suddenly having a whole slew of russians in my life i've been a little obsessed with things russian lately. russian films, russian music, russian language...
so lately, i've been reading and rereading a lot of russian literature. to wit:
i reread Anna Karenina--last time was when i was about 13 i guess, a previous russian lit phase. i was living in tehran, iran at the time and devoured Anna Karenina (tragic love stories and 13 year old girls are a natural mix), Brothers Karamazov (i must revisit that one, i don't think i understood most of it), Dr. Zhivago (who wouldn't want to read it after seeing the movie, recent at the time, and falling in 13 year old love with omar sharif, who incidentally, i met a couple of years ago--but that's another story) and of course War and Peace (nothing like a good epic novel to hold me entranced).
does We the Living by ayn rand count? i think so. it was a fictionalized account of rand's life in russia just after the 1917 revolution.
Anna Karenina is a rich novel of love and betrayal with so many layers i didn't get the first time around. as a mother now myself, anna's heartrending choices regarding her own happiness and continued contact with her son evoked thoughts and emotions that were non-existent for me at 13. her relationships with her husband and lover were complex and torn, her melancholy so deep.
when i fell under a train once (packing my baby sister off to school in toronto--again, another story) i imagined for an instant that i was anna. but the train i fell under was just starting to move and i scrambled out, unhurt. i wasn't anna.
if you've read it before, if you've never read it, if you've been a lover or a mother, been a mistress or had one, if you just like beautiful lyrical tales of life, i highly recommend Anna Karenina.
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this is an older post i found in my drafts. so i posted it, but the russians have been in my life for a while now...
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