The book was turned into a television series that is being shown on Israeli TV at the moment. I missed the first episode but caught the second; what I saw seems to have little connection to the book itself.
But that's not why I am writing this. I came across the following interchange
in the chapter "Arachne's art" which is in book three, set in 1930. It's a
conversation between the eponymous gentleman (Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov)
and a seamstress, Marina.
“It’s just that to hear Nina talk of her upcoming journey, she is so passionate, so self-assured, and perhaps so single-minded, that she seems almost humorless. Like some dauntless explorer, she seems ready to place her flag in a polar ice cap and claim it in the name of Inevitability. But I can’t help suspecting that all the while, her happiness may be waiting in another latitude altogether.”
“Come now, Alexander. Little Nina must be nearly eighteen. Surely, when you were that age you and your friends spoke with passion and self-assurance.”
“Of course we did,” said the Count. “We sat in cafés and argued about ideas until they mopped the floors and doused the lights.”
“Well, there you are.”
“It’s true that we argued about ideas, Marina; but we never had any intention of doing anything about them.” [emphasis mine]
Thinking back on my ideological youth, as I do quite frequently, I am struck by that final sentence. Did my comrades (to use a suitable word from the book) feel that way, that they had no intention of doing anything about the ideas that were argued so passionately? The older I get, the more I wonder about my youth. Was I the wise, or at least dutiful, one who believed in what we were talking, or was I the fool for believing in those ideas?
Maybe it's because I was working again on 'Looking for this tribe'1 that I remember how little I had in common either with my fellow students or with those with whom I worked during my industrial placements during the 1970s (the "ideological years"). Not having a close family meant that I didn't have any supporting community except that of my friends in the bubble, and so I had to fulfill the ideas.
Internal links
[1] 1726
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Migraine | Migraine | |
| 406 | Planning the SQL | Delphi, SQL, Firebird | |
| 511 | My father's 90th birthday | Personal, Father | |
| 1663 | Cropping videos | Home movies, Musical group |
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