War and Peace

My dear Friends
You may not know that I have Russian blood - my grandparents on my father's side came from Minsk, now Belarus, white Russia, but I consider it Russia nonetheless. I have never discovered if they actually spoke Russian or just Yiddish; certainly my father, who was the first of the ten children to be born in England after they came over (he was born in Leeds in 1897) was a fluent Yiddish speaker. But I have large, expansive emotions, and have always thought that this was 'in the genes.'

One of my 2 favourite books listed on my blog profile is Dr Zhivago by Pasternak, a poet as well as a writer. He came from a Jewish family. In one of the translations of this book, the translators actually state that they don't feel that they have done it justice; precisely because Pasternak was such a beautiful poet, this imbues Dr Zhivago, a novel, as well, so it is so difficult to capture the poetic rhythms of the book in places.

Anna Karenina is a different book, filled with Tolstoy's reflections and theories about how to solve the question of land and the peasants, who of course did not own the land and were subject to their masters. It is also the story of the passionate love affair between Anna Karenina, a woman married to a high-ranking Government official, and Vronsky, a handsome but unscrupulous Captain in the army, who deserts her and treats her so badly that she throws herself under a train.

It is a noble and sweeping book, dealing with important moral questions of exploitation, infidelity and passion to the point of extreme suffering.In some ways it is a deeply religious book, as religious as his 'Resurrection' which was not well acclaimed by the public of the day.

War and Peace...Benigna has just given me both volumes as a present for my new life. In a world where we seem to hover more and more between these two extremes, we must try to find the via media, the middle way, the balance. Only then can we arrive at real peace.

Have a good and peaceful week
Shalom from Sister Gila