Briggs: Princess Marya recalls her father's death.
Maude: Princess Mary at night recalls her last sight of her father
Translation:
XII.
For long on this night Princess Marya sat at the open window in her room, listening to the sounds of the speeches of the peasants, heard from the village, but she did not think about them. She felt that, how much would she would think about them, she could not understand them. She thought all about the same — about her grief, which now, after the break, produced worries about the present, now made for her past. She now could remember, could cry and could pray. With the approach of the sun, the wind fell silent. The night was quiet and fresh. In the 12th hour the voices began to calm down, sang the rooster, from behind the linden began to exit the complete moon and rose a fresh, white foggy dew, and above the village and above the houses reigned peace and quiet.
Only for another presented to her the picture of her close past — the disease and last minutes of her father. And with a sad joy she now stopped at these images, driving away from herself with horror only one latter presentation of his death, which — she felt — she was not in the forces to behold even in her imagination in this quiet and secret hour of the night. And this picture presented to her with such clarity and with such details that they seemed to her that reality, that past, and that future.
Then to her lively presented that minute, when he had a stroke, and he from the garden at Bald Mountains was dragged under hand, and he mumbled something in a powerless tongue, jerked his gray-haired eyebrows, and anxiously and timidly watched her.
"He then wanted to say to me what he said to me on the day of his death," she thought. —"He always thought that what he said to me." And here to her all the details were remembered of that night at Bald Mountains, on the eve he had the stroke, when Princess Marya, foreboding trouble, against his commitment left with him. She did not sleep and at night on tiptoe got off downwards and, coming up to the door at the floral, on which in this night spent the night of her father, listening to his voice. He in an exhausted, tired voice spoke something with Tihon. It was seen he wanted to talk. "And from what did he not call me? From what did he not allow me to be me here in the location of Tihon?" thought then and now Princess Marya. "Really he will never express to anyone now only what was in his soul. Really never will he return and for me this minute when he would speak all that he wanted to express, but I, and not Tihon, would listen and understand him. From what did I not enter then in the room?" she thought. "Maybe, he then again would have said to me that what he said on his day of death. He then in conversation with Tihon two times asked about me. He wanted to see me, but I stood here, behind the door. He was sad, heavily speaking with Tihon, who did not understand him. I remember how he began talking with him about Lise, as living, — he forgot that she died, and Tihon reminded him that she really was not, and he shouted: "fool." He was heavy. I heard from behind the door, as he, groaning, lied down on the bed and loudly screamed: "My God!" From what did I not rise then? What would he do to me? What would I have lost? But maybe, then again he would have been comforted if he would have said to me these words." And Princess Marya out loud uttered that caressing word, which he said to her on the day of her death. "Da-r-li-ng!" repeated Princess Marya this word and sobbed facilitating for her soul tears. She saw now before herself his face. And not that face, which she knew from since she herself remembered and which she always saw from afar; but that face, timid and weak, which eyes on the last day, bending to his mouth, so that to hear that what he spoke, in the first time examined near with all his wrinkles and details.
"Darling," she repeated.
"What did he think when he said this word? What does he think now?" suddenly came her question, and in answer to this, she saw him before herself with that expression of the face, which was on him in the coffin in the tied white handkerchief face. And that horror, which swept her then, when she touched him and made sure that this not only was not he, but something mysterious and repulsive, swept her and now. She wanted to think about other things, wanted to pray and could do nothing. She with large, open eyes watched the moonlight and shadows, all seconds were waiting to see his dead face, and felt that peace and quiet, standing above the house and in the house, fettering her.
— Dunyasha! — she whispered. — Dunyasha! — she cried out in a wild voice, and breaking free from silence, ran to the running to her nanny and girls.
Mentioned: that day, the day of his death
Locations: see previous chapter
Mentioned: Lysyya Gory, the Crimea (not in Pevear and Volokhonsky or Briggs
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes:
Marya can't understand the peasants and can only think about her sadness over her father's death. She experiences regret over not being in the room with him in a rather brief chapter.
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 *):
Princess Mariya (also "Dushenka--Dear heart", which were her father's last words to her.)
Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky ("father")
Tikhon
Liza
Dunyasha
the old nyanya
(also peasants and the other maids. Prince Bolkonsky also mentioned the empress, who is probably to be understood as Catherine.)
Abridged Versions: End of chapter 17 in Bell.
Gibian: Chapter 12.
Fuller: Entire chapter is cut.
Komroff: Entire chapter is cut.
Kropotkin: Entire chapter is cut.
Bromfield: Alpatych is used to connect Rostov and Marya a little more naturally than the 12 to 13 chapter cuts in the latter version. Dunyasha initially thinks Rostov and Ilin are the French.
Simmons: Chapter 12: Mary's reflections are shortened, with the details of what her father was asking about, including the mention of Lisa, are removed.
Additional Notes:
Thoreau (Civil Disobedience): Page 331: “The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast-off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy.”
Anna Karenina (Kent/Berberova): (Levin) “It’s not my feeling, but a sort of force outside me has taken possession of me...when with loathing I go over my life, I shudder and curse and bitterly complain...The one comfort is like that prayer which I always liked”..
Bayley: Page 23: “Tolstoy stresses the necessity of looking from the work--however artistically dazzling it may seem--to the author in order to ask the question: “Well now, what sort of a person are you?”...this writer...really “loves his protagonists” and persuades the reader not only to pity but also to live them...This is the closest Tolstoy comes to recognizing that an author’s intention may not correspond to the actual effect of the work of art and that some of the best books, and those most full of infectious feeling, may be those in which the author’s intentions is lost sight of, or even contradicted by the close attention or “love” he devotes to his characters.”
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