Gary’s Reviews > War and Peace > Status Update
Gary
is on page 206 of 1200
Count Ilya Rostov and Prince Nikolay Bolkonsky are wonderful characters whom both Tolstoy and I are fond of. Tolstoy affectionately calls them as “the old count” and “the old prince.” The old count is affectionate, emotional, supportive, while the old prince is distant, rigid, cold. Yet both love their children madly. In contrast, Prince Vasili Kuragin dislikes his children and uses them to advance his own ends.
— Jul 22, 2021 01:47PM
1 like · Like flag
Gary’s Previous Updates
Gary
is finished
Now that I've finished reading, I'm watching the Amazon Prime mini-series adaption (2016) of War and Peace. The series, at least so far is remarkably true to the original, with huge portions of th book left out ... as you would expect. Some of the actors fit their parts brilliantly, others not so much.
— Aug 22, 2021 11:38AM
Gary
is on page 954 of 1200
Grief. Through Natasha, reeling from the slow, inexorable, and intimate death of Andrei, Tolstoy movingly portrays deep, personal, wasting grief more emotionally, more gut-wrenchingly, and more believably than anything I’ve read or known. Tolstoy knew grief, and in his artistry painted it in words.
— Aug 16, 2021 05:26PM
Gary
is on page 937 of 1200
The Stoic. Pierre in his sufferings as a prisoner of war “had learned that there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom … suffering and freedom have their limits and those limits are very near together ... the person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth."
— Aug 14, 2021 03:05PM
Gary
is on page 853 of 1200
The firing squad. The French begin executing prisoners whom they accuse of setting Moscow afire. Tolstoy—who is fearless and shrinks at nothing—describes the impersonality of the executions, and as a humanist chooses not to assign moral responsibility to individuals. It is the system of power and authority that is answerable. And this here and in his later works he avows must change.
— Aug 13, 2021 10:54AM
Gary
is on page 816 of 1200
Prince Andrei, gravely injured at Borodinó, drifts from delirium into and out of varying levels of consciousness. Tolstoy’s technique here is what we today might call “stream of consciousness.” There’s no doubt in my mind that Tolstoy is a literary genius who uses a wide range of narrative techniques and frames of reference, and creates complex gripping characters. Even in translation he amazes.
— Aug 11, 2021 04:47PM
Gary
is on page 710 of 1200
Incongruous. Pierre in his gentlemen’s green swallowtail coat and white hat rides and walks though Battle of Borodinó, cannonballs and bullets whizzing by, horrendous injury and violent death all around. That Tolstoy uses Pierre, a civilian in every sense, to depict the battle is either odd or inspired. I’m not sure which.
— Aug 10, 2021 07:20AM
Gary
is on page 563 of 1200
More on subservience to the autocrat … ”in an Emperor’s vicinity all became courtiers.”
— Aug 07, 2021 09:08AM
Gary
is on page 542 of 1200
Mark Twain, a contemporary of Tolstoy is said to have said of War and Peace, “Tolstoy carelessly neglects to include a boat race.” Not so. In Bk 3, Pt 1, we read, “Count Bennigsen, being a landowner in the Vilnan province, offered his country house for the fete, and the thirteenth of June was fixed for the ball, dinner, regatta, and fireworks … “
— Aug 07, 2021 09:01AM
Gary
is on page 535 of 1200
Nastasha Rostova at age 13 was inquisitive, intelligent, animated, and admired. Now at 18, she is moody, irritable, lustful, faithless. Tolstoy writes that Pierre “could not reconcile the charming impression he had of Natasha whom he had known as a child, with his new conception of her baseness, folly, and cruelty … like all women.” Tolstoy’s misogyny on display.
— Aug 07, 2021 08:57AM
Gary
is on page 455 of 1200
An evening at “Uncle’s” after the hunt is a paean to the “Russian Soul,” a theme in late 19th century Russian literature, and certainly in Tolstoy. ”Russian soul" was an expression of optimism. It stressed Russia's historical youth and its ability, by following the wisdom of the peasant, to become the savior of the world. -Wikipedia
— Aug 03, 2021 07:39AM
