On Being A Person Who Reads
Crossing Niagara. ( Still photo is John Barrymore and Dolores Costello, When A Man Loves. Music is “A Sea Change,” Kyle Preston.). May 20, 2017. Video by Gerst.
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” (Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind)
Those of us who have been reading Anna Karenina together end this joyful reading not with answer but with questions. Questions are what open doors and light up worlds.
Professor Louise Myers is asking herself these questions about Tolstoy’s novel:
•Why does Tolstoy name the horse that Vronsky races to its death “Frou-frou?” (It seems like a silly question, but it can open up aspects of the novel if pursued thoughtfully.)
•The books teeter-totters between polarities, such as city vs. country. What are some other polarities the novel asks us to consider?
•Certain aspects of the novel, such as Dolly’s domestic dilemmas at the outset of the novel, ridiculous wedding mishaps, the extraordinary emotionalism of Anna almost smack of soap-opera angst and drama. What pulls the novel back from this precipice?
•Why doesn’t the novel end with the eponymous heroine’s death (that is, with Anna’s death) and Vronsky’s response to the death? Tolstoy even gives us a graphic description of how Anna appeared. The novel continues on though for another forty pages. Why, and what is the effect on the reader of Levin’s philosophical musings?
Tolstoy’s Waltz. (Original music composed by Count Leo Tolstoy)
•All the chapter divisions in the novel are marked by simple, spare Roman numerals, except for one chapter titled “Death,” chapter XX, beginning on page 499. Why this departure?
