R.L. Swihart's Blog, page 44

War & Peace: Old Prince Bolkonski

The old prince dressed leisurely in his study, frowning and considering what he was to do. The coming of these visitors annoyed him. "What are Prince Vasili and that son of his to me? Prince Vasili is a shallow braggart and his son, no doubt, is a fine specimen," he grumbled to himself. What angered him was that the coming of these visitors revived in his mind an unsettled question he always tried to stifle, one about which he always deceived himself. The question was whether he could ever bring himself to part from his daughter and give her to a husband. The prince never directly asked himself that question, knowing beforehand that he would have to answer it justly, and justice clashed not only with his feelings but with the very possibility of life. Life without Princess Mary, little as he seemed to value her, was unthinkable to him.

California Gnatcatcher

California Gnatcatcher (Male) @ Ocean Trail Reserve in Palos Verdes CA. Got my black cap on and O what a thrill!🎈

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Tolstoy: War & Peace: Mary

Mary dreamed of happiness and of children, but her strongest, most deeply hidden longing was for earthly love. The more she tried to hide this feeling from others and even from herself, the stronger it grew. "O God," she said, "how am I to stifle in my heart these temptations of the devil? How am I to renounce forever these vile fancies, so as peacefully to fulfill Thy will?" And scarcely had she put that question than God gave her the answer in her own heart. "Desire nothing for thyself, seek nothing, be not anxious or envious. Man's future and thy own fate must remain hidden from thee, but live so that thou mayest be ready for anything. If it be God's will to prove thee in the duties of marriage, be ready to fulfill His will." With this consoling thought (but yet with a hope for the fulfillment of her forbidden earthly longing) Princess Mary sighed, and having crossed herself went down, thinking neither of her gown and coiffure nor of how she would go in nor of what she would say. What could all that matter in comparison with the will of God, without Whose care not a hair of man's head can fall?

Tolstoy: War & Peace: Pierre & Helene

"Thank God!" said Prince Vasili. "My wife has told me everything!" (He put one arm around Pierre and the other around his daughter.)--"My dear boy… Lelya… I am very pleased." (His voice trembled.) "I loved your father… and she will make you a good wife… God bless you!…" He embraced his daughter, and then again Pierre, and kissed him with his malodorous mouth. Tears actually moistened his cheeks. "Princess, come here!" he shouted. The old princess came in and also wept. The elderly lady was using her handkerchief too. Pierre was kissed, and he kissed the beautiful Helene's hand several times. After a while they were left alone again. "All this had to be and could not be otherwise," thought Pierre, "so it is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It is good because it's definite and one is rid of the old tormenting doubt." Pierre held the hand of his betrothed in silence, looking at her beautiful bosom as it rose and fell. "Helene!" he said aloud and paused. "Something special is always said in such cases," he thought, but could not remember what it was that people say. He looked at her face. She drew nearer to him. Her face flushed. "Oh, take those off… those…" she said, pointing to his spectacles. Pierre took them off, and his eyes, besides the strange look eyes have from which spectacles have just been removed, had also a frightened and inquiring look. He was about to stoop over her hand and kiss it, but with a rapid, almost brutal movement of her head, she intercepted his lips and met them with her own. Her face struck Pierre, by its altered, unpleasantly excited expression. "It is too late now, it's done; besides I love her," thought Pierre. "Je vous aime!"* he said, remembering what has to be said at such moments: but his words sounded so weak that he felt ashamed of himself. *"I love you." Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count Bezukhov's large, newly furnished Petersburg house, the happy possessor, as people said, of a wife who was a celebrated beauty and of millions of money.

Olive-sided Flycatcher

Olive-sided Flycatcher @ Colorado Lagoon. Late May. Long Beach CA.

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War & Peace: Policeman and Bear

"But what have they been up to?" asked the countess. "They are regular brigands, especially Dolokhov," replied the visitor. "He is a son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, such a worthy woman, but there, just fancy! Those three got hold of a bear somewhere, put it in a carriage, and set off with it to visit some actresses! The police tried to interfere, and what did the young men do? They tied a policeman and the bear back to back and put the bear into the Moyka Canal. And there was the bear swimming about with the policeman on his back!" "What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!" shouted the count, dying with laughter. "Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?" Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing. "It was all they could do to rescue the poor man," continued the visitor. "And to think it is Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov's son who amuses himself in this sensible manner! And he was said to be so well educated and clever. This is all that his foreign education has done for him! I hope that here in Moscow no one will receive him, in spite of his money. They wanted to introduce him to me, but I quite declined: I have my daughters to consider."

Tolstoy's War & Peace

The Englishman took out his purse and began counting out the money. Dolokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Pierre jumped upon the window sill. "Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I'll do the same thing!" he suddenly cried. "Even without a bet, there! Tell them to bring me a bottle. I'll do it…. Bring a bottle!" "Let him do it, let him do it," said Dolokhov, smiling. "What next? Have you gone mad?… No one would let you!… Why, you go giddy even on a staircase," exclaimed several voices. "I'll drink it! Let's have a bottle of rum!" shouted Pierre, banging the table with a determined and drunken gesture and preparing to climb out of the window. They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that everyone who touched him was sent flying. "No, you'll never manage him that way," said Anatole. "Wait a bit and I'll get round him…. Listen! I'll take your bet tomorrow, but now we are all going to ----'s." "Come on then," cried Pierre. "Come on!… And we'll take Bruin with us." And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the ground, and began dancing round the room with it.

Homo Faber: Technologists

Hanna utters no reproaches, Hanna doesn’t find the way I behaved toward Sabeth incomprehensible; in Hanna’s opinion I experienced a kind of relationship I was unfamiliar with and therefore misinterpreted, persuading myself I was in love. It was no chance mistake, but a mistake that is part of me(?), like my profession, like the rest of my life. My mistake lay in the fact that we technologists try to live without death. Her own words: “You don’t treat life as form, but as a mere sum arrived at by addition, hence you have no relationship to time, because you have no relationship to death.” Life is form in time. Hanna admits that she can’t explain what she means. Life is not matter and cannot be mastered by technology. My mistake with Sabeth lay in repetition. I behaved as though age did not exist, and hence contrary to nature. We cannot do away with age by continuing to add up, by marrying our children.

Homo Faber: Simile Game

Twenty-four hours ago (it seemed to me like a memory from my youth!) Sabeth and I were still sitting at Acrocorinthus waiting for the sunrise. I shall never forget it. We had come from Patras and got out at Corinth to see the seven pillars of a temple, then we had supper at a nearby guesthouse. Apart from this, Corinth is little more than a hamlet. By the time we discovered there were no rooms free it was already getting dark; Sabeth thought it a wonderful idea of mine just to wander on into the night and sleep under a fig tree. Actually I had only meant it as a joke, but since Sabeth thought it a wonderful idea we really set off across country in search of a fig tree. Then we heard the barking of sheep dogs, uproar all around us, the flocks in the night; there must have been quite a number of the beasts, to judge by their yapping, and in the heights to which they drove us there were no fig trees, but only thistles and wind. Sleep was out of the question. I never thought night in Greece would be so cold, a night in June, downright wet. And on top of that we had no idea where it would take us, a bridle path leading upward between rocks, stony, dusty, and hence as white as gypsum in the moonlight. Sabeth thought it like snow. We both agreed it was like yogurt! And above us the black rocks. Like coal, I thought. But again Sabeth compared them to something else; and so we chatted as we followed the path that led higher and higher. We heard the whinny of a donkey in the night. Like someone learning to play the cello, thought Sabeth. It reminded me of unoiled brakes. Apart from this there was a deathly hush; the dogs had fallen silent at last, now that they could no longer hear our footsteps. We saw the white huts of Corinth—as though somebody had emptied a bowl of lump sugar. I thought of something else, just to go on with the game. Then we came to a black cypress. Like an exclamation mark, thought Sabeth. I contradicted: exclamation marks have the pointed end at the bottom, not at the top. We roamed all night long. Without meeting a single human being. Once we were frightened by the tinkling of a goat, then silence returned to the slopes that smelled of peppermint, a silence accompanied by beating hearts and thirst, nothing but wind in the dry grass—like tearing silk, thought Sabeth. I had to think hard, and very often nothing occurred to me, then it was a point for Sabeth, according to the rules of the game. Sabeth almost always thought of something. The towers and crenellations of a medieval bastion—like the scenery at the Opéra! We passed through doorway after doorway, nowhere any sound of water, we heard our footsteps echoing against the Turkish walls, otherwise silence the moment we stood still. Our shadows cast by the moon—like paper cutouts, thought Sabeth. We always played to twenty-one points, as in ping-pong, then we began a new game, until suddenly, while it was still the middle of the night, we were standing on the mountaintop. Our comet was no longer visible. In the distance lay the sea—like a sheet of aluminum, I said; Sabeth said it was cold, but nevertheless a wonderful idea not to spend the night in a hotel for a change. It was her first night out of doors. As we waited for the sunrise, Sabeth trembled in my arms. It is coldest just before sunrise. Then we smoked our last cigarette together; we didn’t say a word about the coming day, which for Sabeth meant the return home. The first light of dawn appeared around five o’clock—like porcelain. It grew brighter every minute, the sea and the sky, not the earth; we could see where Athens must lie, the black islands in the light bays, water and land were parted, a few small morning clouds hung overhead—like tassels sprinkled with pink powder, thought Sabeth; I couldn’t think of anything and lost another point. Nineteen to nine in Sabeth’s favor! The air at this time of the morning—like autumn crocuses. I thought, like cellophane with nothing behind it. Then we found we could make out the surf on the seashore. Like beer froth. Sabeth thought, like a frilled collar! I took back my beer froth and said, like fiberglass. But Sabeth didn’t know what fiberglass was. Then came the first rays of the sun over the sea: like a sheaf, like spears, like cracks in a glass, like a monstrance, like photos of electron bombardment. But there was only one point for each round; it was no use producing half a dozen similes. Soon after this the sun rose, dazzling. Like metal spurting out of a furnace, I thought: Sabeth said nothing and lost a point . . . I shall never forget how she sat on that rock, her eyes closed, silent, letting the sun shine down on her. She was happy, she said, and I shall never forget the way the sea grew visibly darker, the Gulf of Corinth, and the other sea, the Gulf of Aegina, the red color of the plowed fields, the olives, like verdigris, their long morning shadows on the red earth, the first warmth and Sabeth, who embraced me, as though I had given her all this, the sea and the sun and everything, and I shall never forget how Sabeth sang!

Rock Wren in Palos Verdes CA

Hump Day with the Rock Wren Family @ Ocean Trails Reserve in Palos Verdes CA. Terrible lighting (June Gloom is with us still) but I'll return on a sunnier day.🤞🎈

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