‘‘My whole life,’ he said, ‘was changed one night, or, rather, morning.’
‘Why, what happened?’ one of us asked.
‘What happened was that I was very much in love. I have been in love many times, but this was the most serious of all.’’
Definitely not one of Tolstoy’s best, to be honest, quite ineffective on the surface. But if you really think why the story is actually written (as I generally do after dragging myself through any obscure art form, not so much of that in this case) you can find out a surprising number of relevant contexts. First of all, it brings up a rather debatable perspective on love: the character who despises to associate any form of physicality (rather sexuality) on matters of love, (
‘The more I was in love the less corporeal was she in my eyes.’
)blatantly renames a temporary infatuation with serious adulation. Also, someone who feels sympathetic affection for a person when he wears inexpensive shoes out of apparent destitution, is repulsed when the same person cries out for help and mercy when publicly beaten and humiliated. Still, at the end of the day, he believes (and hopes others will believe so too) that he did well on dissociating himself from the girl of his dreams at the moment when he was most needed, while having fallen on the desperate obsessive desire to be with her when she was the most admired one in a ball. Questions as to what the hell is actually this story trying to be ambiguous about.
It’s high time to get back here on Goodreads and stay active, I feel. Had a ridiculous couple of months, while in the last four weeks I joined and quit five part-time jobs. No kidding. Do I have anger-management issues that require medical attention? Is that why even a so simple tale is bothering me so much, let alone all of those self-conscious morons who were trying to control the way I write?
I don’t know, honestly. But yeah, trying hard to get back on track.