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I have to take a break. This book is intense and emotional. I can’t help but empathize with the people, real people, who speak for themselves on its pages.

Now that I've finished reading, I'm watching the Amazon Prime mini-series adaption (2016) of War and Peace. The series, at least so far is remarkably true to the original, with huge portions of th book left out ... as you would expect. Some of the actors fit their parts brilliantly, others not so much.

Grief. Through Natasha, reeling from the slow, inexorable, and intimate death of Andrei, Tolstoy movingly portrays deep, personal, wasting grief more emotionally, more gut-wrenchingly, and more believably than anything I’ve read or known. Tolstoy knew grief, and in his artistry painted it in words.

The Stoic. Pierre in his sufferings as a prisoner of war “had learned that there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom … suffering and freedom have their limits and those limits are very near together ... the person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth."

The firing squad. The French begin executing prisoners whom they accuse of setting Moscow afire. Tolstoy—who is fearless and shrinks at nothing—describes the impersonality of the executions, and as a humanist chooses not to assign moral responsibility to individuals. It is the system of power and authority that is answerable. And this here and in his later works he avows must change.

Prince Andrei, gravely injured at Borodinó, drifts from delirium into and out of varying levels of consciousness. Tolstoy’s technique here is what we today might call “stream of consciousness.” There’s no doubt in my mind that Tolstoy is a literary genius who uses a wide range of narrative techniques and frames of reference, and creates complex gripping characters. Even in translation he amazes.

Incongruous. Pierre in his gentlemen’s green swallowtail coat and white hat rides and walks though Battle of Borodinó, cannonballs and bullets whizzing by, horrendous injury and violent death all around. That Tolstoy uses Pierre, a civilian in every sense, to depict the battle is either odd or inspired. I’m not sure which.

More on subservience to the autocrat … ”in an Emperor’s vicinity all became courtiers.”

Mark Twain, a contemporary of Tolstoy is said to have said of War and Peace, “Tolstoy carelessly neglects to include a boat race.” Not so. In Bk 3, Pt 1, we read, “Count Bennigsen, being a landowner in the Vilnan province, offered his country house for the fete, and the thirteenth of June was fixed for the ball, dinner, regatta, and fireworks … “

Nastasha Rostova at age 13 was inquisitive, intelligent, animated, and admired. Now at 18, she is moody, irritable, lustful, faithless. Tolstoy writes that Pierre “could not reconcile the charming impression he had of Natasha whom he had known as a child, with his new conception of her baseness, folly, and cruelty … like all women.” Tolstoy’s misogyny on display.

An evening at “Uncle’s” after the hunt is a paean to the “Russian Soul,” a theme in late 19th century Russian literature, and certainly in Tolstoy. ”Russian soul" was an expression of optimism. It stressed Russia's historical youth and its ability, by following the wisdom of the peasant, to become the savior of the world. -Wikipedia

The New Year’s Ball. Natasha enters society. Andrei, remembering her from the moonlit night, is drawn to her. Pierre is out of place as usual. Tolstoy’s description of the ball is totally brilliant. [Personal note: I’ve spent New Year’s week in St. Petersburg and the magic Tolstoy describes is still there.]

Andrei’s epiphany. A guest at Rostov estate on a moonlit night, overhearing Natasha overjoyed at at nature, at life: “In his soul there suddenly arose such an unexpected turmoil of his youthful thoughts and hopes, contrary to the whole tenor of his life … ‘everyone must know me, so that my life may not be lived for myself alone … ’ ”

Pierre’s epiphany. Delayed at a post station, a chance meeting with Joseph Bazdéev, a Freemason: “… I have led a contemptible and profligate life … But this man knows the truth and, if he wished to, could disclose it to me … With my whole soul I wish to be what you would have me be … Help me, teach me …”

The lucky shot. Pierre, believing himself cuckolded, fires a random shot in a duel that seriously injures Dolokhov, a cheat and a bawler, but it seems also a caring son and brother. Tolstoy’s major characters are individuated, complex, and change with time and experience. I can’t help but think about them even when I am not reading.

End of Book 3: Tolstoy’s telling of the Battle of Austerlitz is a brilliant piece of historical fiction. However, a serious “suspension of disbelief” is called for. Having wounded Prince Andrei rescued from the battlefield by Napoleon himself, and having Count Nikolai happen upon forlorn Tsar Alexander, stain credulity. All in all, It’s a jarring reminder that this is fiction.

Count Ilya Rostov and Prince Nikolay Bolkonsky are wonderful characters whom both Tolstoy and I are fond of. Tolstoy affectionately calls them as “the old count” and “the old prince.” The old count is affectionate, emotional, supportive, while the old prince is distant, rigid, cold. Yet both love their children madly. In contrast, Prince Vasili Kuragin dislikes his children and uses them to advance his own ends.