Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
The ambition of Tolstoy’s masterpiece is announced in its
sweeping title: War and Peace, and it aspires to treat the full richness of human life in history. Spanning the fifteen years from 1805 to 1820, the novel includes hundreds of characters, ranging from Napoleon Bonaparte and wealthy aristocrats to army officers, young girls, and the poorest of Russia’s peasants. Tolstoy combines the saga of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia with the life stories of a range of characters struggling to understand themselves and their places in society.
Through searching analyses of the novel’s central characters, especially Natasha Rostova, Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, and Pierre Bezukhov, Tolstoy shows us a variety of ways of responding to life and its questions. Should one be guided by one’s intellect or one’s emotions? What is love, and can it last? Do people have free will
or are they the puppets of history?
The critic Isaiah Berlin declared that “no author who has ever lived has shown such powers of insight into the variety of life,” and Tolstoy explicitly embraced such variety. In a letter written while he was working on War and Peace, Tolstoy wrote, "The goal of the artist is not to solve a question irrefutably, but to force people to love life in all its innumerable, inexhaustible manifestations.” To read War and Peace is to encounter an incomparable tapestry
of human life; to discuss it is to be challenged to answer its
questions for oneself.
"'ALIVE, AND VERY MUCH SO,' TOLSTOY’S DIARY ENTRY FOR NOVEMBER 19, 1889, BEGINS. THAT IS HOW IT FEELS TO BE CAUGHT UP IN THE BRIGHT SWEEP OF TOLSTOY’S “WAR AND PEACE”: ALIVE, AND VERY MUCH SO. IT IS TO SUCCUMB TO THE CONTAGION OF VITALITY. AS HIS CHARACTERS INFECT EACH OTHER WITH THE HIGH TEMPERATURE
OF THEIR EXISTENCE, SO THEY INFECT US."
James Wood from "How War and Peace Works," in The New Yorker (Nov. 26, 2007)
LEADERS
Nancy Carr is a senior editor at the Great Books Foundation in Chicago who is also engaged in freelance teaching and discussion lending. Nancy is drawn to War and Peace by Tolstoy’s unparalleled ability to combine the epic sweep of history with incisive observations about everyday life and character.
Sean Forester is a classical painter and Director of Art History and Humanities at the Florence Academy of Art. He studied at the St. John’s College Great Books Program and has led several seminars on the intersection of literature and art for Classical Pursuits. A visit to St. Petersburg a couple years ago sparked a deep interest in Tolstoy's masterpiece. View the paintings to be examined along with Tolstoy’s epic masterpiece. CLICK HERE.
BOOK
Participants are required to obtain the specified editions in order to facilitate the group’s ability to find and cite portions of the text during discussion.
Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace
Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Knopf (2007)
ISBN-10: 0307266931; ISBN-13: 978-0307266934
or
Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace
Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Vintage; Reprint edition (2008)
ISBN-10: 1400079985; ISBN-13: 978-1400079988
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