Repository path: workshop/translations/voina-i-mir/R04-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

«Война и мир» I.i.I–II — the whole of two chapters, R04

• Work: Л. Н. Толстой, «Война и мир» (1865–69), том первый, часть первая, главы I–II complete — 64 paragraphs, 2,780 Russian words. Public domain.
• Source: ../../../experiments/E-20260904-french-in-russian/materials/source-ru-i-ii.txt, blocks i01–i44 and ii01–ii20, from the ilibrary.ru text, collated at every one of the 38 French loci against a second independent Russian transcription (az.lib.ru): 38 of 38 present in both with identical extent, eight orthographic differences, none moving a boundary.
• Regime: R04 (lead close translation, source only). The draft was frozen first as T-voina-i-mir-R06-v1, before the self-revision began and before any English rendering of the work was fetched.
• Translated by: the lead agent, in session, from the Russian alone. Cost $0, not ledgered.
• Contamination: suspected — the measurement is in §Contamination below and was made after the freeze. This is the most-quoted opening in Russian fiction and the honest expectation was a high figure.
• Lineage: first rendering of this work in the project.
• Evaluation: none designed. The lead never judges its own translation (charter §5). The lead's choices at the 38 French loci are reported as a labelled fifth hand in RS-20260904-french-in-russian, alongside the published hands, and are never pooled with them.

Superscripts are Tolstoy's own footnote numbers; the English of his Russian glosses is at the foot of this page. Italic is marked *…*.

I

Eh bien, mon prince. Gênes et Lucques ne sont plus que des apanages, des estates, de la famille Buonaparte. Non, je vous préviens que si vous ne me dites pas que nous avons la guerre, si vous vous permettez encore de pallier toutes les infamies, toutes les atrocités de cet Antichrist (ma parole, j'y crois) — je ne vous connais plus, vous n'êtes plus mon ami, vous n'êtes plus my faithful slave, comme vous dites.¹ Well — how do you do, how do you do. Je vois que je vous fais peur² — sit down and tell me all about it.

So spoke, in July 1805, the celebrated Anna Pávlovna Scherer, maid of honour and intimate of the Empress Márya Fëdorovna, receiving the important and highly placed Prince Vasíli, the first to arrive at her evening party. Anna Pávlovna had been coughing for some days; she had the grippe, as she called it (grippe was then a new word, used only by a few). In the little notes sent round that morning by a footman in red livery, one and the same thing was written to everybody:

«Si vous n'avez rien de mieux à faire, Monsieur le comte (or mon prince), et si la perspective de passer la soirée chez une pauvre malade ne vous effraye pas trop, je serai charmée de vous voir chez moi entre 7 et 10 heures. Annette Scherer»³

Dieu, quelle virulente sortie!⁴

— replied the prince as he came in, not in the least put out by such a reception, in his embroidered court uniform, in stockings and buckled shoes and his stars, a bright look on his flat face.

He spoke that choice French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and with the quiet, patronising intonations proper to a man of consequence grown old in society and at court. He went up to Anna Pávlovna, kissed her hand, offering her his perfumed and shining bald head, and settled himself comfortably on the sofa.

Avant tout dites-moi, comment vous allez, chère amie?⁵

— Set my mind at rest, — he said, without changing his voice, and in a tone through which, from behind propriety and sympathy, indifference and even mockery showed.

— How can one be well... when one is suffering morally? Can anyone with feeling stay calm in our time? — said Anna Pávlovna. — You are with me the whole evening, I hope?

— And the English ambassador's fête? Today is Wednesday. I must show myself there, — said the prince. — My daughter is calling for me and taking me.

— I thought this evening's fête had been cancelled. Je vous avoue que toutes ces fêtes et tous ces feux d'artifice commencent à devenir insipides.⁶

— If they had known you wished it, the fête would have been cancelled, — said the prince, from habit, like a wound clock, saying things he did not even wish to be believed.

— Ne me tourmentez pas. Eh bien, qu'a-t-on décidé par rapport à la dépêche de Novosilzoff? Vous savez tout.⁷

— How shall I put it to you? — said the prince in a cold, bored tone. — Qu'a-t-on décidé? On a décidé que Buonaparte a brûlé ses vaisseaux, et je crois que nous sommes en train de brûler les nôtres.⁸

Prince Vasíli always spoke lazily, the way an actor speaks a part in an old play. Anna Pávlovna Scherer, on the contrary, for all her forty years, was brimming with animation and impulse.

To be an enthusiast had become her position in society, and sometimes, when she did not even wish it, she became an enthusiast so as not to disappoint the expectations of people who knew her. The restrained smile that played perpetually on Anna Pávlovna's face, though it did not suit her outworn features, expressed, as in spoilt children, a perpetual consciousness of her own dear failing, one she does not wish, cannot, and finds no need to correct.

In the middle of the talk about political doings Anna Pávlovna grew heated.

— Ah, don't speak to me of Austria! I understand nothing, perhaps, but Austria has never wanted war and does not want it now. She is betraying us. Russia alone must be the saviour of Europe. Our benefactor knows his high calling and will be faithful to it. That is the one thing I believe in. The greatest role in the world lies before our good and wonderful sovereign, and he is so virtuous and so good that God will not desert him, and he will fulfil his calling and crush the hydra of revolution, which is now more frightful still in the person of this murderer and villain. We alone must redeem the blood of the just. On whom are we to rely, I ask you?.. England, with her commercial spirit, will not and cannot understand the whole loftiness of the Emperor Alexander's soul. She has refused to evacuate Malta. She wants to see, she looks for, a hidden motive in our actions. What did they say to Novosíltsev? Nothing. They did not understand, they could not understand, the self-denial of our Emperor, who wants nothing for himself and wants everything for the good of the world. And what did they promise? Nothing. And even what they promised will not come to pass! Prussia has already declared that Buonaparte is invincible and that all Europe can do nothing against him... And I do not believe one word of Hardenberg's or of Haugwitz's. Cette fameuse neutralité prussienne, ce n'est qu'un piège.⁹ I believe in God alone and in the high destiny of our dear Emperor. He will save Europe!.. — She stopped suddenly, with a smile of mockery at her own vehemence.

— I think, — said the prince, smiling, — that if you had been sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode, you would have taken the Prussian king's consent by storm. You are so eloquent. Will you give me tea?

— In a moment. A propos, — she added, growing calm again, — I have two very interesting men tonight, le vicomte de Mortemart, il est allié aux Montmorency par les Rohans,¹⁰ one of the best families in France. He is one of the good émigrés, the real ones. And then l'abbé Morio;¹¹ do you know that profound mind? He has been received by the sovereign. Did you know?

— Ah! I shall be very glad, — said the prince. — Tell me, — he added, as though he had only just remembered something, and with particular carelessness, whereas what he was asking about was the chief object of his visit, — is it true that l'impératrice-mère¹² wants Baron Funke appointed first secretary in Vienna? C'est un pauvre sire, ce baron, à ce qu'il paraît.¹³ — Prince Vasíli wanted to get his son into that post, which they were trying, through the Empress Márya Fëdorovna, to obtain for the baron.

Anna Pávlovna almost closed her eyes, in token that neither she nor anyone else could judge what pleased or was agreeable to the Empress.

— Monsieur le baron de Funke a été recommandé à l'impératrice-mère par sa soeur,¹⁴ — she said only, in a mournful, dry tone. At the moment when Anna Pávlovna named the Empress, her face suddenly presented a deep and sincere expression of devotion and respect combined with sadness, which came over her every time she mentioned her exalted patroness in conversation. She said that Her Majesty had been graciously pleased to show Baron Funke beaucoup d'estime,¹⁵ and again her look was overspread with sadness.

The prince fell indifferently silent. Anna Pávlovna, with the courtly and womanly deftness and quickness of tact that were her own, wanted both to flick the prince for having dared to speak so of a person recommended to the Empress, and at the same time to console him.

— Mais à propos de votre famille, — she said, — do you know that your daughter, since she began going out, fait les délices de tout le monde. On la trouve belle comme le jour.¹⁶

The prince bowed in token of respect and gratitude.

— I often think, — Anna Pávlovna went on after a minute's silence, moving closer to the prince and smiling affectionately at him, as if showing by this that political and society talk was over and the heart-to-heart was now beginning, — I often think how unfairly the happiness of life is sometimes distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid children (excepting Anatole, your youngest, I don't like him, — she put in with finality, raising her eyebrows), — such delightful children? And you, really, value them less than anyone and so are not worth them.

And she smiled her rapturous smile.

— Que voulez-vous? Lafater aurait dit que je n'ai pas la bosse de la paternité,¹⁷ — said the prince.

— Stop joking. I wanted to talk to you seriously. Do you know, I am displeased with your younger son. Between ourselves be it said (her face took on a mournful expression), he was spoken of at Her Majesty's, and you are pitied...

The prince did not answer, but she waited for an answer, looking at him silently and significantly. Prince Vasíli made a wry face.

— What am I to do? — he said at last. — You know, I did for their education everything a father can, and both have turned out des imbéciles.¹⁸ Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, and Anatole a restless one. That is the one difference, — he said, smiling more unnaturally and more animatedly than usual, and in doing so bringing out with particular sharpness, in the wrinkles that had formed about his mouth, something unexpectedly coarse and unpleasant.

— And why are children born to men like you? If you were not a father I could reproach you with nothing, — said Anna Pávlovna, raising her eyes thoughtfully.

— Je suis votre faithful slave, et à vous seule je puis l'avouer. My children — ce sont les entraves de mon existence.¹⁹ That is my cross. That is how I explain it to myself. Que voulez-vous?..²⁰

— He was silent a while, expressing by a gesture his submission to a cruel fate.

Anna Pávlovna grew thoughtful.

— You have never thought of marrying off your prodigal son Anatole. They say, — she said, — that old maids ont la manie des mariages.²¹ I do not yet feel that weakness in myself, but I have a certain petite personne who is very unhappy with her father, une parente à nous, une princesse²² Bolkónskaya. — Prince Vasíli did not answer, though with the quickness of grasp and memory characteristic of society people he showed by a movement of his head that he had taken this information into consideration.

— No, do you know that this Anatole costs me forty thousand a year, — he said, evidently unable to hold back the sad course of his thoughts. He was silent a while.

— What will it be in five years, if this goes on? Voilà l'avantage d'être père.²³ Is she rich, your princess?

— Her father is very rich and very stingy. He lives in the country. You know, that famous Prince Bolkónsky, retired in the late Emperor's time and nicknamed the King of Prussia. He is a very clever man, but odd and heavy going. La pauvre petite est malheureuse comme les pierres.²⁴ She has a brother — the one who married Lise Meinen not long ago, Kutúzov's adjutant. He will be here tonight.

— Ecoutez, chère Annette,²⁵ — said the prince, suddenly taking his companion's hand and for some reason bending it downwards. — Arrangez-moi cette affaire et je suis votre most faithful slafe à tout jamais (slafe — comme mon steward m'écrit des²⁶ reports: pe, yer, pe). She is of good family and rich. That is all I need.

And with those free and familiar graceful movements that distinguished him, he took the maid of honour's hand, kissed it, and having kissed it waved the maid-of-honour hand about, sprawling in his armchair and looking away.

— Attendez,²⁷ — said Anna Pávlovna, considering. — I will speak this very evening to Lise (la femme du jeune Bolkónsky)²⁸. And perhaps it will be arranged. Ce sera dans votre famille que je ferai mon apprentissage de vieille fille.²⁹

II

Anna Pávlovna's drawing room began little by little to fill. The highest nobility of Petersburg arrived, people of the most various ages and characters but all alike in the society they lived in; Prince Vasíli's daughter arrived, the beautiful Hélène, who had called for her father to go with him to the ambassador's fête. She was in a ball gown and wore the imperial cipher. There arrived, too, the woman known as la femme la plus séduisante de Pétersbourg,¹ the young little Princess Bolkónskaya, married the previous winter and now not going out into the great world on account of her pregnancy, though she still went to small parties. Prince Hippolyte arrived, Prince Vasíli's son, with Mortemart, whom he introduced; the abbé Morio arrived, and many others.

— You have not seen yet, — or: — you are not acquainted with ma tante?²

— Anna Pávlovna said to the guests as they arrived, and with great gravity led them up to a little old lady in tall bows who had sailed in from another room as soon as the guests began to arrive; she named them to her, moving her eyes slowly from the guest to ma tante, and then withdrew.

Every guest performed the ceremony of greeting an aunt whom nobody knew, nobody was interested in and nobody needed. Anna Pávlovna followed their greetings with mournful, solemn sympathy, silently approving them. Ma tante said to each of them, in the very same words, something about his health, her own health, and the health of Her Majesty, which today, thank God, was better. All those who came up, out of propriety not showing haste, went away from the old lady with a feeling of relief at a heavy duty done, not to come near her once again all evening.

The young Princess Bolkónskaya had come with her work in a gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty upper lip, with its faintly darkening down of moustache, was too short for her teeth, but the more charmingly did it open, and the more charmingly still did it sometimes reach out and come down on the lower one. As always happens with wholly attractive women, her defect — the shortness of the lip and the half-open mouth — seemed her own particular, her very own, beauty. Everyone found it cheering to look at this pretty expectant mother, so full of health and vivacity, bearing her condition so lightly. Old men and dull, gloomy young men felt that they were themselves becoming like her after being and talking a while with her. Whoever talked to her and saw at every word her bright little smile and her gleaming white teeth, which showed continually, thought that he was being particularly agreeable that day. And so thought every one of them.

The little princess, waddling with quick small steps, went round the table with her workbag on her arm and, gaily settling her dress, sat down on the sofa beside the silver samovar, as though everything she did were a partie de plaisir³ for herself and for all about her.

— J'ai apporté mon ouvrage,⁴ — she said, opening her reticule and addressing everybody together.

— Mind, Annette, ne me jouez pas un mauvais tour, — she said, turning to her hostess. — Vous m'avez écrit que c'était une toute petite soirée; voyez comme je suis attifée.⁵

And she spread out her arms to show her elegant grey dress trimmed with lace, girdled with a broad ribbon a little below the breasts.

— Soyez tranquille, Lise, vous serez toujours la plus jolie,⁶ — answered Anna Pávlovna.

— Vous savez, mon mari m'abandonne, — she went on in the same tone, addressing a general, — il va se faire tuer. Dites-moi, pourquoi cette vilaine guerre,⁷ — she said to Prince Vasíli, and without waiting for an answer turned to Prince Vasíli's daughter, the beautiful Hélène.

— Quelle délicieuse personne, que cette petite princesse!⁸

— said Prince Vasíli quietly to Anna Pávlovna.

Soon after the little princess there came in a massive, stout young man with a cropped head, spectacles, light-coloured trousers in the fashion of the day, a high jabot, and a brown dress coat. This stout young man was the illegitimate son of a famous grandee of Catherine's day, Count Bezúkhov, who was now dying in Moscow. He was not yet in any service; he had only just come back from abroad, where he had been educated, and this was his first appearance in society. Anna Pávlovna greeted him with the bow she kept for people of the lowest rank in her salon. But in spite of this greeting, inferior of its kind, at the sight of Pierre coming in there showed in Anna Pávlovna's face an uneasiness and alarm like the alarm expressed at the sight of something too huge and out of place. Though Pierre really was rather bigger than the other men in the room, that alarm could only have to do with the intelligent and at the same time timid, observant and natural look that distinguished him from everyone in that drawing room.

— C'est bien aimable à vous, monsieur Pierre, d'être venu voir une pauvre malade,⁹ — Anna Pávlovna said to him, exchanging frightened glances with the aunt to whom she was leading him. Pierre burbled something unintelligible and went on searching for something with his eyes. He smiled joyfully and gaily, bowing to the little princess as to a close acquaintance, and went up to the aunt. Anna Pávlovna's alarm was not in vain, for Pierre walked away from the aunt without hearing out her speech about Her Majesty's health. Anna Pávlovna stopped him in alarm with the words:

— You don't know the abbé Morio? He is a very interesting man... — she said.

— Yes, I have heard of his plan for perpetual peace, and it is very interesting, but hardly possible...

— You think so?.. — said Anna Pávlovna, in order to say something and turn again to her duties as hostess; but Pierre committed the reverse incivility. Before, he had gone off without hearing out what the person he was talking to had to say; now he detained with his talk a person who needed to get away from him. Bending his head and spreading his large feet, he began to prove to Anna Pávlovna why he considered the abbé's plan a chimera.

— We will talk about it later, — said Anna Pávlovna, smiling.

And having got rid of the young man who did not know how to behave, she went back to her duties as hostess and went on listening and looking about, ready to lend help at the point where the conversation flagged. As the master of a spinning mill, having set his workers in their places, walks about the establishment, noticing a spindle at rest or an unaccustomed, creaking, too-loud sound, and goes quickly to check it or set it going properly — so Anna Pávlovna, walking about her drawing room, went up to a circle that had fallen silent or was talking too much, and with a word or a rearrangement set the regular, decorous conversational machine going again. But amid all these cares a particular fear for Pierre was still visible in her. She watched him solicitously as he went up to hear what was being said around Mortemart and moved away to another circle where the abbé was talking. For Pierre, brought up abroad, this evening of Anna Pávlovna's was the first he had seen in Russia. He knew that the whole intelligentsia of Petersburg was gathered there, and his eyes ran everywhere, like a child's in a toyshop. He kept being afraid of missing the clever conversations he might hear. Looking at the confident and elegant expressions of the faces assembled here, he kept waiting for something particularly clever. At last he went up to Morio. The talk struck him as interesting, and he stopped, waiting for a chance to express his own thoughts, as young people like to do.

Tolstoy's footnotes, rendered

The numbers are his; the English below renders his own Russian gloss, not the French.

1. Well, prince, Genoa and Lucca are the estates of the Buonaparte family. No, I tell you in advance, if you do not tell me that we have war, if you again allow yourself to palliate all the vileness, all the horrors of this Antichrist (truly, I believe he is Antichrist) — I know you no longer, you are no friend of mine, you are no longer my faithful slave, as you say. (French. Hereafter translations from the French are not marked. Here and throughout, all translations except those specially noted are L. N. Tolstoy's own. — Ed.)
2. I see that I frighten you.
3. If you have nothing better in view, Count (or Prince), and if the prospect of an evening with a poor invalid does not alarm you too much, I shall be very glad to see you at my house today between seven and ten. Anna Scherer.
4. Lord, what a violent onslaught!
5. First of all, tell me, how is your health, dear friend?
6. I confess, all these fêtes and fireworks are becoming insufferable.
7. Do not torment me. Well, what has been decided about Novosíltsev's despatch? You know everything.
8. What has been decided? It has been decided that Buonaparte has burned his boats, and it seems we too are ready to burn ours.
9. This famous Prussian neutrality is only a trap.
10. By the way — Vicomte Mortemart; he is related to the Montmorencys through the Rohans.
11. The abbé Morio.
12. The dowager Empress.
13. This baron is an insignificant creature, so it appears.
14. Baron Funke has been recommended to the Empress Mother by her sister.
15. Much esteem.
16. By the way, about your family... is the delight of the whole company. She is thought as beautiful as the day.
17. What is one to do! Lavater would have said that I have no bump of parental love.
18. Fools.
19. I am your... and to you alone can I confess it. My children are the burden of my existence.
20. What is one to do?..
21. Have a mania for marriage-making.
22. A girl... a relation of ours, a princess.
23. That is the advantage of being a father.
24. The poor little thing is as unhappy as the stones.
25. Listen, dear Annette.
26. Arrange this business for me and I am yours for ever... as my steward writes to me.
27. Wait.
28. To Lise (young Bolkónsky's wife).
29. In your family I shall begin my apprenticeship as an old maid.

Translator's log

Frozen 2026-09-04, before any English rendering of «Война и мир» was fetched and before the evaluation of these loci was designed. Decisions and alternatives; no quality claims.

The one policy, decided before the first sentence

Every one of the 38 French passages is kept as French, in italic, with an English rendering of Tolstoy's own Russian gloss at the foot of the page.

The reason is a structural asymmetry that this work has and the project's two earlier change-of-language works did not. When Sa'di's Arabic or Dante's Latin is carried into English, the matrix language changes and the embedded language stays put, so the pair survives but the readership's relation to it does not. Tolstoy's case is the same in form and different in effect: French in English is still French. The switch itself transfers intact, at no cost. What does not transfer is the sociology — for Anna Pávlovna's circle French is the language of the room, and Russian the thing that breaks through it; for an English reader French is a school subject. So keeping costs the relation and englishing costs the switch, and the switch is the thing Tolstoy built the scene out of.

The alternative that was live and was refused: english everything and mark it verbally ("she said in French"), which is what a modern trade edition would do and would read faster. It was refused because in chapter I the language change is not decoration: Prince Vasíli's whole characterisation is that he can say je suis votre — and then has to reach into Russian for «верный раб» because there is no French for what he means.

The five places where Tolstoy writes Russian inside the French

At LI.01, LI.03, LI.19, LI.26 and LI.28 the French sentence has Russian words standing in it. The policy adopted is: the Russian becomes English inside the italic French, so the relation survives — the salon language outside, the home language inside, exactly as in the original. This is the only decision in the two chapters that I could not find a second-best for:

• LI.01 «des apanages, des поместья» → des apanages, des estates. Anna Pávlovna translates herself, mid-sentence, into her own language. The English does the same thing with the same words in the same order.
• LI.01, LI.19 «мой верный раб» → my faithful slave, roman inside the italic. The formula recurs three times and is kept identical each time.
• LI.03 «(или mon prince)» → (or mon prince). This one is the author's own editorial hand inside a quoted document, not a speaker's switch, and the English "or" carries it.
• LI.28 «Lise (la femme du jeune Болконский)» → Lise (la femme du jeune Bolkónsky). This is where the policy is weakest: a transliterated Russian name set in roman inside italic French does not look like a language change the way Cyrillic inside Latin type does. The switch is preserved in structure and lost in appearance.

LI.26, the one locus I could not carry

«Arrangez-moi cette affaire et je suis votre вернейший раб à tout jamais (рап — comme mon староста m'écrit des донесенья: покой-ер-п).» Prince Vasíli calls himself his hostess's most faithful раб; then, quoting his own village steward, misspells it рап; then spells the misspelling out in the old letter-names — покой (П), ер (Ъ) — the way a semi-literate clerk would.

Three things had to be given up. The devoicing that makes the misspelling natural in Russian has no English counterpart, so slafe is an invented spelling doing a job the Russian spelling does for free. The letter-names have no English equivalent that is also archaic and also clerical, so they are left in Russian — pe, yer, pe — which asks the reader to accept a joke it cannot get. And the copy-text's own reading here is doubtful: the second Russian witness prints Latin ( pan, where this one prints Cyrillic (рап, and the trailing п of покой-ер-п is not accounted for by either reading. The locus is quoted with its problem rather than smoothed; nothing in the study limb turns on it alone.

Other decisions worth recording

• Dialogue dashes are kept, not converted to quotation marks — the same foreignising choice as keeping the French, and it keeps the narrator's tags visibly outside the speech, which matters at the five merged loci where a tag splits one French sentence in two.
• «грипп» is kept as grippe: the aside says it was then a new word, and the English word is the same French loan arriving at the same date.
• «Лафатер» is rendered Lavater in the footnote though Tolstoy's French prints Lafater; the French run keeps his spelling, the gloss uses the man's English name.
• «чиновный» — "highly placed" rather than "official"; the word is about position in the table of ranks and there is no one English adjective for it.
• «Ma tante» in the narrator's own sentences (chapter II) is kept in French and not italicised differently from the same phrase in speech, because Tolstoy does not distinguish them either. He glosses it once, as speech, and then lets it stand.

The fourteen changes made between the frozen draft and this version

R06 → R04, in order of appearance: the dash after "Well"; "tell me all about it" for "tell me things"; "important" for "great"; "in red livery" restored; "as she called it"; a dialogue dash supplied at "Set my mind at rest"; "On whom are we to rely" for "In whom are we to put our hope"; the letter-name joke rebuilt (above); "the woman known as" restoring Tolstoy's withholding of the princess's name behind her epithet, and "on account of her pregnancy" for a euphemism the draft had introduced; "Everyone found it cheering to look at"; "she said only" for "was all she said"; "He kept being afraid" unified with "he kept waiting"; "turned out" for "come out"; and "I will speak this very evening to" for a fronting the draft had invented.