Review: War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy

Source: https://rissiwrites.com/2016/03/the-first-dance-12-memorable-romantic.html

Ah, the dark confessions of a bookworm. Here's mine: I read Russian novels for the bragging rights, not for enjoyment.

At least, I did before reading War and Peace.

True, tackling War and Peace did start out as another masochistic reading endeavor. (Okay, masochistic might be a bit much. I have enjoyed at least parts of all the Russian novels I've read. Except maybe Crime and Punishment, but that's a discussion for another day.)

War and Peace is a sprawling novel (not that Tolstoy would call it a novel, according to his appendix at the end of the book) following several wealthy Russian families from the year 1805 to the year 1820. Among these are the Bezukhovs, the Rostovs, and the Bolkonskys, with honorable mention going to the Drubetskoys, Kuragins, and Karagins (that confused me for a bit). There's not really a main character, although the two we follow closest would be Natasha Rostov and Pierre Bezukhov.

This 587,287-word masterpiece required more than a passing mention in my January Reading Recap post. After finally finishing it (I've been reading it since mid-November) and watching the BBC miniseries (more on that to come!), I can't get this story and its characters out of my mind.

*SPOILERS BEGIN HERE*

Tolstoy draws a distinction between artists and historians and categorizes himself as an artist. On page 1,035 he says: "For a historian, considering the contribution rendered by some person towards a certain goal, there are heroes; for the artist, considering the correspondence of this person to all sides of life, there cannot and should not be any heroes, but there should be people."

I love that! Because this book deals with people. Real, live people. How they think, how they feel, how they interact. Not one of them is perfect. They're all riddled with flaws, but most of them are lovable despite that. Pierre is kind and wants to do the right thing, but his weaknesses are laziness and the pleasures of the flesh (food, drink, and women). Andrei is honorable and upright, but he is in love with the idea of glory and he tends to hold onto bitterness ("'If I were a woman, Marie, I would be doing that. It's a woman's virtue. But a man must not and cannot forget and forgive.'"). Natasha is loyal, spirited, and loving, but she's too easily swayed by her emotions. Nikolai is good-humored and would do anything for his friends, but he doesn't have the strongest moral compass. Rarely have I read a book that delves so deeply into its characters' thoughts and emotions. I love how sometimes their words, arising from their confused mental state, make no sense, but we as readers understand exactly what they mean, because Tolstoy has brought us along for their whole mental journey up to that point. I'll talk more about the characters in my post comparing the book to the BBC miniseries.

My favorite part of the book was the middle, between the two wars. That's where most of the interesting action and intrigue took place, in my opinion. Towards the end, Tolstoy really got down to expounding upon his theories about free will, cause and effect, and power, and the story just kind of petered out. Although there's a fair amount of philosophizing throughout the book, Tolstoy sticks to his story better than Victor Hugo does. Tolstoy often starts his chapters with a long, convoluted simile, which, on the whole, I liked (except that time he likened the abandoning of Moscow to a beehive without a queen; that went on for two pages and was a little painful to get through). He did have some interesting ideas, though. I'm surprised that he didn't turn to God as the prime mover, since he was a Christian, but he rejects that original cause saying that religion has already been dismissed by modern theorizers, and instead goes on a long explanation of what power is and where it comes from. And yet, God was mentioned throughout the book. Here's my favorite quote about God, spoken by Osip Alexeevich Bazdeev, Pierre's mentor, with whom I disagree about many things and yet has some good things to say:

"'If [God] did not exist,' he said softly, 'we would not be talking about Him, my dear sir. What, whom are we talking about? Whom have you denied? ... Who invented Him, if He does not exist? Why has the supposition appeared in you that there is such an incomprehensible being? Why do you and the whole world suppose the existence of such an unfathomable being, a being almighty, eternal, and infinite in all His qualities?'"

Here is another quote about God (emphasis mine):

"He [Pierre] could have no purpose, because he now had faith–not faith in some rules, or words, or thoughts, but faith in a living, ever-sensed God. Before he had sought for Him in the purposes he set for himself. This seeking for a purpose had only been a seeking for God; and suddenly he had learned in his captivity, not through words, not through arguments, but through immediate sensation, what his nanny had told him long ago: that God is here, right here, everywhere."

Another idea that was revisited throughout the book, and which I thought was interesting, was the idea of morality as applied to abstract concepts such as beauty and suffering. We talk about physical beauty, but when do we ever think of moral beauty? We talk about physical or mental or emotional suffering, but when do we think about moral suffering? This was a powerful idea for me, especially the concept of moral suffering; in a word, conscience. It's a different way to frame conscience.

Speaking of morality, here's a quote about Anatole Kuragin that I really liked: 

"Carousers, those male Magdalenes, have a hidden sense of awareness of their innocence, just as female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope of forgiveness. 'Everything will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and everything will be forgiven him, for he had much fun.'"

Everyone's morals were a little gray. Even at the end, the characters continued to be far from irreproachable, and for that reason they were still highly relatable. I'm so glad that Marya ended up married (and not to Anatole, thank goodness), but Sonya's fate made me sad. I didn't like how Natasha ended up either, making Pierre a henpecked husband. To tell the truth, I didn't find the ending entirely satisfactory. (At least this book did have an ending, unlike Anna Karenina.) The last forty pages or so of the epilogue ceased to be story and instead devolved into Tolstoy's philosophical musings about why wars happen, and we left the characters as they were. Tolstoy tried to answer the questions we all have at the end of a story: "Were they happy? Did they have children? What happened next?" But the epilogue wasn't a rosy picture of domestic happiness. The happy couples still argued, the children still misbehaved sometimes, the family had political disagreements. (I read somewhere that the political discussion between Pierre and Nikolai at the end hinted that Nikolai and Nikolushka would become part of the Decembrist revolt.) 

Actually, the more I think about the ending, the more I like it. Nothing is perfect. Fairytale endings don't exist; the prince and princess are still human, after all. It's enough to know that they were happy on the whole. I still could have done without those forty pages at the end, though.

To conclude, here is the silly little bedtime prayer prayed by Platon Karataev when he and Pierre were prisoners of the French: "Lord, lay me down like a stone, raise me up like a loaf."

*SPOILERS ENDED*

If you're thinking about reading War and Peace, I highly recommend it! True, it's an investment in time, but as I implied by calling it an "investment", you'll be richly repaid by the effort.