Anna Karenina

by Leo Tolstoy

translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Marissa Volokhonsky

It seems fitting that a new film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s stunningly beautiful novel, Anna Karenina, debuted at the same time that retired General David Petraeus crashed his high horse and fell from grace.  Both stories involve military officers and notable married women who fare less well in the court of public opinion than their paramours.  The essential difference between these two stories is that the former is one of the great works of fiction while the latter is fodder for the tabloids, with elements of Greek tragedy thrown in to prove that humanity hasn’t changed much across the millennia of our documented existence. 

Anna Karenina, one of two main characters in Tolstoy’s novel, is a high-born aristocrat, married to an older man with whom she shares little other than their son.  In the opening scene two things happen:  she witnesses a man fall in front of a train and she meets the man who will become her lover.  At her brother’s home later that day, Anna’s sister-in-law is aggrieved over Stiva’s affair with their children’s governess.  Anna begs Dolly to forgive Stiva and stay with him because that is the best choice for herself, her children, and her husband.  Women in that place and time – pre-Soviet Russia – depended on marriage for their survival both economically and socially. 

Anna’s marriage to Alexei Karenin, an important and painfully uninteresting government official, is slowly killing her soul, but she accepts her lot in life until she becomes involved with the young and dynamic Alexei Vronsky.  Count Vronsky, a military officer and man about town, is under pressure from his mother to marry a woman of high birth.  When he meets the beautiful and quietly passionate Anna he falls for her and loses all interest in other women.  Anna tries to ignore the passion that Vronsky stirs in her to no avail, and soon the two are the talk of the town.  Anna’s husband warns her to stay away from Vronsky, not so much because he is jealous but because of what the talk is doing to their/his reputation.  She abandons the marriage without regard to the consequences so that she and Vronsky can be together, sending shock waves throughout society.  Karenin offers to divorce her but this is not an option because she would lose her son whom she loves dearly;  and so the three live in an increasingly uncomfortable limbo. 

Tolstoy paints a photorealistic picture of the double standard applied to women:  while Stiva suffers no serious consequences for his infidelities, Anna’s choice sends her into social exile.  No longer welcome at soirees and shunned in public, Anna’s mental health begins to deteriorate.  Her total dependence on Vronsky devolves into possessiveness and jealousy which eventually drive him away.   His passion spent, Vronsky heeds his mother’s advice that he needs a “proper” wife in order to advance his career.  He abandons Anna, leaving her bereft and at the mercy of her husband, who has a surprisingly forgiving aspect to his character.  Unable to resolve her internal conflicts and tormented by guilt, Anna makes a devastating choice which echoes the opening scene.

This story line is but one of many in Tolstoy’s book, each of which is rich in descriptions of life in Czarist Russia.  Konstantin Levin,  the other protagonist, is a philosophical character who leaves his government job to return to his rural roots.  He personifies Russia on the cusp of industrialization and sweeping social change, fascinated by the possibilities of mechanized farming and free serfs while afraid of losing generations of tradition and economic stability.  Like Anna, Levin lives outside of social convention, but unlike her he is free to do so.  His story of love and marriage is a contrast to Anna’s and heightens the unfolding tragedy of hers. 

Tolstoy was not a proponent of equal rights for women, but he was sympathetic to the inequities they faced.  Previous translations of Anna Karenina into English have failed to capture the nuances of Tolstoy’s writing and as a result have left many readers to conclude that he was misogynistic.  Richard Pevear and Marissa Volokhonsky succeed in keeping Tolstoy’s words alive across the two languages where the old school standards have left many student readers cold.  These two scholars respect Tolstoy’s original text and attempt to capture both the letter and the spirit of his words.  Thus their translation goes beyond literal and into psychological, cultural, and personal understanding of what Anna Karenina was about.  According to a New Yorker article by David Remnick (“Translation Wars”, November 7, 2005), Volokhonsky – a native Russian speaker – takes the first pass through the text, making notes on the author’s choice of words and idioms as well as analyzing the author’s intent, based on how he used the language, as she goes along.  Then her husband, Pevear, translates her translation into a first English draft.  After that, the two go through as many iterations as necessary until they are both happy with the result.  It takes them years but their technique has yielded numerous prizes and awards for breathing new life into classic works of Russian literature by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Translation of even the simplest piece of writing from one language to another is nicely described in Vladimir Nabokov’s poem on the subject, lifted from that same New Yorker article:

What is translation? On a platter
A poet’s pale and glaring head,
A parrot’s screech, a monkey’s chatter,
And profanation of the dead.
The parasites you were so hard on
Are pardoned if I have your pardon,
O Pushkin, for my stratagem.
I travelled down your secret stem,
And reached the root, and fed upon it;
Then, in a language newly learned,
I grew another stalk and turned
Your stanza, patterned on a sonnet,
Into my honest roadside prose—
All thorn, but cousin to your rose.

Anna Karenina, so beautifully translated and so true to Leo Tolstoy’s original words, takes the reader deep inside Russian high society.  I hope that before you run out to see Keira Knightley attempt to capture the essence of one of literature’s most beloved tragic heroines, you do yourself a favor and buy or borrow the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation, published in 2000 by the Penguin Press.  Anna Karenina is an intricately woven tapestry of Russian society and history in the period leading up to the Russian Revolution.  It reveals the living and working conditions of serfs and their growing discontent and it exposes the decadence of the aristocracy which will soon fall to the Soviets.  Finally, and most important, Anna Karenina – the book – explains the plight of women in a way that is timeless and universal, and relevant to the Petraeus scandal.

David Petraeus’ lover, Paula Broadwell, is highly intelligent, a graduate of West Point and Harvard, a competitive athlete, and is described by those who know her as an over-achiever.  In other words, she is no bimbo.   And yet, the media have slapped the label “mistress” on her as if she does nothing but sit around in her negligee waiting for her general to rescue her from boredom.   It would be nice if the media either neutralized the female label or used something similarly pejorative such as “gigolo” or “Narcissus” or “playboy” when describing Petraeus.  Moreover, the assumption is that she seduced him and not the other way around, and therefore she is responsible for the shame he brought to his wife and family, the CIA staff he directed, the Army he represented, the nation he served, the president he failed, the soldiers he commanded, and the citizens whose lives he was supposed to be protecting.  The only people she hurt were her husband and children.   Petraeus will likely rehabilitate his image by becoming a news commentator for one of the cable news channels.  Broadwell’s future is less certain. We can only hope, for the sake of her family that she does not do as Anna Karenina did. 

The Petraeus/Broadwell episode highlights a subtle misogyny which continues to pervade our culture.  While much has changed for women in the 135 years since Tolstoy published Anna Karenina, women are still thought of as the temptresses who lead men to ruin.  It might be worth considering the possibility that after Eve picked the apple, Adam took it by force and then blamed Eve because she was naked.  The Bible has been translated so many times and in so many ways, there is no way to know for sure.   In the interest of humanity, we would all do well to question our assumptions and choose our words carefully, especially when labeling others.

Copyright 2012 Teresa Friedlander all rights reserved

The Count of Monte Cristo

By Alexandre Dumas

There is something deliciously satisfying about a revenge story, which is why we still talk about TV series such as Dallas and Dynasty with their twisted characters who made life miserable for everyone around them, especially those who tried to play along.  We watched week after week being teased along by the possibility of the evil ones getting theirs in the end, but JR and Alexis always managed to stay one step ahead of their avengers.  Revenge stories are as ancient as human society, as if we are as troubled by this need for blood as we are fascinated by it.  When someone does us a great wrong, we often desire revenge with a hunger bordering on obsession.  

Before the rule of law, revenge was handled by the injured parties through duels, which were considered honorable, or by some other means requiring a visit to the confession booth for absolution.  Today, our system of laws and justice takes on the role that eye-for-an-eye vigilantism did in times past.  While this enables us to live in peace, for the most part, there is something a little bit too sanitary for some of us about delegating the function of revenge to a government body.  For these folks, even the death penalty is too humane. 

Revenge is a theme for many of literature’s great and enduring classics.  Ahab seeks to avenge the loss of his leg by killing Moby Dick.  Medea defeats her faithless husband by murdering their sons.   Don Giovanni is undone by his own unwillingness to repent for the harm he has caused countless women.   In The Count of Monte Cristo, like most of these other stories, revenge comes at a high cost and we have to ask was it worth it? 

Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) was a prolific writer of historical fiction in a highly romantic style.  The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo were wildly successful and remain in print a century and a half later.  Both tales involve protagonists seeking revenge for injustices, but The Three Musketeers is more light hearted fun.  The Count of Monte Cristo, on the other hand, is about revenge taken to its ultimate conclusion.  In this book, the main character – a good natured and genuinely honest merchant sailor named Edmond Dantés – falls prey to the ambitions of people he had trusted as friends.  A self-serving politician, whose father’s loyalty to Napoleon could doom his own future, sentences the innocent Dantés to prison for treason in order to prevent his father’s identity from becoming known.  Dantés’ strength of character saves him during his fourteen years in prison because he befriends an ailing priest who imparts a lifetime of education and culture upon this loyal and generous young man.  Dantés’ reward for putting the wellbeing of the priest ahead of his own escape is to learn of a treasure hidden by the priest on a tiny island called Monte Cristo, not far from Elba where the deposed Napolean was sent to exile.

Time, imprisonment, and new-found riches so transform Edmond Dantés that no one recognizes him when he returns to seek revenge against those who had wronged him.  It is only after his escape from prison that he discovers the treachery of people he had trusted and the faithlessness of the woman he still loved.   The once guileless and innocent Dantés is reborn as the Count of Monte Cristo, a compelling and opaque figure with so much money that no one questions who he really is.  The Count studies his enemies to learn their weaknesses in order to ruin them without their knowledge and in the most painful way possible. 

The historical backdrop for The Count of Monte Cristo is the period after Napoleon’s exile, in accordance with the 1814 Treaty of Fountainebleau, leading up to his final defeat at Waterloo.  Napoleon had come to power by exploiting the instability created by the French Revolution.  As emperor, he became an aggressive conqueror and at the height of his power ruled over most of Europe and nearly brought down Russia.  His defeat at Leipzig, in October of 1813, allowed a coalition of nations to install a government in France headed by the long deposed French King.  With the Revolution still fresh in the national memory, many French citizens considered Louis XVIII to be illegitimate.  Napoleon loyalists met in secret to find a way to bring him back from exile and succeeded – for one hundred days until he was overwhelmed at the Battle of Waterloo and banished to the island of Saint Helena off the coast of Africa where he eventually died of cancer.

The betrayal of Edmond Dantés was the result of a conspiracy on the part of two of his friends and the paranoia of a government official whose father had killed a Royalist in a duel.  Dantés could have born all of that had his fiancée, Valentine, remained faithful.  Instead, she married one of the conspirators believing her beloved to be dead and with him had a son whom she loved dearly.  When Dantés, in the person of the Count of Monte Cristo, exacts his revenge there is no way for the story to have a happy ending for the protagonist.  That is the most important lesson from the book.  Revenge may be sweet but it leaves a bitter aftertaste and in the end fails to satisfy.

Copyright 2012 Teresa Friedlander all rights reserved

Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Presidential elections provide many “litmus tests” by which we define the candidates, some valid and some ridiculous.  During the 2008 election, the “War on Terror” and questions about then-Senator Obama’s religious beliefs and patriotism were upstaged by the collapse of the United States’ financial system.   If that had not happened, the election might have turned out differently, but there is no way to know for sure.  As we enter the 2012 presidential campaign season, the death penalty has taken center stage, with each of the Republican candidates trying to show how tough he or she is on crime based on the number of death row inmates executed in their respective states.    In 1988, Michael Dukakis lost the election to George H. W. Bush during a debate in which a questioner asked Governor Dukakis whether he would seek the death penalty if someone raped and murdered his wife, Kitty.  Dukakis unemotionally said that he opposed the death penalty, always had, always would; he didn’t even scold the questioner for throwing a sucker punch.   His lack of outrage, which came across as a lack of empathy for those who had lost loved ones to vicious crimes, turned the tide in his bid for the presidency.  This is because significantly more Americans (greater than 60% at present) favor the death penalty than those who oppose it.  The idea of justice based on revenge has greater appeal than the Christian notions of forgiveness, rehabilitation, and turning the other cheek. 

During the last two decades, support for the death penalty has dropped somewhat, likely because of advances in forensic science which have exonerated a number of death row inmates.  In other words, an unknown number of people have been imprisoned and executed for crimes they did not commit, and an equal number of criminals literally got away with murder.  It is hard to see these wrongly-convicted people as “collateral damage” in the so-called war on crime: they are tragic victims for whom there will never be justice nor will there be revenge.  It would be nice if presidential candidates could have a more nuanced and thoughtful discussion of whether and when to execute someone, but this level of discourse cannot fit into a “tweet” or sound-bite.

People commit heinous crimes for many reasons:  revenge, greed, jealousy, and insanity among the most common.  Some murders happen without any forethought:  they are crimes of passion or anger.  Others happen because of psychoses such as schizophrenia and delusions.  Crime and Punishment, by Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, is a compelling analysis of pre-meditated murder and the type of soul-sickness which can drive one to kill another.  In the story, a man, believing himself to be exempt from laws and social norms, decides to commit a murder.  His conscience puts up a good fight but eventually loses ground to perceived messages, signs, and signals which the man uses to justify the crime.  One murder turns into two when the man is caught in the act by the first victim’s slow-witted sister.  The rest of the story concerns the aftermath:  the man, who had thought himself somehow superior to everyone else and not bound by their laws, lives in a state of tormented guilt and paranoia about his crimes until he comes to understand that only by confessing and going to prison will he be set free.

The first part of the story, in which an alienated and disturbed person kills out of a sense of self-righteousness, is all too familiar.  Notorious examples include Jared Lee Loughner’s killing spree aimed at  Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s assault on Columbine High School, and Sueng-Hui Cho’s massacre at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.  Each of these men was isolated and angry, and felt completely justified in gunning down innocent victims.  Loughner has been diagnosed as schizophrenic; but Cho, Harris, and Klebold committed suicide rather than surrender, so their diagnoses will never be completely made.  It is clear that mental illnesses and possible personality disorders blinded these young men to the reality that killing others was a far greater crime than any wrong that had been done to them.  If he is ever considered fit to stand trial, Jared Loughner could face the death penalty.  If convicted and executed, would justice truly be served?

Crime and Punishment, is an intricate examination of the interplay between alienation and empathy with which people struggle during desperate times.  The main character of Crime and Punishment, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, lives in miserable poverty.  His squalid living conditions as well as the filth and decay of St. Petersburg’s slums have left him alienated from society.  To him, life seems meaningless and without justice.   As a way of coping Raskolnikov engages in denial, telling himself he is superior in every way to the filthy wretches surrounding him, even though his own clothes are in tatters, and he is always hungry, owes money everywhere, and has pawned everything of value that he owns.  Raskolnikov, like many of his neighbors, harbors a grudge against the local pawnbroker because of her miserliness and abusive treatment of her mentally challenged sister.  There is also a whispered hint of anti-Semitism in discussions about her.  Raskolnikov overhears someone say that the world would be better off if someone would kill the pawnbroker and give her money to the poor; and decides in that instant that it is he who must right this particular wrong in the name of social justice.

While planning the murder, Raskolnikov wrestles with his conscience, his self-respect, and his resentments.  Unlike Loughner, Harris, Klebold, and Cho, Raskolnikov knows that murder is wrong even though his nihilism tells him that life is meaningless and that there is no God.   While his behavior and thoughts suggest that he  suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, he is clearly rational.  After the murders, Raskolnikov’s superiority complex falls away leaving him even more alienated than before.  Moreover, the guilt over his brutal killing of the women eats away at his soul and his life becomes punishment until he is redeemed by the power of selfless love and forgiveness.

Dostoyevsky drew from many of his own life experiences in the writing of Crime and Punishment:  he lived in St. Petersburg and often walked the slums, he spent time doing hard labor in Siberia for being part of a movement to end serfdom, and he struggled with gambling debts for most of his life.  What is interesting is that his political views changed from decidedly socialist to more traditional and nationalistic while serving his time in the prison camp.  At the same time, Dostoyevsky moved away from nihilism and became an orthodox Christian.  These conversions did not, apparently, make him believe that capital punishment was appropriate for heinous crimes.  If Crime and Punishment is a reflection of his philosophy, then it seems he believed that repentance and confession could absolve one of sin; and that forgiveness would heal the families and friends of crime victims to a greater extent than revenge.

 Dostoyevsky was fascinated by the idea of how to live with oneself while carrying the overwhelming burden of guilt from having killed another human being, and that belief in God was not a requirement for having a conscience.  He also sought to understand how one’s living conditions and social status could strengthen one’s innate character defects and lead to deluded thinking.  In other words, guilt and responsibility inhabit a spectrum ranging from insanity to inhumanity.  Raskolnikov was somewhere in the middle:  he had to commit the murders in order to discover his conscience and that was the greatest punishment.  We could, therefore, interpret Crime and Punishment to mean that having a conscience is proof that God exists because, in the end, Raskolnikov admits his guilt, begs forgiveness, humbly accepts his punishment, and is thereby saved.

Almost everyone has an untested opinion about capital punishment because most of us are fortunate enough not to be touched by violent crime.  I, myself, am opposed to the death penalty, but if the unthinkable happened to one of my children or to my husband I might feel differently.  Similarly, a life-long death penalty advocate could change his views if a loved one was wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death.   The lessons I take away from Crime and Punishment are that often the greatest punishment is having to live with guilt, that the line between rationality and mental illness can be quite blurry and is easily influenced by environment and heredity, and that we – as a society – owe it to ourselves to be sparing in our use of execution as punishment, lest we lose our humanity in the pursuit of justice.

Copyright 2011 Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved

Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo


A man steals a loaf of bread to feed his sister and her seven hungry children. For this crime, a French court sentences him to five years in prison. While in prison, his sense of outrage festers and he breaks out repeatedly, only to be recaptured and sentenced to additional time for each escape. While serving his time the man, Jean Valjean, exhibits almost superhuman strength in his ability to lift and carry great weights. His prison guard Javert, a man of questionable heritage, becomes obsessed with bringing Valjean to his knees. Nineteen years after stealing the loaf of bread, Jean Valjean walks out of prison a free man. Javert, however, cannot let go of his need to crush his mighty nemesis and devotes the rest of his life to this pursuit.

Les Misérables is an intricately crafted novel that is both epic in scope and hugely entertaining; hidden inside the story is a treatise on how the human condition depends on the will of the people to improve their collective lot. Literally translated, the title means “the impoverished” or “the wretched”. In 19th century France, following the fall of the Bastille and the Reign of Terror, the poor found themselves, once again, at the mercy of the rich, forced to steal food and then being mercilessly prosecuted for trying to survive. Victor Hugo (1802-1885) and his contemporaries believed that wretched conditions created criminals, in contrast to the prevailing view that one’s basic nature and potential were determined at birth. Outsized punishment for desperate acts of survival fueled the still simmering rebellion which had brought down a series of leaders as France struggled to govern itself. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the government wavered between attempts at forming a republic and reverting to a monarchy, and this instability provided a charismatic Italian artillery officer the opportunity to stage a coup d’état. During his reign, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte restored to France a false sense of glory by waging wars of aggression. Hubris led Napoleon to believe he could conquer Russia, leaving France weakened for the next many decades.

In Les Misérables Jean Valjean represents the voiceless underclass while Javert represents the abuse of power, under the guise of maintaining law and order, in service to authoritarian rule. Jean Valjean is no angel: upon his release from prison, he steals from a priest and is cruel to a little boy. The priest, representing the Christian notion of forgiveness, enables Jean Valjean to redeem himself by thwarting Javert’s prosecution of the theft. Javert knows that the priest is covering for Jean Valjean and reports the theft anyway. Humbled by the priest’s kindness, Jean Valjean devotes his life to atonement by doing good in the world. In order to live in peace, he changes his name to Monsieur Madeleine, becomes a successful businessman and prominent member of society, and lifts many out of poverty by providing jobs at his factory. None of this matters to “blind justice” in the person of Javert who discovers the true identity of “M. Madeleine” in an ironic plot twist. Javert gleefully arrests his quarry, but once again, Jean Valjean escapes, this time with money in his pockets. While on the lam, Jean Valjean rescues a little girl from servitude at the hands of her foster family and the two bond as father and daughter. Jean Valjean places the child, Cosette, in a convent for her safety while he stays one step ahead of Javert. Meanwhile, other characters and events conspire to bring Jean Valjean and Javert together repeatedly over the next few years.

While Javert pursues Jean Valjean, the Emperor Napoleon becomes desperate to hold onto power. Following France’s humiliating defeat at the hands of Russian General Kutuzov in 1812, the emperor’s former European allies turned against him and formed the so-called Sixth Coalition, putting as many as one million soldiers at the ready. Napoleon, by contrast, had fewer than 500,000 loyal troops remaining. This disadvantage did not stop him from attempting to retake parts of Germany which France had once controlled. The battle at Leipzig resulted in Napoleon abdicating the throne and being exiled to Elba, a small Italian island in the Tuscan Archipelago. A few months later, Napoleon escaped Elba and returned to France where his followers awaited his return from exile. King Louis XVIII left Paris as Napoleon returned in a blaze of glory. Given his outlaw status, a Seventh Coalition of nations established a strong military position along the border shared by France and The United Kingdom of the Netherlands (present day Belgium and The Netherlands). Rather than wait for the Seventh Coalition forces to invade France, Napoleon went on the offensive and quickly found himself surrounded on three sides by British, Dutch, German, Austrian, and Prussian forces. Three days later, on June 18th, 1815, the Battle of Waterloo ended with Napoleon’s final defeat.

Fifty thousand men died at Waterloo, a geographically small area, and the battlefield was literally an enormous pile of rotting bodies. While looting the bodies, Monsieur Thénardier, Cosette’s former guardian, discovers an injured colonel. M. Thénardier claims to be one of Napoleon’s soldiers and promises to help the colonel but instead moves out of sight. A short while later, Jean Valjean discovers the same unconscious colonel and carries him out of the battlefield. M. Thénardier gets credit for the rescue, however, and this leads to the colonel’s son Marius tracking down the wicked Thénardier family in order to give them a reward. By chance, Marius also meets up with Jean Valjean and Cosette who coincidentally all find themselves in the same place at the same time. Marius overhears the Thénardiers plotting to kill Jean Valjean and Cosette, with whom he has fallen in love, and reports this to local police inspector, who is none other than Javert.

Meanwhile student groups in Paris, outraged by the oppressively conservative Orléanists who seized power following Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, stage a rebellion to support creation of a republic which would provide justice for the poor. Marius is part of this movement and believing that Cosette has left Paris, throws himself into the fray. Jean Valjean, none too pleased that Marius and Cosette are in love, can’t decide whether or not he wants Marius to survive the fight, but in the end does the right thing by carrying the injured young man to safety through the sewers of Paris.

The sewers serve a number of purposes in Les Misérables. First, to Victor Hugo and his contemporaries, sewers were a modern day marvel which enabled cities to grow and thrive by carrying away the human waste responsible for cholera epidemics. Sewers are an acknowledgement of the ugly reality of human existence: that everyone’s body produces foul waste regardless of social status. Jean Valjean, fugitive from twisted justice, must enter this fetid underworld conduit in order to save Cosette’s lover and himself. In the same way that blind justice is often unjust, sewers can carry away good things along with waste. Binary thinking, in other words, denies the complexity of humanity.

A prolific writer and poet, Victor Hugo, studied a number of political and philosophical themes throughout his life including good and evil, the “social contract”, equality, justice, utilitarianism, and morality. Les Misérables brings these ideas to life and demonstrates how public will in the form of representative government is the best way to advance the human condition and provide “the greatest good for the greatest number”. Governments “of, by, and for the people” acknowledge both our flaws and our aspirations and, when functioning properly, protect us from ourselves. The people of France followed America’s lead in attempting to create a state based on “liberty, equality, and brotherhood”; unlike forming a new nation where none existed inside of one hot summer, France struggled for more than a century to achieve political stability. While misery and injustice still exist in France, as in the United States, the overall human condition has vastly improved in these two countries.

As we have seen in Japan, however, the human condition can change in a day. We Americans take our government for granted, often vilifying it, even though it is a reflection of ourselves – good, bad, and ugly. State governors who disdain the federal government, are usually first in line for handouts when disaster strikes, and then quick to criticize the assistance as too little too late. Considering the alternatives to our imperfect more perfect union, certain politicians doth protest too much methinks.

Copyright 2011 Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved

War and Peace

by Leo Tolstoy

Someone recently asked me what one book I would take along for an extended stay in solitary confinement . Without hesitating, I answered, “War and Peace.” Not only is it long (my Penguin paperback edition is over 1400 pages) it gets better with every reading. The first time I read War and Peace was in pursuit of education. The next two or three times were purely for pleasure because Leo Tolstoy’s novel of Russia during the Napoleonic wars is a book to get lost in. It succeeds on every level: as fiction, history, character study, and social commentary. I could spend years in solitary re-reading War and Peace and never be lonely or bored.

Leo Tolstoy was, for much of his adult life, fascinated by the essence of human character. He wanted to understand the meaning of life, the nature of leadership, and why people behaved as they did. He was influenced by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s notion of a “collective consciousness”, or zeitgeist, which both moved and was moved by the tides and currents of human events. War and Peace, the story of Russia as she prepared for and then resisted Napoleon Bonaparte’s aggression in the early 1800s, was Tolstoy’s way of exploring these themes.

Tolstoy recognized that human beings have a dual nature: on one side we are driven by basic survival needs and on the other by the craving for society. Societies function when there is an accepted set of behaviors grounded in ethics. In other words, we must tame our survival instincts in order to live with others, and by doing this we increase our chances of survival. Within each of us as individuals and collectively in family and social groups there exists a constant effort to balance self interest against societal needs. On a deeper level, we struggle with ethical questions and often act against our better nature, our self-interest, and our survival instincts. In War and Peace, these struggles for balance come vividly to life within each of the main characters, and we recognize in them certain truths about ourselves.

In the 1700s, during the reign of Empress Catherine the Great, Russia was the center of European civilization and culture. French became the language of the aristocracy. While not of royal heritage herself, Catherine was a shrewd politician who curried favor with the powerful people behind the bloodless coup that deposed her husband, Peter III. Even more important, Catherine possessed the leadership to sustain the monarchy during this period of instability. Her influence in politics, statesmanship, and culture defined Russia for decades afterward. By the time her grandson, Alexander I, took the throne, his contemporary, Napoleon Bonaparte, was well on his way toward conquering all of Europe. France, once the object of adoration by sophisticated Russians, suddenly became threatening; and in salons in Moscow and Saint Petersburg aristocrats debated the motives of the diminutive emperor.

War and Peace opens in the salon of Anna Pavlovna Scherer, a wealthy society matron, who is warning one of her esteemed guests that Napoleon is no friend to Russia. The guest, Prince Vasili Kuragin, is an opportunist whose main objective is to secure wealthy spouses for his children. He has no affection for his hostess nor any of her guests and is not concerned about Napoleon’s plans, as long as he can marry off his profligate children and continue to live like a nobleman. Within the first pages of this novel, Tolstoy tutors the reader in the social order of the aristocracy: debates must be carried out in a restrained and decorous manner, social position must be respected, and one must know the rules of conversation. By the end of the evening, a penniless princess, Anna Drubetskaya -using her mastery of these social skills - has succeeded in manipulating Prince Vasili into helping her son, Boris, become an army officer. She succeeds by reminding him of the debt he owes her family and by making it clear that she will not take no for an answer.

Two of the three main characters of the novel, Prince André Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezuhof, make their debut in Anna Pavlovna’s salon. Prince André is unhappy with his domestic life and cannot wait to go to war. His pregnant wife, Lise, is a beautiful but empty socialite whom he has come to abhor. His good friend, Pierre, the bastard son of a wealthy count, is the only person in the room that he can tolerate. Pierre had been educated abroad and, because of his illegitimacy, did not have the proper upbringing for Russian society; he is therefore socially awkward and unintentionally rude. Anna Pavlovna is obligated to include him in her salon because Pierre is the favorite child of the ailing Count Bezuhof and will likely inherit a good piece of the family fortune. Tolstoy very quickly establishes Pierre as a person of good character and kindness in the way he smiles at everyone, with openness and big-hearted innocence. While his hostess and her guests put up with him because they must, the reader can’t help but take an almost instant liking to the naïve and clumsy young man.

The third main character, Natasha Rostov, is a young girl of high spirits whose family lives way beyond their means because they know no other way. The Rostovs are an old noble family living on an estate just south of Moscow. Count Ilya Rostov, one of the most delightful characters in the book, is generous to a fault and indulges his wife and children, especially Natasha, in their every whim. When the penniless Princess Drubetskaya shows up at the Rostovs’ estate for a visit, she tearfully explains to her good friend Countess Rostov that she plans to appeal to Count Bezuhof on his death bed not to forget Boris in his will, otherwise her beloved son will not be able to afford his costly army officer’s outfit. The Countess, knowing full well the futility of Princess Drubetskaya’s quest, and having been moved by the Princess’s tears, asks her husband for the money to outfit Boris. Count Rostov, unable to refuse his wife, instructs his accountant to get the cash. Rather than admit to the count that the estate is nearly bankrupt due to mismanagement, the accountant does as he is told and the debts continue to pile up.

Tolstoy understood the complex and co-dependent relationship that the Russian gentry had with France. Because the educated classes were so enamored of everything French, they had a hard time accepting that France, in the person of Napoleon Bonaparte, would turn on them. The Russian peasants and Cossacks suffered no such delusions but it took the leadership of General Mikhail Kutuzov to mine the passions of these “true” Russians in order to defeat the determined French emperor. Kutuzov was not only a great leader, he was a brilliant military strategist. Unfortunately for Russia, Tsar Alexander I did not care for Kutuzov and blamed him for his own bad judgment. By the time Kutuzov took charge of the army, Napoleon had advanced his troops quite far into Russia.

Russia is a vast country, with long and bitterly cold winters, and conditions on the ground were brutal. In order to keep the French troops from deserting in the face of this hardship, Napoleon permitted them to help themselves to the spoils of each village they conquered. The troops of both armies were underdressed and underfed; their only chance for survival was to keep fighting. Kutuzov’s predecessor, Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly, attempted to slow Napoleon by engaging in a “scorched earth” strategy as he ordered his troops to retreat. When Kutuzov took command, he exploited Russia’s size and hostile weather in order to break the back of the French invaders; he surrendered Moscow, angering many, but there was method to his madness. The farther the French got from home, the looser their discipline became and when Kutuzov had them where he wanted them, he brought the war to a decisive end. For all his tactical brilliance, Kutuzov did not receive the praise he was due until after his death.

War and Peace, the story, does not pass judgment on the waging of war; rather Tolstoy’s novel explains how combat is often inevitable when diplomacy fails. Regardless of its objective, war is always an ugly business: people die, infrastructure collapses into ruin, and opportunists seize advantage. Tolstoy understood that for some, war was a way of life. Most Russian noblemen served in the army as part of a tradition started by Tsar Peter the Great (1682-1725) and there was a certain glamour associated with achieving the rank of officer. Young men with nothing better to do than gamble away their families’ fortunes enlisted to fight Napoleon not out of patriotism but out of boredom. Prince André, having completed his military service, re-enlisted to escape his tiresome marriage.

While the personal lives of the main characters are the backbone of the story, it is the descriptions of the soldiers battling each other and the elements that set War and Peace apart from other works of fiction. Tolstoy’s writing is so vivid that I felt the pain of frostbite as it claimed the fingers and toes of hungry soldiers, I wept for villagers whose homes and farms were ruined in acts of gratuitous violence, and I experienced the futility and loneliness of the mortally wounded soldiers who surrendered their lives to the aggression of a small man with an oversized ego.

In the words of George Santayana, “those who cannot remember the past are destined to repeat it.” Leo Tolstoy understood this truth and hoped that by writing a story about people like ourselves we might consider the cost of human suffering before declaring war on another country. Everyone, especially those who “love a man in a uniform”, should read War and Peace, because even a “slam dunk” spills the blood of innocent people and ruins the lives of others.

War and Peace, like A Tale of Two Cities, is about duality as the title suggests. In the same way that without death we wouldn’t celebrate life, without war we wouldn’t cherish peace. When peace finally descends on Russia, sons and fathers return to their families, marriages and births take place, and a new day dawns. The three friends – André, Pierre, and Natasha – each find peace within as a result of the struggles of the war years. André discovers his capacity for love, Pierre gains wisdom and happiness, and Natasha redeems her impulsive and hurtful behavior. Does peace require the catharsis of war?  That is the question.

Copyright 2011, Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved