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War And Peace
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War And Peace
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2 journalers for this copy...
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It's 1116 pages. It's 365 chapters. It took six years to write, and was published over five. I'd been moving this book from city to city, house to house, for more than twenty years, all the while unread. Then one day I came across a funny article in the Guardian's Books section about who has read War and Peace, and how many times. I was struck by how many of the luminaries interviewed seemed to be fibbing (like novelist Deborah Moggach, who said "I feel I have"), and I felt a pang of self-consciousness about how I'd have to answer the same question. So I read War and Peace. It took a month to read, but turned out to be completely engaging. Not a novel so much as a pastiche of interrelated characters and the things they get up to during a fifteen year period spanning the Napoleonic Wars (1805 - 1820). Many of the main characters are in their teens as the book begins, and we watch them grow up, fall in (and out) of love, and ultimately settle in domestic and professional circumstances illustrative of some of the book's major themes: disillusionment and social alienation, spiritual yearning and the nature of free will, romantic infatuation and marital ennui, regret and the desire for redemption. This is a book made up of big, over-arching themes and small details (see, for example, the description of Moscow before the 1812 French invasion, reproduced below), with moments of wry humour, unanticipated sorrow and astonishing wisdom. Much like any human life. I started using this journal to keep track of the characters in the novel, since the Russian names, combined with Tolstoy's tendency to use their French equivalents or other family nicknames interchangeably (e.g. Natalya/Natasha/Natalie) got pretty confusing. Then I learned there are more than 500 characters in War and Peace, many of whom -- though fully realized -- have walk-on roles (many are also actual historical figures, including Tsar Alexander I, Napoleon, General Kutuzov, Mikhail Speransky), Pyotr Bagration and Mikhail Barclay de Tolly. The volume referenced in the journal entries below is the version translated by Constance Garnett in 1904, a Quality Paperback Book Club selection from 1985. (Left: Leo Tolstoy, near the end of his life.) Useful links
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The FamiliesWar and Peace tells the story of five Russian aristocratic families (warning -- spoilers to follow):The Kuragin/Kuraginas: Shallow, vapid opportunists who spend most of the novel climbing the social ladder through manipulation and deceit. Bald, fifty-plus Vassily Kuragin is married to the "fat princess", Aline. They have three children: Ippolit, Ellen and the youngest, the prodigal Anatole. Ellen is as beautiful as Ippolit is unattractive and feebly built, but both are uninteresting and vacant. Anatole is a gambler, drinker and all-round party boy who later secretly marries the daughter of a Polish landowner -- which doesn't stop him from sabotaging the engagement of Natasha Rostova and Andrey Bolkonsky. Ippolit joins the Embassy of the Austrian government in exile in Brunn, Moravia (part of the present-day Czech Republic), after which his character disappears from the novel. Vassily, having lost Count Bezuhov's fortune to Pierre when the latter's parentage is "legitimized", secures himself an appointment as Pierre's "gentleman of the bedchamber", effectively taking control of his personal and financial affairs. In this way he engineers the marriage of Pierre and Ellen, enhancing Ellen's social stature -- a benefit she enjoys until near the end of the novel. Vassily also tries to arrange a marriage between Anatole and Marya Bolkonskya, but fails when Marya catches Anatole in a tryst with her friend Amelie Bourienne (who, fittingly, remains single for the rest of the novel). The Bolkonsky/Bolkonskyas: Predominantly neurotic and self-deluded, the Bolkonsky children nonetheless have their sympathetic moments. Father Nikolay Andreivitch Bolkonsky, once a commander in chief nicknamed "the Prussian King", is compulsive, mercurial and abusive. He lives under a highly regimented schedule at "Bleak Hills", his estate in the country outside Moscow, with his daughter Marya and her companion, Amelie Bourienne. Marya, a devout Christian, is a close friend of Julie Karagin (once a threat to the relationship between the young Nikolay Rostov and his cousin Sonya, later Marya's competition for the hand of Boris Drubetskoy), with whom she seems to be in love. (She's pretty fond of Amelie, too.) Attempts to marry Marya to various suitors (read: fortune hunters) are unsuccessful (she loses Anatole Kuragin to his own wandering hands, and Boris Drubetskoy to the wiles of Julie Karagin), and in any case Marya seems happiest in the company of the "God's folk", wandering pilgrims who visit Bleak Hills. Andrey Bolkonsky enlists as adjutant to General Kutuzov in an effort to escape his unhappy marriage to "the most seductive woman in Petersburg", the pregnant Lise (his experience of feeling "swallowed up" in marriage reportedly echoed Tolstoy's own). He goes to battle against the French, where he becomes quickly disillusioned and is injured at Pratzen. In a chance meeting with Napoleon and his physician, the latter pronounces Andrey a "nervous, bilious subject". Turned over to the French locals as a hopeless case, Andrey is missing in action for some time and presumed dead. He returns to Bleak Hills just in time to see Lise die during childbirth, leaving a son, Nikolay. By 1809 Andrey, now 31, is living part time at his own estate, Bogutcharovo, where he follows Pierre Bezuhov's example and converts his serfs into "free cultivators". Through his emerging reputation as a liberal Andrey is introduced to Secretary of State Mikhail Speransky, who appoints Andrey to new committees for reform of army regulations and the legal code. Back to battle in 1812, Andrey meets an unhappy, untimely end. The Rostov/Rostovas: A happy, close knit family who live at their estate Otradnoe, where throughout the first half of the novel they seem to keep an almost constantly open house. Count Ilya Rostov and the Countess Natalya Rostova, 45, have twelve children. Older daughter Vera is a stick-in-the-mud, disliked by her younger siblings, who ultimately marries brother Nikolay's wartime acquaintance, Adolphe Berg. Nikolay, 20 as the book begins, leaves university to join the army led by General Kutuzov, and is soon promoted to officer in which capacity he becomes almost romantically devoted to Tsar Alexander I. In love with his "kittenish" cousin Sonya, Nikolay becomes an adjutant to the Governor of Moscow following the battles of Schongraben and Austerlitz (1805), and as a young man develops a gambling problem. As he matures, he returns to his love for Sonya and are briefly engaged against his parents' wishes (they would have preferred him to marry money). At 13, Natasha Ilyinishna is in love with Boris Drubetskoy, son of close family friend Princess Anna Mihalovna, but the attachment doesn't last. Natasha grows into an exhuberant, vital, somewhat immodest young woman with a flirtatious nature and a competent singing voice and becomes engaged to Andrey Bolkonsky. The engagement doesn't last, but Natasha ends the novel happily married to another character. The youngest son is Petya, 9 as the novel begins. The Bezuhovs: Pyotr "Pierre" Kirillovitch, massive, irrepresible and bespectacled, is the illegitimate son of "a celebrated dandy of the days of Catherine", Count Kirill Vladimirovitch Bezuhov (owner of 40,000 serfs and "millions of money"). They are distantly related to Vassily Kuragin. By far the most emotionally well-rounded character in the book, Pierre was educated abroad, though he remains clumsy, labile and socially awkward. Friendly as a young man with both Andrey Bolkonsky and Anatole Kuragin, the latter and his friends (who Pierre acknowledges appeal to the debased side of his personality) are directly responsible for getting Pierre thrown out of Petersburg following a drunken incident involving a bear and a policeman. Shortly afterwards he inherits his father's fortune, which enhances his social stature, and Vassily Kuragin and Anna Pavlovna conspire to have him marry Ellen Kuragin, whom he finds off-putting but hot. The marriage flounders when Ellen takes up with an officer friend of Nikolay Rostov's, Fedya Dolohov. Following a duel with Dolohov (during which the latter is injured but not killed), Pierre meets Osip Alexyevitch Bazdyev, a well-known freemason, who convinces him to join the movement. Pierre and Ellen are reunited in 1809, by which time Ellen's reputation as an intelligent and attractive society woman has improved considerably. The Drubetskoys: For someone who has fallen "a long way out of society", Anna Mihalovna is pretty good at inserting herself into the middle of things. A widow from one of the best families in Russia and mother to the tall, fair-haired Boris (who is in love with Natasha Rostova as the book begins, though he later gets involved with Ellen Kuragin-Bezuhov following her split with Pierre), Anna is an intimate friend of the Rostov family, though now quite poor. She secures Boris' appointment to the Semenovsky Regiment ("the Guards") by seeking the influence of Vassily Kuragin, and acts as an advocate for Pierre Bezuhov at the time of his father's death (apparently hoping Pierre will remember the Count's godson, Boris, in his will). She also works with Vassily Kuragin to arrange the marriage of his daughter Ellen to Pierre. Boris joints the freemasons in 1809, and benefits from an ongoing intimate association with Ellen Kuragin, though he discovers he also still has feelings for Natasha Rostova. He ultimately marries Marya Bolkonskya's friend, the wealthy Julie Karagin. Anna "Annette" Pavlovna Scherer: forty years old as the novel begins in July 1805, a "distinguished lady of the court" and "confidential maid of honour" to the Dowager Empress Marya Fyodorovna (the mother of Tsar Alexander 1) and a would-be matchmaker for the Kuragin family. "To be enthusiastic had become her pose in society", thus Anna hosts a series of parties throughout the novel at which various key characters interact. (Photo: actress Lyudmila Savelyeva plays Natasha Rostova in Sergei Bondarchuk's 1967 film version of War and Peace.) |
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Great Moments in War and PeaceThe dinner at the home of Count Rostov (p. 54): Count Rostov throws a party to celebrate his wife and daughter's saint's day. Many members of the five families (see above) attend. There's an orchestra, dancing, and the Count's "household band" plays during dinner. "The count peeped from behind the crystal of the decanters and fruit-dishes at his wife and her high cap with blue ribbons, and zealously poured out wine for his neighbours, not overlooking himself. The countess, too, while mindful of her duties as hostess, cast significant glances from behind the pineapples at her husband, whose face and bald head struck her as looking particularly red against his grey hair. ... Pierre said little, looked about at the new faces, and ate a great deal. Of the two soups he chose a la tortue, and from that course to the fish-pasties and the grouse, he did not let a single dish pass, and took every sort of wine that the butler offered him, as he mysteriously poked a bottle wrapped in a napkin over his neighbour's shoulder, murmuring, "Dry Madeira," or "Hungarian," or "Rhine wine." Pierre took a wine-glass at random out of the four crystal glasses engraved with the count's crest that were set at each place, and drank with relish, staring at the guests with a countenance that became more and more amiable as the dinner went on."The cruelty of Nikolay Bolkonsky (p. 206): Vassily Kuragin and his son Anatole have come to visit Nikolay Bolkonsky and his plain daughter, Marya, with the hope of arranging a marriage between the two young people. Desperate to prevent his daughter from leaving Bleak Hills, Bolkonsky nonetheless gives Marya the choice. Unsure what to do, she asks her father for his opinion. "'I? I? what have I to do with it? leave me out of the question. I am not going to be married. What do you say? that's what it's desirable to learn.' The princess saw that her father looked with ill-will on the project, but at that instant the thought had occurred to her that now or never the fate of her life would be decided. She dropped her eyes so as to avoid the gaze under which she felt incapable of thought, and capable of nothing but her habitual obedience: 'My only desire is to carry out your wishes,' she said; 'If I had to express my own desire ...' She had not time to finish. The prince cut her short. 'Very good, then!' he shouted. 'He shall take you with your dowry, and hook on Mademoiselle Bourienne into the bargain. She'll be his wife, while you ...' The prince stopped. He noticed the effect of these words on his daughter. She had bowed her head and was beginning to cry." Andrey Bolkonsky meets Napoleon (p. 264): At the conclusion of the Battle of Austerlitz (December 1805), Napoleon arrives at the hill at Pratzen where Andrey lies injured to inspect the Russian prisoners. "Prince Andrey, who had been thrust forward under the Emperor's eyes to complete the show of prisoners, could not fail to attract his notice. ... 'And you, young man,' [Napoleon] said to him, 'how are you feeling, mon brave?' Although five minutes previously Prince Andrey had been able to say a few words to the soldiers who were carrying him, he was silent now with his eyes fastened directly upon Napoleon. So trivial seemed to him at that moment all the interests that were engrossing Napoleon, so petty seemed to him his hero, with his paltry vanity and glee of victory, in comparison with that lofty, righteous, and kindly sky which he had seen and comprehended, that he could not answer him. And all indeed seemed to him so trifling and unprofitable beside the stern and solemn train of thought aroused in him by weakness from loss of blood, by suffering and the nearness of death. Gazing into Napoleon's eyes, Prince Andrey mused on the nothingness of greatness, on the nothingness of life, of which no one could comprehend the significance, and on the nothingness -- still more -- of death, the meaning of which could be understood and explained by none of the living. Pierre's conversion in Torzhok station (p. 320): Following the breakdown of his marriage to Ellen and his duel with Dolohov, Pierre is travelling from Moscow to Petersburg but gets held up in Torzhok station when there are no horses available. In the waiting room he meets Osip Alexyevitch Bazdyev, a well-known freemason who changes his life. Pierre gazed with shining eyes into the freemason's face, listening with a thrill at his heart to his words; he did not interrupt him, nor ask questions, but with all his soul he believed what this strange man was telling him. Whether he believed on the rational grounds put before him by the freemason, or believed, as children do, through the intonations, the conviction, and the earnestness, of the mason's words, the quiver in his voice that sometimes almost broke his utterance, or the gleaming old eyes that had grown old in that conviction, or the calm, the resolution, and the certainty of his destination, which were conspicuous in the whole personality of the old man, and struck Pierre with particular force, beside his own abjectness and hopelessness, -- any way, with his whole soul he longed to believe, and believed and felt a joyful sense of soothing, of renewal, and of return to life. (Top left: The Battle of Austerlitz by Louis-François Lejeune.) |
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More Great Moments in War and PeaceAndrey Bolkonsky loses interest in government reform (p. 425): Having been specially chosen to work on two government social reform committees, Andrey loses interest in this work when a night spent dancing with Natasha Rostova wakens a more vital aspect of his personality. "On reaching home Prince Andrey ... thought of the efforts he had made, and the people he had tried to see, and the history of his project of army reform, which had been accepted for consideration, and had been shelved because another scheme, a very poor one, had already been worked out and presented to the Tsar. He thought of the sittings of the committee ... He thought of the conscientious and prolonged deliberations that took place at those sittings on every point relating to the formalities of the sittings themselves, and the studious brevity with which anything relating to the reality of their duties was touched on in passing. He thought of his work on the legislative reforms, of his careful translation of the Roman and French codes into Russian, and he felt ashamed of himself. Then he vividly imagined Bogutcharovo, his pursuits in the country, his expedition to Ryazan; he thought of his peasants, of Dron the village elder; and applying the section on Personal Rights, which he had divided into paragraphs, to them, he marvelled how he could have so long busied himself on work so idle."A description of life in Moscow before the French invasion (p. 607): As rumours regarding the progress of the war become more alarming people carry on as usual, though there's a subtle change in the atmosphere. "It was a hot July day. Even by ten o'clock, when the Rostovs got out of their carriage before chapel, the sultry air, the shouts of the street hawkers, the gay, light summer dresses of the crowd, the dusty leaves of the trees on the boulevard, the martial music and white trousers of the battalion marching by to parade, the rattle of the pavements, and the brilliant, hot sunshine, were all full of that summer languor, that content and discontent with the present, which is felt particularly vividly on a bright, hot day in town. All the fashionable world of Moscow, all the Rostovs' acquaintances were in the chapel. A great number of wealthy families, who usually spent the summer in the country, were staying on in Moscow that year, as though in vague anticipation of something." Andrey Bolkonsky visits the abandoned Bleak Hills (p. 646): After the burning of Smolensk, the Bolkonskys are advised to leave Bleak Hills and go to Moscow. The regiment Andrey commands happens to be marching along the road past the avenue that leads to the estate. "He ordered his horse to be saddled, and turned off from the main line of march towards his father's house, where he had been born and had spent his childhood. As he rode by the pond, where there always used to be dozens of peasant women gossiping, rinsing their linen, or beating it with washing bats, Prince Andrey noticed that there was no one by the pond, and that the platform where they used to stand had been torn away, and was floating sideways in the middle of the pond, half under water. Prince Andrey rode up to the keeper's lodge. There was no one to be seen at the stone gates and the door was open. The paths of the garden were already overgrown with weeds, and cattle and horses were straying about the English park. Prince Andrey rode up to the conservatory: the panes were smashed, and some of the trees in tubs were broken, others quite dried up. He called Taras, the gardener. No one answered." Pierre's epiphany while imprisoned by the French (p. 934): Pierre meditates on the fact that no matter what happens to his body, his soul will remain untouched. Pierre [went back] to an unharnessed waggon where there was nobody. Tucking his legs up under him, and dropping his head, he sat down on the cold ground against the waggon wheel, and sat there a long while motionless, thinking. More than an hour passed by. No one disturbed Pierre. Suddenly he burst into such a loud roar of his fat, good-humoured laughter, that men looked round on every side in astonishment at this strange and obviously solitary laughter. 'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed Pierre. And he talked aloud to himself. 'The soldier did not let me pass. They have taken me -- shut me up. They keep me prisoner. Who is 'me'? Me? Me -- my immortal soul! ha, ha, ha! ... The immense, endless bivouac, which had been full of the sound of crackling fires and men talking, had sunk to rest; the red camp-fires burnt low and dim. High overhead in the lucid sky stood the full moon. Forests and fields, that before could not be seen beyond the camp, came into view now in the distance. And beyond those fields and forests could be seen the bright, shifting, alluring, boundless distance. Pierre glanced at the sky, at the far-away, twinkling stars. 'And all that is mine, and all that is in me, and all that is I!' thought Pierre. 'And all this they caught and shut up in a shed closed in with boards!' He smiled and went to lie down to sleep beside his companions. (Top left: the Battle of Borodino, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.) |
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A few last moments to remember...Natasha and Princess Marya grieve Andrey Bolkonsky (p. 985): Everything -- the carriage driving along the street, the summons to dinner, the maid asking which dress to get out; worse still -- words of faint, feigned sympathy -- set the wound smarting, seemed an insult to it, and jarred on that needful silence in which both were trying to listen to the stern, terrible litany that had not yet died away in their ears, and to gaze into the mysterious, endless vistas that seemed for a moment to have been unveiled before them.Pierre reflects on the impact of his experience as a prisoner of war (p. 1025): 'They say: sufferings are misfortunes,' said Pierre. 'But if at once, this minute, I was asked, would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say, for God's sake let me rather be a prisoner and eat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal before us. That I say to you.' Pierre, Natasha, Nikolay and Marya's loyalty to the elderly Countess Rostova (p. 1067): The old countess's condition was understood by all the household, though no one ever spoke of it, and every possible effort was made by every one to satisfy her requirements. Only rarely a mournful half-smile passed between Nikolay, Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Marya that betrayed their comprehension of her condition. But those glances said something else besides. They said that she had done her work in life already, that she was not all here in what was seen in her now, that they would all be the same, and that they were glad to give way to her, to restrain themselves for the sake of this poor creature, once so dear, once as full of life as they. Memento mori, said those glances. Only quite heartless and stupid people and little children failed to understand this, and held themselves aloof from her. |
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A hearty thank you to goatgrrl for sending me this book as a RABCK. It arrived today and I feel honored to have it somehow, maybe because this copy has been read and so beautifully and thoroughly journaled (great entries goatgrrl!) and because I had just decided it was high time I read this great book, perhaps in honor of my youngest son, who is also named Leo. I shall accept your challenge goatgrrl to move this off my shelf in under twenty years! Someday I will also try to find someone to give this book to that really wants to read it. |
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