3 ms·
I do think though Russians do get a bit too much press for their novels, in a way that isn't, I think accorded to the French. For example dealing with events fr
by billfruit 8y ago
I do think though Russians do get a bit too much press for their novels, in a way that isn't, I think accorded to the French. For example dealing with events from the same period of time is Hugo's "Les Miserables" (it has a description of the battle of Waterloo lasting around 12 chapters), perhaps captures more of the variety of human experience.
- msviss 8y agoI haven’t read Les Miserables. I’m sure its great. But depicting battles scenes is not what makes W&P, W&P. 12 chapters of Waterloo for waterloo’s sake is meaningless.
- cafard 8y agoVictor Hugo was born to make Tolstoy seem laconic. Tolstoy can be prolix, but Austerlitz and Borodino are critical to the action of the novel. Waterloo has a minor plot justification inn Les Miserable, but most of the twelve chapters on Waterloo are just Hugo's excuse for spinning his theories.
- baud147258 8y agoI'm pretty sure Hugo being a fan of Napoleon helped.
- cafard 8y agoQuite. But somebody commenting mentioned Stendhal, who greatly admired Napoleon, and who managed to keep his account of Waterloo far shorter.
- baud147258 8y agoGood point. I don't know very well Stendhal, thank you.
- B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago> Russians do get a bit too much press for their novels Russians get a bit too much press for most everything, from nukes to unstoppable social progress to foreign election meddling. Curiously, but possibly related, not for https://www.google.com/search?q=largest+country+on+earth https://www.google.com/search?q=largest+country+on+earth
- pound 8y agocould you please tell a bit more about social progress? I'd appreciate it.
- int_19h 8y agoI think it's a reference to the early days of USSR, when many in the West were gushing about the "new and better" society that it was supposedly building.
- B1FF_PSUVM 8y agoRight, unfortunately the 'novus homo sovieticus' was mostly Mrs. Busybody snitching on the neighbors. Drats.
- nbabitskiy 8y agoActually the battle scenes in War and Peace were written under significant influence of Stendahl's in la Chartreuse de Parme. I don't know, how the French treat their novelists, but from a Russian perspective, Stendahl's a big literature, and Hugo more of a teenage reading. I'm pretty sure Tolstoy shared this view.
- billfruit 8y agoStendhal also has a description of Waterloo in his Charterhouse of Parma, but I think Hugo did a better description, besides it appears Stendhal wrote Charterhouse in a great hurry, as I recollect, he finished the whole novel in 52 days, I do find it not as finely turned out as Les Miserables. The problem with Les Miserables is that of wide circulation of translations which are actually abridgements, I fear many readers would have missed the grandeur of the whole unabridged novel. Same seems to be the case with Count of Montecristo.
- coldtea 8y agoGreat as it is, Les Miserables is a telenovela compared to War and Peace.