Classics and the Western Canon discussion
War and Peace
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Book 14
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Laurele wrote: "I am puzzled by Pierre's behavior..."
I haven't yet figured out which of Pierre's puzzling behaviors you are referring to. :)
Anyway, I think my favorite part of the entire novel is in that one passage where Pierre learns of the fate of Platon. I'm not sure how to express the feeling, but I found it quite beautiful how the tragic loss of Platon is suddenly washed over with the beauty of the Russian landscape. Life trumps death, even at the moment of death's most penetrating presence in the minds of the living.
Some of the most marvelous writing is in this book. Here are two of my favorite passages from book 14.On his last night on earth, Petya is having a dream, it is about music:
And what was played was a fugue- though Petya had not the least conception of what a fugue is. Each instrument- now resembling a violin and now a horn, but better and clearer than violin or horn- played its own part, and before it had finished the melody merged with another instrument that began almost the same air, and then with a third and a fourth; and they all blended into one and again became separate and again blended, now into solemn church music, now into something dazzlingly brilliant and triumphant. Ch X Bk 14
He wakes up and realizes he was dreaming and that the music is in his head.
Later on in Bk 14,Ch XV Pierre is having a dream which carries him to the realization of Platon's death:
"Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in innocent sufferings."
"Karataev!" came to Pierre's mind.
And suddenly he saw vividly before him a long-forgotten, kindly old man who had given him geography lessons in Switzerland. "Wait a bit," said the old man, and showed Pierre a globe. This globe was alive- a vibrating ball without fixed dimensions. Its whole surface consisted of drops closely pressed together, and all these drops moved and changed places, sometimes several of them merging into one, sometimes one dividing into many. Each drop tried to spread out and occupy as much space as possible, but others striving to do the same compressed it, sometimes destroyed it, and sometimes merged with it.
"That is life," said the old teacher.
"How simple and clear it is," thought Pierre. "How is it I did not know it before?"
"God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so as to reflect Him to the greatest extent. And it grows, merges, disappears from the surface, sinks to the depths, and again emerges. There now, Karataev has spread out and disappeared. Do you understand, my child?" said the teacher.
"Do you understand, damn you?" shouted a voice, and Pierre woke up.
He lifted himself and sat up. A Frenchman who had just pushed a Russian soldier away was squatting by the fire, engaged in roasting a piece of meat stuck on a ramrod. His sleeves were rolled up and his sinewy, hairy, red hands with their short fingers deftly turned the ramrod. His brown morose face with frowning brows was clearly visible by the glow of the charcoal.
"It's all the same to him," he muttered, turning quickly to a soldier who stood behind him. "Brigand! Get away!"
And twisting the ramrod he looked gloomily at Pierre, who turned away and gazed into the darkness. A prisoner, the Russian soldier the Frenchman had pushed away, was sitting near the fire patting something with his hand. Looking more closely Pierre recognized the blue-gray dog, sitting beside the soldier, wagging its tail.
"Ah, he's come?" said Pierre. "And Plat-" he began, but did not finish.
Suddenly and simultaneously a crowd of memories awoke in his fancy- of the look Platon had given him as he sat under the tree, of the shot heard from that spot, of the dog's howl, of the guilty faces of the two Frenchmen as they ran past him, of the lowered and smoking gun, and of Karataev's absence at this halt- and he was on the point of realizing that Karataev had been killed, but just at that instant, he knew not why, the recollection came to his mind of a summer evening he had spent with a beautiful Polish lady on the veranda of his house in Kiev. And without linking up the events of the day or drawing a conclusion from them, Pierre closed his eyes, seeing a vision of the country in summertime mingled with memories of bathing and of the liquid, vibrating globe, and he sank into water so that it closed over his head.
I like how Tolstoy sometimes describes his philosophy using aural metaphors and sometimes he uses visual metaphors. Other times he uses reason and rhetoric to reach his readers who are so inclined to understand the world that way.
Tolstoy`s beliefs about God seem to be of a pantheistic nature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism
Book 14 is section 4.3 in P&V.