The World of War and Peace

 

You dread crossing that line, and yet you still want to cross it. You know sooner or later you will have to go across and find out what is there beyond it, just as you must inevitably find out what lies beyond death. Yet here you are, fit and strong, carefree and excited, with men all around you just the same - strong, excited and full of life. This is what all men think when they get a sight of the enemy, or they feel it if they do not think it, and it is this feeling that gives a special lustre and a delicious edge to the awareness of everything that is now happening.

- War and Peace

How can one do justice to a book like this? No short or long blog post would be able to. This book is epic: it spans war time in Russia, with the impending approach of Napoleon and his French army. And yet it's small scale at the same time - It invites the reader into the families - parents, sons and daughters. Their good choices, bad choices, and everything in between. It takes you onto the battlefield dashing between bullets and explosions. Our characters we get to know are out there in danger. They are also at home dealing with those elements of family we might be familiar with.

Princess Marya stayed out on the terrace. Morning had broken into a day of hot sunshine. She could take nothing in, think of nothing, and feel nothing beyond her passionate love for her father, a love that seemed to have escaped her understanding until this moment. She hurried out into the garden sobbing, and ran down the paths between Prince Andrey's recently planted line-trees that led to the pond. 

I started reading War and Peace well over a year ago, but had to pause it often as I very often wanted to finish another book or focus elsewhere. But I decided to devote my time recently so I could finish it. The Russian tale by Leo Tolstoy fills over 1,300 pages and covers several years during the Napoleonic War mostly the years 1805 - 1812. Each chapter is like a short episode - a scene in the family or on the battlefield. Very readable these chapters are, and if you took out the Russian notions of Counts and Princesses it could read like other family dynamics. 

"Tell the King of Naples," said Napoleon stiffly, "that it is still not midday, and I cannot yet see my chess-board clearly. you may go."

The variety of characters (real and fiction) covers a huge range. From Russian families you have Napoleon on the battlefield with his officers. His pompous confidence jumps off the pages as he treads over the land into Russia. He stomps into Moscow in his victorious march. Yet you as the reader know there is a downfall coming. His end is coming. You can catch a glimpse of this in the encounter Pierre has with a French soldier. Tolstoy captures such amazing moments of humanity.

Davout looked up again and stared closely at Pierre. For several seconds they looked at one another, and it was this look that saved Pierre. The business of staring at each other took them beyond the realm of warfare and courtrooms; they were two human beings and there was a bond between them. There was a single instant that involved an infinite sharing of experience in which they knew they were both children of humanity, and they were brothers.

Pierre is capture by the French, and it is in his difficult times of being held as a prisoner that he discovers great joy in life. Pierre is a character you like from the beginning. He is large in size, large in spirit, awkward and yet loving, inheriting a fortune he doesn't really want and feels strange in. He stumbles in his status and he's always seeking out truth in his various ventures. His experience of hardship as a prisoner frees him from the binds that he had always felt around him. and you cheer him on, as he's such a likeable character. 

I've heard it said that War and Peace doesn't really have a plot or a story, but I would argue that it follows life, which is a big story with a plot you don't know until you've run into it. Tolstoy sneaks many of his philosophical ideas into these episodes, which is an antidote to sometimes feeling overwhelmed with scenes of battle. And then there are scenes with beautiful moments sitting beside beloved characters you've been on this long journey with that cause you to pause as a reader.

"Love gets in the way of death. Love is life. Every single thing I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is - everything exists - only because I love. Everything is bound up with love and love alone. Love is God, and dying means me, a tiny particle of love, going back to its universal and eternal source."