:: hiatus ::

since school started, I've made it through about six chapters of w&p, and I've only kept posting because I wrote four posts in early august. but I've run out, and I don't have time to write another right now. that said, I've taken notes on the few chapters I have read, so once I get to the next break (both school- and book-wise) I should be able to start posting again. until then, don't watch for me.

we are more than halfway through the book, though! we can do this! (and seriously, who wouldn't want to. aren't you just dying to find out what happens to everyone?? I'm super excited to finish, because there's so much I don't remember.)

I do this thing every semester, where I drop a huge bucket of words detailing all the work I'm doing in each class. I'm not going to do that this time. for my bookforms class (hereinafter referred to as "574") I have to do a weekly process post on tumblr, so if you're really curious what I'm up to, check out derynjoyulhitebf.tumblr.com. (that's at the request of my teacher: "ul hite" because I'm at the university of louisville's hite art institute; and I assume the "bf" is for bachelor of fine arts, but then it should really be "bfa" so I'm not sure exactly what's going on. whatever. just type it in, you'll be fine.)

linguistics is great: I'm spelling everything in IPA these days because it's good practice and I get a kick out of it. it's a bummer to have to go to school on fridays, but oh well -- it's worth it for this class, which is only 50 minutes anyway.

music history. well well well. it's easy, but inconvenient. more on that as the semester progresses, probably. right now we're gearing up for test one, which shouldn't be tough since all we've covered is irish music (spec. uilleann pipes), spanish music (by which he means gypsy music, but really, flamenco dancing), cape breton fiddling, and cajun + zydeco (spec. button accordions). much tough. very difficult. so sarcasm.

english -- which turns out to be cross listed with WGST gahhhh -- has actually been manageable. it's "women in literature," which of course means we talk about feminist issues and cetera, but mostly how women are portrayed in literature. which I can deal with (I just so hate confrontation...). the first book we read was jane eyre and that was delightful, of course :) it's easier to be prepared for class when you can already quote paragraphs from memory.


and packaging ("575"). just peachy. I have to go make a mockup of my pizza cutter packaging right now, though. so bye.

:: growth ::

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 all the character development, and report back here. also there are a lot of spoilers. this is your only warning. 

- - -

BOOK 3 PART 1

Consciously man lives for himself, but unconsciously he serves as an instrument for the accomplishment of the historical, social ends of mandating. An act committed is irrevocable, and that action coinciding in time with the actions of millions of other men acquired historical significance. The higher a man stands on the social scale, the more connections he has with people and the more power he has over them, the more manifest is the predetermination of his ever act.
   'The hearts of kings are in the hand of God.'
   A king is the slave of history.
   History -- that is, the unconscious, common, swarm life of mankind -- uses every moment of the life of kings as an instrument for its own ends.

diverting from his usual narrative course, tolstoy spends the first chapter of part three laying out mankind and why war is fought -- or rather, he asks the question, but doesn't answer it. he just points out that every person with a role in fighting, from the people in charge to the people on the ground, justifies their part in it (right or not).
   which seems all insightful and wise, but then he immediately switches into narrative about our boys there on the field and it becomes personal and microscopic. no longer philosophizing, real life becomes much more complex: I'm not thinking, "hey nikolai, why don't you clue in and go out for world peace?" I'm completely caught up in his moment, which is almost myopic in its here-and-now-ness. nikolai (and the reader; at least me) isn't stepping back and looking at the ginormous picture of human history -- he's focusing on his life and the next decisions he has to make based on the ones he's just made. we all do this. and I don't think tolstoy is judging him for it.
   a thing may be senseless, he says, but we still do it; and sometimes when you're caught up in something all you can do is be swept along and make the best of it.

"swept along" is apt in this case: in a disturbing turn of events, napoleon is on the riverbank and a group of uhlans (eastern european cavalry) choose to swim across the swollen river, instead of fording further up, to prove their devotion to him -- self-sacrifice that literally drowns about forty men. napoleon is annoyed by the noisy crossing and leaves before they're partway across (they never make it and have to swim back). and yet the next day, he sends to award a medal to the man who led the charge. the chapter ends with "quos vult perdere -- dementat": those whom [god] destroys he first drives mad.

andrei, the restless, now the broken-hearted, is sick of inaction. he chooses to give up a place of power, near the emperor, for field duty, because he comes to realize that "the success of a military action depends not on [the leaders and their theories], but on the man in the ranks who shouts: 'We are lost!' or 'Hurrah!'" after having seen the disorganized, chaotic, divided military meeting, andrei forfeits power for action: "Only in the ranks can one serve with the assurance of being useful."

incredible tolstoy switches to nikolai who proves this. his regiment is paused above the action when he realizes it's a pivotal moment in the battle. without waiting for a command, "touched up his horse and galloped to the head of the squadron, and before he had time to give the command, the whole squadron, sharing his feeling, started after him." here's nikolai, influencing the war just as andrei understood it; the way one man's actions become historical in the context of all the others' happening simultaneously.

back on the homefront, natasha finds comfort (similarly to marya) in abandoning herself to God: "a sense of the possibility of redemption from sin, of a new, pure life, and of happiness." pierre, too, believes in living for something outside of himself; andrei hopes for "God and a future life"...as the characters each stop dwelling on themselves and their grief -- do something, and usually to someone else's benefit -- their depression fades and they can continue with joy. I wonder, is there a certain amount of self-forgiveness involved? do they have to find a hope for redemption before they can actually be redeemed?

natasha and pierre have grown closer in her time of trouble. pierre, the only one attached to essentially all parties in the story (and certainly all parts in the andrei-natasha-anatol fiasco), has really been there for her and this selfless care has quieted his questioning. she gives him a certain fulfillment of spirit and he's more at peace; even though, as he acknowledges, she'll never know how much he cares for her and he is still married to helene.
   pierre is very humble. he's content to wait and watch. maybe from being shy and not especially good-looking he's learned to be kind and non-judgmental. but at the same time, he just is kind; he may be more accepting, having faced rejection, but his kindness is a part of who he is. there is something likable about the bumbling pierre, in a way andrei is never liked. andrei is admired, sometimes feared, always respected, and has an official fan club started by me, but never reaches the level of loved- or loving-ness that pierre experiences. there's something a little too cynical and wary about him. he who gives much loves much :)
   he's changed a little, though: he's not being led so much. he's beginning to think about what he thinks and starting to stand up for himself (funny, I'm seeing that in several places). he's all for sacrifice, he says to the fanatical die-for-the-emperor group, but he wants to "know the state of affairs in order to be able to improve on it." this is growth even from his attempted estate overhaul; he blindly jumped into that, and it worked out not at all. now he's preaching less fanaticism and more knowledge -- a tempering of the emotional pierre that speaks volumes to his character. yay pierre. we hope good things for you.

relationship tracker:
IN LOVE
nikolai + sonya
pierre + natasha

IN MARRIAGE
pierre + helene
vera + berg
boris + julie

up-to-now SUNK SHIPS
andrei + lise
marya + anatol
nikolai + sonya (later unsunk)
helene + pierre (unsunk, sunk, etc.)
dolokhov + sonya
denisov + natasha
andrei + natasha
anatol + natasha (hmm...pattern?)

soundtrack - the void, andy black*

*as long as you hear andrei sighing along with a wrinkled brow of pain

:: things fall apart ::

for a long time now I've been reading tolstoy's war & peace and taking exhaustingly extensive notes. then I pick through them to discuss recurring themes, great passages, and what I think the characters should be doing, and report back here. also, there are a lot of spoilers. this is your only warning.

- - -

BOOK 2 PART 5

pierre has become what he once despised: "the same type of gentleman-in-waiting" as so many he saw when he was younger, who hang genteelly around their society wives' parlors and have about no personality at all, smiling blandly while the younger men flirt with the hostess. pierre comforts himself with the thought that he's this type only temporarily, before he goes on to actually accomplish something, be something in his own right -- when he considers maybe those same gentlemen thought they were also temporarily there. in a humbly gracious turn of thought, he refuses to judge them for their apathy and lack of ambition.

He had the unfortunate faculty common to many men, especially Russians, of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsity of life too clearly to be able to take a serious part in it. ...And so he abandoned himself to the first distraction that offered itself in order to forget them.

...and thinking never comes, of course, because he's in moscow, in the city, and busy. doing nothing.

nikolai andreyvich (the grandfather, not the son: andrei's dad) exemplifies his urge to CONTROL someone -- anyone -- must -- control -- -- once again. gosh, I can't even say how much I hate this guy. he makes me so angry.

speaking of makes me angry... after a whole section on nikolai, we're back to boris, who's waffling between marya and julie because they're both so beautiful I mean kind and funny oops into him NOPE GUESS AGAIN. starts with weal- ends with -thy, rhymes with healthy, and is synonymous with rich.
   GO FIGURE. guys, it's boris. we could expect nothing less of mama's little diplomatic pumpkin.

his courtship of julie kuragin (he ends up going with her because he likes her estates better. no, "estates" is not a euphemism. he really does like her estates better than marya's. minds out of the gutter, yo. boris is basically a robot at this point, none of that!) -- this courtship is so fake, it's actually hilarious. you really need to read the whole melancholy description: "Meeting at large gatherings Julie and Boris gazed at each other like kindred souls in a sea of prosaic people." they write sad poems in one another's albums (or, boris does in julie's) and say beautiful, sad things to one another (or, boris does to julie) until julie becomes less melancholy and just irritated that he hasn't proposed yet. frankly, it's because he can't stand it every time he looks at her. when competition shows up in the shape of anatol kuragin (not related, although I wouldn't put it past him) boris has to jump on it, though. can't let a different self-absorbed, good-looking fortune-hunter get there first, right?
   boris is a smidge easier to handle than anatol, though -- at least for me. boris is in it for himself, sure, but it's power. which is at least cold and impersonal. anatol is like the embodiment of lust and narcissism, which just destroys everyone he touches. at least boris has to watch out for his career and pretend to be civil and decorous, however little he may feel it. anatol feels no such compunction and -- JUST GROSS MAN. leave my precious bolkonskys alone. (unfortunately, I remember too much for my mind to be completely at rest.)
   one last thing on boris: he's more practical (if money-grubbing is practical) than nikolai, but ultimately he's more unhappy, because to get what he wants he always has to put on a front.

on to the opera. the ultimate place for people to be seen. the ultimate platform haha pun for displaying oneself and for putting on a show totally on a roll here for other people to admire, envy, or be deceived by. or any combination of those three, really.
   natasha goes. this is the girl who can't speak french well; the girl whose innocence and wholehearted love for living and vibrant personality captivated prince andrei; so it makes sense that when she arrives she's confused by everyone's intentness on the show -- it's incomprehensible to her, language-wise, unnatural and unreal.
   between the acts, she's introduced to helene -- the kuragin, the coarse, the depraved, but the deceptively beautiful -- who begins to insidiously pull natasha into this falseness. "Countess Bezukhova fully deserved her reputation of being a fascinating woman. She could say what she did not think, particularly if it was flattering, with perfect simplicity and naturalness." amused by anatol's admiration of natasha, she does her best to throw them together.

anatol basically stalks the poor girl, pursuing her everywhere (encouraged by helene and also dolokhov, for whom, like andrei's father, "the very process of dominating another's will was in itself a pleasure, a habit, and a necessity").
   under the kuragins' influence, natasha loses hold of that grounding innocence and her innate sense of right and wrong. flattered by his attentions, she spends most of her time at helene's -- where all is false and repulsive. in a symbolic scene, a home performance that centers around incest (...this is the kuragins after all...) is praised to the skies by the watching audience and natasha is blindly led along: to "a world in which it was impossible to know what was good or bad."

long story long, anatol, the disgusting creepy lech writes a note to natasha stating the time and circumstances of their now-planned elopement. --well, actually, the note was dictated by by dolokhov. because what is life if one isn't ruining someone else's.

my note for chapter 18:

NATASHA YOU STUPID

I don't think I need to elaborate. we know how I feel about all parties involved.
pierre steps up to protect and punish -- a true friend. maybe he can redeem himself from this gentleman-in-waiting period of life.

it breaks my heart and brings me to tears reading about andrei's response. he is so crushed by the broken engagement. I can't even discuss it, honestly. I ache.
I ache.

but things seem to be changing for pierre. in working self-sacrificially for natasha he's found an odd joy.

Above the dirty, ill-lit streets, above the black roofs, stretched the dark, starry sky. Only as he gazed up at the sky did Pierre feel the humiliating pettiness of all earthly things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been raised. At the entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark, starry sky appeared before his eyes. Almost in the center of it, above the Prechistensky Boulevard, surrounded and spangled on all sides by stars, but distinct from them by its nearness to the earth, with its white light and its long upturned tail, shone the huge, brilliant comet of the year 1812 -- the comet that was said to portend all kinds of horrors and the end of the world.

pierre is in awe of the comet, though, and to him it seems a private wonder: of all places, it has paused here, where he can see it and be amazed in the midst of his new awakening -- looking to the sky, just as andrei once did, and the peace-promising heavens.

It seemed to Pierre that this comet fully harmonized with what was in his own mollified and uplifted soul, now blossoming into new life.  

relationship tracker:
IN LOVE
nikolai + sonya

IN MARRIAGE
pierre + helene (now patched up)
boris + julie

SUNK SHIPS
natasha + andrei

soundtrack 
heartbreak, drew holcomb & the neighbors
gold dust, BANNERS
the day we never met, daniel powter
grand romantic, nate ruess  

- end of book 2 -