On the weekend I heard for the second time the most wonderful quotation and this time I’m writing it down.  It was in a program about the career of the Italian film-maker, Roberto Rossellini, and the movie, Rome, Open City which he made in 1945.  The quotation comes in the last line in the program when Rossellini’s asked to compare his development between Rome, Open City and the film he made the year after, Paisà.  He says in the earlier film there is plenty of seduction, because wherever there is sentimentality there is seduction, but by the time of the later film he wanted something more pure.  He says he no longer wanted ‘to seduce, to persuade’, but ‘to offer,’ which is ‘a completely different thing.’

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Heard Bob Ellis on the radio a little while ago.  When asked for his views on the Prime Minister, he replied, ‘the mountain has laboured and brought forth … a clerk.’

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Tolstoy, in the meantime, is brilliant.  Take for instance the latest episode when Levin joins the peasants to scythe the meadows to make hay, and exhilarated by the physical work and envious of the sexual affection between one of the young peasants and his new wife, he starts thinking that this is the only way to live and impetuously starts dreaming about how he can dispose of his current life. 

He’s all resolved to change everything immediately, and starts walking home after spending the short summer night dreaming in the mown meadow, listening to the singing of the peasants who are also camping in the meadow, and then he hears a carriage approach and he looks in and sees Kitty.  Immediately, the foolishness and futility of his feverish planning is revealed.  All his resolution vanishes in an instant, exactly as we’ve experienced a hundred times in our own lives.  And it’s so right that Tolstoy would have Kitty in the carriage — out of place, unexpected, shockingly accessible — just when Levin’s made up his mind to renounce her.

And all that had troubled Levin during that sleepless night, all the decisions he had taken, all of it suddenly vanished.  He recalled with disgust his dreams of marrying a peasant woman.  There, in that carriage quickly moving away and bearing to the other side of the road, was the only possibility of resolving the riddle of his life that had been weighing on him so painfully of late.

Some other quotations from this part of the book:

The singing women approached Levin, and it seemed to him that a thundercloud of merriment was coming upon him.

Some of those muzhiks who had argued most of all with him over the hay, whom he had offended or who had wanted to cheat him, those same muzhiks greeted him cheerfully and obviously did not and could not have any malice towards him, nor any repentance or even memory of having wanted to cheat him.  It was all drowned in the sea of cheerful common labour.  God had given the day, God had given the strength. Both day and strength had been devoted to labour and in that lay the reward.  And whom was this labour for?  What would its fruits be?  These considerations were irrelevant and insignificant.

… the thought came clearly to Levin that it was up to him to change that so burdensome, idle, artificial and individual life he lived into this laborious, pure and common, lovely life.

Shamming in anything at all can deceive the most intelligent, perceptive person; but the most limited child will recognise it and feel aversion, no matter how artfully it is concealed.

Surrounded by all her bathed, wet-headed children, Darya Alexandrovna, a kerchief on her head, was driving up to the house when the coachman said:
‘Some gentleman’s coming, looks like the one from Pokrovskoe.’  Darya Alexandrovna peered ahead and rejoiced, seeing the familiar figure of Levin in a grey hat and grey coat coming to meet them.  She was always glad to see him, but she was especially glad now that he would see her in all her glory.  No one could understand her grandeur better than Levin.

He considered Russia a lost country, something like Turkey, and the government of Russia so bad that he never allowed himself any serious criticism of its actions …

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Image: Anna Magnani, star of Rome, Open City