With all due respect, what is precisely so extraordinary about this? Was Tolstoy some masterful prose stylist whose intricacies are lost in translation? He writes this stupendously long narrative, ends it abruptly, and then attaches an essay explaining his entire deterministic outlook as if he didn’t beat the reader over the head with it for 1000 pages.
It’s just a good story anon. I’m like a mix of nikolai, andrei, and Pierre. Also I feel bad for Mary I bet she was pretty and everyone else just can’t find the cuteness in so-called “plain girls”
Mary had a happy ending. Sonya got absolutely fricked and didn't deserve it.
Yes I know she had a happy ending married to nikolai but it’s still sad that she’s called plain :/
I’m more of a Levine from Anna Karenina myself
This.
Its a disguised essay criticizing the great man theory of history
>the great man theory of history
Is this still relevant (legitimate) post-WWII?
The only people who still use it are Moldbug, Boris Johnson, and butthurt leftists who want to blame Thatcher for their problems. Choose your fighter!
I genuinely don’t know how anyone can be filtered by Tolstoy other than pure laziness. He is easy to read and more profound than any writer
>more profound than any writer
You may be pushing it there.
guess you haven't read flaubert
There are only 1200 pages of Napoleon bad Russia good
>Napoleon le good
Have you read the critic of Napoleon by Victor Hugo? On the other hand the biography of Napoleon by Stendhal should be read too.
The psychology and how accurate he is on how people think.
Think of Dolokhov. He is a psychopath. But how do people perceive him?
For example, there is a reddit community on War and Peace where they comment every chapter.
People were like "Awww, Dolokhov is not that bad. Look how he cares about his mother and sister"
And then, a few chapters later he bankrupts Nikolai out of spite. And they were shocked that Dolokhov was bad to someone who helped him so much.
Or: its a bad old world out there, so if some young puppy is dumb enough to throw his money at someone over the card table, you owe it your poor mother and sister to be the one he's throwing it at.
At least that's how I read it. Dolokhov doesn't have the kind of money that Pierre or Andrei or Kuragin have and does what he needs to do in an unjust society in which families give far too much power and money to idiots like Nikolai. Hate the game not the player
Dolokhov bullied some poor guard, slept with Pierre's wife and then made fun of him for it. Then dueled Pierre and wouldn't feel any kind of guilty if he killed him.
He bankrupt Nicolai because he was mad Sonya preferred Nicolai to himself.
None of that makes him a psychopath. He lives in a society and acts accordingly. Proles are there to get bullied by their betters. Wives with ineffectual husbands are there to have affairs with. Rich young idiots are there to take money off. All the things Tolstoy seethes about in his later nonfiction
Nothing Dolokhov does is against the social code of his milieu.
like the other anon said, tolstoy has an uncanny grasp of human behaviour. grab any, randomly, description of any of his characters and you can clearly see how the most minute details (a certain look, a blush, the tone of some response) effortelessly come together without you noticing how fricking difficult it actually is to understand (let alone describe in written words) the stupid complexity of what was going on in any given moment of his character’s lives. he does not simply say “mary was heartbroken when she realized that she was not gonna get aristocracy dick”, but masterfully paints a picture of the nuanced psychological movement that happens almost instantaneously and the force that comes out of her through her determination in staying faithful through a different experience of love. Was it cope? Was she in denial? Was it real? Its all there for you to try to figure out, and its never obvious and its never linear. And that happens even with random minor charachters.
tolstoy is on a different level of literature. that does mean that he is above criticism, im sure plenty of people can make solid arguements in that regard. but that motherfricker knew how to write people in a level that id say it has not been surpased yet.
>Its all there for you to try to figure out, and its never obvious and its never linear.
I don't agree. In Tolstoy every single thing is explained, there is no room for interpration at all. That's why his books are so goddamned long.
And Natasha is kind of the female version of this, I personally found her character insufferable and thought I hated her, but caught myself thinking “ah, sweet, it’s a Natasha chapter, those are my absolute favorites”.
It’s crazy how well these characters are written.
Ignore the essays
It's just a very good story to get immersed in
Maybe you aren't interested in period dramas and the Napoleonic Wars but many people are
A genius admires simplicity. An idiot admires complexity.
one hundred percent agree with norm. read A Confession and realize how Tolstoy is able to convey obvious facts about human existence in the simplest, direct and intelligent way, and then wonder why few other people can articulate things as well when these ideas seem so simple
just perfect writing
war and peace sucks
anna karenina is the kino one
War and Peace doesn't "suck", Tolstoy is great at characterization and the way he weaves in the Napoleonic history is really interesting, at least to an ignorant American like myself.
Tolstoy's philosophizing about history is 100% pure Reddit, it's not even "wrong" it's just so smug and boring and dumb I can't believe he was able to (apparently) think so perceptively about human nature. You definitely feel the weight tof 1200 pages when he starts in on his bullshit. For this and other reasons AK is the vastly superior book, although it needs more Napoleon.
Yeah, "sucks" is way too strong a word. W&P is good, whereas AK is great. W&P would be great if it were cut down by 30%.
babby's first 'tome'
the people's daily reading consumption comes from tiktok subs