mentioned previously in my 2024 movie round up: I watched the four-part Soviet epic1 after reading Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Patreon post about a scene from Part I and now I’m reading Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace one chapter a day. I am using the Vintage Classics 2008 edition, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Initially, I was nervous that reading one chapter a day would feel burdensome (read something from War and Peace everyday? for the entire year!?). That has not been the case and I’m so happy I have made reading this book everyday as part of my life for 2025!
I finished Part One from Volume One and here are my favorite passages:
Part One, VI, page 31
But at once, as happens with so-called characterless people, he desired so passionately to experience again that dissolute life so familiar to him, that he decided to go. And at once the thought occurred to him that the word he had given mean nothing, because before giving his word to Prince Andrei, he had also given Prince Anatole his word that he would be there; finally he thought that all these words of honor were mere conventions, with no definite meaning, especially if you considered that you might die the next day, or something so extraordinary might happen to you that there would no longer be either honor or dishonor. That sort of reasoning often came to Pierre, destroying all his decisions and suppositions. He went to Kuragin’s.
My notes before Kuragin’s party, “Pierre, do NOT go to that party!” My notes after Kuragin’s party, “Pierre, you should NOT have gone to that party!”
Part One, X, page 43 – 45
the movement within these two pages! I do not compare the book with the movie often (yet!) but the scene in the movie captures this sense of action between these two couples moving in and around a room, of watching and being watched:
Boris stopped in the middle of the room, looking around, brushed some specks of dust off the sleeve of his uniform with his hand, and went up to a mirror studying his handsome face. Natasha kept still, peeking from her ambush, waiting to see what he would do. He stood for some time before the mirror, smiled, and walked to the other door. Natasha was about to call him, but then changed her mind.
Part One, XV, page 62
I tabbed this one page three times and underlined almost every line. I felt like I was losing my fucking mind reading this:
From behind the crystal, the bottles, and the bowls of fruit, the count kept glancing at his wife and her tall cap with blue ribbons, and diligently poured wine for his neighbors, not forgetting himself.
Berg was saying to Vera, with a tender smile, that love was a heavenly, not an earthly, feeling. Boris was naming the guests at the table for his new friend, Pierre, while exchanging glances with Natasha, who was sitting across from him. Pierre spoke little, looked at the new faces, and ate a lot.
Part One, XVIII, page 73
Prince Vassily talks with Princess Katerina (Catiche) about the possibility of Pierre being legitimized before Bezukhov’s death. I am endeared to Pierre because he can’t help it that his dad never practiced what the French called la chamade!2 Anyway, this chapter is where I became a full-time Pierre defender!
Part One, XX, page 83
Pierre is in the room with his dying father, they are surrounded by plotters, schemers, fuckwads, and dickheads and somehow they get to have this moment together. I was sobbing at work:3
Either the count noticed the horror with which Pierre looked at this lifeless arm, or some other thought flashed in his dying head at that moment, but he looked at the disobedient arm, at the expression of horror on Pierre’s face, at the arm again, and on his face there appeared —so incongruous with his features —a faint, suffering smile, as it expressing mockery at his own strengthlessness. Unexpectedly, at the sight of this smile, Pierre felt a shuddering in his breast, a tickling in his nose, and tears blurred his vision. The sick man was turned on his side to the wall. He sighed.
Part One XXI, pages 91 – 97
This may be the most important chapter I’ve read so far and it’s because what Richard Pevear wrote in the Introduction and how it started clicking into place:
He wanted to say, not how that period could be made to appear in a beautiful lie, an entertaining or instructive story, a historical narrative, but how it was. He wanted to capture in words what happened the way it happened. But how does happening happen? How can words express it without falsifying it? How can one Capture the past once it is past? [ . . . ] Tolstoy found the truth could not be approached directly, that every attempt at direct expression became a simplification and therefore a lie, and that they “shortest way to sense” was rather long and indirect. He was actually aware of the inadequacy of all human means of speaking the truth, but his artistic intuition told him that those means might be composed in such a way as to allow the truth to appear.
This is one of the longest chapters from Part One, ten pages. Princess Marya is receiving a math lesson from her father, Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, who is a severe man, insisting on punctuality and adhering to a strict schedule. During the lesson, Prince Nikolai gives Marya a book and some letters from her friend, Julia. The letters are so important to me! It is so interesting how Tolstoy uses the correspondence between two young women to convey historical and societal (political?) contexts!
- In previous chapters we know Count Bezukhov is very near death, however Julie’s letter confirms he has died and that Pierre has been allowed to inherit, Vassily’s failed maneuvering is also mentioned.
- Marya’s response to Julie is to defend Pierre, who she has known since she was younger. She also writes at length about how the coming war has affected her life and community, “here in the midst of these rural labors and this calm of nature which city dwellers usually picture to themselves in the country, the noise of war makes itself heard and felt painfully.”
- Julie writes that she has heard that Marya’s father is making arrangements for her to be married; Marya’s response is one of pious devotion to God and His will.
(Marya gives off a sense of strength in her letters to Julie that she does not seem to possess during her interactions with her father. Not that I blame her, her father scares me, too!)
These letters bring me back to something from the Introduction:
“the artist out to be guided, like the historian, by historical materials.” The difference lies not in the figures and events that are seen, but in the way of seeing them: the artist sees not heroes but people, not results but facts, and considers a person not in terms of a goal, but “in correspondence to all sides of life”
Part One, XXV, Page 107
The evening before he leaves for war, Marya gives her brother, Prince Andrei, a religious icon to be worn around his neck. This scene devasted me and I was once again crying at work. These intimate moments appear and I am floored, life changed, crying, etc:
“André, I’m going to bless you with an icon, and you promise me never to take it off … Do you promise?”
“Of course, if it doesn’t weigh a hundred pounds and pull my neck down … To give you pleasure…” said Prince Andrei, but that same second, noticing the distressed look that came to his sister’s face at this joke, he instantly repented. “I’m very glad, truly, very glad, my friend,” he added.
“Against your will He will save you and have mercy on you and turn you to Him, because in Him alone there is truth and peace,” she said in a voice trembling from emotion, with a solemn gesture holding up in both hands before her brother an old oval icon of the Savior with a blackened face, in a silver setting, on a finely wrought silver chain.
She crossed herself, kissed the icon, and gave it to Andrei.
“Please, Andre, for me . . . “
From her big eyes shone rays of a kindle and timid light. These eyes lit up her whole thing, sickly face and made it beautiful. Her brother wanted to take the icon, but she stopped him, Andrei understood, made the sign of the cross, and kissed the icon. His face was at the same time tender (he was touched) and mocking.
“Merci, mon ami.”
She kissed him on the forehead and sat down again on the sofa. They were silent.
See you after Part Two!
scarr 