War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Source of book: I own this

I am not sure exactly how to count this book. I didn’t realize that the version we have is, technically speaking, abridged. I failed to realize this until I was quite a way into it, and decided to finish it up. Upon further research, it appears that the translator/abridger, Alexandra Kropotkin, took out the extended statement of Tolstoy’s philosophy on war and history at the end and the essays in the middle. In any event, this version is still 700 pages long, so the bulk of the text has to be in there. I am guessing that this redaction is more like The Count of Monte Cristo, (which does not appear to be readily available in English without some abridgement), namely the removal of commentary on French politics of the time. So, at minimum, I know the story in War and Peace. Should I find that someone wishes to discuss Tolstoy’s views on war, history, or gender relations, I can probably fake my way through based on the other stuff I have read of his. It would be interesting to go back and read an unabridged sometime, at least the omitted parts.

So, anyway, I at least can say that I have read the same version my wife read - she brought the book to our marriage. She read it as a teen, while I waited until age 40, but whatever. I get bragging rights for having read three Dostoevsky novels while she hasn’t experienced him yet.

I have read a decent amount of Tolstoy, however. The combination of Family Happiness and The Kreutzer Sonata made my list of most influential books. I also reviewed Tolstoy’s other major work on war, the brutal Sevastapol Sketches.

I have always found Tolstoy to be easier to follow than Dostoevsky, primarily because it is easier to keep the characters and relationships straight. Tolstoy seems to limit himself to two names and a nickname for each character, whereas - at least in The Brother Karamazov, it seemed as if each character had a different name given by each other character. I literally wrote names down on a pad of paper so I could keep them straight. 

Napoleon's Retreat From Moscow (painting by Adolph Northen)

For those who do not know, War and Peace is set in the years 1805 through 1820, during the wars between Napoleon and Russia. More accurately, one could say that the story takes place primarily in the years up to and including 1812, with the other years covered in what is essentially an epilogue, explaining what happened to the surviving characters.

In addition to chronicling the major engagements of the war, the novel follows several aristocratic families through the years. The children grow up and marry, the older generation dies, families experience financial ruin or windfall, and relationships are formed and torn.

I considered trying to summarize the plot, but decided against it. There are a lot of threads, all of them are important in some way, either historically or more often psychologically. Instead, I will comment a bit on the characters.

For some reason, I had heard several times over the years about what a great character Natasha Rostov was. I was rather disappointed. I found her to be one of the more annoying, least realistic, and insipid characters in the book. Her attraction seems to be that she is beautiful, and that she is “vivacious.” Now, certainly nothing wrong with either of those, if that is your thing. But it isn’t mine. Vivaciousness in this case seems to be extroversion mixed with youthful vigor, which is easy enough to find. What Natasha seems to lack is something deeper. She isn’t witty, she isn’t reflective, and she doesn’t grow in the sense that other characters do. Rather, she goes from a young and flighty girl to a controlling and frigid matron and mother. That this reflects Tolstoy’s rather toxic view of womanhood is obvious, but it is also disappointing because Tolstoy can write interesting female characters. In particular, Masha from Family Happiness is complex and convincing - Tolstoy writes from her perspective. Even within War and Peace itself, I thought that Princess Maria was a better character. She wrestles with her love for her father, who has given her an education but also a good bit of abuse. She ends up marrying Nikolai Rostov, who is driven as much by the need for her money to rescue the family fortune as he is by affection for her. (Not that Nikolai is a gold digger - he resists marrying for money until he realizes that Maria is genuinely in love with him.) Maria is the one who must be strong and weather all the craziness that overtakes her family: Her father’s increasing eccentricity and rage and his flirtation with a French woman a third his age, her brother Andrei’s estrangement from his innocent and pregnant wife, her death in childbirth followed by Andrei’s departure to fight Napoleon, Andrei’s catastrophically broken engagement to Natasha, Andrei’s eventual lingering death, and her eventual responsibility for everything as the last surviving adult member of her family. I would have loved it if Tolstoy had spent more time on her and a bit less on Natasha’s emotional attachments to unworthy males.

Prince Andrei is also a great character. If the above paragraph made him sound bad, it is an incomplete picture. He learns and grows as a result of his wife’s death, and admittedly is caught in a difficult position, between a controlling father, his disillusionment with a war that he must nonetheless fight in, and a fiancee who can’t remain faithful.

Like Prince Andrei, Pierre Bezukhof must wrestle with himself and his circumstances. Pierre is the illegitimate son of a fabulously wealthy - and philandering - nobleman. He is socially awkward (almost autistic, it sometimes seems) who has to find himself after inheriting his father’s fortune and becoming the city’s most eligible bachelor. Pierre is often a stand-in for Tolstoy himself, and his thoughts and opinions are probably closest to Tolstoy’s, particularly his epiphany of the meaning of life by observing a decent peasant man. Pierre is interesting precisely because he is so mistake prone. He seems to botch everything, from start to finish, except for a few acts of genuine kindness on his part which do not manage to go completely awry.

One of the key moments in the book is when Pierre, naive as all get out, is essentially roped into marrying Helene, who, it is strongly implied, sleeps around. (In fact, she continues to go behind his back, eventually dying of an overdose of abortifacient after she gets pregnant by another man.)

My least favorite thing about reading Tolstoy is that he is such a misogynist pig, and it comes out throughout this book. Tolstoy had a disastrous marriage, which, between his difficult personality and his later belief that sex was evil, let to a frustrated, trapped, disrespected, and deeply unhappy wife. There is a line somewhere near the end of the book to the effect that women should be interested in what their husbands say. Not, mind you, so that they can improve their own minds or become interesting conversationalists. (He really says this.) No, they should be interested and listen so that they can make their husbands’ lives and homes more pleasant. Gag. It is this same attitude that makes him speak admiringly of the way that Natasha learns to gently steer her husband without his knowing it, all the while giving up any desire for society outside the family, devoting herself completely and only to her children and husband. And the man wondered why he had a lousy marriage?

On the other hand, Tolstoy writes exceedingly well about war and strategy. He’s not the tactician that Winston Churchill was, but he shows a keen eye for detail and doesn’t have Churchill’s rosy glasses. Heroism is mostly a myth to Tolstoy, while blood and dirt and senseless death are very real. This isn’t to say Tolstoy is completely anti-war, because he certainly acknowledges that Russia had to defend herself against Napoleon. (Although I think he has a good point that the invasion was a terrible and unnecessary conflict that could have been avoided had either side not been so stupid.)

Reading War and Peace was one of my goals for this year. I’m glad I did, although I wish I had gone with an unabridged translation.

***

Any review of War and Peace would be incomplete without mentioning the other great Russian work inspired by the French invasion. Tchaikovsky commemorated the event in his 1812 Overture, one of the most popular orchestral works of all time.

When I first joined the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra 21 years ago, we used to play this in an outdoor pops concert every August. Although we didn’t use cannon (hard to get permits in the city…), we did use fireworks at the climax and at the end. Eventually, funding for the concert dried up, and we stopped doing it. We revived it once for a single year, and that year we included a high school choir for the chorale Save, O Lord, Thy People. This is the tune that opens the work, played by the violas and cellos. (I really wish I could play the viola part sometime. I love the richness of the tune.)

Here is the chorale in its original form, more or less.

O Lord, save Thy people,

and bless Thine inheritance!

Grant victory to the Orthodox Christians

over their adversaries,

and by virtue of Thy cross,

preserve Thy habitation.

Other tunes include God Save The Tsar and the Marseillaise. The latter is an anachronism, because Napoleon banned the tune during his reign - it was associated with the monarchy. However, Napoleon’s actual anthem is obscure, while the Marseillaise is and was well known when Tchaikovsky wrote the overture.

I really must mention my favorite tune from the piece, though, which is the folk tune At the gate, at my gate, which is played softly by the flute and English horn.

Here is the full overture. Enjoy.

"The Sevastopol Sketches" and other early works by Leo Tolstoy

Source of Book: I own this - used hardback

Tolstoy is best known for his two long novels, War and Peace, and Anna Karenina, neither of which I have read. Actually, this is a somewhat odd omission, because I have read three of Dostoyevsky’s novels, which are equally as long and difficult. I have, however, read and enjoyed a number of Tolstoy’s shorter works.

In this case, I am tackling part of a collection of short stories and novellas that the editor has titled “Tales of Courage and Conflict”. The works within the collection are presented in essentially chronological order, and contain a significant slice of the Author’s short works. I decided to jump in at the beginning and read until I decided to stop. As I did with my review of assorted short works of Henry James, I will look at each work briefly, rather than attempt an overview of the whole.

“The Invaders”

This short story was Tolstoy’s first. It is alternately titled “The Raid”. This is one of several stories that Tolstoy based on his experiences fighting in the Russian army in the Caucasus. Not being particularly familiar with 19^th Century Russian history, I had to look up what on earth this war was about. Apparently, most of the first half of the century was taken up by Russia expanding its empire into the Caucasus, in places that have now returned to some degree of independence: Georgia, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, and others. Turkey and Iran were also involved as interested parties, if not exactly belligerents.

This story focuses on a conversation between Tolstoy and a superior officer about the nature of courage, which is defined by the officer thus: “A brave man is one who conducts himself as he ought.” This theme is then developed throughout the rest of the story. I should note that a Tolstoy “short story” is rarely as short as one would expect, and is typically divided into chapters. The chapters are shorter than those in a novel, and there are fewer of them, making the overall length less.

I particularly enjoyed Tolstoy’s description in this story of rising early and setting out on a march. He beautifully paints the transformation from the foggy night to the brilliant day.

“Recollections of a Billiard-Marker”

This is the only one of the early stories that I had previously read as well as the only story in this review that is about civilian life.  Told from the point of view of a “Billiard-Marker”, who sets up the balls, keeps score, and otherwise does the work at a billiard hall; it chronicles the downfall and eventual suicide of a young, sensitive nobleman who becomes addicted to gambling and gets hopelessly in debt.

This is one of Tolstoy’s semi-autobiographical stories, and showcases one of his talents: the ability to write unflatteringly about himself. Tolstoy was a rather dissolute young man, and also quickly wound up in debt due to gambling. Rather than make his quietus, he joined the army, of course, and the world was not prematurely deprived of a fine writer.

This particular story is more tightly plotted than average, making it a focused and purposeful tale. It also shows good insight into the nature of addiction as the nobleman expresses his horror at his own descent into moral and physical blackness, but is unable to rouse himself to take action. Finally, in his suicide note, he states that he is even unable to feel pain at the thought of his own death.

“The Sevastopol Sketches”

This is a trio of stories entitled, “Sevastopol in December 1854”, “Sevastopol in May 1855”, and “Sevastopol in August 1855”.

If you mention the Crimean war to a random stranger, you will usually get a blank look. With a few, you might get a mention of Florence Nightingale. A few war buffs might mention it as the first modern use of artillery, or mention it as one of the most pointless wars of all time. It also was a presaging of the trench warfare in World War I. This is not a compliment.

Each sketch is a snapshot of a particular moment in the siege of Sevastopol. Located on the Crimean peninsula extending into the Black Sea, Sevastopol remains an important port and naval center. After a dispute with England and France over the Dardanelles, and control of other remnants of the Ottoman Empire, the Russians sent troops to the Holy Land, sparking the war. (There is a lot more to it than that, but is better left to the military historians.)

Eventually, the Europeans laid siege to Sevastopol for about a year, finally breaking through and forcing Russia’s surrender.

Tolstoy based his stories on his own experience in Sebastopol during the war. Since he was in the artillery, that facet of the battle receives particular attention, and a good deal of careful detail.

The first story is told in the second person, that is, it is a tour given to “you”, the reader. Tolstoy is brutally effective in showing the horrors of war, from the cold and mud to the “hospitals” with the dying crammed into any available spot on the floor. These are the dreadful and hopeless conditions in which Nightingale and other nursing pioneers sought to reform. Whatever other strides have been made in warfare, the greatest has certainly been in medical care, where an injury does not have to mean death.

The second story is split between accounts of the rather vain and pointless social lives of the officers and their petty hopes of advancement, and an artillery battle. It concludes with a temporary truce called in order to collect the dead and injured. Tolstoy’s haunting language describes this scene beautifully:

Yes, white flags are hung out from the bastion and the trenches, the flowery vale is filled with dead bodies, the splendid sun sinks into the blue sea, and the blue sea undulates and glitters in the golden rays of the sun.

…

The white flags have been hauled down, and again the weapons of death and suffering are shrieking; again innocent blood is shed, and groans and curses are audible.

The final story tells of the final battle and the surrender of Sebastopol. It begins with two brothers making their way to the front. The elder is returning to action after being wounded, and the younger is joining the fight for the first time. Their hopes and fears are explored for much of the story, until all hell breaks loose on the front, and all is swept away by the inexorable enemy.

Tolstoy shows a foretaste of his eventual skill in psychological analysis of human nature in these sketches. Although he has not yet figured out how to focus consistently and avoid distraction with side characters and stories, he is able to keep his narrative arc together, for the most part. These are not easy to read. The death and destruction are ever present, and the author does not shy away from portraying suffering. Drawing from experience, he is able to portray the experience of injury and even death in ways that we now take for granted. Far from the heroic deaths of Medieval legend or the gory yet poetic deaths of Homer’s warriors, these are closer to death as portrayed in modern war movies. I was amazed at how few words were necessary to do this. Tolstoy does not wallow in gore, and actually moves quickly, but his deaths are hard to take.

Together, these three are nearly 100 pages of small type, making them longer as a unit than Tolstoy’s novellas.

“The Wood-Cutting Expedition”

Another “short” story about the war in the Caucasus. I would say this one is the weakest of the ones I read, particularly in its lack of economy. If Tolstoy had ended it after about 2/3 of its length, it would have made more sense. Instead, he charges on after the logical ending, introduces a few new characters which never go anywhere, and then ends it abruptly.

Also puzzling is that he starts the story with a few characters, then launches a diatribe about the basic kinds of people in the army. He then applies his categories to a few of the characters, but then apparently loses interest in this idea, and never really brings it up again. This would have been interesting had he stuck with it and made the story about the types. If he had left out the types and made it a musing on the responses to the death of a soldier, that also would have been interesting. Had he focused instead on the reasons each of the characters was in the army in the first place, that too would have been intriguing. Instead, he flirts with each of these ideas, never committing to one long enough to make for a coherent central idea.

“An Old Acquaintance”

In contrast, this story is highly focused, with the narrator and another character taking center stage, and a minimum of supporting characters largely in the background.

The narrator is a nobleman serving in, predictably at this point, the Caucasus. During a gathering of officers while on an exhibition, an odd and pathetic soldier appears at their gathering. He is a former officer who has been “cashiered”, that is, stripped of his rank for disciplinary reasons. It turns out that he is also of noble descent, and knew the narrator during their pre-military days. At that time, he was a bit of a prig, and his priggishness has done him no favors in the army, to say the least.

The two have an extended conversation, in which the author alludes to some sort of incident which led to the soldier being disinherited. Unfortunately, Tolstoy declines to indulge our curiosity, claiming that the story would be boring. I suspect Tolstoy at this stage in his career, either did not wish to write of such things, or felt more at home writing about military rather than civilian issues. Either way, I was disappointed that this was omitted. It would have been very interesting indeed to know the cause of the disgrace of the soldier, as it was the inciting event that led to his ever increasing degradation.

This story is an excellent use of the unpleasant, unlikeable character. The soldier is clearly irritating to all he encounters because of his belief that he is better than everyone else. It is true that he comes from a better background, is better educated, and has broader interests. However, this causes him to despise everyone else as inferior. Even worse, his sufferings have utterly failed to bring him humility. Humiliation, yes, in spades; but not humility or even empathy.

As a group, these stories show a broad slice of life as Tolstoy knew it in his early years. From the gambling to the mud and blood, Tolstoy shows his observational powers, and the early gleams of his genius of characterization. He also shows his tendency to lose focus and ramble without tying up the loose ends. Although these stories are not a bad way to start, I would recommend short stories or novellas from Tolstoy’s mature period for the first time reader. Such novellas as Family Happiness or The Death of Ivan Ilyich, or short stories such as “What Men Live By” or “How Much Land Does a Man Need” show the more typical philosophy of the older Tolstoy, and showcase his talents at their peak.

Translation notes;

No, I do not speak or read Russian, so these are in translation. The Sevastopol Sketches were translated by Isabel F. Hapgood. The rest were translated by Nathan Haskell Dole. I have nothing negative to say about the translations. I have read a few stories that seemed ill translated before, but there were no real off notes here.