Worming into Our Consciousness

Since I seldom seem able to go forward without shifting into reverse first, I am approaching a new post by looking at an old one—as a matter of fact, the first post here at The Ruff Draft. On August 11, 2019, I wrote, “It took me months, but I got through War and Peace, enjoying the experience overall, even with the maddening second epilogue. I hope to read the book again, this time with the insights Gary Saul Morson provided in his fascinating account, Hidden in Plain View: Narrative and Creative Potentials in ‘War and Peace,” a book I finished yesterday.”

Believe it or not, I did manage, a few months ago, to re-read both War and Peace and Morson’s commentary on it. The two have greatly influenced how I view events unfolding in the world now. Incidentally, I am also reading Anna Karenina, Tolstoy’s other enormous book, and am thoroughly enjoying it. I read it once before, when I was pregnant with, and then caring for, my first baby. Not surprisingly, I remember nothing from that encounter and am quite happy to come across Anna, Vronsky, Kitty, Levin, Oblonsky, and the others who people their world as if meeting them for the first time.

What is it about Russian literature, exactly? If I let myself, I could more fully explore the question, but I think it has to do with a tendency of the great Russian authors to find an abundance of meaning in the here-and-now, meaning that we tend not to notice, along with their ability to show it in such a way that it worms into our consciousness and informs future thoughts and actions, whether we see such influence or not.

Isn’t that what all good literature does, though? I look around and can’t help but wonder how the situation of worldwide totalitarian darkness breathing down our necks would be different if books like The Idiot, Doctor Zhivago, War and Peace, or The Heart of Darkness, Moby Dick, and The Power and the Glory were known and loved by more people.