War & Peace – Review

Yesterday after a little under two months of heavy reading, I finally came to the end of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. I’ll start off by saying, no the irony is not lost on me that I started reading this book during the beginnings of a war involving Russia which is one of the main players in this novel. In fact, I ended up thinking it quite fitting. It gave me insight into how Tolstoy may have viewed the conflict that is currently unfolding.

I had heard before reading War and Peace, that although it’s often referred to as a classic “novel,” Tolstoy himself did not describe it as such. I’d have to agree that this book is not what you would expect from a traditional work of fiction. A good portion of the book is a lengthy, honestly tedious and repetitive, account of Tolstoy’s opinion of past wars and historians’ descriptions and explanations of them. Another portion of the book is focused on the fictionalized account of the war itself. Perhaps if you are someone who likes to read about history, battle strategies, or the logistics of war, this would be of interest to you, but if you go into this book with the idea it will be like his other novel, Anna Karenina, you will be sorely disappointed.

Apart from these two seemingly disjointed portions in the work, it is about the interpersonal lives and inner dramas of some of the wealthiest families in Russia during the Napoleonic Wars. These passages in the book were excellently written, gripping, and often even profoundly philosophical. I adored Pierre from the very beginning and continued to throughout the rest of my reading. Although the elaborate Russian names in Anna Karenina were difficult at times, I felt the lengthy list of characters in this book made it even harder to keep track of the important players.

While overall, I got a lot of enjoyment from this book, I felt the ending left a lot to be desired. I wish that the story had stuck with the lives of the characters rather than getting sidetracked so often by seemingly irrelevant details about generals, marching orders, battlefield layouts, and criticisms of historical accounts. Quite understandably, it felt like by the time Tolstoy got to the end of the nearly 1400 page book, he wrapped everything up with the characters rather hastily. Everything did get tied up in a nice bow with no storyline being neglected or unfinished, but it still felt unsatisfying and rushed in the end.

I was also rather irritated that the last 50 pages or so of the book which were once again just a long diatribe by Tolstoy, railing against the foolish or incompetent historians that recorded the events that took place in real life. Eventually he did come to some interesting philosophical points about cause and effect and free will.

I still believe that this book is worth reading, however I’m not quite as sure why it is lauded as one of the greatest books ever written. My final impression is of a work that had great bones, but gave a feeling of being a first draft rather than being carefully edited and compiled. I’m not sure whether or not there were editors at that time, whether Tolstoy had one, or whether or not he would have taken their advice had he had one. My suggestion would have been to scrap all of the superfluous text about the war maneuvers themselves and the author’s personal commentary on the war. At the very least he could have published that account in a separate work. I would have much preferred those pages have been dedicated to more fully delving into what I consider the main story, the lives of the fictional characters.

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Beyond the Intellect

They gather like wolves on the boardwalk below. They’re howling for answers no wolf can know.

Mewithoutyou – Fox’s Dream of the Log Flume

I’ve been reading War & Peace these last few weeks. Pretty ironic considering the state of affairs in the world right now. Nonetheless, the passages I read last night were very insightful. One of my favorite characters, Pierre, is talking about God, religion, and spirituality with an old freemason. The conversation goes as follows:

“He is attained not through reason, but through living.”

“I don’t understand,” said Pierre, dismayed at the doubts surging up inside of him. Put off by the vagueness and weakness of the freemason’s arguments, he felt the dread of unbelief. “I don’t understand,” he said, “why human reason cannot attain the knowledge you speak of.”

“The highest wisdom and truth is like unto the purest liquid which we try to absorb into ourselves,” he said. “Can I receive that pure liquid into an impure vessel and judge of its purity? Only through the inner purification of myself can I bring the liquid received within me to some degree of purity.”

While I still don’t believe in the Christian God or the Bible, and have a general distaste for this particular expression of spirituality, I do think these words have a certain truth to them. I may not be religious, but in recent years I have come to consider myself a spiritual person. Hidden inside the horrors of the churches that have cropped up around the world in various forms, is a poignant, important truth. I don’t think it’s merely a coincidence that all forms of religion seem to share very similar threads. There is wisdom to be obtained there. I once held logic and intellect above all else, scoffing at the idea of faith. Now I think there is a place for both.

I used to believe that everything could be understood through science and reason. My experiences with psychedelics, more than anything else, have opened my mind to the idea that there are things our minds are just not capable of grasping. There are states and perspectives we cannot even conceive of. I’ve always been a curious person. As a child I had so many questions that seemed beyond answers. I contented myself on the idea that after I died, I could ask God. Then I would finally know everything and nothing would be a mystery to me. When I lost my faith, I also lost that comforting thought of finding answers one day. Now part of me thinks that far away hope might not be entirely off.

“You’ll die and all will end. You’ll die and know all, or cease asking.”

Will the new view I tentatively hold of death, I think it’s possible I may still have all the answers some day. When this fragmented consciousness disconnects from my mortal form, it will be submerged once again in the larger ocean of all that is. I want to believe that there is peace in that dissolution. That I will once again understand and remember all that I have forgotten in order to take part in this earthly existence. Yet, even this explanation isn’t exactly right. Part of me feels sure that whatever the real answers are, the full truth of reality is something that we simply cannot comprehend or conceptualize in the brains we are currently working with as humans. That is why no answer appears sufficient or correct, testable, or provable. There are no satisfactory answers that we can obtain in this life regarding those large existential questions of who am I, what is this, why am I here.

These questions and our endless, futile search for definitive answers to them have caused suffering throughout all of human history. We wrestle constantly with the gnawing ache to know things that cannot be known. This is were I believe that faith becomes a valuable asset to us. Faith can be twisted and used to manipulate the masses to bow to corrupt authorities, and for most of my life, this seemed like its sole purpose, to trick and take advantage of people. Now I find myself longing for a more abstract and vague faith. Not a faith in some supreme, all-knowing being. Not faith in the institutions of mankind. But a faith in the idea that there are things at work in the universe that I cannot comprehend.

This form of faith is a great comfort. It is a surrender. It is the acknowledgement that I do not understand, that I can never understand, and that that’s okay. I don’t have to keep struggling and suffering for these important answers. I won’t find them. I may not even be asking the right questions. There is such peace in trusting that everything is as it should be. That everything is going to be alright, even if you can’t fathom how. There is a reason, an explanation for all of this seemingly random chaos out there somewhere. We must accept that we are only working off of very limited, myopic understanding. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s all we’ve got to go by and we have to keep going despite not having the full picture.

In this way, faith is a necessary part of life for all of us, it is a constant practice, whether you consider yourself religious/spiritual or not. Faith is that energy inside of us, that yearning, that momentum that keeps us going despite all the pain, the suffering, the confusion, the doubt. It’s scary to relinquish control in favor of faith, but it is what we all must do sooner or later. Logic, reason, knowledge, and intellect can only take us so far. Certainly use them and value them. They are essential, important, wonderful tools. But also know that it’s okay to let go and surrender to the unknown, the unknowable too. It’s going to be okay, even if we can’t understand how. Everything is as it should be.