War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
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Book Reviews of War and Peace
Book Review: Only imposing in length.
Summary: 5 Stars
I found my way to Tolstoy circumvently by way of other Russian authors. It seems all roads lead to the count one way or another when it comes to Russian literature.
Certainly in my youth the expression, "It isn't 'War and Peace'!" was a sarcastic and thoughtless epitaph when trying to get through a book or writing something. Well, this edition takes the academic intimidation off the novel and makes it a completely readable and (who'd of guessed?)enjoyable experience.
Make no mistake- it's long. The joke holds water in that regard but if it's any help even Tolstoy himself wrote it in sections and volumes published seperately.
Like any work of vision, this book teaches you how to read it. Some have argued about the extensive french in this edition (overstated in my opinion) but the author's have placed the direct translation at the bottom of the page. It isn't an elaborate endeavor to avert one's eyes downward to read it's equivalent. Tolstoy (and thus his translators) thought it important that the Russian's spoke french extensively to exemplify how prevalent that culture was saturated into the aristocracy before it was their deadly enemy.
Volokhonsky and Pevear, the translating team, retain the original poetic intention of Tolstoy's writing in various points to some readers disdain. I find it beautiful and correct.
Tolstoy made clear he wasn't writing a novel (of european invention)or trying to obey any form besides the very expression he felt apporpriate to convey his story and characters. It is essentially Russian and is simply to be taken or left for it's own worth.
Aside from the artistic and ambitious translation (an art unto itself), I found the book inspiring, despairing and beautiful. A history lesson, a contemplation of the divine and a love story.
If that doesn't appeal then don't place this brick on your lap for the weeks or months it takes to consume. But if you do, I doubt you'll regret the journey.
Book Review: Hard to put down
Summary: 5 Stars
War and Peace has the handicap of being on almost every short list of "greatest novels of all time," and on many such lists in fact stands at the top. That, plus the size of the book and its huge cast of characters, makes it a little intimidating for those who are unused to Russian names and their numerous affectionate variations. Yet once one starts reading, the mantle of greatness falls away as a barrier with the discovery that this is a book that's very hard to put it down. Tolstoy had an amazing gift to bring each person who figures in his epic fully to life, the women no less than the men. He records not only what is said but, in many cases, what was thought but not openly expressed. Tolstoy has a surgeon's eye for what is going on beneath the surface.
As the title suggests, this is in part a book about war (the heroism, the horror, the chaos, the tragedy), but even more importantly it is a study of the spiritual development -- for several cases, the transformation -- of a number of people whose lives the reader follows closely over the course of years.
This my second reading of War and Peace. The first time around, 37 years ago when I was in prison for taking part in an act of civil disobedience protesting the Vietnam War, it was the translation done by Constance Garnett. She did ground-breaking work introducing English-language readers to Russian authors, but took a great many liberties with her translations.
This long-awaited new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky is the most readable I know of, and (judging from the earlier translations) is probably the closest English-language edition of the Russian original, including the decision to retain French in all the places Tolstoy used it, with translation into English appearing as footnotes.
Tolstoy's masterpiece remains as vital today as it was when it was originally published.
Book Review: Excellent idiomatic translation - Difficult reading though
Summary: 5 Stars
This new English translation of Tolstoy's classic by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky is certainly the most worthy to appear in a long while. The translators attempt to preserve the literary experience one would have if one were to read the original Russian. The French is preserved with English footnotes. Many seemingly "awkward" (to use a term frequently used by other reviewers) expressions, such as repeated words, are preserved. This is truly a word-for-word literary translation. The practice of "dynamic equivalency" has been downplayed in favor of rendering the text to match Tolstoy's prose style.
I took some Russian in college, and I attempted to read W&P in Russian a few times. I found the reading extremely painful and spent upwards of an hour sometimes just trying to understand one paragraph; Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, and Chekhov proved much more accessible. But I also got a sense of realism and true-to-life narrative that I found lacking in others. To translate W&P into smooth flowing English in the style of modern day novelists, or even Victorian era novelists, is to rob the novel of the unique "real-world" style Tolstoy adopted. I liken it to translating James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake into the French equivalent of modern day smooth English prose. Would you, if you be an English reader of Joyce, consider that a proper way to render that classic for foreign readers? I think not. Remember that when you read this W&P.
While I will always go back to the Maude translation, this certainly is the first choice among more recent translations. Garnett, Edmonds, Dunnigan, and Briggs are woefully inferior in comparison.
So I encourage you not to be disturbed by the difficulty you may find reading this version. You may not be able to speed through it Evelyn Wood style, but you'll experience the world Tolstoy tried to preserve with it more fully this way.
Book Review: Awkward and often difficult to follow
Summary: 1 Stars
This was a translation I had waited for impatiently and then found myself sorely disappointed with. Even though I have read this - my favorite novel - numerous times, I found some sentences in this Pevear translation almost totally unreadable with awkwardness. Perhaps the translators were attempting to replicate Russian sentence structure along with word meaning?
Another problem for this reader was the lack of in-line translation of the French, which appears more often than one would suspect. I do not read French, and looking to the bottom of the page for meaning broke the flow of my read and caused numerous stop-start impediments. Though this raw presentation of the French may be considered a strength for the reader who can read it, it is not an advantage for those of us limited to understanding English only.
My favorite translations remain the Maude or Garnett, and I would vigorously recommend either over this one.
If you are at ease with French, you may enjoy this Pevear version, but even then, I would challenge you to arbitrarily take a long paragraph and match it against the Maude or Garnett translations. I think you'll agree that the Pevear flows poorly and is too often less clear than the others.
The very first time I read the work, I read the Constance Garnett translation and never had a problem; indeed, the story became my favorite. Now, many years later, I frequently read that her version is inaccurate. Nevertheless, whenever I run into a confusing sentence or paragraph in Pevear - and this is also true for his Dostoevsky works - I find greater clarity with a more flowing style in my Garnett versions. I guess I'm one who will trade strict faithfulness to the Russian for style, a flowing juxtaposition of words, and crisp clarity.
Book Review: READY FOR OPRAH!
Summary: 5 Stars
I deliberately held off reading another War and Peace until my favorite Russian translators, Pevear and Volokhonsky, got to it, and the result is worth waiting for. Theirs is a delicate, elegant rendering of Tolstoy, one that makes his strengths and weaknesses perfectly clear for evaluation. My only disagreement is about the many French passages. P&V leave them in the original, with translations below as footnotes. Especially in the opening part, where you want to get going as smoothly as possible, the constant use of French creates a lot of unwelcome speed bumps. In my view, an English translation is meant to render everything in English. Tolstoy had reason to believe his readers were French-speaking gentry, but that's not tenable anymore. My one complaint aside, I certainly endorse this as the best, indeed the only, translation of War and Peace you need.
As for the merits of Tolstoy, I am ambivalent. Of the 19th century Russian greats, Tolstoy writes best--but to least effect. He always stands between the reader and the characters, a snobbish Olympian puppet-master. Thanks to his minute, remote ethnography, I never care about any of his characters, and quite a few remain inconsequential cartoons. I would apply "fine" rather than "great" to this work: it always held my attention, though at times barely, but it just never took off. For me, Chekhov is the real Russian great, especially in his short novels and stories, and how he did it remains in great part a mystery. Somehow, Chekhov's characters communicate to us directly from inside themselves; in his world even trivia seem momentous. And Chekhov achieves his effects with great concision. Tolstoy: vast works about small pampered people; Chekhov: miniatures about nobodies that open to a universe of feeling and desire.