War and Peace

“The strongest of all warriors are these two—Time and Patience”

The above lines of War and Peace aptly describe my experience of completing this behemoth of a Russian epic. As a kid, I had an understanding that one may call oneself a true literature aficionado, or a bibliophile if one can accomplish reading a classic endowed with a page count of at least a thousand pages. Over the years, that conception has been greatly altered. I have come to the realisation that some books can say a lot more in a few pages than the others that fail to enrapture or engage even with enormous word counts. That being said, if you feel I’m digressing from the main point of this review, then I am not. Because War and Peace takes the cake for show more quintessential literature that balances a character driven storyline along with pages, and pages of philosophical digressions. But while reading the book, if you ever feel disheartened by the latter, just remember the first quote and bear with it, because when Tolstoy’s not filling his pages with his deep (a convenient term for concepts where you feel you’re out of depth) philosophical meditations on the nature of war and the inevitability of life and fate, he is concocting few of the most iconic and human characters.

Set in Tsarist Russia amidst the Napoleonic war, the novel is set over a period of seven years (fourteen if you count the epilogue) from 1805 to 1812. Alternating between the setting of posh social gatherings of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and battlegrounds of Austria, Poland, and eventually Russia, the book gives an insight into the lives of Russian nobility as they go through the tumultuous period of war, and peace, and war again. But the core of this epic, in my opinion, is formed by the fictitious characters that Tolstoy sketches and places in this historical settings. Characters such as Pierre Bezukhov, Andrei and Marie Bolkonsky, Natasha Rostov are some of the deeply human characters, each with their own shade of grey. They are flawed people, and trying to make sense of the situation that has been thrust upon them in a war torn Russia. Bezukhov’s search for meaning and virtue, balancing his hedonistic tendencies and his inner conscience to become a better human is a beautiful arc in the novel. There are also some of the famous historical figures presented as characters in the novel such as Napoleon, Kuzutov, Tsar Alexander, and more. Apart from the intermittent meanderings by Tolstoy regarding his commentary on significant historical battles and futility of wondering “what ifs” that sometime leave you exhausted, my primary complaint from his magnum opus is the incomplete ending that leaves much to be desired. Over the book, Tolstoy introduces a plethora of personalities, even provides us with their background, given them a personality of their own, with their ambitions, their flaws. But at end of the story, refuses to give us even a hint about their fates, which as you must agree, is quite frustrating, and feels almost akin to betrayal.

It took me a period of a year to complete this book. That says a lot about me than what it says about the book, though. But in all seriousness, this is a book that does demand your time and patience. Rarely will you find a piece of literature that combines history, philosophy and drama with such richness in detail.

Rating: 5/5

Here are a few more quotes from the book that I found memorable and insightful, in the hope that it may nudge you on that path of wanting to read this book:

“Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.”

“The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, and light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness.”

“A man on a thousand-mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, ‘Today I’m going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.’”

“If everyone fought for their own convictions, there would be no war.”

“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.” show less

I spent nearly a full year reading War & Peace, taking it one chapter a day. This beautiful book. It's going to take me a while before I can write anything much about it; I'm in mourning that I have to leave Pierre, Natasha and all the others to finish their stories without me. I've never spent so much time with so many richly drawn characters.

In the epilogue, Tolstoy wrote: "For a historian, considering the contribution rendered by some person towards a certain goal, there are heroes; for the artist, considering the correspondence of this person to all sides of life, there cannot and should not be any heroes, but there should be people."

Beyond the panoramic Battles of Austerlitz and Borodino, the muffled burning of Moscow and Napoleon’s dilapidated retreat, Tolstoy in War and Peace painted the Napoleonic War’s dislodging the cast of characters from their apparel concerns, gossipy sorties, troubled marriages and career ambitions and through their social clumsiness, oppressive ideals, spiritual dullness and determined naivete, extorted their unavoidable responses to these tidal waves.

While Napoleon sought to drive history’s course through his lashing will and reining determination by marching onto Moscow, Kutuzov by sensing and attuning to the historical current tactically retreated beyond Moscow and after the Napoleonic army’s natural dissipation trailed its show more chaotic retreat. Tolstoy, who believed historical crosswinds to be too complicated for any Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan to align, favored Kutuzov’s naturalistic craftsmanship and through Pierre, applied it to personal destiny.

After his wife had left him, Pierre’s clumsy and sometimes-comic search for meaning led him to freemasonry, whose esoteric philosophy failed to pave a new path beyond the thorns and thistles. Although he accepted life storms serenely, his what for and so what would continue to harass him until he met Karataev, who showed him the life unified to the land, the sea and the air and harmonious with their rhythms¾a mystical naturalism favored by Tolstoy. However, at the novel’s conclusion, our hero’s life as a conscientious nobleman, a contributing intelligentsia and an accommodating family man, perhaps a sign that age would squander aspirations and the years would sap physical and emotional energy, smelled of defeat to his previous pilgrimage.

On the other hand, Andrei’s escaping from marriage, career and the mundane drudgery, and impulsively grasping after the wintry Polaris led to the battlefield where he almost died. Although Natasha’s love provided respite, her unfaithfulness confirmed his suspicion of an earthly Eden. In the end, even though he had forgiven her, he gave up that love for the ultimate rainbow, death, wherein he finally could rest. If he had not died, he probably would have been disillusioned by his love for Natasha.

It is sad that Andrei had given up youth, love and the possibilities of life, but it is equally sad that Pierre had decayed into a Nikolai Rostov after his courageous journey through what for and so what. Must we like the samurai commit seppuku to immortalize youth, vitality, creativity and aspiration so as not to decay into a grumpy and lecherous old man or a jealous and nagging old woman? Tolstoy’s determinism would dictate that Pierre would ultimately return to the natural cycle of birth, growth, education, career, marriage, procreation, contribution, decay and death. But whether we agree with Tolstoy or not, War and Peace would continue to tower above the greatest novels. show less

This is one of those books that can be life-changing. I read this as a teenager and I remember exactly where I was (sitting on my bed, in my grandmother's house, in southern Germany) when I finished it. I must have spent an hour just staring out the window, in awe of the lives I'd just led, the experiences I'd just had.

****

I'm now re-reading this, enjoying it immensely and no doubt appreciating it much more than I did the first time. Tolstoy has the most amazing ability to make us feel, when he zooms out and examines historical events, that the individual is nothing--and then when he zooms in and paints intimate portraits of his characters, that the individual is everything. Breathtaking.

By the way, I'm reading the Anthony Briggs show more translation (Penguin Classics), and it's marvelous. I'm quite picky when it comes to translations and this is one of the best I've read.

It's in the sweeping battle scenes that Tolstoy shows how insignificant the individual really is--how even generals and emperors are at the mercy of random and unpredictable events. Then when Tolstoy switches to the intimate drawing room scenes, the entire perspective shifts, and nothing matters more than the individual consciousness that he depicts. The juxtaposition of these two feelings is just, well, genius!

I'd forgotten how mystical Tolstoy gets with respect to Pierre's "conversion" or "enlightenment" or "getting religion." It's fascinating how Pierre becomes animated by these great ideas and that's a sign of his maturity, whereas Prince Andrey matures in an almost opposite way: by eschewing his former great ideas regarding military heroism and focusing instead (at this point in the narrative) on his baby son.

The contrapuntal movement of Pierre and Andrey's development is only highlighted when they're together, debating whether one ought to try to improve people's lives (Pierre) or just focus on one's own happiness and leave the world alone (Andrey). It's actually a profound debate, which then ends when Andrey beholds the vast sky again and something stirs inside him, something long dormant, and we as readers can't help anticipating that Andrey will be "back."

***

One of the great glories of reading War and Peace is to encounter, in a novel, characters struggling with serious philosophical issues--not as airy abstractions but rather in terms of how they ought to live. Pierre and Prince Andrey are the prime examples of this. I kept thinking, as I read the sections in which they struggle earnestly with such questions, that contemporary American fiction has precious little of this. I wonder if it's because we've all drunk the kool-aid that says "show, don't tell," making contemporary novelists shy away from such material. But this little mantra, while seemingly objective, renders entire realms of fiction off-limits. Tolstoy is constantly "telling" us what Pierre and Andrey are thinking, and the novel is so much better for it.

***

Tolstoy's "peace" is of course anything but: it's full of anticipation and intrigue and philosophical yearning, from the bursting bewildering sallies of youth (Natasha) to the resigned feeling that life isn't what you dreamed when you were young, and perhaps you aren't either (Pierre). The deftness and sheer range of human drama is staggering.

And the war, when it returns, is no abstract matter. Everywhere there are people caught up in this great event, bewildered by it. Here's Rostov on seeing the French officer he's brought down: "This pale, mud-stained face of a fair-haired young man with a dimple on his chin and bright blue eyes had no business with battlefields; it was not the face of an enemy; it was a domestic, indoor face." Rostov can't help seeing him as a human being, and in that moment his "enthusiasm suddenly drained away."

It's interesting how, when Rostov chases the French officer on horseback, he thinks about the wolf hunt he was recently on. When I read the scene of the hunt, where the hunters capture the old She-Wolf and her cubs, I couldn't help feeling sorry for those animals, for that animal family hunted for pure sport. I wondered how that scene would come back into the narrative because of the obvious symbolic weight of it, and here it is, in the scene of war. The characters hadn't empathized with the She-Wolf in the same way that Rostov does with the French officer, but I wonder if we're meant to anyway, or at least be made somewhat uncomfortable (as I was) by such sport-killing, perhaps seeing it as a prelude to another kind of sport-killing altogether: namely war.

***

Tolstoy can't help wearing his patriotism on his sleeve a bit, as he describes Napoleon's advance and the rival Moscow social circles, one of which has eschewed anything French while the other clings to its Francophile ways. Of course the French-speaking social circle is that of Helene, who's cold and manipulative and whose brother schemed to snatch away Natasha in such, well, French fashion. But this is no bald tale of Russian virtue and French perfidy. Tolstoy is finely attuned to the chaos of war and to the humans that engage in it, so much more alike than not as everyone tries simply to survive and perhaps claim a little glory in the end.

***

I love how Tolstoy peppers his narrative with keen insights into human nature. Here he is, when describing the attitude of Muscovites on the approach of Napoleon: "At the first approach of danger two voices always speak out with equal force in a man's heart: one tells him very sensibly to consider the exact extent of the danger and any means of avoiding it; the other says even more sensibly that it's too wearisome and agonizing to contemplate the danger, since it is not in a man's power to anticipate future events and avoid the general run of things, so you might as well turn away from the nastiness until it hits you, and dwell on things that are pleasant."

***

Tolstoy describes the cavalcade of human affairs as well as anyone, and the evacuation of Moscow is a great example of it: so many little stories described with the deftest brushstrokes. The irony and humor also shine through when he describes Berg's ridiculous recitation of war stories or Count Rostov's childlike diffidence when it comes to the issue of whether they should empty their wagons of belongings in order to make room for wounded soldiers.

***

Hurtling toward the end now, and Tolstoy is hammering his theme that the individual is a slave to fate and mysterious forces. This adds much irony to his tale, and some biting commentary as well, as when he says: "These man, carried away by their passions, were nothing more than the blind executors of the saddest law of necessity; but they saw themselves as heroes, and mistook their doings for achievements of the highest virtue and honour."

***

In the final pages the scenes return to domestic life full of family, as the war generation ages and their children are born. So many mixed emotions in the characters and in me, the reader, as our story ebbs to a close, as this towering and monumental work of art draws ever nearer to silence. "Memento mori," the characters are described as feeling in the face of an old countess, and the same can be said of this entire work, which is a testament to the fragility and beauty and fleetingness of life itself.

***

And then, finally, we see Pierre and Natasha together, but the last lines of the dramatic narrative belong to young Nikolay, Prince Andrey's son, who thinks: "Father! Father! Yes, I'm going to do something even he would have been pleased with."

Tolstoy then delves more directly into a philosophical treatise on free will, capping his narrative with the final summation that "it is no less essential to get away from a false sensation of freedom and accept a dependence that we cannot feel."

***

With that, the book closes, and I feel again what a monumental work I've just encountered. I'll spend many days and weeks pondering these pages, recalling little scenes and thinking about Tolstoy's grand arguments. The scope is breathtaking and profound, yet on every page you feel the frantic beating of the human heart. Despite all its spiritual claims, it's a deeply humanistic work. show less

Rarely has a novel with such a thumping thesis (Tolstoy’s rejection of the so-called great man theory of history) been so affecting, so charming at times, and so brutally honest at others. Once you give yourself over to it, it is engrossing and the pages (the many, many pages) seem to fly by. And perhaps not surprising for such a long and complex work, your allegiances to characters develop and shift over the course of the novel. Whether it is the moral development of the seemingly dense Pierre, or the reclamation of the overly proud Prince Andrei, or even the dizzying excitement of Natasha and its aftermath, the care that Tolstoy takes with his fictional characters helps humanize the necessarily violent battle sections of the novel. show more Despite the frequent authorial disquisitions on the impossibility of the will of one man, be that man Napoleon or Alexander, directing the outcome of huge events, Tolstoy regularly brings the focus down to single individuals in the midst of a battle and we see how personally meaningful their individual actions are for them.

There is no need for me to recommend this novel. It stands as one of the bulwarks of imaginative fiction and for that reason alone, if no other, it deserves to be read. But what I would say is how surprisingly funny and charming and at other times heart-poundingly tense it can be. So as well as being an important, possibly a necessary, read, it is also a good read. Enjoy! show less

"The subject of history is the life of peoples and of mankind. To grasp directly and embrace in words - to describe - the life not only of mankind, but of one people, appears impossible." (pg. 1,179).

When I first started thinking seriously about reading War and Peace, I was more than a bit sceptical about some of the reviews I encountered, which suggested that the book covered 'everything' and 'all of human life'. Whilst this is, of course, hyperbole, I was surprised at just how much Leo Tolstoy was able to cover: not just touch upon, you understand, but genuinely thoughtful reflections. It truly is one of those books that has to be read to be properly appreciated.

First, a note on the one thing everyone knows about War and Peace: its show more length. My Vintage Classics edition was 1,273 pages long, and there are some editions which are even longer. This is understandably off-putting for many potential readers but, as I hope to demonstrate in this review, it is certainly worth it. Any effort put in is rewarded tenfold. It's also not that long if you really think about it, at least not if you're a regular reader. You can read four normal books, each about 300 pages long, in the space of a couple of weeks, or you can read one book: War and Peace, one of the defining works of world literature. At least that's how I thought about it when I resolved to crack it open. And then you can brag about how you've read War and Peace because, regardless of the sort of people you socialise with, they probably haven't made the same resolution. Another benefit is that now I am less likely to be daunted by other great works; I have the notion that if I can read through War and Peace, and truly engage with and understand it, I can read anything. That may not be true, but it does give you confidence and a genuine sense of achievement when you (eventually) reach the end.

I should perhaps also note at this point that I read the English translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (known as the P&V translation). I found it agreeable and sympathetic to the reader. It did what a great translation should do: it didn't feel like a translation. I didn't feel like I was reading a book written in 19th-century Russian and French; it just felt like I was reading a great novel. I can't comment on some of the other translations, but I would have no reservations about recommending the P&V edition.

Set during the Napoleonic Wars (and primarily concerned with the French invasion of Russia in 1812), War and Peace uses these grand events as a backdrop for in-depth reflections on war, peace (obviously), love, life, death, nature, happiness, family, friendships, society, leadership, history, politics, governance, law, freedom, education, religion, and so on. Tolstoy has some fascinating and eloquent things to say on these topics and more, even if you don't always agree with it. At this point you might be thinking that you can just skip over the philosophising guff, but it is essential to the story. If you can't engage intellectually with Tolstoy's ideas, you won't be able to engage with any of the book. You cannot really say to yourself that you will just read the literary parts, because the two are so intertwined and complementary that you cannot, in discarding the philosophy, be able to truly say that you have read (and, more importantly, understood) War and Peace.

Tolstoy's most persistent theme running throughout the book - and one which intensifies towards the end - is one in which he disputes the theory that individuals shape history (the 'great man' theory) and instead suggests that a plethora of unknown (and often unknowable) causes direct the course of life (sort of like the modern-day theory of the butterfly effect). Insofar as one can sum up such a lengthy and wealthy novel in one passage, I would suggest the following from page 1,137:

"As the sun and every atom of the ether is a sphere complete in itself and at the same time only an atom of a whole that is inaccessible to man in its enormity - so, too, every person bears his own purposes within himself and yet bears them in order to serve general purposes that are inaccessible to man."

If you understand that passage, you can begin to understand the complexity and sheer scale of Tolstoy's book. Tolstoy himself said that War and Peace is not a novel as such, nor a historical chronicle, incorporating as it does such lengthy passages of philosophy as sampled above. This is why the book is so long; the author must account for even just a small segment of all these conflicting interests which influence the 'common action'. His characters must embody and experience enough of these influences to make the ebb and flow of life's direction clear to the reader, without focusing solely on major personalities, which would buy into the theory that individuals shape history, which Tolstoy finds erroneous. If all of this seems complicated, that is because it is. Tolstoy is attempting to provide an account of life. Not just a life, or the lives of some characters, but a thorough and comprehensive accounting of all of life as we know it. When you consider that, and consider the fact that he actually manages to pull it off, you can begin to understand why War and Peace is considered such an outstanding artistic achievement.

Given this achievement, it seems churlish to criticise the structure of the book, seeing as how Tolstoy has managed to ensnare the very essence of life within these pages. But the book leaps from its literary endeavours (with, at its heart, the story of Pierre, Natasha and Prince Andrei) to lengthy philosophical treatises and occasional forays into providing a historical appraisal of the Napoleonic Wars. It's all very good, if perhaps a little jarring, and certainly very challenging. You do need to dissemble everything you know about literature, every habit and preconception you have in your regular reading, in order to engage with War and Peace. Reconfiguring your entire mindset and outlook in order to engage with a book is a tall order, and it says a lot about just how good War and Peace is that, having done so myself, I would recommend anyone else to do the same.

The book does have flaws, but its flaws are minor and not concerned with the essence of the book itself. Aside from the sudden leaps between fiction, philosophy and history, I did find it hard to keep track of everything that was happening in the plot. There's a fair bit of superficial detail, particularly when you're reading about the dull dinner parties which the upper-class Russians are repeatedly hosting - "good-natured and bustling banality", as Prince Andrei puts it - and consequently it's hard to build up a head of steam when you first open the book. Tolstoy also has a strange (or normal, I suppose, if you're Russian) habit of referring to the same character by a number of monikers (surnames, first names, pet names, family names and titles are all used) often within the same paragraph, which can be confusing. Consider, as examples, the three main characters. Prince Andrei is alternately referred to as André, the prince, Andryusha, and Bolkonsky, amongst others. Pierre is referred to as the count, Pyotr or Count Bezukhov. Natasha is also known as Natalya, Natalie or Countess Rostov (which is doubly confusing when the paragraph also includes her mother, who is also a countess). This is not only a problem I have with War and Peace; it seems to me that it is one of the defining criteria that classic literature must have needless stylistic affectations. But these affectations only add another layer of difficulty to a book which is already a sizeable challenge.

There are also pages of French dialogue (at a rough - and probably inaccurate - guess, I'd say about 20% of the entire book is in French) which means the reader finds themselves in the peculiar position of eschewing the main body of the text and just reading translated footnotes. Tolstoy also uses the words 'us' and 'we' when referring to the Russians (e.g. 'the French invaded us' and 'we fought back') which struck me as rather too personable and unprofessional, especially given the epic nature of the work. Similarly unprofessional is the regular appearance of exclamation marks, which seems awkward when rendered in the English language. Because it is not just a work of fiction but also a work of history and of philosophy, we also get footnotes and an extensive collection of endnotes (although it should be noted that the endnotes are the contribution of the editors of my Vintage Classics edition, not Tolstoy himself). We also get maps of key battlefields, lengthy quotations of passages from other history books and sources - it's almost like a bona fide history book at times - and even mathematical equations. You're getting variety (and value for money), that's for sure, but it is quite daunting. It's the only piece of fiction I've read that I can accurately describe as 'encyclopaedic'.

It should be noted though that, alongside the philosophy and the science and the maths and the history, there is also a really good piece of literature. The three most identifiable characters - Pierre, Natasha and Prince Andrei - are all interesting and you really care about what happens to them. It's not the most gripping story you've ever read, but I didn't get bored of them (and at over 1,200 pages, that's quite impressive). Tolstoy himself admitted, in a March 1868 article included in my Vintage edition as an Appendix, that the activity of his characters were "interesting to me only as an illustration of that law of predetermination which, in my conviction, governs history." (pg. 1,224). Nevertheless, he balances the literature with his philosophical message well; his characters are the vehicle for it. By the end of the book, all the characters - particularly that trinity of Pierre, Natasha and Prince Andrei - are living, breathing examples of Tolstoy's various ideas. One of the key Tolstoyan principles is of learning to love everything (expanding on the Christian precept of loving one's neighbour and one's enemies), even to love death, and when by the end of the novel you have seen the characters embrace this concept, whether knowingly or unknowingly; well, it is a beautiful thing. There's also a neat little suggestion at the end that the young children - offspring of the main characters we have followed throughout the book - haven't yet learned these lessons of life. "In the last analysis," Tolstoy tells us, "we arrive at an eternal circle." (pg. 1,200). Life, history, experience: it is cyclical, and what is learned by one generation must be relearned by the next. Life. That's what War and Peace is about. It is a great, perhaps peerless, feat of writing, and fully deserving of the daunting feat of reading and perseverance it requires from its audience. show less

If you need confirmation from me, take it: War and Peace's reputation as one of the best books ever written is well deserved. As well as the empathic and imaginative genius of its author, and the boldness with which he stated its theme and stuck to it, I was particularly astonished by how easy Tolstoy made this book to read. It’s a page-turner – and there isn’t a chapter in it that’s longer than five. You’re sucked in before you know it and the only reason to pause is if your eyes or arms get tired.
I’m serious: War and Peace is /fast/. As long as you don’t include all the years of telling myself I’d get around to it, the time it took me to read was negligible. If you’re putting it off too, stop. War and Peace is one of show more the greatest reading experiences of my entire life. I would recommend it to /everybody/. show less