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7 internautes sur 8 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
5.0étoiles sur 5
Yes, the Greatest Novel Ever Written, Jui 30 2004
I have read a lot of books and so I've scrabbled together a fairly intelligent idea of what a great book is; the definition has always been complicated and hard to explain, but I really needn't have bothered. The concept can be summed up in only three words: "War and Peace".
This is, simply, what all novels want to be when they grow up. The novel format is as varied as the writers who attempt it---to call "War and Peace" and "Ulysses" examples of the same art form seems ridiculous, but it's true---but ultimately a novel is a story about humans that explains what humanity is, or might be, or could have been; through these characters whose adventures you're following, you might learn something about what it means to be a human being. Every art form is about this experience, but only the novel can really hunker down and explore humanity in all its billions of shapes. You can learn not only facts and feelings but you can learn TIME by spending it in these pages. You can learn GROWTH. You can learn LIFE.
The main characters in "War and Peace" are Pierre Bezuhov, Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, and Natasha Rostov, three Russians caught in the middle of the war between their country and France in the years 1805 to 1813. Through them we meet dozens if not hundreds more characters, and through those dozens or hundreds we simply meet humanity itself. There's no other way to express it. The way Tolstoy tells us about his characters shows us ourselves; the identification is that strong. When a character falls, in battle or from old age, we feel that someone we know personally is gone, and we mourn them as though we couldn't simply flip back a few pages and resurrect them. The mass of life in this book is overwhelming: the story, like the title, is so big it seems impossible that you could find a moment of intimacy, but in fact there are hours here, even days. There is so much contained in the book, battles and weddings, parties and firestorms, evacuations and reunions, military history and moral philosophy, yet Tolstoy never loses track of his characters and how they are evolving while they watch the world tear itself apart and try, almost pitifully, to put itself back together again. It's an absolutely superhuman performance, one no writer could have dared hope for. Only one writer in history ever did it, and no writer ever will again.
"War and Peace" gets its reputation not from dusty old college professors, but from the sheer power of its story and the awesome scope of its understanding, and its ability to impart that understanding to the reader in the guise of a riveting tale of adventure and romance. The novel survives not because it's A CLASSIC, but because it is impossible to pick it up and not be sucked into its hurricane of humanity.
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2 internautes sur 2 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
4.0étoiles sur 5
A classic, but long, Mars 12 2007
I put off reading this for years, though I'd taken on other books such as CRIME AND PUNISHMENT and some other Russian literature. Frankly, the size put me off, but once started, I couldn't put it down. I was amazed that any author could so hold my attention with a story. Yes, it rambles a bit in places, but this was written in a time when people savored books and really got into the things.
There are a number of sub-plots in this great classic, and of course a love story, but it's really about humanity and the observations that Tolstoy makes about the human race, both then and now---as they are really the same---for better or worse, are incredible. What's scary is that we've not changed all that much. The uselessness of war, the greed, the corruption, and even the hope---they're all there in this book, just as they are with us today.
WAR AND PEACE should be read not because it is a classic but because it is a great book.
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2 internautes sur 2 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
5.0étoiles sur 5
Epic proportions, Fév 28 2006
How does one do justice to a work as monumental and vast as Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' in the short space this review grants? Indeed, I toyed with the idea of trying to encapsulate this epic work in 100 words, but failed. I do know of one review of 'War and Peace' that was even shorter; it read: Napoleon invaded.
It snowed.
Napolean failed.
Russia won. Perhaps that does encapsulate it. Tolstoy would have probably respected such as description, for, as verbose as he and other Russia novelists seemed to be (given a purely page-count analysis), he appreciated brevity and essentialism in the description. This holds true for 'War and Peace'. I was amazed at the lack of what one might hold to be extraneous detailing in the text -- I would have expected long, drawn out and tedious renderings of situations, emotions or events, but such is not the case. In Tolstoy's following of the Rostovs (poor country gentry) and the Bolkonskis (higher society), and a hero Pierre Bezuhkov, he illustrates basic truths in the way life is lived, and the way it ought to be lived. Tolstoy was a moralist, but no mystic in his writing (unusually so, given his general mystical sentiments in life). He felt it absolutely essential that the novelist should tell the truth, and mystical digressions lead away from that. His characters grow as we watch, and he recounts details that are important (such as Natasha and her doll as a child, and then later Natasha going to church -- these are two ages of the same person, to be sure, but not a simple updating of the character, as if an actress wearing a different costume). Each circumstance, the day-to-day conversations and events, the family interactions, their dealing with life and success and death and defeat, all have an uncanny ring of truth about them. The family resemblance of characters leap off the page: the Rostovs all have a common element (beyond the basic social class attributes), and likewise there is and intangible similarity between Prince Andrei and his father. 'War and Peace' has been described as the Illiad and the Odyssey of the Russian people, with just cause. This is a work that speaks to the meaning and hope of life. His realism forced him to strip away much of the glorification of war and show the realities. Yet Tolstoy presents the events of 1812 as a moral crusade, and that the Russians won against the Napoleonic onslaught because of their adherence to simple, good and true virtues (as much as they relied on the snow to come to their defence). Even the upper classes, the urbane, wealthy and sophisticated Russians in 'War and Peace' have an underlying simplicity (contrasting to the French, and other foreigners', complexity and slyness) that gives them the moral upper hand. One almost hears the echo of 'Simple Gifts' in this Russian epic: Tis a gift to be simple... Yet this is not a stupid or ignorant simplicity. It is a wise state of being. One could imagine Tolstoy being at home with the philosophies of Emerson and Thoreau, and while he might sympathise with Thomas Carlyle in moral and political terms, he would be opposed to his historical hero-worshipful stance, preferring to think of the collective of humanity as the true agent and mover in history. 'War and Peace' is often held up as an example of a long book that nobody can read. This is rubbish. I have three editions, each of which is fewer than 1500 pages (yes, I know that is quite a lot), fewer pages than the Bible, fewer pages than some anthologies of modern novelists. It is long, there is no denying that. But it can be read, and I contend, given the right translation, one might become so enthralled that one might wish it were longer. The Modern Library Edition is just such a translation.
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