Tolstoy s Biography and Genesis of War and Peace Biography Count Lev Niholayevich Tolstoy was born August

28, 1828 at Yasnaya Polyanya, the estate of his mother s family, the Volkonskys, 130 miles southwest of Moscow. It can be argued that Tolstoy is the highest ranking aristocrat to ever become a major literary figure. He could trace his ancesters back to 1353, and, because of the custom of intermarriage among the Russian aristocracy, Tolstoy could clai m kinship with nearly every family of social consequence in Russia. The Russian social hierarchy at the time of T s birth resembles an enormous feudal pyramid. Po wer is in the hands of the nobility, who alone could attend university, hold gov ernment positions, dictate social policies. They were supported by a vast slave system. The serfs would not be emancipated until 1861. Tolstoy s grandfather, Nikolay Volkonsky, was the model for Old Prince Bulkonsky i n W&P, an 18th-century Enlightenment figure, who like Tolstoy s character oversaw the education of his daughter, Marya, in geometry and physics. T s father had been in the Russian army during Napoleon s invasion of Russia, had been captured by th e French and was not released until the Russians entered Paris in March, 1814. T s father married Marya Volkonski in 1822. [Note that the names of T s mother and fa ther, Marya and Nicholai, become important characters in W&P. Buried in the huge mass of the novel, therefore, is the suggestion that the coming together of Pri ncess Mary and Nicholai Rostov enacts the marriage of T s own parents and subseque nt the birth of the author, in which he is contemplating the mystery of his own existence.] T s mother gave birth to four sons, of whom Leo was the youngest. She died in 1830, after giving birth to a daughter when T was only two years old. T. could not remember what his mother looked like and had nothing but a cameo of h er from childhood to recall her features. [Much psychological analysis has been given to T s search for his mother as one of the motivating factors in his writing and philosophizing.] The Tolstoy children were raised, following the death of T s father when the autho r was eight, by their paternal grandmother and two aunts. T s was an idealized chi ldhood whose disruption by his father s death would fuel T s philosophical disconten t and struggles to reclaim contentment. A sensitive child, Leo was given the nic kname, Leo Cry-Baby. The four brothers formed a secret society that they called th e Ant Brotherhood, in which T s brother Nikolay claimed he had recorded the secret s of the universe, the source of ultimate happiness, on a little green stick tha t he buried somewhere on the estate. It can be argued that T. never stopped sear ching for that little green stick, finally becoming that stick, buried himself a t Yasnaya Polyana. T s grandmother would die when he was nine, so before he was te n-years-old death had taken his parents and grandmother. The persistence of deat h would become the fundamental question to haunt T s for the rest of his life. In 1841, the Tolstoy children were taken to Kazan to live with their aunt. T. wo uld enter Kazan University in 1844, originally in the school of Oriental languag es in order to pursue a diplomatic career. Later he switched to law. A capable b ut easily distracted student, T., with his own carriage and personal servant to carry his books for him to class, indulged in the dissolute life available to th e young aristocratic males, including the brothels. There, the fourteen-year-old Leo was introduced to sex by his brother Sergei. T s student years reveal the dom inant dichotomy that would perplex him thoughout his life: a passionate indulgen ce in the sensual joys of life and a subsequent revulsion of the physical and a recognition of the equally strong claims of the spiritual. T. writing life began with his diary begun while he was recovery from a syphallitic cure. It is from his relentless study of himself that one can argue his career as a novelist trul y began.

For the next 20 years, T. would wage an intense battle against his appetites in search of a mission in life. He left the university before earning a degree, lik ely to avoid failing his exams, to live for a time on his Yasnaya Polyana estate , which he inherited (Inheritance=estate of +4,000 acres & 330 souls or serfs, inc ome of 4,000 rubles a year (ruble=$2.00), so how rich was Tolstoy? Considerably poorer than most in his class: if we use Pierre s inheritance of 40,000 serfs and m illions in rubles as the mark of one of the richest men in Russia, T. lagged far behind. Gentry family usually had 500 serfs; less than 100 would be considered i mpoverished. T. therefore shabby genteel ?) T altenated between his country estate and the fashionable life of Moscow and Pe tersburg before joining his brother s regiment fighting the border tribes on the C aucasus. [Note that the same tribes are currently being battled in Russia today in Chechniya.] The Caucasus for a Russia is like the West and the Rockies for an American: breathtaking geography and a population more atuned to the natural. T he life of the peasants fascinated T. who began to juxtapose in his mind their i nstinctive, passionate direct, unreflective response to existence with his own d etached, intellectualized, superficial existence as a fashionable aristocrat. T. took a commission as an artillery officer and participated in the defense of Se vastopol during the Crimean War. T s attitude to war and his remarkable ability to capture battlefield experiences comes from the years he spent there. It was dur ing his army service that he was afflicted with a destructive gambling addiction that would cost him the main house at Yasnaya Polyana which was sold off to pay his debts, and when he began to write. His first books, interestingly from the perspective of W&P were his autobiographical recollection of his childhood and h is brutally honest depictions of the fighting, i.e., peace and war. First book, Childhood, appeared in 1852, followed by Boyhood, and the Sevastopol Sketches. T he works announced an original and powerful new force in Russian literature. Pra ised for freshness and directness, its eye for physical detail that animated exp erience. Following the war, T. returned to Moscow and Petersburg where he mixed in litera ry circles and was taken up by Turgenev. Painfully shy in social situations, T. masked his insecurities in trying to dominant conversations with crude and outla ndish opinions. He proved to be a very difficult companion, prone to take offens e. In Kazan he was known as the bear ; Turgenev called him the troglodyte. He quarrel ed with Turgenev and almost fought him in a duel. Cf. James Joyce, Ernest Heming way. T. on himself during this period: Yes, I am not modest; and that is why I am proud at heart, but bashful and shy in society. Why am I? One of four sons of a retired lieutenant-colonel, left an orphan at seven years of age in the care of women and strangers, having received neither a social nor an academic education and becoming my own master at the age of seventeen, without a large fortune, wi thout any social position, without above all, my principles. T as outsider, a min ority of a minority. In 1857 T. travelled in western Europe where he witnessed an execution in Paris and saw Dickens give a reading from his works in London (Dickens read from Olive r Twist, but T. remembered it years later as a lecture on education, perhaps a r eflection that T s English was not up to the challenge.). Back at Yasnaya Polyana he devoted much time to establishing a school for peasant children. When he was 34, T. fell in love with Sofya Andreevna Behrs, a spirited girl of 1 8, and they were married in 1862, the start of one of the most documented and to rmented marriages of all time. Tolstoy s early married life was happy and its appe al plays a dominant role in W&P as family life serves as the moral center for th e entire novel. By his mid-30s then, T. had experienced everything he would need to create the grand panorama of life in W&P. Origins of W&P rests on two fundam ental realities of T s personal life=participation in the Crimean War + happy earl y days of his married life in Yasnaya Polyana.

Origin of War & Peace T s first conception of the novel he wanted to write after treating a fictional ve rsion of his background in Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth, the depiction of war i n The Sevastopol Sketches, and a fictional treatment of life in the Caucasus in The Cossacks (1863) was a Novel about a Russian landowner, the relationship betwee n a landlord and his serfs that the imminent emancipation in 1861 had made a cru cial topic. Political/ideological base that would be broadened to encompass the key moments of Russian history in which the essential qualities of the Russian c haracter are defined. By or so es 1863, when T. sat down to begin a new work, emancipation had been in effect f two years and the consequences were not as drastic as anticipated. Tolstoy al shifted view from negative to affirmation of the world based on his experienc as a husband and father.

T. also in 1863 gave lessons in history to peasant children. The students did no t respond to ancient events, so T. took up the Napoleonic Wars and tried to gain their interest by suffusing and transforming the facts by emotions. It has been speculated that T. attempt to teach history to the children was the true genesi s for W&P as he began to meditate on the way the past has been abused by most hi storians. (T=History is nothing but a collection of fables, unnecessary trifles, cluttered up with a mass of unnecessary figures and proper names.). Underlying motive of W&P=contrast between the reality of history as people experience it an d the unreal picture presented by historians. T. began to consider writing a new kind of history that would consider all that historians left out of the history books in their emphasis on the great figures and events. T. would deal with the unwritten historical forces that he was convi nced truly shaped an era. T. had earlier considered a subject for a novel the Decembrist Revolution of 182 5 that was for T. a watershed in Russian history: the first major rebellion agai nst Russia s autocratic rule that was led by noblemen, and gentry class: officers who had battled the French and been exposed to liberal ideas of reform after cha sing Napoleon back to Paris. Rebellion short-lived and brutally put down with th e organizers exiled to Siberia. Subject to be the part his own class played in t he national life of the times. T. began to conceive a novel treating one of the Decembrists who has returned from exile in the 1850s as a lens to consider both the past and present. Protagonist=Petr Labazov, called Pierre who returns after 30 years in exile with his wife Natasha and their two grown children. My Decembri st, T. wrote in 1861, is to be an enthusiast, a mystic, a Christian, returning to Russia in 1856 with his wife and his son and daughter, and applying his sterna a nd somewhat idealized view to the new Russia. Tolstoy in a draft intro to W&P (Norton, p. 1088), written in 1864: In 1856 I started writing a tale with a certain direction, the hero of which was to be a Decembrist returning with his family to Russia. Without intending to do so, I moved from the present time to the year 1825, a period of error and unhap piness for my hero, and I abandoned what I had begun. But even in the year 1825 my hero was already a grown-up family man. In order to understand him, I had to move once again back to his youth, and his youth coincided with the period of 18 12, so glorious for Russia. I abandoned for a second time what I had started and began to write about the year 1812. The odors and sounds of that time are still dear to us but also so remote from us that now we can think about them calmly. But for a third time I abandoned what I had started, not because it was necessar y for me to describe the earliest days of my hero s youth but, on the contrary, be cause among the half-historical, half-social, half-invented great characters of the great era, the personality of my hero was being pushed into the background,

and the foreground was being occupied, with an equal interest for me, by old and young people and by men and women of that time. For the third time I turned bac k to an earlier period, guided by feelings that may seem strange to the majority of readers but which, I hope, will be understood by those whose opinions I valu e. I did it guided by a feeling similar to shyness that I cannot define in a sin gle word. I was ashamed to write about our triumph in the struggle against Bonap arte s France without having described our failures and our shames. Who has not ex perienced that concealed but unpleasant feeling of embarrassment and distrust wh en reading patriotic words about the year 1812? If the cause of our victory was not accidental, but lay in the essence of the character of the Russian people an d army, then that character must be expressed still more clearly in the period o f failures and defeat. So returning from 1856 to 1805, I set out to guide not one but many of m y heroines and heroes from that time onward through the historical events of 180 5, 1807, 1812, 1825, and 1856. I do not foresee the outcome of these characters r elationships in any one of those periods. No matter how much I tried to begin cr eating novel plots and denouements, I became convinced that this is not within m y power, and I decided, in describing these characters, to yield to my habits an d strengths. I tried only to give each part of my work its own independent sourc e of interest. Note that in 1864, T. still conceived a grander chronicle to cover the period 18 05-1856. Note how his concern for his hero grows to his conceptions of multiple heroes and heroines, multiple historical figures. 1812 turned out to be in T s mi nd not the starting point of his story but the climax. Then he needed the contex t of the previous Russian defeat in 1805. Conception grew in T s mind from a satir ic view of contemporary life from the perspective of a former revolutionary, the story of one man and his family, into a national epic to uncover the essence of the character of the Russian people. 1856 1825 1812 1805 the Alexander II comes to the throne and Decembrists pardoned Decembrist Revolution Climax of the war with Napoleon when the Decembrists came into their own Russia s great defeat at the hands of Napoleon that led to Russia s invasion by French.

1865 Section corresponding to Book 1 published serially in the Russian Messenger under the title 1805. T. expressly forbid his editor to refer to it as a novel. 1866 Next installment, corresponding to Book 2 & 3 serialized as War. All s Well that End s Well : to carry the story as far as the retreat from Moscow. Andr ei to recover from his wounds and sacrifice his own feelings when he realizes Na tasha s love for Pierre. Sonya to sacrifice her claim to Nickolai. Petya not kille d in battle; no Karataev; N. and A. with the Russian forces to Paris. June 1866: two sections published in book form as 1805. Draft agreement to publi sh the entire work in March 1867 with the title 1805 crossed out and replaced wi th War and Peace. 1868-1869: 6-volumes published. 1873: drastically revised. Reflective, philosophical passages cut; second epilog ue removed for publication as a pamphlet; number of volumes reduced from 6 to 4. French passages translated. 1886: T s wife (with T s tacit acquiescence) undid her husband s revisions and issued a new version that was virtually the same as the 1868-69 ed. which became the d efinitive ed. Titles 1805 All s Well that End s Well War and Peace

1805 implies it is to be a historical chronical but lacks the philosophical univer sality of War and Peace All s Well suggests a family comedy, focus on family affairs, comedy of manners=fict ional life joined to historical past. War and Peace =brings history, family life together in a universal context: no long er time specific. 3 paths available based on precedent in Russian fiction: 1. Private lives of several families 2. Historical novel mixing fictional characters with historical personages 3. Philosophical novel on the questions of free will/destiny and the nature of history. Most Russian novelists choose one path. T. would interweave and develop all thre e.

What Is War and Peace?: The Genre Question War and Peace initially confused its first readers who couldn t find its center or understand its principles of coherence. Is W&P about war or peace? Is it a hist orical chronicle depicting actual figures or a family chronicle with fictional c haracters? And what about all the long, philosophical essays embedded in the tex t? Novel or chronicle? Fiction or Fact? Daily life or historical? Novels do not usually include so many characters (many of whom appear suddenly and disappear a s suddenly), so many apparently unrelated episodes, or with so much seemingly ex traneous materials. Subsequent critics have similarly attacked the perceived str uctural and thematic disunities of W&P. Some critics have ruled that W&P is magn ificent in its parts but an unsuccessful whole, a disordered heap of accumulated material, a Babel of color and a Babylon of population. Is such criticism justified ? The question of what exactly W&P is novel, epic, miscellany of philosophical essay s was initiated by Tolstoy who refused to let his publisher describe it as a novel . What are T s narrative assumptions and how do they help explain the kind of nove l that W&P is? I. Tolstoy s conception of the non-novel novel T. wrote in Some Words about War and Peace (Norton ed. p. 1090):

What is War and Peace? It is not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less an historical chronicle. War and Peace is what the author wished and was able to express in the form in which it is expressed. Such an announcement of disregard of conventional form in an artistic production might seem presumptuous were it premeditated and were there no precedents for it. But the history of Russian lit erature since the time of Pushkin not merely affords many examples of such devia tion from European form, but does not offer a single example of the contrary. Fr om Gogol s Dead Souls to Dostoevski s House of the Dead, in the recent period of Rus sian literature there is not a single artistic prose work rising at all about me diocrity, which quite fits into the form of a novel, epic, or story. W&P may resemble aspects of a novel, epic, or story (adventure/historical chroni cle) but T. refuses to be limited by the formal assumptions of any one of them. T. writes: This work is more similar to a novel or a tale than to anything else, but it is n

ot a novel because I cannot and do not know how to confine the characters I have created within given limits a marriage or a death after which the interest in the narration would cease. I couldn t help thinking that the death of one character o nly aroused interest in other characters, and a marriage seemed more like a sour ce of complication than diminuation of the reader s interest. I cannot call my wor k a tale because I am unable to force my characters to act only with the aim of proving or clarifying some kind of idea or series of ideas. (Norton, p. 1089) T. points out that a conventional novel is often bounded by the death of a prima ry character or the intrigue leading up to marriage (as all of Jane Austen s novel s demonstrate). However, T. suggests that these are arbitrary boundaries for the kind of novel he wants to write in which there will be many centers of characte r interest, and consideration will exceed typical climaxes of a protagonist s deat h or marriage. Death and marriage are not ends but transitions to different stat es or dimensions. For T. there is no real beginning to any action and nothing ev er really ends, therefore, the conventional novel with a narrowly-defined causal sequence of a set beginning, middle, and end falsifies experience, and he inten ds to avoid this distortion. Justifying his breaking of conventional rules, T writes: Every great artist is bo und also to create his own form. Turgenev and I were once really all that was be st in Russian literature and it proved to be the case that the form of all these works are completely original. Not to mention Pushkin, take Gogol s Dead Souls. W hat is it? Neither a novel nor a long short story. Something completely original . Then there is Turgenev s Diary of a Sportsman, the best thing he ever wrote, Dos toevski s House of the Dead, my Childhood sinner that I am Herzen s My Past and Thoughts and Lermontov s Hero of Our Time. And We Russians generally speaking do not know ho w to write novels in the sense in which the genre is understood in Europe. II. War and Peace as a novel Despite T. defiance of accepted aspects of the novel, W&P does resemble a conven tional novel in key ways: It tells more than one love stories that culminate in marriage. It features many standard situations of narrative interest: a duel, gambling sce ne, a girl s first ball, an attempted abduction, a hero believed dead who returns alive, an attempted suicide. It deals with basic human emotions and conflicts: passion, jealousy, unrequited love, ambition, courage, thirst for adventure, honor, glory. It captures key moments of human experience: birth, adolescence, maturity, marri age, old age, death. It is constructed out of standard narrative elements: journeys, meetings, partin gs. It connects its many narratives and characters by coincidences. Despite being so much more than a conventional novel, at its core W&P is built o ut of standard novel elements, but it is what T. adds to these that pushes the b oundary of what we have come to expect a novel to be. It can be argued that W&P marks a new stage in the history of the novel because of its concern with histor ical, social, psychological, ethical, and religious problems on a scale never be fore attempted by a previous novel. Previously, a novelist might elect to write a historical novel dramatizing a par ticular historical event, era, figures; a novel of growth and development; a phi losophical novel offering an understanding of how we comprehend the world; or a family comedy of manners, T. does all four simultaneously! T. not the greatest in every aspect of a novelist s arsenal: Stendhal and Dostoevs ky are better psychologists; Dostoevsky and Dickens are far greater dramatists;

Turgenev and Austen write with more economy and wit; Fielding and Sterne with mo re humor; Balzac with more period detail and greater social insights, and Emily Bront and Dickens with greater depth of the imagination. But as one critic has ob served, In T. there is a unique combination of intelligence, imagination, and ser iousness of purpose; profundity of thought and profundity of emotion. His novel engages the mind and the heart, brings into play the animal and rational sides o f the reader. Its content is richer, fuller, and more varied than that of any ot her novel before it. III. War and Peace as an epic T., who perhaps admired Homer above all as a writer, stated that War and Peace w ithout false modesty is like the Iliad and that the epic manner is becoming the o nly natural one for me, suggesting that the epic, better than the novel, describe s T. s structure and intention in W&P. Its massive length, panoramic approach, and title clearly establish an epic resemblance. A standard definition of the epic is a long narrative poem on a grand scale, abou t the deeds of warriors and heroes . . . incorporating myth, legend, folk tale a nd history. Epics are often of national significance in the sense that they embo dy the history and aspirations of a nation in a lofty and grandiose manner. (J.A. Cuddon, Dictionary of Literary Terms) Characterists include: 1) hero of imposing stature and importance, of great hist orical or legendary significance; 2) setting vast in scope, representing a natio n, the world, and universe; 3) action consists of deeds of great valor or requir ing superhuman courage recounted by the epic poet with objectivity; 4) supernatu ral forces, including the denizens of heaven and the underworld; 5) style of sus tained elevation and grand simplicity; 6) conventions include: invocation of Mus e and statement of theme; opens in medias res; extended formal speeches by the m ain characters; digressions; battle scenes; catalogs of warriors, ships, armies; epic similes (elaborate comparisons). Note convergence of epic elements in W&P. Core of the epic is a narrative that attempts nothing less than a comprehensive summary of a nation or era s central values (Homer=heroic values/cosmogony of Bron ze Age/Ancient Greeks; Virgil=founding of Rome and what it means to be Roman; Da nte=central understanding of Christianity; Milton=central understanding of Chris tianity; Eliot=undestanding of modern collapse of meaning and faith). Note that yet again T. escalates, combining the central themes of three great ep ics: 1) Iliad: story of men at war; 2) Odyssey: story of a hero s journey home/sto ry of a family; 3) Aeneid: story of a nation. Like the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, and The Divine Comedy, W&P produces a panoramic view of a whole country, culture, and historical era, featuring extensive descr iptions of feasts, balls, hunting parties, and battles, a vast cast or exception al and representative figures, and different levels of action: from the royalty, through war council of generals to ordinary soldiers. Like the Odyssey and the Aeneid, W&P is built out of epic journeys: Napoleon s jou rney into Russia and his return is the main catalyst for the novel. Napoleon s jou rney produces the journeys of others: Andrei/Pierre/Natasha/ Marya/Nicholas. Des tinies become journeys in both a literal and figurative sense, a spiritual, emot ional quest ultimately leading the characters, like Odysseus journey, home (liter ally, in marriage and family, symbolically, in death). Among the characters, it is Andrei who most conforms to the role of the epic her o. Like the great Greek/Trojan heroes like Achilles, Ajax, Hector, Andrei is def ined by a pursuit of glory/honor, which for the Homeric hero was the only means for men to gain immortality.

However, note how often W&P diverges from the classical epic: The gods are noticeably absent. When the all-powerful emperors, like the gods of Homeric epic, mingle with humans they are either helpless (as when Alexander cr ies by the ditch at Austerlitz) or deluded in their sense of omnipotence and omn iscience (as Napoleon takes credit for causing and directing what actually can t b e controlled). Homer s gods often participate in human affairs and assists heroes; here, the gods are ineffectual. Do any of the characters really come up to the courage, skill, ambition, dedicat ion, and strength of Homeric heroes? Nicholas falls from his horse and runs from his attacker; Andrei is struck down before he can carry the day and forced to a cknowledge the emptiness and vanity of glory; Pierre at Borodino is more comic t han heroically effectual. T. writes in W&P: The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which the heroe s formed the whole interest of the story, and we are still unable to accustom ou rselves to the fact that for our age this sort of story is meaningless. Argument can be made that W&P is actually, like Joyce s Ulysses, more a mock-epic, a parody of the epic that alters our understanding of what makes a truly epic story. IV. War and Peace as Parody It can be argued that W&P defines itself ironically by its violations of the rule s of the epic and the novel, that by echoing elements of both and reminding the r eader of key differences T. is writing an anti-epic and anti-novel through parod y. 1. W&P as anti-epic. Going through each of epic characteristics listed abov e, note how T. alters expectations. The main candidate as a Homeric hero Andrei is i neffectual and destroyed by his pursuit of glory and honor. The epic duels betwe en heroes are trivialized (reduced in Book 3 as the tug-of-war over a gun mop be tween a Frenchman and a Russian artilleryman, the outcome we never learn; Nichol ai s throwing his pistol; the bumbling Pierre accidentally hitting Dolokhov). The individuals who emerge for a moment s prominence in W&P lack the tradtional heroic attributes of stature and beauty. True heroism in W&P comes from the little men , like red-faced Timokhin, Tushin (foolish in his bootless feet), Karataev, who smells, and especially the mostly unnamed Russian people who suffer and die anon ymously, overlooked with the credit for heroism going mistakenly to the generals who do nothing. The gods are absent, though Fate complicates the very notion of the hero s will in the face of controlling circumstances. Pierre is the epitome o f the anti-epic hero: fat and near-sighted, passive and helpless in the face of attack. Is any character in literature less like Achilles, Hector, Aeneas, or Od ysseus (yes, Leopold Bloom). He is nevertheless T s candidate for greatness whom T . will argue is far more admirable and a model than any of these. 2. W&P as anti-novel. T s multiplication of characters and episodes that push es the boundary of a novel s coherence and unity causes us to re-evaluate our assu mptions about conventional novels. What is more truthful to the actual flux of e xperience: the crowded, messy texture of W&P or a conventional novel with its ar bitrary beginning, middle, and end and arrangement of circumstances into a pleas ing climax. What is the beginning, middle, and end of your life? What is the plo t and climax of your life? To the extent that the novelist imposes a coherence o n the chaos of experience, he, like the historian (to T. another novelist), fals ifies by claiming importance for one set of circumstances while omitting others that are of equal (or greater importance). T. through parody and the violation of accepted narrative rules undermines our a ssumptions about the truthfulness of all narratives. Like Nicholas telling about his experiences at Schon Grabern, all storytellers (novelists, epic poets, hist orians) are guilty, T. suggests, of falsification. By framing an experience, the storyteller distorts reality; by selection (the definition of what artist do),

the storyteller emphasizes something over other things and thereby invalidates f ull truthfulness. T. therefore challenges our most fundamental belief: that we c an know anything with certainty, that beneath the randomness of experience there is a set of rules, a system, a pattern that explain everything. For T. the worl d fits no orderly pattern and we must learn to prefer ambiguity and uncertainty over consoling simplifications. All storytellers leave out what doesn t fit their purpose and assume causal links where there are none. Anna S s salon (order) vs. battlefield (chaos). T. understood experience as the co llision of the centripetal and centrifugal forces: social codes that impose orde r and regularity on the otherwise unpredictable and forces that upset that order by introducing random elements, new potentialities, and ultimately the conditio ns for human freedom. By enabling people to believe that events do make sense, h istorians and novelists supply a narrow, reductive version of experience that en slaves to the false, rather than liberates to the true, which is T. s intention in W&P. V. What the Critics Have Said Aristotle: Of all plots and actions the episodic are the worst. Neither the life o f a single man nor a single period of time will yield a good plot: For infinitely various are the incidents in one man s life, which cannot be reduced to unity; an d so, too, there are many notions of one man but of which we cannot make one act ion. C.S. Lewis: I thought that the strong narrative lust, the passionate itch to see w hat happened in the end which novels arroused . . . ruined the taste for other, b etter, but less irresistible forms of literary pleasure. . . . Tolstoy, in his b ook, has changed all that. I have felt everywhere . . . that sublime and indiffe rence to the life or death, success or failure, of the chief characters, which i s not a blank indifference at all, but almost like submission to the will of God . Henry James: Tolstoy is a reflector as vast as a natural lake; a monster harnesse d to his great subject all human life! as an elephant might be harnessed, for purpos es of traction, not to a carriage, but to a coach-house. His own case is prodigi ous, but his example for others dire: disciples not elephantine he can only misl ead and betray. Percy Lubbock: T. supplies a theory drummed into the reader with merciless iterat ion, desolating many a weary page. . . T s artistic sense deserts him in expoundin g it. . . . He whose power of making a story tell itself is unsurpassed, is capa ble of thrusting into his book interminable chapters of comment and explanation, chapters in the manner of a controversial pamphlet. And: War and Peace is like an Iliad, the story of certain men, and an Aeneid, the story of a nation, compress ed into one book by a man who never so much as noticed that he was Homer and Vir gil by turns. A.N. Wilson: Like many self-obsessed people, he was entirely lacking in self-know ledge which is why, for the next twenty years, he was able to write fiction with the self-detachment of a saint. It was only when he decided that fiction would not do, and that a saint, rather than a novelist, was what he was cut out to be, that the real trouble began. VI. What Tolstoy Has Said On digressions: I notice that I have a bad habit of digressing and that it s precis ely this habit and not, as I used to think, a teeming of ideas that disturbs my writing and makes me get up from my desk and start thinking about something comp letely different from what I ve been writing about. It s a ruinous habit. Despite th

e great talent for narration and clever chatter of my favorite writer, Sterne, e ven his digressions are tiresome. (1851) On starting W&P: Never have I felt my intellectual, and even all my moral, powers to be so free and so ready for work. And I have work to do. It is a novel, cove ring the period of 1810 and the 1820s, with which I ve been wholly occupied since autumn. Perhaps it shows weakness of character, or perhaps strength sometimes I th ink one and sometimes the other but I must confess that my view of life, of the pe ople and of society is now utterly different from what it was. (1863) On mixed characters: I have never met a man who was all bad, all pride, all good , or all intelligent. In modesty I can always find a repressed urge towards prid e. I see stupidity in the most intelligent book, intelligent things in the conve rsation of the greatest fool alive, etc. And: I never saw lips of coral, but I hav e seen them the color of brick; nor torquoise eyes, but I have seen them the col or of laundry blueing. On characterization: It seems to me that it is really impossible to describe a ma n, but it is possible to describe the effect he produces on me. On description: Commenting that the accepted method of logical step by step desc ription has become now impossible in literature: First a description of the chara cters, even their biographies, then a description of locality and milieu, and on ly then the beginning of the action. And it s a strange thing that all these descr iptions, sometimes dozens of pages long, tell the readers less about the charact ers then some casually thrown out artistic detail in the course of the action al ready in progress between people who have not been described at all. And: Descript ion for the author is a bad thing in literature one should describe how this or th at thing is reflected in one s characters. On the shift of emphasis in contemporary literature: Now, quite rightly, is the n ew school of literature, interest in the details of feeling is taking the place of interest in the events themselves. On the imagination: Imagination is a mirror of nature which we carry in ourselves and in which it presents itself. The most beautiful imagination is the clearest and most truthful mirror, the one we call genius. A genius does not create, it retraces. On the clarity of the author s vision: It is necessary for a man to know clearly an d without doubt what is good and evil to see plainly the dividing line between t hem and consequently to paint not what is, but what should be. And he should pai nt what should be as though it already was, so that for him what should be might already be. (1887) On objectivity: The Gospel words judge not ray, but do not judge. (1857) On the artist: The artist ake us love life. are profoundly true in art: relate, port

instead of proving something objectively . . . is to m

On the aims of the artist: The aims of an artist are incommensurate (as the mathe maticians say) with social aims. The aim of the artist is not to solve a problem irrefutably but to make people love life in all its countless inexhaustible man ifestations. If I were to be told that I could write a novel whereby I might irr efutably establish what seemed to me the correct point of view on all social pro blems, I would not even devote two hours work to such a novel; but if I were to be told that what I should write would be read in about 20 years time by those w ho are now children, and they would laugh and cry over it and love life, I would devote all my own life and all my energies to it. (1865)

Comparing the aim of the historian and the artist: The historian is concerned wit h the results of an event, the artist with the fact of an event. On the conclusion of W&P: What I have expressed in the epilogue of the novel, wit hout quotations and references, is not the momentary fancy of my mind but the in evitable conclusions of seven years of work, which I had to do. On freedom and necessity and history: My thoughts about the limits of freedom and necessity and my view of history are not chance paradoxes, which I have taken u p for the moment. These thoughts are the fruits of all my mental labor of life, and they constitute an inseparable part of that world view which God knows with what labor and suffering I worked out and which has given me complete peace and happiness. Nevertheless, I know and knew that the tender scenes about young girl s, the satire of Speransky, the trifles of that kind would be praised, because p eople are capable of understanding only those things. But no one will take notic e of what is important. On fatalism and free will: storical events. Fatalism for man is just as foolish as free will in hi

Tolstoy and History History and the Origins of War and Peace It has been suggested that one of the crucial factors in Tolstoy s launching War a nd Peace derived from his experience teaching history to the children of serfs o n his estate in the school he founded. He discovered that he was unable to rouse their interest in the distant past but stories connected to 1812 and the French invasion succeeded in capturing the students imagination, particularly when reco unted by master storyteller Tolstoy. Reading himself extensively in historical a ccount, Tolstoy was struck by their biases, misconceptions, and avoidance of the the forces of ordinary life that T. was convinced contribute more to shaping ev ents than any king, diplomat, general, etc. Participation in the siege at Sevast opol and the contrast between his experiences and historical accounts must have also contributed to this view. Historians, in T s view, are as much storytellers a s novelists are in their selection of data for emphasis and significance. As nov elists contrive pleasing and significant patterns of idealizations, historians f alsify when they concentrate on single causes for historical events when in fact there are myriad of causes, each as valid as another, and when they attribute t he cause of events to the will of a so-called great man: Why does the apple fall ? To test T s thesis: 1) consider writing a history of 9/11. What caused it? Note wh enever you decide to start, you could go further back in time for determining fa ctors. Who should be considered? Is 9/11 a battle between Bin Laden and Bush? Is it the story of Rudy Guilliani? Or is the history of 9/11 made up by the collec tively experiences of everyone who died (and lived on)? 2) consider writing a hi story of your experiences yesterday. What details from the millions of impressio ns you processed did you select and why? Is what you left out conceivably as imp ortant or more important because it was less memorable: more revealing of what y esterday was truly like for you? War and Peace, therefore, could be seen as a new kind of historical narrative th at contrasts the reality of history as people experience it with the unreal pict ure presented by historians. T. alternates between a historical chronicle of eve nts, involving actual historical figures and a fictional narrative meant to repr esent the deeper significance of the inner meaning and significance of the past

that is controlled, in T. view, by the collective will of ordinary individuals. War and Peace as Historical Novel Pioneered by Walter Scott in the early 19th-century, the novel began to treat th e historical past like it had done the present: with immediacy and a clarity in which historical eras were shown to be both different and similar to the present . By first titling his opening section of W&P, 1805, T. announced his intention of transporting his readers back in time to a particular historical moment. The evolving novel mixed invented characters and situations with historical events a nd actual figures. However, T s initial readers criticized the relative absence of period descriptions, the evident anachronisms, and the incompleteness of its hi storical chronicle. Compared to other historical novelists, T. supplies scanty d etails of period customs or what people wore, ate, what the interior of their ho uses looked like. What does a street scene in Moscow in 1812 really looked like? Compared to historical accounts of the battles of Austerlitz and Borodino, the reader is struck with how much T. has left out or filtered through the limited p erspectives of his characters. His fictional protagonists like Andrei and Pierre seem more like contemporaries than ancestors. T. also willingly violates the ru les of historical accuracy by departing from sources and entering the thoughts o f historical figures like Napoleon and Kutuzov and violates the historical recor d by having his fictional creations take over historical roles Lavrushka as the Co ssack interviewed by Napoleon, Denisov proposing the guerrilla war campaign. Tolstoy rather testily takes on complaints about the historical accuracy and aim of W&P in his Some Words about War and Peace, first published in 1868 and reprint ed in the Norton ed. on pp. 1089-1096. In the section, The character of the perio d, T. addresses the complaint that the characteristics of the period are insufficie nt by acknowledging that readers do not find in his novel the horrors of serfdom, the immuring of wives, the flogging of grown-up sons, Sa ltykova, and so on [in other words what people think of as characteristics of th e first decade of the 19th c. in Russia], but I do not think that these characte ristics of the period as they exist in our imagination are correct, and I did no t wish to reproduce them. On studying letters, diaries, and traditions, I did no t find the horrors of such savagery to a greater extent than I find them now, or at any other period. In those days also people loved, envied, sought truth and virtue, and were carried away by passion; and there was the same complex mental and moral life among the upper classes, who were in some instances even more ref ined than now. If we have come to believe in the perversity and coarse violence of that period, that is only because the traditions, memoirs, stories, and novel s that have been handed to us record for the most part exceptional cases of viol ence and brutality. To suppose that the predominant characteristic of that perio d was turbulence is as unjust as it would be for a man seeing nothing but the to ps of trees beyond a hill, to conclude that there was nothing to be found in tha t locality but trees. That period had its own characteristics (as every epoch ha s) which resulted from the predominant alienation of the upper class from other classes, from the religious philosophy of the time, from peculiarities of educat ion, from the habit of using the French language, and so forth. That is the char acter I tried to depict as well as I could. T. makes clear that he is less interested in the exceptions but the rules, the u niversal points of connections in human nature and the human condition that link s his past epoch with ours. Period detail is not as important, T. suggests, as m ore essential truths that reveal the universal in the particular historical mome nt. As to the divergence between his description of historical events and that given by historians, T. declares,

This was not accidental but inevitable. An historian and an artist describing an historic epoch have two quite different tasks before them. As an historian woul d be wrong if he tried to present an historical person in his entirety, in all t he complexity of his relations with all sides of life, so the artist would fail to perform his task were he to represent the person always in his historical sig nificance. Kutuzov did not always hold a telescope, point at the enemy, and ride a white horse. Rostopchin was not always setting fire with a torch to the Voron ovski House (which in fact he never did), and the Empress Marya Fedorovna did no t alwaysstand in an ermine cloak leaning her hand on the code of laws, but that is how the popular imagination pictures them. For an historian considering the achievement of a certain aim, there are heroes; for an artist treating of man s relation to all sides of life, there cannot and s hould not be heroes, but there should be men. An historian is sometimes obliged, by bending the truth, to subordinate all the actions of an historical personage to the one idea he has ascribed to that perso n. The artist, on the contrary, finds the very singleness of that idea incompati ble with his problem, and tries to understand and show not a certain actor but a man. The historian, T. argues, is dominated by a thesis, an interpretation of a histo rical character and events, selecting and emphasizing the details that support t he thesis. The artist, T. declares, must resist simplification and instead deal with the complexity, ambiguity, contradictions, multiplicity of experience. In d ealing with historical events, T. writes: The historian has to deal with the results of an event, the artist with the fact of the event. . . . For the historian (to keep to the case of a battle) the chi ef source is found in the reports of the commanding officers and of the commande r in chief. The artist can draw nothing from such sources; they tell him nothing and explain nothing to him. More than that: the artist turns away from them as he finds inevitable falsehood in them. To say nothing of the fact that after any battle the two sides nearly always describe it in quite contradictory ways, in every description of a battle there is a necessary lie, resulting from the need of describing in a few words the actions of thousands of men spread over several miles and subject to most violent moral excitement under the influence of fear, shame, and death. Tolstoy asserts a relativity of perspective in historical accounts that makes th e absolute claims of historians problematic. Is Napoleon s view of the battle more or less valid than the ordinary soldier s? Is the novelist s selection of details, even invention of them, more or less valid than what the historian selects to em phasize? T. concedes only this: An artist must not forget that the popular conception of h istorical persons and events is not based on fancy but on historical documents i n as far as the historians have been able to group them, and therefore, though h e understands and presents them differently, the artist like the historian shoul d be guided by historical material. Whereever in my novel historical persons spe ak or act, I have invented nothing, but have used historical material of which I have accumulated a whole library during my work. War and Peace and the Battle with History In a sense Tolstoy is doing nothing more than what most historical novelists do to justify their interpretation and handling of history: claiming a rival standa rd of truth to go beyond a slavish adherence to the historical record. Who has b etter captured the inner dynamics of Napoleon? Tolstoy or the record of Napoleon s victories and defeats? Is the experience of battle better judged from the persp

ective of the commander in chief or from the limited, unreliable perspective of the foot soldier? If the historical artist violates the letter of the biography or event, he/she can claim to have reached the spirit of both, and truth through lying, which is what creative writers do. Think about all the anachronism in Sh akespeare s history plays. But consider the truths revealed by his dubious history ! However, Tolstoy has more in mind in his assault on conventional history than ju stifying violations or mounting a counterclaim of the truth of the imagined over the verifiable. At the core of W&P, in its essential theme, its unconventional structure, and in its characters development, is the drive toward liberation from the tyranny of the historical viewpoint. The historian, like the Freemason, the political reformer, the military strategi st, and the doctor, in T s view, is a systematizer, someone who insists that behin d the multiplicity of apparent accidental or random experience can be detected a set of rules, a system, or a pattern to explain things. This is the cornerstone of rational thought: that human reason can solve the problems of the universe. As the doctor solves the mysteries of the human body, the strategist the forces at p lay on the battlefield, the historian uncovers the underlying rules and principl es that explain the past. In W&P any search for a pattern in events, in self, or in the universe is always nave, if not absurd. History, the world, and the self fit no orderly pattern and are too multiple, contradictory, variable to be reduced to rule. Because such a search assumes an underlying attempt to control what is unknowable, to limit th e illimitable, it both falsifies and is ultimately destructive. History, T. asse rts, leaves out what does not fit what the historian wants to see, and assumes c ausal links where there are none. Historians mistake one of a myriad of causes ( Napoleon did this . . . ) as the sole cause, and ignores the rest, finding only evidence to support a theory while invalidating equally important sources for th e causes of events and human actions and outcomes. In T s universe, chaos reigns u nopposed. Life is fundamentally uncertain, incomprehensible, and historians and other systemitizers ensnare their customers in consoling falsehoods that experie nce is orderly, that men control their destinies, that events do finally make se nse. The really important agents in the force of history, T. asserts, no one not ices because they are so common and because there is nothing dramatic about them . Great men don t control history; they are controlled by history. It s swarm life the c ollective assertion of the mass that truly shapes history. What matters most is no t whether Moscow is defended or abandoned, whether it is burned or preserved, th ough those questions have dominated historical accounts of 1812, but the next-to -last breath of someone like Andrei, Pierre s encounter with Karataev, Natasha s rec overy, evidence of the swarm life that no history book ever celebrates. Historians, in T s view, despite claiming objectivity and impartiality are as rule d by subjective bias as any other storyteller. Historians are novelists by other means. They both select from the endless, a beginning, middle, and end, a few c ausal lines from among an infinitely large number that governs real events and m isrepresent and miss what is most important. W&P, therefore offers an alternativ e version of the historical and novelistic narrative fitted to T s notion of multi plicity and uncertainty. It must be huge: only in its hundreds of pages, immense cast, and clash of real and imagined events can one approximate the staggering richness of experience. History has no beginning, middle, and end, and T. shows that his novel won t eithe r. W&P could keep going further and further back and forward in time. Is anythin g actually resolved by the conclusion of W&P in the manner of conventional novel s or historical accounts? Action is allowed to trail off and often fails to accelerate into climaxes. Hist ory lacks a plot beyond a linear sequence of events. Because it is impossible to

determine causality without misrepresenting, T. s novel will also be plot-less in the conventional sense either as a historical chronicle or as a novel. Structure of W&P is emblematic of the historical process as T. conceived it: see mingly insignificant events may or may not turn out to be the most important, wh ile significant events may not have the effect foreseen (who would have predicte d that the staggering losses of half the Russian army at Borodino or the abandon ment and destruction of Moscow would have insured the French defeat and Russian victory?). Chance as well as design drives events (note the number of coincidenc es that riddle W&P). The structure of the novel is designed to encompass the bre adth of relevant and irrelevant detail that is characteristic of life itself. Tolstoy, therefore, is attempting to write a version of true history, an oxymoron, that is, a version of experience that avoids the misrepresentations of historic al and novelistic accounts by breaking the tyranny of systems for the anarchy of experience itself. The lectures T. makes on the nature of history serve two major functions: they challenge conventional wisdom, while clearing the ground for th e application of his theories in his depiction of events and characters. War and Peace and the Battle of Free Will and Necessity Tolstoy s notion of history as random, uncertain, and ruled by chance, of being mo ved not by an individual s will but by the collective (and determined) will and di verse chances, undermines the fundamental principle of the realistic novel: that individuals have free will and are accountable for their actions. If no one per son can direct events, if he/she is in fact ruled by infinite forces beyond his/ her control, what becomes of moral choice and responsibility? Why bother to choo se one course of action over another, if whatever I choose is inevitable? If the re is no free choice, then no one is to blame. Despite T s deterministic depiction of history in which necessity controls destiny in which the swarm life inevitably triumphs over individual life, the novel gravi tates nevertheless toward expressions of free will and the assertion of moral va lues. How to reconcile this paradox? The answer goes to the nub of the search of T s characters for the meaning of exis tence, the right way to act, and the right principle of dealing with reality. On the historical side, contrast Napoleon and Kutuzov. Napoleon thinks he is free to choose, but he is shown to be ruled by necessity. Kutuzov s freedom comes from, as Andrei recognizes, his understanding that there is something stronger and mor e important than his own will. K s motto: patience and time defines a free necessity : b y giving up the illusion of control, he breaks down the limitation of self and e nters into a liberating consciousness. It is the same concept that characterize the best moments of T s fictional characters Nicholai and the wolf hunt, Natasha at th e ball and Uncle s, Andrei s multiple moments, and Pierre s as a prisoner. Note that o nly when P. gives up everything that previously defined him and as a captive doe s he find the freedom that liberates his consciousness, T s ultimate definition of freedom. True freedom for T. is not the power to initiate or control events but the consciousness of reality. The further and richer the consciousness, the gre ater the breakdown of the barrier between Self and Other, the freer one is. Reas on denies the freedom of man (as Andrei learns tragically); consciousness affirm s it. One s consciousness sets in motion our free acts, which contribute to necess ity, or the totality of free actions. Freedom, therefore is necessity, and neces sity is freedom.

Tolstoy and Dostoevsky Russian literary historian D. S. Mirsky has asserted that Tolstoy . . . seems to have been given to the world for the special purpose of being contrasted with Do

stoevsky. Tolstoy is Moscow; Dostoevsky is Petersburg; Tolstoy is high noon; Dost oevsky, midnight. Tolstoy s telescope is contrasted with Dostoevsky s microscope; To lstoy s expansive, clarity and inclusiveness versus Dostoevsky s intensive narrowing and dark tunneling into the wellsprings of the human psyche and core existentia l truths. Tolstoy s celebration of the physical, ordinary life, and wholeness clas hes with Dostoevsky s probing of mental states, extremes, and the isolated and div ided self. While all of this is certainly true in broad strokes, what both share can be as significant as the points of divergence. Let me try to deal with both . Tolstoy never met Dostoevsky (1821-1881), but they were certainly aware of the o ther and followed each other s careers with interest. The only one of Dostoevsky s b ooks that Tolstoy admired unreservedly was the collection of realistic prison sk etches, The House of the Dead (1862). T. would complain of the implausible contr ivance of D s novels and of D s characters talking alike, like their creator. He wou ld, however, endorse many of D s views, particularly D s skepticism about Western ra tionalism and progress and support of indigenous Russian cultural and spiritual values. He would write that the best works of art of our time convey feelings imp elling to the unity and brotherhood of men (such as the works of Dickens, Hugo, Dostoevsky . . . ). Dostoevsky resisted W&P calling it Nothing more than historic al pictures of times long past and denied T s originality and genius. He would writ e that Russian literature had been a landowners literature, and he found that it had sail all that it had to say (splendidly in Tolstoy). But this pre-eminently lan downers word was the last one. There was still now new word to replace the landow ners . Dostoevsky s was to be the new word to deal, not with Russia s gentry class, but the landless, petty officials, urban intelligentsia, the poor. Biographical Correspondences Despite their class differences, both writers were shaped by personal traumas, b ut in the case of D. by extreme versions of similar traumas. Born in a Moscow ho spital for the poor where his father, a violent, domineering alcoholic, was a re sident physician, D. would be haunted by his father s murder in 1839 by his serfs, which helps to explain why murder and violent crimes center almost all of D s sto ries. D s favorite writers included Pushkin, Gogol, and Lermontov, Walter Scott, t he English Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe, Balzac, Dickens, and Hugo. After gradu ating from a military engineering school, D. published his first two works of fi ction, Poor Folks (an exchange of letters between a poor civil servant and a sea mstress) and The Double (about a man haunted by a look-alike who eventually usur ps his position and leads him to insanity), in 1846. The first was hailed for it s subject of lower-class Russian life, previously ignored by Russian writers. Th e second was unappreciated as overly fantasical. Both, however, indicate that th e focus of D s art was psychological rather than social and show D. experimenting with narrative forms that would allow direct, unmediated access to the conscious ness of his characters, shown disintegrating under conflicting conceptions of id entity. In 1849, D. was arrested as a member of a utopian, socialist discussion group, a nd sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to penal servitude and Siberian exile only after the enactment of a mock execution designed to teach the conspi rators a lesson. D would spend four years in chains in a prison among the dregs of humanity and a further five years as a common soldier at a Siberian frontier post near the Mongolian border. The whole Siberian experience transformed D. and his convictions. His firsthand knowledge of the criminal mind led him to the re alization of basic irrationality of human nature and its capacity for evil. It a lso disabused him of his previous belief that political solutions could ever rem edy a corrupt soul. In Siberia, D. learned that salvation was to be found not in political or institutional reform but in a complete religious and moral convers ion. When he returned from exile in 1859, he was a writer with a mission to chal lenge faith in progress, materialism, and the intellect and promulgate a faith i

n the superiority of native Russian cultural and moral values over those of the West, ideological themes that would shape his subsequent writing. Like T., therefore, D. was haunted by parental death (but in the case of D, by v iolent death). D. nearly directly experienced the kind of execution that T. witn essed in Paris and would haunt his imagination (note that T. would provide a ver sion of D s firing squad experience in W&P). T. would gain important lessons of li fe and death during his soldiering years in the Caucasus and during the Crimean War. He would witness the pointlessness of war, its difference from how it is de scribed by historians, and the remarkable strength and capacities of the common Russian people. He would also experience the same gambling mania that addicted D . Dostoevsky in prison and as a common soldier similarly attained an awareness o f human evil and suffering as well and the capacity of the ordinary Russian to m eet it by faith. Both returned from their experiences transformed and committed to challenge conventional wisdom in their writings. D. would reassess his previo us liberal ideas to concentrate on themes of spiritual and indigenous Russian re generation by dramatizing the well-springs and mysteries of his characters psyche s and souls. T. would set his war experiences next to his subsequent experiences as a husband and father with family life leading him to core moral and spiritua l principles. Like D. T. would also express skepticism of Western ideas of intel lectual progress and his faith in Russian nationalism and simple Christianity. B oth writers would increasingly take on prophetic roles, and their art would give way to the polemical. Dostoevsky s Art D s art as a novelist can be understood best in the context of three major context s: drama, psychology, and ideology. Drama Called the Russian Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, like Dickens, is fundamentally a drama tic novelist who arranges his often highly-contrived fictional circumstances to push his characters to extremes, to theatrical crises and conflicts that externa lize and illuminate inner states and universal meaning. Almost all of D s novels a re built around a mystery or crime that is probed for what it reveals about moti ve and human nature. Poe had earlier shown how crime and detection could serve a psychological/metaphysical purpose. Dickens preceded Dostoevsky in the use of a dversity to reveal character, in employing crime and detection as a means of rea ching a character s state of mind and demonstrating how society is entangled in ca use and effect. It is Dostoevsky, however, who brought the plot devices of myste ry and suspence to a masterly fulfilment, who transformed the theatrical crime n ovel into one of the most searching existential and psychological explorations e ver attempted in fiction. Like Dickens s intention of treating the romantic side of familiar things, Dostoevsk y would call his particular version of heightened experience, fantastic realism. H e would observe that I have completely different ideas about reality and realism from our realists and critics. My idealism is more real than theirs. And I have my own view of reality in art and what in the view of most people verges on the fa ntastic and the exceptional is sometimes the very essence of the real for me. Alt hough D. would be criticized for emphasising the unseamly sides of the human con dition and unattractive, abnormal aspects of human nature, D s novel, like Dickens s , are realistic in their details but finally more interested in the ideal, unive rsal truth to be discovered beneath the surface of things. Less an observer than a visionary, D shapes experience into artistic dramatic designs to reveal that significance. By contrast, Tolstoy s art is closer to the epic than the dramatic. Like the epic poet, T. tells multiple stories, joining a large cast over a significant expanse

of time and setting. The epic writer records the past; his encyclopedic intenti on is ruled by the compound sentence linking multiple stories; the dramatic writ er doesn t so much tell a story as have his characters enact it, in a vividly port rayed present in which story becomes plot. E.M. Forster has famously described t he distinction: The queen died, and then the king died =story; The queen died and th en the king died of grief =plot. It is the relationship of episodes that transform s a chronological sequence into a meaningful plot. We have already emphasized the violations of the dramatic method in T s novel stra tegy (too many stories; too few climaxes; too much that is unconnected and unres olved). This makes W&P very unlike a typical D s novel that aims at concentration and intensity with fewer characters in a highly contrived, exceptional series of actions. However, what both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy share is the conception that truth is dialectic, reached by a juxtaposition of opposites. For D. this energi zes his narratives into theatrical collisions; in T. it shapes the multiplicity of his panorama into a pattern of contrasts, parallels, and associations. D. is far more willing than T. to contrive narrative extremes to push his characters t o reveal what is hidden, to uncover key ideal patterns beneath the surface of th ings. T. mostly allows the surface to dominate, working only gradually to climax es derived from his characters natures and the normal process of life. T s method i s centrifugal, ever expanding outward our apprehension of the world; D s method is centripetal, ever reducing down to a significant core in which the mystery of m otive and experience is exposed. T. is convinced that the average, routine, and ordinary conditions of life provides that core meaning; D s forte is crises and is convinced that truth is revealed in the exceptional. Psychology Dostoevsky s novels take for their central subjects man as a solitary being: isola ted, displaced, alienated, an outsider forced to confront exceptional situations that test values and understanding. T. looks at how his characters behave in mu ltiple relationships; D. with who his characters are, with what makes them tick. At the core of T s characters are central truths, of temperament, personality, an d emotions; at the center of D s characters are secrets, paradoxes, contradictions that resist disclosure. Crime and Punishment, for example, though a murder myst ery, is not a who dunnit (we know Raskolnikov is guilty from the start), but a w hy dunnit, so that even the murderer himself tries to solve his own motive and w hat it implies. At the center of D s novel is the mytery of human existence and hu man nature that finally resists solution. The deeper D s novels penetrate the more we encounter contradictions, paradoxes, the irrational. From the beginning of the novel s development, writers had gravitated to points al ong a continuum between the external and the internal, between directing the rea der s attention outward and extending fiction s command of more and more aspects of human life and inward to the recesses of human consciousness itself, diagnosing the causes of human behavior in the interplay between our conscious and unconsci ous thoughts and desires. If T. tried to comprehend more about life than was eve r attempted before in fiction, D. did the same to our inner life. T s characters a re embodied; they seem fully rooted in physical life than virtually any other fi ctional characters. As we see them in action they grow more and more real in our mind, more recognizable and familiar to us. In contrast, D s characters are excep tional human beings in exceptional situations. The critic John Bayley has writte n, Like those of many good detective stories, his characters begin in the world o f fact and contingency and end in that of dramatic convention, of marvellous men tal solution. T s characters become more and more real; D s become more and more fant astic as their nightmares, obsessions, and distorted perspective begins to cast an eerie glow over the proceedings. D s characters begin as exceptions and end as archetypes. T s characterization begins with their bodies; D. begins with their mi nds. With the Underground Man and Raskolnikov we are locked in their mental worl d and begin to see through their eyes. As in a Kafka novel, external detail poin

ts us toward interior significance. There is no objectivity in D s novels, only th e clash of subjectivity. If T. aspired to a clarity of view (in both close-up an d long shots), D. s view is more expressionistic, the attempt to objectify inner e xperience and show the distortions caused by subjective viewpoint. Although more mimetic and representational in his approach, Tolstoy shared D s awa reness of the relativity of perspective. He characteristically narrates through a character s perspective. Like D. Tolstoy at times makes strange, presenting the fa miliar in ways that their oddity, grotesqueness, and inner meaning are uncovered (think of Pierre s view of his father s death; Christmas at Otradnoe, Natasha at th e opera). T. also allows us access to the deepest reaches of some of his charact ers mental and emotional states. He experiments with the stream of consciousness technique that attempts to replicate associative mental activity; dreams play a role in his presentation of character (note Pierre s diary). However, character in T. is more stable and consistent than in Dostoevsky. For T. the unknowable (but liberating and joyful) is the illimitable, incomprehensible nature of life itse lf, represented by the sky; for D. the unknowable is the terrifying mystery of m ind, heart, and soul, represented at the deepest abyss of human consciousness it self where consciousness becomes the unconsciousness, rationality becomes irrati onality, waking thoughts become dreams, become nightmares. Ideology Dostoevsky s theatrical plots and characters begin to represent the clash of ideas , of alternative understandings of human nature and the human condition. D s novel s are less about people and behavior than they are about ideas. D. arranges deba te on essential questions of existence, including whether God exists, the origin of evil in the universe, how faith is possible in a world of suffering and inju stice. D. is the pioneer of the polyphonic novel the clash of multiple viewpoints in search of fundamental solutions to the most baffling questions of human existen ce. At times, D s novels lapse from drama to metaphysics, and his characters can s eem little more than debate positions: contrived and schematic. D. cannot resist the temptation of answering the questions he has raised, and the solution provi ded (Christian simplicity, Russian nationalism, etc.) impress less than his extr aordinary ability to assault consoling illusions and test assumptions. D s self-st yle role as a prophet is shared with T. Both writers see themselves as aesthetic teachers, and at times, they shift from showing to telling, foregoing their ima ginative powers for the essay and sermon. The conclusion of D s Crime and Punishme nt shows the novelist arranging an abstract consolation that the main body of hi s drama resisted. We can see the battle T. fought between the imaginative artist and the sermonizer in the clash of his fictional story and the essays on histor y and free will and determinism that more and more dominates the second half W&P . Tolstoy and Dickens Tolstoy would write in 1904: I think that Charles Dickens is the greatest novel w riter of the 19th century, and that his works, impressed with the true Christian spirit, have done and will continue to do a great deal of good to mankind. Ther e are references in Tolstoy s letters and journals to Oliver Twist, David Copperfi eld, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Hard Times, Tale of Two Cities, and Our Mutual Friend. He would record that the impression made on him by reading David Copperf ield as a teenager was enormous, and would write in 1886 that Dickens interests me more and more. What can Dickens teach us about Tolstoy methods as a novelist? In two ways, both by how T. was influenced by Dickens and differed from him. Biographical Correspondences

Dickens (1812-1870) would die just after W&P appeared, and, although D. was of t he previous generation, there are some striking resemblances in their background s and careers. It can be argued that the motivation and trajectory of D s relentle ss assault on fame and fortune can be traced back to the central trauma of his l ife: his being at age 12 cast out of his home to live on his own and work as as a common laborer while his mother and siblings followed his father to live in de btors prison. Dickens, raised as a young gentleman and encouraged in his intellec tual and artistic ability, felt that the ground gave way underneath him and he f ell into the lower depths. Though eventually rescued to resume his schooling, he would keep this shame a secret from even his wife and family until he reopened the wound in David Copperfield. It is possible to see D s ambition as driven to ov ercome this event, as well as the source of his social and moral consciousness t hat tried to conceive why children and innocents could be treated this way in a supposedly Christian society. Tolstoy is similarly haunted by the early deaths o f both his mother and father and the later deaths of his brothers. For T., like D., childhood was a paradise lost, and all his subsequent work stems from a desi re to know why, to evolve a philosophy that copes with human loss and mortality. For D. the fleeting nature of success and ultimately the corrupting nature of m oney give him his central themes as a writer; for T. it s the meaning of life in t he face of death that absorbed him as a core theme. Both D. and T. raised immense families and were identified with the contentment of hearth and home. Yet both had ultimately tormented marriages that led to diff ering versions of separation. D. literally lived apart from his wife; T. figurat ively lived apart from his. Their children, whom they both adored, mainly disapp ointed them. Both D. and T. after achieving all they could have imagined in fame and fortune from their writing became increasingly critical of the societies th at they had surmounted and the implications of their success. D. would translate his discontent into scathing attacks on the nature of society and the distortio ns and corruptions it causes on individuals; T. would eventually disown his fict ion as worthless and the social values of his time as hopeless. Both D. and T. t ook seriously their roles as teachers and exposers of social and moral abuses. D . would continue to address social concerns in his fictions to the end; T. would largely abandon fiction for polemics. D. ended his life as an actor and perform er of his works, embodying his creations; T. as a sermonizer and saint who tried to embody his preachings. Dickens s Methods as a Novelist Unlike many modern novelists, D. is a more traditional storyteller who employs s uch theatrical elements as secrets, surprises, and coincidences to heighten susp ense and uncover universal patterns of significance beneath the surface of thing s. His fictional formula, expressed in the preface to Bleak House, is to show th e romantic side of familiar things. D. therefore, combined the realistic and recog nizable with distortions and idealizations that shaped ordinary experience into significant and pleasing artistic design. For D. fidelity to fact is not as impo rtant as consistency to a greater artistic truthfulness. D. is less a realistic than a surrealist or expressionist. His novels are built on conflict, with drama tic action largely replacing authorial analysis and commentary. My notion always is, D. observed. that when I have made the people to play out the play, it is, as it were, their business to do it, and not mine. In the arranged collision of cha racters, D. achieves his desired illumination. Dickens s art is preeminently dramatic. One of D s first toys was a miniature theatr e on which he devised his first fictions. He attended the theatre almost nightly as an adolescent and almost auditioned to become an actor, but a head cold prev ented him. He would later declare that All fiction writers in effect write for th e stage, so to understand Dickens you first must understand his dramatic instinct . The popular stage attraction of D s day was melodrama, the high octane plot-driv

en drama that featured attempted seductions, secrets, surprises, and characters that conform to readily identifiable idealized types: hero, villain, and comic f igure. Point of melodrama was to prompt an emotional response. Best done in grea test contrast between hero/villain, weak/powerful, black/white. Moments of great est happiness/moments of greatest sorrow/suffering. Plots often incredible, but the measure is not plausibility but impact. Writing to his friend Wilkie Collins in 1856 about a melodrama they were conside ring for private performance, Dickens commented that It seemed to supply everything the play wanted . . . the struggle . . . the grea t suspicion, the suspended interest . . . the relief and joy of the discovery. This is a succinct summation of Dickens s methods as a novelist: 1. Struggle. His novels are characteristically arranged, as in a good melod rama, into the most striking confrontations between good and evil, hero and vill ain, weak and the powerful. Early novels mainly employed character types: conven tionally conceived as either totally black or white. Often his good characters a re his least interesting, while his villain, though equally improbable, are at l east powerfully alive (Oliver Twist vs. Fagin and Sikes). In the later books, Di ckens s charactherization improved in subtlety and complexity. It began to be hard er to spot the hero and villain, and aspects of each were combined in single, mi xed character. Also in the later novels, increasingly the struggle was against s ocietal forces rather than with a villain or in the struggle within the characte rs themselves. 2. Great Suspicion. To animate his vast canvases and connect his large cast of characters, D. characteristicall used suspense and mystery: what will happen next and what has happened to propel the reader through his novels. D. desired rising action of successive climaxes to hold his audience through initial serial publication. To do so, D. would withhold information, plant clues for the reade r s detection, and shock with surprises. Between suspense and surprise, D. preferr ed surprises. Increasingly, however, D s novels are cut to a mystery pattern with intrigue aided by coincidence and accidents. Test not necessarily plausibility b ut consistency to his artistic design. 3. Suspended Interest. D. subscribed to the famous dictum: Make em laugh, mak e em cry, but most of all make em wait. To aid suspense D. would cut away at key mo ments of suspended interest in the best Saturday matinee tradition. Installments contrived by what D. called a streaky bacon method: It is the custom on the stage in all good, murderous melodramas to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alterations, as the layers of red and white in side of streaky, well -cured bacon. The hero sinks on his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfo rtunes, and in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the a udience with a comic song. The novels alternate comedy and pathos, cutting betwee n sets of characters, creating suspense to compel the reader to turn the pages. 4. Relief and Joy of the Discovery. D s finales are the most theatrical and o ften most straining probability. All characters must be accounted for and prizes and penalties distributed. As if, all the characters, whom the reader has follo wed for as many as 19 months, are given a curtain call and final bow. Reliance o n poetic justice and the happy ending, though comedy of the later novels is cons iderably more muted and ambiguous. Supporting D s dramatic method is his extraordinary powers of visualization. D. an imates the inanimate, vitalizing the physical so that his novels teem with life. D. would agree with Joseph Conrad who asserted that a novelist s primary assignme nt is to make the reader see. D. has a remarkable eye for detail, selecting the smallest and salient to bring the scene/character to vivid life. D. is also an u ncanny mimic, making the reader hear as well as see, showing how we speak indica tes who we are. In creating character, D. is more a caricaturist rather than a p hotographer. He finds the distinctive trait and through exaggeration makes his p

ortraits memorable. D. will often use ticks and tags physical characterists and verb al expressions to identify his characters and help remind us about them. Comparing Dickens with Tolstoy As Dramatists. The true Dickensian Russian novelist is Dostoevsky, not Tolstoy. Dostoevsky, like Dickens, had a stage conception of the novel. He, like Dickens, would build his novels around a core of crime and mystery, and present a succes sion of highly theatrical scenes generated by pushing his characters to extremes by extraordinary circumstances. T. by contrast to either Dickens or Dostoevsky is far less expert (or interested) in arranging his characters and story into a dramatic design. T s art is far more episodic. What happens in W&P seems to develo p naturally out of his characters and the ordinary process of life (birth, marri age, death, etc.). D. worked from a concept of narrative moves, major plot acceler ants that he needed in each installment of his serials, that is, at least one ma jor crisis or climax per 3-4 chapters. T. builds to a theatrical climax perhaps once a book or once about every 15-chapters (Book 1? Dolokhov on the ledge?; Boo k 2 Nicholai at Schon Grabern?; Book 3 P s engagement; Andrei at Austerlitz?; Book 4 Lise s death? Book 5?). T. therefore depends less on plot to drive his novel an d more on incident and character. Only as D s art matured, did he generate his plo ts out of the nature of his characters. The early books are picaresques, with hi s characters only the passengers in a fast-moving episodic vehicle. T. combines both situationally-driven plots and character-driven ones in W&P. Napoleon s wars and invasions are catalysts for the action, but so are the motives of his charac ters. T. also is far more willing than D. to have loose ends, to allow episodes to sta nd unconnected. To avoid climaxes. Eventually, in Bleak House, for example, ever y character in his massive social panorama and every incident will eventually be connected into an intricate pattern of correspondence and association. What see ms initially chaotic, fragmented, and incoherent finally is revealed as perfectl y artistically, theatrically unified. T. ultimately rejects the very notion of c ausality in experience; multiplicity is far more important to him as an operatin g principle than the reduction to a unified dramatic design with all the loose e nds tied up. T. will allow characters to disappear from view (Timokhin? The redhaired gunner?) with their stories inconclusive. The connections between scenes and characters (between war and peace, for example) will have to be made by the reader responding to a pattern of association rather than incident. There are ma ny crises in W&P but is there a single, dramatic climax? Does W&P really end? Actually, what links D. and T. better is not what they share as dramatists but a s melodramatists! Both love the strongest contrast of opposites. Both accept the Hegelian dicta that truth comes from dialectic. For D. it s the clash of hero vs. villain; powerful vs. weak; good vs. evil; for T. it s virtually every opposite y ou can imagine: Petersburg vs. Moscow; Society vs. Family; French vs. Russian; Y oung vs. Old . . . . As Portraitists. T. shares with D. an extraordinary power of visualization. Both select key details that animate their scenes in unforgettable ways. Both convin ce their readers that life never seemed as vivid before. Like D. T. also employs the art of the caricaturist (or impressionist): choosing a few, salient details to suggest the whole. D. will remain more on the surface and will resist the te mptation to analyze his characters; T. will take us deeply inside a character s ps yche by recording characters most intimate thoughts and feeling. D. wants those t houghts and feelings acted out in the drama; he prefers showing to telling. T. t urns the drama inside to the clash of ideas, concepts, etc. Unlike D. who will m ore often than not guide the reader, omnisciently, like an all-knowing tour guid e, T. dramatizes perspective. Almost always narrating scenes through the limited and subjective consciousness of one of his characters. Everything we see in W&P is relative, based on who is seeing.

There is no character in all of Dickens with such a detailed intellectual and em otional life as Pierre. D. is also particularly weak with his good characters an d his women. When expected to bear the moral burden of the drama, D s heroess can appear lifeless (his heroines can be worse than that). Only later in his career does D s characterization improve in subtlety and complexity, as good and evil beg ins to mix inside a single character (Pip, for example, in Great Expectations) a nd D. experiments with first-person narration (David C., Bleak House, Great Expe ction). There is really only one fully convincing female character in all of Dic kens (Bella Wilfer in Our Mutual Friend). D. is most convincing in his villains (Satan is far more fun than God in Paradise Lost!) and in his non-heroic, second ary characters, who are some of the most amazing and memorable inventions since Shakespeare. T. begins his career accepting the notion that characters are not p aragons. You can t really categorize T s characters in conventional groupings of her oes, villains, and clowns. There are certain characters who are more good than n ot, more bad than not, but T s art turns on countering conventional idealization o f characters. D s forte is the depiction of contemporary, particularly urban life of the middle class. D. is less sure of himself in treating characters in the upper or lower c lasses, who tend to be abstractions and idealized. He also is not great on the h istorical past. His two ventures into historical fiction, Barnaby Rudge and A Ta le of Two Cities are his two weakest novels in my view. It can be argued that T. is similarly contemporary. Despite setting W&P 60 years in the past is the novel really historical? The events are, but what about the characters and the particu lars? T. solves the problem of presenting the upper class and lower classes conv incingly by mainly filtering our view of both through his middling characters. As Moralists. T. like D. fully subscribes to the notion that the novelist plays a serious, moral role; that the novelist is often a teacher whose job it is to c onvince his audience of an important truth. Both novelists love the podium (and soapbox), more than modern taste often permits. D. wants primarily to entertain but that does not prevent him from making us uncomfortable, in exposing social a buses and injustice. His early novels tend to identify exceptions to the rule, a buses that can be easily corrected (the Poor Laws in Oliver Twist, the boarding schools in Nicholas Nickleby, etc.). Increasingly, however, the abuses D. calls to our attention are endemic, the rule, not the exception, and can only be corre cted by radical social and personal transformation (selfishness and materialism in Christmas Carol, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son; snobbery in Great Expecta tions; repression in Little Dorrit; indifference to the plight of the poor and s uffering in Bleak House). Again, T. seems to have begun where D. ended up. Thoug h clearly passionately interested in the social problems of Russian society (sho uld Russia turn to the West, what should be done with the serfs, etc.) in his le tters, journal, and articles, T s novels deal with more primary moral questions of a culture s values and an individual s core beliefs. Pierre learns that all his ref orms on his estates are pointless; Andrei realitzes that achievements on the bat tlefield and as a social legislator (a la Speransky) are equally misguided. Abus es are symptoms, according to T., not causes, and he is more interested in treat ing the causes: what can we believe? what should we value? how should we act? The morality that D. preaches is simply the advice David Copperfield receives fr om his Aunt Betsy: Never be false, mean, or cruel. Connected is what has been call ed D s philosophe de noel: that we should act like we do at Christmas 365 days a y ear: with love and compassion for our fellow men, giving rather than expecting t o receive. D. ultimately wants us to retain the wide-eye joyfulness of childhood and uses children as the ultimate test of behavior: how you protect or destroy innocence is the key moral test. T. subscribes to the same fundamental lessons b y having Andrei discover that what truly matters is compassion, love for our brot hers, for those who love us and for those that hate us, love for our enemies; ye s, that love that God preached on earth and which Princess Marya taught me and I

did not understand that is what made me sorry to part with life, that is what rem ained for me had I lived. And in the novel s ultimate moral summary: There is no gre atness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent. For T., like D. selfishn ess is the great evil that cuts us off from the source of life itself. Childhood is when we act instinctually, with our heart not our intellect, and it s then tha t teaches us how to meet the essential moral challenges, even death itself. Tolstoy and Joyce Preliminaries First, let me say that this might be way more than you need or want from me: Not only did I ask you to read a 1000-page novel, now I want you to consider it in the context of another 1000-page novel, the consistent winner of the title most difficult novel ever written. However, I offer it to you to use as wish. Since I have been teaching and writing a great deal lately about Ulysses, I have been s truck during this read-through of W&P of strong resemblances and connections tha t in a course whose subtitle is The Art of the Novel might prove illuminating. To aid your consideration, I have included two additional documents: my critique of Ulysses from The Novel 100 and some notes I prepared for my class on Ulysses th at tries to place it in the context of the novel tradition. Both might help to e xplain the more direct comparison that I will be developing between War and Peac e and Ulysses. The Tolstoy/Joyce Connection Tolstoy died before Joyce published his first book, so the connection between ar guably the greatest 19th-century novelist and the 20th-century s is one sided. No two writers could have been on the surface more different: Tolstoy, the Russian aristocrat, military officer, distinguished member of the landed gentry with a f amily petigree that went back centuries; Joyce, the Irish Catholic (and therefor e an outsider in English ruled Ireland), the ardent pacifist, whose father lost the family fortune in drink plunging his large family into dire poverty, who nev er owned any property, and readily accepted exile from his native country. Yet t here is also striking resemblances: no two writers were more self-centered and a rrogant in their conviction of their own genius and destiny; both became secular priests of the eternal imagination, were obsessed by their respective religious backgrounds and trainings, broke with their churches, and articulated their own alternative spiritual answers; both were anchored by family and tormented by fa mily tragedy. Tolstoy was Joyce s favorite novelist. He would write in 1905, Tolstoy is a magnifi cent writer. He is never dull, never stupid, never tired, never pedantic, never theatrical! He is head and shoulders over the others. I don t take him very seriou sly as a Christian saint. I think he has a very genuine spiritual nature but I s uspect he speaks the very best Russian with a St. Petersburg accent and remember s the Christian name of his great-great-grandfather (this, I find, is at the bot tom of the essentially feudal art of Russia). Comparing Turgenev with Tolstoy, Jo yce observed in 1907, He is not Tolstoy s height by any means. His brother pointed o ut that a character s random thoughts before death in the Sebastobol Sketches was an earlier forerunner of Joyce s stream-of-consciousness technique, prompting Joyc e to remark, I have do doubt it was. And also by holy Job when seated on the acro polis of Israel. In 1935, he wrote to his daughter Lucia that In my opinion How Mu ch Land Does a Man Need is the greatest story that the literature of the world k nows. Although there are no extant references to War and Peace in Joyce s letters, Joyce s biographer Richard Ellmann begins his great work with a comparison between the

writers and their masterpieces: When Joyce s adherents anxiously compare him with the great, his detractors are ap t to call up against him the formidable figure of Tolstoy. A famous critic [T.S. Eliot] has remarked that Joyce, unlike Tolstoy, tells us nothing. Certainly in Joyce there is none of the active, external, conclusive life that Tolstoy portra ys. Out of all the characters in War and Peace only Pierre, and Pierre only so l ong as he does nothing and remains ineffectual and observant, could have been a Joyce character. Yet if Pierre tells us something, perhaps Joyce tells us someth ing, too. Before we assume that he has abdicated the evaluation of human behavio r to Tolstoy, the novelist he like best, and has conceded to Flaubert that the n ovelist must not judge, we must listen to what, in spite of his cardplayer s face and the ostentatious shuffling of the deck, Joyce is saying to us. Whether we know it or not, Joyce s court is, like Dante s or Tolstoy s always in sessi on. The initial and determining act of judgment in his work is the justification of the commonplace. Other writers have labored tediously to portray it, but no one knew what the commonplace really was until Joyce had written. There is nothi ng like Joyce s commonplace in Tolstoy, where the characters, however humble, live dramatically and instill wisdom or tragedy in each other. Joyce was the first t o endow an urban man of no importance with heroic consequence. . . . To look int o the flotsam of a city was common enough after Zola, but to find Ulysses there was reckless and imprudent. Joyce s discovery, so humanistic that he would have b een embarrassed to disclose it out of context, was that the ordinary is the extr aordinary. Joyce, like Tolstoy, would observe that I never met a bore, and his central messag e like Tolstoy s in War and Peace is the love of life, life in all its messy vital ity. Like Tolstoy, Joyce regarded every human being as both fascinatingly specif ic and universal. If Tolstoy can argue that the real factor for the Russian vict ory in 1812 was routine, daily life of common humanity, Joyce would make the act ion of a single, uneventful day, June 16, 1904, contain multitudes. Tolstoy woul d show how the ordinary cope with the extraordinary; Joyce would reveal the extr aordinary in the ordinary: the great Homeric adventure in a typical day in Dubli n. War and Peace and Ulysses: Points of Comparison The Epic. The titles of both writers works announce their epic intention. Tolstoy signals in the reach of his title the expected epic amplitude; Joyce establishe s in his title the implied comparison between the ostensibly unheroic and the un eventful routine in a typical day in Dublin and Homer s epic. Both writers establi sh their epic connections to violate them, ironically exploiting the discrepancy between the conventions of the heroic epic and their treatment of the epic conv entions. W&P can be seen as a kind of epic parody of the Iliad (dealing with com bat and heroism), the Odyssey (dealing with family life and homecoming), and the Aeneid (dealing with the fate of a nation and national character); U. stands as a more systematic parodic equivalency of Homer s Odyssey with each chapter corres ponding to Homer s story. Epic elements abound in both works, including Homeric si miles, catelogues, descents into the underworld, etc. Each novel fundamentally changes the central definition for heroism that the epi c established. For Tolstoy, great men, the Achilles and Hectors of the world Napol eon and Alexander are diminished, exposed as blind egoists, and the lover, not the fighter, Pierre is elevated for our admiration. For Joyce, Leopold Bloom, the e quivalent for Odysseus, proves himself to be a far greater man because he does n ot vanguish his enemies. Odysseus slays the suitors who dare to just court Penel ope; Bloom must cope with his wife s actual infidelity, recognizing his complicity in it and persisting, despite the burden of guilt and sorrow he is made to bear . In W&P, Andrei Tolstoy s central-casting candidate for lead hero fails to sustain hi

s life, while the bumbling and limited Pierre gets the girl and reaches home. In U. Bloom, who will be seen defecating and masterbating, will finally show himse lf to be a true hero for his unconquerable humanity, and it is Bloom, not her ne w lover, whom Molly will think of in the novel s climactic affirmation of life. History. T. explicitly takes on the falsification and simplification of history to clear the ground for a radical re-definition of what truly produces important events and what truly matters in human experience. To do so, he takes as his su bject the key historical events in Russia s history, the relationship with Napoleo nic France from 1805 through 1812. To the historical chronicle, T. invents a fic tional chronicle, a microcosmic commentary on the macrocosmic historical level. Joyce turns T s telescope into a microscope, T s panorama into a compressed close-up by limiting his novel to the history of a single day June 16, 1904 a day in which a lmost nothing of significance happens. Yet history remains in the background of Joyce s novel, as essential a theme as in W&P. Although set in 1904, the novel was written through the experiences of World War I and the rebellion and civil war that would free Ireland from English rule and create a nation. What it meant to be Irish is as central a theme in U. as what it truly meant to be Russian in W&P . U s Stephen Dedalus will significantly state in the novel s second chapter, devote d to history, that History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. The det erministic tyranny of history, the roles history forces us to play, and history s murderous disregard for human life in the context of World War I, set the contex t for an understanding of Joyce s drama, which offers the sustaining everyday to t he exceptionality of history. Bloom, an Irish Jew, is the ultimate outsider, the internationalist amidst the dehumanizing and humiliating force of bigotry and n ationalism that attempts to exclude and condemn him. Joyce forces a wider defini tion of Irishness and humanity that will include Bloom. Bloom s greatest moment is his standing up to a drunken, xenophobic, anti-Semitic Citizen in a pub by condem ning the circumstances of history, declaring, Force, hatred, history, all that. T hat s not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it s t he very opposite of that that is really life. . . . Love . . . I mean the opposi te of hatred. Joyce has Stephen observe that he fears those big words, which make us so unhappy honor, glory, self-sacrifice, happiness, nationality all will be re-def ined in U. , as they are in W&P, and Joyce will, like Tolstoy force us to shift our focus from the great men and great events of history to the usually unmemora ble details and routines of ordinary life where all that truly matters in human life really transpires. Life and Death. Both novels attempt to capture life as it is affected by its alt ernative: death. Death frequently stalks W&P and ultimately must be faced by all its central characters Pierre, Andrei, Natasha, Marya, and Nicholai. Death simila rly haunts U.: Stephen has returned to Dublin to witness his mother s death and is dealing with his refusal of her dying wish for him to pray for her; Bloom is gu iltily haunted by the death of his 11-day-old son, ten years before. Fearing to bring another death into the world, he has given up sex with Molly for the last 10 years, prompting her first extramarital affair on June 16th. Bloom knows that Molly will meet her new lover at 4.30, and he will carry the burden of the deat h of his love through the day. Bloom will, like Odysseus, travel to the underwor ld at the burial of a friend and will heroically reject death for life: Plenty to see and hear and feel yet. Feel live warm beings near you. Let them sleep in th eir maggoty beds. They are not going to get me this innings. Warm beds, warm ful lblooded life. Bloom will finally reach home, a wanderer, in bed next to his unfa ithful but ultimately loving wife, after an impossibly long day, resting before his wandering will resume the next day. Pierre will similarly search for the key to sustain his life and be recalled to life after facing the abyss of the executi on by the maternal Platon Karataev. Pierre s faith in the human capacity to endure and surmount the force of death by the life force will lead him to Natasha and his new home beside her. Arranging the life/death debate in both novels, Tolstoy and Joyce employ similar

character types. Andrei, T s intellectual, resembles Stephen Dedalus. They are bo th similarly haunted by the gap between their aspirations and the diminishing an d tawdry reality. In U. Stephen, the Telemachus of Joyce s Odyssey, is in search o f a father figure to guide him out of his self-absorbed stagnation and help him to re-focus his artistic attention on revitalizing life itself. Andrei has lost his father and has rejected the possibility of guidance (from either his friend Pierre or his beloved Natasha) to a better sustaining equilibrium between life a nd death, and tragically passes out of the life he cannot fully understand or em brace. Stephen will eventually meet Bloom as his surrogate father, the committed -to-life wanderer who could offer Stephen a way out of his moody-broodies. Symboli cally, the son in search of a father, meets the father in search of his lost son . Bloom, of course, corresponds to Pierre. Both are outsiders in their societies, comic strivers and searchers whose greatness is ignored and undervalued by conve ntional valuation. Bloom is the traditional butt of comedy: the cuckhold. He is also a Jew in Catholic Dublin, whose heroism is defined not by decisive action b ut by endurance and undiminished zest for life itself. Pierre stands as a marked contrast to conventional heroism: stout, awkward, short-sighted, often absurd i n his enthusiasm and nave in his perceptions. Both aspire to greatness, and both are pulled up comically short. Both journey through major trials before returnin g home, coping with suffering and existential angst with a life affirming forebe arance and appetite for existence. Natasha and Molly Bloom are soulsisters, or perhaps soul-daughter and mother. Bo th are defined by their vitality and relish for life so that each in a sense bec omes the life force itself. Both fall sexually, interestingly because sex is defer red, though Molly s seduction is consummated. Natasha s libido is suggested; Molly s i s graphically self-described. Both are given their respective novel s final words. And it s basically the same word: Yes. Both end with the affirmation of their engag ements: Natasha supporting Pierre s decision to leave her for a time; Molly rememb ering Bloom s marriage proposal: Natasha: But why go to Petersburg? . . . But no, no, he must. . . . Yes, Mary. He must . . . Molly: and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. Both novels, therefore, conclude in progress, in the unending flow of life that is affirmed by the two characters in either book who best represent the life for ce itself. Technique. Although it might seem strange to suggest that a book that includes Napoleon, the battles of Austerlitz, Borodino, and the destruction of Moscow can be descibed, like Ulysses, as a novel about nothing, in a fundamental way that s pr ecisely how W&P gathers its strength and focus. Neither Tolstoy nor Joyce are dr amatic writers like Dickens and Dostoevsky, who build their novels out of a seri es of exceptional crises and climaxes. In many ways what stands out in W&P of eq ual or superior interest to the occasional moments of high drama Andrei s woundings, the foiling of Natasha s abduction, Pierre s near-execution are the scenes of unremar kable daily life: Natasha bursting into the drawing room, dancing at Uncle s, the wolf hunt, Pierre and Andrei on the ferry, the sight of the old oak, Pierre smil ing at his toes! Joyce will exclude virtually everything that usually constitute s dramatic action, relocating his crises and climaxes to the barely noticeable r hythms of normal life. U. is, in a sense, the logical extension to the premise t hat Tolstoy asserts that the ordinary, not the exceptional, should be the novel s primary focus. What matters T. argues are not great men or great events but comm on humanity and their struggles.

Both novelists are fascinated by the surface of life and all its myriad details, and with how the human mind makes sense of the flow of experience, how we proce ss (and often distort) what our senses reveal to us, how memory and desire, thou ght and feeling, interpret the world around us. Both writers seem committed impr essionists and relativists who reject the notion of omniscience and an absolute re ality to filter experience through the limited (and unreliable) perspective of c haracters. Joyce will take this further than Tolstoy by attempting to replicate directly the associational logic (or illogic) of consciousness itself, giving us a fully orchestrated mental soundtrack, a technique that we can see T. also exp erimenting with as Nicholai and Petya Rostov drift off to sleep, Andrei in delir ium, and Pierre s dreaming/unconscious state when he considers the need to harness. For the most part, however, T. translates his characters thoughts logically for us , more than Joyce will, whose often dense verbal texture of thoughts, memories, and association must be decoded both by the character and by the reader. Both Tolstoy and Joyce insist that the reader play an active role in interpretin g meaning and significance in their novels. T s decision in Book 1, chapter 1, to thrust his reader in the middle of Anna Sherer s soiree with little to no expositi on or explanation of who these characters are, forcing the reader to use all his /her wits to gather clues from response and gesture, as well as dialogue, announ ces the challenging narrative strategy in W&P. Neither Tolstoy nor Joyce will se rve as guides for the reader to the novels meanings. To reach them, both novelist s employ similar methods. T. would remark on That endless labryinth of connexions which is the essence of art, and he and Joyce will similarly direct attention to the pattern beneath the surface of things through juxtaposition, repetition, co ntrast of character, situation, and details. Joyce s method of the epiphany: the s udden revelation of the whatness of a thing, in which meaning is suddenly made man ifest amidst the sordid and trivial, resembles T s method of narratively working t oward self-revelation of his characters and the universal significance reached t hrough the particular. The title of one of the Joyce s Dubliners stories, Counterpa rts, reveals both writers method of arranging truth through dialectic, by contrast , and counterpoint. Think of both W&P and U. as essentially montages or collages in which detail is presented in such a way that the reader detects the principl e of cohesion by a close attention to every detail. Both writers complicate matters by disrupting their novels with different modes of narrative elements. Usually, a novel takes a consistent viewpoint or method a nd sticks with it to the end. Neither T nor J do this. W&P is simultaneously a h istorical chronicle, a family drama, and a series of philosophical essays, each with a corresponding tone, focus, and strategy. What is invented mixes with the actual and documentary evidence: actual letters, proclamations, etc. Narration t hrough limited perspective gives way at times to Olympian pronouncements from an all-knowing authority figure. These narrative dislocations test the reader s assu mption about what a novel can or should be, problemitizing the storytellers art a nd how truth can be reached. Joyce similarly undermines his narrative by shifting his vantage point and method of narration virtually in every chapter. Events sud denly are put in the form of newspaper headlines and brief stories, through a bi ased narrator who dislikes our hero. The story suddenly turns into a musical, or the romantic language of a women s magazine, or the pseudo-scientific format of t he questions and answers. The climax of U. is a nearly 300-page surrealistic dra ma. Neither Joyce nor Tolstoy will limit themselves to what convention dictates novels outght to be. The result of both writers technical virtuosity is to expand the novel s resources, to reach truth through multiple means. Structure. Both W&P and U. are encyclopedic novels that extend the range of fic tion in unprecedented and at times dizzying ways. W&P is so vast that it include s hundreds of characters and multiple centers of interest. Who is the protagonis t in W&P? Whose story is central? T. answers the restricted requirement of drama tic compression in a novel with multiplicity and amplitude, pushing the number o

f narrative centers in his novel to the edge of incomprehensibility and incohere nce. The distinction between primary and secondary characters is blurred, and ch aracters are allowed to pass out of narrative range with their fates unresolved or unclarified. Similarly, Joyce overwhelms his reader with the multiplicity of a modern city with hundreds of characters interacting and passing on, any one of whom we could profitably follow to a dramatic conclusion but do not. Like the u ndramatic texture of ordinary life, J s novel replicates the untidy flow of experi ene in which the exception is the exception, not the rule. Both novels use the open, rather than the closed, form. By doing so, both questi on whether conventional novels, with their clear beginnings, middles, and ending s, their unmistakable linear development and cause and effect, falsifies actuali ty. To imitate actual experience, W&P has no real beginning and no certain end. It ends in mid-sentence, with an ellipsis, suggesting that it could go on and on . Similarly, virtually nothing is resolved in U. Where will Stephen go after lea ving Bloom s house? Will he break out of his malaise to become the great writer he aspires to be? Will Bloom resume intimacy with Molly? Will Molly continue to be unfaithful to her husband? All these central narrative questions remain unresol ved and unanswered. Life, both Tolstoy and Joyce argue, is far more complex than previous novels have suggested. What is the climax of your life? Will your life be resolved as you go to bed this evening? No, life will go on (if we are lucky) with new challenges to be faced. Ultimately, both War and Peace and Ulysses replace a narrow, idealized, and simp lified view of life with one that is richer, deeper, and more challenging than o ther novels have previously allowed. Both books set out to make their readers lo ve life more, in all its messiness and paradoxes. Both novelists echo the ad lin e of the old Life magazine: Life, consider the alternative.

War and Peace Notes Book by Book Book 1 (Peace) Chs. 1-3: Petersburg; dominant family=Kuragin Chs. 4-13: Moscow; dominant family=Rostov; link characters=Pierre, Anna M., Prin ce Vasili Chs. 14-16: Bald Hills; dominant family=Bolkonsky; link characters=Andrei, Lise, Julie K. Ch1=Public scene (Anna S s party) ) Ch 2=Private scene (Pierre s visit to Andrei) is, etc.) Ch 3=Party scene (Anatole s) Ch 4=Public scene (Rostov s nameday visits Ch 5=Privatec scene (Natasha/Bor Ch. 9-10=Rostov s dinner party

Novel is built on principle of a mosaic, with the narrative tied together by mea ns of juxtaposed blocks of settings, actions, characters, and ideas that may be perceived as equivalents of one another. Take from title T s characteristic binary principle of opposed opposites. Generates ideas, relationships by opposing oppo sites: Russia vs. France; Russian ruling class vs. Russian people; historical vs. ficti onal characters; peace vs. war; Moscow vs. Petersburg; City life vs. country lif e, Kuragins vs. Rostovs . . . .

Albert Cook= The fifteen books and epilogues of the novel are orchestrated into an almost contrapuntal order. War and peace being not disorganized strands, but th e basic alternation, each defining the other. Chapter 1 Anna Scherer s Soiree Why begin here? Serves to gather many characters and themes that will be subsequ ently developed while alerting reader to the ways that W&P must be read. Reader forced into situation of entering an unfamiliar social situation and perceptivel y deciphering personalities and motives from limited evidence. Narrator offers o nly limited assistance. Reader must play active role in uncovering significance. Enter world of W&P through the doors of AS s fashionable salon. It is a realm of f alsity, of poses, of inauthenticity, and disguised motives. T. makes clear that we are at a theater in which every character wears a mask that he/she chooses or that life, society, habit have chosen. (T.S. Eliot in Prufrock: Prepare the face to meet the face we meet. ). Anna=vivacity, lan, enthusiasm Vasily=languid, detached, indifferent Andrei=bored and contemptuous Helene=placid display and ever-present smile Only one arrives with a naked face=Pierre, who does not know how to play act, do es not know the rules of the universal social theater. His spontaneity and openn ess offends good taste and convention. Scene sets up the novel s central conflict between the social (false) and the personal (true). How can you maintain an auth entic sense of self under the pressure to conform, to repress true thoughts and feelings under respectable guise. To be not what we are but what we are expected to be. Establishes basic theme of the novel as contrast between two opposing st ates: selfishness/self-importance/self-indulgence and their attendant values of careerism, nepotism, vanity, affectation, and the pursuit of private pleasusures versus a turning outward from the self, a groping toward something bigger, the attempt to surmount individualism, a recognition that the cult of self is an unw orthy alternative to service to one s neighbors, one s family, the community, and th e country at large. T. follows epic tradition by plunging the reader in medias res. Effect=disorient ing and confusing. No clear sense of focus or relationships. We hear Anna and Pr ince Vassily s words before we know who the speakers are. T. avoids authorial prep aration and analysis. Introduces characters obliquely ( Who listens and how ). Usual ly narrative filtered through observing consciousness=fixed, authoritative viewp oint. Here, like a hand held camera with frequent close-ups. Who s the central int erest? Dispersed over many characters. T s narrative claims equal importance for a ll. Opening has no dramatic function beside introducing a number of characters and s etting some plot elements in motion (moves), namely, Prince V s plan to marry Anat ole to Princess Marya B. and Andrei s relationship with Lise and Pierre. Begins at decisive moment=war imminent; Pierre s arrival from study abroad to assu me adult responsibility and choose his career; Andrei s repudiation of his former social life by joining the army. This is a threshold moment, the first of severa l in the novel. Conversations establish themes to be developed: War Napoleon ogre or hero? (note the He talyst for all that will come)

of first words of the novel refer to Napoleon=c

Family relations (introduced to the novel s anti-family=Kuragins) and the generati onal battle of Fathers/Mothers and their offspring Alexander as savior Russia vs. France (Represented in the bilingual party: Russian vs. French) Chapter 1 also establishes some of T s characteristic techniques: Revision (T. worked on 15 different versions of his opening chapter) led to repr essing his voice and concealing his presence: avoids telling the reader about th e characters but permit reader to encounter characters in action and deduce his or her nature. Let events generate the novel s ideas. Impressionism: suggest the whole by salient detail (tics and tags). Note how muc h we don t know of these characters. Who listens and how to replace character biogra phies and descriptions. T: It seems to me that it is really impossible to describe a man, but it is possi ble to describe the effect he produces on me. T believed that the accepted method of logical step-by-step description now impo ssible in literature: Conventional novels offer first a description of the charac ters, even their biographies, then a description of locality and milieu, and onl y then the beginning of the action. And it s a strange thing that all these descri ptions, sometimes dozens of pages long, tell the readers less about the characte rs than some casually thrown out artistic detail in the course of the action in progress between people who have not been described at all. T: Description . . . is a bad thing in literature one should describe how this or that thing is reflected in one s characters.

Avoids direct analysis for dramatic unfolding of character through what they say , how they say it, and how they react to others. Gesture crucial. Method of narrative rhyming as in verse: two juxtaposed but otherwise unrelated ev ents, details, generate an additional meaning that could not exist otherwise. Cr eate an echo of each other in our minds, creating a new level of meaning. Narrat ive rhyming composes a network of cross-references and complex narrative pattern s that create the novel s structure. Leitmotifs (candles, windows, doors): like a repeated musical melody, T. will pr oduce significance through repetition of details and association. Counterpoint method: T, like Hegel, believes that the way to truth is through di alectic, by juxtaposing opposites and achieving a more complex understanding thr ough the conjunction. Use of external physical details, facial expressions, bodily position as express ions of a character s inner state. Objective correlative: Andrei s small, white hand s; Helene s breasts. Narrate through the perceptions of character s experience (Pierre s view of Anatole s party). Making strange /defamiliarizing (Pierre s view of his father s death). Story telling in Chapter 1. Who tells stories? And how do they give us a hint ab out the storytelling of W&P? Vicomte s story of gossip and Hippolyte s pointless ane cdote sandwiches Pierre s attempt to tell the truth regardless of social dictates. How is truth possible? After initial 3 chapters in Petersburg, setting shifts to Moscow where significa nce is generated by the counterpoint between Petersburg values (selfish, falsity ) and the opposite values (self-less, affectionate, generous) of the Rostov s fami ly life. Petersburg Moscow Anna=barren old maid Rostov s every expanding family circle

French primarily spoken Count R s French bad; Marya Dmitrievana always speaks Russ ian All have social poses At the Rostov s people laugh, weep and express their true feelings spontaneously. Anna as hostess=foreman at a mill who skillfully manipulates her guests. Relatio nships=mechanical. Count R. s greatest pleasure is encouraging the pleasures of others. Relationships=organic. Anna shrewdly grades the social consequences of each guest and acts accordingly Count R. calls all mon chere or ma chere without distinction. Tutor dines with the d istinguished guests Anna= maitre d hotel who serves up her celebrity guests as if they were a roast of bee f. People=consumable Rostovs provide a real, nourishing meal. Kuragins reflect family life=scheming father, overripe (on offer) Helene; idioti c Hippolyte, violent and licentious Anatole Rostov s family life characterized by affection and self-lessness. Money and how to get it Money to be spent and given away Pierre feels discomfort and awkward Pierre experiences welcome and pleasure Performance=verbal Performance=dance T. arranges these and many more counterpoints that require the reader s ability to associate previous scenes, characters, and details with the next. He thereby be gins to establish an intricate pattern of correspondences that mimics the ways i n which we perceive reality, by connecting what we now see with what we have see n in the past, measuring similarity and difference. Moscow chapters introduce the Rostov family who will serve as the moral center o f W&P. Natasha bursts into the novel with a bang as an irresistible life force. T. begins to establish her link with Pierre:

both spontaneous, instinctual, generous both break rules of social decorum that enforces restraint/hidding true feelings both associated with childhood Pierre was like a child in a toyshop /Natasha shown c rrying her doll both like children emulates behavior they see: Pierre s wanting to try Dolokhov s st unt/Natasha kissing Boris after seeing Nickolai kiss Sonia. both associated with laughter both sensitive to others Pierre to Andrei s feelings/Natasha to Sonia s Natasha flings herself at life, totally immersed in the moment. Her response to life represents an alternative to the detached, intellectual, abstract approach of Andrei and the cautious strategic maneuvering of the Petersburg set and other s. Although the values of self-less generosity and affection predominate among the Rostovs, T. keeps his family portrait realistic with the addition of the eldest Rostov child, Vera. Watch also how money will increasingly play a role in shapin g the Rostovs. It is easier to be generous with a bank account. What will happen if the money troubles glimpsed by Countess R. escalate? Drama in the Moscow scenes comes from the dying of Count Bezukhov. Here T. arran ges the classic comedy (a la Moliere and Dickens) of the assault of the vulture relatives and hangers-on of a dying man of wealth. Anna M. who has been the peti tioner to Count V. now competes with him for what they can secure from the dying man. Scene represents a typical Tolstoy method that has been called making stran ge, that is, recording a situation from the unknowing, nave perspective of a chara cter so that the familiar takes on a surreal quality and we are forced to see th e familiar fresh. Pierre becomes our vantage point, and he understands nothing o f the rituals and the motives of Prince V., Anna, or Catiche (though the reader does). The result turns the most solemn occasion in human existence (death) into

a farce that juxtaposes a man s ultimate passing with the life force of those scr ambling to profit by his death. What had been latent and beneath the surface in Petersburg (selfishness, tactics, maneuvering) here explodes into actual violenc e as Anna and Catiche wrestle for possession of the portfolio, resolved only wit h the intelligence of the Count s death (note the emphasis on doors here). Irony: the one person unmotivated by self-interest turns out to be the one person who d oes profit from the Count s death=Pierre who is now Count B. and one of the riches t men in Russia. Pierre has shifted in the space of the first few chapters from outsider and bastard whom no one (other than Andrei) values into a man of conseq uence and importance that people will flatter and defer to. T. establishes suspe nse in the reader s mind: how will Pierre handle his new fortune and new identity as Count B? Note how in Chapter 3 death is flirted with in Dolokhov s bet with its emphasis on the threshold separating life from death on the window ledge. Threshold is actu ally crossed here and the importance of death as defining moment is established. Chapters 14-16 Third setting: Bald Hill Estate of the Old Prince Bolkonsky. Havi ng given us contrasted cities (Petersburg/Moscow), T. gives his third alternativ e: country life and a third alternative to life. If Petersburg is dominated by t he scheming, self-centered Kuragins, and Moscow by the loving, self-less Rostovs , the Bolkonskys are a complex mixture of both. Prince B. is a Voltairean intellectual, an Enlightenment figure with a faith in the intellect, science, and progress who ridicules religion as primitive superst itions and emotions as weakness. He is rigid in his approach to life: inflexible routine of productive achievement. Leitmotif=his lathe producing snuff boxes. T rains his daughter Marya in geometry, physics, and math to toughen her girlish s ensibility that is naturally emotional and spiritual. Note her tics=luminous eye s and heavy tread. Andrei is his father s son: detached, cynical, intellectual, fe arful of showing emotion, secretly appalled by the dictates of the emotions and physicality. But unlike his father who has faith in his intellect and principles , Andrei has no such faith. Andrei does not believe that his father s intellectual life can redeem human existence. He is like the young W.B. Yeats who desired pa ssionately to believe something but his non-religious skeptical father destroyed the available objects for belief. Note that Julie K. becomes the link figure connecting both initial sections to t he third as she warns Marya of Anatole s interest and reports on Pierre s inheritanc e. Ironically, she also brings to Mary s attention Nickolai. Bald Hill continues the generational struggle previously glimpsed in the Kuragin s and Rostovs and establishes the dominant conflict in W&P between the demands o f the head versus the demands of the heart. By resisting feelings Prince B. atte mpts to force life into something he can control and dominate, like a problem in geometry. He will be broken by his theory and the legacy that he has transferre d to his son and daughter. How will Andrei and Marya cope? Note again, that Mary a s response is crucial to the birth of the author since she is modeled on his mot her. Book 1 Summary Bk. 1 serves to introduce the various circles of the novel through its series of contrasting portraits: Petersburg, Moscow, Bald Hills (country life) in scenes of public and private (domestic) life. It establishes three principal fictional families: the Kuragins, the Rostovs, and the Bolkonskys and two connecting famil y groups: the Bezukhovs and the Drubetskoys. Tolstoy works up a portrait of the era before the forces of history will unalter ably change everyone. Napoleon and the coming war is the dominant topic in each

of the Book s three sections. War is therefore a part of peaceful family and socia l life (as peace will figure in scenes of war). Tactics and manuevering for adva ntage is just below the surface throughout and violent combat will explode in th e scene over Pierre s legacy. Life, Tolstoy suggests, is a complex blend of contra ry states, suggested by the novel s title, not War or Peace, but War and Peace. As in an overture, Book 1 establishes the novels dominant themes and methods. Th e fate of the second generation suspended as Andrei and Nickolai leave for the f ront, Pierre becomes heir to a great fortune, Natasha enters her girlhood, and t he scheme to marry the rake Anatole to Princess Marya develops. Several themes Power, Self, Money, Society, Reason are planted for future developmen t. At the center of the emerging structure are two central male protagonists Pierre a nd Andrei discontented searchers for answers to the most essential questions: How should one live?/What is the point of one s life? Others provide different respons es in ambition, intellectual mastery, spontaneity, joyful enjoyment of the momen t, family life. Book 2 (War) If Book 1 dealt with society and family relations the normal activities of peace: love, death, money, drinking, dancing, ambition book 2 presents the activities of war: waste, confusion, distortions of normal human relationships, the loss of th e sense of meaning. Parallels with Book 1: Opening shows Anna S. running her soiree like a general c ommanding troops; here Book 2 opens with an actual inspection of troops by the c ommanding general. As in the Petersburg salon, there is a discrepancy between ap pearance and reality. Troops put on mask of readiness that disguises the reality of their condition after their forced march from Russia to Austria. Generals mi sinterpret Kutuzhov s orders. He actually wants them to appear as they are to show the Austrians that he cannot immediately take on the French. Show/display of in spection will contrast to the reality of war as shown later in the book. Begins by assaulting the notion that war is rational, that officers can control circums tances. The tactics and manueverings for supremacy and power in Book 1 explodes into actual violence in the combat over the disputed portfolio. Here, the Russia n army will finally after a series of feints and maneuvers and skirmishes take o n the French in a bloody encounter at Schon Grabern that will collect the growin g awareness by both Nicholai and Andrei that war is not what they expected. Book 2 will provide multiple examples of the key philosophical points of W&P: th at the notion of great men controlling the forces of history is an illusion; tha t war, like life generally, is complex, irrational, and uncertain. Chs. 1-2 Kutuzov s review of the troops near Braunau; Mack s defeat. Chs. 2-5: Nicholai s experiences: Telyanin and the missing purse; the bridge over the Enns. Chs. 6-10: Andrei s experiences: to the Austrian court and back to Kutozov after t he French take the Tabor Bridge. Chs. 11-16: Battle of Schon Grabern. Chs. 1-2 Connects with Book 1 by showing Dolokhov reduced to the ranks, Andrei o n Kutuzov s staff, and introduces the first of the novel s major historical figures: Kutuzov who will, like Pierre on the fictional side, become the novel s primary c andidate for central hero. K=marked contrast with Napoleon. K not a hero in the European mold: he s fat, indolent, blind in one eye, not a leader of the people bu t their servant, who recognizes that circumstances are beyond any one person s pow er to control. K. accepts complexity of life and sees compassionately, as shown

by his treatment of both Timokhin and Dolokhov. K. looks for reasons not to figh t and die needlessly. All I can say, General, is that if the matter depended on my personal wishes . . . But circumstances are sometimes too strong for us, General. (2, 2, 104). K. rec ognizes, as Napoleon does not, that personal wishes have little to do with the f orce of events. K here sounds T s notion of history: delusion that a great man or single force directs history. Greater the man, the more he is aware of his own l imits and insignificance in the face of destiny. What will ultimately save the R ussians will be the collective spirit of the Russian people, not the will of a g eneral. Arrival of General Mack who announces the destruction of the Austrian army. This famous historical event is used by T. to gauge Andrei s reaction as he reprimands Zherkov jest at Mack s expense: . . . either we are officers serving our Tsar and our country, rejoicing in the successes and grieving at the misfortunes of our common cause, or we are merely lackeys who care nothing for their master s business. (Ch. 2, pl 108) Andrei trying to fit his conception of war as honorable and opportunity for the glory that he seeks. He will confront a series of challenges to his conception: reception by the Austrian court, coming to the aid of the doctor s wife, coming to the aid of T ushin. Chs. 2-5. Introduces Nicholai to army life and warfare and a more complex unders tanding of the world. Why the scene of the theft by Telyanin of Denisov s purse? Breakdown of gentleman code. Self-interest growing as social laws break down. Also serves to present Ni cholai with his first moral challenge: Having accused T. before the company, pub lically exposing a thief among the officers, Nicholai is urged to apologize to s ave the regiment s honor. Nicholai has acted truthfully but is urged to lie. One g ood, to tell the truth and expose a thief, conflicts with another, to preserve t he honor of the regiment. Nicholai s concept of right and wrong shown to be too na rrow and simplistic. His personal honor now conflicts with the honor of the grou p and his duty beyond self to his comrades. Nicholai confronted with a paradox: when is a right a wrong. Impasse=Nicholai s pride vs. regiment s pride. N. tries to apply Rostov values of openness, generosity, pride to world outside his family c ircle. Forced to confront a situation that falls out of his absolutist system of morali ty/world view announced at the Rostov s nameday party when N. declared that I am co nvinced that we Russians must die or conquer. Even N. realizes that his coment i s unsuited to the occasion, that he has been foolish, but sense of his foolishne ss marks the beginning of his maturation. Either/or philosophy here tested. When does telling the truth produce harm rathe r than good? Should N. swallow his pride in his integrity when such pride is in conflict with the general pride of the regiment? Individual vs. community. Nicholai s conception of the world nave and limited: black and white moral world in which good and evil are easily identified and separable. All do not wear their hearts on their sleeves as do the Rostovs. All do not follow the same code of co nduct which was the rule in his family. Shown that even a good, N s pride, can be bad when measured from another standard. Next test of world view will come under fire where what he thinks war is will be challenged by its reality. Book 2 will assert the dominant note of relativism: we see from a particular perspective, through a particular bias. N. will be show n that he is not the center of the universe, but on, limited, fallible perspecti

ve among many. Enns River Bridge Pattern of recognizing his foolishness from the Name Day dinner repeated. Begins by wanting to prove himself. All seen from his perspective. Whi le trying to stay in front of everyone, he trips in the mud. Realizes that he ha sn t brought anything to assist in burning the bridge. Realizes his role playing a nd false preconceptions make his behavior ridiculous. Finally, becomes conscious of reality: fear and guilt. (126-127) N. sees the sky (128). Sky like death will become the repeated symbol for charac ters to deal with essential questions of existence. Chs. 5-10 Andrei s experiences like Nicholai s challenge his illusions that right an d wrong are clearly discernible and that it will be possible for him to achieve on the battlefield the glory and fulfilment he craves. Like N. Andrei will confront a paradox: when is a victory not a victory? War tak es A. back to the insincere, posing world of Anna S s salon, with Bilibin s mots and Hippolyte s absurd stories. Even the Austrian emperor questions A. by rote and fa ils to recognize Andrei s greatness. A. learns how unimportant individual lives are held in the overall scheme of things. In the grand scheme of things, from the bi g picture, Andrei s action and his heroism in it is trivial and meaningless. Like N, A. also interprets the events from his perspective. A., like N., is being sub jected to situations that will force him to reconsider his conception of the wor ld. Both men s ideals are questioned; each finds that his understanding of things is often wrong. Like N, A s sense of the war to deepen and instructed in the insig nificance of individual lives in the grand scheme of things. Despite first assault on his conception of the war and possibility for his achie vement in it, A. still dreams of gaining glory: He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading, of musketry, and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed to fill his ears, and now again drawn out in a thin line the musketeers were descending the hill, the French were firing, and he felt his heart palpitating as he rode forward beside Schmidt with the bullet s merrily whistling all around, and he experienced tenfold the joy of living, as he had not done since childhood. (Ch. 7, 136) Emperor Francis, one of the great men who is interested only in the minutiae.

Bilibin tells of the French taking of the Tabor Bridge and Andrei convinces hims elf that he is destined to save the Russian army by giving them the news and sho wing how the army can be saved. Bilibin: My dear fellow, you are a hero! (Ch. 9, 1 42) Save the Army! How about saving the wife of an army doctor? Army he wants to save is a rabble. Courtesy and order breaking down. It is a mob of scoundrels. Instead of assisting the army, his instinct causes him to come to the aid of a woman in distress. Better nature causes him to risk the one thing he most dreaded: ridic ule. but his instinct urged him on : heart vs. head. Incident produces loathing: ha tes those he serves and his own pettiness and pretensions. (Ch. 10, 144) Chs. 11-16 Battle of Schon Grabern. Both A. and N. from their contrasting perspectives: entire army/particular unit will continue to have their conception of war and themselves tested, while T. ma kes his case that no general controls a battlefield, that battles are won and lo st by innumerable factors that have nothing to do with strategy and orders. Here two insignificant soldiers will play a greater role than the commanders in dete rmining the outcome: Tushin and Timokhin. Again and again, T. will stress that b

attle is irrational, unplanned, and uncontrollable. Contrast the murderous of war with the troops making a home for themselves and a ct toward the enemy they have sworn to annihilate with friendliness. Opens with Andrei noting the defenses and hoping to play a role in the strategy. While noting positions, overhears conversation of Tushin and infantry officer, who have been reprimanded for leaving their posts. They are are speculating on w hether there is an afterlife. Despite skepticism, they do their duty. Mocks Andr ei s abstract musings. Bagration s leadership rests on the illusion that the commander is in control of t he events. Responds to everything Very Good, as if part of his plan. Jealousy between the commanders on the flank the general whose troops were inspect ed in ch. 1, and Bogdanich of the Pavlograd hussars prevents them from taking de cisive action, forced to react. Nicholas cavalry charge. Note comparison with the incident on the Enns Bridge. N. here has abandoned motive to prove himself to the commanding officer, but still more and more happy and animated, galloping out front. Unhorsed, he refuses to be lieve that the French advancing toward him would want to kill him: To kill me? Me whom everyone is so fond of? (Ch. 14, 163)

But N. manages to regain his grip on reality, lets his instincts (cf. Andrei s) ta ke over and runs for the nearby bushes: with the feeling of a hare fleeing from the hounds. One single sentiment, that of fear for his young and happy life, possessed his whole being. Afterward does not feel shame, as at the Enns, but disillusionment with his entire conception of w hat it would be like to be a hussar in the thick of battle. To feel fear without guilt, and act on it constructively, is a step away from romantic roleplaying t oward reality. The moment of moral hesitation which decides the fate of battles had arrived : Timo khin, the officer praised by Kutuzov in ch. 1 alone has managed to keep his comp any disciplined and they break the French assault. Dolokhov takes a French officer Tushin s battery holds the middle. Tushin is one of T s good people who rides the tide, accepts life as it comes, is se lf-effacing, gentle, courteous, courageous. He does his duty. Tushin s goodness is natural; Andrei s must be reached from layer after layer of self-deception and re straint. T s moral lesson: the meaning of life is life itself; in service to other s is salvation. Tushin gave no orders. Tushin disobeys order to abandon the wounded by trying to save the infantry offi cer (who dies) and agrees to transport the wounded Nicholai. Tushin performs all the necessary works of mercy: gives water to the thirsty, wa rmth to those without fire, sympathy to the discomforted, without asking for any thing in return. Tushin does not defend himself when Bagration reprimands him for the loss of his cannon. Andrei, as with the doctor s wife, comes to Tushin s assistance, again dares ridicul e, to admit what must have been an enormous concession: Tushin, not Andrei, has saved the army. Again, the realization that Andrei has failed to achieve the glo ry he desires, and that such glory is even possible on the battlefield leaves hi m disillusioned:

He felt sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had hoped. . 16, 172)

(Ch

Book 2 ends with Nicholai s thoughts of home. And why did I come here? N. forced int o new appreciation of what he has taken for granted. Both N. and A. disillusione d. War not what either had expected. Not possible for individual to effect outco me by plan and design. Chance rules on the battlefield, and the individual who t hinks he can control his fate is a fool. Andrei learns a different definition of heroism in the simple artillery captain Tushin who does his duty, helps others with no expectation for reward, turns the other cheek. Nicholai learns greater appreciation for what he has left so willi ngly. Values of home reinforced by their opposites in Book 2. Image of home and peacetime forms a link to the opening of Book 3. Book 3 (War and Peace) Having challenged and expanded our view and understanding of Peace (with war) in Bk. 1 and War (with peace) in Bk. 2, Tolstoy now brings both War and Peace toge ther in Bk. 3 in a connected whole, having established their indivisibility. Boo k 3 revisits scenes and characters from the first two books and marks the change s. Pierre is treated markedly differently at Anna S s. In Petersburg and Bald Hill s, Prince Vasily, the Napoleon of the drawing room, mounts two strategic campaig ns to secure a husband for Helene (and control of Pierre s fortune, lost to Anna M . in Book 1) and a wife for Anatole. Princess Marya becomes an object of combat between Prince B and Prince V. Berg and Boris are shown getting on. As the book concludes, Nicholai and Andrei, whose views of war and themselves have been chal lenged in Book 2, confront ultimate tests as each is granted his desire of conta ct with the men both most admire: Nicholai=Alexander; Andrei=Napoleon, in the mi dst of Russia s defining defeat at Austerlitz. By the end of Book 3, Tolstoy has challenged the reader s conceptions on several f ronts. By the end of Book 2, the reader has learned When a lie is preferred to the truth. When a victory is valued like a defeat. How an army can become a mob. How orders on the battlefield are meaningless. How even a well-loved young man could be killed. How one man directed or changing the forces of circumstances is vanity and impos sible. How a person who more than anyone else is responsible for victory can be overloo ked and blamed. Book 3 will ask whether one has free will; whether self-sacrifice is better than self-fulfilment, whether any eyewitness account of combat can be truthful; whet her great men are in fact great, and finally whether any human achievement has a ny significance measured against death and the infinite. Book 3 is organized into five major sections: Ch. 1 Petersburg: Pierre s courtship Chs. 2-4 Bald Hills: Marya s courtship Ch. 5 Moscow: Rostovs receive Nicholai s letter Chs. 6-9 Olmutz: Nicholas-Boris-Berg-Andrei before the battle Chs. 10-13 Austerlitz Ch. 1: Pierre s entanglement with Helene

Scene returns to Petersburg and Anna Sherer s salon of novel s opening to mark the e vident changes: Pierre now one of the most desirable bachelors in Russia who is being courted and flattered (sieged and duped). Even while troops are dying, th e same selfish and duplicitous intrigue is being carried on on the homefront. Ch apter opens with one of the biggest lies of the book: Prince Vasili was not a man who deliberately thought out his plans. Re-entering the world of lies, we get a lie, or at least the way Prince V sees himself. Presented as a strategist, a cam paigner, who like the foolish generals thinks he can control his own and others d estinies. V. shown mounting two campaigns: getting Pierre to marry Helene and getting Prin cess Marya to marry Anatole. Note that V. willing to use his children as commodi ties, to convert marriage into a business transaction. When last seen, V. had be en bested in combat with Anna M. for the control of Count B s fortune. Here shown having gained control of Pierre and his money nevertheless. Pierre is described like a country or city under siege from all sides. P. shown as helpless to resi st, lacks the strength of will that he most admired in Andrei. P s passivity is co mic, but ultimately it will be what will save him later. He like Tushin goes wit h the flow of life. Anna S s soiree Helene s intoxication: she represents an abyss that P. feels himself b eing inevitably drawn to. Helene s Name Day (cf Rostovs in book 1) Sergei Kuznich . . . from all sides. Pierre s fate raises one of the novel s central philosophical questions: free will v s. determinism. Pierre anticipating the fatal step into the abyss is linked to the borderline identified on the battlefield between safety and risk, life/death . How do we regard Pierre at this stage? T. intended P. as a version of Candide. P s innocence mated with Helene s worldly character to be followed by Mary s spirituali ty contrasted with Anatole s corruption. P s passivity, though comic here, is actual ly the character trait that will ultimately save him. He like Tushin goes with t he flow of life. Chs. 2-4 Marya s courtship The announcement of Prince V s visit with Anatole exposes the reality of Prince B s heart: desperately unwilling to part with his daughter. Head vs. heart debate fu lly engaged here. Suggests that the Prince s gruffness, cruelty is self-protection , trying to insulate himself from hurt. Marya s plainness emphasized. Those around her are incapable of seeing her true be auty that emerges when she is unconscious of self. She is presented with moral d ilemma, like Pierre, submit to father s will, endorse self-sacrifice or claim poss ibility of earthly happiness. Like Pierre s passivity, Marya willingness to sacrifi ce herself seems a weakness but is actually a condition for her eventual salvati on. Ch. 3 shows how each person s sense of self and need determines understanding of t he world. Relativity stressed. P. 196. Anatole s swinging foot (p. 193) footsy with Mademoiselle B. Watch how T. will use t his leitmotif later in the novel. Ch. 4: How each of the three women and Prince B go to bed. Prince under the guis e of giving M. freedom to choose actually dictates her choice by alerting her to the flirtation between Anatole and Mlle B. Again the question is raised: free w ill or determinism.

Ch. 5 Rostovs hear from Nicholai Natasha senses something is up. Has capacity to perceive what others miss. She w heedles the intelligence out of Anna M. and give her word of honor to keep the sec ret that she promptly breaks by telling Sonia. Links N. again with Pierre who ga ve his word of honor to Andrei not to carouse with Anatole and does so. N. doesn t remember Boris. What s the point here? Sonya s faithfulness in love contras ted with N s fickleness, who is now in love with her singing master. So much for Fo rever . . . Till death itself in book 1. Now she can t even recall Boris. N=immedi ate gratification. Petya reminds the connection between N. and P: in spectacles. She was in love with that fat one

Boris gets 700 rubles for his officer s outfit; Nicholas gets 6,000. Nicholai as model son leads to his actual appearance: Ch. 6 Nicholas visits with Boris, Berg, and meets Andrei What should be evident in watching both N. and A. here is that despite the lesso n learned in book 2, they revert to earlier, pre-combat self. N=roleplaying as t he braggart hussar; A=indolent, detached cynicism. Despite disillusionment, nei ther have altered from their basic character. Both still convinced that war rema ins opportunity for glory and self-actualization. N. dresses the part of the careless hussar, disdaining fashion and staff officer s (T. own pose on returning from Crimean War). Berg and Boris=self-interested am bition. Boris=chessmen; Berg still only interested in conversation about himself . p. 210 Nicholas account of the Schon Grabern makes major point that no eyewitness account of combat can be believed: It is very difficult to tell the truth. An ind ividual s memories or memoirs are unreliable because consciously or unconsciously we falsify though the desire for self-glory, illusion, because we don t want to di sappoint our audience, or because we enhance our ignorance with invention. Neith er the historian whose selectivity misleads or the eyewitness whose limitations and biases distort can get to the truth of experience. Novelist offers a better version of experience. Andrei enters and his arrogance infuriates N. who rudely picks a fight: p. 211, even as N. admits that he admires A s self-possession and that there was none he wo uld so much like to have for a friend. Ch. 7 Alexander reviews the troops. Cf Book 2, ch. 1: ultimate parade before the army s ultimate defeat. As in Book 2, T. contrasts the order, heroism on the parade ground vs. the chaos, confusion, and self-preservation of the battlefield. Here escalated by showing Alexander an d connecting him with Nicholas. If A. has Napoleon as his hero; N s hero is Alexan der (both will gain their desire of meeting their heroes on the battlefield with disillusioning effect). The review of the troops takes on the impression of a N uremberg rally. Army=ocean in which individual is a drop in a huge, impersonal m ass. T. s method: close-ups, tracking shots, and bird s eye views. Sees the parade t hrough N s adoring eyes and then pulls up so the entire mass of the army seen: los ing individual for mass. Personification=ocean, leaves blown by wind. Cf. Andrei s admiration of Napoleon with N s idolatry of Alexander. How does the per son they most admire provide a contrast with the two characters. A. wants to be

Napoleon; N. wants only to serve Alexander. A. wants to dominate and control lik e Napoleon; N. wants validation of love and respect from A. Typical Bolkonsky vs Rostov responses. Ch. 8 Boris visits Andrei at Olmutz Boris introduced to higher world of power and influence and mistakes the true sour ce of power in which a general defers to a captain. Boris accepts the mistaken n otion that individuals control events. Boris taken to meet Prince Dolgorukov, an adjutant general on the Tsar s staff, on e of the hot-heads urging the army to advance on Napoleon. Gets closer to the sun . He was conscious that here he was in contact with the springs that set in motion the enormous movement of the mass of which in his regiment he felt himself a tin y, obedient, and insignificant atom. Actually, Dolgorukov and Napoleon are acted upon by forces beyond their control. Boris mistakenly assumes that power rests with this elite; actually, as T. shows, meaningful power is in the hands of the masses. Ch. 9 Nicholas in reserve in a minor engagement that has captured a French squa dron. Tsar seen again. Tsar is shocked by the sight of a dying soldier: What a te rrible thing war is. This is a lesson that should determine his seeking an altern ative to the carnage that his ambition unleashes. Ch. 10 Russians deliberate T s epic simile: Clock mechanism: Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the me chanism of the military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result . . . (223-224) Great action actually composed of thousands of minute human ac ts of passions, desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, f ear, and enthusiasm, not the result of any individual s single will. (224) The mist ake is to think that any one person sets the clock in motion and is not merely o ne more cog. Again, free will vs. determinism is being raised. Dolgorukov: All eventualities have been foreseen. (225) Oh, yes? How about the mor ning s fog? Napoleon s hidden force aimed at your center? Kutuzov: I think the battle will be lost. Ch. 11 War Council before the battle This famous historical scene is remarkable for the absence of the most important aspect of any war council: the specifics of the plan. All is described from And rei s perspective: Weyrother s mud-splattered uniform, droning, pedantic voice, and K s snoring. The emphasis makes the concept of plan/strategy meaningless: A hears only a string of Austrian rhyming place names that seem like childish gibberish; K. confirms the nonsense of it all by snoring through it. Allies committed: Like a horse running downhill harnessed to a heavy cart. K acknowledged that ircumstances. dispositions cannot now be altered. Accepts inevitability of c

Ends with Andrei revealing his deepest desires. (229 230): The closest view we get into Andrei s heart. He is ambitious, not like Boris or Berg, or most of us, but wants to become a great man. Lost interest in Lise and society: not a stage larg e enough for his capacity for greatness.

Has vision of his achieving the opportunity to prove himself. But what about dea th? His other voice asks. I don t know what will happen and don t want to know, and can t, but if I want this want glory, want to be known to men, want to be loved by them, it is not my fault tha t I want it and want nothing but that and live only for that. Yes, for that alon e! I shall never tell anyone, but, oh God! What am I to do if I love nothing but fame and men s esteem? Death, wounds, and the loss of family I fear nothing. And pr ecious and dear as many persons are to me father, sister, wife those dearest to me yet dreadful and unnatural as it seems, I would give them all at once for a moment of glory, of triumph over men, of love from men I don t know and never shall know, for the love of these men here. (230) The paradox of glory is that it is finally how one dies that determines ultimate greatness. Death wish dominates A s conception, which he evades. Andrei s willingness to sacrifice all for fame and men s esteem is comically deflated by the men whose esteem he desires the coachman teasing the cook Go, Tit, thresh a bit. Battle will be a reaping of a human crop. Ironic deflation of human aspirati ons will frame the entire battle. (p. 251) Ch. 12 Nicholas on picket duty observes the French on the eve of battle. Cf Andrei s dream of power and glory=N s less grandiose desire to gain the Tsar s atte ntion. N. enters dream state in which T. shows the stream of consciousness: p. 2 31 Napoleon s proclamation as epitome of egoticism: I/me/myself. Ch. 13 Battle of Austerlitz One of the two major battle set-pieces in the novel. What is T s strategy for rend ering one of the most famous battles in human history? 1. alternation of bird s eye view and close up 2. frames action by characters reaction. Andrei and Nicholas become like d-held cameras in motion. Andrei on hand for the realization by K. of Napoleon eception and killing stroke against the center; N. on horseback where he moves cross the battlefield to witnesses the famous charge of the horseguard and the espair of the Tsar. 3. emphasis on atmosphere: fog, clouds, sun, sky. All weaving together confusion of battle; ry/honor in the face ts of the novel when ghest observatory in han s d a d

the major themes novel has previously developed: Chaos and free will vs. determinism, insignificance of concept of glo of ultimate annihilation=sky over Austerlitz. Central momen the infinite is glimpsed. Scene has been described as the hi W&P. p. 244

How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? All about the field, like heaps of manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to fiftenn dead and wounded to each couple of acres. Go, Tit! Thresh a bit. Both Nicholas and Andrei will be granted their wish of encountering the men they most admire. For N. he is too bashful to come to the aid of the desolated Tsar. For Andrei, in the context of the lofty sky. N s voice=buzzing of flies. From the perspective of the immense, infinite sky, N., and all A s former dreams of glory, seem petty and pathetic. (p. 253)

Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of lif e which no one could understand, and the still greater unimportance of death, th e meaning of which no one alive could understand or explain. (254). There is nothing certain, nothing at all except the unimportance of everything I understand, and the greatness of something incomprehensible but all important. (2 55) Book ends with T capturing the essence of the battle while weaving together the progress of his two fictional characters. Both dream of glory: Andrei to bear th e standard at a decisive moment; Nicholas to be of service to the Tsar. Each is granted his wish, but nothing turns out the way it was expected. Andrei is griev ously wounded; Nicholas lacks courage to act and is overwhelmed by bitter self-r eproach. In neither case is the result of encountering their heroes what they ex pect. In the context of the death and impersonal, indifferent, and infinite life , both Alexandre and Napoleon are diminished. From the perspective of the lofty sky, all men s ambitions and achievements are vanity. Austerlitz itself reduced to the warfare of ants, barely attracting attention. Can the joy that the realizat ion of the beautiful, immense, infinite sky releases in Andrei be sustained? Wil l the dual consciousness of the human and the infinite diminish or nourish? Will Andrei choose life or death as the path to reach the perfect peace he has glimp sed at Austerlitz? . . . stay tuned. Book 4 (Homecomings) Book 4 is patterned by contrasting homecomings Nicholas and Andrei s from the war, Pi erre s from his duel with Dolokhov. Dolokhov becomes the link character connecting Pierre/Helene and the Rostovs in the gambling scene in which D. reacts to Sonya s rejection of his offer of marriage by ruining Nicholas. At Bald Hills, Andrei, missing and believed dead, returns unannounced at the exact moment of Lise s death , removing the possibility of A making amends to her for his desire for glory ov er love. Chs. 1-3 Nicholai s homecoming (Dinner connects N. and P.) Chs. 4-6 Pierre s duel and homecoming Chs. 7-9 Andrei s homecoming Chs. 10-15 The Rostovs at home: Denisov-Natasha; Dolokhov-Sonya; Dolkhov-Nichola i Chs. 1-3 Nicholai s homecoming N. returns to a peaceful world and joyous welcome. Despite fears of change, all seems exactly the same. Chance to measure change, and new relationships need to be established. Should N. and S use Thee or You? Denisov must be incorporated in to family group. Tranquility to be challenged by Dolokhov s proposal and N s gamblin g loss. Natasha now 15. Continuities in her character? Strengths/weaknesses? What are the hints that Sonya is wrong for N.? T. convinced that despite essential core of temperament, men and women must cont inually adapt and change. Refusal to accept change and growth=stagnation/death. Novel will subdivide characters on a continuum of those who change/grow and thos e who do not. Russians respond to their defeat by denial. Versus the reality of war as we expe

rienced it in Books 2 & 3 here all falsified by sentiment and simplification. Ba d poetry and ludicrous inflation of B s contribution. Bagration selected as hero t o be celebrated (Kutuzov abused). Learn important information: Count Rostov has mortgaged his estates; Boris now on the staff; Dolokhov s affair with Helene suspe cted; Pierre miserable in his marriage; Andrei assumed dead and quickly forgotte n: Of Bolkonski, nothing was said, and only those who knew him intimately regretted that he had died so young, leaving a pregnant wife with his eccentric father. So much for A s desire to win everlasting glory in men s eyes. Chs. 4-6 The duel and Pierre s homecoming In the world of War (peace)/Peace (war), Pierre finally now a combatant. Combat over the portfolio now escalated into an affair of honor. Note change in P: He is gloomy, withdrawn, depressed, the one sour note at the festivities. Emphasis on trivialty. What do P. and D. quarrel over? Copy of the tribute song. Just as D. has taken possession of P s wife, he seizes P s musical program. P. is p reoccupied with the anonymous note accusing his wife and D. which confirms his o wn suspicions of his wife s corrupt nature. N. s dismissal of P. alligns him with the false and cruel. He will become D s second . Consistent with N s character: N offended by P s lack of enthusiasm to the Tsar (h as N. forgotten his last view of the Tsar at Austerlitz?). N s sympathy with D. wi ll be disastrous. Psychologically, how do you explain D.: P. has taken him in, l oaned him money, and D. seduces his wife and fights him in a duel. N. will befri end D., entertain him at his home, get to know D s mother and sister, and D. will ruin N. Why? Shouldn t the practical side of D. tell him that he can use both P. a nd N.? Here s to the health of pretty women . . . and their lovers. Marriage/family vs. Sex. T. will in Anna Karenina explore in great depth the co mplex notion of marital infidelity. Here, emphasis solely on P. with little to m itigate or even humanize Dolokhov or Helene s characters or motives: amoral monste rs. Echo: in Ch. 3 P. had challenged D s feat; now challenges him. The duel=ritualization of battlefield. Here is the heroic one-on-one contest of heroic poetry that T. shows is impossible in modern combat. As on the battlefiel d, there is an emphasis on the barrier between the combatants, between life and death. Pierre acts consistently here as he did with his engagement: unable to pr event it from happening he lets it happen: the duel seems to be taking its course independently of men s will. (again, P. is portrayed as going with the flow that wi ll prove his ultimate salvation/fate vs. free will). By pure luck (again the theme of free will/determinism), having never previously fired a weapon, P. shoots the experienced duelist D. P. must stand 10 paces fro m D. and allow him to return fire ( with a gentle smile of pity and remorse ). D. mi sses (chance/fate). P. horrified and ashamed: Folly . . . folly! Death . . . lies. Aftermath: surprise: even D. has a loving mother. T. shifts reader s sympathy from Pierre to D. At home, P. faces the realization of Helene s vulgarity and corruption. Blames him self for succumbing to her beauty and accepts his punishment. Confronted Helene is unrepentant and contemptuous, prompting P. into a violent display of strength

. Beginning of a dark moment of his soul: Louis XVI criminal or victim? Who is r ight/who is wrong? Given moral relativity, lack of moral absolutes, what truly m atters? Chs. 7-9 Andrei s homecoming Impact on the news of Andrei s assumed death is measured on Prince B, Mary, Lise. Each respond as they can/who they are. Andrei s arrival comes dramatically at the moment of Lise s confinement and crisis. T., like Dickens, despite claims of truth fulness and realism, orchestrates events and circumstances to heighten impact. A tmosphere symbolic=storm. Andrei s surprising reappearance at the crisis moment in Lise s childbearing. How to judge? Part of the extraordinary texture of life or o verly contrived? It s Andrew! . . . No it can t be, that would be too extraordinary. You didn t get my letter? What a strange fate. Death of Lise: My darling . . . God is merciful. Comment indicates A s changed attit ude toward wife and presumably in accepting the notion of divine justice. Both w ife s love and God s mercy will be expressed by a trick of fate=Lise s death. Birth described through perspective of A s anxiety, his attempt to comprehend the event (making strange). What have they taken a baby in there for? Lise s death accusation: Ah, what have your done to me? Answer to this question will absorb A s thought and cloud his sense of life s joys and possibilities. Presumably , at the point of returning home to wife to start afresh, he is prevented by fat e from making a new commitment to wife (and love). Prince A. felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a si n he could neither remedy nor forget. Out of the experience of L s death (and his battlefield experience) A. will evolve a new philosophy of patient forbearance: don t get involve with anyone, pain will only come of it. First, Pierre is pushed to realization of folly/death/lies; second, Andrei must face the question of why; third, Nicholas will be made to pay for his willfulnes s: consequence for actions. Andrei would later consider the death of Lise as among the best moments of his l ife, along with Austerlitz, Pierre at the ferry, first meeting with Natasha. Why ? Sky at Austerlitz reminds A. that life within him is infinite, glimpses someth ing not circumscribed by his understanding. Best moments=heightened consciousnes s, no matter how harmful and disillusioning. Suffering leads to growth. Austerli tz=death of his concept of glory and rebirth of concept of infinite. Death of Li se=guilt that he has violated the sacredness of her being leads to spiritual dea th/despair before rebirth. Chs. 10-15 Nicholai s relationship with Dolokhov D s mother regards ther s view points as venal. If he her. How does this him too noble and pure-souled for our present, depraved world. Mo toward unsuspected complexity in D s character. Regards all women could meet one as pure as his mother, he would give his life for help explain his bullying and cruelty to others?

Note that Natasha takes Pierre s side in the duel and accuses Dolokhov of being un

natural, heartless, and cruel. Predicts that D. has fallen in love with Sonya (w hich will be proven true). Natasha will also predict that N. will never marry S. Iogel s Ball: Natasha appears in her first long dress. In love with everyone. Deni sov dances the mazurka (cf Count Rostov dancing the Daniel Cooper). Card Game with Dolokhov. Comes after Sonya s rejection. D s motive? To get N. to rel ease S to him. Note that N. drifts half against his will into playing with D., p receeded by his giving his word of honor to his father that he would live within h is means. Third time a word of honor is broken: Pierre, Natasha, now Nicholai. C ard game perfect metaphor for chance/fate and ritualized combat like a duel. 43,000 rubles=S s age of 16 and D s age of 27. Ch. 14 Nicholai returns home to hear Natasha sing. Perspective: shocked that everyone isn t as miserable as he is. Against his will, in the midst of his despair, he finds himself responding to N s singing: What were losses, and Dolokhov, and words of honor? . . . All nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be happy. =life force too strong to resist. Death/life=In the midst of Nicholas s despair as he confesses to his father, Natas ha joyful at Denisov s proposal. Book 5 (The Searchers) Book 5 takes its shape from the different efforts of three characters Pierre, Andr ei, and Nicholas to find answers to the existential question how should we live. P ierre will respond to the despair brought on by his marriage and duel and leap a t the life buoy offered by Freemasonry; Andrei will evolve a new philosophy prom pted by the defeat of his dreams of glory and death of Lise with a philosophy to minimize exposure to pain (only to be reminded by P s example of the existential lesson learned at Austerlitz); Nicholas will attempt to correct the injustice do ne to his friend Denisov by appealing to the mercy and generosity of his idol, A lexander. What he experiences at Tilsit will shake the foundations of his unders tanding of the world and he will respond characteristically: by not thinking abo ut it and calling for another bottle. Same pattern as Book 4: Pierre-Andrei-Nich olai. Chs. 1-5 Pierre s search Chs. 6-12 Andrei s search Ch.s 13-18 Nicholai s search Chs. 1-5 Pierre and the Freemasons At Torzhok posting station, P. waits for a change of horses on his way to Peters burg in the midst of deep, spiritual agony: All we know is that we know nothing. And that s the height of human wisdom. Central metaphor for his state: stripped screw

Enter Bazdeev: shriveled old man wearing a death s head ring who knows all about P . and challenges P s hopeless state.: God not to be apprehended by reason but by li fe. To find him, B. suggests that P. must purify his life to attain wisdom. Cf. Andrei s revelation at Austerlitz who also finds his whole life meaningless. As ab ove Austerlitz, P. proded to a vision of the infinite, the spiritual beyond self . Both A. and P. tormented by the essential questions that haunted T. throughout his life: What is good/bad?

What What What What

should one love/hate? does one live for? is life/death? power governs all?

P. offered a path through Freemasonry. It will be shown as ultimately a simplist ic system of forms, rituals that fail to sustain. T. suspicious of any packaged a nswer to the ultimate question. We will see the rituals of Freemasonry through th e uncomprehending, slightly foolish and embarrassed eyes of Pierre (cf. his fath er s death, the duel), between his desire to be transported to religious/moral ecs tasy and reality=Freemasonry little more than a gentlemen s club. The spiritual meaning that P. discovers through Freemasonry releases joy. After initiation P. felt as if he had returned from a long journey . . . had become com pletely changed, and quite left behind his former habits and way of life. Initiation scene: comic. Hair caught in the blindfold. What are the hints that F reemasonry will prove inadequate? Ch. 3 P s newly found commitment to Freemasonry at least helps P. stand up to Prin ce V. who tries to repair the breach with Helene. P. leaves Petersburg to inspec t his estates in search of doing some good. Ch. 5 Anna Scherer s salon now features new celebrity on the menu=Boris who attrac ts Helene s attention. From the perspective of the fashionable (and false), P is b lamed for the duel and the break with H. Intelligence that the Prussians have be en beaten by Napoleon suggests that a second war with France is coming. Boris is shown making steady progress climbing the social ladder into prominence. Hippol yte continues to tell pointless stories: Le Roi de Prusse. In T s scheme, all the bad people stay the same; all the good change, open to chan ge because they are alive. Chs. 6-12 Andrei following the death of Lise and his retirement from the army Note roles now reversed. With war impending, the old Prince is roused by activity while Andrei is now detached and cynical. Cynicism matched by Bilibin s letter th at comically, ironically summarizes the Prussian campaign in which the troops ar e left to starve and the main enemy of the generals is not Napoleon but their ri vals. Illness of Prince Nicholas. Ch. 8 Pierre s visits to his estates. P. embarks on grand scheme met by distrust and deception. With no head for business or the erseers, P. is easily duped and shown what he wants to see: How good. All his reforms are a sham. Again, P. has good intention, al will to make a difference (cf. Andrei s reforms). Ch. 9 Pierre visits Andrei First meeting since Ch. 2; again an opportunity to measure change. P. has new philosophy of self-less service to humanity; A. to minimizing pain to himself and others. At first constrained, oing good for others; out knowing what good /illness. A. shows P. they eventually argue over the correct way to live. P=by d A=by living for one s self and avoiding harm to others, with is, can at least avoid evil. A. identifies 2 evils=remorse how all his efforts on behalf of others is wrongheaded. Pe of reform that is wiles of his ov easy . . . to do but lacks practic

asant s animal happiness alone is enviable. Neither education, easing work, nor fr eedom will make anything better. Even freeing the serfs only desirable to correc t the moral abuses of masters. A s is a cynical philosophy of an isolated life bas ed on diminishing exposure, retreating to a protective shell to avoid being harm ed. Love no one to limit the pain of loss of love. At a stroke, A. punctures P s idealism. On the Ferry: P. attempts to combat A s philosophy of self-interest with what he h as learned from the Freemasons. Happiness only from equality, brotherhood, and lo ve. Begins to crack A s shell of self-sufficiency exposing something beyond self. Ferry=barrier. As in the sky above Austerlitz, A. reminded of something beyond h is narrow, intellectual pride: For the first time since Austerlitz [A] saw that high, everlasting sky he had see n while lying on that battlefield; and something that had long been slumbering, something that was best within him, suddenly awoke, joyful and youthful, in his soul. It vanished as soon as he returned to the customary conditions of his life , but he knew that this feeling which he did not know how to develop existed wit hin him. His meeting with Pierre formed an epoch in Prince Andrei s life. Though o utwardly he continued to live in the same old way, inwardly he began a new life. A s need to believe is the crucial first step in a alteration and chnge of philoso phy from narrow, selfish rationalism to larger conception of self as part of a g reater whole that helps supply meaning for existence. Under A s previous view, joy is impossible; now he is receptive to what will come=Natasha God s Folk. Neither A nor P can approach Marya s faith and devotion. Regard the spir itual pilgrims as superstitious (cf. their beliefs with the Freemasons). Note that Pierre pleases the old Prince. Special pleading on T s part or do we get some grounds for Prince B s preference. He stirs me up. Another says clever thing s and one doesn t care to listen, but this one talks rubbish yet stirs an olf fell ow up. P. here given a version of family life that underscores how isolated and a lone P. is: no mother, father, estranged from wife, childless. Ultimately, it wi ll be in family that P s search will end. Chs 13-18 Nicholai s return to the army Balancing the homecoming of the opening of Book 4, is a second homecoming here: N. rejoining the Pavlograds. Note that N. makes the point that the army is simpler : you don t have to think, just do your duty. Here in the regiment, all was clear a nd simple. Life clearer/simpler, but will it be? As in N s first experiences he wil l be presented by a series of assaults to his simplified, absolute, either/or se nse of the world from the perspective as a soldier: Regiment will be left to starve Denisov s humanitarian effort to feed his men will be punished (note the coinciden ce that behind the starvation of the Pavlograds=Telyanin. He is charged with rob bery while the real robber (Telyanin) goes unpunished. Hospital worse than being wounded (Tushin reencountered, lacking an arm); Deniso v no longer the devil-may-care soldier: becomes obsessed with the case against h im to the exclusion of any interest in the regiment. French now friends, not foes. Alexander not the idol that N. wants: rejects out-of-hand the petition on behalf of Denisov. N. assumed that A. will be sensitive to the wrong done his friend a nd will be merciful. Instead, A. too busy with trappings of celebrations. The law is stronger than I. Soldier, best shot on the firing range selected to receive the Legion of Honor,

while the really brave Tushin and Denisov neglected or reprimanded. Random chance re wards one soldier, while Denizov s suit is ignored. Like Pierre at Torzhok and Andrei at the ferry, Nickolai is pushed to a spiritua l crisis: what can he belief? As at Austerlitz, N. given lesson that his views o f the world clashes with reality. He is filled with terrible doubts. Alexander not great but limited. Army life not simple but complex and contradictory. Given hi s experiences at Tilsit, why so much death and suffering? Why did we fight? On t he threshold of a shattering realization, N. responds characteristically by refu sing to think further, by calling for another bottle. Don t think, just do your du ty, submit. If once we begin judging and arguing about everything, nothing sacred will be lef t! That way we sall be saying there is no God nothing! P/A led to recognition of di vine; N. to the abyss of the collapse of all absolutes. Note at Tilsit, N. encounters Boris, echoing his meeting following Schon Grabern . Now, Boris has left his friend behind. Guests now French or so self-important that they ignore or patronize N. But note as well that N. does not let his feeli ngs carrying him from his mission (as in his near-duel with Andrei). N. has matu red. Does complete his mission. At Tilsit, N s adolescence has come to an end. Disillusion has clouded his earlier view of war and Alexander. Alexander no better than Napoleon. Both equally indi fferent to justice and goodness of ordinary life. Pierre responds to disillusion by spirituality and brotherhood. Andrei responds to his disillusion by retreating into self and protective shell, Nickolai responds with accepting the world as it is, doubts soothed with alcohol and not thinking. Peace now comes, and for the next 5 years, the novel will follow the fortune of the characters off the battlefield. Book 6 (Rebirth) Between the poles of life and death, W&P will explore the possibilities of growt h, change, and rebirth. Book 6 will show Andrei coming back to life, as the seas on changes in the opening chapters from winter to spring. After hibernation, And rei will be reanimated, inspired by the vital life force that causes a reluctant old oak to leaf and drives a young girl to imagine flying out her window on a m oonlit spring night. Andrei, remembering the vitality that he also experienced o n the battlefield of Austerlitz will break out of his isolation and retirement a nd return to St. Petersburg where he will first be inspired by a new hero, Spera nsky, and imagine his glory and destiny, not on the battlefield, but as a reform er. Speransky s dead, mirror eyes and mirthless laugh will pale before another obj ect of Andrei s desire: the innocent, vital Natasha. The book will end with Andrei s fateful proposal to Natasha and the conditions that will produce one of the gre at climaxes of the entire novel. Important to pause a bit to recall Andrei s progress to this point. Originally, An drei was not a central character at all. T. needed a corpse to leave on the Auster litz battlefield, a young man of distinction, connected to the Russian staff who could record the battle from the perspective of the generals. T. embodied in An drei significant aspects of himself, at least a version of T. that he projected: cool, detached, intellectual, polished aristocratic. He also gave Andrei the as pect of T s temperament that was revolted by the physical and was driven to achiev ement and personal glory. Pierre represents the other side of T. and together, P ierre and Andrei represent a kind of double self-vision of their creator.

When first seen, Andrei is revolted by his societal and married life of shallow, pointlessness. He tells P. never marry, seeing marriage as a limitation on his am bition to achieve greatness. He forgoes the salon (and home) for the battlefield where he thinks he can gain glory. Andrei, his father s son, is a rationalist who dismisses the spiritual as so much superstition (attitude to the icon that Mary a gives him). Like the Homeric hero, glory/honor for A. is the only way to insur e immortality, the only way to combat fate that condemns man to death. Driven by a thirst for military success, the supreme assertion of one s courage and capabil ities at the risk of death, A. is ultimately suicidal because his quest is a con frontation between the absolute and mortality. Ultimately, only in death, by the way one dies, does anyone finally achieves glory. Andrei, flag in hand at Auste rlist, gains his deepest desire (against which his father, sister, and wife mean nothing), dies while looking at the absolute in the form of the sky above him, wh ich tells him all is vanity. Caught between the heartbreaking beauty of the worl d and its transitoriness compared to the infinite, death for A. is not yet an aw akening but a consolation. Perfection glimpse in the sky, the expansiveness of n on-self, can only be gained in death. Death is in attendance as well when A. returns to Bald Hill resolved to start a new life (Lise= my darling / God is merciful ). New birth of his son takes Lise s life a nd prevents A from making amends from his lack of valuing his wife. Lise s death a lso shakes his newly declared faith that God is merciful. Mercy/justice would have kept Lise alive. In her death, Lise exposes A s guilt that causes his retreat int o a protective shell. Evolves philosophy of do no harm, minimize pain by limitin g human contact=perfect image of hibernation/retreat/denial/death. P will set in motion A s wake-up call. He will remind A. of what he saw in the sky above Auster litz: life beyond self. A. will revive on his trip to visit the Rostovs that wil l drive him back to life at Petersburg, to Speransky and into Natasha s arms. Will the life force that Andrei stokes here sustain him? Ch. 1: Andrei s revival Chs. 2-8: Petersburg: Speransky, Helene, Vera-Berg Chs. 9-15: Andrei-Natasha Chs. 16-17: Bald Hills: Prince B s and Marya s reaction to the engagement Ch. 1: Andrei s revival Book opens with a brief historical intro. to 1808-1809: Treaty of Erfurt brings peace and makes Russia a French ally against the Austrians. But Life meanwhile real life, with its essential interest of health and sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in thought, science, poetry, music, lov e, friendship, hatred, and passions went on as usual, independently of and apart f rom political friendship or enmity with Napoleon Bonoapart and from all the sche mes of reconstruction. After two years in the country, Andrei has achieved practical reforms on his est ate that has eluded P. frees serfs, improves education, hires midwife. Still deepl y scarred from his disillusionment with the war, his wound, his wife s death. Sets out in spring, 1809, to visit his son s Ryazan estates (near Otradnoe, country ho me of the Rostovs). Crosses in ferry that produced the memorable conversation wi th P. the year before. Spring shows life coming back: birches vs. oak that seems to resist: Spring, love, happiness! this oak seemed to say. Are you not weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? . . . There is no spring, no sun, no ha ppiness! . . . I do not believe in your hopes and your lies. . . . Oak expresses A s feeling=mirror: Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right, thought Prince A ndrei. Let others the young yield afresh to that fraud, but we know life, our life is

finished! Instead A. determined to live out his life, content to do no harm, and not distur bing himself or desiring anything. T.S. Eliot s The Waste Land: April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Andrei is depressed and preoccupied when he sees Natasha for the first time: What is she so glad about? . . . Why is she so happy? In his room, unable to sleep (s tifling), A. opens his window(!) to reveal a magical landscape of moon, sky, tre es. Overhears Natasha at the window above him and suddenly feels the unexpected t urmoil of youthful thoughts and hopes, contrary to the whole tenor of his life. On his return, the old oak has burst into leaf, and A. experiences a sense of joy and renewal : vision of the 4 best moments of his life: 1. Austerlitz with the lofty heavens 2. His wife s dead reproachful face 3. Pierre at the ferry 4. That girl thrilled by the beauty of the night, and that night itself and the moon Commonality: each invitation to reality of more than self. No, life is not over at 31! It is not enough for me to know what I have in me everyone must know it: Pierre, an d that young girld who wanted to fly away into the sky, everyone must know me, s o that my life may not be lived for myself alone while others live so apart from it, but so that it may be reflected in them all, and they and I may live in har mony! Andrei resolves on taking an active share in life, decides to go to Petersburg to reconnect with the world to present his plan for military reform, compelled by th e possibility of being useful and in the possibility of happiness or love. Lise no longer accusing him; guilt now gone. Irrational and inexpressible though ts which altered his whole life and were connected with Pierre, with fame, with t he girl at the window, the oak, and woman s beauty and love. Chs. 2-8: Petersburg: Speransky, Helene, Vera-Berg Return to St. Petersburg, capital of falsity, selfishness to measure the changes : Helene considered a wit and important person. Boris has achieved the prominence, the proximity to the source of power. Pierre battles the superficiality, social, insincerity of the Petersburg freemas ons. Reform/political life in the control of Arakcheev and Speransky. Andrei will be seduced (like Natasha by Anatole) by Speransky. He is an intellec tual tempter=what A. would like to be: totally rational, powerful, a genius insu lated from human contact, another Napoleon with plump, soft, white hands.

Speransky= commander in chief (375). S= living ideal of that perfection toward which he strove, that he readily believed that in Speranski he had found this ideal of a perfectly rational and virtuous man. (379). What warns A. about S: his cold, mirror-like look, which did not allow one to pen etrate to his soul, and delicate white hands. . . . his excessive contempt for others. Ch. 3-5 Narrative double backs in time to early 1808 when P s story had left off. Returns from Bald Hills to Petersburg when he becomes more involved with Petersb urg Freemason. Despite commitment to freemasonry, his life now continues as befo re with the same infatuations and dissipations. Members less committed to reform t han socializing. P. travels abroad to learn from other Freemasons. Speech: refor m (like A s plan for army reform) is rejected as too radical. Depression sets in. Expresses the same sentiment as at the posting station: Nothing mattered to him. Nothing in life seemed to him of much importance, and under the influence of the depression that possessed him valued neither his liberty nor his resolution to punish his wife. Helene sues to be taken back. And P. concedes after being encouraged by Bazdeev as part of self-purgation. Narrative shifts to diary form to reveal P s interior. Struggle of conscience cf. to Andrei s process of regeneration. Helene= C est un superbe animal (Napoleon): sums up Helene s whole character. She is re garded as important figure in society that all try to please. P regarded as am a bsent-minded crank and advantageous background for his elegant wife. Boris=mon pag e. Is this a repetition of the Dolokhov episode? Helene will increasingly ally h erself with the French sympathizers. P. comes close to acting the part of Andrei in society, regarding her wife s guests with contempt and he behaves at her parti es as he would at a theatre. Beneath the surface of placid indifference, P. is in spiritual turmoil. P s diary=internal torment to suppress his sensual nature, his doubts. Dreams=unco nscious mind. Diary contrasts with the placid, superficial surface of Helene who is considered a great wit vs. mental conflict and agony of P. whom no one takes seriously. Boris admitted as a Freemason (enough said!). Chs. 6-8 Rostovs in Petersburg Why are the Rostovs in Petersburg? Money will increasingly dominate their domest ic life. Open hearted hospitality and generosity have a cost. Increasingly, the Rostovs will have to act practically (head vs. heart), at odds with their nature s. Petersburg reception of the Rostovs revealing: they are seen as provincials and ignored by those who enjoyed their hospitality in Moscow. Berg, who now needs a fashionable wife, proposes to Vera. Suggestion that the Ro stovs would never have considered Berg but he may be the best the 24-year-old ca n now do, given the family fortune. Dowry, like the gift of 700 rubles, exceeds Berg s request. Natasha and Boris. N. now 16, the age she forecast her engagement to Boris. Chan ge measured: Natasha now considered beneath Boris. Despite his reluctance to jeo pardize his career, Boris still finds Natasha irresistible and continues to visi

t the family. Natasha in her mother s bed. Natasha, allowed a final, tender moment of childishne ss before onset of adulthood. Confesses that she doesn t love Boris= narrow, like th e dining room clock . . . grey, light grey. Pierre= blue, dark blue and red, and he is square. Tolstoy s notes on Natasha. Include: Terribly generous . . . Believes in herself. Naughty, and always gets away with it, a nuisance to everybody and loved by everybody. . . . Ambitious. . . Suddenl y sad, suddenly terribly happy. Love: crying out for a husband , two even: needs children, love, bed. . . . Foolish but nice, uneducated, knows nothing and alwa ys knows how to hide it. Chs. 9-15: Andrei-Natasha Ch. 9 Natasha s first grand ball. At ball Natasha is ignored by Boris and Anatole (in pursuit of an heiress) who l ooks at N. as if she were a wall. Natasha saved from humiliation by Pierre who urges Andrei to dance with her. Contrast between Natasha s freshness and modesty and Helene: hardened by a varnish left by the thousand of looks that had scanned her person, while Natasha was lik e a girl exposed for the first time, who would have felt very much ashamed had s he not been assured that this was absolutely necessary. Andrei, infected by her innocence, youth, joy, vitality, felt revived and rejuven ated. The ever sensible, rationalist Andrei finds himself saying, If she goes to h er cousin first and then to another lady, she will be my wife. Ch. 10. Dinner at Speransky s and Andrei s disillusionment. Begins to think how can this work make me happier or better? Speransky s laugh such as one hears on the stage. Party seems to A. an epitome of fa lsity. Series of anecdotes at expense of others. Gaiety of guests is mirthless an d tiresome. Speransky and his daughter= unnatural. Like Napoleon seen from Austerli tz sky, Speransky is trivial, compared to what he felt dancing with Natasha. Ch. 11 Andrei visits the Rostovs. Cf. Speransky s=natural/genuine: In Natasha Prince Andrei was conscious of a strange world completely alien to him and brimful of joys unknown to him, a different world, that in the Otradnoe ave nue and at the window that moonlit night had already begun to disconcert him. N: Austerlitz sky. Natasha sings (cf Nicholai s reaction) and tears choke Andrei=ice melting. Andrei feels happy/sad: The chief reason was a sudden, vivid sense of the terribl e contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable within him and tha t limited and material something that he, and even she, was. This contrast weigh ed on and yet cheered him while she sang. At home, Andrei cannot sleep (cf. scene at Otradnoe): his soul was as fresh and j oyful as if he had stepped out of a stuffy room into God s own fresh air. Picturing Natasha all life appeared in a new light :

Why do I strive, why do I toil in this narrow, confined frame, when life, all lif e with all its joys, is open to me? Thinks about the future. Agrees with Pierre from the ferry that one must believe in the possibility of happiness to be happy: Let the dead bury the dead, but while one has life one must live and be happy! T s psychological analysis of the gradual growth of love in Andrei is masterly. Co nsistent with Andrei s age, character, personality, and the determining factors of his life. Slow but steady process of turning toward life, but opening up to pai n/loss as well as joy/happiness. Ch. 12 The Bergs evening party Vera and Berg=yuppies of 1809. Totally conformists. Berg measured his life not by years but by promotions. No children: We must live for society. Everything was just as it was everywhere else. Secure Pierre as highest ranking guest. He watches Natasha change when Andrei ar rives: What s the matter with her? / Something very important is happening between them . Vera, tactless as always tells Andrei about Natasha s relationship with Boris and her fickleness. A. refers to P s pair of women s gloves (freemasonry), but resists confessing to him. Ch. 13 Natasha consults her mother Cf. previous scene where Natasha confesses she doesn t love Boris: But such a . . . such a . . . never happened to me before! Love: Fear (overpowering). Pierre by contrast to joy of Natasha and Andrei brings back depression: everythin g seemed to him insignificant in comparison to eternity; again the question: for what? presented itself, and he forced himself to work day and night at Masonic labors, hoping to drive away the evil spirit that threatened him. Implied: depres sion caused by jealousy. Andrei visits him (cf. Bk. 1, ch. 2) and confesses that he is in love. Compared to Andrei s previous advice to P ( Never marry), despite P s jealousy, he advises: don t philosophize, don t doubt, marry, marry, marry. This is one of the singular marks o f P s greatness as a character: self-less act on behalf of his friends. Natasha=light; everything else it is not my fault. gloom and darkness. I cannot help loving the light,

Ch. 14 Andrei seeks his father s approval Andrei declares in ch. 13 that he could not sacrifice his own happiness to his fa ther s caprice. But he does, with fatal consequences. Why? Knowing what we do about Natasha, the delay of a year is cruel and unusual punishment. Andrei is guilty of violation of love in interest of practical and irrelevant family consideratio ns. Prince B s objections selfish (doesn t want anything to upset the order of his e xistence, resistant of change) and offers head vs. heart argument that A. accept s: she is young; she may not know her mind. A case can be made that in fact Nata sha does not betray A. as much as A. betrays Natasha. He violates her essence (a s was done to Lise). Prince B shown as blocking agent, standing in the way of hi s son and daughter s happiness and growth. N shown dealing poorly with not seeing A. for three weeks. What will she be like in a year? Countess R. reacts with dread: Lord have mercy on us.

Andrei frames the postponement in terms of Natasha s not knowing her mind. Mind no t the point here. It s the heart not the head that matters here. Natasha: It s awful/ I shall die, waiting a year: it s impossible, it s awful! Ch. 15 Prince A s last days with N. The proposed union of the Andrei seemed a man from ngaged is leaving Natasha committed but she remains rely on P. Parting: Don t go! Chs. 16-17: Bald Hills: Prince B s and Marya s reaction to the engagement As the Prince s health declines, he asserts his weakening powers by torturing his daughter. Marya refuses to believe that Andrei could marry again or love Natasha . Why does Marya have such an antipathy toward Natasha? Doesn t want to give up ca re of A s son; can t conceive that A should get a second chance when she hasn t had a first. Julie K s letter (cf. earlier letter). Death of Julie s brother will make her an hei ress. Stay tuned. Book ends with Prince B. revealing his intention to marry Mademoiselle B. and Ma rya dreaming of running away and living like a pilgrim. Book ends contrasting th e Prince s pride and Marya s humility, between the old Prince s irritable unhappiness and egotism and Marya s resignation and submission. Book opened contrasting political/historical events with Real life : precisely what the book has been about: essential interests of health and sickness, toil and re st, and its intellectual interests in thought, science, poetry, music, love, fri endship, hatred, and passions. Book 7 (Russian Soil/Soul) At the geographical center of W&P Tolstoy constructs a book to emphasize what it means to be Russian. Before the storm hits, and the remainder of the novel will be unrelenting in its depiction of the destruction that will tear individuals, families, and a nation apart, we are given the last few moments of calm, tranqui lity, harmony, family unity. T. wants to establish what the Russians will be fig hting to perserve and the source of their strength that will ultimately cause th em to triumph. At the core is the family and their roots in the Russian soil/sou l that are displayed here. The book has little relevance to the plot. Other than monitoring Natasha s impatient wait for Andrei s return and the increasing financia l pressures on the Rostovs that will assert a pressure on Nicholai to go back on his promise to Sonya, the book s episodes are supremely extraneous. Do we need th e hunt and mummery scenes from a plot perspective? No. But the greatness of W&P is nowhere better displayed. At the center of the center is Natasha Russian danc e, almost as if the inner energy of the novel radiates from this source. Note that book 7 will end echoing the close of book 6: closed with A s relation wi th his father and sister in conflict over his engagement to Natasha; here Nichol as is in conflict with his mother over his engagement to Sonya. Both books sound the generational conflict theme. Chs. 1-7 Nicholas returns home on leave; the hunts; evening at Uncle s Chs. 8-13 Xmas at Otradnoe Bolkonskis-Rostov: matter/anti-matter. To the Rostovs another world. He frightens them. Being engaged and not e without an identity, without protection. Her heart is vulnerable. Natasha advised by A. if there is trouble to

Chs. 1-7 Nicholas returns home on leave; the hunts; evening at

Uncle s

Chs 1-2 Nicholai forced out of his pleasant military life of compulsory and irrep roachable idleness to return home and engage in the confusion and chaos of his fa mily s worsening financial circumstances. Where s Denisov? Note that T. neglects to inform us of his whereabouts and what ha ppened with his illness and court martial. Nicholai s reaction to Natasha s engagement: It always seemed to him that there was s omething not quite right about this intended marriage. Countess Rostova: Natasha is living through the last days of her girlhood. Nicholai applies his military manner to Mitenka, the Rostov s steward. Again, it s an either/or; right/wrong response: N. beats Mitenka, but neglects to turn the p age in the ledger to find the suspected missing entry. N. remains convinced that Mitenka is a thief even if he can t prove it. Like the Count, Nicholai is helples s with the practical and gives up trying to concentrate on hunting. So much for Nicholai coming to the rescue of the family. N. destroys the promissory note of Anna M. (echoing previous generosity). Chs. 3-6 Wolf, fox, hare hunt Why here? T. wants us to forget the social/civilized and engage with the primiti ve, the natural. Here, the animals acquire identities (names and characters) and dignity over humans, while the social order is scrambled. Here, the huntsman Da niel towers over his superiors, is able to chastise Count R. who feels the justi ce of his disapproval, and the dog Rugay, after taking the hare, walks with the serene air of a conqueror. Symbolic reading: Russians here hunt; later to be hunt ed. Their quarry=images of elemental that will become strength. Characters to ta p into the survival instinct themselves. Natasha s shriek of joy: animalistic, ins tinctual. Natasha foregoes gender restriction from the hunt to become a woman war rior. Note how Daniel shrinks indoors but achieves his natural dignity and stature out doors. Uncle s tag: That s it. Come on.

Nicholai prays to meet the wolf. Now, instead of wanting to die under the eye of the Tsar, N. wants the opportunity to prove himself and his dog, Karay, to Dani el and Uncle. Prayer is granted When N. witnesses the wolf struggling with his d ogs was the happiest moment of his life. Ilagin encountered during fox hunt and they compete through their dogs Milashka an d Erza but it is Uncle s dog, Rugay who gains the hare. Ch. 7 Eventing at Uncle s Joys of simple country life celebrated in the hospitality of Uncle, who is shown close to the soil, a man of justice and integrity. House=functional. No class d istinctions. N. & N. shown the essential elements of a good life=simple food, fe llowship, song, dance. Anisya Fedorovna Uncle s housekeeper

Uncle: This, you see, is how I am finishing my days . . . Death will come. That s i t, come on! Nothing will remain. Then why harm anyone?

Balalayka vs. harp. Natasha dances (contrast with the ball at Petersburg): Where, how, and when had this young countess, educated by an migr French governess, imbided from the Russian air she breathed that spirit and obtained that manner which the pas de chate whould, one would have supposed, long ago have effaced? B ut the spirit and the movements were those inimitable and unteachable Russian on es that Uncle had expected of her. Aniysa laughs and cries: as she watched this slim, graceful countess, reared to s ilks and velvets and so different from herself, who yet was able to understand a ll that was in Anisya and in Anisya s father and mother and aunt, and in every Rus sian man and woman. Note detail: Petya was carried out like a log. Not log but corpse.

Going home Natasha declares that I know that I shall never again be as happy and tranquil as I am now. Nicholai, as if to stop both their maturation and progress responds: ays drive about forever! We might alw

This is the pinnacle of Natasha s happiness and tranquility. From here on, happine ss will be mixed with pain and guilt. She will not achieve a comparable moment u ntil she attains with Pierre the simple pleasures of family life experienced her e. Fairy tale world of wish fulfillment to give way to real problems that destro y unity and the happy tranquility of home. Chs. 8-13 Xmas at Otradnoe To confirm point, immediately plunged into disagreement prompted by the Rostovs m oney troubles. Darkens the Christmas season. The Moscow house and estate to be s old. Countess R. fixes on Nicholai marrying Julie K. as their salvation, plungi ng N. into conflicting paradox: how can he keep his word to Sonya and save his f amily, whom he has helped to ruin? How will N s either/or absolutism work now? Things were not cheerful in the Rostovs home.

Money (or the lack thereof) will increasingly warp the Rostovs into displaying t he least agreeable aspects of their character, revealing a distorting selfishnes s. Andrei who was expected in December delayed. Natasha shown as a sexual hysteric: I want him. Pacing like a caged beast. Gives o rder and counterorders. Sick with longing she grows bored and dissatisfied. Fortune telling: Chicken and grain. Sounds in the granary Mirror and candle Unconscious, irrational, superstitious begins to suffuse the scene. Nicholai, Natasha, and Sonia retreat into past memories: dreamscape. The past in which dreams and realities blend. distant

They consider eternity, reincarnation, the immortality of the soul. Natasha is not frightened of the concept: why is it hard to imagine eternity? . . . It is now today, and it will be tomorr

ow, and always, and there was yesterday, and the day before . . . . Countess R s maternal instinct told her that Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy. Enter world of dreams/mummers. Reality gives way to make-believe. Take on new o r hidden identities: Nicholai=old lady Petya=Turkish girl Natasha=hussar Sonya=Circassian S. in her burnt-cork mustache loses her usual timidity, and her odd appearance a nd behavior strikes N. and he sees her afresh. They leave to neighbor s estate and are plunged into a fairyland: snow, cold, moon light. Nature=magic realism. Nicholai intercepts Sonya on the way to the granary to tell her fortune and reaf firms his love and promise. Note prediction will be false. Finally, N. and S. us e Thee worried over in book 4. Returning home, Natasha and Sonya play the third and final fortune telling game: mirror and candle. Natasha sees nothing; neither does Sonya, but not to disappoint she imagines she does: Sonya unconsciously predicts Natasha s future=Andrei on bed, smiling (dead) and ething blue and red =Pierre. som

Book ends with the clash between Nicholai and his mother escalating to open host ility. Nicholai has arrived in ch. 1 to rescue the family and has proven himself incapable. His military-trained either/or philosophy inadequate to deal with co ntradictory claims: how can he honor his promise to S. and his responsibility to his family? Both son and mother s opposite desires cause them to act in ways neit her wants but can t avoid. Final breach prevented by Natasha who acts as peacemake r. Ends with Nicholai returning to his regiment and Count R. taking Natasha and Son ya to Moscow to sell property to secure their future. Countess Rostova s absence t hrough illness (and reluctance to face reality of their situation) will prove co nsequential. Book cuts away at crucial moment of crisis: How will Nicholai resolve the conflict over Sonya? How will Natasha cope with the continuing absence of Andrei? By the book s end, much of the happy tranquility of Uncle s and the fairyland of the mummers is forgotten under the pressure of real life of responsibility and cons equence for actions. Book 8 (Betrayal) Book 8 will cover events of the year 1811-1812, the lull before the outbreak of the French invasion. Natasha, like all of Russia, suspended in anticipation. Boo k 8 is ruled by betrayal, the consequences of the violations of love and the rul e of Self over Other. Although Natasha s betrayal of Andrei is the dramatic focus of the book, it should not be overlooked that Andrei s betrayal of Natasha by unna turally forcing her to conform to conventional wisdom and family pressure motiva

tes Natasha s actions. Andrei is guilty here of violating the imperatives of Natas ha s being much as he had done to Lise. Lise s accusatory death-look asks, What have I done to deserve this? , i.e. Who are you to have treated me this way? Lise has not measured up to Andrei s conception of what he has wanted in a wife and in marriag e, but who s fault is that? Lise is what she is, chosen by Andrei and then contem ptuously dismissed. Andrei has refused to grant autonomy and an equal claim of h uman significance to Lise, and he repeats the same mistake with Natasha, caging her animal vitality, removing the object for the love he has summoned from her. Given Natasha s nature (how many people has she been in love with? Boris, Pierre, he r singing master, her dancing master, Denisov, Andrei), Natasha is incapable of the restrained and repression that Andrei s engagement enforces. Natasha is all im mediacy and is vulnerable to anyone who responds to her and invites her compassi on. The secret engagement leaves her unprotected, in limbo: is she single or mar ried? A daughter or a wife? Anatole represents the climax she craves, the releas e that Andrei has stimulated. Natasha will show here that animal vitality is not enough; her innocence will be exchanged for the corrupting experience offered by the seductive deceiver Anato le and the complicity of the falseness of Helene and her set. Here, Natasha too joins the ranks of the searchers like Andrei and Pierre, who all have their conc eption of the world shattered, forcing a sobering reassessment. Ultimately, Nata sha s is a fortunate fall that will transform her from girl to woman. Her betrayal , however, will be the final blow for Andrei in his turning toward life over dea th. Ironically, Natasha s sin and the tears she sheds will be exactly what Pierre needs to germinate in his soul a new life. Chs. Chs. Chs. Chs. Chs. 1-5: Moscow life: Pierre, Prince B. and Marya, Boris and Julie K. 6-7: Rostovs in Moscow: calling on the Bolkonskys 8-10: The opera. 11-17: The abduction. 18-22: Aftermath

Chs. 1-5: Moscow life: Pierre, Prince B. and Marya, Boris and Julie K. Note how the book begins and ends with Pierre, showing how his hated life of dull formalities will be unexpectedly transformed by Natasha s grateful tears. Note as well how P. s experiences reflect a similar pattern with A s: from faith to disillus ionment to withdrawal and skepticism. P. is more naive, less rigid in his concep tion of right and wrong than A. and hence more easily duped and more willing to trust. He is duped into marrying Helene, is duped into embracing Freemasonry as the answer to his search for belief and purpose in his life. P s blundering, his o ften foolish willingness to believe sets him apart from Andrei who is always rea dy to disbelieve and will be his ultimate salvation. Despite lacking Andrei s stre ngths and discernment, it will be P., not A., who will discover the right relati onship with reality; it will be P. who will marry the girl who is the best embod iment of that right principle. As he watches Andrei reborn by love for Natasha, P. sinks into stagnation as an aging club man: those old Muscovites who desired nothing, hurried nowhere, and we re ending their days leisurely : irrelevant, eccentric, but homeless and sterile, stuck in static round of social trivialities. Old faith in spiritual regeneratio n and human reforms prompted by the Freemasons is now gone, but P s discontent wil l prove his ultimate salvation, keeps searching. For P. Only the skeleton of life remained. What for? Why? What is going on in the world? he would ask himself in perplexity s everal times a day. Compares self to soldier before battle doing everything to avoi d: That dreadful it!

Ch. 2: Bolkonskys in Moscow. Prince Bolkonsky s decline (having outlived his wits) takes the form of increasing persecution of Princess Marya and his threat to ma rry Mlle. B. Prince s vulgar and grotesque courtship a caricature of his son s love. Ch. 3: Prince s name day (third to compare): serves to update the reader on the im pending resumption of hostilities with the French and introduce character of Cou nt Rostopchin, who will play an important role in the defense of Moscow. Ch. 4 Marya confesses her unhappiness to Pierre. He warns her about Boris who is in the market for a rich heiress, and they discuss Natasha, whom Marya dislikes . Why? Ch. 5: Black comedy of Boris courtship of Julie K. Satire on cult of romantic mel ancholy. Appearance of love/sentiment undercut by practical: She knew that for the Penza estates and the Nizhegorod forests she could demand t his [Boris declaration of his undying love], and she received what she demanded. T. distrusts and is hostile to romanticism as artificial and false. Note that li nking Andrei and Natasha he employs almost a fairy tale pattern: literally a Pri nce Charming for his heroine who is saved at the ball. But he will contrive to und ermine the romance by reality: Prince does not sweep his bride off to his castle , but contingency of family, self, intervenes. The enchanted princess will be se duced by a mock Prince Charming: Anatole who seems what he is not: genuine, pass ionate, caring. Here Julie and Boris go through the required motions of romantic love that they don t really feel; neither are they creatures of passion and feeli ng that they pretend to be with their poetic sensibility recorded in an album of poses. This is love that is outwardly derived by how one should behave rather t han what one truly feels, in which the lovers use each other selfishly, as comm odities for purchase. They don t love, but imitate what they are supposed to feel/ behave. Love/feeling translated into falsity is the context for Natasha s encounte r with Anatole. Here love is a ghastly pantomime. This is the world that Natasha enters blindly, unprepared for the deception she will fall prey to, duped like Pierre. Chs. 6-7 Natasha, Sonya, and Count Rostov return to Moscow and stay with Marya D mitrievna. Natasha visits her in-laws. Here, Andrei s betrayal is replicated in Pr incess Marya s coolness and the old Prince s insult, appearing before Natasha in his dressing gown. Both Natasha s and Marya s manners offend the other; each incapable of seeing things from the other s perspective. N s pride is wounded; Marya s jealousy evident. That Natasha s love for Andrei seems hopeless given his family s treatment of her sets the context for Anatole. Chs. 8-10: The opera. T., who loved music, attended the opera frequently, but uses the artificiality o f opera and the theatre to externalize Natasha s seduction. It is one of the tour de force chapters of the book, the finest example of T s method of estrangement, of m aking strange. Theatre and opera metaphors for Society as playacting. T. treats what is going on on stage with an extreme realism that initially resists the ill usion that art demands. Seen from Natasha s perspective, her viewpoint becomes the measure of the change that is going on inside her. It is society and its values of falsity and temptation that lead to N s fall. It i s Andrei s other derived/social values of his love of personal honor, filial duty, rationalized restraint that prompt the postponement that empties N. of true fee ling amd makes her susceptible to the false. Fittingly: N s fall will take place i n the temple of wickedness and falsity, the opera.

Before Act 1: N. at first sees through the falsity and is not susceptible to its lures (later comes under its spell). N. struck by the artificiality of everythi ng. What she sees at first is unconnected with what she feels; her thoughts and feelings are with her absent lover and the with the bitter rejection of his fath er and sister. Women s bare arms and shoulders: sex on display. N. counscious of b eing examined, both agreeably and disagreeably. It is Count R., who should be his daughter s protector, who directs N s gaze outward to the audience (later, he will s eal his daughter s doom by leading her into Helene s box=the heart of falsity). N s black eyes looked at the crowd without seeing anyone. =inner vision, as at the ba ll. Sees Boris/Julie, Dolokhov, and Helene much exposed plump white shoulders and neck Natasha too began to look at it. Act 1: N. sees through the illusion to reality and absurdity: all this seemed gro tesque and amazing to N. She could not follow the opera nor even listen to the m usic, she saw only the painted cardboard and the queerly dressed men and women w ho moved, spoke , and sang so strangely in that brilliant light. She knew what i t was all meant to represent, but it was so pretentiously false and unnatural th at she first felt ashamed for the actors and amused at them. N. little by little began to pass into a state of intoxication she had not experi enced for a long while. She did not realize who and where she was, nor what was going on before her. N. begins to lose grip on reality: singing along, touching a n old man with her fan, tickling Helene. Sees Anatole: his looks and his looking and admiring N. emphasized. A rested his foot against the orchestra screen. Charmante =French

Entr acte: Having gone from seeing no one to noticing particulars, N. begins to im itate those around her, particularly Helene. She gives her best profile to Anato le to admire (she has become the stage), and talks to Borish with a gay, coquetti sh smile, =Helene s placid smile. N. gave Boris a similar smile. Natasha now acting as those around her act. What the heart feels to be shameful becomes easy and natu ral when the world approves. In the state of intoxication she was in everything seemed simple and natural. N. grows more and more conscious of Anatole s caressing looks, even as she speaks to Pierre! Now, unlike at the ball, N. disregards P. Sex=looks. Act 2: Scenery representing tombstones/maiden s persecution. The opera appears mor e and more absurd, more and more violent emotions displayed artificially. N. cap tivated by Anatole and tells herself that She was pleased to see that he was capt ivated by her, and it did not occur to her that there was anything wroing in it. Entr acte: N. lead by Count R into Helene s box: symbolically enters the heart of wi ckedness. Act 3: Maiden judged. Mockery of high emotion and emphasis on the actors s: Duport provokes wild applause and cheers. bare leg

N. no longer thought this strange. N. agrees with Helene that Duport is delightful . What had initially seemed grotesque and ridiculous, now N. responds to. Surrou nded by falseness, encouraged by example, N. is led to accept what the world app roves rather than what her heart knows. In the absence of the real, she is unab le to recognize what is unreal. Enter Anatole who, as the opera goes on, becomes more and more explicit in the intimacy he weaves around N., as Helene becomes m ore and more friendly and more and more naked.

N. senses barrier being violated. N. under siege. She is vanquished. flower/deflower (503). Anatole hypnotises N.: trancelike.

Anatole takes

Now quite submissive to the world she found herself in. All that was going on bef ore her now seemed quite natural. Act 4: Last judgment scene of devil and hell: misses its meaning. N. now could no t help watching Anatole. As they leave, A. pressed her arm above the elbow. At home N. horrified at what has happened. Two voices will emerge in N: rational izing voice of social values: nothing wrong, and other voice that knows she is a cting wrongly (cf. Pierre s voices leading up to his engagement). Some instinct told her that though all this was true, and though nothing had happ ened, yet he former purity of her love for Prince Andrei had perished. Chs. 11-17: The abduction. T. would state that the abductions scenes were keypoint of the whole novel. the most difficult passage and the

Ch. 11: Preparations: Anatole and Dolokhov in Moscow. Secret of Anatole s marriage is crucial to N s eventual realization of her mistake. Revealed now rather than s prung as a surprise in the Dickensian manner. T. prefers suspense derived from e xposing Anatole s intentions. Is the marriage plausible given Anatole s character? Anatole incapable of considering how his actions might affect others or what the consequences of this or that action of his might be. He was convinced that, as a duck is so made that it must live in water, so God had made him such that he mu st spend 30,000 rubles a year and always occupy a prominent position in society. = male Magdalenes Chs. 12-13: Helene s invitation to recital; Mlle George s performance Sunday that Helene violates Mary Dmitrievna s devotions by bursting in on a nearly undressed Natasha who is trying on dresses. Under Helene s influence, what had seemed terrible now seemed simple and natural. Fr om H s amoral standard, all is acceptable: Why not enjoy myself? Helene tries to complete what Anatole has begun. He attempts to se his life is directed by self-pleasure; H. by envy and spite, N. is different and better. Society has taught Anatole to turn into rapacity and sensuality; society has taught Helene to turn profit and power. corrupt N. becau and both because love and desire her beauty into

Helene s reception. Mlle George (remember her from Bk. 1, ch. 1?): poetry reading more corrupt than the art of the opera: verses describing her guilty love for her son. Gap between grotesque aging actress with her bare, fat, dimpled arms, and he r immoral verses. And she is wildly, enthusiastically received. N only felt herself again completely borne away into this strange senseless world s o remote from her old world a world in which it was impossible to know what was go od or bad, reasonable or senseless. Duplicity greater than N s power to discern it. N. mistakes her own capacity for l ove and sincerity in Anatole. N. admits that she loves both. If I love Anatole, It means that he is kind, noble, and splendid, and I could not help loving him.

Ch. 14: Letters from Marya and Anatole. Marya asks for forgiveness, but N. unable to respond; does respond to the love l etter from Anatole (written by Dolokhov). She found in it an echo of all that she herself imagined she was feeling. Ch. 15: Sonya discovers Anatole s letter and confronts N. Sonya logically alerts N . to the danger and the inconsistency of Anatole s behavior: why the secrecy. N. w rites to Marya to break off the engagement. Ch. 16: Anatole s plan for abduction and farewell to his carousing life. Why does Dolokhov try to talk Anatole out of the abduction? Ch. 17: Abduction foiled by Marya Dmitrievna s footman. Chs. 18-22: Aftermath Ch. 18: Marya D. confronts Natasha Ch. 19: Pierre reveals to Natasha that Anatole is married. P. had been avoiding N. because it seemed to him that his feeling for her was str onger than a married man s should be for his friend s fiancee. P s first reaction to t he news is contempt/digust for N.: baseness, folly, and cruelty. Cf. Helene= They ar e all alike! P. knows that Anatole is already married and is made to confirm this information to Natasha. It is P who breaks the spell Anatole has over N. and wi ll prepare the way for her regeneration. Ch. 20: Pierre confronts Anatole. P s brute strength and moral will intimidates Anatole: s as mean as beating an old man or a child. A&H: Oh, vile and heartless brood! Don t you understand that it i

Ch. 21: Natasha tries to poison herself/ P. talks to Andrei. Andrei takes the news of N s betrayal with characteristic, icy suppression of outw ard feeling. Reader reminded that A. begins the corruption of N s love and society brings to completion what he had begun. The honorable impulse to defer his love with N actually conventional/other directed values: A. never learns to live for himself, always at a remove from experience in the arbstractions of honor, judg ment, fidelity to some rule of behavior. A. initially attracted to N. as a being of mystery and charm because she is not touched and limited by his conception o f what life should be. Prompted by N., A. lives for a time for himself, free of the past and future and unlimited by his conceptions. A. becomes a new man: diff erent and unknown to himself. However, his old habit of holding experience at a distance infects his relationship with N. A begins to hold N. at a distance, lik e he holds life. Postponement=that distance. B s betrayal from the best of motives : please his father, for N s own good=A s habitual way of seeing experience as somet hing to be analyzed and tested. N. not A. in age or temperament. She does not lo ok on experience as something to be postponed. N. needs love that is concrete an d now; A. offers love that is abstract and deferred. Germ of A s betrayal: willing ness to live for others: his father, a mature Natasha, some future perfection. S ame as those in society who conform to external values, ignoring internal feelin g. P. meets a cruel, hard, pitiless man. Love that had filled A s life now only an in terruption in his public career. Conversation about Speransky s dismissal and A s de fense marks his return to where he was before the ball. His pride has swallowed

up all the other emotions. Natasha= the countess : no longer a particular person. P. unable to stir A. to pity for N s suffering and sickness. To information that N is very sick, A responds: Then, she s still here? When P. tells him that she has been n ear death, he elicits only the formal: I much regret her illness. A. takes on the characteristics of his father: disagreeable laugh. Diminishes betrayal as expected and beneath A s contempt. Although he has only con tempt for society, he reaffirms its hold on him by his primary concern for his h onor: it is A s ugliest moment: reduces N. from living person to abstraction. Ch. 22: Pierre, Natasha and the Comet of 1812. Cf. Andrei s cruel dismissal of memory, feelings, pity, P. will come to N s aid and save her (and in the process be saved himself). N. asks P. to tell A. to forgive me. P. moved from hostility to pity. N. finally begins to cry, and P. weeps in re sponse. Generously offers his friendship. Rejected: I am not worth it. P. says tha t You have your whole life before you. and N. responds that All is over for me. To w hich P. says the best lines in the novel: All over? . . . If I were not myself, but the handsomest, cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this moment ask on my knees for your hand a nd your love! N, overwhelmed by shame and guilt: ars of gratitude and tenderness. For the first time for many days . . . wept te

P. leaves Where to? Where to go now? rejects usual destination (see ch. 1) of the club a nd his lifeless routine for Home: exposure to the cold evening and sky: comet of 1812: Instead of portent of all kinds of woes and the end of the world, with fear but joy: P. responds not

His eyes moist with tears, at this bright comet which, having traveled in itsorbi t with inconceivable velocity thorugh 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 lifth amid countless other scintill ating stars. It seemed to P. that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life. Comet=Andrei s old oak: summoning P. back to life/love. Book reverses emotional st ates of P. and A. P. now exalted and A. depressed, vs. opening. T. conveys the d iversity of human existence, the changes, its flow, its multiplicity. Life goes on, even after Natasha s fall. Life for her is not over, at age 19 as it had not b een for A. at 31. Who would have predicted at the beginning of the book, its out come? Book 9 (History) W&P now arrived at the main event: 1812 and the French invasion, Russia s ultimate survival test. Could be argued that the first 500 page of the novel is the need ed preface to this moment: all seeded and ready for harvest. Narrative here inte rrupted, as it will be increasingly to the end, with T s analysis of the historica l process. What has been demonstrated in the fictional narrative now explicitly address in the abstract. Why does T. do this? What is the connection between his theory of history and concept of free will and necessity and the fictional narr ative. Are these digressions? Or essential (as T. insisted)? Subject and viewpoint shift signaled by the narrative voice that takes on omnisc ient, Olympian-eyed view versus previous method of dramatizing perspective by li

miting through a particular character. Here, the narrator=lecturer. Instead of t he particulars of the fictional narrative, T. mounts an abstract argument of gen eralities. Key themes=the absurdity of the great man theory of history the notion that indivi dual will can cause and control human history. This leads to the even greater qu estion of free will and necessity. If the individual will is acted upon, what co nstitutes human freedom. Are we determined? These grand questions have been dram atized in the fictional narrative, will be considered in the abstract here, and then applied to both the historical and fictional narrative that follows. Book 9 opens with instances of the absurdity of attributing the cause of events to great men: Napoleon and Alexander, who are shown causght in the grip of circu mstances and ludicrous in their egotism their mistaken notion that their will rule s. T. descends from his lecture podium to use his novelistic skill to find the deta il (always absent any history books) that brings these historical figures to lif e and exposes their lack of greatness. Following a contrast between Napoleon and Alexander in the opening of the invasion and the response of the French and Rus sian generals, T. returns to his fictional narrative to offer glimpses of the sp irit of the Russian people who will deafeat the French (not the emperors or gene rals): 1. 2. 3. 4. erre at Common soldier (Nicholai in his regiment) Religious view (Natasha s faith and the prayer for victory) Patriotism of the Russian polis (Petya and the Tsar) The self-interest and self-lessness of the Russian gentry and nobles (Pi the Assembly)

Book 9 juxtaposes the usual historical approach to locate power to make history in the hands of those in command and shifts the center of power to what he calls the swarm, the ordinary, rank-and-file and their mixed motives of self-sacrifice and self-preservation. Ch. 1:Theory of History Chs. 2-7: Napoleon and Alexander Chs. 8-11: Andrei Chs. 12-15: Nicholai Chs. 16-18: Natasha Chs. 19-23: Pierre Ch. 1:Theory of History Philosophical prologue: What caused the French invasion of Russia in 1812? Inste ad of single cause, there are incalculable number of causes. Individual live vs. hive life. A king is history s slave Why does an apple fall? (538) Chs. 2-7: Napoleon and Alexander Ch. 2: Applying his theory, Nap. shown as a supreme egoist who thinks he is in c ontrol of events. Drowning deaths of the Polish Uhlans= distraction of his attenti on. Soldiers willing to perish for Nap. s approval: what is more absurd: their wast ed life or the pathetic object of their adoration.

Those whom God wishes to destroy he drives mad! Ch. 3: Shift to the Russian side and comparison: Alexander similarly a pawn, not a king of history, but a pawn who thinks he is a king. Ball interrupted by news that the French have crossed the Nieman. Boris and Helene in attendance. T. leaves out a perfect historical complement to the drowning Uhlans: Ball prece eded by collapse of the decoration and the suicide of the designer by drowning! Ch. 4-7: Brings French and Russian together in Balashev s mission to Napoleon Murat/Davout: elaborate chivalry of Murat contrasted with brutality of Davout. Ch. 6-7: Balashev s interviews with Napoleon Napoleon will emerge as the novel s historical villain (cf Kutuzov as the historic al hero): it is a study in monomania: only what took place within his own mind in terested him. Whole range of tics will characterize: quivering of N s left leg / fat, white hands.

For T. bad people (Helene, Boris, Berg, Anatole) are self-seekers, egotists, imm oralists who have no conception beyond their own self-importance. Nap.=ultimate bad person because he will serve no other cause than his own desires and destroy hundreds of thousands in the pursuit. Nap. sees himself at the center of the un iverse and everyone else as an adoring satellite, or mirror of his own magnifice nts. (Cf. Natasha s self-absorption that merges with Other.) Nap. like Satan, lock ed in the ice of Dante s hell, in the prison of his own self-importance. Poles of the novel: Live for one s self----Live for others. Pierre and Natasha wil l reveal how to do both. Ultimately, the point of Balashev s mission futile: machinery in process. Chs. 8-11: Andrei After failing to find Anatole in Petersburg to gain satisfaction for his honor, Andrei, again withdraws: the surroundings in which he had been happy became tryin g to him, and the freedom and independence he had once prized so highly were sti ll more so. Not only could he no longer think the thoughts that had first come t o him as he lay gazing at the sky on the field of Austerlitz and had later enlar ged upon with Pierre, and which had filled his solitude at Bogucharvo, and then in Switzerland and Rome, but he even dreaded to recall them and the bright and b oundless horizons they had revealed. He was now concerned only with the nearest practical matters, unrelated to his pa st interests, and he seized on these the more eagerly the more those past intere sts were closed to him. It was as if that lofty, infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered above him had suddenly turned into a low, solid vault that weig hed him down, in which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious. Visits Bald Hills: unchanged/divided into 2 alien and hostile camps. A. criticizes his father for the first time and they quarrel and part unreconciled. Andrei cannot summon up remorse over the quarrel or affection for his son: human feelings have dried up. Marya urges forgiveness and God s will, but A. sees only senseless things, lacking

coherence. At Drissa, Andrei surveys the defenses and the Russian response to the invasion in 9 different conflicting viewpoints (all marked by self-interest) German strategist: Pfuel, totally devoted to his theory, like Speransky, elicits A s admiration, but at the War Council (cf Austerlitz and before Moscow), A sees only a tower of Babel: There is not and cannot be any science of war, and that therefore there can be no such thing as a military genius now appeared to him an obvious truth. Nothing can be accomplished on the staff, A. thinks and he asks to serve in a regiment among the common soldiers. Chs. 12-15: Nicholai Shift from staff to regiment signaled here by looking at Nicholai. As at Enns, w e are shown his regiment in a a fire fight to gauge the changes in Nicholai. Not e that it is what he has learned in the wolf hunt that makes him an effective so ldier: Self/Other aligned. Nicholai=spirit of courage that will win the war. As the generals dither, the Ru ssian people are ready for action. Ilyin now is to N. as N. was to Denisov. N. hears war story and is skeptical: ha s learned self-restraint. Mary Hendrikhovna: Why this scene? Parallel to Andrei s rescue of the regimental d octor s wife? Nicholai in action at Ostrovna: leaned to prepare for battle by not thinking abo ut it. Acts without orders to strike the French dragoons. Unhorses a drgaoon wit h a dimple, but does not kill him. In fact, struck by his most ordinary, homelike face. Prompts moral nausea, vague sense that something is wrong. Expects to be rep rimanded for acting without orders, instead N. is honored. His moral ambiguity e nd in promotion. So others are even more afraid than I am! Chs. 16-18: Natasha Just as Nicholai medical efforts. ses too complex. eing done. Like does what comes natural and succeeds, Natasha recovers despite Historians wrong, military strategists wrong, now doctors. Cau Only utility of doctors=to give family the sense of something b a child, having a boo-boo kissed.

N s youth (and life force) finally conquers her illness. Prepares for communion. Spirits low. Grateful to Pierre for his tenderness, kind ness, and sensitivity. Religious purgation: N. experienced a feeling new to her, a sense of the possibil ity of correcting her faults, the possibility of a new, clean life, and of happi ness. (586) Prayer for Victory: N. sees the irony of praying to forgive enemies and desire t o vanguish them. However, simple religious faith will prove crucial for the even tual Russian victory.

Chs. 19-23: Pierre From Natasha s sublime to Pierre s ridiculousness. P. transformed by his love for N. To question Why the terrible it: replaced not by doubt and another question or answ er but by N s image. P. is convinced that a catastrophe is coming. Under the influence of Freemasons who interpret Napoleon as the Antichrist of Apocalype=666, P. determines that he is to become N s nemesis: L Empereur Napoleon = 666 L Russe Besuhof = 666 Ch. 20. P s last visit to the Rostovs N. begins to sing again: signals that her depression has lifted: [Pierre] completely. N. realized that P. is in love with her. P. under N s spell resolves not to go to the Rostovs any longer. Petya determined to join the army. Way of marking passage of time. Chs. 21-23 Patriotism Petya nearly crushed by crowd awaiting the Tsar, who throws biscuits from the ba lcony. Assembly of gentry. Even P. carried away by Russian patriotism: agrees to fund a regiment; Petya allowed to joiin the army. By the end of the book, in the Moscow setting, T. shows the strength and resolve of the Russian people. Before the Tsar, all classes mingle, merge, become one, as at the Assmbly when self-interest gives way to patriotism and generosity. Nei ther the planners, the generals, the theorists, or the Tsar will ultimately defe at Nap., but the unity and identity of the Russian people who will be called to greatness under the terrible pressure of war, rape, desolation, and devestation. I believe in you

Book 10 (Crucible) As the Battle of Boradino is the climax of the war with Napoleon and will determ ine the fate of Russia, this book serves a similar function in W&P in both the n ovel s historical and fictional narratives. By now the previous separation of war and peace as two distinct world has given way to the complex blend of both state s, symbolized by the destruction of Bald Hill, Princess Marya as combatant who m ust be rescued by Nicholai, and Pierre s final arrival on the battlefield. In a se nse, the book shows the ultimate fate of Andrei and Nicholai (it has taken +600 pages for Nicholai and Marya to finally meet, though they were introduced by Julie K. in Book 1), and the continuing development of Pierre, another ground for dec laring him the central hero of W&P. Having already chronicled two battles: Schon Grabern and Austerlitz, T. now must deal with the most famous of all: the bloodiest single day in human history tha t would decide Napoleon s, Russia s, and Europe s fate, and therefore modern history. How to do this without repeating himself? By rendering the events through the nav e perspective of Pierre, in his white hat and green swallowtail coat! What P. is made to realize at the Redoubt is as crucial as what Andrei glimpses above him

at Austerlitz. For Pierre, a new appreciation of life begins, Andrei is shown, b y contrast, saying farewell to life to begin his descent into the underworld. Ch. 1: Prologue Chs. 2-8 Smolensk to the death of Prince B. Chs. 9-14: Princess Marya and the Bogucharvo peasant revolt Chs 15-19: Borodino preliminaries: Kutuzov in command Chs. 18-25: Pierre tours the battlefield. Chs. 26-28: Napoleon before the battle. Chs. 29-39: Battle of Borodino Ch. 1: Prologue As in the opening of Book 9, T. launches into another disquisition on the causes behind historical events that denigrates individual will. The unforeseen always seems inevitable after the fact. Who would have predicted that the destruction and burning of Smolensk would have inflamed the hearts of the Russian people and insured the French defeat? In retrospect it seems obvious. Again, T s target here is the conversion of the essential incomprehensible multiplicity of life into a narrow system of explainable causes and effects. What actually happened is the opposite of what the history books declare. Chanc e governs outcomes. Chs. 2-8 Smolensk to the death of Prince B. Old Prince in decline blames Marya for his quarrel with Andrei. Unable to make s ense of the present situation with the army as his mind begins to fail. Guilty conscience evident in his inability to sleep: restlessly wandering from p lace to place. Ch. 4: Battle and destruction of Smolensk shown from the perspective of Alpatych , the Prince s trusted steward. Increasingly, T. suggests, it s the formerly anonymo us serfs and commoners who will matter now. Limited perspective of Alpatych (doe sn t understand French) will be measure of the famous brutal bombardment of the ci ty, the retreat of the defenders, in which the inhabitants set the town afire), meeting with Andrei and Berg. Ch. 5. Andrei makes a final visit to his birthplace at Bald Hills, now deserted. Opens: Wasteland imagery of dryness and thirst (624). The burning of Smolensk and its abandonment made an epoch in his [Andrei s] life. (6 25): tries to forget sorrow and devote himself to doing his duty as a regimental commander. Sees: Old, deaf peasant, oblivious of all. Symbol of life s persistent continuity: The ol d man was sitting in the ornamental garden, like a fly impassive on the face of a loved one who is dead. Girls with the plums: echo of Natasha at Otradnoe: He was sorry for the pretty fr ightened little girl, was afraid of looking at her, and yet felt an irresistible desire to do so. A new sensation of comfort and relief came over him when, seei ng these girls, he realized the existence of other human interests entirely aloo f from his own and just as legitimate as those that occupied him. A s consoling rec ognition does not last: Men swimming naked in the muddy pond: like carp stuffed into a watering can. flounde ring mass : the physical and the mass and the pathetic weakness of man disgusts an

d horrifies A.: Flesh, bodies, cannon fodder! Again, pressed to identify and to be consoled by Other, A. is pulled back to the shell of Self that loathes mortalit y, human vulnerability, and desire. Ch. 6: Petersburg: Anna vs. Helene, anti-French, pro-French faction, in which Pr ince V. adapts to both sides: cf his view of Kutuzov s appointment of commander in chief. Ch. 7 . Napoleon interviews Lavrushka, Nicholai s Cossack orderly: wily, clevernes s of Russian vs. vanity and blindness of Napoleon. Famous historical account tha t T. gives opposite, more plausible interpretation. Ch. 8 Death of Prince B. Cf. previous death of Prince Bezukhov. Similarities/differences? Too much to exp ect that the Prince would have a deathbed conversion and beg forgiveness of his da ughter? Evidence of the Prince s love for his daughter, even as he is hurtful to h er is consistent throughout. The Prince who has lived trying to control everythi ng, now faces the ultimate inability to control. World shatters and he finally a cknowledges what he has denied so long: his love and affection for his daughter. Characteristically, his acknowledgement comes in the form of a command: Put on y our white dress. I like it. And ironically, it can be argued cynically that the o ld prince has finally found the way to enslave his daughter to him forever: thro ugh guilt. What is far more realistic is Marya s shocking discovery that she desires her fath er s death! Chs. 9-14: Princess Marya and the Bogucharvo peasant revolt Marya pulled out of grief and guilt by contingencies of life: war has shattered order and anarchy now reigns. What is T s point here? Serfs=self-destructive, pred icting the Revolution of 1917? An aristocrat s fear of the masses: needs the autho ritarian hand of Nicholai to save the day? Marya roused to act when Mlle B. urges appeal to the French: like P s break with P rince V. Nicholai arrives strange fate of the brother of the woman engaged to marry Marya s b rother should rescue this damsel in distress. Note that finally the birth of the novelist is now glimpsed in the immediate love N. and M. feel for the other. Wh y is Marya better for Nicholai than Sonya? Chs 15-19: Borodino preliminaries: Kutuzov in command Denisov re-appears, with his lisp announcing him. No effort to explain where he has been, how he was promoted. Denisov reminds A. of Natasha and marks how experiences have altered his former feelings. Bitterness softened, prelude to final transformation. Contrast between K. and all other generals evident: gives no orders, accepts, ex presses genuine emotion. His motto: Patience and time. K. understands what A. does not: ant than his own will. Julie s farewell soiree: Forfeit. that there is something stronger and more import

Moscow scenes through P s perspectives: interview with Catiche, game of patience t o decide fate, Leppich s balloon, the beating of the French cook: all finally driv es P to the battlefield where he experiences a sense of joy from impending selfsacrifice. Chs. 18-25: Pierre tours the battlefield. Prelude of what can be described as part 2 of Book 10 is another lecture from T. on why the battle was fought: countless series of accidents. Tour of the position : Versus the confusion of the generals is the solemnity and pi ety of the ordinary soldier: Peasants at work on the defenses: the sight of these bearded peasants . . . impr essed P. more strongly with the solemnity and importance of the moment than anyt hing he had yet seen or heard. They may die tomorrow, why are thinking of anything but death? Procession of the icon to contrast with the display of the portrait of the King of Rome. Boris and Dolokhov (again degraded, we do not know why) Bennitsen s stupidity vs. Kutuzov s genius Ch. 24: Andrei s reflections prior to the battle (cf. comparable reflections 7 yea rs before Austerlitz). This is A s dark night of the soul, preceeded by the collap se of all his illusions (685-686): glory = Schon Grabern/Austerlitz good of society = Speransky love of a woman = Natasha s betrayal family life = argument with father/home abandoned to the enemy fatherland = invaded by the French Setting: broken down shed (cf. Pierre with Karataev later). A s humanity disgusts him. Mortality puts into context his vanity and limitations. Cold white light of d eath shows his life= false images that agitated, enrapture, and tormented me : And it is all so simple, pale, and crude in the cold white light of this morning which I feel is dawning for me. Love for Natasha: I believed in some ideal love which was to keep her fatithful to me for the whole year of my absence! Like the gentle dove in the fable she w as to pine apart from me. . . . But it was much simpler really. . . . It was all very simple and horrible. What does it all mean or matter if they fling me into a hole that I may not stink under their noses, and new conditions of life will arise, which will seem quite ordinary to others and about which I shall know nothing. I shall not exist. Looks at the birches shining in the sunshine, with their motionless green and yel low foliage and white bark but recognizes only this: To die . . . to be killed to morrow . . . That I should not exist . . . That all this should still be, but no me. The birches changed and seemed terrible and menacing. P. arrives for his last meeting with his friend and is greeted with A s hostility. P. s arrival announced by his tripping over something and cursing. A. refuses to meet with P. alone and insists that Timokhin, an adjutant, and paymaster remain.

Ch. 25: Pierre and Andrei discuss the battle to come. Andrei offers a bitter reassessment of war that is stripped of all nobility, def ines war not as a game or opportunity for glory but as murder and terrible evil. War is not a game of chess. If it must be waged, he declares, let it be with no prisoners, no chivalry: no pretense at nobilitiy. Clausewitz, the most famous o f all military theorists rides by and Andrei mocks his inhumanity. Ah, my friend, it has of late become hard for me to live. I see that I have begun to understand too much. Actually, the reality is that A. has understood too litt le. After P. leaves, A. is left with the image of Natasha, recalled trying to tell o f her experience being lost in the woods. I understood her . . . that inner, spi ritual force, that sincerity, that frankness of soul that very soul of hers which seemed to be fettered by her body it was that sould I loved in her . . . loved so strongly and happily. A. remains divided: conscious of what he loved and lost: N s great soul, tied to a body that was corrupted by He. Chs. 26-28: Napoleon before the battle. Portrait of his son/dispositions not carried out/Napoleon s cold/game of chess (co ntradicted by Andrei s earlier comments). Chs. 29-39: Battle of Borodino P. first views the battle from a distance and is struck by its beauty, not conta minated yet by death: Puff . . . bang. Borodino bridge: sees his first wounded and dead soldiers, taken to Raevski Redo ubt: Struck by merriment and concentration of the soldiers who do their job unconscio us of the horror all around them and adopt him into their family circle : P. finall y finds a home at at the center of the battlefield! In the midst of the slaughte r. P. gives up trying to understand the position, and concentrates on the immediat e and closest. Goes for ammunition and is blown up. Fights with the French soldier. Family circ le is broken up. P. now orphaned, convinced that Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified a t what they have done! T. pulls back to perspective of Napoleon and Kutuzov (contrasts the two). N. fac es the horror of the possibility that he has been defeated. K. wins the day by d eclaring victory, despite all the evidence to the contrary. His order that the R ussians will attack tomorrow taps into the elemental spirit of the army, that is m ore decisive than any battle order. Ch. 36 Andrei wounded by exploding shell 2/3 of his regiment lost in shelling while they wait impassively, concentrating on everyday, commonplace occurrences. Andrei paces, stripping the flowers from the wormwood. Cannon ball lands near him, the ground : Lie down! like a bird whirring in rapid flight and alighting on

Andrei hesitates: Can this be death? . . . I cannot, I do not wish to die. I love life I love this grass, this earth, this air (722) A whistle of splinters as from a breaking window frame. Dressing station: horse eating/bird s eating. On regaining consciousness, A. recalls his sudden rush of passionate love of life before the explosion. Yet he reflects But isn t it all the same now? . . . And what will be there, and what has there been here? Why was I so reluctant to part wit h life? There was something in this life I did not and do not understand. Note th e past tense: in a sense A. already dead and looking back on his life. Operating tent Coincidence: of the countless mangled and wounded A. is operated on next to the one man he resents the most in all the world: Anatole, whose identity is conceal ed until the dramatic final moment. Inside the operating tent, A. makes the conn ection with the mass of bodies that formerly horrified him: the swimmers in the pond. Now, he is one of them. He has been cannon fodder. Next to him, a man who seems somehow familiar to A. is having his leg amputated. The order from the doc tor that he be undressed brings A. back to childhood, when he was put to bed, wh en he felt happy in the mere consciousness of life. Anatole s moans, sobs, and shrie ks prompts A. sympathetically to feel like weeping childlike, kindly, and almost happy tears. A. shown his amputated leg stained with clotted blood and with the bo ot still on. A. now recognizes his enemy. The recollection brings A. back to Nata sha: He remembered everything, and ecstatic pity and love for that man overflowed his happy heart. A. finally weeps tender loving tears for his fellow men, for him self, and for his own and their errors. It is a sacramental moment of A. ultimate recognition of Self and Other: Compassion, love our brothers, for those who love us and for those who hate us, l ove of our enemies; yes, that love which God preached on earth and which Princes s Mary taught me and I did not understand that is what made me sorry to part with life, that is what remained for me had I lived. But now it is too late. I know i t! Note again the past tense: had I lived. A s recognition about life comes from bein g dead. Chs. 38-39: After the battle. Napoleon depressed by the carnage but orders it to continue because it is expect ed of him. Later, N. will justify the carnage by declaring that fewer French had been killed than the non-French that made up his Grand Armee. Ch. 39: Chapter closes with survey of the battlefield: Field s bloody harvest reca lls Tit, thresh a bit. Despite standoff, Russians had won a moral victory and Fren ch had suffered a mortal wound. By the end of the book, Marya has lost the anchor of her life in her father, fou nd her true love; Nicholai has found his ultimate heart s desire; Andrei has found death; and Pierre has briefly found a home and a model for coping with the doub t and disaster around him, only to be again orphaned, to continue his search. Book 11 (Retreat) Following the Battle of Borodino, book 11 follows the Russian army s abandonment o f the defense of Moscow and the French occupation of the city. The Rostovs are o ne of the last remaining families, and their departure provides an opportunity f or a final act of generosity. A central coincidence is Prince Andrei s traveling w

ith the Rostovs to be reunited with Natasha at the book s conclusion. Pierre elect s to stay behind, and the book treats his intention to assassinate Napoleon that is complicated by his meeting the French officer, Captain Ramballe, and the cir cumstances of Moscow s burning. The book ends with Pierre s arrest, and yet another apparent reversal of Pierre s and Andrei s fortunes. Andrei is brought back to Natas ha s love and loyalty, while Pierre is never more alone and at risk. Chs. 1-4 Prologue: the movement of history/ decision to abandon Moscow Ch. 5: Helene in Petersburg Chs 6-7:Pierre s return to Moscow after Borodino Ch. 8: Rostovs departure Chs. 9-13: Moscow occupied Ch. 14: Pierre and Captain Ramballe Ch. 15: The Rostovs at Mystischchi Ch. 16: Pierre arrested Chs. 1-4 Prologue: the movement of history/ decision to abandon Moscow Ch. 1 provides a meditation on the movement of history: Man can only understand laws of motion by selecting arbitrarily some element of that motion. This leads to error (Achilles and the tortoise). Same is true of a historical method that c oncentrates on arbitrarily chosen, discrete elements instead of the continuous f low of humanity. To truly understand history, we should ignore kings, ministers, generals and concentratre on what moves the people: Only by taking infinitesimal ly small units for observation (the differential of history, that is, the indivi dual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, f inding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of his tory. Ch. 2: The movement of the Russian army before and after Borodino. Applying T s theory to the continuous motion of the army we see the incapacity of the commanders to foresee all the various events that after the fact seems so c lear: A commander in chief is never dealing with the beginning of any event. Ch. 3: War council at Fili This is the third of the war councils (Austerlitz/Drissa) T. has described: firs t two from Andrei s p.o.v. Here, from the eyes of Malasha, a 6-year-old peasant gi rl who understands nothing but instinctively prefers granddad (Kutuzov) to long-coa t (Bennitsen). K. must decide whether to defend Moscow and risk the Russian army or pull back: Moscow is not Russia. Ch. 4 T s defense of abandonment of Moscow T. asserts that abandoning the city was inevitable. Not a defeat but an act that ultimately saved Russia. Why did the populace abandon Moscow? Russians could no t accept possibility of French rule. Each for his/her own self-interest accompli shed the great patriotic result of the French defeat. Irony: by serving self-in terest, Russians saved their country: leaving an empty city for the French to oc cupy and setting in motion the conditions for the destruction of the French. Ou tcome despite the best planning by Count Rostopchin whose every act will be show n as a hinderance to the outcome he intended. Ch. 5: Helene in Petersburg Shift back to the fashionable world of Petersburg that continues on unaffected. Helene (whose French sympathies ally with the invader) resembles Napoleon by ass

uming that everything is order to her desires. Never doubts that whatever she de sires is possible and correct. Sexual manipulation extends now to juggling two s uitors. Her corruption extends even as far as to manipulate religious for her ow n end. Chs 6-9: Pierre s return to Moscow after Borodino Pierre s rebirth will eventually be accomplished by his casting off all that had p reviously defined him: possessions, identity. Here shown going undercover. Ch. 6 Following the battle P. goes to Mozhaysk. Sustained by the food given him by three soldiers. P. haunted by his fear and the calmness and fortitude of the soldiers at the battery, who had given him food, and those who prayed before the icon. P s dream (750): harness.

Ch. 7: Pierre to Moscow where Rostopchin advises him to break off with the Freem asons (pacifists). Reaching home he reads Helene s letter (755). Ch. 8: Rostovs departure Rostovs delay departure for the Countess to insure Petya accompanying them. Nich olai s letter of his meeting with Princess Marya distresses Sonya and delights the Countess. House is opened up to the wounded through Natasha s intervention. Berg arrives, busy picking up furniture bargains. Natasha convinces the Count and Cou ntess to leave their belongings and use the carts to evacuate the wounded, inclu ding Prince A. The eggs are teaching the hens. tasha. Countess generosity and compassion reanimated by Na

Rostovs see Pierre, disguised in a coachman s coat, and Natasha observes, You are not like yourself. Chs. 9-13: Moscow occupied Ch. 9: Pierre to Bazdeev s house: P. has left his house and responsibilities for t he anonymity of his former mentor s home. P. He felt that everything was now at an end, all was in confusion and crumbling to pieces, that nobody was right or wrong, the future held nothing, and there was n o escape from this position. Ch. 10: Napoleon before Moscow. T. enters Napoleon s thoughts in victory. Fantasy destroyed is a hollow victory in which s, a class abolished in 1750, as he awaits a delegation. Imagines his magnanimity by information that the city has been deserted. It he has conquered a shell of a city. Asks for boyar showing his superficial knowledge of Russia.

Ch. 11: Moscow abandoned: epic simile comparing Moscow to a queenless hive (777778) Retreat of the Russian troops Rostovs home and the visit of a relation Dramshop fight Ch. 12: Rostopchin and the killing of Vershchagin: mini-passion play with Rostop chin as Pilate; Vershchagin as Christ, nd the lunatic as the risen Christ.

Ch. 13: French enter Moscow. French army becomes a band of marauders. Why did Mo scow burn? No one to blame Neither Russian patriotism or French barbarity caused the fire, but the conditions of occupation of an empty city. Ch. 14: Pierre and Captain Ramballe Pierre saves a French officer from Basheev s drunken/deranged brother. Planning to kill Napoleon, P. finds himself saving a Frenchman s life. Captain Ramballe is se lf-centered but engaging, and P. finds him irresistible. Ch. 15: The Rostovs at Mystischchi We later learn that S. tells Natasha about Andrei to help insure her love for Ni cholai. Meeting of Natasha and Andrei seen through A s delirium (816-) Fly: piti-piti Ch. 16: Pierre arrested Pierre sets out to kill Napoleon and winds up rescuing a child and defending an Armenian girl. Planning gives way to instinctual. Arrested by the French as an i ncendiary/ Book about the destruction and occupation of Moscow. Dominated by Pierre who com es to represent the best impulses of the Russian people, the Russian bear has co me into his own. Book 12 (Death/Rebirth) Book 12 will be dominated by death: two actual deaths (Helene s and Andrei s) and on e figurative death and rebirth (Pierre s). Its backdrop is the great death of Mosc ow. As in most works of epic literature, consideration of death is a central top ic. The Odyssey and the Aeneid depict journeys into the underworld. Dante s Divine Comedy is a depiction of the Christian afterlife; Paradise Lost offers views of both heaven and hell. W&P probes how we can understand death and what it implie s for the dying and the living. Andrei s is the third deathbed scenes of the novel , the most intimate (and terrifying) because it is described from Andrei s point o f view. It is the culmination of the contrast that T. has developed from the beg inning of the novel between Andrei and Pierre in their searches for the meaning of existence and the right relationship with the world, and it is the ultimate e xploration of the barrier between life and death that has persistently been glim psed in the novel. Andrei s death will be juxtaposed with Pierre s near-death experience, psychic disin tegration through his execution experience and his reintegration into life and a new philosophy through the ministrations of Platon Karataev, the novel s last maj or character. Pierre will be brought back to life, as Andrei passes on into deat h. The other testament of life s power comes in Nicholai s reunion with Princess Mar ya, and the apparently providential release by Sonya of Nicholai from his promis e to her. We learn that Sonya has written the letter knowing that Nicholai and M arya will be unable to come together since Natasha and Andrei have reunited. Nic holai is wrong in his surmise; Sonya will be proven wrong in hers as well. Ch. 1: Petersburg and the death of Helene Ch. 2: Nicholai and Marya at Veronezh Ch. 3: Pierre in prison

Ch. 4: Andrei s death Ch. 1: Petersburg and the death of Helene In what is clearly one of the most somber books in W&P, in which the core meanin g of life and death will be exposed, T. begins with two comic chapters: the black comedy of Helene s death and the more tender comedy of Nicholai s romance with Marya . In a sense, Ch. 1 balances Ch. 2; as Ch. 3 balances Ch. 4. Here love is turned into farce from the perspective of falsity and manipulation of Petersburg. Helene maneuvers to end her marriage to Pierre by converting to C atholicism and manipulating the church into annulling her marriage, while she ju ggles two alternative suitors. The amorality of Helene, her total egotism, her F rench sympathies, all connect her with Napoleon. While the Petersburg defense of Helene whose tawdry affairs seem equal if not more interesting than the French invasion and the destruction of Moscow is T s last word on the falsity of fashiona ble society. All goes on precisely as it always does in Petersburg: buzzing of th e court drones contrast with the queen-less hive that T. has described Moscow. U ltimate corruption of the society is represented by having Prince V. read the re ligious document as its patriotic and religious sentiment are turned into entert ainment and style. Will the French take Moscow? This question gets absorbed in the more shocking ne ws that Helene has died. Death revealed by gossip, which defined her existence. Cause? Represented as angina: heart disease. Actually, by drug overdose of a cert ain drug to produce a certain effect : abortion? Suicide: she kills herself becaus e she can t have her way: be married to three men at once. Ch. 2: Nicholai and Marya at Veronezh Nicholai sent into the provinces to procure horses. Coincidentally, arrives at V eronezh where Princess Marya is staying with her aunt. Chance brings them togeth er again. Before meeting Marya again, Nicholai reverts to his old playacting: fl irts with a married lady. We are given a view of Nicholai if he does not marry M arya: self-centered, egoist. Nicholai=emblem of unconscious/instinctual action. Does not regret missing Borod ino. Does what he is told and takes it as it comes. As at Tilsit, N. does not al low himself to doubt. Marya shown as reanimated: a new life force took possession of her . . . . For th e first time all that pure, spiritual, inward travail through which she had live d appeared on the surface. All her inward labor, her dissatisfaction with hersel f, her sufferings, her strivings after goodness, her meekness, love, and self-sa crifice all this now shone in those radiant eyes, in her delicate smile, nad in ev ery trait of her gentle face. For N., Marya was a quite unusual and extraordinary being. N. attracted to her an d yielded to the power he felt irresistibly carrying him he knew not where. Compa ring Sonya and Marya, N. can easily imagine his life with S. : fixed and set vs. unimaginable future with Marya=precisely why she is the superior choice: she wi ll prompt N. to develop/change in unimagined ways. He glimpses the spiritual dim ension in M. that compliments his externality. (844) N. prays to be delivered from his promise to Sonya, and like at the wolf hunt he is granted his wish: receives Sonya s letter. We will learn later that the letter was written under duress from Countess Rostov after S. is confident that Natash a and Andrei will reunite, making, by the customs of the Russian Orthodox Church , Nicholai and Marya s marriage impossible. Letter also alerts Marya to Andrei s il

lness and location. Applying the Providential reading of the fictional narrative, the ultimate great m an theory: Providence seems to have freed N.; Providence seems to have reunited Natasha and Andrei. Actually, much more complex human motivation and outcome. Chapter of personal not historical interest/ of unconscious vs. conscious actions, w hich connect with T. s theme that even in the midst of the historical turmoil of t he French invasion and occupation of Moscow, life goes on. Vs. plan/reason= only unconscious action bears fruit. Here, T. offers a far more realistic view of Russ ia s great moment=still dominated by self-interest and petty concerns, which are t he stuff of life and the important motivating forces. Ch. 3: Pierre in prison This is one of the tour de force chapters of the book the climax of P s moral develo pment that orchestrates a remarkable realism/symbolism. P. to be pushed to the aby ss of sense-less, purpose-less extinction, in which his question Who was doing th is? is terrifyingly answered No one. This is W&P s Kafkaesque chapter. Trial (cf Kafka) in which P s identity is on trial. Interviewed by Davout, whom we have met before. P s recognition of Davout s rank prompts the human recognition tha t ultimately saves P. Executions. P. taken to Virgin s Field where his innocence will be taken from him. W ho is doing this? The system: this is the ultimate expression of the concept of determinism addressed in the philosophical chapters: if all is determined, if no free will, then no one is to blame for anything: this realization and the horro r of its application to the executed men breaks P. (853-854) Pardon. Taken first to a small, ruined, and befouled church where agents of the An ti-Christ pardons him for a crime he did not commit (again, we are in the realm of Kafkaesque absurdity). P. numb. Taken to sheds. It was as if the mainspring of his life, on which everything depended and which m ade everything appear alive, had suddenly been wrenched out and everything had c ollapsed into a heap of meaningless rubbish. The universe had crumbled before his eyes and only meaningless ruins remained, an d this not by any fault of his own. He felt that it was not in his power to reg ain faith in the meaning of life. (856) Enter: Platon Karataev who will reorient P. to life by reawakening his senses. P =newborn child; Platon=tender mother. Like an infant who recognizes his mother by her smell, P. first smells Platon. Sight=winding legbands: round: putting universe back into some order. Sound= tender singsong caressing voice old peasant women employ. Touch/Taste=potato Platon=simple, resigned, no past/no future=immediate. Personification of everythi ng Russian, kindly, and round. Instinct, not intellect. The great thing is to live in harmony. Platon=:an unfathomable, rounded, external personification of the s pirit of simplicity and truth. Sounds of crying and screaming came from somewhere in the distance outside, and f lames were visible through the cracks of the shed, but inside it was quiet and d ark. For a long time P. did not sleep, but lay with eyes open in the darkness, l

istening to the regular snoring of Platon who lay beside him, and he felt that t he world that had been shattered was once more stirring in his soul with a new b eauty and on new and unshakable foundations. (859) Ch. 4: Andrei s death T. follows a remarkable chapter with an even more remarkable one the contemplati on of the extinction of consciousness, of dying and death, and how life appears from the other side. As in Ch. 3, the chapter is set in the limbo world between life and death. What is most striking following Andrei s romantic reunion with Nat asha in Book 11 is A s terrifying transformation as he gives himself over to death . The vision of divine love, self-less, impersonal, and infinite that A. tries to maintain overpowers his love for Natasha and life itself and we are shown the terrifying change. Scene arranged suspensefully as Marya arrives to Yaroslavl, anxious to see her b rother and is kept maddeningly waiting by the Rostovs who are aware of the chang e that has taken over A. Vs. the emotional, forgiving and human response that gr eeted Natasha in Book 11, Marya is coldly, hostily greeted by Andrei as someone still dealing with life. Then in flashback we watch Andrei s terrifying transformation. When this happened.

By the end of Book 12, Pierre is left standing as the central male protagonist a nd the way is now clear, though it is unknown to him, that will allow him to gai n Natasha: Andrei and Helene s deaths. Book 13 (French Retreat 1) Book 11, dealing with the Russian retreat, is balanced here by the causes of the French retreat from Moscow and flight from Russia. T s central concern is to pres ent the causes that defy conventional wisdom. The French were not driven out by strategy, the will of the generals, but by countless human forces. Heroism and s elf-sacrifice (at least as conventionally defined), which are usually celebrated in the great Russian victory over the French, in T s view, have little to do with the matter. Self-interest, human interest played a far more important role. Con trasted to the absurd and counterproductive strategies of the French and Russian generals is the sheer, irrational, irrepressible survival instinct and life for ce that drives the French out and the Russian pursuit. At the still center of th e whirling chaos is Pierre, easy in harness, free in captivity. Ch. Ch. Ch. Ch. 1: 2: 3: 4: Russian army following the abandonment of Moscow Napoleon s attempt to rule Moscow Pierre in captivity and the French retreat Russian pursuit

Ch. 1: Russian army following the abandonment of Moscow T. continues to analyze the causes of historical events from the perspective of eventual French retreat and the flanking movement of Kutuzov s army. His central p oint is repeated=countless, unforeseen, and unexpected circumstances and not the will of one man or a group of strategists bring about historical events. Based on Kutuzov s philosophy of patience and time, the Russian army is restrained. When c onditions, usually the egoism of the generals, force an attack, all the foreseen contingencies go terribly awry=Battle of Tarutino. A cossack hunting a hare accidentally stumbles on Murat s corps. Orders are eventu ally given to attack, but they go astray and the troops fail to reach their posi tions on the first day. The second day is again a muddle that fails to produce t he desired result the destruction of Murat s corps and capture of the French general h

owever, the French withdraw, the Russians can claim a victory, and K. and his ge nerals are rewarded and honored. T s point is unmistakable: doing nothing would ha ve accomplished as much (and avoided needless deaths), plans on a battlefield ar e pointless, what is conventional conceived as heroic falsifies the mixed motive s and self-interest that drives human action. Ch. 2: Napoleon s attempt to rule Moscow The ineffectual Russian army is contrasted by Napoleon s futile attempt to impose his will on the occupation of Moscow. N. does precisely what will insure his ult imate defeat: 1) does not attempt to destroy the Russian army with his superior force; 2) does not succeed in stopping the looting and disintegration of discipl ine that destroys his army. Documentary evidence of Napoleon s proclamations: despite measures, efforts, and pl ans nothing changed the essence of the matter but, like the hands of a clock detac hed from the mechanism, swung about in an arbitrary and aimless way without enga ging the cogwheels. The army like a herd of cattle run wild and trampling underfoot the provender whi ch might have saved it from starvation, disintegrated and perished with each add itional day it remained in Moscow. News of the Battle of Tarutino prompts N. to issue the order for retreat.=wounde d beast hurrying into the hunter s gun. N. acted like a child who, holding a couple of strings inside a carriage, thinks he is driving it. Ch. 3: Pierre in captivity The four weeks Pierre remains a captive in Moscow are summarized. Dressed in dis carded clothing, P. has lost his flabbiness: His former slackness . . . was now r eplaced by an energetic readiness for action and resistance. Bare feet prompt him to a smile of animated self-satisfaction. P. and a French corporal appreciate a brilliant fall day. Community of fellows Rus sians and French have formed. Prison=home. In burned and devestated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the extreme limits of p rivation a man can endure; but thanks to his physical strength and health, of wh ich he had till then been unconscious . . . he endured his position not only lig htly but joyfully. And just at this time, he obtained the tranquility and ease o f mind he had formerly striven in vain to reach. He had long sought in different ways that tranquility of mind, that inner harmony which had so impressed him in the soldiers at the battle of Borodino. He had sought it in philanthropy, in Fr eemasonry, in the dissipation of town life, in wine, in heroic feats of self-sac rifice, and in romantic love for Natasha; he had sought it by reasoning and all th ese quests and experiments had failed him. And now without thinking about it he had found that peace and inner harmony only through the horror of death, through privation, and through what he recognized in Karataev. P. ceases to care about the position of the troops, the big picture: Russia, or the war, or politics, or Napoleon all these things were no business of his: Russia and s ummer weather are not bound together. P. realizes that Napoleon does not matter, nor what Helene does. P realizes: Prince Andrei had thought and said happiness could only be negative, but had said it with a shade of bitterness and irony as though he was really saying that all desire for positive happiness is implanted in us merely to torment us and never

be satisfied. But Pierre believed it without any mental reservation. The absenc e of suffering , the satisfaction of one s nees and consequent freedom in the choi ce of one s occupation, that is, of one s way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be in dubitably man s highest happiness. Captivity= for the rest of his life, he thought and spoke with enthusiasm of that month of captivity, of thos irrecoverable, strong, joyful sensations, and chiefl y of the complete peace of mind and inner freedom which he experienced only duri ng those weeks. As the French begin the evacuation of Moscow, their attitude changes: family is broken up by the System that P. glimpsed at the execution: the mysterious, callou s force which compelled people against their will to kill their fellow men that fo rce the effect of which he had witnessed during the executions. To fear or to tr y to escape that force, to address entreaties or exhortations to those who serve d as its tools, was useless. Pierre knew this now. One had to wait and endure. P. learned the fundamental lesson offered in King Lear: readiness is all. As the prisoners are marched out of Moscow, they witness the horrors of the occu pation in a soot smeared corpse beside a church and the ludicrousness of the Fre nch booty that will damn them. From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the mysterious force noth ing had seemed to him strange or dreadful: neither the corpse smeared with soot for fun nor these women hurrying away nor the burned ruins of Moscow. All that h e now witnessed scarcely made an impression on him as if his soul, making ready fo r a hard struggle, refused to receive impressions that might weaken it. On the march P felt that in proportion to the efforts of that fatal force to crus h him, there grew and strengthened in his soul a power of life independent of it . P. prevented from going among the common soldiers: sits by himself and laughs: b reaks the spell of the mysterious force= The soldier did not let me pass. They to ok me and shut me up. They hold me captive. What, me? Me? My immortal soul? Ha-h a-ha! Ha-ha-ha! P. looks up into the sky, recalling Austerlitz and the ferry, and the Comet of 1 812: And all that is me, all that is within me, and it is all I! . . . And they c aught all that and put it into a shed boarded up with planks! Ch. 4: Russian pursuit News reaches the Russians of the French departure from Moscow. Kutuzov reacts with joy and still wants to restrain the Russian generals: They want to run to see how they have wounded it. Wait and we shall see! Continua l manuevers, continual advances . . . What for? Only to disinguish themselves! As if fighting were fun. They are like children from whom one can t get any sensib le account of what has happened because they all want to show how well they can fight. But that s not what is needed now. French army=lump of snow Book 14 (French Retreat, 2: Russian Perspective and Rescue) Book 14 shifts the perspective on the French retreat to the Russian perspective, discussing the strategy that drove the Russian army s pursuit, while re-introduci ng key characters Denisov, Dolokhov, and Petya Rostov as participants in the guerill

a warfare harassing the French. Denisov finds himself again in the position of b eing a mentor to an impulsive Rostov, and Dolokhov is given a new opportunity to wreck a Rostov life. He has already stripped Nicholai of 43,000 rubles, and was behind Natasha s seduction and abduction. Now his recklessness, evident as early as Book 1 in the wager, will risk Petya s life unnecessarily and will factor in Pe tya s death. The book includes one of the novel s major coincidences: the target of the Russian attack is the transport that includes Pierre, so Petya s death becomes connected with Pierre s release from captivity. Ch. 1: Nature of the war and guerilla warfare. Ch. 2: Denisov, Dolokhov, and the death of Petya. Ch. 3: Pierre among the prisoners; Karataev s death, and Pierre s rescue Chs. 4-5: Nature of the French retreat. Ch. 1: Nature of the war and guerilla warfare. T. asserts the irony, unique in military history, that the conquerors had won, h ad subjugated their enemies, yet the French army ceased to exist. This happened because the Russian people, fighting for its life, for its integrity, and for it s identity, had turned upon the invaders, burned crops and villages. It became a national war, a people s war. Napoleon had correctly used the rapier and operated b y the rules of fencing; the Russians had picked up a cudgel, and used the principl e of by whatever means necessary. Rules of war violated Napoleon, the chess maste r, was bested by an opponent who ignored the rules. Unknown x in military engagement=spirit of the army. Ch. 2: Denisov, Dolokhov, and the death of Petya. Abstractions of Ch. 1 applied to specifics of Ch. 2 where we meet Denisov as the leader of a guerilla band operating independently (and productively) harassing the French retreat. Dolokhov also a commander (how he regained his commission is as unclear as how he lost it at Borodino). On eave of coordinated attack between Denisov and Dolokhov s units, they encounter Petya who has come from his regiment to gain his general s desire to subordinate under the general s command. How does Petya remind the reader of Nicholai and all the Rostovs? Impulsive, gen erous, rash, driven by unrealistic concept of bravery and glory. Denisov? Dolokhov? D s malevolence has turned murderous. Note that he endorses Andrei s cynic al concept of take no prisoners. In Andrei s case, it was to help end war, shed of i ts chivalric pretensions; in Dolokhov s case we suspect he simply loves killing. H ow to make sense of Dolokhov s psychology? He is led to destroy those who are bett er than he is. Sense of power rests in dominating others, destroying others. Dolokhov embarks on another gamble infiltrating the French to learn what they are dealing with. Connected to the life defying window-ledge stunt. Also another exa mple of violation of the rules of war=spies. Petya compelled to acoompany D. to prove himself. The mission produces no useful intelligence, but the thrill will prove fatal for Petya who will try to duplica te D s daring in the charge. Petya s last night, lost in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible, he conduct s a symphony: T s equivalent of Beethoven s Ode to Joy. (932-933). Scene prefigured in B ook 7 at Uncle s when P. sleeps through Natasha s dance and is carried out like a log /corpse, with the visual suggestion of dead soldier carried from battlefield. Sce

ne, therefore, connects: Russian spirit, music, and death. Here the situation is reversed. P. sent to join Denisov s force who are pursuing the French as if they were the wolf hunted down in Book 7. Petya s raisins recall the meal after the hun ting party. Counterpart to Petya here is Vincent, the captured French drummer bo y. He will be killed at the end of the episode, together with the other French p risoners. Petya asks a Cossack to sharpen his saber, and the sound of the sword against th e whetstone produces a constant ozhegzheg sound. As he drifts off to sleep, the wo rld is magically changed, and P. is transported to a fairy kingdom, where nothing resembled reality. Music=Sword instrument of death. At the charge, Petya disobeys Denisov s order and rushes to the center of the figh ting, where he is shot in the head. When P. dies, he waved his arms about rapidly , like a conductor. Thus music has become death, with Petya still conducting his grand and joyful symphony. At end Dolokhov, watching the French prisoners pass by, gently switched his boots with his whip echoes the gesture of the conductor. Here Petya s triumphant, joyful music has become a procession of the dead. Last sentence of the chapter: Pierre among the prisoners. Chapter captures the w aste and evil of war in taking the life of such a young, vigorous, and sweet you ng man. Ch. 3: Pierre among the prisoners; Karataev s death, and Pierre s rescue Narrative doubles back to relate Pierre s journey among the prisoners and brings u s back to the moment of his rescue. Platon has fallen ill. Tells the story of the merchant falsely accused of murder whose acceptance of his sin turns the actual murderer s heart. Significance of th is parable? All is purposeful, acceptance of fate. Merchant is pardoned not by t he murderer s confession but by his own acceptance and submission. Next day, as they move on, Platon is left behind, and Pierre does not look back when the shots that kill him are fired. How explain Pierre s avoidance of Platon i n his illness? And lack of grief at his death? Death: (940-941): birch trees/Andrei at Borodino. Core truths P. discovers: Unhappiness comes not from privation but superfluity; Nothing in this life is terrible; Freedom comes not in the absence of limits, bu t in the recognition of limits. Globe (941): Self/other. Realization that Platon has been killed: memory of summer evening spent with a b eautiful Polish lady on the veranda of his house in Kiev. Vs. Pierre s recovery=Dolokhov s murderousness as they march off for execution a hun dred at a time. Cf. Denisov s grief at the burial of Petya. Chs. 4-5: Nature of the French retreat. Retreat equated to a game of blind man s bluff. Napoleon s elevation to greatness ab surd. Central truth= There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are ab sent.

Book 15 Book 15 (Homecoming) Book 15, ends the novel proper with an engagement, the final destination of a co medy. W&P answers the tragedy of history with the comedy of ordinary life and hu man love. The final assertion in the combat between war and peace/ death and lif e is the affirmation of peace and life. Pierre makes his way home to Moscow, tra nsformed by his experiences in captivity. Like the ants who come back to the des troyed ant hill, the population of Moscow returns and the rebuilding commences. On the microcosmic level, Pierre s confidence in the power of life and happiness r ecalls Natasha back to life (as he had done following the abduction fiasco). The novel s last words (an unfinished sentence) is given to Natasha who now affirms b oth her love for Pierre and the necessity of waiting for its completion. Ch. 1. Natasha recalled from grief to comfort her mother over the death of Petya . Chs. 2-4: Kutuzov Ch. 5: Pierre reunited with Princess Marya and Natasha. Ch. 1. Natasha recalled from grief to comfort her mother over the death of Petya . Both Marya and Natasha are grief stricken following A s death, But pure and complet e sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy. The cares of life intrude upo n their isolated sorrow and draws them back to life. Marya, without father or br other, has greater demands put on her and is the first to recover from her wound . Natasha continues to brood. News of Petya s death forces Natasha into action: comforting her mother. Helping h er mother cope, restores Natasha to life. Death/life. Her love for her mother unexpectedly showed her that the essence of life love was sti ll active within her. Love awoke and so did life. Chs. 2-4: Kutuzov These chapters conclude T s repeated comparison between Napoleon and Kutuzov: Napoleon=absolute stranger, separated, isolated individual, emblem of empirical worldview and Western individualism. World only interests him as it affects him. Believes world revolves around him and that he can control while he is blind ot any will other than his own. Individual separated from human relationships. Emp hasis on physical=rotund stomach, heavy thighs, short hair, white hands and neck . N=body, who loves only himself. Totally self-enclosed. He is subject; everythi ng else is object. No awareness of truth, beauty, or goodness Kutuzov=absolute resident, does not experience life isolated from others or wrap ped up in the contemplation of himself. Sees and enters complex reality of life and sees with compassion (Timokhin). Does not see as others do. Has contempt fo r knowledge of the mind. K knows through consciousness, not bound by the limits of self. K. not a hero in European mold, but a servant of the people. Rooted in fa ith and in contact with earth. Napoleon vs Kutuzov establish a continuum to view the fictional characters: Napoleon Helene (body) Kutuzov Natasha (spirit)

Anatole (self-centered will) Mary (lack of personal will) Andrei (self vs. other) Pierre (self & other) Speranksy (reason) Platon (unconscious) T s final testimony on Kutuzov s greatness that is misperceived by historians who fo cus on his shortcomings. K is not European hero in sense of willful leader but R ussian hero=servant of greater cause. K. is great because he discovered and foll owed the currents of humanity. Ch. 3: K s victory speech to the army: But now we may even pity them. They are huma n beings too. Scenes of Russian troops=spirit of the army: endurance/fellowship. Captain Ramballe treated with dignity and respect. Morel sings for his supper: ey are men too. Th

Ch. 4: return to Vilna where Kutuzov is dismissed by Alexander who will carry th e war beyond Russia. K. realizes his duty now is done and accepts his fate: Nothi ng remained for the representative of the national war but to die, and K. died. Ch. 5: Pierre reunited with Princess Marya and Natasha. Pierre and Natasha, linked throughout the novel by temperament, traits, and circ umstances, finally come together: Each has been disastrously connected with a Kuragin P. through marrying Helene, wh ich almost results in his death through his duel with Dolokhov; Natasha through her infatuation with Anatole, which almost leads to her death by poison. Both amorous involvements engineered by a Kuragin (Prince Vassily for Pierre and Helene for Natasha). Dolokhov is the link character as Helene s lover and Anatole s accomplice. Both amorous involvements are punctuated by exclamations of French (Je vous aime /Mais charmante). The background of each s sexual fall is reflected in an atmosphere of falsity: Pri nce Vassily and the opera; both succumb to the terrible nearness of the Kuragins, in which protective barriers have been removed. After suffering, both emerge stronger and ready to rebuild their lives (cf. aban donment and rebuilding of Moscow. Pierre and Natasha are unique in their combination of sensitivity, spontaneity, altruism, and empathy. Both help people in distress: Natasha (Sonya, Countess R. , wounded soldiers); Pierre (enemy soldier, lost child, Armenian woman). Both ar e associated with childhood: N-with her doll; P child in a toy-shop. Both imitate o thers: Natasha kissing Boris; Pierre trying to duplicate Dolokhov s wager; both br eak their words of honor (Pierre to go to Anatole s; Natasha telling of Nicholai s w ound). Pierre s recovery at Orel. Learns of Andrei s and Helene s death. Feels joyous feeling of freedom He no longer questions life but accepts it, joyfully, humbly: That sear ch for an aim had simply been a search for God . . . he had learned that God is here and everywhere. Well, and what then? What am I to do? . . . Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!

The search for the aim of life . . . no longer existed for him Vs. former self (927-928). Shows the effect on Catiche, Terenty, Doctory, unname d young Italian, Count Willarski. Decision whom to help now made by instinct. De

cides to rebuild and pay his wife s debts. Pierre in Moscow. Moscow=reassembly of a scattered ant colony. Visits Princess M arya and gradually recognizes Natasha (984): Like the opening of a door grown rusty on its hinges, a smile appeared on the fac e. . . . P. involuntarily shows his love for Natasha and her eyes reflects his affection, sympathy. Prompted to talk for the first time about Andrei. P. tells his story of captivity and recalls Natasha to life: I am not to blame for being alive and wishing to live nor you either. Mary and Natasha. From Natasha s perspective P. has somehow grown so clean, smooth, and fresh as if he had just come out of a Russian bath . . . out of a moral bath. Mischievous smile alerts Marya that Natasha has come back to life. Pierre at home and on his subsequent visit. Natasha transformed to old joy of li fe. Third visit: unable to leave, P. finally speaks to Marya alone and confesses his love. She agrees to assist him. Note that T. does not allow the romantic climax of Pierre-Natasha: no proposal, no acceptance scene. P. in Petersburg=transfixed by happiness: blissful insanity. And by loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes for loving t hem. Beatles: And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

Ends with Natasha s joyful acceptance of Pierre s love. Of all the things that W&P i s, it is centrally one of the great love stories in all of literatures, ending w ith the victory of love and life over death and destruction. The great strands o f existence are all drawn together and subsumed in Natasha s Yes. First Epilogue Conventional novelists would have followed Natasha s final interrupted sentence at the end of Book 15 with a summary of what happened next, in a comedy, a realist ic variation of They all lived happily ever after. See ending of Jane Austen s Pride and Prejudice, for example: Lady Catherine was extremely indignant on the marriage of her nephew; and as she gave way to all the genuine frankness of her character, in her reply to the let ter which announced its arrangement, she sent him language so very abusive, espe cially of Elizabeth, that for some time all intercourse was at an end. But at le ngth, by Elizabeth s persuasion, he was prevailed on to overlook the offence, and seek a reconciliation; and, after a little further resistance on the part of his aunt, her resentment gave way, either to her affection for him, or her curiosit y to see how his wife conducted herself; and she condescended to wait on them at Pemberley, in spite of that pollution which its woods had received, not merely from the presence of such a mistress, but visits of her uncle and aunt from the city. With the Gardiners they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmes t gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire. had been t he means of uniting them.

Or Jane Austen s Emma: The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste f or finery or parade; and Mrs. Elton, from the particulars detailed by her husban d, thought it all extremely shabby, and very inferior to her own. Very little white satin, very few lace veils, a most pitiful business! Selina would stare when she heard of it. But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confid ence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremo ny, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union. .Or Dickens s Pickwick Papers: [Mr. Pickwick] is somewhat infirm now, but he retains all his former juvenility of spirit, and may still be frequently seen contemplating the pictures in the Du lwich Gallery, or enjoying a walk about the pleasant neighbourhood on a fine day . He is known by all the poor people about, who never fail to take their hats of f as he passes with great respect; the children idolize him, and so indeed does the whole neighbourhood. Every year he repairs to a large family merry-making at Mr. Wardle s; on this, as on all other occasions, he is invariably attended by th e faithful Sam, between whom and his master there exists a steady and reciprocal attachment, which nothing but death will sever. All these close on a point of stasis, of culmination, of summary. Tolstoy with a n interruption, a pause in the action. He follows this with two distinctly diffe rent afterthoughts: a tantalizing glimpse of his central characters seven years later, not a summary but a drama, very much in keeping with T s preference for the specific over the abstract, at least in terms of his fiction. We are treated wi th a view of married life with its suggestion that narrative interest is not res olved at the altar, that human life goes on beyond the honeymoon. Here we see Ni cholai-Marya, Pierre-Natasha subsumed in their new roles as spouses and parents. We also glimpse the historical developments of 1820 that will coalesce into cir cumstances that will descend upon them, as well as the next generation, which wi ll eventually predominate, as the second generation succeeded the first from the opening of the novel. The last word of the First Epilogue is given to Nicholenk a Bolkonsky, eerily echoing the motivation of his father, suggesting that a cycl e of life will be continued. He, too, like Natasha in Book 15, breaks off in mid -sentence, suggesting the continuity of life that has no beginning or end. Set in 1820, the First Epilogue can be read as the application of the insights s upplied in the narrative as a whole: Primacy of the present, the family, of consciousness over reason, and love. The ultimate insignificance of great events and great men for what truly matters : ordinary routine of life. Transcencence comes not through the supremacy of the self but fulfillment of the self in relationship with experience and Other Ch. 1 Opens on the Macro level of history with a concluding contrast between Nap oleon and Alexander and the aftermath of the War of 1812. If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is de stroyed. What is the purpose of a bee?: All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee to other man ifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of historic characters and na tions.

Ch. 2: Rostov family history. Shift from history to family, from grand to trivia l. Old Count R. dies after Pierre and Natasha marry in 1813. Nicholai retires from the army and works tirelessly to repay the family debt, li ving quietly with his mother and Sonya. First resisting re-acquaintance with Mar ya (1010-1011), they are married, and N. becomes an accomplished and respected l andowner. Nicholai s success as a farmer proves T s point that unconscious acts are always the best. Self-interest can lead to good if based on right instinct. N. intuits wha t is best for himself and for his serfs. Sonya= sterile flower (1015)

Focus on particular, eve of St. Nicholas Day, December 5, 1820: General Denisov vi siting and Pierre expected. Nicholai s bad temper soothed by his 3-year-old favori te Natasha, who, like her namesake, dictates kissing. Ch. 3: Natasha and Pierre s married life. Natasha has 3 daughters and a son. She i s matronly and happy. Her old animation replaced by contentment. Universe=husban d and family. (1020-1023). Neglects appearance, gives up singing, is jealous and stingy. Women s rights? No meaning for her. P. happily accepts N s rule (1023) Pierre s arrival at Bald Hills (1024-1025). Family dynamics; Countess Rostova. Conversation with the Countess Conversation in Nicholai s study Conversation in the dining room Ch. 4: Two couples before bed Nicholenka s dream: Everyone shall know me, love me, and be delighted with me! Oh, Father, Father! I will do something with which even he would be satisfied . . . Ends with assertion of life s continuity. Life goes on; people grow and decline; t he vivacity of youth settles into the regular conditions of life. Youth repeats the cycle: full of passion and ambition, unaware of what lies ahead for them, as they set out to conquer the world. Life cannot be suppressed; each must test hi m/herself against existence and hopefully come to joy. Second Epilogue W&P ends not with T s observations about his characters but with an abstract philo sophical essay on the nature of history and free will and necessity. Why? Each e pilogue shows a side of T s mental make-up. Epilogue 1=unsurpassed capturer of exi stence; Epilogue 2=philosophical moralist. What W&P has synthesized: history/fic tion; chronicle/family drama; war/peace, the epilogues divide showing the two pa ths T. will subsequently follow: fiction/sermon. Just as Epilogue 1 has shown the fulfillment of his points about the nature of e xistence and the right balance in dealing with reality, Epilogue 2 shows that th e novel has been a demonstration of these principles.

Historians power exist in the Historical y. Difference

who focus on the great men or great event miss the point: events and collective will of the people, not in a few heroes. inquiry eventually leads to the central paradox: freedom vs. necessit between reason and consciousness:

Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability. Consciousness gives express ion to the essence of freedom. Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in man s consciousness. In evitability without content is man s reason in its three forms. Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what examines. Freedom is the co ntent. Inevitability is the form. Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related to one another as form to content, do we get the mutually exclusive and separately incomprehensible con ceptions of freedom and necessity. Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of man s life. (1071) Reading W&P the reader is forced to stretch his/her moral and perceptual muscles : we are forced to grow up, giving up consoling illusions to deal with complex r eality. T. helps us to see people and events in the round, in all their dimensio ns, not as they ought to be, but as they are. W&P=liberal education. It offers n ot one but many love stories, adventures, deaths. Importance of W&P beyond its a mazing vitality and multiplicity is that it matures the reader. More of the worl d has been set before us than in any other novel.