Going in circles

At our last chat session, several members of the group noted that we are starting to see real development in several of the characters. One Tolstoy scholar, R.F. Christian, wrote something that seems to me to be particularly relevant to the section of War and Peace that we'll be discussing this week: "Tolstoy made it a main object of his characterisation to show his positive heroes at all important moments 'becoming' and not just 'being,' beset with doubts, tormented by decisions, the victims of ambivalent thoughts and emotions, eternally restless." He also stated, "The lives of Pierre, Prince Andre[i] and his sister, Natasha and her brother, are lived in a constant state of flux. Movement is of their essence."

In this section, we see this movement in both a physical and a spiritual sense. Physically, Pierre goes to visit his estates in order to reform them and improve the lives of his serfs, then he drops in on Andrei, Nikolai goes to a military hospital to visit Denisov and eventually moves on to Tilsit to try to obtain a pardon for his friend, and Andrei at first just vegetates at his estate but eventually goes to the Rostovs' estate and then to Petersburg. Even the Rostovs themselves are on the move - they transition from Moscow to their country estate (briefly), and then on to Petersburg, where Natasha experiences her first high society ball. In contrast to some of the other minor characters that we usually only see in one setting - Anna Pavlovna Scherer, who it seems can always be found in a salon, or Helene who, even though she too moves from Moscow to Petersburg, always seems to be in Petersburg when we see her, or even Prince Bagration, wise and hardy on the battlefield but somewhat ridiculous at the dinner at the English Club - many of our main characters are like sharks in that they have to keep moving in order to survive.

Spiritually and emotionally as well, many of them seem restless, troubled by doubts, decisions, and desires. The physical journeys that the characters go on become journeys of self-discovery. The conversation that Pierre and Andrei have on the ferry as they journey from one place to another is a crucial moment. The scene is loaded with mythological overtones - in Greek mythology, the river Styx is the boundary between Earth and the underworld, and the newly dead were ferried across the river, a transition from one state of being to another. In War and Peace the river, the ferry, and Pierre's words have a similar effect on Andrei. For the first time since Austerlitz, he is conscious of the beauty of the lofty, eternal sky and its promise of infinity, and "suddenly something inside him that had long lain dormant, something better than before, awoke in his soul with a feeling of youth and joy." It is a moment of rebirth and rejuvenation - things that Pierre is striving for as well - and although we are warned that "It was a feeling that would vanish as soon as Prince Andrei got back to the normal run of everyday life," he has been reminded that this feeling still exists within him.

However, sometimes the lessons to be learned on these journeys are hidden from the characters, or they are unwilling or unable to see them. Nikolai is forced to confront some unpleasant truths when his beloved Tsar refuses to help Denisov and even more so when he witnesses the rapprochement between the Tsar and Napoleon, but he refuses to acknowledge those truths and his doubts. Instead of the fog of war, he uses the fog of wine to cloud his vision. Pierre is duped into believing that the reforms that he orders to be carried out on his estates have actually achieved his aims, but the narrator pulls back the curtain for the reader and reveals the truth - the peasants are actually worse off than they were before. For all of his joyful revelations at the Rostovs' estate of Otradnoye (the word "Otradnoye" contains the root rad, which in Russian is a root for words meaning "joyful," "joyous," "glad"), Andrei's rebirth into an active life finds him worshipping another Napoleonic figure. A Russian one this time, true, but Napoleonic nonetheless.

But at the same time, they are becoming, attempting to transition from one state of being to another. Perhaps they are doing it imperfectly and incompletely - Pierre's doubts about Freemasonry in this section would seem to confirm that he hasn't really found the path he was looking for, and the disconnect in chapter 5 of Part III between Andrei's impression of Speransky and the narrator's ("Nowhere in the society frequented by Prince Andrey had he seen such composure and self-assurance as in this man's clumsy and ungainly movements. Nowhere had he seen a glance that was so decisive and yet so gentle as in these half-closed, rather watery eyes. Never had he seen this kind of firmness in such a meaningless smile") would seem to imply that Andrei hasn't either - but still, they are attempting. This is in contrast to other characters - Helene, Dolokhov, Anatole, Prince Vasily, Anna Scherer - who are trapped in states of being. We see such characters as static figures that exist but don't become, but when Andrei or Pierre are in such a state, it either leads to or is caused by a deep depression and cynicism. Again, they are like sharks in that they have to move to survive - not just physically, but spiritually and emotionally as well.

I can't help feeling, though, that much of the movement in this section seems to be circular. We are at yet another salon party of Anna Pavlovna's, and Helene is starting yet another affair with yet another dashing young man who used to be Pierre's friend. Bilibin appears again through a letter to Andrei, Telyanin (who had earlier in the novel stolen money from Denisov) appears again, Nikolai again meets Captain Tushin, and then he again sees the Tsar. Boris courts Natasha again, and Natasha once again falls in love for a little while, and she again goes dancing and again falls in love with everyone in the room. Pierre is again unhappy in his marriage, and Andrei is again searching for glory and intoxicated by being around those in power. Even Andrei's two highly symbolic sightings of the oak tree represent circular movement.

In some ways, the characters' lives seem to represent the circle of history. In chapter 19 of Part II, Boris looks at his watch the moment the two Emperors go into the pavilion to conclude the treaty at Tilsit, and he looks at his watch again the moment that Alexander comes out. Boris takes this circular movement of Alexander's into and out of the pavilion, along with the length of time the meeting lasted, as things "that he considered to be of historical importance." In a scene that is as ridiculous and bumbling as Pierre's initiation into Freemasonry, Napoleon awards the Legion of Honor to the Russian soldier "who conducted himself with the greatest courage in this last war," a ceremony that will be repeated the next day when the Emperor "send[s] the St. George to the bravest man in the French guards." The Russians and the French were enemies at the beginning of War and Peace, now they are friends and allies, but soon - no great spoiler, since it's historical fact - they will be enemies again. History repeats itself.

Tolstoy originally conceived War and Peace not as a novel about the Napoleonic invasion of Russia, but as a novel about the Decembrist movement. More accurately, it was supposed to be about a Decembrist returning from exile in 1856 after being pardoned by Alexander II. The Decembrist Revolt occurred in 1825 when a group of noblemen and a handful of soldiers took advantage of the crisis in succession to the Russian throne after the death of Alexander I to try and implement massive changes in Russian society and government, primarily the abolition of serfdom and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. Several of the participants were executed, the rest were sent into exile until their pardon. Many of the noblemen who planned the revolt had taken part in the Napoleonic campaign, and in the course of pursuing Napoleon's army to Paris, and later occupying Paris, they picked up ideals about reforms and a constitution that they brought back to Russia. So, to go forward, Napoleon was a result of the French Revolution. Revolutionary ideas entered Russia through Enlightenment thought from Europe, as well as through Freemasonry. All these revolutionary ideas, as well as the Napoleonic wars themselves, in turn influenced the Decembrist Revolt. By the time Tolstoy was writing War and Peace in the 1860s, radical critics and activists were covertly disseminating ideas of revolution that they had gleaned from reading European socialist philosophers. The revolutionary ideas of the 1860s would later culminate in the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 and, ultimately, in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. So, history repeats itself.

But circles can be broken, can't they? This time when Denisov encounters Telyanin, he gives him a good thrashing. Nikolai sees the Tsar again, and is again disappointed, but this time perhaps more with the Tsar than with himself. The first time Andrei saw the oak tree, he saw it as lifeless and shrivelled; the second time, full of promise, hope, and springtime. The first time the Russians battled the French they were defeated, in the end they will triumph.

Perhaps these aren't so much circles as spirals - spirals at least seem to lead somewhere, up to a higher form of consciousness, a higher form of being. But the circle of history is also the circle of life. And the only thing that can break the circle of life is - death.