Art and Science Involved

There are so many scenes in “War and Peace” that stand alone, masterfully. The one we’ve just read this evening is poor Count Nikolai Rostov’s has lost at cards to his cruel friend, Fedya Dolokov. Knock on wood, but that’s one sin that never had much of any appeal to me.  I’ve gone to Vegas, with clients and my approach is to take out $100.00 and go lose it as fast as I can, so I can be done with the who charade early. 

I appreciate that there is art and science involved, but it doesn’t hold any allure nor appeal for me.  Other arts and other sciences are more interesting.  But that doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate how the next man might get the lure fastened in his mouth and then tug and pull at it until he was slowly destroyed. 

Because the process is so intoxicating, the figure Rostov initially looses seems large.  But as he precedes to ever greater and greater losses it beckons as a reminder of a playful sum that he could have easily covered the loss of, rather than the astronomical figure, he is ultimately led to wager and lose. 

Distraught, he returns home and confronts his family in a daze.  And though he’s promised his father he wouldn’t gamble again he knows he must explain to him what has happened, and ask him, beg him if necessary, for help.  He tries to play it off as something that happens to everyone.  That his father ultimately agrees proves even more painful for Rostov than a proper confrontation.  It isn’t clear that either man has learned much of any lesson.  In the same evening’s read we watch as Denisov proposes to the pubescent and utterly confused Natasha. These scenes are remarkable, as standalone tales and effortlessly stitched into a lifetime of fabric. 

Tuesday, 3/28/17