Watching A Gentleman in Moscow and musing on what it means today...

I've been watching the series adapted from one of my favorite books, Amor Towles' A Gentleman in Moscow. It's pretty good; appropriately dark when it should be, especially in the third episode that shows the rise of Stalin and how otherwise "good" people got hoodwinked to do execrable things in the name of helping "Mother Russia." It feels prescient. The novel is beautifully, lyrically written, and I am almost inclined to read it over again, just to immerse myself in really good writing. But my To Be Read pile is huge. And I have three books of poetry to review. I need to get back into that harness rather sooner than later. 

I can't quite form enough words to comment on the proposed Cabinet picks for the incoming regime, but I will say this: it's never worked well in the history of the world, let alone in the United States, or even in our own smaller lives, to put unqualified people in positions that they are clearly not suited for. Too many lives are at stake, the national economy is at stake, our global relations are at stake-- and we will likely have --at best-- chaos. The far-reaching effects will ooze into our lives, even here in the northern reaches of "nowhere," and we will have to be resilient (again), and patient (very hard), and clever.

In episode three of A Gentleman in Moscow, Rostov discovers that all the labels have been removed from every bottle of wine in the hotel's wine cellar; to know what vintages are best with what foods is deemed classist, and thus, to level the playing field, the only choices allowed are "red or white." All hallmarks of culture, of taste, of beauty are removed-- a beautiful painting on the wall above the balcony is whitewashed over, for example. He is living the life of a prisoner in a hotel, but one that is systematically being transformed into the image of the new Russia, an image that reduces to rubble all that would indicate a glorious and cultured past. Art, music, literature--all knowledge of things that capture the soul and spirit--are deemed sources of inequality, and the State will remove all things that might make anyone feel superior or intellectual (even if they are better educated) because those things were not afforded to the working class. No one will have them; only Stalin's views are the allowed ones, and the State will move into their new future and role without any ties to the past.

This feels all too familiar, really. I only hope that we can keep those treasures that make us who we are as a people close to our hearts and solidly in our minds. We'll need them.

C

“...our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunting; ...if we persevere and remain generous of heart, we may be granted a moment of lucidity—a moment in which all that has happened to us suddenly comes into focus as a necessary course of events, even as we find ourselves on the threshold of the life we had been meant to lead all along.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow