Evasive Manoeuvres
Evasive Manoeuvres
War and Peace Week 34: Book 3, Part 3, Chapters 5–11
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Welcome to Week 34 of War and Peace 2024
This week, we have read Book 3, Part 3, Chapters 5–11.
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This week’s theme: Evasive Manoeuvres
In these chapters, Pierre and Hélène are both trying to escape. Hélène is manoeuvring her way out of an inconvenient marriage and an embarrassing pair of liaisons. Pierre, with the cannon still ringing in his ears, is in flight from Borodino and also from himself.
Hélène decides religious conversion could solve all her problems. She looks to heaven, but her mind is on earthly concerns.
With Pierre, it is the reverse. Fearful again for his soul, he seeks solace in everyday things: food, company and sleep.
The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was to get away quickly from the terrible sensations amid which he had lived that day, and return to ordinary conditions of life and sleep quietly in a room in his own bed. He felt that only in the ordinary conditions of life would he be able to understand himself and all he had seen and felt. But such ordinary conditions of life were nowhere to be found.
Whilst his wife appears to emulate the teachings of the Holy Fathers, Pierre wants to get closer to those salt-of-the-earth soldiers who have found peace in submission to the army and suffering in battle.
They ask him whether he is ‘an honest man.’ Pierre wants to be, but his reply is deliberately misleading: ‘I am a militia officer’ called ‘Pyotr.’ Not Count Pierre Bezukhov, one of the richest men in Russia. He decides not to leave them any money: he is embarrassed about his wealth and offending them, and it exposes the lie that stops him from becoming one of them.
He is a hypocrite, but one we can sympathise with. In contrast, Hélène’s hypocrisy is flagrant and unashamed. She suffers no crisis of conscience in her campaign to re-marry. She only needs to do it all in French, a language which suits her insincereity.
The soldiers give Pierre some ‘mash,’ which he considers ‘more delicious than any food he had ever tasted.’ Hold that thought, Pyotr. We may come back to it.
So here is Pierre on 31 August 1812. His best friend is dead. He has survived Borodino at great cost to his soul and sanity. Waking up in a doomed city, he goes out the back porch and disappears:
From that time till the end of the destruction of Moscow no one of Bezukhov’s household, despite all the search they made, saw Pierre again or knew where he was.
Chapter 5: Roasting Rastopchin
Meanwhile, the abandonment of Moscow was underway. The governor-general, Rastopchin, prints his broadsheets imploring the citizens to defend the city. However, Tolstoy argues that this abandonment of Moscow was both inevitable and patriotic. It led to the destruction of the city and the defeat of the French. In contrast, Tolstoy accuses Rastopchin of posturing and making ‘sport of the momentous and inevitable event.’
Fun fact: This chapter contains one of the longest sentences in literature. The last sentence, depending on your translation, weighs in at around 307 words. It begins ‘But Count Rastopchin’ and builds into a furious and scathing takedown of the man in charge of Moscow.
It’s a long sentence but not the longest: check out 64 other long sentences in literature.
Rastopchin’s World
I don’t think it is an accident that we meet Rastophcin immediately after leaving Kutuzov crying into his tea, exclaiming, ‘They shall eat horse flesh!’ Because if that old one-eyed general represents selfless service to his country, Rastopchin is the complete opposite:
This man did not understand the meaning of what was happening but merely wanted to do something himself that would astonish people, to perform some patriotically heroic feat; and like a child he made sport of the momentous and unavoidable event—the abandonment and burning of Moscow.
It is a caricature instantly recognisable. A politician who exploits a crisis for their own self-aggrandizement. In fact, if Rastopchin feels familiar, it is because his world is our own. His deceitful broadsheets could be tweeted. His scapegoating of the Postmaster anticipates attacks on ‘enemies of the people.’
Who does Rastopchin remind you of?
Chapter 6: Directors of Conscience
In Petersberg, Hélène ‘found herself in a difficult position,’ negotiating two extra-marital affairs. Her solution is to convert to Catholicism, divorce Pierre and marry the young foreign prince. What else is religion for? She confesses and is admitted into the Church. The confessor eyes up her fortune and her bosom while finding the right words to tell her that her marriage vows remain binding.
A difficult position
There is devilish logic in coming to Hélène at this point in the story. Moscow faces destruction while Hélène worries about her indiscreet social life: They are both in a ‘difficult position.’
This chapter is satire: priests spouting nonsense to bag themselves a rich convert and a beautiful bosom. What her confessor says about sin and divorce is not Catholic doctrine, as Hélène will soon discover.
Everything here is contrived and artificial, from the French phrases to the white ribbons, transparent clothes and the crocodile tears.
This is a stark contrast from the earnest way Pierre embraced Masonry, or the ecstatic manner Natasha danced out her Russianness. For all their faults, they meant what they did. They lived authentically.
Hélène makes an intractable problem seem simple by just declaring it so. Tolstoy compares it to Columbus’s egg, an apocryphal story about how the explorer showed how an egg could be stood on its end… by giving it a little bash.
What is Hélène’s ‘difficult situation’? What are her motivations?
It was almost impossible for women to divorce their husbands. Do you sympathise with her situation?
Jesuits in Russia
Hélène isn’t the first character to find solace in religion. Pierre’s adventures in Masonry and Natasha’s experiments with Orthodoxy give us alternative ways people turn to religion in moments of crisis. Tolstoy himself will later take a similar journey, converting to Christianity in the 1870s.
But even after Tolstoy’s conversion, he remained critical of organised religion.
The Jesuits, or the Society of Jesus, is a Catholic religious order founded in 1540 and known for its organisational discipline and its role in defending and proselytising the Catholic faith.
Throughout their history, they have been accused of interfering in politics. In 1773, Rome suppressed the order, but the Jesuits remained active in Russia with imperial support. Between 1773 and the order’s restoration in 1814, Russia supported new Russian chapters outside of the country.
After the war, Alexander withdrew his patronage of the Jesuits. By 1820, they had all been expelled from the Russian empire.
Chapter 7: French Lies
Dissatisfied by her new religious advisors, Hélène turns to society to work her case. Soon, high society is discussing which of her two suitors she should marry. Marya Dmitrievna calls Hélène a prostitute, and Bilibin recommends marrying the elderly magnate first. Her parents intervene in their separate ways, but Hélène has decided upon her course. She writes to Pierre, asking him to dissolve the marriage. But Pierre is at Borodino.
Hélène • Bilibin • Marya Dmitrievna • Prince Vasili
Dragon versus wrinkles
This chapter reprises two of my favourite minor characters: Marya Dmitrievna and Bilibin. If you’ve forgotten who they are, let me refresh your memory:
Marya Dmitrievna is known in society as le terrible dragon. Godmother to Natasha. She always speaks her mind and can dance a mean Daniel Cooper with Count Rostov. She was instrumental in scuppering Anatole’s plans to kidnap Natasha.
Bilibin is a man of many wrinkles, and many clever sayings that go viral in polite society. He lives a blessed life, wandering from soiree to salon, in the knowledge that nothing bad will ever happen to him.
Everyone’s got an opinion about Hélène’s love life. And Marya and Bilibin give us the two extremes:
‘So wives of living men have started marrying again! Perhaps you think you have invented a novelty? You have been forestalled, my dear! It was thought of long ago. It is done in all the brothels.’
Petersburg society considers Marya a buffoon, but Tolstoy has a way of making fools speak wisdom when society has lost its mind.
In contrast, Bilibin finds everything très amusant:
‘If you marry the old count you will make his last days happy, and as widow of the Grand … the prince would no longer be making a mésalliance by marrying you.’
Notice the importance of language here: Marya only ever speaks Russian and calls a spade a spade. Bilibin speaks almost entirely in French, eloquently but with no sincerity. And Hélène lets slip her dishonesty when she switches,
‘from Russian, in which language she always felt that her case did not sound quite clear, into French which suited it better.’
Was Marya Dmitrievna right to publically denounce Hélène as a prostitute?
What is motivating Hélène’s mother in this chapter?
Chapter 8: An Honest Man
Pierre had fled the battle of Borodino and found himself on the road to Mozhaisk. Although the fighting is over, he still feels under fire and longs for his own bed. A group of soldiers offer him food, and he introduces himself by his Russian name. He walks with them to Mozhaisk, where his groom finds him. The inn is full, so Pierre sleeps in his carriage.
Little white lies
There are a few biblical allusions sprinkled throughout this chapter: Like Mary and Joseph, Pierre discovers there is no room at the inn. Like his namesake, Peter the Apostle, he is caught fibbing before the cocks crow.
Well, perhaps they are only little white lies. The soldiers ask if he is honest, and he replies by claiming to be something he isn't: a common man. But then again, part of him yearns not to be Count Bezukhov. He wants to be something less and something more than what he is.
Tolstoy must want us to compare his deception with that of his wife. She pretends to look to heaven, he desires the earth, and a pot of mash around a night fire. With those cannonballs still ringing in his ears, Pierre's soul is again on the move in search of something just out of reach.
Do you think Pierre was honest with the soldiers? Should he have behaved differently? How do you think the soldiers would have responded?
Chapter 9: Time to Harness
Pierre sleeps. He dreams he is still in the battle and wakes thinking of the bravery of the men on the battery. He falls asleep again and dreams he is at a solemn meeting of the Lodge. Familiar men sing and shout, but above them, he can hear his dead benefactor. Bazdeev is telling him to harness his thoughts together. His groom wakes him, and they ride to Moscow with a wounded general. The general tells Pierre of the deaths of Anatole and Andrei Bolkonsky.
Why do we never get anywhere?
This chapter articulates two common feelings: the sense of a truth just out of reach, and the vain hope that we can master life if only we can get all our horses to ride together. But alas, they will always be pulling in different directions.
And comparison is the thief of joy: others have always discovered the simple answers that elude us.
I was struck by Pierre's thoughts about his father. It is the first time we learn he wanted to run away. His father overshadows Pierre’s story: his wealth, his physical strength, the poisoned chalice of his inheritance. But we only get glimpses of what seems to be a troubled and complicated relationship.
And then the final sentence!
Some translations employ a comma that may give some readers cause for hope. But in classic Tolstoy style, he kills us with a word.
What is the significance of Pierre’s dreams?
Andrei’s been declared dead once before. What was your reaction this time?
Chapter 10: The Rumour Mill
When Pierre arrives in Moscow, he is summoned by Count Rastopchin. The city’s governor-general claims in his latest broadsheets that Kutuzov will defend Moscow to the last drop of blood, even though everyone in charge knows the city will fall. Pierre learns that his wife plans to go abroad and listens to a convoluted story about Vereschagain, a tradesman who has confessed to translating Napoleon’s proclamation.
‘Oh, well, you know people often invent things. I only say what I heard.’
If this chapter is a bit confusing, it may be because the situation in Moscow is confusing. There's Napoleon's proclamation being passed around and Count Rastopchin's broadsheets spreading disinformation about the defence of the city. Add to all that the rumours about Pierre’s marital problems, and it is difficult to know who to believe.
Vereschagain was a real historical character, and we will return to his story later in the book.
Why might Pierre be interested in Vereschagain’s father?
Do you think Rastopchin will mislead Pierre in some way?
Chapter 11: Disappearing Acts
Rastopchin explains why he has summoned Pierre. He advises him to leave Moscow immediately and break off all communication with the Masons, who he believes have betrayed Russia. Pierre returns home to find Hélène’s letter. His head full of all the recent events, he falls asleep. The following day, he dodges the crowd of people waiting for him and slips out the back door. In the days to come, his household will not know where he has gone.
Pierre finally finds that pillow he craved at Borodino. On the battlefield, no one wanted him. Now, a dozen people are waiting on his next move. The city needs defending or evacuating, depending on who you ask. Should he stay, or should he go? In typical Pierre fashion, he walks out on his life again.
Pierre has had little time to think about Andrei or Hélène. How do you think he is likely to respond to his friend’s death and his wife’s desire for a divorce?
Thank you for reading
Thank you for reading and joining me on this slow read of War and Peace.
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And that’s all for this week. I love to hear your thoughts in the comments and the chat threads. Have a great week, and I’ll see everyone here next Sunday for more War and Peace 2024.
Thank you, Simon - I love these summaries!
Thank you, Simon, for guiding us through another week of W&P. It’s remarkable how often I think of this book and its characters. Certain passages in “Martyr!” by Kaveh Akbar (I read it this week; recommend!) reminded me of Prince Andrey, seeking happiness, the meaning of life — one of the powerful, universal truths explored by Tolstoy in W&P. As you wrote in your summary, Simon: “This chapter articulates two common feelings: the sense of a truth just out of reach, and the vain hope that we can master life if only we can get all our horses to ride together. But alas, they will always be pulling in different directions. And comparison is the thief of joy: others have always discovered the simple answers that elude us.” I’m holding out hope that the reports of Andrey’s death “are greatly exaggerated,” so he can find peace and happiness in the now.