Rostovaganza!

War and Peace Week 10: Book 1 Part 3 Chapter 18 – Book 2 Part 1 Chapter 4

Welcome to week ten of War and Peace 2024. This week, we read Book 1 Part 3 Chapter 18 – Book 2 Part 1 Chapter 4. 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.

• Plot summaries for each character

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This week’s theme: Rostovaganza!

The war is lost. Andrei is dead. Dolokhov is a scoundrel, and Pierre is miserable.

But don't be glum! The Rostovs are having a party!

And no one does a party quite like the old Count Rostov.

He's re-mortgaged all his estates, so he is feeling flush, with plenty to shower on the homecoming hero Nikolai and his increasingly expensive tastes.

Nikolai has got a fine new racehorse and some extremely pointy shoes. He's got silver braid and a lady on the boulevard. Released from his promise with Sonya, he's now one of the most eligible bachelors in Moscow.

His father? His father must have cock's comb and sturgeon. Strawberries and pineapples. And enough glassware to smash a thousand toasts.

A toast to General Bagration – the guest of honour. The man, if we choose to remember, who sent Rostov's son on a fool's errand across the battlefield, to his almost certain death. All's fair in love and war.

And speaking of love, who is sitting opposite that grumpy “old woman” Pierre Bezukhov?

That'll be Dolokhov. The one Anna Mikahilovna calls the dare-devil. A man who drank a bottle of rum on a windowsill and tied a policeman to a bear. That Dolokhov.

He's now enjoying Pierre's hospitality. His house, his food, and his wife. So they say. Hélène, after carefully removing Pierre's spectacles, has begun to deceive him.

Now Dolokhov glares at Pierre from across the sturgeon and cock's comb. The dare-devil dares our Pierre to do something, anything...

Because let's face it. Our lost boy Bezukhov hasn't done much so far of his own free will. He's sleepwalked through the first three hundred pages of War and Peace.

So go on, Pierre. Do something. Anything.

Dare you!

Challenge you!

Positions at the Battle of Austerlitz, 1400 on 2 December 1805. Source.

Chapter 18: The Emperor’s tears

Rostov tries to find out what has happened. He is told the emperor is wounded, and the battle lost. There are dead and wounded everywhere. Rostov finds the emperor alone on the battlefield but is unable to approach him. Instead, he watches a captain comfort the crying sovereign. Dolokhov is one of the few survivors of his regiment. Cut off, he walks onto the ice. Many follow, and many drown.

Nikolai Rostov • Emperor Alexander • Dolokhov

Rostov’s sliding doors moment: He could have been Captain Karl Wilhelm von Toll, later a General and Chief of Staff. Source.

Take a look at this sentence:

On the narrow Augesd dam where for so many years the old miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasselled cap peacefully angling, while his grandson, with shirtsleeves rolled up, handled the floundering silvery fish in the watering-can, on that dam over which for so many years Moravians in shaggy caps and blue jackets had peacefully driven their two-horse carts loaded with wheat and had returned dusty with flour whitening their carts—on that narrow dam amid the wagons and the cannon, under the horses’ hoofs and between the wagon wheels, men disfigured by fear of death now crowded together, crushing one another, dying, stepping over the dying and killing one another, only to move on a few steps and be killed themselves in the same way.

I think this might be one of my favourite passages up to this point in the novel. In one long sentence, full of repetition (“peacefully”, “so many years”, “killing”, “dying”), Tolstoy takes us from peace to war, from heaven to hell, and from life to death. I can see so perfectly the miller and his grandson and then so hauntingly the men stepping over the dying.

Footnote: The Satschan ponds

As you can see in the map above, the Austrians and Russians retreated eastward into the waterways and onto frozen ponds and lakes. According to Napoleon, he witnessed the “dreadful spectacle” of “20,000 men throwing themselves in the water and drowning in the lake.” This dramatic scene was recently dramatised in Ridley Scott’s film Napoleon. Tolstoy appears to have taken the initial reports at face value. The ponds were drained in 1811, and only a few corpses were retrieved. A French officer, Baron de Comeau, later wrote in his memoirs that “some parties might have gotten their feet wet” but only “fewer than 200” were killed, from French gunfire and not from drowning.

Russian soldiers drowning in the frozen ponds at Austerlitz.

If Napoleon did exaggerate these events, Tolstoy has inadvertently amplified the story further. Which seems to me ironic, given that one of Tolstoy’s aims in War and Peace is to take the great man down a peg or two. But on to the next chapter.

Napoleon and Francis I of Austria after the Battle of Austerlitz. Source.

Chapter 19: Meeting your heroes

That evening, Andrei lost consciousness. When he comes to, Napoleon is above him, and above Napoleon is the infinite lofty sky. This great man seems small, his words like a buzzing fly. Napoleon sends him to the field hospital and sees him and the other injured officers before leaving the battlefield. Andrei grows delirious, and the doctor says he will not recover.

Andrei Bolkonsky • Napoleon

The French surgeon Dominique Jean Larrey amputating an arm and leg in 1813. Source.

Footnote: Dominique Jean Larrey

Forget Napoleon, Andrei Bolkonsky, you’re in the presence of medical history-in-the-making. Although I suppose you’re not in the best condition to appreciate it.

‘He is a neverous, bilious suject,’ said Larrey, ‘he will not recover.’

This is Napoleon’s surgeon, Baron Larrey, regarded as the first modern military surgeon. He established a system of field hospitals, ambulances and rules of triage to treat casualties according to the severity of their wounds regardless of rank. And under Larrey, soldiers from the enemy’s army were treated alongside the French and their allies. He was a brave and principled man and an innovative and skilled surgeon.

We should take his prognosis for Andrei Bolkonksy seriously. Napoleon may have been an insignificant buzzing fly, but his surgeon changed how war casualties were treated and their chances of survival.

• Read more about Baron Larrey here.

Tangent: A small man under a big sky

Here at Footnotes and Tangents, we are all about celebrating great literature with curiosity and creativity. I am less interested in a critical close reading of the text and more excited to see where the words take us. Reading is a creative act, and the book is only the beginning.

With that mind, I am delighted to share

Ellie

’s sketch of Napoleon and Andrei beneath the lofty infinite skies:

Ellie’s first reaction on reading this chapter:

I gasped when Napoleon appeared above Andrei, and by the end of the chapter I was in tears. How Napoleon was walking among the dead with pleasure, ready to shrug at all the lives sacrificed for what, for what, for what? For the stupid ambition of tiny, tiny men. “That’s a fine death,” he says, as though a flag in a hand would make a life any less wasted. The glory of battle that mattered so much to Andrei just yesterday is a distant memory, his fellow soldiers exchanging quips with Napoleon might as well be children talking about their toys. Our Andrei gained a new perspective today, he was reborn, so please PLEASE Tolstoy let him survive, he’s too stubborn not to. I want him to go back home, tell his wife he loves her, talk about his newfound spirituality with his sister, see what he can make of it.

For me, this is what it is all about. Two months ago, we couldn’t give two hoots for that proud and arrogant young man at Anna Pavlovna’s party. Now, heart in my mouth, I want him to live. I want that lofty sky to be the beginning of something. And not simply the end.

‘There is nothing certain, nothing at all except the unimportance of everything I understand, and the greatness of something incomprehenisble but all-important.’

Thank you Ellie, and thank you everyone for sharing this reading journey thus far.

And congratulations on finishing Book One of War and Peace! Have a badge.

(Thanks again

Jennifer S

for making these!)

And

Irena Hindy

has once again written us an emoji summary for Book 1 Part 3:

🪄 - 👰‍♀️🤵‍♂️ -❄️💄💅 - 👩‍🦰👱‍♂️👱🏻‍♀️ - 🙅🏻‍♀️ - 📨💗💵 -🙎🏻‍♂️ 👨‍💼👨‍💼👨‍🏫 - 🥰👑 -👨‍💼📈🤝 -🐴 - 🕰️⚙️ - 🥱😴 - 💭🎞️ - 😶‍🌫️ - 🚩🐿️ - ☁️🩵☁️ - 🏇💥-💧🤴🏻🧊 - 🤕🧘‍♂️🪬

You can see Part 1 and Part 2 in their respective weeks.

Remember, we have one day off at the end of each book. On Wednesday, I opened a thread for reflections on the last two month’s reading:

And on Thursday, we began Book Two:

Chapter 1: Home sweet home

It’s 1806, and Nikolai returns home to the Rostovs. He invites Denisov to stay with them. He is greeted with a blizzard of kisses from his family. The siblings catch up. Natasha has lost interest in Boris and has thrown herself into dancing. She tells her brother that Sonya wishes Nikolai to be free of their promise to one another.

Nikolai Rostov • Denisov • Sonya • Natasha • Vera • Petya • Count Rostov • Countess Rostova

Reading War and Peace is like falling into a kaleidoscope. How it expands and contracts and then keeps expanding and contracting out beyond itself into all the other books I’ve loved.
— Miss Mainwaring in Yiyun Li’s Tolstoy Together

The Homecoming by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller. Source.

Tangent: A hymn to Prokofy

Prokofy, the footman, who was so strong that he could lift the back of the carriage from behind, sat plaiting slippers out of cloth selvedges. He looked up at the opening door and his expression of sleepy indifference suddenly changed to one of delighted amazement.

In the chat thread, there is necessary and long-overdue discussion of all the Rostovs and the wonderful moment when they greet their homecoming son. This chapter is a feast of emotions and gestures. A rich banquet of life that deserves its own post and rewards endless re-reading.

But I just want to give the spotlight here to Prokofy, the footman. One sentence, carriage-lifting, slipper plaiting, and Tolstoy makes this very minor character completely real and unforgettable. This is what Tolstoy does again and again in War and Peace. No character is just a device, a backdrop, a mechanism. They are all ready to rise from the page and walk into the world.

“Gracious heavens! The young Count!” he cried. “My treasure!” He rushes to announce Rostov’s return, and then changes his mind and comes back to kiss Nikolai on the shoulder.

In our chat,

Dacha

writes:

Just reading the chapter now in Russian … The expression in Russian is not « to kiss the shoulder » but more like lean into it, put one’s face against it…I don’t know if you see what I mean…There is tenderness here, lots of restrained emotion (more so then in a kiss)…You know how sometimes we come close to a loved one and just put our face against their back, bury it there (maybe a sleeping child).

I love this clarification, because this makes this moment even more special. It mirrors the Countess herself, who “could not lift her face, but only pressed it to the cold braiding of his hussar’s jacket.” When Prokofy does this, I instantly see the weeks and months of worry he has been witness to, and the years he has known Nikolai grow from a child into a man.

This is War and Peace. Over a thousand pages, but with a world on every line.

Chapter 2: The show must go on

Nikolai Rostov returns home a hero. His love for the emperor, and for Sonya, has cooled. His love for horses and spending money is hotting up. Meanwhile, his father has re-mortgaged all his estates and is organising a lavish dinner for Bagration, the man who almost killed his son. On the grapevine: Dolokhov has moved in with Pierre and “compromised” Hélène. The war is lost, Andrei is dead, but the soldiers are heroes, and the show must go on.

Nikolai Rostov • Denisov • Count Rostov • Mitkenka • Pierre • Hélène • Dolokhov • Anna Mikhailovna • Count Rastopchin • Dolgorukov • Kutuzov • Shinshin • Berg

Footnote: What are cocks’ combs?

‘Well then, mind, cocks’ combs in the turtle soup, you know!’

The preparation for Bagration’s banquet contain the most detailed descriptions of food in War and Peace. But one ingredient has the translators stumped. Grebeshki in the turtle soup or sauce. According to Richard Pevear, grebeshki is either scallops or cocks’ comb. Scallops might make sense in turtle soup, but Pevear learned from a Parisian chef that cockscomb was all the rage in sauces during the Napoleonic wars.

What I can’t ascertain is whether Pevear is referring to cockscomb the plant or the actual combs of roosters, both of which are used in cookery. If anyone can shed some light on this, I would be very grateful!

Anthony Briggs, by the way, chickens out and translates it as croutons in the soup.

Chapter 3: Big party, big fish

Moscow high society is toasting Bagration at the English Club, and smashing a lot of glassware in the process. The general looks uncomfortable. The poetry is bad, the seating plan is… awkward, but the food is splendid and the many expensive toasts reduce our spendthrift count to tears.

Bagration • Count Rostov • Denisov • Nikolai Rostov • Pierre • Count Rastopchin • Shinshin • Kutuzov • Dolokhov • Prince Nesvitsky • Andrei Bolkonsky

The Gagarin Mansion was home to the Moscow English Club from 1802 to 1812. Source.

Footnote: Bagration’s big bash

The dinner described in this chapter actually took place at the English Club in Moscow in 1806. The English arrived in Moscow by accident in 1553, searching for a sea passage east to India and China. In 1771, they set up their own social club and, in 1802, moved into a mansion built by the Gagarin family.

The host at Bagration’s big bash was no other than Leo Tolstoy’s grandfather, the extravagant spendthrift Ilya Andreyevich Tolstoy. I mentioned in a previous week that he is the inspiration for Count Rostov and Tolstoy’s description of this dinner is based on accounts of his ancestor’s celebrations.

With the second course, a gigantic sterlet (at sight of which Ilya Andreich blushed with self-conscious pleasure), the footmen began popping corks and filling the champagne glasses. After the fish, which made a certain sensation, Ilya Andreich exchanged glances with the other committee-men. ‘There will be many toasts, it’s time to begin.’

A 1000-kg, 4.17-m-long beluga fish from the Volga River. Photo Credit: Petar Milošević

The giant sterlet is a sturgeon, probably a beluga, one of the biggest and longest extant fish. The longest sturgeon on record was caught in 1827 in the Volga and measured 7.2 metres. There are unconfirmed reports of beluga reaching 12 metres. Tolstoy doesn’t tell us exactly how big Rostov’s sturgeon is. But it certainly made an impression.

Chapter 4: Pistols at dawn

Pierre is in a fix. An anonymous letter tells him he needs to put his spectacles back on and see what his wife is doing with Dolokhov. At the banquet, Dolokhov toasts the health of lovely women and their lovers. Pierre breaks and challenges him to a duel. So next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre, who has never held a gun, prepares to fight the famous duellist Fedor Dolokhov.

Pierre • Katishe • Dolokhov • Rostov • Denisov • Prince Nesvitsky

Duel of Pushkin and d'Anthes by Adrian Volkov. Source.

Footnote: Duelling

It seems like something would be missing from a nineteenth-century epic novel without at least one duel. The teenage Leo Tolstoy read the swashbuckling duels in the novels of Alexandre Dumas, and the founder of modern Russian literature, Alexander Pushkin, was killed in a duel in 1837.

The practice was illegal in the Russian Empire. Peter the Great threatened duellists with execution, although the punishment was never carried out. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, duelling became fashionable as noblemen travelled and studied abroad, encountering the culture of honour and challenges prevalent in Western Europe. In 1787, Catherine the Great wrote her “Manifesto on duels,” punishing the instigator of a duel with exile in Siberia, and a fine for other participants.

These laws did not deter everyone. Tolstoy’s own uncle-once-removed, Fyodor Tolstoy had a passion for duels and reportedly killed eleven men in challenges during his life. He was a gambler, a cardsharp, a tattooed adventurer who travelled to Russia’s American colonies in Alaska, where he earned his nickname “Tolstoy the American.” This wild Tolstoy fought at the Battle of Borodino in 1812 and survived to meet a young Leo Tolstoy.

Fyodor Ivanovich Tolstoy, the American, is probably the blueprint for our blue-eyed bad boy, Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov.

Thank you for reading

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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.