Borodino

War and Peace Week 32: Book 3, Part 2, Chapters 30–36

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Welcome to week 32 of War and Peace 2024

This week, we have read Book 3, Part 2, Chapters 30–36.

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The Battle of Borodino by Louis Lejeune. Source.

This week’s theme: Borodino

‘Are you really afraid?’ said Pierre.

‘Well, what else?’ answered the soldier. ‘She has no mercy, you know!’

Here is the field, here is the meadow. The glittering cornfields and the yellowing wood. Mist in the morning, smoke on the river. A bridge for the crossing, a hill for the dying.

Two men, one story, on a raft long ago. Pierre whispers with waves: ‘We must live, we must love.’ Andrei scowls at the sky: ‘Yes, if only it were so!’

One believes in all. The other: in nothing. They come to Borodino. It's all or nothing.

Before the battle, both men think of death.

For Pierre, it is a ‘joyful feeling’ bound up with his desire to throw himself at life. He doesn't have time to think if he should be there. He must live life fully, and life flows like a river to Borodino.

For Andrei, the river dries up. His father, his childhood home, his wife, his betrothed – all swallowed by this senseless and cruel world. ‘What is this trial for?’ He asks himself. The sacrifice must be performed, but curse anyone who says it matters.

Hours later, Pierre's strong hands are squeezing the life from a Frenchman's throat. Neither knew each other until this moment. But their fears and confusion are the same. They have so much to share, and somewhere else should have been friends.

But here comes a cannonball to save Pierre from himself.

Hours later, Andrei paces in the footsteps of mowers. He strips flowers from a wormwood tree and smells its bittersweet perfume. He thinks of nothing. What good are thoughts now when men sit for hours in a field, waiting to die?

But here comes a cannonball to save Andrei from himself.

‘The smoking shell spun like a top.’ A spinning top, a childhood toy. Time stops. He sees the smoke curl about the ball, the wormwood scenting the air, the grass beneath his feet. ‘I love this grass, this earth, this air.’

Pierre, whispering long ago: ‘We must live, we must love.’

High up on a hill, he is running still. His heart still beats. His soul still moves. He thinks the truth that cannot be:

"Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified at what they have done!’

Pierre at Borodino by Matthias Laurenz Gräff. Source.

Chapter 30: Rose-Tinted

On the morning of the battle of Borodino, Pierre overslept. His groom wakes him, and he goes outside. He is dazzled by the beauty of the battlefield, especially the puffs of white smoke from the cannonades. He sees the warmth in everyone’s faces and believes he understands it after his talk with Andrei. Kutuzov sends a general to the river, and Pierre decides to follow, his spectacles almost slipping off as he goes.

Pierre • Kutuzov

• What does Pierre think he understands after his talk with Andrei?

• Why does he decide to follow the general down to the crossing?

A puff of smoke

Just as in the mist-enveloped hollow near Borodino, so along the entire line outside and above it and especially in the woods and fields to the left, in the valleys and on the summits of the high ground, clouds of powder-smoke seemed continually to spring up out of nothing, now singly now several at a time, some translucent others dense, which, swelling, growing, rolling, and blending, extended over the whole expanse.
   These puffs of smoke and (strange to say) the sound of the firing, produced the chief beauty of the spectacle.

We can waste a lot of exasperated anger wondering why Pierre has gotten himself into this mess. But we shouldn’t be surprised: he is always making the biggest mistakes for the best of reasons. Having failed to find meaning in money, marriage and religion, he goes looking for it in the catastrophe. He will be again disappointed.

But first: the beauty of Borodino! Only Pierre, in his rose-tinted spectacles, could give us this perfect panorama. More military minds, like Nikolai and Andrei, saw the clear contrast between the beauty of nature and the ugliness of war. But for Pierre, the two are indistinguishable. ‘The smoke of the guns mingled with the mist.’ The sun ‘burst forth’ as cloudlets ‘burst from the muskets.’ The morning light makes golden cornfields and bayonets glitter together.

Pierre believes he has understood ‘the warmth of feeling’ on the faces of the generals. It is the ‘spirit’ of which Andrei spoke. Pierre observes it with curiosity as though it is a mysterious creature. And he wants to be close to it: ‘Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those shining bayonets, that movement, and those sounds.’

It is as though these puffs of smoke are alive and have become the animated spirit or feeling that Pierre wishes to hold within himself. But it is an illusion. Not only is it literally a smokescreen, a nothingness, but the smoke comes from cannons and muskets with only one purpose: to kill.

So, as he descends into the smoke, Pierre’s rose-tinted spectacles slip from his eyes.

Pierre at Borodino, illustration by Dementy Shmarinov.

Chapter 31: Witness to Folly

Pierre descends the hill to the river but becomes disorientated amongst an advancing regiment. He meets an adjutant who takes him to Raevsky’s Dedoubt, a fortified position at the centre of the battle. There, he tries to keep out of the way and is gradually accepted as ‘our gentleman’ by the artillerymen. Fighting intensifies, and the guns run out of ammunition. Pierre volunteers to fetch fresh charges, but before he reaches the wagons, an explosion throws him to the ground.

Pierre

• The soldiers were first annoyed and then delighted by Pierre. How might you explain this change?

A naive observer

One of Tolstoy’s aims is to give a truthful account of war. He intends to upend the heroic epic mode of war stories. Nikolai Rostov’s journey reveals the disconnect between the myth and reality of war from the perspective of a war-weary soldier. With Pierre, Tolstoy puts a novice into battle to imagine what it looks like to untrained eyes.

Tolstoy’s model for this was The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal, who presented the Battle of Waterloo from the perspective of a young Italian nobleman called Fabrice del Dongo. Stendhal was a survivor of Borodino and the French retreat from Moscow, and he used Fabrice to show the confusion and unglorified horror of war.

As a civilian with no combat experience, Pierre’s perspective is also closest to many, if not most, of those reading War and Peace. But he is even more than this: he is almost clownishly naive and innocent. His character has elements of the holy fool, a figure in the Russian Orthodox tradition: a wandering ascetic whose foolish behaviour reveals a greater wisdom.

One piece of wisdom is revealed when Pierre arrives at Raevsky’s Redoubt:

   In contrast with the dread felt by the infantrymen placed in support, here, in the battery where a small number of men busy at their work were separated from the rest by a trench, everyone experienced a common and as it were family feeling of animation.

These chapters contrast men doing nothing while waiting to die with Pierre’s ‘found family’ at the battery. I mentioned in a previous week that Tolstoy seems to have a dim view of collective action and the madness of crowds. But here, Pierre is infected by the bravery of this group of men who continue despite mounting disaster and death.

That ‘family feeling’ leads Pierre to volunteer to fetch fresh ammunition. Whether brave or foolish, this act is life-changing: it almost kills him, and then it saves his life.

Pierre is at the centre of the battle at the Raevsky Redoubt. Source.

Chapter 32: Without End

Pierre returns to the battery to discover it has been overrun by the French. A man in a blue uniform attacks him, and for a moment, they seize one another and are united in terror. A cannonball frees them; Pierre runs back down the hill into a Russian counterattack. The French flee, and he sees all his ‘family’ are gone or dead. ‘Now they will stop it,’ he thinks. But they don’t, and the roar of the cannon continues with even greater desperation.

Pierre

• How do Pierre’s perceptions of his surroundings change in this chapter?

Moral horror

If you like metaphors, you will enjoy the image of the big burly Russian Pierre and the ‘thin, sallow-faced’ Frenchman holding each other in a death grip of terror and confusion. Both wonder, ‘Am I taken prisoner or have I taken him prisoner?’ It is a neat allegory for the Battle of Borodino itself: an inconclusive clash that destroyed both armies.

In the previous chapter, Pierre experienced the common feeling of comrades; here he feels united in fear with his opponent. And not for the first time, I am afraid of what Pierre might do with his hands (his father’s hands) and live to regret. The cannonball saves him from this by almost taking his head off.

The French charge on the battery has left Pierre orphaned of his family. Without their courage, he is suddenly aware of the proximity of death. And though reinforcements are coming, with readymade tales of glory and medals thrown into the battery, Pierre’s lasting impression is one of horror: ‘The red-faced man was still twitching, but they did not carry him away.’

Whatever he felt before, Pierre is now overwhelmed with moral horror:

‘Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified at what they have done!’

A soldier like Andrei or Nikolai would not think this. It is a perfect pearl of wisdom from our holy fool that rolls away onto the battlefield unheard, under the desperate din of the roar of cannon.

Napoleon near Borodino by Vasily Vereshchagin. Source.

Chapter 33: The Absent God

Above the battlefield, blinded by the sun, Napoleon watches on. Through the smoke, it is impossible to make sense of events, and the reports from the battlefield are always out of date and often contradictory. Orders are given, but none can be executed. Down below, fear reigns, and men go forward and retreat only to survive.

Napoleon

• Why does Tolstoy show us this elevated view of the battle from Napoleon’s perspective?

The fog of war

One can forgive Pierre – inexperienced and down in the chaos – for being unable to make sense of the battlefield. But it is no better for Napoleon:

Through the smoke glimpses could be caught of something black – probably men – and at times the glint of bayonets.

If there is a God, he feels far from Borodino. If Napoleon is supposed to be the god in control of this catastrophe, he is powerless to shape its outcome:

Napoleon gave his orders which had either been executed before he gave them or could not be and were not executed.

As Andrei foresaw, what is happening today is governed not by military strategy but by the spirit in each man. What he did not anticipate was that the overwhelming feeling on all sides would be fear of death. Tolstoy twists the idea a little further: everywhere down below, men are running for their lives. Forget death or glory, there is one thing at stake and it is ‘what is dearest to man – his own life.’

Detail from Jean-Charles Langlois’ panorama of Borodino. Source.

Chapter 34: That Losing Feeling

On his hill, Napoleon drinks punch and chats about matters unrelated to the battle. Requests for reinforcements arrive from all sides, and he begins to realise for the first time that the battle is lost – and he, too, may be captured or killed. He rides along the line and sees slaughter like he has never seen before. He refuses to deploy his Old Guard and rides back to Shevardino.

Napoleon • de Bausset

• How does this chapter respond to Pierre’s thought that ‘they will stop’ when they see what they have done?

Napoleon was experiencing a feeling of depression like that of an ever-lucky gambler who after recklessly flinging money about and always winning, suddenly, just when he has calculated all the chances of the game, finds that the more he considers his play the more surely he loses.

Tolstoy, the habitual gambler, knew what he was talking about. Here, we get to feel something most of us born losers will never feel: what it is like to never lose and then lose big.

That ‘great traveller’ M. de Bausset takes this inopportune moment to invite the emperor to lunch. What’s on the menu, Bonaparte? Humble pie? M. de Bausset’s ‘beatific smile’ has echoes of Pierre's foolish smile, horribly out of place as Napoleon comes to terms with the situation:

It was no longer a battle: it was a continuous slaughter which could be of no avail to the French or the Russians.

As many as 73,000 people were killed or wounded at Borodino, the bloodiest single day of battle in the Napoleonic Wars and one of the deadliest days of warfare before the First World War.

Deatil from Franz Roubaud’s panorama of the Battle of Borodino. Source.

Chapter 35: The Old Gentleman

Meanwhile, Kutuzov commands the Russian positions from Gorky. Unlike Napoleon, he knows it is impossible to direct the course of battle, but guides ‘the spirit of the army’ as best he can. He sits down to eat and dozes off. An adjutant from Barclay de Tolly arrives to report the battle is lost. Kutuzov sends him packing and lets it be known that tomorrow they will attack.

Kutuzov

• Kutuzov says they have won. Do you think he believes this to be true?

The spirit of the army

From Napoleon to Kutuzov. From punch with humble pie to a tough bit of chicken. Roasted. The meal feels allegorically appropriate because it is being consumed with some difficulty and plenty of patience. ‘The old gentleman’ knows there's little he can do.

A general gleefully reports defeat, a partisan of de Tolly waiting for Kutuzov to fail. But the one-eyed general knows there is nothing worse for the spirit than despair. He allows himself a smile at the news of Murat’s capture, but exudes a calm and patient confidence:

   'Wait a little, gentleman,' said he. 'The battle is won, and there is nothing extraordinary in the capture of Murat. Still, it is better to wait before we rejoice.'

Time and patience, those old warriors. The orders go out, and the war continues.

But still no news of Andrei, of Nikolai, of Petya or Denisov.

Ownerless Horse at Borodino. Artist: Albrecht Adam. Source.

Chapter 36: Cannon fodder

Andrei is with his regiment in reserve, pacing up and down as his soldiers sit and wait to be killed. They look for distractions during eight hours of constant fear of death. When a cannonball falls near Andrei’s feet he thinks: ‘Can this be death? I do not wish to die.’ He is badly injured in the stomach and carried away on a stretcher to the field hospital.

Andrei • Timokhin

• How does this scene compare to Andrei’s ‘infinite skies’ at Austerlitz?

The Third Trumpet from Douce Apocalypse, late 13th century. Source.

Andrei’s Wormwood

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

— The Book of Revelation, 8:10-11, King James Version

The trees of Bolkonsky: Andrei’s gnarly oak, his burdensome birch trees, and his bittersweet wormwood. Wormwood is the flowering shrub Artemisia absinthium, traditionally used to make absinthe. It is also the name of the star in the biblical account of the apocalypse that will poison the waters and kill many, many men.

This chapter depicts such a scene from the apocalypse: men sitting on the ground waiting to die, doing nothing for eight hours while the sky rains cannonballs and stretchers remove the slain.

Andrei thinks: ‘There was nothing for him to do and no orders to be given.’

This slaughter turns everyone into spectators: Pierre, Napoleon, Kutuzov and now Andrei. Ironically, Pierre is the only character to actually engage in any form of combat.

When death finds Andrei, the first thing it does is terrify a nearby horse. Tolstoy reminds us that all the men are trying to hide their fear, but the horse has no sense of courage or cowardice, of great men or history. Its innate animal emotion infects the men.

Then time stands still: ‘The smoking shell spun like a top between him and the prostrate adjutant near a wormwood plant between the field and the meadow.’

   ‘Can this be death?’ thought Andrei, looking with a quite new envious glance at the grass, the wormwood, and the streamlet of smoke that curled up from the rotating black ball. ‘I cannot. I do not wish to die. I love life—I love this grass, this earth, this air…’ He thought this and at the same time remembered that people were looking at him.
   'It’s shameful, sir!’ he said to the adjutant. 'What…’
   He did not finish speaking.

As only Pierre could show us the full folly of war, only Andrei can show us the full value of life. Here is a man who has come to hate his own life and sees no meaning in it. And now he is envious of the grass and a streamlet of smoke.

Once again, Andrei senses that mystery that has alluded him ever since Austerlitz:

‘Why was I so reluctant to part with life? There was something in this life I did not and do not understand.’

Thank you for reading

Thank you for reading and joining me on this slow read of War and Peace.

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