Civilisation and Politics

Kenneth Clark

Kenneth Clark in 1969 in Civilisation observed: “It could be argued that western civilisation was basically the creation of the Church,” and this theme is taken up in detail in Tom Holland’s 2019 book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. Clark makes the point that when things are truly important — as science has been us in the last century — that internationalism is accepted without hesitation, and that was most definitely the case with the Church.

But there are barriers to internationalism as we are only too aware. Politics — especially recent aggrieved and parochial (or ‘patriotic’) politics that has gained popularity and momentum in so many countries — gets in the way of internationalism, and this of course poses grave problems both in terms of dealing with the current pandemic but also the long term issue of the climate. 

That politicians are happy to abandon internationalism is perhaps to be expected. That they seem unable to address important issues is reluctantly but widely accepted; but that they may not even want to deal with the big issues comes as more of a surprise. Yet Tolstoy in his novel Resurrection already described the situation with great clarity: regarding Minister of State Count Ivan Mikhailovich he wrote:

в том, что у него не было  никаких  общих принципов или правил, ни лично нравственных, ни государственных,  и  что  он поэтому со всеми мог быть согласен, когда это нужно было, и, когда это нужно было, мог быть со всеми не согласен. Поступая так, он старался только о том, чтобы был выдержан тон и не было явного противоречия самому себе, к тому же, нравственны  или  безнравственны  его  поступки  сами  по  себе,  и  о  тем, произойдет ли от них величайшее благо или  величайший  вред  для  Российской империи или для всего мира, он был совершенно равнодушен.

“having no general principles or rules of morality, either public or private, made it possible for him to agree or disagree with anybody as best suited the moment. In thus ordering his life and his work, his one endeavour was always to behave with good form and avoid being too obviously inconsistent. Whether his actions were in themselves moral or immoral, whether great good or great harm would result from them for the Russian Empire or the world as a whole, was a matter of supreme indifference to him.” (pp.328 – 329)

This is a singularly depressing observation, given as we are to seeing ourselves still very much in terms of being at the end of a long progression of societal and political development — I am reminded of those old illustrations of a series of apes standing ever more upright which now feature primarily in parody cartoons. We have, after all, progressed through various reformations and the Enlightenment. Holland sees all this as a mere extension of the fundamental pivot in thinking that the Christian church brought to the west.

“Already, by the time that Anselm died in 1109, Latin Christendom had been set upon a course so distinctive that what today we term ‘the West’ is less its heir than its continuation. Certainly, to dream of a world transformed by a reformation, or an enlightenment, or a revolution is nothing exclusively modern.”

Playing towards impossible goals

А игры не будет, что ж тогда остается? If there won’t be games, then what remains?

That’s Tolstoy, and the fuller context is at the end of this post. 

I have elsewhere quoted the words of Henry Moore, as reported by the poet Donald Hall, “The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is – it must be something you cannot possibly do.” I wonder if Moore knew he was essentially repeating something from Nietzsche, who in 1873 wrote in his notebook: “nun so stecke Dir selber Ziele, hohe und edle Ziele und gehe an ihnen zu Grunde! Ich weiss keinen besseren Lebenszweck als am Grossen und Unmöglichen zu Grunde zu gehen: animae magnae prodigus” — “Set for yourself high and noble goals, and perish in pursuit of them! I know of no better life purpose than to perish in pursuing the great and the impossible: animae magnae prodigus.”

This thought seems closely related to this later idea, which appears in Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886): “Reife des Mannes: das heisst den Ernst wiedergefunden haben, den man als Kind hatte, beim Spiel” (#94). “A man’s maturity: this means having regained the seriousness one had as a child when playing.” The book title is translated as Beyond Good and Evil; this is correct enough but the original does have something of the sense of ‘The Next World: post Goodies and Baddies’ …. Of course a silly, awkward, and ugly translation.

The centrality of how children play was realized well before Nietzsche. Most famously Friedrich Fröbel in his Sonntagsblatt (1838 - 1840) described his idea of Spielgabe, “play gifts” such as wooden blocks, which we now refer to as Fröbelgaben, and which were the foundation of the original idea of kindergarten. In his autobiography Frank Lloyd Wright recalls the seminal importance of playing with construction blocks based on Fröbel’s ideas: “Now came the geometric play of these charming checkered colour combinations! The structural figures to be made with peas and small straight sticks; slender constructions, the jointings accented by the little green pea globes. The smooth shapely maple blocks with which to build, the sense of which never afterwards leaves the fingers: so form became feeling. And the box with a mast to set upon it, on which to hang with string the maple cubes and spheres and triangles, revolving them to discover subordinate forms.” 

Jung, in his Memories, Dreams, Reflections recalls: “Als erstes tauchte eine Erinnerung aus der Kindheit auf, vielleicht aus dem zehnten oder elften Jahr. Damals hatte ich leidenschaftlich mit Bausteinen gespielt. Ich erinnerte mich deutlich, wie ich Häuschen und Schlösser gebaut und Tore mit Bögen über Flaschen gewölbt hatte. Etwas später verwendete ich natürliche Steine und Lehm als Mörtel. Diese Bauten hatten mich während langer Zeit fasziniert. Zu meinem Erstaunen tauchte diese Erinnerung auf, begleitet von einer gewissen Emotion. «Aha», sagte ich mir, «hier ist Leben! Der kleine Junge ist noch da und besitzt ein schöpferisches Leben, das mir fehlt. Aber wie kann ich dazu gelangen?» Es schien mir unmöglich, die Distanz zwischen der Gegenwart, dem erwachsenen Mann, und meinem elften Jahr zu überbrücken. Wollte ich aber den Kontakt mit jener Zeit wieder herstellen, so blieb mir nichts anderes übrig, als wieder dorthin zurückzukehren und das Kind mit seinen kindlichen Spielen auf gut Glück wieder aufzunehmen. Dieser Augenblick war ein Wendepunkt in meinem Schicksal, denn nach unendlichem Widerstreben ergab ich mich schließlich darein zu spielen. Es ging nicht ohne äußerste Resignation und nicht ohne das schmerzhafte Erlebnis der Demütigung, nichts anderes wirklich tun zu können als zu spielen.”

 “The first thing that came to the surface was a childhood memory from perhaps my tenth or eleventh year. At that time I had had a spell of playing passionately with building blocks. I distinctly recalled how I had built little houses and castles, using bottles to form the sides of gates and vaults. Somewhat later I had used ordinary stones, with mud for mortar. These structures had fascinated me for a long time. To my astonishment, this memory was accompanied by a good deal of emotion. “Aha,” I said to myself, “there is still life in these things. The small boy is still around, and possesses a creative life which I lack. But how can I make my way to it?” For as a grown man it seemed impossible to me that I should be able to bridge the distance from the present back to my eleventh year. Yet if I wanted to re-establish contact with that period, I had no choice but to return to it and take up once more that child’s life with the childish games. This moment was a turning point in my fate, but I gave in only after endless resistances and with a sense of recognition. For it was a painfully humiliating experience to realise that there was nothing to be done except play childish games.”

In 1950, for his 75th birthday he installed a stone cube at his Bollingen Tower home on the shores of Lake Zurich, one of the inscriptions on which reads: “Ὁ Αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων, πεττεύων· παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη.” — Which has been translated as “Time is a child — playing like a child — playing a board game — the kingdom of the child.” 

And Alain de Botton in The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work observes: “Long before we ever earned any money, we were aware of the necessity of keeping busy: we knew the satisfactions of stacking bricks, pouring water into and out of containers and moving sand from one pit to another, untroubled by the greater purpose of our actions.”

Tolstoy in Детство (Childhood) reflects on the importance of games. “Я  сам знаю,  что из палки не только что убить птицу,  да и выстрелить никак нельзя.  Это игра.  Коли так рассуждать, то и на стульях ездить нельзя; а Володя, я думаю, сам помнит, как в долгие зимние вечера мы  накрывали кресло платками,  делали из него коляску,  один садился кучером,  другой лакеем, девочки в середину, три стула были тройка лошадей, - и мы отправлялись в дорогу.  И какие разные приключения случались в этой дороге! и как  весело и  скоро  проходили зимние вечера!..  Ежели судить по-настоящему,  то игры никакой не будет. А игры не будет, что ж тогда остается?” — Judson Rosengrant’s Penguin Classics translation runs like this: “I myself knew that the stick not only wouldn’t kill birds, but wouldn’t even shoot. It was a game. If you were going to look at it like that, then you couldn’t ride chairs either, and I think Volodya himself remembered how on the long winter evenings we covered an armchair with shawls and made a barouche out of it, with one of us the driver and the other a footman, and the girls in the middle, and three chairs a troika of horses as we set off down the road. And what adventures we had along the way! How happily and quickly we passed those winter evenings! If you’re going to judge by what’s real, there can be no play at all. And if there’s no play, what’s left?”

The person one wants to become

Ilya Repin: Lev Tolstoy in his Study, 1891

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus begins his ΤΩΝ ΕΙΣ ΕΑΤΟΝ, known in English as Meditations (and in Latin as M. Antonius Imperator Ad Se Ipsum) with a catalogue of the things he has learned from friends, family, and the gods. The longest section is devoted to his adoptive father, Antoninus Pius (whom had himself been adopted by Hadrian). There is a striking passage near the end of the section – ἀλλά πάντα διειλημμένα λελουίσθαι, ὡς ἐπὶ σχολῆς, ἀταράχως, τεταυμένως, ἐρρωμένως, συμφώνως ἑαυτοῖς. The crucial word for me here is σχολῆς a form of the verb σχολάζω which means to have leisure, to have spare time, to have nothing to do. So Marcus Aurelius is saying that his father's good example of how to deal with the demands of being Emperor was to act as if he had nothing to do. I like the phrasing in the Penguin Classics translation by Martin Hammond which reads “everything was allotted its own time and thought, as by a man of leisure - his way was unhurried, organized, vigorous, consistent in all.” The old Loeb translation by C. R. Haines is almost as felicitous: “but everything was considered separately, as by a man of ample leisure, calmly, methodically, manfully, consistently.”

The Emperor is also of course making a statement against the temptation to ‘multi-task’, which puts me in mind of a nice quote from the TV series M*A*S*H: there are a very large number of wounded being delivered to the hospital and there's a hurry to deal with the load, but the newly arrived surgeon from Boston is taking a long time scrubbing up before surgery. When the other surgeons are hurrying him up, he replies, “Gentlemen, I do one thing at a time. I do it very well, and then I move on.”

In the third chapter of two great novels – Resurrection (Воскресение) and Anna Karenina (Анна Каренина) – Tolstoy portrays the morning routine of a member of the Russian ruling class. This excerpt describing Nekhlyudov's morning, after he has lain a while in his crumpled bed, gazing vacantly into space, considering what he has to do that day and what happened the day before:

«Выбрав из десятка галстуков и брошек те, какие первые попались под руку, – когда-то это было ново и забавно, теперь было совершенно все равно, – Нехлюдов оделся в вычищенное и приготовленное на стуле платье и вышел, хотя и не вполне свежий, но чистый и душистый, в длинную с натертым вчера тремя мужиками паркетом столовую с огромным дубовым буфетом и таким же большим раздвижным столом, имевшим что-то торжественное в своих широко расставленных в виде львиных лап резных ножках. На столе этом, покрытом тонкой крахмаленной скатертью с большими вензелями, стояли: серебряный кофейник с пачухим кофе, такая же сахарница, сливочник с кипячеными сливками и корзина с свежим калачом, сухариками и бисквитами. Подле прибора лежали полученные письма, газеты и новая книжка “Revue des deux Mondes”.»

“Picking up from among a dozen neckties and tie-pins the first that came to hand – at one time choosing what to wear had been novel and amusing but now it was a matter of complete indifference to him – Nekhlyudov put on the carefully brushed clothes lying ready on a chair, and, clean now and perfumed if not feeling altogether refreshed, he proceeded to the long dining-room, where three men had laboured the day before to polish the parquetry. The room was furnished with a huge oak sideboard and an equally large extension-table to which widely spaced legs carved in the shape of lions’ paws gave an imposing air. On this table, which was covered with a fine starched cloth with large monograms, stood a silver coffee-pot of fragrant coffee, a silver sugar-bowl, a cream-jug with hot cream, and a bread-basket filled with freshly baked rolls, rusks and biscuits. Beside his plate lay the morning post–letters, newspapers and the latest number of the Revue des Deux Mondes.” This is the Penguin Classics translation by Rosemary Edmonds. I have my quibbles about whether it quite conveys, at least to the modern ear, what is described ... the “rolls” are the round bread circles, the “rusks” are dried or lightly toasted bread, which may be close to the original meaning of rusks but nowadays we probably think of baby rusks, and I guess hot cream is right, literally it says “boiled cream” which was a standard addition to coffee in the 19th Century: according to All About Coffee “Café à la crème, was made by adding boiled cream to strong clear coffee and heating them together.”

Of course Tolstoy would have been able to write this description from his own direct experience as a member of the Russian nobility, but I also suspect that this is something of an idealised portrayal, a description in some sense of how the nobleman’s life should be. Later Nekhlyudov's way of organizing his To-Do list is described: «Дела, занимавшие в это время Нехлюдова, разделялись на три отдела; он сам с своим привычным педантизмом разделил их так и сообразно этому разложил в три портфеля.» ... “The business at present occupying Nekhlyudov could be divided under three headings: this was what he did, in his usual systematic way, and he accordingly grouped his papers in three portfolios.”

There is an increasingly didactic tone in much of Tolstoy's work, but it has its origins in the approach he took to life even at an early age. I am reminded of his idea of writing down the “Rules of Life” as recounted in his autobiographical Youth (Юность):

«и я пошел к себе на верх, сказав St.-Jérôme'у, что иду заниматься, но, собственно, с тем, чтобы до исповеди, до которой оставалось часа полтора, написать себе на всю жизнь расписание своих обязанностей и занятий, изложить на бумаге цель своей жизни и правила, по которым всегда уже, не отступая, действовать.
   
Я достал лист бумаги и прежде всего хотел приняться за расписание обязанностей и занятий на следующий год. Надо было разлиневать бумагу. Но так как линейки у меня не нашлось, я употребил для этого латинский лексикон. Кроме того, что, проведя пером вдоль лексикона и потом отодвинув его, оказалось, что вместо черты я сделал по бумаге продолговатую лужу чернил, -- лексикон не хватал на всю бумагу, и черта загнулась по его мягкому углу. Я взял другую бумагу и, передвигая лексикон, разлиневал кое-как. Разделив свои обязанности на три рода: на обязанности к самому себе, к ближним и к Богу, я начал писать первые, но их оказалось так много и столько родов и подразделений, что надо было прежде написать “Правила жизни”, а потом уже приняться за расписание. Я взял шесть листов бумаги, сшил тетрадь и написал сверху: “Правила жизни”.»

“‘Well, it’s all right, too – you wouldn’t understand,’ I said, and then went up to my room after telling St-Jérôme I was going to study, but actually in the hour and a half left before confession to make a list of my own duties and occupations for the rest of my life, and to commit to paper the purpose of my life and the rules by which I should always act without backsliding.

I got out a sheet of paper, wishing first to make a list of my obligations and activities for the coming year. The paper needed to be lined. Since I couldn’t find a ruler, I used a Latin dictionary instead. But besides leaving an oblong puddle of ink on the paper after I drew my pen along its edge and removed it, the dictionary didn’t reach the whole length of the sheet, and the line curved around its soft corner. I got out another sheet and, by moving the dictionary along it, made lines of a sort. Dividing my obligations into three kinds – to myself, to my family, and to God – I started to list those to myself, but they proved so numerous and of so many kinds and subdivisions that I saw that I would first have to write Rules of Life and only then make the list. I got out six more sheets, bound them together in a booklet, and at the top of the first page wrote Rules of Life.”

Lev Tolstoy, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (Penguin Classics) (p. 225)

There is an interesting psychology involved in envisioning a better way to live, clarifying those ideas by for example writing them down, and then acting in accordance with them. In a sense by pretending to be the person you want to be, you are on the path to becoming the person you want to be.

„Gewiß, es kann auch neurotisch sein, die eigene Verwundbarkeit verheimlichen zu wollen. Das habe ich zweifellos oft getan, am öftesten in den frühen Jahren, in denen man leicht dazu neigt, sich so zu verhalten, als ob man in der Tat schon jener wäre, der man werden will.“ Manès Spreber, Die Vergebliche Warnung. All das Vergangene ... S.37

“Certainly, a desire to conceal one’s own vulnerabilities can also be neurotic. I have no doubt that I have frequently done so, most often in my early years, a time when one tends to behave as though one already were the person one wants to become.” Manès Sperber, The Unheeded Warning, p32.

Sober one minute, drunk the next

Adriaen van Ostade, Three Drunken Peasants in a Tavern or Inn, V&A

In Anna Karenina (1873–77) Tolstoy contrasts the drinking of lower and upper classes. Levin, blushing and bumbling after his visit to Anna, blabs on about drinking:-  «Вот  мы говорим, что народ пьет; не знаю, кто больше пьет, народ или наше  сословие; народ хоть в праздник, но… Но Кити неинтересно было рассуждение о том, как пьет народ». “‘We talk about the peasants drinking, but I really don’t know who drinks most — the common people or our own class. The peasants drink at holiday times, but …’   But Kitty was not interested in a dissertation on the drinking habits of the peasants. (VII.12)

More than twenty years later in Resurrection (1899) he revisits the contrast. He is describing Kolossov - a former Marshall of the Nobility who is now a bank director. «Колосов, выпив водки, вина, ликера, был  немного  пьян,  не  так  пьян,  как бывают пьяны редко пьющие мужики, но так, как бывают пьяны  люди,  сделавшие себе из вина привычку. Он  не  шатался,  не  говорил  глупостей,  но  был  в ненормальном, возбужденно-довольном  собою  состоянии». “Kolossov, having drunk vodka, wine and liqueur, was a little tipsy - not tipsy like the peasants, who drink seldom, but like people who are in the habit of drinking wine. He did not reel about  or talk nonsense, but he was in an abnormal condition - excited and self-satisfied.”

Elsewhere words exhorting the use of alcohol are put in the mouth of the unfortunate Maslova at one of her lowest points where nothing but cynical self-interest makes any sense to her: «Станет скучно - покурила или выпила или,  что  лучше всего, полюбилась с мужчиной, и пройдет». “When you feel depressed - have a cigarette or a drink or, best of all, make love, and it will pass.”

Towards the end of Resurrection, Tolstoy describes a general who is administrative head of a remote regional town. «Ему достаточно  было  выпить какой-нибудь жидкости, чтобы чувствовать опьянение». “He was literally saturated with alcohol. It was enough for him to drink any kind of liquid to feel intoxicated.” 

Alcohol, as with God or death, is no respecter of persons. The same phenomenon Tolstoy describes affecting the regional administrator, appears in a story by Raymond Carver set in the sort of suburbs where people can’t even afford a radio. “In the whisky days I’d wake up with this tremendous thirst in the middle of the night. But, back then, I was always looking ahead: I kept a bottle of water in the fridge, for instance. I’d be dehydrated, sweating from head to toe when I woke, but I’d wander out to the kitchen and could count on finding that bottle of cold water in the fridge. I’d drink it, all of it, down the hatch, an entire quart of water. Once in a while I’d use a glass, but not often. Suddenly I’d be drunk all over again and weaving around the kitchen. I can’t begin to account for it – sober one minute, drunk the next.”

Turning a New Leaf

С Нехлюдовым не раз уже случалось в жизни то, что он  называл  «чисткой души». Чисткой души называл он такое  душевное  состояние,  при  котором  он вдруг, после иногда большого промежутка времени, сознав замедление, а иногда и остановку внутренней жизни, принимался вычищать  весь  тот  сор,  который, накопившись в его душе, был причиной этой остановки.

Всегда после таких пробуждений Нехлюдов составлял себе правила, которым намеревался следовать уже навсегда: писал дневник  и  начинал  новую  жизнь, которую  он  надеялся  никогда  уже  не  изменять,  — turning  a  new  leaf, как он говорил себе. Но всякий раз соблазны мира улавливали его и он, сам того не замечая, опять  падал,  и  часто  ниже того, каким он был прежде.

— Лев Николаевич Толстой, Воскресение (or pre-reform Воскресеніе)

More than once in Nekhlyudov’s life there had been what he called a ‘purging of the soul’. This was the name he gave to a state of mind in which, sometimes after a long interval, he would suddenly recognize the slothfulness of his inner life, or even the total cessation of activity, and set to work to clean up all the dirt which had clogged his soul to the point of inaction.

After such awakenings Nekhlyudov would make rules for himself which he meant to follow for ever after: he would keep a diary and begin a new life, which he hoped never to go back on — turning over a new leaf, he called it to himself in English. But time after time the temptations of the world ensnared him, and before he knew it he had fallen — often lower than before.

Tolstoy, Resurrection, pp. 140 — 141

Happy Otherwise: 1869

Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, and Marya Nikolayevna Bolkonskaya — each from different novels published in 1869 — and each drawn as spiritual characters —the first holy and the second religious — express the thought that happiness for them must lie elsewhere than in the conventional happiness of romantic love.

Мое призвание другое, -- думала про себя  княжна Марья, мое  призвание -- быть счастливой  другим  счастием, счастием любви и самопожертвования.

“My calling is different - Princess Marya thought to herself, “my calling is to be happy with a different happiness, the happiness of love and self-sacrifice.”

Myshkin when asked whether he had in Switzerland been in love: "я... был счастлив иначе" ... "I ... was happy in a different way".

Lev Nikolayevich is of course not only the name of the character in Dostoevsky's novel, but also the name of the author of the second novel.

The real ogres know how to live

Claude Chabrol is the French Hitchcock. Of course, that's an Anglo-centric way of putting it. He may be better than Hitchcock. At the end of his film Masques the soundtrack even plays Gounod's 'Marche funèbre d'une marionnette' ... the piece used as the theme music for the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

In this film the sinister character at one point explains: "The love for children, you know, it's terrible ... it eats you alive! They're the real ogres."

Raymond Carver, in an essay on "Influence" in his book Fires wrote: "The biggest single influence on my writing, directly and indirectly, has been my two children. They were born before I was twenty and from beginning to end – some nineteen years in all – there wasn’t any area of my life where their heavy and often baleful influence didn’t reach."

I remember the first time I read this —back before I had any children of my own — this shocked me, maybe because — for like Tonio Kröger I am no doubt ein verirrter Burger — it was not the sort of thing one should say, it was not (in the young Tolstoy's terms) comme il faut, but I think also because — despite the admiration I felt for both the man and his writing — I sensed that here there was something wrong, something that revealed more of some ancient wound of the speaker than it did some universal experience.

Children are — almost by definition — a positive. They know how to live! In a scene at the very end of Mikio Naruse's Late Chrysanthemums one friend advises another whose adult son has just left on a train for a new job in a different city, "Don't worry, young people know how to live".

There are theories about creole languages — new langauges with sophisticated grammars arising out of the many-rooted pidgin languages in communities of immigrant workers of diverse origins — which explain that their creation is due to the children of the community playing together and inventing the new language. But surely the standard languages are similarly invented, or reinvented, children inventing a language based on the inherited dialect, but full of mistakes and radical reuse ... small wonder that reading Chaucer in the original is not so easy.

Most anxious to appear clever

Усадьба Богимово, the setting of 'The House with the Mezzanine'

Chekhov in his story "The house with the Mezzanine" paints, in a single sentence, an instantly recognizable and convincing portrait of a young man who has retained the social awkwardness of his student days:

Chekhov, 1879

Зато мой  Петр  Петрович,  у  которого  еще  со студенчества осталась манера всякий  разговор  сводить  на  спор,  говорил скучно, вяло и  длинно,  с  явным  желанием  казаться  умным  и  передовым человеком.

On the other hand my friend Pyotr Petrovich, who still retained the student habit of turning everything into an argument, spoke boringly, listlessly and longwindedly - he was obviously most anxious to appear advanced and clever.

Tolstoy in Youth (Юность) presents himself as a young student with a similar social affliction in a memorably cringeworthy scene:

- Вам,  я  думаю,  скучно,  monsieur Nicolas,  слушать из  середины,  - сказала мне  Софья  Ивановна с  своим  добродушным вздохом,  переворачивая куски платья, которое она шила.
Чтение в  это время прекратилось,  потому что Дмитрий куда-то  вышел из комнаты.
- Или, может быть, вы уже читали "Роброя"?
В то время я считал своею обязанностию, вследствие уже одного того, что носил студенческий мундир,  с  людьми мало  мне  знакомыми на  каждый даже самый простой вопрос отвечать непременно очень умно и оригинально и считал величайшим стыдом короткие и ясные ответы,  как: да, нет, скучно, весело и тому  подобное.  Взглянув  на  свои  новые  модные  панталоны и  блестящие пуговицы сюртука,  я отвечал, что не читал "Роброя", но что мне было очень интересно слушать,  потому что я больше люблю читать книги из средины, чем с начала.
- Вдвое интересней:  догадываешься о  том,  что  было и  что  будет,  -

The young & unpleasant Tolstoy

добавил я, самодовольно улыбаясь.

'I expect you find it dull, Monsieur Nicolas, to hear the middle of the story without knowing the beginning,'  said Sophia Ivanovna to me with her good-natured sigh, turning over the pieces of a garment she was making.
The reading had stopped just then because Dmitri had gone out of the room.
'Or perhaps you have read Rob Roy before?'
At that time I thought it incumbent on me, if only on account of my student's uniform, always to give clever and original answers to even the simplest question put to me by people I did not know very well, and I should have been deeply ashamed to offer brief plain replies like 'Yes,' 'No,' 'I don't care for it,' 'I like it,' and so on. With a glance at my fashionable new trousers and the shining buttons on my coat I said that I had not read Rob Roy but that it was very interesting to me to listen to it because I preferred to read books from the middle rather than from the beginning.
'It is doubly interesting,' I added with a self-satisfied smile. 'One tries to guess what has gone before and what will happen further on.'

Youth p. 242 sect 23

Then in his story 'Muzhiki' (sometimes translated as 'Peasants'), Chekhov describes a character whose only achievement is the acquisition of a few unusual words.

В городе он не живал и книг никогда не читал, но откуда-то набрался разных умных слов и любил употреблять их в разговоре, и за это его уважали, хотя и не всегда понимали.

Although he had never lived in a town or read any books, somehow he had managed to accumulate a store of various clever-sounding words and he loved using them in conversation, which made him respected, if not always understood.

How many writers still it these shoes? The awkward youth eager to impress? The ill-educated spicing every paragraph with clever-sounding words? People like me peppering obscure blog posts with quotes in multiple languages.

Copying your brother

When the central character of Per Petterson's I Curse the River of Time (Jeg forbanner tidens elv) is twenty and attending a college he gets a student loan and moves out of his childhood home.

"The first thing I did was to go into town and buy a stereo with some of the money, a TR 200 Tandberg amplifier, a Lenco record player and a couple of 20 watt loudspeakers of a make I can no longer recall, but the sound was superb, and to be honest the whole thing was identical to the stereo my eldest brother had put together and bought with his student loan."

An remarkably similar thing is described by Tolstoy in Youth (Юность) when the central character, Tolstoy himself, passes his university entrance examinations, and is given money and access to a horse and trap (or drozhky) he also decides to copy his older brother, Volodya ... "I remembered that when Volodya entered the University he had bought himself some lithographs of horses byVictor Adam, some tobacco and several pipes, and I felt it essential to do the same." ("Я  вспомнил,  что  Володя  при  вступлении  в  университет  купил  себе литографии лошадей  Виктора Адама,  табаку  и  трубки,  и  мне  показалось необходимым сделать то же самое").

Petterson goes on to say that the older brother also tried to copy the younger brother's intense interest in books; Tolstoy later reveals that the older brother had in fact been copying one of his more worldly friends.

La Règle du jeu

One of the pivotal scenes in Tolstoy's memoir Childhood is first time he is invited to join the grown-ups in the hunt.  The scene of the servants beating the birds and rabbits out of the woods, towards the waiting gentry is perfectly echoed in Jean Renoir's film La Règle du Jeu, which devotes an entire reel to depicting this cruel and pointless upper-class pursuit and the slaughter than ensues. Of course, both Renoir and Tolstoy were depicting the last throes of a doomed social class, that had enjoyed close to a thousand years' dominance since its establishment as a military strategy: when the idea of shock combat spread and the supremacy of making the momentum of knight and horse one, by the use of stirrups, the social order was quickly adapted to support the new military needs: aristocrats were given power and large tracts of land, the quid pro quo being that when the king wanted to go to war, the lord would provide a good number of trained knights: noblesse oblige.

There appear to be several parallels between Renoir's La Règle du jeu and the first volume of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, the book Justine.  Obviously the hunt, and its threatening and dangerous atmosphere is a clear link, as too is the story of a rich and powerful husband who suspects a somewhat bored and ill-at-ease wife of being unfaithful with a younger man whom has been accepted into the family circle and household on a friendly social basis.  But it is the smaller details that make me think that Durrell must have seen this film and been strongly impressed by it, and that certain images and ideas lodged in his mind, to later resurface, like drowned bodies.  There is the striking similarity of the use of field glasses in the hunt, which enables the wife to learn first-hand of her husband the Marquis' affair with the somewhat histrionic Geneviève; set this aside Nessim's downward directed telescope which Darley (whose name perhaps is not revealed until later in the quartet?) discovers by chance while looking for some notepaper to write Melissa a letter: when he puts his eye to the glass he sees the little hut by the bathing spot where only an hour before he and Justine, Nessim's wife, had lain together.

Another small detail is that the Marquis collects automatons: singing birds and other forms of musical machines, and a minor scene shows him upset and searching for the small key for one of them. This is echoed by Durrell in the scene where the character Balthazar is most upset at having lost the small ankh-shaped gold key which fits his pocket watch, which used to belong to his father, and has not - up to that point - been allowed to stop running. Darley helps Balthazar retrace his steps, but to no avial. Much later the key turns up in Nessim's possession.

Justine, Balthazar, and the other books of the quartet, made a big impression on me in my mid 20s, but now I have some difficulty with both the tone and the content, and at times it brings to mind Tolstoy's observations, in either Boyhood or Youth, or perhaps both, both about himself and about Dubkov at different times, how these young men tell the most shameless lies in society and everybody knows it. Everybody averts their eyes, or they smile politely, and they feel awkward and embarrassed for them, these silly boys who make up frightful nonsense. Now I get the same feeling at times reading Durrell: when he alludes to some particularly debauched excess I feel like averting my eyes from the page, embarrassed for the bluster and exaggeration of the prose.

If there are no games, what is left?

Tolstoy at 20

Early on in his memoir Childhood, which he started writing in Tbilisi (which is written თბილისი in the beautiful Georgian alphabet, or "anbani") at the age of 23, Tolstoy recalls his disappointment when he was around the age of 10, and his brother, a couple of years older, declined to play make-believe while the family are out on a picnic after a hunt. The ten-year-old Tolstoy saw his older brother's point, but reflected: "Ежели судить по-настоящему,  то игры никакой не будет. А игры не будет, что ж тогда остается?" (translated in the 1964 Penguin Classic edition by Rosemary Edmonds as "If you only go by what's real there won't be any games. And if there are no games, what is left?").

Too much food ?

«'On cite souvent, pour en rire, Schopenhauer qui faisait l'éloge du sui- cide devant une table bien garnie.» - Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942)

"Schopenhauer is often cited as a fit subject for laughter, because he praised suicide while seated at a well-set table."

«В сущности же, эта моя любовь была произведением, с одной стороны, деятельности мамаши и портних, с другой - избытка поглощавшейся мной пищи при праздной жизни» - Lev Tolstoy, Kreutzer Sonata.

"In actual fact, this love of mine was the product of on the one hand, the efforts of the girl's mother and dress-makers, and on the other, of the excessive quantities of food I had consumed during a life of idleness"

Beware of books

The last sentence of chapter five of Madame Bovary is a succinct expression of the engine that propels the story. It deserves to be as famous as the first sentence of Anna Karenina - Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему - or Tale of Two Cities - "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, ..." and so forth. Flaubert writes:

"Et Emma cherchait à savoir ce que l’on entendait au juste dans la vie par les mots de félicité, de passion et d’ivresse, qui lui avaient paru si beaux dans les livres."

In Geoffrey Wall's translation for Penguin Classics it is: "And Emma sought to find out exactly what was meant in real life by the words fidelity, passion, and rapture, which had seemed so fine on the pages of books." "Fidelity" here seems like a mistake.

Lydia Davis' recent translation offers: "And Emma tried to find out just what was meant, in life, by the words "bliss," "passion," and "intoxication," which had seemed so beautiful to her in books."

Books can be perilous - we know this from Paolo and Francesco in Canto V of Dante's Inferno. It was their reading of the story of Lancelot which was their dangerous path, and when they reached the part where Lancelot kissed the smiling lips of the Queen, they kissed and their fate was sealed. At the end of the canto, Dante faints from pity at this story.

Quando leggemmo il disïato riso
esser basciato da cotanto amante,
questi, che mai da me non fia diviso,
la bocca mi basciò tutto tremante.

Everything is beautiful at the ballet, as Edward Kleban's lyrics in the A Chorus Line song go, and fidelity, passion and rapture are generally "si beaux dans les livers".

Emma and Francesca are each driven by the desire to know and to experience things of which they have read. There is almost something of wanting to apply the scientific method to the world of the emotions which leads us into the world of Freud.  But more simply there is simply the desire to fully live, to experience what there is to be experienced and not let life pass by shut off from the big experiences.