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Title: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Rosemary Edmonds ISBN: 0-14-044417-3 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: October, 1982 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.49 (213 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Masterpiece of Russian Literature
Comment: Oh, if I only I could read Russian! It would be worth learning that language to read this book in its original language. Tolstoy is well known for several books he wrote, but "War and Peace" is his crowning achievement. Out of all the distinguished works of Russian literature (Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and others), "War and Peace" is the Atlas that holds all the others upon its shoulders. It beckons you to conquer its sheer size and scope, and its reputation is one of the most formidable in literary history. Surprisingly, War and Peace is not difficult, and is a cracking good tale.
An adequate summary of the book, in 1000 words, is impossible. Tolstoy places his characters in the context of the Napoleonic wars. His emphasis is on three "characters": the Bolkonsky family, the Rostov family, and Pierre Bezuhov. Along the way, dozens of other characters appear: Denisov, Dolohov, Helene, Kutuzov (my favorite), and Anatole quickly spring to mind. Even Napoleon and the Russian Tsar Alexander make appearances. All aspects of life appear, in one carefully crafted scene after another. Love, death, marriage, children, combat; all come together into a seamless whole. Saying that these people become real through Tolstoy's pen is an understatement. Despite the different time frame and different society, their struggles are our struggles. Pierre's search for meaning in life will find many sympathizers in our fast-paced world. Andrei's death scene is achingly realistic, and it you aren't touched in some way by it, you should check your pulse. Even Natasha, the hyper vivacious Rostov who grows into a responsible family matriarch, is a recognizable figure in today's world (as anyone who knows teenage girls can attest). It doesn't matter that these people are 19th century Russians; they are people acting on the stage of humanity, and are timeless. The end of the story, with everyone settled down in family life, reflects Tolstoy's own joys of family and home.
Occasionally, Tolstoy lifts the curtain and reveals the method behind the story. This method is Tolstoy's unwavering belief in the abilities of man. It is no mistake that the peasantry is represented as an ideal of man. Pierre's embrace of peasant simplicity towards life and Nicolai's careful cultivation of peasant ways are issues that Tolstoy himself dealt with in late 19th century Russia. The Populist movement in Russia in the 1890's is an extension of this idea. Tolstoy takes his faith in the peasant, and with it, posits a whole philosophy of history. His philosophy of history, in short, sees history as the result of millions of individual actions. History is not the prerogative of the elite, but the result of the actions of all humans. I see some reviews despised these sections, accusing Tolstoy of repetition and error. While the theory may be questionable at times, it does fit in with Russia's growing awareness of the peasantry and its role in the future of the country.
I had a few problems with this Penguin edition. First, printing this monster in one volume was not a good idea. Expect pins-and-needles sensations in your hands and fingers. I suggest at least two volumes, maybe three, for better and easier reading.
Second, I wonder if Rosemary Edmonds trimmed the translation a little. I find it hard to believe that Tolstoy did not provide more information on some of the characters. Bagration's death is announced but never described. We also never find out what happens to Dolohov. Prince Vasili figures prominently in the early parts of the book but barely appears in the rest of the story. Maybe Tolstoy did leave this stuff out, but I would like to know for sure. Other than these objections, the translation seems excellent.
Third, this edition needs a better introduction. I am loath to recommend this, as introductions are usually boring or useless. For "War and Peace," an introduction longer than three or four pages is needed. The introduction in the book is inadequate because it doesn't elucidate Tolstoy's philosophy and it gives only superficial clarification of characters.
You owe it to yourself to read this book. My copy set on the shelf for a long time, too. It took me about eight days to read the book. I made sure to read at least 100 pages a day. On at least one day I read 250 pages. I wanted to get it done fast so I could get the full effect. Spreading this monster out over months would not be a good idea. Highly Recommended.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Eye of God
Comment: Ever since I was a teen (I'm 51) I tried reading War and Peace. The furthest I ever got was something like Page 80. Six summers ago, I thought, what the heck, give it another shot. After Page 100 or so, the book picked up steam, and I was absolutely awed as I've seldom been by all the great books I've read in my life. That's what I want to share with potential readers of this great book. Stick with it. It's like a trickling stream that grows and grows from many tributaries into a grand wide raging river. It's got everything in it, as if it were written by God. Tolstoy saw everything. There are so many, many unforgettable scenes in it. My favorite two are the costume party at the country estate (pure magic!) and the great wolf-hunting scene in which the wolf actually takes on a personality under the all-knowing skill of Tolstoy's great pen. In just a line or two, Tolstoy could actually get inside the "soul" of even an animal! I can only imagine how great this book is in the original Russian. After War and Peace, I devoured Anna Karenina, which is in many ways an even greater book. I'd recommend people read War and Peace with Cliff's Notes, as I did, because you get a sense of the historical background and it helps you from getting the hundreds of characters mixed up. War and Peace is more than a novel. It's an Everest of creation. Please stick with it!
Rating: 5
Summary: "the Iliad of Russia....."
Comment: ....as someone dubbed it (Trotsky?), although with exquisitely human characters rather than archetypal gods and heroes. The film GETTYSBURG comes to mind, but stripped of all the "why we fight" rahrah.
Those who read history know that by the early 1800s, Napoleon had captured most of Europe. Only the discipline and seamanship of the Royal Navy had kept him from swallowing all of it. In his grandiosity he lined up his next target, fabled Moscow, sent in the army, burned the city; but Russia was the rock upon which his Grand Armee shattered. By the time it ran back to France, most of its vitality lay dying in the Russian winter. That's the historical context of the novel.
For me the start was a slow read--all those balls and drawing rooms and Russian high society--but only until realizing that Tolstoy was setting the stage, introducing key characters, and making an ironic contrast between the insulated world of the nobility and the blood and death that would soon pierce it.
What stood out most for me: people and events. What a gallery of people: the parasitic Anna Mihalovna and her insipid son Boris; the callous Don Juanism of Anatole; his psychopathic friend Dolohov; Sonya, clever but faded; the unstoppable Denisov, the Wobin Hood of Wussia ("Weload!"); Prince Andrei, fated for a moment of battlefield transcendence in which even Napoleon seems paltry and limited; girlish Natasha; and Pierre, living proof of William Blake's dictum that excess can lead to wisdom.
In charge of the Russian army: Field Marshal Kutuzov, as weary and patient as the ground he defended. The clever and enduring peasant Karatayev might serve as his spiritual counterpart, the first an exemplar of the Russian heart, the second a bearer of its soul.
The ball where the nobility dance as Napoleon quietly crosses the border; the burning of Moscow; and the terrible carnage as Prince Andrei's men are knocked to pieces one by one in a fog torn by incoming artillery fire: just three of many poignant, wracking, and unforgettable events in this vast tapestry whose human threads weave their way in and out of what for us is history.
A few critiques:
My edition of this translation could stand updating. I don't read Russian, but I can't visualize Russians using words like "fiddlesticks," "blackguard," or "at sixes and sevens."
The book's most obvious artistic flaw is all the pages it devotes to the grinding of Tolstoy's history ax. At least he put most of it in the Epilogue. An aspect of his view has been called Tolstoy's fatalism: wars and other big events don't happen because of heroes or geniuses or bad guys, but because power relations within and between societies make them inevitable. Napoleon no more "chose" to attack Moscow with insufficient supplies than Kutuzov "chose" to hold his ground at Borodino. Even so, such determinism, "Russian fatalism," or whatever the reader chooses to call it also serves to polish and brighten the flaws, foibles, choices, and losses of the richly drawn characters, whose strivings are ennobled and illuminated by the darkness of the social forces gripping them.
What stands forth clearly in his epic is that the forces of life shine on another scale of magnitude altogether and are, in the end, as proof against final eclipse as the Russian soil in which this masterpiece germinated.
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