What a great book. I finished it this morning. It took me a while, as I now have a tendency to drop off after reading two pages of anything, but it was worth it. I made a note of a few passages that caught my eye, whether by making me think, or smile, or wonder. I shall compare them with famous quotations from Tolstóy to see if any match up, and to berate myself with what I missed.

There were a few words that sent me scurrying to my dictionary, such as plethoric, dalmatic, gabions, crupper, esaul, bast* — but it was not a hard read, just a long one. The edition I read was translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, and the hardback was published jointly by Macmillan and OUP, London 1942. The page numbers quoted are from that edition. The book must have belonged to my father-in-law Toby Seeley, because it just appeared on our shelves one day.

You can get exactly the same text for free from Project Gutenberg. The ebook version scores highly for searchability — all the mentions of Mítenka, for example, can instantly be found, but for readability it’s hard to beat Caslon and onion-skin paper.

So where do I go from here? After a brief respite (a summer of trashy ebooks) it will probably be the much lauded new translation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables by Christine Donougher. The hardback awaits me in Wales.

I can’t wait!

P102
… his architect, [who] by a strange caprice of his employer’s [Prince Bolkónski] was admitted to table [dinner], though the position of that insignificant individual was such as could certainly not have caused him to expect that honour.

P105
“Moreau would have been a prisoner if Suvórov had had a free hand; but he had the Hofskriegswürstschnappsrath on his hands. It would have puzzled the devil himself!” — Prince Nicholas Andréevich Bolkónski

P105
Buonaparte … began by attacking Germans. And only idlers have failed to beat the Germans. Since the world began everyone has beaten the Germans, They beat no one — except one another. — Prince Nicholas Andréevich Bolkónski

P395
What was needed for success in the service was not effort or work, or courage, or perseverance, but only the knowledge of how to get on with those who can grant rewards, and he was himself often surprised at the rapidity of his success and at the inability of others to understand these things. — Prince Borís Drubetskóy

P396
‘L’Urope’ (for some reason she called it Urope as if that were a specially refined French pronunciation which she could allow herself when conversing with a Frenchman), ‘L’Urope ne sera jamais notre alliée sincère.’ — Anna Pávlovna

P414
The others, one’s neighbours, le prochain, as you and Princess Mary call it, are the chief source of all error and evil.

P442
The blue spectacles of conventionality.

P473
The endless variety of men’s minds prevents the truth from ever presenting itself identically to two persons.

P665
There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental swarm-life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him.

P667
In historic events the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself.

P697
In an Emperor’s vicinity all become courtiers.

P704
Pfuel was one of those hopelessly and immutably self confident man, self-confident to the point of martyrdom as only Germans are, because only Germans are self confident on the basis of an abstract notion — science, that is, the supposed knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally both in mind and body as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured as being a citizen of the best organised state in the world and therefore, as an Englishman, always knows what he should do and knows that all he does is an Englishman is undoubtably correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German’s self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more important than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth – science – which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.

P724
It comforted her to reflect that she was not better, as she had formerly imagined, but worse, much worse, than anybody else in the world. But this was not enough. She knew that, and asked herself, “What next?” But there was nothing to come. There was no joy in life, yet life was passing. — Natásha

P795
Heaven only knows who arranged all this and when, but it all got done as if of its own accord.

P798
I can see through you and 3 yards into the ground under you.

P857
Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she is so kind-hearted that she can’t look at the blood, but enjoys eating the calf served up with sauce.

P902
Europe would in this way soon have been, in fact, but one people, and anyone who travelled anywhere would have found himself always in the common fatherland. I should have demanded the freedom of all the navigable rivers for everybody, that the seas should be common to all, and that the great standing armies should be reduced henceforth to mere guards for the Sovereigns. — Napoleon.

P911
The peasants say that a cold wind blows in late spring because the oaks are budding, and really every spring cold winds do blow when the oak is budding.

P913
A commander in chief is never dealing with the beginning of any event – the position from which we always can contemplate it. The commander in chief is always in the midst of a series of shifting events and so he never can at any moment consider the whole import of an event that is occurring.

P916
A sixth group was talking absolute nonsense.

P1070
Lay me down like a stone, O God, and raise me up like a loaf. — Platón Karatáev

P1162
He was in a fairy kingdom where nothing resembled reality. The big dark blotch might really be the watchman’s hut or it might lead to the very depths of the earth. Perhaps the red spot was a fire, or it might be the eye of an enormous monster. Perhaps he was really sitting on a wagon, but it might very well be that he was not sitting on a wagon but on a terribly high tower from which, if he fell, he would have to fall for a whole day or a whole month, or go on falling and never reach the bottom.

P1250
A man without convictions, without habits, without traditions, without a name, and not even a Frenchman, emerges—by what seem the strangest chances—from among all the seething French parties, and without joining any one of them is borne forward to a prominent position.

P1267
Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the people but to the home (Sónya).

P1283
The countess was now over sixty, was quite grey, and wore a cap with a frill that surrounded her face. Her face had shriveled, her upper lip had sunk in, and her eyes were dim.

P1330
Wealth and poverty, fame and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness, health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of freedom.

*Don’t tell me you know ANY of those words. I shan’t believe you.

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