War and Peace

War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy (1869) 

This is my final War and Peace post - you can see my introductory post here, and also my first and second progress reports.

I discussed some of the details of the plot and characters before and I don't want to say too much more about that at the risk of spoiling it for any of you thinking of reading the book. So I'll keep my final discussion a bit more general.

Our instructor insists that this isn't a historical novel, that to Tolstoy it was about family because family is the most important thing ever. It's hard to see sometimes, especially because in all his philosophical musings in the epilogue and appendix, he doesn't really talk about family at all. But our instructor cites Tolstoy's 99 volumes of journals as evidence of his ideas.

There were, of course, some families in the novel and the parts centering around them were my favorite. I'm not super interested in military strategy, and am rather shaky with history (I find it interesting, but have a hard time grasping it), so I preferred everything that revolved around the romantic entanglements and family life. There were some good war parts though, especially those that focused on particular characters like Bolkonsky, Rostov, and Kutuzov.

It was a bit rough getting through all the philosophical musings (especially at the end), though Tolstoy discussed some interesting ideas. For instance, the difficulty of separating historical events from one another. How do you decide where to begin with a story, when clearly everything that happens has roots in earlier events? He also questions what causes movements. Is it personalities of leaders, conditions of the time, the results of particular orders that were given, or a combination of all of these things? Tolstoy seems to accept a certain inevitability when he discusses our lack of free will. We may think we are doing what we want to do, but there are always restrictions and obstacles, and that applies as much to historical events as to actions in our daily lives.

As you can probably tell, this novel is nothing if not ambitious, and the 1200 or so pages were crammed not only with a great story, but many big thoughts and ideas. Even reading along with a class I know I'm still missing some things. This seems like the sort of book you could read 10 times and get more out of it each time. (I am unlikely to read it 10 times though.)

Reading War and Peace feels like a huge accomplishment, and I'm very glad I did it. Now I don't feel quite so daunted by other unread classics, and hopefully I'll be able to take classes on some others as well to make the reading go a little easier. But maybe not soon.

War and Peace: Progress report 2

I'm now around halfway through War and Peace and I'm happy to report that it has become less complicated and mystifying, and both the French and the explanatory endnotes have thinned out a bit. Although I appreciated it from the beginning, it has become much more enjoyable now that I don't feel like I'm cramming for a history exam.

When a book is this long, I sort of assume it will include lengthy, boring descriptions or other such filler, but not so here. There are some beautiful descriptions to be sure, but also there is a hell of a lot of things happening with the characters. It has become quite a page-turner!

Several characters are young and marriageable which, as you can imagine, leads to a great deal of intrigue. There is Pierre, the illegitimate son of a Count, who was raised in France and then inherited his father's wealth, making him suddenly appealing to the aristocracy. He is rather awkward and lost, trying to find his way in life and looking for something to inspire him. Natasha Rostov is an impassioned young woman who can't decide who she is in love with, but whatever she feels at the moment, she feels strongly. One of my favorite characters is Marya, a devout young woman who is aging out of the marriageable range and living under a domineering father. He is really cruel to her, and she is constantly willing to sacrifice her happiness and martyr herself for the greater good. Eventually something will have to give and I really hope she is able to come into her own as the strong, wise woman she has the potential to be.

There is just so much to discuss in this book! In class we've had extensive conversations about such subjects as dueling and Freemasons. The instructor continues to be fantastic. She is also fascinating in her own right. A poet and a dissident, many of her family members killed by Stalin, she is incredibly knowledgeable and expresses strong opinions about Putin. Sometimes I can't help but think, "To hell with Tolstoy - tell me more about you!"

This experience is all even better because I'm taking the class with two of my friends. As I mentioned, I'm not the only person in my social circle dorky enough to sign up for a War and Peace class. Every week we all go to class and then have dinner together nearby. It's only for eight weeks, but I'm really getting used to it. Only four more classes and 600 pages to go!

War and Peace: Progress report 1

I may have been a little too cocky going into this whole War and Peace thing. Sure, it's long and there are a ton of characters, but if I can read 400 pages I can read three times that many, right? It's just more pages, and I can refer to character list at the beginning if I forget who's who.

Except it takes exponentially longer to read than you'd think because of all the flipping back and forth that is required. In addition to the aforementioned character list, there are copious footnotes translating the French (and sometimes German) text, as well as extensive endnotes explaining the historical context.

War and Peace takes place during the Napoleonic Wars of 1805-1812 and follows several aristocratic families in Petersburg and Moscow, as well as some of the family members who are in the military in various locations. It opens with the death of Count Bezhukov and some intrigue surrounding his beneficiary, who ends up being his illegitimate son, Pierre. Among the families are the beginnings of various romantic entanglements. Then the story moves on to a military setting and it all became extremely unclear to me. There were cavalries and hussars and dragoons and the burning of bridges, along with a little gambling thrown in for good measure, and one of our main characters was injured.

History is not my strong subject, and military maneuvers are completely mystifying to me. The problem is that I often can't visualize what is happening, so it doesn't stick in my head from one moment to the next and the whole story becomes extremely difficult to follow. So I'm doing a lot better with the peace portions of this novel than the war. But luckily we're talking about it in class so I'll be sure to come away with the important bits one way or another.

Our instructor is not only well-versed in this novel, Tolstoy's life, and Russian history, she asks thought-provoking questions that go far beyond keeping all the characters straight. It makes me very glad I signed up because, as I predicted, I'm getting much more out of it than if I had just tried to plow through this novel on my own. So far she is emphasizing the characters, their philosophies, and asking us to consider how they change during the novel. Thankfully, she is less concerned with the historical events.

Still, it all makes me feel just a bit incompetent. As surprising as it may seem to anyone who knows how much I read and how much my life revolves around books, I wasn't an English major. I took a few classes on Russian literature in college, but I'm not really used to discussing books in this way. I'm unfamiliar with many of the themes and ways of looking at literature that come second-hand to those more versed in this sort of thinking. So it's a big challenge, but one that I think will be a good learning experience.

In the meantime, I'm still doing a bit of other reading, so expect a couple of reviews soon.

Upcoming: War and Peace

Recently I made a list of classics I want to read, including War and Peace, which I've been vaguely wanting to read since college. It was only in the course of making this list that I found a fall class on it at a local adult ed program. It's nothing short of a miracle when there's a class I'm interested in that's not during the day or on an evening that I work. Clearly, this was a sign, so I took the plunge and signed up. And then I convinced two of my friends to also sign up! Because we are all nerds! The first class was originally scheduled for this week, when I'm out of town, but in another miraculous development, it has been delayed by a week so I won't miss a thing. Obviously it was meant to be.

As you may already know, War and Peace is quite lengthy and complicated. This is an 8-week class so I'll be reading it rather slowly and thoroughly, and I'm thinking of making it into a whole series of blog posts as other bloggers sometimes do. They usually do it as a read-along, so if any of you want to read War and Peace along with me, that would be most welcome.

Hopefully the blog won't get too boring for those of you less inclined towards Tolstoy. Giving the number of pages we'll likely be reading per week, I'm planning to read other books concurrently. Short, easy books. This may be a great time to catch up on young adult novels.