During these last few days, I've been wandering through Italian cathedrals, contemplating hundreds of paintings, sculptures, and stained glass windows meant to reveal a deeper understanding of humanity and the divine. And in the evenings I've been reading Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's translation of Anna Karenina.
Art--at its best--can elicit a flow state, and during these moments of flow, we are focused and sensitive to things we don't normally notice. Tolstoy succeeds in summoning the same sense of vitality and verity that made my head swim when I circled Giambologna's sculpture Rape of the Sabine Women in Florence. In the novel, scenes stir and vibrate with tensile power. For example, one can hear the rhythmic, sweeping sounds of the scythes as men glean a field, or the halting breath of Anna as she watches her young son approach her in the garden. As we breathe with Anna, we feel the substantial ache of her desires and her failures; we also learn something about humanity and the earnest yearning for the divine.
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