11.10.08
Family Happiness by Tolstoy
The school bookstore just went out of business so Chrissy and I picked up a few books on sale. One was a collection of short stories by Tolstoy (think War and Peace). The first story, Family Happiness, was about a young upper-class Russian girl whose parents recently died. According to the introduction, Tolstoy was working on his ability to get inside the heads of his characters so he challenged himself by writing about a young girl on the verge of being married. I have to say, he nailed it! (Not that I believe myself to be an expert on the inner workings of young women’s minds. It read like the best of Jane Austin, and I consider her an expert on the subject.)
In this work he explored the meaning and experience of young love and how that transitions over the early years of marriage. I appreciated that his story did not conclude with a marriage, as so many of these types of stories do, but explored the first few years of marital bliss. (I always want to spell marital “martial”… I wonder what that means?) Since all stories need conflict the early years were not all bliss, but he did give the lovely couple three months of happiness before things started to come apart.
His take on love, forgiveness and regret were brilliant. Love is not all mushy mush, but some of that is fun and necessary indeed. As people mature their love cannot help but change, and it is useless trying to recapture what has been lost. Nevertheless, love can roll with life and make every season beautiful in its own way.