Love is Unlucky... Wider Reading 13: Anna Karenina

All good blogs are alike; every bad blog is bad in its own way, though I hope Tolstoy would have liked this one. Almost every aspect of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy’s life is incorporated into Anna Karenina; the loss of his mother at a young age, his social awkwardness, antimilitaristic sentiments, his courtship of his wife, contact with peasants, and his overwhelming awareness of the power of death. This novel, his second most famous after War and Peace, is often viewed as the turning point in Tolstoy’s career, the point at which he shifted away from fiction and toward faith. The tug-of-war between these two forces helps create the rich portrait of Anna, whom Tolstoy both disapproves of and loves.

The novel explores the rich tapestry of mankind’s capacity for love, set against the opulent backdrop of the twilight of the Russian Empire. Despite the elegant settings, danger lurks and around every corner is the constant reminder that this powerful, precarious world is soon to drop. An impoverished train worker is killed; a privileged man who has seen the crisis coming leaves his duties to work with the commoners. The novel, however, centres on the lives and loves of families inhabiting the high societies of St Petersburg and Moscow. Anna is the wife of the respected but dull Minister Karenin. What love she lacks in her marriage she lavishes on her only son, Seryozha, and later her affair with handsome cavalry officer Count Vronsky. Meanwhile Anna’s brother, Oblonsky, is experiencing marriage troubles of his own. Dissatisfied with his wife’s fading attractiveness, he has been caught with the governess and must repent his infidelity. His wife’s young sister Kitty, at the same time, has her heart broken by Vronsky as he chooses Anna over her, but finds happiness in her friend and suitor, Levin.

In his depiction of Anna’s appearance at the train station during her first meeting with Vronsky, Tolstoy emphasizes Anna’s spiritual rather than physical attributes. This method of characterizing her is important, for it reinforces from the very beginning that although Tolstoy may harshly condemn adultery on an abstract level, he does not portray Anna as a passion-crazed vixen—as popular novels of the time often represented the straying wife. The parallel structure of Anna’s and Levin’s story lines was one of Tolstoy’s strokes of genius in composing Anna Karenina. Their stories begin on very different notes: Anna finds love with Vronsky just at the moment when Levin loses love with Kitty. Anna’s decision to act on her feelings brings her thrills and excitement, whereas Levin’s decision brings him dejection and depression. Both Anna and Levin seek truth in their personal relationships, unwilling to settle for anything less. Anna discovers that she would prefer to suffer with her true love rather than continue to lead a life of lies and deceit with a man she does not love. Her = unconventional actions are prompted by a desire not for rebellion for its own sake but for absolute sincerity in her emotional life. Similarly, Levin, after Kitty’s rebuff, does not go after the next girl on his list but resigns himself to eternal bachelorhood and withdraws to the country. Like Anna, Levin wants all or nothing in love.

Anna Karenina - Quotations

The Edge of Love... Wider Reading 12: Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night

"Thomas is the greatest living poet in the English language.” Thus gushed one critic upon this poem's publication in the Botteghe Oscure, and later featured in Collected Poems, 1934–52. Winning him the Foyle poetry prize, Thomas’ most famous poem marked the twilight of his turbulent life and career. The poem was a success and continues to be popular to this day. It was written for his dying octogenarian father, and also unnervingly foreshadows the poet’s own death following a spell of bad luck for his family and friends. Despite the well-known address to his father, Thomas never actually showed the poem to him, giving the impression that the poet composed it more for his own benefit, rather than his father’s as Thomas watched the veteran grow weak, frail and blind with old age. The poet relates his experience in this poem. The speaker tries to convince his father to fight against imminent death. He addresses his father using men as examples to illustrate the same message: that no matter how they have lived their lives, or what they feel at the end, they should fight death.

It could be interpreted that the speaker admits death is unavoidable, but encourages all men to fight it anyway. This is not for their own sake, but to give closure and hope to the kin that they will leave behind. To support this, he gives examples of wise men, good men, wild men, and grave men to his dying father. There is little textual evidence for this interpretation, however, except the words "curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray." Another reading of this poem shows the author's own fear of death. He seems to fear having little separation between life and death. As such, he feels the need for a strong indication of the difference between the two. The poem could be written in the hope that the speaker would be able to see his dying father. He gives the impression that, since all men regret leaving this world, his father as well should not wish to leave it without a fight. It seems to be a wild hope, that he will be able to see his father before he passes; that each will be able to say last words to each other—whether they are curses or blessings.

The poem uses parallelism as the actions of the different types of men are listed. Each of these three stanzas begins by listing the type of men in question, then describing something amazing that they have done. The speaker ends each by reminding the reader that these men will not let themselves die without a struggle. This builds the case he is offering his father, and is highly persuasive. The poem is also a villanelle, which would to imply a light gay tone, in contrast to the poem’s actual content. This alludes to a profound paradox and the prevalent conflict in the poem: unavoidable death in the face of the perpetual rhythm of poetry and rebirth. The haunting refrains trap the poem and draw a fine line between courage and frustration, strength and grieving. "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" begins with an address to an unknown listener and ends by revealing that this listener is the speaker's father. In between these direct addresses, however, the speaker describes the valiant and praiseworthy behaviour of many different kinds of exemplary men – "wise men," "good men," "wild men," and "grave men." The speaker touchingly hopes that his father will be all these things.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night - Quotations

Love is Important... Wider Reading 11: A Woman of No Importance

A Woman of No Importance" is witty Victorian writer Oscar Wilde doing what he does best - portraying gatherings of 19th Century high socialites delivering egocentric quips on the trivialities of their daily lives, with an omnipresent underlying commentary on society's often dubious morals and ethics. The members of the party accumulate to engage in frivolous commentary on themselves and each other, determined to outwit one another while maintaining an air of boredom at all times. Sometimes described as Wilde's weakest, yet unfailingly most famous dramatic works, the play is bursting with dramatic irony, rhetoric strategies and humorous witticisms. Oscar Wilde produces a great play with subtle sentiment and an underlying theme of good triumphing over bad.

The main theme is obviously that of the "fallen" woman who becomes, in the eyes of society, "a woman of no importance." It is a subject which often occupied other Victorian writers and artists, such as Christina Rossetti and Mary Gaskell. They were acutely aware that the men who seduced and abandoned often naïve girls were still welcomed into society, while for the woman it meant social and often financial ruin. If she was pregnant, her child would be illegitimate, and she herself disgraced. Wilde felt strongly that men and women should be treated equally when it came to sexual matters. It is a main topic of "Lady Windermere’s Fan" as well as here. As several writers have suggested, it is not difficult to see that a concealed sin and a plea for forgiveness might well reflect Wilde’s own situation in a society where his homosexuality ultimately made him an outcast.

There has been criticism levelled at Wilde about this play which suggests that the witty, clever repartee of the society characters sits very uneasily with the impassioned rhetoric of the ‘moral’ characters, and that either the drama drives out the wit or the epigrams are somehow passing the time for the audience in between the dramatic episodes. Some modern critics, however, have shown that because Wilde’s dialogue is both clever and enjoyable, it is possible to miss the underlying satirical implications that fit in very well with the more serious themes of the play. For example, Lord Illingworth’s apparently trivial comments, if analysed, contain echoes of the situation in which he left Gerald’s mother – out of society – but there is also a foreshadowing of the ending of the play in which the power of women and the need for their backing is amply demonstrated. This careful crafting so that moral and social comment are masked by seemingly trivial cleverness, is true of much of this type of dialogue, which is used to reveal characters and attitudes.

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A Woman of No Importance - Quotations

Love is Russian... Wider Reading 10: Doctor Zhivago

Doctor Zhivago is an epic, a romance, and a history. In the course of Yuri’s life, the modern history of Russia is revealed. He is born under czarist rule but lives through World War I, the Revolution, and the Civil War. He begins life as the member of a wealthy family, but is reduced to poverty by his father’s alcoholism. He remains a member of the intelligentsia, and he focuses his attention on questions of philosophy and religion. The revolution changes the face of Russian society, and he finds that his family history and his status as a doctor make him suspicious to the people who come to power. Yuri seems destined for a tragic end, and, ultimately, his life is characterized by brief moments of happiness surrounded by periods of darkness. He finds all of his convictions challenged, and is torn from all of the people he loves. After his death, Yuri leaves behind children born to three different women, all destined for different fates: exile is possible, poverty is probable, but uncertainty is certain.

Boris Pasternak’s epic tale about the effects of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath was not permitted publication in the Soviet Union until 1987. One of the results of its release in the West was Pasternak's complete rejection by Soviet authorities; when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 he was compelled to decline it, or risk leaving his beloved Russia forever. The book quickly became an international best-seller. Doctor Yuri Zhivago, Pasternak's alter ego, is a poet, philosopher, and physician whose life is disrupted by the war and by his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary. His artistic nature makes him vulnerable to the brutality and harshness of the Bolsheviks. The poetry he composes constitutes some of the most beautiful writing in the novel.

The first image of the novel - Yura crying over his mother's grave--creates a sense of morbid expectation. The further knowledge of his father's lost fortune, revealed by the scene in the train, adds suspense. This is compounded by several shifts in time and location that occur. Pasternak draws the story line of Misha into the novel by describing his boredom and irritability, together with his dissatisfaction at being Jewish. When the man who kills himself is revealed to be Zhivago, the realization is both a means of integrating the different story lines and establishing the time flow of the novel. It is clear that Zhivago had a story to tell and that it was closely linked to the lives of Yura and his mother, though he has not seen them for some time. Early on, Pasternak establishes a sense of things unravelling backward through time, by revealing details about the past as the action of the novel marches forward.

Doctor Zhivago - Quotations

Love is Enduring... Wider Reading 9: Birdsong

Birdsong is the story of Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman who arrives in Amiens, France in 1910. After a passionate love affair with his married landlady that goes terribly wrong, he leaves only to return four years later to fight in the Great War. Over the course of the novel he suffers a series of traumatic experiences, from the clandestine love affair that tears apart the family with whom he lives, to the unprecedented experiences of the war itself. Entwined with his story are numerous heartrending tales of others affected by the fever sweeping Europe: from Michael Weir, his best friend, Jack Firebrace, whose tender heart becomes his undoing, Jeanne, a woman of endless kindness and patience, to the 1970s and the story of Elizabeth, who discovers her grandfather's tale through his letters, diaries, and the stories of those who were close to him. Set before and during World War One, Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale.

The novel defies modern convention by exclusively employing the omniscient narrator to tell its harrowing story. Penetrating into the deepest thoughts, pasts and even, in some cases, futures of every single character, it seems unnervingly invasive, but becomes an all-encompassing narratorial rubric to complement perfectly the difficult subject matter. Birdong is indeed difficult; it is a World War One novel with an explicit focus on trench warfare - that most horrifying and unimaginable of all wartime terrors. While the public consciousness may have a vague notion of the sheer horror, a true understanding remains forever ungraspable to the individual.

Birdsong has a tripartite plot structure, beginning with a long pre-war love story. Faulks’ intentions in doing this are obvious and multiple: put simply, this section serves to humanize the characters we are soon to see committing horrific acts of brutal killing and to drive home to the reader what’s at stake. There’s also more than a little dramatic irony. The reader knows what is coming, and is powerless to warn the characters. Stylistically this is also the most colourful part of the book. The writing here is metaphor-heavy, plentiful with adjectives and parenthetic digressions. The second section offers the ‘meat’ of the novel. A jump-cut to mid-war trench life carries with it a drastic change in Faulks’ linguistic register. The synaesthesia of sex is replaced with that of war: now there’s blood, iron, mud and agony. There’re no more metaphors, few adjectives, many more concrete nouns and a focus on active verbs. The contrast with the first part of the book is abrasive and sudden – here there is no artificiality of language. The third and weakest part of the novel is another jump-cut, but this time to a modern-day setting. The characters and events that occupy this part of the novel seem extremely dull and muted, creating a sharp contrast to the horror, and excitement and bravery, of war.

Birdsong - Quotations

Love is Trouble... Wider Reading 8: Leda and the Swan

Leda and the Swan" was published in Yeats's 1928 collection “The Tower,” after being rejected for publication by The Irish Statesman. The collection is often considered to be one of the most celebrated and important literary works of the twentieth century. Yeats started writing the poem for a political publication when he was well into his sixties, presumably intending to inject political meaning into it, but he changed it several times before the final version that we know with a new title. Leda, the beautiful Queen of Sparta is bathing when Zeus, disguised as a large swan knocks her off balance. The swan is ferocious as it lands on top of her, and caresses her thighs with his webbed feet and holds the back of her neck in his bill. She can't escape as the swan presses down with his chest on her own. The swan completes the act, and Leda becomes pregnant with, among others, Helen of Troy. This act will cause the entire Trojan War, the death of Agamemnon and the beginning of Rome. As the swan overpowered her, the poet wonders if Leda acquired any of Zeus's knowledge before, his appetite sated, he “let her drop.”

“Leda and the Swan” describes a precise moment which represents a change of era in Yeats’s historical model of gyres, in which a great, changing event happens every two thousand years – the fall of Troy in 2000 B.C, the birth of Christ in A.D. 0, and a “rough beast,” which was supposed to appear around 2000 A.D. It is important to note the lasting impact of the Trojan War. The conflict brought about the end of the ancient mythological era, and the birth of Rome and modern history. Like “The Second Coming,” “Leda and the Swan” is valuable more for its powerful and evocative language — which manages to imagine vividly such a bizarre phenomenon as a girl’s rape by an immense swan — than for its place in Yeats’s occult history of the world.

While the use of sexually suggestive language does alter the perception of rape in the sonnet, it does not thwart it entirely. The references to sexual desires in conjunction with rape are likely the result of cultural attitudes towards rape during the time period in which the piece was written, such as blaming women. Despite its ABAB rhyme scheme, the poem maintains a breathlessness that is partially due to enjambment, a poetic technique that Yeats uses liberally in his poetry. While the subject matter of the poem is violent and disturbing, the structure of "Leda and the Swan" conveys feelings of love, safety and beauty. The intensity of the rape is controlled by the narrow confines of the sonnet, an aesthetically pleasing and heavily structured art form traditionally associated with romance. The violence of the rape is then controlled within the constraints of the sonnet. Additionally, the sonnet itself is brief, thus ensuring the rape will be brief as well.

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Leda and the Swan - Quotations

Love is Scandalous... Wider Reading 7: The School for Scandal

Richard Sheridan's comedy was first performed in 1777 and focuses on the superficial intrigues and scandals of the overfed, underworked upper classes of Georgian England, centring around two young brothers. Joseph Surface is hypocritical, "a sentimental knave," but popular in society. His brother Charles is considered to be a wastrel, who squanders his uncle's fortune in gambling, but is morally decent and generous, and greatly desired by the duplicitous Lady Sneerwell. Both men want to marry Maria, an heiress and ward of Sir Peter Teazle. Maria, however, prefers Charles over Joseph. In order to detach the couple, Lady Sneerwell and Joseph spread rumors about an affair between Charles and Lady Teazle, Sir Peter's extravagant new wife. Meanwhile, Sir Oliver Surface, newly returned from the East Indies, assumes various disguises in a vanity project to test his nephews' characters. Misunderstandings, mistaken identities, gossip, and bad behaviour abound in this comedy of manners.

One of Sheridan's most famous plays, The School for Scandal disparages the behaviour and customs of the upper classes through witty dialogue and an intricate plot, with comic, farcical situations which expose the shortcomings of the individuals involved. These C=characters consist almost entirely of stock types — the bore, the flirt, the gossip, the wastrel, the rich uncle, etc.—rather than individuals with unique qualities. Comedies of manners in Sheridan's time typically avoided the romantic sentimentality that characterized many other stage dramas of the eighteenth century. The author mainly satirizes malicious gossip and hypocrisy in the fashionable society of 1770s London. Underlying the comedy, however, is a serious theme: condemnation of the odious practice of slander and, in the case of the written letters, libel. Spreading scandal was commonplace in London's high society at this time, when conversation in drawing rooms, at balls, in spas, and across card tables was a form of entertainment.

Amid all the wrongdoing in the play, it is it is worth commenting upon the moral resolve of Maria, and, to a lesser extent, Charles. She refuses to gossip and repeatedly denounces the practice. She tells Mrs. Candour, "'Tis strangely impertinent for people to busy themselves so [with gossip]." Maria also steadfastly refuses to become involved with Joseph Surface even though her legal guardian, St. Peter Teazle, pressures her to do so. For his part, Charles Surface, despite his extravagance and devil-may-care lifestyle, refuses to compromise the basic goodness that defines his character. In particular, he refuses to sell the portrait of his benefactor and uncle even though the bidder, Sir Oliver in the guise of Mr. Premium, offers him a large sum of money. Moreover, even though he has little money left to support his wastrel ways, he contributes a generous sum to the destitute Mr. Stanley.

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