Lot’s Wife by Anna Akhmatova
I’m currently reading Anna Karenina for book club. Perhaps the Russian influence made me look for an Akhmatova poem. This one reminds me of Mrs. Lot by Vassar Miller.
Lot’s Wife
By Anna Akhmatova
And the just man trailed God’s shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
“It’s not too late, you can still look back
at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed.”
A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound…
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.
I read Anna Karenina for the first time last January for my on-line book club, in the newish Pevear & Volokhnosky translation. Nothing but amazing. Immediately went high on my ‘all-time favorites’ list.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/151.Anna_Karenina
Philip,
I forgot to mention that Anna Karenina is one of a very short list of books that I started but never finished. Granted, I was in seventh grade (12-13 years old). (Of course, my younger sister read the whole thing in seventh grade, so what does that say?) Anyway, I have always kept it on my list, and I’m glad my online book club has chosen it. I’m listening to an audio version, narrated by Davina Porter, and translated by Constance Garnett. I’m on disc 6/30 and enjoying it so far!
I don’t think “Anna Karenina” could be the same book at all for even a precocious 7th-grader and an adult. Maybe even not the same book for a man and a woman, though much of the book uncovered a shared human experience despite enormous differences in class, region, age, and gender.
Since my commute by car or bus is rather brief, the only two audio books I’ve listened to were the second installment of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series, on a long family vacation (wonderful for the car!) and “Desolation Island” by Patrick O’Brian, another of my favorite authors, just for the experience of “hearing” the story as read by Patrick Tull.
The only good thing about the 1.5 hours I spend in the car daily is the rate at which I whiz through audiobooks. I’ve also listened to audiobooks in the house while making baby blankets. I can read a book in less time than I can listen to it, but I’ve been spending so much time cooking/baking that I haven’t been reading as much as I sometimes do.