Finished: War and Peace (Tolstoy). An instant favorite book; partially because I survived it...but mostly because I relished so many moments in the book. It is definitely worthy of being considered one of the all time great novels. I'm still in that kind of thoughtful, spacey buzz after reading a book that was heading towards 600,000 words. I actually find myself at a loss for words...maybe too many have been crammed into my head in the last nine days. :-) I loved reading this book, though! It was such a combination of sweeping historical fiction and heartbreaking romance and family closeness and enlightening, deep-thinking religious and moral beliefs.

I absolutely love the intense and detailed writing of Tolstoy. He gives such depth and vitality to his characters. You really feel like you get to know these people, and either love them or hate them or somewhere in between. All of the characters have flaws, yet such human emotions, doubts and actions that you feel for almost all of them.The romances are both heartbreaking and satisfying. The manipulations are cringe-worthy. The battle scenes, and thoughts and fears of the soldiers as they plunge into combat seem as if they would probably stand the test of all the time and wars in history. The depiction of the Russian people, the French soldiers, Napoleon, Alexander I, the peasants, the nobility, the main characters...all so vivid. I want to say I adored and fell in love with Natasha, Nikolai, Pierre, Andrei, Marya, Petya and Sonya...but they drove me crazy so many times! When you find yourself yelling at a character in a book...or exclaiming "oh no!" really loud when a character dies, then you know you're emotionally attached to your book.

I waited with patience to see who would come back from war alive and who would end up with who. I was happy that Pierre and Natasha ended up together, as well as Nikolai and Marya, but so sad at those who didn't make it home. Well, except for Anatole, the irreverent scoundrel who I wasn't sorry to see expire. Andrei's reaction to seeing Anatole being tended to on the hospital bed next to him was so moving, though, considering Anatole ruined Andrei's life on a mere whim. Finally Andrei showed the emotion I knew he had. I only wish he'd shown it to his own little son too. And, I wanted so much for Nikolai to be a little more loving, Natasha to be a little less single-minded, Marya to be a little more confident, Pierre to be a little less flighty, and Petya definitely less impetuous. :-(

I was slightly disappointed, after reading more than 1200 pages, that I never got to see how the lives of Boris, Vera, and Dolokhov end up. I know how I would have LIKED for Dolokhov to end up after his callous disregard for Pierre, Nikolai, and everyone else. I found nothing redeeming in him or in Helene, Anatole's sister. I was so happy when Helene died, and only wished more time had been devoted to the telling of it instead of just hearing of it second hand. And...it was never explained how Denisov escaped from being prosecuted, but I'll assume that Alexander I pardoned him. I also loved reading about all the real-life military characters mixed in with the fictional ones. I had to take breaks at times and go read about them separately.

Tolstoy did drone on a bit too much for me with his debate about whether the single historical figure, like Napoleon truly made history happen, or whether circumstances make history, and the historical figures just help it along. I know I completely oversimplified that, but that was probably my least favorite part of the book. The final 35 pages...part 2 of the Epilogue...are devoted to Tolstoy's very definite opinions on what exactly makes historical events occur...how history becomes history, etc. It's very detailed, but I made myself read it. In hindsight, I wish I'd just ended with the first part of the Epilogue which contained the final moments with the characters I'd grown attached to!

I had so many passages I loved. I couldn't possibly type them all out. I will put a few in though. :-)

As a Russian commander leads his soldiers into battle:

Having galloped luckily through the French, he came to the field beyond the woods through which our men were running and, disobeying commands, heading down the hill. That moment of moral hesitation came which decides the fate of battles: would these disorderly crowds of soldiers heed the voice of their commander, or look at him and go on running? Despite the desperate shouts of the regimental commander, formerly so terrible for the soldiers, despite the furious, crimson face of the regimental commander, who no longer resembled himself, and the waving of his sword, the soldiers went on running, talking, firing into the air and not listening to his commands. The moral hesitation that decides the fate of battles was obviously being resolved in favor of fear.

These next two brought tears to my eyes. First, the scene with Nikolai and his mother. Then, the scene with his sister, Natasha, who he was so close to. Twenty year old Nikolai, who has already been heroic in battle, gets leave to come home from the war and has an emotional reunion with his family, and especially his mother. Then, he catches up with his sister:

    Rostov, not wishing anyone to announce him beforehand, threw off his fur coat and ran on tiptoe to the big, dark reception room. Everything was the same--the same card tables, the same chandelier in its cover; but someone had already seen the young master, and before he reached the drawing room, something flew out of a side door precipitously, like a storm, and embraced and began kissing him. A second, then a third such being sprang from a second, a third door; more embraces, more kisses, more shouts, tears of joy. He could not make out where and who was his papa, who was Natasha, who was Petya. Everybody wept, talked, and kissed him at the same time. Only his mother was not among them--he noticed that.....The old countess had not come out yet. And then footsteps were heard at the door. The footsteps were so quick that they could not have been his mother's. 

    But, it was she, in a new dress, unfamiliar to him, which must have been made in his absence. Everyone let him go, and he ran to her. When they came together, she fell on his breast, weeping. She could not lift her face, and only pressed it to the cold cords of his Hungarian jacket.

-----

Natasha, taking her brother under the arm, led him to the sitting room, and started talking with him. They hastened to ask and answer each other about a thousand little things that could interest only them. 

One of Tolstoy's little statements about history:

     Fatalism in history is inevitable for the explanation of senseless phenomena (that is, those whose sense we do not understand). The more we try to explain sensibly these phenomena of history, the more senseless and incomprehensible they become for us.

     Each man lives for himself, uses his freedom to achieve his personal goals, and feels with his whole being that right now he can or cannot do such-and-such an action; but as soon as he does it, this action, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irreversible and makes itself the property of history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.

When Napoleon marches into Moscow in triumph, he expects that he will be meet by Russians willing to bow down to him. He memorizes his speech in his mind, and all his grandiose gestures of good will, his own little theatrical production. Instead, he encounters a Moscow that has been deserted by the Russian people with no one there to great him. Tolstoy, who uses much French in the book simply writes:

Le coup de theatre avait rate. (The coup de theatre had not come off.)

Andrei is severely wounded, drifting in and out of consciousness, his early childhood flashing through his mind, when he notices the other wounded soldier they are working on beside him....the man who tried to seduce his fiance, and ruined his life, Anatole. However, in his state of mind, he feels none of the former hatred for Anatole, and only love and compassion:

     The doctors were bustling about a wounded man, the shape of whose head seemed familiar to Prince Andrei; they were lifting him and calming him. 

     "Show me...Oooh! oh! oooh!" his moaning, broken by sob was heard, frightened and resigned to his suffering. Hearing those moans, Prince Andrei wanted to weep. Whether it was because he was dying without glory, or because he was sorry to part with life, or from those memories of long-lost childhood, or because he was suffering, others were suffering, and this man was moaning so pitifully before him, he wanted to weep childlike, kind, almost joyful tears.

     The wounded man was shown his cut-off leg in a boot caked with blood!

     "Oh! Ooooh" he sobbed like a woman. The doctor, who was standing in front of the wounded man, screening his face, stepped away.
     "My God! What is this? Why is he here?" Prince Andrei said to himself.
     "In the unfortunate, sobbing, exhausted man whose leg had just been removed, he recognized Anatole Kuragin. They were holding him up in their arms and offering him water in a glass, the rim of which he could not catch in his trembling, swollen lips.....He remembered now the connection between him and this man, who was looking at him dully through the tears that filled his swollen eyes. Prince Andrei remembered everything, and a rapturous pity and love for this man filled his happy heart.
    Prince Andrei could no longer restrain himself, and he wept tender, loving tears over people, over himself, and over their and his own errors.
     "Compassion, love for our brothers, for those who love us, love for those who hate us, love for our enemies--yes, that love which God preached on earth, which Princess Marya taught me, and which I didn't understand; that's why I was sorry about life, that's what was still left for me, if I was to live. But now it's too late. I know it!"

This evolving of Andrei's was a huge step in the book, considering he'd rejoined the army just to search for Anatole and take revenge on him after what he'd done to him. Being a non-fan of Anatole, I'm afraid I wasn't as magnanimous as Andrei. I quite enjoyed him being the one whose leg was taken off. Then...we hear later on that Anatole died from his wounds. I could go on and on. I loved the friendship between Andrei and Pierre. Tolstoy uses that friendship to show two sides to a few moral and theological debates. And, I loved the growth of Pierre throughout the book. Yes, I think this is one of those books whose characters I'll be thinking about for quite awhile. :-)