Briggs: Andrey reflects on life and death. Pierre visits him.
Maude: Prince Andrew's reflections on life and death. Pierre comes to see him
Pevear and Volokhonsky (chapters 24-25): Prince Andrei's thoughts on the eve of battle. Pierre finds him. They discuss strategy and commanders. Prince Andrei's views of war. He embraces and kisses Pierre. Pierre goes back to Gorki. Prince Andrei thinks of Natasha.
Translation:
XXIV.
Prince Andrey on this clear, August evening of the 25th, lied, leaning on his arm in a broken barn in the village of Knyazkova, at the edge of the location of his regiment. At the hole of the broken walls he watched at the going along by the fence strip of thirty birch trees with chopped off bottom twigs, at arable land with the broken on it heaps of oats and at the bush, by which were seen the smoke of bonfires — the soldier kitchens.
As cramped, not needing anyone and hard now appeared to Prince Andrey his life, he so the same, as seven years to that backwards at Austerlitz, on the eve of the battle, felt himself thrilled and annoyed.
The orders for tomorrow’s battle were given and they were received. There was nothing more for him to do. Yet the thought, the most simple, clear and because of it, scary thought did not leave him alone. He knew that tomorrow’s battle must be the most scary of all those in which he participated, and the opportunity of death for the first time in his life, without any relationship to the everyday, without considerations about how it acted on others, but only by relation to the most of him, to his soul, vividly, almost with credibility, simply and terribly, presented to him. And from the heights of this presentation all that before tormented and occupied him, suddenly illuminated a cold, white light, without shadows, without perspectives, without differences of shape. All his life presented to him as a magic lantern, at which he for long watched through the glass and at artificial lighting. Now he saw suddenly, without glasses, in bright daytime light, this badly painted picture. —"Yes, yes, here there are those thrilled, admired and tormented me false images," he spoke to himself, sorting out in his imagination the cardinal picture of his magic lantern of life, looking at it in this cold, white light of day — he clearly thought about death. "Here are these rough painted figures, which presented something beautiful and mysterious. Thankfulness, the public good, love to a woman, the very fatherland — how big seemed to me this picture, what deep sense it seemed executed! And all this is so simple, pale and rough in the cold white light of this morning, which, I feel, lifts for me." The three cardinal griefs of his life in particular stopped his attention. His love to a woman, the death of his father and the French invasion, capturing half of Russia. —"Love!... This girl, which seemed to me full of mysterious forces. How again I loved her! I made poetic plans about love, about happiness with her. — Oh a sweet boy!" — with anger out loud he spoke. —"How again! I believed in that ideal love, which was for me to keep her allegiance for a whole prepared lacking year! As a gentle dove of fables, she was to waste away in separation with me. — But all this is much easier... All this is terribly simple, nasty!"
"Father also built at Bald Mountains and thought that this was his place, his land, his air, his men; but Napoleon came and, not knowing about his existence, as silver from roads, pushed him, and fell apart his Bald Mountains, and all his life. But Princess Marya speaks that this is an experiment, sent over. For what again experiment, when he now is not and will not be? Never more will he be! He is not! So who again is this experiment for? The fatherland, the death of Moscow! But tomorrow I will be killed — and not by the French even, but, as yesterday defused a soldier’s gun about a prepared ear, and will come the French, taking me behind the legs and behind the head and hurled in a pit, so I do not stink under their nose, and form new conditions of life that will also be habitual for others, and I will not know about them, and they will not know me."
He looked at the strip of birch trees with their motionless yellow, greens and white bark, brilliant in the sun. "Death, so that I am killed tomorrow, so that I was not... so that all this was, but I would not be." He lively represented himself absent from himself in this life. And these birch trees with their light and shadow, and these curly clouds, and this smoke of bonfires, all around transformed for him and appeared something terrible and threatening. A frost ran by his back. He got up fast, got out of the barn and had begun to walk.
Behind the shed he heard a voice.
— Who is there? — called out Prince Andrey.
Red nosed Captain Timohin, the former company commander of Dolohov, now, behind the decline of officers, battalion commander, timidly entered in the shed. Behind him entered an adjutant and the treasurer of the regiment.
Prince Andrey hastily got up, listened to what by service had delivered to his officers, delivered to them some more orders and tidied up to let them go, when from behind the barn was heard a familiar, whispering voice.
— Ah, damn it!670 — said the voice of a man, knocking about something.
Prince Andrey, looking out of the barn, saw the suitable to him Pierre, who stumbled on a lying pole and a little bit did not fall. To all of Prince Andrey it was unpleasant to see people from his world, in particular again Pierre, which resembled to him all those heavy minutes, which he survived in the last arrival in Moscow.
— Ah, here so! — he said. — By what destiny? Here I was not waiting.
At that time as he spoke this, in his eyes and the only expression of his face was more than dryness— was hostility, which immediately again saw Pierre. He approaching to the barn was in a very lively condition of spirit, but, seeing the expression of the face of Prince Andrey, he felt himself cramped and awkward.
— I had arrived... so... you know...I had arrived... to me it is interesting, — said Pierre, already so many times on this day pointlessly repeated this word "interesting." — I wanted to see the battle.
— Yes, yes, but what do the brother masons speak about war? How to prevent it? — said Prince Andrey mockingly. — Well what of Moscow? What of mine? Whether they have arrived finally in Moscow? — he asked seriously.
— They have arrived. Juli Drubetskaya told me. I went to them and did not catch them. They left to near Moscow.
670 Que diable! (What the devil!)
Time: August evening of the 25th
Mentioned: seven years before, the next day (also to-morrow)
Locations: Knyazkovo
Mentioned: Austerlitz, French, Russia (also Russian), Lysyya Gory, Moscow, suburban estate
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: We switch to Prince Andrei who is waiting with nothing to do with the anxiety of battle creeping up on him. He reflects on his death in passages that will be mirrored somewhat in The Death of Ivan Illyich.
"Three main griefs of his life especially held his attention. His love of a woman, the death of his father, and the French invasion that had seized half of Russia." Of course, the woman is not his dead wife, but Natasha.
"And tomorrow I'll be killed--not even by a Frenchman, but by one of our soldiers, like the one yesterday who fired his gun just next to my ear".
Pierre enters the scene by injecting comedy in it and tripping over something. Andrei treats him with hostility rather than lighting up like he normally does when seeing Pierre.
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 *):
Prince Andrei
Natasha ("that young girl")
Nikolai Bolkonsky ("father")
Princess Mariya
Captain Timokhin
Dolokhof
Pierre
Julie Drubetskaya
Abridged Versions: Start of Chapter 2 with no break afterwards in Bell.
Gibian: Chapter 24.
Fuller: Chapter cuts off with a line break after "I wanted to see the battle", cutting the final two paragraphs where Andrei mentions his family and Pierre mentions Julie Drubetskaya.
Komroff: Chapter cuts off with a line break before Timokhin or Pierre comes in but the inner monologuing and state of mind Andre is in is pretty well preserved.
Kropotkin: Chapter 16: Captain Timokhin is cut and the episode Andrei recalls about nearly being shot by his own soldier and the idea of being killed by his own soldiers seems to be removed.
Bromfield: Chapter 11: "There was no similarity between the person he had been in 1805 and the person he was in 1812". There is a comparison between the Timokhins and Tushins, who he basically sees as animals, but still more respectful than the Nesvitskys, Kutaisovs, and Czartoryskys, who he sees as liars that use human suffering to get what they want. The inner monologuing is longer, and the "Oh my dear boy" stands out as making more sense in this version. There is a concentration on Anatole and the idea of him caressing Natasha. Timokhin doesn't appear, though Pierre now comes in and Andrei has a similar reaction to him. "Without knowing why, Prince Andrei felt uncomfortable looking him straight in the eye." No break.
Simmons: Chapter 24: Prince Andrew's reflections are a little shorter.
Additional Notes:
Hadji-Murat (Aplin): Page 3: “I had gathered a large bunch of different flowers and was walking home when in a ditch I noticed a full bloom a wonderful crimson thistle of the sort that is called in Russia a ‘Tatar’, which people take pains to avoid when mowing, and which, when it is accidentally cut down, is thrown out of the hay by the mowers so that they do not prick their hands on it. I took it into my head to pick this thistle and put it in the middle of the bunch. I climbed down into the ditch and, driving off the fuzzy bumble-bee that had sunk itself into the heart of the flower where it had fallen into a sweet and languorous sleep, I set about picking the flower. But this was very difficult: not only did the stem prick me on all sides, even through the handkerchief in which I wrapped my hand, but it was so terribly strong that I struggled with it for some five minutes, tearing through fibres one at a time. When I finally plucked the flower off, the stem was already quite ragged, and the flower no longer seemed so fresh and pretty either. Moreover, in its coarseness and clumsiness it did not go with the delicate flowers of the bunch. I felt regret at having needlessly ruined a flower which had been fine in its place, and I threw it away. ‘Yet what energy and life-force,’ I thought, recalling the effort with which I had picked the flower. ‘How vigorously it defended, and how dearly it sold its life.’
Page 4: “‘What a destructive, cruel being man is, how many different living creatures and plans has he annihilated to sustain his own life,’....’What energy!’ I thought. ‘Man has conquered everything, destroyed millions of blades of grass, but this fellow refuses to surrender.’”
Anna Karenina (Pevear and Volkhonsky): "'It's a secret that's necessary and important for me alone and inexpressible in words. 'This new feeling hasn't changed me, hasn't made me happy or suddenly enlightened, as I dreamed - just like the feeling for my son. Nor was there any surprise. And faith or not faith - I don't know what it is - but this feeling has entered into me just as imperceptibly through suffering and has firmly lodged itself in my soul. 'I'll get angry in the same way with the coachmen Ivan, argue in the same way, speak my mind inappropriately, there will be the same wall between my soul's holy of holies and other people, even my wife, I'll accuse her in the same way of my own fear and then regret it, I'll fail in the same way to understand with my reason why I pray, and yet I will pray - but my life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!'"
Rancour-Laferriere: Page 187: “It should be noted that Pierre’s generosity in 1812 is different from what it was several years earlier. This is especially true of the rescues. They result from a completely spontaneous compassion for the potential victim...They are not part of some dreamy humanitarianism or striving for self-perfection that characterized his Masonic period. Pierre has climbed out of that narcissistic morass, at least for the time being.”
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