- - -
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
No comments:
Post a Comment
by all means, leave a comment if you have something to share! please keep your language clean, respectful, and polite.
staying on topic would be nice, too, but I know that can be hard sometimes.