Tiresome ( )

Yes, I did it. Say, "What?" It was quite a feat, but it was well worth it. This is one of the greatest novels of all time. ( )

Larger than life. Truly deserving of the words "epic", "classic", and "memorable"; they are not cliches in this case. I'm very happy to have found the 1938 Heritage edition in two hardcover volumes with fold-out illustrations in a used book store many years ago; it's beautiful and added to my enjoyment.

I'll spare you an attempt at summarizing the plot but not a bunch of excerpted quotes. :-)

On Accepting Fate:
"While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth – that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while the other was warming…
He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who lagged behind, though more than a hundred perished in that way. He did not think of Karataev who grew weaker every day and evidently would soon have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about himself. The harder his position became and the more terrible the future, the more independent of that position in which he found himself were the joyful and comforting thoughts, memories and imaginings that came to him."

On Children:
"How strange, how extraordinary, how joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely perceptible motion of whose tiny limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that son about whom she used to have quarrels with the too-indulgent count, that son who had first learned to say ‘pear’ and then ‘granny’, that this son should now be away in a foreign land amid strange surroundings, a manly warrior doing some kind of man’s work on his own, without help or guidance. The universal experience of ages, showing that children do grow imperceptibly from the cradle to manhood, did not exist for the countess. Her son’s growth towards manhood, at each of its stages, had seemed as extraordinary to her as if there had never existed the millions of human beings who grew up in the same way. As twenty years before, it seemed impossible that the little creature who live somewhere under her heart would ever cry, suck her breast, and begin to speak, so now she could not believe that that little creature could be this strong, brave man, this model son and officer, that, judging by this letter, he now was."

On Death:
“…Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not fear it possesses all.”

"…What is bad? What is good? What should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am I? What is life, and what is death? What Power governs it all?
There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer was: ‘You’ll die and all will end. You’ll die and know all, or cease asking.’ But dying was also dreadful."

On Detachment:
"Karataev had no attachments, friendships, or love, as Pierre understood them, but loved and lived affectionately with everything life brought him in contact with, particularly with man – not any particular man, but those with whom he happened to be. He love his dog, his comrades, the French, and Pierre who was his neighbor, but Pierre felt that in spite of Karataev’s affectionate tenderness for him (by which he unconsciously gave Pierre’s spiritual life its due), he would not have grieved for a moment at parting from him. And Pierre began to feel in the same way towards Karataev."

On Enlightenment:
"Only looking up at the sky did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been raised. At the entrance to the Arbat square an immense expanse of dark starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it, above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its white light, and its long, uplifted tail, shone the enormous comet of 1812 – the comet which was said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre however that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly – like an arrow piercing the earth – to remain fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail erect – shining and displaying its white light amid countless other scintillating starts. It seemed to Pierre that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life."

On Happiness:
“…I was then wiser and had more insight than at any other time, and understood all that is worth understanding in life, because…because I was happy.”

On Man's limitations:
"A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that exists to gather honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the life of the hive more closely, says that the bee gathers pollen-dust to feed the young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate its race. A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and see in this the purpose of the bee’s existence. Another, observing the migration of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that in this lies the purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the processes the human mind can discern. The higher the human intellect rises in the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.
All that is accessible to man, is the relation of the life of the bee to other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of historic characters and nations"

On Inviduality and the Russian character:
'"The other was that vague and quite Russian feeling of contempt for everything conventional, artificial, and human – for everything the majority of men regard as the greatest good in the world. … It was the feeling that induces a volunteer-recruit to spend his last penny on drink, and a drunken man to smash mirrors or glasses for no apparent reason and knowing that it will cost him all the money he possesses: the feeling which causes a man to perform actions which from an ordinary point of view are insane, to test, as it were, his personal power and strength, affirming the existence of a higher, non-human, criterion of life."

"There was a new feature in Pierre’s relations with Willarski, with the princess, with the doctor, and with all the people he now met, which gained for him the general goodwill. This was his acknowledgement of the impossibility of changing a man’s convictions by words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling and seeing things each from his own point of view. This legitimate peculiarity of each individual which used to excite and irritate Pierre, now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and the interest he took in, other people. The difference, and sometimes complete contradiction, between men’s opinions and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased him and drew from him an amused and gentle smile."

On living in the now:
"‘Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and a criminal,’ came into Pierre’s head, ‘and from their point of view they were right, as were those too who canonised him and died a martyr’s death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a despot. Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alive – live: tomorrow you’ll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in comparison with eternity."

On Love of Fellow Man:
"Yes – love,” he thought again quite clearly. “But not love which loves for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some reason, but the love which I – while dying – first experienced when I saw my enemy and yet loved him. I experienced the feeling of love which is the very essence of the soul and does not require and object. Now again I feel that bliss. To love one’s neighbors, to love one’s enemies, to love everything, to love God in all His manifestations. It is possible to love someone dear to you with human love, but an enemy can only be loved by divine love…”

On Meaninglessness:
"Above him there was now nothing but the sky – the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with grey clouds gliding slowly across it. ‘How quiet, peaceful, and solemn; not at all as I ran,’ thought Prince Andrew – ‘not as we ran, shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds glide across that lofty, infinite sky! How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!…’ …
Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood, suffering and the nearness of death, aroused in him. Looking into Napoleon’s eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one alive could understand or explain."

"‘What for? Why? What is going on in the world?’ he would ask himself in perplexity several times a day, involuntarily beginning to reflect anew on the meaning of the phenomena of life; but knowing by experience that there were no answers to these questions he made haste to turn away from them…
He had the unfortunate capacity many men, especially Russians, have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to be able to take a serious part in it. Every sphere of work was connected, in his eyes, with evil and deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he engaged in, the evil and falsehood of it repulsed him and blocked every path of activity…
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!”"

On old age:
"The old lady’s condition was understood by the whole household though no one ever spoke of it, and they all made every possible effort to satisfy her needs. Only by a rare glance exchanged with a sad smile between Nicholas, Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Mary, was the common understanding of her condition expressed.
But those glances expressed something more: they said that she had played her part in life, that what they now saw was not her whole self, that we must all become like her, and that they were glad to yield to her, to restrain themselves for this once precious being formerly as full of life as themselves, but now so much to be pitied. “Memento mori,” said these glances.
Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that household and the little children, failed to understand this and avoided her."

On oneness:
"Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own insignificance, aware of being a drop in that ocean of men, and yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part of that enormous whole."

On sorrow:
"'You talk of schools,” he went on, crooking a finger, “education and so forth; that is, you want to raise him” (pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking off his cap) “from his animal condition and awaken in him spiritual needs, while it seems to me that animal happiness is the only happiness possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him of. I envy him, but you want to make him what I am, without giving him my means….I go to bed after two in the morning, thoughts come and I can’t sleep but toss about till dawn, because I think and can’t help thinking…'"

"She thought of only one thing, her sorrow, which after the break caused by cares for the present, seemed already to belong to the past. Now she could remember it and weep or pray.
After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was calm and fresh. Towards midnight the voices began to subside, a cock crowed, the full moon began to show from behind the lime trees, a fresh white dewy mist began to rise, and stillness reigned over the village and the house.
Pictures of her near past – her father’s illness and last moments – rose one after another to her memory. With mournful pleasure she now lingered over these images, repelling with horror only the last one, the picture of his death, which she felt she could not contemplate even in imagination at this still and mystic hour of night. And these pictures presented themselves to her so clearly and in such detail that they seemed now present, now past and now future."

On violence:
"'But in these great endeavors we are gravely hampered by the political institutions of today. What is to be done in these circumstances? To favor revolutions, overthrow everything, repel by force?…No! We are very far from that. Every violent reform deserves censure, for it quite fails to remedy evil while men remain what they are, and also because wisdom needs no violence.'"

On virtue:
"Countess Mary’s soul always strove towards the infinite, the eternal and the absolute, and could therefore never be at peace."

On war:
"In the rearguard Dokhturov and others rallying some battalions, kept up a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops. It was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd dam where for so many years the old miller had been accustomed to sit in his taselled cap peacefully angling, while his grandson, with shirt-sleeves 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 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."

"To us it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England’s policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenberg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them. …
To us, the wish or objection of this or that French corporal to serve a second term appears as much a cause as Napoleon’s refusal to withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula and to restore the duchy of Oldenberg; for had he not wished to serve, and had a second, third, and a thousandth corporal and private also refused, there would have been so many less men in Napoleon’s army and the war could not have occurred."

"Can it be that there is not room for all men on this beautiful earth under these immeasurably starry heavens? Can it be possible that in the midst of this entrancing Nature, feelings of hatred, vengeance, or the passion for exterminating their fellows, can endure in the souls of men? All that is unkind in the hearts of men ought, one would think, to vanish at the touch of Nature, that most direct expression of beauty and goodness." (actually from Tolstoy's "The Raid", but it's quoted in the notes in my edition of War and Peace)

“Not take prisoners,” Prince Andrew continued. “That by itself would quite change the whole war and make it less cruel. As it is we have played at war – that’s what’s vile! We play at magnanimity and sensibility and all that stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she is so kind-hearted that she can’t look at blood, but enjoys the calf being served up with sauce. They talk to us of the rules of war, of chivalry, of flags of truce, of mercy to the unfortunate and so on. It’s all rubbish! I saw chivalry and flags of truce in 1805; they humbugged us and we humbugged them. They plunder other people’s houses, issue false paper money, and worst of all they kill my children and my father, and then talk of rules of war and magnanimity to foes! Take no prisoners, but kill and be killed! …
War is not a courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous. The military calling is the most highly honored.
But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare? What are the habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of war are spying, treachery, and their encouragement, the ruin of a country’s inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army, and fraud and falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the military class are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery and drunkenness. And in spite of all that it is the highest class, respected by everyone.”

On the "younger generation", and the fallacies the "older generation" perceives:
"…In our days,” continued Vera – mentioning ‘our days’ as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of ‘our days’ and that human characteristics change with the times – “in our days a girl has so much freedom that the pleasure of being courted often stifles real feeling in her…” ( )

Fancy pants dribble about high society flakes and incompetent generals. Sure there is more to it than that, but after 400 pages I'm irritated that I managed to guilt myself into reading 399 pages too many. ( )

A must-read classic of all times. ( )