Thursday, July 26, 2018

Book 2 Part 2 Chapter 5 (Chapter 87 overall)

Chapter Summaries: Dole: The sacred square. Prince Vasili. Pierre refuses to submit to arbitration. Pierre's departure.
Briggs: Prince Vasily, seeking a reconciliation between Pierre and Helene, is violently rejected.
Maude: Pierre repulses Prince Vasili
Pevear and Volkhonsky: Pierre throws Prince Vassily out.

Translation:

V.
On the next day after the reception at the lodge, Pierre sat at home reading a book and tried to delve into the matters of the square, depicting on one side God, another the moral, the third the physical and the fourth mixed. Occasionally he ripped from the book and square and in his imagination formed himself a new plan of life. Yesterday in bed he said that before the intelligence about the duel reached the hearing of the sovereign that Pierre would be prudent to  leave from Petersburg. Pierre assumed to go to his southern estates and meet there his own peasants. He happily pondered this new life, when suddenly in the room entered Prince Vasiliy.

— My friend, what have you done in Moscow? For what have you quarreled with Lyoley, my dear?422 You are in delusion, — said Prince Vasiliy, entering into the room. — I found out everything, I can rightly say to you that Elen is as innocent before you as Christ before Jews.

Pierre wanted to respond, but he interrupted him. 

— And for what have you not turned in all and simplicity to me, as to a friend? I know everything, I understand everything, — he said, — you lead yourself as a decent person, value your honor; maybe too hastily, but about this we will not judge. Another thing for you to remember in what position you put her and me in the eyes of society and even the court, — he added, lowering his voice. — She lives in Moscow, you are here. Remember, my sweet, — he pulled him downwards by his arm, — here is only a misunderstanding; you yourself, I think, feel it. Write now with me a letter, and she will come here, explain everything, but that I to you say, you very easily can get injured, my sweet.

Prince Vasiliy impressively looked at Pierre.

— I from good sources know that the Dowager Empress accepts a live interest in all of this case. You know, she is very gracious to Elen.

A few times Pierre was going to speak, but with one party Prince Vasiliy did not allow him before this, with different parts Pierre himself was afraid to start speaking to this tone of decisive rejection and disagreement in which he firmly decided to respond to his father-in-law. Besides this the words of the masonic regulations: "wake up affectionate and affable" he remembered. He frowned, blushed, got up and lowered, worked in himself for the most difficult for him in his life case — to talk unpleasantly to the eyes of a person, saying not that what this seeing person would want him to say. He was so used to obeying this tone of careless self-confidence of Prince Vasiliy that now he felt that it was not in his forces of will to resist it; but he felt that from what he will say now will decide all of his further fate: whether he will go by the old, previous way, or by that new, which was so attractively indicated in him by the masons, and in which he firmly believed that he could find a rebirth to a new life.

— Well, my sweet, — playfully said Prince Vasiliy, — say again to me: "yes,” and I from myself will write to her, and we will kill the fat calf. — But Prince Vasiliy did not have time to finish his joke as Pierre with madness on his face, which reminded him of his father, not looking at the eyes of his interlocutor, spoke in a whisper:

— Prince, I have not called you to myself, go, please, go! — he jumped up and opened his door. — Go already, — he repeated, himself not believing and rejoicing in the expression of embarrassment and fear appearing on the face of Prince Vasiliy.

— What is with you? Are you ill?

— Go! — another time spoke the trembling voice. And Prince Vasiliy was to leave, not receiving any explanations.

In a week Pierre, saying goodbye with his new mason friends and leaving them a large sum in alms, left to his estate. His new brothers gave him letters for Kiev and Odessa, to the masons there, and promised to write him and to lead him in his new activities.

422  mon cher? (my dear?)


Time: the day following his initiation, a week later (within a week in Bell. In a week's time in Dole.)
Mentioned: previous evening (the day before in Pevear and Volkhonsky. the previous day in Garnett)

Locations: Pierre's home in St. Petersburg
Mentioned: southern estates (estates in the south in Dunnigan, Garnett, and Mandelker.), Moscow, Kiev (Kiew in Bell. Kief in Bell), Odessa

Pevear and Volkhonsky: Now Pierre is back home, trying to understand the meaning of the square. Pierre is going to have to leave Petersburg because of the duel, and decides to go “occupy himself with his peasants.”
Prince Vassily appears and says “I’ve found out everything and can tell you for certain that Helene is as innocent before you as Christ before the Jews.”
Pierre cannot answer Vassily for several reasons, “yet he felt his whole future destiny would depend on what he said right now: whether he would follow the former way, or the new one which had been shown to him so attractively by
the Masons, and on which he firmly believed he would find rebirth into a new life.”
Vassily makes a reference to the prodigal son, with Pierre of course playing that role.
Pierre does stand up to him and makes him leave before he himself goes to the estates.


Characters (characters who do not appear, but are mentioned are placed in italics. First appearances are in Bold. First mentions are underlined. Final appearance denoted by *):

Pierre

Czar Alexander (just “emperor”)

Prince Vasili

Ellen (also “Lyola” by her father)

Maria Feodorovna (“Empress Dowager” here.


(the end of the chapter references Pierre’s new friends at the Masonic Lodge, but they are not differentiated)


Abridged Versions: End of chapter 18 in Bell.
Simmons: Chapter 3: chapter is preserved.
Fuller: entire chapter is cut.
Komroff: Whole episode with Vasili is cut, with only the intro and the conclusion of the chapter meshed together to make a rather seamless aside to prepare for his journey. Followed by a line break.
Kropotkin: Chapter 3: Chapter is preserved.
Bromfield: Chapter 27: After the Vasily episode, Pierre gets a letter from Anna Pavlovna to come meet her. "A lot of time had passed since that first evening when Pierre had so inappropriately defended Napoleon in Anna Pavlovna's
drawing room. The first coalition had been destroyed, hundreds of thousands of men had died at Ulm and Austerlitz. And Buonaparte, who had so outraged Anna Pavlovna with his insolence in annexing Genoa and placing the crown
of the kingdom of Sardinia on his own head, since then this Buonaparte had made his two brothers kings in Europe, dictated laws to the whole of Germany...taken the sword of Frederick the Great because he took a liking to it and sent
it to Paris (this latter circumstance irritated Anna Pavlovna more than all the others), then declared war on Russia...."
Gibian: Chapter 3.

Additional Notes:

Davis: Page 585: “According to an inventory of 1739, Stanislaw Lubomirski (1719-83) had inherited a latifundium of 1,071 landed estates. They stretched right across the nine souther palatines of Poland, from the family seat at Wisnicz
near Cracow to Tetiev near Kiev in Ukraine, and were worked by close to a million serfs. Grand Marshal of the Crown from 1766, Lubomirski could have laid claim to be Europe’s largest private landowner. Allied by marriage and politics
to the related clans of the Czartoryski, Poniatowski, and Zamoyski, he certainly belonged to the most powerful circle of magnates in the land.”

Nikitenko/Jacobson/Kolchin ix: "the Sheremetev family--possessed tens of thousands of serfs scattered across Russia; in 1850, just two Americans owned more than one thousand slaves. Only a tiny fraction of enslaved blacks in the
southern United States (2.4 percent) had owners with more than two hundred slaves, whereas the great majority of bound peasants in Russia (80.8 percent) had such owners. Unlike most American slaves, most serfs lived in a world
of their own, where their masters were remote figures whom they rarely or never saw."

Raeff: (page 166-167): "Nor did Russia escape the effects of the effects of the European revival of mysticism. Much of the literature translated and published with the assistance of Masonic groups consisted of the classics of Protestant Pietism and Western mysticism. That mysticism answered a need can be inferred from the fact that its devotional literature circulated widely and was eagerly read. The literature helped to prepare the ground for the explosion of religious passion and mysticism in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, after the Napoleonic Wars. The same spirit also found some of its best-known expressions in the sentimental literature of the end of the eighteenth century (which owed as much to Pietist German models as it did to Rousseau and the English forerunners of Romanticism)."
 


No comments:

Post a Comment