War and Peace

Rating:
Summary: Actually
Review: War and World is the bad title. I perfectly understand the title to be war and periods of military quiet. It also contrasts personal struggle and personal content

Rating:
Summary: Worth It
Review: Many "classics" fail to live up to their accreditation. War and Peace does not. It is geniune article, the definitive soap opera novel with a giant cast, incredible insight on humanity at all levels and brilliant storytelling. The caveat is you will probably not be able to spend a couple of months at it and retain understanding of the immense volume of characters, their relationship to each other and the broader canvas of philosophy Tolstoy shoves in every now and then. I read it in 13 days, about 100 pages per day, 30 years ago and have never forgotten that thrill ride. If you make time for it you will realize why people say they read War and Peace. Not bragging rights. They want to share a sublime experience.

Rating:
Summary: the title is not translated correctly
Review: The book is great, but the title is always translated incorrectly. It has to be "War and World", not "War and Peace".
I am native russian speaker, and in high school (the russian literature as major) the teacher explained to us that there is wide-spread confusion about how to translate the title. Currently, in russian, words "Peace" and "World" are represented by one word, but when the book was written, two words existed, which though were pronounced exactly the same, were written differently. Leo Tolstoy used the word "World". Actually, "War and Peace" title does not make sense to me at all, as probably for everyone who read the book.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing book, unlike anything I ever read
Review: I am a PhD student at Northwestern University, in a department of applied mathematics, and I have discovered the wonderful world of Russian classics recently. This book is beyond anything I ever imagined! Tolstoy has such an understanding of human nature...I learnt a lot about myself while reading this book, and I understand why it is acclaimed by many to be the best novel ever written. Don't get discouraged by the length of this book, or by the variety of characters introduced early on in the book. This book will make you laugh, cry and want to scream at the same time. It is a story of life...of a great people and a magnificent culture, and the faults and virtues of all the characters can teach us a lot about ourselves...

Rating:
Summary: Ahhh - this takes me back
Review: Back in 1996 I was 15 years old and idly began to read a very cheap edition of War and Peace.

Certainly it had an appalling cover, and had spelling and typesetting mistakes, and the font was too small, but still - I had discovered a brilliant translation of a brilliant book. It took me three months to read it. I don't have a clue how I did it, or why - but the book made a big impression on me.

Eight years later, and the book still wows me.

Very roughly, the book describes the interactions between five prominent aristocratic families in Russia as they live through the Napoleonic Wars (1804-1815).

Trying to describe the plot of War and Peace is like trying to describe the "plot" of a zoo or a botanical park. The events are presented shapelessly and meanderingly, with little apparent structure.

It is character rather than event that makes this book memorable. No one could define character and moivation like Tolstoy. His characters are always ensnared by their own character traits, which are made clear to the audience by their reactions to events.

One scene has the teenaged Nicholas Rostov, who is very close to his father, incur a gambling debt - something he did not habitually do. He has toi get his father to pay it. At first he decides to throw himself on his father's mercy - but of course, he is a young soldier, trying to prove he is grown up. So he pretends to be arrogant and coldly tells his father of the debt; and asks him to pay it. "It happens to everyone" he says brusquely, although he feels awful saying it.
But of course Count Rostov is a perceptive man; rather than go with his first impulse and tell him off for his arrogance (which Nicholas is secretly begging him to do), he says humbly: "Yes, all right, it happens to everyone..." and he glances at his son and pretends to leave the room.
Of course then Nicholas Rostov, filled with guilt, breaks down and tearfully asks his father to forgive him.

This sort of psychological chess-game is Tolstoy's speciality. All of his characters are irresistably familiar, and their motivations and reasons for doing things are very realistic. Consider Anatole Kuragin's utter incomprehension when Pierre tells him off for trying to elope with the Count'sd daughter. Not only does Anatole (a party animal/dilettante) not feel guilty for what he has nearly done - he does not even have the slightest comprehension of what Pierre is talking about. So he simply stares blankly.

To say this book has a shapeless plot doesn't mean it doesn't have an epic sweep. In fact, that's probably what's so brilliant about this book. The drama is a drama of character rather than event. Changes of character can occur while the character is sitting in a chair thinking, or wandering in a POW train, or lying at death's door in a bed. It seems to be what is happening inside the character's heads that interests Tolstoy; and the only events in the book that are revolutionary occur inside the characters' heads! The battle of Borodino passes with hardly any change for the characters; but Prince Andrei's last days alive, sitting alone in a room, are monumentally important.

In a memorable - and very strange - static scene, the very young Petya Rostov, who has joined the Hussars (and is doomed to die the next day) asks a Russian soldier to sharpen his sword for the next day's battle.
Petya is the brother of Nicholas and Natasha, very musical people. But since he is so young, and so eager to join the army, that he hasn;'t really shown this trait yet.
So when he listens to the sound of his sword being sharpened, he falls into a trance-like sleep that lasts for hours. The sound of the sword becomes music in his imagination - in fact, a fugue. Petya imagines that he is conducting this sword-music. Hours later, he awakens, and the soldier gives him his sharpened sword, and he prepares to fight in his first (and terminal) battle.
This scene is odd, and hallucinatory in its vividness; Tolstoy was a genius at bringing out the nature of this boy's introspection. Of course, the musical talent of Petya - he can hear music only in swords - is to be wasted the following day on the battlefield. Again, this is a static scene; the battle itself becomes only a transitory event.

I must admit, I am one of those who doesn't like Tolstoy's historiographical theories and how they are pushed into the narrative. To me, it is the characters, not the philosophy or events, that make the book memorable.

Well, no wonder none of the films of this book seem to be as good. Films by definition can only show character through events - unless yu have far too much interior monologue.

Rating:
Summary: This book is a classic
Review: Books like this give a good name to all books! I've read it several times and can't read it enough if i had a dime for every time i read it i'd be the bill gates of hobos! Buy it and you'll think better of all books!

Rating:
Summary: Simply the best
Review: This book is so trancendent, sublime, and all encompassing. Words are not enough. No novel is more thought provoking or rewarding. I'm sure some are of equal merit, but none surpass it. I would recommend the Maude translation. The Maudes actually lived with Tolstoy for a while. He personally approved of their translations. Also, if you like this book, check out Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed(I Promessi Esposi). Its historical and spiritual value are in some ways better than tolstoy's. The Betrothed is the Italian War and Peace.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing Classic
Review: Plot and history intertwined. It's long but fascinating. I read it for a class, and I could read the basics, then go back and enjoy it all. Everyone should read.

Rating:
Summary: "the Iliad of Russia....."
Review: ....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.

Rating:
Summary: One More Time.....
Review: After reading such a huge book, it's tempting to congratulate oneself and then accord it the status of a great piece of literature (perhaps the argument running that it must have been great to hold one's attention for so long). I suppose that others could find its length daunting or its pace too slow, such that they don't see the point of wasting the time it inevitably demands.

So, how to assess "War and Peace"? I've read it three times now, albeit I've left a number of years between each reading. I found that re-reading is almost a new experience: that is to say, so vast is its scale, that there is always something new to discover or reflect upon, something missed or unappreciated before. Perhaps this is partly the result of the passing years causing one's perception both as a human and a reader to change. But there had to be sufficient "raw material" in the novel to provoke such reactions, a tribute to Tolstoy's skill.

This time, I was struck by Tolstoy's ability to describe three-dimensional characters, and to develop them - none are really static, each is a mixture of emotions and attitudes, each are imperfect, make mistakes and grow emotionally. Even the worst of them have some redeeming features. Tolstoy's eye was sharp: Bitsky was "one of those men who select their opinions like their clothes, according to the prevailing fashion"; Berg "measured his life not by years but by promotions". Bitsky and Berg are still around! Tolstoy holds up a mirror to human traits and gives the reader the chance to reflect.

Unfortunately, there are newly-observed faults in the book. The end is a real anticlimax. And as the novel progressed, in one sense it became less of a novel and more Tolstoy's critique of contemporary historical analysis (and a repetitive critique at that, ending in a forty page treatise). I'd got the message earlier on and didn't need it hammering into me.

A great work, yes, but with its faults, and one to enjoy time and time again.

G Rodgers