Today was meeting 2 of my meetup group on War and Peace. It's going to be a long slog effort, it's probably more than a year, every 2 weeks.
So far, having a bit of difficulty getting into it, but getting great tips from the group to help me settle in.
Advice for far:
- Tolstoy is just setting the scene for us
- Don't worry about going to back to re-read what I didn't 'get' already.
- We are just meeting the three main families
- We are being introduced to different settings: the aristocracy, in a home, at a formal dance, a dinner party, at a deathbed
- Tolstoy is revealing how human the aristocracy is: they are petty, acting out, showing off, judging others
- The setting in time is being revealed: the time of Napoleon (he has been Emperor for only a year, lots of differences about how people felt about him)
- Write a list of characters as they appear, and draw the relationships as I discover them
- Download character maps (I have done this already)
I'm coming to think I might start a large doodle that I build on over time. This will need a large piece of paper, or separate journal!
We are using the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation for this Meetup series. I have been listening to Audible, with a free Kindle version to mark where I am in the book. Fortunately the parts and chapters line up with the printed book. I used this approach with Anna Karenina, and it worked well, but am starting to think the physical book might be called for....
In our first meeting, I wondered out loud whether it would help me to study more Russian history... and I received the suggestion that French history would serve me better (!). The setting is 1805
Learnings about French/Russian in the book:
- Some are speaking French, some are speaking Russian (during 1805 French was the predominant language amongst the aristocracy)
- Why this is:
- the influx and influence of the French on Russian culture
- people would speak French to hide what they are saying from servants
- Catherine the Great imposed French as the language of the court in Russia
- Conflict between Eastern and Western thought is important here
This book is part of a longer journey for me - read about My Tolstoy Adventure here. The good news is that I have learned to love Tolstoy's writing.
