Qianshi Zheng Zheng itibaren Nyáregyháza, Macaristan itibaren Nyáregyháza, Macaristan

Dyslexia rules! And so does absurdity. We all need a little bit of mental sorbet.

I first read Anna Karenina when I was in junior high or early high school, so my memory is not adequate to compare this translation to previous versions, but standing on its own it is excellent. It neither eradicates the time period during which it was set and written (like some trendy Bible translations with their modern yet instantly dated slang) nor envelopes itself in a cloud of dust and mildew as stuffy Great Literature. Another thing I appreciated was that it preserved the flavor of Russian conversation, which is not the same, literally translated, as English. Most conversation begins with a "well," which sounds a bit abrupt in English but I assume is like the "allora" that precedes just about every statement in Italy. As to the book itself, it is wonderful. The stories are rich and the way they intertwine is interesting and not forced. Reading it in updated language you appreciate Tolstoy's subtlety; Anna Karenina, it turns out, was not a victim of the mores of her time but a deeply depressed, possibly bi-polar character who would not have been happy under any circumstances. The concept of conveying a less obvious but no less destructive form of mental illness seems very fresh for Tolstoy's time period. Another wonderful passage is Kitty and Levin's "honeymoon period," which Tolstoy points out is anything but as two people learn to adjust to one another on a day-to-day basis. This is a long book, no two ways about it. I was kind of flagging by the last 200 pages. But in the end it's worth the slog. It contains some beautiful passages that I have to copy down: "It showed him the eternal error people make in imagining that happiness is the realization of desires.... He soon felt arise in his soul a desire for desires, an anguish." "As she dressed, she paid more attention to her toilette than she had all those days, as if, having ceased to love her, he might start loving her again because she was wearing a dress or had done her hair in a way more becoming to her." "Formerly..., whenever he had tried to do something that would be good for everyone, for mankind, for Russia, for the district, for the whole village, he had noticed that thinking about it was pleasant, but the doing itself was always awkward, and there was no full assurance that the thing was absolutely necessary, and the doing itself, which at the start had seemed so big, kept diminishing, and diminishing, dwindling to nothing; while now, after his marriage, when he began to limit himself more and more to living for himself, though he no longer experienced any joy at the thought of what he was doing, he felt certain that his work was necessary, saw that it turned out much better than before and that it was expanding more and more." "If the good has a cause, it is no longer the good; if it has a consequence -- a reward -- it is also not the good. Therefore, the good is outside the chain of cause and effect." "In place of each of the Church's beliefs there could be put the believe in serving the good instead of one's needs."

The South, the mentally ill, Nazis & concentration camps, New York City, an innocent young writer, immigrants, love & sex-- put it all together and it's Sophie's Choice. One of my all-time favorites.