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 liked it too. It was very true to life.
They must feel like royalty having that huge house to themselves!

07/09/22
Volume 3, Part 3, Chapter 23

•	In a bar, a bunch of drunken factory workers are singing when a fight breaks out on the porch between a worker and a blacksmith.

•	The fight quickly turns into a melee of factory workers vs. blacksmiths. It's all fun and games until one guy is almost beaten to death.

•	The others grab the almost-murderer and decide to take him to the police. But of course, there are no police, so the crowd goes off towards Rastopchin’s office.

•	On the way, they pick up other people who are unhappy about something else that’s going wrong in town. The crowd swells, and they kind of forget about the original beating. The almost-murderer slips away, while the crowd is carried along to the governor’s house.

•	Along the way, they run into the police chief, who at first tries to menace them but is quickly overwhelmed and intimidated and rides off in his carriage.

•	The crowd runs after him, yelling complaints about being left behind after all the aristocrats and merchants have fled.

08/09/22
Volume 3, Part 3, Chapter 24

•	All this time Rastopchin has been furious that he didn’t get invited to Kutuzov’s war council. In his head, he’s the top VIP, so he is just made crazy by the idea of being ignored and overstepped.

•	Even more galling? He gets a short note from Kutuzov that Moscow is going to be abandoned. He’s not even worth a full letter.

•	Afterward, when he wrote about his doings during the Moscow occupation, Rastopchin would say that all of his actions were for the public good and public safety. Tolstoy is like, um yeah, that’s what all dictators and oppressors say.

•	Mostly Rastopchin’s problem seems to be a total lack of self-awareness and a firm belief that the people of Moscow love him. He’s like the Michael Scott of 19th-century Russia. 

(Michael Scott is the inept boss in The American Office sit com)

•	When he gets this note from Kutuzov, he’s forced to face at least the fact that he’s been in denial about needing to evacuate the city. All the paperwork, all the people – nothing is ready to move.

•	He gives orders all night, trying to catch up with everything he hasn’t been doing. The mental hospital? Let them all into the streets. The prisons? Let them out too. What about political prisoners, like Vereshchagin (who was introduced back in Chapter 10)?

•	Rastopchin thinks for minute and then asks that Vereshchagin be brought to him.

Am I being dense but who was the 'unknown' young Rostov in ch 22? Seemed a bit odd to introduce a family member but not as a character iyswim?

It was very random, Rebecca!

Perhaps just another symbol of the confusion and mass disorganisation that is Moscow at that moment - random guy chancing his luck... although he did know names etc? Agree - very odd.

I feel very sorry for those who are left with the prisons being emptied out. And those poor asylum patients just being abandoned in an empty city - they'll have no clue whats happening!

That's what I was thinking. It might have been a Rostov from another branch of the family or a soldier trying his luck.

I think this is a difficult section of the story to read. Anarchy, disorder and confusion with the less well-off bearing the brunt of it.

And not that I'm saying we should definitely read it next year even though I am, but saw an absolute deal on Les Miserables on EBay so bought it... should be here next week!

I did also look for Clarissa as I think that's another one I'd really like to read but could only find a very posh, expensive version so may postpone forking out for that (for now)...

09/09/22
Volume 3, Part 3, Chapter 25

•	On the morning of September 2, the French troops are coming into the city. Rastopchin has his carriage all ready to go when he sees a huge crowd of people outside his window.

•	This is the crowd we saw forming earlier on. They've kind of morphed into a freedom militia and have come to get orders from the governor.

•	Rastopchin freaks out at the sight of them.

•	He goes out on the porch and starts talking to the crowd, telling them that soon he’ll punish the villain who brought the French to Moscow.

•	Vereshchagin, the political prisoner, is led up to the porch. He’s a skinny young guy, all bedraggled and dirty.

•	Rastopchin starts screaming that this is the man who is responsible for the downfall of Moscow. The situation is crazily tense. It’s obvious some horrible thing is about to happen.

•	Suddenly Rastopchin yells for the crowd to kill Vereshchagin.

•	Nothing happens.

•	Vereshchagin starts to plead to the crowd that they all share the same God. But after another order to kill him, one of the officers who brought him in hits Vereshchagin on the head with the flat of his sword.

•	In a nightmarish, horrific, terrifying scene, the crowd rushes forward and kills this young man. It takes a long time. He lives through beating after beating, until finally he dies.

•	It’s totally nuts. 

•	Rastopchin has a panic attack, but still manages to make it to his carriage and drive off.

•	In his head he immediately figures out a way to justify all of his behavior to himself.

•	Driving across a field to get out of the city, Rastopchin sees one of the people from the mental asylum running toward him. The man is clearly delusional, yelling about dying and being brought back to life three times over. For Rastopchin, this is all chilling, creepy and very apropos. He realizes that he will be scarred by Vereshchagin’s death for the rest of his life.

He realizes that he will be scarred by Vereshchagin’s death for the rest of his life.

Good... what a awful man he turned out to be! All for his damn ego... and I mentioned the poor mentally ill a couple of posts back and whilst Tolstoy picked on the good old, clichéd 'I'm the second (or third in this case) coming of Jesus' type mania, its the confused, institutionalised people who have most of my sympathy. I do feel bad for Jesus man too by the way, but his delusion means it all 'makes sense' to him, iykwim.

Just a pretty heart-wrenching chapter overall...

Yes, that chapter was truly harrowing. Sheesh! And a long chapter too, as though Tolstoy was giving himself as much space as he needed to show the horror of it.

An example of inhumane, self-centred leadership and mob justice combined.

Rastopchin meeting the madman who seemed to function as a double both of Jesus and of Vereshchagin was completely over the top. Very gothic. An image that will be hard to forget, for Rastopchin and for the reader!

I hope he is haunted forever by the ghost of Vereshchagin.

Tolstoy was born on this day in 1828.

"Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness"

www.themarginalian.org/2019/07/21/leo-tolstoy-kindness-calendar-of-wisdom/

I like Tolstoy’s approach in Ch 26: this is what happens in war, in these sorts of circumstances; it’s nothing peculiar to the French.

Thank you musicmaiden. I enjoyed reading that. I think that kindness is at the core of Tolstoy's writing and how we treat each other as human beings.

I thought that Tolstoy presented a very balanced view on the burning of Moscow. He was a pragmatic man, not coming down on one side or the other. And similarly the looting of the city. It was human nature to give into temptation.

Agree with you both, Fuzzy & Channel - that's the reality of war, probably even up to today!

I did like the fact he made it clear that am organised, functioning army arrived in Moscow but when it left, it was just a bunch of men who'd somehow ended up together, with no common cause except to get their loot home. Very clever...

10/09/22
Volume 3, Part 3, Chapter 26

•	At about four in the afternoon, French troops under general Murat starting pouring into Moscow.  Murat himself drives into the city, and his people stop to ask an old porter how to get to the Kremlin. Their interpreter speaks Russian with a Polish accent and totally confuses the old man. Someone else shows them the way.

•	The Kremlin’s churches are ringing their bells. The French mistake this for some kind of alarm or call to arms.

•	They get ready to fight.

•	Suddenly there are shots from the gate. The French respond with cannon fire, prepared for some kind of major battle. But when they open the gate, they see three dead guys on the ground.

•	Murat settles into the Kremlin.

•	Others spread through the city, moving into houses.

•	Slowly they change from an army into a bunch of looters and stragglers trying to find a way to live in a weird new place. All order and army discipline is lost. It’s kind of an awesomely insightful passage – as soon as the veneer of army life is removed, these guys morph back into regular people.

•	There is order after order forbidding looting, but it’s like trying to herd cats, especially when there are so many fancy expensive goods left behind.

•	And so, eventually, the city is burned.

•	Afterward, French historians will say that Russian patriots did it. Russian historians will first blame barbaric French soldiers, but then also accept the Russian patriot explanation. But for Tolstoy, it’s neither. It's more like, what else do you expect to happen to a wooden city when no one is left to protect their houses or worry about fireplaces going out of control?

Volume 3, Part 3, Chapter 27

•	For the past two days, Pierre has slowly been going crazy. Seriously.

•	He’s been reading all these Masonic books, thinking again about the number of the beast and how his name can be rejiggered to fit into some kind of numeric pattern. And he’s become convinced that he is supposed to be the anti-beast to Napoleon.

•	Meaning, that he has to assassinate him. Wow.

•	Pierre is fully invested in doing this and fueled by the energy of his decision to become an assassin.

•	When Pierre is in mid-fantasy about the future on September 2, Makar Alexeevich, the crazy brother of his mentor, runs into the room, grabs Pierre’s gun, and runs off yelling something about no surrender.

•	As Pierre and the servant Gerasim try to calm Makar down and take the gun away from him, there is a knock at the door.

12/09/22
Volume 3, Part 3, Chapter 28

•	Pierre has decided that he can’t let anyone know that he speaks French. This will be a way to hide his identity and his rank.

•	The knock at the door turns out to be a French officer, who comes in and wants to be quartered in the house.

•	Everyone kind of ignores him for a while, until suddenly Makar jumps out of nowhere and points the gun at the Frenchman.

•	Pierre lunges and tackles Makar, and the gunshot goes wide, missing.

•	Forgetting that he’s supposed to not speak French, Pierre runs up the officer to make sure he’s not injured.

•	He explains that Makar is drunk and crazy, and the officer is all, hey buddy, you saved my life, so we’re cool.

•	The officer declares that Pierre must be French, then orders food and wine to be brought.

I agree with the comments above about Tolstoy's representation of the burning and looting. A really balanced and human perspective.

13/09/22
Volume 3, Part 3, Chapter 29

•	In a pretty surprising turn of events, Pierre and the French captain become BFFs.

•	They have dinner together, drinking wine and telling each other about themselves. Pierre at first doesn’t want to give his name and just listens to the French guy talk.

•	They first talk about Borodino. The French officer was pretty impressed by the Russian army.

•	He’s a genuinely nice, fun, friendly guy, and Pierre feels himself getting back into a more human mood and state of mind just from having a good interaction with another person.

•	Pierre is a little disturbed when he realizes that all his psyching himself up to kill Napoleon evaporated so quickly.

•	The officer tells story after story about all the women he’s ever been with – many of them already married, and many of them women that he first rescued from some danger or other.

•	Pierre has a few glasses of wine, then also starts to talk. He tells the French officer about his wife, and his love for Natasha, and then even tells him his name and rank.

•	After eating they go outside a bit and see the beginning of the Moscow fire in a district far away.

•	Pierre goes back to his room and falls asleep.

I'm not sure it is that surprising, really... Pierre isn't a mean or malicious man and seems very apologetic whenever he loses his temper (well, other than with Helene <- and on her, she's obviously left the city? Or was she in St Petersburg?)

I like the fact he still really wants to kill Napoleon but doesn't like the fact he's so easily swayed from his objective... looking forward to seeing what happens next!

I thought today's chapter was quite moving - I can't imagine basically leaving everything behind, trying to escape from an invading force, only to look back and see the place you hold dear in flames. I was totally with the steward guy!

I'm still plotting key locations on a map and it's fascinating to me. The point furthest to the right, if you can see it, is where the Rostovs 'camped up' which is only 20k from Moscow.. I'm a little sad and have made notes against each little point but you can clearly see the first campaign which is centred round Austria, the second which shows Napoleon's advance into Russia and then the very busy spot which encompasses Moscow and some of the estates in that area. I must admit, i didnt realise St Petersburg was quite so far up north - but it's there and somewhere I'd love to visit one day.

The valet's reaction to the burning of Moscow was very moving, I thought.

Thanks for putting up the map, SanFran.
It's good to get a sense of the physical space.* *

Thanks for the map SanFran. Do you remember we talked about a W&P tour on an earlier thread? That was before the invasion seems very unlikely at the moment.