Category: War and Peace

English, to me, is an empowering medium. The language is pivotal to many of us today in communicating with and understanding each other, not just through the words we say, but through a speaker’s message and intentions. This is based around my unequivocal belief that ‘All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend’, as Joss Whedon most eloquently versed, making literature a source of escapism and a way of putting to words the intricacies of the world in which we live.

Perhaps this is why I am attracted to Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’, a personal favourite of mine, which combines both my love of literature and history. The rediscovery of past events, uncovering and enlightening ourselves to the rich history of the world, and how it might have shaped societal structures and ideologies today is of great interest to me. Reading the novel for the first time, I was overwhelmed by the vast sea of words, but soon I was engrossed in the lives of Tolstoy’s constructs- following the lines with an anxiously beating heart, eager to find out whether Princess Marya would break free from the oppressive shackles imposed by her father and if Pierre Bezukhov will be ensnared by the licentious Helene Kuragina. It was whilst reading this novel that I discovered the power of literature and my passion for novels.

Studying English Literature at A-Level has helped me develop my analytical, descriptive and overall creative abilities- enriching me as a writer and enhancing my thoughts as my own critic. I hold initiative and self-criticism in high regard as in my opinion, the process of learning in itself is a learning curve and that only through being able to identify one’s errors and misjudgements can one truly strive for the best. This is a lesson which I find should be applied both academically and in other aspects of life.

Exploring my love for literature, I came across the riveting works of Agatha Christie- from which I developed an interest for crime investigation and the functions of criminal minds. I became infatuated with Christie’s detective novels, eager to reach the ending, to discover who the murderer was this time. Christie’s great works made feel the way in which I think all readers should feel when absorbed by such great works and has helped me modify my own writing style. However, I still have room to learn and grow, which I will be able to do studying English at a higher level.

In 1863, Leo Tolstoy began writing a novel simply named ‘1805’, intending to focus on the Napoleonic wars and later, the Decembrist revolt after the death of Tsar Alexander I. By the end of 1863, however, Tolstoy ended up with a 900 page manuscript focusing on, largely, five wealthy Russian families, the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs, the Kuragins and, to a lesser extent, the Drubetskoys. The novel began to be serialised in the newspaper The Russian Messenger in 1865, although Tolstoy wasn’t happy with it. He allowed the rest to be published but rewrote almost the entire novel between 1866 and 1869, when he considered it ready for publication. So, in 1869, Leo Tolstoy published the seminal piece of literature Voyna i Mir, or War and Peace.

One of the most interesting parts of the novel is Tolstoy’s philosophical commentary, which is prevalent throughout the whole of the novel, but particularly the second half. An understanding of Tolstoy’s philosophical and religious beliefs is quintessential to understanding a lot of the characters and why Tolstoy made certain decisions.

The novel begins at a soiree, hosted by an aging socialite named Anna Pavlovna. It is here that the reader is introduced to two of the novel’s main characters, and two of the main characters who Tolstoy uses to express his own philosophical beliefs, Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky. Pierre and Andrei are foil characters and lifelong friends. Pierre struggles a lot with the meaning of life, he spends the first hundred pages gambling, drinking and eventually getting exiled from Moscow. Andrei also struggles with what it means to be human, but in a vastly different way to Pierre – Andrei is married and his wife pregnant, but he is extremely unhappy, despite having ‘settled down’. The other most important character for analysing Tolstoy’s philosophical beliefs is Andrei’s sister, Maria. She is a deeply religious young woman who cares for her aging father on their estate in Smolensk, far away from Moscow and the rest of the main characters. Her religion guides her life, and she ends up becoming one of the most important characters, despite having a minor role in the beginning, after helping to raise Andrei’s son after his wife dies in childbirth.

Since War and Peace is such a human novel, analysing Tolstoy’s other intentions when reading it is equally as important. One of the main ones was Tolstoy’s original intention, an accurate depiction of war. In a letter to his sister, Tolstoy asked her for any firsthand accounts of the Napoleonic wars that she may have, and later on, Tolstoy interviewed veterans who actually fought in the wars in order to depict it as accurately as possible. This was clearly very important to Tolstoy, as he fought in the Crimean war and therefore nows what fighting is like, which allows him to develop an even more accurate portrayal of war. Tolstoy also found it important to focus on individuals from the wealthy families too, and these parts make up the ‘peace’ section of the novel. Natasha Rostova is one of the most beloved characters in all of literature, and she’s easily one of the most important characters in this section. When the reader meets her, she has just turned 13, but over the course of the novel, the reader sees her grow up and by the end of the novel, she’s married with children. For Tolstoy, focusing on individual people is very important and it’s what makes this novel so human.

We are surprised that Pierre was involved. Princess Maria, the sister of Pierre’s closest friend Andrei, says ‘he seems to me to have an excellent heart, […] so young and burdened with this wealth, what temptations will he have to resist’, which shows that the other characters generally speak positively of Pierre, and they understand that he is just misguided.

Pierre’s struggles, like Tolstoy’s, change as he ages throughout the novel, and he begins to question what it means to be human. In his 1999 article Microcosm and Macrocosm in War and Peace, Andrew D. Kaufman writes that Tolstoy ‘was fascinated throughout his lifetime with the problem of how human beings search for unifying order in a chaotic world’, a trait that Pierre definitely reflects as well. Pierre’s character development hits its peak at the end of book eight, when Pierre sees the Great Comet of 1811-12, a comet that was said to be able to ‘portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world’. Pierre, on the other hand, ‘gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears’. In fact, Pierre is so affected by the comet’s brilliance that Tolstoy states ‘it seemed to Pierre that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life’. Pierre’s epiphany in this scene is one of the most important scenes in the entire novel, and forms the foundation of Pierre’s character for the rest of the novel.

Overall, Pierre’s character is extremely important into understanding how Tolstoy explores what it means to be human in the novel. Since Pierre is based on Tolstoy himself, looking at his character is extremely important into understanding how Tolstoy saw the world, even if it’s from the perspective from one of his characters. A critic named Nicholas Chernychevsky uses the term ‘vnutrennyi monolog’ – or, ‘interior monologue’ – to explain how Tolstoy depicts the world presented in War and Peace. This can be seen in characters such as Pierre because Tolstoy uses him to present his own ideas on philosophy and the universe.

Another important character in understanding Tolstoy’s motives behind the novel is Andrei Bolkonsky, a prince, veteran and lifelong friend of Pierre who is arguably one of the most important characters in the novel. In 1969, critic Laura Jepsen wrote an article where she discusses how War and Peace can be read as a Homeric style epic, with Andrei as the hero. According to Jepsen, Tolstoy himself called it the ‘new Iliad’, and If Andrei is the hero of Tolstoy’s epic, he’s definitely a tragic one. Jepsen likens Andrei to something of a ‘Christian hero’ as well, and Tolstoy had written that he had intended for him to die on the battlefield, but he was spared from that fate and instead died at home after an injury. Interestingly, in the original version of War and Peace that was serialised, Andrei actually survived, but Tolstoy was not happy with this version, as he thought that he had to die in order for the story to progress.

In an article called Injury, Pain and Change in War and Peace, Gary Rosenshield discusses how Tolstoy ‘employs the shock of physical pain as a catalyst for his characters’ spiritual illumination or later growth’, particularly through the characters of Nikolai and Andrei, as they are the two main characters who go to war, and suffer because of it. Andrei’s first injury, in 1805, is a serious blow to the head, and both he and the doctors think he is dying. As he lies on the battlefield, Andrei ponders life and death, and the quote ‘Prince Andrei mused on the insignificance of greatness, on the insignificance of human life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and most of all the insignificance of death, which no living person could make sense of or explain’ is important because it is where Andrei and a Homeric hero differ. Achilles spent his entire life pursuing eternal glory, and although he died on the battlefield, he died a hero and obtained the kleos, or reputation, that he desired. Andrei, on the other hand, ponders his insignificance, as in his mind, he was just another dead soldier out of the thousands who had died in the Napoleonic wars at that point, despite making a full recovery afterwards.

The most important part about Andrei’s first injury at Austerlitz, is that it gives him a reason to live. As he drifts in and out of consciousness, Andrei stares up at the sky and every time, hopes that he will wake up and be able to see the sky one more. For the first time in the novel, Andrei displays a clear will to live. However, Rosenshield writes that ‘when the pain is gone, the revelations stop, and the insights that he thought he gained at Austerlitz make life no more manageable or comprehensible’. In fact, Rosenshield argues that in the weeks leading up to the battle of Borodino, Andrei is even more cynical than he was before, seeing his fellow soldiers as nothing more than ‘cannon fodder’. During this battle, Andrei is severely injured by shell fragments in the stomach, but this time, when he is drifting in and out of consciousness, there are no visions of recovery or dreams about the sky. Andrei is sent home, where he eventually dies under the care of Maria and Natasha.

Overall, Andrei’s character is important to discussing philosophy in the novel because he is the complete antithesis of Pierre – Pierre’s revelations give him a will to live, and shape his character for the rest of the novel. Andrei’s, on the other hand, may have offered him solace temporarily, but ultimately, when he’s actually faced with his own mortality, he loses the will to live and even the sky can’t save him from his fate.

Finally, Prince Andrei’s sister, Princess Maria, is extremely important when discussing philosophy, and particularly religion. Although most of the characters are presented as religious in one way or another, it is clear that Maria is the most devout, and although she isn’t a direct presentation of Tolstoy’s own religious beliefs, it is interesting to explore how his religion presents itself later in life.

Leo Tolstoy was raised in the Russian Orthodox Church, but lost his religion when he was around 18. However, in the late 1860s and 1870s, Tolstoy went through a massive spiritual and religious change, and became something of a ‘Christian anarchist’, wherein he held anarchist beliefs for topics such as the state and the ownership of property, but he was still very much a pacifist, writing a book called The King of God is Within You in 1894, which is still used as a major text for Christians and anarchists alike, and influenced people such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. In 1901, Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Russina Orthodox Church because of his religious beliefs, as although he was a Christian, he disliked organised religion, and was not shy about his distaste for the church.

Princess Maria’s religion is much more traditional than Tolstoy’s was, but nonetheless, her faith is an extremely important part of her character and contains hints of Tolstoy’s own faith as it develops throughout his life. In a letter to her friend Julie Karagin, Maria writes ‘oh, if we had no religion to console us, life would be so very sad’, showing how she uses her religion as a comfort, because compared to the other characters, she is very lonely, and lives far away from where the bulk of the novel takes place in Moscow. Andrei and Maria’s mother died when they were young, definitely before 1805, when the first book takes place, when Maria is 20 and Andrei slightly older, and when the reader first meets her she’s caring for her aging father on their estate in Smolensk, whilst Andrei is away fighting in the Napoleonic wars. As a result of this, it can be inferred that Maria had to grow up fairly quickly, dealing with the death of her mother and then the deteriorating health of her father, and that religion is the one constant in her life, explaining why her faith is so important to her.

However, according to an article by Anne Eakin Moss called Tolstoy’s politics of love, Maria is also used to discuss how Tolstoy presents close friendships between women. She cites the quote ‘one of these tender and passionate friendships that can exist only between women’, which Tolstoy used to describe the relationship between Maria and Natasha. Moss argues that the friendship between the two women can be described as ‘an apotheosis of Tolstoy’s lifelong literary and moral search for the complete understanding of another human being, unburdened by social, economic or biological demands’, and she follows this up by saying ‘in the context of Tolstoy’s politics, it represents a sanctuary against the ‘alienating’ forces of modernity symbolised in War and Peace’. Essentially, Moss argues that the friendship between two women, represented by, among others, Maria and Natasha offers an iteration of love in its purest form, and one unburdened by the outside world.

However, it can also be argued that one of Tolstoy’s main motives behind writing the novel was to create an accurate portrayal of war, as he was dissatisfied with historiography at the time. The first chapter of book three is essentially an essay about Tolstoy’s disdain for modern historians, such as when Tolstoy is discussing rising crime rates and states that ‘historians, with naive assurance’ analyse the reasons behind it in completely the wrong way. ‘Naive assurance’ suggests that the historians aren’t trying to deceive people, they just understand or an.

‘War and Peace’ through Leo Tolstoy has attained a standing as one of the maximum famous, but maximum daunting, books withinside the present-day library. The number one motive for its fearsome recognition is due to the fact the book is properly over one thousand pages in maximum published editions. Yet, regardless of the reality that it’s so challenging, it has maintained a legacy of being a masterpiece and is liked through many that study it.

‘War and Peace’ is book this is nonetheless applicable to the present-day reader due to the fact it’s a book approximately life. It’s a book that expertly relays the splendour of simply being alive thru its relatable characters, shifting scenes and sensible individual development. And that is no much less treasured in a messy present day global, than it turned into while the radical turned into first written.

As Richard Pevear notes withinside the advent to his translation of ‘War and Peace,’ the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev as soon as criticized the radical due to the fact he claimed that the characters were ‘all mediocrities.’ This is true, in a sense. The characters Tolstoy depicts, opposite to different Russian novelists like Dostoevsky, are pretty regular. Russian literature has a completely clean tendency in the direction of extravagantly specific characters who defy society and feature loopy existential dilemmas. ‘War and Peace’ appears to interrupt this mildew on this regard to its protagonists.

This element of ordinarity is honestly one of the novel’s finest strengths. Most people have a tendency to be extra regular and strong than general Russian literary characters, and it’s a good deal simpler for lots to narrate to an individual like Natasha Rostov or Pierre Bezukhov from War and Peace than to a person like ‘the underground guy’ from ‘Notes from Underground’ through Dostoevsky. Through the normalcy of his characters, Tolstoy is capable of explicit the extraordinariness of regular dwelling extra broadly.

In one such example, Nikolai Rostov, one of the novel’s imperative characters, gambles his manner into superb debt and springs domestic devastated. As he’s deliberating suicide, he hears his sister Natasha singing. He had heard his sister sing infinite instances before, however this turned into the primary time he had listened to her intentionally. While taking note of Natasha sing, Rostov is briefly transformed. He forgets all approximately his money owed and his afflictions and may suppose handiest of that musical concord and the way it touched him. Tolstoy wrote ‘Oh, how that 0.33 had vibrated, and the way touched turned into some thing that turned into first-class in Rostov’s soul. And that some thing turned into unbiased of some thing withinside the global and better than some thing withinside the global.’ Through this scene, amongst many different occasions of the book, Tolstoy is capable of deliver how a regular occasion which includes taking note of track is honestly pretty extraordinary.

Because the radical is so long, it offers Tolstoy room for unheard of individual development. We, as readers, get to witness the characters as they undergo trials and warfare thru life. Some characters move from being readers’ favourites to later being despised, to in the end turning into liked as soon as again. In a sense, analysing thru War and Peace lets in the reader to develop with the characters thru persistent observation. There are only a few books withinside the global that produce one of these profound transformative impact at the reader as War and Peace. Readers will sense like a distinctive individual after finishing the radical. I truly did.

Andrew Kaufman, a professor of Russian literature on the University of Virginia, wrote an editorial titled 7 Reasons You Should Give War and Peace a Chance. He remarked for his very last factor that ‘it’ll make you sense higher approximately being alive.’ I can’t think about higher phrases to explain the radical than these. I felt like a distinctive guy after completing the radical. Similar to the enjoy of Nikolai taking note of his sister sing withinside the novel, some thing approximately analysing War and Peace touched my soul. It is a book that I suppose absolutely each person should energy thru, due to the fact it’s now no longer simply a book, however an enjoy.

‘War and Peace ‘ by Leo Tolstoy has earned a standing along of the foremost illustrious, nonetheless most intimidating, books at intervals the fashionable library. the primary reason for its terrible name is as a result of the book is overflow thousand pages in most written editions. Yet, in spite of the actual fact that it is so difficult, it’s maintained a inheritance of being a masterpiece and is beloved by many who browse it.

‘War and Peace ‘ could also be a book that is still relevant to the modern reader as a result of it’s a book concerning life. It’s a book that like an expert relays the sweetness of simply life through its relatable characters, moving scenes and realistic character development. And this is {often|this can be} often no less valuable throughout mussy times, than it had been once the novel was 1st written.

As Richard Pevear notes at intervals the introduction to his translation of ‘War and Peace, ‘ the Russian writer Turgenev once criticized the novel as a result of he claimed that the characters were ‘all mediocrities. ‘ this is {often|this can be} often true, throughout a way. The characters Leo Tolstoy depicts, contrary to alternative Russian novelists like Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski, area unit quite normal. Russian literature options a awfully clear tendency towards extravagantly distinctive characters United Nations agency defy society and have crazy existential dilemmas. ‘War and Peace ‘ appears to interrupt this mildew throughout this relation to its protagonists.

This facet of ordinarity is basically one of the novel’s greatest strengths. most people tend to be additional normal and stable than customary Russian literary characters, and it’s a lot of easier for many to relate to a temperament like Natasha city or Pierre Bezukhov from War and Peace than to somebody like ‘the underground man ‘ from ‘Notes from Underground ‘ by Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski. Through the normalcy of his characters, Leo Tolstoy is in a very position to specific the quality of everyday living additional broadly speaking.

In one such example, Nikolai city, one of the novel’s central characters, gambles his approach into tremendous debt and comes home desolated. As he is considering suicide, he hears his sister Natasha singing. He had detected his sister sing unnumerable times before, however this was the first time he had listened to her purposely. whereas paying attention of Natasha sing, city is briefly reworked. He forgets all concerning his debts and his afflictions and will suppose solely of that harmony and also the approach it touched him. Leo Tolstoy wrote ‘Oh, however that third had vibrated, and also the approach touched was one thing that was best in Rostov’s soul. that one thing was freelance of something at intervals the globe and higher than something at intervals the globe. ‘ Through this scene, among several alternative events of the book, Leo Tolstoy is in a very position to convey however a typical event like paying attention of music is basically quite extraordinary.

Because the novel is goodbye, it offers Leo Tolstoy space for incomparable character development. We, as readers, get to witness the characters as they’re probing trials and and struggle through life. Some characters go from being readers’ favorites to later being unloved, to eventually turning into beloved yet again . throughout a way, reading through War and Peace permits the reader to grow with the characters through continual observation. There area unit solely a couple of books at intervals the globe that manufacture such a profound transformative impact on the reader as War and Peace. Readers can want a special person when finishing the novel. I actually did.

Andrew dramatist, a faculty member of Russian literature at the University of Virginia, wrote a bit of writing titled seven Reasons you got to offer War and Peace a chance . He remarked for his final purpose that ‘it’ll cause you to feel higher concerning life . ‘ I cannot think about higher words to elucidate the novel than these. I felt form of a unique man when finishing the novel. nearly just like the expertise of Nikolai paying attention of his sister sing at intervals the novel, one thing concerning reading War and Peace touched my soul. it is a book that i feel everybody have to be compelled to power through, as a result of it’s not simply a book, however associate degree expertise.