Does anyone know why is Tolstoy's name usually in English anglicized as Leo? I know it's customary to do for Pope and kings, but I don't know of any other writer. Fyodor Dostoyevsky is Fyodor, not Theodore or Fred or whatever, so why has Lev become Leo? Publishers?
On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”
31–40 of 100 posts
Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”
#32I’d like to (or help someone else to) produce this for Standard Ebooks, but although Gutenberg has what looks like a nice transcription of the Maude translation,[1] there doesn’t seem to be any 1922/1923 scans available to proof it from[2] so it’s not happening at the moment…
[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2600
[2] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/standardebooks/kBnED...
Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”
#33An amusing footnote I found in Tolstoy's Confession:
The context:
>In spite of the fact that during these fifteen years I regarded writing as a trivial endeavor, I continued to write.* I had already tasted the temptations of authorship, the temptations of enormous monetary rewards and applause for worthless work, and I gave myself up to it as a means of improving my material situation and as a way of stifling any questions in my soul concerning the meaning of my life and of life in general.
The footnote:
*It was during this period, when he "regarded writing as a trivial endeavor,"
that Tolstoy produced War and Peace (1869).Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”
#34JSYK, The New Criterion sometimes features outstanding criticism, but it also has an ideological bent. Both Tolstoy and Shakespeare are often labeled as “conservatives,” but that’s a reductionist treatment of them and their art transcends base politics. However, that the first sentence of TFA extols Tolstoy’s supposed conservatism is a clue to raise your ideological shields before reading further, lest you find yourself nodding along with a publication that invented the Edmund Burke Award and then bestowed it upon one of its commentators, Henry Kissinger.
Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
could you please tell a bit more about social progress? I'd appreciate it.
I think it's a reference to the early days of USSR, when many in the West were gushing about the "new and better" society that it was supposedly building.
Right, unfortunately the 'novus homo sovieticus' was mostly Mrs. Busybody snitching on the neighbors. Drats.
Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”
#36Does anyone know why is Tolstoy's name usually in English anglicized as Leo? I know it's customary to do for Pope and kings, but I don't know of any other writer. Fyodor Dostoyevsky is Fyodor, not Theodore or Fred or whatever, so why has Lev become Leo? Publishers?
Basically yes, via French "Léon", according to this article:
https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2015/03/how-lev-tolst...
Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”
#37An amusing footnote I found in Tolstoy's Confession: The context: >In spite of the fact that during these fifteen years I regarded writing as a trivial endeavor, I continued to write.* I had already tasted the temptations of authorship, the temptations of enormous monetary rewards and applause for worthless work, and I gave myself up to it as a means of improving my material situation and as a way of stifling any que…
I wonder if he was depressed when he wrote this.
Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”
#38War and Peace reminds me of David Lynch's "Dune". Aspects of it are utterly brilliant. Perhaps unsurpassed. As a whole though, it suffers from the effects of poor decisions. Tolstoy famously said that he didn't even consider War and Peace to be a novel, but something else that sort of passes for one. Where another author with an axe to grind would tell a story that leads the reader to the desired conclusion, Tolstoy…
"On the battlefield, it's not the army with the better strategy or equipment that prevails, but the one whose soldiers simply decide it's their time to win." whoa- things people say .. here's a chance to reconsider that line ..
Here's a chance to reread the comment. He was paraphrasing Tolstoy.
Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”
#39I never finished this novel, but the juxtaposition of social maneuvers and war struck me early in the story.
Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”
#40War and Peace reminds me of David Lynch's "Dune". Aspects of it are utterly brilliant. Perhaps unsurpassed. As a whole though, it suffers from the effects of poor decisions. Tolstoy famously said that he didn't even consider War and Peace to be a novel, but something else that sort of passes for one. Where another author with an axe to grind would tell a story that leads the reader to the desired conclusion, Tolstoy…
Did you mean Herbert's "Dune"? Or did the movie diverge from the book?