Tolstoy appears to have beaten the annalist historian Marc Bloch (a French Jew later executed by the Nazis) to the Total History punch. Groping for truth is difficult, and often I think, "How should I even try to put all of this into words?" It's a wonderful prologue to the period leading up to what in the business is categorized as "post-modernity." From the NY Review of Books it appears as though Tolstoy struggled with finding the Truth (certainly an Enlightenment principle) while transitioning into the contradictions inherent in the post-modern world with his beautiful stream of words to describe that truth: a grope.
FCP'ers are fond of groping (take it from here, JJ)...
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I always thought of Tolstoy as a tiresome religious Russian nationalist mystic rather than as a genial religious Russian nationalistic mystic like Dostoyevsky.
Neither I would think has any interest in truth with a capital T, the way we think of it.
Hold on for a second. This delves into several literary Russian themes, unified by this: all those mis-translations of Russian authors by Constance Garnett. These new translations by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky purport to be purists (certainly more philological), and thus allow Tolstoy a voice otherwise unknown in the English-speaking/reading world.
...either that or the bastards just found another way to sell another translation of War and Peace.
Constance Garnett brought Dostoyevsky to my mind while you were still shitting your pants, son. Speak ill of her and you will return to that state.
Bring it on, pussy (kidding).
This isn't freshman creative writing. Instead, try something novel, like reading the article.
Note, and just for the record: I've got plenty of Garnett's Chekhov and Dostoevsky translations on my shelf.
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