A Certain Slant of Light

"So too in history what is known to us we call the laws of necessity; what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for history only the expression for the unknown remainder of what we know of the laws of human life."

Tolstoy comes to a perfectly good ending halfway through his epilogue (which is of course a hundred pages long), but he just can't help himself: he tacks another twelve chapters on just in case we haven't quite understood his theory of history yet, and indeed it does clarify things, because it is only in this last section that he comes right out and says that he thinks the whole idea of free will is bogus, an illusion that masks the fact that history works out according to the ineluctable workings of natural laws.

In a way I admire him for sticking to a theory that he knows is going to be dreadfully unpopular (he compares it to Copernicus's theory that the earth revolves around the sun), but at the same time I wish he would have done it elsewhere. A pamphlet perhaps. Or he could have started his own magazine to expound on his theory of history. He's a count, he has the funds.

...I was going to go on a bit more about the goofiness of Tolstoy's theory of history - he seems to be singularly naive about how power works, for instance - but then I decided that it had probably all been said before and I didn't care enough to reread any of it in order to refute it.

So let's talk about Tolstoy's characters! Princess Marya manages to marry Nikolai Rostov, yesssss! I'm not convinced it's the best match ever - I don't think Nikolai has it in him to understand her, although to be fair Nikolai knows this and admires her fine qualities the more for it - but Princess Marya always wanted to get married and have children and has at last been granted this earthly happiness and I am happy for her.

It occurs to me that both of the big matches at the end of the book involve one partner who is more spiritual and intellectual and one who admires that quality from afar while being too down to earth and focused on the here and now to really understand it. Princess Marya and Nikolai Rostov, Pierre Bezukhov and Natasha Rostov.

In fact in a way both the Rostovs seem oddly diminished by their marriages; I noticed this more in the case of Natasha, because she goes all Happy Housewives in the epilogue (she doesn't sing anymore! Why doesn't she sing anymore?) but they both seem to have become more firmly staid and practical and, well, boring in their marriages than they ever were before.

Also I feel bad for poor Sonya, who is stuck living in her former betrothed's house as a sort of spinster aunt for his children, forced to watch Nikolai and Princess Marya be happy together and endure the fact that Princess Marya doesn't much like her. I don't even blame Princess Marya really - it's an impossible situation; of course there's friction - but still. Poor Sonya.

And she doesn't even have the solace of her best friend! Natasha has transferred her allegiance to Princess Marya, to whom she comments apropos Sonya, "She is a sterile flower, you know, like a strawberry blossom. Sometimes I feel so sorry for her, and at other times I think she doesn't feel as you or I would feel."

Well, that's a nice way to wash her hands of the matter. Poor Sonya; but then, she doesn't really feel anything, does she? At least it would be very convenient for everyone else if she didn't. Can't they at least try to marry her off to someone else?

PETYA. PETYA NOOOOOOO.

Approximately 75% of Book 4, Part 3 involves Tolstoy expounding his theory of history, which he has already shared AT LENGTH in other parts of the book. And unlike Hugo, who often thoughtfully sets his digressions aside in their very own sections of the book, Tolstoy mixes his in with everything else, so you can’t skip anything without the concern that you might in fact be missing important parts of the story.

I mean, sure, if you skip the whole Waterloo section in Hugo, you would miss the two sentences at the end where Thenardier saves Marius’s father, thus setting off a chain of obligation that binds Marius to his worthless carcass forever after. But Hugo goes on to explain all of this at length later on, so it still wouldn’t matter really if you missed it the first time around.

Whereas if you skipped Book 4, Part 3 in War and Peace, you would get away from a lot of tiresome historical theorizing… But you would also miss the five Petya chapters sandwiched in the middle. And that would be a great loss.

The book has been so intent on explaining why history happens as the result of the concerted action of masses of men driven along by great historical laws, as opposed to as a result of world-historical genius, that we haven’t visited many of the characters in quite some time. No news on how Natasha is holding up in the aftermath of Prince Andrei’s death; nor is there any news of Princess Marya and Nikolai Rostov’s possible impending nuptials.

I’m also not sure Princess Marya knows her brother is dead, which I suppose is yet another thing that might get in the way of her wedding to Nikolai Rostov. I have become disturbingly invested in this marriage and therefore increasingly convinced that it will never be.

Oh! But we do know something about Pierre! After being imprisoned by the French army and then marched halfway to Smolensk, he’s been rescued by Russian forces. One can but hope he will get to go back home to St. Petersburg and nurse his battered feet back to health.

I've passed the thousand page mark in War and Peace! There are only...four hundred more pages to go...

As I suspected, reports of Prince Andrei's death were greatly exaggerated. I strongly suspect that he is Emma's favorite character, after whose second death she quit reading the book - no other characters have fulfilled the requisite criteria of dying (well, having their deaths reported) twice - and I am wondering if there is some way I can gently hint at his continued liveliness.

He's lying in a wagon in the Rostov's baggage train. Natasha doesn't know about it yet, and I strongly suspect that she's going to come upon him by accident and nurse him back to health and thus undo the damage done to their romance by that snake Prince Anatol. Or maybe not? What a missed opportunity if not.

I thought the whole sequence where Natasha convinces her family to leave most of their baggage behind and take wounded soldiers instead was rather splendid.

But now we're back in Moscow with Pierre, who hasn't left the city because he seems to be suffering some sort of nervous breakdown - oddly enough, unconnected with the war; it's everything else in his life that sent him over the edge. A French detachment has just found the house where he's staying, and notwithstanding that the commander has just pronounced Pierre a Frenchman (one can be, it seems, an honorary Frenchman), I feel this will not end well for Pierre.

PRINCESS MARYA HAS A SUITOR! PRINCESS MARYA HAS A SUITOR!

Oh, and also Napoleon is invading Russia, and he is coming EVER CLOSER to Moscow (the Muscovites have not yet quite assimilated the fact that their city is about to be invaded, and they're partying), and also Tolstoy is having a jolly good time expostulating on the fact that history happens because... I suppose history forces itself to happen somehow, even against the will of its participants?

I find his theory a bit puzzling. He emphasizes that Napoleon was very foolish to invade Russia at all, or to give battle at Borodino; I'm not sure why he concludes from this fact that the forces of History swept Napoleon along, rather than that Napoleon behaved foolishly and history is often decided by the foolishness of supposedly Great Men.

Speaking of foolishness, Pierre has decided that now is the time to join the army. Oh no, Pierre! Stay safe! I worry about him: he's clever about books and ideas, but otherwise he doesn't seem to have the sense God gave a goose.

But all of this pales in comparison to Princess Marya's happy fortune. After her father's death - the book does not expect us to feel deeply sad about his death, but I think I felt even less sad than I was supposed to; he was so awful - Marya was trapped on her estate by a recalcitrant peasantry, unable to flee as the French army loomed ever closer - and who should arrive but a gallant Russian officer, who saves her from her peril and, in this incomparably romantic situations, falls in love with her! And she, of course, swoons over her knight in shining armor.

The only fly in my ointment is that this gallant Russian officer is Nikolai Rostov, the beloved of Sonya, who is clearly either going to marry him or pine away and die. I am so torn! I want everyone to be happy! But I think I want Princess Marya to be happy just a little bit more, so poor Sonya is just going to have to pine.

Not that my desires are likely to have the slightest effect on the outcome, mind. Nikolai Rostov might get killed in battle at any moment, and then the whole question is moot.

Not much progress on War and Peace this week. We've gotten to another war section, which means leaving behind Natasha and Pierre and Sonya and all my other favorites (right when they just suffered some high drama, too!) and following some rando on his mission to convince Napoleon to rethink this whole invading Russia thing.

Napoleon is having none of it. Napoleon is convinced that it is All Russia's Fault that he has to invade, and what can you do with a man like that?

On the bright side, I am now officially halfway through this book! It's taken me a mere two months to get here, so if all goes well I will finish long before my deadline.

At last we've made it through the thicket of the hunting party! And Natasha and Nikolai went to their relative's house and had a marvelous time, although Natasha sank promptly back into despair afterward, musing on the bitter question of whether she will waste her whole life away waiting for Prince Andrei to return. You're only seventeen, Natasha, I think you'll be okay.

Pierre, meanwhile, has sunk into the Depths of Despair. Even his Freemasonry has ceased to help him; he has at last noticed that Masons are just as likely as other people to pay lip service to their ideals while living lives full of hypocrisy and greed, and he just can't stand it. He "had that unfortunate facility common in many men, especially Russians, of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and ruth, but seeing the evil and falsity of life too clearly to be able to take a serious part in it... 'Nothing is trivial, nothing important - it's all the same: one should only try to escape from it as best one can,' thought Pierre. 'If only one couldn't see it, that terrible it!'"

I think we're still a couple years out from Napoleon's invasion of Russia, which I imagine might rouse Pierre from his lethargy. But I hope neither we nor Pierre need to wait that long.

We are at the ball! We are at the ball with Natasha Rostova - her first ball, and she's practically floating with excitement - and Dramatic Happenings are in the air, although I'm not yet sure what they will be.

Natasha's older sister Vera has gotten engaged to the most boring man in the whole Russian army, but it's beginning to look like the family finances may keep the engagement from coming off. Poor Vera. No one seems to like Vera that much - even her prospective fiance is willing to throw her over if the money doesn't come through - which makes me sad for her, even though at the same time I don't really blame them for not feeling close to her. She's always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and never notices or cares if it hurts people.

Poor Pierre continues to be a failboat at everything. He tries to modernize his estates and liberate his serfs, but he's so befuddled by business affairs that he doesn't make any headway; and then he takes his wife back, and I am pretttttty sure that she's cheating on him again and he's never going to notice because he's so taken up with Freemasonry.

Although he seems to be growing ever so slowly disenchanted with the Masons, so perhaps he is due for another conversion? Although unless it's a conversion to the mysteries of double-entry bookkeeping and the joys of intense management of one's own estates, I'm not sure that it's going to help him in his heartfelt but wholly inept desire to help his serfs.

He did manage to convert Prince Andrei, not to Freemasonry, but to the idea of trying to do some good for his serfs, and Prince Andrei (a much more practical fellow than poor Pierre) has already emancipated the serfs of one estate. I have become fond of him despite everything; of course it doesn't hurt that he feels simply terrible about the way he treated his poor wife.

I am three hundred odd pages into this book and I finally think that I have all the characters straight! Oh Tolstoy.

Prince Andrei is mortally wounded! Although there are still a thousand pages to go, so really I think it's too early for him to die, and also if he does then we're not going to have a prisoner of war's eye view on the French army, and surely that's something we all want.

Rostov has fallen in love with the emperor (like seriously, this is how Tolstoy describes it) and he had the opportunity to comfort him right after the battle had all gone to pieces, but instead of going up to him and saying something nice, Rostov panicked and spurred his horse to a gallop to flee the scene with all possible speed. OH ROSTOV. This is totally something I would do, let's be real, and it has made me a lot fonder of him.

Princess Marya continues to be the best, although it is becoming ever clearer to me that my affection for her will result in nothing but sadness. She shows all the signs of being Too Ugly for Love and is going to spend the rest of her life with her emotionally constipated father, and all I want for her is to find happiness and someone who loves her with all the tender kindness she deserves.

We haven't heard from Pierre for aaaaages, but last we heard, he had just gotten married because he was too polite/befuddled/alarmed to say he hadn't proposed to the young lady in question when her father burst into the room and congratulated them heartily on their impending nuptials.

The young lady in question is Ellen, and I am desperately curious if we'll ever get to hear her opinion on this state of affairs. She's the most beautiful young lady in St. Petersburg and could presumably marry just about anyone; does she mind being railroaded into marrying Pierre? Is she just glad he has lots of money? Does she care?

We've reached the first war section in War and Peace, and my progress has slowed down accordingly: I have never been all that interested in battles.

Despite this, I once got in an argument with my classmates in grad school that military history, despite being terribly out of fashion, might actually be important. We would all be living in a different world if the Confederacy had won the Civil War! Wouldn't we? Wouldn't we? Mightn't military victories and defeats have some hand in shaping social trends?

They did not seem impressed, although I'm not sure if they were philosophically opposed to this line of reasoning, or if they just didn't want to be railroaded into spending the rest of their lives analyzing the battle dynamics at Gettysburg. Which, you know, fair enough. Neither do I.

...But just because I don't want to do it myself doesn't mean that military history isn't important.

Now, getting back to the book. The Austrian general Metz has lost his army; the Russians are on their own, and in retreat before the French forces. I predict they soon will be rueing the day that they got involved in this war at all.

Making another go at War and Peace! I am seven chapters into it (the chapters are about four pages long so this is not very impressive), and so far the only character I can reliably identify is Pierre, because the French name sticks out like a sore thumb - as, indeed, does Pierre himself, who in those short chapters already been terribly gauche at Anna Pavlovna's soiree and gotten in trouble for dancing with a bear through the streets of St. Petersburg while terribly drunk. Otherwise I am lost, lost! in the sea of princes and princesses. But I daresay I'll sort them out eventually.