An invitation to a soirée

War and Peace Week 1: Book 1 Part 1 Chapters 1 – 7

Welcome to War and Peace 2024!

Hello! And welcome. I am absolutely delighted that you have decided to join us for this year-long slow read of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. You are in for a treat. This is a rather extraordinary book: a great story full of complex always-changing characters and a kaleidoscope of human experience. Reading it slowly and collectively expands and deepens this story into something greater than itself. Stick with us, and hopefully, you will see what I mean.

Everything you need on this journey will appear on the main War and Peace page of Footnotes and Tangents. There is a reading schedule that links through to daily chat threads for each chapter. There is a list of weekly updates. And there is a wiki of character profiles to help you keep track of all the people you will meet in these pages.

Every Wednesday¹, I will send out a reading update like this one, covering the chapters from Monday to Sunday of that week. You can save it for the weekend or browse it as you read. Whatever works for you!

And for some astonishing reason, all of this is free this year. But it’s not free to make. In fact, it’s become something of a full-time job. So if you value this book group and have the means to do so, I encourage you to become a paying subscriber. As a supporter, you get a warm glowing feeling inside and a little extra post called All Tolstoy’s Parties, a review of every ball and banquet in War and Peace.

And speaking of parties…

If you have nothing better to do, dear reader, and if the prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you in the comments section as we discuss Anna Pavlovna’s soirée and Anatole’s night of drinking and debauchery.

But before we get started, a quick poll:

View of the Palace Embankment in Saint Petersburg. 1826. Source. Source.

This week’s story

Chapter 1
Prince Vasili is the first to arrive at the soirée of Anna Pavlovna Scherer. They discuss the latest news of war with Napoleon, and Vasili talks about his useless children and their marriage prospects.

Chapter 2
The guests begin to arrive. There is the charming Princess Bolkonskaya with her pretty upper lip. And a stout young man called Pierre Bezukhov, who knows exactly how not to behave.

Chapter 3
The reception is in full swing. Pierre has begun to argue with the abbé Morio about politics. Prince Andrei arrives looking handsome and bored, but his eyes light up to see his old friend Pierre.

Chapter 4
The ever-determined Anna Drubetskaya approaches Prince Vasili about securing a good position for her son Boris. Meanwhile, Andrei rescues Pierre from a heated exchange with the Vicomte Mortemart.

Chapter 5
The guests depart. Prince Ippolit behaves inappropriately with the little princess. Pierre goes to Andrei’s, where they talk about Pierre’s career plans and the coming war.

Chapter 6
Lise and Andrei argue, and he confides in Pierre about how unhappy he is in his marriage. He advises his friend to leave off carousing, and Pierre promises, then talks himself into going to Anatole’s wild party. There is drinking, gambling and a bear.

Chapter 7
Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya visits the Rostovs in Moscow on the name-day of Countess Rostova and her daughter Natasha. We learn that Anatole’s party led to him and Pierre being banished from Petersburg. The conversation turns to Pierre’s dying father and the exceptional fortune he will leave to his relatives.

This week’s characters

These are the principal characters, in the order they are mentioned:
Vasili Kuragin • Anna Pavlovna • Hélène Kuragina • Anatole Kuragin • Ippolit Kuragin • Marya Bolkonskaya • Nikolai Bolkonsky • Andrei Bolkonsky • Liza Bolkonskaya • Pierre Bezukhov • Kirill Bezukhov • Anna Drubetskaya • Boris Drubetskoy • Dolokhov • Natalya Rostova • Natasha Rostova • Ilya Rostov • Marya Karagina • Julie Karagina

The Coronation of Napoleon, 1804. Source.

NB: This is a long post and may get clipped by your email provider. It is best viewed online here.

Background: The coming conflict

War and Peace doesn’t start how you might expect. We don’t get a wide-angle sweeping shot of Europe in 1805, in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars. Tolstoy doesn’t dump a huge dollop of historical background on our doorstep and say: deal with it, dear reader. He throws us straight into the middle of a conversation between an old courtier, Prince Vasili, and a society hostess, Anna Pavlovna. It is almost as though we are time-travelling eavesdroppers who have just stumbled into a St Petersburg soirée.

So if you’re confused about what’s going on, let’s zoom out a little.

About 16 years ago, in 1789, something extraordinary happened. The French rose up, overthrew the aristocracy and cut off the head of their king. They proclaimed a republic, grounded on revolutionary ideals of the rights of man, liberty, equality and fraternity. A decade of social and political turbulence followed.

Out of this chaos emerged Napoleon Bonaparte. The soldier from Corsica became a national hero through a series of successful military campaigns and, in 1799, overthrew the government to become First Consul. Last year, he was crowned emperor.

If you talk to some people (Anna Pavlovna), Napoleon is the Anti-Christ. He has destroyed the natural order of things. He’s turned everything upside down. And now he’s killed the Duc d’Enghien, a French nobleman of the royal Bourbon family. The Russian Tsar Alexander I has expressed his outrage. With news that Napoleon has taken the Italian states of Genoa and Lucca, hopes of peace have evaporated. War looks inevitable.

If you talk to others (Pierre), Napoleon is a “great man” who has preserved all that was good from the revolution and curbed its violent excess. He cannot understand why his best friend Andrei, or anyone else, would go and fight Napoleon. This is not a popular opinion right now in Russia.

Leo Tolstoy, aged 20. An unlikeable character? Source.

Focus: A cast of unlikeable characters

When I look at this photo of Tolstoy aged 20, I think of the young men in War and Peace. And I think of Tolstoy’s own words about his youth, written in his fifties:

I cannot think of those years without horror, loathing and heartache. I killed men in war and challenged men to duels in order to kill them. I lost at cards, consumed the labor of the peasants, sentenced them to punishments, lived loosely, and deceived people. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder - there was no crime I did not commit, and in spite of that people praised my conduct and my contemporaries considered and consider me to be a comparatively moral man.

Because here’s an odd thing about War and Peace: Did you like anyone in the first week?

Prince Vasili is a weary courtier who can’t stand his children. His son Ippolit is just embarrassing. Andrei is arrogant and unkind towards his wife. Pierre is a bumbling fool. The women fair a little better. Anna Mikhailovna has admirably sharp elbows. Anna Pavlovna throws a great party, although maybe not as wild as Anatole’s. And speaking of which, Anatole and Dolokhov are clearly bad news.

I think it is worth thinking about which characters have your sympathy and which do not. It will be different for each reader, and I suspect different for each reading throughout your life.

It’s a bold move by Tolstoy. To introduce so many characters in their worst light. How can any of these people be worthy of our interest, respect or love?

Because they are human. Very few of the characters in War and Peace are just caricatures or plot devices. They don’t exist to please the reader or prove a point. They just exist. In their own messy complicated way. As Tolstoy writes:

Man is flowing. In him there are all possibilites: he was stupid, now he is clever; he was evil, now he is good, and the other way around. In this is the greatness of man.

Characters will change, from one moment to the next, and across the course of the book and their lives. It is this complexity and capacity to change that makes the characters so compelling and true to life.

So if all the characters infuriate and frustrate you right now, you’re not alone. But we have only just begun.

Maria Feodorovna, aged 18. Anna Pavlovna is a maid of honour to the Empress Dowager. Source.

Reading tip: Russian names

This is going to be the biggest challenge for most of us. Every character appears to have half a dozen names, and if you’re English like me, you’re probably struggling to pronounce most of them and remember all of them.

And to make matters worse, the names and spellings differ between translations.

But don’t panic! The benefit of a slow read is that you spend longer with the characters, and you are less likely to muddle them up. The group read means there’s always someone on hand to remind you who is who. And my list of characters should also help jog your memory.

But here are the basics. Meet Lev:

Full name: Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy.

Lev is his given name. Nikolayevich is his patronymic, derived from his father’s name Nikolai Tolstoy.

Characters are frequently referred to by their given name + patronymic, for example:

Andrei Nikolayevich
Anna Mikhailovna

Characters also have many diminutives used by others to express affection:

Pierre: Petrushka, Petya.
Nikolai: Nikolenka, Nikolushka.

In the English-speaking world, we know Tolstoy as Leo. And we will find many characters adopting French versions of their names: For example, Hélène and Pierre.

And this leads us to another topic…

Peter the Great Meditating the Idea of Building St Petersburg at the Shore of the Baltic Sea. Painting by Alexandre Benois. Source.

Focus: The use of French

Depending on your translation, you may have been confronted by a lot of French dialogue in the opening chapters. Often the translations are in footnotes. If you don’t read French and this is driving you potty, here are two comforts: There is must less French as the story continues. And if that’s still too much, I recommend the Anthony Brigg’s translation, where everything is translated into English.

The Russian aristocracy in the 18th and 19th centuries spoke French. As Tolstoy writes in Chapter One, they “not only spoke but thought” in French and often struggled to speak Russian fluently.

This attachment to the French language begins with Peter the Great (1672 – 1725), rather romantically looking out to sea in the painting above. The founder of modern Russia, Peter, built a new capital city in St Petersburg, self-consciously European in design and architecture. He introduced French and Western dress at court and laboured to build a state that looked west to Europe instead of east into Asia.

Which is why we have so many “princes” and “counts” all speaking French in the opening chapters of War and Peace. But this is all going to become a bit awkward for our characters when Russia goes to war with France, the country and culture that the aristocracy revere.

But there is another reason why Tolstoy uses French in War and Peace. You will find characters frequently switch to French when a more delicate or precise word is required. And those words are often double-edged and insincere. It is the language of the head rather than the heart. This theme of head and heart, artificial speech and natural, honest emotions, is a theme we will see popping up time and again as we read on.

Bonus: All Tolstoy’s Parties

Last year, I had the idea that someone should review all the balls and banquets in War and Peace. This year, it turns out that someone is going to me. So for paying subscribers, here is the first dispatch from our all-expenses-paid entertainment columnist:

Marie Thérèse Geoffrin’s salon, 1755. Source.

Character of the week: Anna Pavlovna

Oh, is there any doubt?

And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave, she resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch, ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to flag. As the foreman of a spinning-mill when he has set the hands to work, goes round and notices, here a spindle that has stopped or there one that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna Pavlovna moved about her drawing-room, approaching now a silent, now a too noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement, kept the conversational machine in steady, proper and regular motion.

Professional enthusiast, apprentice old maid and first-class Maître d', offering up her guests like joints of “roast beef on a hot dish”. Could we have had a better hostess to welcome us into the pages of War and Peace?

• Who is your favourite character of the week?

• And, what has surprised you most in week one?

That’s it from me. Thank you for reading and listening. Join me in the chat or in the comment section below. I hope you enjoy your time with War and Peace and as part of this book group. Bye for now.

1. I am actually mulling over publishing these posts later in the week. I’d be keen to know when might be best. If most people are sticking to the schedule, it may make sense to post them on Sundays. Let me know what you think.