There was an awful lot I liked about #WarAndPeace, but one #samover culture really stands out. We've all seen samovars somewhere, maybe in a museum or a curio shop, but how was it actually used? There's that scene, for example, in the first epilogue where "Sonya presided over the samovar" at the Rostov family gathering. At one point, Nicholas and Denisov went to "fetch more tea from Sonya -- who sat weary but resolute at the samovar."
The cultural assumptions bound up in that passage escape me.

@uanews One of the things I really liked in #WarAndPeace was #Tolstoy’s insistence that soldiers killing other soldiers is murder. War is murder on a mass scale.

Now that I've finished #WarAndPeace, should I move on to #TheBrothersKaramazov, which I've never read? Or should I reread #CrimeAndPunishment, which I last read 40 years ago and still vaguely remember? Or #Chekhov or #Turgenev?
Ugh. What I really want is for #Tolstoy to have written his book on the #Decembrists..

On a related note, at one point the phrase "train of thought" appears in the text. Trains as such didn't exist during the #NapoleonicWars though they did when #Tolstoy was writing in the 1860s, but because I'm a nerd I had to google the phrase. Turns out #Hobbes used it in #Leviathan back in 1651, so its use in #WarAndPeace isn't an #anachronism. #History #Etymology

I'm about 2/3 of the way through #WarAndPeace, just finished the section on the battle of #Borodino, and every once in a while during the battle scenes I have to pinch myself to remember the telegraph hadn't been invented yet. Maybe you could use semaphores or other signaling, but mostly if you wanted to send a message you'd actually have to get face-to-face.
#Tolstoy #History #HistoryOfTechnology #Telegraph

I've been resisting live-tooting my way through #WarAndPeace, but there's one bit I read yesterday that I can't keep from commenting on. It's #Tolstoy's description of an opera as seen by Natasha Rostova, who had never witnessed one before. Opera becomes not just mundane, but ridiculous, with a stress on cardboard stagecraft and excessive make-up. In the edition I'm reading, it's in Vol. 2, Pt. V, Bks 8-9. In the Maudes' translation, it's Bk 8, Chapts 8-9.

I started reading War and Peace last week. If I finish it, does that make me a better person?
#Tolstoy #WarAndPeace #Literature

I started reading War and Peace last week. If I finish it, does that make me a better person?
#Tolstoy #WarAndPeace #Literature

I'm reading #WarAndPeace I've obviously got alot of spare time 🤣

#Ukraine has #banned the novel #WarAndPeace" by #LeoTolstoy from being discussed in schools

https://www.newstarget.com/2022-06-10-ukraine-bans-classic-novel-war-and-peace.html

#Ukraine has #banned the novel #WarAndPeace" by #LeoTolstoy from being discussed in schools

https://www.newstarget.com/2022-06-10-ukraine-bans-classic-novel-war-and-peace.html

#Ukraine has #banned the novel #WarAndPeace" by #LeoTolstoy from being discussed in schools

https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-06-10-ukraine-bans-classic-novel-war-and-peace.html

War and Peace (#WarAndPeace #year2016)

War and Peace (#WarAndPeace #year2016)

War and Peace (#WarAndPeace #year2016)

War and Peace (#WarAndPeace #year2016)

War and Peace (#WarAndPeace #year2016)