Don’t fret this is not some post on Russian lit per se……although it does help me make a point on foreign policy…..you know that subject that the candidates want to avoid speaking on while on meets and greets.
Have you ever read the novel, War and Peace? How about Anna Karenina? Both were written by Russian Leo Tolstoy and as usual they are long winded and detailed……I bring this up because these days there seems to be a certain sector of our society that seems hell bent on a confrontation with Russia.
Tolstoy wrote about this…the rush to war….so to speak……
I recently read a piece that makes the comparison….an excellent piece and very thought provoking…..well at least to me……for I spend a lot of time researching conflicts….causes and effects……
Rushing to war – justified by half-truths and propaganda – is a story as old as written history and the topic of great novelists like Leo Tolstoy, whose Anna Karenina offers lessons for today’s stampede toward WWIII,
Russian literature is too important to be left to professors of Comp Lit or to Slavic Departments at our universities, as is so often the case with the novel that I propose to examine here, Leo Tolstoy’s, Anna Karenina. Great literature is great precisely because of its multi-layered construction and the timelessness of the issues and considerations that constitute its substance.
Like War and Peace, Karenina has been the subject of many films going back to 1911, running through the 1930s with two classic versions featuring the legendary Greta Garbo and right up to time present and the widely discussed version released in 2012.
The novel has a core triangle, the relations between the heroine, her unloved and unloving husband who is 20 years her senior, Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, and her lover, Prince Alexei Vronsky, for whom she gives up everything but does not find happiness or inner peace, seeing instead that her only way out is suicide. It is about love and passion, about the basic building block of all societies, the family.
Source: Applying Tolstoy to Today’s Rush to War – Consortiumnews
The books need to be on your bucket list…they are well worth the time it takes to read them….again maybe that is just me.
I read both of those while in Junior High School, (not mentioning how long ago that was), but I whole-heartedly agree with you!!
It took me almost a year to wade through War And Peace…and then I wqss told there was a movie…damn the luck…LOL
Movies are never as good as the book!!
So true but back in those days I would have settled for the movie…..Anna was read later and enjoyed…..
Watched the movie … the book is too long and complicated for the likes of me …The only thing I read about Russia that I like is whatever I can find on The Romanoffs.
Well the Romanovs were czars at the time of War and Peace….was an excellent book is so damn long winded typical of a Russia writer…
I am a total klutz when it comes to either panache, classiness or education. My appreciation of the arts is not so much literary as it is focused on things like Salvadore Dali, Tintoretto, Van Gogh, Turner, Paul Klee, Enrico Caruso, — everything except literature. I was ruined when they required me to do a comprehensive book report on “Beowulf.”
I was given books as a kid and I have never lost my need for them…that would explain the 1500 books in my library and not one is fiction….I have more books on cool stuff than the local library…
My Daughter In Law to be is a professor at some university and her thing is Library Sciences and she travels the world talking about it.
That’s cool….in a world ate up with the internet and apps will she have a job in 5 years? I hate to know what will happen to all my books when I crap out….hopefully my granddaughter will become their guardian….
Off topic…..a couple of friends in Europe have sent me screen grabs of where someone is trying to block my site….one says I have nudity content and the other says that I am not a secure site and they could lose their passwords and card info…..it is good to know that someone is afraid of my words…LOL
I hav e encountered the same phenomenon from time to time ….usually the claim is that my site is insecure …. it gets a “Some Content Blocked” notice that anyone who wants to read it anyway can dismiss and access my writings. It shows up in the search bar as a yellow square with an “x” in it. If you know the countries that are blocking you I think I can suggest a method by which you can view your own blog the same way it is viewed in the other country. You are running your privacy and cookies notice at the bottom of your blog aren’t you? Some Euros require it be displayed and it is one of the options in your admin page’s “Widgets” selections.
Thanx I like being a “threat” if you will…makes me feel like I did back in the COINTELPRO days…..
If you open up Google in any foreign country it will tell you whether you are blocked or not. For example my blog in Google Germany looks like this. If it were blocked, the Google Germany would not allow me to see it.
https://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=en&u=https://theripeningwanderer.com/author/johnliming/&prev=search
My friend has solved the problem for me…not sure how but not to worry….
Check yourself out in Google China just for fun
Looks similar to Google here…but the writing looks funny…LOL
The good news is that China is not blocking you .. but there is no hope of getting a reading from North Korea is there?
I doubt it….but what the Hell…I can live without their help…LOL
‘The Second Half of a Man’s life is Made up of Nothing but the Habits he has Acquired During the first Half’
I observe this to be true…in fact very/terribly true.
‘Beauty is Mysterious as well as Terrible. God and Devil are fighting there, and the Battlefield is the Heart of Man’
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Read War & Peace ( a tale) Much prefer Dostoevsky….maybe b/c he touched my heart..
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn is pretty cool as well…
There is something ‘great’ about those two writers…..
Am back… in the UK…Happy Sunday to you…
Great post! I have just reviewed Resurrection, his last great novel, which I honestly think is one of the best books in the world. My review is here if you fancy a look https://murderundergroundbrokethecamel.wordpress.com/2016/11/01/resurrection/
Thanx for the visit and the comment….I have not read that book and now I am ready to go buy it….thanx for the nudge….chuq
Thank you, really hope you enjoy it