I'm about half way through War and Peace, and despite being extremely apprehensive about starting such a novel, I have been deeply surprised at just how much I have enjoyed reading it!
I had many people telling me I was too young (I am 14) and therefore not experienced enough to read War and Peace, and I must admit I found some of the novel hard-going but overall it has become one of my favourites.
I would recommend anyone to read it, however young or old.
I've read War and Peace three or four times and enjoy it each time. I think I was in my late teens or early 20s the first time. I was probably a little more used to reading long 19th Century novels than you, but if you are drawn to it, why not?
It might be a little easier to read in book form than online. The better translations usually have a list of the characters in the front of the book, as well as some footnotes that explain a little more clearly what's going on.
The Count Tolstoy (Osterman-Tolstoy) in the book was the author's uncle, so he had some great inside information. But his views on history can get a little tedious. I remember that I skipped some of Tolstoy's personal comments on the theory of history the first couple of times I read the book.
As a society, we've gotten out of the habit of leisurely reading. A book like this is meant to be savored over time. In the 19th Century, it even would have been read aloud in the evening to a group--19th Century TV! It has some really wonderful moments, and the characters are so well drawn, with their complex psychologies. I get more out of it each time I read it. But if you just can't get through it, don't worry. Maybe try other Russian writers or some of Tolstoy's shorter works. I believe the first "Russian" I read was "The Idiot," by Dostoyevsky.
Well, to the people saying 16 is too young, I strongly disagree.
I'm 16 and I just devoured this book in a month and understood it perfectly. The only taxing part was the 2nd epilogue
Age makes no difference...intelligence and reading do though.
EDIT: and wow, MortalTerror. All 16-year-olds only know of malls and video games? Have you experienced the destruction of your home and uprooting of your way of life like the characters in WaP? No? Then you're no more qualified to understand the book than I am.
Last edited by TomWolfe321; 05-13-2009 at 08:39 PM.
You're taking it too literary.Originally Posted by TomWolfe321
Well, to the people saying 16 is too young, I strongly disagree.
I'm 16 and I just devoured this book in a month and understood it perfectly. The only taxing part was the 2nd epilogue
Age makes no difference...intelligence and reading do though.
EDIT: and wow, MortalTerror. All 16-year-olds only know of malls and video games? Have you experienced the destruction of your home and uprooting of your way of life like the characters in WaP? No? Then you're no more qualified to understand the book than I am.
The genius of War and Peace is that it can be understood on every level possible. At 16, War and Peace is a very different story to what it is at 25. And, I expect (I'm not there yet), it will be very different to this at 40. And so on.
The most intelligent 16 year old ever, even one who may have been through the hell of living in a war-torn third-world country simply hasn't got some of the experiences - in the case I'm thinking of, the changes that come from within - that will illuminate the characters in War and Peace, give them even more depth and shade and colour than you thought possible. The changes that you go through don't come from your intelligence, but are acquired as you age, as your body and soul becomes bruised and hardened, as your ego is squashed into nothing and your perceptions of the world are shattered into a million peices and you pick them up and put them back together again, but it's never the same.
I read a lot of Dostoevsky when I was 16. I enjoyed the stories. I'm going back to them now, 10 years later, and I'm finally starting to understand what they're about. But I know that I'll have to go back to them again and again and again as the years pass before I truly get them.
Remember: Tolstoy wrote War and Peace as a culmination of his life experience. To claim that you can grasp what he was saying at 16 is an insult to the man!
I think your problem lies completely in the first dozen-or-so words of your post.
Tolstoy's world, in my experience, lends to make itself more full through seeming to come by as a blur at first, then your mind catches up with it's rate and it starts to make more sense than your own world, there's enough detail and repitition that you don't need to firmly remember every single maid or military man in order to clearly understand the story and it's various subtexts, the reason I believe you're having trouble is that you've only read 150 pages in a week. I've only read what I've just learned is a shorter version, 900 pages, but I just finished it yesterday after four days of reading. Undertaking something like War & Peace, I don't believe for a second that you necessarily need to be older, but I do think you should put aside more time, and you'll understand it better when you get more engrossed in it. That might just be me, but I simply couldn't read a book like this for a half an hour a night and expect myself to retain much. Like I said, might just be me, this rule probably doesn't apply to everybody.
What was he in - the last line of your post completely contradicts the rest of it; if you're going to need to re-read it over every ten years to understand it better each time, then you and I have both insulted him to nearly the same degree as you claim the sixteen year olds have, we're reading it well before the age of the man who wrote it at the time that he wrote it. It's a ridiculous idea, especially coupled with the rest of the post. Artists are all libertanians of sorts, and I don't believe that any artists, whether literary or otherwise, classical or modern, would feel insulted by anybody appreciating their art. What a load of bullshizen.
Agree. I've read it when I was 19 and again 3 years later and it's quite different. Better, of course.
At thunder and tempest, At the world's coldheartedness,
During times of heavy loss And when you're sad
The greatest art on earth Is to seem uncomplicatedly gay.
To get things clear, they have to firstly be very unclear. But if you get them too quickly, you probably got them wrong.
If you need me urgent, send me a PM
I'm glad to hear that people in the USA like W@P. I am Russian (and I live in Moscow all my life), my "first" W@P was at the age of 15, and this book, at once seemed fantastic to me, just marvelous, wonderful... After that I have read it 20 or 30 times (yes!) in Russian, once in English (Maude's translation), once in French. Evidently, it's more diificult for foreigners to read W@P: there are very many details of Russian life and history, which are poorly known abroad. Also, it is a pity that those who read W@P in translations cannot savour managements of Russian speech in the novel. Last remark: I don't agree with those who are not happy with the 2nd part of the Epilogue. I think that this is a deep, objective and adequate description of the causes of historic events, of the role of "great" people on one hand, and of the ordinary people on the other hand. That's why so-called "professionals" (historians, philosofers, politicians) usually hate the 2nd part of the Tolstoy's epilogue.
hey guys! I have just begun reading War and Peace after several years of putting the book off! Does anyone have any good tips on how to sucesfully read it?
I read War and Peice when I was 15 going on 16, and it was a truely extraodinary book. Never have I seen cahracters develop so fluidly beforem y very eyes. Tolstoy took us on a ride through the lives of so many people, we saw them change moment by moment, sentence by sentence and most people I think don't notice that.
The characters where real, they where human.
I got the impression that they expressed aspects of Tolstoy's character and ides. Rostov i similar to the soldier Tolstoy. He retires from the army and throws himself into the estate and farming, He displays a respect for peasants and working the land. He also incurred gambling debts as Tolstoy did.
Pierre is a man who has come through fire. I thought that he represented the social aspect of Tolstoy - awkward in society, but sincere in his ideas and motivations.
I also felt that the female characters were vehicles Tolstoy's ideas. I did think the characterisation was good.
For me, W&P is a book that should be required reading for all young adults. It instructs us on what life is about. For example, what happens to Natasha: she is seduced by Anatole. She was the last person in the world who could have realized what Anatole was doing and what type person he really is: a sociopath. We also get to travel within Pierre's mind. And the minds of several other characters. We do not need to have experience before reading the book. The book itself is the experience that, once read, will help us live our lives with greater freedom.
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