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War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - My Journey
#1

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - My Journey

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Throughout my entire life, I have heard many things about War and Peace - most of those things were about its length. At just over 1200 pages and over 560,000 words, it isn't exactly a breezy read.

It began when I downloaded The Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller onto my Kindle.
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This is a memoir about Andy Miller's journey through a long list of books, which he calls his "List of Betterment," that he wanted to read for most of his adult life. He always set these books aside up until he was married with a child and a full-time job as a magazine editor. Over the course of a year he decided to finally make time for these books. Two of the books on his list were Anna Karenina(also by Tolstoy) and War and Peace.

I had heard about what an amazing novel Anna Karenina was several times before and had a lingering curiosity about it.
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Andy Miller's glowing review inspired me to finally check it out. As I was reading through it, I could not understand why I liked it, since I am not in the demographic for romantic melodramas about nineteenth century aristocrats. Yet I could not put it down. Tolstoy a spell over me with his words.

The ROK article about Anna Karenina shows how red pill the novel truly is.

Since it was such an enjoyable read, it made me curious about what War and Peace was all about and why it had so much hype surrounding it. But I put it off for some time, more than anything because of mild intimidation.

But what finally made me want to read it was, in all seriousness, The Peanuts Movie. In the movie, Charlie Brown gets the highest score on a standardized test and everyone admires him for his apparent genius. When he has to do a book report with a partner, his crush, the little red-headed girl, who is absent at the time of the assignment, he decides to read the "biggest, most greatest novel ever written." With a little help from Marcie and Peppermint Patty, he chooses to read War and Peace.
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Interestingly enough, I later found out that War and Peace was Peanuts creator Charles Schultz's favorite novel.

So after watching Charlie Brown succeed at reading the entire novel, I was inspired to finally tackle this monster of a novel. Over the course of eight weeks, reading a few pages whenever I could, I also got through it.

It was good. Very good. Harrowing, powerful, inspiring, and intense. The best part was that I never once felt its length -- there was never a point where it felt dull or that it was dragging on.

It was a surprisingly easy read. There are some challenging bits, particularly the first 100 pages, simply because you're introduced to dozens of characters in rapid succession; and some battle scenes, since I had to research a little bit (military terms and Napoleon-era warfare) to follow what Tolstoy was describing. Other than that, it is as easy as Harry Potter. Most people in Russia read this in their first or second year of high school.

Some of you who are truly voracious readers might get through it in less than a week. To the slower readers like myself, here is Andy Miller's wife's suggestions for getting through it:
  • Read fifty pages per day.
  • Utilize the list of principal characters at the front.
  • Pay attention! Soon you'll discover that Tolstoy is doing the heavy lifting for you.
  • Don't fret if you're not enjoying the Peace, there will be a bit of War along shortly.
  • When you get to the end of it, read it again.
I will now get more into the book, so if you want to read without having it spoiled, skip ahead.

SPOILER ALERT!
War and Peace follows the lives of five royal/aristocratic Muscovite families -- the Kuragins, Rostovs, Bolkonskys, Bezukhovs, and Drubetkois-- during the Napoleonic Wars (1805-1812).

The main protagonists are Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, son of Prince Nikolai Bolkonski, Count Pierre Bezukhov, and Natasha Rostov, younger daughter of Ilya Andreevich Rostov. There are many other important characters(over 500), but most of the main action revolves around these three characters.

My favorite characters were Princess Marya and Pierre Bezukhov.

Princess Marya, Prince Nikolai Bolkonsy's long-suffering daughter and Prince Andrei's sister. Prince Bolkonsky runs Bald Hills, his family estate, like a dictatorship. Everything in Bald Hills is pristine and perfect, and Prince Bolkonsky mainatins a militaristic routine for everyone. Marya is always taking abuse and insults from her father. She is weak and submissive, some might even say she has no backbone, but she is probably the most moral character in the novel. She is loyal to her family and is with them through their even the darkest times.She is right there from the death of Andrei's wife, to being by Andrei's side during his last days as he is dying from his wounds sustained in battle. It is her equanimity and spirituality in the face of adversity that helps her find her strength as her familiar world falls apart, and along the way she demonstrates an admirable amount of strength.

Count Pierre Bezukhov is the one I relate to the most. He is not the most likeable character at the beginning. He is fat, absent-minded, navel-gazing, and people in high society mock him behind his back constantly. Many of the characters feel that he is a fool with the mind of a child. He starts off inheriting his father's (Pierre is an illegitimate child) fortune, and is always on a never-ending quest for meaning and purpose. What I love about Pierre is that when he is pushed, he is quite the badass. He is no pushover. At his best, he is strong, courageous, and moral. My favorite scenes are where he is present at the battle of Borodino; he is dressed in a fancy coat and white hat and is very much out of place. The soldiers laugh at him, but warm up to him and consider him a sort of mascot. He demonstrates considerable bravery, barely flinching as bullets and cannon balls whiz by him. He is knocked out in battle, and returns to his home in Moscow. During Napoleon's occupation of Moscow in the spring of 1812, he is taken prisoner. It is during his time in captivity --where he is deprived of food, shelter, and warm clothes -- that he is at his most selfless and courageous. It is during these horrifying time that he learns most about himself and about life. After that experience is still the same goofy, absent-minded Pierre as always, but he is also the one who has gained the most from his experience, more so than the more respected Prince Andrei.

Tolstoy's prose, at least the translation I chose, is a joy to read. It is flowing, lucid, and hypnotic. Here are some of my favorite passages:

Prince Andrei, thinking to himself during the battle of Austerlitz:
I don't know what will happen... I don't want to know and I can't know, but if I want this, want glory, want to be known by people, loved by them, it's not only my fault that I want it, that it's the only thing I want, the only thing I live for. Yes, the only thing! I'll never tell it to anyone, but my God! What am I to do if I love nothing except glory, except people's love? Death, wounds, loss of family, nothing frightens me. And however near and dear many people are to me--my father, my sister, my wife--the dearest people to me--but, however terrible and unnatural it seems, I'd give them all now for a moment of glory, of triumph over people, for love from people I don't know and never will know.

Prince Andrei, knocked out in the same battle as the above passage:
There was nothing over him except the sky--the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds slowly creeping across it. "How quiet, calm and solemn, not at all like when I was running, "thought Prince Andrei, "not like when we were running, shouting, and fighting; not at all like when the Frenchman and the artillerist, with angry and frightened faces, were pulling at the swab-- it's quite different the way the clouds creep across this lofty, infinite sky. How is it I haven't seen this lofty sky before? And how happy I am that I've finally come to know it.

When Nikolai Rostov returns home:
Never had love been so much in the air, and never had the amorous atmosphere, made itself so strongly felt in the Rostov's house as at this holiday time. "Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here," said the spirit of the place.

Andrei having a day-long conversation with Pierre:
I only know two very real evils in life: remorse and illness. The only good is the absence of those evils. To live for myself avoiding those two evils is my whole philosophy now.

Prince Andrei, during the battle of Borodino, in front of a grenade that is about to blow up in front of him:
"Can this be death?" thought Prince Andrei, gazing with completely new, envious eyes at th grass, at the wormwood, and at the little stream of smoke curling up from the spinning black ball. "I can't, I don't want to die, I love life, I love this grass, the earth, the air..."

When Prince Andrei is dying, he has these thoughts to himself:
"Love? What is love?" he thought. "Love hinders death. Love is life. Everything, everything I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is connected only by that. Love is God, and to die--means that I, a part of love, return to the common and eternal source.

Pierre's state of mind at the end, after going through the horrors of war:
That which he had been tormented by before, which he ad constantly sought, the purpose of life--now did not exist for him. It was not that this sought-for purpose of life happened not to exist for him only at the present moment, but he felt that it did not and could not exist. And this very absence of purpose gave him that full, joyful awareness of freedom which at the time constituted his happiness. He 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 she 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.

A red pill passage where Pierre is telling Natasha about his experiences during the occupation of Moscow:
Now, as he told it all to Natasha, he experienced that rare pleasure which is granted by women when they listen to a an--not intelligent women, who, when they listen, try either to memorize what they are told in order to enrich their minds and on occasion retell the same thing, or else to adjust what is being told to themselves and quickly say something intelligent of their own, worked out in their small intellectual domain; but the pleasure granted by real women, endowed with the ability to select an absorb all the best of what a man has to show.

END OF SPOILERS

Basically, War and Peace really does feel like it is a book with every other book within it, as well as all of life. While I was reading, I had Give War and Peace a Chance by Andrew D. Kaufman in my library, which I saved for after I finished reading the novel. I first learned about it at Masculinebooks.com

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Andrew D. Kaufman is a Russian literary scholar who is absolutely obsessed with Leo Tolstoy. He has read War and Peace over 15 times in both English and Russian. Kaufman packs in everything, from his scholarly analysis to his experiences with students, into this relatively short book. It is structured by themes, with chapters split into subjects such as Death, Happiness, and Truth demonstrates how the themes are discussed in the novel. He also wrote this useful online guide.

Here are some key takeaways:
  • Sometimes, your plans will blow up in your face. Nonetheless, making plans is still useful, but be prepared to course-correct and be ready to improvise like General Kutuzov does in battle.
  • The world is full of beauty and possibilities, but to truly see it, you need to view it imaginatively, not unlike the absent-minded Pierre and the dreamy Natasha.
  • Living fully is not living free of pain; but it is only by taking risks that may lead to pain and hardship that you will fully experience the true joy of living.
  • Tolstoy emphasizes that family is the indestructible seed that, no matter what else is happening in the world, continually renews itself by adhering to a set of laws as universal as the processes of nature itself.
  • We are finite. We are all going to die. Being conscious of this, puts an urgency on living a fuller life and to appreciate this one life we have been given.
  • This world and this life is filled with difficulty and suffering. Sometimes the only true choice, the only true freedom we have is how we react to the difficult circumstances in our life. It is up to us to live courageously.
  • From Tolstoy himself: "No matter how old or how sick you are, how much or little you have done, your business in life not only hasn't finished, but hasn't yet received its final, decisive meaning until your very last breath"
Then there are the movie and television adaptations. The 1966 Soviet adaptations directed by Sergei Bondarchuk is a remarkable adaptation. In terms of its scope and ambition, it is the Lord of the Rings film trilogy of its era. It even has similar aerial panning shots as Lord of the Rings, but done without CGI. You can watch it with English subtitles on Dailymotion. I've only watched one episode 1972 BBC TV adaptation. It is good, and while the acting is excellent, the daytime soap opera productions values are outdated and distracting.The whole series is on Youtube.

Here is a scene from the Soviet version. The context is that Pierre challenges the officer Dolokhov to a duel after he humiliates him at a party. It is unsubbed but you'll understand what is going on.





And that's all I have to say about War and Peace. After finishing it, I feel as though I am done with literature. Ever since I graduated from college several years ago, I have read more out of school than in my two decades in the educational system. In the past few years I have read classics by the greats-- Arthur Conan Doyle, Homer, Joseph Heller, Charles Bukowski, Ayn Rand, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Hesse, Roald Dahl. Not only classic literature, but also books about philosophy, history, biographies, business, and self-help. But at this point, I feel as though my mind and spirit has gleaned everything it can from novels. Of the small handful of novels that I truly loved and felt had an impact, I'll certainly revisit again. But for works that I haven't read, I don't really care that much anymore. Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo, and even George RR Martin be damned. For good fiction, I'll stick to Woody Allen movies and cartoons likeRick and Morty.

Here are a few other ways you can supplement your reading of War and Peace:

A glance at the Wikipedia pages of the real-life historical figures such as Emperor Alexander I, Mikhail Kutuzov, and Prince Pyotr Bagration.

A Napoleon Bonaparte biography or documentary. Here is a PBS documentary about the French emperor.

The TV Tropes page for this and for any work of fiction is always a lot of fun.

Love and Death. Woody Allen's parody of Russian literature--mostly Tolstoy-- with a few jabs at Ingmar Bergman.
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#2

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - My Journey

Great thread! You gave me a hunger to read War And Peace [Image: wink.gif]
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