Parts I-IV / All parts in two books
Tolstoy's major work, War and Peace, appeared between the years 1865 and 1869. The epic tale depicted the story of five families against the background of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Its vast canvas includes 580 characters, many historical, others fictional. The story moves from family life to the headquarters of Napoleon, from the court of Alexander to the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino. War and Peace reflected Tolstoy's view that all is predestined, but we cannot live unless we imagine that we have free will. The harshest judgment is reserved for Napoleon, who thinks he controls events, but is dreadfully mistaken. Pierre Bezukhov, who wanders on the battlefield of Borodino, and sees only the confusion, comes closer to the truth. Great men are for him ordinary human beings who are vain enough to accept responsibility for the life of society, but unable to recognize their own impotence in the cosmic flow. "No one has ever excelled Tolstoy in expressing the specific flavour, the exact quality of a feeling - the degree of its 'oscillation', the ebb and flow, the minute movements (which Turgenev mocked as a mere trick on his part) - the inner and outer texture and 'feel' of a look, a thought, a pang of sentiment, no less than of a specific situation, of an entire period, of the lives of individuals, families, communities, entire nations."
Osat I - IV / kaikki osat kahdessa kirjassa
"Война и мир", самый известный роман Л.Н.Толстого, как никакое другое произведение писателя, отражает глубину его мироощущения и философии. Эта книга из разряда вечных - в ней раскрыты основные составляющие человеческого бытия: жизнь и смерть, любовь и измена, подвиг и малодушие, война и мир.
"Vojna i mir", samyj izvestnyj roman L.N.Tolstogo, kak nikakoe drugoe proizvedenie pisatelja, otrazhaet glubinu ego mirooschuschenija i filosofii. Eta kniga iz razrjada vechnykh - v nej raskryty osnovnye sostavljajuschie chelovecheskogo bytija: zhizn i smert, ljubov i izmena, podvig i malodushie, vojna i mir.
