{"id":628,"date":"2009-11-25T11:52:26","date_gmt":"2009-11-25T10:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?page_id=628"},"modified":"2023-04-02T14:27:26","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T13:27:26","slug":"book-of-lifetime","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?page_id=628","title":{"rendered":"Book of a Lifetime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>first published in<\/em> The Independent <em>as part\u00a0of their &#8216;<strong>Book of a Lifetime&#8217; <\/strong>series:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<em>Anna Karenina<\/em><\/strong><em>, <\/em><strong>by Leo Tolstoy\u00a0 <\/strong>(translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky), Penguin Classics<\/p>\n<p>I first read <em>Anna Karenina <\/em>twenty years ago when travelling across the Peruvian desert on a long bus journey, and it has stayed with me ever since.\u00a0 The flatness of the desert, with looted and bleached bones from the Paracas tombs spilling right up to the highway, made a peculiarly complementary backdrop for Tolstoy\u2019s tale as it played back and forth across the Russian steppe.<\/p>\n<p>Despite his reputation as a thinker, it was the physicality of Tolstoy\u2019s description of individual scenes which first attracted me:\u00a0 Oblonsky rolling his \u2018full, well-tended body\u2019 over the springs of a sofa as he wakes in the spare-room, exiled by his wife;\u00a0 the needles of hoar-frost against the black of Kitty\u2019s gloves as she skates.\u00a0 It is this physicality that makes Tolstoy, like Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez, translate so well.\u00a0 And again like M\u00e1rquez, another writer to whom I early made a lifelong allegiance, Tolstoy sets the intensity of such moments against long stretches of intervening time.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">He wrote <\/span><em style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Anna Karenina<\/em><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\"> in his late forties, looking back at himself as a young man through his portrayal of Levin.\u00a0 The novel came at a turning point in his live, midway between the young gambler and womaniser who had fought in the Crimea and the feisty sage of the late years.\u00a0 Not long afterwards he had a spiritual conversion and began to give up his land, title and worldly goods, including even the copyright to his books.\u00a0 But all that was still to come. <\/span><em>Anna Karenina <\/em>is the last flaring up of his worldly interests, with its often mischievous and attentive descriptions of St. Petersburg society and the affairs of the rural steppe:\u00a0 how much we enjoy the moment when Oblonsky deliberately wears his oldest clothes to go out shooting, so as to point up the <em>arriviste<\/em> new boots of his companion.<\/p>\n<p>Above all, the long hold the book has exerted over me comes from Tolstoy\u2019s ability to exploit, with great tenderness, the frail gap between what we intend and what we achieve, from Levin\u2019s endlessly prepared yet never delivered engagement stratagems to the blind automatism of Anna\u2019s desire that renders her good resolutions, and ultimately her life, void.<\/p>\n<p>On a recent pilgrimage to Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy\u2019s house in the woods on the edge of the steppe and the model for Levin\u2019s estate, I was shown in a back storeroom the ostentatious full-length bearskin coat that he bought himself with the substantial first royalties from <em>Anna Karenina<\/em>.\u00a0 I like to imagine the pleasure with which he saw the first snowflakes of winter fall on the black fur.<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>(c) Hugh Thomson 2006<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 first published in The Independent as part\u00a0of their &#8216;Book of a Lifetime&#8217; series: \u00a0Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy\u00a0 (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky), Penguin Classics I first read Anna Karenina twenty years ago when travelling across the Peruvian desert on a long bus journey, and it has stayed with me ever since.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":721,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-628","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/628"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3842,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/628\/revisions\/3842"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}