War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Title: War and Peace
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Translators: Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Published: 1867
Type: Fiction-ish
Pages: 1,224
We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.
In Brief:
Obviously, this book is super long. Did it have to be? Probably not. Is it a novel? Is it a political manifesto? Is it a historical narrative? No one knows. Tolstoy is full of himself and prone to ranting, sometimes it didn’t seem like he edited anything, but… I still liked it. Possibly due to Stockholm Syndrome. But I also thought the characters were very thorough and real, and it had this wry blend of humanism and cynicism that I have a soft spot for. Again, VERY LONG.
Rating: 3.7, maybe?
Synopsis:
Am I even going to try and summarize this book? Have I mentioned that it’s very long? Can you tell that thinking about it makes me feel somewhat hysterical? I’ll just lean into that.
We first meet our characters at a party in St. Petersburg. The year is 1805, Napoleon is starting to invade Europe, and everyone’s a bit angsty about it. There’s Pierre, the fat and awkward bastard son of a Count. There’s Andrei, a noble and intelligent aristocrat who doesn’t like his wife, Lise. There’s also sneaky Vasili, his beautiful daughter Helene and his also sneaky/beautiful son Anatole, who are all basically just looking out for themselves. After spending some time at the party chatting about war, Pierre and Andrei hang out together, Andrei trying to convince his friend to get his life together. Pierre declines, and parties with Anatole, eventually getting kicked out of St. Petersburg for debauchery involving a bear. But then his dad dies and he ends up the only heir, so now he’s very rich and forgiven.
Moving on to Moscow, we meet the Rostov family: most importantly there’s lively Natasha, impulsive Nikolai, young Petya, and the quiet cousin Sonya. Not a lot happens other than a lot of teenage love, notably between Nikolai and his cousin, who is poor (naturally, this is important).
Both Andrei and Nikolai go to war, Andrei leaving behind Lise with his terrible father and sweet sister Marya. Andrei’s in charge of some stuff, Nikolai is terrified and has a serious man-crush on the tsar. Andrei is wounded and decides that nothing matters. They come back from the war, and Nikolai finds out that his family is broke and they want him to marry someone rich. He still wants to marry Sonya, seemingly mostly from stubbornness. Andrei makes it back for his son’s birth, and wife’s death. Meanwhile, newly-rich Pierre is sort of tricked into a marriage with beautiful Helene, who immediately has an affair. He challenges the other guy to a duel and almost kills him, but is very distraught and joins the Freemasons. You know, as one does.
Andrei comes to St. Petersburg with a plan to save the military, but no one will listen to him. He’s pretty bummed until he meets Natasha and falls in love, proposing to her. But it’s not a great marriage money-wise, so his dad (remember, terrible) makes him wait a year. He goes abroad, which doesn’t seem so bad, except that Natasha is seduced by Anatole at an opera and decides she’s going to marry him instead. Problem is, he’s already secretly married, so that’s called off. Pierre sort of shows up to help and falls in love with Natasha. Natasha is very depressed and stops singing.
So now it’s 1812, and there’s the battle of Borodino, which is a Big Deal and takes up a lot of pages. Pierre goes mostly to watch, and Andrei is seriously injured/presumed dead by most people. We also get to see some of Napoleon, who Tolstoy clearly doesn’t think much of. Though the Russians win, they retreat afterward and abandon Moscow to the French. Andrei’s terrible father dies of a stroke while the French are invading his estate, and the serfs decide to trap Marya there. Nikolai comes in to save the day and they fall in love, but Nikolai is still awkwardly engaged to Sonya.
The Rostov family leaves Moscow, and because they’re really nice they leave behind their things and help take wounded soldiers (aw), including (gasp) Andrei! But they don’t know it at first. Pierre sees them leaving and is still super in love with Natasha. He decides he has to kill Napoleon (having deciding with numbers that Napoleon is the Anti-Christ and he’s maybe the anti-Anti-Christ), but instead he helps a bunch of people and is arrested. As a prisoner, he sort of figures out the meaning of life, and is freed by a group including none other than Petya Rostov, though he dies, which is sad but also not really a big deal.
Natasha finds out the Andrei is with them and nurses him, there’s lots of touching forgiveness. Marya shows up and she and Natasha like each other now. Sonya tells Nikolai he can marry Marya if he wants, but figures it won’t happen since Andrei seems to be getting better and she assumes he’ll marry Natasha and then it would be weird for Nikolai to marry his sister-in-law. It’s not a good assumption. Andrei has a very extended death, and everyone is pretty sad about it. But on the bright side, Marya and Nikolai can marry, and her money saves the family! And Pierre’s wife dies possibly from an abortion (she’s been having affairs this whole time), and he and Natasha can also marry, since she loves him now, too!
It ends with the foursome all happy and married (poor Sonya), chatting about politics as usual. Andrei’s son misses his dad but likes Pierre a lot. Then Tolstoy goes on a long monologue about historians, carrying on the long monologues that often interrupted the narrative this whole time. That’s all.
Where I’m At:
Unsurprisingly, this book took a long time to read – April to July, so about three months. I would have finished it sooner, but I was also reading along with a friend who slowed me down (kidding, kind of). He was the one to suggest it, inspired by a virtual book club hosted by novelist Yiyun Li. I’m morally opposed to books longer than 400 pages, but I can never say no to a book club – plus, it seemed like now was as good a time as any to read such a monumental book, given there’s not much else really going on.
War and Peace sort of anchored me during the months of reading. The other books I read flew by quickly, while the escapades of Pierre and co. felt like a constant – finishing it was a feeling of relief, accomplishment, and sorrow. Even if it was annoying or boring at times, it had become this detailed world for me to rely on and escape to, so far away from my own reality. I could give my friend grief for never finishing on time, look forward to an opportunity to see him and talk about it – a chance to get out of the apartment, have a discussion about something other than the “current situation”. Like my half-marathon, finishing it was something to work for and look forward to, and I’ve felt a bit directionless in my personal life since then, with no enduring project to focus on.
That said, I am not planning on picking up another book this size anytime soon. Other recommendations are welcome.
Getting Into it:
Alright. What can I say about War and Peace without making this post as absurdly long?
A coworker today told me that the key to reading War and Peace is to skip all the war, and I wish I know that beforehand. The long descriptions of battles and marches and scheming made me want to rip my hair out and scream. The battles themselves were usually pretty incoherent, Tolstoy explaining the maneuvering as if the reader were familiar with Russian geography and/or war games.
I would extend that to many of Tolstoy’s monologues. He does them a lot. In fact, here’s a meme about it (from the excellent Sparknotes Twitter):
I get that they’re where he does the Frank-Underwood-breaking-the-third-wall thing and directly addresses his point, but… I think the plot and characters could stand on their own and do that too. That said, Tolstoy didn’t really see this book as “just” a novel, so he probably wasn’t very interested in letting the characters stand on their own.
With those caveats, I actually did like the book. Tolstoy’s thesis is basically that everything is pointless. I like that. Contrary to how it might seem, the argument isn’t particularly dour – it’s cynical, yes, but in a way that’s human-centered and ultimately hopeful. Tolstoy summarily dismisses institutions or ways people might try to find meaning in their lives – things like religion, patriotism, romance, politics, ambition. He points out that the leaders we often idolize don’t actually know anything, that they are caught up in the march of history like anyone else, helpless to its current.
So what’s one to do, in this absurd, meaningless world? According to Tolstoy, basically just appreciate it. Do good things for the people around you, and build connections with them. It’s very Russian-lit (obviously, Tolstoy basically invented the genre), also reminds me of Vonnegut and Camus (I strongly recommend this recent podcast about the latter). Though I’m the type of person who has searched for meaning in religion, politics, and relationships, this message has always resonated with me, and I find myself more and more comfortable within it as the years go on. The meaning that I was looking for was always focused on other people, anyway – how to love and help them. So just be a good person, fight for what’s right, help others, and enjoy your life/the people in it.
Beyond my own philosophical tendencies, I also liked the writing. Though my friend complained that it often read like it hadn’t been edited at all (he’s not wrong), I enjoyed the pervading wry humor, the note of melancholy. I liked the realism, the minute details about these character’s lives, the unflinching examination of their complicated desires, even when it was dull. The characters themselves were also impressively real – not a saint among them, no single flash of revelation that solved everything. They all had moments of grace, moments of being really awful. They wanted different things, changed their minds, then changed them again. Really, they just struggled their way along, searched for meaning, sometimes got a piece of it, continued to grow and evolve as humans do.
I’ll end with that. Do I recommend this book? Absolutely not. Unlike my friend, I’m not going to the reason anyone else muddles their way through it for months on end. But if you feel interested and choose to read it independently, or maybe if you’re looking for a project under quarantine – there’s certainly something worthwhile amid all those pages.
