What's burning? asked Natasha. Oh, yes. Moscow.There is far too much in War and Peace to even begin with. Read it if you dare! No right-mind could call that collection of words a novel, but then I haven't really any idea what it is. Do not doubt that there is a very intriguing story in War and Peace; there are about thirteen very intriguing stories inside, but there is also a very, very lengthy discussion of the philosophy of history, which towards the end, I guess the last two hundred pages or so, was a bit dull.
He had the unfortunate capacity many men, especially Russians, have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to be able to take a serious part in it. Every sphere of work was connected, in his eyes, with evil and deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he engaged in, the evil and falsehood of it repulsed him and blocked every path of activity. Yet he had to live and to find occupation. It was too dreadful to be under the burden of these insoluble problems, so he abandoned himself to any distraction in order to forget them. he frequented every kind of society, drank much, brought pictures, engaged in building, and above all - read.
Those questions, then as now, existed only for those who see nothing in marriage but the pleasure married people get from one another, that is, only the beginnings of marriage and not its whole significance, which lies in the family.
To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away. You remember? She is one that hath not; why, I don't know. Perhaps she lacks egotism, I don't know, but from her is taken away, and everything has been taken away. Sometimes I am dreadfully sorry for her. Formerly I very much wanted Nicholas to marry her, but I always had a sort of presentiment that it would not come off. She is a sterile flower, you know - like some strawberry blossoms. Sometimes I am sorry for her, and sometimes I think she doesn't feel it as you or I would.
This legitimate peculiarity of each individual, which used to excite and irritate Pierre, now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and the interest he took in, other people. The difference and sometimes the complete contradiction, between men's opinions and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased him and evoked from him an amused and gentle smile.
While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned, not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in teh satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth - that there is nothing in the world that is terrible. He had learned that, as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and not free. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing shoes he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feet that were covered with sores - his footgear having long since fallen to pieces.
Despite Tolstoy's ruminations on history and how every historian up till his day has misunderstood it, there are two characters in particular who engrossed me. The first is Pierre. He is one of the three or four central characters who are present throughout the whole book. The second, fifth, and sixth quotations from above are about Pierre. If ever a man struggled in life, if ever a man took a long time getting round to understanding something, it is this man. But as he neared his breakthrough into clarity, his smooth path after so much turmoil, I couldn't help but thinking that it isn't the smooth part of his life that is interesting at all. And this thought gets me back to Daoism. Maybe they had it right afterall? The way is the important part. We don't enjoy reading stories about figures who understand everything or have gotten it all right, we enjoy reading about the path a man takes on his way to understanding. We enjoy watching a man stuggle towards his epiphany--but the moment of clarity itself, like the back cover of a book, is only necessary to prove that it happened. I think I have a deep affinity to characters like Pierre--outcasts who go their own ways and in terror finally find some peaceful pasture.
The second character I have an affinity towards is Sonya. She is an orphan of some sort taken in by the Rostov family (a chief family in the book). I don't remember what exactly the technicalities of Sonya's position are (there are so many technicalities in War and Peace, you'll not begrudge me a few) but she is the person who the fourth quotation above speaks. She seems to sacrifice everything, to give everything constantly and consistently and never receives a thing in return. Her life is hollow and empty by the end of the book, in fact Tolstoy pretty much forgets to say anything more about her. She just drifts away, an empty middle-aged woman. And if it weren't for that small discussion about 'He who hath much...' I would have thought Tolstoy had simply not found a better way to get rid of her. But he makes me think she is perhaps the key to much in the book. Pierre has much and is given more, Sonya has little and even that is taken from her. I don't claim to understand this mystery, but I would recommend those interested in it, take a look at War and Peace.
1 comment:
Toiling, whether in solitude or in community, always is more interesting to me than arriving or achieving. Maybe that's why they call the end of the race, the finish. It's over, done, fini.
Dad
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