Collage 55

Lynn Waskelis
from page 117-118 of original text
collage and acrylic on paper
made on 4-2-10

Another low-quality image. Sorry. I'll ask Mark to re-shoot these last two.

Lynn was talking about this project with friends the other night, and they suggested that we hook this blog into Facebook and Twitter. Great idea! I am a total Luddite so will need some technical assistance. I will also ask Mark to access Google Analytics -- I'm curious about how many people are reading this.

I am a meditation student and we are working on "wise speech", one of the eight tenets of Buddhism. Tolstoy must have been a student of wise speech, too. At a minimum, he was an astute observer of it. He gives many examples of characters in dialogue who are so deceitful, so dishonest. Here is the narrator's description of Kutuzov:, "as if he was saying: 'you have every right not to believe me, and I'm even quite indifferent to whether you believe me or not, but you had no cause for telling me so. And that's the whole point.'" The narrator goes on, "he said in a peevish and angry tone, quite contradictory to the flattering meaning of the words he spoke". page 122 -- Lola

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Lola, you're right - I have noticed the same thing in certain characters' dialogue. I just read this passage on p. 465:

"He wanted several times to enter the conversation, but each time his word was thrown out, like a cork out of water; and he was unable to joke along with them.

There was nothing bad or inappropriate in what they said, everything was witty and might have been funny; but that something which constitutes the salt of merriment was not only missing, but they did not even know it existed." ~ W&P, p.465

Prince Andrei is seeing some acquaintances for in a new light, and seeing their emptiness and hypocrisy. And the way the passage is described, I can feel his alienation...
---Lulu