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The Blue-Gray Dog

Started by Roads, October 05, 2012, 11:34:12 PM

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Roads

I've been reading War and Peace for about a year now and am getting pretty close to the end...about time I know. :)
Anyway it is pretty much a slog for me reading the translated version of it but still Tolstoy has his moments.  This paragraph about the blue-gray dog I found particularly appealing.  I think maybe Tolstoy wanted to be like that blue-gray dog.  I told my sons my life was pretty much like the dog's now and they couldn't see the relationship but Simutrans is a chip and a straw to me.


Quote
Early in the morning of the sixth of October Pierre went out of the shed, and on returning stopped by the door to play with a little blue-gray dog, with a long body and short bandy legs, that jumped about him.  This little dog lived in their shed, sleeping beside Karataev at night; it sometimes made excursions into the town but always returned again.  Probably it had never had an owner, and it still belonged to nobody and had no name.  The French called it Azor; the soldier who told stories called it Femgalka; Karataev and others called it Gray, or sometimes Flabby.  Its lack of a master, a name, or even of a breed or any definite color did not seem to trouble the blue-gray dog in the least.  Its furry tail stood up firm and round as a plume, its bandy legs served it so well that it would often gracefully lift a hind leg and run very easily and quickly on three legs, as if disdaining to use all four.  Everything pleased it.  Now it would roll on its back, yelping with delight, now bask in the sun with a thoughtful air of importance, and now frolic about playing with a chip of wood or a straw.

isidoro

I started to read it, but I failed to finish it up...  What about this one?
http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/L/LeonLuisde/LifeRemoved.htm

The first lines:
Quote
How tranquil is the life
Of him who, shunning the vain world's uproar,
May follow, free from strife,
The hidden path, of yore
Chosen by the few who conned true wisdom's lore!

Roads

Yep Isidoro, I think both are talking the same idea.  Society hates individualists.  It tolerates them where the military does not. It even claims to like them at times but it does not.  What society wants is conformity.  These men are saying something that it took me the greater part of my life to learn - a man has to find his own way in life - what suits him regardless of what people say.  Society is a sea prone to change and storms.  I decided a good while ago to take my little sail boat off that sea and move it to calmer waters.

Thanks for the link.  I had never heard of Luis de Leon and I like his thinking and his poetry.