Briggs: Pierre arrives in the theatre of war and seeks out the army's position.
Maude: Pierre encounters cavalry advancing and carts of wounded retiring. He talks to an army doctor. Pierre looks for the 'position' occupied by the army. Peasant militia digging entrenchments
Pevear and Volokhonsky: Pierre leaves Mozhaisk for Borodino. Meets a convoy of wounded.
Translation:
XX.
On the morning of the 25th Pierre left from Mozhayck. In the descent from the great steep and crooked mountains, leading from the cities, standing past the mountain to the right cathedral, in which went a service and preaching, Pierre got out from the crew and went by foot. Behind him lowered on the mountain some horse regiment with singers ahead. Towards him lifted train carts with the wounded in yesterday’s case. Carts of men, shouting at the horses and whipping their whips, ran across from one party to another. Carts, on which were lying and sitting three and four soldiers wounded, jumped by the outline on the seen pavement of stones on a cool lift. The wounded, tied with rags, pale, with tightened lips and frowning eyebrows, held behind beds, jumped and jostled on carts. Almost all with naive childhood curiosity looked at the white hat and green tailcoat of Pierre.
The coachman of Pierre angrily shouted at the wagon of wounded, for them to hold to one side. The cavalry regiment with songs, going down from the mountains, moved forward to the carriage of Pierre and hindered the road. Pierre had stopped, huddled to the edge of the dug up in the mountain roads, from behind the slope of the mountains the sun had not gotten in the deepening of the roads, and here it was cold and damp; above the head of Pierre was the bright August morning, and the funny spreading ringing. One of the supplied with wounded stopped at the edge of the road beside Pierre himself. The carter in bast shoes, out of breath, ran up to their cart, slipped a rock under the rear, not shimming the wheels and began to straighten his helmet on his coming horse.
One wounded old soldier with a tied hand, going behind the cart, took for his healthy hand and turned back to Pierre.
— What the same, countryman, whether they will place us here? Or to Moscow? — he said.
Pierre so thought that he did not hear the issue. He watched on that cavalry regiment, met now with the train of wounded that was on that cart, at which he stood and on which were sitting two wounded and one lying. One of the sitting on the cart soldiers was probably injured in the cheek. All his head was tied with rags, and only his cheek was swollen from his childish head. His mouth and nose were on the side. This soldier saw the cathedral and crossed. Another, a young boy, a recruit, blond and white, as would be completely without blood on his thin face, with a stopping good smile watched Pierre; the third lied face down, and his face was not seen. The cavalry singers passed above the cart itself.
— Ah disappeared... Yes a keen head...
— Yes on the foreign side of life... — they made a dancing soldier song. As would be echoing them, but in another kind of fun, interrupted in the above metal sounds of ringing. And, still in another kind of fun, doused the top opposite slope of the hot rays of the sun. Yet below the slope, in the carts with the wounded, beside the breathless horse, at which stood Pierre, it was damp, mainly cloudy and sad.
The soldier with the swollen cheek angrily looked at the singing cavalrymen.
— Oh, dandies! — he spoke reproachfully.
— Now not that, soldier, but little men have seen! Those little men drive, — said with a sad smile the soldier standing behind the cart and turning to Pierre. — Now not disassembled... to all people who are piled up want, in one word — Moscow. One end we do not want. — despite the indefiniteness of the words of the soldier, Pierre got all that what he wanted to say, and approvingly nodded his head.
The road cleared, and Pierre came down under the mountain and went farther.
Pierre rode, looking back by both parts of the roads, looking for acquaintances in the faces and everywhere meeting only unfamiliar, military faces of different families of troops, equally with surprise watched his white hat and green tailcoat.
Driving four versts, he met the first friend and happily turned to him. This familiar was one of the chief doctors in the army. He in a chaise rode towards Pierre, sitting nearby with a young doctor and, upon learning of Pierre, stopped his Cossack, sitting on the box instead of a coachman.
— Count! Your excellency, how are you here? — asked the doctor.
— Yes, here wanted to look...
— Yes, yes, I will look...
Pierre tore and, stopping, got into conversation with the doctor, explaining to him his intention to participate in the battle.
The doctor advised Bezuhov to turn to all the lordly.
— What the same, God knows, where to find you in the time of the battle, and the obscurity, — he said, exchanging glances with his young friend, — But the lordly all the same knows you and will accept you graciously. So, father, do it, — said the doctor.
The doctor seemed tired and in a hurry.
— So you think... but I still wanted to ask you, where the same is the position itself? — said Pierre.
— The position? — said the doctor, — Really this is not my part. You will pass Tatarinov, there many are digging something. There on the mound enter: from there it is seen, — said the doctor.
— And it is seen from there?.. If you would...
Yet the doctor interrupted him and moved to the chaise.
— I would spend you, and God — here (doctor showed his throat) — jumps to the corps commander. Because how are we?.. You know, count, tomorrow is the battle; in one hundred thousand troops, a little number of 20 thousand wounded are needed to be counted; but we have stretchers, beds, paramedics, or doctors for not six thousand. There are 10 thousand carts, and because we need others; as we want, we make.
That strange idea that of the numbers of those thousand people alive, healthy, young and old, which with fun surprise looked at his hat, there was for sure 20 thousand doomed to wounds and death (maybe, those very ones which he saw) — struck Pierre.
"They, maybe, die tomorrow, what for do they think about something other, besides death?" And to him suddenly by some secret communication of thoughts lively presented the descent from the Mozhayck mountains, the carts with the wounded, ringing, oblique rays of the sun and the song of the cavalrymen.
"The cavalry go into battle and meet the wounded, and for one moment do not think above that what awaits them, but go past and wink at the wounded. But of all these are 20 thousand doomed to death, but they are amazed at my hat! Weird!" thought Pierre, directed farther to Tatarinov.
At the landlord’s home, on the left side of the road, were standing crews, vans, crowd orderlies and sentries. Here stood the lordly. Yet at that time, as Pierre had arrived, he was not, and almost nobody was from the staff. All were at the prayer. Pierre went forward to Gorky.
Entering on the mountain and leaving to the small street of the village, Pierre saw for the first time the peasant militias with crosses on their hats and on the whites of the shirts, which, with loud speaking and laughter, lively and sweaty, worked on something to the right from the roads, to the huge mound, overgrown with grass.
One of them dug with shovels in the mountain, another raised with boards the earth to wheelbarrows, the third were standing, doing nothing.
Two officers were standing on the mound, disposing of them. Seeing these peasants, still obviously amused at his new military position, Pierre again remembered the wounded soldiers at Mozhayck, and he began to understand that what the soldier wanted to express, speaking about what all people wanted to pile on. The view of these workings on the field of battle, the bearded peasants with their strange awkward boots, with their sweaty necks and some in oblique unbuttoned shirts, from below were seen tanned clavicle bones, acted on Pierre stronger only what he saw and heard before still about the solemnity and significance of the present minutes.
Mentioned: to-day, to-morrow
Locations: Mozhaysk (also Mozhaysk hill), Gorki (Gorky in Dunnigan, Bell, and Garnett.)
Mentioned: Moscow, Tatarinovo (Tartarinova in Maude, Mandelker, and Briggs.)
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: We go back to Pierre after the military history expository chapter, as now we are on the 25th, with Borodino looming on the 26th. He sees the results of the previous day's fighting. He speaks to a doctor who advises him where to go.
The doctor says "tomorrow's the battle: for a hundred thousand troops we must figure on at least twenty thousand wounded; and we don't have enough stretchers, or beds, or medics, or doctors for even six thousand."
Pierre: "twenty thousand of them are doomed to die, yet they get surprised at my hat!"
Pierre then realizes the meaning of what the soldier had told him earlier in the chapter. The peasants are expected to carry the burden of the war effort.
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 *):
Count Pierre Bezukhoi (also "batyushka")
Yevstafyevitch ("Pierre's coachman." As in Chapter 205, you could argue this coachman/driver is different than the head coachman Yevstafyevitch.)
Kutuzof ("serene highness".)
Abridged Versions:
Gibian: Chapter 20.
Fuller: Only the first sentence, which tells us that Pierre drove out Mozhaisk on the 25th is kept.
Komroff: The conversation a soldier tries to have with Pierre is removed and we get to the wounded soldier with the swollen cheek as big as a baby's head quicker. The singing is also removed. The conversation with the doctor is much shorter and Pierre only has the realization that many of those who he is looking at will die, not the other realization about the peasants bearing the brunt of the war.
Kropotkin: Chapter is severely shortened, maintaining just the basics of Pierre seeing the wounded soldiers and knowing that many of them will die. This removes his conversation with the wounded soldiers and the doctor character entirely. No break.
Bromfield: The doctor is the one that makes the Burdino/Borodino confusion rather than the soldier in the next chapter of the latter version. We don't have Pierre's realizations or the wounded soldiers here.
Simmons: Chapter 20: While the conversation with the doctor is preserved almost completely, there, some of the overall description of the chapter is cut.
Additional Notes:
Davidov/Troubetzkoy: Page 163: "I feel, in a sense, that I was born solely to play a role in the fateful year of 1812; but much in the same manner as a rank and file soldier firing blindly amid the smoke and confusion of the battle of Borodino, I have killed a dozen Frenchmen. No matter how much knowledge and talent were at my disposal, it was fate, just the same, which decided to diminish the enemy army by a dozen men and thereby to contribute to its eventual destruction by my comrades."
Speirs: Page 43: "The five books (IX-XIII) which now follow are divided into two sections, the first consisting of two books and the second of three, precisely as with the previous five books. The conclusion of the first of these sections (comprising Books Nine and Ten) is to be the Battle of Borodino. There is now a distinct change in emphasis....People now move in their masses, in entire nations. A consequence of this is that the author, the organiser of the material, is far more in evidence. Tolstoy drops the role of an impersonal narrator concealed behind his characters. He now uses his private voice and stands in the foreground, selecting and guiding...He is now there as a man who is searching for answers…”
My Religion: "With despair in their hearts they move on, to die of hunger, or cold, or disease, or, if they survive, to be brought within range of a storm of bullets and commanded to kill. They kill and are killed, none of them knows why or to what end. An ambitious stripling has only to brandish his sword and shout a few magniloquent words to induce them to rush to certain death. And yet no one finds this to be difficult."
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