I have been carting around a copy of War and Peace for years and have almost parted ways with it several times, including putting it in my building’s lending library a couple of weeks ago but you inspired me to go get it back and actually put it on my TBR 😊😂 I can also confirm Aki Shimazaki’s books are fantastic for learning French. Hers were the first actual novels I read in French and have been able to progress to a lot of contemporary fiction now!
Well, I must admit that I might not have read W&P if I had to read it physically. It's so unwieldly and having the physical reminder of its length could be unmotivating. Congratulations on your French reading progress! So fantastic to hear! As a native French speaker I can't imagine how difficult it must be. Also happy about the confirmation on Shimazaki being a good recommendation.
Off topic: I am still reading Middlemarch now and again. And, I finished Satoshi Yagisawa's "Days at the Morisaki Bookshop" and I absolutely loved it! It was multi-layered in that there was the story line and then there was some philosophy behind it, plus it educated me a bit about the second-hand book trade, especially in the Jimbocho District. After I finished it I learned it was Yagisawa's very first novel. He has written a sequel that I plan to eventually buy and I hope the second lives up to the first. I didn't want the story to end and so I am glad that it continues on! I also learned that there is a music composer with the very same name, also born in 1977 and I am wondering if this is the same person but I did not find anything (yet) online to connect the two entities. My guess is that it *is* the composer who wrote about the Morisaki Bookstore.
This is one of your funniest videos😄I agree with you on War and Peace being an easy read-it’s an easy/smooth read in Russian as well. As for translations-I’ve only read the P&V translation of Crime and Punishment and to me they seem to get Dostoyevsky okay. You are so right about the whole snobbish outlook about Russian literature😂. As a native Russian speaker living in Pennsylvania I’ve come across that outlook a bit. Reading the work is more important than nitpicking every word in a translation. As for free will and inevitability…yeah, these past few days after the election here and the past few years in the world in general have had Tolstoy always in the back of my mind.
Finishing W&P immediately before this election really put an extra damper on the whole thing. Trying to think what future historians will have to deal with when writing about this time period.
I only remember bits of War and Peace, but I recall feeling small as I read it, like history itself had flattened out before me into an ocean deeper than I could fathom. Tolstoy is funny in that he's grand and yet tender in moments with his prose. But as you rightly point out, he's entertaining because he's often satirical and conscious of momentum amidst wit-This applies to Anna Karenina even more, being almost sitcom-esque in its humor and then deep, deep in tenderness such that it flows with a kind of longing for its eventual end. That feeling of deep history I miss. Right now feels historical, no? Like we're in a tenuous time, but I guess like Tolstoy's characters life for us always feels a tad tenuous. Your thoughts make me very much want to go back and reread. Thank you for that.
Speaking of the simplicity and occasional seeming repetitiveness you mentioned in Japanese writing (that comes across in some translations) I noticed that especially with Kazushige Abe's book "Mysterious Setting" (which I have not picked up for some weeks; eventually I'll get back to it even though it has not yet hooked me).
While the repetition is normal in Japanese, I wonder if editors in other languages shouldn't cull some of the repetition? Would that be manipulation of an author's work? It's a topic worth discussing.
@tokyochemist Definitely! It harks back to something I said in a previous comment some months ago- that there is perhaps a balance to be made between translating words and "translating culture." And, in this instance, translating for a certain readership into a style more familiar to that readership. I am perhaps expressing it clumsily, but do you get what I am saying?
Translation - I think Project Gutenberg has the Maude Sisters' translation. That's the translation that is usually free and it also has the benefit of having been blessed by Tolstoy himself, as I have been informed. Maude versus Pevear and Volokhonsky - I agree that PV is difficult to read. Their method is strange. Volokhonsky translated word for word from Russian to English and Pevear edits. Both are fluent in French, from what I understand. I do like what they are trying to do, but I don't think it works as a standalone work. I read both Maude and PV at the same time. It was an accidental discovery that reading both at the same gave me a greater appreciation of the book than had I read just one. Without the Maude, I would not have appreciated the PV. History - I agree with you about Tolstoy message about needing distance. That's why he wrote about the Napoleonic Wars, because it was already long past when he was writing about it. And the second epilogue... LOL, I know lots of people who did not read the second epilogue. I also know people who tell those people that they did not read all of War and Peace because they did not read the second epilogue. I think the second epilogue explains why he wrote the book the way he did. There is something childlike about all of the characters. I read War and Peace with A Public Space and Yiyun Li back in 2020 in the early days of the pandemic. It just so happens that Li is again leading a readalong, this time Don Quixote. I think it starts in the next couple of weeks. I won't be joining because I have begun my Genji Project, but I thought you might be interested.
Yes, Maude, thank you. And yes, without the chapter about historians, and without the 2nd epilogue W&P becomes a simple melodrama. It needs those chapters to instill meaning into the work. Don Quixote is fantastic and I would love to reread it someday but that is a someday project for sure.
I have been carting around a copy of War and Peace for years and have almost parted ways with it several times, including putting it in my building’s lending library a couple of weeks ago but you inspired me to go get it back and actually put it on my TBR 😊😂
I can also confirm Aki Shimazaki’s books are fantastic for learning French. Hers were the first actual novels I read in French and have been able to progress to a lot of contemporary fiction now!
Well, I must admit that I might not have read W&P if I had to read it physically. It's so unwieldly and having the physical reminder of its length could be unmotivating. Congratulations on your French reading progress! So fantastic to hear! As a native French speaker I can't imagine how difficult it must be. Also happy about the confirmation on Shimazaki being a good recommendation.
Off topic: I am still reading Middlemarch now and again. And, I finished Satoshi Yagisawa's "Days at the Morisaki Bookshop" and I absolutely loved it! It was multi-layered in that there was the story line and then there was some philosophy behind it, plus it educated me a bit about the second-hand book trade, especially in the Jimbocho District. After I finished it I learned it was Yagisawa's very first novel. He has written a sequel that I plan to eventually buy and I hope the second lives up to the first. I didn't want the story to end and so I am glad that it continues on! I also learned that there is a music composer with the very same name, also born in 1977 and I am wondering if this is the same person but I did not find anything (yet) online to connect the two entities. My guess is that it *is* the composer who wrote about the Morisaki Bookstore.
This is one of your funniest videos😄I agree with you on War and Peace being an easy read-it’s an easy/smooth read in Russian as well. As for translations-I’ve only read the P&V translation of Crime and Punishment and to me they seem to get Dostoyevsky okay. You are so right about the whole snobbish outlook about Russian literature😂. As a native Russian speaker living in Pennsylvania I’ve come across that outlook a bit. Reading the work is more important than nitpicking every word in a translation.
As for free will and inevitability…yeah, these past few days after the election here and the past few years in the world in general have had Tolstoy always in the back of my mind.
Finishing W&P immediately before this election really put an extra damper on the whole thing. Trying to think what future historians will have to deal with when writing about this time period.
I only remember bits of War and Peace, but I recall feeling small as I read it, like history itself had flattened out before me into an ocean deeper than I could fathom. Tolstoy is funny in that he's grand and yet tender in moments with his prose. But as you rightly point out, he's entertaining because he's often satirical and conscious of momentum amidst wit-This applies to Anna Karenina even more, being almost sitcom-esque in its humor and then deep, deep in tenderness such that it flows with a kind of longing for its eventual end.
That feeling of deep history I miss. Right now feels historical, no? Like we're in a tenuous time, but I guess like Tolstoy's characters life for us always feels a tad tenuous. Your thoughts make me very much want to go back and reread. Thank you for that.
@@ToReadersItMayConcern And thank you for your comment. Again your way of putting your thoughts into words is inspiring.
So many translations of War and Peace. interested in your ughts on this one. Thank!
I really think the Maude translation was really smooth and accessible. A great way to read W&P.
Speaking of the simplicity and occasional seeming repetitiveness you mentioned in Japanese writing (that comes across in some translations) I noticed that especially with Kazushige Abe's book "Mysterious Setting" (which I have not picked up for some weeks; eventually I'll get back to it even though it has not yet hooked me).
While the repetition is normal in Japanese, I wonder if editors in other languages shouldn't cull some of the repetition? Would that be manipulation of an author's work? It's a topic worth discussing.
@tokyochemist Definitely! It harks back to something I said in a previous comment some months ago- that there is perhaps a balance to be made between translating words and "translating culture." And, in this instance, translating for a certain readership into a style more familiar to that readership. I am perhaps expressing it clumsily, but do you get what I am saying?
"Sorry I'm late"... I was waiting for the monthly hotspot GBs to refill....
I didn't post until Tuesday, the morning of the US election so you're not the only one who was late! 😄
Translation - I think Project Gutenberg has the Maude Sisters' translation. That's the translation that is usually free and it also has the benefit of having been blessed by Tolstoy himself, as I have been informed.
Maude versus Pevear and Volokhonsky - I agree that PV is difficult to read. Their method is strange. Volokhonsky translated word for word from Russian to English and Pevear edits. Both are fluent in French, from what I understand. I do like what they are trying to do, but I don't think it works as a standalone work. I read both Maude and PV at the same time. It was an accidental discovery that reading both at the same gave me a greater appreciation of the book than had I read just one. Without the Maude, I would not have appreciated the PV.
History - I agree with you about Tolstoy message about needing distance. That's why he wrote about the Napoleonic Wars, because it was already long past when he was writing about it. And the second epilogue... LOL, I know lots of people who did not read the second epilogue. I also know people who tell those people that they did not read all of War and Peace because they did not read the second epilogue. I think the second epilogue explains why he wrote the book the way he did. There is something childlike about all of the characters.
I read War and Peace with A Public Space and Yiyun Li back in 2020 in the early days of the pandemic. It just so happens that Li is again leading a readalong, this time Don Quixote. I think it starts in the next couple of weeks. I won't be joining because I have begun my Genji Project, but I thought you might be interested.
Yes, Maude, thank you. And yes, without the chapter about historians, and without the 2nd epilogue W&P becomes a simple melodrama. It needs those chapters to instill meaning into the work. Don Quixote is fantastic and I would love to reread it someday but that is a someday project for sure.