Briggs: Andrey is hit by a bursting shell. The dressing-station.
Maude: Prince Andrew with the reserve under fire. Hit by a bursting shell. Outside the dressing-station
Pevear and Volokhonsky: Prince Andrei's regiment in reserve behind Semyonovskoe. Steady losses under artillery fire. Prince Andrei is wounded and taken to a dressing station.
Translation:
XXXVI.
The regiment of Prince Andrey was in the reserves, which to the 2nd hour were standing behind Semenovsky in inaction, under the strong fire of the artillery. In the second hour the regiment, suffering already more than 200 persons, was moved forward to a worn oat field, to that gap between Semenovsky and the mound battery, at which on this day were beaten a thousand people, and at which in the second hour of the day was directed hard and focused fire from several hundred enemy cannons.
Not coming down from this place and not releasing one charge, the regiment lost here more than a third part of their people. In the front and in particular from the right parties, at the unspent smoke of the booming guns, and from the mysterious area of smoke, frozen in all the terrain ahead, not ceasing from the hissing of the quick whistle, took off shots and slowly whistling grenades. Sometimes, as would be giving a rest, passed a quarter hour, in the time of which all the shots and grenades flew over, but sometimes in the continuation minutes a few persons were pulled out of the regiment, and incessantly dragged away the slain and carried away the wounded.
With every new blow all less and less accidents of life stayed for those that had still not been killed. The regiment stood in battalion columns in a distance of three hundred steps, but despite that, all the people of the regiment were found under the influence of one and the same mood. All the people of the regiment were equally silent and gloomy. Seldom was heard between the rows dialect, but this dialect fell silent at any time as was heard the hit of a stroke and the shout: stretcher! A big part of the time the people of the regiment by the order of superiors were sitting on the land. Who, by removing their shako, carefully dismissed and again collected the assembly; who with dry clay, sprinkling it on their palms, polished their bayonet; who kneading their belt and pulling the buckle of bandages; who carefully straightened out and went overboard by their new footcloths and changed shoes. Some built houses from lumps of arable land or weaved braids from straw stubble. All seemed quite submerged in these lessons. When there were wounded and killed people, when there were dragged on stretchers, when ours returned backwards, when were seen through the smoke large masses of the enemy, no one turned any attention to these circumstances. When again forward drove through the artillery, cavalry, and were seen the movements of our infantry, approving remarks were heard with all parties. Yet the greatest attention was deserved by events completely strange, not having any relationship to the battle. It was as if the attention of these morally-tormented people rested on these ordinary, everyday events. A battery of artillery passed before the front of the regiment. At one of the artillery crates an attachment interceded line-by-line. —"Hey, clasp that!... Straighten it! It is falling... Oh, they do not see it!"... by all the regiment equally shouted from the ranks. At another time the common attention turned to a small brown dog with a firmly-raised tail, which, God knows where from, was taking a preoccupied trot running out before the ranks and suddenly, from a close stroke of a shot screeched and, tucking its tail, threw to the side. By all the regiment were heard gaggle and squeals. Yet the entertainment of such family continued for minutes, but people now for more than eight hours were standing without food and without affairs under a not passing horror of death, and the pale and frowned faces of all became more pale and frowning.
Prince Andrey exactly so the same as all the people of the regiment, frowning and pale, went back and forward by the meadow beside the oat field from one to the other, laying down backwards his hand and lowering his head. To do and to order for him there was nothing. All was done by himself. The slain were dragged away behind the front, the wounded carried off, the ranks closed up. Should soldiers run back, then they immediately again hastily returned. At first Prince Andrey, considering it his duty to excite the bravery of the soldiers and show them an example, paced by the rows; but then he made sure that he had nothing and nothing to teach them. All the forces of his soul exactly so the same as in each soldier, were unconsciously directed at that, so to hold on only from the contemplation of horror of this situation in which they were in. He went by the meadow, dragging his legs, scraping the grass and watching the dust which spread on his boots; then he walked in large steps, trying to hit in the traces left by the mowers by the meadow, then he, considering his steps, made calculations to how much time he should take from between to between, so that to make a verst, then squirting the flowers of wormwood, growing in between, he rubbed this flower in his palms and sniffed the fragrant bitter, strong smell. From yesterday’s work throughout the thought had not stayed. He about that did not think. He listened tiredly, hearing all to those same sounds, the distinguished whistle of flights from the rumble of shots, looking at the getting accustomed faces of the people of the 1st battalion and was waiting. "Here it is... we are this again!" he thought, listening to the approaching whistle of some closed area of smoke. "One, another! More! Horrible..." he stopped and looked at the ranks. "No, it carried over. But here this is horrible". — and he again was accepting the walk, trying to make large steps, so that in sixteen steps to reach to between.
A whistling and stroke! At five steps from him exploded dry land, and the disappeared cannon ball. An involuntary cold ran by his back. He again looked at the ranks. Probably were pulled out many; a big crowd gathered at the 2nd battalion.
— Mr. adjutant, — he screamed, — order, so that it is not crowded. — The adjutant, carrying out the order, approached to Prince Andrey. From different parties drove on horseback the commander of the battalion.
— Guard! — was heard the scared shout of a soldier, and as whistling in quick flight, squatted on land as a bird, in two steps from Prince Andrey, beside the horses of the battalion commander, quietly flopped a grenade. The first horse, not asking if it was okay or bad to show fear, snorted, soared, a little bit not dropping the major, and bounced off at the side. The horror of the horse informed the people.
— Lie down! — shouted the voice of the adjutant, adjacent to land. Prince Andrey stood in indecision. The grenade, as a spinning top, smokingly spun between him and the lying adjutant, at the edge of the arable land and meadows, beside the bush of wormwood.
"Is this really death?" thought Prince Andrey, in a completely new, envious look looking at the grass, at the wormwood and at the trickle of smoke, curly from the spinning black ball. "I cannot, I do not want to die, I love life, love this grass, land, air..." he thought this and together with that remembered about how at him were watching.
— A shame, sir officer! — he said to the adjutant, — What... — he did not finish talking. At one and that same time was heard the explosion, whistling debris as would a broken frame, the stuffy smell of gunpowder, and Prince Andrey rushed on his side and, holding up his arm, fell on his chest.
A few officers ran up to him. From the right part of his belly went away by the grass a great blur of blood.
Called for militias with a stretcher stopped behind the officers. Prince Andrey lied on his breast, lowered his face to the grass, and heavily snoring, breathed.
— Well what has become, approach!
The men came up and took him behind the shoulders and legs, but he pitifully groaned, and the men, exchanging glances, again lowered him.
— Take, place, all one! — shouted someone’s voice. He another time was taken behind the shoulders and placed on the stretcher.
— Ah my God! My God! What is this?... The stomach! This is the end! Ah my God! — was heard a voice between the officers. — In the hair past the ear it buzzed, — spoke the adjutant. The men, fixing the stretcher on their shoulders, hastily set off by the trodden by them track to the dressing point.
— On a leg go... Eh!.. Peasant! — shouted the officer, behind the shoulders stopping unevenly marching and shaking the stretcher of the peasant.
— Whether that is tweaked, Hvedor, but Hvedor, — spoke the front peasant.
— Here so is important, — happily said the rear, hitting at the leg.
— Your excellency? Ah? Prince? — in a trembling voice said the running up Timohin, peeping at the stretcher.
Prince Andrey opened his eyes and looked from behind the stretcher, at which deeply left his head, at who spoke, and again lowered his eyelashes.
The militias had brought Prince Andrey to the wood, where were standing wagons and where was the dressing point. The dressing point consisted of three outstretched, with curled floors, tents at the edge of the birch forest. At the birch forest were standing wagons and horses. The horses at the ridges ate oats, and the sparrows flew by it and picked up spilled grains. Ravens, smelling blood, impatiently croaking, flew over to the birches. Around the tents, more than two tenths of the places, were lying, were sitting, and were standing bloody people in institutional clothes. Around the wounded, with sad and attentive faces, were standing crowds of soldier porters, which in vain drove away from the places which directed the officers. Not listening to the officers, soldiers were standing, leaning on the stretcher, and intently, as if trying to understand the difficult matters of the spectacle, looked at that what was done before them. From the tents were heard that loud, angry cry, those mournful groans. Occasionally ran out from there a paramedic for water and pointed at those which were needed to bring in. The wounded, expecting in the tent their queue, wheezed, moaned, cried, shouted, swore, and requested vodka. Some raved. Prince Andrey, as regimental commander, stepping across the unbound wounded, was carried nearer to one of the tents and stopped, expecting orders. Prince Andrey opened his eyes and for long could not understand what was done around him. The meadow, the wormwood, the arable land, the black swirling ball and his passionate rush of love to life was remembered by him. At two steps from him, loudly speaking and turning to himself the common attention, stood, leaning on a bough and with a tied head, a tall, nice, black haired noncommissioned officer. He was injured on the head and leg by bullets. Around him, greedily listening to his speech, gathered a crowd of wounded and porters.
— We from there so blasted him, so all is thrown up, the king himself took away, — the glistening black flushed eyes looking back around himself, shouted the soldier. — Come on only in that very time the reserves, my brother, the title was not left, because of how right you speak...
Prince Andrey, so the same as all surrounding the narrator, brilliantly watched him and felt a comforting feeling. "Yet don't all care now," he thought. "But what will there be and what such was here? From what was I to pity to part with life? Something was in this life, what I do not understand and have not understood."
Mentioned: fifteen minutes, eight hours
Locations: Semenovskoe
Mentioned: Mound battery
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: We switch to Prince Andrei, whose regiment, despite being in the reserves, has lost two hundred men because of artillery fire. "Without leaving the spot or firing a single shot, the regiment here lost another third of its men."
The soldiers do nothing but wait while cannons land among them. "the greatest attention was accorded to totally extraneous events, which had no relation to the battle...the men had been standing for more than eight hours with no food and with nothing to do, under the relentless terror of death...All the forces of his soul, as of every soldier, were unconsciously bent solely on keeping himself from contemplating the horror of the situation they were in."
A shell lands near Andrei, and though people shout for him to get down (this scene somewhat reminiscent of Pierre's duel scene), he looks at the spinning shell and contemplates whether or not it is death.
"I can't, I don't want to die, I love life, I love this grass, the earth, the air..."
The scene descends into a combination of confused words and voices as Andrei is wounded. We then get a very tense description of the dressing station. "The wounded, waiting their turn by the tents, wheezed, moaned, wept, shouted, cursed, begged for vodka. Some were delirious."
The chapter ends with Andrei hearing a soldier discuss heroics on the battlefield and thinking to himself that none of it really matters.
"Why was I so sorry to part with life? There was something in this life that I didn't and still don't understand...."
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 (also called "batallion commander", "regimental commander", and "illustriousness". Also his horse.)
Timokhin
Abridged Versions: Line break after "he again shut them" and before "the militia-men carried" in Dole. Line break in the same place in Wiener and Garnett.
Start of Chapter 7 in Bell with no break at the end.
Gibian: Chapter 36: line break after "eyelids drooped."
Fuller: Chapter is preserved and followed by a line break.
Komroff: The set-up of the chapter is a little shorter with a few details removed. Timokhin does not appear and the description of the dressing station is a little shorter.
Kropotkin: Chapter 22: The description of what each individual soldier is doing while waiting is removed, as is the episode with the horse and the dog. Timokhin is also removed.
Bromfield: Chapter 13: The set up of the soldiers standing around waiting is not here, going almost immediately into the cannonball hitting near him, where he feels a blow "above his nipple." Timokhin is not here and he is brought to the dressing station much quicker. The non-commissioned officer is not here either. No break.
Simmons: Chapter 36: the description of what the men are doing while waiting is removed, including the dog. Line break after "heavily and noisily."
Additional Notes:
Sevastopol in May 1855: Page 54: “at that moment he caught sight of the glowing fuse of the bomb which was spinning on the ground not a yard off. Terror, cold terror excluding every other thought and feeling, seized his whole being. He covered his face with his hands. Another second passed - a second during which a whole world of feelings, thoughts, hopes, and memories flashed before his imagination.”
Page 55: “he remembered the twelve rubles he owed Mikhaylov, remembered also a debt in Petersburg that should have been paid long ago, and the gipsy song he had sung that evening. The woman he loved rose in his imagination wearing a cap with lilac ribbons. He remembered a man who had insulted him five years ago and whom he had not yet paid out. And yet, inseparable from all these and thousands of other recollections, the present thought, the expectation of death, did not leave him for an instant. ‘Perhaps it won’t explode,’ and with desperate decision he resolved to open his eyes. But at that instant a red flame pierced through the still closed lids and something struck him in the middle of his chest with a terrible crash.”
Moser/Rowe: Page 40: “Tolstoy had wished to write an accurate account of early nineteenth-century European history, and so decided to write about a man returning in 1856 from exile in Siberia after taking part in the abortive Decembrist uprising of 1825...and publish it under the title All’s Well That Ends Well...War and Peace is first of all a celebration of life…”the aim of an artist...to make people love life…”
Speirs: Page 55: “Tolstoy sees it as the moral force to endure terrible bondage sanely, the ability to stand still when necessary rather than to run, even though it be forward. It is the quality which connects Pierre’s soldiers to their fellows with such strength. The Russians gain the victory by staying where they are for a whole day...He (Andrew) receives death because his fear of ridicule is stronger than his instinct to live. He dies because he is an aristocrat, a being apart...The occupation of Moscow is the subject of Books Eleven to Thirteen. The study of personalities drops still further into the background after the experience of Borodino.”
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