We begin here with the duel, slowly blurring in and then dollying in on Pierre as he stands in the snow, looking off in the distance before Denisov calls to his attention. Nikolai, since his friendship with Dolokhov is not set up and we didn't see his defense of him and attack of Pierre at the dinner at the end of episode two, while appearing on his side, seems a little more neutral here. Nesvitsky is labelled as the officiator, but I only know that from the subtitles since his character is undeveloped and he hasn't been in other scenes (in the novel, his participation here is random anyway).
The duel has some odd background music that really works. I like the way the scene is shot from the most part, especially the wide shot, the mid close up on Dano as he shoots and the way it cuts to snow and the blood as Dolokhov walks forward after he gets shot. The mid-close up on him as he shoots at Pierre while being on the ground is not quite as strong. Surprisingly we get Dolokhov saying he must live for his mother and sister and get a shot in the carriage of Nikolai holding him before cutting to Pierre, who sees the hints of Anatole (I think he should, again, judging people's looks when I have no right, be a little more attractive because he looks really goofy) and Helene's incest. This scene, the post-duel argument, is the first time that Helene really appears evil or amoral in this show, which makes me a little confused as to what the development of her character they are going for, since she continues in this vein, which is much closer to Tolstoy's portrayal of her, for the rest of the episode, as we will see.
We go straight from that argument to Pierre going and waiting for the horses and meeting Osip, who is a little stouter than I usually picture him (perhaps because his health deteriorates pretty quickly after we meet him, I picture him as sickly and skinny. I'd have to go back to the description, which is not something I always remember very well, to see what he looks like in Tolstoy's eyes. In most adaptations, just as with the abridged versions, he is cut.)
Andrei's reappearance (his disappearance not quite built up since he almost immediately appears in this episode when we cut to the Bolkonskys) is much less surreal and not drawn out enough to be melodramatic. The way that the screaming of Lise is played while Andrei waits outside is played much better than their meeting, but again, rather than confusion, things are played rather straight. The sight of Lise with blood all over here after her death, and the way he kisses her, is played in a really haunting way. Early in this episode, the music has really taken over the scenes and plays up the drama. The baby's cries really punctuate the scene and there is a fantastic pullback shot of Andrei hugging his father. This segues into the baptism scene shown briefly before we go out to the snow and Andrei and his father.
Something needs to be said about Count Rostov's hats, which are pretty ridiculous. He continues to be cut down a bit, but he is much more prevalent in this episode. His wife has almost been cut entirely. We develop Dolokhov and Sonya, as well as the Rostovs' money problems and Nikolai's promise to his father. There is a strange scene, that is supposed to show Dolokhov's menace where he fights swords with Nikolai while Denisov watches. I'm surprised there is such a long scene of Denisov and Natasha dancing, but they do develop that relationship and his awkward proposal. Here, Natasha doesn't run to her mother and instead turns him down kindly and awkwardly (this scene comes pretty quickly after Sonya and Natasha have a conversation about knowing which one is the right one, with Natasha being uncertain that she will ever know who is right while Sonya is much more certain) while Dolokhov sings. I think this continues the theme we have seen in this show, which is a much more independent, and due to the necessities of casting and age, and mature Natasha than we see in the novel, especially in these sections, who is childish and frivolous. The loss here is that we don't really get the abruptness and inappropriateness of the proposal and the awkwardness comes mainly from Natasha just being uncertain and uninterested (almost like she isn't quite ready to "settle down", but this is quite a different motivation than just being too young).
The Mason scene is accompanied by ominous chanting and none of the comedy is played. I'm interested in how this Mason plot-line is developed throughout the rest of the show since the necessity of it is to have Pierre make his post-duel turn, while, on the other hand, much of the Mason stuff in the novel is frivolous and intentionally put there to show the emptiness of it.
We are introduced to Bilibin in a Pavlovna party and he serves to introduce Helene to Boris and even utters a line from one of his letters in the book, one of the best lines in the book, the one about Prussia being one of Russia's allies, betraying them only three or four times. There is a brief scene where Pierre is trying to set up a school and grain stores for what appears to be the peasants. This appears to take the place of the absurdist scene where none of his reforms come to fruition because he is tricked by the steward. This is a much more positive portrayal and completely changes the content of the scene, which I get, because, just as with the Speransky plot-line, this scene displays one of his uncomfortable for liberals political beliefs. This is followed by Helene and Boris meeting in which Boris realizes why Helene has called to him all alone. He appears much more innocent from how he appears in the novel, and though we aren't treated to a sex scene or anything, what is going on is a little more explicit, especially since it is followed immediately by Pierre forlornly stacking wood, which sounds strange to describe, but works to get the point across.
The gambling scene where Rostov loses (43,000 exactly here) is rather brief and followed by a character (whose identity I'm uncertain of) giving Dolokhov a sheepish glare. The episode ends with, after Nikolai has had to ask his father for the money, Nikolai and Denisov returning to the battlefield, only for, immediately, the announcement of the peace between the Russian and the French, leaving Nikolai angry. This works by showing that the point that is brought out explicitly in the book, which is that Nikolai and Denisov make mistakes while in civilian life, decide that they are only suited for the life of a soldier, and then the peace robs that from them, so while the political element is intentionally ridiculous, they play an unrelated negative role in the lives of the characters as well.
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Book 4 Part 3 Chapter 19 (Chapter 314 overall)
Chapter Summaries: Dole: Why the Russians failed to cut off the French. Reply to the historians. Object of the campaign. Senseless reasons. Comparison of cattle in a garden. Impossibility of cutting off an army. Difficulty of the march.
Briggs: Four good reasons why the Russians did not cut off the French.
Maude: Why the French were not cut off by the Russians
Pevear and Volokhonsky: Critique of Russian historical accounts.
Time: December
Mentioned: 1812
Locations:
Mentioned: Russia (and Russian), French, Borodino, Krasnoe, Berezina, Vyazma, Tarutino, Moscow, German
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: Still sticking with a birdseye view, Tolstoy discusses the frustration Russians feel that the entire French army wasn't cut off and destroyed. His main enemy here is now Russian historians who blame Kutuzov and give Napoleon credit for victories, a contradiction that Tolstoy believes exists because the aim of capturing Napoleon and destroying his army was not the aim and could not have been the aim. While Tolstoy breaks the argument into different parts, the main thrust is that the French were fleeing at a speed that the Russians could not wish to catch them and that the expulsion of the French from Russia was the chief goal.
One of the most interesting arguments is that the ability to cut off an army is "impossible, because there is always plenty of room for it to go around, and there is the night, during which nothing can be seen". Notably, unlike "Germans", the French were not willing to surrender because captivity would still mean "hunger and cold".
Tolstoy also puts emphasis on the amount of soldiers that the Russians lost in their pursuit, with half of them dropping out of the army before there was a single battle. "The Russians, dying by half, did all they could do and should have done to achieve an aim worthy of the nation, and are not to blame if other Russian people, sitting in warm rooms, proposed doing what was impossible."
End of Part Three.
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 *):
(Russians and French are mentioned in general, as are Russian military historians. Also a theoretical gardener, cattle-driver, military students, and the Germans.)
Abridged Versions:
End of Part Fourteen in Garnett.
End of Part the Fourteenth in Wiener.
End of Book Fourteen in Maude.
End of Part Three in Edmonds, Briggs, Mandelker, and Dunnigan.
End of Part Third in Dole.
End of Chapter 14 in Bell.
Gibian: Chapter 5: End of Book Fourteen.
Fuller: entire chapter is cut.
Komroff: entire chapter is cut.
Kropotkin: entire chapter is cut.
Simmons: Chapter 5: the opening paragraph that sets up context is removed. The discussion of specific commanders that have been blamed by historians is removed. End of Book Fourteen.
Additional Notes:
Claridge: "His (Tolstoy's) readings of the works of Joseph de Maistre (extensively discussed by Sir Isaiah Berlin), the Sardinian Ambassador in St Petersburg between 1803-17, helped form his sense that historical events are not shaped by the individual will, no matter how much that will sees itself as the shaping force."
Mandelker: (on Maistre) "noted...for his passionate defence of 'throne and altar' conservatism. His energetic writing style and forceful, ardently held royalist beliefs made him a compelling counter-cultural figure in the aftermath of the French Revolution...(Isaiah) Berlin discuss De Maistre as a forerunner of modern fascism..."
Briggs: Four good reasons why the Russians did not cut off the French.
Maude: Why the French were not cut off by the Russians
Pevear and Volokhonsky: Critique of Russian historical accounts.
Translation:
XIX.
Who of the Russian people, reading the descriptions of the last period of the campaign of the year 1812, has not felt a heavy feeling of annoyance, dissatisfaction and ambiguity? Who has not assigned themselves issues: how was not taken away, not destroyed all the French, when all three armies surrounded them in superior numbers, when the disturbed French, hungry and frozen, gave up in droves and when (as we tell the story) the objective of the Russians consisted in to stop, cut off and pick up in captivity all the French?
In what way the Russian army, which, weaker in number than the French, gave the Borodino battle, in what way this army, with three parties surrounding the French and having the purpose to pick them up, did not reach their goal? Is it really such a huge advantage before us to have the French that we, surrounding them with excellent forces, could not beat them? In what way could this happen?
History (that, which is called by this word), answering to these questions, speaks that this happened because of how Kutuzov, Tormasov, and Chichagov, and that, and that, had not done these and those maneuvers.
Yet from what had they not done all these maneuvers? From what, should they be blamed in this, how was not achieved the intended objective, — from what were they not judged and not executed? Yet, even should we allow that the guilty failures of the Russians were Kutuzov and Chichagov and so on, it cannot be to understand all the same, why and in those conditions, at which were found out the Russian troops under Red and under Berezina (in both cases the Russians were in superior forces), why were not taken in the captivity French army with the marshals, kings and emperor, when in this was consisted the objective of the Russians?
The explanation of this strange phenomena is that (as that is done by Russian military historians) Kutuzov hindered the attack, unreasonably because of how we know that the will of Kutuzov could not hold the troops from attack under Vyazma and under Tarutin.
For some reason the Russian army, which with the weakest forces won victory under Borodino above the enemy throughout its strength, in superior forces, was vanquished under Red and under Berezina by the disturbed in droves French.
If the objective of the Russians consisted in so to cut off and take in captivity Napoleon and marshals, and this objective not only was not achieved, and all attempts to achieve these goals at any time were destroyed in a very shameful way, then the last period of the campaign completely fairly presents the French with nearby victories and completely unfairly presents the Russian historians as victorious.
Russian military historians, so, as far as for them is obligatory logic, unwittingly come to this conclusion and, despite lyrical appeals about courage and devotion and etc., must unwittingly admit that the retreat of the French from Moscow is a row of victories for Napoleon and defeats for Kutuzov.
Yet, leaving completely to the side people's pride, we feel that this conclusion itself concludes in a contradiction, as the row of victories of the French brought them to perfect destruction, but the row of defeats of the Russians brought them to the complete destruction of the enemy and cleansing their fatherland.
The spring of this contradiction lies in that historians, studying events by the letters of sovereigns and generals, by communications, reports and so on, suggest a false, never existing objective of the last period of the war of the year of 1812, as if the objective would consist in so that to cut off and catch Napoleon with the marshals and army.
These goals never were and could not be, because of how it had no sense, and the achievement of it was completely impossible.
This objective had no sense firstly because of how the disturbed army of Napoleon with all possible speed ran from Russia, i.e. carried out that very thing, what could want any Russian. for what the same was there to do various operations above the French, which ran so fast, as only they could?
Secondly, it was pointless to kneel in the way of people, all of their energy directed in escape.
Thirdly, it was pointless to lose their troops for the destruction of the French armies, destroyed without external reasons in such a progression, that without any obstructions in the way could not transfer abroad more than how they transferred in December, i.e. only one hundredth of the troops.
Fourthly, it was pointless to wish to take in captivity the emperor, kings, and dukes, — the people whose captivity to the highest extent would have impeded the action of the Russians, as that was recognized by the most skillful diplomats of this time (J. Maistre and others). More senseless was the wish to take the corps of the French, when their troops melted to half before Red, but to the corps captives it was needed to detach a division of convoy, and then their soldiers did not always receive full provisions and already taken away captives died from hunger.
All the thoughtful plans for cutting off and catching Napoleon with the army, was similar to that plan of the gardener, who, kicking out of the vegetable garden the trampling his ridges cattle, would run in to the gate and begin by the head to beat this cattle. One could say in excuse of the gardener that he was very angered. Yet this cannot be to even say about the compilers of the project, because of how they have not suffered from the trampled ridge.
Yet besides how cutting off Napoleon with his army was pointless, it was impossible.
This was impossible firstly because of how, as from experience it is seen that the move of columns for five versts in one battle never matches with plans, the probability that Chichagov, Kutuzov and Wittgenstein agreed in the time and appointed place, was so insignificant, that it equaled an impossibility; as that thought Kutuzov, still in receiving the plan saying that diversions in large distances do not bring the desired results.
Secondly it was impossible because of how, so that to paralyze that force of inertia, with which moved backwards the army of Napoleon, the need was to without the comparisons of bigger troops, than those which the Russians had.
Thirdly, this was impossible because of how the military word cut off, has no sense. One can cut off a piece of bread, but not an army. To cut off an army — to block its road — in no way cannot be, for the places around are always so many, where it can be to walk around, and at night, in the time which nothing is seen, than could make sure military scientists from the examples of Red and Berezina. To take again in captivity in no way can be without that, who is taken in captivity has agreed in this, as it cannot be to catch a swallow, than when it sits down in one’s hands. To take in captivity can be that who gives up as the Germans by the rules, strategies and tactics. Yet the French troops completely fairly did not find this comfortable, as an equally hungry and cold death awaited them in flight and in captivity.
Fourthly and the main thing, this was impossible because of how never, since existed the world, was a war in those scary conditions in which it happened in the year of 1812, and the Russian troops in the pursuit of the French strained all their forces and could not do more, not destroying themselves.
In the movement of the Russian army from Tarutin to Red dropped out fifty thousand sick and backward, i.e. a number equal to the population of many provincial cities. Half the people dropped out of the army without battles.
And about this period of the campaign, when the troops without boots and fur coats, with incomplete provisions, without vodka, by months spending the night in the snow in 15 degrees of frost; when the day was only 7 and 8 hours, but the rest of the night, in the time which may not be the influence of discipline; when, not so as in battle, in a few hours only people are introduced in the region of death, where already is no discipline, but when people by months live, all moments fighting with death from hunger and cold; when in a month is killed half the army, — about this period of the campaign we are told by historians, how Miloradovich should have done a flank march there, but Tormasov there, and how Chichagov should have moved there (moving in higher than knee snow), and how that knocked over and cut off, and etc. and etc.
The Russians, dying by half, had done all that can be done and must do for achieving the glorious to the people goal, and not to blame in that other Russian people, sitting in warm rooms, supposed to do that what was impossible.
All this strange, incomprehensible now contradiction to the facts with written history, goes on only because of how the historians who wrote about this event, wrote the story of beautiful feeling and words of different generals, but not the story of events.
For them appear very entertaining the words of Miloradovich, awards which received that and this general and their assumptions; but the question about those 50 000 that stayed by hospitals and graves, not even interests them, because of how they are not subject to their studying.
But between that stands only to turn away from studying reports and general plans, but to delve into the movement of those hundred thousand people, hosting direct participation in the event, and all the seeming before insoluble questions, suddenly, with extraordinary ease and simplicity receives undoubted approval.
The objective of cutting off Napoleon with his army never existed, besides as in the imagination of ten people. It could not exist, because of how it was senseless, and its achievement was impossible.
The objective of the people was one: clear their land from invasions. This objective was achieved firstly itself, as the French ran and because it should only be to not stop these movements. Secondly, this objective was achieved by the actions of the folk war, destroying the French, and thirdly by that the big Russian army went following behind the French, finishing to consume the force in the case of stops in the movements of French.
The Russian army was to act as the whip to a running animal. And the experienced driver knew that it was very profitable to keep the whip raised, threatening them, but not by head lashing the running animal.
—————
Mentioned: 1812
Locations:
Mentioned: Russia (and Russian), French, Borodino, Krasnoe, Berezina, Vyazma, Tarutino, Moscow, German
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: Still sticking with a birdseye view, Tolstoy discusses the frustration Russians feel that the entire French army wasn't cut off and destroyed. His main enemy here is now Russian historians who blame Kutuzov and give Napoleon credit for victories, a contradiction that Tolstoy believes exists because the aim of capturing Napoleon and destroying his army was not the aim and could not have been the aim. While Tolstoy breaks the argument into different parts, the main thrust is that the French were fleeing at a speed that the Russians could not wish to catch them and that the expulsion of the French from Russia was the chief goal.
One of the most interesting arguments is that the ability to cut off an army is "impossible, because there is always plenty of room for it to go around, and there is the night, during which nothing can be seen". Notably, unlike "Germans", the French were not willing to surrender because captivity would still mean "hunger and cold".
Tolstoy also puts emphasis on the amount of soldiers that the Russians lost in their pursuit, with half of them dropping out of the army before there was a single battle. "The Russians, dying by half, did all they could do and should have done to achieve an aim worthy of the nation, and are not to blame if other Russian people, sitting in warm rooms, proposed doing what was impossible."
End of Part Three.
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 *):
Kutuzof
Tormasof
Chitchagof ("Tchitchagov" in Garnett. "Tchichagov" in Edmonds. "Chichagov" in Maude, Briggs, and Dunnigan.)
Napoleon (and his marshals)
J. Maistre (as in Dole and Wiener. See Bromfield in post on chapter 88 and Pevear and Volkhonsky note in chapter 193. "Joseph de Maistre" in Maude, Edmonds, and Mandelker. Bell cuts the name.)
Wittgenstein
Miloradovitch
(Russians and French are mentioned in general, as are Russian military historians. Also a theoretical gardener, cattle-driver, military students, and the Germans.)
Abridged Versions:
End of Part Fourteen in Garnett.
End of Part the Fourteenth in Wiener.
End of Book Fourteen in Maude.
End of Part Three in Edmonds, Briggs, Mandelker, and Dunnigan.
End of Part Third in Dole.
End of Chapter 14 in Bell.
Gibian: Chapter 5: End of Book Fourteen.
Fuller: entire chapter is cut.
Komroff: entire chapter is cut.
Kropotkin: entire chapter is cut.
Simmons: Chapter 5: the opening paragraph that sets up context is removed. The discussion of specific commanders that have been blamed by historians is removed. End of Book Fourteen.
Additional Notes:
Claridge: "His (Tolstoy's) readings of the works of Joseph de Maistre (extensively discussed by Sir Isaiah Berlin), the Sardinian Ambassador in St Petersburg between 1803-17, helped form his sense that historical events are not shaped by the individual will, no matter how much that will sees itself as the shaping force."
Mandelker: (on Maistre) "noted...for his passionate defence of 'throne and altar' conservatism. His energetic writing style and forceful, ardently held royalist beliefs made him a compelling counter-cultural figure in the aftermath of the French Revolution...(Isaiah) Berlin discuss De Maistre as a forerunner of modern fascism..."
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Book 4 Part 3 Chapter 18 (Chapter 313 overall)
Chapter Summaries: Dole: Criticism upon historians who consider the action of the masses subservient to the will of one man. The ugly truth. Greatness.
Briggs: Even in retreat the absurd Napoleon is described as a 'great man'.
Pevear and Volokhonsky: Critique of French historical accounts of the retreat. Greatness and heroism reconsidered.
Time: see previous chapter
Locations: Kaluga, Maly-Yaroslavets, Smolensk, Orsha, Krasnoe, Dnieper
Mentioned: French
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: Tolstoy discusses how the movement of the French troops described in the previous chapter are often attributed to Napoleon and his marshals by historians, though this is impossible. Napoleon's flight from his army is then discussed, "which every child is taught to be ashamed of".
"It is as if greatness excludes the possibility of the measure of good and bad. For the great man there is no bad."
"For us, with the measures of good and bad given us by Christ, nothing is immeasurable. And there is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness, and truth."
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 *):
(also the French and historians.)
Abridged Versions: Page 177 of Dole is basically unreadable.
No break in Bell.
Gibian: end of Chapter 4.
Fuller: Entire chapter is cut.
Komroff: Entire chapter is cut.
Kropotkin: Entire chapter is cut.
Simmons: Entire chapter is cut.
Additional Notes:
Briggs: Even in retreat the absurd Napoleon is described as a 'great man'.
Pevear and Volokhonsky: Critique of French historical accounts of the retreat. Greatness and heroism reconsidered.
Translation:
XVIII.
It would seemed at this campaign the flight of the French, when they did all that only could be, so that to ruin themselves; when or in the same movement of this crowd, began from the turning at the Kaluga road and to the flight of the chief from the army, was not the slightest sense, — it would seem, in this period of the campaigns of the now impossible history, attributing the action of the masses to the will of one human, to describe this retreat to their sense. But no. Mountains of books were written by historians about this campaign and everywhere is written the orders of Napoleon and his thoughtful plans — maneuvers, leading the army and the ingenious orders of his marshals.
The retreat from Little-Yaroslav then, when to him was given the road at an abundant edge, and when to him was open that parallel road, by which then Kutuzov pursued him, the unnecessary retreat by the ravaged road is explained to us by different thoughtful considerations. By so the same thoughtful considerations are described his retreat from Smolensk to Orsha. Then describing his heroism at Red, where he as if would prepare to accept battle and himself command, goes with a birch stick and speaks:
— Already I submitted as emperor, now it is time to be the general.997 — And, despite that, immediately again after this, runs farther, leaving to the arbitrariness of fate the scattered parts of the army, located back.
Then described to us is the greatness of the soul of the marshals, in particular Ney, the greatness of soul, consisting in that he at night made his way in the forest to bypass across the Dnieper and without banners and artillery and without nine tenths of the troops came running to Orsha.
And finally the last departure of the great emperor from the heroic army is presented to us by historians, as something great and ingenious. Even this last act of flight, in the language of humanity called the last degree of villainy, which is taught to be ashamed by every child, and this act in the language of historians gets an excuse.
Then, when now it is impossible to farther pull out such elastic threads of historical reasoning, when the action is now obviously nasty to that of all that humanity calls good and even fair, is an in the historians salvatory concept of greatness. Greatness is as if it excludes the opportunity of steps of good and evil. For the great — no evil. There is no horror which could be delivered to blame to that who is great.
"This is majestic!"998 — speak the historians, and then now there is no good or evil, but "grand", and "not grand." Grand — okay, not grand — bad. Grand is a property, by their concepts, of some kind of special creatures, called by them heroes. And Napoleon, clearing out in a warm fur coat home from the perishing of not only his friends, but (by his opinion) people he led here, feels que c’est grand (how majestic this is), and his soul was calm.
"From the stately (he as something grand999 sees himself) to the funny is only one step,"1000 he spoke. And all the world for 50 years repeats: Grand! Great! Napoleon is great. From the stately to the funny is only step.1001
And to anyone in their head it will not come that the acknowledgement of greatness, the immeasurable measure of good and evil, is only the acknowledgement of their insignificance and the immeasurable little things.
For us, with the given to us by Christ measure of good and evil, there is no immeasurable. And there is no greatness, where there is no simplicity, good and truth.
997 J’ai assez fait l’Empereur, il est temps de faire le général, (I've done enough as the Emperor, it's time to be the general,)
998 C’est grand! (This is great!)
999 sublime (sublime)
1000 Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas (From the sublime to the ridiculous there is only one step)
1001 Sublime! Grand! Napoléon le grand! Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas. (Sublime! Great! Napoleon is great! From the sublime to the ridiculous there is only one step)
Locations: Kaluga, Maly-Yaroslavets, Smolensk, Orsha, Krasnoe, Dnieper
Mentioned: French
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: Tolstoy discusses how the movement of the French troops described in the previous chapter are often attributed to Napoleon and his marshals by historians, though this is impossible. Napoleon's flight from his army is then discussed, "which every child is taught to be ashamed of".
"It is as if greatness excludes the possibility of the measure of good and bad. For the great man there is no bad."
"For us, with the measures of good and bad given us by Christ, nothing is immeasurable. And there is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness, and truth."
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 *):
Napoleon (also "emperor" and "Napoleon le grand")
Kutuzof
Ney
Abridged Versions: Page 177 of Dole is basically unreadable.
No break in Bell.
Gibian: end of Chapter 4.
Fuller: Entire chapter is cut.
Komroff: Entire chapter is cut.
Kropotkin: Entire chapter is cut.
Simmons: Entire chapter is cut.
Additional Notes:
Thoughts on the 2016 BBC Version of War and Peace: Episode 2
We start in Brunn, Austria where Andrei is trying to report directly to the emperor (a different situation than in the novel, where he is asked to see him, he gets some slight resistance here). Here the emperor is uninterested and brisk for a different reason than the novel, pretending to be busy and uninterested in the news. I think it would have been much more difficult to portray the emperor as he is portrayed in the book, though the necessity of the scene in this adaptation, since it is such a one off episode in the book and seems to just be there for Tolstoy to take shots at elite historical characters, is pretty debatable. I really wanted to see more of the Tushin episode at the end of episode one and thought it would be developed more. The defending of Tushin is also notably absent (and the importance of that scene in the book is that, just like the also absent disposition scene, which is alluded to by Alexander in this episode, is to show the absurdity and out of touch nature of the military leaders and show the heroism and necessity of the common soldier), and I kind of wonder why he isn't cut together (though I guess he wasn't technically shown, just called after), unless they plan on doing the scene in the hospital with him and Denisov (just as with the emperor, I would have considered cutting him in order to lengthen some of the more important scenes that we have already seen).
When we switch to Pierre, Paul Dano has a strange walk that he uses to try to highlight the awkwardness. All it seems to really do is make it look like he has a limp, but Dano is growing on me with his interpretation of the character so I don't want everything I say about his performance to be negative. There is a scene with Anatole and Helene in bed that plays up the incest. She also explicitly calls Pierre a buffoon, but the camera lingers on her face long enough I wonder what they were trying to portray. I think what they want to show is a sweeter side of her we don't see in the novel and give her character more complexity (her accepting the marriage as inevitable in this version mirrors the inevitability Pierre faces, giving the situation more complexity than Tolstoy does).
I like the conversation between Pierre and Anna Mikhailovna and how all the women look at him, playing out the way his new wealth makes him an attractive suitor, even though he says he can't talk to ladies. This is a good demonstration, in my opinion, of taking the expository structure that Tolstoy reveals information about the characters and making a scene out of it, which a reader could complain that Tolstoy doesn't quite do enough of. Count Ilya Rostov is played really well (the letter scene is much more muted and only involves Sonya after the fact) though he has been cut down in adaptation here.
I like the scene that shows Nikolai has gone to a prostitute, where he wakes up, and we see a woman lying with Denisov and he asks if Denisov will take care of the bill. We don't get an unnecessary sex scene (we don't even see who Nikolai sleeps with, adding to the anonymous nature of it), but we, as revealed in the dialogue (and somewhat hilariously reinforced with his mustache), see his development into an adult. I like how young the actors of Nikolai and Boris look, making their formal uniforms look ridiculous on them. Whether intentional or not, I feel that it plays the intent by Tolstoy that I've talked about a lot well. Another character with them (I wonder if he is supposed to stand in for Telyanin? We don't see this subplot) looks even more ridiculous. Nikolai is much stronger in his confrontation with Andrei and the whispering way Andrei comes off is extremely strong and confident, without being overly abrasive and unlikable, which is how he could be played. There is a really nice very white ice skating scene and the overall scenic choices of the novel have been really good, not opulent and somewhat restrained, much less grand than the Soviet version for example, but you get the point and you can be in the setting without it feeling like a television show or showing obvious budget deficiencies like the previous BBC version.
Pierre has a dream where he follows Helene as she takes her clothes off and beckons him to a bed. She also does the Brigitte Bardot laying in bed like in Contempt, which seems silly and a little too modern, but it is a decent alternative to the childish way that Pierre realizes his sexual attraction to her in the novel. The episode also later heightens the sexual nature of their relationship after the marriage and dabbles into, while tasteful, the sexualization of the novel that I thought was done really terribly in the 2007 version.
There is some weird slow motion before Vassily says congratulations to them. Notably Pierre never says I love you in French and instead says really nothing. I'm not sure they played up the awkwardness of it up enough and not having Pierre consent to it with his halfhearted French is I think very important because it is something he explicitly regrets in the novel and shows his consent to the marriage. Pierre and Helene's first conversation after their wedding in bed is about Pierre wanting to tour all his estates and Helene not wanting to go, immediately showing the disconnect between them and their different motives, but doing some in a restrained way.
The introduction of Alexander here is a rather combative one with Kutuzov while the soldiers cheer him on, calling Kutuzov too old. Kutuzov tells Andrei to write to his wife and the latter reflects and says to himself that he would give them all up for glory. This does give us that motive that Andrei really has (I'm just now putting together how we lost the part of the conversation between Pierre and Andrei where the latter said that he didn't go to war to fight for what he believed in and how there would be no wars if this was the motivation people had for going to war), but a character talking to themselves about their motivations is almost never not silly.
The chanting returns right about midpoint of the episode, where we cut back to the opening shot, the one with the back of Napoleon before cutting to his face. They didn't go for a face that looks like Napoleon's and we don't see a lot of him in this episode, so I'll save comments on him for later.
It is extremely foggy and Boris even explicitly says he can't see anything, really capturing the way that Tolstoy describes Austerlitz and the battle scenes in general (there isn't a lot of emphasis in the episode that this is Austerlitz and I think this is because a modern, especially Western and post-Bonaparte-cult, audience may not put much stock or have much knowledge about Austerlitz, despite the importance it had to Napoleon and European politics). The soldiers are all really dirty, and I guess if I have a complaint it is that soldiers are blown way up into the air and back when the artillery hits around them. It looks a little silly and over the top.. We don't get any upward scale shots as you might suspect (there is one at the end, but it is extremely zoomed out), but the ground shots do a good enough job, especially since it is supposed to display confusion anyway. The camera is not too shaky but feels authentic enough to feel like you are there.
The episode really isn't interested in the French versus Russian big-scale part of the story, and even though this is less important in this part of the novel, I wonder if this is a sign for things to come, with the broad, birds-eye political sections of the novel being skipped (which makes me wonder exactly how much we will see of Napoleon). It also fixates on the human carnage and there is a great shot of Alexander (who doesn't really need to be saved or anything) holding back tears.
The Andrei seeing the sky scene is done very well and I don't think we need to comment on it very much because it is a great scene and it works on the screen.
Helene is much more sympathetic, especially in the conversation about having children she has with Pierre (one of the most non-amoral but downright dreadful moments Helene has) and he is forceful about having Dolokhov in his house, which she has trepidation about. Dolokhov has not been really introduced, but he is very well cast, at least by looks and plays the dashing immoral soldier very well. Not introducing him sooner makes him much more random than he appears in the novel, but we'll see how his character arc plays out throughout the series. There is also an awkward scene where the three of them eat together and Dolkohov eats some of Pierre's food and says it always tastes better from another fellow's plate and then later Dolokhov and Helene have sex on the table very briefly and clothed. Interestingly, when he gets the letter about the affair, it is read in a woman's voice (I think Mikhailovna's?).
Pierre talks to the pigs again when he visits the Rostovs and rambles about Napoleon in an awkward way. I really like the sensitive, and then angry, way Dano plays the challenge scene and this is what ends the episode. On a side note, the Catana is here and sang, but in Russian and despite the look on Bagration's face, there isn't really any comedy in it, and of course all the sections that focus on Count Rostov trying to put on the feast and then being honored for it are cut.
When we switch to Pierre, Paul Dano has a strange walk that he uses to try to highlight the awkwardness. All it seems to really do is make it look like he has a limp, but Dano is growing on me with his interpretation of the character so I don't want everything I say about his performance to be negative. There is a scene with Anatole and Helene in bed that plays up the incest. She also explicitly calls Pierre a buffoon, but the camera lingers on her face long enough I wonder what they were trying to portray. I think what they want to show is a sweeter side of her we don't see in the novel and give her character more complexity (her accepting the marriage as inevitable in this version mirrors the inevitability Pierre faces, giving the situation more complexity than Tolstoy does).
I like the conversation between Pierre and Anna Mikhailovna and how all the women look at him, playing out the way his new wealth makes him an attractive suitor, even though he says he can't talk to ladies. This is a good demonstration, in my opinion, of taking the expository structure that Tolstoy reveals information about the characters and making a scene out of it, which a reader could complain that Tolstoy doesn't quite do enough of. Count Ilya Rostov is played really well (the letter scene is much more muted and only involves Sonya after the fact) though he has been cut down in adaptation here.
I like the scene that shows Nikolai has gone to a prostitute, where he wakes up, and we see a woman lying with Denisov and he asks if Denisov will take care of the bill. We don't get an unnecessary sex scene (we don't even see who Nikolai sleeps with, adding to the anonymous nature of it), but we, as revealed in the dialogue (and somewhat hilariously reinforced with his mustache), see his development into an adult. I like how young the actors of Nikolai and Boris look, making their formal uniforms look ridiculous on them. Whether intentional or not, I feel that it plays the intent by Tolstoy that I've talked about a lot well. Another character with them (I wonder if he is supposed to stand in for Telyanin? We don't see this subplot) looks even more ridiculous. Nikolai is much stronger in his confrontation with Andrei and the whispering way Andrei comes off is extremely strong and confident, without being overly abrasive and unlikable, which is how he could be played. There is a really nice very white ice skating scene and the overall scenic choices of the novel have been really good, not opulent and somewhat restrained, much less grand than the Soviet version for example, but you get the point and you can be in the setting without it feeling like a television show or showing obvious budget deficiencies like the previous BBC version.
Pierre has a dream where he follows Helene as she takes her clothes off and beckons him to a bed. She also does the Brigitte Bardot laying in bed like in Contempt, which seems silly and a little too modern, but it is a decent alternative to the childish way that Pierre realizes his sexual attraction to her in the novel. The episode also later heightens the sexual nature of their relationship after the marriage and dabbles into, while tasteful, the sexualization of the novel that I thought was done really terribly in the 2007 version.
There is some weird slow motion before Vassily says congratulations to them. Notably Pierre never says I love you in French and instead says really nothing. I'm not sure they played up the awkwardness of it up enough and not having Pierre consent to it with his halfhearted French is I think very important because it is something he explicitly regrets in the novel and shows his consent to the marriage. Pierre and Helene's first conversation after their wedding in bed is about Pierre wanting to tour all his estates and Helene not wanting to go, immediately showing the disconnect between them and their different motives, but doing some in a restrained way.
The introduction of Alexander here is a rather combative one with Kutuzov while the soldiers cheer him on, calling Kutuzov too old. Kutuzov tells Andrei to write to his wife and the latter reflects and says to himself that he would give them all up for glory. This does give us that motive that Andrei really has (I'm just now putting together how we lost the part of the conversation between Pierre and Andrei where the latter said that he didn't go to war to fight for what he believed in and how there would be no wars if this was the motivation people had for going to war), but a character talking to themselves about their motivations is almost never not silly.
The chanting returns right about midpoint of the episode, where we cut back to the opening shot, the one with the back of Napoleon before cutting to his face. They didn't go for a face that looks like Napoleon's and we don't see a lot of him in this episode, so I'll save comments on him for later.
It is extremely foggy and Boris even explicitly says he can't see anything, really capturing the way that Tolstoy describes Austerlitz and the battle scenes in general (there isn't a lot of emphasis in the episode that this is Austerlitz and I think this is because a modern, especially Western and post-Bonaparte-cult, audience may not put much stock or have much knowledge about Austerlitz, despite the importance it had to Napoleon and European politics). The soldiers are all really dirty, and I guess if I have a complaint it is that soldiers are blown way up into the air and back when the artillery hits around them. It looks a little silly and over the top.. We don't get any upward scale shots as you might suspect (there is one at the end, but it is extremely zoomed out), but the ground shots do a good enough job, especially since it is supposed to display confusion anyway. The camera is not too shaky but feels authentic enough to feel like you are there.
The episode really isn't interested in the French versus Russian big-scale part of the story, and even though this is less important in this part of the novel, I wonder if this is a sign for things to come, with the broad, birds-eye political sections of the novel being skipped (which makes me wonder exactly how much we will see of Napoleon). It also fixates on the human carnage and there is a great shot of Alexander (who doesn't really need to be saved or anything) holding back tears.
The Andrei seeing the sky scene is done very well and I don't think we need to comment on it very much because it is a great scene and it works on the screen.
Helene is much more sympathetic, especially in the conversation about having children she has with Pierre (one of the most non-amoral but downright dreadful moments Helene has) and he is forceful about having Dolokhov in his house, which she has trepidation about. Dolokhov has not been really introduced, but he is very well cast, at least by looks and plays the dashing immoral soldier very well. Not introducing him sooner makes him much more random than he appears in the novel, but we'll see how his character arc plays out throughout the series. There is also an awkward scene where the three of them eat together and Dolkohov eats some of Pierre's food and says it always tastes better from another fellow's plate and then later Dolokhov and Helene have sex on the table very briefly and clothed. Interestingly, when he gets the letter about the affair, it is read in a woman's voice (I think Mikhailovna's?).
Pierre talks to the pigs again when he visits the Rostovs and rambles about Napoleon in an awkward way. I really like the sensitive, and then angry, way Dano plays the challenge scene and this is what ends the episode. On a side note, the Catana is here and sang, but in Russian and despite the look on Bagration's face, there isn't really any comedy in it, and of course all the sections that focus on Count Rostov trying to put on the feast and then being honored for it are cut.
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Chapters 24-28 of Resurrection: Nekhlyudov's Attempt at Freedom
Chapter 24: Maslova is sentenced to four years of servitude in Siberia and she cries out in the courtroom that she isn't guilty. Nekhlyudov chases down the president, but the latter is too eager to get to the Swiss women to take him seriously and recommends that he get an advocate. Even though he realizes that something unjust has happened, he is unwilling to do anything about it, leaving his work at his job, which is why being a judge as a "job" affects people's lives negatively, which subjugates people, seemingly at random, due to incompetence or apathy.
Chapter 25: Nekhlyudov goes to the advocate and feels better that he has done something and the weather matches his mood until depression captures him as he walks, deciding to get in a cab after first rejecting them. War and Peace has several moments of depression for Pierre, as well as moments of rather sudden jolts of mood, both positive and negative. I think the big moment here, as is the whole of Pierre's Mason arc, is that Nekhlyudov does "something" and that "something" makes him feel better, only to realize that the "something" is rather meaningless and his positive contribution does not match the negative contribution he has had on Maslova's wife. This setup really mirrors the Tolstoyan (and leftist) critique of charity from the rich, in which the rich rob the poor and actively oppress them through the system they have created to maintain their political power and wealth, but then give a small amount of their wealth back to feel better about themselves, and are often honored for doing so. I think Tolstoy here wants to make sure that we do not see Nekhlyudov's going to the advocate, which was just something the president told him to do in order to get him out of the way so he can go have an affair in a hotel, as something that was actually either helpful or an action that has any moral value. It is only when Nekhlyudov walks and self-reflects that he realizes this and the emptiness of his actions. At the risk of reading too metaphorically, I think we can see the decision to get into the cab as an attempt to break from self-reflection and how technology allows us to disengage from having to reflect on our moral actions and our mental health. Even though technology has allowed us to have more "down time" than most civilizations throughout history have, that technology eats up our down time, which is probably why meditation movements have gained a foothold in our culture, as a reaction to how technology has caused us to avoid looking inside of ourselves for happiness and moral/mental clarity.
Chapter 26: Nekhlyudov goes to the Korchagins to see the one he seems to be on the way to getting betrothed to. We are introduced to several characters, and I'll hit the highlights or most important ideas. One lady is a rabid Slavophile, while another is a bank director and liberal (just as War and Peace has the separate Franco-centric and Russian patriotic courts, Russia at this time was divided in a debate of whether to embrace its own/Asian culture or Euro-centric culture, a debate that also happened in Catherine the Great's time). The elder Korchagin is a man who is known for his senseless cruelty when he was a provincial governor, which reminds the reader of the cruelty of the country and how Maslova is getting crushed by it (and that despite his cruelty, Korchagin has suffered no consequences). The liberal gets incredibly angry about an article from a reactionary newspaper that argued against trial by duty. Missy's (the woman that Nekhlyudov appears to be getting betrothed to) behavior reminds everyone through her use of pronouns that she is intimate with Nekhlyudov, which makes him uneasy. On one hand, clearly Tolstoy does not have positive representations of women who take charge of their love lives (at the end of War and Peace before the epilogues, Natasha and, especially, Marya, passively allow their marriages to happen, and previously in the novel Marya rightly rejects a proposition and Natasha's "aggression" or at least participation toward the same person, Anatole, brings about what many characters at one point consider her "ruin"), but part of it in the context of the novel appears to relate to Nekhlyudov's guilt, as he is having a relationship with a married woman, but more importantly, his rape and role in Maslova's imprisonment.
"today everything in the house jarred - everything, beginning with the doorkeeper, the wide staircase, the flowers, the footmen, the table decorations, even Missy herself, who now seemed unattractive and affected. Nor did he care for Kolossov's self-satisfied, commonplace Liberalism; he did not like the ox-like, conceited, sensual appearance of old Korchagin, or the French phrases of the Slavophile Katerina Alexeyevna....Nekhlyudov had always wavered in his attitude to Missy...."
Just as with the cracking of the ice during the rape of Maslova, the surroundings of Nekhlyudov reflect his inner moral state, but here, rather than something ominous and odd, we get things that (though it is an introduction to them for us) Nekhlyudov is used to, but now finds abhorrent. This is because he has been taken out of his normal state and his comfortable life by his participation in the jury of Maslova's trial. At first, this shaking of the foundations of life comes with despair and malaise
(just as before resurrection, there must be a death) and an awakening of the emptiness around them. Everything that once seemed valuable and important becomes ridiculous, which mirrors Pierre's revelations throughout War and Peace. Notice here too that Tolstoy continues to put himself and his characters outside of the normal political debates, finding them ridiculous and transitory, and meaningless to the average person attempting to better their moral self. He has no love for liberalism, conservatism, or epicureanism. As we've seen, Tolstoy is certainly not apolitical and cares deeply about the suffering of peoples and how they can be alleviated. However, he rejected the Slavophile versus Westerner debate, just as he rejects the conservatism versus liberal debate because he sees it as missing the point, especially in the context of an individual's progression of their moral self.
"He was sorry and ashamed at having hurt her feelings, but he knew that if he showed the smallest signs of weakness it would be the end of him, that is, would bind him to her. And today he feared that more anything"
Nekhlyudov does not want to be in a situation where he is bound to Missy and this can come off as perpetuating Tolstoy's sexism (and I think it does), but to look at it contextually in Tolstoy's work, we can compare the "binding", both negative and positive, of Pierre in War and Peace. First, Pierre gets bound to Helene, almost by force, but he desires it and awkwardly consents to it, and this leads to her manipulation of him that he has to then withdraw from (and accept to being the strange husband that doesn't participate in her parties and living with her like a sister). Then, late in the novel, he is completely bound to Natasha, but she reciprocates by giving up everything for her family and taking the motherly role. By this point in Tolstoy's thinking, this also isn't ideal and is distracting from moral progress, especially for Nekhlyudov, who has to atone for his sins (to use Christian traditional language).
Chapter 27: The chapter begins with Missy's mother, who is in a relationship with one of the other characters at the dinner (and always eats dinner alone and has the defining characteristic of pretending to be much younger than she is). After furthering cementing the decadence of these characters, Nekhlyudov admits that "one has no right to sit in judgement" (perhaps ironic considering Tolstoy's judgment of these characters). This is of course a key tenant of Tolstoyan thought and perhaps the key point of the novel. Systems created to subjugate or classify people into different groups (whether guilty/non-guilty, rich/poor, or Slavophile/Westerner) are inherently flawed because people are inherently equal, flawed, and unable to know the inner workings of each person.
Tolstoy spends time talking about the difference between the drunkenness of peasants, "who drink seldom....reel about or talk nonsense", and the nobility, which are "excited and self-satisfied" when drunk, which I think shows the way the two classes operate and reveal, as alcohol often does, the essential parts of their character. The characters talk about the importance of mysticism in poetry, which is absolutely antithetical to everything that Tolstoy believed about art, as mysticism does not look for infecting an audience with sincerity or a message that the author wants to give to the reader. Tolstoy gives these characters these opinions intentionally, just as he gives the characters for War and Peace abhorrent opinions (such as defending Napoleon, fighting for glory, or serfdom), in order to define those characters and to alienate the reader from those characters, to make them sound ridiculous (this is easier in War and Peace when there is historical irony that can be played with). The mother especially is shown to be a rather pathetic character.
The more important and relevant conversation is about heredity, which Nekhlyudov says he doesn't believe in while picturing the other characters naked. The heredity point is essential and needs to be borne out a little more, but goes with Tolstoy's belief that people are equal (an anti-classist and hierarchy standpoint) and born essentially good and are shaped by social conditions, not biology. While obviously in a bad mood, he continues to fight off Missy and "understood how a horse must feel when it is being coaxed into its bridle and harness." This section begins with someone losing their literal political freedom while this chapter focuses on Nekhlyudov's social and internal freedom.
Chapter 28: In what is almost entirely a self-reflection chapter, a depressed Nekhlyudov repeats "Disgraceful and disgusting". He remembers wanting his mother to die and sees a picture of her almost entirely undressed and remembers seeing Missy in the same state. While Tolstoy wouldn't have any love for psychology or Freudism, it wasn't completely out of the ordinary for Tolstoy to have weird sexual family dynamics (see, for example Helene and Anatole's relationship) and it is a broader indictment of the sexual dynamics of society as a whole (Tolstoy also wants to have mothers be completely post-sexual, as we saw in the last chapter and Natasha in the epilogue). He thinks about leaving and going to Constantinople and Rome after getting the Maslova situation fixed, resolving to break it off with both Missy and the married woman he is having a relationship with. He resolves to make rules for himself to clean his soul but realizes that every time he has done this in the past and it hasn't worked. The obvious parallels to Tolstoy's own life with his diaries and his rules for how he should live his life and how those rules have failed. He decides to pray and ask God to help him, "to enter into him and cleanse him; and in the meantime that which he asked had already happened." This spiritual reformation and inward turning, rather than the attempt at rule-based morality, is what truly changes a person. Just as with Nikolai's prayer being instantly answered towards the end of War and Peace, prayer for Tolstoy, who does not otherwise believe in miracles, works. Just how it works, whether it is literal, a "it-works-when-it-is-in-God's-will-thing", or more about inward change, like meditation, isn't entirely clear. The chapter ends with his attitude completely reversed.
Chapter 25: Nekhlyudov goes to the advocate and feels better that he has done something and the weather matches his mood until depression captures him as he walks, deciding to get in a cab after first rejecting them. War and Peace has several moments of depression for Pierre, as well as moments of rather sudden jolts of mood, both positive and negative. I think the big moment here, as is the whole of Pierre's Mason arc, is that Nekhlyudov does "something" and that "something" makes him feel better, only to realize that the "something" is rather meaningless and his positive contribution does not match the negative contribution he has had on Maslova's wife. This setup really mirrors the Tolstoyan (and leftist) critique of charity from the rich, in which the rich rob the poor and actively oppress them through the system they have created to maintain their political power and wealth, but then give a small amount of their wealth back to feel better about themselves, and are often honored for doing so. I think Tolstoy here wants to make sure that we do not see Nekhlyudov's going to the advocate, which was just something the president told him to do in order to get him out of the way so he can go have an affair in a hotel, as something that was actually either helpful or an action that has any moral value. It is only when Nekhlyudov walks and self-reflects that he realizes this and the emptiness of his actions. At the risk of reading too metaphorically, I think we can see the decision to get into the cab as an attempt to break from self-reflection and how technology allows us to disengage from having to reflect on our moral actions and our mental health. Even though technology has allowed us to have more "down time" than most civilizations throughout history have, that technology eats up our down time, which is probably why meditation movements have gained a foothold in our culture, as a reaction to how technology has caused us to avoid looking inside of ourselves for happiness and moral/mental clarity.
Chapter 26: Nekhlyudov goes to the Korchagins to see the one he seems to be on the way to getting betrothed to. We are introduced to several characters, and I'll hit the highlights or most important ideas. One lady is a rabid Slavophile, while another is a bank director and liberal (just as War and Peace has the separate Franco-centric and Russian patriotic courts, Russia at this time was divided in a debate of whether to embrace its own/Asian culture or Euro-centric culture, a debate that also happened in Catherine the Great's time). The elder Korchagin is a man who is known for his senseless cruelty when he was a provincial governor, which reminds the reader of the cruelty of the country and how Maslova is getting crushed by it (and that despite his cruelty, Korchagin has suffered no consequences). The liberal gets incredibly angry about an article from a reactionary newspaper that argued against trial by duty. Missy's (the woman that Nekhlyudov appears to be getting betrothed to) behavior reminds everyone through her use of pronouns that she is intimate with Nekhlyudov, which makes him uneasy. On one hand, clearly Tolstoy does not have positive representations of women who take charge of their love lives (at the end of War and Peace before the epilogues, Natasha and, especially, Marya, passively allow their marriages to happen, and previously in the novel Marya rightly rejects a proposition and Natasha's "aggression" or at least participation toward the same person, Anatole, brings about what many characters at one point consider her "ruin"), but part of it in the context of the novel appears to relate to Nekhlyudov's guilt, as he is having a relationship with a married woman, but more importantly, his rape and role in Maslova's imprisonment.
"today everything in the house jarred - everything, beginning with the doorkeeper, the wide staircase, the flowers, the footmen, the table decorations, even Missy herself, who now seemed unattractive and affected. Nor did he care for Kolossov's self-satisfied, commonplace Liberalism; he did not like the ox-like, conceited, sensual appearance of old Korchagin, or the French phrases of the Slavophile Katerina Alexeyevna....Nekhlyudov had always wavered in his attitude to Missy...."
Just as with the cracking of the ice during the rape of Maslova, the surroundings of Nekhlyudov reflect his inner moral state, but here, rather than something ominous and odd, we get things that (though it is an introduction to them for us) Nekhlyudov is used to, but now finds abhorrent. This is because he has been taken out of his normal state and his comfortable life by his participation in the jury of Maslova's trial. At first, this shaking of the foundations of life comes with despair and malaise
(just as before resurrection, there must be a death) and an awakening of the emptiness around them. Everything that once seemed valuable and important becomes ridiculous, which mirrors Pierre's revelations throughout War and Peace. Notice here too that Tolstoy continues to put himself and his characters outside of the normal political debates, finding them ridiculous and transitory, and meaningless to the average person attempting to better their moral self. He has no love for liberalism, conservatism, or epicureanism. As we've seen, Tolstoy is certainly not apolitical and cares deeply about the suffering of peoples and how they can be alleviated. However, he rejected the Slavophile versus Westerner debate, just as he rejects the conservatism versus liberal debate because he sees it as missing the point, especially in the context of an individual's progression of their moral self.
"He was sorry and ashamed at having hurt her feelings, but he knew that if he showed the smallest signs of weakness it would be the end of him, that is, would bind him to her. And today he feared that more anything"
Nekhlyudov does not want to be in a situation where he is bound to Missy and this can come off as perpetuating Tolstoy's sexism (and I think it does), but to look at it contextually in Tolstoy's work, we can compare the "binding", both negative and positive, of Pierre in War and Peace. First, Pierre gets bound to Helene, almost by force, but he desires it and awkwardly consents to it, and this leads to her manipulation of him that he has to then withdraw from (and accept to being the strange husband that doesn't participate in her parties and living with her like a sister). Then, late in the novel, he is completely bound to Natasha, but she reciprocates by giving up everything for her family and taking the motherly role. By this point in Tolstoy's thinking, this also isn't ideal and is distracting from moral progress, especially for Nekhlyudov, who has to atone for his sins (to use Christian traditional language).
Chapter 27: The chapter begins with Missy's mother, who is in a relationship with one of the other characters at the dinner (and always eats dinner alone and has the defining characteristic of pretending to be much younger than she is). After furthering cementing the decadence of these characters, Nekhlyudov admits that "one has no right to sit in judgement" (perhaps ironic considering Tolstoy's judgment of these characters). This is of course a key tenant of Tolstoyan thought and perhaps the key point of the novel. Systems created to subjugate or classify people into different groups (whether guilty/non-guilty, rich/poor, or Slavophile/Westerner) are inherently flawed because people are inherently equal, flawed, and unable to know the inner workings of each person.
Tolstoy spends time talking about the difference between the drunkenness of peasants, "who drink seldom....reel about or talk nonsense", and the nobility, which are "excited and self-satisfied" when drunk, which I think shows the way the two classes operate and reveal, as alcohol often does, the essential parts of their character. The characters talk about the importance of mysticism in poetry, which is absolutely antithetical to everything that Tolstoy believed about art, as mysticism does not look for infecting an audience with sincerity or a message that the author wants to give to the reader. Tolstoy gives these characters these opinions intentionally, just as he gives the characters for War and Peace abhorrent opinions (such as defending Napoleon, fighting for glory, or serfdom), in order to define those characters and to alienate the reader from those characters, to make them sound ridiculous (this is easier in War and Peace when there is historical irony that can be played with). The mother especially is shown to be a rather pathetic character.
The more important and relevant conversation is about heredity, which Nekhlyudov says he doesn't believe in while picturing the other characters naked. The heredity point is essential and needs to be borne out a little more, but goes with Tolstoy's belief that people are equal (an anti-classist and hierarchy standpoint) and born essentially good and are shaped by social conditions, not biology. While obviously in a bad mood, he continues to fight off Missy and "understood how a horse must feel when it is being coaxed into its bridle and harness." This section begins with someone losing their literal political freedom while this chapter focuses on Nekhlyudov's social and internal freedom.
Chapter 28: In what is almost entirely a self-reflection chapter, a depressed Nekhlyudov repeats "Disgraceful and disgusting". He remembers wanting his mother to die and sees a picture of her almost entirely undressed and remembers seeing Missy in the same state. While Tolstoy wouldn't have any love for psychology or Freudism, it wasn't completely out of the ordinary for Tolstoy to have weird sexual family dynamics (see, for example Helene and Anatole's relationship) and it is a broader indictment of the sexual dynamics of society as a whole (Tolstoy also wants to have mothers be completely post-sexual, as we saw in the last chapter and Natasha in the epilogue). He thinks about leaving and going to Constantinople and Rome after getting the Maslova situation fixed, resolving to break it off with both Missy and the married woman he is having a relationship with. He resolves to make rules for himself to clean his soul but realizes that every time he has done this in the past and it hasn't worked. The obvious parallels to Tolstoy's own life with his diaries and his rules for how he should live his life and how those rules have failed. He decides to pray and ask God to help him, "to enter into him and cleanse him; and in the meantime that which he asked had already happened." This spiritual reformation and inward turning, rather than the attempt at rule-based morality, is what truly changes a person. Just as with Nikolai's prayer being instantly answered towards the end of War and Peace, prayer for Tolstoy, who does not otherwise believe in miracles, works. Just how it works, whether it is literal, a "it-works-when-it-is-in-God's-will-thing", or more about inward change, like meditation, isn't entirely clear. The chapter ends with his attitude completely reversed.
Book 4 Part 3 Chapter 17 (Chapter 312 overall)
Chapter Summaries: Dole: Relations of the French and Russian armies. Blind-man's buff. Flight of the French. Escape of Napoleon.
Briggs: French and Russian manoeuvers are like a game of blind man's buff.
Time: see previous chapter
Mentioned: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, two days, four days, twenty-four hours, three days
Locations: Krasnoe, Orsha, Smolensk, Dnieper, Vilna, Berezina
Mentioned: Russian, French, Moscow, Nyeman, Kaluga,
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: We get another birdseye view of the French and Russian armies, particularly how it was difficult for either army to discover where the other army was and information being impossible. The French keep accidentally running into the Russians and then running and abandoning each other.
Ney is described as the child who hits that floor that has hurt them by blowing up the walls of Smolensk.
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 *):
(also the Russian and French troops and two theoretical players of "zhmurki, or blindman's buff")
Abridged Versions: No break in Bell.
Gibian: line break instead of chapter break.
Fuller: Entire chapter is cut.
Komroff: The blindman-buff's analogy is removed. Some of the different details about where the two armies expected each other to be is removed, but we still get the information about Davoust and Ney. End of Book Fourteen.
Kropotkin: Entire chapter is cut.
Simmons: Entire chapter is cut.
Additional Notes:
Briggs: French and Russian manoeuvers are like a game of blind man's buff.
Translation:
XVII.
The actions of the Russian and French troops in the time of the reverse campaign from Moscow and to the Neiman was a similar game to blind men, when two are playing with tied eyes and one occasionally rings a bell, so to notify about catching themselves. The first that, who is catching, rings, not fearing the enemy, but when he has it bad, he, trying, cannot hear to go, running away from his enemy and, often, thinking to run away, is going all to his hands.
The first Napoleonic troops still gave about themselves knowing — this was in the first period of movements by the Kaluga road, but then, getting out on the Smolensk road, they ran, clutching with their hand the catch of the bell, and often thinking that they were going away, ran all to the Russians.
In the quickness of the running French and behind them the Russians and exhausting their owned horses, the main means of approximately recognizing the situation, in which was the enemy — the departure of the cavalry did not exist. Besides this, owing to the frequent and fast change of provisions of both armies, the intelligence was that they could not keep up in time. If the second numbers came with news about how the army of the enemy was somewhere in the first numbers, then in the third numbers, when it can be to undertake something, now this army made two transitions and were found out really in another position.
One army ran, another caught up. From Smolensk the French were to many institutions dear; and it seemed here would be, standing still for four days, the French could know where the enemy was, realize something profitable and undertake something new. Yet after the four-day stop, their crowd again ran not to the right, not to the left, but, without all maneuvers and considerations, by the old, worst road, on the Red and Orsha — by the following sound.
Expecting the enemy back, but not in front, the French ran, stretched out and divided from each other in a 24 hour distance. Ahead of all ran the Emperor, then the kings, then the dukes. The Russian army, thinking that Napoleon took to the right behind the Dnieper, what alone was reasonable, served also to the right and exited on the big road to Red. And here, as in the game of blind men, French stumbled upon our vanguard. Suddenly seeing the enemy, French mixed up, paused from surprised fright, but then again ran, throwing back following their friends. Here, as through building, the Russians troops, passing three days, one behind one, separated in parts the French, first the vice-king, then Davout, then Ney. They all threw up each other, throwing up all their weight, the artillery, half the people, and ran away, only by night in right semicircles going around the Russians.
It, going last, because of how (despite their unhappy position or it was owing to they wanted to beat that floor, which injured them) it occupied the blasted not interfering anyone walls of Smolensk — going last, it, with its 10 thousands corps, came running to Orsha to Napoleon only with a thousand men, throwing up all people and all guns, and at night, stealthily, making their way in the forest across the Dnieper.
From Orsha ran farther by the road to Vilna, exactly so the same as play blind men with a persecuted army. At Berezina again implicated, many drowned, many surrendered, but those that got over across the river ran farther. The main chief of them allotted his fur coat and, sitting down in a sleigh, galloped alone, leaving his friends. Who could, — left too, who could not, — surrendered or died.
Mentioned: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, two days, four days, twenty-four hours, three days
Locations: Krasnoe, Orsha, Smolensk, Dnieper, Vilna, Berezina
Mentioned: Russian, French, Moscow, Nyeman, Kaluga,
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: We get another birdseye view of the French and Russian armies, particularly how it was difficult for either army to discover where the other army was and information being impossible. The French keep accidentally running into the Russians and then running and abandoning each other.
Ney is described as the child who hits that floor that has hurt them by blowing up the walls of Smolensk.
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 *):
Napoleon (also "emperor" and "chief commander")
Murat ("viceroy")
Davoust
Ney
Abridged Versions: No break in Bell.
Gibian: line break instead of chapter break.
Fuller: Entire chapter is cut.
Komroff: The blindman-buff's analogy is removed. Some of the different details about where the two armies expected each other to be is removed, but we still get the information about Davoust and Ney. End of Book Fourteen.
Kropotkin: Entire chapter is cut.
Simmons: Entire chapter is cut.
Additional Notes:
Monday, January 28, 2019
Book 4 Part 3 Chapter 16 (Chapter 311 overall)
Chapter Summaries: Dole: Beginning of cold weather. Melting away of the French army. Berthier's letter to Napoleon.
Briggs: The French army, at half strength, is a ragged shambles.
Maude (chapters 16-18): The French retreat. Berthier's report to Napoleon. Their flight beyond Smolensk.
Pevear and Volokhonsky (chapters 16-17): General remarks about the French retreat. Berthier's report to Napoleon. The movements of the two armies during the final period of the war.
Time: October 28th, November 9th
Locations: Smolensk
Mentioned: French, Moscow, Vyazma, Berezina, Vilna, Eckmuhl, Naples
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: "the process of the flight and decomposition of the French army had not changed in the least since the departure from Moscow".
"the guards (who did nothing but loot during the entire war)"
Here we are getting a more birds-eye view of the disintegration of the French army. We then get a letter from Berthier to Napoleon that says "They are on the point of disbanding" and that the soldiers who do remain are hoping to regroup at Smolensk.
"They all went, not knowing themselves where they were going or why. The genius Napoleon knew still less than others, since no one gave him orders." Tolstoy connects the idea that they believe that have done something evil and they just want to save themselves in a way that contrasts with the man in Platon's story, as well as Platon himself.
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 *):
(the French, as well as kings and dukes are mentioned in general, as are the Russians)
Abridged Versions: Start of Chapter 14 in Bell. No break at the end.
Maude puts stars after the letter, which they haven't been doing for the most part, as a line break. I have not been discussing line breaks separating letters from the rest of the text, but I thought this one was notable.
Gibian: Chapter 4: line break instead of chapter break at the end.
Fuller: Entire Chapter is cut
Komroff: The letter from Berthier is removed. No break.
Kropotkin: Chapter 9: Chapter is preserved. End of Part Fourteenth.
Simmons: Chapter 4: entire chapter is cut and replaced with "Tolstoy depicts the headlong retreat and terrible losses of the French, and contends, contrary to the historians, that there was no plan in the flight. In fact, he insists that the one thought of Napoleon and his marshals was to save their own skins."
Additional Notes:
Briggs: The French army, at half strength, is a ragged shambles.
Maude (chapters 16-18): The French retreat. Berthier's report to Napoleon. Their flight beyond Smolensk.
Pevear and Volokhonsky (chapters 16-17): General remarks about the French retreat. Berthier's report to Napoleon. The movements of the two armies during the final period of the war.
Translation:
XVI.
From the 28th of October, when the began frosts, the escaping French received only a more tragic character of freezing and roasting to death at bonfires, people continuing in fur coats and carts going with robbed goods of the emperor, kings and dukes; but, in their entities, the process of the flight and decomposition of the French army with the time of the performances from Moscow had not changed any.
From Moscow to Vyazma of the 73 thousand French army, not considering the guard (which in all the war did nothing besides robbery) of the 73 thousand, was left 36 thousand (of this number not more than five thousand dropped out in battles). Here was the first member of the progression, which, mathematically right, defines the subsequent.
The French army in that same proportion melted away and was destroyed from Moscow to Vyazma, from Vyazma to Smolensk, from Smolensk to Berezina, from Berezina to Vilna, from whatever of the greater or lesser extent of cold, pursuit, barriers in the way and all other conditions, taken separately. After Vyazma the troops of the French instead of three columns deviated into one lot and so went to the end. Berthier wrote to his sovereign (knowing how distant from the truth chiefs allow themselves to describe the position of the army). He wrote:
It is my duty to deliver and convey to your majesty about the condition of the corps, examined by me on the march in the last three days. They are nearly in perfect confusion. Only a fourth portion of the soldiers stay at banners, others go themselves in different directions, trying to find food and get rid from service. Everyone thinks only about Smolensk, where they hope to relax. In the last days many soldiers have thrown up cartridges and guns. What would be were neither your further intentions, but the benefit of service, your majesty requires to gather corps at Smolensk and detach from them dismounted cavalrymen, unarmed, extra wagons and a portion of artillery, for it now is not in proportionality with the number of troops. Necessary is food and some days of peace; the soldiers are exhausted from hunger and tiredness; in the last days many died on the road and in bivouacs. Such a disastrous position is incessantly amplified and forced by fear, that if will not be accepted quick steps for the prevention of evil, we soon will not have troops in the authority for the case of a battle. 9th of November, 30 versts from Smolensk.994
Tumbling down at Smolensk, presented to them as the promised earth, French killed each other for provisions, robbed their same shops and, when all was robbed, ran farther.
All went, themselves not knowing where and what for they went. Still less than others knew this genius Napoleon, as nothing was ordered by him. Yet all the same he and his surroundings observed their long-standing habits: writing orders, letters, reports, schedule of the day;995 calling each other: "your majesty, my brother, the Prince of Ekmuhl, the Neapolitan king and etc.996 and etc. but the orders and reports were only on paper, nothing by it was performed, because of how they could not be carried out, and despite naming each other great, highness, cousin and brother, they all felt that they were miserable and ugly people, having done much evil, behind which they now were accounted to pay off. And despite that they pretended to, as if, care about the army, they thought only about every one of themselves and about how they would soon leave and be saved.
994
"Je crois devoir faire connaître à Votre Majesté l’état de ses troupes dans les différents corps d’armée que j’ai été à même d’observer depuis deux ou trois jours dans différents passages. Elles sont presque débandées. Le nombre des soldats qui suivent les drapeaux est en proportion du quart au plus dans presque tous les régiments, les autres marchent isolément dans différentes directions et pour leur compte, dans l’espérance de trouver des subsistanses et pour se débarrasser de la discipline. En général ils regardent Smolensk comme le point où ils doivent se refaire. Ces derniers jours on a remarqué que beaucoup de soldats jettent leurs cartuches etaleurs armes. Dans cet état de choses, l’interêt du service de Votre Majesté exige, quelles que soient ses vues ultérieures qu’on rallie l’armée à Smolensk en commençant à la débarrasser des non-combattans, tels que hommes demontés et des bagages inutiles et du matériel de l’artillerie qui n’est plus en proportion avec les forces actuelles. En outre les jours de repos, des subsistances sont nécessaires aux soldats qui sont exténués par la faim et la fatigue; beaucoup sont morts ces derniers jours sur la route et dans les bivacs. Cet état de choses va toujours en augmentant et donne lieu de craindre que si l’on n’y prête un prompt remède, on ne soit plus maître des troupes dans un combat. Le 9 Novembre, à 30 verstes de Smolensk". ("I believe I have to make known to Your Majesty the state of your troops in the different army corps which I have been able to observe for two or three days in different passages. They are nearly disbanded. The number of soldiers who follow the flags is in proportion to a quarter at most in almost all the regiments, the others walk in isolation in different directions and for their own account, in the hope of finding sustenance and to get rid of discipline. In general they regard Smolensk as the point where they have to remake themselves. In recent days we have noticed that many soldiers throw away their cartridges and guns. In this state of things, the interest of Your Majesty's service demands, whatever his views subsequent that the army be rallied in Smolensk by starting to rid it of non-combatants, such as disassembled men and useless baggage and artillery material which is no longer in proportion to the current forces. In addition to days of rest, subsistence is necessary for the soldiers who are exhausted by hunger and fatigue; many have died in recent days on the road and in the bivacs. This state of affairs is always on the increase and gives rise to fear that if a prompt remedy is not given, one is no longer master of the troops in a fight. November 9, 30 versts from Smolensk.")
995 ordre du jour, (order of the day,)
996 Sire, Mon Cousin, Prince d’Ekmuhl roi de Nâples (Sir, My Cousin, The Prince of Ekmuhl, the King of Naples)
Locations: Smolensk
Mentioned: French, Moscow, Vyazma, Berezina, Vilna, Eckmuhl, Naples
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: "the process of the flight and decomposition of the French army had not changed in the least since the departure from Moscow".
"the guards (who did nothing but loot during the entire war)"
Here we are getting a more birds-eye view of the disintegration of the French army. We then get a letter from Berthier to Napoleon that says "They are on the point of disbanding" and that the soldiers who do remain are hoping to regroup at Smolensk.
"They all went, not knowing themselves where they were going or why. The genius Napoleon knew still less than others, since no one gave him orders." Tolstoy connects the idea that they believe that have done something evil and they just want to save themselves in a way that contrasts with the man in Platon's story, as well as Platon himself.
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 *):
Napoleon (also "emperor", "your majesty", and "sovereign")
Berthier
Davoust ("Prince d'Eckmuhl")
Murat ("Roi de Naples")
(the French, as well as kings and dukes are mentioned in general, as are the Russians)
Abridged Versions: Start of Chapter 14 in Bell. No break at the end.
Maude puts stars after the letter, which they haven't been doing for the most part, as a line break. I have not been discussing line breaks separating letters from the rest of the text, but I thought this one was notable.
Gibian: Chapter 4: line break instead of chapter break at the end.
Fuller: Entire Chapter is cut
Komroff: The letter from Berthier is removed. No break.
Kropotkin: Chapter 9: Chapter is preserved. End of Part Fourteenth.
Simmons: Chapter 4: entire chapter is cut and replaced with "Tolstoy depicts the headlong retreat and terrible losses of the French, and contends, contrary to the historians, that there was no plan in the flight. In fact, he insists that the one thought of Napoleon and his marshals was to save their own skins."
Additional Notes:
Thoughts on the 2016 BBC Version of War and Peace: Episode 1
Since I haven't seen the recent BBC version of War and Peace and, considering I have seen all the other major productions of the novel and it is a little silly to have a War and Peace blog and not at least comment on the recent series, I decided to watch and make a post for each episode. I don't want to just list the differences, etc., or even give anything that might look like a formal review or summary. Instead, I'll discuss some things that I find worth talking about.
The first thing you notice is the Weinstein logo, which is not only quite unfortunate, but lead to a search and discovery that the company still exists and produces movies and shows. The episode opens with some ominous chanting, which is also played during the death of Count Bezukhov. The show begins with a pull back to Napoleon, who doesn't appear in the episode (following the book's depiction of the events in the episode), on a horse as an opening shot from the back, with a focus on the war and how it will change the lives of the Russian people in the text crawl.
The party and Andrei/Pierre's private discussion that also includes his wife takes place during the day, which I found to be a really weird choice. Overall, I really like Paul Dano as an actor (especially in movies like Love & Mercy, 12 Years a Slave, and There Will Be Blood) but he seems a little stilted and his awkwardness is a little modern and forced. He also isn't able to portray Pierre's size, which feeds into the artificial awkwardness. Anna Pavlovna (I didn't realize while watching that it is Gillian Anderson of The X-Files) is quite pretty and looks a little young, though she is technically only forty years old in the book. In the opening conversation, there is an added line that isn't in the book but I think is very good and summarizes the conservative patriotic Catherine-esque Russian sect: "Russia hasn't lost a war in a hundred years". I really like the long shot that circles around and introduces us to the characters and gives a scale to the party as a whole. Unlike the book, Boris is here at the party, and I think this helps introduce his character. Helene is skinny and less busty than one would imagine. Vassily is much meaner to Boris and his mother than the novel. He appears to be a little more explicitly evil and cunning in this. Pierre makes the point that Russia can't speak its own language explicitly. The revolution language is much more explicit in this conversation as well, which I think are good additions.
Pierre's decision to join the Anatole party, going back on his word, is made less through the laissez-faire way it seems to me in the novel, but with explicit intercuts as he is walking, making him make the decision. The window ledge scene, one of the early iconic scenes of the novel (and a scene the King Vidor version did beautifully), is notably cut. Helene and Pierre have an extra conversation after he is scolded by Vassily. The bear scene is shown in pieces by a flashback as Pierre rides to Moscow, neither of which are dramatized in the book. There's a weird scene where he talks to pigs, coming to the backway and repeating that it is Natasha's nameday. It was probably the worst addition and seemed like filler or an attempt to slow the pace down, something the novel doesn't need.
A problem when adapting War and Peace is the age of the actors, as the Rostovs are supposed to be young teenagers at the beginning, which is impossible to do and have the same actors play throughout (at least Petya starts off very young here, as I think you have to do) without doing the Boyhood method. What this does is make the Rostovs introduction less childish but inherently more silly because the scenes are written for children (there is no doll here obviously and in the old BBC version, the doll scene is very strange because the actress was 30 years old at the time of filming). Natasha's (Lily James was about 26 or 27 when this was made) terrible eyebrows help (I say that now, hoping it will change with the production). What this does do is make the Boris kiss a little more serious, though this is extremely brief here.
I really like how they casted Catiche as older (she was about 47 when it was made) and played the scene with her and Vassily (they took out the dog, which seems to make it more serious, especially with the very golden candle-light). I also like the physicality of the acting of Andrei, as he is very stiff, formal, and his facial expressions showing his contempt, matched by the dialogue of his wife, but his love for his sister. The casting of the "plain" Marya works as well (it is hard to talk about women's looks, so I won't dwell on the point. Sonya isn't too beautiful either.). The casting of Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky is always important and I think really shows how the production understands the tone of the novel. Here, the actor (Jim Broadbent) is recognizable, but he seems to be playing a bit too dementia-like, more confused than harsh and I didn't like the scene of the two talking before Andrei left. The production also cuts one of my favorite jokes of the novel, where Andrei claims he will only wear the necklace if it doesn't break his neck, instead playing the scene more tender (Count Bezukhov's death is played with almost no awkward comedy as well).
We get to Kutuzov and Andrei in Austria before the end of the episode, with the Unfortunate General Mack immediately popping up when we get to the War section. All the comedy, and this appears to be a running theme, is cut from the scene as the series isn't interested in trying to play up the absurdist humor of Tolstoy. It was an interesting decision to introduce Prince Bagration, whom I don't really consider an important dramatic character in the novel for adaptation sake (he isn't in the 2007 adaptation for example), who speaks in very deep guttural tones. I want to see how Kutuzov is portrayed in the rest of the series. We got a couple of scenes with here and he is serious and a little hardened. The chanting reappears in the battle scene and the violence is fairly visceral without being over the top. Nikolai's pain in the battle is treated as serious and his confusion real, with tension appearing as he recognizes the French and throws his gun at them, even having bullets bounce all around him and screaming at his own soldiers pathetically. The episode ends with Andrei arriving to the cannons and deciding to stay with Tushin. This is of course something that is going to happen a lot, but this seemed to happen very quickly and it was hard to see Andrei's decision turn here.
Definitely, and the casting of course makes sense with this, a Pierre-centric adaptation, though this is true obviously of the Soviet version, which can be attributed, at least in part, to the director also playing Pierre (Anthony Hopkins is also the biggest actor to come out of the first BBC adaptation and Henry Fonda/Audrey Hepburn dominate the King Vidor adaptation). Overall, you can see that I liked some of the decisions in the first episode and disliked some of them. The production value is solid, though you can see the limitations (nothing can possibly match the scale of the Soviet version). I have to say that I'm interested in seeing the rest of the series, which shows that the series has at least some value.
The first thing you notice is the Weinstein logo, which is not only quite unfortunate, but lead to a search and discovery that the company still exists and produces movies and shows. The episode opens with some ominous chanting, which is also played during the death of Count Bezukhov. The show begins with a pull back to Napoleon, who doesn't appear in the episode (following the book's depiction of the events in the episode), on a horse as an opening shot from the back, with a focus on the war and how it will change the lives of the Russian people in the text crawl.
The party and Andrei/Pierre's private discussion that also includes his wife takes place during the day, which I found to be a really weird choice. Overall, I really like Paul Dano as an actor (especially in movies like Love & Mercy, 12 Years a Slave, and There Will Be Blood) but he seems a little stilted and his awkwardness is a little modern and forced. He also isn't able to portray Pierre's size, which feeds into the artificial awkwardness. Anna Pavlovna (I didn't realize while watching that it is Gillian Anderson of The X-Files) is quite pretty and looks a little young, though she is technically only forty years old in the book. In the opening conversation, there is an added line that isn't in the book but I think is very good and summarizes the conservative patriotic Catherine-esque Russian sect: "Russia hasn't lost a war in a hundred years". I really like the long shot that circles around and introduces us to the characters and gives a scale to the party as a whole. Unlike the book, Boris is here at the party, and I think this helps introduce his character. Helene is skinny and less busty than one would imagine. Vassily is much meaner to Boris and his mother than the novel. He appears to be a little more explicitly evil and cunning in this. Pierre makes the point that Russia can't speak its own language explicitly. The revolution language is much more explicit in this conversation as well, which I think are good additions.
Pierre's decision to join the Anatole party, going back on his word, is made less through the laissez-faire way it seems to me in the novel, but with explicit intercuts as he is walking, making him make the decision. The window ledge scene, one of the early iconic scenes of the novel (and a scene the King Vidor version did beautifully), is notably cut. Helene and Pierre have an extra conversation after he is scolded by Vassily. The bear scene is shown in pieces by a flashback as Pierre rides to Moscow, neither of which are dramatized in the book. There's a weird scene where he talks to pigs, coming to the backway and repeating that it is Natasha's nameday. It was probably the worst addition and seemed like filler or an attempt to slow the pace down, something the novel doesn't need.
A problem when adapting War and Peace is the age of the actors, as the Rostovs are supposed to be young teenagers at the beginning, which is impossible to do and have the same actors play throughout (at least Petya starts off very young here, as I think you have to do) without doing the Boyhood method. What this does is make the Rostovs introduction less childish but inherently more silly because the scenes are written for children (there is no doll here obviously and in the old BBC version, the doll scene is very strange because the actress was 30 years old at the time of filming). Natasha's (Lily James was about 26 or 27 when this was made) terrible eyebrows help (I say that now, hoping it will change with the production). What this does do is make the Boris kiss a little more serious, though this is extremely brief here.
I really like how they casted Catiche as older (she was about 47 when it was made) and played the scene with her and Vassily (they took out the dog, which seems to make it more serious, especially with the very golden candle-light). I also like the physicality of the acting of Andrei, as he is very stiff, formal, and his facial expressions showing his contempt, matched by the dialogue of his wife, but his love for his sister. The casting of the "plain" Marya works as well (it is hard to talk about women's looks, so I won't dwell on the point. Sonya isn't too beautiful either.). The casting of Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky is always important and I think really shows how the production understands the tone of the novel. Here, the actor (Jim Broadbent) is recognizable, but he seems to be playing a bit too dementia-like, more confused than harsh and I didn't like the scene of the two talking before Andrei left. The production also cuts one of my favorite jokes of the novel, where Andrei claims he will only wear the necklace if it doesn't break his neck, instead playing the scene more tender (Count Bezukhov's death is played with almost no awkward comedy as well).
We get to Kutuzov and Andrei in Austria before the end of the episode, with the Unfortunate General Mack immediately popping up when we get to the War section. All the comedy, and this appears to be a running theme, is cut from the scene as the series isn't interested in trying to play up the absurdist humor of Tolstoy. It was an interesting decision to introduce Prince Bagration, whom I don't really consider an important dramatic character in the novel for adaptation sake (he isn't in the 2007 adaptation for example), who speaks in very deep guttural tones. I want to see how Kutuzov is portrayed in the rest of the series. We got a couple of scenes with here and he is serious and a little hardened. The chanting reappears in the battle scene and the violence is fairly visceral without being over the top. Nikolai's pain in the battle is treated as serious and his confusion real, with tension appearing as he recognizes the French and throws his gun at them, even having bullets bounce all around him and screaming at his own soldiers pathetically. The episode ends with Andrei arriving to the cannons and deciding to stay with Tushin. This is of course something that is going to happen a lot, but this seemed to happen very quickly and it was hard to see Andrei's decision turn here.
Definitely, and the casting of course makes sense with this, a Pierre-centric adaptation, though this is true obviously of the Soviet version, which can be attributed, at least in part, to the director also playing Pierre (Anthony Hopkins is also the biggest actor to come out of the first BBC adaptation and Henry Fonda/Audrey Hepburn dominate the King Vidor adaptation). Overall, you can see that I liked some of the decisions in the first episode and disliked some of them. The production value is solid, though you can see the limitations (nothing can possibly match the scale of the Soviet version). I have to say that I'm interested in seeing the rest of the series, which shows that the series has at least some value.
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Book 4 Part 3 Chapter 15 (Chapter 310 overall)
Chapter Summaries: Dole: Pierre's dream of life. The liquid sphere. Rude awakening. Dreams. Liberation. Burial of Petya.
Briggs: They are rescued by Dolokhov. Pierre sees Petya's dead body.
Pevear and Volokhonsky: Pierre's thoughts and memories. The raid and liberation. Petya's burial.
Time: see previous chapter, before sunrise
Mentioned: evening, summer
Locations: Shamshevo
Mentioned: Mozhaysk, Borodino, Switzerland, French, Russian, Polish, Kiev
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: Pierre falls into a deep sleep after eating and thinks "Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God. And while there is life, there is delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to live God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one's suffering, in the guiltlessness of suffering."
He has a dream about an old teacher showing him a globe that melts and swirls together.
"In the center is God, and each drop strives to expand in order to reflect Him in the greatest measure. It grows, merges, and shrinks, and is obliterated on the surface, goes into the depths, and again floats up."
He is woken up by a rough French soldier, but sees the dog and he reflects on the death of Karataev, but this quickly fades into other memories he has. The Cossacks then come, with Pierre not understanding what has happened, and there is a line break after "he embraced the first soldier who came up to him and kissed him, weeping."
We switch to Dolokhov who is, with a Cossack, counting the French prisoners. Meanwhile, Denisov is with Cossacks burying Petya.
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 *):
(also the prisoners, the marshal from the previous chapter, and the other members of the provision train. Also a Frenchman who wakes Pierre up, who remembers the two Frenchman from the last chapter as well as a Polish beauty he remembers. Cossacks, including one that counts the prisoners, and Hussars are mentioned in general, including a soldier that Pierre embraces while weeping. The French soldiers and then prisoners are mentioned in general as well.)
Abridged Versions: Line break after "that the water went over his head" in Dole. Line break in the same place in Edmonds, Dunnigan, Briggs, and Maude.
Line break after "kissed him weeping" in Dole. Line break in the same place in Bell, Garnett, Edmonds, Maude, Dunnigan, Briggs, Mandelker, and Wiener.
End of Chapter 13 in Bell.
Gibian: Line break after "kissed him, weeping." End of Chapter 3.
Fuller: Denisov's connection to partisan warfare from chapter 298 is moved here. We follow the entirety of the Denisov and then Petya and Dolokhov storyline to Pierre being among the prisoners rescued detailed in chapters 298 to 306. This ends Part Ten, which cuts out the entirety of what is actually in chapter 310.
Komroff: Some of the reflections on God is removed. Line break after "and kissed him, weeping." The final sentence about the burying of Petya is removed. Followed by a line break.
Kropotkin: Chapter 8: Pierre's first reflections on God is removed. The mingling of his different memories is removed.
Simmons: The geography teacher is removed. Line break after "kissed him, weeping." Dolokhov picking up the French phrase "Filez" is removed. End of Chapter 3.
Additional Notes:
Briggs: They are rescued by Dolokhov. Pierre sees Petya's dead body.
Pevear and Volokhonsky: Pierre's thoughts and memories. The raid and liberation. Petya's burial.
Translation:
XV.
The depot, captives, and wagons of the marshal stopped at the village Shamsheva. All was lost in the lot of the bonfires. Pierre came up to a bonfire, had a meal of fried horse meat, lied down back to the fire and immediately already was asleep. He slept again by that same sleep, how he slept at Mozhayck after Borodino.
Again the events of reality connected with dreaming, and again someone, whether he himself or someone different, spoke to his thoughts and even those same thoughts, that were spoken to him at Mozhayck.
"Life is all. Life is God. All moves and moves, and this moving is God. And while there is life, there is enjoyment in the self-awareness of God. Love life, love God. The harder and blessed are only the love of this life in its misery, in innocent misery."
—"Karataev!" remembered Pierre.
And suddenly to Pierre presented, as alive, a long time forgotten, gentle old man teacher, which in Switzerland taught Pierre geography. —"Wait,” said the old man. And he showed Pierre a globe. This globe was an alive, hesitant orb, not having dimensions. All the surface of the ball consisted of drops, densely compressed between itself. And these drops all moved, moving and then blending from several into one, then from one divided into many. Each drop sought to spill, to seize the greatest space, but others, striving to that same, compressed it, sometimes destroying it, sometimes blending with it.
— Here is life, — said the old man teacher.
"How this is simple and clear," thought Pierre. "How could I not have known this before."
— In the middle is God, and each drop strives to expand, so that at the greatest sizes reflect it. And it grows, merges, and compresses, and destroys the surface, going away in the depth and again pops up. Here is Karataev, here spilled out and disappeared. — Do you understand,989 — said the teacher.
— Do you understand, damn you to be torn to pieces,990 — shouted the voice, and Pierre awoke.
He rose and sat down. At the bonfire, sitting down in a squat, sat a Frenchman, only pushing away a Russian soldier, and cooked a put on the gunstick meat. The wiry, rolled up, overgrown hair, red hand, with short fingers cleverly turned the gunstick. The brown, dark face, with frowning eyebrows, clearly could be seen in the light of the coals.
— He cares for everyone,— he grunted to the fast turning soldier, standing behind him... — ... A robber, right!991 — and the soldier, twirling the gunstick, gloomily looked at Pierre. Pierre turned away, peering in the shadows. One Russian soldier captive, that one who was pushed back by the French, sat at the bonfire and ruffled something in his hand. Peering nearer, Pierre found out the purple little dog, which, wagging its tail, sat beside the soldier.
— Ah, it has come? — said Pierre. — But, Pla... — he started and did not finish talking. In his imagination suddenly, at the same time, connecting between himself, sprang up a memory about the glance, which Platon watched him, sitting under the wood, about the shot, heard in that location, about the howl of the dog, about the criminal face of the two Frenchmen running past him, about the removed smoking gun, about the absence of Karataev in this halt, and he was ready now to understand that Karataev was killed, but at that very same instant in his soul, taking God knows where from, sprang up a memory about an evening, held with beautiful Pole, in the summer, on the balcony of his Kiev home. And, all the same was not connected the memories of the day and not making about them a withdrawal, Pierre closed his eyes and pictured a year old nature mixed up with a memory about bathing, about a liquid hesitant balloon, and he lowered somewhere in the water, so that the water went above his head.
—————
Before the ascending sun woke him up were loud, frequent shots and shouting. Past Pierre ran the French.
— Cossacks!992 — screamed one of them and in a moment a crowd of Russian persons surrounded Pierre.
For long Pierre could not understand what was with him. With all parties he heard the cry of joys of friends.
— Brothers! My dear, darlings! — crying shouted the old soldiers, embracing the Cossacks and hussars. The hussars and Cossacks surrounded the captives and hastily offered some dresses, some boots, and some bread. Pierre sobbed, sitting in the middle of them, and could not pronounce words; he hugged the first approaching to him soldier and cryingly kissed him.
Dolohov stood at the gate of the collapsed home, skipping past himself the crowd of disarmed French. The French, excited by all of what happened, loudly talked between themselves; but, when they passed by Dolohov, who a little whipped himself by the boot with his whip and saw them with his cold, glassy, promising nothing good look, their dialect fell silent. From different parties stood the Cossack of Dolohov and counted the captives, marking hundreds of lines of chalk on the gate.
— How many? — asked Dolohov at the Cossack, considering the captives.
— To a second hundred, — was the response of the Cossack.
— Come through, come through,993 — sentenced Dolohov, having learned this expression in French and, meeting eyes with the passed captives, looking at his flared up cruel shine.
Denisov with a gloomy face, removing his hat, was walking behind the Cossacks, carrying to dig in the garden pit the body of Petya Rostov.
989 Vous avez compris, mon enfant (Do you understand, my child)
990 Vous avez compris, sacré nom, (Do you understand, sacred name,)
991 Ça lui est bien égal, brigand. Va! (This is quite equal to him, brigand. Go!)
992 Les cosaques! (Cossacks!)
993 Filez, filez, (Go, go,)
Mentioned: evening, summer
Locations: Shamshevo
Mentioned: Mozhaysk, Borodino, Switzerland, French, Russian, Polish, Kiev
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: Pierre falls into a deep sleep after eating and thinks "Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God. And while there is life, there is delight in the self-awareness of the divinity. To love life is to live God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one's suffering, in the guiltlessness of suffering."
He has a dream about an old teacher showing him a globe that melts and swirls together.
"In the center is God, and each drop strives to expand in order to reflect Him in the greatest measure. It grows, merges, and shrinks, and is obliterated on the surface, goes into the depths, and again floats up."
He is woken up by a rough French soldier, but sees the dog and he reflects on the death of Karataev, but this quickly fades into other memories he has. The Cossacks then come, with Pierre not understanding what has happened, and there is a line break after "he embraced the first soldier who came up to him and kissed him, weeping."
We switch to Dolokhov who is, with a Cossack, counting the French prisoners. Meanwhile, Denisov is with Cossacks burying Petya.
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 *):
Pierre
Platon Karatayef (his first name "Platon" is also half said by Pierre.)
a dear little old man (from Switzerland that taught Pierre geography, as remembered in his dream.)
the little bandy-legged pink dog
Dolokhof
Denisof
Petya Rostof (I guess since he is dead, he could be considered a mentioned character, but his body is there. This isn't an issue that has appeared before, with the dead body appearing in a chapter later than the death.)
(also the prisoners, the marshal from the previous chapter, and the other members of the provision train. Also a Frenchman who wakes Pierre up, who remembers the two Frenchman from the last chapter as well as a Polish beauty he remembers. Cossacks, including one that counts the prisoners, and Hussars are mentioned in general, including a soldier that Pierre embraces while weeping. The French soldiers and then prisoners are mentioned in general as well.)
Abridged Versions: Line break after "that the water went over his head" in Dole. Line break in the same place in Edmonds, Dunnigan, Briggs, and Maude.
Line break after "kissed him weeping" in Dole. Line break in the same place in Bell, Garnett, Edmonds, Maude, Dunnigan, Briggs, Mandelker, and Wiener.
End of Chapter 13 in Bell.
Gibian: Line break after "kissed him, weeping." End of Chapter 3.
Fuller: Denisov's connection to partisan warfare from chapter 298 is moved here. We follow the entirety of the Denisov and then Petya and Dolokhov storyline to Pierre being among the prisoners rescued detailed in chapters 298 to 306. This ends Part Ten, which cuts out the entirety of what is actually in chapter 310.
Komroff: Some of the reflections on God is removed. Line break after "and kissed him, weeping." The final sentence about the burying of Petya is removed. Followed by a line break.
Kropotkin: Chapter 8: Pierre's first reflections on God is removed. The mingling of his different memories is removed.
Simmons: The geography teacher is removed. Line break after "kissed him, weeping." Dolokhov picking up the French phrase "Filez" is removed. End of Chapter 3.
Additional Notes:
Book 4 Part 3 Chapter 14 (Chapter 309 overall)
Chapter Summaries: Dole: The marshal. Execution of Karatayef. The soldiers.
Briggs: Karatayev lags behind and is shot. His dog is left howling.
Pevear and Volokhonsky: The convoy moves on, but Karataev stays behind. A shot. Karataev's dog howls.
Time: see previous chapter
Mentioned: the night before, two days before
Locations: see previous chapter
Mentioned: French, Smolensk
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: A marshal and his convoy passes by, with the marshal looking at Pierre and "Pierre fancied he saw compassion and the desire to conceal it."
Karataev remains sitting under a tree, calling Pierre over to him gently, but Pierre, still wanting to avoid a connection with his impending death, pretends he doesn't hear. As he is walking, he hears the shot and the soldiers, that remind him of the soldier in the execution who clearly felt guilt, run by him. The chapter ends with Pierre continuing to walk while he hears the howling of a dog.
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 *):
(also the prisoners, the cavalrymen, and the guards. The people shout "l'emperuer", but it is not Napoleon, so I don't think it counts as a mention. There is the unnamed or identified marshal in the chapter as well as a general in charge of the division. Also the two Frenchmen that shoot Karatayef which causes Pierre to think about the young (here "soldier") factory worker that was executed.)
Abridged Versions: No break in Bell.
Gibian: line break instead of chapter break.
Fuller: Chapter is preserved, but no apparent line break since it ends at the end of a page.
Komroff: Chapter is preserved. Followed by a line break.
Kropotkin: Chapter is preserved. End of chapter 7.
Simmons: the description of the caravan is shortened and the general removed. The description of the two French soldiers are removed, as are the prisoner soldiers walking with Pierre. Line break instead of chapter break.
Additional Notes:
Briggs: Karatayev lags behind and is shot. His dog is left howling.
Pevear and Volokhonsky: The convoy moves on, but Karataev stays behind. A shot. Karataev's dog howls.
Translation:
XIV.
— To places!986 — suddenly shouted a voice.
Between the captives and the convoy happened a joyful confusion and expectation of something happy and solemn. With all parties was heard the shouting of commanders, and from the left parties, trotting around the going captives, appeared okay clothed cavalry, on good horses. On all faces was an expression of tension, which is on people in proximity to higher rulers. The captives deviated in a lot, facing with the roads; the convoy built.
— Emperor! Emperor! The marshal! The duke!987 — and only how drove through the well fed convoy, as thundered a coach train, on gray horses. Pierre caught and saw the calm, beautiful, thick and white face of a man in a triangular hat. This was one of the marshals. The look of the marshal turned on the large, noticeable figure of Pierre, and at this expression, with which this marshal frowned and turned away his face, to Pierre appeared compassion and a wish to hide it.
The general, who led the depot, with a red, scared face, chasing with his thin horse, galloped behind the coach. A few officers agreed together, soldiers surrounded them. In all were excitedly-tense faces.
— What did he say? What? What?988 heard Pierre.
In the time of the travel of the marshal, the captives deviated in a lot, and Pierre saw Karataev, whom he had not seen still on the current morning. Karataev in his overcoat sat, leaning on a birch. On his face, besides the expressions of yesterday’s joyful affection at the story about the innocent suffering merchant, shined still an expression of quiet solemnity.
Karataev watched Pierre with his own kind round eyes, tugged now with a tear and apparently called him up to himself, wanting to say something. Yet Pierre was too fearful for himself. He made so, as if he had not seen his sight, and hastily walked away.
When the captives again set off, Pierre turned backwards. Karataev sat on the edge of the road, at the birch trees; and two Frenchman said something above him. Pierre did not look around more. He was walking, limping, on the mountain.
Back, from this place, where sat Karataev, was heard a shot. Pierre heard clearly this shot, but at that same moment, as he heard it, Pierre remembered that he had not finished the still begun before passing marshal calculations about how many transitions stayed until Smolensk. And he began to count. Two French soldiers, of which one held in his hand a taken, smoking gun, ran past Pierre. They both were pale and in the expression of these persons — one of them timidly looked at Pierre — was something similar to that, what he saw on the young soldier at the execution. Pierre looked at the soldier and remembered about how this soldier three days ago burned, drying out on the fire, his shirt and how laughed above him.
The dog howled in the back, from that place, where sat Karataev. "What a fool, about what does she howl?" thought Pierre.
The soldier friends, marching nearby with Pierre, did not look around so the same as he at that place, from which was heard the shot and then the howling of the dog; but a strict expression lied on all faces.
986 A vos places! (At your places!)
987 L’Empereur! L’Empereur! Le maréchal! Le duc! (The Emperor! The emperor! The Marshall! The Duke!)
988 Qu’est ce qu’il a dit? Qu’est ce qu’il a dit?... (What did he say? What did he say?...)
Mentioned: the night before, two days before
Locations: see previous chapter
Mentioned: French, Smolensk
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: A marshal and his convoy passes by, with the marshal looking at Pierre and "Pierre fancied he saw compassion and the desire to conceal it."
Karataev remains sitting under a tree, calling Pierre over to him gently, but Pierre, still wanting to avoid a connection with his impending death, pretends he doesn't hear. As he is walking, he hears the shot and the soldiers, that remind him of the soldier in the execution who clearly felt guilt, run by him. The chapter ends with Pierre continuing to walk while he hears the howling of a dog.
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 *):
Pierre
Karatayef
The dog
Abridged Versions: No break in Bell.
Gibian: line break instead of chapter break.
Fuller: Chapter is preserved, but no apparent line break since it ends at the end of a page.
Komroff: Chapter is preserved. Followed by a line break.
Kropotkin: Chapter is preserved. End of chapter 7.
Simmons: the description of the caravan is shortened and the general removed. The description of the two French soldiers are removed, as are the prisoner soldiers walking with Pierre. Line break instead of chapter break.
Additional Notes:
Saturday, January 26, 2019
Book 4 Part 3 Chapter 13 (Chapter 308 overall)
Chapter Summaries: Dole: Sierui. Karatayef's story of the merchant unjustly punished.
Briggs: Pierre still derives great joy from Karatayev's solemn happiness.
Pevear and Volokhonsky. Karataev's story
Time: the 22d, at noon
Mentioned: the night before, ten years or more
Locations: see previous chapter
Mentioned: Moscow, the fair of St. Macarius (Makary in Garnett, Briggs, and Pevear and Volokhonsky. Makarii in Bell. Nizhni fair in Maude. just pilgrimage in Bell.)
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: Pierre is walking with the dog, who is feeding on the dead bodies as much as it likes. Pierre meanwhile is trying to count his steps and bend his fingers while he thinks about the story ("God Sees the Truth But Waits") Platon told him the day before.
"It was not the story itself, but its mysterious meaning, the rapturous joy that shone in Karataev's face as he told it, the mysterious significance of that joy, that now strangely and joyfully filled Pierre's soul."
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 *):
(also the wolves and the dead soldiers and horses. Also the soldiers and the old merchant, his friend the rich merchant, and the prisoners, including the one that confesses, in the story. There is also a mention of the tsar in the story, but I don't think it literally counts as a reference to Alexander.)
Abridged Versions: Line break instead of chapter break in Bell.
Gibian: line break instead of chapter break.
Fuller: Chapter is preserved and followed by a line break.
Komroff: Only the intro of the chapter, containing Pierre and the dog walking on the road is preserved. The rest of the chapter is cut. No break.
Kropotkin: The chapter cuts off without a break after Pierre says "rain, rain, please come not again", cutting out the Platon and his story section of the chapter.
Bromfield: Chapter 22: Pierre has been eating horsemeat as they have marched out and he notices the terrible sores on his feet. He discovers that the carriages and carts belong to the Duke of Ettingen. Pierre marches with a soldier who taught him how to bind his feet but the soldier is now sick. The French tell him that orders are that anyone left behind is to be shot. The old soldier accepts his fate. Notably the soldiers carry out his death do so angry, "But terrible though this was, Pierre did not blame them. They themselves were in such a bad state that some of them might have agreed to take the old soldier's place." Pierre sees the suffering of the French as nothing but a dream. "Almost every evening he said, "Today I'm finished" - but the next day he walked on again." They see a carriage go by and say "Long live the Emperor" and this revitalizes them for a moment, "Yet everything still went on just the same: the same cold, hunger and physical effort, pointless and cruel, and the same fear, which never left the troops." Pierre goes into a deep sleep and is then woken up by Dolokhov, who at this point is doing his spying and pretending to be French. He then tells Pierre that he will save him and the next day the French are raided by the Cossacks. Pierre goes to Tambov and discovers that Andrei has gone back to the army.
Simmons: the weather description early on is shortened and Karataev's story is also shortened. Line break instead of chapter break.
Additional Notes:
Briggs: Pierre still derives great joy from Karatayev's solemn happiness.
Pevear and Volokhonsky. Karataev's story
Time: the 22d, at noon
Mentioned: the night before, ten years or more
Translation:
XIII.
On the 22nd, at noon, Pierre was walking on the mountain by the dirty slippery road, looking at his legs and on the uneven way. Occasionally he looked at the familiar crowd surrounding him, and again at his legs. And that, and another was equally to him familiar. The purple, curved-legged gray dog funnily ran around the road, occasionally, in proof of his agility and contentment, pursing his back paw and jumping on three and then again on all fours flinging with a bark at Voroniev, who was sitting in the fall. The gray dog was more fun and smoother than in Moscow. To all parties lied the meat of the institutions of animals — from human to horse, in institutions the degrees of decomposition; and the wolves were not let by the marching people, so that the gray dog could gorge on as much as anything.
The rain was walking with the morning and it seemed that here it would pass and in the sky it would be clear, as following behind a short stopping the rain let still stronger. The nourished by rain road now did not accept in itself water, and streams flowed by the ruts.
Pierre was walking, looking back by the sides, considering his steps by three and bending his fingers. Turning to the rain, he internally sentenced: well now, well now more, more to give.
To him it seemed that he did not think; but long away and deeply somewhere something major and comforting thought his soul. This was some of the finest spiritual extraction from yesterday’s conversation with Karataev.
Yesterday, at the night halt, chilled at the putting out fire, Pierre got up and moved to the nearest, better burning bonfire. At the bonfire to which he came up, sat Platon, hiding, as with a robe, his head with his overcoat and telling the soldiers with his flowing, enjoyable, yet weak, painful voice, a familiar to Pierre story. It was already behind midnight. This was that time in which Karataev usually revived from a feverish seizure and had been especially lively. Coming up to the bonfire and upon hearing the weak, painful voice of Platon, and seeing his brightly lit by the fire miserable face, Pierre felt that something unpleasant pricked in his heart. He was scared by his pity to this person and wanted to leave, but there was not another bonfire, and Pierre, trying to not look at Platon, hooked to the bonfire.
— What, how is your health? — he asked.
— What health? To a disease cry— God does not give death, — said Karataev, and immediately again returned to the started story.
— ...And here you are, my brother, — continued Platon with a smile on his thin, pale face, and with a special, joyful shine in his eyes, — here you are, my brother...
Pierre knew this story for a long time, Karataev six times alone to him told this story and always with a special joyful feeling. But as well as Pierre knew this story, he now listened to it, as for some reason as new, and that quiet delight, which, telling it, apparently was felt by Karataev, informed Pierre. This story was about an old merchant, good and godly living with his family and traveling once with his friend, a wealthy merchant, to Makar.
Stopping at an inn courtyard, both merchants fell asleep and on the next day the fellow merchant was found stabbed and robbed. The bloody knife was found under the pillow of the old merchant. The merchant was judged, punished, whipped, and were pulled out his nostrils — as it should be by order, spoke Karataev, — and he was exiled to hard labor.
—"And here you are, my brother (at this location Pierre caught the story of Karataev), passes to that business nine years or more. Lives the old man in hard labor. So follows he submits, not making him thin. Only to God he asks of death. — Good. And they collect, at night business, the convicts, so the same here as you and I, and the old man was with them. And called for the conversation for whom that suffers, in what God is to blame. Began to tell, one soul that was ruined, then two, then an arsonist, then being fluent for such that and that. The old man was asked; what for, they say, grandfather, do you suffer? I, my cute brothers, say, for them, yes for human sins I suffer. But I did not ruin a soul and did not take another's, but what beggar fraternity I shared. I, my cute brothers, am a merchant; and my wealth had been great. Such and such, he speaks. And he told them, meaning, as all business was by order. I speak about myself not grieving. I mean, I found God. Another speaks to me that they pity the old woman and children. And so cried the old man. It happened that in their company was that very person, I mean, that killed the merchant. Where, he says, grandfather, were you? When, in which month? All asked. He was ill in his heart. He approached in such a manner to the old man — clapping on his legs. For me you, he says to the old man, disappear. It is really true; innocently and in vain, he says, this person tormented the kids. I, he says, did that very business and put the knife under your sleepy head. I am sorry, he says, grandfather, for Christ."
Karataev fell silent, happily smiling, looking at the fire and correcting the logs.
"The old man speaks: they say God forgives you, but we are all, they say, to God sinful, I for their sins suffer. He cried burning tears. What again do you think, falcon," — all lighter and lighter beaming an enthusiastic smile, spoke Karataev, as if in what he had now said, concluded the main beauty and all the matters of the story —"what again do you think, falcon, announced this killer by the chief. I, he says, ruined six souls (he was a big villain), but I only pity this old man. Let it be again he for me is not crying. It was explained: a written sent paper followed. The place was far, while the court business, while all the paperwork was written as it must be, by the means of command. To the tsar it reached. While that was, came the tsar’s decree: release the merchant, give him awards for how much there he was sentenced. Came the paper, and the old man was searched for. Where such did an old man innocently and in vain suffer? From the tsar the paper exited. Began the search." — The lower jaw of Karataev trembled. — "But he was already forgiven by God and died. So that, falcon," finished Karataev and for long, silently smiling, watched before himself.
Not this very story, but its secret meaning, that enthusiastic joy which shone on the face of Karataev at this story, this mysterious matter of joy, this vaguely and happily filled now the soul of Pierre.
Mentioned: Moscow, the fair of St. Macarius (Makary in Garnett, Briggs, and Pevear and Volokhonsky. Makarii in Bell. Nizhni fair in Maude. just pilgrimage in Bell.)
Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes: Pierre is walking with the dog, who is feeding on the dead bodies as much as it likes. Pierre meanwhile is trying to count his steps and bend his fingers while he thinks about the story ("God Sees the Truth But Waits") Platon told him the day before.
"It was not the story itself, but its mysterious meaning, the rapturous joy that shone in Karataev's face as he told it, the mysterious significance of that joy, that now strangely and joyfully filled Pierre's soul."
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 *):
Pierre
Sierui (what Dole calls the dog here. Bell just calls it "the little dog". Wiener calls it "Gray".)
Platon Karatayef
(also the wolves and the dead soldiers and horses. Also the soldiers and the old merchant, his friend the rich merchant, and the prisoners, including the one that confesses, in the story. There is also a mention of the tsar in the story, but I don't think it literally counts as a reference to Alexander.)
Abridged Versions: Line break instead of chapter break in Bell.
Gibian: line break instead of chapter break.
Fuller: Chapter is preserved and followed by a line break.
Komroff: Only the intro of the chapter, containing Pierre and the dog walking on the road is preserved. The rest of the chapter is cut. No break.
Kropotkin: The chapter cuts off without a break after Pierre says "rain, rain, please come not again", cutting out the Platon and his story section of the chapter.
Bromfield: Chapter 22: Pierre has been eating horsemeat as they have marched out and he notices the terrible sores on his feet. He discovers that the carriages and carts belong to the Duke of Ettingen. Pierre marches with a soldier who taught him how to bind his feet but the soldier is now sick. The French tell him that orders are that anyone left behind is to be shot. The old soldier accepts his fate. Notably the soldiers carry out his death do so angry, "But terrible though this was, Pierre did not blame them. They themselves were in such a bad state that some of them might have agreed to take the old soldier's place." Pierre sees the suffering of the French as nothing but a dream. "Almost every evening he said, "Today I'm finished" - but the next day he walked on again." They see a carriage go by and say "Long live the Emperor" and this revitalizes them for a moment, "Yet everything still went on just the same: the same cold, hunger and physical effort, pointless and cruel, and the same fear, which never left the troops." Pierre goes into a deep sleep and is then woken up by Dolokhov, who at this point is doing his spying and pretending to be French. He then tells Pierre that he will save him and the next day the French are raided by the Cossacks. Pierre goes to Tambov and discovers that Andrei has gone back to the army.
Simmons: the weather description early on is shortened and Karataev's story is also shortened. Line break instead of chapter break.
Additional Notes:
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