Tolstoy's Spring

Happy Easter!

Following is an excerpt from "Anna Karenina". Enjoy.

There was still snow at Easter. Then, suddenly, on Easter Monday, a warm wind began to blow, dark clouds gathered, and for three days and three nights warm, heavy rain poured down. On Thursday the wind dropped, and a thick grey mist gathered, as if concealing the mysteries of the changes taking place in nature. Under the mist waters flowed, ice blocks cracked and moved off, the muddy, foaming streams ran quicker, and on the eve of Krasnaya Gorka the mist scattered, the dark clouds broke up into fleecy white ones, the sky cleared, and real spring unfolded. In the morning the bright sun rose and quickly ate up the thin ice covering the water, and the warm air was all atremble, filled with the vapours of the reviving earth. The old grass and the sprouting needles of new grass greened, the buds on the guelder-rose, the currants and the sticky, spirituous birches swelled, and on the willow, all sprinkled with golden catkins, the flitting, newly hatched bee buzzed. Invisible larks poured trills over the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubble, the peewit wept over the hollows and marshes still filled with brown water; high up the cranes and geese flew with their spring honking. Cattle, patchy, moulted in all but a few places, lowed in the meadows, bow-legged lambs played around their bleating, shedding mothers, fleet-footed children ran over the drying paths covered with the prints of bare feet, the merry voices of women with their linen chattered by the pond, and from the yards came the knock of the peasants’ axes, repairing ploughs and harrows. The real spring had come.

- LEO TOLSTOY

•  Illegitimate diary...

  I know, but I didn’t want to compete with Tolstoy. I’ll delete the entry if anyone objects.

  -Sarge

  by Sarge in Seattle on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 08:55:00 AM PDT

  •  Thanks

    That's a nice hit for an Easter Sunday morning with a clear blue, cloudless sky.

    by gmoke on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 09:12:47 AM PDT

•  Well, this is very strange ...

  Just last night I finished playing Levin in a run of Helen Edmundson's acclaimed play adaptation of ANNA KARENINA.  (In fact, just before reading this diary, about ten minutes ago, I finally got to cut off my Levin-beard!)

  This is one of my favorite parts of the book, and one of my favorite scenes to play was a condensing of this -- of Levin walking around the farm, describing some of the details above, excited about the Spring coming.

  Wow.

  Thanks for posting this.

  by niemann on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 09:42:00 AM PDT

  •  You're welcome!

    And how fortunate to play Levin, perhaps the greatest fictional character, or at least greatest depth of character, of any fictional character that I can think of.

    Levin is, as you know, to no small degree, a self-portrait of Tolstoy.

    From the introduction of my copy of A.K.

    'Levin is you, Lyova, minus the talent', Sophia Andreevna said to her husband after reading the first part of Anna Kerenina. (And she added, 'Levin is an impossible man!'

    by Sarge in Seattle on Sun Mar 23, 2008 at 10:31:38 AM PDT