Nature, Forbidden Words, and Tolstoy

It has been a long time since I read Tolstoy’s, Anna Karenina. I picked up my old copy today and thought how I would love to read it again, until I asked myself how I’d pull that off given I have an entire library of books I have yet to read, never mind a few of Tolstoy’s to still finish — War and Peace comes to mind!

I also realised that, up until the last few years, I had resisted spoiling my books by taking the pencil or pen to underline words or passages that caught my fancy. But I happened upon a page where I had indeed underlined a sentence, and it sparked an idea to write something brief around it.

Now, given the insanely zealous copyright laws around all modern versions of old texts, I can only paraphrase this line — unless I wanted to go to the public domain and seek out something on Wikepedia, which I prefer not to do because I have my own valued copies. Given I am a stickler for doing the right thing when it comes to my work, I will paraphrase appropriately.

Early on in Part III of the novel, Sergei Ivanovich and his half-brother, Konstantin Levin, ride through the woods on their way to the meadows. Sergei was taken with the beauty of it all, and began to describe the trees, changing colours of the leaves, the blooming of young shoots, and the light surrounding them. But his brother was not keen to hear nature described in words.

For Konstantin, words could not capture the beauty of nature, and it only served to take away from it rather than enhance it.

This prompted me to consider where I sat with that view — I agree with it. I, too, find it almost impossible to put Nature into Words.

How can we, really? The two are almost opposing forces.

Beetle resting peacefully on a splendid red petal. Image courtesy of my daughter.

What words can possibly capture the brilliant colours of the magnificent peacock, or an Australian lorikeet, or even a flamingo with its more pale tones to that of the first two? Or even that of a small beetle resting on a flaring flower petal — which is the photo included here, taken by my daughter.

I admit that my forte is not in that level of detail, but perhaps some writers are skilled enough to accomplish such a task.

Anyway, this is a whimsical piece; inspired by a brilliant novel, written by a gifted writer. And that in itself is a wondrous thing — that there is a limitless amount of inspiration we can draw just from one simple sentence in a book.

While we may not be able to truly capture Nature through the written word, we can still describe our thoughts on just about any object around us.