Les mouettes, par Sándor Márai

Les personnages de ce roman font des monologues tellement longs que je me suis endormie plusieurs fois pendant la lecture. Pas recommandé sauf comme somnifère.

Les erreurs de l'occident, par Alexander Solzhenitsyn

This is the French edition of Mortal Danger.

Three Questions, by Leo Tolstoy

This story is an excellent cure for two kinds of people: 1. procrastinators, and 2. those who have a tendency to overthink things or who believe there is some grand theory that will solve all problems if only they knew it. The king in this story is searching for knowledge that will help make him a better king when consistently applied. The hermit demonstrates how much more simple life is. There is no grand theory. You just have to take life as it comes in all its variety and do your best to figure out what is right for each situation.

Twilight and Moonbeam Alley, by Stefan Zweig

 I find that there is something almost cinematic about Stefan Zweig’s writings. He has a talent for creating scenes in the reader’s imagination that draws them in and makes them feel what the characters are feeling. Both stories in this collection deal with despair, loneliness, and the isolation of human beings from each other.

Twilight is about a high ranking lady who has fallen out of favor with the king. She is obliged to leave Versailles to stay at her estate in a sleepy rural town. Accustomed to being the center of attention because of her great influence at court, she never realized that she was just as dependent on the flattery and attention of other people as they were on her for the favors she could grant. After living a life that revolved around creating an outward image for the public to admire, she is not capable of cultivating an interior life, and the scant social life in the little town leaves her no scope for her talents. She begins to contemplate suicide, after throwing a lavish party at her estate to give her society friends the impression that her banishment did not affect her too much. A deceptive appearance, however, does not change the underlying reality. Zweig’s portrayal of this woman’s despair while walking alone by candlelight through the rooms of a dark empty chateau, with only the occasional appearance of a servant to do something for her, is very vivid.

Moonbeam Alley is about a man whose pride and avarice drove his own wife away. Despite his repentance and willingness to reconcile, she prefers to support herself as a prostitute, for independence, and also to humiliate him. The atmosphere of this story is reminiscent of a film noir movie—all dark alleys, seedy tenements, and moody, dimly lighted little bars that are all but impossible to recognize in the daytime, since they only come alive at night.

Winter Is Coming, by Garry Kasparov

I'm old enough to remember watching the demonstrations and other events associated with the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, but my understanding of what followed (the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, the rise of Vladimir Putin and his stand-in Dmitri Medvedev, aggression in Georgia, the Ukraine, and other places), has been quite sketchy. So I'm glad someone in my history book group suggested this for a book of the month selection. It's very informative about Russian political developments from the 1990's to the mid 2010's and really helped me to make sense of them.

The Dream of Gerontius, by Cardinal John Henry Newman

I listened to a talk by Dr. Peter Kreeft on YouTube called "10 Books No One Should Be Allowed To Die Without Reading", which he had expanded to 26 books, not being able to pick just 10, and this was one.  I can't thank Dr. Kreeft enough for recommending it.

It is a speculation by Cardinal Newman on what death, separation from one's body, traveling towards the presence of God, judgment, and the transition to purgatory might be like for a human soul.  The imagery and language used to describe Gerontius's and his guardian angel's journey are beautiful and otherworldly enough to suggest what it might be like to suddenly not have a body, or to experience time and space differently from what one is used to in this life.

Antigone, by Sophocles

Antigone is well known as the play that indicates that the Greeks understood the primacy of natural law over temporal laws enacted by governments.  Antigone is Oedipus’s elder daughter, who after burying her father, wishes to perform the burial rites for her brothers, both killed in the war.  The problem is that her uncle Creon has passed a law that prohibits anyone, from burying Polynices, her elder brother, seen as a traitor who made war against his own city. Antigone disobeys this law, on the grounds that the laws of the gods are more important than the laws of man, and suffers the consequences.  Like the other two plays, the narrative is simple and direct, the characters lifelike.

The Kreutzer Sonata, by Leo Tolstoy

Probably most people today (and apparently in Tolstoy’s day too) are victims of a particular kind of cognitive dissonance.  They think that they can live a dissolute lifestyle when young, indulging in a series of short-lived relationships where they view their partner as little more than an instrument of pleasure, then do a 180 degree turn on their wedding night to become the perfect, virtuous, considerate spouse who never loses sight of their husband or wife as a full human being just like themselves, to be treated with due respect.  In The Kreutzer Sonata, Tolstoy gives his answer to that proposition: Not. Going. To Happen. 

The protagonist, a wealthy young aristocrat named Pozdnyshev, dreams of the ideal marriage to a virtuous woman, while at the same time living it up with the other debauchees of his social circle.  When he finally does fall in love with a beautiful, virtuous woman and marries her, he finds that the corruption of mind and soul in which he has been marinating himself for years are impossible to get rid of, influencing his behavior and how he thinks about his wife, ultimately bringing them both to tragedy.

Love and the Dignity of Human Life, by Robert Spaemann

This is an interesting trio of essays by philosopher Robert Spaemann.  The first is on the many meanings and paradoxes of love, especially the tension between desirous love and beneficent love.  The second is on human dignity, particularly its inalienability when the person does not consent to its loss. The third on the modern concept of “brain death”—is it the same as the traditional concept of death, and can a “brain dead” person properly be considered dead?   

Since I have no philosophy training, I thought the book would probably be over my head, but Spaemann explains things very clearly.  Highly recommended to clear out the fog that results from the intentionally deceptive wording we are accustomed to using these days to lie to ourselves about reality in order to justify ethical shortcuts.

Oedipus at Colonus, by Sophocles

Of Sophocles’s three Theban plays, this is the one we didn’t read in high school.  It covers the end of Oedipus’s life, years after he has left Thebes, blind, and in shame because of the misfortune he brought to the city.  His two sons are at war over who will be the next king of Thebes, and his two daughters are really the only ones left he can rely on.  Having learned his lesson on how unwise it is to try to cheat fate, he is obedient to the prophecies when choosing his last resting place—at Colonus, near Athens—and resists entreaties from his two sons to settle near one of them, since there is a new prophecy that says that whomever Oedipus goes to live with will win the war.  I didn’t find this one as interesting as the other two plays in the series.