Kindle

Yesterday evening we watched the penultimate episode of the elderly BBC version of 'Anna Karenina', a version which we have been watching in a rather dilatory fashion for some time now, despite its many qualities. See reference 1.

A fault, to my mind, is the sense of tragedy which hangs over the whole thing. Virtually from the off, we know that it is all going to end in tears.

Then this morning, thinking that the book was not really like this - that the tragedy there was slower growing, slower moving, slower to move even - I was moved to turn up the Kindle version (translated by Constance Garnett), the first time that I have turned the Kindle on for some weeks, despite having charged it up for our visit to Bognor. In which version, I am struck anew by the structure of the plot with its three marriages: those of Anna, Dolly and Kitty. Dolly settles for second best, but trundles along, sometimes happily enough. Anna goes for broke, for the grand passion, and ends up dead. Whereas Kitty, as far as I can recall, after the odd hiccup, lives happily ever afterwards. With all this being written by a man who was himself something of a libertine, taking plenty of liberties with, I think I once read, the peasant girls on his own estate. Inter alia. Or perhaps it should be inter alias.

Point of correction: Anna does not go for the grand passion, although I believe that there are people who do do that. Who seek such a thing out, something to give some colour to their otherwise drab lives. But this grand passion goes for Anna, rather than the other way around.

Point of wonder: I say struck anew, but I wonder how anew it is. How did I react to all this when I first read the book, probably when I was fifteen or so, a time when I suspect I knew what the words meant, what they added up to, what was right and wrong - but a time when I had little or no personal knowledge of any such feelings? I remember writing an essay about Lawrence's 'Women in Love' at about that time, for a school magazine, where again I might have done the words but could not have done the feelings. Would it be illuminating or embarrassing to read it now? Or both?

How did I react when I read it again, as I almost certainly did, as a young adult? No idea now - and it seems unlikely that I will recover one.

PS: as I type this, we have the young Burman cat from next door in a stand off with a rather grey looking and much larger fox on the back lawn. Sometimes he goes into full stalking mode, ventre à terre, for which see reference 2. Fox just wanders off. A few minutes later, they have both gone off, more or less together, and one of the two black cats which visit our garden now holds the field.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/frou-frou.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/margins.html.