War and Peace

What a novel, what a fantastic experience I had reading (listening) to Tolstoy's masterpiece, War and Peace.  I have thought over and over how to describe War and Peace.  Do I tell you about the incredible historical aspects of this novel, the descriptions of his characters, his worldview, his understanding of humanity, or the way in which he describes ordinary people in all of life's circumstances?  Tolstoy's descriptions of all of the above are unbelievably intricate and multi-faceted.  He not only describes the surroundings of the characters, but the way they feel, think, how they are intertwined with their historical context, the families they come from and the society in which they were brought up in.  It is not until the "second" Epilogue that he explains in detail his world and life view which explains why he wrote the way he did.  Everything in the novel supports this epilogue.  It was as if he wrote down the epilogue and then crafted his characters, their surroundings, and their historical context.  Oh to be able to write in such a way.  This is the reason why this novel has stood the passage of time, and is a classic.  

Tolstoy was born on August 28, 1828.  He was born into a long line of Russian nobility.  His mother died giving birth to a sister when he was two years old, he lost his father before he was thirteen, and lived after that between aunts and siblings.  His father gave him a love of reading.  There were 20,000 volumes in the family library in thirty different languages.  At the age of sixteen he went off to the University of Kazan to study languages. When it was all said and done, he learned twelve languages.  He also studied philosophy, religion, and geography. He never finished though, because he was listless, and confused about his role in life.  He entered the service and fought in two different wars. Before he went into the military, he became addicted to drinking and gambling. As he says in his biography, he was involved in every kind of debauchery there was."I put men to death in war, I fought duels to slay others. I lost at cards, wasted the substance wrung from the sweat of peasants, punished the latter cruelly, rioted with loose women, and deceived men. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, and murder, all were committed by me, not one crime omitted, and yet I was not the less considered by my equals to be a comparatively moral man. Such was my life for ten years." 

Tolstoy married at the age of thirty four, fathered twelve children, all of them did not survive infancy.  He began writing in the army and submitted his writings to periodicals.  They were very popular, and War and Peace was one of his first novels.  

He was plagued with depression most of his life over the way that he had lived in his ten years of riotous living.  It remained with him all of his life.  After he finished writing Anna Karenina, he was so depressed that suicide seemed to be a way out.  Instead, he found the truth in his savior Jesus Christ.  This began his religious writings.  

Tolstoy dealt with all aspects of life, emotions, and also of death.  

He writes of this theme in all of his books. In War and Peace, the

characters that were the strongest were those that had faced death,

come to grips with it and was no longer afraid of it, in fact it was a

a very welcome relief. He sees this as the strength that Jesus gives us. 

Life is then lived to the fullest, in dying we find real life.  

I have now read three of Tolstoy's novels and am looking forward

to reading the rest.

In dying we live...................Lynn