This week I am getting all my news from RT. To go along with that, I am reading only Russian books. So I started reading Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” (1868). So far “War and Peace” is way better than RT.
It is supposed to be one of the best books ever written but I had been put off by its length. I found that I am not alone on that one. The Penguin paperback runs 1,444 pages! And on top of that I am a slow reader, reading at about half the average speed. But then, come to think of it, I read Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” without batting an eye and that is over 1,000 pages. And I have read the Bible, which is about 1,900 pages.
The trick to reading a long book is to read a bit of it every day. “War and Peace” is divided into 361 chapters. The chapters are short: four pages on average, no longer than 11. Chapters are designed to give you a good place to stop. So reading the whole book in a year is easy.
Another way to think of it: it is about six books long. So, however long it takes you to read six books is about how long it will take to read “War and Peace”. For those who read a book a month, it will take about six months. For those who read a book a week, it will take six weeks. And so on. You cannot read it in a weekend, but maybe in four weekends. For the average reader, it takes about as much time as watching all five seasons of “Breaking Bad”.
Tips from Oprah.com:
- It is not a hard book to read – it is just long.
- Russians have long, confusing names. Just pay attention to the first name. If two first names sound alike – Natalia and Natasha or Piotr and Petya, for example – and you think it might be the same person, it is.
- Read the first 50 pages to see if you like it.
- Do not skip the war parts.
- It is a book you will never forget.
Tips from Charles Van Doren:
- Take off a week to read it. It is worth it. If you cannot do that, get as close to that ideal as you can.
- Throw away any reader’s guides that list characters and their relationships.
- Let the book happen to you. If you are confused at first, you will not be confused for long. It is like moving to a new town: it could take a while to get your bearings.
- Trust Tolstoy to tell the story. He is one of the best storytellers ever. He knows what he is doing. Just go with it.
Like Paris: When I was about to leave Paris, I was sitting on the train next to a young woman from Chile. She said she was about to see Paris for the first time. I envied her. Charles Van Doren feels the same way about “War and Peace”.
– Abagond, 2017.
Sources: Oprah.com; “The Joy of Reading” (2008) by Charles Van Doren.
See also:
- Programming note #32 – my RT news diet
- Reading the Bible
- Breaking Bad
- Tolkien
526
Any insight into the better translations for those of us who cannot read Russian yet?
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Your advice to break big tasks into manageable chunks is inspiring and has wide application.
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A good read for an English Composition Class
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Reblogged this on IBHE Collaborative University.
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It took me years to get up the nerve to begin this book, so much hype and it’s so long and somewhat I thought it would be challenging reading. None of this feels true once you take a good preliminary bite out of it. So,I agree about setting aside a good chink of time to begin it ( a weekend maybe). I feel that way about most good books. Something to consider, which you dod not mention, is that this book was written to be read serially. As I recall,I believe it was published in installments in a magazine or newspaper. It reads like that for sure, which is to say that it beckons you on and on…it isn’t hard to keep going back to it at all…it sucks you in and that is part of the charm and skill of Tolstoy for me. And you do have to read the war parts…you have to read it all. If you read it for long enough when you begin it the names will not confuse you too much. Looking forward to your thoughts when you finish it. Have you read Anna K. yet? Another great one.
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War and Peace a ‘must-read.’ You’ve encouraged me not to put it off much longer. Thanks for this post!
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@ jefe
I am reading the Maude translation. The Maudes knew Tolstoy. Even though their translation is from the 1920s it is still widely read. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky updated it in 2007. The Briggs translation (2005) I heard is good, but he gets rid of the French.
Constance Garnett also knew Tolstoy. She did a translation in 1904.
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When you want to impress people this the book you tell people you’re reading to sound smart.👨🏾🏫📕
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I advice to read the first 150 pages in one rush. I thought the frist 100 were very dull and put the book away because I thought I can’t stand it. Only years later I picked it up again and read the – great – rest.
Russian authors have the odd tendency to introduce a character once with his full name and then refer to him either by first or last name, but never both. So it sounds reasonable to write down the full name of all introduced characters.
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the tv show was pretty cool, i found it engaging, but i’m pretty sure it got axed before season 1 was through
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i only made it through a couple dostoevsky books in college
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Hm… I’m wondering how did the English translators get with all those passages in French that sometimes can go on a half-chapter contradicting the very essence and essentials of the Anglo-Saxon narrative tradition.
Perhaps I should start leafing this novel, too. From all the classical writers, Tolstoy shows the best understaning and sometimes even insights of and the less superstitions against my main tradition.
Yet, he is not a best option to understand the (modern) Russian literature. To understand it, I would recommend Bulgakov, Pasternak, Vassilly Shukshin and Vladimir Orlov. Leskov is good, too, but his idiolect is basically untranslatable into any other language.
Dostoyevsky is the writer of the ‘Golden Age’ I like the less, although even in his Demons, his sixth novel, he too shows some intuition of the Dzogchen teaching.
And there is also a contellation of writers composing their works in Russian though ethnically they are not, e.g. Chingis Aytmatov or Yury Rutkheu.
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…Or Fazil Iskander.
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P. P. S. Damn, how could I miss such ‘Silver Age’ writers as Vladislav Khodasevich and Andrey Bely (AKA Boris Bugayev)?…
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@nagpo
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‘typewriter of the illiterate and all that’
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@ v8driver
LOL! Subtle and hilarious!
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I saw this before. don’t get it. what is it that he is rejecting?
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ah man, that russian guy needs to be refusing a clip of ammo, even not that sight rail and all that
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“War and Peace” is a great book so far. I am up to about page 180. Vienna has just fallen to Napoleon and the Russian army is fleeing the French through the mud of Austria. I will do a post on the book when I am done, hopefully in June or so.
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@ A Russian Nagpo
Can you elaborate or give an example?
What do you mean by “my main tradition”?
I will let it slide this time 😉
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@abagond Well, the first sentence in the original W&P goes like this melange of French sentences with occasionally found Russian words (you can test this by googling):
Еh bien, mon prince. Gênes et Lucques ne sont plus que des apanages, des поместья, de la famille Buonaparte. Non, je vous préviens, que si vous ne me dites pas, que nous avons la guerre, si vous vous permettez encore de pallier toutes les infamies, toutes les atrocités de cet Antichrist (ma parole, j’y crois) – je ne vous connais plus– and so on.
And this is not even the longest French passage from the book, so I deduce from your question that American translators just skipped the original diglossia.
As for the second part of your question, it is a long story of Buddhist influence upon classical Russian prose and poetry since the 19th century. The ideas of Tolstoy were not only a mixture of Orthodix and Buddhistic teachings. In fact, his idea of non-contradicting evil with violence (neprotivlenie zlu nassiliem) and those of simple life were entirely Buddhistic and inspired by his encounter with a Buddhist monk in 1947, when then-19-years-old count Tolstoy was treated in a Kazan hospital.
Later, Tolstoy frequently mentioned Buddhism in his diaries and one of the most ancient and best-known sutras, Sutra of Allegories, is included into his book for children as a short fairytale.
I believe a parallel exists in Arabic literature, too, because the story is a part of Tale of Bilaukhar and Budasaf which, in turn, was incorporated into the Kitab al-Fihrist by an-Nadim al-Bagdadi in the 10th century.
The sutra illustrates futility of mundain life: a person runs from a wild beast (in the original story, from an enraged elephant) into the wilderness, almost falls into a pit and grabs a small tree growing on its edge. While the beast rages around, the man sees the sweet berries on the tree and two mice, a black one and a white one, gnawing the roots of the tree (in the original story there were bees and a bee hive plus a dragon and four serpents at the bottom of the pit).
Then comes the explanations of the wild beast of anger and ignorance, the pit of death, the day and night as the mice, the tree of human life and the sweetness of worldly pleasures.
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Actually, the books written in pre-revolutionary times show more ‘classicism’ than those of ‘Golden Age’.
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UPD: Count Tolstoy met a Buddhistic monk in 1847, of course; not in 1947.
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@ A Russian Nagpo
Some English-language translators, like Briggs, get rid of the French altogether. I am reading the 1923 Maude translation. The opening lines are all in English, but they do slip in French here and there and make it clear that some Russians speak completely in French, even to other Russians, while most of the upper class seem to speak in a mix of Russian and French.
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@nomad pretty sure i posted that here a while ago it seemed to have disappeared from my fb pix this one is a larger size, A. it is ‘busting chops’ on nagpo, as i do so well, and B. well it’s a soviet agent with a ak47
also it should have him saying nyet to a like 30 round banana clip or something it would be cooler
it’s not my joke its a soviet joke!
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War and Peace is a brilliant book, it took me months to read it!
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