Be honest now: Have you really read War and Peace?

[Matthaus Hetzenauer]

The reason I ask is because I have a used hardcover of the book and was wondering if it's going to be worth the time and effort. I plan on cracking it on New Year's Day; and, reading roughly 50 pages a day, I hope to have it finished by the end of January (my Modern Library edition is just under 1,400 pages).

Now I've done my homework on the novel, both online and referring to my bible, The Oxford Companion to English Literature, but still all I can get are summaries and rave reviews by professional critics, who I don't really trust. So this is why I'm asking if anyone here has read the doorstop. I'd really hate to get 1/4, or worse, 1/2-way through the damn thing only to slam it shut and say "Sonofabitch! What a fucking waste of time!"

So have you read Tolstoy's tour de force? If so, what's your honest opinion of it? Do you think I'll view the upcoming "project" as a waste of time or not?

[Matthaus Hetzenauer]

Um, that's all very edifying, Dawn, but you're not really helping me out here; unless of course War and Peace is nothing more than one big rant appreciating the gifts bestowed upon us ingrates by the Benevolent Ones...

[SUNOFSPARTA]

Skip it and read:

Natures Eternal Religion-By Ben Klassen

or

The Seven Pillars of Wisdom-By T.E.Lawrence

As any women can tell you,
it's quality, not quantity that counts.

[luftwaffensoldat]

I've read both War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but not recently. War and Peace takes place during the Napoleonic wars; it becomes very philosophical towards the end, from what I remember. I didn't mind it, but personally, I enjoyed Anna Karenina more, which is about the eponymous heroine trapped in a loveless marriage, falling in love with some dashing nobleman and then committing suicide by jumping in front of a train when she has her heart broken.

Tolstoy isn't my favorite Russian author anyway, I much prefer Dostoevsky.

Also, another writer you might like: Thomas Hardy. His novels are some of the best in the English language, such as The Mayor of Casterbridge, Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

[Bardamu]

I've read Anna Karenina but never found traction in War and Peace. Of the Russians, Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn are the authors I've read a fair amount in. Crime and Punishment was a favorite. The Gulag Archipelago I managed somehow to read twice. But mentioning tomes how many here have read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? I've read every volume (unabridged) but the last.

[Alex Linder]

I have not read it, not even come across a copy. Have not read Tolstoy generally, have read much more Doestoyevsky, who is pretty good altho at least 1/5 a pure christian idiot. Twain has a much firmer grasp of human nature than Doest does, but he doesn't have the glamour of a long Russian name.

[jaekel]

No, I have not.

[Olesia Rhoswen]

I only read the first few hundred pages. I very much enjoyed it- there are some truly entertaining scenes in that first bit with drinking games and dancing bears- but one day I just put it down and forgot about it. I suppose that says something there, as I rarely leave books unfinished.

[Fred Streed]

I have not read War and Peace. And probably never will. I have read quite a bit of other stuff by Tolstoy. The Kreutzer Sonata, Ana Karinina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Master and Man, The Snowstorm, and others that I can't remember. Years ago, when I was in my 20s, a hippie I used to get drunk with occasionally gave me a big thick book of Tolstoy's work, from short stories up through The Cossacks. I enjoyed it. I used to read stuff like that purely for entertainment value, on an equal footing with Easyriders Magazine or Stephen King. Nothing fucks up good literature worse than some pinhead teacher who insists on "analysing" it for "hidden" messages, "metaphors" and crap like that. Had an English teacher in high school like that. I still shudder when I see a copy of Dickens' Great Expectations or anything by Shakespeare.

I have read a couple of things by Dostoyevsky also, my impression was that Tolstoy was easier to read. He was morose (Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata, not exactly cheerful stuff, but still interesting) but not to the level of Dostoyevsky. Crime and Punishment is downright twisted, a slow motion train wreck, or maybe it's just very Russian.

[Matthaus Hetzenauer]

Shit, this ain't looking all that promising here, folks (good thing I only paid a buck or so for the fucking thing, eh?)

Fred: the only work I've read by Tolstoy (and a short one it is) is Ivan Ilyich, and I didn't find it all that great. Btw -- did you know that Tolstoy himself had an inordinate fear of death/dying?

As some here have brought up Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn...

Dostoevsky is not only my favorite Russian, but he just may be my favorite novelist of all (with Hardy, Twain, Dumas and Steinbeck running a tight race for second), and I plan on reading all his novels if time permits. Thus far I've read only Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. The first two I read ca. 1990; the last just recently. And although Karamazov is considered by most to be his masterpiece, C&P is my favorite among the three.

Of Solzhenitysn, I've read The Gulag Archipelago; The Cancer Ward; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (overrated in my opinion; the only reason it received so much attention in the press is that it happened to coincide with Khrushchev's exposure of Stalin's crimes in his "Secret Speech"), and earlier this year, his massive fictional tome November 1916: The Red Wheel/Knot II. A few months back I picked up a used hardcover of Gulag; and seeing as how my first and only reading of the book was in 1974, I'll mark the 40th anniversary of it by rereading it sometime in 2014.

Luftwaffensoldat: Excepting Don Quixote, I just might rate Jude as my favorite novel of all. I've also read Tess and Far from the Madding Crowd; the former being damn near as good as Jude.

Thanks to all who've offered up their opinions; I really, really appreciate it.

[Matthaus Hetzenauer]

re: post #2

Great! makes me look like I'm imagining conversations with female members here...

[Fred Streed]

Originally Posted by Matthaus Hetzenauer

Of Solzhenitysn, I've read The Gulag Archipelago; The Cancer Ward; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (overrated in my opinion; the only reason it received so much attention in the press is that it happened to coincide with Khrushchev's exposure of Stalin's crimes in his "Secret Speech"), and earlier this year, his massive fictional tome November 1916: The Red Wheel/Knot II. A few months back I picked up a used hardcover of Gulag; and seeing as how my first and only reading of the book was in 1974, I'll mark the 40th anniversary of it by rereading it sometime in 2014.

I have read the works you mention by Solzhenitysn. Also you might like "Lenin in Zurich". I have "August 1914" around here some place but haven't read it yet.

[Solskeniskyn]

"Notes from the underground" is another great psychological portrait of a neurotic outsider by Dostoyevsky.

"White Nights", and "The Gambler", is two shorter ones by him that I remember from the top of my head that also made an impression on me.

As regards the latter, having spent a year or so myself grinding out a decent but not to glamorous living on internet poker some years back when I was fresh out of school, and being somewhat familiar with the distorted logic and rationale that grips the gambling mind, I remember that I found the portrait very convincing.

Twain(?), and others, have remarked that one should write about what one knows (and I'll only half agree with Alex that he had a better grasp of human nature, in that Twain had a better grasp of the american nature, and arguably a better conception of how a man should think and go about tackling the world, but Dostoyevsky offers an unparralleled look into the gloomy psyche of the poor and downtrodden soul) - and not suprisingly, Fyodor had first hand experience at the gambling-tables himself:

The Gambler treated a subject Fyodor Dostoyevsky himself was familiar with—gambling. Fyodor Dostoyevsky gambled for the first time at the gaming tables at Wiesbaden in 1863.[2] From that time till 1871, when his passion for gambling subsided, he played at Baden-Baden, Homburg, and Saxon-les-Bains frequently, often beginning by winning a small amount of money and losing far more in the end.[2] He wrote to his brother Mikhail on 8 September:

[2]“ And I believed in my system ... within a quarter of an hour I won 600 francs. This whetted my appetite. Suddenly I started to lose, couldn't control myself and lost everything. After that I ... took my last money, and went to play ... I was carried away by this unusual good fortune and I risked all 35 napoleons and lost them all. I had 6 napoleons d'or left to pay the landlady and for the journey. In Geneva I pawned my watch. ”


Fyodor Dostoyevsky then agreed to a hazardous contract with F. T. Stellovsky that if he did not deliver a novel of 12 or more signatures by 1 November 1866, Stellovsky would acquire the right to publish Dostoyevsky's works for nine years without any compensation to the writer.[2][3] He noted down parts of his story, then dictated them to one of the first stenographers in Russia and his wife-to-be, young Anna Grigorevna, who transcribed them and copied it neatly out for him.[1][3] With her help, he was able to finish the book in time.[1]

...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gambler_(novel)

[Lars Redoubt]

Russian novels are strange. They are full of weird people who blabber incessantly. The Russian people, at least as they are portrayed in their own books, are completely incomprehensible to me.

In my younger days when I was a gullible leftist I tried to read Russian books. But I soon gave up although many people praised them and talked about “Great Russians”.

And finally, when I read Revilo P. Oliver's Russian Riddles, I was rewarded:

“Despite the efforts of the largely Germanic aristocracy of Czarist Russia to make the country European, it has always and correctly seemed alien and outlandish to Europeans. Russian literature differs generically from European literature. Of the novelists who have been translated into European languages, only Merezhkovski (3) could pass for a European. The others are patently alien, although a very few, like Dostoyevski, seem to have a European mentality that is puzzled by the alien mentality of the Russian mentality they portray. What is more significant, writers like Berdyaev and Ouspenski do not resemble the purveyors of mystical novelties in our world; one has, rightly or wrongly, the conviction that they vouchsafe us a glimpse into the brooding darkness of the natively irrational Russian soul.”

“One could expatiate on this subject at great length. I am concerned here only to remind you that to us, the men of the West, the Russians’ character is as alien as onion-shaped domes are to Occidental architecture.”

http://www.stormfront.org/rpo/RIDDLES.htm

Jim Morrison is right: The west is the best.

The Doors-The End [FULL] - YouTube

The Doors-The End [FULL] - YouTube

[Fred Streed]

Originally Posted by Lars Redoubt

Russian novels are strange. They are full of weird people who blabber incessantly. The Russian people, at least as they are portrayed in their own books, are completely incomprehensible to me.

Yes, I kind of get that feeling about them too.

Yockey talks a little about this in Imperium IIRC.

[Matthaus Hetzenauer]

re: the "strangeness" of Russian novels...

There's a good reason Russian novelists, unlike their American and English counterparts such as Twain and Dickens, aren't, as a rule, read in the middle schools of the US, but saved instead for high school and college curriculums: they're deeper and more complex; their characters aren't as easy to categorize as either chivalrous knights in shining armor rescuing damsels in distress, or nogoodnik evil villians who like nothing more than distressing said virtuous babes. Dostoevsky's protagonists especially oftentimes exhibit split personalities; they're torn between doing good and evil; they border on madness; and they suffer extreme emotional terror in consequence. Not exactly fare for 13- and 14-year-olds, is it?

Kids and young adults will understand and better relate to Dickensian characters than they will those of the Russian greats such as Dostoevsky, Gogol, Nabokov and Turgenev. Hey, I'm a huge fan of Dickens, and I've read more of his novels (seven to date) than I have of any of the Russians; but still, I'll take Dead Souls or Crime and Punishment any ol' day over the cartoonish characters of Oliver Twist or The Pickwick Papers. But to each his own, I guess...

[Matthaus Hetzenauer]

Originally Posted by Solskeniskyn

Twain had a better grasp of the american nature, and arguably a better conception of how a man should think and go about tackling the world, but Dostoevsky offers an unparalleled look into the gloomy psyche of the poor and downtrodden soul...

The #1 reason one should take the time to read all posts in a thread as short as this:

Solly gets the crucial point across in a mere half sentence what took me two whole paragraphs. (Go right ahead -- make me look like an asshole, you sonofabitch!)

[Solskeniskyn]

Thanks for the link to the Revilo article, interesting reading.

So as regards the critique of what some regard as the pretentious, long winded, over-hyped, perceivably non-western, sometimes sentimentally christian moralizing -nature of the Russian likes of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, I'll agree that there is a measure of truth to that.

"The Brothers Karamazov", for example, with its claim to fame of being a work of great philosophical magnitude, I regard as overrated, and "The Idiot" too (though I still consider them being worth the time to read), as the christian strain in them is so dominating, to their detriment.

Now (keeping to Dostoyevsky): Cristianity is not exactly void in "Crime and Punishment" (which I regard as one of the best book I've ever read, in agreement with Matthaus) or "Notes from the Underground" either, but the difference is that you there have such gripping, convincing portraits of real, complex characters, offering a deep look into the human soul of some seriously troubled people, that isn't hinged to the christian smothering moral universe to an extent to make it feel alien and repellent.

Raskolnikov ("Crime and Punishment") is probably the fictional character that has made the strongest impression on me, all categories...hell, come to mention it, I think it's about time for a re-read, it's been a while since.

[Fred Streed]

So, MH, what have you decided on "War and Peace"? If you do read it you probably won't regret it.

When I commented about finding the Russian literature strange I didn't mean that as a put down. It is all the more reason to read them. Russia isn't something that can be ignored.

[luftwaffensoldat]

Matthaus,

Sergei Nechayev is another nineteenth century Russian author you should become very familiar with. He was a nihilist who hated the Tsar, but one doesn't have to embrace the author's extreme left-wing ideological beliefs to put his revolutionary catechism into practice. Given the ruthlessness and criminality of the multicultural fanatics who have forced us to embrace mass third world immigration and racial integration, it's only fair that we resist them as ferociously as they have resisted us. The famous opening sentence:

The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no personal interests, no business affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no property, and no name. Everything in him is wholly absorbed in the single thought and the single passion for revolution.

http://www.marxists.org/subject/anar.../catechism.htm