#andrey bolkonsky

[coyote-daniels]

A look through the Great Comet zine I made!! ☄️✨🍷

[eleancrvances]

andrei "doomed by the narrative" bolkonsky has been on my mind recently.

the oresteia by roberte icke / prologue by dave malloy / waltz of the 101st lightborne / war and peace (1966-7) by sergei bondarchuk / grief lessons by anne carson / sunday morning by dave malloy / lake mungo (2001) / moby dick by herman melville / empty stage by franz wright / catheryne m. valente / the triumph of achilles by louise glück / ? / grief lessons by anne carson

[hauntthenarrative]

Haunting the Narrative Round 2 Side A

Haunting the narrative means that the character’s absence heavily impacts the plot. They’re not present or active in the story when their influence is most strongly felt, whether they’re alive or dead!

[marcell-arts]

my love letter to the australian cast of Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 which i am in love with and can't stop listening to daily now

[roseg96]

I’m in my Josh Groban era and I will not apologise 🕺

On a serious note though the great comet of 1812 has touched my soul like no other musical has done before. And the staging is so interactive and alive especially with the audience sitting with the actors and the orchestra pit being centre stage and having the actors be part of the pit and stage. Ugh I’m obsessed. It’s honestly such a masterpiece of theatre.

“It seems to me/ That this comet/ Feels me/ Feels my softened and uplifted soul/ And my newly melted heart/ Now blossoming/ Into a new life” - Pierre, The Great Comet of 1812

[anotherfandomtrash]

That just how it is

[starry-bite]

great comet: would you fuck a clone of yourself?

[finleyforevermore]

Lyrics.

(opinion: the off-broadway version of this song is so much better than the broadway version)

@literatureisdying

[officer-lahit]

in the digital folder since spring I found sketches of the searches for the main characters of wap (not only the Kuragins)

I cleaned up a little and sharing!!

(a joke as a gift)

(translation for the joke: best friends for ever and also Katyushka)))*** *_* *_* *_*)

[incorrectlit]

Natasha, to Andrei: Wait! You knew Pierre was going to try to assassinate Napoleon?!

Pierre: Yes! I told Andrei about this months ago!

Natasha, to Andrei: He WHAT?!

Andrei: What?! He says insane shit all the time! How was I supposed to know this one was real?!

Pierre: Bank accounts are a scam created by the Free Masons.

Andrei: See?!

[eva-eyre]

crying my eyes out

[prechistensky-boulevard]

One beautiful moment in the Canadian premiere of Great Comet happens during No One Else. The stage is set up to move, so Natasha is singing about her love for Andrey, and Pierre and Anatole come out to spin the stage around. The stage is spinning, faster and faster, until it seems like Natasha is floating. And then Pierre and Anatole stop moving the stage. Anatole walks away before the stage is still, and Pierre stays there, steadying it until the song is almost over. It's an amazing choice because it demonstrates Natasha's relationships with all three men in her life. She is devoted to Andrey, but he's not there. Anatole forces himself into her heart, but leaves her at the brink or ruin. And Pierre is there to steady her. To balance her out. To be the bravest, handsomest, best man on earth.

[eleancrvances]

andrei bolkonsky is truly the most "dead since the beginning" character. in his last few days he reaches a very explicit state of undeathness ("they were not attending on him (he was no longer there, he had left them) but on what reminded them most closely of him—his body"), but really, is it the first time he has been like this? in his first chapter, when he walks into anna pavlovna's soiree, "it was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen to them". he goes through the social motions but doesn't really feel them (except with pierre, who understands instinctively many things about him, like that their meeting before borodino is their last), and he's just like that before the end. the night before austerlitz he declares "death, wounds, the loss of family—i fear nothing", and it's close to the absence of terror and general feeling he feels after his last nightmare. he's assumed to have died at austerlitz by everyone and reappears at home with zero explanation. the same thing happens after borodino. during both the near-death experiences, he feels some sort of "awakening" ("death is an awakening"). he identifies himself in an old oak tree that appears to be dead until spring (love) draws some last signs of life from him. and literally the only thing that seems to keep him alive is his last-minute unwillingness to separate himself from love, which to tolstoy is life - "i cannot, i do not wish to die. i love life—i love this grass, this earth, this air". this man is a zombie. he returned from the metaphorical and literal (the battlefield) land of the dead not once but twice with terrible wounds, despite all his efforts he can never find a complete and lasting connection to liveliness but falls back again and again in his mechanical, detached way of moving through situations. even his connection to natasha, life and joy, is perceived to be doomed from the beginning by many. "ah, my friend, it has of late become hard for me to live. i see that i have begun to understand too much" he says to perhaps the only person he has always been honest with, pierre, before receiving his final wound. and when he does die it's impossible to tell. marya can't pinpoint the moment when he's gone physically, and as for his spirit, even little nikolai knows it was torn from him earlier. but it doesn't feel like a sudden and new thing. we've seen him in this state before, though perhaps not on this level. but really, it looks like his struggle to keep death out of the room has been going on throughout the entire novel, and he could never hold the door completely closed. we've never seen him completely alive. on a meta level too, because he is maybe the only main character tolstoy didn't base on anyone but created from scratch, with the specific intention to kill him. when did he die exactly? at borodino? at austerlitz, where tolstoy originally intended him to? when he had his nightmare? when he left natasha? when lise died? when his mother died? before we ever met him, it seems. he died in a dream.

[hauntthenarrative]

Haunting the Narrative Round 1

Haunting the narrative means that the character’s absence heavily impacts the plot. They’re not present when their influence is most strongly felt, whether they’re alive or dead!

[ilovefredjones]

something about the same actor playing bolkonsky AND andrey. it makes the audience question how much of andrey’s cruelty is inherited from his father, and how much of it is a result from the war.

both are mentioned in the only song andrey physically appears in: ‘there’s a war going on’ andrey says, a callback to the prologue. in that song, the characters sing ‘the war can’t touch us here’ — an ironic statement, now. and pierre says that andrey ‘smiled just like his father / coldly, maliciously.’

andrey is malicious, and wary, and exhausted. there’s a war going on. his cruelty is echoed in the way the son is playing his father. his father is playing his son. words and notes are sung with similar cadence and emphasis. how justified is andrey? how much did the war change him, or how much can the war excuse his maliciousness? andrey does not break the cycle of his father’s cruelty, but how much of it is his fault? there’s a war going on, after all.

[lesgatsby]

andrei bolkonsky: austerlitz

| this was made a while ago, but i decided to post on tumblr as well |