28 March 2011

My Russian Transformation

"During that year, Pierre had grown so fat that he would have been monstrous if he had not been so tall, so large of limb, and so strong that he obviously bore his corpulence lightly."
- Leo Tolstoy (III.1.xx)

Day Count: 87
Page Count: 671

Today, I would like to share with you a little something that's been happening with me since I decided to start reading War and Peace. In December, after I finished my role in MerryMAC Players' production of Christmas Belles, I decided to let my hair - both facial and regular-type - grow rather indiscriminately. The impetus for this decision was in an effort to look more like the characters I was reading about in Tolstoy's novel, 19th century Russians. Over the course of the last few months, then, my hair has been growing rather steadily, getting a little trim here and there as needed, but I am now the proud owner of a rather impressive beard. Here are a few transition pics over the last few months.

December 25, 2010:
The journey begins! Notice that subtle stubble around my chinny-chin-chin? Those are the early warning signs of the beard that is to come. At this point, I've only been growing the beard out for a little more than a week. More to come...

February 18, 2011:
Oddly, few acceptable pictures of me exist from during the month of January this year. That being said, the next two pictures were taken on the same day, though in admittedly different circumstances. This picture was taken in front of a classroom when I noticed I was having a particularly good hair day. The beard adds to that, methinks. :) 

February 18th, 2011:
A friend of mine was kind enough to invite me to her new place in Illinois to celebrate her birthday and I was more than happy to oblige! It was a great chance to cut loose, relax, unwind, and spend some time with friends I don't get to see very often. Thanks to both the angle and the lighting, the beard looks a bit thinner here, but I assure you, it's the same beard from above! :)


March 27, 2011:
Last night, I went with my family to a new favorite restaurant - Jockamo Upper Crust Pizza (if you visit, try their signature pie, the Slaughterhouse Five, named for Indy's own, Kurt Vonnegut!) - and I realized that I hadn't taken a picture of myself in a while. In a few short moments after taking these photos, this post formed in my head and I realized that I had to let my faithful readership in on this aspect of my War and Peace experiment.

More of the "War and Peace and Religion" series next time!

26 March 2011

"War and Peace" and Religion: Part One - The Bolkonskys

"My calling is different... my calling is to be happy with a different happiness, the happiness of love and self-sacrifice."
- Princess Marya Bolkonsky (I.3.v)

"Prince Andrei understood that [something] had been said about him, and that it was Napoleon speaking... but at that moment, Napoleon seemed to him such a small, insignificant man compared with what was now happening between his soul and this lofty, infinite sky with clouds racing across it."
- Leo Tolstoy (I.3.xix)
Day Count: 85
Page Count: 666

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. It has been fifty-three days since my last Tackling Tolstoy post... and that is nothing short of 'wrong'.

Life has picked up and how since my last entry - travel, potentially bad news, plays, and all manner of other happenings and non-happenings have impeded any hope of steady or regular progress on this blog. As you can see (both from the page count above and the Twitter posts to the right of  this page), my reading of War and Peace has continued, but the pacing I'd originally wanted to maintain has slowed considerably. I am still considerably ahead of my initial "three-pages-a-day" pacing (by 411 pages, to be precise), but I still feel like I could be close to finished by this point had I kept up with my initial reading schedule. (Let's be honest: it was never going to last, but it's always fun to dream, isn't it?)
This post is intended to be the first in a series of (two? three? FOUR?!) posts chronicling Tolstoy's use of religion in defining his characters in War and Peace. Man's quest for God often directly parallels (and, perhaps, is driven by) his quest for meaning and purpose. In creating some of the most human characters in literature, the men and women in War and Peace each struggle on their own individual searches for meaning which bring them one at a time and rarely accidentally into contact with the Divine. Their experiences differ and the nature of their experiences helps to shape and define the people they grow into. It has been fascinating to watch their growth throughout this first half of the novel and I can only assume that Tolstoy will continue to grow and develop them over the course of the book.

Firstly, though...

As a general word of warning, this post is going to contain some details about the plot of War and Peace. For those of you among my readership who are either reading the book or planning to one day, you might not want to read this section. If you've already read the book or are living vicariously through my reading of it, then by all means continue. Thanks!

*Ahem* Now that that unpleasant business has been taken care of, we can get down to brass tacks. ("Oh, I didn't bring any. I drove.")


There are scads of characters in War and Peace - a fact that I address and then never re-address (as a logically-thinking human being might assume I would) here. Among those characters that are most influential to the overall story of War and Peace, they belong to one of three (or four, depending on whether or not you count the Kuragins) prominent Russian families - the Bolkonskys, the Bezukhovs, and the Rostovs. My hope is to take each family in turn and discuss the ways in which faith directly affects them and their development in the story. Let us start with the 'first family' of War and Peace, the Bolkonskys.

Prince Nikolai Andreévich Bolkonsky is the patriarch of the Bolkonsky family, formerly an important person in society, now having withdrawn to his country home where he lives a life as regimented and orderly as a Swiss clock. He is cantankerous and bristling with most, set in his ways and either unwilling or unable to change for anyone or anything. His opinions are 'facts' and his word is bond.
It does not seem that he has a 'religion' or 'faith' to speak of, per se, other than what appears to be a belief in schadenfreude (which, for those of you who don't speak German - or haven't seen Avenue Q - is "pleasure derived from the misfortune of others"). Prince Nikolai's central preoccupation seems to be the torture of his only daughter, Princess Marya Bolkonsky. In fact, his entire life seems to revolve around making her miserable. Whether belittling her for taking longer than he would like at mathematics or becoming romantically linked to her young friend, Nikolai's behavior seems like an odd amalgamation of monstrous, contrary, and
senile.
Marya has become a favorite character of mine. While not as fully developed as others in her family, she is easily the most spiritual of all of Tolstoy's characters and bears the brunt of her father's attacks with more grace and humility than I've ever seen from anyone - real or fictitious. She is the soul of Christian charity - housing wandering believers (whom her father would just as soon chase away belligerently) and prays both feverishly and fervently over her brother when his own faith is shaken (which it almost constantly is - more on that later).
While she is plain, she remains an eligible bachelorette due to her father's sizable wealth (none of which he plans to allot to Marya); however, her desires are not for marriage. After a brief and unfortunate flirtation with Anatole Kuragin (the unrepentant "ladies' man" of War and Peace), Marya realizes that perhaps she is not meant to be happy within the bonds of marriage, but rather with a life lived through compassion, charity, and self-sacrifice. In fact, she does not seem to seek marriage after this point, spending her time teaching her young nephew and caring for her ailing (though increasingly irascible and irritable) father.

Her brother, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, is one of the principal characters of Tolstoy's epic. In many ways, he is the most heroic character so far in the story and, in many ways, he is the most pitiable. Andrei appears at the beginning of War and Peace as a man who's faith has been shaken, if not entirely lost. While Tolstoy does not immediate give us the reason, it gradually begins to become clear - Andrei consistently misplaces his faith, i.e. he places his faith in people.

At the beginning of the novel, Andrei has become disillusioned with marriage, his relationship with his own wife having become frivolous and trivial, based on little more than mutual attraction. He becomes obsessed with the coming war and especially enamored with Napoleon Bonaparte. However, after a heroic display at the battle of Austerlitz - after which he is taken as a prisoner of war by Napoleon's men - Andrei becomes enraptured by the infinity of the sky, next to which even his idol Bonaparte looks pale and tiny.

This is the first truly 'spiritual' experience we see Andrei having. His disillusionment returns, however, after the death of his wife and the birth of his son. He withdraws into a deep depression, allowing his son Nikolai to be raised by his sister Marya. After a brief foray in politics, which serves to illuminate Andrei only for a season, he is disillusioned again until a chance encounter with Miss Natasha Rostova.

Natasha seems to remain Tolstoy's feminine ideal and she captures not only the heart of the reader, but of every male character in the novel as well. Andrei is no exception. Becoming enamored with her redeems him, but with Andrei, such atonement is often short-lived. While not going into too many details, Andrei's second chance at love ends with his now-typical disillusionment and his returning to government service for the first time since the birth of his son.

The Bolkonskys seem to be the second-most dysfunctional family in War and Peace (second, perhaps, only to the Kuragins), mainly because their spiritual house is far from 'in order.' Personally, I hope that Andrei and his sister are both able to find their peace in the end.

UPDATE (4/2/2011): As I was reading War and Peace last night and this morning, I realized that I was definitely able to make an update to this entry... so I'm making one.

Six days after the initial entry, I realized as I was reading that an update was necessary. Princess Marya Bolkonsky, easily the most pious and faithful person in War and Peace to date has had a major crisis of faith. Even in the midst of her most uncertain and trying times, Marya has always been able to take solace in the Lord and in prayer... until the death of her father. After suffering a stroke while attempting to organize his private militia against the French, Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky died... but not without finally making peace with his daughter.

In what has been one of the most touching scenes I've read yet in literature, the old prince (as Tolstoy often calls him) calls his daughter to his side and, with much effort, communicates his love for her and his regret at his treatment of her for so long. Prior to this action, Marya had - in her most private moments - wished for her father's death, but in the face of this revelation, she felt closer to him than she had felt before: "She could not understand anything, or think about anything, of feel anything except her passionate love for her father, a love which, it seemed to her, she had not known till that moment" (III.2.viii).

Upon her father's death, with the imminent threat of Napoleon's armies bearing down on her location, Marya is wracked with guilt at her once persistent desire for her father's demise: "...her vague thoughts were concentrated on one thing: she was thinking of the irrevocability of death and of her own inner loathsomeness, which she had not known about till then, and which had shown itself during her father's illness. She wanted but did not dare to pray, did not dare to address herself to God in the state of soul she was in" (III.2.x).

In this moment, the pious Marya is confronted with her own humanity and, in the face of it, cannot bear the weight of her sin. Rather than crying out to God, as she otherwise might, she - for the moment - remains content (after a fashion) wallowing in her own self-pity and self-loathing.

Oddly enough, it is an act of charity that shakes her out of this stupor. At realizing the peasants (muzhiks) have been without food for awhile now, Marya rallies to attempt to share with them from the stores of grain her father left behind and urges them to escape the oncoming French armies by traveling with her to Moscow. To her dismay and surprise, the muzhiks refuse her charity - whether out of a sense of pride or something other, Tolstoy never overtly states. I cannot imagine this refusal of her charity will inspire Marya, but will likely further burden her.

As stated earlier, it is my hope that Marya is able to find peace...

01 February 2011

The Tools of My Trade

"...stepping off the ferry, [Prince Andrei] looked at the sky Pierre had pointed to, and for the first time since Austerlitz saw that high, eternal sky he had seen as he lay on the battlefield, and something long asleep, something that was best in him, suddenly awakened joyful and young in his soul. This feeling disappeared as soon as Prince Andrei re-entered the habitual conditions of life, but he knew that this feeling, which he did not know how to develop, lived in him. The meeting with Pierre marked an epoch for Prince Andrei, from which began what, while outwardly the same, was in his inner world a new life."
- Leo Tolstoy (II.2.xii)

Day Count: 32
Page Count: 390

The first month of Project Tolstoy is over and much progress has been made! Thank you all for your contribution to making this blog great! I couldn't have gotten this far without you! Enjoy this post that I've been working on for the past week!
Right after I started this blog, my friend Kyle (of Unraveling Ulysses) asked me some specifics about the translation of War and Peace I'm reading - font, size, binding, etc. Rather than answer his questions in a comment, I decided to dedicate an entire post to answering his question... along with introducing some of the other tools I use on a daily basis in my reading and study.

The Book
 As I've mentioned elsewhere, I opted to use the Richard Pevear/Larissa Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace for numerous reasons. The main thing I was looking for in my edition was the language being used - was it accessible, easy to understand, while simultaneously taking as little as possible from the original Russian text of the book?

As a Greek minor in college, I know that often times, translations have little of the specificity and nuance of the original text, which is why the best way to read a work is in the original language. As I wanted to read War and Peace before the end of the year, I had neither the time nor - let's be honest - the inclination to learn the entirety of the Russian language. Having researched a number of translations, I decided on this one for a few reasons:
(1.)
It's the latest translation currently available on the market (released in 2007 - Andrew Bromfield's translation came out earlier the same year), which says a lot for its overall accessibility. I would not necessarily need to sit down with a dictionary or a thesaurus at hand, waiting for an archaic or out-of-use word before I flung the other book open and began my feverish hunt for a definition. It was written in something as close to the vernacular as possible.
(2.) The Pevear/Volokhonsky combo has already made a name for themselves in the literary community with their translations of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Not only were those translations widely said to be quite readable, but they also had a unique way of translating that took into account a lot of the nuance of the original Russian text.
(3.) My department head told me that his wife had received a call from her old college professor shortly after this translation was made available saying that she "had to read it." It had renewed his excitement for a book he knew all to well. That, for me, was the final piece - I needed this translation.

After I received this translation, I began to notice that there were a lot of other wonderful things about this book:
- The French: When War and Peace was originally written, Tolstoy wrote a vast majority of the book in Russian. However, there was a percentage of the text (something like 1% or 2%) that was originally written in French. While I have discussed my thoughts on Tolstoy's use of French already, I found it interesting that Pevear and Volokhonsky opted not to translate the French into English in the main body of the text, as most (if not all) other English translations have done. (Instead, the pair translate the French at the bottom of the page in footnotes - sometimes for pages at a time, which can get interesting.) I found this immensely helpful (especially considering that Tolstoy doesn't always mention that characters are speaking in French unless he himself is writing in Russian) in figuring out which characters are speaking and in understanding just how immersed in French culture the Russian people were at this point in history.
- Endnotes, Appendices, and Indexes: Pevear and Volokhonsky clearly did their research for this text, providing over fifty pages of supplementary material, including chapter summaries, exhaustive endnotes useful for providing context, an index providing information on the real life characters in War and Peace, and even Tolstoy's own thoughts on the book. At first, it was a bit daunting having to switch back and forth from the main text to the endnotes, but after the addition of a second bookmark, I find I barely notice anymore. These tools are fantastically useful for the casual reader like myself.
- The Difference is Readability: One of the best things about this edition of War and Peace is the ease of reading. The typeface is an easily-recognizable Times New Roman in a medium-sized font that is just right for my eyes. Not too big as to be ludicrous, but not too small to involve squinting or cartoonishly large magnifying glasses.

The book itself is paperback. Generally, I prefer hardcovers - particularly for classic books like this, as they look so pretty on my bookshelf - but I opted for the trade paperback for the purposes of portability. "Portability," I suppose, is something of a subjective term in this case, as the book is 6"x4"x1.5" and weighs roughly two-and-a-half to three pounds. It's not always conducive to lugging around under my arm wherever I go, but it does fit nicely in my computer case for my treks to and from school, Panera, Mom & Dad's... wherever!

The Notes




I've been a fan of Moleskine journals since the first time I started working at Barnes & Noble back in 2006. I loved the aesthetic of them - the sleek black cover, the heavy (but not too heavy) lined pages, and the professional vibe that it gave off to those around me. As if to say, "Back off, pal! I'm a writer/thinker!" So, needless to say, I have several Moleskines laying around my apartment, many of them half-full (or half-empty for all you Andrei-esque pessimists out there!) of thoughts, story ideas, random doodles, quotes... you name it, I probably scribbled it into a Moleskine at some point!

When I began teaching a Comparative Religions class at the high school where I work, my department head (that man of wit and wisdom who started me on this journey in the first place) recommended that I have my students record their thoughts in these journals, as a sort of commonplace book. I found myself using one as well and thought it to be a most worthwhile exercise for organizing my thoughts and making a note of quotes, ideas, and lists of various sorts. (In an effort to decorate my commonplace book, I placed an old Superman window sticker I'd gotten years ago on the cover. It looks pretty rad, as you can see below.)

I've been using this tool to jot down some of my favorite quotes from War and Peace (many of which have appeared on the tops of various posts I've made here at "Tackling Tolstoy") and also for early brainstorming on an endeavor I plan to bring to this blog very soon! Stay tuned for that!

The Internet
Honestly, it almost goes without saying, but two of the most important tools in my ongoing reading of Tolstoy remain both this blog and my Twitter feed, @TweetingTolstoy (which appears on the right-hand side of this blog). This blog, as I mentioned at the very beginning, is a means of keeping me accountable - hence the day and page counts at the beginning of every post - and really helps me digest and process a lot of the various things I'm thinking about while reading War and Peace. My Twitter feed, thanks to the magic of cellular telephones, gets updated far more frequently (including just a second ago). Mainly, it allows me to record small blurbs of text that I want to share when I'm not near my blog or the Internet. Still, in this digital age, I'm using the Internet to my full advantage in my Tolstoy reading!

The E-book (sorry, B&N - I can't bring myself to use 'nookbook'...)



For my birthday last fall, I bought myself (with some generous contributions from my parents and my sister) a Nook, Barnes & Noble's e-reader - comparable, but in my mind, better than the Kindle. (This was, of course, five months or so before the release of the Nook Color, so I'm stuck in black and white, but that's no big deal - I'm not that picky.)

Since getting my Nook, I've enjoyed reading all sorts of texts on it, including (but not limited to) a number of Kurt Vonnegut texts like Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions, and Mother Night. When I got it into my head to start reading War and Peace, though, I was sure that I wanted the feel of the book in my hands (I suppose as a way of legitimizing the experience) and, at that point, the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation wasn't available for the Nook yet.

However, still being a big fan of my Nook, I wanted to use it somewhere in the process. So, when I decided that I needed something to help supplement my reading of War and Peace, I looked no further than Sparknotes!



Barnes & Noble owns Sparknotes and they have a wide variety of teaching tools available for all manner of topics (not just literature). I've never been a big fan of reading guides (except the time I needed to read Pride and Prejudice in high school), but I thought that a book with literally hundreds of characters and all manner of settings would require I find some additional assistance.

I'll be honest - as yet, I've not really needed this all that much. I estimate that I may change my mind once I get to the part of the book where Tolstoy begins talking at length about his thoughts of the nature of time and history, but until then, I'm having no trouble following both the arc and the scope of the story. Consider this e-book my back-up plan!

The Pencil



 I had a number of teachers in high school (many of whom I've had the privilege to work alongside in the last few years I've been a teacher) who insisted that, in order to be a good reader, I needed to carry a some manner of writing utensil along with me at all times in order to write in whatever I was reading. (I have always preferred pencil to pen or highlighter, as I feel that, once I have hold of something permanent, Murphy's Law dictates that I'm bound to make a mistake!) This is a rule of thumb I followed all through college on theology and philosophy texts - a number of my books have all sorts of pencil markings in them - but never thought to apply to fiction until within that last few years.

Since then, I've been unstoppable! The last several fiction texts I've read - The Magnificent Ambersons, East of Eden, and To Kill a Mockingbird, to name a few - have all been subject to the mighty blows from my pencil of justice!

I prefer Bic mechanical pencils, as those are the ones I've been using since high school. I like using the 0.5mm leads as well, as it gives me more precision when I'm writing things down. Typically, I run out of those fairly quickly and have to end up using the 0.7mm leads, but I'm generally okay with that. My pencil is, generally speaking, the one thing I am never without, making it an indispensable tool in my literary arsenal!

The End
So... that's probably far more information than you wanted to know about my reading habits, but there it is! Hopefully this gives you some insight into my thoughts and attitudes about reading and about what goes into writing a post for "Tackling Tolstoy"! Thanks for reading, true believers! We'll see you next time (whereupon I will have cracked the 400-page mark - BELIEVE IT!)!