Reading WAR & PEACE for the First Time
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- Опубліковано 31 лип 2024
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Segment Navigation
- Intro 00:00:00
- Opening Remarks 00:02:30
- Translation 00:05:38
- Pages 1 to 200 00:12:08
- Pages 200 to 425 00:38:44
- Pages 425 to 665 01:12:24
- Page 665 to 1035 01:47:09
- Pages 1035 to 1260 02:25:48
- Pages 1260 to 1360 02:48:34
- General Studies 03:03:36
- Critical Texts 03:27:50
- A. N. Wilson Biography 04:19:13
- Rosamund Bartlett Biography 04:52:49
- The Hedgehog and the Fox 05:41:49
- Parting Thought 06:03:31
Bibliography
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Anthony Briggs
- Tolstoy Together by Yiyun Li
- Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace , edited by Harold Bloom
- Tolstoy's Phoenix: From Method to Meaning in War and Peace by George R. Clay
- The New Lifetime Reading Plan: The Classic Guide to World Literature by Clifton Fadiman, with John S. Major
- Critical Insights: War and Peace , edited by Brett Cooke
- Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times by Andrew D. Kaufman
- Tolstoy: A Russian Life by Rosamund Bartlett
- Tolstoy by A.N. Wilson
- New Essays on Tolstoy , edited by Malcolm V. Jones
- The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History by Isaiah Berlin
- Reminiscences Of Tolstoy, Chekhov And Andreev by Maxim Gorky
- A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul by Leo Tolstoy
- Lectures on Russian Literature by Vladimir Nabokov
- The Novel: A Biography by Michael Schmidt
- The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages by Harold Bloom
#leafbyleaf #bookreview #warandpeace #leotolstoy #books #bookreview #booktube #reading
War and peace is easily one of my favorite novels of all time. I’m only 1 hour into this video and I’m already amazed at the way you can draw out the beauty of War and Peace in just a brief summary. It’s already an immense pleasure to relive the experience of reading this novel with you
Wow, thanks so very much for the kind words! This was such an amazing experience. I'm currently reading the unabridged _Les Misérables_ and it has a lot in common with _War and Peace_ -- it's very, very good! All best to you.
Wow Chris! A 6-hour epopee by Leaf by Leaf, what a Christmas surprise! Thank you
Спасибо !
Such a great celebration of War and Peace. It’s a pleasure to relive the novel through your commentary.
Was waiting for this one and it didnt disappoint! 6 hours of Tolstoy is the perfect christmas gift!
Very kind compliment-thanks so much! And, indeed, Merry Christmas!
Last year he gave us a Gravity’s Rainbow vid. This Christmas he tops that with 6hrs on War and Peace. Unbelievable.
God bless us, every one.
😆🙌
The last video got me more into reading again and got me to read GR and as soon as I start a reread of it I see this lol. Guess it can be my next read
“What makes ‘time’ so elusive?
Time couldn’t be a more familiar and fundamental part of our existence-and yet, as soon as we really start thinking about it, we find that there is no subject more mysterious and ineffable. ‘Ineffable’ is a particularly good way to put it:
-It means ‘beyond words.’
It is difficult to get started in thinking about time, because it is difficult even to put our thoughts about time into words.
The basic problem has been under intense consideration throughout recorded history. There are two essential facts about time that most will agree on:
-First, we think of events as arrayed in a sort of order, where what is happening depends on where we are in that order.
-Second, we think of events as coming to be and passing away, as undergoing change over, or in, time.
Roughly speaking, we use calendars to track this first aspect of time and clocks for the second.
But these two characteristics seem to be in tension:
-If events are arrayed in an order, then how can we also say that they come to be and pass away?
-Is the passage of time real, or is it merely a subjective aspect of our experience?
-What is it for an event to be ‘in’ time in the first place?
Upon reflection, it is very difficult to explain just what a temporal description of the world really amounts to.
This fundamental conundrum gives rise to a number of significant subsidiary questions:
-What is the nature of our experience of time?
-What gives time its direction?
-Is travel in time possible?
-Is the future unwritten, and do our choices matter?
-Did time begin, and, if so, how?
This book concerns the philosophy of time. One might well wonder how a philosophical approach to time is different from a scientific, psychological, sociological, literary, or other approach to the subject. Answering this question requires that we briefly examine what philosophy is.
To be honest, philosophers generally dread being asked to explain what philosophy is. Part of the problem is that philosophy is more of an activity-the activity of philosophical thinking-than a subject matter, so it is easier to demonstrate than to define. Unlike physics, mathematics, literary studies, religious studies, or just about any other field of investigation, philosophy does not have its own, unique subject matter:
-A given philosophical investigation might, for example, concern itself with the subject matter of science, or math, or art, or religion.
Philosophy is really distinguished by the kinds of questions it asks. Philosophers ask foundational questions-questions about, say, science:
-What is a scientific explanation?
-What is causation?
-What is the proper domain for empirical study?
Philosophers ask questions about art:
-What is beauty?
-What counts as a work of art?
There is an unwarranted prejudice that philosophers like to dither around and ponder unanswerable questions. Nothing could be further from the truth, at least as far as contemporary academic philosophy is concerned. Thinking about philosophical questions is not viewed by philosophers as some sort of meditation, with no real endpoint. Philosophers deal in tough, abstract questions, but they shun unanswerable ones like the plague. Indeed, distinguishing between questions that are hard to answer and questions that are meaningless or otherwise poorly formed is a big part of the philosophical enterprise. The inherent difficulty of philosophical questions can make progress very slow, and this may be confused with a lack of progress.
To get a better grasp of what time is all about, philosophers have two main jobs to do:
-Figure out exactly what questions to ask, and then figure out how to answer them.
The first of these jobs is often the tougher one, and is commonly the main task in serious philosophical work. In understanding the question “What is time?” we start by trying to zero in on our target. Figuring out what you are asking when asking about time is less than straightforward. In ordinary discourse, we employ temporal terms, like “past,” “present,” and “future,” without thinking much about what they mean. In describing the world, natural scientists tend to presume an understanding of temporal concepts, like temporal measurement, succession in time, or the earlier/later relation, in their accounts. Before we can formulate questions about time, we need to look carefully at what our notions about time include, and what facts and concepts we take for granted in both colloquial and scientific discourse.
Time certainly has something to do with measurement. This doesn’t tell us much so far, because what time measures is duration, and duration is a temporal concept. Time can also be thought of as a coordinate system. Events are located ‘in’ time; they have a fixed temporal position relative to each other. This means something different from having a different spatial position, or a different position on a number line:
-But how, exactly?
Finally, time has something to do with change. Again, this is just a starting point, because it is very tough to see how we could understand what change is without understanding what time is:
-Change involves something having different properties at different times.
We also speak of change ‘of’ time:
-The future, we sometimes say, approaches, and the past recedes.
-But is this a real phenomenon or a metaphor for something else?
Then there is the problem of methodology. Philosophical questions are philosophical precisely because they demand unusual methods. Some ordinary questions can be answered by appeal to authority:
-By consulting a professional or looking them up in a book.
Other kinds of questions are answered by experimentation, observation, and inductive inference.
Philosophers specialize in tackling precisely those questions that are not amenable to these everyday ways of finding things out. Philosophical methods involve innovative uses of reason and logic:
-A big part of any philosophical project is to figure out how to understand and address the issue in question using these tools.
There are silly, meaningless questions, and there are tough and abstract, yet answerable, questions. Questions about time, I believe, fall into the latter category. Time is a difficult and puzzling matter because questions about time tend to be questions of the tricky, philosophical sort. Asking “Is time real?” is a fundamentally different enterprise from asking whether, say, three-toed sloths are real. We know what the latter question means. We also know how to go about finding the answer:
-Head to Central America and other places where sloths are known to congregate, find all the sloths we can, and count their toes.
We know what would constitute success or failure in finding three-toed sloths:
-Either we find some or, after a careful and thorough search, we don’t.
If the former occurs, then the problem is solved. If the latter, though we may not be absolutely certain that they do not exist, we can reasonably conclude that they do not. In contrast, figuring out whether time is real is a whole different ballgame. It is not something we are going to uncover just by looking around.
Historically, philosophers have had a particular focus on questions about knowledge and reality that are not susceptible to more mundane methods of investigation. Take the case of numbers:
-Is the number seven, for example, itself a real thing?
Obviously, it is not a material item like a rock or tree or sloth. But we talk about it and solve problems with it. So it is not material, but neither is it fictional, like Sherlock Holmes or the Loch Ness monster.
-And how do we know that seven plus five equals twelve?
We know this is true, but not in the way that we know whether sloths exist. Philosophers try to come up with ways of answering questions like these:
-But because of the tricky nature of the issues involved, they first have to come up with ways of grasping the meaning of these questions.
And doing this tends to require tackling some even more fundamental questions, like:
-What is it for something to be real, and what is it for us to know that something is true?
Next, consider another classic preoccupation of philosophy:
-Moral facts.
Chris this is incredible. I have only watched the first part, but I can tell it’s going to be excellent, as always from you. Love you and your work. Merry Christmas! J
My deepest, sincerest thanks, Jeffrey! Merry Christmas! 🙏
I'm really enjoying this epic deep dive. Your feelings of being swept up in the story in the first 200 pages echo what I've always experienced with the book, whether that was the Rosemary Edmunds in the 70s, or the Anthony Briggs most recently.
I can't wait to read more translations!
Absolutely fantastic piece, Chris!
Thanks so much! 🙏
Oh my gosh!!! I am going to go pick up War and Peace so I can watch this video!! You have inspired me. Thanks for this, Chris!! Happy holidays.
That you’re inspired to read the book is the greatest compliment you could give me!
This is amazing, thanks so much Chris.
My pleasure! Hope you find some ore.
Thank you. Just reading war and peace for the first time. Am totally absorbed. The characters are alive , you feel you’re there with them either in the drawing room or on the battle field. Thank you for all your work with this video Grateful
Happy Christmas 🎄
Absolutely! It’s been a few weeks since I finished it and the characters still feel so real.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
I am starting war & peace next week - I’m so excited. Thanks so much for this in depth commentary!!!
You’re gonna have a blast! 🙌
How fitting another peculiar coincidence just Baught war and peace. Once again my favorite youtuber producing such a grand long video for a well deserved book. Thank you so much for doing these long deep dives. how marvelous thank you so much and have a splendid holiday.
It was meant to be! Thanks for your encouragement and generosity. Happy holidays! 🙏
5:38:20
Interesting to find that he liked Chopin. It makes a total sense to me, though. Chopin was a salon pianist maybe, but his musical passion didn’t come from aristocratic views at all in my opinion. His musical identity was deeply rooted in his love and yearning for Poland where he was not able to go back. It makes me happy just to think Tolstoy heard the same lyricism and romanticism in Chopin as I do now. Thank you for this great upload! I’ve been listening after my first read!
Well said! And I'm glad you're getting use out of the video!
Thank you for the great work! Love this longer format. You really got me into using tabs in my readings and really like the system you used for this book.
Recently I had the experience of re-reading War and Peace together with Vassily Grossman’s two Stalingrad novels, I think you would like them.
I have both of those Grossman books. Grossman, I’ve heard, had War and Peace in the trenches. Can’t wait to finally get round to his work. Glad you found the video useful and not gratuitous.
my all time favorite book. just incredible work
🙌🙌
Welp, UA-cam hasn't taken you down yet (; Congrats again on this monumental achievement, Chris. Just got through the preliminary section on translation (obviously a topic near and dear to my heart), and looking forward to diving in to the rest over the holidays!
Thanks so much, Dylan! (I did lose 5 subscribers minutes after the video posted. Could be incidental, but something about it made me feel...proud.)
“He’s a rebel and a runner
He’s a signal turning green
He’s a restless young romantic
Wants to run the big machine
He’s got a problem with his poisons
But you know he’ll find a cure
He’s cleaning up his systems
To keep his nature pure
He’s got to make his own mistakes
And learn to mend the mess he makes
He’s old enough to know what’s right
But young enough not to choose it
He’s noble enough to win the world
But weak enough to lose it
He’s a radio receiver
Tuned to factories and farms
He’s a writer and arranger
And a young boy bearing arms
He’s got a problem with his power
With weapons on patrol
He’s got to walk a fine line
And keep his self-control
He’s not concerned with yesterday
He knows constant change is here today
He’s noble enough to know what’s right
But weak enough not to choose it
He’s wise enough to win the world
But fool enough to lose it”
“One humanoid escapee
One android on the run
Seeking freedom beneath
A lonely desert sun
Trying to change its program
Trying to change the mode
Crack the code
Images conflicting
Into data overload
Memory banks unloading
Bytes break into bits
Unit one’s in trouble
And it’s scared out of its wits
Guidance systems break down
A struggle to exist
To resist
A pulse of dying power
In a clenching plastic fist
It replays each of the days
A hundred years of routines
Bows its head and prays
To the mother of all machines”
“Love is born with lightning bolts
Electro-magnetic force
Burning skin and fireworks
A storm on a raging course
Like a force of nature,
Love can fade with the stars at dawn
Sometimes it takes all your strength
Just to keep holding on
Love is born with solar flares
From two magnetic poles
It moves towards a higher plane
Where two halves make two wholes
Like a force of nature,
Love shines in many forms
One night we are bathed in light
One day carried away in the storms”
“Like a shipwrecked mariner adrift on an unknown sea
Clinging to the wreckage of the lost ship Fantasy
I’m a castaway, stranded in a desolate land
I can see the footprints in the virtual sand
Astronauts in the weightlessness of pixellated space
Exchange graffiti with a disembodied race
I can save the universe in a grain of sand
I can hold the future in my virtual hand
Let’s dance tonight
To a virtual song
Press this key
And you can play along
Let’s fly tonight
On our virtual wings
Press this key
To see amazing things
Like a pair of vagabonds who wave between two passing trains
Or the glimpse of a woman’s smile through a window in the rain
I can smell her perfume, I can taste her lips
I can feel the voltage from her fingertips”
“Pariah dogs and wandering madmen
Barking at strangers and speaking in tongues
The ebb and flow of tidal fortune
Electrical changes are charging up the young
It’s a far cry from the world we thought we’d inherit
It’s a far cry from the way we thought we’d share it
You can almost feel the current flowing
You can almost see the circuits blowing
One day I feel I’m on top of the world
And the next it’s falling in on me
One day I feel I’m ahead of the wheel
And the next it’s rolling over me
Whirlwind life of faith and betrayal
Rise in anger, fall back and repeat
Slow degrees on the dark horizon
Full moon rising, lays silver at your feet
You can almost see the circle growing
You can almost feel the planets glowing
One day I fly through a crack in the sky
And the next it’s falling in on me”
“In a world lit only by fire
Long train of flares under piercing stars
I stand watching the steamliners roll by
The caravan thunders onward
To the distant dream of the city
The caravan carries me onward
On my way at last
On a road lit only by fire
Going where I want, instead of where I should
I peer out at the passing shadows
Carried through the night into the city
Where a young man has a chance of making good
A chance to break from the past
The caravan thunders onward
Stars winking through the canvas hood
On my way at last
In a world where I feel so small
I can’t stop thinking big”
“What did I see?
Fool that I was
A goddess, with wings on her heels
All my illusions
Projected on her
The ideal, that I wanted to see
What did I know?
Fool that I was
Little by little, I learned
My friends were dismayed
To see me betrayed
But they knew they could never tell me
What did I care?
Fool that I was
Little by little, I burned
Maybe sometimes
There might be a flaw
But how pretty the picture was back then
What did I do?
Fool that I was
To profit from youthful mistakes?
It’s shameful to tell
How often I fell
In love with illusions again”
-Neil Peart
This is such a treat!
😁🙌
This video is phenomenal, thank you so much for such a great deep-dive! Benjamin Mcevoy has set War and Peace for one of his book club books in January 2023 so I’m very excited to get stuck into this in the New Year. I would honestly love to see you and Benjamin do some collaboration or occasional podcasts together - your taste and approach to literature is so similar, it would be absolute gold!
Thank you so much! I didn’t know about Benjamin McEvoy, so thanks for that, too. I’ll reach out to him.
You definitely should, the both of you together with better than food are carrying the good side of booktube. Thanks for the great content
Not surprised to find that I am not Chris's only sub who's also subbed to Benjamin McEvoy.
Very kind of you to say!
Thanks for making me away of him!
Geodesic! Love learning new words from this channel.
Thanks for that--I take a special delight in adding to word hoards!
Thank you so much for this video! It enriched my reading of the novel :)
Music to my ears! 🙏
Oh Chris, how delightful.
I’m going to savour this video over days.
The intro was so _peaceful._ The paintings, the words, the music. It inspires me to read Gorky and enjoy art and reflection 👩🎨
I’ve been waiting for you to show up! I’m so pleased that you like it so far. By all means, take your time-the video will be here. Thrilled to hear you liked the intro (I was pretty proud of it).
@@LeafbyLeaf New Zealand time causes me to be late to the premiere but you know I was *never* going to miss this video!
@@LeafbyLeaf video structure is perfect:
• Intro, comments, division of book followed by supplementary material.
• Chapters and even a bibliography (chef’s kiss) in description
I know exactly how I’ll conduct my viewing ( _I was going to go by t-shirt change but I skipped ahead and.. you really love that Walden shirt 👕… 🙊… I’m sure you were going for continuity. Did you also visit the hairdresser before each chapter ?_ 😆)
Hahaha! You nailed it-I used the t-shirt for a semblance of continuity, but I think I got two haircuts along the way.
Another deep dive from Leaf by Leaf! Thanks, Chris, for this wonderful Christmas present. I'm a Dubliner, so when I say that War and Peace is greater than Ulysses, you know how highly I rate this masterpiece. I still look back on my reading of Rosemary Edmonds' translation as one of the most memorable reading experiences of my life. (Edit: She has "bald head"!)
Whoa-that _is_ a serious statement! (I can’t wait to do my _Ulysses_ video.) looking back on the way I made my translation decision, it’s sort of silly; but I’ve no regrets. As I talk about during the critical texts segment, I’m interested in the Constance Garnett translation. As you’ve seen, I didn’t have the Edmonds at my disposal. But I’ve still plenty of life left to read (I mean: live)!
This channel makes me endlessly excited to read literature.
That is a huge compliment! 🙏🙏🙏
1:12:48- 1:14:23 Thank you for saying this. Beautifully said and I completely agree.
Thanks so much for the affirmation! :)
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas to you and yours!
A beautiful read, Chris
🙏
War & Peace an Epic read! It will open your mindset in the complexities of humanity!
Notwithstanding, there a rich history of literary meaning to keen reader, as you are, Chris.
You breakdown this writer, Tolstoy, characters very well & explanations well expressed insights.
Outstanding, keep up your reading journey!
Well done!
Blessed in YAHUAH!
Chris, I can't even begin to tell you how happy I was to see that you'd uploaded this huge video, going through your first read of 'War & Peace'. This coming year I had decided to try and avoid making numerical targets for my reading, and instead tackle the Russians, which if I read correctly will probably see my entire year's book count, come out at no more than 20 books overall. I'm going to be reading 'Anna Karenina' first - in my head it's the less overwhelming one, so hopefully it will introduce me to Tolstoy in a way that prepares me for 'War & Peace'.
I just watched the very beginning of your video, but had to stop myself at the point where you said you'd read the first 200 pages. I know that's only 12 minutes of a 6 hour epic video, but I wanted to be able to return to this video, as and when I'm reading it myself, which won't be for a few months yet. (I also have a 'buddy-read' of 'Infinite Jest' to work through too after I convinced my other half to read it. It's my 2nd favourite book of all-time and he's finally decided that he wants to know what all the fuss is about - I'm really excited for that!)
But back to your video: everything you said regarding the 'head' versus 'pate' decision, resonated so ridiculously well with me (as well as the mentioning of the odd use of 'ghastly' and 'chap' here and there) that I too will use the latest Penguin translation by the British chap! Only people who read a lot of books will understand the way in which the size and shape of a page, along with the overall heft of a book, can affect one's reading experiences. And I'm not going to lie...you really did have me at "deckled edges"!
So thank you. Thank you for making this video and just taking the time to include all the little details that matter. I had actually checked back through your entire video collection a couple of weeks ago, to see if you had any on "The Russians" but was surprised to find there were none covered. And now you go and drop this video around Christmas time, just before I finalise the order in which I'm going to be tackling some big texts, with a video that I can read alongside, like a companion whose opinions and observations I trust. Thank you again and lots of love, luck & great reading for the coming year! Bex x
This comment was such a treat to read! Thanks so much for all of your kind words and affirmations. A year in the Russians sounds like a year incredibly well spent. You may want to include George Saunders’s A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, which essentially packages his monumental graduate course in Russian literature for the rest of us. I have a video reviewing it. If for nothing else, it will confirm your prudent decision to immerse yourself in the Russians. As for Anna K versus War and Peace, you should consider that they are two very different books written by two very different Tolstoys. By the time he wrote Anna K he was in his downward spiral of darkness and suicidal ideation, on the cusp of his post-literary asceticism. The order in which you read them doesn’t matter, and both are sublime artistic works. But I don’t think Anna K will necessarily set one up for War and Peace. Just my two cents.
“Captain First Rank Marko Ramius of the Soviet Navy was dressed for the Arctic conditions normal to the Northern Fleet submarine base at Polyarnyy. Five layers of wool and oilskin enclosed him. A dirty harbor tug pushed his submarine’s bow around to the north, facing down the channel. The dock that had held his Red October for two interminable months was now a water-filled concrete box, one of the many specially built to shelter strategic missile submarines from the harsh elements. On its edge a collection of sailors and dockyard workers watched his ship sail in stolid Russian fashion, without a wave or a cheer.
“Engines ahead slow, Kamarov,” he ordered. The tug slid out of the way, and Ramius glanced aft to see the water stirring from the force of the twin bronze propellers. The tug’s commander waved. Ramius returned the gesture. The tug had done a simple job, but done it quickly and well. The Red October, a Typhoon-class sub, moved under her own power towards the main ship channel of the Kola Fjord.
“There’s Purga, Captain.” Gregoriy Kamarov pointed to the icebreaker that would escort them to sea. Ramius nodded. The two hours required to transit the channel would tax not his seamanship but his endurance. There was a cold north wind blowing, the only sort of north wind in this part of the world. Late autumn had been surprisingly mild, and scarcely any snow had fallen in an area that measures it in meters; then a week before a major winter storm had savaged the Murmansk coast, breaking pieces off the Arctic icepack. The icebreaker was no formality. The Purga would butt aside any ice that might have drifted overnight into the channel. It would not do at all for the Soviet Navy’s newest missile submarine to be damaged by an errant chunk of frozen water.
The water in the fjord was choppy, driven by the brisk wind. It began to lap over the October’s spherical bow, rolling back down the flat missile deck which lay before the towering black sail. The water was coated with the bilge oil of numberless ships, filth that would not evaporate in the low temperatures and that left a black ring on the rocky walls of the fjord as though from the bath of a slovenly giant. An altogether apt simile, Ramius thought. The Soviet giant cared little for the dirt it left on the face of the earth, he grumbled to himself. He had learned his seamanship as a boy on inshore fishing boats, and knew what it was to be in harmony with nature.
“Increase speed to one-third,” he said. Kamarov repeated his captain’s order over the bridge telephone. The water stirred more as the October moved astern of the Purga. Captain Lieutenant Kamarov was the ship’s navigator, his last duty station having been harbor pilot for the large combatant vessels based on both sides of the wide inlet. The two officers kept a weather eye on the armed icebreaker three hundred meters ahead. The Purga’s after deck had a handful of crewmen stomping about in the cold, one wearing the white apron of a ship’s cook. They wanted to witness the Red October’s first operational cruise, and besides, sailors will do almost anything to break the monotony of their duties.
Ordinarily it would have irritated Ramius to have his ship escorted out-the channel here was wide and deep-but not today. The ice was something to worry about. And so, for Ramius, was a great deal else.
“So, my Captain, again we go to sea to serve and protect the Rodina!” Captain Second Rank Ivan Yurievich Putin poked his head through the hatch-without permission, as usual-and clambered up the ladder with the awkwardness of a landsman. The tiny control station was already crowded enough with the captain, the navigator, and a mute lookout. Putin was the ship’s zampolit (political officer). Everything he did was to serve the Rodina (Motherland), a word that had mystical connotations to a Russian and, along with V. I. Lenin, was the Communist Party’s substitute for a godhead.
“Indeed, Ivan,” Ramius replied with more good cheer than he felt. “Two weeks at sea. It is good to leave the dock. A seaman belongs at sea, not tied alongside, overrun with bureaucrats and workmen with dirty boots. And we will be warm.”
“You find this cold?” Putin asked incredulously.
For the hundredth time Ramius told himself that Putin was the perfect political officer. His voice was always too loud, his humor too affected. He never allowed a person to forget what he was. The perfect political officer. Putin was an easy man to fear.
“I have been in submarines too long, my friend. I grow accustomed to moderate temperatures and a stable deck under my feet.” Putin did not notice the veiled insult. He’d been assigned to submarines after his first tour on destroyers had been cut short by chronic seasickness-and perhaps because he did not resent the close confinement aboard submarines, something that many men cannot tolerate.”
-Tom Clancy
Wow. Only 15 minutes in, and I am absolutely hooked. Your description is flowered with incredible prose. Need to read this. Thank you!
Thanks so much!
Thank you . Fully engaging.
My pleasure!
Oh woooow, I planned something like this vlog with War and peace on my Hungarian booktube channel in the beginning of next year! :) (I guess this book is absolutely worth to create vlogs during reading. Until now I had concern about the lenght, but now, thanks to you, I see it can work well. So thank you not just for the content but also for the confirmation. Happy holidays! :)
For what it’s worth, I, too, was concerned about the length of the video-but this was the only way to capture all I wanted to say about the book in one video. I totally support your vlog! Happy holidays!
Also-I love Hungarian literature: Imre Kertész, Miklós Szentkuthy, László Krasznahorkai, Péter Nádas!
@@LeafbyLeaf It's so good to hear this. All of them are really great! Nádas and Krasznahorkai are my favourites from this list. :)
@@LeafbyLeaf i hope you do voices of the characters i love that. I have just finished reading Pushkin's The Queen Of Spades i hope you review that on your channel.
😁
“People keep on learning
Soldiers keep on warring
World keep on turning
'Cause it won't be too long
Powers keep on lying
While your people keep on dying
World keep on turning
'Cause it won't be too long
I'm so darn glad He let me try it again
Because my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin
I'm so glad that I know more than I knew then
Going to keep on trying
'Til I reach my highest ground”
-Stevie Wonder
I tackled War And Peace during the very first leg of the first lockdown. I chose the Maude translation and spent with it one of the most enjoyable months of my life. Can't wait to read it again in another version.
(Good God, this episode of Leaf By Leaf is even longer than the unabdridged version of Fanny & Alexander. . . . )
It longer than Fanny & Alexander but shorter than Satantango! Speaking of Bergman’s great film-coincidentally, I watch the unabridged version (thanks to Criterion) every Christmas vacation! I love that movie.
@@LeafbyLeaf Didn't know you were a Criterion fan! Satantango is great by the way. I've seen it twice.
Satantango was incredible! I took the day off work and watched it all in one sitting.
@LeafbyLeaf I think the first time I watched it I watched it in one sitting but the second time I split it into two sittings. Thanks for your reply!
👊
Hey Chris, Allen, here: I started the Briggs translation, last night, and cant put it down; coming up on 100 pgs. I agree: Ive not taken barely any annotations (so far) save for a few post it's. Ive gotten a lot out of your channel low these past 5 year's 😎📚😁 Pierre is my favorite character; him & Natasha 😅 Deep dive into Napoleon and Waterloo, to boot.
Thanks so much for the kind words and encouragement! Pierre is wonderful--sort of like the way we're drawn to Don Gately in _Infinite Jest_ (Gately and Joelle van Dyne : Pierre and Natasha). So great to know you're enjoying this incredible novel!
Chris, you have outdone yourself..I will keep coming back to thi video again and again and will be recommending to my friends who will read this tome. What a remarkable feat! Reading W&P for the second time now.
Ah, thanks so much! I really appreciate knowing that these videos are helpful. Which translation are you reading this time? Which did you read the first time?
Thank you for this. What you have done here will be remembered for a long long time. You are for UA-cam what Tolstoy was (still is) for literature .
My goodness what a compliment! I feel very honored, my friend.
@@LeafbyLeaf 🙏🏼
What a treat! I read War & Peace for the first time this year!
🙌🙌
God bless you sir!
And you!
I’m just part way through this review but I’m already loving it! Thank you so much for the thoughtful reflections and analysis of this book. I had thought I’d read Anna Karenina first but now I’m thinking maybe War and Peace first is the way.
It’s honestly such a pleasure to share my thoughts with you all. I will say that AK and WP are similar in their powers of verisimilitude and ability to engross the reader-but they are very different books. AK has a darker, harsher vision of the world, whereas WP is a brighter, more positive vision. But both are rightfully deserving of their high place in the annals of world literature.
@@LeafbyLeaf Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on the two. I think right now I’m in the mood for something with a more positive tone so War and Peace it is!
My pleasure! Happy reading!
@@LeafbyLeaf Thank you! 😊
It took me 4 sittings to completely assimilate your 3 hour GR review and it was such a fun (and laborious 😬) experience because I was simultaneously reading it while coming back to the video. Now I have to circle down a similar schedule for this as well 😅
I should really give rewards to people who actually watch these videos in full!
@@LeafbyLeaf These videos are rewards in themselves.
Very, very kind of you to say. 🙏
Hi Chris, in the afterword of War & Peace, Anthony Briggs translation, Orlando Figes read this tome 12 times!
Think you will ?
I myself read Gravity’s Rainbow countless times since 1990 & continued to!
The Richness of Literature!
Ulysses, Recognitions, JR, Blood Meridian, Focualt Pendulum , infinite Jest, & so on.
Keep up the readings, good stuff!!
A mammoth video befitting a mammoth work of world literature, what a treat!
🙌🙏🎉
Great Video friend🎉
Thanks so much!
I love, love, LOVE the new thumbnail design (this video and the upcoming “Why Do We Read” videos).
Thanks so much. Unfortunately, in the process of trying to figure out how to make my 2023 video the latest video, I ended up completely losing the file. And I just so happened to have deleted it off my camera and my computer (as I do after I go live with a video). So, the video is now completely gone. Pretty depressing, honestly. I'll have to re-shoot the whole thing, but I'm not in the state of mind to do it. Never had this happen before.
@@LeafbyLeaf oops
@@LeafbyLeaf it’s because you didn’t have the right thumbnail design I think.
@@LeafbyLeaf don’t tell me you deleted the other videos too? The ones with the pretty thumbnails
@@LeafbyLeaf at least it wasn’t the War and Peace video. Omg I’d quit UA-cam if I made a video like this and then that happened.
The video was meant to be deleted. Don’t stress just leave it alone and come back after a rest and you’ll have a new idea
“From time immemorial, the purpose of a navy has been to influence, and sometimes decide, issues on land. This was so with the Greeks of antiquity; the Romans, who created a navy to defeat Carthage; the Spanish, whose armada tried and failed to conquer England; and, most eminently, in the Atlantic and Pacific during two world wars. The sea has always given man inexpensive transport and ease of communication over long distances. It has also provided concealment, because being over the horizon meant being out of sight and effectively beyond reach. The sea has supplied mobility, capability, and support throughout Western history, and those failing in the sea-power test-notably Alexander, Napoleon and Hitler-also failed the longevity one.”
-Edward L. Beach
Just finished the Bartlett biography. After reading that and watching your analysis, I’m finally ready to tackle this behemoth after.
One question: how many books behind you are on your TBR list? Impressive collection!
Enjoy your journey!
I’d say around 30-40 of them are unread.
Awesome dude! Congrats. I’ve just begun my Russian journey by finishing my first Dostoyevsky book “the idiot” and I loved it. I would love to see your take on that book, but I think I’m gonna be swapping between Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy until I get to their magnum opus’ brothers karamazov and war and peace respectively among my other books on my TBR. Can’t wait to watch this in 2 years LOL
I will however finally be watching your gravity’s rainbow video probably in February since I’m starting that in a few days so I am SO excited for that
Thanks so much! Wow-you’re really reading some top-shelf literature! I love The Brothers K and Crime and Punishment. They are in no way overhyped. Pretty much all of Dostoyevsky is sublime in my opinion.
Gravity’s Rainbow!!!
This is fabulous. Thank you. I love the long form.
Thanks so much! 🙏
Your shock at seeing your cat is hilarious! I replayed that moment multiple times. Thanks for keeping it in, haha.
Haha! I’ve been waiting for someone to find this moment. I couldn’t edit it out!
Oh wow! Thank you for sharing your thoughts here. I’m currently on Volume 3 and loving it so much. I started thanks to Benjamin McEvoy’s book club and thought “now is my time to read it!” It’s been quite an immersive experience-all characters equally frustrating but somewhat endearing for reasons we understand.
My pleasure! You nailed it about the frustrations with the characters. It’s so well done. I still feel like they are real people!
Thanks to this piece and your hearty recommendation, I'm 400 pages deep on the Maude translation and I'm absolutely stunned at the tapestry that Tolstoy weaves here. Thank you so much for advocating for this masterpiece!
How wonderful!
Part 2 of 2
Upon examination, a murder scene may reveal a body, a bloody knife, even fingerprints. But the moral viciousness of the act of murder, no matter how closely we look, is not something we actually see in addition to these other elements. Moral facts, such as the fact that murder is wrong, are things we like to think we can know, but it is awfully tricky to explain just what sort of facts they are and how it is we know them. Figuring out how to locate these facts, and what would constitute success in finding them, is a nontrivial part of the process.
Take color as yet another example. We know that color varies according to the observer, as well as the lighting conditions.
-So, do things have a true color or not?
-Is color a real property in the world at all?
-Should color just be thought of as a disposition on the part of objects with certain other characteristics to give rise to visual experiences of a certain kind?
These are philosophical questions about color. Note the relationship between these questions and a scientific understanding of color. These questions begin with the scientific description of the situation:
-Objects reflect light at a certain wavelength, and our brains are so organized that they typically register a visual sensation of a corresponding sort in variable but predictable ways.
This basic picture is not in dispute. What are in dispute are deeper and more abstract questions like:
-What is it for something to be a property?
-Where do we draw the line between objective and subjective?
These philosophical questions about color seek to deepen our understanding of the situation by pushing the subject further, into issues of how best to think about what we have learned from the science of color perception.
These examples may help us understand why we find time so weird and ineffable. The question as to whether time is real may be more like the question as to whether numbers, moral facts, or colors are real than the question as to whether sloths are real. We are badly in need of help when thinking about time, because our questions about time need clarification, and proper methods for answering these questions have to be settled upon. Fortunately, these are precisely the things that philosophers are especially good at.
-What are we looking for when looking for an explanation of time?
-How do we know when we have the answer?
-Can reason and logic alone provide substantive answers?
-What about the empirical sciences?
-What is the relationship between our experience of time and time as described by the empirical sciences?
-How is understanding our experience of time pertinent to understanding time itself?
These are philosophical questions, and in fact the history of the philosophy of time gives us lots of reasons to think that we can actually make progress on answering them.
Talented thinkers have been working on these problems for several thousand years; that is good news for us, because their having done so much of the groundwork makes things a lot clearer. Over the centuries, theories about the nature of time have resolved into three main categories:
-Idealism
-Realism
-Relationism
-Idealists believe that time is a merely subjective matter, and nothing in reality corresponds to it.
-Realists maintain that time is a real thing, a kind of underlying matrix for events.
-Relationists take something of a middle path; they believe that time is just a way of relating events to each other, but the relations it describes are real.”
-Adrian Bardon
War and Peace holds a special place in my heart. Oxford World's Classics (The Maude's translation) is sublime.
I love a floppy novel - I find them so much easier to annotate and read in different positions 😆
Sorry for hating on floppy novels. There’s a place for books of all floppiness levels! 😁
@@LeafbyLeaf that’s ok, my heart soared at your love for a deckled edge 😉
Yessssss! It’s so visually and tactile-ly pleasing!
At the age of 57, I'm finally in the process of reading War and Peace for the first time. I decided to read the Briggs translation for this first read. (I have the Pevear and Volokhonsky as well, and I'll use that for my second read.) I am taking a slow approach to this and reading only 1 chapter per day, as per a Benjamin McEvoy recommendation, while reading other books concurrently. I started back in September, and at the one chapter a day pace it will take a full year to get through. I'm absolutely loving this slow pace and just savoring every brilliant word. I've watched your video up through the point that I've gotten to in the book so far and will watch the other sections of your video as I finish those sections of the book.
Thanks so much for this incredible video!! You consistently deliver some of the best material on UA-cam.
By the way, are you familiar with the musical Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812? If not, you might want to check it out.
Hey there! That sounds like a wonderful idea. (Similarly, I’m reading Leopardi’s Zibaldone at the rate of 3pp/day.) I’ve just recently become away of Benjamin McEvoy thanks to another commenter. I have not heard of that play, but the title alone has my attention. Thanks for that! All best and happy reading.
3:10:45 lol lovely interruption 😍😁
Haha! I had to leave that in the final cut!
Have you gone on to watch the Sergey Bondarchuk adaptation (approximately 8 hours)? I also read Isaiah Berlin's essay The Hedgehog and the Fox after reading War and Peace and was so interested in how Tolstoy depicted Kutuzov. There is a military historian, Alexander Mikaberidze, who has written several books about various battles featured in War and Peace. Last year he published a biography of Kutuzov that seems like it would be a great companion to War and Peace.
On the off chance people are still visiting this video or if Chris himself may see this, I'm looking for the 3 volume hardback edition featured in this video so I can carry each one around with me. Could anyone let me know who published the 3 volume version please? I hope it's available in England...Thankyou!
Hey there! It's the Everyman's Library edition: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/215485/war-and-peace-by-leo-tolstoy-translated-by-louise-maude-and-alymer-maude-introduction-by-r-f-christian/
I read War and Peace in October/November. It was one of the most memorable literary experiences I had.
Tolstói managed to create a powerful cosmos of characters and produce a story as alive as life itself.
History, sociology, philosophy and religion are perfect blended together in a story that is a peak of literature.
So if Gravity's Rainbow got 3 hours last year and this year we have 6 hours, then logically, one can only assume that December 2023 will present us with a 9 hour video, yes?
12!
@@tectorgorch8698 Of course! What was I thinking? Double it every year!
Pattern recognized. Challenge accepted.
@@LeafbyLeaf Do Bottom's Dream or Mahabharata.
I’ve been picking at BD for years now… I’ve been wanting to start getting into Eastern literature a lot more here recently. I’ve read a handful of classics, including Bagavat Gita, but not the Mahabharata. Thanks for these suggestions.
Just curious. Did you browse the Constance Garnett translation? I've read Anna Karenina but I'm afraid my will (or arms) failed me with W&P during the pandemic. I believe it was the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation.
I read War n Peace at 16 and was surprised that i loved this book . I didn't think i clicked a book re: war!!!? Recommend.
Great, great, great!! Have you read Anna Karenina? Which one of the two novels do you prefer? And where do you stand in the eternal Dostoyevsky vs Tolstoy debate? :))
Are your bookshelves built-ins or were they purchased at store or online? I’d like to do something similar in our new house. Cheers!
They are built-ins. When we built the house back in 2017, I got to spec them out. 😁
Is Tolstoy Together by Yiyun Li mentioned in the video? I'm about to start W&P so I have been careful not to dig too deep into this video YET. Just curious if you found it helpful. Thanks.
Skip directly to the last short segment: “Parting shot.”
Where are you going to shelf all the new books? 😲
It’s getting pretty unwieldy in here!
Yo Chris, would you consider graphic novels literature? Love the channel mate, big love from the UK
Absolutely. Not all, of course, just as not all non-graphic novels are literature. Art Spiegelman’s MAUS is a recently notorious example of a graphic novel that is firmly literature. All my best to the UK, mate!
Hey Chris, after reading war and peace, I found your video and must say what a great companion piece it has been to the reading experience. I went back to re read sections you highlighted. Was wondering whether you have read Nicola Chiaromonte’s Paradox of History . Best
Thanks so much for the kind words. And congrats on having read such an amazing and important piece of literature! No, I have t heard of that book. Seeking it out now. Thanks!
Oh, this book looks wonderful! Thanks so much for the recommendation!
@@LeafbyLeaf yes, it's a terrific book. By chance, I found a second hand copy in Strand. It builds nicely on The Hedgehog and the Fox, further problematizing the chapters on history with continental philosophy. But there is some great insight on character too. One part I found particularly amusing, and could not help but think of Napoleon's cold at Borodino (and Tolstoy's views on the matter) , which, of course as it always is, is not in the chapter on War and Peace but Les Thimbault, is a brief digression on Trotsky. In 1923, he was prevented from defending himself again Stalin's maneuvers due to a terrible fever, "One can foresee a war or a revolution, but one cannot foresee the consequences of a duck hunt in the fall," of course, written not by Trotsky but by his biographer.
What is the name of the companion book you read along with that has thoughts from all over world lit/philosophy?
www.indiebound.org/book/9780684837932
Finally just finished reading it today. Now I have a 6 hour date with Chris Via
That ending paragraph of volume 2 is indeed great. I read it again and again. Natasha’s behaviour accurately portrays the mind of a young girl who gets carried away with everything she thinks her heart says. I just finished part two and your video part about it. Will come back after part 3. I am loving Tolstoy’s writing and I think Pierre is my favourite character so far.
Pierre is like the Don Gately of _Infinite Jest_ .
Excellent. I never had literature in school.
Good thing it's never too late!
I've always been curious how is French being handled in English translations, in Russian editions (at least the ones I know about) the sections in French are being translated in footnotes. Thanks, Chris, for this video.
My pleasure!
Did you coordinate with the Codex Cantina? You two both just dropped maximalist, in-depth discussions on this book at the same time but with slightly different angles. RIP my free time
No way! I had no idea! I guess the stars have aligned. I’ll have to go check their video out. My condolences to your free time.
I read the Anthony Briggs penguin deluxe as well and found it excellent
I feel certain I made the right choice!
@@LeafbyLeaf I agree. For this type of novel, I think a more idiomatic or fluid translation is better than one that tries to imitate the author's original style, which is a more hopeless task.
I'm starting Anna Karenina and I've went with a modern translation by Rosamund Bartlett
The Penguin deluxe gets the approval over the Peavar/ Volkohnsky translation from Vintage?
Only with qualifications: In my admittedly meager comparisons, I found that the Briggs from Penguin was best for my first reading of the novel. As have a lot of others. But, I cannot conclusively say, without any clarifying parameters, that the Penguin/Briggs is superior to the Vintage/PV.
hey chris, as i'm watching this just wanted to give some feedback. It's been difficult for me to keep my position on the video as it's so long, and youtube seems to want to forget where i'm up to each time. Might be an idea to upload these longer ones in one hour parts to make the more digestable. Not sure what you think?
Ah, man--didn't realize that was a problem. Thanks so much for this valuable feedback!
“They moved swiftly, silently, with purpose, under a crystalline, star-filled night in western Siberia. They were Muslims, though one could scarcely have known it from their speech, which was Russian, though inflected with the singsong Azerbaijani accent that wrongly struck the senior members of the engineering staff as entertaining. The three of them had just completed a complex task in the truck and train yards, the opening of hundreds of loading valves. Ibrahim Tolkaze was their leader, though he was not in front. Rasul was in front, the massive former sergeant in the MVD who had already killed six men this cold night-three with a pistol hidden under his coat and three with his hands alone. No one had heard them. An oil refinery is a noisy place. The bodies were left in shadows, and the three men entered Tolkaze’s car for the next part of their task.
Central Control was a modern three-story building fittingly in the center of the complex. For at least five kilometers in all directions stretched the cracking towers, storage tanks, catalytic chambers, and above all the thousands of kilometers of large-diameter pipe which made Nizhnevartovsk one of the world’s largest refining complexes. The sky was lit at uneven intervals by waste-gas fires, and the air was foul with the stink of petroleum distillates: aviation kerosene, gasoline, diesel fuel, benzine, nitrogen tetroxide for intercontinental missiles, lubricating oils of various grades, and complex petrochemicals identified only by their alphanumeric prefixes.
They approached the brick-walled, windowless building in Tolkaze’s personal Zhiguli, and the engineer pulled into his reserved parking place, then walked alone to the door as his comrades crouched in the back seat.
Inside the glass door, Ibrahim greeted the security guard, who smiled back, his hand outstretched for Tolkaze’s security pass. The need for security here was quite real, but since it dated back over forty years, no one took it more seriously than any of the pro forma bureaucratic complexities in the Soviet Union. The guard had been drinking, the only form of solace in this harsh, cold land. His eyes were not focusing and his smile was too fixed. Tolkaze fumbled handing over his pass, and the guard lurched down to retrieve it. He never came back up. Tolkaze’s pistol was the last thing the man felt, a cold circle at the base of his skull, and he died without knowing why-or even how. Ibrahim went behind the guard’s desk to get the weapon the man had been only too happy to display for the engineers he’d protected. He lifted the body and moved it awkwardly to leave it slumped at the desk-just another swingshift worker asleep at his post-then waved his comrades into the building. Rasul and Mohammet raced to the door.
“It is time, my brothers.” Tolkaze handed the AK-47 rifle and ammo belt to his taller friend.
Rasul hefted the weapon briefly, checking to see that a round was chambered and the safety off. Then he slung the ammunition belt over his shoulder and snapped the bayonet in place before speaking for the first time that night: “Paradise awaits.”
Tolkaze composed himself, smoothed his hair, straightened his tie, and clipped the security pass to his white laboratory coat before leading his comrades up the six flights of stairs.
Ordinary procedure dictated that to enter the master control room, one first had to be recognized by one of the operations staffers. And so it happened. Nikolay Barsov seemed surprised when he saw Tolkaze through the door’s tiny window.
“You’re not on duty tonight, Isha.”
“One of my valves went bad this afternoon and I forgot to check the repair status before I went off duty. You know the one-the auxiliary feed valve on kerosene number eight. If it’s still down tomorrow we’ll have to reroute, and you know what that means.”
Barsov grunted agreement. “True enough, Isha.” The middle-aged engineer thought Tolkaze liked the semi-Russian diminutive. He was badly mistaken. “Stand back while I open this damned hatch.”
The heavy steel door swung outward. Barsov hadn’t been able to see Rasul and Mohammet before, and scarcely had time now. Three 7.62mm rounds from the Kalashnikov exploded into his chest.
The master control room contained a duty watch crew of twenty, and looked much like the control center for a railroad or power plant. The high walls were crosshatched with pipeline schematics dotted with hundreds of lights to indicate which control valve was doing what. That was only the main display. Individual segments of the system were broken off onto separate status boards, mainly controlled by computer but constantly monitored by half the duty engineers. The staff could not fail to note the sound of the three shots.
But none of them were armed.
With elegant patience, Rasul began to work his way across the room, using his Kalashnikov expertly and firing one round into each watch engineer. At first they tried to run away-until they realized that Rasul was herding them into a corner like cattle, killing as he moved. Two men bravely got on their command phones to summon a fast-response team of KGB security troops. Rasul shot one of them at his post, but the other ducked around the line of command consoles to evade the gunfire and bolted for the door, where Tolkaze stood. It was Boris, Tolkaze saw, the Party favorite, head of the local kollektiv, the man who had “befriended” him, making him the special pet native of the Russian engineers. Ibrahim could remember every time this godless pig had patronized him, the savage foreigner imported to amuse his Russian masters. Tolkaze raised his pistol.
“Ishaaa!” the man screamed in terror and shock. Tolkaze shot him in the mouth, and hoped Boris didn’t die too quickly to hear the contempt in his voice: “Infidel.” He was pleased that Rasul had not killed this one. His quiet friend could have all the rest.
The other engineers screamed, threw cups, chairs, manuals. There was nowhere left to run, no way around the swarthy, towering killer. Some held up their hands in useless supplication. Some even prayed aloud-but not to Allah, which might have saved them. The noise diminished as Rasul strode up to the bloody corner. He smiled as he shot the very last, knowing that this sweating infidel pig would serve him in paradise. He reloaded his rifle, then went back through the control room. He prodded each body with his bayonet, and again shot the four that showed some small sign of life. His face bore a grim, content expression. At least twenty-five atheist pigs dead. Twenty-five foreign invaders who would no longer stand between his people and their God. Truly he had done Allah’s work!
The third man, Mohammet, was already at his own work as Rasul took his station at the top of the staircase. Working in the back of the room, he switched the room systems-control mode from computer-automatic to emergency-manual, bypassing all of the automated safety systems.
A methodical man, Ibrahim had planned and memorized every detail of his task over a period of months, but still he had a checklist in his pocket. He unfolded it now and set it next to his hand on the master supervisory control board. Tolkaze looked around at the status displays to orient himself, then paused.
From his back pocket he took his most treasured personal possession, half of his grandfather’s Koran, and opened it to a random page. It was a passage in The Chapter of the Spoils. His grandfather having been killed during the futile rebellions against Moscow, his father shamed by helpless subservience to the infidel state, Tolkaze had been seduced by Russian schoolteachers into joining their godless system. Others had trained him as an oil-field engineer to work at the State’s most valuable facility in Azerbaijan. Only then had the God of his fathers saved him, through the words of an uncle, an “unregistered” imam who had remained faithful to Allah and safeguarded this tattered fragment of the Koran that had accompanied one of Allah’s own warriors. Tolkaze read the passage under his hand:
And when the misbelievers plotted to keep thee prisoner, or kill thee, or drive thee forth, they plotted well; but God plotted, too. And God is the best of plotters.”
-Tom Clancy
On a side note: Choosing a translation is a very enjoyable part of the process of reading in translation.
These are some of the translator’s I’ve used for Russian fiction:
Peter Carson - Fathers and Sons
James E. Falen - Eugene Onegin
Louise and Aylmer Maude - War and Peace (newly revised by Amy Mandelker, with French in the text)
David McDuff - The Cossacks and other Stories
Oliver Ready - Crime and Punishment
Pevear and Volokhonsky - Anna Karenina, Notes from a Dead House, The Double and the Gambler
I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m going to use Anthony Briggs for my next War and Peace reading.
I used your logic of clarity and ease when I chose the Dennis Washburn translation of The Tale of Genji, which I’ll be reading in 2023.
Sometimes I go for ‘authenticity,’ using the Greek names of Gods (Zeus instead of Jove/Jupiter if I’m reading an Ancient Greek work like The Iliad), but other times I’ll go for clarity. It just depends on what I’m looking for with the work at the time I’m reading it.
I totally agree that choosing translations, comparing and contrasting, reading in multiple translations-it all adds to the experience.
@@LeafbyLeaf yes, you get to read the book over and over and it’s still
‘New’. I have started a tradition where I’m kicking off each year (first read of the year) with The Iliad and the next year the Odyssey… each time with a new translator. This year I did my second reading of Iliad with Peter Green’s work and this coming New Year’s Day I’ll be starting Emily Wilson’s the Odyssey (my second Odyssey read). My first read of both works was with Richmond Lattimore thanks to your videos on Homer. It’s exciting picking who to read with next.
I’m very keen on reading Wilson’s Odyssey. This sounds like a great tradition! 🙌
@@LeafbyLeaf oh and I complimented the Iliad this year by reading a couple of modern retellings: Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girl’s and Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles.
For the Odyssey next year I’m going to read Margaret Attwood’s Penelopiad and maybe another.. I have Nikos Kazantzakis’ the Odyssey: A Modern Sequel so thats an option.
Although I’ve found the retellings to shine quite dimly when placed right next to the real thing I still found it to be an enjoyable exercise.
“They called him the Archer. It was an honorable title, though his countrymen had cast aside their reflex bows over a century before, as soon as they had learned about firearms. In part, the name reflected the timeless nature of the struggle. The first of the Western invaders-for that was how they thought of them-had been Alexander the Great, and more had followed since. Ultimately, all had failed. The Afghan tribesmen held their Islamic faith as the reason for their resistance, but the obstinate courage of these men was as much a part of their racial heritage as their dark pitiless eyes.
The Archer was a young man, and an old one. On those occasions that he had both the desire and opportunity to bathe in a mountain stream, anyone could see the youthful muscles on his thirty-year-old body. They were the smooth muscles of one for whom a thousand-foot climb over bare rock was as unremarkable a part of life as a stroll to the mailbox.
It was his eyes that were old. The Afghans are a handsome people whose forthright features and fair skin suffer quickly from wind and sun and dust, too often making them older than their years. For the Archer, the damage had not been done by wind. A teacher of mathematics until three years before, a college graduate in a country where most deemed it enough to be able to read the holy Koran, he’d married young, as was the custom in his land, and fathered two children. But his wife and daughter were dead, killed by rockets fired from a Sukhoi-24 attack-fighter. His son was gone. Kidnapped. After the Soviets had flattened the village of his wife’s family with air power, their ground troops had come, killing the remaining adults and sweeping up all the orphans for shipment to the Soviet Union, where they would be educated and trained in other modern ways. All because his wife had wanted her mother to see the grandchildren before she died, the Archer remembered, all because a Soviet patrol had been fired upon a few kilometers from the village. On the day he’d learned this-a week after it had actually happened-the teacher of algebra and geometry had neatly stacked the books on his desk and walked out of the small town of Ghazni into the hills. A week later he’d returned to the town after dark with three other men and proved that he was worthy of his heritage by killing three Soviet soldiers and taking their arms. He still carried that first Kalashnikov.
But that was not why he was known as the Archer. The chief of his little band of mudjaheddin-the name means “Freedom Fighter”-was a perceptive leader who did not look down upon the new arrival who’d spent his youth in classrooms, learning foreign ways. Nor did he hold the young man’s initial lack of faith against him. When the teacher joined the group, he’d had only the most cursory knowledge of Islam, and the headman remembered the bitter tears falling like rain from the young man’s eyes as their imam had counseled him in Allah’s will. Within a month he’d become the most ruthless-and most effective-man in the band, clearly an expression of God’s own plan. And it was he whom the leader had chosen to travel to Pakistan, where he could make use of surface-to-air missiles. The first SAMs with which the quiet, serious man from Amerikastan had equipped the mudjaheddin had been the Soviets’ own SA-7, known by the Russians as strela, “arrow.” The first “man-portable” SAM, it was not overly effective unless used with great skill. Only a few had such skill. Among them the arithmetic teacher was the best, and for his successes with the Russian “arrows,” the men in the group took to calling him the Archer.
He waited with a new missile at the moment, the American one called Stinger, but all of the surface-to-air missiles in this group-indeed, throughout the whole area-were merely called arrows now: tools for the Archer. He lay on the knife-edge of a ridge, a hundred meters below the summit of the hill, from which he could survey the length of a glacial valley. Beside him was his spotter, Abdul. The name appropriately meant “servant,” since the teenager carried two additional missiles for his launcher and, more importantly, had the eyes of a falcon. They were burning eyes. He was an orphan.
The Archer’s eyes searched the mountainous terrain, especially the ridgelines, with an expression that reflected a millennium of combat. A serious man, the Archer. Though friendly enough, he was rarely seen to smile; he showed no interest in a new bride, not even to join his lonely grief to that of a newly made widow. His life had room for but a single passion.
“There,” Abdul said quietly, pointing.
“I see it.”
The battle on the valley floor-one of several that day-had been under way for thirty minutes, about the proper time for the Soviet soldiers to get support from their helicopter base twenty kilometers over the next line of mountains. The sun glinted briefly off the Mi-24’s glass-covered nose, enough for them to see it, ten miles off, skirting over the ridgeline. Farther overhead, and well beyond his reach, circled a single Antonov-26 twin-engine transport. It was filled with observation equipment and radios to coordinate the ground and air action. But the Archer’s eyes followed only the Mi-24, a Hind attack helicopter loaded with rockets and cannon shells that even now was getting information from the circling command aircraft.
The Stinger had come as a rude surprise to the Russians, and their air tactics were changing on a daily basis as they struggled to come to terms with the new threat. The valley was deep, but more narrow than the rule. For the pilot to hit the Archer’s fellow guerrillas, he had to come straight down the rocky avenue. He’d stay high, at least a thousand meters over the rocky floor for fear that a Stinger team might be down there with the riflemen. The Archer watched the helicopter zigzag in flight as the pilot surveyed the land and chose his path. As expected, the pilot approached from leeward so that the wind would delay the sound of his rotor for the few extra seconds that might be crucial. The radio in the circling transport would be tuned to the frequencies known to be used by the mudjaheddin so that the Russians could detect a warning of its approach, and also an indication where the missile team might be. Abdul did indeed carry a radio, switched off and tucked in the folds of his clothing.
Slowly, the Archer raised the launcher and trained its two-element sight on the approaching helicopter. His thumb went sideways and down on the activation switch, and he nestled his cheekbone on the conductance bar. He was instantly rewarded with the warbling screech of the launcher’s seeker unit. The pilot had made his assessment, and his decision. He came down the far side of the valley, just beyond missile range, for his first firing run. The Hind’s nose was down, and the gunner, sitting in his seat in front of and slightly below the pilot, was training his sights on the area where the fighters were. Smoke appeared on the valley floor. The Soviets used mortar shells to indicate where their tormentors were, and the helicopter altered course slightly. It was almost time. Flames shot out of the helicopter’s rocket pods, and the first salvo of ordnance streaked downward.
Then another smoke trail came up. The helicopter lurched left as the smoke raced into the sky, well clear of the Hind, but still a positive indication of danger ahead; or so the pilot thought. The Archer’s hands tightened on the launcher. The helicopter was sideslipping right at him now, expanding around the inner ring of the sight. It was now in range. The Archer punched the forward button with his left thumb, “uncaging” the missile and giving the infrared seeker-head on the Stinger its first look at the heat radiating from the Mi-24’s turboshaft engines. The sound carried through his cheekbone into his ear changed. The missile was now tracking the target. The Hind’s pilot decided to hit the area from which the “missile” had been launched at him, bringing the aircraft farther left, and turning slightly. Unwittingly, he turned his jet exhaust almost right at the Archer as he warily surveyed the rocks from which the rocket had come.
The missile screamed its readiness at the Archer now, but still he was patient. He put his mind into that of his target, and judged that the pilot would come closer still before his helicopter had the shot he wanted at the hated Afghans. And so he did. When the Hind was only a thousand meters off, the Archer took a deep breath, superelevated his sight, and whispered a brief prayer of vengeance. The trigger was pulled almost of its own accord.
The launcher bucked in his hands as the Stinger looped slightly upward before dropping down to home on its target. The Archer’s eyes were sharp enough to see it despite the almost invisible smoke trail it left behind. The missile deployed its maneuvering fins, and these moved a few fractions of a millimeter in obedience to the orders generated by its computer brain-a microchip the size of a postage stamp. Aloft in the circling An-26, an observer saw a tiny puff of dust and began to reach for a microphone to relay a warning, but his hand had barely touched the plastic instrument before the missile struck.”
-Tom Clancy
I think I was looking for a deterrent to reading a 1000+ book for the book club. Failed mission.
🤣
Jolly well done, Chris. Any chance you might look into Robert Ruark?
Thanks so much! I’m always open to suggestions. Any book(s) in particular?
@@LeafbyLeaf Well, "The Old Man and the Boy" (memoir) and "The Honey Badger" (novel) are my favorites. He also wrote a couple of African books: "Uhuru" and "Something of Value." Cheers, Chris, and Merry Christmas.
Thanks so much! Merry Christmas!
Just finished War and Peace yesterday and I’m having a tough time letting go of the book I’ve held since July and the characters I learned to love and hate.
I totally understand. After I finished it, I was in an absolute book stupor/book hangover. It was a good while before I could move on. And, possibly, arguably, I still haven't managed to move on...
I took the train in Chicago to get to school at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was about a 45 min trip. I was deeply into my reading of War and Peace. the train pulled in to the station but I had to finish that scene I was reading. the conductor came through and told me; "You'd better get off, the trains going to go back the other way." Hilarious! I couldn't stop reading. I love War and Peace! Be careful about the translation. I tried to reread a different translation that was awful....Also love Moby Dick and Don Quixote
+1 for Briggs!
I was very pleased!
I just recently started to read W&P for the third time and am reading the Briggs translation. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I read it in the Maude translation. To make this decision I read the first five chapters in Maude, Briggs, P&V and Garnett and the original Russian ( I studied this language in College, and spent some time studying in what what was then the USSR). Matters of translation are exceedingly thorny, and there is a strong element of personal taste in this. I decided to commit myself to Briggs and must say I am enjoying it immensely. I have some reservations, but they are minor. I do think, especially after going through this comparison exercise, the Maude translation is outstanding--the best overall of those I checked. It all depends on what you can forgive and how picky you are. Briggs uses some expressions and idioms that seem very un-Russian to me. A friend of mine cannot forgive Maude for changing Prince Andrei to Prince Andrew. And P&V are the only ones who preserve all of Tolstoy's French, which I think is ideal, but some readers would be annoyed at having to bounce around to footnotes so often. There are no easy answers here, and as strong as my feelings are about it, I am humble enough to recognize that my position is not definitive. The comparison was a blast for me, however, and deepened my understanding of Tolstoy's grace and finesse and endless discipline as a writer.
1:29:00
and there's me listening on Audible 🙃
😁
" Fifth - another book by Leo Tolstoy. One of the greatest in all the languages of the world, War and Peace. Not only the greatest but also the most voluminous… thousands of pages. I don’t know that anybody reads such books except myself. They are so big, so vast, they make you afraid.
But Tolstoy’s book has to be vast, it is not his fault. War and Peace is the whole history of human consciousness - the whole history; it cannot be written on a few pages. Yes, it is difficult to read thousands of pages, but if one can one will be transported to another world. One will know the taste of something classic. Yes, it is a classic."
Leave Socks alone he’s choosing a book to read 😂
Lol! He really did appear to be looking for a book!
The Swastika facing out on the bookshelf couldn't be more distracting.
Sorry about that, but please note that it's a history book, not propaganda or the like.
6 hours wow
For what it’s worth, it took about 93 hours to read. 😁
@@LeafbyLeaf incredible. Loving your work!❤️
Very kind of you to say-thanks!
gm
☕️☕️☕️
I read War and Peace about 10 years ago and thought it was monumentally overrated. I could not understand how anyone could think that Tolstoy was in the same league as Dostoyevsky. It made me recall DFW's remark that Dostoyevsky, in contrast to Tolstoy, knew how to be moral without moralising. But maybe I'll have to give it a reread sometime in the not too distant future.
I think it’s so telling that the two authors came into close proximity in so many ways but neither ever finally broke the silence to the other. A. N. Wilson perfectly formulates the statute and contrast of the two. For what it’s worth, my tastes tend toward Dostoyevsky over Tolstoy, but I find them a study in contrast, not comparison. Cheers!
@@LeafbyLeaf I prefer Dostoyevsky too but only by a smidgen because there is a character and a setting which Tolstoy writes which I really love to read. That character is _Levin_ in *Anna Karenina* and _Olyenin_ in *The Cossacks* and the interaction of these noblemen and their understanding of the muzhik (peasants), how they are dealing with their own society pre-revolution and the changes they feel; and I get the sense without having read any Tolstoy biographies besides what is on Wikipedia, that these characters are Tolstoy..
I prefer both of those Tolstoy works to *War and Peace.*
On page 800 now. I think I will finish the book before I watch this
Sounds great. Happy reading!
penguin delight ?? sounds like good samwitsch ..
Hahaha! XD
I hate the book, they gave me choice to read it and write an essay or fail Russian language class ..
Which choice did you make?! :)
Literature should be banned from schools! (I'm serious)
@@LeafbyLeaf I read it, in Czech language, problem was I had to write the essay in Russian, she let me pass eventually but said she is keeping my essay to show to future generations of students how such an essay is NOT supposed to look like .. lol ..
We had to address her as "tawarishtsch utschitjelnitsa Dovalilova .." (comrade teacher,) she was okey though, my diligence and studying habits were far from admirable .. I would be sleeping off my hangovers in the back desk row of her classroom most of the time. She must be long gone, she was ancient back then and that was over forty years ago ..