Reading WAR & PEACE for the First Time

Segment Navigation
- Intro 00:00:00
- Opening Remarks 00:02:30
- Translation 00:05:38
- Pages 1 to 200 00:12:08
- Pages 200 to 425 00:38:44
- Pages 425 to 665 01:12:24
- Page 665 to 1035 01:47:09
- Pages 1035 to 1260 02:25:48
- Pages 1260 to 1360 02:48:34
- General Studies 03:03:36
- Critical Texts 03:27:50
- A. N. Wilson Biography 04:19:13
- Rosamund Bartlett Biography 04:52:49
- The Hedgehog and the Fox 05:41:49
- Parting Thought 06:03:31

Bibliography
- _War and Peace_ by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Anthony Briggs
- _Tolstoy Together_ by Yiyun Li
- _Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace_ , edited by Harold Bloom
- _Tolstoy's Phoenix: From Method to Meaning in War and Peace_ by George R. Clay
- _The New Lifetime Reading Plan: The Classic Guide to World Literature_ by Clifton Fadiman, with John S. Major
- _Critical Insights: War and Peace_ , edited by Brett Cooke
- _Give War and Peace a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times_ by Andrew D. Kaufman
- _Tolstoy: A Russian Life_ by Rosamund Bartlett
- _Tolstoy_ by A.N. Wilson
- _New Essays on Tolstoy_ , edited by Malcolm V. Jones
- _The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History_ by Isaiah Berlin
- _Reminiscences Of Tolstoy, Chekhov And Andreev_ by Maxim Gorky
- _A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul_ by Leo Tolstoy
- _Lectures on Russian Literature_ by Vladimir Nabokov
- _The Novel: A Biography_ by Michael Schmidt
- _The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages_ by Harold Bloom

#leafbyleaf #bookreview #warandpeace #leotolstoy #books #bookreview #booktube #reading

[alexschmidt]

Last year he gave us a Gravity’s Rainbow vid. This Christmas he tops that with 6hrs on War and Peace. Unbelievable.


God bless us, every one.

[maiko]

5:38:20
Interesting to find that he liked Chopin. It makes a total sense to me, though. Chopin was a salon pianist maybe, but his musical passion didn’t come from aristocratic views at all in my opinion. His musical identity was deeply rooted in his love and yearning for Poland where he was not able to go back. It makes me happy just to think Tolstoy heard the same lyricism and romanticism in Chopin as I do now. Thank you for this great upload! I’ve been listening after my first read!

[judegrindvoll]

This video is phenomenal, thank you so much for such a great deep-dive! Benjamin Mcevoy has set War and Peace for one of his book club books in January 2023 so I’m very excited to get stuck into this in the New Year. I would honestly love to see you and Benjamin do some collaboration or occasional podcasts together - your taste and approach to literature is so similar, it would be absolute gold!

[natashapschool]

Wow Chris! A 6-hour epopee by Leaf by Leaf, what a Christmas surprise! Thank you

[michaelrhodes]

“What makes ‘time’ so elusive?

Time couldn’t be a more familiar and fundamental part of our existence—and yet, as soon as we really start thinking about it, we find that there is no subject more mysterious and ineffable. ‘Ineffable’ is a particularly good way to put it:
-It means ‘beyond words.’

It is difficult to get started in thinking about time, because it is difficult even to put our thoughts about time into words.

The basic problem has been under intense consideration throughout recorded history. There are two essential facts about time that most will agree on:
-First, we think of events as arrayed in a sort of order, where what is happening depends on where we are in that order.
-Second, we think of events as coming to be and passing away, as undergoing change over, or in, time.

Roughly speaking, we use calendars to track this first aspect of time and clocks for the second.

But these two characteristics seem to be in tension:
-If events are arrayed in an order, then how can we also say that they come to be and pass away?
-Is the passage of time real, or is it merely a subjective aspect of our experience?
-What is it for an event to be ‘in’ time in the first place?

Upon reflection, it is very difficult to explain just what a temporal description of the world really amounts to.

This fundamental conundrum gives rise to a number of significant subsidiary questions:
-What is the nature of our experience of time?
-What gives time its direction?
-Is travel in time possible?
-Is the future unwritten, and do our choices matter?
-Did time begin, and, if so, how?

This book concerns the philosophy of time. One might well wonder how a philosophical approach to time is different from a scientific, psychological, sociological, literary, or other approach to the subject. Answering this question requires that we briefly examine what philosophy is.

To be honest, philosophers generally dread being asked to explain what philosophy is. Part of the problem is that philosophy is more of an activity—the activity of philosophical thinking—than a subject matter, so it is easier to demonstrate than to define. Unlike physics, mathematics, literary studies, religious studies, or just about any other field of investigation, philosophy does not have its own, unique subject matter:
-A given philosophical investigation might, for example, concern itself with the subject matter of science, or math, or art, or religion.

Philosophy is really distinguished by the kinds of questions it asks. Philosophers ask foundational questions—questions about, say, science:
-What is a scientific explanation?
-What is causation?
-What is the proper domain for empirical study?

Philosophers ask questions about art:
-What is beauty?
-What counts as a work of art?

There is an unwarranted prejudice that philosophers like to dither around and ponder unanswerable questions. Nothing could be further from the truth, at least as far as contemporary academic philosophy is concerned. Thinking about philosophical questions is not viewed by philosophers as some sort of meditation, with no real endpoint. Philosophers deal in tough, abstract questions, but they shun unanswerable ones like the plague. Indeed, distinguishing between questions that are hard to answer and questions that are meaningless or otherwise poorly formed is a big part of the philosophical enterprise. The inherent difficulty of philosophical questions can make progress very slow, and this may be confused with a lack of progress.

To get a better grasp of what time is all about, philosophers have two main jobs to do:
-Figure out exactly what questions to ask, and then figure out how to answer them.

The first of these jobs is often the tougher one, and is commonly the main task in serious philosophical work. In understanding the question “What is time?” we start by trying to zero in on our target. Figuring out what you are asking when asking about time is less than straightforward. In ordinary discourse, we employ temporal terms, like “past, ” “present, ” and “future, ” without thinking much about what they mean. In describing the world, natural scientists tend to presume an understanding of temporal concepts, like temporal measurement, succession in time, or the earlier/later relation, in their accounts. Before we can formulate questions about time, we need to look carefully at what our notions about time include, and what facts and concepts we take for granted in both colloquial and scientific discourse.

Time certainly has something to do with measurement. This doesn’t tell us much so far, because what time measures is duration, and duration is a temporal concept. Time can also be thought of as a coordinate system. Events are located ‘in’ time; they have a fixed temporal position relative to each other. This means something different from having a different spatial position, or a different position on a number line:
-But how, exactly?

Finally, time has something to do with change. Again, this is just a starting point, because it is very tough to see how we could understand what change is without understanding what time is:
-Change involves something having different properties at different times.

We also speak of change ‘of’ time:
-The future, we sometimes say, approaches, and the past recedes.
-But is this a real phenomenon or a metaphor for something else?

Then there is the problem of methodology. Philosophical questions are philosophical precisely because they demand unusual methods. Some ordinary questions can be answered by appeal to authority:
-By consulting a professional or looking them up in a book.

Other kinds of questions are answered by experimentation, observation, and inductive inference.

Philosophers specialize in tackling precisely those questions that are not amenable to these everyday ways of finding things out. Philosophical methods involve innovative uses of reason and logic:
-A big part of any philosophical project is to figure out how to understand and address the issue in question using these tools.

There are silly, meaningless questions, and there are tough and abstract, yet answerable, questions. Questions about time, I believe, fall into the latter category. Time is a difficult and puzzling matter because questions about time tend to be questions of the tricky, philosophical sort. Asking “Is time real?” is a fundamentally different enterprise from asking whether, say, three-toed sloths are real. We know what the latter question means. We also know how to go about finding the answer:
-Head to Central America and other places where sloths are known to congregate, find all the sloths we can, and count their toes.

We know what would constitute success or failure in finding three-toed sloths:
-Either we find some or, after a careful and thorough search, we don’t.

If the former occurs, then the problem is solved. If the latter, though we may not be absolutely certain that they do not exist, we can reasonably conclude that they do not. In contrast, figuring out whether time is real is a whole different ballgame. It is not something we are going to uncover just by looking around.

Historically, philosophers have had a particular focus on questions about knowledge and reality that are not susceptible to more mundane methods of investigation. Take the case of numbers:
-Is the number seven, for example, itself a real thing?

Obviously, it is not a material item like a rock or tree or sloth. But we talk about it and solve problems with it. So it is not material, but neither is it fictional, like Sherlock Holmes or the Loch Ness monster.

-And how do we know that seven plus five equals twelve?

We know this is true, but not in the way that we know whether sloths exist. Philosophers try to come up with ways of answering questions like these:
-But because of the tricky nature of the issues involved, they first have to come up with ways of grasping the meaning of these questions.

And doing this tends to require tackling some even more fundamental questions, like:
-What is it for something to be real, and what is it for us to know that something is true?

Next, consider another classic preoccupation of philosophy:
-Moral facts.

[brendanward]

Another deep dive from Leaf by Leaf! Thanks, Chris, for this wonderful Christmas present. I'm a Dubliner, so when I say that War and Peace is greater than Ulysses, you know how highly I rate this masterpiece. I still look back on my reading of Rosemary Edmonds' translation as one of the most memorable reading experiences of my life. (Edit: She has "bald head"!)

[lalitborabooks]

Thank you for this. What you have done here will be remembered for a long long time. You are for YouTube what Tolstoy was (still is) for literature .

[Nuance]

Your shock at seeing your cat is hilarious! I replayed that moment multiple times. Thanks for keeping it in, haha.

[SevenFootPelican]

I just finished this novel and I remembered you uploading this video a couple years ago. I’m determined to watch this whole thing now! Probably the greatest, most ambitious, novel I have ever read

[MaximTendu]

I tackled War And Peace during the very first leg of the first lockdown. I chose the Maude translation and spent with it one of the most enjoyable months of my life. Can't wait to read it again in another version.
(Good God, this episode of Leaf By Leaf is even longer than the unabdridged version of Fanny & Alexander. . . . )

[bethanylaurenreads]

I am starting war & peace next week - I’m so excited. Thanks so much for this in depth commentary!!!

[tylermurray]

War and peace is easily one of my favorite novels of all time. I’m only 1 hour into this video and I’m already amazed at the way you can draw out the beauty of War and Peace in just a brief summary. It’s already an immense pleasure to relive the experience of reading this novel with you

[GypsyRoSesx]

I love, love, LOVE the new thumbnail design (this video and the upcoming “Why Do We Read” videos).

[austinjohnbaker]

Such a great celebration of War and Peace. It’s a pleasure to relive the novel through your commentary.

[maiko]

1:12:48- 1:14:23 Thank you for saying this. Beautifully said and I completely agree.

[TractorCountdown]

I'm really enjoying this epic deep dive. Your feelings of being swept up in the story in the first 200 pages echo what I've always experienced with the book, whether that was the Rosemary Edmunds in the 70s, or the Anthony Briggs most recently.

[star-bit]

How fitting another peculiar coincidence just Baught war and peace. Once again my favorite youtuber producing such a grand long video for a well deserved book. Thank you so much for doing these long deep dives. how marvelous thank you so much and have a splendid holiday.

[duckwithat]

Thank you. Just reading war and peace for the first time. Am totally absorbed. The characters are alive, you feel you’re there with them either in the drawing room or on the battle field. Thank you for all your work with this video Grateful
Happy Christmas 🎄

[GypsyRoSesx]

Oh Chris, how delightful.

I’m going to savour this video over days.

The intro was so _peaceful._ The paintings, the words, the music. It inspires me to read Gorky and enjoy art and reflection 👩‍🎨

[GreatKingEd]

Was waiting for this one and it didnt disappoint! 6 hours of Tolstoy is the perfect christmas gift!