I don’t think it’s possible to read War and Peace in a casual way. It needs time, lots of time, and commitment. Also, it requires a good translation that helps the reader with the French passages, provides historical notes and the all-important list of characters. I had been eyeing War and Peace for years, but it wasn’t until a few years ago, when I saw the Sergei Bondarchuk film, made in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, that I thought I would give it a try. Watching that wonderful film (in three parts, many hours long) gave me an easier entrée to the story. Or maybe, now I didn’t have to read it. Was the film enough? Several years passed and it was always in the back of my mind: to read or not to read. And then I did it, signed up for a course to read War and Peace in eight weeks with twenty other folks and two discussion leaders. Some people in the class had read the novel before, others, like me, had never read it. One woman had read it three times!
Our assignment for the first class was the first two hundred pages. I started writing this post when the course began, last spring, sure that I would keep up every week with the novel and my reactions. Procrastination took over! Now it’s six months later. The same discussion leaders are planning a class on The Brothers Karamazov in the spring–another Russian classic I never read. The discussions we had about War and Peace were so terrific that I think I’ll sign up for this next one.
Back to War and Peace. Tolstoy starts in medias res: we’re at a soiree at the home of an upper-class noblewoman, Anna Pavlovna. It’s an easy way to introduce lots of characters, have them express their opinions, and describe them as they enter the party. Napoleon is already on the march, winning battles as he heads towards Moscow. The guests admire him as a heroic soldier but revile him for his assault on Russia. Tolstoy has little use for Napoleon; he appears in the battle scenes as a buffoon. And Tolstoy repeatedly addresses the reader; he wants to make sure that we understand his point of view about history and who gets to tell the story.
There’s lots of up-close history in the novel and those parts are very exciting, but the personal stories of Natasha, Pierre, and Andrei are the beating heart. There are villains and heroes, characters change and grow and we get to live with them and share their travails. Pierre, a lost soul, inherits a huge fortune and becomes an object of desire for a beautiful but depraved and unscrupulous woman. Reader, he marries her, and we ache for Pierre’s mistake. He was my favorite, a tormented soul until…but I won’t give away what happens to Pierre. War and Peace encompasses so much and draws you in very close to the characters. I wouldn’t want to spoil that.
I recently saw a student production of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, a musical version of a chunk of the book. I loved revisiting the characters, thinking once again about their complicated lives and loves. If you need a book for those short, gloomy winter days, open up War and Peace and join the party at Anna Pavlovna’s.
A Reader's Place 