... as opposed to a merely good one?
Blogging will continue to be light today as I continue reading War and Peace. But Tolstoy's masterpiece has got me to wondering: What exactly is it that makes it so great?
It is a world on paper, for one thing. You pick it up, start reading, and all of a sudden you're not in the 21st century anymore. Tolstoy has a unfailing knack for choosing the right details and arranging them in just the right way to bring a scene or a person to life. I guess it comes down to his preternatural power of imagining what he is writing about so vividly:
... there was no one between the squadron and the enemy, but there was that dreadful dividing line of uncertainty and fear, so similar to the line between the living and the dead. All of them sensed this, and one question worried them all: would they cross it or not, and if yes, how would they cross it?
I'm only about a sixth of the way through, but already the contrast between the war as talked about in the drawing rooms and the war as experienced on the fields of battle seems to offer a lesson our chattering classes could well use.
You're really and truly reading War and Peace?? I bow to your literate prowess. I only got about half way through it, and then I used it as a projectile to hit someone who was annoying me.
ReplyDeleteIt gave him a concussion, but he left me alone. LOL
Read on!
i agree. you must be a dyed-in-the-wool bibliophile.
ReplyDeleteHi Bonnie and Vikram:
ReplyDeleteThe new translation is a lot easier to get through. And you have to relax and remind yourself that 1,350 pages is going to take some time. It's not a page-turner, though, because you have no great desire to get to the next page, since the one you're reading is so good. I will be writing about it for our Jan. 29 issue (I hope).