War and Peace, Round 3

I'm just beginning another read through War and Peace, this time the latest translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, published this year. Given all the great books in the world, who has time to read War and Peace three times? It's a fair question, but I find Tolstoy's writing so powerful that I am often drawn back into his works, particularly War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and Resurrection. It's probably also true that more people lie about reading War and Peace than any other book, so I guess my third crack is a partial effort to make up for them. 🙂

I suspect I will write more about this issue as I continue to read, but this translation is interesting. I lack the knowledge to know how accurate my translation is, so I am left evaluating it as a reader. P and V are interesting to me; their work often feels a bit less polished than other translations, which occasionally makes the reading a bit more challenging, but on the other hand, I can feel the difference between their Tolstoy and their Dostoyevsky, something that was not always true with the Constance Garnett translations. I have to say, though, through the first fifty pages, I am missing my favorite translation of War and Peace, by Aylmer and Louise Maude. I guess we'll see.

In the early reading, one of the elements that really seems to stand out is the tenderness with which Tolstoy describes the relationships between the young lovers at the beginning of the novel. This is not the older Tolstoy, railing against sexuality and sinfulness, but someone sympathetic to the struggles of adolescent love. On page 44, he describes a scene between Sonya and Nikolai, after Nikolai had been flirting with another young woman at dinner:

"So you know, and that's wonderful, and so go to her."

"So-o-onya! One word! How can you torment me and yourself so because of a fantasy? said Nikolai, taking her hand.

Sonya did not pull her hand away and stopped crying.

Natasha, motionless and breathless, with shining eyes, watched from behind her ambush. "What will happen now? she thought.

"Sonya! The whole world is no use to me! You alone are everything," said Nikolai. "I'll prove it to you."

It's a small section, but what makes it stand out is Tolstoy's ability to reveal so much about his characters through simple dialogue. These are authentic young people, full of passion about the smallest things, and this little scene will come back to us later in the work, with these little character details having increased significance.

One of the other elements that stands out for me in Tolstoy's fiction is his ability to demonstrate contempt for a character, using no more than a small physical detail. His description of Vera, the eldest daughter of the Rostovs, is a perfect example (pg. 43):