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In September 1862 Tolstoy married the
eighteen-year-old daughter of a doctor Sofia Andreevna Bers and just
after the wedding took her away from Moscow to Yasnaya Poliana where
he became utterly adsorbed in home life and everyday cares. However
even from the fall of 1863 he became enthusiastic about a new
literary idea which for a long time was called The year of eighteen
and five and the first 2 parts under this title were published
separately in Moscow in the university printing house of M. Katkov
in Strastnoy Boulevard in 1866. The time of creation of the novel
was the period of elation, family happiness and quiet lonely
literary work. Tolstoy used to read memoirs and correspondence of
people the Alexanders epoch (including materials of the Tolstoys
and the Volkonskys), work in archives, study Masonic manuscripts,
go to Borodino field moving ahead in the work slowly, through lots
of editions (it is his wife who used to help him with copying
manuscripts disproving in that way their friends jokes that she was
still as young as if she were playing dolls), and only in the
beginning of 1865 he published in the Russian bulletin the first 2
parts of "War and peace" (and still under the same working name The
year of eighteen and five). [1865: 1 and 2 p.p. 1-156, 564-627,
1866: 2,3,4, p.p. 763-814, 313-340 and 690-733]. The Novel was read
greedily causing lots of responses and amazing with the combination
of wide epic canvas and keen psychological analysis, with vivid
picture of private life organically inserted in history. Heated
arguments provoked the subsequent parts of the novel in which
Tolstoy developed the fatalistic philosophy of history. But it did
not go in this way: the author describes events of military and
civil history of the world intertwining them with pictures of family
and public life of Russia. Tsars and commanders on the one side and
masses of soldiers on the other side, heroes and the masses, the
girlie and subsequently the grown-up girl Natasha Rostova with her
limited, filled with charm of youth and happy personal world, and
Andrey Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezuhov living with complex public and
political interests of the time, diplomatic fuss and events where
human destiny, movement of armies, battles, military parades,
councils of war, death and births are settled by blood instead of
chatter, and all this is found within the grandiosely wide framework
of the Tolstoy novel. The breadth of scope of reality is impressive.
Tolstoys strength, his composition mastery is in combination of
grandiosity of the occurring events with the interest of life of a
single little human being. And the words Great lies in little! are
not mere words in this masterpiece! War and peace is the
chronicle: events develop in time sequence with such dynamics and
with such variety of touches of contrast or internal deep accord
that makes this chronicle the classical composition. The image of
peace in the meaning of the Universe prevails over the image of
war as action. There could be heard the reproaches that the writer
had transferred to people of the beginning of the XIX-th century
the intellectual requirements of his epoch as the idea of the novel
about the Patriotic war indeed the answer to the problems that moved
the Russian after-reform society. Tolstoy himself characterized his
idea as the attempt to write history of the people and considered
it was impossible to define its genre nature (it wouldnt not match
any form, neither a novel, nor a narrative, nor a poem, nor a
story). It would be desirable to note one important matter that was
missed by Western biographers of Lev Nicholaevich Tolstoy and which
concerns the title of the book.
The proverbial phrase to put a dot over i, i.e. to bring the final
clearness exists in many European languages including Russian. But
where does this i from in Russian language? one might ask the
question and he would be right - in fact such a letter is not
present in Russian language. But it did present before. Right up to
1917. The orthographic reform that was thought of even before the
February Revolution and realized after the Great October Revolution
cancelled this letter together with yat, phi and ijitsa having also
chopped off hard signs in the end of words. The western name of the
Tolstoy masterpiece looks in the following way: War and Peace. And
everything looks correct at first sight. In English War shall mean
war, i.e. military actions, and the Peace shall mean peace, i.e.
absence of military actions. And everything is clear about the war
there are no different interpretations. And there is a certain
disagreement concerning the word peace in this context. The first
desire was to attribute this to translators. But it is the wrong
way. Formally they are right: it was translated literally. It is
this name that Tolstoy gave to his novel. In the original it is
written in this way: ! And still something prevents
from saying that it is translated adequately. And the matter is as
follows. In modern Russian language this word includes two groups of
meanings. The first one is: the Universe; a planet; the Earth; the
population of the globe; the human society, etc. And another one is
concordant relationships, calmness, lack of enmity, wars and
quarrels; the agreement of belligerent parties. There is the
difference between the two versions of the word. And it is so
important that in pre-reform Russian literature the first group of
meanings had another way of writing i, i.e. in the root of
the word there had been used letter i that was subsequently
cancelled. Having received in 1868 the proof-sheet of the first
volume of the prepared for publishing novel under the title The
year of eighteen and five Tolstoy crossed it out and wrote another
one with his own hand: (that had to be understood as
War and peace). And, probably, has made it hastily as he even
forgot to put the diacritical mark above letter in the word
(war) and the following appeared from under his hand: .
(The Kilgour Collection of Russian Literature. 1750-1920. Harvard
College Library. 1959).
Having written on the title page of the proof-sheet ,
Tolstoy latere in his latter the publisher of The Russian bulletin
used another version of the title - i. Having used the
word i having the wider, one could say, philosophical
character, than the word which is more specific, Tolstoy made
it clear (knowingly or unwittingly) which meaning he wanted to bring
to the title of his composition. N.N. Gusev, the historian of
literature who served from 1907 to 1909 as Tolstoys personal
secretary and who considered the title "War and peace" to be canonic
one explains the case of Tolstoys writing through i denary that
Lev Nicholaevich was in a hurry to sign the terms of the contract
with his publisher. (N.N. Gusev. Lev Nicholaevich Tolstoy. Materials
to the biography from 1855 to 1869. Publishing house of Academy of
Sciences of the USSR, p. 742). In other words, he forgot hurriedly
that earlier he had put down with his own hand on the title - "",
instead of "i". B.M. Ejhenbaum and B.I. Bursov adhere to the same
point of view. It means that both the meanings were very close to
each other for Tolstoy. It is necessary to emphasize that they are
always close to each other for every Russian, they have always been
homophones and now they are also visually indiscernible. In other
languages they sound and look in different way. And the explanation
thereto lies in the national character. All this is the evidence
that the title of the book is of wide and full of different meaning
sense. This idea has found its development in V. Ermilov work
Tolstoy as an artist and novel "War and peace" (Goslitizdat, 1961,
p. 17) where he comes to the conclusion that ... The concept of
peace in the meaning of absence of wars shall become the category of
artistic action only and then when it is included in the broader
concept of the universal human unity as it actually takes place in
the novel. i and merge in a single whole. It could be
possible to give here some more references to supporters of the
similar point of view, but we shall limit ourselves with the
following examples only adding a couple of moments in favor thereof.
In one of the episodes of the novel (volume 1, part 2, chapter 4)
Russian military cadet Nicholay Roctov in the impulse of
fraternization with the Austrian farmer from under Braundau joyfully
exclaims after him in German: Vivat die ganze Welt! (Long live the
whole world!) Die Welt, that is i, world. Here is the semantic
filling of this multipronged Russian word that was put in the title
of the Tolstoy novel. It is also the same in Schopenhauer work
called The World as will and representation in which Tolstoy took
a great interest within the period of publishing his novel together
with his close friend poet Athanasius Fet (Lev Nicholaevich even
started to translate this work but it is Fet who finally translated
it). Schopenhauer in his Wille (the short name of the German
original The World as will and representation) says the same thing
as we do approaching from the other side, - wrote Tolstoy in his
letter to Fet of May 10, 1869 (L.N.Tolstoj. Correspondence with
Russian writers, Vol.1, M. Art. Lit., 1978, p. 390.) Moreover,
once in 1913 in Russia, i.e. before the orthographic reform it is
this title and i under which the novel was published.
Where the word i also matches the second, broader,
philosophical concept. Perhaps, the publishers had enough grounds
to resort to this version. Although the author was not alive, his
relatives and heirs were in full health. And the publishers for
certain had not only their specific reasons, but also the sanction
for this version. So, there are serious reasons to consider, that it
is not the antithesis at all that was put in the title of the novel
by Tolstoy. Here is not the same antonym structure as, say, in his
story The Master and the worker. In his composition Tolstoy
considers war as the phenomenon in the plan to be common to all
mankind as an unnatural form of human society, the planet of
people according to the famous expression of Saint-Ecsupery. In the
end of the 3-rd part of the 4-th volume of the novel Tolstoy writes:
... Since the world () exists there was no war under those
strange conditions under which it occurred in the year of 1812.
Here is the same correlation between words war" and "world ()
as it was put in the title of the novel. And the flat antithesis is
hardly satisfactory in this case. For the sake of analogy we shall
mention here the Majakovsky anti-war poem War and world (i)
that was published even in 1917 in old Russia!
Reference literature:
1. Printing and the Mind of Man. ( PMM), Voina i mir, 273.
2. The Kilgour collection of Russian literature 1750-1920. Harvard-Cambrige,
1959, 1195.
3. Bitowt Uyrii A Count Leo Tolstoy in literature and art, Moscow,
1903, p. 42. |
