Alexandra Popoff's Blog - Posts Tagged "war-and-peace"

Upon completing his first great novel, Tolstoy told a friend, “I’ve stopped writing, and will never again write verbose nonsense like War and Peace… I swear I’ll never do it again.” The story repeated itself when, after finishing Anna Karenina, Tolstoy dismissed it in one sentence: “I assure you that this vile thing no longer exists for me.” While he was celebrated as the greatest living writer, Tolstoy moved on to study religion and to make his own translation of the Gospels. His refusal to take his artistic achievement for granted allowed him to move on and explore life from other angles.
Tolstoy’s scathing remarks about his fiction remind me of Somerset Maugham’s story about Marcel Proust told in the introduction to his novel Of Human Bondage. Proust decided to review his own novel (I presume it was his monumental In Search of Lost Time), thinking he could do it better than a critic. Having written the review, Proust asked a friend, a young writer, to submit it under his own name. The review was turned down: the editor said that Marcel Proust would never forgive him for publishing such an insensitive piece of criticism. Proust must have torn his own book to pieces, without realizing it. Maugham, who called Proust’s novel “the greatest fiction to date,” thought that authors alone know what they fell short of accomplishing: “Their aim is perfection and they are wretchedly aware that they have not attained it.” But if authors cannot be trusted to judge their own work, why listen to their remarks? I think that a sense of openness is essential for any writer or an artist.
Writers of today are silent about their failings. I could give examples of the opposite when, facing pressure to promote their books, some get carried away in praising them. Orlando Figes, the author of prize-winning books on Russian history, was exposed in 2010 on Amazon’s British site assessing his own book as “beautiful and necessary” and rating his competitors’ books as “rubbish” and “pretentious.”
I’m troubled by the fact that the book industry has become so commercialized that authors no longer tell the reader what they actually think about their writing.
While in the days of Tolstoy and Maugham a reader was perceived as a trusted friend, now he is treated like a customer. Writers of the past were frank with their audiences –– and I think about this when reading blurbs on the book covers describing every modern novel as fascinating and every biography as definitive.
Writers of today participate in publishers’ boot camps where they are trained to promote their own books. They learn to listen to readers’ praise and to ignore their mispraise.
I’m not suggesting that someone should be trying to match Tolstoy’s remarks about Anna Karenina, a book he described as “unbearably repulsive.” But I regret that being honest or humble is no longer an option for a writer. In the introduction to Of Human Bondage Maugham wrote apologetically, “This is a very long novel and I am ashamed to make it longer by writing a preface to it.” Today, describing one’s book as less than perfect is a costly mistake, so truth suffers as a result.

As I was reading Christopher Hitchens’ memoir "Hitch-22," I stumbled upon the phrase that "The Kreutzer Sonata," “was the title of Tolstoy’s own personal favorite among his own works.” Hitchens, who expertly discusses Vladimir Nabokov or Wystan Hugh Auden, among other writers, makes a blunder with Tolstoy whose personal dislike of "The Kreutzer Sonata" is well-known. True, Tolstoy had made confusing and contradictory pronouncements about his own works, dismissing "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" and expecting the public to like his ABCs, written for peasant children during his literacy campaign. I don’t know if Tolstoy ever named any of his fictional works as his “personal favorite.” It took him a long time to write and perfect his fiction and non-fiction, but he was rarely satisfied with the result and was also impatient to move on to other projects, not necessarily literature. Having completed "The Kreutzer Sonata," he told several people that the novella was “terribly repulsive” to him. This attitude is reflected in several sources and in Sophia’s Diaries: in March 1891, she wrote that Tolstoy “has grown to hate this story and cannot bear its name to be mentioned.”
Of course, nobody is immune from making mistakes, but I wonder why Hitchens, despite his journalistic accuracy, did not check this simple fact about Tolstoy. Or perhaps, he did, but much that has been written about Tolstoy (especially on the Internet) is inaccurate or even untrue.
Take, for example, discussions of the new film "Anna Karenina," directed by Joe Wright. The film itself was recently described in The New Yorker as “forget Tolstoy.”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs...

While reading discussions of the film, I stumbled on this posting of November 15, in which Joe McGasko also gives his take on Tolstoy: http://www.biography.com/bio-now/anna....
Describing the later period of Tolstoy’s life, following his religious transformation, McGasko mentions that the writer’s ascetic beliefs generated a lasting conflict in the family. Then he goes on to say something utterly ridiculous:
“This conflict reached its tipping point when Tolstoy announced that he would divest himself of all worldly goods and leave his family to wander the world as a monk. His advanced age almost guaranteed that he wouldn’t get very far; shortly after leaving home, he caught pneumonia and returned home to die at age 82.”
There are many blunders here, but most appallingly, the author of this biographical piece is unaware that Tolstoy could not and did not return home to die; he died in a stationmaster’s hut in Astapovo.
So, why write about Tolstoy without checking basic facts? McGasko quotes Tolstoy as supposedly saying, “I wrote everything into Anna Karenina, and nothing was left over.” I don’t know where he got this quote, but I wonder if he would discuss Dickens’ life and work with the same assurance.
Misconceptions about Tolstoy abound, not only on the Internet, but, say, in the popular film "The Last Station." Unlike the latest version of "Anna Karenina," this film was praised far and wide, even though it misinterpreted Tolstoy’s life, showing the writer to enjoy luxury in the Yasnaya Polyana mansion. In fact, the house, with its bare wood floors, became known to visitors for its simplicity. There are numerous inaccuracies in this film, but I just want to mention one particular blunder at the very end. You might remember the text in the epilogue to "The Last Station," which reads that the Senate awarded Sophia the copyright to her late husband’s works. This never happened, since Sophia did not challenge Tolstoy’s secret will.
I will be updating you on other inaccuracies concerning Tolstoy as they pour in.

The BBC has produced an adaptation of "War and Peace" featuring scenes of nudity and incest. The adaptation, by Andrew Davis, will air in the New Year. As The Telegraph writes, Davis is known “for his racy take on "Pride and Prejudice" and for admitting that he read Austen’s book only when he undertook the project.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/bbc/1...

So, does Tolstoy depict an incestuous relationship? I read "War and Peace" many times in Russian and in translations by Anthony Briggs, and Pevear and Volokhonsky. I will be quoting here from the latter, but first a few words about Tolstoy’s plot.

Scholars are now debating Tolstoy’s intention in depicting Anatole and Hélèn Kuragin, more specifically the brother and sister relationship. I believe there is hardly any need to speculate––Tolstoy clearly suggests it involved incest.

When Pierre Bezukhov receives a vast inheritance, becoming a millionaire overnight, the Kuragin family at once considers him a match for their beautiful daughter, Hélèn. During Anna Pavlovna’s soirée, attended by the cream of Petersburg aristocracy, Hélèn is seated next to Pierre: money and beauty go together.

Pierre is divided in his heart between everyone’s expectations of him to marry Hélèn and the unattractive things he knows about her: “I’ve been told that her brother Anatole was in love with her and she with him, and there was a whole story, and that’s why Anatole was sent away.”

True, not everything Tolstoy wrote appears in the final draft. As Tolstoy’s wife, Sophia, writes in her autobiography, she persuaded her husband to exclude some “cynical scenes” involving the beautiful Hélèn Kuragina. However, Tolstoy was no puritan and an ardent reviser, so it’s hard to know whether he heeded her advice or slashed some paragraphs because he wanted to.

In an early draft, published in Tolstoy’s 90-volume Collected Works, the brother and sister relationship is shown in more detail. Anatole refuses to leave his sister’s room until the small hours of the morning; their mother, entering unexpectedly, witnesses Anatole caressing Hélèn. Tolstoy further suggests that Anatole experiences sexual arousal and that Hélèn enjoys being fondled. After the incident the old Prince Kuragin strictly forbids brother and sister to be together and sends Anatole away.

Tolstoy undoubtedly implies an incestuous relationship. But he certainly doesn’t show brother and sister in bed. It is enough to depict Anatole’s sensuality, to show “animal” expression on his face when he is caressing Hélèn’s bare shoulders. Less is more––the reader gets the message.

I believe that scenes of nudity in the BBC production of "War and Peace" will not affect audiences as much as Tolstoy’s implication, which leaves room for imagination.

Finally, because I know and love the novel, I unlikely will be watching the BBC production, although I also realize that some viewers may be drawn to the adaptation because of the bedroom scene. And this is regrettable. While scandal helps draw attention to the film, it takes away the audience’s attention from the book.

Fifteen years ago a Russian publisher produced Tolstoy’s magnificent novel without the war and philosophical parts––a sensational publication of "War and Peace" minus the war. The BBC adaptation strikes me as an attempt to sell the masterpiece on the strength of nude scenes, to which modern audiences are accustomed, but which present some novelty because this is about nineteenth-century aristocracy.

This Q & A was compiled by the author herself.

Q. What prompted you to write Vasily Grossman’s biography?

A. If I had to answer in one sentence––Vasily Grossman’s subject matter. To use James Atlas’ words about Edmund Wilson, Grossman “offered a large canvas on which you could draw a map of the twentieth century––the ideal subject for a big, ‘definitive’ biography.” This line comes from Atlas’ memoir The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer’s Tale. In fact, Grossman’s novels Life and Fate and Everything Flows capture the twentieth century along with its calamities brought about by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes––World War II, the Holocaust, Ukraine’s famine, and the Gulag. Each of these topics may take a lifetime to explore, but I felt I could approach them through Grossman. As Atlas remarks, a biographer’s biggest reward is a chance to educate yourself while reconstructing someone else’s world.

Q. Writing a book is a marathon. What kept you going?

A. I had a sense of personal connection to Grossman’s themes. My birth family of Russian Jewry had suffered under Stalin and Hitler. My mother’s family––her uncle, aunt, and cousin––were liquidated during Stalin’s Great Purge. Her other uncle was shot as a Jew in Nazi-occupied Kiev. Earlier, while living in Kharkov and Kiev in the 1930s, my mother and grandmother witnessed Ukraine’s famine.

World War II is also not a remote event for my generation. My father had fought on the Eastern front; his brother and cousin were killed in battle. After the defeat of German fascism, Stalin launched his own anti-Semitic campaign, so my father, a war veteran, was, as a Jew, denied employment. In Life and Fate, commenting on postwar Soviet politics of state nationalism and antisemitism, Grossman writes that Stalin raised over the heads of Jews “the very sword of annihilation he had wrested from the hands of Hitler.”

I grew up in Moscow where Grossman spent much of his life. My parents and I lived in the apartment building where Grossman had a studio and kept part of his archive. Our house was among the addresses where in 1961 the KGB confiscated copies of Grossman’s novel, Life and Fate. My father, the novelist Grigory Baklanov (Friedman), brought his first fiction about the war to Grossman and later studied in his creative writing seminar. During Gorbachev’s glasnost my father became editor of Znamya literary magazine and published Grossman’s splendid Armenian memoir and short prose, and also published his wartime diaries as a separate volume.

Q. Vasily Grossman died in 1964. Why are his works relevant today?

A. Grossman wrote about state nationalism, the rise of totalitarianism, and antisemitism, topics that today remain among the most discussed. In Life and Fate the Nazi officer Liss says, “Nationalism is the soul of our epoch.” We are now witnessing the rise of nationalism in America, Europe, Russia, and China, and these words can be read as a warning from history.

In the 1950s both Grossman and Hannah Arendt elucidated on the nature of totalitarianism in Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. As Timothy Snyder points out in Bloodlands, “The Nazi and the Stalinist totalitarian systems must be compared, not so much to understand the one or the other but to understand our times and ourselves.” We are observing a strong comeback of far-right populist governments in Europe and elsewhere; in her award-winning book, The Future Is History, Masha Gessen even argues that totalitarianism has reclaimed Russia.

Because Grossman was a banned writer, his major works have only appeared after much delay. In the past two decades interest in his ideas has been steadily rising. Grossman’s novels are now recognized as a valuable historical source, a testimony about the twentieth century and the global evil perpetrated by totalitarian regimes. His powerful 1944 article, “The Hell of Treblinka,” became part of the evidence at Nuremberg. Today it continues to provide insights into the Holocaust, which Grossman was among the first to fathom and to chronicle.

Q. Martin Amis referred to Grossman as “a Soviet Tolstoy.” Do you agree with this description?

A. Yes and no. As a war novelist Grossman had undoubtedly experienced Tolstoy’s influence: his research notes for Life and Fate reveal that he used the structure of War and Peace as a blueprint. Written with epic sweep, Grossman’s novel also includes war parts and peace parts. Like Tolstoy, he depicts historical figures alongside fictional characters; his narrative switches between global events and family occurrences. Grossman, however, was not imitating Tolstoy. He was leading a dialogue with his predecessor and, as he states in his notes, intended to show “how life changed over 100 years.” Grossman’s protagonists fight in Stalingrad; are marched to a gas chamber, and, like the physicist Victor Shtrum, work on the Soviet nuclear program.

Actually, it was not merely Tolstoy’s greatness as a novelist that had inspired Grossman to model his epic Life and Fate on War and Peace. He saw in Tolstoy an example of a writer who was driven by the moral imperative to tell the truth. Having testified about Nazi crimes in Treblinka, he realized the pressing need to also make the world aware of the crimes of Stalinism.

In 1952, after three years’ battling with Soviet editors, Grossman succeeded in publishing a censored version of the novel For the Right Cause (this was the first part of Life and Fate). The initial reaction was positive: critics hailed it as “a Soviet War and Peace.” A few months later, For the Right Cause was attacked in the Soviet press and a political campaign against Grossman was launched, nearly ending in his arrest. Unlike Tolstoy, Grossman lived and wrote in a totalitarian state and many of his topics were the strictest Soviet taboos. In 1960 Grossman produced his uncompromising anti-totalitarian novel, Life and Fate. His attempt to publish it in the USSR was an act of desperate bravery and defiance.

Q. How will your book affect what we know about Grossman?

A. This book will come out 23 years after a single English-language biography by John and Carol Garrard. It’s drawn from my archival research, published and unpublished memoirs, letters, and interviews. My biography amasses the latest information about Grossman and his subject matter. I read everything Grossman had produced, including his early works, which were usually dismissed by biographers. My research helped me discover, for example, that Grossman’s beliefs in freedom and democracy were lifelong and that the Jewish theme was also conspicuous in his early works. My biography traces his life and ideas from the beginning, and I show how the war and the Shoah moved him to openly oppose the state.

I’ve always tried to unveil myths in my books, and this biography dispels a number of myths. Ehrenburg’s remark that Grossman was born under the star of misfortune has been given too much attention. Although there was tragedy in Grossman’s life, he was fortunate to survive Stalin’s mass purges and the war––despite reporting from Stalingrad and Kursk, the site of the largest tank battle in history. When discussing the confiscation of Life and Fate we need to know that this violent action was not unprecedented in the Soviet Union. The epilogue of my book tells the story of Georgy Demidov, a writer and Kolyma survivor, whose manuscripts were seized by the KGB and who was also deprived of the means to complete his testimony about the Gulag. In contrast, Grossman was able to produce his most uncompromising novel, Everything Flows, which became his political testament. One needs to remember that the list of Soviet literary martyrs is extraordinarily long. It includes writers murdered by the regime––Isaak Babel, Osip Mandelstam, and Boris Pilnyak.

Q. It took you four years to produce this book. Any regrets?

A. It pains me to see the clichéd image on my book cover. This picture of Grossman, made in the burning Berlin in 1945, has been repeatedly published. I provided the publisher with a little known picture of Grossman in his study, but it was rejected “as not dramatic” enough. I believe a cover is important. It gives the first impression about the book. Regrettably, someone in the marketing department, who did not even read my book, decided the cover’s outcome.