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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
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 -
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