Book 2 Part 4 Chapter 3 (Chapter 132 Overall)

Chapter Summaries: Dole: Country scenes in September. The dogs. Milka. Danilo in the house.
Briggs: Nikolay decides to go hunting.
Maude: Nicholas decides to go hunting
Pevear and Volkhonsky: Preparations for the hunt. Natasha and Petya insist on joining in.

Translation:

III.

Already it was winter, morning frosts chained to the soaked in autumn rains of the land, already the greens had escaped and bright green separated from stripes of brownish, knocked out cattle, winter crops and light-yellow spring stubble from red strips of buckwheat. The tops of the forest at the end of August were still former green islands between the black fields of winter and stubble, becoming golden and bright red islands in the middle of the bright green winter. The hare was now to half erased (wetted), the fox broods began to disperse, and the young wolves were more dogs. It was the best hunting time. The dogs were hot, the young hunter Rostov now not only entered into the hunting body, but knocked out so that in the overall advice of the hunters it was decided for three days to give relaxation to the dogs and on the 16th of September go in departure, beginning with Dubravy, where was an untouched wolf brood.

In such a position were affairs on the 14th of September.

All this day the hunting was at home; it was frosty and prickly, but from the evening became rejuvenated and thawed. On the 15th of September, when young Rostov in the morning in a smock looked out the window, he saw such a morning for which nothing could be better for hunting: as if the sky melted and without wind came down onto the land. The only moves which were in the air was the quiet movement from above of microscopic drops of haze or fog descending downwards. In the bare branches of the garden hung transparent drops falling only on the fallen down leaves. The land in the garden, as poppy, glossy and wet turned black, and in the near distance merged with the dull and wet cover of fog. Nikolay got out onto the wet with dragged mud on the porch: it smelled of fading forest and dogs. The black-footed, wide-backed bitch Milka with large black rolled out eyes, seeing its owner, got up, stretched backwards and lied down as a hare, then suddenly jumped up and licked him all on the nose and mustache. Another greyhound dog, seeing its owner with the color track, arching back, swiftly threw to the porch and holding up the rule (its tail), and began to rub about the legs of Nikolay.

— Oh hoy! — was heard at this time that inimitable hunting subclick, which combines in itself the most deep bass, and the most small tenor; and from behind a corner got out the arriving hunter Danilo, Ukrainian in bracket trimmed gray hair, the wrinkled hunter with a bent whip in hand had that expression of independence and contempt to all in the world, which is only in hunters. He stripped off his Circassian hat before the baron, and contemptuously looked at him. This contempt was not offensive for the baron: Nikolay knew that this all despising and above only in worth Danilo all the same was his person and hunter.

— Danil! — said Nikolay, timidly feeling that in seeing this hunting weather, these dogs and hunter now embraced that irresistible hunting feeling in which a person forgets all the former intentions, as a person fallen in love in the presence of their mistress.

— What is the order, your excellency? — asked the protodeacon, hoarse from the pounding bass, and two black brilliant eyes took a sneaky look at the silent baron. "What, can you not handle it?" as if said these two eyes.

— Good day, ah? Chase, and leap, ah? — said Nikolay, scratching behind the ears of Milka.

Danilo did not respond and blinked his eyes.

— Uvarka was sent to listen at dawn, — his bass said after a minute of silence, — he said at where the Otradnoe order leads across, there was howling. (Lead across meant that it was a she-wolf, about which they both knew, went over with its children to the Otradnoe forest, which was two versts behind the home and which was not a large detachable place.)

— And because of it we need to go? — said Nikolay. — Come to me with Uvarka.

— How you order!

— So wait a minute again to feed.

— I am listening.

In five minutes Danilo with Uvarka was standing in the big office of Nikolay. Despite that Danilo was not great by height, seeing him in the room produced an impression like that, as when you see a horse or bear on the floor between furniture and the condition of human life. Danilo himself felt this and, as usual, stood mostly in the door, trying to speak in a hush, not moving, so that to not break something in the lordly chambers, and trying to soon express all and exit to the spaciousness, from below the ceiling to below the sky.

Graduated the interrogations and extorting the consciousness of Danilo that the dogs were nothing (Danilo wanted to go the most), Nikolay told him to saddle up. Yet only how Danilo wanted to exit, as in the room entered the fast steps of Natasha, still not combed and not dressed, in a big, nanny shawl. Petya ran in together with her.

— You ride? — said Natasha, — I knew so! Sonya said that you would not ride. I knew that now is such a day that it cannot be not to go.

— Going, — reluctantly was the response of Nikolay, whom now as he contemplated to undertake a serious hunt, did not want to take Natasha and Petya. — Going, yes only for wolves: you will be bored.

— You know that this is my very great pleasure, — said Natasha. — This is bad, — you yourself ride, said to saddle up, but to us you said nothing.

— Futile to the Russe are all obstacles, go! — screamed Petya.

— Yes because you cannot be: Mama said that you cannot be, — said Nikolay, turning to Natasha.

— No, I will ride, it is indispensable to ride, — resolutely said Natasha. — Danil, lead us to saddle up, and Mihail so that to leave with my pack, — she turned to the hunter.

So that to be in the room to Danilo seemed indecent and heavy, but to have some business with a young lady, — for him seemed impossible. He lowered his eyes and hurried to exit, as if before him this did not touch, trying to somehow not accidentally harm the young lady.

Time: September 14th (September 26th in Dole), the following morning (Bell, Pevear and Volkhonsky, and Briggs add the 15th)
Mentioned: autumn, winter, end of August, September 16th (28th in Dole), daybreak, five minutes later

Locations: Otradnoe
Mentioned: Ukrainian, Circassian, Russes (Russians in Dole, Pevear and Volkhonsky, and Briggs. Russian in Bell and Maude.)

Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: We turn to winter, the fourteenth of September, waiting for the sixteenth so the sore hunting dogs can get their rest. Tolstoy goes all out in the detail given in this chapter, describing the weather, the dogs, and the different aspects of Danilo. There is still a class dynamic between Nikolai and Danilo, "The scorn was not offensive for the master: Nikolai knew that this Danilo, who scorned everything and was above everything, was still his serf and his hunter." They decide to go out, while Petya and Natasha crash their preparations and Natasha manages to wrangle herself into going.

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 *):

Nikolai Rostof ("young", "illustriousness", and "barin")

Milka ("the black-spotted bitch." To avoid confusion and guesswork, I will only place the dogs that are named on the character list.)

Danilo ("the whipper-in and hunter". Maude uses "Daniel" in an alternative reading. Nikolai and Natasha call him "Danila" in Dole. It doesn't appear any other translation does this.)

Uvarka (Bell calls him "Ouvarka" in an alternative reading.)

Natasha

Petya

Their Nurse

Sonya

Countess Rostova ("mamenka")

Mikhaila (see chapter 67)

Abridged Versions: Start of Chapter 11 in Bell. No break.
Gibian: Chapter 3.

Fuller: Entire Chapter is cut.

Komroff: Entire Chapter is cut.

Kropotkin: Entire Chapter is cut.

Bromfield: Chapter 2: Rugai gets an earlier mention here. Bromfield uses Danila. No chapter break.
Simmons: Chapter 3: Most of the weather description at the beginning of the chapter is shortened. The ending of the chapter that focuses on Daniel's awkwardness is removed.

Edmundson: Act Three Scene One: Sonya is on the hunt with them, and Petya has more dialogue. There is no Uncle and Nikolai's dog is the one that catches the wolf. Sonya

touches the wolf after Petya will not.

Additional Notes:

Dead Souls (Meyer/Garnett) Page 87: Circassian (a region in the northern Caucasus, bordering the Black Sea.)”

 

Davis: Page 831: “Traditionally known as Rusini or ‘Ruthenians’, they now begin to adopt the ‘Ukrainian’ label in reaction to the misleading and insulting designation of ‘Little

Russians’, which tsarist officialdom had invented for them. (A Ukrainian simply meant a politically conscious Ruthene.)”

Nikitenko/Jacobson/Kolchin Page 211: "Little Russians: Ukrainian as an ethnic name was first adopted by the Romantic intellectual movement in the early nineteenth century

(from the name of the seventeenth-century Cossack state "Little Russian Ukraine") and became universally used in the 1920s. Before then Ukrainians called themselves simply

Russians, but among Great Russians they were known as Little Russians, beginning in the seventeenth century."