Aug 09, 2015 11:24 PM
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An epic novel by the legendary Leo Tolstoy.
What a novel of such a wide panorama!
Tolstoy skillfully brings before us Russia during the French Napoleonic era. Just like his other work Anna Karenina, we are again amidst the aristocratic and upscale families of Russia. Each person in the novel is so vividly sketched, we almost feel acquainted with them since a long time.
Pierre, the central character, is depicted as a person going through various phases of his life. He is an illegitimate son of a wealthy Russian Bezhukov, who bestows all his wealth to Pierre as he is the favorite son.
During the course of the novel, Pierre is subjected to many internal turmoils. His wife, an adulterous woman, is a constant reminder of his disastrous decision to marry her. He goes through mental turbulence owing to some unfortunate incidents, and seeks divine help by joining the Masons. Here also he gets disillusioned and circumstances put him as prisoner of war during Napoleon's war against Russia. Later he gets rescued by Russian soldiers and in the end gets married to his love Natasha.
Parallely, novel's most important part i.e. invasion of Napoleon into the Russian soil goes on. In the beginning, Napoleon is shown through the views of important Russian personages as a war genius. War and Peace gives a good insight about how Russian high society was influenced by the French culture, French language. Just as Indian society has the inclination towards English language. One respectable character, drawn by Tolstoy, is a Russian general Kutuzov. In the novel, he is the true genius behind the success of Russian soldiers against the mighty and organized French army. But he is never given the true credit for this. In the epilogue, Tolstoy gets to his philosophical mode describing the way History is written by historians and how they are faulty in some aspects.
According to him, History is not marked by the advent or progress of any one great individual of any particular era(In this case Napolean), but is marked by the summation of small infinite events involving the normal people. His analogy being the Mathematical Integration of infinitesimal events of an era. Thank you.
