Near the end in War and Peace

In the end, Pierre gets the girl, Natasha. Nicolai does too - Princess Maria. But Tolstoy, thinking that his readers would not get enough of the story of the Rostoffs and the Bulkonskis, publishes an epilogue which ties the stories together. The domestic life of the two couples (mentioned above) gets discussed in pretty good detail and with some philosophical thoughts about wedded bliss.

But there is a second epilogue that IMHO is the more important one. Tolstoy has teased us continuously with the question of why things happen in history and in this final set of chapters he goes about trying to answer the question. This is not exactly an easy question. Is it culture, events, power/leaders or ideas? He writes a fairly biting critique of each of the factors as the determinative issue. He wonders why at one point a leader is a hero and at another soon after a goat. I suspect that any political science professor could rip the second epilogue - reprint it and generate some very interesting and thoughtful discussions in a beginning political science class or even an advanced one. His answer, by the way, is that history is created by the interactions of individuals - sort of a want of a nail the shoe was lost motif - but his conclusions are well thought out and well demonstrated.

There are several passages in the novel where Tolstoy gets to these kind of major questions - but this second epilogue is among the best part of his writing. It is the dollop of wisdom at the end of very long trek. But I found the section to be wonderful. I hope to finish the book before Thanksgiving.

There is one other issue that has run through my mind while I have been reading this. A lot of the novel is interior commentary. The asides here are critical. So I wondered whether the novel could be put to film. There were two attempts. The first, is a King Vidor version in the mid-fifties. I saw that one and thought that some of the characters (Audrey Hepburn as Natasha) were perfect but others (Henry Fonda as Pierre) were lacking. Fonda is a bit a shucks for this kind of role - he was clearly miscast or thought he was in another role. He is naive but not the kind of naive that Pierre is in the early part of the novel. The movie is a lot like classics illustrated. While many of the important scenes are recreated, others are not. It lacks the intensity of the book and at the same time misses the fundamental transformation of Pierre. Thus, Vidor's decision, which I believe was a wrong one, was to avoid as much as possible the interiors of the novel. You will remember that in the Woody Allen parody of the novel the interiors are done by Diane Keaton and Woody always going back to references to "wheat" - that actually worked as a comedic device but it is also a way to present the psychological factors which help to define the novel. The second version was done by a Russian in 1968. It is seven hours long. I have ordered it from Netflix and will see how it comes out. The reviews of it seem to be pretty good. As I thought about how this might go to the screen, someone like George Lucas might be able to bring it off. What I think it would need is someone who could take the story and divide it into three segments- all inter-related but which take the time and effort to assure that the key elements in the book are covered.

This has been a long project, started in the summer. I have had friends who read this pretty quickly, but I think it is better read in bursts. The friend who urged me to tackle it, said it is the greatest novel ever written. I am not sure about that - but I am sure that it is well worth the investment of time and thought. If you decide to tackle this novel you will invest both.