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

Another interesting discussion of history to start this new section. I’m not sure, though, that there are ‘laws’ of history. I’d be interested to know the range of meanings of the Russian word being translated here. Or maybe I’m just a little sceptical of nineteenth-century empiricism.

I was interested in the discussion of correlation versus causation. Still an easy trap to fall into!

Volume 3, Part 3, Chapter 1

1812
• OK, guys, we’re about to get really heavy here. Put on some incense, pull out the floor pillows, and sit down in your best thinking pose – this chapter is about to bust out some grade-A philosophy.

•	Ready? Go.

&bull;	So, have you heard the one about <a class="break-all" href="https://www.shmoop.com/iliad/achilleus.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Achilles</a> (super-human Greek soldier from the Trojan war) and the turtle (really slow animal with a big shell)? They decide to race. Turns out, if the turtle gets a head start of about ten feet, Achilles can never catch up with it. By the time Achilles moves ten feet, the turtle has already moved ahead six inches. By the time Achilles moves six inches, the turtle has already moved half an inch. By the time Achilles does that half an inch, the turtle has already moved a hundredth of an inch. He moves a hundredth, it moves a thousandth. And so on and so forth. This was a famous ancient Greek conundrum that seemed to have no solution. On the one hand, we feel like that must be wrong &ndash; obviously fast Achilles can catch up with and overtake the turtle. But on the other hand &ndash; look at the math. It all seems to check out.

&bull;	The solution is that the puzzle ignores the way time actually flows. By breaking time down into smaller and smaller units, it ignores basic rules of continuity &ndash; which is actually its own mathematical concept (the idea of limits that calculus differentials and integrals explore).

&bull;	Right, OK then. One question though: what does all this have to do with War and Peace?

&bull;	Tolstoy says that another place we see this same mistake of breaking continuous time into fake units is in the study of history. When we decide to study some big historical event &ndash; say, a war &ndash; we automatically give it some kind of starting and ending point, as if that&rsquo;s how time and human actions really occurred. Tolstoy argues that you can&rsquo;t do this without sacrificing meaning. If we throw away what happened before our arbitrary starting date, then we&rsquo;re necessarily going to come to a lot of false and mistaken conclusions about causes, effects, and what happened because of what.

&bull;	He proposes to go with calculus instead of the Achilles-turtle branch of math &ndash; to break time up into little tiny fragments, but only with the idea of then somehow putting them all back together into something as close to a universal presentation of history as possible. This kind of history would have to include not just the VIPs like Napoleon, but also the peasants and low-level soldiers around him.

&bull;	Huh. Interesting, no? How is history different when we include the thoughts and actions of usually ignored groups of people?

Yeah... my brain hurt at the start of that chapter although eased somewhat by the end (and thanks for the summary Desdemona - definitely helps!)

I haven't read today's chapter yet, but thanks for the gradesaver summary of the last part, Desdemona -- it's very thought-provoking. I particularly liked the Pierre/Don Quixote comparison. I feel emotionally drained after finishing that section. 😀

ChannelLightVessel, that saying is so apt! It reminds me a bit of Putin's propaganda now -- he is invading Ukraine to make the world safer, not because he wants to expand Russian territory 😥

SanFranBear said, I'm always a little 🙄 when people ascribe feelings and actions to known historical figures but it didn't seem that out of place here

I agree, and apparently Napoleon's words in Ch. 38 are transcribed from real life interviews with him when he was exiled at St Helena. He just comes across as so deluded and grandiose. His speech is full of contradictions: the whole world would have been one big community, but France would have been the greatest! And we would have moved from dictatorship to constitutional reign, but my own son would have been the ruler! OK yeah right Napoleon. As Orwell wrote in Animal Farm, 'All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.'

I thought it was beautiful when Andrei, severely wounded, decides that the meaning of life is love for your fellow humans. In another context that might sound simplistic or trite, but bloody hell, I feel like Tolstoy has earnt that moment, given everything he has taken us through as readers.

Volume 3, Part 3, Chapter 2

•	We guess the next logical thing to do is to try to apply this view of history (from Chapter 1) to the War of 1812.

•	What do we know so far? Well the French push forward, and the Russians retreat. They fight at Smolensk and again at Borodino. After Borodino, the Russian army keeps on retreating, and the French army gets to Moscow. (Wait, wasn't the French army just defeated in the last chapter? Keep reading.) They hang out in Moscow for five weeks, not attacking, not doing anything, then they suddenly flee back toward France. What’s up with that?

•	Well, after Borodino, everyone thinks the Russians have won. Kutuzov orders a new attack for the next day and sends off a letter to Alexander describing their victory.

•	But the attack just cannot happen. It’s not enough to just order the army to attack. There are more Russians dead than first thought, and one night isn’t enough to promote a bunch of new officers to replace the ones that were killed and wounded. There just isn’t enough momentum to keep going.

•	Meanwhile, the French have the opposite problem – too much momentum. The next day their army is starting to get a move on towards Moscow.

•	That’s why a week after the victory at Borodino, the Russian troops retreat and the French take Moscow. This is a big deal.

•	While Kutuzov is retreating, he keeps trying to figure out the moment when the tide turned. One day he ordered an attack and the next he found himself retreating. He doesn't have enough perspective on the events to see how every tiny thing slowly flowed into the next, setting up the necessity that the Russian army head back deeper into Russia. But that’s what happens. Every moment is forever setting up all the moments to come for the rest of time.

Just as an aside, is everyone enjoying this 'read a giant book over a year' project so much that they're starting to think of doing the same thing next year, with another monster classic?

I was wondering if I might attempt 'The Count of Monte Cristo' in 2023, but I do love the shared enterprise of this thread and all of us reading together.

Definitely! I would be up for a new giant book challenge 😅I'm enjoying this very much. Great book and lovely company. It would never have occurred to me to read this if I hadn't seen Viking's post back in January.

I'd definitely be up for another read-along. Is Vanity Fair too short?

Me too! I've been meaning to read War and Peace for years. I'm not sure when I'd have got round to it without this thread.

I am VERY much interested in another big read - so much so, I was looking for something which would work. The closest I've come so far (to a similar ser up, so a chapter a day) is Clarissa which I've always wanted to read after watching Sean Bean be very handsome but it actually has too many chapters/sections so some would need combining?

I've read both The Count of Monte Cristo and Vanity Fair and they're both great but I think only VF would be long enough? You'd need to sorry of going by pages rather than chapters though, I think, as they're quite long and meaty?

I shall continue my research as I have been so enjoying this - far more than expected and love having you to all talk to. Someone mentioned a while back how others probably think I'm a bit pretentious for reading W&P, but I'm amongst friends here!

I quickly tried a different search and OMG... found this on Reddit:

So... guess which book also has 365 chapters and takes place in the time period directly after W&P?

Les Miserables!!!

5 volumes, 48 books, 365 chapters! Could be a contender!!

Oh yes, SanFran. I would be interested in that. Les Mis could be the biz :)

Vanity Fair has 867 pages (not sure how many chapters)
The Count of Monte Cristo has 1276 (again, not sure how many chapters)
I saw the musical of Les Miserables and hated it - although I don't like musicals so that's not surprising!

I am still reading along but keep falling behind and having to catch up so haven’t been joining in the chat on here as I’m usually out of sync with what’s being discussed! It’s been helpful to read through the comments to highlight things I’ve missed. I confess to not really enjoying it much at the moment though, I do find all the war stuff less interesting than the ‘society’ stuff.

I would be up for another readalong though.

Yeah, I'm not enjoying this section either and I'm skip-reading @ChessieFL because I find it so dull. I was really hoping we'd get some society chit chat again in this section, so I'm disappointed it's Tolstoy pontificating again!

Hélène turns up in chapter 6, happily not too impacted by the war, as if!

The war/philosophy sections are not really my bag either, but by this stage I feel like Tolstoy has reeled me in and I need to find out what happens to the characters so I plough on regardless!

Volume 3 Part 3 Chapter 3

• After marching away from Borodino, the Russian army first camps at Fili, in front of the gates of Moscow.

•	All the generals get together at Kutuzov’s quarters to try to figure out how to defend the capital. It’s not called a war council, but clearly that’s what it is.

•	Kutuzov doesn’t try to talk to anyone in particular; he just kind of sits in the middle of the room, listening to the general chatter. He’s been to the rodeo many times already and can tell just from the mood of the room that it will be impossible for the army to defend Moscow. Instead, they have to let it fall into enemy hands.

It’s cool how he picks up on this from the ambiance alone. The convos the generals are having are totally the opposite: lots of bluster about how they are going to protect the city.

Still me, still blue, but have semi-namechanged.

I’m really enjoying the read along too and will be bereft when we have finished.

I’m struggling a bit with this part too - found myself wishing the other day for an abridged version with just the drawing room parts, and have often wondered if I’d have persevered if I’d been reading alone - but then Tolstoy hits you with something at the human scale and it’s all good again.

Volume 3 Part 3 Chapter 4

•	Basically this chapter is just another rehash of the we-have-to-abandon-Moscow theme, but this time as seen through the eyes of a little girl who lives in the cottage where Kutuzov is quartered. It’s hard to know why this is here – maybe just to give us an example of the whole universal history concept?

•	But yeah, Kutuzov finally announces out loud that Moscow will be abandoned.

I liked the child's perspective here.

"For her it came down to a straight fight between 'Grandad' and 'Longcoat', her name for Bennigsen."

Volume 3, Part 3, Chapter 5

•	Just as everyone knows that Napoleon reached Moscow, so they’ve heard of the bravery of the Moscow residents who set the city on fire rather than let the French have it.

•	Well, that’s true in a way, Tolstoy says. Although it’s not like the rich people fleeing Moscow actually lit the fires themselves. It was more a kind of passive acceptance of what would happen when the city was abandoned.

•	Somehow the collective consciousness of the city knew that no way were they going to stick around and be occupied by the French. The collective consciousness must have also known that leaving a totally wooden city unattended would inevitably mean it would burn to the ground. And that’s what happened.

•	The only person resisting the general mood is Rastopchin, the city's governor. He wants to be a hero, so he keeps doing sort of random, useless, and sometimes horrible things. He writes a bunch of proclamations declaring everyone who leaves town a coward and a traitor. He arms a volunteer militia to fight off the French, but then disperses this militia, which then turns into a bunch of armed hooligans roaming the streets.

•	And there's more. We’re going to see this guy’s great deeds up close and personal in a few chapters. It’s pretty horrific.

Thanks for all the summaries! I've just read chapter 6 - am I out of synch?

Or have I missed a day rifling ??? Maybe someone else can enlighten us.