War and Peace (again) by Leo Tolstoy

Okay, so, here we go again.

Once upon a time, in the quaint, innocent year 2017, I thought I read Leo Tolstoy's famously long classic novel War and Peace. I was wrong. I discovered that I had read an abridged version after I finished. Feeling like this didn't count as reading the real thing, I pledged to eventually read it again before crossing it off my Classics Club list. The years went by and I put off this giant reread until I had no other Classics Club books left to finish. I completed 99 out of my 100 picks. It was finally time to go back and fulfill the promise I made to myself four years ago. It was time to read War and Peace as it was meant to be experienced--all 1,215 pages of it.

Armed with an unabridged edition and more than a little trepidation, I embarked on a marathon of reading. I had a lot of questions I wanted answered. Would reading the complete version make a difference? Would I like it any more than my first time around? Would my interpretation or appreciation level change? Would I even be able to tell a difference between the two versions at all, with several years between my readings? 

As it turns out, the answer to all of those questions was yes, and that fact really surprised me. In looking over my review from back in 2017, I feel like I read a different book. My experience was much better this time around, and I think that the main reasons for this were that I was reading a better translation and I have four more years of classics experience under my belt now. 

As I noted in my first review, the plot of the novel follows several upper class Russian families between the years 1805 and 1820. Russia is fighting in the Napoleonic Wars during this time, and the political strife affects the characters in different ways. The main players are as follows:

• Pierre Behzukov, the illegitimate son of a wealthy Count whose fortunes take a dramatic turn when his father dies and makes him his sole heir. Pierre is intellectual, bumbling, and ultimately a good person at heart. He bounces between several different modes of life, most of which leave him feeling empty and confused. He tries living the party lifestyle and the religious life, but doesn't find fulfillment in either one. He becomes disillusioned and struggles to find deeper meaning in a world that often feels mean and random.
• Andrei Bolkonsky, a moody prince who distinguishes himself through military service in the wars. He comes to prefer life in the service over dealing with his social butterfly of a wife, difficult to manage elderly father, and needy sister. He spends most of the novel away from home. When he falls in love with a beautiful young woman, however, he finds his attitude beginning to change.
• Nikolai Rostov, a young count who takes an active role in the war. He spends much of the novel uncertain about how to manage his personal life. He faces intense pressure from his family to marry for wealth, as their personal finances are falling apart due to mismanagement. He falls in love with two different women (one rich and one poor) and must choose which of them to marry.
• Natasha Rostov, Nikolai's beautiful sister. Everyone instantly feels drawn to her charismatic personality and child-like joy. She becomes romantically linked with a few different characters throughout the book and grows from a flighty, flirtatious girl to a more serious, mature woman as she learns from her experiences. 
• Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France. Russians throughout the novel regard him with admiration or loathing depending on the current political situation, which does shift throughout the novel. Tolstoy focuses on his successes and failures throughout the story, and how his actions affect Russia as a whole over the course of the wars.

One aspect of my reading that stayed the same as my first time was keeping the character names straight. There are many more characters in the novel than the ones I listed above, and differentiating between them was challenging. Russian naming conventions are complex, and characters often go by more than one name or by nicknames that aren't necessarily close to whatever their original name is. Even more confusing was the fact that some characters have the same names or names that are only a few letters different. I often had to pause and think through who each character was while I was reading. This wasn't enough of an issue to seriously impact my understanding of the novel, but it was definitely a consistent point of confusion. 

Aside from that, the rest of my reading experience was different and better. I liked the novel well enough back in 2017, but I struggled with the overall purpose of it and had a hard time getting through the sections focusing on war. This time around, I didn't really have those issues. Don't get me wrong, the war parts were still less interesting to me than the family dramas, but I was able to navigate them better and find the beauty in them this time around. I feel like a lot of the military material was cut from my abridged version, and reading what was included felt choppy. Having all of it there helped me to see what Tolstoy was conveying more clearly. His analysis of the wars was extremely detailed and impressive. I could sense that his love for Russia ran deep and I appreciated that. I am sure that the different translation helped as well. I was reading the Constance Garnett translation from 1904 on my first try, and this time I read the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation from 2007. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what was better about this version than the first one I read since it's been four years, but I liked it a lot more. It felt smoother and was easier to understand.  

Reading this version also helped me to understand what ties the whole novel together. It's love. I don't know why I had such trouble with this the first time around. It seems so obvious now. The whole novel centers around it. Love for a romantic partner, love for family, love for friends, love for a country, love of power, love of God, love for mankind--it's all there. Love leads the characters into terrible pain at some times and into great happiness at other times. It's transformative and powerful. It's behind every decision the characters make. It's the thread that ties everything in the story together, and the way Tolstoy presents it is remarkably relatable and understandable. I was very invested and interested in the characters this time around and I had a much better time staying engaged. This is a good book. It's an epic read. It's worth the time just to see the breadth and depth of human experience Tolstoy is able to convey in its pages.    

When I first started off my reread of this, I was viewing it more as a duty I was honor-bound to complete. I didn't expect to actually enjoy it or even be able to tell a difference from my first reading. War and Peace remains a challenging read, but I liked it much more this time around. My greater reading experience and having an unabridged, more modern translation ended up making a huge difference. In the end, I'm actually happy that I went back to revisit this novel. It was a great way to see how much I have grown as a reader over the course of this challenge and a really fitting way to finish it off. I think, in a weird way, this was the best ending possible for it. I'm really happy with how everything turned out, and I'm happy to finally be done with my Classics Club journey.    

Pierre's insanity consisted in the fact that he did not wait, as before, for personal reasons, which he called people's merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and loving people without reason, be discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them.

Challenge Tally

Classics Club (#68 on my list): 100/100 books completed - DONE!

Total Books Read in 2021: 47