Hadji Murat and Noam Chomsky
1. “… when we came to the camp, Hamzat led the khan into the tent. And I stayed with the horses. I was at the foot of the hill when shooting began in Hamzat’s tent….
Tag: Leo Tolstoy
After Kishinev
I’ve shared this story with hundreds of friends and students over the years. After a pogrom in Russia in 1903, the author was invited to contribute to a literary collection to be circulated to aid…
Beautiful and Toxic Multitudes
Jewish because reading Dostoyevsky at 13 I write poems at restaurant tables Lower East Side, perfect delicatessen intellectual –Allen Ginsberg, Yiddishe Kopf Prompted by a recent tragedy, I turned again to the conclusion of Fyodor…
Not So Random Entries, Commonplace Moleskine/5
7. Our monkey-minds are like these agitated monsters that are wanting this and collecting that, always grabbing, grabbing, grabbing. The process of cooling out that agitation takes time, and that’s hard for the agitated mind…
“What Am I Living My Life for?” Ivan Ilyich and Ikigai- A Summer 2018 Reading/Writing Class
“I see that all of my work amounts to nothing, that my ten volumes aren’t worth anything!” —Guy de Maupassant, after reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich David Barsamian: You had something in mind in…
“What Am I Living My Life for?” Ivan Ilyich and Ikigai- A Summer 2018 Reading/Writing Class
“I see that all of my work amounts to nothing, that my ten volumes aren’t worth anything!” —Guy de Maupassant, after reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich David Barsamian: You had something in mind in…
Tolstoy’s List
After coming across this acknowledgement of influence, a goal for this spring–re-engaging with Tolstoy.
The Good News of Translation, 3.17.2017
Opera excepted, I never asked myself, in those early years of reading literature in translation, what I was missing. It was as if I felt it were my job, as a passionate reader, to see…
Be Here Now
In one of Tolstoy’s parables, a peasant is plowing a field. The narrator asks the old man what he would do if he knew that Death was coming to take him away within the hour….
On Ivan Ilyich
ahamkara [aham, “I”; kara, “maker”] Self-will, the ego mask, the principle in people which makes them feel separate from others. — Diana Morrison, A Glossary of Sanskrit from The Spiritual Tradition of India The Death of Ivan…