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Tolstoy's War & Peace - Lecture Three (Vol. I, Part III) (Patreon)

Published:
2023-01-22 16:35:53
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

'Where's it gone, that lofty sky that I had never known before until I saw it today?' 

Today we've reached the significant milestone of having read the first volume of War and Peace. 

We're discussing the power of perspective, deferring happiness to the future, exercising free-will, feelings of dissociation, our need for meaning, the sublime and epic, and much more.

Timestamps:

  • 0:00 Tolstoy's shifting perspective
  • 5:07 reuniting with Pierre 
  • 5:24 binaries & external vs internal
  • 6:57 deferring happiness to the future
  • 10:30 wooing, warfare & free-will
  • 14:00 between stimulus and response
  • 15:10 from panorama to interior 
  • 17:10 dissociation & defamiliarisation
  • 19:51 Marya & understanding others
  • 21:30 the cave we fear to enter 
  • 24:35 Tolstoic juxtaposition 
  • 25:00 physical vs inner beauty
  • 26:00 the echoes of destiny 
  • 27:20 reflections of ourselves 
  • 29:30 the chain of supplication
  • 31:18 Nikolai & truthful reactions
  • 33:20 external vs inward change 
  • 34:16 fantasy, history, truth 
  • 35:52 on yearning for meaning
  • 37:00 the clock face of history 
  • 39:30 Kutuzov falls asleep 
  • 41:00 Shakespeare & influence 
  • 42:20 meditating on 'tomorrow'
  • 46:18 on the sublime & epic
  • 50:22 when fantasy becomes reality
  • 51:30 Andrei sees 'that lofty sky'
  • 52:15 the reality of warfare 
  • 53:40 on near death experiences 
  • 56:00 'the insignificance of greatness' 
  • 1:00:10 some questions for you

Our Tolstoic Journey:

Works Mentioned:

  • Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl's work continues to be incredibly instructive when it comes to living a life filled with meaning and purpose. It is slim, but resonant. And it makes a superb complementary read to War and Peace.
  • A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of the Sublime and Beautiful - Edmund Burke's tract makes for another great supplement to your reading of Tolstoy's epic, as it goes a long way towards explaining what we mean when we call something 'sublime'.

Documentary Recommendation:

  • Napoleon's Masterpiece: Austerlitz - This documentary does a tremendous job of explicating the socio-political climate of the time and using crisp visuals to show the military strategy involved in this battle. 

Tolstoy Biographies:

As we are now through the first volume of War and Peace, you may find this to be the perfect time to deepen your understanding of the great writer with a biography. My top recommendation is Rosamund Bartlett's Tolstoy: A Russian Life. A. N. Wilson's Tolstoy is also a superb choice. 

Reading Assignment:

Congratulations are in order because we are now onto the second volume of War and Peace. The next discussion will focus on the first two parts of volume two. This takes us up to page 452 in the Briggs.

Questions to Consider:

1) Do you see anything of yourself in these characters?

2) When have you significantly noticed a gap between fantasy and reality? 

3) What resonated with you the most from this first volume? And what are you expecting from the second volume?

And please do share with us your impressions and favourite passages from the third part of volume one of War and Peace.

Happy reading, everybody!

Files

Previews only

Tolstoy's War & Peace - Lecture Three (Vol. I, Part III)

0:00 Tolstoy's shifting perspective 5:07 reuniting with Pierre 5:24 binaries & external vs internal 6:57 deferring happiness to the future 10:30 wooing, warfare & free-will 14:00 between stimulus and response 15:10 from panorama to interior 17:10 dissociation & defamiliarisation 19:51 Marya & understanding others 21:30 the cave we fear to enter 24:35 Tolstoic juxtaposition 25:00 physical vs inner beauty 26:00 the echoes of destiny 27:20 reflections of ourselves 29:30 the chain of supplication 31:18 Nikolai & truthful reactions 33:20 external vs inward change 34:16 fantasy, history, truth 35:52 on yearning for meaning 37:00 the clock face of history 39:30 Kutuzov falls asleep 41:00 Shakespeare & influence 42:20 meditating on 'tomorrow' 46:18 on the sublime & epic 50:22 when fantasy becomes reality 51:30 Andrei sees 'that lofty sky' 52:15 the reality of warfare 53:40 on near death experiences 56:00 'the insignificance of greatness' 1:00:10 some questions for you

Comments

Halcyon Distilled

As an INFP, I related to N. Rostov's meanderings and fertile imagination of how events would play out....to then be left with regret and disappointment with myself for not bringing them to fruition. The word "imagination" is used so many times in this book. Several of the characters dwell in their imagined reality which then interfaces with the reality outside that construct. I enjoyed this passage too.

Anonymous

I’m coming to this very, very late, having just discovered this site through YouTube and then through Patreon. So I doubt anyone will read this but I’ll put it up anyway. I started about a month ago, reading a few chapters every night before drifting off to sleep. I got as far as Volume III, part 3, but then got distracted for about a month and then started going back over the lectures, starting at lecture one, as a means of catching up with my previous gait. I remember very vividly Andrey’s near death experience under the lofty sky. It resonated with a personal experience of my own, but not a near death one. Back in the mid-70’s, as a young man in my mid-twenties, I happened to be driving across country from Georgia to California. I stopped in to visit a friend I had known in college who was living in a very small hamlet high in the Colorado Rockies. Even at that time, I was never enthralled, as so many of my contemporaries were, with psychedelic drugs. But, it being Christmastime, my friend and some of his Colorado friends decided a good way to celebrate was to go cross country skiing while high on LSD. I had never taken the drug, or any psychedelics, before and was apprehensive, but in the spirit of the times and not wanting to be left alone I the cabin while the others were out having a good time, I went ahead and took a small tab, slapped on a loaned pair of cross country skis, and headed out with the group. It was not long before I was flat on my back in the snow and yelling to the others to go on without me. I just laid there in the snow, very happy, looking at the beautiful blue sky above framed by the dark green and snow white tops of the trees around me. I came to the profound realization, which to this day I still hold as true, that the sky, the trees, and the snow somehow loved me. That this incredible beauty of the natural world was an expression of God’s love for me. This realization, profound as it was, represented a complete turning point in my life. I had always heard about God’s love for us but I never experienced it so directly before. My circumstances were the total opposite of Andrey’s, but I believe it was similarly transformative. I recalled Andrey’s advice to Pierre about marriage in volume 1 part1, and his unhappiness and mistreatment of Lise. I think although he loved Lise on some level, he was not able to realize that love. But after his understanding of life garnered by his near death experience, his subsequent “falling” into love with Natasha, evinces that he is a different man. I think that my experience changed my life as well. In fact, in my 74 years I can think of only one or two experiences, one being the birth of my child, that have affected me more. Ah, the infinite, lofty sky will put you in your place if only you can stop living long enough to see it. I never did any psychedelics again, reasoning that if the drug can produce such a positive transformational experience it may also have the power to produce an equally powerful negative experience. Anyway, I’m so glad I finally got around to reading this masterpiece and this is the way I resonated with the character of Andrey in that situation. I also thought that the later description of his and Natasha’s affair was as true a rendering of what it is like to be in love as is rendered by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. By the way I’m reading the Briggs translation. It’s a real page-turner.