Collage 269

Team Tolstoy is on break! We had a fantastic show which had a brief but intense 3-week run at the Atlantic Work Gallery in East Boston. We took it down Saturday evening. We may get together to have a studio day on Friday December 31, depending on who's in town, but most likely we will start afresh the first Friday in January.

I had been reading the book, but put it down again recently after Natasha almost eloped with bad-boy Anatole, Helene's brother. Anatole was assisted in his plot by the other true bad-boy, Dolokhov. It is unclear whether Prince Andrei forgave her. The one who is really in love with her is Pierre. Anyway, that's skipping ahead.

On this page (Volume II, Part Three, Chapter VI and VII),. Pierre has become the head of the Peterburg Masons.

"In the daze of his activities and diversions, however, Pierre began to feel after a year that the ground of Masonry, on which he stood, was giving way all the more under his feet the more firmly he tried to stand on it. Along with that, he felt that the further the ground he stood on gave way under his feet, the more involuntarily he was bound to it. When he was starting out in Masonry, he experienced the feeling of a man who trustingly sets foot on the smooth surface of a swamp. Placing one foot on it, he sank. To verify fully the firmness of the ground on which he stood, he placed the other foot on it and sank still more, became stuck, and now involuntarily walked knee-deep through the swamp."

Isn't that the way it is, sometimes? You know that something is not right, that you should get out, get away, yet you stay and become more embroiled in a bad situation. Why do people do that? --Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 545-546 of original text
collage, wax, acrylic paint
made 10/15/10
page 433-434 of Pevear/Volokhonsky translation