Word: tolstoys
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...crowded battlefields claim to be citing causes, all the while knowing that they can be certain only of enumerating events. In War and Peace, Napoleon claims that what happens is "destiny when I can guide it, chance when it slips through my fingers," and the historian believes him. But, Tolstoy implies in his epic novel, chance--and the random effect it has on the lives of millions of people--is history's major determining factor. The victory at Borodino towards the end of the novel belongs to the aging Russian general Kutuzov not because he stopped the French but because...
...current Loeb production of War and Peace, the trembling of Russian society in the face of the Napoleonic Wars is staged in the historian's limbo of order and chaos, at the interface of the sloping stage of destiny and the flat, eye-level platform of action. But whereas Tolstoy flashed light on the everyday existence of ordinary men and women, what drama there is in the adaptation, first performed in 1955 in Berlin, must be released in a series of stunning special effects simulating the horrors of war from above. The peculiar predicament of characters adhering fiercely to free...
...curtain goes up. Like a commanding general surveying a battle from his horse atop a hill, the Narrator is both involved with and separated from the action. Consistently drawing the lessons to be learned from the playing out of the scenes, the Narrator is the omniscient, controlling eye Tolstoy wished to, but knew he could...
There is no message in this elegy from a Hollywood graveyard. The Haywards were unusual and interesting only in their good fortune, not their bad. Tolstoy was wrong: it is unhappy families that are all the same. Happiness is unique, the product of endless labor, never-ending struggle. It demanded an effort the Haywards were not willing to make...
...unhappy families are different, as Tolstoy said, and perhaps Anna Karenina would never have thought of dressing up in baby-doll pajamas. Perhaps Karenin would not have been inspired to chase her around the table. But Marabel did, and Charlie was. Epiphany. Love was reborn. Charlie became romantic. Marabel stopped nagging. Charlie was happy. Marabel was happy. The children were happy...