War And Peace (Volume I)

Let’s face it, I’m not getting to the end of War and Peace any time soon.

So I thought it’d be best if I put my thoughts down as I go, instead of waiting till the last page and forgetting all about the gems that happened before. So here goes judgment day for War and Peace: Volume I.

The Story
Well, the story is, if nothing else, complicated. It always has one too many names for you to remember, you usually end up going “oh that’s the guy with the girl who’s the rich guy’s daughter” or something. It carries that overly interconnected Russian society vibe. There are always surnames and family ties to keep up with, a few nicknames to get used to. But this one differs in one way; good old Fyodor usually had about 6 names for each character, Tolstoy has 6 characters for each character. People come and go like flies. Some certainly do get lost in the haze, but mostly—due to that Russian blood of Leo’s—you get a sense of who’s who. Some more frequently occurring ones get a hold of you, and surprisingly, you grow familiar to those less mentioned.

The plot rarely slows down or looses beat—except for the war sections which always describes and explains way too much (Soljenitzin’s August 84 had butchered me for weeks on that matter), but besides that, it works out fine. Somebody’s always in love, or in trouble, or in some scheme—you don’t really get bored. There would be times in Dostoevsky’s stories that you would just beg him to stop dragging the story line (but that drag always somehow ends up being perfect) but Tolstoy’s rapid changing lines and ability to include vast changes at the scope of the story in a few lines usually speeds things up for you.

Last remark on what goes on would be that it’s communal. You don’t pinpoint anyone on the way. Sure you get a few extra pages of Prince Andrew or Pierre once in a while, but it refuses—he, Tolstoy, refused to—focus on anyone. There is no leading character—yet at least. You don’t listen to the story wondering what happens to someone specific. It’s about Napoleon, as much as it’s about Natasha. It’s about a city, a country, countries even—this crazy time in the world of which we only read in history books. Nobody’s that special, everyone’s a part of the story line. It’s a combination of a hundred climaxes, some related to one another, others completely apart.

The People

Here’s where the problem starts. Kerouac’s vividness that spurs of reality, or Dostoevsky’s muse-given talent to make people out of nothing, or Dylan’s superb way of telling you that Eliot and Pound are fighting in the captain’s tower—all the great things that make a story a story is very dangerously vague in War and Peace. Possibly because there are too many of them, rarely with few pages of inner self descriptions; or maybe because the scope is too big or something—but they’re mostly just book people, and you know that when you put them down. They don’t jump out of the pages.

Though rarely, sparkling do happen. Three people especially show the Russian-ness of Tolstoy, one being my favorite, who I’ll save for the last.

Count Nicholas Rostov is who I’ll start with for the obvious reason; I hated that brat at the beginning. He was a pitiful little rich man’s kid, and he seemed irrelevant. There wasn’t much going on with him. But Tolstoy shone through the pages as he turned young Nikolai from a spoiled kid to a brainwashed dutiful soldier to an honorable man. That kinda change, if done masterfully, is just plain delicious. The gambling scene from start to the end is the kind that renews your faith in literature. It reminds of Dostoevsky’s passionate gambler—but puts Rostov somewhere different, entirely different. And his fierce defend against Dolokhov (“My cousin has nothing to do with this and it’s not necessary to mention her!) suddenly gives him that charm only men who bleed can have. The way Tolstoy breaks Rostov amazingly makes him a better man, and you see his stupidity, his childishness, his immaturity with a loving eye. He possesses the wounded man’s appeal from then on, and you become sold on Rostov.

Pierre is the next persona of the story that is worth mentioning. He is kinda weird, not easily understood, a little too melodramatic even. He goes from being the silent, obedient, lost heir to a crazy jealous dueling husband, to a monk. His transformation goes slower and less charmingly than Rostov’s, and Tolstoy makes sure he keeps him intact and a single person—something that would have ruined Rostov, by the way. The way you love Rostov for the change, you love Pierre for the lack of it. His shyness gets you to have some sympathy for him, and almost hatred for his first needless, then obligatory, then practically evil wife Helene.

And then we have Prince Andrew Bolkonski—the only man you get hung up on. His grandness, his appeal, his charisma—man, can you feel that one through the pages. His cruel indifference to his pretty little wife, his denial at everything on the battle field, his way of diminishing Napoleon, his unexpected return—all of it you read with excitement, and let’s face it, attraction. You picture a broad shouldered blonde Russian with a heart of steel and a charm of gold. He keeps that up—of course—until Tolstoy makes him fall in love with Natasha. But even he then somehow navigates through that with a different air. He always brings a give’m hell attitude to the story, the way he ignores his family, mocks his sister’s religious folk, puts up with his father—from the first moment of crazy drunk Russian men fooling around to his marriage decision (which happens in the second volume) he remains charming, attractive and strong. He feels like he stumbled upon the story, and though he does not fit in perfectly, he stays on as a favour. He feels a little out of Tolstoy’s league—and reach too—and stands aloof and apart on his own road. The Mitya of the lot, he with his uniform and his coldness and his irony stands to be the best part of this very long story; and manages to flash among everybody else.

One more person should probably be mentioned before I move on—and that is a little fella that goes by the name Napoleon. Fate has it, he is in flesh and bone through the book with a few appearances, which is hilarious, considering he usually comes up in history classes and, well, history classes. There are a few scenes in the book that could be seen quite entertaining, and awkwardly real. Anywho, not that I ever cared much for the guy, but it is kinda fun to be reading a sentences that goes as Napoleon took out his glove...

The Man

Now for Tolstoy.



He is no Dostoevsky, for starters. I can see why the man’s a legend—the attention and effort and work put into that book is too large for any human to even grasp. It seems to have been just spit out like that, just like you and I and everyone else have been- for else you don’t picture one man being able to create so much with so many entanglements. But still, the scope shadows the context.

Aside from a few moments of hellish brilliance (Andrew’s return, Rostov’s gamble, Anatole and Mary etc) often, the book just flows. I’m not saying it’s a bad flow, but it’s a flow nonetheless. It becomes habitual almost, for it usually stays on the same wave of light. You end up getting more and more used to it, and that kills the spark. Now it could be because I’m kinda moving slow, but a few moments I definitely do remember, and many others I don’t—I doubt that is entirely my fault.

But Tolstoy seems to have little interest on any of that anyhow—you see what the man likes to talk about: it’s love. The same subject that Dostoevsky clumsily mentions, or tiptoes around, or tries to turn into some psychotic other dimension of feelings—Tolstoy clashes with it head on. Somebody’s always in love, and then in love with somebody else. He has the fierce ability to explain one’s feelings on the subject, and the courage to bring it up in the most unlikely places. He is playful too; one who loves someone loves someone else the next day. Dostoevsky’s insistence on certain people being for certain others doesn’t exist in Tolstoy—he pushes and pulls as he wishes. He cares little for boundaries and promises made. And even more, he rarely puts love—or at least attraction--down, he treats it with joyful respect, and gives it its spotlight no matter where. In a room filled with a dozen people he never misses out the sparks between two people. He takes them and brings them forth. In a way Dostoevsky—or anyone else I’ve read—ever do, he makes love the leading character. He puts it in colors and shapes you have or have not seen—and he always bows down in admiration to its greatness—and its natural simplicity.

So the general tone in post-War and Peace Volume I?

Pride, firstly. It’s not an easy one to get by. It is a different reading experience, one that seems to outgrow history and life and literature. Kinda like the way Desire sounds so otherworldly even though it is not the greatest album Dylan put out--War and Peace does not belong to this world. It’s too large to ever fit in. It is not entirely beautiful, though graceful; not entirely life changing but effective. You don’t feel like you peeked at a god who had been lurking in the dark, but you do get the feeling that you may have just met the perfect man that came out of millions of imperfect folk.

Well, that’s the end of Volume I. Who knows what the rest may bring? I’ll let you know.

5/31

i suppose this could be seen as a review, so i'll post it here too to keep up protocol:

http://dilara-ish.blogspot.com/2010/06/may-31st-301.html

Traditional Tunes (Part II) - World Gone Wrong

"Pack up my suitcase, give me my hat,
No use to ask me, baby, 'cause I'll never be back.
I can't be good no more, once like I did before.
I can't be good, baby,
Honey, because the world's gone wrong"

I read somewhere centuries ago someone point out the impossibility of saying something about Dylan that hasn't been said before ("Go ahead, try")--which is as true as anything gets. The man is an interesting subject to talk about. You can push and pull all day and most likely you won't end up a step closer, so everyone does it as they like it to be done, and everyone end up making desicions and coming to conclusions and so forth. Some are quite impressive (such as Todd Haynes' masterpiece I'm Not There), some are just needless (like that creepy guy from the 65 press conference obsessing over the cover of Highway 61 Revisited). Either way, the man talks a lot, and is talked about even more.

Good thing about that vaguness though is that he can slip in and out of things easier than most (let's face it, after a while people began reacting somewhat more mildly to his rapid changes), and through that process he offers many kinds of pretty stones and pearls. I love Freewheelin' just as i love Blonde on Blonde, or Street Legal. I even have a few of Christmas In The Heart on my ipod. Point I'm making is that the acceptance of his alterations results in an acceptance of the altering of his works, you tend to give more chances to works to which you would otherwise deny a minute of your day.

World Gone Wrong



On my account, World Gone Wrong is similar to that. It's a change of heart, or for Dylan, I guess, a change of muse. It breaks away two cliches: first one being "Dylan can't sing" and second one being the start of all this rambling, that the traditional tunes of one nation can not move someone of the other.

It was an album of Dylan that excited me as a whole, the moment I heard about it. He is obviously known to make original works, but I have always enjoyed his interpretations of tunes that aren't his--Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land could be on my-favorite-8-billion-Dylan-songs list. The wonderful bootleg The East Orange Tape is one to me of the most enjoyable bits of Dylan. I even love his When I Got Troubles -- a super amateur home recording of his days way before he took off to New York. Long story short, I like listening to him sing stuff that aren't his, and no matter what anyone says, I do think the guy can sing. You just have to listen right, if you ask me.

Anyways, so obviously World Gone Wrong was a new batch of cookies for me, and I gave it a whole round the minute I got my hands on it. It's Dylan through and through. It's a different Dylan, considering he was, well, I guess in his 50s, when it was released. So it's not like singing Pastures Of Plenty at the age of 22 or so. There's a different air to the whole thing, but an air that in any case smells of Dylan.

The songs--well, I'll start as always with my favorite, which was also the song that got me interested in this album in the first place (see with Dylan, there's always so much material, you need to go step by step). Blood In My Eyes is simply put, a masterpiece. Could be one of the greatest Dylan songs (per say), even. It is perfect match to his now ragged, worn out tone; and the way he sings it makes you not doubt for a second that the song is his. That obviously is not the case, but still, he owns that song in a way much more different than he owns any other on the album. You may not like Dylan, but you will like that song.

Second one deserving of attention-- World Gone Wrong. A gem in both lyrics and tune. The minute it starts of as the opening track you know you're in for a treat.

Love Henry, which is right after World Gone Wrong is a lovely tune, but oddly, it seems out of place. I could say that is the one song that doesn't fit Dylan. Probably the theme of the song looks not so good on him. Considering (or more like assuming, let's say, godforbid you say something certain on the man and he'll flip you around on it like a million times) fatal jealousy is not one his traits, the song kind of slips. It's good, don't get me wrong, he sings it perfectly fine. It's just that when you remember something like You never had to be faithful/I didn’t want you to grieve /Oh, why was it so hard for you/If you didn’t want to be with me, just to leave? of the masterpiece She's Your Lover Now, and the way he scorns her not leaving honestly instead of leaving at all, and the way he stings more than he resents all through it blurs the vision on Love Henry. It is possibly a stretch, but jealousy doesn't suit Dylan the way it suits others. It's just the way it goes.

I did really enjoy Ragged& Dirty. Good lyrics, good music.

My last comment about the songs will be on The Lone Pilgrim which I absolutely loved. Much more mellow than the rest, it has a calming way of misery. It's the song on the album which moves past its story. I didn't really care what it said, I was even suprised to find out what its title was. It's just simply enjoyable.

Another tasty treat of World Gone Wrong is obviously its liner notes. They resemble almost too greatly Tarantula, reminding you that after all this is the lifetime of one single individual which moves somewhat from one point to the other--instead of a clash of a hundred pesonalities. It is after all Dylan you're talking about. Whether it's Gospel or folk or rock or nothing or everything he sings, that head of his is still that head of his. Not that you should--or could--precisely understand, but you could at least acknowledge it.

Summing up this too long piece of reflections; World Gone Wrong offers more than good songs and calm nights. The real trick in the business is Dylan's desire to tell stories. That spark is what sets everything on fire. He could have done milion other songs, but naively, I would like to believe that these were the ones he wanted to do. He wanted to talk about the songs (and what they are about), he wanted to tell their stories. You can sense (or assume) that all over the liner notes, and all over the album.

And let's face it, it's always good to hear him talk.

Traditional Tunes (Part I) - Just Dave Van Ronk

A lot of people would tell you where you're born and raised affects how you define yourself. That's true. Then they will go on telling you that your homeland outlines your lines of perception, and those perceptions are mostly clear cut. To them there's one language you speak as your own, one kind of culture in which you will find the tools to talk about yourself. That, i say, is bullshit.

I will pour my heart on two topics of discussion over the next few dozen lines--both sharing absolutely nothing with where i've lived, or where i was born. They're two great works of art on stories told by men who lived neither in my time, nor on my land. they belong to the traditional ammo of an entirely different culture, nevertheless, i believe they speak of things larger than lands and borders. Hence my fascination with their existence.

It was a couple of weeks back that i got my hands on an unfamiliar, yet greatly appreciated, album: Dave Van Ronk's Just Dave Van Ronk. And a few days back i got my hands on another somewhat more familiar one: Bob Dylan's World Gone Wrong. What the two albums had in common (besides great music and musicians with colorful pasts on the streets of the Village) was their share of traditional tunes--Dylan's being entirely a complation of them, Van Ronk's being mainly arrangements, with a few other wonderful additions.

Just Dave Van Ronk



First time I saw Dave Van Ronk was on No Direction Home, all I could think was how huggable he looked. Then I noticed his gracefullness ("I could not have blamed him for that, and I didn't"*), and the amount of life squeezed into his body. You could see it wanting to break free, this flow of energy and compassion and liveliness trying to shake loose its meat suit, but obediently doing what he says nonetheless--as if he had a huge ball of life that would roll over on his command for a chewy treat.

So needless to say when I got Just Dave Van Ronk I was miserably excited, since it was to be (finally) my musical, official introduction to the man. It took me a week or two though to become acquantinces with him and with the album, but now I can say I'm on safe ground.

Overall, two things caught my attention on the album. First, Van Ronk's incredible ability to elevate songs. You feel like you're in some higher state of being when he sings. Plant sometimes has that effect; this way of turning your daily, ordinary world into some unseen sense of brand new order. Second thing that pulls you in--the vivacious, lively feel of the songs. They become living organisms through Van Ronk's cherishable tone, and you feel they move around on their own account. They force you to participate; you don't feel seperate from the songs, but kept at their arms length.

My favorites-- well, I have a few. Every song on the album is worth your while, but my money is on (by far distance and assurance) Wanderin'. It already made itself to the list of my favorite songs ever, let alone on this one album. It is almost scarily honest. It paints a world of pain and burdensome loneliness-- it is in itself a lonely song. It's kind of a song that would linger outside after closing time, with a cigarette and boney fingers. It's naturally beautiful.

Pastures Of Plenty is another interesting one--for reasons independent of the album. I have a version of it done by Dylan. He sings it in his youthful persona much more immaturely; though that may not be the word for it, there's a sense of ripeness in his version. It's a step mellower, though it's more upbeat. It has that Dylan way of making it one's own without really making it one's own. You can see the words are not Dylan's (over a zillion words he used, you can still tell which are by dylan and which aren'), he still owns the song. Dave's version is much more edgier, threatening and definetly more mature. He doesn't only sing it, but knows it. He too owns the song, but in a completely different way. He stands tall, not as a narrator, but as sort of a God-man behind it all.

God Bless The Child would be my third favorite--again simply of Van Ronk's originality in its arrangement, if of nothing else. Didn't It Rain too is worth a couple of plays back to back. Candy Man is charming to the last note, Frankie's Blues is a song that grasps you in your first play.

I have been insanely curious about House of The Rising Sun after all the stories about it, but now, I do have to say, The Animals version on my account beats both Van Ronk's and Dylan's that was later recorded for his debut album.

All in all, Dave Van Ronk musically was no disappointment on my behalf. He definetly made his way into my limited yet heartfully loved list of artists. The bluesy grandness in both his tone and in his arrangements make him simply beautiful. If you do have time on your hands, and do not care where songs come from as long as they move you, Just Dave Van Ronk is a great way to open your ear to a different kind of music that we don't hear that often these days.

Tomorrow, hopefully, I will talk about Dylan's World Gone Wrong--Till then, make sure you give this artful man a chance.

*the exact quotation i can not remember for the life of me, but it was something similar to that.

the waves

"Identity failed me."

It has been a little over a week since I've been done with Woolf's cherishable work of art, and it is not one that lingers on long after. Its beauty rests, on my account, during the reading, not after. It doesn't talk a lot about events, but feeds on human perceptions instead. In a nutshell, The Waves proceed through the monologues (even when they're talking to each other, we're being introduced to the conversation through one of the participants such as "Here, my poem" being followed by something like "neville now has given me his poem") of the 6 main characters: Neville, Bernard, Louis, Jinny, Rhoda and Susan.

I come to think of it as a long piece of poetry, its perfection in prose many times comprimises the reality of it all. Either Woolf had lived in a world full of poets, or she wished to live in one, I don't know, though I've read somehwere that one of the characters (Louis) was based on the wonderful T.S.Eliot. So I guess it isn't that far off for Woolf to have people with honey dripping of their tongues any given time of the day, for me, it stands as a utopian long-time dream to have people around who are unattached and vivid, saying something like "But if I find myself in company with other people, words at once make smoke rings--see how phrases at once begin to wreathe off my lips" in the middle of our daily lives.

So if anything was to me a bit less impressive it would be that. It comes to a point that you lose completely who is who, I myself read about 2 pages of Neville thinking he was Bernard. See, if you read a book for the reading's sake, The Waves is nearly perfect. But me, I seek the living through the pages. I sort of like feeling Rodya's fever on my forehead, the irony of Sydney pinching me through my shield, all in all, I like "people" in the stories, I like them ripe, I like them burning and alive, I like them with their ups but more with their downs, I like them when they are capable of standing on their own--had I ever closed the page on them. The Waves lack that, in my opinion. It blurs the vision a bit too much, and if that was the aim at it (Woolf had said that they should not be taken seperately, but as layers of perception), I'm cool with that, but none of the characters leave a mark--say, maybe Bernard and Neville, a little, but not that much.

Moving on--about those characters who chase one another through the autumn fog--my favorite, favorites more like it, are of course, Neville and Bernard. Possibly because I saw them as two seperate pieces of what I come to think of the greater spirit of the creative creed.

Seperately I'll start with Neville--since he is to me the most clearly defined one of the lot. His arrogance shrug at the rest of the folks is appealing to one similar to his kind, and understandable, since one way or the other, the poet feels off base among the others, "his wings get in the way," as Baudalaire would say. So I applauded him, and understood silently--even though it is all fragments of one's own imagination--you catch phrases here and there that make you feel like you're among those who understand. Anyways, returning back to Neville, what makes him delicious is not just that pompousness, but simultaneously existing self-degradatiton. His willingness to throw himself at the feet of whomever he loves, dragging his otherwise superior existence to the pits of shame and desparation, that right there, makes one not just interesting, but also beautfiul. He's similar in that way to the great Dostoyevskien gods, whose sudden virtuousness gets torn apart with vices of the worst kind. What can i say, i chase those swan songs in the dark. They're hard to find, but ones like Neville, they give you a hundred swan songs in a life time.

"Should I seek out some tree? Should I desert these form rooms and libraries, and the broad yellow page in which I read Catullus, for woods and fields? Should I walk under beech trees, or saunter along the river bank, where the trees meet united like lovers in the water? But nature is too vegetable, too vapid. She has only sublimities and vastitudes and water and leaves. I begin to wish for firelight, privacy, and the limbs of one person."

My second favorite obviously is Bernard, with his obsession of stories and constant deisre to find phrases to fit the dullness of life is not at all uncommon to my inner self either. I think it would have worked out perfectly if Woolf had told the entire story through Bernard, I wouldn't have minded at all. His resentment towards his quest by the end of the book is what finally makes everything, to me, realistic. People like Bernard, they don't survive for long. Their beauty goes unappreciated, their opennes scorned. At the end of their life, they realize not much have changed. The words that made them joyfull like children betray them at the end of the road. Hell, they betray them long before that. Every poet-man knows that maybe a handful will see the true face of their stories, and maybe not even that.

"But you understand, you, myself, who always come at a call (that would be a harrowing experience to call and for no one to come, that would make the midnight hollow, and explains the expression of old men in clubc--they have given up calling for a self who does not come) you understand that I am only superficially represented by what I was saying tonight!"

I don't have a whole lot to say on the rest--I believe Rhoda's constant fearful state lands a fatal blow to her air of greatness, I could not see her as anything but a vague child, her so called strength fails to shine through. Louis' worry of not fitting in makes you want to somewhat accept him, but he too, only makes himself visible through pastel, fading colors. Jinny and Susan are too one-dimensional for my taste. Percival, though constantly being told as the god-like inspiration, that too in my opinion (and this time on Woolf's account) fails to create that atmosphere. Salinger's Stradlater should be remembered here, and his air of existence, compared to that of Percival's.

Overall--I do have to end this sooner or later--The Waves is a graceful work of art. Sometimes though, that grace blocks true life from showing itself. For true life is rarely graceful. And we ourselves seek not the graceful but those smothered in Catullus and misery at the final hour. For the graceful is beautiful to look at, but rarely ever leaves a mark.

yet another crystal ship

from now on i shall put down my reflections on the works of others on here, starting tomorrow with woolf's the waves i would not call them reviews--more like heartful opinions that could not be held down--and better to pour them here than to people with no interest in the beauty of their object...

who knows maybe there in the darkness--i'll get someone to turn a page.