War and Peace: Book 4 and Epilogues Discussion

Well, the month of March and the first quarter of 2016 have come to an end! Have you finished War and Peace? If so, congratulations on an impressive accomplishment!



Please share your thoughts/feelings/opinions below. Was the book more of a pleasure or a penance for you? Are you glad you read it? Have you watched (or will you watch) the recent TV adaptation?

Sadly, I'm not quite ready to celebrate, as I'm still about 250 pages from the end. *blush* But I'll be back to share my take on the book and see what everybody else thought!

I finished! There were certainly sections that seemed like a penance, but for the most part, the book was a great pleasure. The epilogues were somewhat painful, but strangely, their themes were what I thought most about in the days following. I have the TV adaptation recorded and will be watching it soon. I decided to wait until I finished my reread of the novel before viewing it.

Though I loved the family saga, I found Tolstoy's ideas on history and warfare interesting, especially when considering current world affairs.

First, there is his idea that history is not shaped primarily by great men performing heroic actions but by a multitude of complex circumstances that lead to the inevitability of certain outcomes. I tend to agree with this but found his portraits of Kutuzov and Napoleon fascinating none-the-less, even if he was trying to bring them down to earth, in a way.

I also found interesting Tolstoy's thoughts on how Russians used guerrilla warfare to resist the French, saying that there is a long history of these tactics and it is a natural reaction of people who are desperate and unable to engage in a war according to the accepted "rules". (I loved his comment about the fencer who drops the sword in favour of a club, and the silly historians who insist on describing the duel as a sword fight after the fact.) This contrasts with some modern ideas about terrorism that I see in the media.

By the way, I really enjoyed doing this as a group read. It kept me on track and I like seeing everyone else's comments. I hope the conversation will be continuing for some time after.

>2 mathgirl40:

The Monthly Authors Reads group is reading Tolstoy in May. You may want to check that out too.

>3 March-Hare: Thanks for that information!

>3 March-Hare: and >4 mathgirl40: The link to the Tolstoy read is here https://www.librarything.com/topic/219440.

I made it, you guys -- I finally finished! Here are my thoughts on the experience as a whole:

I really loved the family saga parts, but I really did not love the battle parts or the "What is history?" parts. I actually found some of Tolstoy's ideas on history and power (particularly in the second epilogue) interesting, but by that point it was way too repetitive, and I just wanted to be DONE. I do think it's interesting that the historical methodology Tolstoy criticized is still the methodology predominantly used today.

Throughout most of the book, Pierre was the most annoying character to me. So I was surprised to find that I really liked him in the end, after he went through his transformative experience as a prisoner! I'm glad Tolstoy finally gave him some inner peace and happiness...and in fact, I was surprised and pleased by the happy endings for most of the characters in the first epilogue! Most people are happily paired off and doing well financially. I was expecting things to be a little more depressing, but I'm glad I was wrong.

I enjoyed the Anthony Briggs translation. It's probably not the most faithful to the original text -- the idioms and dialects of the lower-class characters are VERY British, and the French passages are all rendered directly into English, usually without a notation -- but it's a very readable translation.

In sum, I'm really glad I read this book, but I will probably never be tempted to read it again! Looking forward to watching the miniseries, though.

>5 Tara1Reads: Thanks for the link.

>6 christina_reads: The relatively happy ending surprised and pleased me too. I agree with you about Pierre and really like Tolstoy's development of many of the characters. I guess the great length of the novel allows major changes in their character and outlook to occur in a natural and gradual way.

>6 christina_reads: Pierre was my favourite character pretty much the whole way through (although I did have a few moments at various points in the book where I just wanted to tell him to stop being an idiot). The only other character I think I consistently liked throughout was Sonya, although I was really disappointed with her releasing Nicolai from his promise. Most of the others took a long time to grow on me, but even the character I disliked most (Anatole) surprised me by how much I was saddened by what happened to him at the end.

I didn't dislike the battle scenes (although they were too long for me!), but got really cross with the philosophising (is that a word?!), I thought Tolstoy came across as quite arrogant in a way - 'everyone interprets history in this way, and this is why they're all WRONG and stupid, and I'm going to tell them what's right'. I also found it all so very repetitive, so will confess to skimming most of those sections.

I hope you enjoy the TV adaptation - I thought it was great, and very impressive how they managed to condense so much into such a relatively short amount of time! All of the actors were really good, and the scenery and filming was sumptuous.

I liked the first epilogue all right, and like others was happy that things surprisingly turned out pretty well for Pierre and most of the others.

But the second epilogue seemed like reader abuse. Here's what I said right after finishing:

So, I finish this lengthy novel, and I think, hmm, very good. I'm happy about how the romances ended up, and this has been quite a reading experience. Maybe a lot more pages about the war than I would've chosen, but I can see how that part would be fascinating in particular to Russians, who could visualize all he depicts and would have the same how and why questions Tolstoy had.

Then I find out there's a "First Epilogue". Arggh. OK, I'm pretty weary of this literary journey, but you're a genius, so let's see what you've got. I make it to the end and think, well, I didn't really need that, but it was interesting enough. Then I see there's a "Second Epilogue". Yes, I should have realized that implication from the title "First Epilogue". So I'm aggravated, and I only get more so, as the Second Epilogue turns out to be a lengthy dissertation on how events in general happen and how we view and describe history from a different point in time. Tolstoy is annoyed by how often historical events are attributed, in hindsight, to "geniuses" and "heroes" like Napoleon and Alexander, when in fact they're due to many different contributing factors, and carried out by many people other than the alleged geniuses and heroes.

This is like "a man who, watching the movements of a herd of cattle and paying no attention to the varying quality of the pasturage in different parts of the field or to the driving of the herdsman, should attribute the direction the herd takes to what animal happens to be at its head". Not a great analogy, as it might not be wrong to attribute the direction to the herdsman (who could be named Napoleon), but that's okay.

I think Tolstoy would at least be somewhat happy with Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel because it takes a more gods-eye view and recognizes different factors besides individual wills that have affected our history. "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences" is Diamond's thesis.

There's a lot of discussion of "free will" versus "inevitability" in the Second Epilogue, and I sure didn't need that fulsome discussion after having read the mega-chunkster story that preceded it. At the time I was reading it, I wanted to shoot Tolstoy for doing this to the reader (me). But then I came to my senses and thought a lengthy time-out in a corner for Tolstoy would be more appropriate, maybe with the requirement that he read through the Congressional Record for a few hours.

Were readers at the time of War and Peace's publication up in arms about this, scorchingly expressing their anger at reader abuse? I doubt it. He's a genius, and there are perquisites that come with being at the top of the literary heap. Tolstoy'd probably consider me a troglodyte for not appreciating his ruminations on these vital topics. Please! Give me a break. He could've published a separate pamphlet or book containing all his fascinating theories. Don't welcome me into the inn after I've ridden for days and days, and then insist I clean the whole place up according to your instructions. That's no way to treat a guest.

***

Hmm. I have a bit calmer view now, but that Second Epilogue still bugs me. Plus it's repetitive, as someone pointed out - we'd already learned about his theories on history.