Good but a little short

Tolstoy’s single rich heirs on a moral quest for the truth are my Roman Empire even though the more I age the more I tend to be somewhat critical of their final (conservative) conclusions, but hey still important to read about their lives.

I went into this book thinking that the message would be something along the lines of, Peace is a popularity contest, love triangles, gossip, & rich people talking about where to get lunch but War is brutal, changes everything, & so so serious. Actually, Tolstoy wants you to know that War is a popularity contest, gossip, & rich people talking about where to get lunch (not so much the love triangles back in 1812). A lot of the reviews on this site seem pretty dismissive of Tolstoy’s philosophical rants & suggest that the reader simply skip them - I must say those are some of the parts I enjoyed most. The epilogue broaches on a melange of Nietzsche’s Will to Power & Marxism but like, artsy. It’s honestly quite fascinating. I almost wish I had read the epilogue & the Tolstoy’s afterward before the actual book(s), & I came out of it with the feeling that I’ll need to reread it. Maybe in another decade. Anyway, this definitely comes recommended from yours truly.

Görkemli bir başyapıt... Piyer, kutuzov, nataşa, andrey ve tabiki napolyon gibi unutulmaz karakterlere sahip bir başyapıt..herkesin okuma deneyimi farklı olacaktır muhakkak ama benim açımdan okunması zor ama bir o kadar büyüleyici bir kitap "Savaş ve Barış"..Ömrüm izin verirse bir kez daha okumak isteyeceğim nadir kitaplardan..

The payoff just wasn't there for this 1,200 page trudge fest. There were a few memorable scenes and I enjoyed the history lesson, much less so the characters and philosophizing. Perhaps one day I'll get enrichment from having read the book, but for now I just don't feel like investing any more effort to figure out what I was supposed to walk away with from all this.

** spoiler alert ** My first impression of this book was that it was not for me. The book left me feeling unsatisfied, because I had fully expected epic and grandiose. To me, Tolstoy’s War and Peace is unbearably dull. I attribute this to translation (although I'm not convinced). Despite the large and diverse cast of characters, it seems he himself could not track their development and abandoned it altogether. There is one common trait among all the characters, no matter their name or gender alone: fickleness. I am particularly disturbed by Tolstoy's portrayal of Napoleon, the novel's antagonist, in a clearly biased light. Characters seem generic, uninteresting, and not special if one looks beyond the famed historical events (the core of the work). Nothing in this novel is original or hasn't already been done, or better, since published. There is no need to read this book. Put your time to better use by reading something else.

June 24, 2017: "Было морозно и ясно. Над грязными, полутемными улицами, над черными крышами стояло темное звездное небо. Пьер, только глядя на небо, не чувствовал оскорбительной низости всего земного в сравнении с высотою, на которой находилась его душа. При въезде на Арбатскую площадь огромное пространство звездного темного неба открылось глазам Пьера. Почти в середине этого неба над Пречистенским бульваром, окруженная, обсыпанная со всех сторон звездами, но отличаясь от всех близостью к земле, белым светом и длинным, поднятым кверху хвостом, стояла огромная яркая комета 1812-го года, та самая комета, которая предвещала, как говорили, всякие ужасы и конец света. Но в Пьере светлая звезда эта с длинным лучистым хвостом не возбуждала никакого страшного чувства. Напротив, Пьер радостно, мокрыми от слез глазами смотрел на эту светлую звезду, которая как будто, с невыразимой быстротой пролетев неизмеримые пространства по параболической линии, вдруг, как вонзившаяся стрела в землю, влепилась тут в одно избранное ею место на черном небе и остановилась, энергично подняв кверху хвост, светясь и играя своим белым светом между бесчисленными другими мерцающими звездами. Пьеру казалось, что эта звезда вполне отвечала тому, что было в его расцветшей к новой жизни, размягченной и ободренной душе." What an incredible passage to conclude the first two volumes of the greatest novel ever written! So many interpretations can be formulated from the contrasting feelings of dread by the general public and Pierre's sudden inspiration upon seeing the comet of 1812. What is to happen next? We know that superstitious feeling of doom is to be proven correct soon, when Napoleon invades Russia once again in near future. But what is to come for Pierre? Natasha, Natasha.... I really disliked her character at first because of her endless childishness, but it is her naïveté and tendency to follow her every changing mood with reckless abandon that gets her in a lot of trouble. Now I just feel very sorry for her, and I'm anxious to see how her destiny unfolds. Part V of Volume 2 is an incredible piece of melodrama done right. I'm so in love with Tolstoy's writing. September 4, 2017: I finally finished War and Peace!! That's an incredible feeling of accomplishment. Volumes 3 and 4 definitely contained many more war segments, compared to the previous two. Sometimes it was trying to get through them, but once in a while a brilliant scene would emerge and capture my attention once more (ie. Pierre as a French captive). I loved how Tolstoy brought one of the most famous Russian generals, Kutuzov, to life through his field strategy and defiant nature. I'm a bit disappointed about Natasha's marriage in the end. (view spoiler) Contrary to popular opinion, I disliked Pierre very much. He was awkward and, frankly speaking, stupid, easily manipulated by all around him, and unable to think for himself. It was much more interesting to see the love triangle between Princess Maria, Nikolai, and Sonya unfold. The epilogue was the most painful part, of course. Tolstoy just endlessly rambled on about his philosophical ideas, and it felt like it would never end. However, all the human drama, so wonderfully and realistically captured in this book, made it absolutely worthwhile to persevere through the slow bits. 4.5 stars overall.

It was a soap opera. And not even an enjoyable one like Anna Karenina. Anyways, if they ever make a mock reality tv show I'll watch it, but otherwise I will be avoiding War and Peace in all forms of media.

What is War and Peace about? Is it a novel? An epic? Is it another military history book? Is it about war? Peace? Philosophy? The answer to all these questions is of course, yes. Tolstoy’s magnum opus covers all these topics and more. This is a massive tome: 1200+ pages, 500 different characters, and almost 600,000 words. At its heart, Tolstoy's book describes the making of Russia into what it was when Tolstoy was writing. What happens when a society so enamored by the French that it has adapted its language, culture and attitudes is forced to go to war? ‘But how are we ever going to be able to fight the French, Prince!’ said Count Rostopchin. ‘How can we take arms against our teachers and our idols? Look at our young men, look at our ladies. The French are our gods, and Paris is our Paradise.’ He began to raise his voice so that everyone could hear. ‘Our fashions are French, our ideas are French, our feelings are French! The two main protagonists in our story, Andrey Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov both begin the story in fact admiring Napoleon for completely different reasons. Andrey, so irritated by life in high society with all its gossip and meandering nonsense, is attracted by Bonaparte achieving glory and having influence. Pierre, on the other hand, is a fairly naive idealist who is attracted to Bonaparte's French revolutionary credentials. Both of these characters have some of the richest character arcs in world literature, with Andrey flirting between depressive epicureanism (in the truest sense) and finding love in the figure of Natasha while Pierre attempts to find happiness in freemasonry and a community where he can use his idealistic impulses for good. This is what I believe the book is fundamentally about: how should we live our lives? Tolstoy offers many particular different answers to this question, and yet none of them seemed particularly convincing to me. There are many criticisms I do have of this book, however. I do think the appendixes for the most part can and probably should be skipped. I personally disagree with Tolstoy's theory of historical determinism and am closer to the dialectical approach of Marx when he says, "men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." Tolstoy has an understandable hatred of Napoleon and his hero-worship, however, his diatribes do get stale and repetitive. I honestly think Tolstoy could have used a good editor to fine-tune the book. In addition, I do think Tolstoy's sole focus on the happenings of aristocratic society is problematic, especially given his theory of history. The only discussion of peasants happens on a superficial level, peasants all seem classified into two types: the superstitious rabble-rousers (see the serfs who kept Marie hostage) and the idea of the archetypal good, noble Russian peasant (see Platon Karataev or the peasants encounter by Nikolai at the end). Especially given the time period Tolstoy wrote War and Peace (this was around the time the serfs were abandoned) and Tolstoy’s own relatively progressive views, I’m honestly surprised by their treatment throughout the book. In addition, his treatment of women deserves significant scrutiny. However, despite these criticisms, I honestly think this book deserves its position in the pantheon of Great Books. Tolstoy has a way of writing his characters in a way that makes them seem more real than real life. Reading this book was a deeply emotional experience for me and it was impossible for this not to seep into my daily life (especially Pierre's journey). I honestly cannot recommend this book enough.

World Classic

I couldn't just choose one quote.

Lido em 4 volumes, em 2016. https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.pt/...

A masterpiece.

The way War and Peace is, it's not a novel, it's not completely historical, it's not entirely an essay or a work of philosophy- it's all these things. War and Peace cannot in no way be clearly defined as one genre, but that structure -the form that war and peace is- it takes on so many different contradictory topics [wealth and poverty, fame and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness, health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, freedom and captivity, etc.] that every time you turn it around and look at it you'll see something different, and I think that's exactly Tolstoy's point. We bounce back and forth between war and having that tumultuous dreadful feeling of pain and suffering in day-to-day life and "peace", those soft, wholesome moments each character experiences.

** spoiler alert ** It took me 4 years to get through this book! Whew! I re-read the first “book” (its broken up into 15 books.) about 6 times. I’m more proud of myself than I should be for finishing this. My super fast summary: There’s a War, and Napoleon was there. There are many terrible relationship matches. The characters you want to be together marry other people. People are sad and struggling. War ends, spouses die, people who belong together are finally together. There are a lot of moral questions. It’s super brilliant, but maybe needs some editing. (Seriously, your epilogue shouldn’t be 102 pages long. I’m looking at you Tolstoy.)

I read this in Russian as part of my undergraduate degree at St Andrews. I was the only final honours student who was doing single Russian, so I had pretty much to take all the modules that were on the course, including the dissertation module. My subject was a comparison of Tolstoy's novel with the 1969 movie version directed by Sergei Bondarchuk. Looking back on that period some 12 years later, it stands as one of the most useful and interesting things I did at uni.

Don’t @ me! Bit of a trudge for me. Mostly owing to the strange narrative interjections with prescriptive historical context… about history. And then I just can’t stand military/war fiction in general, so I knew this wouldn’t be a favourite. I honestly think Anna Karenina is better constructed and a masterclass on introducing themes back-to-back, building a network of connective tissue with a lot of payoff without the prescriptive methods of narrative interjections. Fiction is self generated and when authors use that to tell readers what’s right—even when they’re certainly aligned with my own ideology re: politics and nationalism and history—it generates a cognitive dissonance that really bothers me. On top of this, description was really centered on generalities and I prefer specificity. On one hand, there’s insights that bring you into a scene, such as noting a woman being beautiful for having disproportionate lips or friends that meet after a time taking a while to find their footing for a bit. On the other it dumbs things down fairly often, reducing people to bland generalities, always always, again, around attractiveness. Something that is so subjective and pointless. When we get that Downton Abbey vibe and I start caring about these rich people, the voice is compelling. Anytime I care about rich people, the author is a wizard. But it became too infrequent and the interjections more intrusive. It absolutely has some fantastic stuff to say on history and war and power and gender dynamics (from time to time)… but it also isn’t really anything new. If I hadn’t read about these subjects. Especially if I were in high school or early 20s, I think this could be a eye opening read. I love books that trick you into learning. But it became something of a dead horse being written. Points were being made after a scene that made the point already. It’s so explicit it is grating. Over time, it does feel like it’s beating a dead horse.

A masterpiece.

A masterpiece.

Bu kadar yıl önce yazılmış, bir kaç nesil tarafından okunmuş ve en iyi kitaplar arasındaki yeri hiç değişmemiş bir kitap hakkında yorum yazmak biraz zor açıkcası. Beni en çok şaşırtan (aynı zamanda bunca zamandır gözümün korkup kaçmama sebep olan konu şey olarak) bu kadar uzun ve çok karakterli bir kitabın okurken okuyucuyu bu kadar içinde tutması ve uzun zaman akıldan çıkmayacak şekilde akla kazınması. Evet sayısız karakter dahil oluyor, ilk başladığımda karakterleri karıştırdığım için çokça geriye dönmem gerekti. Ancak kitap ilerledikçe karakterlerden işlevini tamamlayanlar geride kalıyor, yeni karakterler geliyor ve bu mükemmel bir dengede oluyor. Ne giden karakterlerle ilgili aklınızda soru işareti kalıyor ne de yeni karakterin gerekliliğini sorguluyorsunuz. Kitap "Savaş ve Barış" temalı olsa da aslında Tolstoy her konuda yazıyor. Hem Rusya'nın ahlaki ve sosyal çevreler ile aşk-aile konularını ele alırken adeta toplumun ayrıntılı bir panaromasını ortaya koyuyor hem de Napolyon savaşlarının tarihi detaylarını okuyorsunuz. Muazzam bir kitap.

two years... and i'm finally done with this massive tome. would i read it again? probably not until years later tbh. for now, i'll content myself with watching the 2016 version of this & listening to the musical endlessly on repeat.

The best translation...very academic... The best part is, finally one translation keeps the French sentences untouched with translations in the footnotes. Tolstoy had a reason to keep them in French...

This book reads like a collection of life stories—not all parts of life are exciting or heartbreaking or shocking, and thus there are won’t to be some boring parts (and boy does Tolstoy like to repeat his points), but over the course of it you have the privilege of seeing characters grow and change. I loved this book over the few months it took me to read, and especially at the end I felt deeply connected to the characters Tolstoy introduced to me. They felt real to me, and I am happy to have been read many a philosophical discussion as the characters come to realisations. There are many great reviews into the themes and contents of this book, better than I could ever hope to do at this moment in time, and so I’d refer you to do if you want to have a more in-depth content analysis of this book, but I do think that if you’re interested in Russian literature this is certainly a book to consider reading. It is not an easy one to get through at times, but it is super rewarding (at least it was to me) to finish it. What I would recommend though is to not read the second epilogue, as there Tolstoy’s tendency for repetition really shows and it subtracts from the experience of reading the characters’ epilogue (which is the first one). Or, at least, wait till the rest of the story has sunk in a little before attempting this section ^^

This book reads like a collection of life stories—not all parts of life are exciting or heartbreaking or shocking, and thus there are won’t to be some boring parts (and boy does Tolstoy like to repeat his points), but over the course of it you have the privilege of seeing characters grow and change. I loved this book over the few months it took me to read, and especially at the end I felt deeply connected to the characters Tolstoy introduced to me. They felt real to me, and I am happy to have been read many a philosophical discussion as the characters come to realisations. There are many great reviews into the themes and contents of this book, better than I could ever hope to do at this moment in time, and so I’d refer you to do if you want to have a more in-depth content analysis of this book, but I do think that if you’re interested in Russian literature this is certainly a book to consider reading. It is not an easy one to get through at times, but it is super rewarding (at least it was to me) to finish it. What I would recommend though is to not read the second epilogue, as there Tolstoy’s tendency for repetition really shows and it subtracts from the experience of reading the characters’ epilogue (which is the first one). Or, at least, wait till the rest of the story has sunk in a little before attempting this section ^^