars ambushed them: he bolted on his horse: he had the only gun. They were both ultimately captured. Zhilin jokes about not getting married then, after he escapes, and he decides to stay in the service in the Caucasus. He crosses himself when he’s running to his comrades. He exclaims to God; again he crosses himself. Tolstoy needs and emphasizes this connection to God. I admire these stories in the odd mountains between the Black Sea and the Caspian. Like Robert D. Kaplan I want to adventure there and chronicle the experience. Like Tolstoy, I ponder going off to war for “good copy.” Perhaps every writer should head off to Iraq or Afghanistan. Any writer worth his or her salt, right? One wonders. I watched the movie: I need to wrestle some man bare chested, both of us, along the Caspian. You know, to be a man; to be a writer/artist. And it is clear that I should pray more often.
- - -
At long last! Now, I enjoy reading about an artists’ biography, from Picasso to Van Gogh to Tolstoy, from vaingloriousness to magnanimousness to wretchedness, and I certainly love the short story, but finally we have entered Anna Karenina, a long enough tale that helps us drift away from the man who created it and into a new world. I love this book; I love the words and phrases, the nuance of social interaction, deep understanding in a simper or an eye’s gleam; I even love the smell of the book. Seated outside, in front of her jasmine, I open the book and jam my nose into it, like some vintner in his element. I enjoy swimming in the clear pool of Tolstoy’s narrative talents. Give me any day the Prince’s mock-curtsey to his wife as they discuss Levin versus Vronsky for their youngest daughter. He says, “So you think! and what if she falls in love too, while he has about as much idea of marrying her as I? Oh, if only I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes! - ‘ah, spiritualism, ah, Nice, ah, the ball - !’ And at each word the Prince pretending to imitate his wife, gave a curtsey.” A writer’s skill cannot surpass this ability to give life to a scene.
And the proposal scene – speaking as one who looks Tolstoy square in the eyes and does not shy away from his piercing gaze (and why would one, given that an artist is supposed to follow, denounce, then better his artistic precursor, especially when vying for the canon?; it seems a simple process to me) – is equally skillful and intense. Levin has just been denied, and he wishes more than anything to carry his humiliation away from there, but he must stay as he is halted by social convention with the arrival of the Princess. Further, he must sit through a conversation with his social nemesis, and then finally meet Vronsky and witness for himself how much Kitty loves the latter. Very good dramatic twist and tension.
I also enjoy literary shepherding (narrative shepherding) that Tolstoy engages as he collects his sheep and ushers them gently along, chapter after chapter, first Oblonsky, then Dolly, then Anna, then Kitty, then Levin, then Vronsky; each piece fits perfectly and finally this reader must remove his hat and bow in deference. And now I refuse to compete; and now I am a simple fan, ready to stand in line for an autograph; certain to learn from the master. And we’ll see where he goes with this: thus far I’ve no sympathy for Anna, and Vronsky, well, Vronsky is a Petersburg cur. Can Tolstoy bring me around so that I feel for them? Also, I should note that as of this writing I am more interested in style, structure, narrative, technique, abilities, prose talent, language, scene construction, than I am with content. I apologize: But I must challenge Lev here: he must have something for my spirit, for my heart; he must go in there and get me, otherwise I will be one of the few who remain unconvinced.
- - -
Now Leo Tolstoy and I are in bed together. Such an intimate relationship. My wife stands in the doorway – catches us in the act – and says, “I’d prefer it if you’d not read other men in bed.” She turns and walks away, leaving us together. Lev’s beard is scratchy.
Ouch: such an intense scene when Karenin picks up Anna – his wife! – at the St. Petersburg train station and there is this stranger there. Vronsky has followed her home. He is her shadow. But decorum dictates that there be no overt antagonisms and certainly no violence. I’ve been there, in a scene such as this one, though in retrospect, given that I wasn’t married, with a lot less at stake. But the emotions are there, deftly sewn and vividly impressive. “Lev,” I say, “What a bold move, to bring Vronsky and Karenin together so soon, so quickly.” I suppose – and many teachers of writing have driven this home to me and many – that if you desire to be dramatic, up the ante, up the stakes, challenge yourself. How will the characters play out their roles and get our of their situation? Anna seems cruel to me. And, given that I’m in bed with Lev, I share with him some intimacies. “Leo, man, I gotta tell you, my mother cheated on my dad. He tried to forgive her. We were in Heidelberg and the Germans don’t give custody to the fathers, it’s simply the way. My brother was three and I was five then six and she did it again. Oh, I’ve forgiven her, whatever, but it still hurts, especially considering that my stepfather isn’t right for her, but who’s right for who, beyond the fact that he takes care of her and they travel together. Whose right for who and what the fuck do I know.
So dad and mom went to court and from what I hear it was suitably vicious – it needed to be for my dad to wrest us away from our mother – and that’s the quick version. So, I gotta tell ya, Leo, I’ve got zero sympathy for Anna here, mother of her son and responsible one. Perhaps I ask much of people. Do the right thing? Live simply and moderately? I don’t know, Anna can rot in that fiery place . . . What’s that, you say? Well there’s the source of all the trouble? No, no, don’t freak out, well-degreed experts have dropped that shit on me as a distinct possibility. I forgave my mother? Oh, yes, well, we’ll see what becomes of Anna.” Then Vronsky has the sack to say, while they’re all standing there in that sublimely uncomfortable scene on the train station platform: “I hope to have the honor of calling on you.” Ouch, this is no good.
In the first chapter of Book II, Kitty is sick with a broken heart, with wounded pride and shame. The reason for the first chapter structurally is to exhibit Kitty’s sickness, but also to have the doctor direct them to go on a trip: the whole chapter comes down to this line: “The answer was finally given: they were to go abroad . . .(p.126).” I point this out here because the scene is essentially one of comedy, and it conveys the simple yet necessary directive. Proust is funnier, however, practically stand-up.
The great love story of Anna Karenina. Some of the wondrous loves and fatefully tragic loves, even when you consider Tolstoy and Sonya themselves. But, thus far, I’ll take Proust’s Odette and Swann any day. Essentially I envision Marcel and Lev dressed in fencing outfits, there on a stage before us, prepared for their literary joust. Marcel is a bit effeminate, sure, but I’ve high hopes for him. They begin. . . we watch . . . And . . .
Eh. Eh. Eh. Remember, it’s play.
I stand up in bed visibly excited. Proust seems to be making a move toward vanquishing a canonical competitor. But then Lev’s counter, on page 131, leaves us stunned and in silence: how’s this for writing, huh?: “The tears seemed to be the lubricant that was indispensable if the machinery of sisterly relations was to run properly.” Kitty and Dolly come together in understanding; both are experiencing personal miseries based upon love or a desire for love.
Now I worry for my money; my bets rest upon Marcel; I have wagered everything; perhaps I never should have entered them into a contest; it is all my fault; Marcel is on his knees (though I know he shall rebound), and it appears that he is bleeding: Karenin attempts to drive away the jealousy that he feels; he refuses to acknowledge that what he feels is in fact jealousy; and Tolstoy goes deep into pathos and essential sympathy: “Karenin was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife’s loving someone else, and this seemed to him extremely irrational and incomprehensible, because it was life itself (p.150).”
The plot thickens. I call a time out and Proust retreats to his side, Tolstoy to his. Leo, however, bears a smirk that does not impress me. Marcel seems petrified that he would be engaged in such an activity. I walk over to console him, reminding him of In Search, a salve to his elementally human insecurities. Tolstoy makes his biceps quiver. He glares at me. He strokes his beard. I shrug and wonder whether I should stop shaving.
- - -
The Zen of Scythe
Seated with Lev on a bench in front of the Mission as the bells tolled mournfully and at length, and after I’d placed my hand on his shoulder, I said, “Lev, those are some beautiful mountains, no?”
“They are, indeed,” he snorted. He was impressed but he attempted to show that he was not overly captivated by my enthusiasm. I am, after all, his inferior. According to him. But I played my role admirably, allowing him to hold court and govern our conversations.
“Why are they tolling so?” he asked.
“They’re remembering the Oklahoma City bombing . . . many died.”
“Actually, my son, I believe it was the new pope . . . Benedict.”
“How do you know?”
“Simply put, I can feel it . . . I’m in touch with all things spiritual.”
I refused to challenge him. We watched the roses grow before our eyes, as he had Levin once heard the growing grass.
“What is this Oklahoma?” he asked.
“Well, it’s a decimated Indian tribe, actually, but, well, so there’s this federal building, oh, nevermind.” I paused. “All I know is that you’d have some serious material if you lived today.”
“And who knows what you would have done had you lived in my day.”
“Look, let’s not argue at a time like this.”
He grunted, crossed his arms, and remained silent for some time. I continued to read him, as the breeze reminded us both of a world that exists beyond our vision of things.
I decided to flatter him; but my flattery was meaningful; by that I mean there was sincerity and truth contained in my thoughts: “You know, Lev, I really love how you captured nature. You certainly were paying attention. The trembling Frou-Frou, the rain running off a roof, the fields, the mud. But particularly, you descriptions of the hay mowing season were exquisite, top notch.”
“Don’t suck up to me, you know how I hate it.”
“Um, I’m not sucking up to you and, as a matter of fact, you love it.”
“You’re not a true acolyte . . . you’re a competitor.”
“Well, all the more reason to respect me and be my friend. In any case, allow me to finish. I am truly inspired by your insight, and your capturing of what I call ‘the Zen of scything.’”
“Show me,” he doubted and dared.
And so I did: \Here were his words in Anna:
“They did another, and still another row. \They went on mowing – long rows and short rows, with good grass and bad. Levin lost all awareness of time; he had absolutely no idea whether it was late now or early. A change had begun to take place in his work now that gave him an enormous amount of pleasure. In the midst of his work moments would come over him when he would forget what he was doing; it became easy for him, and during these same moments his row would come out almost as even and as good as Titus’s. But the instant he would recall what he was doing he would feel the full burdensomeness of toil, and the swath would come out badly.”
I read to him a few Koans by way of comparison. As soon as I began reading his words the tolling of the bells stopped. The breeze continued. A parrot flew by Lev’s head. I expressed to him that I felt the same way with sailing, or with painting, or playing traps in a jazz band, or with playing basketball in my youth: a total loss of Self and Time and a complete manifestation of Beauty, effortless, honest, a Mingusian being in the Moment, a Miles Davisian Hitting the Pocket. Or like the time I was camping in Lauterbrunen and the old Swiss farmer came out to mow his meadow with a scythe. He was sunburned; I asked him in German if I could try it; he said yes and watched from beneath a tree. The water continued to fall from Murren. I scythed then and knew everything.
Lev turned and looked at me. He, too, had scythed, of course, and now he smiled. He jutted out his lower lip and nodded. We understood one another. I continued to read aloud. The parrot stopped on a bunya-bunya bough and listened: “The longer Levin kept mowing the more often he would feel the moments of oblivion when it would no longer be his arms that were swinging the scythe, but the scythe itself, like a body full of life and self-consciousness, would move forward of its own accord, and the work would perform itself, accurately and carefully, as though by magic, without a thought being given to it. These were the most blissful moments.”
“Kind of like sex,” he said. And we laughed aloud, heartily.
“Let’s walk home and get some vodka,” I suggested.
“Let’s,” said he. And we were off. I carried the book with me. It was the middle of a warm afternoon.
- - -
Beyond the Reception Room of the Mind
Any writer should be able to pull off the sweet nuanced essence that our virtuoso does with the following, during a conversation between Vronsky and his general-friend Serpukhovskoy, who alludes to the affair but, again, Tolstoy has his characters raise eyebrows, show understanding on their faces only, subtle, beautiful: “’She’s a friend of Varya’s, and they’re the only women in Petersburg I find it a pleasure to see,’ replied Vronsky with a smile. He was smiling because he foresaw the theme the conversation was going to turn to, and was pleased.
‘The only ones?’ asked Serpukhovskoy, smiling.
‘And I kept hearing about you, but not only from your wife,’ said Vronsky, forbidding this allusion by a severe look.”
Ah, such a deft move on the page. Vronsky directs the substance of the dialogue but not the underlying content, not the tone.
Ouch!: Karenin and Anna are confronting one another for the first time after she revealed herself in the carriage after the race. The saber of language, of sarcasm, eloquently laid down in type before my eyes: Karenin says: “’Not all wives are as kind as you are, in hastening to inform their husbands of such a pleasant piece of news.’”
And, as they say, the plot thickens. Karenin has her suitably caged, seeking revenge, and what will happen next? I found it interesting that both Karenin and Vronsky both set to “doing their laundry” during this trying time.There is more, there is more, but I must go now.
- - -
Lordvmercpons
Tolstoy may have read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It was published before Anna Karenina, and had made its way to Russia. People in Russia used it in their vigorous and engaging discussions of the serf issue, plus emancipations of all kinds. Women, individual liberties, etc. The book also had an impact in Romania, France, Britain, as well as variegated readership responses in the United States. If Tolstoy had not read the book, he at least was aware of the issue. He writes, during a discussion of “the Women’s Question,” from the mouth of Pestsov, in response to my favorite character the Prince: “Just the same thing was thought about the Negroes before their emancipation!” There is a shift occurring in Russian society, and in civilized society on the rest of the continent as a whole, and Tolstoy is writing a story that involves many of the intricate and not necessarily explainable convolutions of these changes. Goodness knows the characters are going through a lot as they discover themselves in relationship to established social mores.
Which leads me directly to my next point: Wow: I don’t know what to think any more. Certainly, I think it is time for me to stop thinking for a moment and to allow the story to unfold. Early on I gave no quarter to Anna’s “selfishness.” You might even say I despised her. Then I loved her, as she was purportedly going to die, and Karenin returns from his aborted trip and sobs for the first time, forgiving everything. It’s not that I anticipated or even desired reconciliation. But that I wanted some kind of sanity to return; some understanding. Even Vronsky was a human being. Finally, I surmised, a chance at some real communication and not this prancing around. These contemplations did not satisfy for long. Just like that Anna stiffened again and began to hate her repentant, really-trying-to-make-sense-of-it-all husband. She treated him as a scourge and wanted no part of him. This emotional rollercoaster has about done me in. Thus, I’m giving up; Tolstoy is controlling me; As characters in his novel often say: I am entirely in his hands. Where the story goes from here is part of the ride. I hate Anna, I love Anna, I hate her again. I disrespect Karenin; I admire and respect him; I pity him. The bullet Vronsky met for his mortal self? I don’t know: show me something, sir. He has now abandoned his painting and his palazzo and they have returned to Russia. Ach! I need a drink.
And I’m a sucker for sentimentality and for the consummation of love. When everybody bursts into tears and Levin and Kitty finally get together, I feel great measures of relief. It’s cathartic, given the torturous swings contained in the Anna-Vronsky-Karenin camp. When the Prince struggles to contain his emotions and declaims “Really, how stupid of me!” I am of that lot. Completely taken over and glad that something verging on happiness, however earthly or momentary, has happened.
Also, I love the psychological portrait of Mikhailov the painter, his almost manic depressive movements of physical manifestations of interior thoughts. He loves his painting, he hates his painting. Each reaction in the real world corresponds to a brief spark of a thought. Plus, like all artists, he must talk himself into a level of self-confidence that allows him to work at all. Notice that, “He began to look at his painting with his own full artistic perception, and reached that state of confidence in the perfection, and consequently the importance of his painting that was essential to him for the all-excluding concentration that was the only way he could work.” I’m not going to venture and try to guess how much of Tolstoy’s own artistic self-image is in contained in the portrait of Mikhailov. But many say that the author painted a scene of an artist adeptly and accurately.
- - -
Anna they let into the house, a seeming violation
on her firstborn’s birthday, a young boy
with depth of understanding yet he would still
need to grow into a man.
They say to the young ones that when older they’ll understand
As if life becomes clear and issues smooth and peace serene
as if the young boy will grow and figure It out.
Seryhozha in bed on his special day searched his mother’s eyes
while they connected, briefly, before rent apart.
This song’s voice from a man whose mother named Anna
on his birthday, when he was six, announced a picnic;
oh a picnic with his younger brother of three, to the playground
under the mountain and among the trees
that had the wooden three-masted ship aiming across those seas.
It was their favorite place, simply a young family;
and Anna mentioned to the eldest that she
would be going away now for a while. Because
mommy and daddy didn’t love one another anymore
-whatever that means to a child –
and that anyhow they should enjoy their day together.
When are you coming home, mom? he asked her;
his younger sucking his thumb.
I don’t know, she said, and turned away.
And Anna ran from the house from which
she was no longer welcome....
save by the love and need of her firstborn son.
- - -
God Will Judge Them Not Us
Tolstoy begins unraveling Anna’s demise and there is nothing we can do about it. I’m writing my official essay (comin’ with the OE) on Tolstoy as the master of delusions. Throughout the novel, his characters, save Levin and Kitty, are engaged in self-defeating periods of misapprehension. I want to save Anna, but I can’t. I’ve learned – maybe it’s been mentioned earlier but I’ve only recently caught on – that Princess Barbara is Catherine’s sister, the aunt who raised Anna and insisted on the marriage between Karenin and Anna. Now Barbara is staying with Anna, and Dolly comes for a visit. Anna and Vronsky are living with one another as a married couple. Anna has been deserted by society. Barbara, who is a licentious woman herself, says to Dolly “God will judge them, not us.” Here is Tolstoy’s voice peeking through. I am reminded of the short story “God Knows The Truth But Waits” as well as the epigraph, a quote from Romans and we should be aware that vengeance is, of course, God’s.
Anna is not going to have more children, she announces to the shocked Dolly. Why is she not going to have more children? wonders Dolly as well as the reader. Because she chooses not to. Is Anna one of the first literary feminist figures? Anna Karenina as a harbinger of feminism and women’s rights, suffrage, equality, birth control. I can’t help but think of Margaret Sanger. Anna’s struggles do appear similar to those of history. Also, Cunningham’s The Hours – and the attendant film – plays itself in front of me as many of the images are similar. Women’s rights? Mental illness? Patriarchy as soul crusher? Oppression, subjugation, society’s hypocritical hate-squeeze? A wicked society it is. And ours. Women fight now like lions.
Anna is more than crushed by ancient social mores and intransigent divorce laws: she is suffering from something clinical. We may diagnose her differently now than they did in nineteenth-century Russia. Anna says to Dolly, “I’m not going to have any more because I don’t want to.” Tolstoy through Dolly tells us how he would choose. I must say, I would go the same way: biological imperative, duty, responsibility. The secret to life is a total immersion in the cares of quotidian life, then maintaining Awareness, and then mythologizing one’s own simple life, as Thoreau counseled. Sing the song of our sun and our rain and all elements in between. Dolly will run from Anna and Vronsky’s household back to the way of life she temporarily questions. I shudder at the suffering of humankind as we look over there, as we covet the other, as we grass-is-greener. Pragmatics, man, and moderation. Then build upwardly. Make what we have the best that we are able. Isn’t this Emerson’s vision in “Self-Reliance” and “Prudence.” After writing his ass off for an entire essay - an excellent multiple-underlines and margin screams essay - he concludes that prudence is “the art of securing a present well-being.” Now you who knows Buddha and sanity at a Thanksgiving table with family can run with this for a million miles and a billion essays.
- - -
A Dangerous Selfishness
A few weeks ago I made a move toward discussing individual responsibility. I know there’s always a gray area and a fine line, but Anna is also selfish. She not only leaves Karenin, but also her son Seryozha. Then she crushes Vronsky’s love because of her tormented, misapplied self-judgments. Her portrait is prominent on the wall. Her daughter’s name is Annie. Not to mention her maid’s. And finally – tragically sad and leaving the reader powerless – she commits an act that is the apotheosis of selfishness: she commits suicide.
The more I think about it, Tolstoy may have been commenting on mental illness. When did Durkheim write Suicide? It is a strong-willed and brazen move for an author to kill the heroine, to self-kill the heroine no less. And the psychological, social, personal and emotional portrait Tolstoy gives us of Anna and her environs is so damn good and so darn tight that it all fits. The train . . . the train: so simple, and yet it properly completes the circle.
- - -
We finish with Anna. Had – and this is not judging! – she loved another after Vronsky she would have ruined him, or her, as well. It is a simply complicated matter of Anna’s neuroses. These cannot be changed overnight, with one notion of passionate love. She would eventually be unhappy in any situation. Bi-polar? Manic depressive? Modeled certainly, it would seem, after Tolstoy’s own ups and downs and struggles with figuring it out. Yes, this is a novel – as is the entire body of Tolstoy’s work – about figuring it out. So we’re not supposed to judge? Is Tolstoy allowed to judge his own characters? He seems to have a place for them: does this mean he has engaged in their judgments as creator? Live nice, be good, engage in life, believe and have faith in something, some force.
One wonders whether I’m still attempting to find anything in Tolstoy about the meaning of life. I believe that a sensitive, subtle artist – for that matter any living being – possesses insights. So, yes, given that he was an artist and a living man, no matter his faults, I think there is something to be gained from watching Tolstoy’s movements. Of course you would not have seen me on a pilgrimage to his estate. I still believe what the first line of this blushing samovar states. And if I was joking at all, or playing with tone and essence, regarding my own writing, I still, though the mastery of Anna is undeniable, do not shy away from direct artist challenges. I think I can be a better man. I’ll pull a Dante any day, or die trying. While being a better man – this cannot be emphasized enough, underlined enough. You’ve taught me a formula about simplicity.
I’m happy to challenge God, as well, given that He is a creation of a man’s brain, a sweet mythology, happy indeed and I shall condemn Anna. She possessed a problem. I’ll forgive her because it wasn’t her fault. Do you remember the woman in The Hours? Recall all those maudlin scenes with her son, the birthday cake, that whole thing? I’ll forgive, sure, but my sympathy lags. My mom left me on a playground.
Tolstoy writes a sweet scene, a subtle shift, when Anna attempts to quiet those tormenting voices of jealousy. But she lets go with “It has no sense for you because you’re not concerned about me. You don’t want to understand what my life is.” She tried to be accommodating there, discussing when they would leave the city, domestic and good. She slipped back into it and her fears, her paranoias, invaded her peace. The neural ruts of her old thinking. OCD, schizophrenia, I don’t know - worn patterns in the brain and people find it difficult to change those patterns, climb out, break free. Try doing something brave everyday, some shocking new step, even a free fall. I’m not double-checking the door before I exit, no, not going to do it. Anna’s habitual furrow got her there - to that place - and she lashed out at Vronsky once more. Pains us because we could have saved her. Anna has been captured by herself. The megalomania I alluded to in the opening line of Blushing can be applied to Tolstoy’s main heroine. You’d lose your soul-mind in a cage. Rather than habituation in another, saner, more giving and encouraging direction.
This subtle switching, yet again, deftly done. And Anna’s unraveling continues.
- - -
Given that I’m still thinking about the master of delusions, and Anna’s self-destructive path, this phrase bears much weight. “Is it possible to tell anyone else what you feel?” She is so alone here, in her mental illness, irreclaimable at this point. You might say bad luck, but she is gone, and Tolstoy continues squeezing the life out of her. In a note to one of my diary entries you wrote that we are touched by Tolstoy despite his weaknesses. In a parenthetical you place “or because of them.” Tolstoy bore much of his literary, artistic power because of his construction, without a doubt.
The driving scenes to and fro in the carriage amaze. Tolstoy paints Anna’s interior monologue, noticing the street scenes, various vendors. She frenetic, private, commenting, completely unbalanced at this point. However, because of her heightened state (perhaps Tolstoy had written under the influence of morphine occasionally; some writers have encouraged the dream) she is wigging out, and consequently her noticing is astonishing, swift, beautiful. I love this writing, these scenes; modern. I hope that Tolstoy had fun writing them. Found driving to and from Dolly’s. Anna says “I don’t even know myself.” Perhaps a moment of glaring insight, during the long run of her near-hallucinatory play-by-play in the carriage.
“Feeling Gripped”
One of my favorite things in the world is to jump into cold water. Talking the northern Pacific; talking Lake Tahoe; talking Maine and Fundy. Almost had a heart attack at Tahoe. Sitting in a hot tub for a long time, dizzy and about to pass out. Climbed naked out of the tub and staggered toward the boulders that lined the clearwater shore. I dived into the water and my heart stopped. I thought “This is the end.” Dragged myself out of the water and collapsed on a lounge chair. If death arrived then, I’d be alone for a while before they found me. This is the kind of experience I enjoy. I like it because I’m afraid of it. Always fearful right before jumping into cold water. Standing there looking at the water. Scared shitless. Enter anyway, precisely because of this fear. Also stand on the tops of tall buildings and ponder jumping off them. Truly visualize it. Without a parachute, no BASE jumping. The resulting rush - gut-dip vertigo swoon - that we all feel is astounding. We savor the rush. I dream about jumping from tall buildings. Bungee off a bridge in New Zealand or Victoria Falls. So when Anna is about to “pray” underneath the train, we know what that feeling is, know it intimately. “A feeling gripped her like the one she had had on getting ready to go into the water when bathing.” Yes, she crossed herself.
Before moving on to Resurrection and “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” and other stories, letters or diary entries, I’ve got to finish with Anna. And so Anna is dead, Vronsky heads off to a loser’s war, Karenin takes Annie, Seryhozha is growing up, Oblonsky is not quite Falstaff but he plays a similar role gets the job he wanted; I’m certain more money won’t save him; Kitty is a mother and she will raise Dmitri and they will do their best (Levin has a good woman and she helps him); Koznyshov’s book project ends in failure as do many; Tolstoy himself wonders about his life and the validity of Art; he bugs out as usual about this or that aspect; Prozac might have done him some good; and finally Levin philosophizes at great length about the meaning of life and his relationship to God.
So he finds God, does he? He reconciles himself to the way of things. A bevy of manic depressives; a nuthouse of characters. No, no, no: that’s not my final assessment. It’s cold in Russia and the winters are long. Levin struggles to figure out the meaning of life as does Tolstoy through Levin. Anna is bad, is she? She dies. Don’t judge her. No, perhaps not, but there may be psychoanalysis. A shrink does not judge, does she? I don’t think so.
What’s up with nineteenth-century literature? On either side of the Atlantic. The American Literary Renaissance, that period between 1850-1855, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Melville, Stowe, Margaret Fuller. What was I saying?: Yes, figuring it all out and Levin’s last surmise. But it won’t be his last now, will it? Of course not. How close are his peroration and the truth of his belief, Tolstoy’s belief, or Truth? I believe it, on my own, way before Tolstoy showed up on the scene. Good. One day I’ll write an Emersonian poem about what I mean. Goodness. Simplicity. Moderation. Acceptance. Hard work. Contentment. Living one’s life. Day to day. Love. Mindfulness. Sharing. Responsibility.
Somewhere in the last paragraph lives a shred of it. Going to quote it, I have to; it’ll help make “The Blushing Samovar” whole. I don’t think he’s making excuses; I have faith that there’s something in there beyond the story. “I’ll go on getting angry at Ivan the coachman. I’ll go on arguing, go on expressing my ideas inappropriately, there will still be a wall between the inmost shrine of my soul and other people, including my wife; I’ll go on blaming her because of my own fears, then repent; I’ll go on not understanding with my reason why I pray, and go on praying – but from now on my life, my whole life, no matter what happens to me, every second of it, is not only not meaningless as it was before, but it has the incontestable meaning of the goodness I have the power to put into it!” This cry retains pure meaning for a sentient being; we self-help; we life coach; we seek joy in this time. You can see the power of religion and its Belief Story, how good it would be to frame your life with such a narrative, any narrative, that tells the story of your journey from life to death.
Stunning that we die. Just, like, what? Stare to the horizon, see your actual end, the final point, then look close at hand, notice this life about you. We should sing magnificent songs to this life. And respect each other’s story. Tolstoy and Emerson are linked here, as with a Zumba teacher in Los Angeles today and the global Tony Robbins. What is your role in your own life journey? Warrior? Soldier? Pilgrim? Beggar? Thief? Teacher? Monk? Brave? All of these and more? Yes, so I respect Tolstoy’s religion, and his comment, his preaching and his dream, knowing fear, thinking alternatively, action upon an idea.
He’s trying hard, they are, this Levin as Tolstoy. Poor boys. Reminds me of a New Age friend with her incense and bookshops in Coolidge Corner and in Brookline. Remember the days, too, with your full beard. Upon writing the quote, however, I am still dissatisfied. He is getting closer, I can sense it. Worry beads and huminah-huminah. Feel sorry for the human sometime. Like apes in their pit in the San Francisco Zoo. Oh, don’t worry, don’t be afraid, it’s not a big deal. I scratch, you scratch. But be a nice person, work to be true. A warm handshake, a pint of ale, a walk on a blustery evening, successfully completing a triathlon, swimming in that cold, clear water, raising children well, reading a good book, drinking green tea with honey, appreciating that Louvre and that Hermitage, a shared experience with a lover without words. Some write, some paint, some work vigorously at figuring it all out. Some know it always because it’s right there. Tolstoy was a great artist, no doubt; Tolstoy could be infantile; I know intimates who lived it better. Better?: Judging again. By the way, I forgive Anna. As I forgave my mother and all who came before them.
You ever read Rabindranath Tagore? I just think It is easier than people make it out to be.
- - -
Ivan Died and Lev was Finally Funny
Eating a turkey sandwich on an English muffin with spinach, biting into it halfway finished when Ivan died, during the last sentence of the short story, and the sentence was pronounced by the judge. The last sentence, chewing my food, hearing aid battery beeping as it informed that I had to replace it, was: “He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh, stretched out, and died.” I stopped chewing. Temporarily.
In a story in which breathes a vivid, interior description of a man dying Tolstoy has finally offered us some humor. I’d been waiting. I’d pronounced judgment and declared that Proust was a better writer and a better person. In my seat pronouncing? I don’t even care if it matters. Proust, though he may have been daft, wrapped in his cork-lined room writing away, at least made fun of himself, self-deprecating with a grand wink on the creative/death bed that was the last ten years of his life. Humor, amid amazing writing, and he didn’t hurt people while living. And so what is this great bear of a man named Tolstoy? But in “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” we smile during the poignant sliding away of dutiful, propitious Ivan. We should visualize our own death, like David Bowie, and conjure an expression. Tolstoy saw his own.
However, Tolstoy writes this death at least as well (please notice a wink) earlier in the story, after Ivan has died. “But the more intimate of Ivan Ilych’s acquaintances, his so-called friends, could not help also thinking that now they would have to fulfill the very tiresome demands of propriety by attending the funeral service and paying a condolence call on the widow.” Ouch. But Tolstoy is playful in this very intense and deep story. The scene of Peter Ivanovich at the house after Ivan has died is classic. The movements between wife and husband, too, though sad, are painted with humor. Even Ivan’s own interior contemplations can be funny, as when he sets his new house in order. After he fell and after the illness arrived watch this: “During these last few days he would go into the drawing-room he had arranged – that drawing-room where he had fallen and for the sake of which (how bitterly ridiculous it seemed ) he had sacrificed his life . . .” Sacrificed his life makes me think of a Marquez scene. If you’re going to show some seriousness, give too some clowning around with subtleties.
- - -
An Old Man Resurrecting Himself
Begin Resurrection.
V.S. Naipaul, when he won the Nobel Prize, remarked that he essentially told the same story over and over again, under different guises, with similar themes, tropes, scenes, moments. It makes sense. A writer only possesses what a writer has in experience and inside her head. This is confirmed when the writer writes autobiographical fiction, moral tales based on life’s experience, family and environment, and does not, say, continually invent. Tolstoy did not write some detective novel set in London or New York. He wrote what he knew. This perspective is no more evidenced than in Resurrection. The familiar style, coloring, character-types, phrases, turns of body language, moral assiduity or struggles, and the search for truth are apparent in the novel as in much of his other work. I see Anna in Maslova, in her body type, her swift-moving feet, her small white hands. There is Levin in Nekhlyudov in the man’s battle between conscience and amorality, Petersburg and others, good and bad. There is Vronsky in Nekhlyudov as well: the playboy, the Petersburgite, the seducer. Tolstoy sets up the story and I sit in a familiar easy chair in his mind’s library. I know this place. Yes, I do. Hello Lev, how are you? This book is going well by page ninety nine.
The battle for what is right in Nekhlyudov is clearly defined and delineated into two separate, precise camps. Then and now. The interest of the self versus the rights and needs of others. His enjoyment versus her feelings. His youthful moments of working toward what is good and right, inspired by poetry and books. And now, with the negative influences pressed upon him by society, by what he thinks people expect of him. Tolstoy writes the terms simply. The character is in the center, a pendulum between one and the other. I fear for Maslova, the bird caught in the hunting bag and Nekhlyudov simply wants the suffering to end.
Humor
Tolstoy is funny, imagine that. I saw him smile a time or two while writing “Ivan,” and I see it now in Resurrection. The scene in the courtroom and the judges have finally assembled and enter the court. Matvey Nikitich who was always late approaches his chair by the green-covered table. He concentrates deeply and he, like making a wish before blowing birthday candles or not having a 13th floor (triskaidekaphobia) or He loves me He loves me not with a daisy counts his steps to the chair - OCD. He wants to see if his procedure for catarrh is going to work. If the steps divide by three he is good to go. “If not, the treatment would be a failure. There were twenty-six steps, but he managed to get in an extra short one and reached his chair exactly at the twenty-seventh.” I’m smiling with Lev on this one.
The scene where the jury is being sworn in also carries healthy comedy. Now Tolstoy seems to have eased up a bit. He could be playful, this many readers know. Marcel would have been proud of him here. The priest administers the oath; the jury members are repeating after him: “Others again whispered very low and lagged behind the priest until they suddenly took fright and caught up with him at the wrong moment.” The entire page contains this kind of neurotic internal-contemplation capturing on Tolstoy’s part. He is extremely perceptive about the sweet pressures exerted on an individual when assembled with others. Know Civilization and Its Discontents.
- - -
Tolstoy Having Some Fun
In Resurrection Tolstoy, though he acts the role of social theorist and though he condemns blasphemously the Christian church and its various accoutrements, is having fun. Therefore, I am enjoying myself much more. Only halfway into the novel, this is my favorite Tolstoy book. He engages in overt irreverence and I love it. And, as mentioned previously, he engages in banter and scathing humor.
While folks are having a social he writes, “and that if they talked it was only to satisfy the physical need to exercise the muscles of the throat and tongue after eating.” Given the seriousness of the topic in Resurrection, I cannot help but see Tolstoy with a smile on this one and many others. Maybe he read these parts aloud with family at the dinner table. A compelling kind of writing: engaging serious topics with irreverence, irony and humor. I recognize this novel. In this scene Tolstoy writes, “Sophia Vassilyevna turned to Kolossov, asking his opinion of a new play, using a tone of voice which said that Kolossov’s opinion must be the final word on the subject and every syllable he uttered deserved to be immortalized.” Ouch. And, as we head toward the end of our winter, the tortoise in Lev moves up on Marcel, drawing-room scenes and bitter commentary. This is the first Tolstoy that has engendered from me an audible, guttural laugh while reading. Folks looked up from their febrile tasks, working on undergraduate term papers in the library on the sea.
Ironic humor and even slapstick in the first two paragraphs, during the second day of Nekhlyudov’s jury duty, with the badinage between the prosecutor and the president “personifying impartiality and justice” and the two gendarmes “with their drawn swords threatening the prisoner” and we know the prisoner to be harmless.
However, this juxtaposition between humor and serious commentary continues. Lev has Nekhlyudov say, “’Just as dangerous a creature as yesterday’s criminal,’ thought Nekhlyudov, listening to all that was going on. ‘They are dangerous – but aren’t we dangerous? . . . I am a rake, a fornicator, a liar . . .” Lev playing the social commentariat throughout the novel, especially as he takes on the justice system, the rights of individuals, the Church itself, and society’s explicit role in producing criminals. A very liberal, progressive Tolstoy at play here. And I cannot shake the feeling, as I picture the older man writing this novel after the tortures of Anna, that he is having fun. As much as Tolstoy is able, I think he is cutting loose here.
His ironic humor is nowhere better evidenced with the comments of the prosecutor, after Nekhlyudov has visited him and the member of the court enters. The consummate prosecutor as a verbose over-talker says, in answer to his comrade who had bored the court to tears, “’People of that kind should simply be stopped; otherwise they become real obstructionists . . .’”
I’m surprised there weren’t assassination attempts on Tolstoy. I am thinking of Theo Van Gogh in 2004 and the radical fundamentalist in Holland who assassinated him. Yes, Tolstoy was eventually excommunicated - social spanking! - and we can see why the church might have experienced a tizzy when he described the scene in the prison church: “It did not occur to any one of those present that everything that was going on there was the greatest blasphemy, and a mockery of the same Christ in Whose name it was all being done.” The entire page a skewer of organized religion under consideration. And because of this, while laughing aloud and agreeing with Tolstoy’s attempt at directing his anger in an artistic form, I am quite fond of him. Lev also demonstrates cynicism when discussing the subdeacon. He’s a very modern novelist at this point. Readers recognize this tone.
Then we’re dealing with “moral nausea.” Did Sartre find his way, in French translation, through Resurrection? There cannot be a doubt. I smell the blood of a French existentialist. Tolstoy must be loving the process of writing this book. Perhaps it was a cathartic process after the tortures of his previous phase. The following line, taken from the “at home” day of the assistant governor’s, when Nekhlyudov appeals to him and they’ve stepped aside to discuss business and yet the former keeps an ear on the gathering beyond the Japanese room: “A general burst of laughter came from the drawing-room, and even sounded genuine.” I’m beginning to like Tolstoy here, like a grandfather, like a big ol’ bear. Tolstoy writing with joy, a soccer expression, and the book seems to be coming effortlessly. Though this may have only been a way station on the journey of Tolstoy’s work, it is one of his better books. Readers enjoy the serious nature of his attacks and the sly vigor of his humor. Thank God for laughter.
And then, poignantly, Tolstoy sets up the duel outcome – with officers in temporary “prison” – and the peasant shipped to Siberia. The prince marching through society and making people uncomfortable with his truths, or at least his willingness to attend painful subjects as relates the aristocracy, is fine, necessary writing. Bob Marley sang “Chant Down Babylon” and there are many ways of making the attempt. Alas, what sweet sadness for the little human friend, struggling to figure it all out down here.