From the award-winning translators of Anna Karenina and The
Brothers Karamazov comes this magnificent new translation of
Tolstoy''s mastwerwork.
War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon''s invasion of Russia in
1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in
literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is
fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual
fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind
to fight in the war against Nap
目錄：
LEO TOLSTOY WAR AND PEACE 1
LEO TOLSTOY WAR AND PEACE 2
LEO TOLSTOY WAR AND PEACE 3
內容試閱：
WELL, PRINCE, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private
estates of the Bonaparte family. No, I warn you, that if you do not
tell me we are at war, if you again allow yourself to palliate all
the infamies and atrocities of this Antichrist upon my word, I
believe he is, I don’t know you in future, you are no longer my
friend, no longer my faithful slave, as you say. There, how do you
do, how do you do? I see I’m scaring you, sit down and talk to
me.”
These words were uttered in July 1805 by Anna Pavlovna Scherer, a
distinguished lady of the court, and confidential maid-of-honour to
the Empress Marya Fyodorovna. It was her greeting to Prince
Vassily, a man high in rank and office, who was the first to arrive
at her soirée. Anna Pavlovna had been coughing for the last few
days; she had an attack of la grippe, as she said—grippe was then a
new word only used by a few people. In the notes she had sent round
in the morning by a footman in red livery, she had written to all
indiscriminately:
“If you have nothing better to do, count or prince, and if the
prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too
alarming to you, I shall be charmed to see you at my house between
7 and 10. Annette Scherer.”
“Heavens! what a violent outburst!” the prince responded, not in
the least disconcerted at such a reception. He was wearing an
embroidered court uniform, stockings and slippers, and had stars on
his breast, and a bright smile on his flat face.
He spoke in that elaborately choice French, in which our
forefathers not only spoke but thought, and with those slow,
patronising intonations peculiar to a man of importance who has
grown old in court society. He went up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her
hand, presenting her with a view of his perfumed, shining bald
head, and complacently settled himself on the sofa.
“First of all, tell me how you are, dear friend. Relieve a
friend’s anxiety,” he said, with no change of his voice and tone,
in which indifference, and even irony, was perceptible through the
veil of courtesy and sympathy.
“How can one be well when one is in moral suffering? How can one
help being worried in these times, if one has any feeling?” said
Anna Pavlovna. “You’ll spend the whole evening with me, I
hope?”
“And the fête at the English ambassador’s? To-day is Wednesday. I
must put in an appearance there,” said the prince. “My daughter is
coming to fetch me and take me there.”
“I thought to-day’s fête had been put off. I confess that all
these festivities and fireworks are beginning to pall.”
“If they had known that it was your wish, the fête would have
been put off,” said the prince, from habit, like a wound-up clock,
saying things he did not even wish to be believed.
“Don’t tease me. Well, what has been decided in regard to the
Novosiltsov dispatch? You know everything.”
“What is there to tell?” said the prince in a tired, listless
tone. “What has been decided? It has been decided that Bonaparte
has burnt his ships, and I think that we are about to burn
ours.”
Prince Vassily always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating
his part in an old play. Anna Pavlovna Scherer, in spite of her
forty years, was on the contrary brimming over with excitement and
impulsiveness. To be enthusiastic had become her pose in society,
and at times even when she had, indeed, no inclination to be so,
she was enthusiastic so as not to disappoint the expectations of
those who knew her. The affected smile which played continually
about Anna Pavlovna’s face, out of keeping as it was with her faded
looks, expressed a spoilt child’s continual consciousness of a
charming failing of which she had neither the wish nor the power to
correct herself, which, indeed, she saw no need to correct.
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