The French Language in ‘War and Peace’

While planning to read War and Peace, the initial challenge was zeroing down on the version to be read. While I settled for the Anthony Briggs translation, one of the criteria by which other versions were compared was the use of French within the work. The novel has substantial dialogues in French and some English translations retained the French text as is with the translation in the footnotes. Something I discovered after reading the book was that Tolstoy tends to show characters speaking French when he wants to indicate their loss of touch with authentic Russian values. There’s a whole bunch of links online that explore this aspect in detail.

From the fifteenth century onwards, French was the language of diplomacy. The ‘culture’ and splendor of the French courts became an object of desire across Europe, and the language was lapped up. The Treaty of Westphalia which ended the Thirty Years War in Europe, established the concept of Nation States, and ushered in the Age of Genius was drawn up in French – another reason for its adoption by the aristocracy of Europe.

Earlier this week, through my daughter’s GK book, I also learnt that French was also the official language of England for three centuries! The Norman conquest in 1066 brought French to their shores where it remained in prominence until the 14^th century. Nationalism slowly rooted it out.