The original title of War and Peace was War: What is It Good For?No, no...wait a minute, I'm getting confused. It was a little less catchy than that. As published in serial-form in The Russian Herald from 1865, it was actually The Year 1805. When it came to be published as a book in 1867, Tolstoy needed a new title, and briefly considered All’s Well That Ends Well before deciding, very soon before publication, on War and Peace.
The choice reflected events six years earlier, when Tolstoy, aged 32, had visited the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in exile at Ixelles, Brussels. Proudhon showed him a copy of his own recently-finished tract on international armed conflict: War and Peace. Greatly impressed by Proudhon and his philosophy of benevolent anarchism — which Tolstoy later developed into his own form of Christian anarchism in works such as The Kingdom of God is Within You — Tolstoy seems to have decided to appropriate his title as an act of deliberate homage.
Consulted:
Troyat, Henri: Tolstoy (Doubleday, 1967)
I like "The Year 1905", it sounds curiously Orwelian.. and War and Peace, how original, is one of my favorite books!
ReplyDeleteYes, me too. I read it in three sweltering weeks in the Seychelles. Tolstoy's shorter fictions are brilliant too of course. The Death of Ivan Ilyich or Father Sergius. What an astonishing man.
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