War and Peace Readalong thread 2022

[VikingNorthUtsire]

Interest thread for the 2022 War and Peace readalong

THIS OP WAS UPDATED on 4/1 BY MNHQ (THANK YOU) TO ADD MORE DETAIL TO THE READING SCHEDULE AND UPDATE THE AMAZON LINKS

"The finest novel ever written on this planet"
"Here is a novel that is worth whatever time one gives to it. There is more life between its cover than in any other existent fictional narrative"

This is a really helpful blog post by someone who has done the challenge: nicksenger.com/onecatholiclife/announcing-the-2020-war-and-peace-chapter-a-day-read-along

1. Translations

The main complication seems to be which edition to choose. The blog post above contains some commentary of the different tranlsations that are available and their merits. There's also a pretty comprehensive guide here including samples from some of the best-known translations: welovetranslations.com/2021/08/31/whats-the-best-translation-of-war-and-peace-by-tolstoy/

The main differences that I can see are:

• some editions (including the free download on Project Gutenburg) have a different chapter structure. I think/hope we would manage to find one another if some are reading versions with more or fewer chapters but I have based the readalong on the versions with 361 chapters.

• there's quite a lot of French in at least some parts of the book. Some editions translate it into English, others keep it in French but use footnotes

• some translators have chosen to anglicise the characters' names. I guess its personal preference whether you prefer Mary, Andrew and Basil or a more Russian version.

Looking at the editions recommended and reviewed in the above blog:

The Vintage Classics edition, translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky: ]]

NB also this link for the kindle version: ]]

The Signet Classics edition, translated by Anne Dunnigan: ]]

The Penguin Classics edition, translated by Anthony Briggs: ]]

As a general rule I would definitely recommend downloading a sample of any kindle edition before buying, so you can be sure that you are happy with it.

Obviously, some people will prefer to avoid Amazon! Feel free to use the weeks in the run-up to Day 1 to share any tips on what you are buying and where from. Can I suggest though that we stick where possible to the editions with 361 chapters otherwise we will all get very confused!

1. Reading timeline

Nick, of the blog post, has very helpfully done the calculations for which chapters fall on which days, except he did it in 2020 which was a Leap Year. So feel free to take a look at nicksenger.com/onecatholiclife/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Nicks-2020-War-and-Peace-Chapter-a-Day-Reading-Schedule.pdf but see below the schedule for the Mumsnet Readalong.

Again, different editions name and number their chapters differently - some refer to four books divided into parts (as below), others refer to fifteen books although it's essentially the same structure just with different numbering. Hopefully there's enough info below to keep us all in sync, and always happy to let anyone know via PM what's happening in today's chapter so we can keep together.

Book 1: 1805
Book 1 Part One (25 chapters): 1/1 - 25/1
Book 1 Part Two (21 chapters): 26/1 - 15/2
Book 1 Part Three (19 chapters): 16/2 - 6/3
DAY OFF: 7/3
Book 2: 1806-1812
Book 2 Part One (16 chapters): 8/3 - 23/3
Book 2 Part Two (21 chapters): 24/3 - 13/4
Book 2 Part Three (26 chapters): 14/4 - 9/5
Book 2 Part Four (13 chapters): 10/5 - 22/5
Book 2 Part Five (22 chapters): 23/5 - 13/6
DAY OFF: 14/6
Book 3: 1812
Book Three Part One (23 chapters): 15/6 - 7/7
Book Three Part Two (39 chapters): 8/7 - 15/8
Book Three Part Three (34 chapters): 16/8 - 18/9
DAY OFF: 19/9
Book 4: 1812-13
Book Four Part One (16 chapters): 20/9 - 5/10
Book Four Part Two (19 chapters): 6/10 - 24/10
Book Four Part Three (19 chapters): 25/10 - 12/11
Book Four Part Four (20 chapters): 13/11 - 2/12
DAY OFF: 3/12
Epilogue One 1812-20 (16 chapters): 3/12 - 19/12
Epilogue Two (12 chapters): 20/12 - 31/12

Phew!

I would suggest that we meet at the end of each section (so 17 times over the course of the year) to discuss what we've read, but with (non-spoilerish) chatter welcome at any time in between. According to my guru, Nick, each chapter is around 4 pages long, so it should be do-able.

1. Chapter "meditations"

This looks like another really interesting blog post from someone who has done it, with thoughts and meditations on each chapter: brianedenton.medium.com/a-year-of-war-and-peace-cc66540d9619#.yabefbbgz

Come and join me! This time next year we will almost have finished reading the finest novel ever written on the planet.

PS Some may feel that each day off deserves a shot of vodka or two. I couldn't possibly comment.

Natasha really is a spoilt brat isn’t she! Thanks for the summary Desdemona, like others I’m finding them very helpful for highlighting things I may have missed!

I’m enjoying how characters’ social skills are atomised eg Berg, Vera, Pierre. I’m glad Vera has a love interest rather than being written off à la Mary Bennet. I’m new to the book but liking Pierre - naive but genuine compared to the scheming of Vasìly.

Natasha is a right bloody pain!

Catherine the Great was rumoured to have a great many lovers so it might well have been feasible that (in this fictional world) he may have courted her favour even if he didn’t sleep with her. She was a kick-ass Queen and my favourite.

Natasha is very annoying in this chapter. Or rather, the adults responses to her are very annoying!

I'm impressed you have a favourite Queen, Columbo - I only have some least favourite royalty 😂
She sounds interesting, I know nothing about Catherine the Great, wasn't there a TV series about her recently with Nicolas Hoult in it? Is it worth looking up?

I felt sorry for Sonya. I wonder if Nicolai cares as much for her.

Very good summary, Desdemona. I had to read the German colonel's speech a couple of times to make sense of it!

I was a bit confused by Natasha's part in this. I thought she must have been saying something witty that had been lost in translation as all the grown-ups were so entertained by her. But no, just being annoying and precocious. I wonder if this would have read more charmingly to the original audience while now she just finds across like a spoilt brat.

I didn't really understand why asking what was for dessert was so shocking, although the way she did it was immature, so it must be more to do with how she asked, interrupting everyone, than what she asked 🤷‍♀️
I can't find The Great which is the Nicolas Hoult vehicle, but that seems to be almost entirely fictionalised anyway and more of a comedy drama.
I have found Catherine The Great starring Helen Mirren which doesn't score as highly on IMBD, but does seem to be more based on historical fact, so I'm settling down to educate myself on kick ass Cate. Maybe she'll become my favourite queen too!

Does anyone else think that the opening chapters are similar to Gone with the Wind? The men are getting excited about the likelihood of war whilst the women are more interested in social standing & who fancies who. It all unfolds during a party for the most well-to-do families. Makes me wonder if that's where Margaret Mitchell got the idea from!

Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs is great for dipping into about the various Russian royals. He also wrote one about Catherine and Potemkin (her main lover) but I haven’t read that. I’m a bit of a history geek about Russia.

I read Gone With The Wind decades ago Spongebob but not you mention it there are lots of similarities. It always amazes me how keen men seem to be for war - until they experience the reality of it. I would say that young men now would be too sensible to allow themselves to be used as cannon fodder but then I look at the Russian troops massing on the border with the Ukraine and China eyeing Taiwan and I'm not so sure.
Thanks for the recommendation Columbo I'm enjoying learning about Catherine and Potemkin via the medium of Helen Mirren although I'm not sure how historically accurate it all is.

I’ve never got to the end of Gone With the Wind (the book, I’ve got to the end of the film many times because I fancy the pants off that cad Rhett Butler).

Totally agree that Natasha is a little brat and the adults need to stop indulging her.

Chapter 17:
After dinner the guests choose between the library or the sitting room to enjoy cards or musical entertainment.

In the drawing room Julie performs on the harp, then talented singers Nikolai and Natasha are asked to grace the guests with a song.
Natasha decides to press gang Boris and Sonya into joining their performance, but looking round she realises that Sonya has disappeared.
Natasha finds a weeping Sonya in a hallway.
Sonya’s worries are three fold, firstly Nicolai’s military papers have come through and he’s leaving for the hussars imminently.
Secondly, Vera has been a total cow towards her since dinner, threatening to show Countess Rostov the love poems Nikolai has written, and saying he would never marry Sonya as their mother wouldn’t approve and he would instead be marrying Julie Karagin.
Lastly Sonya and Nikolai are second cousins so Sonya believes that even if Nikolai did want to marry her their union would need to be approved by an Archbishop and she is sure Countess Rostov would never allow such permission to be sought.
Natasha does a good job of cheering Sonya up, saying Shinshin’s brother is married to a first cousin, so second cousins will definitely not be an issue. (And I wouldn’t have thought second cousins marriages would have been too frowned upon in 1805 Russia, wasn’t our own royal family horribly interbred in those days?) And reassuring Sonya that Nikolai has no affection for Julie. Soon Sonya is feeling considerably better and agrees to come and sing.

Later as the band are tuning up Natasha asks Pierre to dance with her and makes a show of flirting with him. Pierre is flattered and accepts, but true to form admits to being clumsy and untutored in the art of dance.

The highlight of the evening is when Count Rostov,‘mincing like a ballet dancer’, takes to the dance floor, to perform an energetic ‘Daniel Cooper’ polka with Mayra Dmitriyevna as his rather stiff partner, she ‘couldn’t dance at all, and didn’t want to’.
All the guests and even the servants crowd into the room to watch and clap along, whilst Natasha, overcome with pride and love for her father, shouts to the assembled throng to, ‘Watch Papa dance!’

This definitely feels like the calm before the storm.

I thought the Count was camping it up but looking at that clip maybe not

Great clip! Although I don't think the Count's knees would be up to that version! I imagine them being a little more like this:

There is a dance group in my town that learns and performs these types of dances and I feel tempted to join! (I think I would have to get quite a bit fitter first though...)

rifling, ooh how lovely I always think those scenes of ballroom dancing in period dramas look like a lot of fun, you should definitely join up.
But I steadfastly refuse to believe that Count Rostov's 'Daniel Cooper' was anything like as sedate as the second clip, maybe somewhere in the middle

Sorry that I dumped a comment back at the end of last year and then disappeared. I will admit I speed read up to the end of Part I over the last few days as had fallen behind but after catching up on the thread, am tempted to read one chapter at a time with you lot (for some reason, I thought we were only talking on the 25th!)

Aaaaanyways - I've forgotten how much I enjoyed this book. It seems so daunting because of its sheer size but if I remember correctly, it remains a lot of fun (I did enjoy the War bits and don't remember much philosophy, but perhaps I've blocked that!). It has reminded me of Vanity Fair which I read over 20 years ago now but is set in a similar time and is also a beast of a book. But I adored VF - up there as probably my favourite classic!

Back to W&P, I quite like Pierre because he's free from all the fakery a lot of the other characters epitomise (especially Boris' mum, Anna 'sorry, can't remember her surname'). The rest are a sort of indistinguishable blob of Russian aristocracy but I do remember it all becoming clearer and also, Desdemona's excellent summaries are helping.

Will keep up and dump my thoughts on the 25th so as not to drop any spoilers but thoroughly enjoying myself - thanks, OP!

It’s not really relevant to the plot, but Sonya in the hallway confused me. My translation says she was found sobbing on a chest in the corridor. That’s fine, except it then goes on to say that the nurse’s dirty striped featherbed was on top of the chest and Sonya was lying on this. Does the nurse sleep in the corridor?! Why?! Why doesn’t she have a proper bed?!

I didn't really understand that either. Maybe it was put there to be laundered? Or maybe she has a mattress that she moves around to sleep in the rooms of the younger children if needed (but none of them are that young!)

The conversation between Sonya and Natasha really highlighted how very young they still are. I particularly liked Sonya saying:

"I love you all...except Vera".

It seems slightly alarming that Sonya wants to marry Nikolai when they have brought up so closely that she calls his mother "mamma" though.

@ChessieFL

It’s not really relevant to the plot, but Sonya in the hallway confused me. My translation says she was found sobbing on a chest in the corridor. That’s fine, except it then goes on to say that the nurse’s dirty striped featherbed was on top of the chest and Sonya was lying on this. Does the nurse sleep in the corridor?! Why?! Why doesn’t she have a proper bed?!

Maybe the children have just acquired it as cushioning for their place of sorrow!

All of the explanations fit for the mattress. I don’t know about Russia and I don’t know about aristocracy but it was/is quite normal in some places, certainly in some homes in Turkey I have visited for beds to be made up and put away each day with the rooms being used for other purposes. The chest in this scenario might well contain blankets, pillows etc that have been tidied.

The clips of 'Daniel Cooper' were great! Thanks for posting them!