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27 August 2016

:: drubetskoy vs. rostov ::

quick review -- I'm reading tolstoy's war & peace and taking exhaustingly extensive notes. then I pick through them to discuss recurring themes, great passages, and very foreshadowing (credit: doge), and report back here. also, there are a lot of spoilers. this is your only warning.

- - -

BOOK 2 PART 4

okay, for the record: nikolai and natasha are the best sibling couple. I think I should add them to my list of favorite friendships. srsly. love those two. I could so be related to them.

not much happened in this section, at least that stood out to me. I'm guessing more will make sense as the book continues -- I mostly had postulations and questions for this part. it focuses a lot on the rostovs and nikolai; mostly nikolai, and his character continues to develop. he's come back from fighting, and despite his longing to be led, he's now stepping up a little and making his own decisions.

actually, he makes a huge decision: he's going to marry sonya. and when his mother is unhappy ("she's a penniless orphan!") he stands by her in the face of his parents' wishes -- not praising him either way, except that he's not being led anymore. nikolai is deciding for himself.

it's another contrast between nikolai and boris, actually. countess rostova talked to boris, too, after he was somewhat infatuated with natasha (again, years later renewing a childhood interest), but boris took that to heart and immediately stopped coming to the rostovs'...and we'll find out how he went about pursuing marriage in the next part. sorry, I already read it, so I already know. ha. ...okay, little hint: his marriage is going to be a total ambition move for him.
   but like I said, complete opposite of nikolai, who's being swayed by his emotions again. boris is totally calculated -- and pretty unlikable because of that. nikolai may be inclined to romanticize things, but he's at least a sweet guy.

relationship tracker:
LURVE
nikolai + sonya
andrei + natasha
"vera + berg" (quotes, because their only goal is to look just like everyone else. there is zero reality here. SO IMITATION VANILLA Y'ALL)

ACHY-BREAKY HEARTS
pierre (over natasha. ?!?! < yeah, sorry, more foreshadowing. I happen to remember this part.)
helene (over pierre. and by "pierre" she means "pre-separation social status".)
natasha (over andrei. she misses himmmmmm)
boris (over natasha. he feels a little tear starting-- oh wait, it's gone.)

soundtrack - rutting moon, rogue valley; lightning tent, wildlife

20 August 2016

:: hope, at least, springs eternal ::

if you're wondering what this is all about -- I'm reading through tolstoy's war & peace and taking exhaustingly extensive notes. then I pick through them to discuss recurring themes, great passages, and how to get a life partner, and report back here. also, there are a lot of spoilers. this is your only warning.

- - -

BOOK 2, PART 3

"Meanwhile life -- real everyday life, with its essential concerns of health and sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual preoccupations with thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, passions -- went on as usual, independent of and apart from all potential reforms."

real life is made up of a lot of confusing layers of things, the top layer commonly being a compulsion to appear, to act, to say what everyone else is or approves of or wants to see. this section (parts 3 - 5, really), set so much in peacetime society, are full of hypocrisy and living for others' eyes. it's pretty hard to read.

pierre, for one, is still searching for good and true and right and finds only hypocrisy even among the masons, his latest hope. presenting, in his energetic zeal for good, an exhortation to his fellow practicers to return to sanctified freemason living -- actually adhering to what they claim to believe -- gets him on the outs with pretty much everyone. because nobody really wants to give their money away and stop drinking (they're rich and russian, duh, pierre). but even presenting what he thinks they already agree on, he is surprised by "the endless variety of men's minds, which prevents a truth from ever appearing the same to any two persons."
   pierre, meet disillusionment. it won't be the last time.

vera and berg, together again, want their lives to be as blandly identical to everyone else as possible. like, if there were an average, they would be it. excuse me while I gag in the other room.

once more becoming interested in living, realizing his life isn't, doesn't have to be over, andrei begins to look for happiness. he goes to the city to become an active participant again, and gets caught up in the social and political scene: both socially political and politically social (if that makes any sense).
   andrei, interested, intellectual, enterprising, efficient, yet so swayed by emotions and afraid of being loved, is idealistically looking for the perfect person and thinks for a while he's found it in the 'genius' speransky. well, spoilers, but speransky is a traitor; which our clueless prince should have caught on to earlier, because the guy even leaves the room "à la française." andrei also meets with disillusionment in speransky here, and becomes ashamed of all his "work" done during his season in town. it's talking, not doing; practicing, not preaching. he wants reality.
   in petersburg, he "did nothing, did not even think or find time to think, but only talked, and talked well, of what he had had time to think about in the country. He sometimes noticed with dissatisfaction that he repeated the same remark on the same day in different circles. But he was so busy for whole days together that he had no time to think about the fact that he was doing nothing."
   well, who is full of life and love and happiness? who makes mistakes when speaking french? who is fully herself, naive, honest, ecstatically throwing her whole being into the moment?
   natasha is love. natasha is life.
   andrei is bowled over.
   sigh.

"The less attractive a woman is the more constant she is likely to be," says andrei. natasha is not technically beautiful, but certainly striking. is this foreshadowing???

relationship tracker:
SUNKETY SUNK
natasha + boris

IN LOOOOVE
vera + berg
NEW andrei + natasha

soundtrack - raging, kygo feat. kodaline

13 August 2016

:: russian metaphysical angst ::

to catch you up: I'm reading through tolstoy's war & peace and taking exhaustingly extensive notes. then I pick through them to discuss recurring themes, great passages, and SERIOUSLY ANDREI BOLKONSKY, and report back here. also, there are a lot of spoilers. this is your only warning.

- - -

BOOK 2, PART 2

part two picks up with all the things that were broken in the last book: first, pierre, traveling by train to petersburg, running from helene and his guilt and confusion. finally he concludes that "All we can know is that we know nothing. And that is the acme of human wisdom."
   oddly enough, this echoes andrei's frustration from the last book: "There is nothing certain, nothing except the nothingness of everything that is incomprehensible to me, and the greatness of something incomprehensible but all-important!"
   as he thinks about his wealth and the ultimate uselessness of owning things (really, what's the point) a begging peasant woman catches pierre's attention. "And what does [the peasant woman] want money for? As if that money could increase by so much as a hairsbreadth her happiness or peace of mind. Can anything in the world make her or me less subject to evil and death? Death, which ends all and must come today or tomorrow -- at any rate in an instant as compared with eternity?"
   again, this is something andrei struggled with but seemed to accept more easily. "All is vanity, all delusion, compared to those infinite heavens. There is nothing but that. And even that does not exist; there is nothing but stillness, peace."

though andrei regrets his inactivity (as bilibin writes him -- in french -- about the infighting among the russian contingents) he's caught up in little nikolai (<3) and perhaps some self-pitying depression, though he's kinder to marya now.
"Prince Andrei looked at his sister. In the dim shadow of the canopy her luminous eyes shone more brilliantly than usual, filled as they were with tears of joy. She leaned over to her brother and kissed him, slightly catching the curtains of the crib. Each made the other a warning sign and stood still in the dim light beneath the canopy, as if unwilling to leave that seclusion where they three were alone, shut off from all the world." 
pierre is naive and misguided but wants to do good. andrei is smart but still focused on himself and maintains a cynical arrogance about the world -- because of lise's death. when pierre comes to visit, their differing beliefs are necessarily discussed.
"'What convinces is when you see a being dear to you, whose life is bound up with yours, to whom you have done a wrong you hoped to expiate' (Prince Andrei's voice trembled and he turned away) 'and all at once this being is suffering, in agony, and ceases to exist....Why? There must be an answer.'
...'If there is a God and a future life, there is truth and there is goodness, and a man's highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we must love, and we must believe not only that we live today on this scrap of earth, but that we have lived and shall live forever, there, in the Whole,' said Pierre, pointing to the sky.
   Prince Andrei stood leaning on the railing of the raft, listening to Pierre, his gaze fixed on the red reflection of the sun on the blue waters. Pierre fell silent. All was still. The raft had long since reached the shore and the only sound was the gentle ripple of the current against it below. It seemed to Prince Andrei that the lapping of the water kept up a refrain to Pierre's words: 'It is the truth, believe it.'
   Prince Andrei sighed, and with a radiant, childlike, tender look, glanced at Pierre's face, flushed and rapturous, though still shyly sensible of his friend's superiority.
   'Yes, if only it were so,' said Prince Andrei. 'However, let's get into the carriage,' he added, and stepping off the ferry he looked up at the sky to which Pierre had pointed, and for the first time since Austerlitz saw those lofty, eternal heavens he had seen while lying on the battlefield; and something that had long been slumbering in him, something that was best in him, suddenly awoke, joyous and youthful, in his soul. As soon as he returned to the ordinary conditions of life it vanished, but he was aware that this feeling, which he did not know how to develop, existed within him. Pierre's visit marked an epoch in Prince Andrei's life; though outwardly he continued to live in the same way, inwardly a new life began for him."
pierre's belief in a hereafter moves andrei. somehow, as the weak follower honestly explains his belief to the intelligent, scornful leader, that very simplicity is to a degree winsome. how interesting that two men, having lost their wives, both confused and searching, are granted a measure of peace when they begin to believe in something outside of themselves.

for pierre, this is specifically the masonic gospel, "and he experienced a joyous feeling of solace, regeneration, and return to life." despite his philosophizing, pierre is easily swayed by feelings. still weak, he likes to be led.
   so does nikolai. he wants the black and white rules and regulations of the army, the structure and straightforwardness -- no social rules to navigate and situations to manipulate. he's thrown into confusion by the inhumane hospital and the denisov incident, wanting mercy but having to go through a non-intuitive bureaucratic process, just to be thwarted by a peace treaty being forged between the russians and french. nikolai finds, in this peace, a new social confusion -- was the war useless? with peace, what do the sacrificial deaths of the soldiers mean? and now, without a war, his structure goes away. he wants to be able to unquestioningly follow and not have to think.
   unlike boris!

boris has learned to courteously, hypocritically look out for himself while sounding interested in others. he's mastered sly manipulation to gain good opinions and social advancement. and he scorns the rostovs (why? in nikolai: genuine, isn't ambitious, willing to be led, merciful. boris also seems to be into justice, or at least when it's convenient for him).

"Boris, without undue haste and in pure and elegant French, told them a great many interesting things about the armies and the court, carefully refraining from any expression of his won pinion in regard to the facts he was relating."
   emphasis mine -- we pause for a moment as I relish my little moment of having called it.
   okay, all done.

"Boris smiled circumspectly..."
OOH SUCH THE DISCREET ARTIFICE OF DIPLOMAT

so far, andrei, pierre, and nikolai have struggled with confusion as they encounter circumstances that don't jive with their previous belief systems -- and they have to sort it all out for themselves. I'm interested in all the characters' coping mechanisms with change and with confusion. pierre turns to ecstatic, blind religious fervor; andrei shrinks inward and resolves to care only for 'extensions of himself' and close himself off from the rest of the world; nikolai gets drunk and vows his own blind obedience to the emperor.
   will boris ever be confused, or continue in artificial hypocrisy? will natasha struggle? can marya's beliefs uphold her when things get difficult?

relationship tracker:
UNREQUITED
nikolai > emperor aleksandr x)
denisov > natasha

death count: 2

soundtrack - give us the wind, future islands

08 August 2016

:: turmoil ::

vas happenin boys: I'm reading through tolstoy's war & peace and taking exhaustingly extensive notes. then I pick through them to discuss recurring themes, great passages, and everyone's favorite prince andrei, and report back here. also, there are a lot of spoilers. this is your only warning.

- - -

BOOK 2, PART 1

things kick up a notch.

nikolai returns home, "again entered into the world of childhood and family" which includes his boyish...crush? on sonya. he thinks it's love, but it seems more like part of his younger identity, of a child playing the grownup. though they're both convinced they love one another, he's not bothered when natasha confides that sonya wants to set him free (a "noble sacrifice") and they drift apart.
   which actually may not be wise, because sonya is a gentle, loyal constant. he may regret this later.

rumors about dolokhov having compromised helene torture pierre. he has no proof for this suspicion except his dislike of the guy and D's past record as something of a rake. D does provoke pierre into a duel, which throws pierre into a mountain of remorse and navel-gazing. ultimately, he realizes his disgust with his depraved wife -- she looks cool and regal, but "then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her ideas, the vulgar expressions that came naturally to her". remember, this is the woman rumored to have had an affair with her own brother (incidentally, the marya-seeking anatol kuragin. does depravity run in the family).
   pierre still feels guilty over her wrongdoing, because he is the one who married her. there was no love, that's why "I felt that I was wrong," he reasons with himself, "that I had no right to do it."
 
but then he wonders if it should really bother him. "Is it worth tormenting myself when one only has a moment to live in comparison with eternity?" tolstoy points out that pierre, thought weak, doesn't require a confidant: he wrestles things out on his own. I don't know if this is a good wrestling-out, though -- pierre is so easily led, so easily confused, as he thinks these thoughts like a screw that goes around and around, not coming out, not going in. just spinning. in circles. indefinitely.
   hopefully we see character growth here, and I mean that seriously. I don't remember a whole lot on this thread (no pun intended) from my first read-through, though what I remember gives me hope :)
   possibly to expiate this sin, pierre gives very much of his property to helene and skips town for petersburg.

dolokhov was severely wounded in the duel, and his friend nikolai rostov takes him home, surprised to find that the "bullying, brawling Dolokhov lived in Moscow with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most affectionate of sons and brothers." as D convalesces, NR -- as is usual -- comes to admire his high-flown sentiments and romanticize this friend. (nikolai has a habit of this. see his whole worship of emperor aleksandr.) D tells NR that he wants a woman of "angelic purity and devotion" and no other woman will do, and then promptly falls in love with sonya.
   NR tells her this is a great opportunity for her -- as a penniless orphan, this is true; but she assures nikolai she only loves him. he says he loves her, too (he's pretty sure), but doesn't want to lead her on.
   they part, mutually deluded.

dolokhov does his best to ruin nikolai at cards, in one of his freak, adrenaline-rush-seeking, near-psychotic moods. NR has to apply to his father for 43,000 rubles, breaking his word and his father's bank, but gets a little high on the music natasha sings that night -- intoxicated by sentiment as dolokhov is by danger and cruelty. I don't know that one is necessarily better than the other.

natasha has not only fallen out of love with boris, she's now in love with dancing and singing and declares she'll never marry (although she has a short romance with nikolai's friend denisov. but that ends fast).

remember how pierre feels he's mistreated helene by not being all he was supposed to be as a husband?
   andrei comes home one winter evening, recovered and different. they thought he was dead. he arrives to find lise giving birth, and marya notices a change in his face for the sweeter. he kisses lise on the forehead -- she doesn't recognize him -- he waits, she gives birth -- he comes back in to find her dead.
   in not treasuring lise like he should have (they parted in some irritation), like pierre, andrei feels his own remorse. but unlike helene, lise is gone forever.
   he names the baby nikolai andreyevich after his father.

relationship tracker:
SUNK SHIPS
marya + anatol
natasha + denisov
nikolai + sonya
pierre + helene
andrei + lise

death count: 2

so much sad. did I not warn you.

soundtrack - autumn leaves, ed sheeran

03 August 2016

:: the benevolent sky ::

so I'm reading through tolstoy's war & peace and taking exhaustingly extensive notes. then I pick through them to discuss recurring themes, great passages, and our love-to-hate anatol kuragin, and report back here. also, there are a lot of spoilers. this is your only warning.

- - -

BOOK 1, PART 3

even in peace there's not much of it. the war may not touch the secluded home in bald hills, may not directly effect princess marya or her father or lise, but that doesn't mean everything is happy and unified. marya is timid around her father who seems to dislike her, keeping her around for selfish reasons of his own; lise is unhappy, pregnant and lonely; nikolai bolkonsky, beyond being crabby and selfish, is angry when vasily kuragin and anatol come to visit. why? because prince kuragin wants to marry anatol to marya, and prince nikolai wants none of it (she takes care of the house, also that's the way it's always been. good reasons like that. never mind what marya wants).

this section gives a great picture of princess marya (the plain one with beautiful eyes). she wants nothing more than to be married and have children, but believes that her plainness excludes her from ever having this. she's terrified and hopeful when the kuragins come courting; she doesn't know, like we do, that anatol is not only a debauched libertine, he only wants her money. and her french companion, as it turns out.

the night before he proposes -- or rather, his father proposes. to hers -- princess marya submits her will to God's and feels this response: "Desire nothing for thyself; seek not, be not anxious or envious. Man's future and thine own fate must remain hidden from thee; but live so thou might be prepared for anything."
   over the course of the evening, all three women -- marya, lise, and amelie -- fall to some degree in love with anatol. his pride is gratified, but he couldn't care less about them. interestingly enough, each woman's interpretation of him is a projection of their own wishes. they see him as what they want him to be, what he symbolizes; not what he actually is.
   lise: "-- his presence vividly reminding her of a time when she was not in this condition, when everything was light and gay." she comes closest to labeling him the fake he is, because he reminds her of the society that's all about putting up a façade (which he is totally doing).
   amelie: "...had long been waiting for a Russian prince, who, able to appreciate at a glance her superiority to the plain, badly dressed, awkward princess, would fall in love with her and carry her off; and now, at last, that Russian prince had come!" nope, what anatol tries to do is seduce her.
   marya: (at first) "It seemed to her that he was kind, brave, resolute, manly, and magnanimous. She was convinced of this. Thousands of dreams of a future married life kept rising in her imagination. She tried to put them out of her mind, to suppress them."
   but that night, marya of the clear spiritual vision thinks again. "'Kind...that is the chief thing,' thought Princess Marya, and a terror she had almost never felt before came over her. She was afraid to look around; it seemed to her that there was someone standing in the dark corner behind the screen. And this someone was he -- the devil -- and was also that man with the white forehead, black eyebrows, and red lips."

the next morning marya, coming upon anatol making out with amelie in a back hallway, is thankful her decision has been clearly made for her, and refuses the kuragin proposal -- to her father's selfish delight. ugh. just because it's ultimately the better choice doesn't mean he had her best in mind when he prompted her to make it.

back to the war!
nikolai writes a letter that reaches the family, who kiss it and cry over it. his mother remembers his babyhood, "...so now she could not believe that this same little creature could be that strong, brave officer, that paragon of sons and men, which, judging by his letter, he now was." the sarcasm is strong with this one.

nikolai and boris reconnect. N still has a strong drive to be different; B is concerned with being the same -- but better.
   "'Why "what the devil"?' said Boris, picking up the letter and reading the address. 'This letter might be very useful to you. [N refuses to be placed in a position so clearly beneath him.] ...You're still the same dreamer.' 'And you're the same diplomat.'"
   boris is totally a diplomat. as he looks to advance himself, boris watches people closely and begins to recognize a "more fundamental subordination" than that of pure rank or title, first when andrei makes a general wait as he "talks to lieutenant drubetskoy for his own pleasure." he immediately resolves to act on this unwritten code from now on.
   this, in combination with the repeated references to him as a natural diplomat, and his shrewd, people-reading sense, makes me think that boris will be very good at speaking french.

andrei has a near-death experience here: shot and severely wounded, he's knocked unconscious.
Above him there was nothing but the sky, the lofty heavens, not clear, yet immeasurably lofty, with grey clouds slowly drifting across them. "How quiet, solemn, and serene, not at all as it was when I was running," thought Prince Andrei, "not like our running, shouting, fighting; not like the gunner and the Frenchman with their distraught and infuriated faces, struggling for the rod; how differently do those clouds float over the lofty, infinite heavens. How is it that I did not see this sky before? How happy I am to have discovered it at last! Yes, all is vanity, all is delusion, except those infinite heavens. There is nothing but that. And even that does not exist; there is nothing but stillness, peace. Thank God...."
as he wakes to consciousness, he's taken prisoner by the french army, but that sky sticks with him. even when he meets napoleon, "so petty did his hero himself, with his paltry vanity and joy in victory, appear, compared with that lofty, equitable, benevolent sky which he had seen and understood, that he could not answer him." almost dying has brought a lot of things into perspective.
   "Looking into Napoleon's eyes, Prince Andrei thought of the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life, which no one could understand, and of the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no living person could understand."
   there's been a change here. from "lov[ing] and valu[ing] nothing but triumph over all of them," andrei is realizing there's more to life than living, and more than just focusing on himself. is this symbolic of a resurrection? has he undergone some sort of death-to-life salvation experience?
 
and here again is the great russian theme of suffering. andrei's confused mind is tortured by doubt. "There is nothing certain, nothing except the nothingness of everything that is incomprehensible to me, and the greatness of something incomprehensible but all-important!"
   everybody's favorite prince still has a long way to go, "...and only the heavens promised peace."

relationship tracker:
IN LOVE
nikolai + sonya

IN MARRIAGE
andrei + lise
pierre + helene

SUNK SHIPS
marya + anatol

death count: 1

soundtrack - I found my way, jesse taylor

01 August 2016

:: french, russian, and andrei ::

whassup: I'm reading through tolstoy's war & peace and taking exhaustingly extensive notes. then I pick through them to discuss recurring themes, great passages, and looooooooove, and report back here. also, there are a lot of spoilers. this is your only warning.

- - - 

BOOK 1, PART 2

part two of war and peace switches from glittering society to the war front, following mostly prince andrei and nikolai rostov (with a few appearances of dolokhov and some minor characters, like captain tushin and “the handsome artillery soldier”. tolstoy’s name, not mine).

the marked emphasis on french vs. russian really stood out to me, and not just in the context of battles. I still don’t have it pinned down, but I’ve noticed some interesting things.

after general mack brings news of austria’s defeat, an officer named zherkov makes a joke about it that angers prince andrei, who snaps at their mutual friend nevitsky, “‘40,000 men massacred, our ally’s army destroyed, and you find this a cause for jesting,’ he said, reverting to French, as if to give force to his opinion.” he adds an insult in russian, but having noticed zherkov could still hear him, he “pronounced the words with a French accent.”

“He went on this way, speaking French, and saying in Russian only those words to which he wanted to give a scornful emphasis.” ouch.

when andrei goes to brunn to report to the emperor about schmidt’s death and the russian victory, he meets with the russian diplomat, bilibin. there he is “glad to speak, if not Russian (they were speaking French), at least with a Russian who would, he presumed, share the general Russian antipathy…to the Austrians.”

I noticed french is always associated with society and people of status. tolstoy specifically says that bilibin is a good diplomat, beyond needing “only to speak French and to avoid certain things.” in connection with diplomacy, this implied to me a certain level of artifice or posturing; of shrewdly working something for your own ends, and evidenced in the russians consistently pulling through by sheer bluff.

for example, when tushin’s group is firing their four cannons at the french, they aren’t overrun “only because the French could not conceive of the temerity of anyone continuing to fire from completely unprotected cannons.”

this also drew my attention to some interesting things about andrei. when he is angry with zherkov, he shows what he thinks of the seriousness of war and the respect due those fighting it. he has ideals: gallant and honorable ideals, even if they’re somewhat impossible.

bagration thinks he is “one of those ordinary little staff dandies sent to earn a cross”—perhaps because andrei is well-educated, well-dressed, well-looking. he has a momentary foil in his tour guide: “a handsome, foppishly dressed man with a diamond ring on his forefinger, who spoke French readily but very badly.” he’s kind of an andrei wannabe (…aren’t we all).
            of course, though, we know there’s more to him than a staff dandy looking for the little participation badge and getting out early. when tushin’s group is bravely struggling in the face of defeat—and one staff officer is too scared to stay—andrei goes above and beyond the requirements of his position. he delivers his message (requirement) and stays (above and beyond). he isn’t a respecter of persons; he is brave; he is faithful in his execution of duty. when bagration later questions tushin’s obedience, andrei sharply stands up for him—because that’s who he is, and because he has those ideas and ideals for what war should be.
andrei doesn’t accept tushin’s thanks. he walks away without saying anything, “distressed and sad. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had expected.”

this is almost all that part 2 covers. a few small things—in particular rostov's character—I believe are being developed, but I'll recap if I need to. school starts in three short weeks and I don't want to drag this out.

relationship tracker:
IN LOVE
boris + natasha
nikolai + sonya
vera + berg

IN PROCESS
marya + anatole

IN MARRIAGE
andrei + lise
NEW pierre + helene

SUNK SHIPS
0

death count: still 1. wait for it.