The blog is mysteriously returned! I will feed it.
On their weddings' eves, the wives of Tolstoy, Nicholas II, Nabokov, and Khodasevich received a gift from their husbands: a diary that detailed his sex with his serfs (to date). So, Sofya (Sonya) Tolstoy nee Behrs, reading the night before her nuptials and eighteen years old, or reading years later when her husband made her his secretary, would see: '21 April 1858. A wonderful day. Peasant women in the garden and by the well. I'm like a man possessed.' Or 'I'm in love as never before in my life. Today in the wood. I am a fool. A beast. Her bronze flush and her eyes...Have no other thought.' Which women, how in the garden, where by the well, who in the wood, my pale skin, what his thoughts of me. A peculiar torture, to know just enough that one is forced to imagine the rest. Perhaps, though, Sonya's feelings were such that she was not forced, or perhaps, thirteen children later, she simply didn't have the energy. (Orlando Figes, Natasha's Dance, 240-241, New York: Picador).
From Anna Karenina: 'What a dear little creature the bride is--like a lamb decked for the slaughter. Say what you like, one does feel sorry for the girl.' (Figes, 245)
***
Tolstoy to the children, when they asked if he wouldn't be ashamed of dividing his estate with the peasantry: 'What do you mean 'ashamed? Is it anything to be ashamed of to work for oneself? Have your fathers ever told you they were ashamed to work? They have not. What is there to be ashamed of in a man feeding himself and his family by the sweat of his brow? If anybody laughs at me, here's what I would say: there's nothing to laugh at in a man's working, but there is a great deal of shame and disgrace in his not working, and yet living better than others. That is what I am ashamed of. I eat, drink, ride horseback, play the pianno, and still I feel bored. I say to myself: "You're a do-nothing."' (239) Art that did not decry injustice never seemed to have counted as hard work to Russians in the 1860s and 1870s, and I love them for it. ('An interesting idea. A Marxist idea, so wrong, but an interesting idea.')
On their weddings' eves, the wives of Tolstoy, Nicholas II, Nabokov, and Khodasevich received a gift from their husbands: a diary that detailed his sex with his serfs (to date). So, Sofya (Sonya) Tolstoy nee Behrs, reading the night before her nuptials and eighteen years old, or reading years later when her husband made her his secretary, would see: '21 April 1858. A wonderful day. Peasant women in the garden and by the well. I'm like a man possessed.' Or 'I'm in love as never before in my life. Today in the wood. I am a fool. A beast. Her bronze flush and her eyes...Have no other thought.' Which women, how in the garden, where by the well, who in the wood, my pale skin, what his thoughts of me. A peculiar torture, to know just enough that one is forced to imagine the rest. Perhaps, though, Sonya's feelings were such that she was not forced, or perhaps, thirteen children later, she simply didn't have the energy. (Orlando Figes, Natasha's Dance, 240-241, New York: Picador).
From Anna Karenina: 'What a dear little creature the bride is--like a lamb decked for the slaughter. Say what you like, one does feel sorry for the girl.' (Figes, 245)
***
Tolstoy to the children, when they asked if he wouldn't be ashamed of dividing his estate with the peasantry: 'What do you mean 'ashamed? Is it anything to be ashamed of to work for oneself? Have your fathers ever told you they were ashamed to work? They have not. What is there to be ashamed of in a man feeding himself and his family by the sweat of his brow? If anybody laughs at me, here's what I would say: there's nothing to laugh at in a man's working, but there is a great deal of shame and disgrace in his not working, and yet living better than others. That is what I am ashamed of. I eat, drink, ride horseback, play the pianno, and still I feel bored. I say to myself: "You're a do-nothing."' (239) Art that did not decry injustice never seemed to have counted as hard work to Russians in the 1860s and 1870s, and I love them for it. ('An interesting idea. A Marxist idea, so wrong, but an interesting idea.')
posted by Precocity at 6:59 PM
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