Our Third and Final Meeting

Here's a picture from our final meeting, graciously hosted on August 28th by Chuck and Marsha H. It's a little blurry, you may notice, which I take as an emblem of how, inevitably, our memories of this novel will blur and lose focus as time passes. That's sad, in a way, but I expect that my memories of this book and the time I spent discussing it with good friends will always retain a warm glow of happiness, no matter how fuzzy.

Our Second Meeting

We had our second group meeting on Sunday. We met at the Bottleworks again, and we discussed up to page 820 in the novel.

Among the topics discussed: Natasha's age when she attends her coming-out ball; a comparison of the character arcs of Andrei and Pierre; the wolf hunt; War and Peace as an epic; its possible similarities to Moby-Dick in that regard; whether it's still true, if indeed it ever was, that leaders have no real control over large-scale human events, as Tolstoy asserts; and various other topics that slip my mind at the moment (perhaps my fellow group members could chime in if I missed something noteworthy).

I think my favorite turn in the discussion was when we looked at this wonderful passage in which Tolstoy, describing the various generals who comprise the war council, identifies them by their national characters, which he distinguishes on the basis of why each is self-assured:

...only Germans can be self-assured on the basis of an abstract idea—science, that is, an imaginary knowledge of the perfect truth. A Frenchman is self-assured becasue he considers himself personally, in mind as well as in body, irresistibly enchanting for men as well as women. An Englishman is self-assured on the grounds that he is an citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore, as an Englishman, he always knows what he must do, and knows that everything he does as an Englishman is unquestionably good. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and others. A Russian is self-assured precisely because he does not know anything and does not want to know anything, because he does not believe it possible to know anything fully. (639)

Tolstoy is almost entirely uninterested in Americans, but of course we had to ask the question: Why are Americans self-assured?

At first we thought maybe it had to do with military might, but then we decided that wasn't it. Americans are self-assured, we decided, because they believe that anything is possible (even when it manifestly isn't). It's why, according to the Swedish coach of the women's World Cup soccer team, the Americans persisted in the face of seemingly fated defeat and ended up winning against Brazil. It's also why many Americans resist more progressive taxation on the wealthy, because they believe that someday they may be wealthy, too.

In any case, it was a great afternoon and a very enjoyable discussion. Although the end of the summer vacation is always a bittersweet time, our final discussion, re-scheduled for August 28th, gives me something to look forward to.

Shorthand

It's funny how "reading War and Peace" has become a kind of shorthand phrase that means "spending one's time in a worthwhile fashion" or "doing something challenging and meaningful." For example, the following passage from this blog post about a government study of how Americans spend their time:

The findings are unsurprising at first glance: time spent on the job is down from previous years (thanks to the recession), women continue to spend more time housekeeping and caring for children than men, television-watching continues to be our favorite leisure activity, and time spent reading for pleasure remains abysmal (about seventeen minutes a day on average, though the numbers vary largely by age)....

The Journal also notes that the increase in leisure time brought on by the recession hasn’t resulted, as one might think, in Americans finally getting around to all the productive things (like tackling “War and Peace”) they hadn’t had time for before, but in more television-viewing: an average of two hours and thirty-one minutes per weekday.

Why is this the case? Is it the length of the novel? The sheer investment of time and attention it requires? Or does it have something more to do with the ambitions of the novel—the way that it packs so much of life and human experience between its covers?

In some ways, it seems strange that a novel written by a Russian aristocrat almost 150 years ago should occupy this rhetorical position in our culture. Why not the complete works of Shakespeare? Or the Odyssey or the Iliad? Or Moby-Dick?

Our First Meeting

We had our first discussion this past Saturday at the Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood. We had a great time talking about the first 417 pages while drinking beer and eating elk chili. No photos were taken (an oversight on my part), and we didn't appoint anyone to take minutes. But I did want to record some impressions of the conversation. This post is by no means a transcript, but instead a riff on our discussion and two essays on Tolstoy by Isaiah Berlin that I read in the days following the discussion.

Early on, Jim R. made reference to the distinction between foxes and hedgehogs, a dichotomy that has been associated with Tolstoy ever since the publication in 1953 of Isaiah Berlin's celebrated essay "The Hedgehog and the Fox" (which you can read here, and which is also available in book form and in this volume).

Berlin begins by quoting from the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Berlin uses this fragment to classify writers. The foxes pursue many interests and present a multifarious world without needing to bend their observations to a single unitary vision. The hedgehogs, on the other hand, do seek that type of unitary vision, at times even fanatically. Berlin offers Dante, Plato, Ibsen, and Dostoevsky as examples of hedgehogs; and Shakespeare, Montaigne, Balzac, and Joyce as examples of foxes.

Berlin offers the hypothesis that "Tolstoy was by nature a fox, but believed in being a hedgehog."

Our group marveled at Tolstoy's foxlike ability to go seemingly anywhere—from the battlefield to the drawing room to the highest realms of political and court life, as well as the most domestic scenes of family life. Despite his panoramic view of the world and the wide-angle scenes of battle he's able to provide, he is also able to zoom in on the most microscopic detail. For example, Chuck H. pointed out a great detail on page 121, when Zherkov prepares to leave on his horse and "it shifted its footing three times excitedly, not knowing which leg to start with, worked it out, and galloped off."

Details like that one that must have led Berlin to describe Tolstoy as "a creator of a world more real than life itself":

The celebrated life-likeness of every object and every person in his world derives from this astonishing capacity of presenting every ingredient of it in its fullest essence, in all its many dimensions, as it were ... always as a solid object, seen simultaneously from near and far, in natural, unaltering daylight, from all possible angles of vision, set in an absolutely specific context in time and space—an event fully present to the senses or the imagination in all its facets, with every nuance sharply and firmly articulated.

Yet Tolstoy the fox, Berlin argues, wanted to be a hedgehog. He "longed for a universal explanatory principle," and in some sense disdained his own writerly gifts which others so admired (as did Flaubert and Turgenev, for instance, both of whom disdained Tolstoy's flights into philosophical abstraction).

One feels Tolstoy's attraction to this universal, profound explanation in Andrei's near-death experience on the battlefield at Austerlitz (see the final chapter of Volume I), which, as Barbara O. noted, constitutes a remarkable epiphany. It's Andrei's abandonment of his previous search for personal glory in battle; his acceptance of his insignificance (as well as that of even the "great" Napoleon) before the infinity of the sky; his admission that "I knew nothing, nothing till now." And yet, in the end, what does he know now? Barbara wondered.

One thing seemed clear to me as a result of our discussion: that one of Tolstoy's greatest attributes as a writer is love. He loves the details of the world—for example, the horse that doesn't know in its excitement which foot it will start off with. He loves so many of the people that he's writing about, imperfect and human as they are: Pierre, Andrei, Marya, Natasha, Rostov, Denisov, and others. So I was gratified to read the following in another of Berlin's essays on Tolstoy ("Tolstoy and Enlightenment"), in which Berlin describes the "conditions of excellence in art" that Tolstoy laid out in an introduction to a Russion edition of the stories of Maupassant:

...he demanded of all writers, in the first place the possession of sufficient talent; in the second that the subject itself must be morally important; and finally that they must truly love (what was worthy of love) and hate (what was worthy of hate) in what they describe.

War and Peace, I think we all agreed after this first meeting, amply fulfills all three conditions. Tolstoy's talent seems so multifaceted and deep—and modern as well. This epic tale treats so many issues of moral importance—indeed, everything from war to peace—suggesting, for one thing, that in wartime as well as peacetime human beings do not really understand why they do what they do, cannot make sense of all the confusing and chaotic events taking place all around them, but only later fashion these experiences into narratives that, though incomplete or even false, are believed to be true. Lastly, though, I think it's Tolstoy's depth of writerly judgment that we find so enjoyable and engrossing: how much we trust that he does indeed hate what is worthy of hate and love what is worthy of love.

I'm really looking forward to the second meeting, scheduled for Saturday, July 16, at which we'll discuss pages 417-820. I hope to see you there.

Tolstoy and Contemporary American Writers

Lately I've come across a couple interesting references to Tolstoy in interviews with contemporary writers.

For example, this Lee Randall interview with Allegra Goodman:

Which leads me to comparisons drawn by Gabriel Brownstein, writing for The Millions, between yourself and Jonathan Franzen. Brownstein argued that you both wrote similar, epic novels, but that only Franzen’s was hailed as contender for the “Great American Novel” -- because he’s a man.

First of all, it’s nice to be contrasted with Jonathan Franzen. There was Jonathan Franzen’s novel and everybody else’s novel. I’m happy to be the one contrasted, if they want to pick a novel. I think his aesthetic is pretty different from mine. The [critic] made some good points about the differences.

Saying, for instance, that his prose bursts through the door while yours enters quietly.

Yes, but that is not because I am shy or female, it’s because I am interested in disappearing. Franzen [also] admires Tolstoy very much and references Tolstoy constantly throughout Freedom, but his aesthetic is very different from the disappearing negative capability of Tolstoy. His characters all sound like a very articulate Jonathan Franzen. He’s not really a disappearing sort of writer. He’s a bold brash writer. Honestly, I was very happy that a work of literary fiction was number one on the bestseller list and got that kind of attention. We’re on the same team. I applaud him.

And this, from part two of Patrick Dacey's interview with George Saunders:

I’ve started to think that this is one of the hardest and most important things a young writer can do: look at his/her heart-influences and ask, very respectfully: OK, given that this great master existed in the world, what else is there left for me to do? That is, you love (for example) Tolstoy, you give Tolstoy his due. But then you have to say: All right, given that Tolstoy has already existed, is there anything in his world-view that I might, slightly, disagree with? Is there anything that I have known and seen and felt in my life that, perhaps (sorry, maestro!) is not fully accounted for in his work? If not—well, there are other things to do in this life. If so, go for it.

For example, I remember reading Hemingway and loving his work so much—but then at some point, realizing that my then-current life (or parts of it) would not be representable via his prose style. Living in Amarillo, Texas, working as a groundsman at an apartment complex, with strippers for pals around the complex, goofball drunks recently laid off from the nuclear plant accosting me at night when I played in our comical country band, a certain quality of West Texas lunatic-speak I was hearing, full of way off-base dreams and aspirations—I just couldn’t hear that American in Hem-speak. And that kind of moment is gold for a young writer: the door starts to open, just a crack.

As a literary model and inspiration, Tolstoy, it seems, is alive and well in the imaginations of contemporary American writers. I particularly like Goodman's point about Tolstoy's negative capability—his talent, that is, for disappearing as a writer and seeming to let his characters speak for themselves and live independent of his authorial domination.

Family and Freedom

In Part One of the Epilogue, Tolstoy gradually shifts his attention from the political and historical to the domestic. Andrei having died (after being reborn at least twice), the two remaining male seekers—Pierre and Nikolai—find fulfilling lives within the context of families that they create with their wives and children.

The general opinion was that Pierre was under his wife's heel, and in fact it was so. From the very first day of their marriage, Natasha had announced her demands. Pierre was very surprised by his wife's view, which was completely new to him, that every minute of his life belonged to her and the family; Pierre was surprised by his wife's demands, but was flattered by them and submitted to them. (1156)

Natasha reciprocates with her own submission: "At home Natasha put herself on the footing of her husband's slave" (1156).

These characters thus seem to exemplify the idea that I explored in that graduate school essay (mentioned in this earlier post), the idea that “freedom necessarily involves some submission or surrender, either to a human community or to a powerful God"; or, as D. H. Lawrence puts it, that “It is never freedom till you find something you really positively want to be.”

Given that Tolstoy eventually comes to reject as illusory the very notion of individual freedom, these characters' submission or surrender to their family lives seems to be part of a profound statement by Tolstoy about human life: Since one is never really free, true freedom consists in choosing that to which one will be bound.

Of all the lives that his characters have chosen to bind themselves to (lives of military or political service, lives of vice and dissipation, lives of societal gossip and scheming), Tolstoy strives to show us in the epilogue that family life can be the most fulfilling of all.

This familial devotion becomes a type of filial piety, exemplified in the adults' forbearance of Countess Rostov in her rather annoying dotage:

Everyone in the house understood the old woman's condition, though no one ever spoke of it, and everyone made every possible effort to satisfy her needs.... they said that she had already finished her business in life, that all of her was not in that which could be seen in her now, that we would all be the same, and that it was a joy to submit to her, to restrain oneself for the sake of this being, once so dear, once as full of life as we, and now so pathetic. Memento mori.... (1163)

The submission to family life, as Tolstoy depicts it here, creates relationships that lend meaning to life (Nikolai says he always feels as if he's "lost and can't do anything" (1152) whenever he's away from Marya or fighting with her), that provide structure for the rearing of children and the care of the old.

And thus, I think, it makes sense that the final sentence of the novel is this: "[I]n the present case, it is ... necessary to renounce a nonexistent freedom and recognize a dependence we do not feel" (1215). Though we may be tempted to believe that happiness is to be found in shaking off all duties and claims on us that seem to take away our autonomy, in fact we are never autonomous. The best we can do is find something deep and meaningful to bind ourselves to. In the intertwined stories of Natasha, Pierre, Nikolai, and Marya, Tolstoy suggests how family may be the best avenue for doing so.

Tolstoy, History, and Freedom

One of the major themes of Tolstoy's novel, one that he returns to vigorously throughout the final third of the novel (and especially in the second part of the Epilogue) is, essentially, an attack on the "great man" theory of history.

Tolstoy asserts that historians have gotten it all wrong by focusing on history from the top down:

To study the laws of history, we must change completely the object of observation, leave kings, ministers, and generals alone, and study the uniform, infinitesimal elements that govern the masses. No one can tell to what extent it is given to man to achieve in this way an understanding of the laws of history; but it is obvious that the possibility of grasping historical laws lies only on this path, and that on this path human reason has not yet made one millionth of those efforts the historians have made in describing the deeds of various kings, commanders, and ministers, and in setting forth their reflections on the occasion of those deeds. (823)

Why should we leave kings, ministers, and generals alone? Because, in Tolstoy's view, those people have the least to do with why history unfolds in the way it does. Though kings, ministers, and generals may feel that their efforts and orders are the driving forces of historical events and mass movements, Tolstoy sees those with "power" as merely pawns of much larger forces, figures whose prominence puts them in "the center of a most complex play of intrigues, cares, dependency, power, projects, advice, threats, deceptions"; meanwhile, "Imperceptibly, moment by moment, an event is carved into its meaning" (825).

The passive voice here is telling, for Tolstoy's vision is one that I am tempted to call historical fatalism. According to Tolstoy, although Napoleon may have given countless orders, the only ones that could make any difference were the ones that the larger historical forces and the masses of human beings involved allowed to be carried out, "just as in stencilling, some figure or other gets painted, not depending on the direction or manner in which the paint is applied, but because the figure cut out of the stencil is smeared in all directions with paint" (1196). In other words, it didn't really matter how Napoleon smeared his paint; the eventual design was preordained by the stencil of history. Why did the stencil have that preordained design? Tolstoy considers the answer to that question beyond human knowability.

Tolstoy goes further, investigating the very nature of the idea of freedom (and surely Jonathan Franzen must have been thinking of this part of the novel when he was writing and titling his 2010 novel Freedom) and, finally, rejecting the notion that we as individuals are free. Although in the moment we may feel that we are free to do as we please, Tolstoy notes that, as time passes and we look back at a particular action (especially ones that occur in concert with other human beings), we realize that there were countless circumstances that influenced our action.

In any case, I think that, especially in academia, the "great man" theory of history has largely been abandoned. Academic historians now are much more likely, it seems to me, to accept Tolstoy's vision and to look for larger forces to explain the movements of history, or to try to get a sense of the role that the masses of people played—instead of focusing on the kings and ministers and generals.

I was talking about this with the father of one of my daughter's friends the other day (he's a graduate student in American literature and bio-politics, and one might call him a New Historicist), and he pointed out a couple problems with this trend in academic history:

1) It seems to leave out the possibility of human agency and, with it, the possibility that individuals (whether leaders or not) can actually effect change. If we're not free and leaders are the least free of all, then why bother struggling to elect leaders we think will be good? Why bother with anything?

2) As Jill Lepore has apparently argued in one of her books, it leaves the story of history's "great men" to be told by popular historians—or even by demagogues like Glenn Beck and the pseudo-historians of the Tea Party. And since the mass audience has a great appetite for the story of history's great men (e.g., the Founding Fathers), whoever controls the narratives about these figures can potentially control an important political instrument.

Tolstoy's theories are also making me second-guess this piece I wrote in the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden. In my essay, I credit President Obama for accomplishing something that President Bush did not. I argue that bin Laden was killed because Obama made it a priority and Bush did not. I believe the evidence bears out the latter part of that claim, but would Tolstoy reject the first part of it? In other words, would Tolstoy say that it didn't matter what Obama or Bush ordered because the pre-cut stencil of history is what it is regardless of the orders of leaders?

Climbing the Mountain

I finished the book on Monday. I do feel that I've climbed a mountain, especially when I look at the slope on this graph of my reading progress, generated by goodreads.

Here were the benchmark dates in my reading of the novel:

2/16 page 8

2/21 page 52

2/24 page 112

3/03 page 200

3/09 page 303

3/11 page 347

3/17 page 418

3/21 page 503

3/25 page 603

3/31 page 700

4/09 page 800

4/15 page 901

4/21 page 987

4/28 page 1075

5/01 page 1129

5/02 page 1215

Dream Music

Petya Rostov's musical dream the night before he goes into battle with Denisov and the partisans includes this wonderfully narrated passage, which seems—doesn't it?—evocative of the way Tolstoy's novel itself works:

The melody grew, passing from one instrument to another. What is known as a fugue was going on, though Petya had not the slightest idea of what a fugue was. Each instrument, now resembling a violin, now trumpets—but better and clearer than violins and trumpets—each instrument played its own part and, before finishing its motif, merged with another, starting out almost the same, and with a third, and with a fourth, and they all merged into one and scattered again, and merged again, now solemn and churchly, now brightly brilliant and victorious.

"Ah, yes, it's me dreaming," Petya said to himself, rocking forward. "It's in my ears. And maybe it's my music. Well, again. Go on, my music. Now!" (1055)

This novel is Tolstoy's dream ("a dream as real as stone," to quote Greg Brown's great song "Telling Stories"), Tolstoy's music, played out through the stories of an orchestra of characters, whose motifs and lives merge with each other and scatter again, moving through a range of tones and moods, worming its way into our ears, compelling us to accompany it as it goes on and on.

Highlights from Pages 418-820

These are my ten favorite moments from pages 418-820. What moments or passages would you add?

1) Andrei and the Old Oak (419-20 and 423)—Tolstoy’s resonant symbol for Andrei’s dormancy and rebirth

2) Tolstoy’s Mini-Essay on Idleness (488)—a wonderful little digression that ends up introducing the appeal of the military life to Rostov:

Biblical tradition says that the absence of work—idleness—was the condition of the first man’s blessedness before his fall. The love of idleness remained the same in fallen man, but the curse still weighs on man, and not only because we must win our bread in the sweat of our face, but because our moral qualities are such that we are unable to be idle and at peace. A secret voice tells us that we shoul feel guilty for being idle. If man could find a condition in which, while idle, he felt that he was being useful and was fulfilling his duty, he would have found one side of primordial blessedness.

3) Rostov and Sonya kiss while dressed as mummers (528-29)—perhaps the most tender and erotic love scene in the novel

4) Pierre’s Identity Crisis and His Reading (535-38)—I love this chapter. I did a post about this on my own blog.

5) The Opera (557-567)—a great set piece about Natasha’s entry into the exciting, dangerous world of society and sexuality (notice the repetition of the word “bare”)

6) Anatole’s Near Abduction of Natasha (576-594)—the most soap opera-ish part of the novel, and perhaps the most gripping as well

7) Pierre and the Sky—at the end of Volume II, one of the best examples of Tolstoy’s lyricism, and a fascinating parallel with a scene involving Andrei at Austerlitz at the end of Volume I:

Only looking at the sky did Pierre not feel the insulting baseness of everything earthly compared with the height his soul had risen to…. It seemed to Pierre that this star answered fully to what was in his softened and encouraged soul, now blossoming into new life. (600)

8) The Man Rostov Nearly Killed—a wonderful moment of successive realizations about war:

“So that’s all there is to so-called heroism? And did I really do it for the fatherland? And what harm had he done, with his dimple and his light blue eyes? But how frightened he was! He thought I’d kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand faltered. And they gave me the St. George Cross. I understand nothing, nothing!” (654)

9) Andrei Unfolds for Pierre His Realizations about War (772-777)—Andrei, having attained a remarkable awareness through his diverse experiences, seems to speak for Tolstoy here:

“I see that I’ve begun to understand too much.” (776)

10) Andrei and Anatole after Borodino—a climax that explodes with emotion and meaning after Tolstoy’s epic battle sequence:

Prince Andrei could no longer restrain himself, and he wept tender, loving tears over people, over himself, and over their and his own errors.

“Compassion, love for our brothers, for those who love us, love for those who hate us, love for our enemies—yes, that love which God preached on earth, which Princess Marya taught me, and which I didn’t understand; that why I was sorry about life, that’s what was still left for me, if I was to live. But now it’s too late. I know it!” (814)

A.K.A.

On a site called Oh No They Didn't!, a recent post offers Less Pretentious & More Accurate Titles for Literary Masterworks, including this one:

There's some other pretty funny ones, too. I especially like what they do with the dictionary.

Casting Couch

OK, here's a War and Peace parlor game to play. Who would you cast in the following roles in the film version?

Natasha

Sonya

Pierre

Count Rostov

Nikolai Rostov

Dolokhov

Prince Andrei

Nikolai Bolkonsky

Marya Bolkonsky

Helene

Anatole Kuragin

Marya Dmitrievna

A Love of the Joys of Life

David Denby's discussion of Homer in Great Books includes a shout-out to War and Peace:

The Homeric tenderness, held in check in the Iliad, bursts out fully in the Odyssey, and the reader enters the paradise of the patriarchal vision of life, in which young men long to assume the responsibilities of their fathers, and wives are faithful to the long-gone husbands, who, though unfaithful themselves, nevertheless long to return; the paradise in which hospitality is rendered to guests, slaves warm the beds of heroes, and servants remain loyal to masters. Everything abundant and splendid, fragrant and comfortable—in Western literature, one may have to jump all the way to Tolstoy’s War and Peace to experience again so strong a love of the material and physical joys of life.

Notes on Pages 1-417

Anticipating a busy summer of reading, I've been trekking steadily ahead. I've made it to the first benchmark on the climb—to page 418, where we're supposed to have read for our first meeting in June.

The book is really wonderful, though challenging and exhausting as well. Overall, though, it's everything I hoped and imagined it would be.

Since I'm hoping to be finished with the book by the beginning of the summer, I wanted to preserve some of my reactions along the way. I've written out some thoughts on these first 417 pages. You won't want to read them until you've made it this far yourself (through Part Two of Volume Two), so stop here if you aren't there yet.

***

Each of the novel’s three main male characters, Pierre Bezukhov, Andrei Bolkonsky, and Nikolai Rostov, has undergone an arc of change in the first 418 pages.

Pierre begins as a naïve, seemingly foolish outsider. He is earnest, passionate, curious, but often used as a pawn by others—by Anna Pavlovna Scherer at the party that opens the novel, by Anna Mikhailovna as she maneuvers Pierre into his position as heir to his father’s fortune, by Prince Vassily as he angles his daughter into marriage with Pierre, and by the Masons as they initiate him into their secrets. His judgment can be terrible, as when he gets involved with the shenanigans of Dolokhov and Anatole, or when he marries Helene, or when he gets involved in the messy duel with Dolokhov. At the same time, Tolstoy encourages us to sympathize with Pierre, perhaps because of his befuddlement, his muddlement, which in the end are only symptoms of his genuineness. He honestly cares about his ideas about war, about peace, about religion, about his marriage and his honor, unlike manipulators like Vassily or Anna Pavlovna, who are sure of themselves and adroit in their use of others to get what they want, yet are ultimately closed off from growth and change. Even Pierre’s mistakes, as ridiculous as they can make him seem, propel him in interesting new directions. For example, Tolstoy clearly satirizes the Masonic order that Pierre joins, but at the same time it does play an important role in Pierre’s development—and even brings about a change in Andrei’s life, too, as I’ll discuss later.

This openness to the complexities of life seems to be a hallmark of Tolstoy’s art, an awareness that things can be both ridiculous and meaningful, ambiguous in their meaning and subject to change over time. Another good example of this complexity might be Princess Marya’s rejection of marriage to Anatole. In some ways, it’s the best choice: Anatole is a scoundrel, and he and his father have devised this marriage scheme merely as a political and economic scheme to connect themselves to the Bolkonsky wealth. On the other hand, there’s something tragic about her choice to bind herself forever to her condescending, authoritarian father, renouncing the family life she desired and that Anatole, despite his massive flaws, may have been able to give her. But then again, she does seem eventually to experience that family life with her nephew, Andrei’s son, in the wake of the little princess’s death.

Andrei begins as a haughty, superior military officer. His haughtiness seems justified in some instances, as he stands aloof from the frivolous society people of Anna Pavlovna’s party, or from the post-battle falsehoods of people like Zherkov. Andrei may have something in common with Hemingway’s heroes, who strive for authenticity and honor and abhor puffery and lies. He seeks out personal danger to himself in battle, and he also seeks to understand the world as fully as he can by observing the more rarified reaches of power, meeting with Bilibin and the Austrian emperor. Upon being injured in battle, however, he has a sort of epiphany as, near death, he stares at the empty blue sky above him. A personal encounter with Napoleon drives home for him the futility of war and the foolishness of even the most glorious military leaders. Believed dead by his family, he returns to his ancestral estates just in time to witness the death of his wife in childbirth, and to feel the accusation in her face: “Ah, what have you done to me?” (328). Having cruelly written her off as a silly fool before he left for war, he accepts her accusation as true. He withdraws from his former pursuit of glory and refuses to participate in future military campaigns, except as an assistant to his aged father, who has been brought out of retirement to serve as a leader. He has retreated from the public world and sworn off his pursuit of glory, deciding to live a private life, “for myself alone” (384), as he puts it (though he includes his son, his sister, and his father as part of that “self”). According to his sister, however, “He needs activity, and this regular, quiet life is ruining him” (393). Having lost his former self-assurance and primary motivation, he lives a life that seems not to fulfill his deepest needs.

Rostov seems to be a younger, prelapsarian Andrei. He is part of a wonderful family that delights in life—in dancing and laughter and togetherness—and is open to others (they welcome Pierre in to their party warmly and welcome Denisov into their household as well) but also knows how to handle difficult situations. Nikolai’s father handles Nikolai’s gambling crisis just about perfectly, it seems, impressing upon his son the seriousness of his mistake without alienating him or causing him to doubt his family’s love. Sonya and Natasha both reject marriage proposals that aren’t right for them—unlike Pierre, who allows Vassily to speak for him and maneuver him into a marriage that he knows deep down is wrong for him. Rostov, then, has a solid family foundation that allows him to explore the world and make mistakes. He also has the steadfast love of Sonya, who also allows him freedom to dally and live a wild youth.

And yet, for all the so-called freedom of his life as a young blade in Moscow, it is within the strictures of regimental and familial life that Rostov feels most comfortable:

When he had reported to the regimental commander, had obtained an assignment to his former squadron, had been on duty and gone foraging, had entered into all the little concerns of the regiment, and had felt himself deprived of freedom and bound within one narrow, unchanging frame, Rostov experienced the same peace, the same support, and the same awareness that here he was at home, where he belonged, as he felt under the parental roof. There was not all that disorder of the free world, in which he found no place for himself and made wrong choices; there was no Sonya, with whom he had or did not have to talk things over. There was no possibility of going or not going here or there; there were not those twenty-four hours in a day which could be spent in so many different ways…. Here in the regiment everything was clear and simple…. Having entered once more into these definite conditions of regimental life, Rostov experienced a joy and peace similar to what a weary man feels when he lies down to rest. (395)

This passage reminds me of an essay I wrote in graduate school for Naomi Lebowitz’s modernism class, in which I explored the idea that “freedom necessarily involves some submission or surrender, either to a human community or to a powerful God.” To Nietzsche’s warning, in Ecce Homo, that true freedom consists not in negatively “shouting about the things [one is] not,” but rather in “Yes-saying without reservation,” I connected D. H. Lawrence’s assertion, in Studies in Classic American Literature, that “It is never freedom till you find something you really positively want to be.” Rostov finds in the regiment this sense of belonging and purpose, giving his life stability and direction.

Yet there are serious cracks in that regimental foundation. Rostov falsifies his military experience after the fact to make it conform to his heroic notions. And his visit to the military hospital, with all of its hideous suffering and forgotten soldiers, causes him to have misgivings about the war. When he goes from that experience to the highest levels of the war, observing the truce between his sovereign and Napoleon, and seeing the social climber Boris Drubetskoy in his element, he begins to doubt the war’s somber, unquestionable purpose and even his own enraptured allegiance to Alexander. In a bar later on, “he remembered that self-satisfied Bonaparte with his white little hand, who was now an emperor, whom the emperor Alexander liked and respected. Why, then, those torn-off arms and legs, those dead people?” (416) he wonders. His dawning realization here of the futility of war, the colossal waste of it, its purpose only to give glory to leaders who can’t even sit their horses properly, puts him near the same state of consciousness that Andrei attained after his near-fatal injury. Yet Rostov resists this new consciousness, for his faith in war and its glorious leaders is so central to the foundation of his worldview that, he feels, to abandon it would be to plunge into chaos. He argues with fellow soldiers at the bar who express bitterness at the truce with Napoleon. “If it pleases the sovereign emperor to recognize Bonaparte as emperor and conclude an alliance with him—it means it has to be so,” Rostov insists, arguing more with himself than anyone else. “And if we start judging and reasoning about everything, then there’ll be nothing sacred left. Next we’ll be saying there’s no God, no anything” (417). Of course, this is exactly the sort of talk that disillusioned characters like Pierre and Andrei have been trading back and forth, though now each seems to be groping his way toward a new belief in God.

To use another phrase I picked up from Naomi Lebowitz (this time in a class on William and Henry James), Nikolai Rostov is a “once-born” character, still struggling to hold on to the original beliefs of his childhood despite mounting evidence that they are inadequate. Meanwhile, Andrei is becoming a “twice-born” character; having had his original belief system shattered, he now begins to grope toward some new foundation on which to build the rest of his life. After Pierre explains his Masonic religious vision to Andrei—that “We must live, we must love, we must believe … that we do not live only today on this scrap of earth, but have lived and will live eternally there, in the all” (389)—Andrei is reminded of the vision he had of the blue sky after his injury at Austerlitz, and “something long asleep, something that was best in him, suddenly awakened joyful and young in his soul” (389). Thus, this “meeting with Pierre marked an epoch for Prince Andrei, from which began what, while outwardly the same, was in his inner world a new life” (389). Pierre, the illegitimate son of one of Catherine the Great’s former lovers, seems to have grown up with little in the way of a foundation, unlike Andrei (with his strong patriarchal father) or Rostov (with his warm, generous parents). Pierre is an awkward searcher who makes many mistakes but in his openness has potential for learning and growth and even the opportunity to lead others out of their own swamps of desolation.

How Our Translators Work

From David Remnick's great article about English translation of the classic Russian novelists, here's an interesting description of how the husband and wife team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky do their job:

Their division of labor was—and remains—nearly absolute: First, Larissa wrote out a kind of hyperaccurate trot of the original, complete with interstitial notes about ... diction, syntax, and references. Then, Richard, who has never mastered conversational Russian, wrote a smoother, more Englished text, constantly consulting Larissa about the original and the possibilities that it did and did not allow. They went back and forth like this several times, including a final session in which Richard read his English version aloud while Larissa followed along in the Russian.

Base Camp

In this recent Prep News article about our project, I compared reading War and Peace to climbing Mount Everest. Part of my motivation for getting our reading group together was to have companions on this long, potentially arduous journey—fellow readers to make the journey easier and more fun as well.

Some of us, anticipating busy summers, have already started on the journey. As one of the ringleaders of the expedition, I felt a certain responsibility to stay near the head of the pack. I also wanted to be able to participate in some of the early scouting forays and conversations. So I pressed ahead and have now finished Part One of Volume One of the novel (to page 112).

From where I stand, I think this is a good place to set up a kind of "base camp" for the climb—and, if I may, to give some encouragement and advice on how to make it this far.

I felt pretty good for about the first thirty-five pages. The terrain could be rocky—lots of characters, lots of French, lots of references to political, social, and military matters that I didn't know much about—but I felt that I was on more or less steady footing.

After that, though, I hit fog and snow.

In Chapter VII the action switches to Moscow, and a whole new group of characters comes into play with little introduction. I started to feel lost; I sometimes fell asleep while reading. I was getting scared that I wasn't going to like this book. I pressed on, though, trying for the sake of navigation to hold on to certain characters from the opening Petersburg section: Count Vassily, Anna Mikhailovna, and Pierre. I tried my best to keep up with all the new characters, but I missed a lot of nuances and I didn't really enjoy what I was reading.

In Chapter XVIII (page 70), suddenly the plot heated up and got me interested again for about seventeen pages. Things were making sense once more, and pretty dramatic stuff was occurring. I was still a little shaky on some of the characters' motivations, but I was understanding enough to regain some of my confidence.

There was one more rather treacherous crossing at the beginning of Chapter XXII. The action shifts location again, this time to Bald Hills, an estate 100 miles outside of Moscow. We have to adjust to yet another set of characters (some of whom we've already seen or heard of at the beginning of the novel), and a pair of long letters in French.

The Bald Hills section is interesting but a little puzzling UNTIL you get to Chapter XXV, the final chapter of Part One. For me, that was where everything began to snap into place. It's a neat chapter, full of everything I love about Tolstoy—complex psychological insights, wonderfully drawn characters with complicated relationships to each other, and, basically, the drama of human existence.

From my vantage point at this base camp, I could now look back over the ground I'd covered and see it much more clearly. After finishing Part One, I went back and reviewed what I'd read so far, and I started noticing all kinds of things that made much more sense now.

I dipped into Richard Pevear's introduction and came across, in the first paragraph, a simple description of the novel that I found very helpful.

Pevear says the book is about "the interweaving of historical events with the private lives of two very different families of the Russian nobility—the severe Bolkonskys and the easygoing Rostovs—and of a singular man, reminiscent of the author himself—Count Pierre Bezukhov."

This focus is not at all clear as you're struggling through Part One of Volume One. (At least it wasn't clear to me.) But if you can keep your eye on these families and Pierre and think of them as the ones to watch most closely, it helps quite a bit, I think.

Happy climbing! Feel free to chime in with your own observations, links, or questions in the comments section of this blog, or in your own posts. If you want to do a full post, let me know and I can add you as an author to the blog.

Our Project

St. Louis native Jonathan Franzen’s recent novel Freedom ignited something of a national conversation about the role of reading in our contemporary world. Do Americans still read novels? Do novels still matter? Do they still address issues of burning importance—personal, political, cultural? Or has the culture of Twitter and Facebook and text messaging taken us to a place of shorter attention spans and shallow immediacy?

Franzen’s novel explicitly invites comparisons between itself and Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel War and Peace—a gargantuan tome that explores big questions of the sort that Franzen would like to imagine that his novel also engages. Among the so-called “classics” of literature, War and Peace stands as the iconic long novel. It’s the novel that Charlie Brown labors to complete for a book report over Christmas break in Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! Unfortunately for him, he falls asleep on New Years Eve while struggling with the book and thereby misses his chance to kiss the Little Red-Haired Girl.

War and Peace presents challenges on a number of levels, challenges that some of us among the SLUH faculty—along with some of our friends and spouses and JSEA colleagues from De Smet Jesuit High School—are interested in taking on. In a sense, we would like to commit ourselves to an activity that may soon or already be passe—the long solitary journey through a thick and difficult book. Committed to helping our students develop habits of intellectual patience and openness to new ideas, we see this project as a way to model and practice what we teach. In a sense, the project is an affirmation of the value of reading, put into practice with a novel that many of us have desired to read for years but have never been able to find the time to complete.

We also see the project as a way of connecting with each other and nurturing an intellectual community within and beyond our school. We hope that our discussions of Tolstoy’s novel will enrich our understanding of the book, offer us opportunities to enjoy each other’s company and delight in each other’s responses to art, and ultimately enrich our shared vocation as teachers.

At a group meeting on February 3, we decided on the following specific details about the War and Peace reading project:

• We will read Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's translation of War and Peace over the summer of 2011, finishing it by Labor Day weekend.

• We will meet three times to discuss the novel, on the following dates: June 18, July 16, and the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. (These may be subject to change.)

• For the first meeting, we will have read to page 418; for the second, to 820; for the third, to the end of the novel (page 1215).

• We will establish a blog for the project to gather helpful articles, continue the conversation between meetings, orient group members who missed a meeting, etc.

• We will look into the possibility of offering graduate credit for this project through Webster University for those who want it.

Currently we have around 25 faculty members who have expressed a desire to be a part of the project. The group includes members from various departments: English, Theology, Foreign Language, Social Studies, Fine Arts, Mathematics, and SLUH Security. Four De Smet teachers are included. In addition, several friends and spouses of group members have expressed an interest in participating.