War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

“War and Peace”, the four volume epic by Leo Tolstoy, is told as a story that is enhanced (for the most part) with historical commentary; the time period being in the early 1800’s in Russia during the wars fought alongside and against Napoleon. This book has a great deal of positive and negative characteristics, and most valuably serves as an introduction to the history, pride and culture of the Russian people.

I’ll begin with some comments on the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, published by Alfred A. Knope, as it is excellent. Everything Russian has been translated to English, and everything not appears in its original language with the translation in the footnotes. This made the transition between the languages relatively painless (although the translators had much more confidence in my ability to remember previously translated phrases than was warranted). Historical endnotes are scattered throughout to improve the understanding of certain colloquialisms and references. Having begun and failed to finish other translations of Tolstoy’s masterpiece, I highly recommend that anyone wanting to read this book seek out this version in particular (even if you are fluent in French and German). Pevear and Volokhonsky should be congratulated for putting a difficult novel in a very accessible form.

Tolstoy’s format of mixing historical commentary, personal beliefs and fiction for presenting his story is fantastic when it works and painful when it doesn’t. In the first two volumes, the historical commentary serves as a nice enhancement that only rarely detracts from moving the story forward. In the third volume, the historical commentary almost brings the story to a halt, and it is laborious to get through the slow pace of the commentary on the different perspectives and politics of different battles in the French-Russian war of 1812. The fourth volume improves upon moving the story forward, until you reach the epilogue.

The epilogue has several chapters of story that tie up the novel nicely. Unfortunately, this story is surrounded by hundreds of pages (small type) of Leo Tolstoy’s essay on determinism. Similar to Ayn Rands endless essay on objectivism in part 3 of “Altas Shrugged”, this essay feels awkwardly placed in the epilogue and makes finishing the book tedious, because even once the story has been completed there are 50 pages of essay to get through. This essay serves for nothing other than to show that Tolstoy is very strong proponent of determinism. While this essay is well written, it detracts from an otherwise enjoyable novel.

The story itself is enjoyable, with a vast number of characters that represent very different personalities and very accessible main characters that grow and make mistakes and become mature adults as we read. In fact this is initially the hardest thing about reading the book: getting used to all the Russian sounding names ( I’m still not positive I have all the Maryas straight). I do, however, take some exception to how some characters seem to be abandoned by Tolstoy. For Example, Sonya, the loveable and loyal orphaned niece of the Rostovs, is a character that endears herself early in the book, but by the end her story goes nowhere and the story ends without any sort of resolution to her affairs. It’s as though Tolstoy just couldn’t find a way to give her a good ending, so he just gave up on her and moved her to the background. The greatest achievement of this work, however, is it’s endearment of the Russian culture.

I loved how this novel pulled me into Russian culture and revealed a side of the people to which I’ve never been exposed. Like Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner” which presents a rich and lovely view of Afghanistan before the Taliban, “War and Peace” presents a pleasant and homey view of Russian life in the early 19th century that makes it seem as though Russia would be a nice place to live, and like Charles Dickens’ in “David Copperfield”, Tolstoy’s writing style makes you feel like you are pleasantly moving along with the lives of the characters, with no huge climaxes or lulls, but just a consistent narrative of the interesting parts of their daily lives.
Perhaps the greatest value of this book was exposed when I was watching the Olympics in February. Being a child who grew up at the end of the “Cold War” between the USSR and the United States, I have almost always looked on the Russian people with a tinge of fear and a feeling of pride (the bad, you-lost-we-won, gloating kind of pride). After reading this book I was watching the opening ceremonies for the Vancouver Olympics, and when the Russian athletes appeared I saw a people I loved and felt a connection with; a people with whom I would like to spend time and become friends. There is probably no greater value in a work of literature than to bridge a gap between “opposing” cultures in this way.