The Old Tree and the New Search

While I am getting old, we do have a granddaughter who is quite new (5) to this world. A few days ago, we were in Fort Lauderdale with her on a pirate ship.

Yes, a Pirate Ship is in the harbor there where you can cruise around for an hour and be amused by the monologue of Captain Black Sparrow and his sidekick Neverland Jack. It was fabulous. I wouldn't trade it for a davy jones locker full of fake doubloons.

I thought about those two Pirates, because, as I was about to write this essay, which would be about springtime and an old tree that Tolstoy mentioned in War and Peace, I had to turn to Google for a reference or two.

So, there I am, one little googly pirate-plundering maneuver after another, trolling online  for some literary treasure of buried information . . . whereupon I was guided by Sergy and Larry’s magic wand to the information for which I was searching.

I found it in the New Yorker, Nov 2007, in an article, Movable Types.  In the course of his long article about Tolstoy’s War and Peace, James Wood provided an exact quote of the scene I was looking for. 

The snippet of memory in my mind that had propelled my search to this point of world memory was a scene in which Prince Andrei sees something very special (and this is the phrase I remember from the War and Peace move) a “tree with which we agreed.”

Here's how Wood illumined Tolstoy's twice-seasoned experience:

“ a great, gnarled oak, surrounded by trees already succumbing to spring. He (Prince Andrei feeling at that moment somewhat depressed) feels like the oak: it seems to say , “Spring, and love, and happiness . . . senseless deception!”. . . But,  returning a month later, he cannot at first identify the oak, because it has leafed out like all the other trees.”

In the story of War Peace, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, feeling defeated, had "agreed" with the old tree when it was hesitating to join in with the younger trees' celebration of spring. But a month later, hey!, even old growths sprout a leaf or two (thousand) when spring time rolls around.   Life goes on, even when we get old and grumpy, haha!

So I did pirate the info and the quote from James Wood, who had discovered it buried in Leo Tolstoy's masterful literary treasure. Such is the Search and the Looting of meaningful blog-prospects in our 21st century web of wonder. Read 'em and weep for appreciation!

Glass half-Full