War and Peace

Hi, all!

I had such a fun semster with you all; thanks for the awesome discussions and presentations, for thoughtful and sincere peer editing, and above all, for sharing your experience of journeying through this monstrosity of a book!
Best of luck on finals and have a relaxing, wonderful break!

Meredith

Thanks for sharing War and Peace with me!

Have a great break,

Emily

Cabbage pirozhki:

Here’s the recipe for yeast dough that I used (courtesy of NY Times Cookbook).  You can also use frozen puff pastry from the store and roll it out and cut into squares.

1 pkg dry yeast

1/4 c lukewarm water

1/4 lb. butter

1 cup milk, scalded

1 tsp salt

2 tsps sugar

4 1/2 to 5 cups flour

3 eggs, lightly beaten

Filling (see below)

1 egg yolk, lightly beaten

1. Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm water in a large bowl. Melt the butter in the milk. Add the salt and sugar to the milk and cool to lukewarm. Add the milk mixture to the yeast mixture.

2. Beat in 1 cup of the flour. Beat in the eggs and then gradually beat in enough flour to make a soft dough. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured board [or countertop] and knead until soft and elastic.

3. Place in a lightly greased bowl and turn to grease the top. Cover with a clean cloth and place in  a warm place for about 2 hours or until dough has doubled in bulk.

4. Preheat oven to 400.

If you’re making the little pirozhki, rather than big pirog ….

5. Roll it out to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut it into 3-inch rounds or rectangles (3×2 inches). Place about 1 tsp of the filling in the center of each round or rectangle, moistne the edges, and pinch together to seal. The rectangles will make a pillow shape.

6. Place the filled pirozhki on a greased baking sheet., ocver and let stand for about 20 minutes, until dough is light.

7. The cookbook says to bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then turn down oven and bake at 400 for another 15 minutes.  I’ve found that a total of 15 minutes at 400 is about right.  You want them to be golden, not burnt.  You can brush egg yolk onto them before baking for extra color and yumminess.

Filling:

You can fill pirozhki with about anything. (Ground meat, sauteed with onion, add parsley or dill; fish and rice; apples, just hardboild eggs and scallions, etc.)

The cabbage filling I used is simple:

1 large head cabbage

3 Tbs unsalted butter

3 Tbs vegetable oil

4 hard-boiled eggs, finely chopped

salt and pepper

About 2 Tbs chopped dill or parsley

Chop the head of cabbage; blanch it in boiling salted water for about 3 minutes. Then drain the cabbage and squeeze out extra water

Heat butter and oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the cabbage and cook, stirring, until soft and colored, 15-20 minutes.

REmove from heat and stir in eggs, chopped herbs, salt and pepper

Fill your pirozhki and bake them.  (BTW, they can also be deep-fried.)

BORSCHT

2-3 beets, peeled

2-3 potatoes, peeled and diced

1-2 carrots

1 onion

cabbage (about 1/4-1/2 head), chopped

bay leaf

garlic to taste

dill to taste

a fresh tomato or a couple tablespoons of tomato paste

a little extra bouillon for flavor

splash of lemon or vinegar

salt pepper

optional: 1 jalapeno (definitely not RUssian, but I like the kick.)

sour cream

Everybody makes borscht differently–there are millions of recipes on-line. Mine’s vegetarian, because I’m lazy and more people can eat it.

I take 2-3 good-sized beets, peel them, put them in a pot of water and boil them until they’re about half-cooked.  I also put in a bay leaf or two, and a few minutes into the cooking add 1-2 peeled carrots (whole).

Then I take the beets out of the water.

While they cool, I put the potato in the water.

I grate the beets and put about half of them back into the water.

The rest of the beets get sauteed with the onion, garlic, tomato, a little dill, optional jalapeno

I add the sauteed stuff back to the water, chop up the carrot, add the cabbage, and start adding bouillon, more chopped garlic, etc. until there’s some flavor:)

I find that borscht generally tastes best the 2nd day, once flavors have settled. By the third days the vegies get mushy.

Serve with sour cream and dill. (And don’t use lucerne sour cream–the stuff I bought when you were at my house had a funny texture.)

Happy Holidays!

If you’re interested in Russian (and, more broadly, Soviet cooking, which includes great Georgian cuisine), I recommend Anya von Bremzen and John Welchman’s cookbook “Please to the Table”

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Most posts so far have discussed explicitly artistic treatments of war. So I’d like to ask you to think of what Tolstoy’s response to the following story might have been. What are the key points here? (And no, I’m not simply asking us to poke fun–that would be too simple.)

In a videoconference, Bush heard from U.S. military and civilian personnel about the challenges ranging from fighting local government and police corruption to persuading farmers to abandon a lucrative poppy drug trade for other crops.
Bush heard tales of all-night tea drinking sessions to coax local residents into cooperating, and of tribesmen crossing mountains to attend government meetings seen as building blocks for the country’s democracy-in-the-making.
“I must say, I’m a little envious,” Bush said. “If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.”
“It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You’re really making history, and thanks,” Bush said.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1333111120080313

So I really like the comparison between Pierre’stransformation through war and Scarlet O’Harra’s in Gone with the Wind. Neither one is a real participant in their respective wars, yet both are profoundly changed. Pierre has Platon as a 2-D symbol of how to be a better person just as Scarlet has Melanie. But while Pierre listens to and strives to be more like Platon, Scarlet has no desire to be like Melanie in any way other than loving her husband. Pierre becomes a better and more humane person while Scarlet shuts out anything that does not concern her interests. Pierre becomes a better person while Scarlet arguably becomes worse. Yet while they have fundamental differences, they are also surprisingly similar. Both Pierre and Scarlet begin to look after themselves to an extent that they hadn’t before. For Pierre this just means learning how to say “no” sometimes; Scarlet is slightly more extreme.

A lot of people have mentioned songs in reference to modern portrayals of war.  This was an interesting theme to me straight out because it music was also a heavy influence at times of war for soldiers in War and Peace.  We saw how soldiers express themselves and improved morale through singing.  I’m interested in how people on the home front, or non-soldiers in general used music to express their feelings towards war.

I volunteered at the Holocaust Museum a few years ago and when I was there, there was a really interesting exhibit about music written by prisoners in concentration camps.  Some songs were ironic protest.  One, called Soldiers of the Moor was written by prisoners who had been forced by Nazis to sing cheerful work songs during their hard labor.  The song was satirical; it used a catchy upbeat melody like the Nazi work songs, but the lyrics reflected the plight of the prisoners.  Imprisoned composers often kept composing, even in their circumstances.  Jura Soyfer and Herbert Zipper met in Dachau and composed a song about the camp that ended up becoming a powerful source of unity among prisoners.  According to the Holocaust Museum website, the composers ” made Dachau Song deliberately difficult to learn, hoping the challenge would help their comrades rise above their surroundings.”    There are many touching songs written from different perspectives, including songs written by people living in the Ghetto, watching people being deported to death camps, discussing burning of cities, etc.  You can find more info about these songs on this link :http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/music/ or on the museum’s research archive: http://www.ushmm.org/research/collections/music/.  Even years letter, poets and musicians were inspired to write about the Holocaust from a civilian perspective.  Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 13 about Babi Yar, a mass massacre by Nazis of Ukranian Jews in 1941.  He had a choral section reciting poems, including one about the Massacre by Yevgeniy Yevtushenko.  An English translation of the poem can be found here.

A recording of the song is here:

Another era of songs that I am interested in is the Vietnam War.  It is interesting to me that a lot of the home-front reactions to the war and much of the protest movement centered around music, especially the roch and folk movements.  Two of my favorite songs from the era aren’t about actual battles or war violence, but rather about the domestic side of the war.

“Ohio”, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young reflected on the Kent State Massacres and the US government reaction to protesters:

Another song that I find a far more moving means of protest was the “Ballad of Penny Evans”, by Steve Goodman.  The song focused on the potential aftermath of the draft for a young family.  A recording of the song can be found here:

What can you guys say about the reaction to war from the home front?  Do you think that music is an effective genre for expressing these thoughts?  How has music changed over time and by situation?  Any comments about today’s home front reactions to wars?

The modern piece that seemed related to the image of war presented in War and Peace is the song “The General” by Dispatch. The lyrics are :

there was a decorated general with
a heart of gold, that likened him to
all the stories he told
of past battles, won and lost, and
legends of old a seasoned veteran in
his own time

on the battlefield, he gained
respectful fame with many medals
of bravery and stripes to his name
he grew a beard as soon as he could
to cover the scars on his face
and always urged his men on

but on the eve of a great battle
with the infantry in dream
the old general tossed in his sleep
and wrestled with its meaning
he awoke from the night
just to tell what he had seen
and walked slowly out of his tent

all the men held tall with their
chests in the air, with courage in
their blood and a fire in their stare
it was a grey morning and they all
wondered how they would fare
till the old general told them to go home

[CHORUS:]
I have seen the others
and I have discovered
that this fight is not worth fighting
I have seen their mothers
and I will no other
to follow me where I’m going

Take a shower, shine your shoes
you got no time to lose
you are young men you must be living
go now you are forgiven

but the men stood fast with their
guns on their shoulders not knowing
what to do with the contradicting orders
the general said he would do his own
duty bout would not extend it not further
the men could go as they pleased

but not a man moved, their eyes gazed straight ahead
till one by one
they stepped back and not a word was said
and the old general was left with his
own words echoing in his head
he then prepared to fight

[CHORUS]

go now you are forgiven

 

The general in some ways reminded me of Kutuzov in the sense that he is trying to restrain his men from committing senseless violence. However, he is, unlike Kutuzov, unaware of his inability to stop the force of an army about to fight. Another aspect that reminded me of the novel was the young soldiers preparing to fight and searching for glory as Andrew at the beginning was and Petya was to his death. Overall I feel this song expresses much of the same disenchantment with the glory of war as the book, but takes a much more individualist-centric point of view.

For me, the first image that came to mind about war recently, as portrayed in the media/art (besides the immediate jump to Gone With the Wind) was the Dropkick Murphy’s song “The Green Fields of France” that was released in 2005. A song originally recorded by Eric Bogle in 1976, the lyrics tell the story of the grave of a soldier in WWI who died well before his time. “Only 19.” Instead of the heroism and glory of war, this song touches far more on the loss of life, of a young man cut down in his prime, and echo the melancholy nature of the graveyard. Throughout the song, war is echoed through the steady beat of marching drums and a scottish bagpipe, combining both past and present in one beautiful moment. It seems to handle war in a different way than Tolstoy, but considers many of the same major themes, including the cutting down of a man in war (Petya?) and leaving a wife or a sweetheart behind (Andrew). 

Also, definitely one of my favorite songs : ) watch?v=K5s4wjOmW_M

What immediately comes to mind is, oddly enough, Cold Mountain.  The way that battle is portrayed is similar, but more than that, the humanness of war is similar.  There are similar stories – a man is wounded and struggles to get back home, only it’s too late/to no avail (I’m thinking of Andrew when he comes home in time for Lise to die).  Also, Cold Mountain focuses a lot on the “homefront” – what it was like for hte women to be vulnerable and worried while their men are gone.  This is reminiscent of many of the women in War and PEace at some point or another – Lise is a great example, or Countess Rostova.  It’s interesting that the Civil War was going on right when War and Peace was being written…