ANNA KARENINA and IRENE FORSYTE: so similiar yet so diffirent

Women in literature: some are pretty, some are kind, a few may possess virtues; there are witches and there are saints, mothers and lovers, and not much more.

Female characters were – historically - all too often presented and viewed by most male authors in stereo-typical straitjackets. Their images were plain, stale and almost lifeless, they were rarely viewed in all their complexity. They provided a decorative contour to the plot, or a brush-stroke of colour to the setting. Women made secondary appearances, leaving to the male characters the roles of importance and weight.

So it was until authors such as Leo Tolstoy came along with his  “Anna Karenina” and John Galsworthy with his “Forsyte Saga”. These two authors had the audacity to put a woman centre stage and made of her a complex and interesting character around which the whole story evolves. They revolutionized the whole literary world that finally accepted the idea of a woman as an independent figure that could be - and was - of greater interest than the male characters.

Whatever our personal attitude may be towards Anna Karenina and Irene Forsyte we cannot deny that these are two of the most fascinating female characters in literature. Anna and Irene are both stunning, brilliant, irresistible, aristocratic women who contrast with everyone else. They move with grace, they talk politely, they look at you lovingly, they shine in company and are able to talk about anything. Their beauty is never vulgar nor too evident; their faces are painted beautiful with a subtle hue, showing only a peek of the true beauty of the gentle soul. But despite the outward impression of being seemingly calm and reserved, both women have a burning fire of passion hidden deep within that tears them apart. It is exactly that desperate contradiction between  social duty and the heart’s pulsating passion that makes the characters so challenging for Tolstoy and Galsworthy to create and so attractive to the reader to discover..

Each story has the same beginning: a young girl, left without money, unhappy and desperate accepts the offer of marriage from an older wealthy man, without ever loving him. The husbands Alexei Karenin and Soames Forsyte both move in high society, important and influential figures. Both husbands are described as devoted and loyal to their wives, but lacking passion and obvious expressions of love. Both are more than happy to spend money on Anna and Irene, giving them expensive jewelry or building houses, but no outlay of cash can leave the women content or happy. Both marriages seem to be prefect on the outside: a rich man possessing a young, gorgeous wife, but the relationships are fatally flawed.

The characters of Anna and Irene, though, seduce by their complexity. These are no bodice-ripping adulteresses. The longing they feel is no superficial pleasure hunt but rather a developed spirituality and a gnawing lust for beauty that is beyond the understanding of their husbands. No amount of expensive gifts or the pleasures of being in high society can leave them content. Their needs, hidden inside the dark, hot, unexplored embers of their souls go beyond anything material or superficial.

This sensual and spiritual ache is something that neither Soames nor Alexei are able to perceive; it is something unattainable and unimaginable for such men. Anna and Irene, young and beautiful, have a strong desire for passion and romantic love that they had never experienced.

Thus it comes to pass that Anna meets Count Vronsky who is courting her friend and a family relation Kitty Tscherbatskaya. And Irene meets a young architect, Philip Bossiney, a fiancé of her dear friend and relative Jules Galsworthy. Both Anna and Irene, visibly in love with these men, however make serious attempts at refusing them. But both stories are very similar: the passion is so overpowering that soon after they start extramarital affairs.

Neither Alexei Vronsky nor Philip Bossiney seem to have any moral scruples about breaking their previous engagements or breaking a family.

While Irene’s love for Bossiney can be described as spiritual and based on common interests in the first place, Anna’s love of Vronsky is more carnal, based mainly on passion. “Looking at him she felt physically humiliated and couldn’t speak. He felt what only a murderer could feel when he sees the lifeless body.” From the very beginning of their affair, the love between Anna and Vronsky is perceived as something dangerous and impure. It is as if like the horse with the broken spine that he shoots, Vronsky breaks also the structural core of  Anna’s life and in  consequence her life will have to end as well.

It is here perhaps that we see the biggest difference between the two women: while Irene fulfills her desires by finding her soulmate, Anna ends up with a seducer who believes himself to be in love but disappoints her expectations and ruins her life.

As we penetrate the novels we see how Alexei Karenin is more bothered with his image and his family status than by the betrayal itself. In an astounding insight into upper-class morality Tolstoy exposes how Alexei sees it as disrespectful to himself to be jealous of Anna. It bothers and irritates her: “I would respect him more if he killed Vronsky, if he killed me.”

Soames on the other hand does everything possible to vindicate himself with Bossiney and ruins him with a lawsuit. Galsworthy calls him “the man of property”. This is exactly how Soames sees Irene – his legal property. And to prove the right to his possession he uses her for his sexual needs without her consent. Soames is the opposite of the gentleman Alexei – as he fails to conquer Irene’s heart his love turns into madness.

While Karenin does his best to ignore the harm and the public humiliation and even agrees to divorce, Soames follows his obsession with Irene that makes of him a miserable man. Soames, consumed by his unreciprocated love, siezes every possibility to approach Irene. But he fails in all his attempts, always wondering how he deserved to experience such hatred and disrespect.

I confess I have always pitied these two men for what they must have experienced. They both behaved at times more than respectfully, loving and forgiving their wives no matter what. They both would have accepted their return and would have loved them even more than before.

But the biggest difference between the Russian Anna and the English Irene is the attitude of the authors, their “fathers”. While Galsworthy does his best at remaining impartial, we still are more inclined to pity Irene and her loneliness after Bossiney’s death. And as the story progresses Galsworthy gives Irene another chance and her happiness is finally restored. As for Anna, Tolsoy is less merciful to her. Throughout the whole novel he opposes her unholy, impure love to Vronsky to his ideal love that he creates between Kitty and Levin (little Leo- the one who expresses his ideas). Tolstoy views the passion that consumed Anna as something diabolic, a spiritual death that could only end with physical death.

And while Galsworthy seeks happiness for Irene (whose story was inspired by his own wife), and keeps on punishing Soames with all the unhappy events that come his way, Tolstoy is more complex in his analysis of the main character.

Undeniably Anna is nobler than Irene. She despises herself for having an affair, she despises her husband for forgiving her, she despises Vrosnky for not understanding her nature and she despises the judgmental society in which she is entombed. It is only as we look anew at the picture that Tolstoy so masterfully painted with words, we finally see how beautifully complex Anna is. And that her complexity, her Russian-ness creates the biggest difference. This is why she, looking for forgiveness, throws herself under the train and Irene, having no scruples about the broken marriage and the broken lives of either Soames or Jules, re-establishes her happiness, finding respect and understanding of those who previously hated her.

Anna and Irene are like no other women in literature. Indeed they may have become icons for a new blossoming of female characterization. No longer are women madonnas or whores, beautiful or sinful; they are all of the above, in large part due to these magnificently complex portraits of the deep recesses of the female soul.

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Telepathy

Have you ever thought about a friend you haven’t heard from in a while and then received his call? Have you ever finished a sentence someone else started? Have you ever experienced anxiety, believing that something terrible happened to parents, children or a loved one? If you have, you have simply experienced reflections in a spiritual mirror – telepathy. “Mirror, mirror on the wall..” and just like in the brothers Grimm’s fairy tale we look in the mirror expecting our thoughts to reflect together with our image.

The phenomenon falls between spirituality and science, adopted by neither, suspected by both. Telepathy is an orphaned phenomenon.

The word telepathy is of Greek origin (tele means “distant” and pathe or patheia means “feeling” or “perception”). It is the transmission of information from one person to another without any physical contact between the two. Telepathy is one of those atrophied skills possessed by all humans and animals, or to be more exact – by their spirits. Again – spirits. Humans are spirits wrapped in, or suffusing bodies and not vice versa. This insight is accepted by many world faiths but its implications are rarely considered. Telepathy is the least understood implication - the ability of spirits to communicate in a non-physical manner as if you are mirroring someone else’s thoughts.

In recent times telepathic abilities have been considered either a mental disorder (such as schizophrenia) or a form of magic. People claiming to be able to connect to other spirits, see the future or the past and thus travel in time were thought to be insane and even dangerous. Since this kind of communication has nothing to do with the material world and cannot be easily analyzed, it is not seriously considered by mainstream science.

The first scientist who dared to look in the mirror of telepathic abilities and hypnosis was a Russian

neurologist Vladimir Bechterev. Bechterev’s work resulted in a breakthrough in neurological science. In 1886 he established the first laboratory of experimental psychology in Russia to study the nervous system and the structures of the brain. Later Bechterev became the head of the department of nervous and mental diseases at the Saint Petersburg Military Medical Academy. In Saint-Petersburg he continued his neurological research and started specializing in neurosurgery. The Russian scientist published over 600 papers in which he, for the first time, wrote about the experiments proving telepathic abilities.

But what was of greater interest in Bechterev’s work was his experiments designed to influence the behaviour of others from a distance – hypnosis. He started with dogs, practising his ability to influence their thoughts. His friend, a famous animal trainer, Vladimir Durov, participated in those experiments. Durov was given a list of tasks for dogs to perform, which he would transmit to them by looking in their eyes and trying to send his thoughts. Dogs, after being given a telepathic task, would perform exactly what Durov would “ask” them to do. Having achieved successful results with dogs, Bechterev continued his telepathic experiments with humans. During one of them he hypnotized a large group of people. Each of the participants was given a glass of water; Bechterev convinced them it was vodka and then asked them to drink the whole glass. After the experiment the participants said they actually felt the taste of vodka and felt drunk.

Bechterev not only laid the groundwork for neurological science, his studies in behaviourism were of immeasurable importance to the future development of psychology studies. Bechterev’s experiments in hypnosis were of great interest to the Communist party and Joseph Stalin, in particular. His strained relationship with Stalin was surely connected to his mysterious death. It is widely believed that Bechterev was poisoned on Stalin’s orders. However, according to the official report Bechterev died of “heart paralysis”. The strange relationship with Stalin would also explain why Bechterev’s son and daughter-in-law were arrested and sentenced to “10 years in prison without the right to correspondence”. Later, Bechterev’s son was executed and his wife died in the prison camp, leaving their children orphans. Bechterev’s studies in neurology were continued by his granddaughter, Natalia Bechtereva and her son Svyatoslav Medvedev.

Another important figure in science who made a significant contribution to the study of telepathy and other psychic abilities was the Soviet scientist Nikolai Kozyrev. Using his knowledge of astronomy and physics, Kozyrev invented something unique. Mirrors. He installed aluminium mirrors, creating an enclosed space in which there was a weakening of the magnetic field of the earth and which thereby provided more human access to solar and galactic information. Kozyrev’s “mirrors” were in practice two hollow, metal, person-sized tubes made of aluminium. The surface was perfectly smooth and shiny, so that it had the same reflecting properties of a mirror. Through numerous experiments using the mirrors, he focused studies in such areas as human psychophysiology, pathology of disease and health and the evolution of telepathic fields’ remote sensing.

Kozyrev’s mirrors reflect the energy of a human thought in space, where it can be stored in “the universal bank of information” or shared between “spirits”. Within the mirrors “the flow of time”— present, past and future — all exist at the same time and in every place. The scientists who worked on these experiments, including Kaznacheev and Trofimov, realized that human consciousness was enhanced when a person was placed in the mirror tube. The experiment involved two people communicating through telepathy. These two people were placed in identical mirror tubes 6 000 km apart. In the course of experiment, that involved hundreds of pairs of individuals communicating at a distance, Kaznacheev and Trofimov found that the information sent telepathically was received correctly by the participants in 95 per cent of cases.

The technique was simple. A person inside the mirrors was given symbols to project and others in different parts of the world were able to receive them. The experiments made with the apparatus invented by Kozyrev proved that distant communication was possible. This is how Trofimov defined the importance of “the mirrors”: “As we investigate brain activity – either with an electro-encephalogram or by assessing brain functions like intellect level, memory and other functions, we realize that we currently use only 5% of the capacity of our brains throughout our whole lives. And, after some time we spend inside the apparatus we see that our mind’s additional reserves and abilities are activated. We can see an increase in memory capacity, increased IQ and changing zones of electric activity of the brain”.

Another peculiar thing that happened inside “the mirrors” was the possibility of the participants “travelling” in time and space. Most of them witnessed “the time machine” effect. Just like in H. G. Wells’ novel, these people claimed to be able to go back in time and see important historic events, or they could travel to the future and foresee it. Some of these people said that they clearly saw answers to the most important questions of their lives, or saw signs of Mayan or Egyptian origin. Certain people were influenced more than others – ‘the mirrors’ revealed knowledge of foreign languages they hypothesised they once spoke in past lives.

The implication of all this is extraordinary: The human intellect, as we understand it now, is not only a tool of communication but also a peculiar cosmoplanetary phenomenon. Bechterev, Kozyrev, Kaznacheev, Trofimov and many other scientists using different approaches, proved one important thing: all beings (spirits) are interconnected not only with each other but also with the planet earth and its electromagnetic field. Everything that happens, will happen or ever happened somewhere in the universe is mirrored in a way to influence other events or other people.

Something to reflect on the next time you look in the mirror.

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the world's genius turnes down a million dollar prize

"I don’t want to be on display like an animal in a zoo. I’m not a hero of mathematics. I’m not even that successful. That is why I don’t want to have everybody looking at me", - says Grigori Perelman, probably the world's greatest mathematician, who lives in Saint-Petersburg with his mother.

He worked out a solution to one of the seven great unsolved mathematical problems, the Poincaré conjecture, in 2002 - almost a century after it was first posed, and just two years after the Clay Mathematics Institute offered a one-million-dollar prize for its solution. It was a magnificent achievement. Honours, cash, offers of world lecture tours and lucrative teaching posts were hurled at the Russian theorist. But Perelman turned down the Fields medal, the mathematical world's equivalent of a Nobel prize. What was even more astonishing was that he turned down a million of dollars that the Clay Institute wanted to give him for his work. 
One of my friends admires him so much, he said this was such a rare gesture it is almost impossible to believe it.

Grigori Perelman is now 45 (he was born on June 13th 1966). Ever since he was a child he was obsessed with mathematics. He turned down a scholarship to study in the United States and he graduated in Leningrad (now Saint-Petersburg). Since the begginning of the 1990's he worked at the prestigious Institute of Mathematics named after Steklov in Saint-Petersburg.
Now, he has given up his job as mathematician and has no contact with media at all. He lives in his own fragile world, filled with books and his manuscripts.

Some might argue that monetary awards for mathematical work are inappropriate, or that the Poincaré Conjecture is of little practical value and not worth the one-million-dollar prize. But do we owe respect to him? Yes, and not only as a mathematician. We must respect his gesture, a rare gesture in the world where money decides everything.