It’s the book everyone knows the name of but isn’t sure of the author, or why it’s famous in the first place. It’s the book with such a boring and vague title, no wonder nobody cares to pick it up. Those who know what it is are afraid of it, since they have seen how any given copy can be used as an offensive weapon due to its heft. War and Peace. ‘Who’s Tolstoy?” you may ask. ‘He was a Leo? That’s cool, I’m a Capricorn.’ Well, if that were a real conversation, you know I’d be more concerned about making sure you could read in general, but jokes aside, this book was, and will continue to be, one of the most enduring and influential tomes I’ve put to scrutiny in my short life. So settle in, if you’d like, Because here I aim to explain why Tolstoy’s masterpiece is such a worthwhile read for everyone who has seen the sun shine and listened to music ring through the atmosphere. (And hopefully generate some revenue at used bookstores as far as our audience reaches.)
Ethan reviews books more conversationally, but I’ve never written one like this before, so I’ll have to see where my head ends up.
War and Peace details, in painfully minute perspective, the events of European Russia between the years of 1805 and 1820. For those unaware, the War of 1812… was not fought in Russia. That title belongs to a war fought in North America. This war was one war, but strangely, some may even say coincidentally, a massive war was indeed fought in Russia in 1812, but this is referred to as the French Invasion, or the Russian War of 1812, or Napoleon’s Campaign into Russia, or something to that effect. This war, as any war, was terribly destructive for both sides. Aside from death and depravity, the reason this event is remembered, or at least the effect I received in my history classes, is the shocking and broad effects: Napoleon, the “genius” French general and self-appointed emperor, foolishly decided to invade right at the cusp of a Russian winter, without having his army prepare for any kind of cold weather. In a snowball of failure, this is the event that is seen as Napoleon’s last under the guise of a hero, as his emperorship was soon after revoked and he himself exiled. As any war story, this one comes with all the bloodshed, fear, anguish, plot twists and the like that thriller fans could hope for. Since Tolstoy was a supremely talented writer, the “War” in the title is so accurately described with its pure terror and joy, O joy, that a stone statue couldn’t remain unmoved, as the sublimity of bullets and the Armageddon of gunpowder flings past, hanging on each word steeped in smoke. Still, even with all this mastery of conflict, the war remains a lesser part of the indubitable effect of the book. What really shines is the “Peace,” which is carried mightily by the characters and their development. In a surprising way that I’ve never seen before, the introspection into each and every person’s mind was easily the loveliest and most memorable aspect of this long-winded letter to the humanities.
The huge cast of characters is daunting, yes. There is no one protagonist or antagonist of War and Peace, just as there is no one main character we encounter in capital “L” Life. But, unlike this Life, the people who populate his pages, while mostly rich aristocrats, are taken to with a scalpel and dissected through and through to lay out each thought, each decision in a powerful grouping of letters that spills out for the reader exactly who they are, with not an inch left over for doubt. This surgical insight happens scene after scene after scene. In most amateur stories, when character development is imminent, there are bounding red flags that make you seize and brace yourself for a writer’s feeble attempt at divulging to you one character’s thoughts, excusing why they decide on one action over another, pretending it’s not simply a vehicle to drive their plot forward. As it’s happening, it’s clunky, it’s awkward, and it’s usually situationally unreal. That wafting edge of (un)certainty, my friends, is where Tolstoy lives. When he is developing characters, I had nothing but elation for what new thoughts might spring to their heads, or what and how they’d decide on their life’s next path. He writes with such an effortless pen that you barely even notice you’re effectively playing the part of a priest in a mediated confessional, absorbing the inner lives of fictional people with such realism that you can’t help but see what they see, feel exactly what they feel, and celebrate or disdain what fate they ensnare for themselves. It’s different because it feels like a camera view, sweeping around scenes and picking up each tiny musculature movement, be it a tug of the eye, the tickling sensation of a sleeping limb, or Napoleon’s jiggling left leg. War and Peace really is a portal into another real world, touchable by us yet only too far, conveyed miraculously through words, without the need of any Shakespearean
soliloquies to descry mental arguments.
And what’s more is that these decisions each character tussles with, ones that they feel will decide their fates forevermore, aren’t common choices, nor do they like to follow the preordained paths you’d expect. One thing to learn from War and Peace is that people make decisions based off of nothing more than their own pensive minds, basically by shouting at themselves in a mirror. There’s not always logic that tells them what to do; one thing doesn’t necessarily lead to another in a lucid format. That’s one of the major themes Tolstoy wrested with: why does history happen? Surely not because of logic. No, it’s because of tiny, personal decisions, amoral or not, logical or ill, that end up influencing the lives of everyone. The more variables, the more things change. The war in question (and, of course, all war) was not the result of Napoleon himself declaring it any more than it was the result of an unfaithful fiancée, or an old man who died seven years before the invasion. Forget the “what ifs” and whatnot, all that matters is “what did.”
Stylistically I want to praise Tolstoy on his incredible humility throughout the many pages of his artwork. Many writers digress into paragraphs that do nothing but squeeze their thesaurus like a lime into the Delicious Gary of their novel, purely for the sake of expressing their intellect. They’re left with a swill of purple prose that doesn’t help anyone, and yes, I’ll name names Mark Z. Danielewski, H. P. Lovecraft, and, of course, me, I apologize. Tolstoy never does this. Not even during the last section, the most difficult chapter that takes the form of a long discussion of his personal philosophical beliefs in answer to his major questions. Each word is carefully selected to elucidate the exact meaning he is working for, with no fluff or condescension. Big words are big because they need to be, and easy sentences lie in their places when they deserve a spot. Even though War and Peace exists like this, as easy to understand as possible, there are terms that you’ll find as brand new, I guarantee it, and they will challenge you. I promise though, you’ll be better off for knowing them. I sure am, I think and hope and encourage.
I had a conversation about this book with a friend last week. She said to me that she’d like to read it, but she worries that it’d be such a period drama that so much of its cultural references would go over her head. Well, blithely and frankly: it doesn’t. Ben Jonson said about Shakespeare that he wrote “not for an age, but for all time.” The mark of genius is that their creations last eternally after their deaths, and Tolstoy, like Shakespeare, has achieved this postulate not only through the fact his book is still warmly remembered, but with its eminent readability over a hundred-and-fifty years post. His book feels, besides some incredibly specific elements like “versts” and odd, outdated dancing terms, like it could have been written yesterday. All the struggles are human struggles, and this book proves, to me, that human struggles don’t alter, just as we can’t alter history. Condescending looks are shot at perpetrators of faux pas. Binding decisions are made on a dime, and let’s be honest with ourselves, we all are guilty of this. Our conversations often steer towards the state of affairs, which most people we know are unhappy with theirs, at any historical junction. And, most powerful of all, spiritual guidance is grudgingly given at the most dire of times, but is received both for good and for ill. There are more instances of the permanence of the human condition present in the book and in our waking lives, but I’ll move on. Of course the world has changed since War and Peace was written, and especially so since the times of the setting. But I believe the people have not, and the way this book reads confirms it. Those people constrained within the leaves of paper and ink are our contemporaries, just with antediluvian surroundings.
There’s not a single burning sentence that I could feel comfortable with throwing at War and Peace and believe that it would succinctly develop my thoughts on its vastness so that everyone who reads this review would want to read this book. Still, I’ll try: War and Peace makes sense to everyone and all, in the way that only the instinct to breathe deep while stepping outside or to close your eyes while smelling a flower does. It’s habitual, it’s everlasting, and it’s everything anyone with an interest in any aspect of the world, whether how it works or, more pointedly, why it works (or not), could wish to read. Overall, 10/10, surprise surprise. Please read if you can find a copy.
Side note: A big plus for enjoying old books is that they’re crazy cheap. My copy of this book was $4. So, if you’re starved for enlightenment and pure literary bliss, head to your local used bookstore, support a small local business and pick up a copy of this, or something akin to the novelists of the 1800’s on the cheap. Have a great day, thanks for plugging along through this.