If life could write

War and Peace Week 21: Book 2 Part 4 Chapter 12 – Part 5 Chapter 5

Welcome to week 21 of War and Peace 2024. This week, we have read Book 2, Part 4, Chapter 12 – Part 5, Chapter 5.

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This week’s theme: If life could write

One of my favourite literary characters is an eccentric zookeeper called Muzzlehatch in Titus Alone, the third Gormenghast novel by Mervyn Peake. Muzzlehatch rails against the rules and routines of life and the dead hand of the law. In one passionate outburst, he asks:

Do you never love this ridiculous world of ours? The wicked and the good of it? The thieves and angels of it? The all of it?

This is very Mervyn Peake: The world is beautiful, ugly, and ridiculous, and we love it because it is all of these things. We love ‘the all of it’—what a wonderfully awkward phrase! We don’t need a tidied-up, prettified version of reality. What exists is enough. What exists is more than enough.

As he was working on War and Peace, Tolstoy wrote that he wanted to write stories that would make future generations ‘fall in love with life’ all over again. As Isaac Babel wrote, ‘If life could write, it would write like Tolstoy.’ What we get through reading War and Peace is something like a love letter to ‘the all of it’: ridiculous, wicked, good, thieves and angels.

This week, we have the all of it. We see two cousins looking for their futures in mirrors. Telling the truth or making things up? At Otradnoe, the failure of one generation becomes the tragedy of the next. In Moscow, the public Pierre is jolly and at peace, but inside, he’s freaking out at the fact no one is freaking out at the inevitability of death. Meanwhile, Marya faces that reality every waking minute as her father’s health fails. Together, Pierre and Marya, two sensitive souls, say not what they think but how they feel. And then we have Boris and Julie showing us how to just pretend.

Each chapter is like another turn of the kaleidoscope: revealing more of life’s patterns. It is dark and light, absurd and terrifying, beautiful and ugly. But it is all there and it seems impossible not to fall in love with ‘the all of it.’

A trick with mirrors: A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) by Édouard Manet. Source.

Chapter 12: The infinite mirror

On the ride home, Nikolai tells Natasha he has made his decision about marrying Sonya. Natasha and Sonya prepare for bed and sit up with Dunyasha and two looking glasses. They look into them to see some sort of vision, and all believe Sonya has seen something (even though she hasn’t). She begins to believe it herself and tells Natasha she has seen Andrei lying down, cheerful and then ‘something blue and red.’

Natasha • Nikolai • Sonya

They do it with mirrors

Natasha and Sonya set up two mirrors facing each other to create the optical illusion of an infinite reflection. When you gaze into this space, you may easily convince yourself that there is something down there in that tunnel of repeated realities. Of the two women, Sonya has less of an imagination. This pains her: she is jealous of the whimsical romantic universe that Natasha and Nikolai inhabit. But that night with the burnt-cork moustache, she lets her imagination loose a little.

• Are you happy, anxious or otherwise for Nikolai and Sonya?

• What do you make of Sonya’s invented vision and Natasha’s response to it?

Chapter 13: Disenchantment

After Christmas in fairyland: the return to reality. Nikolai tells his parents of his intentions to marry Sonya. The countess summons Sonya and speaks many cruel words, leading to a furious row with Nikolai. Natasha prevents anything worse and calms tempers. Nikolai leaves for the regiment with the serious intention to retire and marry Sonya. In January, the count goes to Moscow to sell his townhouse. He takes the girls.

Nikolai • Natasha • Sonya • Count Rostov • Countess Rostova

• What do you think is behind the countess’s cruelty towards Sonya? What don’t we know?

• Does Natasha’s behaviour surprise you?

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Book Two, Part Five

Chapter 1: That dreadful It

Following Natasha and Andrei’s engagement, Pierre descends into a deeper depression. His dissipated life leads him to Moscow, where he sinks into society, ‘warm and dirty as in an old dressing-gown.’ There, he is the heart, soul and money bags of every party. But inside, he is tormented by the senselessness of life and everyone’s avoidance of the dreadful ‘it’ awaiting us all.

Pierre

Iberian Gate and Chapel, Moscow, 1896. Source.

The terrible twenties

In Moscow he felt at peace, at home, warm and dirty as in an old dressing gown.

The remarkable thing about this chapter is how full Pierre’s life is: he dances, jokes and is merry — the party is dull without him. But like an always-on comedian or public entertainer, behind closed doors, he is even more miserable than before. And he reads a lot.

In my twenties, Pierre’s existential dread felt very true and close to the bone. I thought a lot about death back then. And, like Pierre, it terrified me that no one seemed to be taking life seriously.

Perhaps it is because you are no longer a child waiting for life to begin and, like Pierre, you’ve discovered all those dreams were just dreams, and a ‘rut had long been shaped’ for you. But, blessedly, I chilled out in my thirties!

But it is not a trivial question. It is one that dogged Tolstoy all his life. In 1882, when Tolstoy was in his fifties, he wrote in ‘My Confession’:

Is there any meaning in my life that will not be destroyed by my inevitably approaching death?

It is a question we all probably ask at some point in our lives. And it is the question at the heart of War and Peace.

Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that soldiers in war when entrenched under the enemy’s fire, if they have nothing to do, try hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. To Pierre all men seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine, and some in governmental affairs. ‘Nothing is trivial, and nothing is important, it’s all the same—only to save oneself from it as best one can,’ thought Pierre. ‘Only not to see it, that dreadful it!’

• Have you ever experienced this kind of existential dread?

• What should Pierre do about it?

• Has Pierre changed since the beginning of the book, and if so, how? Does society view him differently, and if so, how?

Noises off. Talk is Moscow is off the Peninsula War in Spain and Portugal. Battle of Somosierra 1808. Source.

Chapter 2: Marya’s Moscow

Marya has moved to Moscow with her father and nephew. The old prince has become the centre of the anti-French opposition to government. But his health has deteriorated and Marya’s life has become even harder. Lonely and isolated in Moscow, she becomes irritable: losing her temper with little Nikolai and attacking Mademoiselle Bourienne. The old prince increasingly favours and flirts with the Frenchwoman and loses all control on the mention of Countess Natasha Rostova.

Marya • Julie • Prince Bolkonsky • Nikolushka • Mademoiselle Bourienne

Growing old

Here’s the stark contrast: Pierre’s busy, people-filled Moscow is followed by Marya’s empty, lonely, and isolated place beside her father. Pierre ruminates on the inevitability of death, while Marya faces its reality.

Nikolai and Marya Bolkonsky are two of my favourite characters. I think this is because their transformation is the most universal: we all grow old, and we all must contend with loved ones growing old. We all will be carers and cared for at some point.

Like Countess Rostova (another fascinating character), we are denied a clear picture of what the old prince was like as a younger man. We can only guess based on the love, respect and loyalty that his children feel for him. He was almost certainly no saint, but neither was he quite the man he has become.

By the time we meet him in 1805, he is already showing the first signs of senility. We don’t have a modern doctor on hand to diagnose his condition, but now in the winter of 1810–1811 he is deteriorating rapidly.

When I was young, my mum worked with carers for people with dementia. And later in life, I saw the burden my nana’s decline put on my parents. Old age can be terrifying for the person experiencing it, but often, it is the carers that carry the greatest burden. So it is with Marya.

And one of the knock-on effects is that Marya becomes a person she doesn’t want to be. She loses her temper with her nephew and lashes out at Mademoiselle Bourienne. This is a sad chapter, with Julie offstage enjoying the “full whirl of society’s pleasures” while Marya’s Moscow is increasingly full of self-hatred and despair.

• Do you have experience of caring for someone with dementia?

Chapter 3: The relic of Moscow

St Nicholas’s day, and guests come to pay their respects to ‘the relics’ of the old prince Bolkonsky. That morning, he throws out a fashionable doctor, accusing him of being a French spy. At dinner, Pierre and Boris listen to the old prince and Count Rastopchin bemoan the state of politics and Russian society. ‘The French are our Gods: Paris is our Kingdom of Heaven.’

Count Rastopchin • Nikolai Bolkonsky • Marya • Mademoiselle Bourienne • Pierre • Boris

The French are our Gods

    ‘How can we fight the French, Prince?’ said Count Rastopchin. ‘Can we arm ourselves against our teachers and divinities? Look at our youths, look at our ladies? The French are our Gods: Paris is our Kingdom of Heaven.’

This is a reminder that one of the main themes of War and Peace is how the Russian aristocracy re-discovered Russian culture in 1812. The first half of the novel introduces us to a French-speaking high society in love with everything French. This all began with the reforms of Peter the Great (1672 – 1725) and his vision of Russia as a European monarchy. It is perhaps then just a little ironic and paradoxical that Count Rastopchin invokes ‘Peter the Great’s old cudgel’ to show them the ‘Russian way.’

This knot of contradictions will become more acute as we approach the war of 1812.

• War is looming again. How do you feel about its return to the pages of War and Peace?

‘One would like to take Peter the Great’s old cudgel out of the museum and belabour them in the Russian way.’ Peter the Great Interrogating the Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich (1871) by Nikolai Ge. Source.

Chapter 4: The saint and the sinner

After dinner, Pierre tells Marya that Boris is in Moscow with the intention of marrying a rich heiress — Marya or Julie Karagina. Marya begins to confide in Pierre about her father and her torments but stops and asks instead about Natasha. Pierre decides to speak the truth, even though it is not what Marya wants to hear. She endeavours to befriend Natasha and accustom the old prince to her.

Pierre • Marya

    An undefined instinct told Pierre that these explanations, and repeated requests to be told the whole truth, expressed ill will on the princess's part towards her future sister-in-law, and a wish that he should disapprove of Andrei's choice; but in reply he said what he felt rather than what he thought.

• What do you think Tolstoy means by saying what he felt and not what he thought?

• Marya tells things to Pierre she has told no one else. And holds back on other details. What does this tell us about Marya and Pierre?

• What will happen when Marya and Natasha meet?

Poor Liza (1827) by Orest Kiprensky. Source.

Chapter 5: Manufactured Melancholia

Boris devotes an arduous month of simulated melancholy in the courtship of the rich heiress Julie Karagina — a woman of twenty-seven years and two huge tracts of land. He writes her some soulfully bad poetry and Anna Mikhailovna turns up to check the accounts. The sudden arrival of Anatole Kuragin on the scene finally seals the deal: the no-longer melancholic couple make plans for a brilliant wedding.

Boris • Julie • Anatole • Anna Mikhailovna

Authenticity and affectation

Boris and Julie’s courtship is played for laughs. Boris finds new depths to his soul with both eyes on Julie’s juicy estates. This chapter offers a bit of light relief after our catchup with the dark world of the Bolkonskys. It also puts Pierre and Marya’s authentic friendship alongside Boris and Julie’s affected performance of romance. It’s one of Tolstoy’s favourite themes: the difference between real, natural feelings and the superficial and artificial acting out of emotion.

Julie and Boris’s ‘melancholy’ also directly contrasts with Pierre’s existential fear of death. Outwardly, Pierre is a jovial crank, a drunk jester. Inwardly, he’s screaming into the void. With Boris, it is the reverse. While he’s doodling tombstones in Julie’s album, in his head, he’s merrily making designs on her estates.

• Would Marya and Boris have made a happy marriage?

• How honest are Boris and Julie with each other and with themselves?

Poor Liza

    For Boris Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Boris read Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than once interrupted the reading because of the emotions that choked him.

Poor Liza is a sentimental novella by the Russian author Nikolay Karamzin. Liza is a poor peasant girl who commits suicide when her rich seducer abandons her. The novel introduced sentimentalism to Russia, literature that focuses on the emotional world of its characters.

The story became immensely popular and people went on pilgrimage to the lake where Liza drowned herself. The story was parodied by Pushkin and influenced Dostoevsky’s writing. Tolstoy was heavily influenced by sentimentalism, especially the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His novel Julie, or the New Heloise has already been mentioned in reference to Julie Karagina and her letters to Marya.

Where do we draw the line between sentimentality and over-sentimentality? For Tolstoy, I think it is fairly clear: Pierre and Marya’s conversation demonstrates a spontaneous sharing of true emotion. Boris and Julie trade concocted sentiments designed to be seen rather than felt.

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 would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Have a great week, and I’ll see everyone here next Sunday for more War and Peace 2024.