June 2024 in Books: What I'm Reading... by Chekhov

Progress has been made in a 1970s Penguin Classics paperback of Chekhov's Lady with Lapdog and Other Stories: I read "The House with an Attic (An Artist's Story)," translated by David Magarshack, today.

I. I. Shishkin and A. V. Gine in the Studio on the Valaam Island (1860)
by Ivan Shishkin (1831–1898). Wikimedia Commons.

One day [...] I found myself by sheer chance on an estate I had never been to before. The sun was already low on the horizon and the evening shadows lay over the flowering rye. Two rows of very tall, solidly planted old fir trees stood like solid walls, forming a beautiful dark avenue.

***

Chekhov's short story recounts an episode in the life of a cynical artist. The artist, the narrator of the tale and not in an omniscient sense, is renting a house in the countryside. There he gets to know a family of three women: the mother Yekaterina Pavlova, the elder daughter Lydia, and the younger daughter Zhenya.

Lydia is occupied with charitable works: teaching, providing medical care, and lending books. The artist squabbles with her: according to him, she is merely greasing the wheels of a homicidal system that condemns poor Russians to overly long working hours, which permit them no time to enjoy the fruits of education, and will make them sick anyway.

In Front of the Mirror (1870)
by Ivan Shishkin. Wikimedia Commons.

I asked myself while reading if Lydia herself is attracted to the artist. Is she even more irritated that he does not fall in with her views, because her political principles force her to see an obstacle between them because of that? Is the artist also interested, but finds her 'too difficult'? I suspect it, but perhaps Chekhov didn't intend it – then either it's a subconscious subtext, or I am wrong. Perhaps the author sees Lydia's intention exactly as the artist interprets it: she thinks that she needs to punish the artist for his views, which get in the way of her labour.

At any rate, the artist falls for Zhenya. As Zhenya is only 17 years old, and portrayed as naive rather than well-informed and independent for her age, I winced while reading.

She longed for me to introduce her into the sphere of the eternal and the beautiful, into that higher world in which, as she imagined, I was quite at home

In the passage where he describes Zhenya's body as "unformed," the artist seems himself to feel a line has been crossed, albeit not in a legal or criminal sense given customs and legislation of the time. The story was published in 1896, and Chekhov died in 1904.

Corner of overgrown garden. Ground elder (1884)
by Ivan Shishkin. Wikimedia Commons.

It's the second story of Chekhov's I've read where his characters self-reflect ambiguously about what 20th century sociological theorists might call the 'male gaze.'

(In the short story Ariadne, he writes about a young Muscovite who is dismayed at the thought of treating partnerships as pairing together heterosexual couples regardless of liking or character or any other factor. Another character, who conducts an adulterous affair with the titular Ariadne, just thinks that any woman is fair game if he's attracted to her: no deep feelings, thoughts, or sentiments needed.)

APPARENTLY Chekhov's stories were often not so much 'inspired by' as directly based on his own life and people he knew. Which sounds dangerous, but as his stories appeared in magazines and Russians in his circles read and reacted to them, he seemed to be fine risking a fist to the face from a disgruntled acquaintance.

Given that garden-variety gossip arguably informed his plotting, it isn't clear to me: was he trying to make a deeper point about Lydia's character here? or can we just understand "The House with an Attic" as a straightforward narrative drawn from real-life experiences of 1. debating how to improve the Russian society of his time, and 2. finding a love that escapes?

THE PROTAGONIST'S ASSERTIONS about sociopolitics seem largely unreasonable, with veins of the reasonable. Of course everyone is prone to exaggerate due to the heat of debate, or because they lack direct illustrations and examples. Chekhov was a doctor, but/so it's hard to believe that the author agrees with every word:

Lydia asks,

But you also deny the usefulness of medicine, don't you?

The artist replies,

Yes. [...] Do away with the main cause of disease, physical labour, and and there will be no more diseases. 

*

I like the poignant ambivalence when Chekhov leaves hopeful loose threads in his stories – to be continued – for his characters, instead of plunging into an impressive but gloomy dead end.

A Forest (1890s)
by Ivan Shishkin. Wikimedia Commons.

May 2019 in Books: What We'll Be Reading Next

Illustration from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
by W. W. Denslow
via Wikimedia Commons

"2019 in books: what you'll be reading this year"
The Guardian,
Saturday, January 5, 2019

May 6th will be the 100th anniversary of the death of L. Frank Baum, the American children's author who wrote the Wizard of Oz books, mentions The Guardian. We still have perhaps two-thirds of the series in our bookshelves, so I might take a look at them again.

Walt Whitman, the poet who foisted upon us (indirectly) the film Dead Poets' Society and who inspired much other art by writing Leaves of Grass, was born 200 years ago on May 31st.

As far as new books appearing this month, I feel drawn to the reprint of Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky, edited by Bryan Karetnyk, that Penguin Classics will be releasing tomorrow. Also, having enjoyed a New York-centred novel for teenagers, The Poet X, read on an audiobook by the author, Elizabeth Acevedo, I'm looking forward to With the Fire on High.

***

The Poet X (2018), which I read on the recommendation of a colleague, is a series of fictional autobiographical poems written by a Dominican daughter of a Catholic family. Xiomara's passion for writing, her growing skepticism of the Catholic religion of her upbringing, and her anxiousness to break free from the rigid repression of her mother's household to venture further in both writing and in a relationship with a boy classmate, drive her away from her old life.

If I were to have read all the verse that I listened to per audiobook in a paper book, it might have felt weaker, because the print lacks the momentum and the authenticity that the author's voice gave it.

The heart of the book is slam poetry anyway, however, so it naturally lends itself best to a spoken performance.

Skimming through the Amazon preview, however, I see that even in printed form it is already pithy:

My parents probably wanted a girl who would sit in the pews
wearing pretty florals and a soft smile.
They got combat boots and a mouth silent
until it's sharp as an island machete.

In terms of other Young Adult books I've listened to these past few months, I felt that Angie Thomas's On the Come Up and The Hate U Give — because they see the fictional southern American suburban "ghetto" of Garden Heights in a more detailed and encompassing way than Acevedo's Bronx — were more ambitious than Acevedo's book. But the principal characters in The Poet X are well and ably sketched, although the marginal 'extras' are a bit of a lost opportunity. For example:

Shake my head as even the drug dealers posted up
near the building smile more in the summer, their hard scowls
softening into glue-eyed stares in the direction

of the girls in summer dresses and short shorts

via Amazon.com

In On the Come Up or The Hate U Give, we're likely to be told about what the dealers' families are like, why they're selling drugs, who has the dealers under their thumb and how likely the dealers are to escape from gang affiliations and this livelihood if they want to escape.

We'll know which hobbies and childhood plans are stored on the other side of the line that separates law from law-breaking, where the dealers' ethical boundaries lie, where the balance is between joy at a generous income and distaste at its origin, what their family, friends, and neighbours think of their dealing, and what happens to the neighbourhood.

In Acevedo's book, as far as I recall the only thing we know is that they're sleazy and physically threatening. All of this is no reflection on her writing, because she might be just faithfully writing what she knew. But it is a little sad that given a complex neighbourhood, the depiction of its humanity does not extend further, and that the world is separated into the proverbial sheep and the goats.

I like logical prose and understated self-description and careful similes, so the poetry is often wasted on me. For example,

Jesus feels like a friend
I've had my whole childhood
who has suddenly become brand-new;
who invites himself over too often, who texts me too much.

This doesn't seem like an apt comparison to me, if I'm being fastidious.

I think that Acevedo's book is also firmly anchored in a conservative world where well-inclined teachers are authorities to appeal to and imitate, and one can leave poverty by 'obeying the rules.' In Thomas's books, the teachers can be good or bad, but in both cases certainly don't know everything. Also, she's likelier to think that 'the rules' suck or don't work. On Friday, American politician Ilhan Omar Twitter-posted a quotation from Malcolm X:

I just don't believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression.

via Amazon

Thomas mentions Malcolm X in The Hate U Give, and I think she'd approve of this quotation. She also seems to believe, refreshingly, that teenagers even at 16 have the right to chart their own paths and morality independently of the adults (relatives or non-relatives) in their environment. I was worried about Acevedo's book because — in contrast to my own experience, at least — the relationship with the mother seemed so toxic that I wasn't sure if it was redeemable; but Xiomara's path forward still lay closely bound with her family, although the author does not condemn her impulse to flee them for a while.

*

To switch from The Poet X to On the Come Up, On the Come Up also worried me for different reasons. It seems to accept the instant celebrity that dominates the internet age; I'd have expected Angie Thomas to turn against that.

Bri, On the Come Up's protagonist, has worked to become a rapper for years, filling notebooks with her verse. I guess she has therefore earned the confidence to put her rap forward on YouTube and on the radio, and to seek a record deal. But it surprises me a great deal that the adult professionals didn't require her to do more training, or to receive more input from mentors or other professionals, so that her career would be more solidly grounded and versatile.

Besides, I suspect that instant fame — which Bri experiences — is so psychologically damaging that I can't imagine why it is still tolerated. Reality TV stars, parents of a murdered child, high school students who survived a bullet, someone who was in an internet meme — all of these people face a remorseless artillery of publicity and comment, which surely amounts to psychological torture and journalistic malpractice. Thomas might have experience with this herself, because she rose to fame meteorically once The Hate U Give was appreciated and accepted for publication; although she is not as young as her heroine, she was not yet 30 at that time. But the main criticism of fame she offers in On the Come Up is that words can be twisted against a rapper (or author), to allege horrible or at least dangerous messages that were never intended. This can lead to violence by people who see such messages where none exist, and to personal and professional reprisals against the unfortunate rapper or author.

But, to end the carping criticism, Thomas's and Acevedo's books spotlight a part of the American experience I rarely see described with such a ring of truth and of affectionate, firsthand knowledge. That is why I'm pleased about Acevedo's new book, mentioned above, which is about teenage pregnancy and will appear on May 7th; and pleased about Thomas's remarks on Twitter that she is working on a new novel.

***

War and Peace, Piecemeal: Round Four

Fall of the Damned
Hieronymus Bosch
(ca. 1450-1516)
via Wikimedia Commons

THE LAST 'live blog' of War and Peace, translated by Rosemary Edmonds, took place quite a while ago, but we (or at least 'I') reached the 18th chapter. This was just before the death of Count Bezuhov, father of Pierre, who is the well-meaning social dromedary who unwisely dove into Russian society headfirst after he returned from his studies abroad. The death scene itself is impressive, because it is a milder version of a grand Hogarthian display of hypocrisy; its particular solemnity is ludicrous in light of its trivial, baseminded underpinnings. (It is not unlike the deathbed of Peter Featherstone in Middlemarch.) But it makes me a little uncomfortable.

The next scene is in the countryside, where Prince Bolkonsky is living out the rest of his stately aristocratic life in splendid isolation. His son Andrei (the friend of Pierre) has already escaped, and his father is very proud and fond of him; but Princess Maria, being a woman, is stuck in the position of being molded into the male heir whom her father had always fancied he would like to have. At least that's my reading of the situation. This enforced sobriety and manly strongmindedness which Maria is supposed to possess — they are not poor qualities in themselves but qualities which are best acquired or kept on one's own initiative — contrast pitifully with her self-doubt and romantic aspirations.

12:28 p.m. Maria Bolkonsky finds an ally in girlishness in her friend Julie Kuragin, who writes her the sort of youthful, gushing letter which shrivels under the scrutiny of adult persons. Among her maidenly woes is her plain face, which Tolstoy tritely redeems with a 'pair of fine eyes.' In Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the hero is compelled to change his opinion of the heroine thusly:

no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes.

(Vol. I, Chapter 6, at Austen.com.)

In War and Peace, the narrative voice says,

. . . Princess Maria sighed and glanced into the pier-glass which stood on her right. It reflected a slight, homely figure and thin features. Her eyes, always melancholy, now looked with particular hopelessness at her reflection in the mirror.

Her friend had written that she has beautiful eyes, but Maria doubts it. So the narrator steps in to explain,

the princess's eyes — large, deep and luminous (it sometimes seemed as if whole shafts of warm light radiated from them) — were so lovely that very often in spite of the plainness of her face they gave her a charm that was more attractive than beauty. But the princess never saw the beautiful expression of her own eyes — the expression they had when she was not thinking of herself.

and moralize: "Like most people's, her face assumed an affected, unnatural expression as soon as she looked in a glass."

As a former girl-teenager, these cogitations ring true to me; I was told that my eyes were pretty and I liked having long hair and doughty legs, but worried about everything else. But I outgrew it by sixteen and find it, in retrospect, horribly mopy and rather embarrassing. As for Tolstoy, he seems to be sermonizing (not unkindly) that feeling poorly about one's pulchritude is the price of vanity; but that characterization might do him an injustice.


13:45 p.m. Julie Kuragin proffers three important pieces of gossip. Firstly, Russia's war against Napoleon is underway and Nikolai Rostov (at whom she has been casting sheep's eyes, to use an amusingly terrible phrase) has enlisted. Secondly, Pierre Bezuhov is being beset by partis and their parents, who are casting sheep's eyes at his new inheritance. Thirdly, the adult relatives (e.g. Prince Vasili, one of the deathbed harpies) of Anatole Kuragin are thinking of palming him off as a husband on Marie. I don't know if this has been mentioned in the book yet, but Anatole Kuragin is — in modern parlance — The Absolute Worst, a glamorous society creep. So she is in great peril!

War and Peace, Piecemeal: Round Three

Another installment at an unhallowed hour of liveblogged War and Peace (tr. by Rosemary Edmonds), starting with Chapter 16 at the name-day party for Countess Natalia Rostov and her daughter, little Natalia Rostov.

1:28 AM THE dinner draws to a close after a further heated discussion as to whether Russia should enter the war or not — Shinshin is against while Nikolai Rostov is filled with militaristic fervour and supports a colonel who declares otherwise — and Natasha's high-pitched and naughty inquiry — in the face of the dragonish Maria Dmitrievna, who waives her dragonishness for her little cossack, and of the entire assembled company — as to what will come for dessert.

War and Peace, Piecemeal: Round Two

A live blog of my thirdish reread (minus the essay at the end) of Tolstoy's War and Peace in the Penguin edition. It is not a Thursday, where the book would fit into the classics category, but to reuse an analogy, I'm not good at issuing forth a stream of creativity with regularity, like Old Faithful. The story is continued from the end of Chapter 10.

 1:48 AM To hop over a lot, the party at the Rostovs' in St. Petersburg ends and Princess Drubetskoy with son Boris in two go forth in their carriage, hat in claw as it were, to mooch from Count Bezuhov. Bezuhov is on his deathbed but they don't much care, though Boris finds this humiliating. There they encounter fellow harpies Prince Vasili Kuragin and one of the count's nieces. Pierre is hanging out in his room in the absence of harpydom and in the presence of great discomfort.

Skipping back a few days earlier, Pierre has come back from Moscow and his disgrace not looking forward to much. His female cousins greet him with self-righteous contempt on the one hand and greedy schadenfreude on the other, and when he awkwardly asks whether he might see the Count, the eldest declares, "The count is suffering both physically and morally, and your only anxiety, it seems, has been to increase his sufferings." No, really, could I see him, repeats Pierre. Only if you want to see him die!! answers his cousin. (Obviously not in those exact words.) The next morning Prince Vasili comes hopping in and after similar self-righteousness and caution not to approach the count, etc., confirms Pierre in his mini-exile.

Returning to the present, a human is sighted on his threshold at last in the form of Boris, while Pierre is play-acting a Napoleonic tirade. Which is, I think, as embarrassing to the rightminded person as being caught solemnly dancing the can-can in undersized high heels. Boris seems to think so; at any rate he is quite condescending. After they are introduced, he is astute enough to painstakingly state that neither he nor his mother are after Count Bezuhov's money. Pierre mistakes this for painful honesty and that establishes Boris on a friendly footing with him, which was I think Princess Drubetskoy's purpose in sending Boris to Pierre's room and Boris's purpose in going. Anyway, I think Tolstoy conveys very well how nice, unassuming and clever as well as attractive Boris can be, without being wellmeaning, altruistic or intelligent.

When Boris has descended again, Princess Drubetskoy has been in Count Bezuhov's room, and oddly enough the Count hasn't joined the angels and struck a harp yet. So clearly the point in keeping Pierre away from the Count's bed is to keep his father from making a will in his favour. Before the Drubetskoys leave, the Princess promises to return and sit with the Count, who would do well to have a good stock of incense, a couple crosses and a vial of holy water (if these are all compatible with the Russian Orthodox tradition) at hand.

In the meantime Countess Rostov, who regards her friend Princess Drubetskoy as an impoverished unfortunate rather than an inveterate leech with unadmirable principles, asks her husband for 500 rubles, which they can ill spare. The husband asks his employee, Mitenka, for 700 rubles in 'nice clean' notes and then the Countess forks over the dough to the Princess. I guess it's worthwhile to remember that the Rostovs in themselves are a family of seven and that they have the servants in their household, grocers, fishmongers, dressmakers, etc. to support and compensate. While the Countess could be hardheaded, she appears to be brought up to find it unladylike to be too precise about finances.

*

Inspecting the Troops at Boulogne, August 15th, 1804
via Wikimedia Commons

(The Boulogne expedition, which Pierre debates one-sidedly with Boris, refers to Napoleon's plan to invade England from in and around Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he did train and quarter a large invasion force. It was also fortified and equipped with numerous barges, which were I think predecessors of the Allies' amphibious landing vessels. Obviously it fizzled. ["Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom" from Wikipedia] But, peculiarly enough, in 1840 his nephew Louis-Napoleon, Napoleon III, tried the same thing in the opposite direction with somewhat fewer soldiers. That fizzled too. ["Napoleon III" from Wikipedia])

*

Chapter 15

03:17 AM The evening party has begun at the Rostovs' and fearsome Maria Dmitrievna Ahrosimov — "le terrible dragon" — is expected. She is

War and Peace, Piecemeal III

After a good night's sleep and the transit to work, the live blog of War and Peace (tr. by Rosemary Edmonds) resumes with the end of the sixth chapter.

11:19 AM In German one uses an expression, evolved from Luther, that one shouldn't draw the devil on the wall. It roughly describes Pierre's self-fulling inverse prophecy that evening; for he goes off to lark with the Kuragins as soon as he is out of Prince Andrei's periphery.

Anatole Kuragin's house is in a dissolute uproar, orchestrated among others by a sly army officer, Dolohov. He bets that he would be able to drink a bottle of rum in one go without turning dizzy enough to fall out of the window. The footmen who are standing by and will have to clean up all and any resulting messes are not entirely pleased but everyone else is until they become too worried. Dolohov wins the bet (which is easier to follow when one watches the film with Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn) by a bloodcurdling hair. Pierre at first approves, then is apprehensive and then is unfortunately inspired to his own misdeeds. He drunkenly hugs and tries to dance with a bear who (likely more sensible than any of his human companions) has been pressed into entertaining the party, and that is where Tolstoy drops the curtain.

To anticipate, we find out in the next chapter that the young men stray from the house to paint the town red; and if it were a modern play one might hear, offstage, the menacing approach of a siren, or in a puppet play, espy th'impending constable's truncheon.

*

The Bear and the Apes, by Egyptian artist (ca. 1325-50)
Paper, 11,5 × 9,7 cm, Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
From 10,000 Meisterwerke der Malerei via Wikimedia Commons

***

12:10 PM In the meantime a nicer party is transpiring in the house of the Rostovs in Povarsky Street.

War and Peace, Piecemeal II

After a bite to eat, and at the rousingly early hour of 03:29 AM, and in the middle of Chapter 3, the attempt to liveblog War and Peace, in Rosemary Edmonds's translation, continues.

04:17 AM Anna Pavlovna is not pleased that an earnest and loud discussion has arisen between Pierre and Abbé Morio as to whether Russia should intervene to keep Europe from being swallowed whole by France. By twittering a commonplace question, she dumbs down the conversation entirely, much to her relief.

The newest arrival is Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who is polished and goodlooking and intelligent and blasé, and who treats his wife like a nitwit. He is consumed by important matters like his future military duty as an aide-de-camp to General Kutuzov. Despite their diametric opposition in some aspects, he is greeted warmly by Pierre and vice versa. I still find it hard to believe that he is so patient with Pierre and so impatient with the princess, and he does seem arrogant.

Outside the room an elderly guest, Princess Drubetskoy, whose circumstances are reduced as the cliché goes, hunts down Prince Vasili and humbly begs for her son Boris to be transferred into the Imperial Guard. He decides that he owes her a favour and besides (being a sort of military stage mother) that she could become a tremendous nuisance, then escapes. Rather like a successful KGB agent who has inserted an operative into a critical position, she returns inconspicuously to the party and is coolly calm.

In the meantime the discussion about Napoleon is becoming more heated. The vicomte says that it serves Prussia, etc., right if it is invaded, because the kings neglected Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and opines that Bonaparte is driving France and its aristocracy to hell in a handbasket. Pierre reveals the equivalent of commie tendencies, suggesting that many aristocrats support Napoleon. Then he argues fiercely that Bonaparte was right and courageous to have the Duc d'Enghien shot for the common good of a unified France, etc. Princess Bolkonsky #2 sees through the humbug and inadvertently raises the pertinent question: "Do you think murder a proof of nobility of soul?" Pierre then argues that the Revolution was right in theory. Which is a pretty gutsy or rude thing to say in front of a French emigrant. The discussion is gently suppressed.

The guests break up after a dead end anecdote by Prince Hippolyte, and Anna Pavlovna is presumably dancing on an imaginary grave as Pierre bids her farewell. Despite his contentiousness, he parts on excellent terms with himself and on fair terms with the others, who find him nice and harmless enough not to be too bothersome. Hippolyte and Princess Bolkonsky #2 flirt a little on the way to the carriage; Andrei Bolkonsky looks like he couldn't care less (which means that he is grumpy) and says goodbye to Pierre.

*

Bonaparte at the Bridge of Arcole (around 1801), by Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835)
Oil on canvas. 73 × 59 cm, in Versailles (one of several copies)
Art Renewal Center via Wikimedia Commons

***

04:33 AM Pierre goes straight to Prince Andrei's home and does a little light reading at random — Caesar's Commentaries — until Prince Andrei comes home and they recapitulate the evening and then Andrei nags Pierre about picking a career. Pierre was catapulted into St. Petersburg by his father for that particular purpose, three months earlier. Andrei brings up the army, Pierre says 'Meh' and comments that he has no beef with Bonaparte, and then Andrei hints that he himself is going to tread the old battlefield not out of holy conviction that Prussia must be succoured or that Napoleon is the devil, but because he is sick of his routine.

Terribly appositely, Princess Bolkonsky #2 makes her entrance and suggests that Prince Andrei could leave off this icky war thingy and instead wangle a position as aide-de-camp to the Emperor. Her husband is signally unimpressed and sternly silent. Then she complains about being offloaded to Andrei's sister and father in the countryside, that she is afraid regarding *cough*the baby*cough*, and then that Andrei doesn't love her any more. Pierre, of course, feels extremely uncomfortable.

Over dinner, by which time Lise (i.e. the princess) has left, Andrei recites a verse from the Timon of Athens primer on matrimony:

Never, never marry [. . .] don't marry until you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of doing, and until you cease to love the woman of your choice and see her plainly, as she really is; or else you will be making a cruel and irreparable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing. Otherwise everything that is fine and noble in you will be thrown away. It will all be wasted on trifles. [. . .] If you marry while you still have any hopes of yourself you will be made to feel at every step that for you all is over, every door closed but that of the drawing-room, where you will stand on the same level as the court lackey and the idiot.

Then he says that, sure, his wife is faithful but she's pretty much the only one who would be. He'd rather she weren't his wife, though. And he really hates girly activities like parties and gossip when he'd rather be doing something grand. Which in his subtle way is as dishonourable and whiny as what his wife said.

Pierre is surprised that his friend, admirable in mental attainments and characterly strength, thinks that his prospects are so bleak, but says nothing. Andrei then asks why Pierre goes out so much with the Kuragins, especially Anatole and especially since the, er, wenching in that environment is not in the best taste. Pierre agrees more or less and says, you know what, I won't go tonight — which satisfies his friend.

That was the middle of Chapter 6 and the temporary end of this second liveblog.

War and Peace, Piecemeal

Empress Maria Fedorovna, by Jean-Louis Voille, late 1790s
Oil on canvas. Russian Museum in St. Petersburg
via Wikimedia Commons
[Portrait chosen because it conveys court dress, picks up on the mentions of the lady in the book, and depicts the immediate historical backdrop to the early stages of War and Peace.]

While beneath the dignity of one of the world's Great Novels, I thought that I could never write a decent overview of the entire book, so I am giving a "live blog" of my reading a try. (The most recent updates are at the bottom. And I am indeed up rather late. And I admit that the pun in the post title is rather bad.)

01:22 AM Finished introduction by Rosemary Edmonds, which says among other things that Tolstoy began writing this the year after he married (himself 34 years old) 18-year-old Sophie, which not only changed his mind about the overwhelming onset of decrepitude but also inspired a flowering of his authorial ability. He had been teaching the serfs on his estate and was apparently rather bored of it. He spent years writing and publishing (in increments) War and Peace, as Sophie spent the time copying it out by hand, and it was finally all out as a book in 1869. Apparently the argument of the essay at the end of the book (which I never finished reading during my previous conquests of War and Peace and whereof I only remember the argument that history is not guided by God toward some fulfillment because he could fulfill the world at once — which logic really impressed me at the time, though now I think I a) misunderstood it; b) would have to reread the passage; and c) disagree) is that the straightforward goodness of the Russian people won out over the artificial grandeur of a certain Corsican general and his French host.

01:54 AM

Setting: 1805, Russia under Tsar Alexander I and the dowager(?) Empress Maria