War and Peace (original version)

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The original version of “War and Peace” is the first version of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace , completed in 1867 and intended for printing by the author , which in essential parts - scope, historical-philosophical excursions, individual storylines and people as well as clarity of political tendencies - by the later "canonized" standard edition of the novel differs.

History of origin

In February 1863 Tolstoy began building on his fragment of the novel “ The Decembrists ” as well as plans for a family novel with a first variant (of a total of 15) of the beginning of “War and Peace”. A good four years later, in the spring of 1867, he completed the manuscript, the first parts of which had already appeared in the journal Russkij vestnik from 1865–1866 , and sent his publisher a draft contract for publication in book form. He used the title “War and Peace” for the first time for his work, for which he had previously planned the title “All's well that ends well”. Possibly due to discrepancies with his publisher Katkov, who advocated a continuation of the magazine version of the novel, the book publication of the original version did not materialize. Tolstoy used this phase for further editing of the novel, whereby, according to his notes, he originally intended primarily to shorten the existing version. However, the planned editing and shortening resulted in a complete reworking of the work, which two years later was not published in a shortened version, but in a version that was almost doubled in size and clearly changed in parts. Depending on the method of counting, four to five other versions followed during Tolstoy's lifetime, but these differed only slightly in the storylines and the characters and became the basis of the later standard edition.

Differences between the original version and the standard version

Some essential differences between the original version and all later versions (and thus the standard version):

  • The significantly smaller scope of the original version is mainly due to the fact that in the later versions Tolstoy clearly expanded his historical-philosophical excursions as well as some historical explanations and battle descriptions.
  • However, he did not take over some of the “digressions” of the original version.
  • In contrast to the later versions, Andrei Bolkonski, one of the main characters of the novel, survives in the original version.
  • The end of the work has been significantly changed and expanded compared to the original version - which closes with a double wedding, a new epilogue was added.
  • A number of passages in the original version paid significantly less attention to the moral norms and "politically correct" views of the time. In the original version, for example, there is a description of Nikolai Rostov's initiation into the men's world of the army through a visit to a brothel, which is missing in the later versions. The death of Hélène Visitov is still straightforwardly attributed to a miscarriage after a pregnancy by one of her lovers, and plundering by Russian soldiers appears, which has been deleted in later versions.
  • Tolstoy's pacifism is named much more clearly in the original version, for example when he describes the dead in a battle as the "murdered in battle" Russian and French soldiers.
  • Tolstoy's view that in war no one really controls events and that the possibilities of an individual like Napoleon to influence the course of history are extremely limited is expressed more clearly in the original version than in later versions.

Reconstruction and publication history of the original version

The reconstruction of the original version was considered impossible for a long time. Although the first parts had appeared in the magazine "Russkij vestnik", the main part was in the form of 1,800 pages with double-sided writing, which Tolstoy used for his corrections by writing new versions of the handwritten text, in which he also wrote older ones , had inserted corrections belonging to the original version. It was therefore necessary to classify which correction was written after the original version in 1867, which should be included in the original version and which had already been rejected.

Evelijna Zajdenŝnur, an employee of the Moscow Tolstoy Museum, began in 1918, alongside her professional activity, to process the manuscript estate of 5,000 pages and, over decades, succeeded in reconstructing the original version, which was published in a series of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1983 . Elements of this reconstruction were put in brackets, including deleted passages and marginal notes by the author. In 2000, a Russian edition was finally published without the academic claim of the academy edition, in which the comments in brackets were omitted and French passages were replaced by (later) translations by Tolstoy. This edition has since been translated into various languages, including German.

expenditure

  • 1981 Russian first publication of the original version reconstructed by Evelijna Zajdenŝnur with notes by the author and - in brackets - deleted passages.
  • 2000 Publication of a Russian edition without scientific comments.
  • German translation of the Russian version, cleared of notes: Leo Tolstoi: Krieg und Frieden. The original version. Translated from the Russian by Dorothea Trottenberg . With an afterword by Thomas Grob. Eichborn Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-8218-0702-4 .
  • according to Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace. The original version. Translated from the Russian by Dorothea Trottenberg. With an afterword by Thomas Grob. 4th edition. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2015, ISBN 978-3-596-90296-5 .

swell

  1. ↑ The unpredictability of life - and the novel. War and peace in their original version. Afterword by Thomas Grob to the German edition of the original version. Pp. 1208, 1209.
  2. ↑ According to the afterword by Thomas Grob to the German edition of the original version. S. 1211. The assertion made elsewhere ( SZ book review of November 17, 2003 (via buecher.de) ) that “all is well that ends well” was also intended as the title of the original version is therefore incorrect.
  3. ↑ The list essentially follows the explanations in The Unpredictability of Life - and the novel. War and peace in their original version. Afterword by Thomas Grob to the German edition of the original version. Pp. 1208, 1209.
  4. ↑ “The unpredictability of life - and of the novel. War and Peace in the Original Version ”. Afterword by Thomas Grob to the German edition of the original version. P. 1212.