Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and dialog
Our Eugene book group just finished discussing Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. What, you might ask, does this have to do with Beyond War? It is filled with conversations between characters who aren't actually communicating. Tolstoy lets us understand everything in a dialog--what Vronsky thought versus what he said versus how Anna interprets his expression and his words versus what she said--none of it the same. Repeated over and over again for hundreds of pages, this ultimately escalates to tragedy in the book. Steve Kanega, a member of our book group, said that we could call this "a domestic War and Peace." I wish I could have just handed them a copy of Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication!
Groups:
Comments
Anna Karenina is enticing. I
Anna Karenina is enticing. I found myself wanting to get back to “her” everyday once I started reading. And I stayed up later than usual, gave up my other evening activities to be with her story. Powerful, details of humanness as described by Tolstoy that I've not previously encountered. How did I miss this book earlier in life?
The power and tragedy of miscommunication is the fundamental message I heard. So many lives affected by holding back on speaking one's truth and making assumptions about what another loved one said. (Never mind the other people in life).
Yet we all MIScommunicate every day. We don't say what we are thinking, concerned about “keeping the peace”. Or we express ourselves strongly without care to what others are thinking, wanting, needing. We don’t ask clarifying questions as often as would be helpful. We don't work as a team composed of equal participants.
I see the first step in getting beyond war to be one of building skills of communication including empathy for others and empathy for ourselves. It takes training, practice, patience, more training, more practice and more patience. If we don’t have homes, work places, communities and a nation that uses skillful communication, how can we expect our leaders to make and keep peace with other nations?