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A review by brandonpytel
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4.0
A book I read in 19 days (humble brag), War and Peace has a little bit of everything — from expansive battles to Napoleon's inner thoughts, from Russian high society in St Pete to the burned out Moscow that Napoleon finds abandoned, from meditations on war, humanity, and larger-than-life figures to essays on man’s true place in history — all this is all strung together by a love triangle between Natasha Pierre and Andrey, and complemented by the love between Nicolas and Mary.
In this way, the book is constructed much differently than a traditional novel: there is a narrative arc, yes, but to get there, you also have to get through essays on war and mankind, damning critiques of Napoleon, and dozens of pages on war and history, including the 100-page epilogue, which nearly abandons the narrative entirely, favoring instead the concept of genius v. change, predeterminism of history and fate v freedom, etc. through extended philosophical musings.
But that is perhaps why War and Peace is so great. It transcends the concept of the traditional novel for something more, something that touches on the intimate aspects of history, while still holding tight to the universal truths his characters embody.
Put succinctly by Daniel Burt in his The Novel 100: “Tolstoy’s conception grew into a massive panoramic summary of a historical era that also comprehended much of the human condition, as one generation is succeeded by the next and characters evolved through time and circumstances from youth to experience in the complicated interplay between private and public life.”
Put another way by Orlando Figes in the intro to the edition I read: “The whole of life appears to be contained in its pages. Tolstoy presents us with a cast of several hundred characters. Yet to each one he brings such profound understanding of the human condition, with all its frailties and contradictions, that we recognize and love these characters as reflections of our own identity.”
And that is perhaps Tolsstpry’s unique and best talent: Despite being written over 150 years ago, War and Peace and its characters are as relevant today as they were then, because, as in Anna Karenina, Tolstoy deals with universal truths.
Those truths are usually sought by characters undergoing their own struggles, such as Pierre’s search for meaning after inheriting a vast fortune and Andrey doing something similar after seeing the death of battle.
These truths include heroism v reality, hope and glory, ambition ties up with military rank — and the difference between the order of military life and the chaos of the world — good v bad, children v men, right v wrong, but it also goes higher than that: life v death (and what is beyond?), significance in the face of fate, the vanity and morality of life, as Pierre wrestles with through his experience with freemasonry, or as Rostov has a blind passion for Alexander I as the ideal of moral good.
One of the most interesting passages early on is how these ideals or views of the world conflict with each other in an argument between Pierre and Andrey. Whereas Pierre believes in the hope of happiness and goodness, loving his neighbor and believing in God and an afterlife, Andrey is much more cynical: Andrey, with his worrisome, dark looks, is the opposite of Pierre and hope; he used to live for glory but now resigns himself to existentialism, living for himself.
As Pierre becomes obsessed with improving his spiritual being through freemasonry, Andrey goes off to war and undergoes a change himself: One that eventually embraces life and happiness. Throw in Rostov, who is content with the clear cut world of the military over the messy nonsense of life, and you have three central characters undergoing major changes in how they view the world. At the center of these changes, like so often is, the search for happiness.
Despite his best attempts, Pierre eventually returns to Moscow, questioning his endeavor to find truth and retires to his fate. He instead falls in love with Natasha, realizing that all those major questions of life really come down to love and beauty. Natasha, meanwhile, finds happiness in both Andrey, whom she is secretly engaged to, and the rascal Antole, who seduces her. As happens a lot in Russian novels, there is something beyond love that characters cling to, and for Natasha it is finding the key of happiness to be God.
Andrey, who aside from Pierre, undergoes one of the central turns of the book from his deathbed, a horrific scene written beautifully that describes a dying man going in and out of his consciousness, with his soul detaching from his body and coming back. He does this, fittingly enough, while being mortally wounded from the battlefield, after he sees the terror of war firsthand.
To Andrey, war is not a grand spectacle that it has been propped up to be. Instead it is terribly ominous and ghostly, as Andrey realizes that war doesn't come down to military genius or strategy but to the will of men (a recurring theme throughout the book) and that this war is not a game but rather a ruthless and vile reality.
As Andrey slowly dies, Pieerre is undergoing his own transformation: He is a mad mess, after witnessing the insignificance and hollowness at Borodino, where he wanders onto the battlefield. The scene is so graphic and stunning that Pieere determines that he must kill Napoleon in his sudden impulse toward sacrifice and suffering, combined with a newfound feeling of contempt for everything conventional.
In this wild state, Pierre attacks a French officer, feeling the energy and determination to save his people. These events all lead to Pierre’s near-ecution, the final straw for Pierre to lose his faith. But it is his time during his imprisonment that everything begins to change for Pierre; he gains an inner peace through the horror of death, and as a prisoner, he is satisfied as his basic needs being satisfied as the ultimate happiness — summed up by his true transformation by novel’s end, after he marries Natahsa: When there’s life, there’s happiness.
War and Peace has a little bit of everything, and once you get off the ground, you realize how fantastically expansive this work is: It’s almost like a history textbook. Thank god I read a Napoleon biography before this, which helped ground the military advancements that are so central to this book.
But you also realize how marvelous the characters are, how they each search for truth and happiness in their own way, before reverting back to what was there all along: love and family. Tied together by the higher purposes of spirituality, these men can transcend the battlefield and man’s futile attempts of war and conquering others to find purpose — the ultimate end point for humanity.
In this way, the book is constructed much differently than a traditional novel: there is a narrative arc, yes, but to get there, you also have to get through essays on war and mankind, damning critiques of Napoleon, and dozens of pages on war and history, including the 100-page epilogue, which nearly abandons the narrative entirely, favoring instead the concept of genius v. change, predeterminism of history and fate v freedom, etc. through extended philosophical musings.
But that is perhaps why War and Peace is so great. It transcends the concept of the traditional novel for something more, something that touches on the intimate aspects of history, while still holding tight to the universal truths his characters embody.
Put succinctly by Daniel Burt in his The Novel 100: “Tolstoy’s conception grew into a massive panoramic summary of a historical era that also comprehended much of the human condition, as one generation is succeeded by the next and characters evolved through time and circumstances from youth to experience in the complicated interplay between private and public life.”
Put another way by Orlando Figes in the intro to the edition I read: “The whole of life appears to be contained in its pages. Tolstoy presents us with a cast of several hundred characters. Yet to each one he brings such profound understanding of the human condition, with all its frailties and contradictions, that we recognize and love these characters as reflections of our own identity.”
And that is perhaps Tolsstpry’s unique and best talent: Despite being written over 150 years ago, War and Peace and its characters are as relevant today as they were then, because, as in Anna Karenina, Tolstoy deals with universal truths.
Those truths are usually sought by characters undergoing their own struggles, such as Pierre’s search for meaning after inheriting a vast fortune and Andrey doing something similar after seeing the death of battle.
These truths include heroism v reality, hope and glory, ambition ties up with military rank — and the difference between the order of military life and the chaos of the world — good v bad, children v men, right v wrong, but it also goes higher than that: life v death (and what is beyond?), significance in the face of fate, the vanity and morality of life, as Pierre wrestles with through his experience with freemasonry, or as Rostov has a blind passion for Alexander I as the ideal of moral good.
One of the most interesting passages early on is how these ideals or views of the world conflict with each other in an argument between Pierre and Andrey. Whereas Pierre believes in the hope of happiness and goodness, loving his neighbor and believing in God and an afterlife, Andrey is much more cynical: Andrey, with his worrisome, dark looks, is the opposite of Pierre and hope; he used to live for glory but now resigns himself to existentialism, living for himself.
As Pierre becomes obsessed with improving his spiritual being through freemasonry, Andrey goes off to war and undergoes a change himself: One that eventually embraces life and happiness. Throw in Rostov, who is content with the clear cut world of the military over the messy nonsense of life, and you have three central characters undergoing major changes in how they view the world. At the center of these changes, like so often is, the search for happiness.
Despite his best attempts, Pierre eventually returns to Moscow, questioning his endeavor to find truth and retires to his fate. He instead falls in love with Natasha, realizing that all those major questions of life really come down to love and beauty. Natasha, meanwhile, finds happiness in both Andrey, whom she is secretly engaged to, and the rascal Antole, who seduces her. As happens a lot in Russian novels, there is something beyond love that characters cling to, and for Natasha it is finding the key of happiness to be God.
Andrey, who aside from Pierre, undergoes one of the central turns of the book from his deathbed, a horrific scene written beautifully that describes a dying man going in and out of his consciousness, with his soul detaching from his body and coming back. He does this, fittingly enough, while being mortally wounded from the battlefield, after he sees the terror of war firsthand.
To Andrey, war is not a grand spectacle that it has been propped up to be. Instead it is terribly ominous and ghostly, as Andrey realizes that war doesn't come down to military genius or strategy but to the will of men (a recurring theme throughout the book) and that this war is not a game but rather a ruthless and vile reality.
As Andrey slowly dies, Pieerre is undergoing his own transformation: He is a mad mess, after witnessing the insignificance and hollowness at Borodino, where he wanders onto the battlefield. The scene is so graphic and stunning that Pieere determines that he must kill Napoleon in his sudden impulse toward sacrifice and suffering, combined with a newfound feeling of contempt for everything conventional.
In this wild state, Pierre attacks a French officer, feeling the energy and determination to save his people. These events all lead to Pierre’s near-ecution, the final straw for Pierre to lose his faith. But it is his time during his imprisonment that everything begins to change for Pierre; he gains an inner peace through the horror of death, and as a prisoner, he is satisfied as his basic needs being satisfied as the ultimate happiness — summed up by his true transformation by novel’s end, after he marries Natahsa: When there’s life, there’s happiness.
War and Peace has a little bit of everything, and once you get off the ground, you realize how fantastically expansive this work is: It’s almost like a history textbook. Thank god I read a Napoleon biography before this, which helped ground the military advancements that are so central to this book.
But you also realize how marvelous the characters are, how they each search for truth and happiness in their own way, before reverting back to what was there all along: love and family. Tied together by the higher purposes of spirituality, these men can transcend the battlefield and man’s futile attempts of war and conquering others to find purpose — the ultimate end point for humanity.