War and Peace (Penguin Classics)

プーチン大統領の愛読書であり「世界最大の小説」と称されてる本書を私ごとき豚児が書評をかける故もないのですがその素晴らしさに圧倒され筆をとりました。多少の小説は読みました、「風と共に去りぬ」、「大地」そして「誰がために鐘はなる」、全て素晴らしい作品ですが、「戦争と平和」がこれらに与えた影響は多大です。トルストイ以前の哲学と宗教に加え科学的見地を加えた世界観・人間観が全く新しい見方をもたらしてます。仏語を日常に使用し、王室と女性にしか興味のないロシア貴族階級が、ナポレオンの侵攻にどう対応するのかが、本書の主題です。愛国心に満ちた若き貴公子が初陣であっけなく頭を射貫かれ、狡猾な老将軍たちは巧みに戦場から離れる対比。信仰心の塊だった貴婦人は、愛人のできた父親の伯爵から冷たく扱われ信仰の意味を失う。最大の謎はナポレオンが略奪と大火のみが残り、栄誉・富の一切ないモスクワまで何故侵攻したのか？彼の「意志」がそうさせたのか？それともモスクワ侵攻は「運命」だったのか？人間と歴史を「意志と運命」の相反する観点から展開させ記述し、本質に迫る描写には圧倒される。気になったのはトルストイが強調してる「Good of living and the love of death」の一節。「love of death」は東洋思想には有りません、これが現在のロシア・ウクライナ戦争にどんな影響を与えるのか？本書は現在も生きてます。

Andrzej Wajda's “The Promised Land” was a very strange film to me. It is a 179 minute-long film and tells the story of a Pole, a German, and a Jew struggling to build a factory in the raw world of 19th century capitalism. In the last scene, the now wealthy partners order police to shoot striking workers, and the leader of the strike is shot down. The leader runs bloodstained and breathless with a red flag in his hand. Strange to say, what impressed me most was the last one minute of the leader running bloodstained and breathless. In a moment of extravagance, I thought that this leader was the main character of this film, even though his performance was only one minute out of 179 minutes. In the same way, what impressed me most in “War and Peace” was the last epilogue. Seven years have passed since the end of the story and one must be surprised at how things and people have changed. For example, there is no Natasha who was so sweet, so unpredictable, and so delightful. “Natasha was so neglectful of herself that her dresses, the way she did her hair, her untimely remarks, her jealousy---she was jealous of Sonya, of the governess, of every woman, pretty or plain---were stock jests among her friends. The general opinion was that Pierre was tied to his wife’s apron strings, which really was the case.” In comparison to the great story, this epilogue is miserable and tragic. But no matter how wonderful the story is and no matter how miserable the epilogue is, I am bound to think that the truth is rather in the epilogue. Tolstoy did not write thus, I think, in bitterness, but because he knew that this is what it would all come to. And he had to tell the truth.

Maude訳 とよく似た翻訳で、Maude 訳でわからない箇所を当たるにはうってつけの翻訳。それにしてもロシア語と英語の近さがうらやましい。

Tolstoy's War and Peace is first and foremost an historical novel based on a few years of the Napoleonic wars and how they affected some Russian families. But, apart from this, it contains three essays, about what one could call, 'Philosophy of History'. Although, I don't agree with Tolstoy's theory the essays are still of interest. Yet, it has to be said that one can read the novel and put the essays aside; it does not impair the enjoyment and deep thoughts of the novel. Personally I think it were best if these essays were printed together as an appendix. To me War and Peace is one of the great historical novels of all time; I have read it four times and enjoyed it every time as much a I enjoyed Sir Walter Scott's historical novels.

If you want to read War and Peace but don't know which translation you'd get. Hopefully my review will help. If you want everything in English [British it is!], then this translation is perfect! But if you want to know who speaks French at what occassion, get Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky's translation. Both are good! But for first time reader I do recommend this book translated by Anthony Briggs! The pages are not easily torn, too.

The paperback is torn and in bad condition.

L'emballage de ce produit était insuffisant. C'est un très grand livre de poche. Le bord de la couverture avant est marqué et plié, comme tous les bords. Il y a une marque bleue sur les pages. Même la couverture arrière a des plis.

This review of the Briggs translation of "War and Peace" is broken down into two segments, a Descriptive Summary and an Evaluative Summary. If you're already very familiar with the story, you may wish to skip directly to the latter facet of my review which is essentially the critique of this particular volume/translation. DESCRIPTIVE SUMMARY: In 1805, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Austria to expand his European empire. Russia, being an ally of Austria, stood with their brethren against the infamous Emperor. Napoleon prevailed and a treaty was ultimately signed at Tilsit. In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia, again in an effort to expand his empire. The end result of this tragic war was that Napoleon's army of about 600,000 soldiers was reduced to roughly 60,000 men as the defamed Emperor raced from Moscow (which he had taken), back across the frozen Russian tundra in his carriage (leaving his troops behind to fend for themselves) for Paris. That encapsulizes the military aspect of this work. But the more intricate story involves both the activities and the peccadillos of, primarily, three Russian families of nobility: The Rostovs, the Bolkonskys, and the Bezukovs. The continual thorn of "The Antichrist," Napoleon, really just provides the wallpaper for this story of romance, riches, desolation, love, jealousy, hatred, retribution, joy, naiivety, stupidity and so much more. Tolstoy has woven an incredibly intricate web that interconnects these noble families, the wars, and the common Russian people to a degree that would seem incomprehensible to achieve -- but Tolstoy perseveres with superb clarity and great insight to the human psyche. His characters are timeless and the reader who has any social experience whatever will immediately connect with them all. In his Epilogue, Tolstoy yields us a shrewd dissertation on the behavior of large organizations, much of it by way of analogy. It's actually an oblique, often sarcastic, commentary on the lunacy of government activities and the madness of their wars. "War and Peace" is a fictional, lengthy novel, based upon historical fact. EVALUATIVE SUMMARY: Anthony Briggs, the translator of this edition, is a former Professor of Russian at the University of Birmingham, (Edgbaston, 26,000 students), coupled with the fact that he has previously translated many other literary works from their original Russian language. Overall, his 2005 translation is a fluid, easy-to-read version of "War and Peace". Having previously read the stalwart Maude translation (twice) and the new (2007) Pevear-Volokhonsky translation I feel compelled to state that that I'm very pleased and impressed with Briggs' smooth, modern-language translation, (which is also devoid of any anachronistic or modern "buzzwords"), and, I'm even more copasetic with the book's straightforward layout. The main text of the Viking Adult version is nicely supplemented with 4 detailed maps, a list of principals (both fictional and non-fictional), and 2 commentaries, all at the rear of the text. There is NO introduction by the translator and it's a direct read -- rendered entirely in English with almost no footnotes to bother with. There are historically-oriented endnotes but, as they are at the finale of the work, I found them useful, yet not distracting. The book is almost exactly the same size and weight as the P-V translation, (3.8 pounds, pretty hefty), with a beautiful white sewn binding and with a white dust jacket. (Penguin offers two alternative bindings of the Briggs translation as well). One of the few early complaints I heard on Briggs is that he "British-ized" the dialogue, using words like "mate" as soldiers address one another... so it's not written in "American" English. This fact, too, probably doomed him a bit in pecuniary terms, at least in the USA. But that is a very small caveat and I was not in the least distracted by this actuality. As Briggs pointed out in his commentary, (paraphrasing), he had to choose an English dialect to translate it TO and, since he himself was English, that was the vernacular which he chose to utilize. This makes total sense to me and the actual instances of these "British-izations" of the language are actually few and far between. Some others have criticized Briggs for eliminating the French entries (Briggs renders the entire work, unabridged, in English), thus eliminating the need for footnotes that we see in other translations which yield the English translation of the French script. Briggs does, however, shrewdly let us know, (by working it into the text), when a particular dialogue or letter was originally written by Tolstoy in French where this fact is either relevant or important for the reader to know. Honestly, the "straight English" text is much of the beauty of this volume for the casual reader because it's notably less distracting. Those who wish to read "War and Peace" for some academic or scholarly purpose would be better served by reading either the Maude or P-V translations since both maintain the French entries, with English translations in the footnotes, the French being roughly two percent of the entire book. In summary, if you are looking for a complete and unabridged, easy-to-read version of "War and Peace" which features modern language, the Briggs translation would be a fine choice.