"My Country is Russian Literature"

The 19th century Russian exile Vladimir Korolenko said : "My country is not Russia, my country is Russian Literature". Maybe I too - although excluded rather than exiled - will say some day : "My country is not England, my country is English Literature" !

On Marriage, War and Peace

In Part I of Tolstoy's "War and Peace", the hero, Pierre, is advised by his friend Prince Andrei :

"Never, never marry, my dear fellow. That is my advice to you - don't marry until you can say to yourself that you have done all that you are capable of doing, and until you cease to love the woman of your choice and see her plainly as she really is; or else you will be making a cruel and irreparable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing. Otherwise everything that is fine and noble in you will be thrown away. It will be wasted on trifles. Yes, yes, yes ! Don't look at me with such surprise. If you marry while you still have any hopes of yourself you will be made to feel that at every step for you it is all over, every door closed but that of the drawing room, where you will stand on the same level as the court lackey and the idiot...."

Good advice, perhaps, for the young men (and women !) of today who find marriage and family life so difficult to bear, and, like Prince Andrei, prefer conflict to the dullness of domesticity.