Spring, Leningrad, 1942 – “though the word ‘spring,”‘ writes Russian literary critic Lidiya Ginsburg in her memoir, Blockade Diary, “had an odd ring to it. The bread ration had been increased, trams made their diffident way along frozen streets. The Germans had halted the bombing raids, but were shelling the city several times each day. The strongest and most vital people had already died – or had survived. The feeble went on belatedly dying. The word ‘spring’ had an odd ring to it.”
As she tells us in this slender but powerful volume, though “the thirst for information was fearful,” with people crowding around street-corner loudspeakers several times a day, the besieged Russians of Leningrad longed for other sorts of “information.” Ginsburg writes:
During the war years, people used to read War and Peace avidly, comparing their own behaviour with it (not the other way round – no one doubted the adequacy of Tolstoy’s response to life). The reader would say to himself… so then, this is how it should be. Whoever had the energy enough to read, used to read war and Peace avidly in besieged Leningrad….
Tolstoy had said the last word as regards courage, about people doing their bit in a people’s war. He also spoke of how those caught up in this common round continued playing their part involuntarily, while ostensibly busy solving problems affecting their own lives. The people of besieged Leningrad worked (while they could) and saved (if they could) both themselves and their loved ones from dying of hunger.
And in the final reckoning that was also essential to the war effort, because a living city barred the path of an enemy who wanted to kill it.
Tag: Tolstoy
Death of Ivan Ilyich – Some Quotes from
Apart from the reflections this death called up in each of them about the transfers and possible changes at work that might result from it, the very fact of the death of a close acquaintance called up in all those who heard of it, as always, a feeling of joy that it was he who was dead and not I.
In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling others like themselves: there were damasks, dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull and polished bronzes – all the things people of a certain class have in order to resemble other people of that class.
It was all just as it was in the law courts. The doctor put on just the same air towards him as he himself put on towards an accused person.
The doctor said that so-and-so indicated that there was so-and-so inside the patient, but if the investigation of so-and-so did not confirm this, then he must assume that and that. If he assumed that and that, then…and so on. To Iván Ilých only one question was important: was his case serious or not? But the doctor ignored that inappropriate question.
And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. But strange to say none of those best moments of his pleasant life now seemed at all what they had then seemed – none of them except the first recollections of childhood. There, in childhood, there had been something really pleasant with which it would be possible to live if it could return. But the child who had experienced that happiness existed no longer, it was like a reminiscence of somebody else.
And what was worst of all was that It drew his attention to itself not in order to make him take some action but only that he should look at It, look it straight in the face: look at it and without doing anything, suffer inexpressibly.
‘Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done,’ it suddenly occurred to him. ‘But how could that be, when I did everything properly?’ he replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution of all the riddles of life and death, as something quite impossible.
Death of Ivan Ilyich
Leo Tolstoy
See also: Ivan Ilych’s life was the most simple and most ordinary and therefore the most terrible.
Tolstoy – A Calendar of Wisdom – September 26
All true wisdom and all true faith are clearly expressed in the same moral law.
All the world is subject to one law, and all thinking beings have the same basic intellect. Therefore, all wise men share the same idea of perfection.
—MARCUS AURELIUS
The more I dedicate my time to two things, the more they fill my life with ever-increasing pleasure. The first is the sky above me, and the second is the moral law within me.
—IMMANUEL KANT
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.
—MATTHEW 7:12
Moral law is so obvious and clear that even people who do not know the law have no excuse for violating it. They have only one recourse: to deny their intellect, which they do.
A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul
Leo Tolstoy, Leo.
10 Tostolyan Conclusions
These conclusions, which paraphrase Tolstoys thought or draw dotted lines from his thought to the present, are offered not as so many truths but as prompts for dialogue.
1. We live in a world of uncertainty. Assured prediction is impossible. History and individual lives contain contingent events that might just as well not have happened. No account that tries to think contingency away can be adequate.
2. There can never be a social science, in the sense that nineteenth-century physics is a science.
3. We need not only knowledge but also wisdom. Wisdom cannot be formalized or expressed adequately in a set of rules. If it could, it would not be wisdom at all. Wisdom is acquired by attentive reflection on experience in all its complexity.
4. Because the world is uncertain, presentness matters. The present moment is not an automatic derivative of the past. In human life, more than one thing can happen at any given moment. Theories that assume otherwise mislead.
5. Because presentness is real, alertness matters. The more uncertain a situation, the greater the value of alertness.
6. Numerous biases distort our perceptions of our lives. We must understand these biases to minimize their effect.
7. The idea that truth lies in the extreme is not only false but also dangerous. Even extraordinary moments are largely the product of what happens at ordinary ones.
8. The road of excess leads to the chamber of horrors.
9. True life takes place when we are doing nothing especially dramatic. The more drama, the worse the life.
10. Plot is an index of error.
Anna Karenina In Our Time
Gary Saul Morson
From the section One Hundred Sixty-Three Tostolyan Conclusions
Vronsky Sees Anna for the First Time – Anna Karenina Quote
Vronsky followed the conductor to the carriage and at the door to the compartment stopped to allow a lady to leave. With the habitual flair of a worldly man, Vronsky determined from one glance at this lady’s appearance that she belonged to high society. He excused himself and was about to enter the carriage, but felt a need to glance at her once more – not because she was very beautiful, not because of the elegance and modest grace that could be seen in her whole figure, but because there was something especially gentle and tender in the expression of her sweet-looking face as she stepped past him. As he looked back, she also turned her head. Her shining grey eyes, which seemed dark because of their thick lashes, rested amiably and attentively on his face, as if she recognized him, and at once wandered over the approaching crowd as though looking for someone. In that brief glance Vronsky had time to notice the restrained animation that played over her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and the barely noticeable smile that curved her red lips. It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile. She deliberately extinguished the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in a barely noticeable smile.
Anna Karenina
Tolstoy
April 13 – Some Thoughts – Tolstoy
We understand the divine, spiritual beginning of our life both with our intellect and with our love.
A man is wise who does three things: first, he does by himself those things which he advises others to do; secondly, he does not do anything that contravenes the truth; and thirdly, he is patient with the weaknesses of those who surround him.
Great thoughts come directly from the heart.
Luc DE VAUVENARGUES
A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul
Leo Tolstoy
March 9 – Calendar of Wisdom Quote, Tolstoy
War and Christianity are not compatible.
War is one of the worst, most terrible things in this world.
War in this world can be stopped not by the ruling establishment, but by those who suffer from the war. They will do the most natural thing: stop obeying orders.
The armed world and the wars it wages will be destroyed one day, but not by the kings or the rulers of this world. War is profitable for them. War will stop the moment the people who suffer from war fully understand that it is evil.
A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Selected from the World’s Sacred Texts
Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy Pictures
Until you do what you believe in, you don’t know whether you believe it or not. – Leo Tolstoy
Calendar of Wisdom, Tolstoy – August 11
A person dies as he lives his spiritual life, alone.
What you do, you possess. You must believe that eternal goodness exists that is within you, and that it grows and develops as long as you live. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON
You alone plan to commit a sin, you alone plan to do evil; and you alone can escape sin and purify your thoughts. Only your inner self can damn you, and only your inner self can save you. —DHAMMAPADA, a book of BUDDHIST WISDOM
A person may ask God or other people for help, but only his good life can help him, and this he must do on his own. Every person has a depth to his inner life, an essence that cannot be explained. Sometimes you want to explain this essence to people, but you will see that it isn’t possible to explain it to another person so that he understands. Hence the need for your own channel of communication with God. Establish this channel and do not seek anything else.
Tolstoy, Leo. A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul
Quotes on Humility, Being Humble
For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. – LUKE 14:11
A person who stands on his tiptoes cannot stand long, and a person who is too proud of himself cannot set a good example. – LAO-TZU
He who is looking for wisdom is already wise; and he who thinks that he has found wisdom is a stupid man. – EASTERN WISDOM
No exterior force can make you humble. There is only one way to be humble: do not think about yourself, but about how you can serve God and others.
From – A Calendar of Wisdom, Tolstoy, Leo
Amazon
See also this quote by Thomas A. Kempis
Ivan Ilych’s life was the most simple and most ordinary and therefore the most terrible.
The self that dies is radically separate, not only from the material world but also from other selves. My consciousness is essentially private; I cannot directly experience the mind of another. I may know everything public about another conscious being, but I cannot experience being that other. Knowing from direct experience is one thing, and knowing about, from an outside perspective, is quite another. Mortality therefore entails unspeakable loneliness.
Itself a narrativized apothegm, Tolstoy’s novella contains several of his most-cited lines. Ivan Ilych has lived as if his public role exhausted his identity, but in his mortal illness he discovers the private self, inaccessible from the outside, that he has overlooked. He senses with horror that his role will go on but his “I” will die.
None of us can really grasp this fact, but for Ivan Ilych it is all the more terrible because he is losing the self just as he realizes he has it. He has thought of himself as his “place” (mesto), a word that means not only physical location but also job (position) and social role (place in society). He has assiduously avoided doing anything “inappropriate” (literally, out of place). But the self is not a place, and so he has missed it until, when dying, he recognizes that besides what is here and now, there is something else.
What Ivan Ilych takes to be the glory of his life, his amazing ability to “fit in” with others, depends on a “virtuoso” erasure of self. But as he will learn, nothing can be worse than success in such a venture. That is the meaning of the frequently cited apothegm that begins Chapter 2: Ivan Ilych’s life was the most simple and most ordinary and therefore the most terrible. (GSW, 255)
Morson, Gary. The Long and Short of It: From Aphorism to Novel
We cannot prevent birds from flying over our heads, but we can keep them from making nests on top of our heads. Similarly, bad thoughts sometimes appear in our mind, but we can choose whether we allow them to live there, to create a nest for themselves, and to breed evil deeds. – Martin Luther
from September 21’s selection:
Tolstoy, Leo. A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul
Amazon
Tolstoy on History and Causation
When an apple ripens and falls—what makes it fall? Is it that it is attracted to the ground, is it that the stem withers, is it that the sun has dried it up, that it has grown heavier, that the wind shakes it, that the boy standing underneath wants to eat it?
No one thing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions under which every organic, elemental event of life is accomplished. And the botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue degenerates, and so on, will be as right and as wrong as the child who stands underneath and says that the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it. As he who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander wanted him to perish, will be both right and wrong, so he will be right and wrong who says that an undermined hill weighing a million pounds collapsed because the last worker struck it a last time with his pick. In historical events the so-called great men are labels that give the event a name, which, just as with labels, has the least connection of all with the event itself.
Their every action, which to them seems willed by themselves, in the historical sense is not willed, but happens in connection with the whole course of history and has been destined from before all ages.
Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace (Vintage Classics) , translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky