Book Christmas 6
- SML
- Dec 6, 2015
- 1 min read
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
This playful scene interrupts a rather tense and melodramatic family Christmas, but it's also unlike most festive holiday scenes we read, what with the unusual costumes and aristocratic veil of patronizing disdain thrown over the whole scene:
The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as bears, Turks, innkeepers, and ladies -- frightening and funny -- bringing in with them the cold from outside and a feeling of gaiety, crowded, at first timidly, into the anteroom, then hiding behind one another they pushed into the ballroom where, shyly at first and then more and more merrily and heartily, they started singing, dancing, and playing Christmas games. The countess, when she had identified them and laughed at their costumes, went into the drawing room. The count sat in the ballroom, smiling radiantly and applauding the players. The young people had disappeared.
Half an hour later there appeared among the other mummers in the ballroom an old lady in a hooped skirt—this was Nicholas. A Turkish girl was Petya. A clown was Dimmler. An hussar was Natasha, and a Circassian was Sonya with burnt-cork mustache and eyebrows.
After the condescending surprise, nonrecognition, and praise, from those who were not themselves dressed up, the young people decided that their costumes were so good that they ought to be shown elsewhere.
コメント