On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” • Hacker News Board

Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”

#81

Post by coldtea » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 8:41 AM UTC

psychometry wrote: post #10

alex504 wrote: post #4

Most people dont think War and Peace was even Tolstoys greatest novel. Anna Karenina is regarded as the greatest novel of all time by lots of authors and critics though of course there is no consensus and its sort of a silly notion.

Anna Karenina is the novel I probably read the most of without finishing. After a while, it became hard to care about rich people and their affairs and varied "nervous conditions".

Only what was then "the affairs and nervous conditions" of rich people --and the rest were working wretches--, nowadays (and for the better part of last century) has been extended to the middle class, that is, to everybody.

Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”

#82

Post by coldtea » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 8:42 AM UTC

rjf72 wrote: post #78

aidenn0 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the greatest?

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Definitely the greatest line I've ever read. Such extensive imagery and metaphor (well beyond just the sky), tucked into 15 words.

And teens today (or soon) would not visually know what "television tuned to a dead channel" meant...

Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”

#83

Post by ctchocula » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 9:43 AM UTC

A lot of great comments int his thread. The quotation that had the greatest impact on me was this one:

"We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed in a subject however trivial it may be, and that there is no subject so trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one's entire attention is devoted to it."

Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”

#84

Post by ethelward » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 10:09 AM UTC

potatoyogurt wrote: post #72

lstodd wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had read the thing, you wouldn't be throwing useless links around. Since you do and thus obviosly didn't read it, why you even consider commenting here?

Did you read his link? It directly addresses your point. I will summarize and add some context, since I don't know if you read Russian. The word мир in Russian has two meanings, "peace" and something that is translated in different contexts more like "the world" or "society." These were once different words with different spellings, but during the Soviet Union, authorities decided that some letters had to be purged b…

> but during the Soviet Union, authorities decided that some letters had to be purged because they were naughty

Just for reference, the grammatical reform had been designed during the tsarist times, started by the ephemeral Provisional Government, and only finished by the Soviets.

Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”

#85

Post by osullivj » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 10:45 AM UTC

mitchbob wrote: post #67

I'm currently reading a remarkable novel modeled after War and Peace: Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate https://www.nyrb.com/products/life-and-fate?variant=10949301... It's astonishingly good, both as literature and as an indictment of war and totalitarianism, and I'd recommend it to anyone who loves War and Peace.

Seconded; Life and Fate is a wonderful novel, and the only viable literary response to the Holocaust that I've read. Grossman's Writer at War is also excellent, and IMHO mandatory for anyone interested in WWII. His chapter on The Hell of Treblinka is without parallel.

Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”

#86

Post by mcv » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 10:48 AM UTC

CalChris wrote: post #46

billfruit wrote: post #2

I liked this paragraph from the article: "The novel’s wisest general, Commander-in-Chief Kutuzov, understands this fact about battle, and about life, from the start. At the council of war before Austerlitz, Kutuzov dozes off. At last he cuts the meeting short: “ ‘Gentlemen, the disposition for tomorrow—or rather for today, for it is past midnight—cannot be altered now. And before a battle, there is nothing more impor…

My favorite quote. I read it as it is too late now to change anything for tomorrow rather than as planning is irrelevant .

I read it as "planning may be important, but a plan can never be perfect and is not worth sacrificing sleep for"

Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”

#87

Post by baud147258 » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 10:57 AM UTC

cafard wrote: post #27

msviss wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t read Les Miserables. I’m sure its great. But depicting battles scenes is not what makes W&P, W&P. 12 chapters of Waterloo for waterloo’s sake is meaningless.

Victor Hugo was born to make Tolstoy seem laconic. Tolstoy can be prolix, but Austerlitz and Borodino are critical to the action of the novel. Waterloo has a minor plot justification inn Les Miserable , but most of the twelve chapters on Waterloo are just Hugo's excuse for spinning his theories.

I'm pretty sure Hugo being a fan of Napoleon helped.

Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”

#88

Post by osullivj » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 11:12 AM UTC

Endy wrote: post #45

alex504 wrote: post #4

Most people dont think War and Peace was even Tolstoys greatest novel. Anna Karenina is regarded as the greatest novel of all time by lots of authors and critics though of course there is no consensus and its sort of a silly notion.

To me, Anna Karenina is really mostly notable for having the second-greatest opening line in all literature.

It is a truth universally acknowledged... Jane Austen, naturally.

Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”

#89

Post by alimw » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 11:27 AM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #73

beloch wrote: post #24

War 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…

I suppose a lot of meaning and cultural context is lost in translation. I never understood how people in the West even approach these masterworks of Russian literature. They're challenging even for the natives. That having been said, War and Peace is my favorite Russian novel by far. First time I read it I was 15, they force you to read it high school. I disliked it intensely. Second time I read it I was 40. I absolu…

Do you really believe that a person's comprehension of the world must be tied so irreversibly to the land they grew up on? There were some similarly condescending comments in a recent thread about the Master and Margarita. Personally I am more likely to respect someone's views on Shakespeare if they've read a lot of Shakespeare than if they were born in Stratford.

Re: On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”

#90

Post by jonstewart » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 12:45 PM UTC

jonstewart wrote: post #34

JSYK, 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 yours…

Uh oh, looks like The New Criterion enforcers found me. I don’t think pointing out the well-known POV of a publication (read the wiki entry) should result in down-modding.