Rereading War and Peace: Vol.4, P.1-2

1/ In the previous blog post, I wrote that there’s a problem in Tolstoy’s portrayal of Hélène, and wondered if there would be anything different when she’s dying. There’s not. And Hélène doesn’t die in the arms of the author, though I don’t know if Tolstoy doesn’t want to write about it or it’s because of the censor. 

2/ There’s a memorable moment in the book that many people talk about when they talk about War and Peace—when Pierre is watching an execution: 

“… Like the others this fifth man seemed calm; he wrapped his loose cloak closer and rubbed one bare foot with the other.

When they began to blindfold him he himself adjusted the knot which hurt the back of his head; then when they propped him against the bloodstained post, he leaned back and, not being comfortable in that position, straightened himself, adjusted his feet, and leaned back again more comfortably. Pierre did not take his eyes from him and did not miss his slightest movement.” (Vol.4, P.1, ch.11) 

It is a haunting scene, especially that detail.

James Wood writes: 

“What strikes us nowadays is the mysterious pointlessness of the man fiddling with his blindfold just before death. It was surely with the help of Tolstoy’s instruction that George Orwell watched a condemned Burmese man, in his essay “A Hanging,” walk toward the gallows and swerve to avoid a puddle on the way. Both Tolstoy and Orwell are making a point about uniqueness and typicality. The human animal will tend to look after its own interests, even when the gesture is so useless that it looks like a decision not typical but radically individual.” (The Fun Stuff and Other Essays) 

The more fascinating thing I find is that such an image has been used by the narrator earlier:  

“As a criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must die immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens the cap that is awry on his head, so Moscow involuntarily continued its wonted life, though it knew that the time of its destruction was near when the conditions of life to which its people were accustomed to submit would be completely upset.” (Vol.3, P.3, ch.12) 

3/ Nikolai meets Marya again and falls more deeply in love with her:  

“When he met her again in Voronezh the impression she made on him was not merely pleasing but powerful. Nikolai had been struck by the peculiar moral beauty he observed in her at this time. He was however preparing to go away and it had not entered his head to regret that he was thus depriving himself of chances of meeting her. But that day’s encounter in church had, he felt, sunk deeper than was desirable for his peace of mind. That pale, sad, refined face, that radiant look, those gentle graceful gestures, and especially the deep and tender sorrow expressed in all her features, agitated him and evoked his sympathy. In men Rostov could not bear to see the expression of a higher spiritual life (that was why he did not like Prince Andrei) and he referred to it contemptuously as philosophy and dreaminess, but in Princess Marya that very sorrow which revealed the depth of a whole spiritual world foreign to him, was an irresistible attraction.” (Vol.4, P.1, ch.7) 

I don’t think there’s anything false in the way Nikolai and Marya fall in love, albeit rather quickly, almost at first sight. The scene of them meeting by chance again is also fine. But there’s something in the phrase “moral beauty” that gets on my nerves. The passage above comes from the translation by Aylmer and Louise Maude, revised by Amy Mandelker. Anthony Briggs also translates it as “moral beauty” (“Nikolay was deeply affected by the singular moral beauty that he could now see in her”). 

There’s also something false in the line “In men Rostov could not bear to see the expression of a higher spiritual life (that was why he did not like Prince Andrei) and he referred to it contemptuously as philosophy and dreaminess”. Nikolai and Andrei have only met once (not counting Nikolai seeing Andrei from afar when they’re watching the Tsar), and I’ve always thought that Nikolai dislikes Andrei because the latter happens to walk in on the former recounting his military exploits, with some embellishments, to Boris and he (Andrei) seems contemptuous. Nikolai feels exposed and embarrassed, then insulted when Andrei asks him about the battle. It’s a short meeting. I don’t buy the idea that Nikolai dislikes “the expression of a higher spiritual life” in Andrei, whatever that means. 

4/ I wrote before that one major difference between War and Peace and Vanity Fair, which is also about the Napoleonic Wars, was that Thackeray stayed behind and didn’t follow the characters going to war. Another difference is that Thackeray doesn’t really write about death: the only death that has a strong impact is George Osborne’s, the other deaths generally happen off-stage and barely ruffle the emotional lives of other characters. In War and Peace, there are several deaths, most of them get Tolstoy’s and therefore our attention, and they are arguably some of the greatest death scenes in literature, especially Lise’s and Andrei’s deaths. 

It is for powerful scenes like these that one puts up with certain frustrations from reading War and Peace. And the scene of Natasha and Marya watching Andrei die is particularly powerful and moving when the reader has watched someone close to them die (in my case, my grandma).  

5/ In the previous blog post, I mentioned this comparison: 

“As a hungry herd of cattle keeps well together when crossing a barren field, but gets out of hand and at once disperses uncontrollably as soon as it reaches rich pastures, so did the army disperse all over the wealthy city.” (Vol.3, P.3, ch.26)

The French army is later again compared to cattle: 

“That army, like a herd of cattle run wild and trampling underfoot the provender which might have saved it from starvation, disintegrated and perished with each additional day it remained in Moscow. But it did not go away.” (Vol.4, P.2, ch.10) 

Tolstoy also compares it to a beast: 

“The beast wounded at Borodino was lying where the fleeing hunter had left him; but whether he was still alive, whether he was strong and merely lying low, the hunter did not know. Suddenly the beast was heard to moan.

The moan of that wounded beast (the French army) which betrayed its calamitous condition, was the sending of Lauriston to Kutuzov’s camp with overtures for peace.” (Vol.4, P.2, ch.2) 

And “a wounded animal” and “wild beast”: 

“The plight of the whole army resembled that of a wounded animal which feels it is perishing and does not know what it is doing. To study the skilful tactics and aims of Napoleon and his army from the time it entered Moscow till it was destroyed, is like studying the dying leaps and shudders of a mortally wounded animal. Very often a wounded animal, hearing a rustle, rushes straight at the hunter’s gun, runs forward and back again, and hastens its own end. Napoleon, under pressure from his whole army, did the same thing. The rustle of the battle of Tarutino frightened the beast, and it rushed forward onto the hunter’s gun, reached him, turned back, and finally—like any wild beast—ran back along the most disadvantageous and dangerous path, where the old scent was familiar.” (ibid.)

The image of the wounded beast reappears later, but I want to draw attention to the following paragraph: 

“During the whole of that period Napoleon, who seems to us to have been the leader of all those movements—as the figurehead of a ship may seem to a savage to guide the vessel—acted like a child who, holding a couple of strings inside a carriage, thinks he is driving it.” (ibid.)

Tolstoy combines 2 similes in the same sentence, and repeats the comparison of Napoleon to a child from earlier in the same chapter: 

“The mining of the Kremlin only helped towards fulfilling Napoleon’s wish that it should be blown up when he left Moscow—as a child wants the floor on which he has hurt himself to be beaten.” (ibid.) 

6/ I’m probably talking rubbish, in which case ignore me, but I can’t help wondering if Pierre keeps looking for spiritual guidance, first from Bazdeev (the Mason) then from Karataev (the old soldier), because he was an illegitimate child and needs some sort of father figure. Levin from Anna Karenina also searches for the meaning of life, but he doesn’t seek a guide or a mentor. 

“[Pierre] had long sought in different ways that tranquillity of mind, that inner harmony, which had so impressed him in the soldiers at the battle of Borodino. He had sought it in philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the dissipations of town life, in wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice, and in romantic love for Natasha; he had sought it by reasoning—and all these quests and experiments had failed him. And now without thinking about it, he had found that peace and inner harmony only through the horror of death, through privation, and through what he recognized in Karataev.” (Vol.4, P.2, ch.12)

We know that’s temporary and Pierre is never fully satisfied with any answer, just as Levin never is, but it’s interesting to follow Pierre and think with him as he searches for meaning.