‘When you have changed every word in a sentence from Russian to English, have thereby altered the sense a little,the sound, weight,and accent of the words in relation to each other completely, nothing remains except a crude and coarsened version of the sense.Thus treated, the great Russian writers are like men deprived by an earthquake or a railway accident not only of all their clothes, but also of something subtler and more important- their manners,the idiosyncrasies of their characters. What remains is, as the English have proved by the fanaticism of their admiration,something very powerful and impressive, but it is difficult to feel sure, in view of these mutilations,how far we can trust ourselves not to impute, to distort,to read into them an emphasis which is false.
They have lost their clothes, we say, in some terrible catastrophe, for some such figure as that describes the simplicity, the humanity, startled out of all effort to hide and disguise its instincts, which russian literature, whether it is due to translation or to some more profound cause, makes upon us. ‘(The Common Reader, page 220)
Woolf goes on to say that ‘the assumption that in a world bursting with misery the chief call upon us is to understand our fellow sufferers,”and not with the mind- for it is easy with the mind- but with the heart”- this is the cloud which broods above the whole of Russian literature, which lures us from our own parched brilliancy and scorched thoroughfares to expand in its shade- and of course with disastrous results.’ (page 221)
‘We become awkward and self conscious;denying our own qualities, we write with an affectation of goodness and simplicity which is nauseating in the extreme.’
If I think about Woolf’s image, there is a man who has survived something which has caused the death of many others. This man is alive but naked. He has nothing left to protect him from any of the world’s harshness. He is completely vulnerable. And he is there, before our eyes. There is no reason to think that he is any particular sort of man, not cunning or kind, or containing evil intent. He is in some ways the same man he was before the catastrophe- perhaps he has habits of keeping his thoughts to himself, or of helping the weak. Perhaps he is in the habit of being dishonest with himself about his motives, or of following every path that leads to pleasure. Perhaps he has a sweet singing voice?
All of these possibilities matter and at the same time they dont. They matter because he will keep being himself, turning every meeting he has with the world in the direction of his best and worst qualities.But they also dont matter. He just is whoever he is, and according to Woolf’s metaphor, it is our job to let our hearts feel sympathy for him.
Tolstoy she says notices everything.
‘One shuts ones eyes to escape the feeling of pleasure and fear’ she says ( page 230)
‘Life dominates Tolstoi as the soul dominates Dostoyevsky.There is always at the ecntre of all the brilliant and flashing petals of the flower this scorpion,”Why live?”‘ (page 231)