the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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A. B. Goldenveizer : Talks with Tolstoi

Thursday 22 March 1940: 'I read Tolstoy at Breakfast -- Goldenweiser, that I translated with Kot in 1923 & have almost forgotten. Always the same reality -- like touching an exposed electric wire. Even so imperfectly conveyed -- his rugged short cut mind -- to me the most, not sympathetic, but inspiring, rousing, genius in the raw [...] I remember that was my feeling about W. & Peace, read in bed at Twickenham. Old [Sir George] Savage [doctor] picked it up. "Splendid stuff!" & Jean [Thomas, owner of nursing home] tried to admire what was a revelation to me. Its directness, its reality. Yet he's against photographic realism.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      Print: Book

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