War and Peace and People

I recently reread War and Peace. It is sending me on a Leo Tolstoy binge. I read Anna Karenana a few years ago. It instantly became one of my favorite books. The timelessness of Anna Karenina captivated me. The struggles and conflicts written ~150 years ago are timeless.

This time with War and Peace, I realized Tolstoy's true gift. Tolstoy is a great writer, but he isn't the best writer when it comes to his literal words and sentences (diction or syntax). His descriptions don't punch the hardest. His writing doesn't seem the most polished. But Tolstoy knows people, better than anyone else I've read. Tolstoy was extremely well read. His understanding of statistics, philosophy, science, and especially history were at the top of his time. Even today, Tolstoy understands those topics better than most people. Tolstoy doesn't need 21st century sciences or technologies because he already knows what those disciplines are trying to discover: people. People are people. Tolstoy knows how people are people. If you knew people anytime during the last few thousands of years, then you'd appear to understand modern psychology, behavioral economics, and other social sciences. Culturally people change, but genetically we're programmed the same as our hunter gather ancestors. And even with all the social progress, the dynamics of relationships and conflicts remain surprisingly similar. That's why 150 years later, people all over the planet are obsessed and in love with War and Peace. They might start reading it to be cool or fit in with intellectual crowds, but they love it because Tolstoy knows people.

My Book Review for Goodreads

I first read War and Peace about 10 years ago. I loved it. At the time, I was shocked at how great the drama was. I liked the philosophy, and really enjoyed the inevitability and free will topics. The history was okay.

Ten years later, I love it even more. It was almost like reading it for the first time because I forgot most of the book, and I misremembered several important details. The philosophy of history I was able to understand and appreciate a lot better this time. As the book progressed the philosophy of history felt redundant and distracting from the characters stories, but then the philosophy of history finished strong in the second epilogue. Many literary readers dislike, I get it. And I'd prefer the first epilogue ending as an ending to the book.

The drama is as great as it was my first read. My previous read had minimal female characters, so the women in War and Peace especially stood out. The women are strong and present figures in War and Peace.

The opening chapters were very slow, but the more I read and remembered and got to know the characters again, the story and my interest picked up. I might have been reading one chapter a day at first.

Structurally, the novel is broken into four volumes of 17 books, and books are broken into parts. The chapters are very short. War and Peace is ~1200-1500 pages depending on the copy. There are 361 chapters. That rounds to 4 pages per chapter. If you read one chapter a day, that'd make for a great year of reading. Volume two was my favorite of the 4 volumes.

For anyone wanting or struggling to read War and Peace, I recommend referencing a character list. Wiki has a great one, but watch out if you care about spoilers. I spoiled a couple things but didn't mind. I'd recommend reading the wiki for War and Peace and Leo Tolstoy as well. It will provide context that makes it easier to follow characters and the plot.

An important idea for Tolstoy is that history shouldn't be told from the point of view and actions of great men. Everyone plays a small part in history, and so Tolstoy introduces the reader to many side characters who play their smaller roles in history. Almost like a 19th century Howard Zinn, "A People's History of Russian Nobility during The Napoleonic War?"

I read this months behind a twitter book club, #TolstoyTogether. I noticed the people I followed on twitter seemed to love Pierre (Christopher McCandless loved Pierre). I like Pierre too, but I prefer Prince Andrei. Although Pierre and Andrei are close friends, they're philosophically opposing. Pierre is the absentminded ideologist and Andrei is the pessimistic man of action. One of my favorite quotes in the book is in the first few chapters when Andrei warns Pierre to never marry unless you're ready to be a loser.

"Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That's my advice: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing- or all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don't look at me with such surprise. If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an idiot!... But what's the good?..." and he waved his arm.

"My wife," continued Prince Andrew, "is an excellent woman, one of those rare women with whom a man's honor is safe; but, O God, what would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one to whom I mention this, because I like you." 

Free Will

These are the spoiler free last sentences of War and Peace:

But as in astronomy the new view said: “It is true that we do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws,” so also in history the new view says: “It is true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws.”

In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious.

I've been reading and learning more about Tolstoy's life. He wrote War and Peace before his hard core Christianity phase where among other things he learned Greek to read the the original Gospels of Jesus and then wrote his own Gospel of Jesus.

Seeing Tolstoy reject free will or imply that laws rule is shocking. The characters in War and Peace find God. They express that Jesus and his teaching are the answer, but the book says the laws are. It doesn't necessarily have to be a contraction, but it goes against almost everything my Christian friends have told me.

Conclusion

I'm going to read more about Tolstoy, Russia, and literary criticism of War and Peace. Then I want to reread War and Peace again. I'm sure there is so much I missed. Until next time, I'll leave you with my favorite chess quote.