I'm considering ordering a bookcase. The amount of books I have that don't fit on my measly two bookshelves is beginning to overwhelm me. I don't appreciate the desk clutter. Anyways, it would help to start collecting for my future home library now (yes, that's my dream for the future. A home library).

Tuesday, October 21st. Currently Reading: None, waiting to start a new book.

I have a suspiciously low amount of work, which means I have projects due soon I have to worry about. I struggle with far-off due dates, because "October 24th" is weeks away until it's this Friday.

To-do:

Study for math test tomorrow

Revise English assignment, which was handed back today with feedback. Ouch.

Yeah, that's it. It's weird, and one of my goals this year is to get better at arbitrarily studying when I don't have actual "work" to do. Previously, I've been able to skate by just doing classwork, but it won't fly in college, and I need to tackle the issue now while I still have time.

Hadji Murad, 1848

ㅤHis friends, Panóv and Serógin, came in; but Avdéev continued to lie in the same position, looking before him with surprise. It was long before he recognized his comrades, though his eyes gazed straight at them.

ㅤ“I say, Peter, have you no message to send home?” said Panóv.

ㅤAvdéev did not answer, though he was looking Panóv in the face.

ㅤ“I say, haven’t you any orders to send home?” again repeated Panóv, touching Avdéev’s cold large-boned hand.

ㅤAvdéev seemed to come to.

ㅤ“Ah! … Panóv!”

ㅤ“Yes, here…. I’ve come! Have you nothing for home? Serógin would write a letter.”

ㅤ“Serógin …” said Avdéev, moving his eyes with difficulty towards Serógin, “will you write? … Well then, write so: ‘Your son,’ say, ‘Peter, has given orders that you should live long.1 He envied his brother’ … I told you about that to-day … ‘and now he is himself glad. Don’t worry him. Let him live. God grant it him. I am glad!’ Write that.”

ㅤHaving said this he was long silent, with his eyes fixed on Panóv.

ㅤ“And did you find your pipe?” he suddenly asked. Panóv did not reply.

ㅤ“Your pipe … your pipe! I mean, have you found it?” Avdéev repeated.

ㅤ“It was in my bag.”

ㅤ“That’s right! … Well, and now give me a candle…. I am going to die,” said Avdéev.

ㅤJust then Poltorátsky came in to inquire after his soldier.

ㅤ“How goes it, my lad! Badly?” said he.

ㅤAvdéev closed his eyes and shook his head negatively. His broad-cheeked face was pale and stern. He did not reply, but again said to Panóv,—

ㅤ“Bring a candle…. I am going to die.”

ㅤA wax taper was placed in his hand, but his fingers would not bend, so it was placed between them, and was held up for him.

ㅤPoltorátsky went away, and five minutes later the orderly put his ear to Avdéev’s heart and said that all was over.

ㅤAvdéev’s death was described in the following manner in the report sent to Tiflis,—

ㅤ“23rd Nov.—Two companies of the Kurín Regiment advanced from the fort on a wood-felling expedition. At midday a considerable number of mountaineers suddenly attacked the wood-fellers. The sharpshooters began to retreat, but the 2nd Company charged with the bayonet and overthrew the mountaineers. In this affair two privates were slightly wounded and one killed. The mountaineers lost about a hundred men killed and wounded.”

ㅤYet his strong body continued the thing that he had commenced. Gathering together his last strength, he rose from behind the bank, fired his pistol at a man who was just running towards him, and hit him. The man fell. Then Hadji Murád got quite out of the ditch, and, limping heavily, went dagger in hand straight at the foe.

ㅤSome shots cracked, and he reeled and fell. Several militiamen with triumphant shrieks rushed towards the fallen body. But the body that seemed to be dead, suddenly moved. First the uncovered bleeding shaven head rose; then, with hands holding to the trunk of the tree, the body rose. He seemed so terrible that those who were running towards him stopped short. But suddenly a shudder passed through him; he staggered away from the tree and fell on his face, streched out at full length, like a thistle that had been mown down, and he moved no more.

ㅤHe did not move, but still he felt.

ㅤWhen Hadji Aga, who was the first to reach him, struck him on the head with a large dagger, it seemed to Hadji Murád that some one was striking him with a hammer, and he could not understand who was doing it, or why. That was his last consciousness of any connection with his body. He felt nothing more, and his enemies kicked and hacked at what had no longer anything in common with him.

ㅤHadji Aga placed his foot on the back of the corpse, and with two blows cut off the head, and carefully—not to soil his shoes with blood—rolled it away with his foot. Crimson blood spurted from the arteries of the neck, and black blood flowed from the head, soaking the grass.

ㅤKargánov and Hadji Aga and Akhmet Khan and all the militiamen gathered together—like sportsmen round a slaughtered animal—near the bodies of Hadji Murád and his men (Khanéfi, Khan Mahomá, and Gamzálo were bound), and amid the powder-smoke which hung over the bushes, they triumphed in their victory.

ㅤThe nightingales, that had hushed their songs while the firing lasted, now started their trills once more: first one quite close, then others in the distance.

ㅤ“One thing more, my darling child, my sweet dove, my own Peterkin! I have wept my eyes out lamenting for thee, thou light of my eyes. To whom hast thou left me? …” At this point the old woman had sobbed and wept, and said: “That will do!” So the words stood in the letter; but it was not fated that Peter should receive the news of his wife's having left home, nor the present of the rouble, nor his mother's last words. The letter with the money in it came back with the announcement that Peter had been killed in the war, defending his Tsar, his Fatherland, and the Orthodox Faith. That is how the army clerk expressed it.

ㅤThe old woman, when this news reached her, wept for as long as she could spare time, and then set to work again. The very next Sunday she went to church, and had a requiem chanted, and Peter’s name entered among those for whose souls prayers were to be said; and she distributed bits of holy bread to all the good people, in memory of Peter the servant of God.

ㅤAksínya, the soldier’s widow, also lamented loudly when she heard of her beloved husband’s death, with whom she had lived but one short year. She regretted her husband, and her own ruined life; and in her lamentations mentioned Peter’s brown locks and his love, and the sadness of her life with her little orphaned Vánka; and bitterly reproached Peter for having had pity on his brother, but none on her—obliged to wander among strangers!

ㅤBut in the depth of her soul Aksínya was glad of her husband’s death. She was again pregnant by the shopman in whose service she was living; and no one would now have a right to scold her, and the shopman could marry her as, when he was persuading her to yield, he had said he would.

A review of Leo Tolstoy’s final work, Hadji Murad

Leo Tolstoy Barefoot, 1901 by Ilya Repin Like many readers of Leo Tolstoy’s final work, Hadji Murad, I read the novella based on Harold Bloom’s praise in his work The Western Canon, where he declares it “my personal touchstone for the sublime of prose fiction, to me the best story in the world, or at least the best I have ever read.” It wasn’t just Bloom’s praise that attracted me to Hadji…

I haven't bought books in a long while and although I've started reading a book yesterday by accident in a friend's house and asked to borrow it (Kerouac's Lonesome Traveler), I couldn't resist these two (and my mom being with me and with $$$). 

I've been dreaming about reading Hadji Murat for about two years and for those unfamiliar with it - "It is Tolstoy’s final work. The protagonist is Hadji Murat, an Avar rebel commander who, for reasons of personal revenge, forges an uneasy alliance with the Russians he had been fighting."