Friday, July 21, 2006

Go on, use "finical" in a sentence

"'Mon cher,' Princess Marya might say, entering at such a moment, 'little Nikolai cannot go out today; it is very cold.'
'If it were not,' Prince Andrei at such moments would dryly retort, 'he could go out in just his smock, but as it is cold, you have only to dress him in the warm clothes that have been designed for the purpose. That is what follows from the fact that it is cold; not that a child who needs fresh air should be kept indoors,' he said with finical logic as if to punish someone for all the secret, illogical forces at work within him." --- p. 513


OK, I love Prince Andrei. I just do. He's even quoted now on my other blog. Now that I'm back from the East and all, I changed my quote over there. Anyway, I went through a lot emotionally when I was in Korea reading about Natasha and Andrei, and I just want to say that I love him. I relate to him, often. I totally and completely rooted for him, even when I was sure (rightly so!) Tolstoy was telling me there was seriously something between Natasha and Pierre. I just knew that Natasha's dalliance couldn't be it between Natasha and Prince Andrei. I just knew it.

Have I mentioned how many parallels there are between Natasha and Andrei and a certain real-life relationship with which I am very familiar?

I digress. So here we have Andrei's sister fretting about his little son Nikolai going out in the cold. Now, as someone who has been a firm believer that the "you'll catch cold" nonsense is no more than an old wives' tale, until I recently acquired pneumonia for which I thoroughly enjoy blaming Ding Ding Dang forcing us to march up a mountain in a cold, spring rain, I passionately agree with Andrei here. Put a coat on the kid and let him go outside, eh?

The larger point is logic, however. How many times do we (I) declare that something is so wholly patently illogical etc. rant rant when trying to squelch the illogical forces within?

I was pondering this quote when I looked down and noted that the page number was 513, and 5/13 is of course my birthday (that's May 13, American style, for you Euro etc. types who write date then month. Sorry!)

I thought, how fun! People could open War and Peace (my edition, recall, is ISBN: 0451523261) to the page whose number "is" their birthday and see if it contains a profound cosmic message for them!

The other day as I was going through all of my books to get rid of them, one of those I felt compelled to keep was an oversize paperback Stars-Birthday-Astrology type guide that has 366 entries telling you all about you based on your birthday. It's just so FUN to look up people's days and see how they compare. I thought maybe I could use The Book like that, too.

Illogical forces are currently at work within me. To whom am I dryly retorting when I should be attending to the fallacies of my days?

1 comment:

marciano guerrero said...

Wow, what a lovely commentary! I love WandP...and the Rostov family. My mom asked me to imitate Tolstoy's prose...and I copies many pages just practice writing. God bless.