Tolstoy himself was royalty, so he knew of what he wrote. War and Peace is largely a story about Russian royalty and their lives that are occasionally interruped by the horrors of war. I’ll for the most part focus on his free thinking qualities, but certainly not exclusively. Were he alive today, my guess is that Tolstoy would be a libertarian hero.
In my case, reading Tolstoy was to read someone who came off as very much a free thinker. Particularly of a novel seen by so many as the greatest. Since no one reads the same book, there can’t be too many analyses. The purpose of this overlong write-up is to analyze the novel. War and Peace isn’t hard to follow, nor are the characters difficult to keep track of. Whatever the answer, don’t be deterred based on fear of translation or the number of characters. Unknown is how much of this was Tolstoy, or the perception of Tolstoy from the translator. Tolstoy’s writing can be surprisingly corny at times, or did those corny qualities come out in the translation? At one point toward novel’s end Prince Pierre Bezukhov dines in trying, unappetizing conditions, yet Tolstoy describes the eating as “Pierre could have sworn he’d never eaten better in his life.” Gag. Lots of lines like “get a move on,” “fine fettle,” and word usage like “anyway” that just seemed so out of place in a Tolstoy novel. About it, I kind of wish I’d read what came before it. My version of War and Peace was the Penguin Classics version, which Groskop and others recommend to the English speaking. This novel doesn’t even end with the wildly interesting characters. As previously mentioned, a lot of the novel isn’t a novel as Tolstoy meditates on history. Just so engrossing, which it would have to be considering its length. So, while I’ll stand with Maugham, War and Peace was excellent.
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