A Nice Sentence

Page 421

“Prince Andrei got up and went to open the window.  As soon as he opened the shutters, moonlight, as if it had been watching at the window a long time waiting for that, burst into the room.”

Not only is it a beautiful personification of nature but it captures Prince Andrei’s state perfectly. 

I was moved.

Ceremonies

I just read in Newsweek or Time or Redbook or somewhere official an article about the two women behind the Republican National Convention and Democratic National Convention that are coming up next month.  They both said that they’d worked 10-12 hours/day for months already and as the events are just around the corner, they will work 14-16 hour days.  That’s a lot of work to go into a convention.  And I understand that potentially this event could go down in history if something singular happens at the convention or to your candidate so you’ve got to be prepared.   But that’s a lot of work.  And then I thought of things like the Emmys and Grammys and MTV Retardedest Teenager Awards and considered all of the preparatory work that goes into them.

On page 414 (I’ve taken to dog-earing pages for future posts) Rostov describes a ceremony that took place with Napoleon.   Napoleon wanted to give a ribbon and silver medal to the bravest Russian soldier.  Neither Alexander nor Kozlovsky was expecting this.  They looked around and Kozlovsky (the commander/general/guy in charge of the soldiers) picked some guy named Lazarev.  Lazarev had no idea that his name would be called and didn’t know what to do.  He started to walk forward and then stopped only when his comrades told him to not make a fool of himself.   Then he just stood there looking at Napoleon until Napoleon turned his horse around and rode away.  I thought that it must have been a funny scene.  Then later it talks about how Alexander had to scrounge up some award to give to some unsuspecting Frenchman. 

The contrast between the War and Peace ceremony and the Grammys, for instance, was shocking.  Months of preparation or a whim.  Several famous and politically correct nominees for each award decked out in designer frocks or some guy.  Prepared acceptance speeches or awkward roaming and rambling.  A 3 hour tv special or an impromptu 15 minutes. 

I don’t think Napoleon was such a bad guy after all!