Book 2 Part 4 Chapter 11 (Chapter 140 Overall)

Chapter Summaries: Dole: The masqueraders re-enforced. The dances. Fortune-telling. Playing games. Nikolai and Sonya. The moonlight kiss.
Briggs: At Melyukovka. Sonya tries her fortune outside, at the barn.
Maude: At Melyukovka. Sonya goes to the barn to try her fortune

Translation:

ХІ.

Pelageya Danilovna Melyukova, a wide, energetic woman, in glasses and a swing hood, sat in the living room, surrounded by her daughters, which she tried not to miss. They quietly poured wax and looked at the shadows of the leaving figures, when rustled on the front steps the voice of the newcomers.

Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, clearing their throats and wiping frost from their frosty faces in the front, entered into the hall, where there were hastily lit candles. The jester — Dimmler with the lady — Nikolay opened the dance. Surrounded by shouting children, the mummers, covering their faces and changing their voices, bowed before the hostess and settled by the room.

— Ah, I know it cannot be! Ah that’s Natasha! Look at who she is similar to! Rightly, she resembles someone. That is Edward Karlych, how good! I did not recognize him. Yes, such dancing! Ah, Father, and the Circassian someone; rightly, such is going Sonya. This is still whom? Well, consoled! Take those tables, Nikita, Vanya. But we were so quietly sitting!

— Ha-ha-ha!...That hussar, that hussar! Exactly as a boy, and legs!... I cannot see... — was heard a voice.

Natasha, together with the darling young Melyukovas, disappeared in the rear room, where was the demanded cork, different robes and male dresses, which at the dissolved door took from the lackey the naked girlish hand. In nine minutes all the young people in the Melyukova family joined to the mummers.

Pelageya Danilovna, disposing clean places for the guests and treats for the gentlemen and court, not taking off points, with a restrained smile, went between the mummers, closely looking them in the face and recognizing nobody. She did not know not only the Rostovs and Dimmler, but in no way could know her daughters, or those men’s robes and uniforms which were on them.

— But this is whom? — she said, turning to her governess and looking at the face of her daughter, presented as a Kazan Tatar. — It seems from the Rostovs someone. Well, but you, sir hussar, in which regiment do you serve? — she asked Natasha. — That Turk, give the pastilles to the Turk, — she said to the carrying barman: — This is not to be banned by their law.

Sometimes, looking at the strange, yet funny capers that were made by the dancing, who decided time was forever how they dressed up, that no one recognized them and because of that they were not embarrassed, — Pelageya Danilovna closed her handkerchief, and all of her fat body was shaking from irrepressibly good, old woman laughter.

— That’s my Sashinet, that’s Sashinet! — she said.

After Russian dances and round dances Pelageya Danilovna connected all the court and gentlemen together, in one big circle; brought a ring, rope and ruble, and arranged a general game.

In an hour all the costumes were crumpled and upset. The cork mustaches and eyebrows were smudged by sweat, flames and fun faces. Pelageya Danilovna began to find out the mummers, delighted by how well the costumes were made, how they went especially with the young ladies, and thanked all for how they so amused her. The guests called to have supper in the living room, but in the hall was ordered a treat for the court.

— No, to a bath I guess, here this is fearful! — said behind dinner an old girl, living at Melyukova’s.

— From what again? — asked the older daughter of Melyukova.

— Yes I will not go, here needs bravery...

— I will go, — said Sonya.

— Tell me, how was this with the young lady? — said the second Melyukova.

— Yes here so went alone the young lady, — said the old girl, — she took a rooster, two instruments — as you should, sitting. She sat, only to hear, suddenly riding... with bells, with covered bells pulled up the sleigh; she heard it going. Entered really in the style of a man, as is an officer, came and sat down with her behind the tool.

— Ah! Ah!... — screamed Natasha, with horror rolling out her eyes.

— Yes so the same he, so speaks?

— Yes, as a person, all as it must be, and began, and began to persuade, but she would need to take his conversation to the rooster; but it had grown; — only grown and closed hands. It picked her up. Okay, how here the girls come running...

— Well, how to frighten them! — said Pelageya Danilovna.

— Mother, because you yourself were guessing... — said the daughter.

— But how this is in the barn guessing? — asked Sonya.

— Yes here though would now go to the barn, yes and listen. What you will hear: nails up, knocking — badly, but pour the bread — this is good; but that is...

— Mama tell me, what with you was in the barn?

Pelageya Danilovna smiled.

— Yes that I already forgot... — she said. — Because none of you will go?

— No, I will go; Pelageya Danilovna, let me go, I will go, — said Sonya.

— Well what the same, if not afraid.

— Louisa Ivanovna, can I? — asked Sonya.

Whether to play at the ring, at the rope or ruble, whether to talk, as now, Nikolay did not walk away from Sonya and really new eyes watched her. To him it seemed that he now only for the first time, thanks to this cork mustache, quite found her. Sonya really on this night was fun, revived and good, which never before Nikolay had seen her.

"So here she is, but I am that fool!" he thought, looking at her brilliant eyes and happy, enthusiastic, from below mustache dimples on her cheeks, smile, which he had not seen before.

— I am not afraid of anything, — said Sonya. — Can I now? — she got up. Sonya was told where was the barn, so she silently stood and listened, and she was given a fur coat. She threw it herself at the head and looked at Nikolay.

"What is behind the beauty of this girl!" — he thought. —"And about what had I thought still before!"

Sonya exited into the corridor, so to go to the barn. Nikolay hastily went onto the front porch, saying he was hot. Really in the house it was stuffy from the crowded people.

In the courtyard was that same motionless cold, that same moon, only it was still lighter. The light was so strong and the stars in the snow were so much that into the sky he did not want to look, and the present stars were unnoticed. In the sky was black and boring, on the land was funny.

"I am a fool, a fool! What was I waiting for still?" thought Nikolay and, escaping onto the porch, he went around the corner of the home by that path which led to the back porch. He knew that here would go Sonya. On the half roads were standing three folded arshins of firewood, on them was snow and from them fell a shadow; across them and with their sideways intertwining falling shadows was an old naked limetree in the snow and road. The road led to the barn. The cropped wall of the barn and roof, covered in snow, as a whip of some precious stone, shone in the lunar light. In the garden was cracked wood, and again all completely fell silent. His chest, it seemed, breathed not air, but something forever young, forcible and joy.

From the porch pounded girlish legs stepping, concealed loudly in the last of the inflicted snow, and the voice of the old girl said:

— All, all, here by the track, young lady. Only do not look back!

— I am not afraid, — was the response of the voice of Sonya, and by the track, by the direction to Nikolay, screamed, whistled in thin slippers the legs of Sonya.

Sonya went wrapped up in a fur coat. She was already on two steps when she saw him; she also saw him not so how she knew and in which she was always a little bit afraid. He was in a female dress with confused hair and with a happy and new for Sonya smile. Sonya quickly ran up to him.

"Really another, and all the same," thought Nikolay, looking at her face, all lighted by the lunar light. He placed his hand under the fur coat, covering her head, hugged, pressed her to himself and kissed her on the lips, above which were the mustache and from which it smelled of burnt cork. Sonya on the very middle of the lips kissed him and, straightening out her small hand, with both parts took him behind the cheeks.

— Sonya!... Nicolas!... — they only said. They ran up to the barn and returned backwards with everyone to the porch.

Time: see previous chapter, ten minutes later, in an hour

Locations: see previous chapter
Mentioned: Circassian, Kazan Tartar (Maude uses a hyphen. Tartar of Kazan in Garnett. Kasan Tartar in Dole.), Turk, Russian

Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: The playing at the widow's house, followed by a "scary" story. The connection that Nikolai and Sonya have.

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 *):

Pelagya Danilovna Melyukova ("Pelageya Danilovna Melyukova" in Maude, Dunnigan, and Mandelker (Wiener drops the final a, but is the same). "Pelagea Danilovna Melyukov" in Garnett. "Pelagueia Danilovna Melukow"
in Bell. Also her undifferentiated daughters. Also called "Mamasha" and "Mamma".)

Eduard Karluitch Dimmler

Nikolai (also "Nicolas")

Natasha

Sonya (also "Sonyushka")

Madame Schoss (also "Luiza Ivanovna")

An Old Maid

(the voice that comments on the show, apparently Melyukova's, references a Nikita, which has to be a different one than the one from two chapters before and a Vanya. Many others serfs or lackeys are also mentioned but
basically undifferentiated. Also "a certain baruishnya" the "scary" story is about.)

Abridged Versions: Chapter 14 in Bell. No break.
Gibian: Chapter 11

Fuller: Entire Chapter is cut.

Komroff: Chapter is basically preserved and followed by a line break.

Kropotkin: Chapter 6: Some of the costume and description of Madame Melyukof is cut out. A few details throughout the chapter are removed, but overall point and structure preserved.

Bromfield: Nikolai has the same revelation about Sonya, even with the different setting. Followed by a line break.
Simmons: Chapter 11: the ghost story is basically cut.

Additional Notes:

Nabokov: Page 147: "the real moral point that he makes: Love cannot be exclusively carnal because then it is egotistic, and being egotistic it destroys instead of creating...

Anna Karenina (Garnett/Mandelker): xv: "He would return in his writings time and again to the paradoxes of sexuality, maternity, and conjugality. His first literary experiment, "A History of Yesterday," portrayed the silent

discourse of sexual attraction; an adulterous flirtation is carried out entirely in a dialogue of unspoken speeches. Later, in "Family Happiness," sexual love is exposed as destructive of family life--it must be suppressed

and evicted from the marital relationship, which is reduced to a well-modulated partnership of coparenting. Toward the end of his authorial career, Tolstoy would savage all notions of a licit human sexuality and urge

continence and abstinence on a bewildered public. In his irascible short love The Kreutzer Sonata, he would describe a man who claims to have been driven to murder his wife; his self-defense consists of blackening

all social institutions, especially marriage, as unnatural and perverse. Following what the author himself admitted to be a bizarre yet logical sequence of thought, marriage is denigrated as institutionalized and socially

acceptable prostitution; even the procreation of the species--the traditional religious sanction for conjugal relations--is dismissed as an inadequate reason for licensed cohabitation. No one should dare to give birth,

rants the narrator, while destitute and needy children may be adopted. The only escape from the prison cell of the passions in the desultory philippic is into the monk's cell of celibacy...

Bayley: Page 12: “War and Peace is the grandest apotheosis in literature of self-realization, of art giving life everything it wants...in War and Peace it is right for Andrew to die, right for Sonya to devote herself in

selfless (that is to say, selfish, right for herself) service to the loved family, right for Natasha and Nikolai and Pierre to get the marriages and the lives that equally suit them. War and Peace is right for a moment of

life, for the triumph of life. But growing in it and through it is the spreading knowledge of extinction, of the outfacing of self by what is not self, of life by death...