Fighting with Ghosts
War and Peace Week 41: Book 4, Part 2, Chapters 3–9
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Welcome to Week 41 of War and Peace 2024
This week, we have read Book 4, Part 2, Chapters 3–9.
Everything you need for this read-along and book group can be found on the main War and Peace page of Footnotes and Tangents. There you will find:
The reading schedule with links to daily chat threads for each chapter.
Weekly updates like this one.
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In November, I will launch the 2025 slow read of War and Peace. If you have enjoyed reading with us this year, I would love to hear from you. Your feedback will be enormously helpful for new readers deciding whether to join us in 2025. What were your expectations? What was your experience of reading slowly as part of a group? What surprised you? And would you recommend this slow read? If you are happy for me to share your thoughts with future readers, I have started a chat thread for testimonials, or you can send me a DM or email. Thank you so much for your time.
This week’s theme: Fighting With Ghosts
So, I get it. Week 41 is no one's favourite week of War and Peace. No Pierre. No Natasha. No Denisov.
Denisov, where are you? There's this guy called Orlov-Denisov. He gets the glory, but he's not our man. So why do we care?
Well, quite. But this is where reading slowly comes into its own. We're invested now in the lives of our big characters. We've travelled hundreds of pages in their shoes. January was a lifetime ago. And it would be easy to flip ahead and find out what happens next.
But stay with me. All life is here. It's worth the wait.
Stay with Shapovalov. The Cossack hunter shooting hare. His lousy shot leads him to the enemy's camp. Picture his face, first of horror, then delight.
Stay with Kutuzov's orderly, entrusted with the battle plans. Searching on an empty stomach for a general who doesn't want to be found. A man too busy dancing and drinking to be bothered about what comes next.
Stay with Kutuzov himself. Only a few months left in his bones. No one listens when he says hold back. No one listens when he says advance. He's the leader, furious at his own impotence, as history moves ever on.
Stay with Bagovut. A general we meet for half a page; long enough to know him completely. The quiet man who keeps his temper, then from nowhere, explodes into a fit of rage. He gets himself killed for acting out of character. Is there a more tragic way to go?
Stay with Napoleon ranting. A Great Man who doesn't know he's lost. Grand proclamations that go on and on, although there's no one there to listen. Stay and listen, even if it's just to laugh.
And stay with Tolstoy. Obsessive, sardonic, pedantic Tolstoy. Banging on about how history's not about the genius of one man but the free forces of the million. Shapovalov's hare. The orderly's stomach. Bagovut's breaking point.
He's the narrator of this novel, and he should know better; he should know it's time to move along. But like Napoleon and his proclamations, he can’t help himself. Here are the truth-seekers, the war-makers, and the writers, fighting with ghosts.
Chapter 3: The Wounded Hare
The Emperor grows impatient as intrigue continues among the generals, and Kutuzov restrains the Russian army from useless and harmful engagements. Then, a wounded hare leads a Cossack to discover the location of the French encampment. He reports the incident, and Kutuzov finally bows to the inevitable and gives the order to attack.
Bennigsen • Alexander • Murat • Kutuzov
On the 2nd of October a Cossack, Shapovalov, who was out scouting, killed one hare and wounded another. Following the wounded hare, he made his way far into the forest and came upon the left flank of Murat’s army encamped there without any precautions. The Cossack laughingly told his comrades how he had almost fallen into the hands of the French. A cornet, hearing the story, informed his commander.
History records that the Tsar sent Kutuzov an angry letter ordering the commander-in-chief to attack. On the same day, a Cossack chases a wounded hare into a wood. It is the hare and not the emperor who turns the tide. Or perhaps, it is both, but no one remembers the hare. No one except Tolstoy.
Pierre watched ‘a brown hare with white feet’ run between the positions on the eve of Borodino. Neither creature knew the significance of what was happening. Back at Borodino, I mentioned that hares are bad omens. But this is a lucky break for the Russians; I just hope that the hare got away in one piece.
Why is Kutuzov so reluctant to attack the French?
What happened to the wounded hare?
Further reading:
Vladimir Nabokov on Tolstoy
What one would like to do, would be to kick the glorified soapbox from under his saddled feet and then lock him up in a stone house on a desert island with gallons of ink and reams of paper—far away from the things, ethical and pedagogical, that diverted his attention… But the thing cannot be done: Tolstoy is homogenous… Tolstoy was striving, in spite of all the obstacles, to get at the truth.
Chapter 4: General Revelry
Once more, some excellent dispositions are prepared for battle. But as usual, nothing will happen according to plan: a young officer is sent to deliver the dispositions to General Ermolov. But the general has made himself scarce and is out partying simply to get one of his fellow generals into trouble.
Ermolov • Toll • Kutuzov • Konovnitsyn
We last saw General Ermolov threatening to blow up a bridge in Moscow as Russian troops plundered the city. Here, he is out partying with his mates when he should be getting ready for battle.
Ermolov was immortalised in Pushkin’s poetry and romanticised as a heroic gallant, admired for his bravery and skill. However, he was later a lead participant in the Russian conquest of the Caucuses. He was infamous for his brutality, writing that ‘the terror of my name shall guard our frontiers more potently than chains or fortresses.’
Tolstoy participated in this imperialist project in the 1850s. He initially succumbed to the fantasy of frontier life but was soon revolted by what he saw, writing in his diary: ‘War is such an unjust and evil thing that those who wage it try to stifle their consciences.’ At the end of his life, he wrote a brilliant novella, Hadji Murat, from the perspective of a Muslim rebel commander fighting the Russians in the Caucuses. The critic Harold Bloom described it as ‘the best story in the world.’
What is your impression of the Russian officers in these chapters?
Further reading:
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Chapter 5: One Angry Man
Kutuzov says his prayers and sets off to direct a battle he does not approve of. On the way, he finds no one is where they should be. He hurls abuse at two junior officers, listens to the excuses of his generals, and consents to a battle tomorrow.
Kutuzov • Bennigsen • Konovnitsyn • Toll • Ermolov
Another short chapter. Kutuzov has been single-handedly holding back the storm of history. Now, it's begun to move without him, and what a shambles it is. Enough to make an old man weep and vent his wrath.
I guess he needed to get it out of his system? The only thing worse than directing a battle of which you don't approve, is losing it and taking the blame.
Tolstoy rather unkindly calls him ‘decrepit’ here, although he is only sixty-seven. The young writer has a brutal way with words when it comes to the older generation.
But then again, Mikhail Kutuzov has seen his last summer.
Why is Kutuzov angry? And can you sympathise with him?
Chapter 6: Everything Everywhere Upside Down
Count Orlov-Denisov (no, not that Denisov) is the only general who is in the right place at the right time. A deserter from the French army tells him where Murat is, and he sends some Cossacks to scout the area. They fall back, but Orlov-Denisov orders an advance, and they capture men, guns and supplies. General confusion ensues, and General Bagovut, an old and placid soldier, gets himself killed ‘for no reason.’
Orlov-Denisov • Toll • Bagovut
In the Afterword, Tolstoy apologises to us all for getting our hopes up here:
M. D. Akhrosimova and Denisov are the only persons to whom I involuntarily and unreflectingly gave names closely resembling those of two particularly characteristic and charming people of the real society of that time. That was my mistake, arising from the specially typical character of those two persons, but my mistake in this matter is limited to their mere introduction, and readers will probably agree that nothing resembling the actual facts of their lives is ascribed to these characters in the novel.
The other character he mentions is Marya Dmitrievna, the terrible dragon. I can’t guarantee she will return to the pages. But we haven’t seen the last of our good fwend Denisov.
In this chapter, everything is topsy-turvy. The least important detachment starts the battle and achieves the first and only substantial victory. Murat escapes because the Cossacks are too busy admiring their new horses. And General Bagovut, a placid old soldier, surprises everyone by losing his rag and getting himself and his men killed.
It’s a brilliant chapter. We forget that we have just met Orlov-Denisov and Bagovut. We are caught up in the astonishment and excitement of Orlov-Denisov’s secret mission. And then Tolstoy gives us a full character arc in two paragraphs: Bagovut, the ‘old soldier of placid temperament’, gets a bit sweary when faced with a military omnishambles and rides off to his death. It is a micro-epic; a mini-tragedy in just a few lines.
Chapter 7: Life’s Essential Condition
Meanwhile, Kutuzov is at the front, trying to stop his men from attacking. In the end, hundreds of men lose their lives for no reason. The generals are given honours, and the French begin their flight from Russia. In retrospect, this was regarded as the objective of the Battle of Tarutino. But it had not been part of the plan, and nothing in life goes according to plan.
Kutuzov • Raevsky • Ermolov • Bennigsen • Toll
A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man freer than during a battle, where it is a question of life and death) influence the course taken by the fight, and that course never can be known in advance and never coincides with the direction of any one force.
The battle of Tarutino is as good a metaphor for life as any other.
Afterwards, it will be remembered for starting Napoleon's retreat out of Russia. Before, there were plans and dispositions – none of which could be realised.
Neither of these perspectives captures the chaos of the present: Orlov-Denisov's hesitation, Bagovut's suicidal charge. And ‘countless’ other decisions made in the moment. It all adds up, but to what? No one can say… until long after the act.
If only life were as clear as a battle plan or a history book.
Bertrand Russell on Tolstoy:
What is valuable in Tolstoi, to my mind, is his power of right ethical judgements and his perception of concrete facts; his theorisings are of course worthless. It is the greatest misfortune to the human race that he has so little power of reasoning.
Do you agree?
The Battle of Tarutino
Don’t worry if you get a bit lost in the chapters surrounding Tarutino. We feel as though we are interrupting Tolstoy halfway through an argument with historians about the events of 1812.
The French, under Joachim Murat, were pursuing the Russian army beyond Moscow. They lost sight of Kutuzov's army, which moved south, switching roads and crossing the Krasnaya Pakhra river. Despite Kutuzov’s reluctance to engage the French, they found Murat at Tarutino and won a victory, accelerating Napoleon’s departure from Moscow.
This map shows the troop movements as the French (red) pursued the Russians (blue) to the battle at Taurtino:
Further reading:
Chapter 8: No special genius
Napoleon had won a brilliant victory and held a brilliant position. He proceeds to do everything required to undo his gains and ensure his destruction: Moscow is looted, and no provisions are gathered for winter. When he leaves Moscow, he takes the same war-ravaged road on which he came. Napoleon was neither clever nor stupid, but just another soldier swept up by history.
Had Napoleon’s aim been to destroy his army, the most skilful strategist could hardly have devised any series of actions that would so completely have accomplished that purpose, independently of anything the Russian army might do.
Joyce Carol Oates on Tolstoy:
Strange how compulsive, obsessive, repetitive Tolstoy is on this theme. Has any other major writer so belabored a theme in his fiction? He thinks he has refuted Napoleon somehow but his obsession with the “great man”—”genius”—seems to argue against his own ideas.
Is Tolstoy convincing? Why do you think Tolstoy is so repetitive on this point?
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Chapter 9: Forget Your Misfortunes
In Moscow, Napoleon is busy writing proclamations, going to the theatre, and allowing orphans to kiss his white hands. The army is paid in forged notes, and the Russian people are told to return to Moscow and raise their spirits: Napoleon is their friend, and anyone who harms them will be promptly punished.
Napoleon in Moscow
His activity in Moscow was as amazing and as full of genius as elsewhere.
I feel Tolstoy’s enjoying himself in these chapters. Possibly a little too much, and at the expense of the reader. The picture of Napoleon making plans and proclamations in an empty Moscow is just too good an image to pass by.
Napoleon summons Captain Yakovlev, ‘who had been robbed and was in rags and did not know how to get out of Moscow.’ He sends Yakovlev to Petersburg with a message for Tsar Alexander. Yakovlev had remained in Moscow to care for his newlyborn son, Alexander Herzen. Herzen became a radical writer and a precursor of Russian socialism, who Tolstoy described as having a unique ‘scintillating brilliance and depth.’
Napoleon also sent the retired general Tutolmin, the head of the Moscow Orphanage, to Petersburg with a letter for the Dowager Empress. These attempts at peace and negotiation failed, and on 19 October, the French abandoned Moscow and began the retreat.
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 read 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. 44
I think Joyce and Bertrand are jealous :P
No, I'm being sarcastic. But they do seem a little overly harsh in their judgements to me. I'm OK with Tolstoy riding his little hobby horse for a couple more chapters. I am intrigued by the portrait of Napoleon in this book beginning as a smart, quick-thinking general and devolving into a dude who likes the smell of his own farts, to put it crudely. And yet he remains human even in Tolstoy's eyes, and sometimes if you squint you can even pity him at this point. He's just human, like the rest of us.
Kutuzov is more fun to read, though. Maybe because I am old and tired too. And the almost slapstick disorganization of the battle of Tarutino -- except it's also still war, and still deadly, and the disorganization and petty motives and things just enhance the ultimate tragedy.
I mean, anyone who thinks writing about the absurdism of war began with WW1 literature (and I have seen this suggested, so this isn't a straw argument) needs to revisit Tolstoy.
Thank you for the links. Saving Hadji Murat for later but dove straight into “Consider the Hare.” A lovely — and informative! — piece. “‘The cat of the wood,’ Heaney calls them. ‘The stag of the cabbages.’ If there is magic in this world, some part of it lies with them. So if you are reading this, my love, I don’t need flowers, or jewels. Please, bring me a hare.” Finding little moments of magic (the campfires among Tolstoy’s ranting) kept me going in this week’s reading. That and your generous notes. Thanks, Simon.