The Pale King’s Opening Lines Vs. Hadji Murad’s Opening Lines

Posted on by Edwin Turner

Putting together a review of David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King right now, I realize I have no place to put , nor anything intelligent or even thoughtful to say, about an observation I made about its opening lines (you know, that sentence you halfway paid attention to on some dude’s tumblr), which seem to echo the opening of Leo Tolstoy’s Hadji Murad, which said observation I only observed because I read the books at the same time, and in fact read the opening chapters on the same day. Anyway.

First lines of The Pale King—

Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-​brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the a.m. heat: shattercane, lamb’s‑quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-​print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your cheek.

First lines of Hadji Murad—-

I was returning home by the fields. It was midsummer, the hay harvest was over and they were just beginning to reap the rye. At that season of the year there is a delightful variety of flowers —red, white, and pink scented tufty clover; milk-white ox-eye daisies with their bright yellow centers and pleasant spicy smell; yellow honey-scented rape blossoms; tall campanulas with white and lilac bells, tulip-shaped; creeping vetch; yellow, red, and pink scabious; faintly scented, neatly arranged purple plaintains with blossoms slightly tinged with pink; cornflowers, the newly opened blossoms bright blue in the sunshine but growing paler and redder towards evening or when growing old; and delicate almond-scented dodder flowers that withered quickly.

I’m not suggesting that Wallace is consciously following Tolstoy here, although the structures of the openings are remarkably similar, and in each case, the flora imagery is ultimately ironized by the narrative that follows.

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Published by Edwin Turner

11 thoughts on “The Pale King’s Opening Lines Vs. Hadji Murad’s Opening Lines”

  2. Compare with the second graf of Babel’s “Crossing the River Zbrucz”:

    “Fields of purple poppies are blossoming around us, a noon breeze is frolicking in the yellowing rye, virginal buckwheat is standing on the horizon like the wall of a faraway monastery. Silent Volhynia is turning away, Volhynia is leaving, heading into the pearly white fog of the birch groves, creeping through the flowery hillocks, and with weakened arms entangling itself in the underbrush of hops….”

    The very next sentence is “The orange sun is rolling across the sky like a severed head…” And the rest of the story concerns the narrator’s encounter with the family of a murdered Jew.

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    2. Russian version of Robert The Bruce is Colonel General Ivan Petrovsky former Russian army general & deputy of the Russian military garrison now a defector to succeed Colonel Mustafa Hadjimurad & became his leader of the liberators together with his band of foreign mercenaries fighting for freedom & continuing struggle for the heartland of the Caucasus in Central Asia.

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    3. White Warrior 1961 Italian American Yugoslav action adventure epic historical military war melodrama film starring Steve Reeves as Hadji Murad the leader of the Chechen guerrilla warriors against the armies of Imperial Russia during the 19th century fighting for freedom & the heartland of Central Asia.

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  3. I believe I’ve read that it was an editorial decision to order The Pale King as it is and that Wallace did not actually indicate anywhere that this was to be the opening section of the novel.

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    1. Colonel Mustafa Hadjimurad a fictional character & hero of Chechnya during the Chechen Civil War against Russian invaders & fighting for freedom for the Caucasus together with foreign mercenaries & defend the heartland of Central Asia & the saga continues.

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    1. Loosely remake of the classic Leo Tolstoy novel set in 1996 Chechnya during the Chechen Civil War about the Chechen guerrilla fighter revolutionary leader warlord dissident tribal chief & liberator of the Caucasus together with foreign mercenaries fight for freedom against Russian military forces & liberation of the heartland of the Caucasus in Central Asia & the saga continues.

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