One of the most well known sentences in Tolstoy's oeuvre is the first sentence of 'Anna Karenina': 'All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way' - after which we get stuck into the unhappy mess resulting from Stiva's messing with the lady who used to be his children's governess.
A sentence which sounds rather clever. One is impressed and moves on. But yesterday, reading it again for the first time for a while, I decided that I did not know what Tolstoy was driving at, with the only help he gives us being an example of an unhappy family, or at least a family going through an unhappy patch. Or perhaps did not have a clue would be more accurate.
Today my assertion is that I see no reason why there should not be just as many ways as being happy as being unhappy. With the famous quote sounding just as clever if one reverses the sense of it; it reads just as well backwards as forwards. Perhaps there is more sense to be had from the original Russian.
Perhaps, in the absence of any Russian, my next step is to look up in my Troyat how happy Tolstoy's various families were - with the suspicion being that the sentence is driven by a man in an unhappy family. See reference 1.
PS: just had yet another senior moment. Wanting to make the reference below into a link in blog speak, I move the mouse up to the underline icon (in the post edit window) and click on that, rather than on the link icon a couple of inches to its right. The brain knew that clicking on the link underline would, in due course, result in underline, so clearly thought it would be quicker just to click on underline in the first place. Which all goes to show that the unconscious can be very unreliable.
Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=troyat+tolstoy+finished.
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