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Ada bagian di ‘The Cossacks’-nya Tolstoy, yang membuatku berkomentar: Kayaknya karakter Chris McCandless di ‘Into the Wild’ lebih pas membaca ini deh daripada Tolstoy yang ‘Happy Ever After/A Family Happiness’.

Ingat nggak, di film Into the Wild, waktu karakternya sudah tinggal di bis dan mulai kehabisan makanan dan mulai mengambili dedaunan dan biji-bijian? Dia kecantol pada kalimat dari A Family Happiness-nya Tolstoy, tentang keinginan untuk menyebut tumbuhan indah di sekitarnya “with their own true name”?

Tapi sepertinya The Cossacks lebih pas buat teman perjalanan. Ceritanya tentang seorang pemuda bernama Olenin yang pergi menjauh dari kota besar ke pedalaman Caucasus. Sudah agak-agak mirip Into the Wild kan, yang memilih Alaska sebagai tempatnya menyendiri?

Paragraf yang menggetarkan itu menggambarkan tentang pertemuan pertamanya Olenin dengan gunung salju Caucasus. Tolstoy menggambarkannya seperti ini:

“Suddenly he saw, at what seemed to him at first glance to be about twenty paces away, gigantic pure white masses with gentle curves and fantastical airy summits minutely outlined against the distant sky. When he realized the distance between himself and them and the sky, and the whole immensity of those mountains, and their infinite beauty, he feared lest it prove to be a mirage or a dream. He gave himself a shake, but the mountains were still there.”

……..

“At first Olenin only marveled at the towering masses, then delighted in them; but later on, gazing more and more intently at that snow-peaked chain that seemed to rise not from other, black masses but straight out of the plain, and to glide away into the distance, he began gradually to take in their beauty and feel the mountains. From that moment, whatever he saw, whatever he thought, whatever he felt, acquired a new character, sternly majestic, like the mountains.”

Hmm.

melanjutkan The Cossacks

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