Since my days in St. Benedicts where we were taught either the first line or the first paragraph or the first page summed up what we would be reading about and the way, or color a story was going to be presented, and so, not only have I smiled reading the poem followed by the descriptive exchange between our Gentleman and his adversaries which highlights the poem but, where various aspects of the poem caught my attention in order to catch a few alluded bits, I had to look them up for their symbolic meaning - after all this is poetry
First the title just has to be a nod to Proust
Things Remembered, but also to, Wadsworth's Ode speaking to the transitory nature of all things;
THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
(and so forth) and now more from Towles poem that tells us more than the surface words.
A melody in the semblance of a mountain cat. Ah the juxtaposition with such irony between a melody and not a household cat but a mountain cat - here we would call them cougars or a puma - in Russia mountain cats are silent, elusive and what really catches the irony and therefore strengthens the inward looking, self aggrandizing and therefore transitory nature of all the sound of a Revolution is the story of how hunters/poachers captured mountain cats - they first capture the cubs and then litter their trail with mirrors. Chasing these kidnappers the mountain cat is attracted to the mirrors and stops to gaze at them, thinking it sees the cubs, as a man when he is dawn into the devil's traps, lead us to see things that do not exist, creating vain illusion.
With the eye-averting peeling of a pear The pear was already during the Homeric age sacred to Venus. suggests the female womb and Juno and statues of Hero were carved in pear wood. In the Psalms the taste of a pear is alluded to the sweetness of virtue. For some, the pear is identified with the famous tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Later during the Middle Ages the pear was no longer favored since the tree's wood easily rots. There is a painting of the Madonna holding out a pear branch to Jesus alluding to redemption.
Since our Gentleman rides the cusp before and after the Revolution his references could include Christian symbolism and his visit to Paris would connect the art and poetry that was an easy coupling between Russia and France before the Revolution.
With a bow I bid goodnight not the words typical of a peasant or a revolutionary and so we know the story will be about a gentleman's viewpoint.
Through Terrace Doors which suggests open air and a
simple garden of a
temperate Spring -
door usually in poetry suggesting an opening to a new life. Compared to
Autumn leaves,
Ashes, and the
blue pagoda Chinoiserie, the pseudo-Chinese decorative style which flourished in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, a sort of populist art form.
Vronsky's saddlebags in Anna Karenina, Vronsky gives 200 rubles to the watchman's family. ... After Anna's husband accuses her of having an affair.
Sonnet XXX - Bellamarie - remember - who knew our struggle through all 154 would come in handy
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.
Not on twenty-seven red; 7- in the west is seen as a lucky number, and 27 contains a 7. People who like covering the sevens with, a 'Finales Cheval Plein' bet, will end up covering 7, 17 and 27 with one easy bet. The no. 27 is a red number.
We catch with Rostov's returns, his wit, his use of droll quips - he is buttoned up, not open to the thinking of Vyshinsky, representing the Party - his association has been with the upper class of old Russia and his "remembrance of things past" under a guise of manners, cultured learning that charm, achieves a small success, (his life
) from self satisfied change agents, who do not appreciate their temporary hold on history.
So that is what I will be looking for in this story - examples of how this gentleman of charm shows us the old Russia dancing around the Soviets while hidden behind doors where he controls his life rather than, being controlled as those on the other side of the door. His world may be small but it is his to use as he will. There will be no Sturm und Drang - or characters that bludgeon their way through life for power.
