Just Finished Reading Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace

I just finished reading Leo Tolstoy's gargantuan novel War and Peace and have to say that it was a very worthwhile experience.  My reading was of an English translation, and as such I'm confident that, like that which I encountered reading an English version of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment recently, the language in the original Russian-language version probably had a distinctive character to it that reflected the author's own style...a character smoothed out through the translation process.  Still, not being as confident with my Russian as I should endeavor to become, I went for the English translation, which read very, very smoothly.

War and Peace is a forerunner of a genre of fiction that we in this present age have become very familiar with: historical fiction.  The story is centered around the lives of the members of some Russian noble families, chiefly the Rostovs, Bezukhovs, and Bolkonskys, as they struggle with the ever-present "game of houses" to maneuver themselves through marriages and dealings into better positions of power and wealth.  By itself this probably wouldn't be all that interesting, but the setting is the Napoleonic Wars of the early nineteenth century, a series of conflicts that saw Russia and France go from adversaries in 1805 to allies in 1807 and then, finally, back to adversaries as Napoleon invaded Russia and occupied Moscow in 1812.  This ruptures the noble families as the young men make their decisions regarding their participation in the war...and the French occupation wreaks havoc with their estates.

Not obvious at the start of War and Peace, the main character (of many) gradually turns out to be Count Pierre Bezukhov, an illegitimate son of a count who, at the end of his life, favors him and bequeaths all of his immense wealth to him.  Pierre, though, comes to regard his newly-gained affluence as more of a burden than a blessing and finds himself pressured and manipulated by others in noble society...including marrying a woman, Helene, toward whom he feels no love.  Pierre is a dreamy, thoughtful man who stumbles through the developing, historically epic events like a Forrest Gump character: he witnesses the famous Battle of Borodino and is in the midst of Napoleon's ill-fated occupation of Moscow.  Continually exposed to extreme peril, Pierre seems to somehow escape the terrible consequences that affect those surrounding him.  He is a genuinely likable character.  Sometimes when I see someone like this in a novel, I wonder whether the author didn't invest his or her own personality in them.  Not knowing Leo Tolstoy, I can only speculate...

There are other characters whose stories Tolstoy focuses on: Andrey Bolkonsky, a cynical and thoughtful military aid during the war, his sister Maria, who is subjugated to the insults of her feebly old, cranky father, Nicholas Rostov, a young man who becomes a hussar soldier and dedicates himself to the military, and his sister Natasha, who goes through romances and heartbreaks.  These are by no means the only characters that the author concerns himself with, but for the purposes of the fictional narrative, they are the most significant.  However, to these must be added the real historical figures of Napoleon Bonaparte, Tsar Alexander I, and Russian commander-in-chief Mikhail Kutuzov.  These actual people, in War and Peace, interact with the fictional characters and behave in congruence to their personalities and philosophies as Tolstoy pictured them.

I became bonded with several of the characters, especially Pierre and Natasha, and their stories are the most unforgettable of the book.  But Tolstoy also spent a great amount of time discussing his beliefs on war and philosophy as it relates to the historical interpretation of events (especially in war).  He opposes the then-generally held view of history flowing from the actions of a few powerful leaders like Napoleon and goes into a series of rather lengthy essays into the nature of free will versus necessity regarding how events are historically examined and analyzed.  It's quite fascinating, actually, especially the final section of the book: for anyone who has a philosophical bent, this to me is required reading of the first order.  Still, Tolstoy's ramblings on war, history, and philosophy seem to belong somewhere else and, especially toward the end, feel awkward juxtaposed next to the fictional narrative.  However, the book is great: please read War and Peace and don't get intimidated by its length: if you've recently read any kind of multi-volume series, this is going to be considerably shorter...