It has a canvas as big as Russia, and within its pages are dizzying high and nauseating lows and bland, lukewarm middles. The bottom line before I go on, Tolstoy-style, is that I was disappointed. My main criticism is the unfortunate mishmash of fictional narrative with historical essay. You're reading the book, right? Or maybe listening to it on a long commute. But that's okay, you've moved past that. Suddenly, you're coasting along.
The story is moving forward. Napoleon has crossed the Danube. There is drama. Finally, people are going to stop with the internal monologues and start shooting each other!
I might actually like this! And then, with an almost audible screech, like the brakes a train, Tolstoy brings the whole thing to a shuddering halt with a pedantic digression on the topic of History with a capital H and free will and military tactics and Napoleon's intelligence.
These digressions do several things. First, and most importantly, they seriously disrupt the narrative. All rhythm and timing is thrown off, which is exactly what happened to all my school concerts when I used to play the snare drum. I knew enough to quit the snare drum to focus on the recorder. Tolstoy, though, plunges on obliviously, casting all notions of structure aside.
You lose sight of the characters for hundreds of pages. Instead of wondering what happens next, you start to wonder things like where am I? It tells you something when you actually start to miss Pierre's endless internal psychobabbling. Second, the essays are Tolstoy at his stupidest at least in my opinion; this is more a philosophical gripe.
He believes that people have no control; that History is a force all its own, and that we act according to History's push and pull. Tolstoy says, in effect, that Napoleon is stupid, but that his enemies were stupider, but that doesn't matter, because they were all doing what they had to do, because History made them.
This is all very Tolstoy goes to far as to attempt to prove this argument algebraically. Yeah, that's just what I wanted: Math! Tolstoy's argument breaks down like this: 1. Someone does something. Someone else reacts in a way that makes no sense. Therefore, History is controlling things. The fundamental flaw, of course, is that Tolstoy's argument really boils down to nothing more than hindsight. Sitting in his armchair, decades after the fact, having never been on those battlefields, Tolstoy decides that the players on the scene acted dumbly, and he attributes that to cosmic events.
A battle isn't lost because of bad roads, or obscured vision, or a shortage of ammunition which are realities in all warfare, but even more prevalent in the 19th century. I suppose Tolstoy can be forgiven for hating Napoleon, but still, the book is 1, pages long. His analysis of the Corsican corporal is reductive and unenlightening. Napoleon was a lot of things short, funny looking, brilliant, cruel, petty, brilliant, ambitious, oddly-shaped but "stupid" was not among them. Yet, there were moments when I loved this novel.
There is the battle of Austerlitz, which is impeccably researched so much so that a narrative history I read on the subject actually cites to Tolstoy and thrillingly told, especially the fight of Captain Tushin's battery. There is Prince Andrei, wounded on the field of Austerlitz, staring up at "the infinite sky," realizing that he's never really looked at it before.
There is Pierre, realizing he is in love with Natasha as he gazes at the stars and glimpses the comet of There is Napoleon suffering a cold on the eve of Borodino. There is Andrei watching a cannon ball land at his feet, its fuse hissing There is Petya, the young adjutant, who rides to his doom chasing the French during their retreat. Every once in awhile, there will also be something clever, showing you that Tolstoy isn't just wordy, but also inventive.
For instance, there's a scene in which Tolstoy describes the thoughts of an old oak tree. Among the hundreds of characters, there's even a tree. I was also fond of a passage in which General Kutuzov, the Russian commander, holds a meeting in a peasant's house to discuss abandoning Moscow.
Tolstoy tells this story from the point of view of a little peasant girl who, in her mind, calls Kutuzov "grandfather. He was an indifferent drunk. The night before Austerlitz, he allegedly engaged in a four-some with three of the "comfort women" he brought with him on campaigns. Unfortunately, despite writing 1, pages, Tolstoy doesn't find space to devote to this occurrence.
The good, though, is surrounded by the bad or the boring. The flyleaf of the book said that Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei were three of the most dynamic characters in literature. I don't think so. Aside from Andrei, I was mostly unimpressed with the main characters Napoleon was fun, in an over-the-top bit part.
Pierre is a boob and a bore, and his sudden heroics during the burning of Moscow come from nowhere. Natasha is a flake. She's the stereotypical girl plucking the daisy: I love him; I love him not; I love him The end of the novel is like Anna Karenina a huge anti-climatic letdown.
As we approach the final pages, Tolstoy gives us a description of the battle of Borodino. It is a masterpiece of military fiction. The research and verisimilitude. The vividness. Pierre's confrontation with the Frenchman in the redoubt: Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified at what they have done, he thought, aimlessly going toward a crowd of stretcher bearers moving from the battlefield.
There is no slow decline into mediocrity; no, it happens at the turn of the page. All of this occurs indirectly, through digression-filled essays on History. The characters recede into the background; all narrative vitality disappears. There are only a couple exceptions: one scene of the city burning, followed by one admittedly powerful scene of the French executing supposed arsons.
During the French retreat, there is not a single visceral moment depicting their hard, frozen march. Then come the Epilogues. When I reached them, I felt a bit like a cowboy in one of those old westerns who is riding across the desert and finds a well, except the well is dry and full of snakes and then an Indian shoots him with an arrow. We will never know the fates of the dozens of characters we've followed for the previous thousand pages.
Tolstoy leaves their destinies to the imagination so that he can rant. Except at Thanksgiving, Uncle Ed usually passes out by the fourth quarter of the Cowboys game. Not Tolstoy. Not even death can quiet him. War and Peace was an experience. There were times I envisioned myself reaching the end, spiking the book like a football, and then doing some sort of victory dance around the splayed pages.
When I got there, though, I simply sighed, leaned back in my chair, and thought: At least this was better than Moby Dick.
View all 53 comments. Mar 13, Michael rated it it was amazing. This is one of those books that can be life-changing. I read this as a teenager and I remember exactly where I was sitting on my bed, in my grandmother's house, in southern Germany when I finished it.
I must have spent an hour just staring out the window, in awe of the lives I'd just led, the experiences I'd just had. Tolstoy has the most amazing ability to make us feel, when he This is one of those books that can be life-changing. Tolstoy has the most amazing ability to make us feel, when he zooms out and examines historical events, that the individual is nothing--and then when he zooms in and paints intimate portraits of his characters, that the individual is everything.
I'm quite picky when it comes to translations and this is one of the best I've read. It's in the sweeping battle scenes that Tolstoy shows how insignificant the individual really is--how even generals and emperors are at the mercy of random and unpredictable events. Then when Tolstoy switches to the intimate drawing room scenes, the entire perspective shifts, and nothing matters more than the individual consciousness that he depicts.
The juxtaposition of these two feelings is just, well, genius! I'd forgotten how mystical Tolstoy gets with respect to Pierre's "conversion" or "enlightenment" or "getting religion. The contrapuntal movement of Pierre and Andrey's development is only highlighted when they're together, debating whether one ought to try to improve people's lives Pierre or just focus on one's own happiness and leave the world alone Andrey.
It's actually a profound debate, which then ends when Andrey beholds the vast sky again and something stirs inside him, something long dormant, and we as readers can't help anticipating that Andrey will be "back. Pierre and Prince Andrey are the prime examples of this. I kept thinking, as I read the sections in which they struggle earnestly with such questions, that contemporary American fiction has precious little of this.
I wonder if it's because we've all drunk the kool-aid that says "show, don't tell," making contemporary novelists shy away from such material. But this little mantra, while seemingly objective, renders entire realms of fiction off-limits. Tolstoy is constantly "telling" us what Pierre and Andrey are thinking, and the novel is so much better for it. The deftness and sheer range of human drama is staggering.
And the war, when it returns, is no abstract matter. Everywhere there are people caught up in this great event, bewildered by it. Here's Rostov on seeing the French officer he's brought down: "This pale, mud-stained face of a fair-haired young man with a dimple on his chin and bright blue eyes had no business with battlefields; it was not the face of an enemy; it was a domestic, indoor face. When I read the scene of the hunt, where the hunters capture the old She-Wolf and her cubs, I couldn't help feeling sorry for those animals, for that animal family hunted for pure sport.
I wondered how that scene would come back into the narrative because of the obvious symbolic weight of it, and here it is, in the scene of war. The characters hadn't empathized with the She-Wolf in the same way that Rostov does with the French officer, but I wonder if we're meant to anyway, or at least be made somewhat uncomfortable as I was by such sport-killing, perhaps seeing it as a prelude to another kind of sport-killing altogether: namely war.
Of course the French-speaking social circle is that of Helene, who's cold and manipulative and whose brother schemed to snatch away Natasha in such, well, French fashion. But this is no bald tale of Russian virtue and French perfidy. Tolstoy is finely attuned to the chaos of war and to the humans that engage in it, so much more alike than not as everyone tries simply to survive and perhaps claim a little glory in the end.
Here he is, when describing the attitude of Muscovites on the approach of Napoleon: "At the first approach of danger two voices always speak out with equal force in a man's heart: one tells him very sensibly to consider the exact extent of the danger and any means of avoiding it; the other says even more sensibly that it's too wearisome and agonizing to contemplate the danger, since it is not in a man's power to anticipate future events and avoid the general run of things, so you might as well turn away from the nastiness until it hits you, and dwell on things that are pleasant.
The irony and humor also shine through when he describes Berg's ridiculous recitation of war stories or Count Rostov's childlike diffidence when it comes to the issue of whether they should empty their wagons of belongings in order to make room for wounded soldiers. This adds much irony to his tale, and some biting commentary as well, as when he says: "These man, carried away by their passions, were nothing more than the blind executors of the saddest law of necessity; but they saw themselves as heroes, and mistook their doings for achievements of the highest virtue and honour.
So many mixed emotions in the characters and in me, the reader, as our story ebbs to a close, as this towering and monumental work of art draws ever nearer to silence. Yes, I'm going to do something even he would have been pleased with. I'll spend many days and weeks pondering these pages, recalling little scenes and thinking about Tolstoy's grand arguments.
The scope is breathtaking and profound, yet on every page you feel the frantic beating of the human heart. Despite all its spiritual claims, it's a deeply humanistic work.
I did it. I finally convinced myself to read War and Peace , partly because it's just something everyone wants to say they've done, and partly because one always needs a good excuse to procrastinate during the exam period when I should have been studying.
And, you know what, I really enjoyed most of it. The novel is far less taxing than I imagined, I don't know if that's because the English translation goes easy on us non-Russians or because Tolstoy wrote it in a quite light-hearted fashion So The novel is far less taxing than I imagined, I don't know if that's because the English translation goes easy on us non-Russians or because Tolstoy wrote it in a quite light-hearted fashion. I suspect I shall never find that out for myself.
Personally, I think a much better title for this book would be War and People. Because, though an in-depth look at history during the time Napoleon had ambitions to take over Europe, this is first and foremost about humanity and Tolstoy observes humanity and all its weirdness with a sense of humour and occasionally sadness.
I don't like to make too many predictions about the older authors, some people will tell you that Bram Stoker was a feminist and William Shakespeare was a humanist, I think these are quite melodramatic conclusions to make about authors who lived in societies where they would struggle to be that.
However, Tolstoy may or may not consider himself liberal, forward-thinking, a humanist, and I wouldn't state that he is any of those things. But I think his perception of the human condition in the nineteenth century shows he is somewhat before his time in his ability to see almost every character as flawed, confusing but ultimately human. He manages to construct a comphrehensive view of humanity and Russian culture at the time in question, complete with betrayals and scandals and affairs.
But though the characters may place blame on one another - like calling Natasha a hussy - Tolstoy appears to remain impartial. Those who stray from the conservative path of the nineteenth century do not do so without reason. Another reason that War and People is a much better title for this book is because there is very little peace going on in here. There are times when the battles aren't raging, of course, but there is always something equally dramatic happening within the social world of Russian high society.
People falling in and out of love, people having affairs, wealthy aristocrats dying and leaving their fortune to illegitimate sons. It seems to me that there's a constant war going on in this book, just sometimes it isn't on the battlefield. And oddly enough, it was the real wars in War and Peace that interested me least of all.
They were probably the reason this book got four stars instead of five - and because goodreads rating system is about personal enjoyment rather than literary merit. I felt much more entertained by the soap opera that was the lives of the Russian nobles than by the tedious and repetitive battle scenes. There were guns and canons and horses - riveting. But thankfully, like I said, Tolstoy's masterpiece is more about people than anything else and this is the reason that I saw this book through and enjoyed the journey.
View all 47 comments. Many of the main characters are introduced as they enter the salon. Pierre Pyotr Kirilovich Bezukhov is the illegitimate son of a wealthy count, who is dying after a series of strokes.
Pierre is about to become embroiled in a struggle for his inheritance. Educated abroad at his father's expense following his mother's death, Pierre is kindhearted but socially awkward, and finds it difficult to integrate into Petersburg society. It is known to everyone at the soiree that Pierre is his father's favorite of all the old count's illegitimate progeny. View 2 comments. Book from books - War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, which is regarded as a central work of world literature and one of Tolstoy's finest literary achievements.
Tolstoy said "War and Peace is not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle. Tolstoy also said that "the best Russian literature does not conf Book from books - War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, which is regarded as a central work of world literature and one of Tolstoy's finest literary achievements.
Tolstoy also said that "the best Russian literature does not conform to standards and hence hesitated to call War and Peace a novel. View all 14 comments. In this frightening, isolated time, let me direct you to War and Peace. People resist this book - they do it because it's something of a punch line as a monolithic, difficult novel. Two nations at war - great world leaders and generals, yes, but also trench life, and even more so, relevantly, now, the way war alters lives at home.
The t In this frightening, isolated time, let me direct you to War and Peace. The thrills of this novel should not be spoiled, but the memories are indelible a dramatic entrance in an opera house, a medical sequence as harrowing as it is moving, Pierre, in Moscow aflame. Tolstoy's creations in the book are near-perfect: Natasha, Andrei, and Pierre, that most lovable of teddy bears, and dozens of spectacular supporting characters, intertwining in complex ways.
It is not a difficult book - just a long one. And it as spell-binding and transporting reading experience that I know of. Tolstoy is the ur-novelist for a reason. It's probably already on your shelf. It's been there for years, since college, maybe.
Start it this evening. Trust me. View all 23 comments. Holy cow! I am done! Not sure what to say. I feel like I should write a page review, but I will keep it short. I finished the book while a passenger in a mini-van stuck in horrible Atlanta traffic. The book was not quite as readable as some other BIG books I have read, but still pretty good. Only a few times, though, did I feel like it was too much. This Holy cow! This book may not be for everyone, but it sure feels cool to be able to say "War and Peace?
Yeah, I read that! View all 46 comments. The plot alters between the battle fields of the Napoleonic war and the noble Russian society. Russia responded by declaring war against France and fought at the decisive Battle of Borodino. On the level of individual characters, Pierre, Andrew and Natasha, try to make their way through life. They struggle to maintain their ideals, vitality, and love for humanity in the face of loss, sadness, and disillusionment of war. War and Peace BBC adaption Pierre suddenly becomes extremely wealthy over night through inheritance and attracts our sympathy in his status as an outsider to the Russian upper classes.
His natural unpretentiousness, simplicity and emotional directness contrast with the artificiality of the high society. He is driven by irrational impulses, naivity and desperately tries to give a meaning to his life, which leads him to be taken advantage of.
Contrary tsar Andrew is highly intelligent, analytical and devoted. He successfully runs his estate and has leading positions in the war. The teenage Natasha is a representation of joyful vitality, youth and the ability to experience life fully and boldly, which sometimes also makes her naive. In Search for the Meaning of Life Several characters experience sudden revelations about the absurdity of their existence. Andrew has a near-death experience as soldier on the field of Austerlitz, that shows him the falsity of earthly life.
He was a war enthusiast before and becomes a pacifist instead. The extremely wealthy Pierre spends most of the novel wondering why his life is so empty and artificial. He makes several attempts to give meaning to his life, through unreasonable spendings, a misguided marriage or a short-lived and crazy obsession with assassinating Napoleon. The inadequacy of his approaches show, as all of his attempts fail due to shallowness. Inexplicable Love Andrew and Natasha BBC adaption War and Peace is full of romantic choices made without a full grasp of their consequences, most of them with disastrous results.
Pierre marries out of sexual passion and naive trust, which only brings him misery. Natasha has a short teenage crush, without seeing that his irresponsible ways would bring her harm. It costs her a chance with the man she truly loves, who cannot forgive her lapse. In both cases, an unreasoned romantic impulse ends up being destructive.
At its best, unpredictable love is a symbol of the mysterious forces of human life and instinct that cannot be denied. Death as a Revelation I never read a book in which so many people die you grew close to. Earthly values of rank and power have lost their meaning to him. Similarly Natasha becomes far more reflective and serious when the man she loves dies. In the meantime the countless deaths of young men in the war are pointless, have horrible consequences for their families and are shown with all their gruesomness.
Mothers dying during birth are also a recurrent motive, which was a very common in the 19th. In this sense, death is not merely the end of life, but a powerful lesson in faith and philosophy. The Limits of Leadership Tolstoy explores characters with both the highest and lowest social standing, giving us realistic portraits of peasants and tsars, servants and emperors.
We get a chance to view leaders against the backdrop of society, their overall usefulness in a democratic evaluation. Tsar Alexander is experienced as an ordinary man, just as Napoleon, when we see him in his bathroom getting his plump little body rubbed down. Even emperors that imagine they rule the world, are caught in chains of circumstance. Money Money and property are recurrent motives. Natashas family looses their savings through carelessness and gambling losses, which forces the family to abandon their Moscow home.
They loose the rest of their belongings as the French invade the city. But financial losses are not necessarily signs of failure. Tolstoy himself gave away possessions in search of spiritual regeneration.
The financial losses in the family strengthen the connection between father and son and the children end up marring into two of the largest fortunes in Russia. Spiritual richness seems to be far more worth than material wealth. The Battle of Borodino Russian Infantry attacking Borodino Russian military officials praise the battle scenes in "War and Peace" as the most accurate ones ever written.
The Battle of Borodino is more than the military turning point in the war against Napoleon. The French imagine that they obey reason and war strategy and are confident that they will win because of their logical advantages, and superior manpower. The Contrary Russians follow a more instinctive and less rational principle. They fight spiritually, with their whole beings, with faith, rather than reason. Tolstoy depicts Borodino as a an event that illustrates the superiority of Russian spirit to European reason.
The Irrationality of Human Motives Tolstoy constantly emphasizes irrational motives. Wisdom is linked not to reason but to an acceptance of how mysterious our actions can be, even to ourselves. Great leader do not emerge because they develop a logical plan and then demands that everyone follows it, but rather because they are willing to adapt to the flow of events. Meanwhile irrational actions cause the characters in the novel constant harm. Others on the other hand turn out successful, in accordance with instincts that lie far deeper than our reasoning minds.
But Tolstoy, goes further and turns the occupation of the city into a symbol of the European cultural invasion of Russia. He uses it to criticize Russian dependency on foreign styles and institutions wrongly deemed superior to native ones. In cultural terms, the French takeover of Russia was happening long before the invasion, which Tolstoy indicates by opening "War and Peace" with a conversation between two Russians, chatting in French about their fears of a war with France.
The threat is both external and internal, as the Russian nobility appears far closer to the French aristocracy, than the Russian. Therefore the answer to the French occupation would lie in greater appreciation of native Russians. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom. There is no need to be intimidated by the length of it. There is simply a lot going on and Tolstoy introduces a great variety of characters that undergo major changes over time.
The book progresses quite quickly and people age, shaped by their experience of war and drama, without loosing the core of their identity. Truly one of the best books ever written and the BBC tv-series adaption is also amazing! View all 52 comments. I read this in tandem with the spectacular BBC adaptation and I will say now that my enjoyment of this piece of literature has been heavily influenced by that wonderful piece of televisual art.
It just has. It's the same story, just told a different way. I will refrain from telling you to get over it. Now, the book. It was written well, very well, in terms of all the stuff that should be done well: punctuation, spelling, grammar, and all that. There were some typos but that will be down to the publisher and not the writer.
However, we'll deal with the negatives first: it had some of the most tedious moments in a book I've ever come across. I realise the war was a very important thing, but my gosh Tolstoy was dire at writing of soldiers and fighting.
I didn't enjoy those sections nearly half as much as I could have, which directly contributes to it not being-and never becoming-a perfect story. He was also well versed in tangents: I understand his intention of the book was exactly what he produced, but we can say that every writer produces their intention when they write a book so in this case I will say that I don't care about the authors intentions at all here.
There were also far too many characters. It's a nice idea to give everyone-including someone randomly delivering a letter-a name and a story, a background and a face, but for the reader it is too much.
But, that ending. I loved the ending I preferred the BBC ending, but that's just me being all romantic and I thought it was so fitting. I was happy-in a very understanding and moral way-with all of the deaths and thought they were all completely relevant to the whole piece.
Perhaps they all came a little too at once and suddenly, but altogether they settled the whole affair so nicely. I found the romance of Princess Mary and the one of Pierre to both be very pleasing. And I shall speak of Pierre now. How I love Pierre. He was, forgive me for saying this, quite English in his manner and that was delightful.
I will refrain from going on about him, but I thought every description of him was just so wonderful: I very rarely get so clear a picture of a character in my mind whilst I thought Paul Dano played him well, he did not embody the exact physical nature of Pierre that was conjured from the reading and my favourite moment will always be when Prince Andrew looks out and sees Pierre trip and stumble.
I also loved it for teaching me more of history than I ever knew. To be very frank, I never even knew that Napoleon had invaded or even fought Russia: I suppose that is the curse of being English.
We learn of our splendid Nelson but not much else. I find that literature fills in the gaps that education leaves, gaping wide and hollow. If you've ever had any misgivings about this book purely based on length, please refrain from those thoughts. It is divided nicely in to chapters, books and parts that you can easily place it down for a while, leave it and come back very happily. It doesn't take all that long to get through, either. It is one of those myths that precedes, unfairly, on the work.
View all 9 comments. Aug 27, Jason Koivu rated it it was amazing Shelves: fiction , classics. I was wrong. Love is in the title, you just have to look for it.
Certainly there is love in peace. It is the time of children, serenity, growth. The mother peacefully raising her children. The farmer lovingly tending his fields.
The elderly passing their final days in comfort surrounded by family. But there is love in war as well. The love for one's country. Such is a person's violent attachment to their mo Love That was the one thing I thought was missing from Leo Tolstoy's title, War and Peace.
Such is a person's violent attachment to their motherland that they will die for it. To give up your own life so another should live, that is love indeed. What is this preoccupation with love?
Well, the Leo Tolstoy I've read is incomplete without this aspect within his writing. I knew this book would be about war, specifically Russia's involvement in the Napoleonic Wars, but I didn't right off see where the love would come in.
It arrived in spades. There are peace-loving characters and there are those who are uber patriotic. Then there is man's love for the good he sees in another man's actions. And then there is the love that weds a couple for life. Tolstoy's genius as a writer lies in his ability to dash his pen across all this with the same level of integrity regardless of whether his subject is a gallant officer in love with death or the daisy-fresh, springy step of a blossoming girl smitten by good looks and dash.
Tolstoy transcends himself to become these hearty or hapless creatures. Then he marries them to our soul. Over these seemingly effortless hundreds upon hundreds of pages, these characters become family to us. We love them like brothers. We root for them. We are annoyed by them. We hate a few of them, but after all, they are family and therefore we must abide by them at least to a certain degree.
And when you step back from the book and see your attachment to these characters, it amazes you…and then it disheartens you, for you realize they are nothing but Tolstoy's puppets used in a grand way so that he may slash and burn the icon of his hatred, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Tolstoy seethes with loathing for this man. In large spurts through out, he devotes half the book to lampooning the man and his military deeds, and then as if that weren't enough, he piles on an average-sized book's worth of epilogue on essentially the same topic.
In an effort to portray fairness, he also fillets his own. The Russian military leaders of the day come in for their share of condemnation. At times Tolstoy pours so much vitriol upon his own that you have to stop to recall who "the enemy" is.
Why is this a 5 star book? After all, it's not perfect, being neither fully a novel nor a military treatise, but rather both and not always successfully joined. For all its many pages, there was only a small handful of moments where I felt my heart fly or crash. Perhaps it is the vast scope of it all and the effortless way in which it is carried off. So much happens. Tolstoy gives us many rare experiences, puts us in battle after battle - whether it's upon the field amidst cannon and rifle fire, within the home during a dangerous pregnancy, or between an embattled couple bereft of love.
Each of these scenes rings true, ringing to their own tune and yet all combining into one beautiful symphony. View all 70 comments. The strongest of all warriors are these two; Time and Patience. She eventually decides that she loves Anatole and plans to elope with him, but the plan fails.
Andrew comes home and rejects Natasha for her involvement with Anatole. Pierre consoles Natasha and feels an attraction toward her. Natasha falls ill. In , Napoleon invades Russia, and Tsar Alexander reluctantly declares war. Andrew returns to active military service. The prince dies just as the French troops arrive. Mary, finally forced to leave her estate, finds the local peasants hostile.
Nicholas happens to ride up and save Mary. Mary and Nicholas feel the stirrings of romance. In St. Petersburg, life in the higher social circles continues almost unaffected by the occupation of Moscow. Helene seeks an annulment of her marriage with Pierre in order to marry a foreign prince. Distressed by this news, Pierre becomes deranged and flees his companions, wandering alone through Moscow. Meanwhile, the Rostovs pack up their belongings, preparing to evacuate, but they abandon their possessions to convey wounded soldiers instead.
On the way out of the city, the Rostovs take along the wounded Andrew with them. Pierre, still wandering half-crazed in Moscow, sees widespread anarchy, looting, fire, and murder.
That is as true for the translator as it is for the first-time reader. We spent three years working full-time on the translation, revising it, copy-editing it, proofreading it twice, meaning that each of us read the novel some five times in Russian and in English.
Yet even in my final checking of the proofs, I still found myself delighting, laughing, or holding back my tears as I read. Princess Marya is perplexed. Something dear, long forgotten, and more than sweet looked at him from those attentive eyes. It breathed out, enveloped, and swallowed him whole. When she smiled, there could no longer be any doubt: it was Natasha, and he loved her. What makes this passage so moving is not only the drama of the moment itself, but the way Tolstoy has sensed it and captured it in words.
That situation has its advantages. Translators are always in danger of drifting into the sort of language that is commonly referred to as "smooth," "natural," or, as they now say, "reader friendly," and is really only a tissue of ready-made phrases.
When that happens to me, as it sometimes does, Larissa is there to stop me. Where I have my say is in judging the quality of our English text, that is, in drawing the line between a literal and a faithful rendering, which are not at all the same. After a good deal of confusion, the hussar captain Denisov finally manages to clear the infantry from the bridge and send his cavalry over.
As the first riders move onto the bridge, Tolstoy writes: "On the planks of the bridge the transparent sounds of hoofs rang out. It is pure Tolstoy. To my knowledge, it has never been translated into English. What we find in other versions is the "thud" or "clang" of hoofs, and it is likely that I would have done something similar if Larissa had not brought me back to what Tolstoy actually wrote. His prose is full of such moments. Coming upon them and finding words for them in English has been one of the most rewarding aspects of our work.
Here is a very different and rather amusing example of the search for fidelity. Ordering the menu, he insists that "grebeshki" be put in the "tortue. Going by my own taste, I decided to put scallops in the turtle soup. This reading got as far as the first set of page proofs. Just then we met by chance at a dinner in Paris a woman who used to run a cooking school. We asked her which it should be. She, too, was puzzled. A few days later we received a long email from her. She was happy to inform us that they came into fashion precisely around the time of the Napoleonic wars and were a key ingredient in turtle sauce.
Thanks to Mme. Meunier, we were able to make the correction in the second set of proofs. But does such a small thing really matter? Well, it certaintly did to Tolstoy. What this seemingly trivial detail reveals is the extraordinary accuracy of his memory, even in the smallest things. There is, for instance, a war between the French and Russian languages in War and Peace that mirrors the war between the French and Russian armies. But this precocious modernism is never word play for its own sake.
It is always moved by passion. The world of War and Peace envelops you. Over it all is that "infinite sky" that Prince Andrei discovers as he lies wounded on the field of Austerlitz. Start earning points for buying books! Uplift Native American Stories.
0コメント