As you make your way through War and Peace, you might be surprised to hear that when Tolstoy was in the middle of composing his book, he wrote in his diary: "Leave out more." One wonders what Tolstoy could have left out of a book that ended up being almost 1,400 pages long. Judging by the book's size and heft and also by its very title, War and Peace contains between its covers almost every aspect of human life. There are the huge, overarching forces that seem to invisibly control human life: the meaning of life, birth, death, free will, the sweep of history and historical events, the relationship between state and citizen, the relationship of the individual to the divine. At the same time, we see structures just one step below that, things that control our lives in a more visible, tangible way: marriage, religious beliefs, family, friendship, adoration for "heroes" and political figures, social functions. And at another, more intimate, level, there are all the details that Tolstoy is famous for: dances, both earthy peasant dances and glittering high society balls; food, everything from foreign delicacies like asparagus and pineapple ices to native, homey pickled mushrooms and honey cakes; hunting scenes complete with borzois and wolves; descriptions of one woman's exposed chest in her high-fashion dress, another woman's downy upper lip, yet another's shining and luminous eyes. And snuff-boxes. Lots and lots of snuff-boxes. (I still haven't figured out this particular fascination!)
Many readers have complained about Tolstoy's overabundant use of minute details. Another famous 19th-century Russian writer, Ivan Turgenev, grimaced, "And how tormenting are those deliberate, persistent repetitions of one and the same feature - little moustaches on the upper lip of Princess Bolkonsky, and so on." But Tolstoy himself was extremely concerned about these minute details. In a letter about the illustrations for War and Peace, Tolstoy commented to the artist about the character Helene: "Couldn't you make her bustier? (Plastic beauty of forms is her most characteristic trait)," and about Pierre: "His face is good (only add to his forehead more of an inclination to philosophize - a wrinkle or lumps above the eyebrows), but his body is too minute - it ought to be wider and fatter and larger." And indeed, the first time we see Helene in the opening scenes of the book, her white ballgown is described as being "trimmed with ivy and moss," showing off her "glistening white" shoulders that later are described as "statuesque." She resembles a statue. And Pierre's large size - his wide, fat, large body - is just one of the things that make him stand out at Anna Pavlovna Scherer's salon in the beginning. Everything about him marks him as different from the other guests at her party - his physical size, his enthusiasm, his social awkwardness, and even his illegitimate birth. Many of Tolstoy's details are just the tip of the iceberg, revealing the psychological depths of his characters (or lack thereof) or alluding to the largest and most important themes of his book.
Virginia Woolf noted, "We feel that we know his characters both by the way they choke and sneeze and by the way they feel about love and immortality and the most subtle questions of conduct." It's true: like it or not, Lise Bolkonsky's downy upper lip sticks with us and gives us a clear picture of her, and even turns into a touching, pathetic symbol later in the book. We remember Pierre partially because of his spiritual agonies, but more so because he is stout, naive, eager to be included, but shy and awkward because he is conscious of himself as an outsider. And above all because of his eyeglasses. Tolstoy's descriptions are so thorough that his characters come alive before us. They have definite contours in our minds. This is why, in my personal opinion, Audrey Hepburn can pass for Natasha Rostova in the 1956 Hollywood film version of War and Peace, but Henry Fonda is just too thin to be convincing as Pierre.
But there's another reason to pay attention to Tolstoy's details: they form the entire backbone of his artistic conception of War and Peace and provide the linkages that unify his work. Tolstoy was very conscious that he was breaking every rule about writing and especially about writing novels. In one of his essays he stated, "What is War and Peace? It is not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less an historical chronicle. War and Peace is what the author wished and was able to express in the form in which it is expressed." Basically, it is what it is. This flagrant violation of all the rules of writing a novel led Henry James to declare that War and Peace was "a large, loose baggy monster." But, with all due respect, James just didn't get it.
You have to read War and Peace differently than you would a regular novel. It's not one plot that marches linearly forward, centered around one main character. It is more of a web of plots and characters that are all linked together with fine threads. Those details matter because they link different characters and situations together and ask us to draw conclusions between them. Ultimately, they link together the war scenes and the peace scenes and invite us to ask certain questions: what are the differences between war and peace? Is there really much of a difference? One scholar has called Tolstoy's method that of using "situation rhymes"; Tolstoy himself referred to the need for critics and readers to pay attention to the "labyrinth of connections" in art. Whatever you want to call it, you have to read Tolstoy's book not linearly, but spatially and look for moments and details that connect and invite comparisons.
Although War and Peace is a huge novel, Tolstoy sets up many of his main themes and characters in the first section, Part One of Volume One. How does he establish his characters? What do all those details reveal about them? What major themes come to the foreground? How can we compare the characters and the situations to each other? There are at least three different parties in the first section: the scene at Anna Pavlovna Scherer's salon, the party Pierre goes to at Anatole Kuragin's apartment, and the name-day party at the Rostovs'. What do we get when we compare these parties? We also start off this section in Petersburg, but move to Moscow - what comparisons can we draw from the characters and lifestyles depicted in these two cities? What about the issue of family that runs throughout this section - Pierre and his father, the Rostovs, Vasily Kuragin and his children, Andrei and his attitude toward his wife, the Bolkonsky estate at Bald Hills?
Don't be intimidated by War and Peace! It's not a difficult book to read, but it does require attention, a love of details, and above all a good memory!
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