МЫСЛЬ ВНЕ ВРЕМЕНИ И ГРАНИЦ

8 Х. Бадрул, журналист, консультант по языкам, литературе и по общественным наукам Мумбаи, Индия ANNA KARENINA: FROM YASNAYA POLYANA TO THE WORLD STAGE * Immersed in the realm of words, one of the greatest writers of all time, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy went on to create a 90-volume legacy for generations to come. He bequeathed a massive treasure trove of more than 300,000 rough works, photos, unfinished writings and documents, of which 71,487 were manuscripts alone. More than 50,000 letters that he had received from all over the world along with 22,000 books in 40 different languages make up his personal library at Yasnaya Polyana. His literary genius firmly established his estate in the Tula region as a pilgrim centre for millions of lovers of art. Tolstoy mastered the art of polishing rough sounds and words to perfection until they became music. He evoked a kind of fear in readers – and in people who visited him – as he seemed to understand their unspoken thoughts. Many art critics and composers, including Pyotr Tchaikovsky, did not hesitate to call him perspicacious (‘cepдцeeд’ which translates to ‘a connoisseur of the human soul’). As we read Tolstoy, we are seized with the feeling that we are reading the story of our lives; as if we were in it, and, at times, as though we had written it. The flow of fluid Russian, the richness of the psychoanalytical content resonates in the memory, creating a kind of music that fills the void between the writer and the reader. There has never been and will never be a list of great works of literature without Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Resurrection, The Death of Ivan Ilych , to name but a few. A novel by Tolstoy, in the words of Matthew Arnold, is not a work of art but a piece of life. Isaac Babel commented that ‘if the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.’ In his major writings, Tolstoy vividly portrays his characters’ struggles to understand the purpose of life and also gives them the liberty to develop by themselves. It is pertinent to note that a few factors impacted Tolstoy’s journey as a human being and as a writer: the death of both his parents early in his childhood, his disillusion with formal education, his participation in the Siege of Sevastopol as an army officer, his two trips to Europe in 1857 and 1860-61, his being witness to a public execution by guillotine in Paris, a period of almost two decades of a happy and tranquil married life when he produced two of his masterpieces—War and Peace and Anna Karenina and finally, his close interaction with peasants and common men. His perception of happiness is beautifully illustrated in the opening lines of Anna Karenina: “All happy families resemble each other; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” * Эта статья была первоначально опубликована Национальным центром исполнительских ис- кусств в Мумбаи, Индия, в ноябрьском номере журнала ON Stage (том 12, выпуск 4), который является официальным журналом этого центра.