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

Published:
2023-02-19 21:05:04
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

'This heavenly body seemed perfectly attuned to Pierre's newly melted heart, as it gathered reassurance and blossomed into new life.'

As our journey through Tolstoy's masterpiece continues, we are discussing history, causation, self-talk, identity, symbolism, complex characterisation, and much more.

Timestamps:

  • 0:00 relishing the experience
  • 1:10 Tolstoy’s musings on history
  • 2:00 how to befriend characters
  • 4:30 Natasha, Andrei & Pierre
  • 5:00 conflict in great literature
  • 6:30 seperation, maturation, return
  • 9:00 on attempting to assign blame
  • 11:00 Shakespeare, Richardson, Austen
  • 12:00 self-awareness in great characters
  • 12:49 how to do marginalia
  • 13:30 Natasha’s self-talk & reflection
  • 15:30 the opera in Tolstoy’s works
  • 16:30 fate, birth & high society
  • 17:30 ‘but am I really what I am?’
  • 20:00 ‘the subject of feminine fickleness’
  • 21:30 characters who talk to themselves
  • 23:00 the nation & the individual
  • 24:19 divorce in 19th century Russia
  • 26:50 Pierre & movement in Tolstoic prose
  • 30:30 the brilliant comet of 1812
  • 31:50 Tolstoy & the hive of humanity
  • 35:28 changing across the years
  • 36:30 meaning loaded retrospectively
  • 37:30 the symbolism of comets
  • 40:00 Pierre contemplates the comet
  • 42:54 Tolstoy & defamiliarisation
  • 46:20 Tolstoy’s representation of Napoleon
  • 49:30 life going on as it always had done
  • 50:53 forgiveness & instruments of God
  • 52:20 rereading & marking our growth
  • 53:35 how to read history
  • 56:35 ‘what causes lay behind it?’
  • 59:00 ‘kings are the slaves of history’
  • 1:01:00 going into Tolstoy’s hive
  • 1:07:00 a beautiful meditation on love
  • 1:09:11 reading assignments

Our Tolstoic Journey:

Music Appreciation & Supplementary Reading :

  • Opera Appreciation: Thank you so much to opera aficionados here at the book club for recommending Prokofiev's superb opera for War and Peace.
  • Musical Theatre: Lovers of Broadway may also like to treat themselves to original Broadway recordings of 'Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812'.
  • Short Story Appreciation: As mentioned in the video, if you would like to appreciate some of Tolstoy's short fiction, you may wish to pick up 'How Much Land Does A Man Need?' as I'm putting together a podcast for it.
  • Recommended Reading: Adam Zamoyski's incredible 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow makes for a powerful supplement to your reading of War and Peace.
  • Reviews of War and Peace: I recently read through some one-star reviews of Tolstoy's work here. As you are the majority of the way through the work, it might be interesting to wonder: to what extent do you agree/disagree with them?

Reading Assignment:

You are making powerful strides through Tolstoy's masterpiece. The next discussion will focus on part two of volume three. This takes us up to page 910 in the Briggs.

Questions to Consider:

1) What do you make of Tolstoy's thoughts on history?

2) Which character is the most complex so far?

3) How much have you changed in the last decade? What caused the change? And what remains the same?

And please do share with us your impressions and favourite passages from these parts of War and Peace.

Happy reading, everybody!

Files

Previews only

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

0:00 relishing the experience 1:10 Tolstoy’s musings on history 2:00 how to befriend characters 4:30 Natasha, Andrei & Pierre 5:00 conflict in great literature 6:30 seperation, maturation, return 7:30 Tolstoy & the ruined woman 9:00 on attempting to assign blame 11:00 Shakespeare, Richardson, Austen 12:00 self-awareness in great characters 12:49 how to do marginalia 13:30 Natasha’s self-talk & reflection 15:30 the opera in Tolstoy’s works 16:30 fate, birth & high society 17:30 ‘but am I really what I am?’ 20:00 ‘the subject of feminine fickleness’ 21:30 characters who talk to themselves 23:00 the nation & the individual 24:19 divorce in 19th century Russia 26:50 Pierre & movement in Tolstoic prose 30:30 the brilliant comet of 1812 31:50 Tolstoy & the hive of humanity 35:28 changing across the years 36:30 meaning loaded retrospectively 37:30 the symbolism of comets 40:00 Pierre contemplates the comet 42:54 Tolstoy & defamiliarisation 46:20 Tolstoy’s representation of Napoleon 49:30 life going on as it always had done 50:53 forgiveness & instruments of God 52:20 rereading & marking our growth 53:35 how to read history 56:35 ‘what causes lay behind it?’ 59:00 ‘kings are the slaves of history’ 1:01:00 going into Tolstoy’s hive 1:07:00 a beautiful meditation on love 1:09:11 reading assignments

Comments

Pat Mac

I’m way behind, but will enter the conversation anyway! I find I agree a great deal with Tolstoy when he talks of the myriad causes of history, and deplores the oversimplification of historical narrative. It reminds me of those conversations beginning with some fairly innocuous “If only such-and-such had been so,” but which eventually end with someone saying “Yes, but then you wouldn’t have been born…”. So many small happenings and/or small choices that multiply out, and lead the next moment’s dominos as they fall into their place as “what happened,” all because circumstances made it almost inevitable that it would happen. But these things only “had to happen” at any given moment because of the influence of all the things that went before—including any free choices any individuals may have had. Andrey’s awareness of this in all the talk of war strategy is a perfect example. Indeed, our sense in all our main protagonists that they have been at fault…but not entirely!… takes us deeper into this nuanced awareness of “choice” that is part of the compassion I feel in Tolstoy. Like many commenters, however, in reading Tolstoy’s historical insertions, I feel a natural recoil at the idea of mundane predetermination. But when I really contemplate it, I wonder: is that simple sense of (our?) history’s predetermined destination really what Tolstoy is getting at? He acknowledges that we do have choices, though of course they are limited by circumstances (which are made up of a myriad of things that are “history” in that they have already happened, and also maybe some which are “now” as our opportunities to choose co-occur with those of others?). I think Tolstoy gives us wonderful examples of these choices and their limits throughout WaP, and it all—including outcomes—rings very true to me. Though we are never entirely free—of circumstances, and maybe particularly ourselves?—we each can find some choices. Nevertheless, he suggests, once our choices have been made manifest, they exist outside of us; they become “history” and feed into the complex set of nudges and pokes that constitute the circumstances “now” and from thence transmute into all the next “nows” and the next, on and on ad infinitum. Hmm…Sounds about right. But now the hard part: though Tolstoy talks of history’s “aims” and “ends,” I don’t really see that that part of his argument is strong, if taken literally. I’d certainly grant him a sense of “history” as a complex, living and evolving thing, but I don’t see that that necessarily presupposes predetermination. However, if we insist on our anthropomorphizing (as we almost always do; witness my own: “living”) we might fall into seeing “history” as an organism in many ways like ourselves: with intent, with teleological direction. That could indeed mean predetermination of the historical narrative. On the other hand, anthropomorphizing could also simply reflect our desire and instinct to find simpler meaning in a complex narrative that is endlessly evolving to encompass some other of an infinite number of possibilities. I think this latter is more like the version of it that I could go with. So is Tolstoy being literal about a supreme “history” with its alleged ultimate purposes, or is he merely anthropomorphizing as a metaphor of sorts, as I would be? Marya is being very literal about it, with a personified God in charge of unknowable intents and aims, but Tolstoy seems to me to be exploring the sprawling randomness of it, so I don’t discount metaphor for him. Indeed I’ll keep looking for it! Because until that passive day when we lose sight of a metaphor as a metaphor, and start taking it literally, thinking in metaphor opens up so many potential connections (which Tolstoy demonstrably does all over the place in this novel!). For example, when I think of this “living” and evolving history, I see juxtaposed with it a tantalizing view of that idea of infinite alternative realities…which I think also isn’t meant to be a literal description, as such, but more a way to try to corral and taste the idea of the infinitely huge stir-pot of all the possibilities that ever could have been and ever will be…all life itself maybe… …And perhaps we can glimpse that vastness in the metaphor of Andrey’s “infinite sky” or Pierre’s “infinity of scintilating stars.” …Perhaps, we can even hope to transcend some of the disappointments of this world, if, like Pierre, we could find a “new realm of sweetness and light…a region of beauty and love well worth living for,” beyond the jostling, bumbling, fallible world of our apparent “history” thus far, where any thought of its conjectural aims and ends (What’s it all about? Why are we here?) might become less clamorous. Enough for now. Probably getting too far-flung! (As usual)

Brock Eldon

1) What do you make of Tolstoy's thoughts on history? I think that the attention that Tolstoy pays to historical detail is extremely impressive - both in terms of his integration of factual events, and in the "retrospective ordering," which, as you say, comes naturally to us all, creating a musical effect to the novel structurally. I used to be a bit bothered by Tolstoy's insistence that "War and Peace" was not a novel, but an epic, though I feel I understand now. To employ the hive simile, it paints grand, grand tapestries, set piece after set piece. But it also creates that "echo" effect of harmony we see in terms of structure, which does indeed remind me of the verse epics of Homer or Virgil ("The Iliad" was a work I was inspired to come back to as a consequence of this project and I think it's a worthwhile experience for readers to go back to that earlier work to make up their own minds: Is the insistence that this is not a novel legitimate when we consider Tolstoy's views on history, and the musical, patterned structure of "War and Peace"? 2) Which character is the most complex so far? One of the joys of breaking this book up over the year has been experiencing volumes one at a time, with some distance between them. I can easily see myself bingeing through the whole thing, but I've wanted to take time with this re-read. Pierre is in my opinion the most complex character so far - or, rather, the most "detailed" (as the most similar to Tolstoy himself); at other sections I have felt closest to Nikolai (the "everyman" stand in here) . . . I may be biased in my opinion here, having just completed Volume II, Part 5, but I think that Natasha is the most complex if we are really thinking about the meaning of that term. Her predicament is complex, forced to put off marriage with Andrei for twelve month; what happens with the intrusion of Anatole is complex. I love your remarks and questions posed about culpability here - is it any one individual's fault? No . . . Natasha is at the center of events in this novel, but there is a whole web of characters and events happening around her. I found gauging her response to these events very compelling in this reading (the Soviet film by Sergei Bondarchuk also captures this beautifully; the classic epic film is one of the late book-film adaptations I have ever seen, and it enhances this section, I believe. It's so emotionally charged.) 3) How much have you changed in the last decade? What caused the change? And what remains the same? As an ex-pat in Asia, I would say that the most significant changes in my life have occurred because I've been receptive to things in my environment. In a sense, I have allowed my life to be led by what life in a foreign land has offered me. My interests remain mostly the same, but I do feel that I am more receptive to other people, and the needs of other people. I have matured behaviorally - making the necessary sacrifices that a young person must make to become an adult. The passages touching on Pierre's drinking of wine resonate a lot with the way I used to process the world, and deal with that processing. When I first read the novel, I was twenty-four years old, living in South Korea. I am now thirty-two. Reading of Pierre, I often pity him, and aspects of my former, historical self. I have loved this reading experience so, so much. I would highly recommend the Everyman's Maude translation in three volumes for anyone who is on the fence. It feels more spacious and the multi-volume approach, stretched over a year, allows you to really spend that time with these characters, returning to them like old friends or close acquaintances. I'm curious: have any other readers decided to stretch "War and Peace" out over the year as well? The short stories and biographies have also entered into my reading and I feel like I've given the book far more justice this way than I had in my previous reading. Just curious. If so, how do you think reading it in installments changes the reading experience? Thanks everyone!