No. 13 Reading War and Peace

What weighs 1 lb 9 oz, has a volume of 440 cubic centimeters and can double as a door stop or a paperweight? You guessed it, a paperback copy of War and Peace. Written by Leo Tolstoy during what can only have been a particularly long period of insomnia, it is allegedly one of the classics that every one should read in their life time. ‘Love and battle, terrors and desire, life and death. It’s a book that you don’t just read, you live’ says the rather gushing and flamboyant acknowledgement on the cover from Simon Schama. What’s the bet he hasn’t even read it? I tried it once and gave up and that’s saying something. There are probably only a handful of books I’ve given up reading over the course of my forty odd years and War and Peace is one of them along with Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses (what WAS all the fuss about?) and A.S. Byatt’s A Biographers Tale which was, in my humble opinion, a completely self-indulgent and unreadable bit of flaptrap. I found the Old Testament of The Bible more entertaining. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve read novels by all these esteemed writers before and have been completely absorbed and draw in but it just so happens that in every novelists career there is obviously a bummer that only gets there because you have a ‘name’ and these happen to be those. And who wants to sit reading a novel feeling that your brain cells are draining out through your nasal cavities? Not me. At the time I discard novels such as these I start to ruminate on the literary wonders of Jackie Collins and Barbara Taylor Bradford. But only very, very fleetingly. But back to War and Peace, wayward Leo and his rather consistent and over exhuberent libido. Leo Tolstoy was born in Central Russia in 1828. Now Russia is rather a large place, in fact the largest country in the world. At 6,592, 771 sq. miles it is just under twice the size of the United States. Being born in “Central Russia” doesn’t exactly pinpoint Leo Tolstoys early beginnings very precisely at all. But I suppose given his rather dissolute youth not letting people know where to find him might have actually been a bit of an advantage. Tolstoy studied Oriental languages and law at university – a very, very early sign of forward thinking but just about 180 years too early. He joined the army in 1851 and found himself mobilised and in the throes of the Crimean War before he knew what was happening. Luckily for us (ever optimistic, I’ve not finished the book yet) he survived but perhaps not so luckily for his wife Sophie with whom he went on to have thirteen children and hence the comment about libido. Maybe that’s what war does for you – gives you this urgent desire to repopulate. Anyway, apparently this ultra-large family brought him great happiness (not sure about his wife) and led to his voluminous and creative output. Just being practical, I wonder if in fact he felt the need to bury himself away behind locked doors BECAUSE he had thirteen children, but just call me cynical. The preface in the book fails to mention his contribution to the household chores but after all this was nineteen century Russia so perhaps I’m asking too much. But whatever the situation, utopian or not, he graced us with two great novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877) the latter of which I have read more than once and which I enjoyed very, very much so there is hope still for W&P.

I make my initial foray into the book by browsing the maps on page 1375 because that doesn’t require a huge amount of intellectual energy and I can play a silly game with myself by pretending I’ve finished it already. Map 1. shows the geographical location of the 1805 campaign, map 2. shows Austerlitz (where?), map 3. the 1812 campaign (ah ha, so there was more than one) and the final map is a kind of mish mash of lines and shaded areas which apparently shows the proposed and actual positions of the French and Russians at Borodino. I find myself yawning and start thinking about a cup of tea and a chocolate brownie but I have been applying myself for less than five minutes and so give myself a stern talking to for being such a lightweight. However the tea and chocolate brownie wins out. Back in front of the book I turn to page 1372 which sets out the key characters and historical figures which feature in W&P. I have forgotten that in Russian classical novels the characters always have more than one name and I have no idea why. But Pierre Bezúkhov, the son of Count Kiríll Bezúkhov, is also known as Pyotr Kirillovich or Pyotr Krillych. Now just will someone explain that to me? But whatever the reason it means you have to be alert and engaged for large tracts of the text and as I tend to read in bed at night by that time my brain is only half awake if I am lucky and switching off fast. I may have to make up nicknames for the characters if I stand any chance at all of keeping up. Next I turn to the section called On War and Peace which is almost a book explaining the book. I am not sure what value reading this will give me but I bumble through the first couple of paragraphs and find it really rather engaging and helpful. I wonder whether I have stumbled on something like one of those GCSE cheat sheets where someone has extrapolated enough facts and information to allow you to scrape through an exam without actually having read the book. I do hope so. But no, that’s not the spirit of the thing and I intend come what may to persist in this nevertoolate activity so that you, dear reader, may know once and for all whether reading W&P is worth giving up three days of your life for. Being conscientious can be so very wearing.