War and Peace readalong thread 2022 - thread 3

[VikingNorthUtsire]

Welcome to the third thread. Please see the OP in threads 1 or 2 for the full info.on the readalong, links to different editions and translations, blog posts, etc.

I think most of us are established now so for this post I'll just re-shsre the reading schedule

Different editions name and number their chapters differently - some refer to four books divided into parts (as below), others refer to fifteen books although it's essentially the same structure just with different numbering. Hopefully there's enough info below to keep us all in sync, and always happy to let anyone know via PM what's happening in today's chapter so we can keep together.

Book 1: 1805
Book 1 Part One (25 chapters): 1/1 - 25/1
Book 1 Part Two (21 chapters): 26/1 - 15/2
Book 1 Part Three (19 chapters): 16/2 - 6/3
DAY OFF: 7/3
Book 2: 1806-1812
Book 2 Part One (16 chapters): 8/3 - 23/3
Book 2 Part Two (21 chapters): 24/3 - 13/4
Book 2 Part Three (26 chapters): 14/4 - 9/5
Book 2 Part Four (13 chapters): 10/5 - 22/5
Book 2 Part Five (22 chapters): 23/5 - 13/6
DAY OFF: 14/6
Book 3: 1812
Book Three Part One (23 chapters): 15/6 - 7/7
Book Three Part Two (39 chapters): 8/7 - 15/8
Book Three Part Three (34 chapters): 16/8 - 18/9
DAY OFF: 19/9
Book 4: 1812-13
Book Four Part One (16 chapters): 20/9 - 5/10
Book Four Part Two (19 chapters): 6/10 - 24/10
Book Four Part Three (19 chapters): 25/10 - 12/11
Book Four Part Four (20 chapters): 13/11 - 2/12
DAY OFF: 3/12
Epilogue One 1812-20 (16 chapters): 3/12 - 19/12
Epilogue Two (12 chapters): 20/12 - 31/12

I agree, Tarahumara. He is being very unfair. It wasn't for a few weeks, but a whole year. I still see it that Anatole took advantage of a young girl.

02/08/22

Volume 3, Part 2, Chapter 26

•	Meanwhile, over on the French side of things, we get a totally hilarious chapter mocking Napoleon.

•	Napoleon’s palace prefect comes with a gift.

•	While Napoleon gets a massage, the prefect sets the present up like a surprise. Finally, the unveiling – it’s...a portrait of little Napoleon, Jr.!

•	Napoleon is clearly strongly aware that his every move now is being recorded by History with a capital H. He comes up to the portrait and looks at it with fatherly love, thinking how it will make a nice contrast in the eyes of his audience with the whole war thing.

•	Then he orders the portrait to be paraded around outside so everyone can have the joy of looking at their future ruler.

•	Finally, he asks them to take it away, since his son is too young to see a field of battle. He’s really acting up a storm.

I am so sorry but have I jumped ahead a chapter? I was away last week and so caught up in my return and think i must have read one too many?

Today - well, Wednesday - I'm on Chapter 28... ?

I think it's Chapter 27 on Wednesday :)

Ooops... so I'm ahead - shall have a day off tomorrow then!

Its all quite dry stuff at the mo but giving a great insight into how war used to work - its so very different today although I suppose in 'some cases', it all seems to be orchestrated by one man..can't see old Vlad getting his hands dirty in the same way as Napoleon though somehow!

It's a long, slow build-up to the battle, isn't it?

I could have done without the details of Napoleon completing his toilette. Trying to banish the words 'flesh-brush' from my brain 😣

03/08/22

Volume 3, Part 2, Chapter 27

•	Napoleon spends the 25th of August, the day before the battle, riding around giving instructions.

•	He likes looking like he’s in charge and all-knowing, and like no one else can figure out what’s going on. How does he do this? By not explaining any of his decisions.

•	He sends out a final set of instructions, which Tolstoy viciously mocks. Why? Here's why:
•	1. These orders will get to most places too late to actually be carried out.
•	2. Half the orders contradict the other half.
•	3. Some of the orders seem to plan for future events that never actually happen.
•	4. He’s so far away from the battle that he has no way of knowing if any of these instructions actually were followed.

•	So, yeah. Good planning.

I've finally caught up again. Pierre bumbling around the battlefield of Borodino as a 'war tourist' reminds me of that British student who had made a spread sheet of all the most dangerous places in the world to visit and decided a trip to Afghanistan just before the Taliban regained control would be a great idea. He ended up being air lifted out at great expense and no doubt taking a place that could have been offered to someone who was in danger through no fault of their own 🙄
There was some discussion earlier in the book about whether or not Hélène had actually had an affair with Dolokhov, but I think Dolokhov's apology to Pierre in Chapter 22 of this section suggests he definitely did:
“I’m glad of an opportunity to tell you that I regret any past misunderstandings between us, and I would like to think you hold nothing against me. Will you please forgive me?"

Hey Desdamona! Yes, agree with both of your comments!

Volume 3, Part 2, Chapter 28

•	Who won the battle of Borodino? And who lost it? Was it Napoleon?

•	Not really. He didn’t shoot at anyone or kill anyone.

•	Why did Napoleon lose? Was it because he had a bad cold and couldn’t think straight?

•	Not really, since his will and his plans are nothing compared to the randomness of actual battle.

French soldiers went and killed Russian soldiers. Russian soldiers went and killed French soldiers. In the end, Napoleon was simply a representative of the power of his troops – basically a symbol.

05/03/22

Volume 3, Part 2, Chapter 29

•	Just before the battle, Napoleon – still trying to act out his best cool-under-fire impression – is chatting with his peeps about Paris and what he wants to do with the palace there.
•	After dinner he wants to go to rest up for the big day tomorrow, but he’s too stuffed to sleep.
•	Napoleon double checks the orders, but everything is all set and ready to go. He whines a bit about the fact that there isn’t yet a cure for the common cold (tell us about it), then whips up some deep-sounding nonsense about the art of war being “the art of being stronger than the enemy at a certain moment” (3.2.24.19).

•	After wandering about a bit, Napoleon chats up a soldier near his tent.
•	A few hours later he rides to the village of Shevardino, near the left flank of the Russian army. Shots ring out. Dun-dun-DUN! The battle has begun.

And we're off - as is Pierre 😆 Not sure what value he's going to bring to the front lines but he's trying, I suppose!

I'm sure we'll get the sights and sounds of the battle from his point of view which should be fascinating... especially if we then hear from Andrey or Nikolay, battle-hardened vets that they are!

06/08/22

Volume 3, Part 2, Chapter 30

•	Pierre comes back from Andrei’s, crashes, and doesn't wake up until late the next morning. When he gets up, everyone is already long gone off to the 

•	After he finally gets a move on and hustles out the door, he’s amazed by how beautiful the battlefield is now that it’s all covered with soldiers running around. There’s greenery, riverbanks, gunfire, and smoky mist from the shots all over the place. Very picturesque.

•	Pierre is sort of hypnotized by the sound of bullets and the little puffs of smoke coming out of gun barrels. He’s feeling the same kind of thing that all the soldiers apparently are. It’s actually not quite clear what feeling this is – some kind of mixture of fear, bravery, and excitement, we’re guessing?

•	A nearby general starts to go down to the river crossing, and Pierre tags along after him.

•	He rides like a total noob, almost falling off the horse.

•	Time for a yummy Shmoop brain snack. This is probably the point in the novel to start thinking about the fact that Tolstoy himself cut his journalistic chops during the Crimean War, several decades before writing this novel. That was a gruesome war too, where almost as many soldiers died from disease and bad conditions as from the actual fighting. Tolstoy wrote war reports and then later fictionalized his experiences as the Sevastopol Sketches, a bunch of short stories. As you read, ask yourself who Pierre is supposed to be standing in for here. Is he like the author, trying to get a good sense of what’s happening? Is he helping out the reader, who is also probably not up on his battlefield knowledge? How is the battle different for Pierre than for the soldiers? For the generals?

Shmoop seems to have missed the vital piece of information that Pierre's poor horse has taken a bullet wound and that's why Pierre is riding in such an ungainly fashion.

That was a very close shave 😑

07/08/22

Volume 3, Part 2, Chapter 31
• Of course, Pierre immediately loses the general that he’s following. Instead, he ends up in the middle of an infantry battalion on his horse, bull-in-a-china-shop style. Pierre rides over a key bridge in the battle – totally cluelessly, of course – and then, trying to stay out of everyone’s way, he runs into a guy he knows.

•	The adjutant offers to take Pierre to the barrow, where he’ll be able to check out the action on the left flank of the army, where it’s apparently getting really hot.


•	As Pierre is riding, his horse is doing some strange bouncing. Turns out it’s been shot. Wow, close call.

•	The adjutant drops Pierre off to be babysat by the soldiers in the barrow, where the cannons are. This is the Raevsky battery of the barrow that we heard about earlier. It was actually a real thing, and the soldiers who manned it became famous for their heroics.

•	At first everyone is angry that this annoying civilian is here interfering with their business. But soon enough they start thinking of him as a mascot, or a pet or something.

•	It’s an amazing scene. The cannoneers are being shot at left and right, and new ones just come up and replace the dead ones. Their morale is unsinkable, and they are loading and firing the cannons like they’re chopping wood or something – just like it’s a normal workaday job. They joke about the bullets whizzing around and get more and more hyped up as the day goes on.

•	Finally, the French infantry that was being bombarded by this cannon battery starts to retreat, and Pierre locks on to a face in the crowd – a young French officer.

•	Suddenly the battery is out of ammo. Pierre volunteers to get a different kind of ammo but is generally ignored. (And really, wouldn’t you ignore him?)

•	For some reason, Pierre runs out of the barrow. He feels shots all around him, and suddenly a cannonball explodes right near him, knocking him out.

He quickly comes to, uninjured, and sees a half-mangled horse dragging itself past him.

I was ahead of myself, this is the chapter that reveals Pierre's poor horse has been shot. And that poor horse at the end of the chapter, I really feel for all the animals killed in wars because of the stupidity of man

Thanks Desdemona! I got behind, again, but have caught up, again -- hurrah!

A good point about the hapless animals 😥

It's interesting that we're hearing about the battle from Pierre's perspective, as Schmoop and others have said. It's very believable, the way he stumbles into a major battle scene without initially understanding what's going on. His behaviour in high society was similar, in a way -- he was never exactly part of the action, but was always the bumbling outsider. Here he really does seem a double of the reader: a spectator within the text, watching events unfold with only a partial and incomplete understanding of them.

Also, this is all the way back in Ch. 24, but I really liked the 'magic lantern' section focusing on Andrei's thoughts how everything in his past life seemed unreal to him given the possibility of his own imminent death. (Schmoop's analysis of this chapter is not so kind; Andrei is having a 'pity party' apparently ha!)

Andrei and Pierre have such different perspectives on the battle that is taking place, but Tolstoy makes both points of view seem plausible and human.

Oh dear I used my double dashes for punctuation again, forgetting that in MN formatting that results in striking out text. Sorry!

Really enjoying the section - I do like the war chapters (not sure what that says about me really!)

I agree this is incredibly clever writing from Tolstoy. Putting a clueless Pierre in the middle of the action gives the reader a completely different perspective - what other author would have thought of that?

Today's chapter is very short but very harrowing.

Thanks for your comments on Pierre's role as the bumbling outsider and the spectator in the text, cassandre. That's what I was thinking, but you articulate it so well.

Volume 3, Part 2, Chapter 32

•	Our brave friend Pierre gets the heck out of there as quickly as his feet will carry him and runs back to the battery for cover.

•	But there’s something weird going on in the barrow. Pierre realizes that the battery officer is dead, and a French soldier is charging him!

•	Pierre acts totally on instinct and grabs the guy. The French soldier grabs him. Then they stand there staring at each other in confusion. Who is whose prisoner?

•	Pierre wins the imprisoning game of chicken, mostly because his grip is tighter, and the other guy kind of cries uncle when a cannonball sails by.

•	Pierre wimps out, lets the guy go, and runs back down the hill. The French soldier runs back up to the battery.

•	As Pierre runs down, a mob of Russian soldiers runs past him toward the battery. They storm the barrow and retake the battery from the French.

•	The field is a horrible mess of corpses by now, but the battle keeps going.

Today's chapter is very short but very harrowing.

It has indeed, got very real, very quickly! It sounds utterly haunting and I bet Pierre is rethinking his plan? Although I think it will do him good to see the reality of what war actually is - back in the drawing rooms of St Petersburg, it's quite a fun thought experiment (as we saw in previous chapters!)

09/08/22

Volume 3, Part 2, Chapter 33

•	Here’s a good sense of how battle took place in the 19th century. The main action is happening about a mile and a half from where Napoleon is. He’s facing the sun. Seeing something a mile and a half away, covered in smoke, with the sun in your eyes is probably beyond even the best eagle eyes out there, telescope or no.

•	Which means Napoleon can’t see what’s happening or how his troops are doing.


•	Sure, messengers are bringing reports from the field – but this also doesn’t help much because 1) by the time these guys make it to his tent, their news is outdated; and 2) half the reports are just flat-out wrong or third-hand information.

•	Napoleon is giving orders, but so are generals and other officers. All of these orders contradict each other, of course, and half of them can’t be followed.

•	The infantry moves this way and that, but the battle is won and lost through the cannon fire and bullets, not hand-to-hand combat.

10/08/22
Volume 3, Part 2, Chapter 34

•	Every time the French generals send their troops into battle, they come running back out all disordered and broken. The French generals are confused.

•	Finally, they send word to Napoleon that they need reinforcements. Then it’s his turn to be all, huh? Because this hasn’t happened in any other battle, you see.

•	Napoleon says no about the reinforcements for some reason, again and again, telling his officers that they are just not getting how the battle is going. Right, that must be it.

•	Finally, Napoleon relents and lets the reinforcements come.

•	He sits, having deep thoughts about how even though everything is the same – same armies, same strategies, same preparations – the roll of the dice has suddenly fallen against him. That’s gambling talk. Again, here we go with the everything-is-random-chance motif.

•	And even though there are sometimes reports of good news, Napoleon is experienced enough to know when things aren’t going his way. Like now, say.

•	He rides out to look at the battle more closely. It’s the most horrible carnage, mutilation, and destruction anyone has ever seen. A small space, ten hours’ worth of guns firing, and heaps and heaps of dead and wounded. It’s really just the worst thing ever, impossible to describe.

•	Napoleon realizes that he has been defeated.