War and Peace and Everything Else (Feat. Lindsay Ellis and Princess Weekes) | It’s Lit
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- čas přidán 6. 08. 2020
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According to Tolstoy himself, War and Peace was "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle."
And in this day and age of publishing, where word count, “readability”, and topical relevance are the lifeline of getting a novel to print, we look at books like War & Peace as something of a relic.
Hosted by Lindsay Ellis and Princess Weekes, It’s Lit! is a show about our favorite books, genres and why we love to read. It’s Lit has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.
Interested in using this video as a teaching resource? Check it out on PBS LearningMedia: to.pbs.org/3KsOs3Q
Hosted by: Princess Weekes
Written by: Angelina Meehan
Director: David Schulte
Executive Producer: Amanda Fox
Producer: Stephanie Noone
Editors: Derek Borsheim, Sara Roma
Writing Consultants: Maia Krause
Executive Producer (PBS): Adam Dylewski
Editorial Producer (PBS): Gabrielle Ewing
Produced by Spotzen for PBS Digital Studios.
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Sounds lie Tolstoy looked at history and though, "what about the side characters?" Then he wrote an epic fanfiction about them.
+
All of the family names are changed versions of actual Moscow families. The Rostov name is based on Tolstoy. He literally went: I can definitely tell my family's story in fanfiction form
The dream
There’s a lot of passages about Napoleon and Kutuzov so I wouldn’t say the book is focused on inconsequential figures. Tolstoy’s his invented characters are more of types for figures who experienced the Napoleonic wars in different ways than they are side characters.
@@notastarcloud rostov was his parents or grand parents, Pierre was him, Andrey was what he aspire to be...
he definitely wrote a fanfiction about him and his family
Me sees war and peace: "way to long, I would never finish!"
Also me: reads an 800,000 word fanfic instead
But it’s different...
Which one
I feel so attacked
That was my first thought when she said how long it was lmaoo
One of my favourite fanfics is over 600k words. I get you. But the thing is, as much as I love very long stories, it still has to be readable and enjoyable, entertaining.
No long, dense slogs. No stories so plodding and boring that it puts me to sleep. But a fic that fleshes out Ruby from supernatural and makes her badarse and awesome, and one of my favourite fictional characters- much better than she is in canon? Hell yes. So damn good. I love that fic.
I’ll still never read War and Peace though. Even though I do own it. Having it on my bookshelf makes me feel smart, even if I haven’t read it and likely never will.
04:22
The way she says, "he just needs therapy..." is just so wholesome and sad at the same time. I LOVE IT.
He lived off grid. He tried his best 😔
I always say War and Peace is like binge watching every season of a long period TV show like Downton Abbey or Mad Men, but in text form and every set, prop, and costume is described in full detail as well.
People also can't deal with a lack of structure or closure on a lot of tv shows, I imagine in the same as happened with this book. It explains a lot, that War and Peace was actually an episodic magazine thing.
@@michelottens6083 To be fair, almost every novel during the nineteenth century was published in this manner.
@@outcastling I wonder if that was a format people quickly knew how to write for, or if it took authors like Tolstoy to popularize styles and contents that worked
That's why I loove long 19th century novels! (Also, Les Miserables! Yay!) It's basically like watching your favorite TV show and you just don't want to let go of your lovely characters.
That’s how I see Count of Monte Cristo (also published episodically). I read it out loud to my mom, and getting to the end felt like finishing Breaking Bad or something. It’s a really great book.
Pierre “quietly realizing his love” for Natasha except he LITERALLY tells her “ If I were not myself, but the handsomest, cleverest, best man in the world, and if I were free I would be on my knees this minute to beg for your hand and your love.” and it literally makes me cry every time I think about it. (also listen to The Great Comet it’s actually incredible. also read War & Peace it’s better than u think)
Yes I keep telling people this too! If ever a time to read an ironically topical book, it's now, and it's W&P
@@sebastianpesenti1455 currently doing that dude...in page 120.
Pierre really is relatable for people today bc dude just hates himself and goes on such a journey to find purpose in war and peace
I want to note that he didn't just wrestle that bear, they tied that bear back to back with an officer and tossed them into a river. Iconic
lol this 😏😎🐻😂😂
"He just needs therapy." Is an assessment that applies to most classics
Hearing that W&P is a similar length to the LOTR trilogy makes it sounds much less intimidating.
Ah, but in the original almost all the dialogue in the early chapters is in French... First language to most Russian aristocrats of the early 19th century. I think they got rid of that in most English versions of the book ;-)
Come to think of it, there's some High Elfish, Dwarfish and Mordorese (sp?) in the LOTR as well... So another way it's similar to WaP.
@@slavkovalsky1671 Well... the original book is in Russian. I don't know how relevant to talk about the French parts when you've already done away with the original language.
AcetylsaliciIique it’s originally on both French and Russian. Both are original languages.
More than that, though, it’s a slog of a read. One whole part is just a giant essay on moral philosophy.
@@AcetylsaliciIique I am Russian and we read it at school. Yes, a huge part is in French, so we went through attached translations to understand.
Yeah, having just finished a read through of LotR, I might just have to pick up the audiobook of W&P.
“but by where people’s actions fell on the constantly changing gradient between” LOVED that. tolstoy’s ability to drive this point home with both plot AND style is incredible. pierre’s obsession with great man theory and his own feelings of inadequacy and how they relate to tolstoy’s notion that history can not be explained as a series of decisions that were either failures and successes, rather something more messy, more confusing, more wrapped up in the individual decisions of soldiers and standers-by than most historians wanted to acknowledge is super interesting, and not something i’ve been fully able to wrap my head around.
Me and some friends decided to watch the Soviet version of War and Peace as a way to pass the time during COVID, and damn.
Basically, the Soviets got buggy when the Americans adapted War and Peace during the 50s, and because they couldn’t have the capitalists making a definitive version of War and Peace, they made the film a government affair. They gave it a bottomless budget and gave the director access to the Red Army to use as extras.
I‘ve never been to a really big concert, so I think that I might have seen more people on screen in the Soviet War and Peace than I’ve ever seen in my life. Columns of soldiers literally stretch over the horizon. Thousands of people ride horses around trapped, defeated armies, filmed from a plane passing overhead. Moscow is sacked and they light EVERYTHING ON ACTUAL FIRE, AND THEN POINT WIND MACHINES AT IT SO THAT THE REAL ASHES LOOK LIKE FOG.
Like damn, the Soviets went hard. You can see things in that movie that you will never see anywhere else. Do recommend - we watched it in about four settings. It was wild.
When I was looking into that myself, I was pleasantly surprised to see how many parts it was. I took that to mean that it was going to be relatively true to the text. I ran out of room on my device, and I'm still trying to get through what I had managed to download so far.
I never used to be bothered by subtitles. But I have to be in the mood for them. I can't be sleepy, and that is difficult for me because of some of the medication I have to take. If I'm not active, I tend to drift off. It really bothers me. I was a late bloomer when it came to reading books I didn't have to. Wasn't until my late twenties that I started to become a voracious reader. Now I'm in my fifties and can no longer just sit with a book quietly and find myself immersed in it. Sadly, after 20 to 30 minutes I tend to get sleepy again. So now it's audiobooks all around.
Some people don't have a problem with audiobooks, but I actually do. . . At least to some extent. If it's a book I haven't read before, I don't notice the issue nearly as much. But when I listen to an audiobook of something I have taken the time to actually read, I find the audiobook seriously lacking. Or at least its impact on me is considerably lessened. I don't know why that is exactly.
I imagine someone else couldn't explain it quite readily. It likely has something to do with focus. For even if I were to only sit quietly,¹ listening to the audio book, I'm still not going to be giving it as much attention. . .as much of myself. . .as I would otherwise.
•••●●●•••
*¹* ─ Not a common situation, as I would just end up getting sleepy again. Usually it's while I'm driving, doing the dishes, etc. That in and of itself may answer the question. Which is why I also including the option of just _sitting quietly._ Because that *does* happen. For instance, after I'm done the dishes but I'm caught up in a moment within the book. It's not like I don't _ever_ do it. I simply never set out to do it, for the reason previously noted.
Yeah, and actually this film got an Oscar in 1969 :) it was the 1st Oscar for the Soviet/Russian cinematography if I remember correctly.
@@MargaritaBaranova-rn7iz It won for 'Best Foreign Language Film', the first Russian/Soviet winner, though it should've been nominated for whole hosts of other things when you delve into what was/wasn't nominated that year, like Costume Design, Art Direction, Direction, and yeah, especially with regards to the technical innovations on display (those "cannon ball shots", the specialized lens prisms to shoot through for the dance sequences, the camera controls for the helicopter shots, the fire controls with regards to the burning warscapes), Cinematography
There's no movie that quite personifies the word AUDACITY quite like War and Peace. It's one of my favorite films.
@@CaesiusX this is the war and peace of youtube comments
@@DonkeyTheWhale 🤦🏼♂️Ugh, _indeed._ It's somewhat of a curse, I think. I get terribly verbose when I'm doing *CZcams* comments. And even a bit redundant. I attribute the former to the availability of _talk-to-text._ It doesn't seem like quite so much when one is saying it all out loud. 🤷🏼♂️
In fact, when I was 5 years old. . .
I remember when Charlie Brown had to read War and Peace. He just couldn't get through that book and then had to do a book report on it which he did just a few hours before he had to go to school and his teacher let him know how she felt about that. When Linus asked what kind of grade did he get on his report he said his teacher said it looks like somebody read War and Peace, 2 hours before they had to give an oral book report on it.
"She wrote it SEVEN TIMES! With a DIP PEN! And you can't even read it ONCE!"
I was thinking about it throughout the entire video.
I Just watched that movie this morning
first thing I did was look for Axiom's End in Lindsay's background
Did you find them both?
@@Blazingstoke yeah but you can only see the paperback in some of the shots
It's our current version of Where's Wally? (Waldo)
She could do a literary Elf on the Shelf and move them for each video. Hours of fun for the whole family - without giving your kids the damaging existential dread of a sentient elf spy. Everyone wins! 😁
"Thought to be the longest book" Marcel Proust just left the chat.
I love how 1Q84, another very long book, makes multiple references to how long In Search of Lost Time is
War and Peace, the hardcover edition of Stephen King's The Stand, and the hardcover the book IT. All those books can be used for home defense, if you hit somebody in the head with those books they're staying down.
remember to double-tap
I actually used to carry around my copy of War & Peace when I walked alone hdjakskdjjs
I'm gonna use my hardcover edition of Le Mis when somebody breaks in.
@@luthientinuviel3883 exactly what I was going to say; There should be a self-defence technique focused on how to best use your literary bricks to take someone down lol
@@thaissa215 Just mimic the library scene from John Wick 3 and hope for the best lol
as a russian i don't understand how it's long when you read it in ninth grade and even if you don't you still know everything about every detail and pass exams like it was nothing
As a Russian student I'm surprised about how many really big books you guys have and that are just normal to you. One of my teachers was like oh War and Peace I read that as a teenager and everyone looked at her with shock, like, how????
@@marina.chayka Hey, teens read them but it doesn't mean they understand them. Historical and geographical (and for ASD kids, social) understanding is still limited simply due to the lack of experience.
In retrospect, I sure as hell didn't understand at least a half of what was going on, and still got straight A's in my literature class
I wonder how many students really internalize the themes of War and Peace. The deep skepticism towards "patriotism" and grand causes in general, for example. Or the condemnation of "great" men.
@@annap9756 still asking people to read it in school is a lot. We don't understand our classics in Brazil either but at least they are small.
Smaller books are better for a school setting. A bored kid skimming a huge book isn't going to learn anything.
Good news! It's only 61hrs 6 min on Audible
HOLY WHAT
ok but what was I even expecting
makes the seven hour soviet movie sound like a walk in the park 😃
I’ve listened to it (took me a year lol) and it was pretty great. The guy who narrates the W&P audiobook(s) available on Audible does a lot of fun voices
Hi Katie ...Thanks for sharing you awesome achievement...and I thought, “She’s even more persistent than I am” (my wife reminded me that my quality of persistence was one of my endearing attractions)
Just don't sleep and do nothing but listen to it for like 2 1/2 days and you're good to go.
Literally, the only part i know about the novel is the 70 pages that got adapted into the Great Comet Musical 😳
I own 4 different translations and I don't even know anymore than the 70 pages that became Great Comet
I only knew it exists, and it is aparently important
Omg same
@@LordOfTheTermites yeah, i really wanna read the classics so bad, but the sheer size of war and peace discourages me 😂
@@greenergrass4060 recovery from surgery was when I had the time to focus on it. If you're in a place under lockdown, why not start it? My dad said he wrote down each character by last name, first name, nickname, and patronymic the first time that character popped up.
War and Peace, when read beyond the 100th page is A D D I C T I V E AF.
I've pulled so many allnighters reading it....
“He just needs therapy”
And thus thousands of literary characters were described... and called out
I swear Nikolai and Marya get just as much time in the book as the other main characters, and yet no one ever mentions them and they're routinely cut from every adaptation. They're my favourite pair!
Borris is cut from the 2007 version
Lindsey and Princess need to do more videos together. I love hearing from both of them separately, but they are such a great duo when together. Like when they talked about fan fiction.
Yup, they have great chemistry
Fun fact: There were so many characters and so much going on in this novel that Tolstoy’s wife had to help him keep track of them all.
Tolstoy's wife also had to write the entrie novel for more than 10 times and was not allowed to have any hobbies or social life
So much for "Tolsoy thought about people*"
*if they are male of couse
@@silkwormchan he hated everyone and that's a fact. He even told that almost everything Pushkin wrote is a trash, haha
Started to read War and Peace out of perceived duty, finished it having fallen in love with that gorgeous door-stopper.
Need more love for the Russian movie adaptation of War and Peace. 7 hours long and completely worth every minute
Yes! Thank you! ❤
Fun fact: I used Great Comet to con my AP Lang & Comp teacher into thinking I read War & Peace
“He just needs therapy” I need a gif of this BAD!!
“literary size queens” i’m dead
Think of it as a series of books - there are a few in there, clearly called "book 1, book 2" etc. Then it doesn't seem so long. And, you'll be glad there's so much of it. I've never been captured by an author's description of human emotion and behaviour than Tolstoy's - even to people who I'd usually have very little sympathy for/anything in common with (the aristocracy, in a country I've never visited)
I can handle if it’s broken into actual books. My version of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is like that too
When the book was quoted and I matched them up to the lyrics of The Great Comet of 1812 my serotonin went brrr
I am reading Les Mis (unabridged) for the first time, and it's interesting how much your description of War and Peace applies to Les Mis as well - not just in the sense that it's a sprawling historical epic that focuses on the lives of ordinary people, but even the more precise details of being written in the late 19th century and set in the beginning of that century. Clearly once I'm done with Hugo I'll have to introduce myself to Tolstoy as well!
I've read it twice (two different translations) and I definitely agree about how much could apply to both.
Tolstoy was inspired to write “War and Peace” after reading Les Miserables
SIZE QUEENS i died
The idea of the importance of historical "side characters" reminds me a lot of the role of the hobbit characters in Tolkien's books, and Tolkien's own views on power and morality and goodness. If I had the mental strength I'd type up an essay about that, but suffice it to say as a "side character" myself feeling at the mercy of the whims of nations and politicians, all of them increasingly insane it seems, I find the ideas presented in both works comforting :)
I took a semester-long course solely on this book in college, and it was one of the most rewarding things I've ever done in school. This is an excellent summary of it, and I really hope everyone who watched it reads it. (or gets to see the wonderful "Great Comet" musical if theaters ever reopen and they revive it)
Hot take: it's long yes but not that complicated to read and really enjoyable
A very reasonable take. Fantasy authors serialize works and often create a huge continuous narrative. The opposite position is usually based on generic assumption reading "literature" is going to be like. Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" is not only far longer, but probably has much denser prose.
War & Peace: the most famous doorstopper that everyone's heard of, but no one's actually read. Myself included.
I liked this book a lot! This and Anna Karrenina are absolutely fantastic. Plus the musical is awesome, everybody should check it out if you like War and Peace, or even if you don't, its really fun!
"There's a war going on out there somewhere, and Andre isn't here."
Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 had the best opening number, and all adaptations of War and Peace should just include it as a foreword from now on.
Appreciate this mostly Princess episode. 💕💕😭💕💕💕💕
I wish they would have just made Princess present this. The abrupt and odd cuts to Lindsey were throwing.
@@Sailorlimabean20 I like seeing Lindsay in these! The beginning sequence was cute. But maybe they could've arranged it to switch more naturally between Princess and Lindsay
Bee, I love Lindsey, but this was a Princes episode and it was kinda roughly edited and off balance. I dunno. I think it could have been stronger with either more or less Lindsey. Lol.
@@Sailorlimabean20 I've actually never seen Princess before. I came as a Lindsay fan. I won't say I thought it was bad just REALLY rough. I'm glad to know it seems to be a one off. I think there is potential for me to be a fan but wasn't sure
Mary OBrien yeah it felt off balance. Lindsay was there in the beginning and then it felt like she dropped off the Zoom call while they were presenting a group book report for class lol. I still enjoyed the video though! It’s cool to see them work together
I don’t know how much I needed a new episode with Lindsay and Princess until I saw the notification, y’all are awesome together!
"But those other books despite their length have embedded theirselves into our public consciousness - more so than war and peace."
In the US maybe. Outside of the US nobody has ever heard about anything by Any Rand (and rightfully so) and at least in Germany we love us our Russian writers, far far more so than the French (and among the French, Victor Hugo is among the lesser well known and liked in German literary circles).
Tolstoi and Dostojewski now, we REALLY love us some of theirs here.
hear, hear!
I think all of Europe loves russian writers
I've noticed even the French who adore their writers acknowledge the Russians
This video is motivating me to pick up the copy of War and Peace I got a while back and actually read it. I’ve been, in all honesty, a bit afraid of it but this video alerted me to the fact that Les Mis is nearly 100k longer than W&P and if I read Les Mis in a week and a half, I can definitely read this one too, though I hold no ambitions of breaking my own record 😂
How did you do? :)
@@helenl3193 I have, in fact, failed to pick War and Peace back up again. My russian professor would not approve 😂
Omg the “nice” joke when 1869 is mentioned. I about died. Favorite channel ever!!
There's also the issue of the translation quality.
Yes, W&P will still be a loose, baggy monster (to paraphrase Andrew Kaufman) even with the best translation quality, but I feel that reading a well translated edition of W&P greatly helps you in getting through the novel. Shoddy translation does add up to your difficulty getting into it.
Unfortunately this problem didn't only plague Tolstoy's body of work, Dostoyevsky also suffered the same problem (ie. the body of work not being well translated into English), heck even the ones with seemingly less convoluted prose (Turgenev and Chekhov) got this problem.
Anyway, it has gotten better nowadays, so if you are commencing your read on War and Peace (or other hefty Russian novels, by Tolstoy or otherwise), get the well translated editions (and for the love of all things holy, stay away from Constance Garnett's edition!! 😫😫💀)
Well, tell us which translations are good then! I've been toying with the idea of reading this since I got into the Great Comet musical.
@@sanityismadness the recent Pevear and Volokhonsky translations are the definitive editions for translations of russian classics, not just tolstoy
A bad translation is far worse than a bad book. A bad book is an honest attempt to show a person's imagination. A bad translation takes that imagination and stomps all over it. @deadlindance, there are two translations I'd recommend. The first is the Pevear and Volokhinsky one, the other is Anthony Briggs.
I read Garnett's W&P for a couple hundred pages and liked it fine. But if anyone wants to read it, I'd recommend Maude as it's leagues better than Garnett.
well the stars have certainley aligned. I'm reading War and peace at the moment and my favourite literature channel puts out a video about it. Amazing!
Tolstoy's process definitely feels like a callout. No wonder my stories are so dang long 😆
1:58 Looks at Proust on my shelf and sobs at once again being excluded.
This guy read Proust everybody.
@@CarrotConsumer well... He's bought Proust. Owning it and reading it are different things!
I know - I inherited a couple of them, not yet had the courage to attempt a read though - so many books, so little time and the biggest books keep moving to the bottom of the pile 😳
I wish I had been born during the era of magazine serials. It sounds so cool!
I guess it's the past equivalent of weekly TV episodes.
Thank you, Ladies. Always a joy!
11:18 omg The Great Comet really did quote the book pretty much verbatim
yes and that is why nothing rhymes in the musical, dave malloy takes so many quotes verbatim from war and peace
I love Princess!!! I love Lindsey!!!! Y’all are so smart! I could listen to y’all talk about books forever
I became obsessed with the musical the great comet so I HAD to read war and peace. I regret nothing.
This is one of my favorite pieces of literature and you both explained it so well. I actually think the best part of War and Peace is not the plot, but the philosophies that Tolstoy presents to the reader in his essays and even in the plot itself.
Both of you are fabulous! Thank you for making quarantine bearable! Lots of love and admiration to both of you! Slaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy queens!
I get so excited to see a new it's lit in my sub box. Lindsey and Princess are great hosts!
I read it during quarantine for a summer class and I really loved it!
I listened to W&P on audiobook while I was working in a tire factory and loved it. One of the benefits of filling your story with normal people is that it’s relatable forever to people who’s cultural background is absolutely nothing like yours. Just a brilliant piece of writing.
Already in love with this vid, closest friends of mine all like War and Peace and I would like to know at least something about it
Love Lindsay and Princess’s delivery is really fun and engaging. Hope they continue delivery content together.
Me, before that last quote: "Huh, you you, this seems like something up my alley, I should--"
Me, after that last quote: "... he's a wordy bastard, ain't he?"
there are sentences several pages long
Yes, but it is a charming passage isn't it? Verbose, but charming.
I think I used to read a translated abridged version of it and somehow, even though it wasn't like anything I used to read when I was young, I liked it and this video really brings me to understand it better and just maybe I will pick it up again later, to enjoy that perspective better (and especially in our age)
Those blue streaks are everything! And they sit on such an intelligent head!
The very excellent twitter account The Bill and Ted Test failed the 2016 War & Peace costuming pretty hard and now I can never see images from it without thinking of the unfortunate purple dress they put Gillian Anderson in, who deserves so much better.
I read The Death of Ivan Ilych in high school, and was touched by it. I wish I'd put more effort into reading Tolstoy then, because this kind of realism is what I felt all the things I'd read previously lacked.
That said, I didn't actually write anything back then, nor did I understand structure etc. I'd heard the words, been quizzed on them, but fumbled blindly. Now I write (sometimes), have found that internal comprehension... which I outline to say that maybe now, I can read (or, more likely, listen) and not just appreciate the story in the straightforward sense I did as a child and teen, but to look into it's component parts and learn by example how to capture that feeling.
I'm glad you finally decided to cover WAP, one of my favorite novels.
I dedicated my senior year thesis to this tome. This video makes that year of my life feel a little more valid
Wow. This was magnificent.. sooo much to say here. First, You ladies are magnificent, so clever and informative and insightful, and I love the blue braids, Princess.
Second, the fact that War and Peace first appeared serialized definitely suggests why it would be so long, gotta keep selling the next issue. Dickens had this problem, too, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, though their plots were "romantic" and structured, if full of emotion.
Third, that Tolstoy keeps wanting to go further back to explore the origins/inputs of the situation he ultimately wants to discuss, welcome to the challenging realm of the history professor...
Fourth, the idea of the greatness in small things.. oh that is just magnificent. It is how I teach several novels that seem utterly mundane, like Old Man and the Sea and Mrs. Dalloway (don't worry folks, along with the rest of the conventional literary bits- I am not irresponsible, but just like to be different),
And lastly, I remember being thrown out of my Expository Writing course in college (really just a time out to cool off) when I got into a heated argument about why stories don't need near resolutions, that life-stories have no clear endpoints (except birth and death- sorta), so a story can just trail off... I was always struck by stories that begin in media res. There was always something so authentic about them, and, I think, fits with the notion of every person containing that element of greatness. It is these bounded people that have to be "great figures" because we bind them up as types, oversimplifying them for consumption and removing them from the realm of relatability (again, a problem history professors deal with) and reality..
Ah, you have me so stirred up, and I see 225 comments, so clearly a great many other people were equally stirred up by all that you have shared. Thank you. I am going to do more writing on my Blog, I suspect, inspired by your great work. Please keep it up!
Lindsay should do audiobook readings, that excerpt at the end was really nice
I'm a big fan of *Lindsay's,* and now of *Princess Weekes.* While I'm not certain just how much input they had here, I feel it's should be noted, that *Angelina Meehan* wrote a terrific piece.
I particularly enjoyed at 8:59, wherein *Princess* notes another of *Morson's* thoughts and expands upon them, regarding how *Tolstoy's* focus at times takes us through the wonderful minutiae of _simply being human._ How it can not only be unstructured and messy, but how that can be translated to his particular style of writing.
Shortly after the outbreak of World War One, Thomas Mann opined that had Tolstoy been alive (he died in 1910), the Great Powers would not have dared to go to war.
I love that story.
I read War and Peace about 12 years ago, as bedtime reading...it worked. Took about 6 months to get through. then saw the movie all I remember is burnt down mansions and soldiers marching barefoot in the snow.
I love y'all. Just some excellent, wholesome literary content on CZcams. We have no choice but to stan!
True fact: yesterday, I just finished to read the whole book.
This is a nice essay as always. But COME ON,
"Kutzoff"? You swallowed a whole syllable!
I was gonna say something too! I don't speak Russian at all but even I had to double-take at that pronunciation.
She is so great! She had me rolling with the "he just needed therapy" bit and the bit regarding the bear wrestling!
My friend is reading this rn and she is giving me a play by play everytime we talk
What an outstanding book channel to stumble across. Well done, great commentary and summary, solid graphic and storytelling devices…stoked👍
We must never forget that War and Peace is 19th Century realism. Stendhal described that the "novels" of that time should be like a double-faced mirror floating above the ground. In other words a novel should show the mud and the heavens at the same time. The conception of the novel was of a representation of real life. EVERYTHING had to be included to give that illusion of realism (yes, even essays on agriculture or politics, etc.). That's why some characters or plot lines today seem "to go nowhere". 19th century writers didn't intend them to go anywhere. They're there for depth and to flesh out the world. A typical Russian noble of the time had many, many servants. So every noble in Tolstoy's work has many, many servants. Some have lines of their own, others get involved in a certain aspect of that noble`s life and then disappear bc they aren`t important anymore and so on. This is also a consequence of his idea that history is forged by the masses as well as by the big historical figures and that every human being has a complex world inside their soul. Another thing, all the historical and political developments he describes are important not only to understand the state of Russia as a whole (that is, noble and peasants alike) at the onset of the Napoleonic invasion, but also to understand the different attitudes that the main characters display when everything starts to go down (the famous bear scene epitomizes the decadence of much of Russia’s aristocracy at the time, for example). Tolstoy's work in general is a prime example of proto-"slice-of-life" literature which became very common in the 20th century. That's why he eschews literary concepts of structure, closure, steady pacing, etc. War & Peace is nearly universally considered one of the best novels ever written, and that has nothing to do with its size. Tolstoy was a master stylist with a huge talent for creating life-sized minor characters with only a few strokes. Plus, he not only perfected 19th century realism, he also took it to a whole new level and set the stage for a lot of the literature written in the first half of the 20th century. His influence on Western novelists has been phenomenal as well, and through Chékhov, who admired Tolstoy to no end, he indirectly influenced the birth of the contemporary short story. Tolstoy and his work are just... incredible
I agree with Gary Saul Morson's take on Tolstoy's deliberate lack of structure. Reading it for the first time as a teenager, and re-reading it now feels like going through random episodes of a show you've started watching from the third season. Old-school Russian telenovela.
I like hearing about books I've never read 💛🖤💖💙💚❤😊.
should i have started bawling at pierres love revelation during the comet. i dont think it was intended but it WORKED
Well done, ladies! I solemnly promise not to wrestle any bears.
solipsistic: of, relating to, or characterized by solipsism or extreme egocentricity
Solipsism: the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist.
I googled so you don't have to
May the odds be ever in your favor
Thank you fam. Doing God's work.
I took Morson's 101 Russian Lit class at Northwestern. He's great.
that is so cool!
I liked the bit with the cans! That was super cute!
I am the world’s biggest fan of war and peace...what makes it so relevant even today is that it tells you what to put your faith in: not in society, country, political idealism, revolution or war, which will all ultimately let you down and become corrupt or evil. Believe instead in the goodness of humanity, that will always be there, if we can find it in ourselves
Speaking of books, I bought yours, Lindsay. I am half way through, very good.
I'm a third of the way through!
It looks intimidating, but since it was a serial it's divided in very short chapters, very easy to follow. I love this book, and I love princess Mary Bolkonskaya
There is a (I think free) version in the Kindle store that is SO helpful; it allows you to highlight character names and see where they first appeared and who they are and that's what got me through it, because I cant keep track of the 200 Russian ways of referring to a Maria
I’m russian so we were forced to read w&p in high school, I didn’t do that fully, half-pages of french made me mad - so I just read a short version made for exams that we could find in stores (was before Wikipedia).
Thanks to you, I’m actually compelled to read it now 💜
Thanks for the video! The point about "contingency" kind of helped me to understand and accept the ending better. At first I felt a bit gypped by how abruptly we left the characters and proceeded to a 12-chapter long epilogue about his philosophy of history (and I guess I still kind of do), but hearing what you all mentioned about how he was trying to portray the realistic unresolved nature of life helps me to understand it a little more. It's a shame he never wrote the sequel about the Decembrists.
An episode about the banned books list would be really cool
10:15 - I love the phrase "vast interiority." I'm gonna find an excuse to work that into conversation.
So much to stan!!!!!! I write like Tolstoy (except not good), such relatable author content!!!!
I've never wanted to read War and Peace like that, but now it feels like a must. It sounds like such a great read now.
My high school has this on the reading list for the junior. I was in the first class when they added it to the curriculum and it took up most of the fall semester. After a few years they realized how big and complex it is and made the first half part of summer reading.
Junior?? oof thats tough.... oh actually I think I was reading Beloved which is its own beast
as a middle-aged russian who felt guilty for not having read the book ever since i was in school, I am very grateful for this summary
Sometimes I have a 50 video watch later cue and I just see a video that I have to watch immediately and skip every one of those other videos and Lindsay Ellis talking about War and Peace is something worth skipping 50 other videos to achieve
My sister took forever to find her favorite translation, and when she finally started reading it she just said, "It's not boring, they tie a policeman to a bear!"
“So they can say that they have “ dammit you caught me.
I got into War and Peace because I am a Tolstoy fan. I first read a collection of stories he gathered (some he rewrote, some he wrote from scratch) and published as a reading material for children, and I read that when I was in the 5th grade (that book was a birthday present). I fell in love with his writing style right then and there and since then I was determined to read all his novels and works 😏😺😼.