War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

This was quite an undertaking, but one that’s been on my “to do” list for quite some time. My reading began June 1, 2022 and took until September 8, 2022 as there seemed to be an overabundance of life’s obstacles occurring simultaneously.

Tolstoy oscillates from lives preparing for or at war to lives at home. I preferred life on the battlefield as the latter seemed trivial and laden with pettiness. Alas, I much preferred Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich to War and Peace. Perhaps my focus strayed due to its volume.

War and Peace opens in 1805 St. Petersburg where Russian fears of Napoleon’s conquests are running rampant. Tolstoy introduces many characters at a party as he begins to intertwine their lives.

An illegitimate son of a wealthy Russian, Pierre Bezukhov, is an overweight and socially awkward. An inheritance puts him in an enviable position and makes him a target for those looking to improve their lives. In particular is Helen Kuragina whom he marries knowing she is not a devoted wife and pining after Natasha Rostova whom he eventually marries only to find that she has become an unhappy and unkempt woman.

Andrew Bolkonski is an ambitious and stoic soldier who also pines after Natasha Rostova, but sees her for the x she is after a brief fling with Anatole Kuragin.

A handsome daredevil, Dolokhov flirts with Pierre’s wife Helene, and Pierre then challenges him to a duel that is narrowly prevented.

Natasha Rostova charms all those she meets and falls for a variety of them. She falls in serious love for the first time with Andrew Bolkonski, but betrays his trust after an affair with Anatole Kuragin. Could never understand the allure here…

Quotes:

She evidently considered it the proper thing to show by a smile her interest in the general conversation; but, against her will, her eyes under their long thick lashes kept looking with such passionate girlish adoration at her cousin, who was leaving for the army, that her smile could not deceive anyone for a moment and it was clear that the little cat crouched down only in order to leap up more energetically and play with her cousin as soon as they, like Boris and Natasha could get out of this drawing room.

“Up to now, thank God, I’ve been a friend to my children and have enjoyed their full trust.” said the countess, repeating the error of many parents who suppose that their children have no secrets from them.

The princess smiled as people smile who think they know more about a matter than those they are talking with.

“However, a great number of monasteries and churches is always a sign of a nation’s backwardness,” said Napoleon, turning to Caulaincourt for an appreciation of this judgment.

There exists in men a certain after dinner state of mind which, more strongly than any reasonable causes, makes a man feel content with himself and consider everyone his friend. Napoleon was in that state of mind. It seemed to him that he was surrounded by people who adored him. He was convinced that after his dinner, Balashov, too was his friend and adorer.

But though by the end of the battle the men felt all the horror of their actions, though they would have been glad to stop, some incomprehensible mysterious power still went on governing them, and the artillery men, sweaty, covered with powder and blood, reduced to one in three, though stumbling and gasping from fatigue, kept bringing charges, loaded, aimed, applied the slow match, and the cannonballs, with the same speed and cruelty, flew from both sides and crushed human bodies flat, and the terrible things continued to be accomplished, which was accomplished not by the will of men, but by the will of Him who governs people and worlds.

And it never enters anyone’s head that the recognition of a greatness not measurable by the measure of good and bad is only a recognition of one’s own insignificance and immeasurable littleness.

Tolstoy’s ability to capture the essence of various personalities and depict them in an intriguing manner is sheer genius. The loss of his parents and other relatives at an early age gave way to an imagination envied by many a writer. Perhaps I could get Mr. Tolstoy to share a couple of pages from his diary after a few sips of Vodka.

My rating for War and Peace is an 8 out of 10.

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Next up, Roberto Bolano’s 2666…