"War and Peace" and Religion: Part Two - Natasha Rostova and the Kuragins

"...[Natasha] listened to the words of the service, which she tried to follow and understand. When she understood them, her personal feeling, with its nuances, joined with her prayer; when she did not, the sweeter it was for her to think that the wish to understand everything was pride, that it was impossible to understand everything, that she only had to believe and give herself to God, who in those moments - she felt - was guiding her soul. She crossed herself, bowed, and, when she did not understand, only asked God, in horror at her own vileness, to forgive her for everything, everything, and to have mercy on her."

- Leo Tolstoy (III.1.xvii)

Day Count: 90

Page Count: 692

Much like my last post in this series, this post will include details about the overall plot of War and Peace. Many of you have not read this great book: if you wish to do so some day without major details regarding the plot revealed to you, you might want to skip this post; if you are living vicariously through my reading of War and Peace, or just don't mind spoilers, keep reading!

In my reading of Tolstoy - indeed, in my reading of literature as a whole, few characters have impacted and moved me quite as much as Natasha Rostova. The third of four children and youngest daughter of the noble Rostov family, Natasha has become something of my 'feminine ideal' - she is charming, lively, full of life, the quintessence of youthful innocence and vitality. While many literary women I know dream that Jane Austen's Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy (of Pride and Prejudice fame) were real so that he may sweep them off their feet, I have similar wishes about Natasha (that I might sweep her of of her feet, natch).

However, while she is first introduced as a plain child of thirteen, we are privileged to see her come of age throughout Tolstoy's saga, experiencing the various triumphs and pangs of youth which, regardless of where or when one grew up, seem completely natural and relatable under the watchful eye of Tolstoy. Perhaps the most defining moment for Natasha (at least, of the ones I have read so far) is the dissolution of her engagement to Prince Andrei Bolkonsky.

In many ways, Andrei is Tolstoy's 'heroic ideal' - he places duty before all else, believes fervently in that which he holds dear, and performs every task which he is given admirably and with gusto. While his inner turmoil and search for meaning remain one of the central conflicts in War and Peace, he is Tolstoy's 'man's man,' the hero that every character admires and desires to be. It is no surprise, then, when Andrei asks for Natasha's hand in marriage - after all, while he is the 'hero,' she is the quintessential 'female.' Their engagement enlivens Andrei from his seemingly constant disillusionment and he is more vibrant, joyous, and alive than we have seen him (no doubt a direct result of Natasha's influence).

It is during their engagement - but also during a prolonged absence which Andrei spends abroad - that Natasha meets Anatole Kuragin. From the start of the novel, Tolstoy predisposes his reader to dislike the Kuragin family. Patriarch Prince Vassily Kuragin is seen clamoring for a piece of Pierre's father's estate even before the Count has died, seeming to believe that he has some stake in it. His eldest son Ippolit Kuragin is a boorish simpleton who, for some reason or other, is quite popular in society. Vassily, in an attempt to get his hands on the Bezukhov fortune, practically whores his daughter Helene Kuragin to Pierre, who eventually marries him (despite her incessant infidelity - but more on the two of them in a later portion). 

Finally... Anatole. While Tolstoy does not say much about Anatole prior to our meeting him - save that he is popular with the ladies and a bit of a reveler - we are predisposed to dislike him because of where he comes from (the Kuragin family). After all, Vassily seems to have no morality to speak of, which has obviously trickled down and effected his children. Anatole, however, takes the cake - a womanizing playboy who spends much of his time gambling and boozing. Tolstoy reveals that he impregnated a Polish girl, married her (mainly because he was forced to do so), and abandoned both her and the child to continue his lifestyle of frivolity. In other words, Anatole is the quintessential 'bad boy' - the one girls love knowing full well he will only break their heart in the end. This is the man who sets his sights on sweet, innocent Natasha, the paragon on femininity and youthful innocence.

(I suppose what attracts Natasha to Anatole - other than his good looks - is his soul-capturing charisma. Tolstoy states that "looking into his eyes, [Natasha] felt with fear that that between him and her that barrier of modesty which she had always felt between herself and other men was not there at all" [II.5.x]. Anatole is the first man to look at her not as a girl or even a female, but as an object of desire. This signifies, I suppose, the moment when Natasha begins to lose her childlike innocence and wonder.)

I must admit that I cried when Natasha began ignoring the good advice of her friends and family who told her to ignore Anatole, when she made plans to abscond in the night and elope with this ruffian. Her failure to do so has more to do with Pierre and his putting his foot down than with anything else. In the aftermath, Natasha becomes a shell of her former self, broken, ailing, and weeping in her bed, unwilling and unable to receive anyone; Andrei returns to his disillusionment, forsaking both Natasha and everything she represented to him and returning to the military; Pierre, trapped in a loveless marriage, begins to realize his own love for the broken Natasha and recognizes the change that love makes within him.

"Uh, nice story, Stephen, but isn't this post supposed to be about religion?" I hear you asking. To which I reply, "Yes, I was just coming to that. Hold your horses."

Natasha, recovering from that 'bad boy phase' that every female seems destined to go through, seems lost within her own misery, so ill that her family are unable to head back to their home in Otradnoe from Moscow. As she begins to recover, the reader feels that she may never return to the vibrant young woman she once was:

"Natasha was more calm, but not more cheerful. She not only avoided all external conditions of joyfulness - balls, promenades, concerts, the theater - but she never once laughed so that tears were not heard behind her laughter. She could not sing. As soon as she began to laugh or tried to sing when she was by herself, tears choked her: tears of remorse, tears of remembrance of that irretrievable time of purity, tears of vexation that just so, for nothing, she had ruined her young life, which might have been so happy. Laughter and singing especially seemed to her a blasphemy against her grief." (III.1.xvii)

Then, a neighbor invites Natasha to go with her to take communion at the end of St. Peter's Fast and, upon going, the young girl is born anew. The quote that begins this post is taken from her experience at this service. Here, we see Tolstoy emphasizing through Natasha the power of God to heal the hurt and bitterness in a human heart. Natasha, once wracked by grief and misery at innocence lost, becomes rejuvenated once again: "But the happy day came, and when Natasha, on that Sunday so memorable for her, in a white muslin dress, came home after communion, for the first time in many months she felt calm and not burdened by the life that lay ahead of her" (III.1.xvii). We eventually see her regain her exuberance and love for life that seemed to have faded. Her faith brings her out of her grief and into new life!

I had also planned to highlight other members of the Rostov family here - Nikolai and Count Ilya especially - but I don't really have the time or the energy to do so at present moment. Instead, I'll sign off here and save the rest of the Rostovs for another post. Cheers!

Read the rest of this series:

• War and Peace and Religion: Part One - The Bolkonskys

My Russian Transformation

"During that year, Pierre had grown so fat that he would have been monstrous if he had not been so tall, so large of limb, and so strong that he obviously bore his corpulence lightly."

- Leo Tolstoy (III.1.xx)

Day Count: 87

Page Count: 671

Today, I would like to share with you a little something that's been happening with me since I decided to start reading War and Peace. In December, after I finished my role in MerryMAC Players' production of Christmas Belles, I decided to let my hair - both facial and regular-type - grow rather indiscriminately. The impetus for this decision was in an effort to look more like the characters I was reading about in Tolstoy's novel, 19th century Russians. Over the course of the last few months, then, my hair has been growing rather steadily, getting a little trim here and there as needed, but I am now the proud owner of a rather impressive beard. Here are a few transition pics over the last few months.

December 25, 2010:

The journey begins! Notice that subtle stubble around my chinny-chin-chin? Those are the early warning signs of the beard that is to come. At this point, I've only been growing the beard out for a little more than a week. More to come...

February 18, 2011:

Oddly, few acceptable pictures of me exist from during the month of January this year. That being said, the next two pictures were taken on the same day, though in admittedly different circumstances. This picture was taken in front of a classroom when I noticed I was having a particularly good hair day. The beard adds to that, methinks. :) 

February 18th, 2011:

A friend of mine was kind enough to invite me to her new place in Illinois to celebrate her birthday and I was more than happy to oblige! It was a great chance to cut loose, relax, unwind, and spend some time with friends I don't get to see very often. Thanks to both the angle and the lighting, the beard looks a bit thinner here, but I assure you, it's the same beard from above! :)

March 27, 2011:

Last night, I went with my family to a new favorite restaurant - Jockamo Upper Crust Pizza (if you visit, try their signature pie, the Slaughterhouse Five, named for Indy's own, Kurt Vonnegut!) - and I realized that I hadn't taken a picture of myself in a while. In a few short moments after taking these photos, this post formed in my head and I realized that I had to let my faithful readership in on this aspect of my War and Peace experiment.

More of the "War and Peace and Religion" series next time!

"War and Peace" and Religion: Part One - The Bolkonskys

"My calling is different... my calling is to be happy with a different happiness, the happiness of love and self-sacrifice."

- Princess Marya Bolkonsky (I.3.v)

"Prince Andrei understood that [something] had been said about him, and that it was Napoleon speaking... but at that moment, Napoleon seemed to him such a small, insignificant man compared with what was now happening between his soul and this lofty, infinite sky with clouds racing across it."
- Leo Tolstoy (I.3.xix)

Day Count: 85

Page Count: 666

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. It has been fifty-three days since my last Tackling Tolstoy post... and that is nothing short of 'wrong'.

Life has picked up and how since my last entry - travel, potentially bad news, plays, and all manner of other happenings and non-happenings have impeded any hope of steady or regular progress on this blog. As you can see (both from the page count above and the Twitter posts to the right of  this page), my reading of War and Peace has continued, but the pacing I'd originally wanted to maintain has slowed considerably. I am still considerably ahead of my initial "three-pages-a-day" pacing (by 411 pages, to be precise), but I still feel like I could be close to finished by this point had I kept up with my initial reading schedule. (Let's be honest: it was never going to last, but it's always fun to dream, isn't it?)

This post is intended to be the first in a series of (two? three? FOUR?!) posts chronicling Tolstoy's use of religion in defining his characters in War and Peace. Man's quest for God often directly parallels (and, perhaps, is driven by) his quest for meaning and purpose. In creating some of the most human characters in literature, the men and women in War and Peace each struggle on their own individual searches for meaning which bring them one at a time and rarely accidentally into contact with the Divine. Their experiences differ and the nature of their experiences helps to shape and define the people they grow into. It has been fascinating to watch their growth throughout this first half of the novel and I can only assume that Tolstoy will continue to grow and develop them over the course of the book.

Firstly, though...

As a general word of warning, this post is going to contain some details about the plot of War and Peace. For those of you among my readership who are either reading the book or planning to one day, you might not want to read this section. If you've already read the book or are living vicariously through my reading of it, then by all means continue. Thanks!

*Ahem* Now that that unpleasant business has been taken care of, we can get down to brass tacks. ("Oh, I didn't bring any. I drove.")


There are scads of characters in War and Peace - a fact that I address and then never re-address (as a logically-thinking human being might assume I would) here. Among those characters that are most influential to the overall story of War and Peace, they belong to one of three (or four, depending on whether or not you count the Kuragins) prominent Russian families - the Bolkonskys, the Bezukhovs, and the Rostovs. My hope is to take each family in turn and discuss the ways in which faith directly affects them and their development in the story. Let us start with the 'first family' of War and Peace, the Bolkonskys.

Prince Nikolai Andreévich Bolkonsky is the patriarch of the Bolkonsky family, formerly an important person in society, now having withdrawn to his country home where he lives a life as regimented and orderly as a Swiss clock. He is cantankerous and bristling with most, set in his ways and either unwilling or unable to change for anyone or anything. His opinions are 'facts' and his word is bond.

It does not seem that he has a 'religion' or 'faith' to speak of, per se, other than what appears to be a belief in schadenfreude (which, for those of you who don't speak German - or haven't seen Avenue Q - is "pleasure derived from the misfortune of others"). Prince Nikolai's central preoccupation seems to be the torture of his only daughter, Princess Marya Bolkonsky. In fact, his entire life seems to revolve around making her miserable. Whether belittling her for taking longer than he would like at mathematics or becoming romantically linked to her young friend, Nikolai's behavior seems like an odd amalgamation of monstrous, contrary, and
senile.

Marya has become a favorite character of mine. While not as fully developed as others in her family, she is easily the most spiritual of all of Tolstoy's characters and bears the brunt of her father's attacks with more grace and humility than I've ever seen from anyone - real or fictitious. She is the soul of Christian charity - housing wandering believers (whom her father would just as soon chase away belligerently) and prays both feverishly and fervently over her brother when his own faith is shaken (which it almost constantly is - more on that later).

While she is plain, she remains an eligible bachelorette due to her father's sizable wealth (none of which he plans to allot to Marya); however, her desires are not for marriage. After a brief and unfortunate flirtation with Anatole Kuragin (the unrepentant "ladies' man" of War and Peace), Marya realizes that perhaps she is not meant to be happy within the bonds of marriage, but rather with a life lived through compassion, charity, and self-sacrifice. In fact, she does not seem to seek marriage after this point, spending her time teaching her young nephew and caring for her ailing (though increasingly irascible and irritable) father.

Her brother, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, is one of the principal characters of Tolstoy's epic. In many ways, he is the most heroic character so far in the story and, in many ways, he is the most pitiable. Andrei appears at the beginning of War and Peace as a man who's faith has been shaken, if not entirely lost. While Tolstoy does not immediate give us the reason, it gradually begins to become clear - Andrei consistently misplaces his faith, i.e. he places his faith in people.

At the beginning of the novel, Andrei has become disillusioned with marriage, his relationship with his own wife having become frivolous and trivial, based on little more than mutual attraction. He becomes obsessed with the coming war and especially enamored with Napoleon Bonaparte. However, after a heroic display at the battle of Austerlitz - after which he is taken as a prisoner of war by Napoleon's men - Andrei becomes enraptured by the infinity of the sky, next to which even his idol Bonaparte looks pale and tiny.

This is the first truly 'spiritual' experience we see Andrei having. His disillusionment returns, however, after the death of his wife and the birth of his son. He withdraws into a deep depression, allowing his son Nikolai to be raised by his sister Marya. After a brief foray in politics, which serves to illuminate Andrei only for a season, he is disillusioned again until a chance encounter with Miss Natasha Rostova.

Natasha seems to remain Tolstoy's feminine ideal and she captures not only the heart of the reader, but of every male character in the novel as well. Andrei is no exception. Becoming enamored with her redeems him, but with Andrei, such atonement is often short-lived. While not going into too many details, Andrei's second chance at love ends with his now-typical disillusionment and his returning to government service for the first time since the birth of his son.

The Bolkonskys seem to be the second-most dysfunctional family in War and Peace (second, perhaps, only to the Kuragins), mainly because their spiritual house is far from 'in order.' Personally, I hope that Andrei and his sister are both able to find their peace in the end.

UPDATE (4/2/2011): As I was reading War and Peace last night and this morning, I realized that I was definitely able to make an update to this entry... so I'm making one.

Six days after the initial entry, I realized as I was reading that an update was necessary. Princess Marya Bolkonsky, easily the most pious and faithful person in War and Peace to date has had a major crisis of faith. Even in the midst of her most uncertain and trying times, Marya has always been able to take solace in the Lord and in prayer... until the death of her father. After suffering a stroke while attempting to organize his private militia against the French, Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky died... but not without finally making peace with his daughter.

In what has been one of the most touching scenes I've read yet in literature, the old prince (as Tolstoy often calls him) calls his daughter to his side and, with much effort, communicates his love for her and his regret at his treatment of her for so long. Prior to this action, Marya had - in her most private moments - wished for her father's death, but in the face of this revelation, she felt closer to him than she had felt before: "She could not understand anything, or think about anything, of feel anything except her passionate love for her father, a love which, it seemed to her, she had not known till that moment" (III.2.viii).

Upon her father's death, with the imminent threat of Napoleon's armies bearing down on her location, Marya is wracked with guilt at her once persistent desire for her father's demise: "...her vague thoughts were concentrated on one thing: she was thinking of the irrevocability of death and of her own inner loathsomeness, which she had not known about till then, and which had shown itself during her father's illness. She wanted but did not dare to pray, did not dare to address herself to God in the state of soul she was in" (III.2.x).

In this moment, the pious Marya is confronted with her own humanity and, in the face of it, cannot bear the weight of her sin. Rather than crying out to God, as she otherwise might, she - for the moment - remains content (after a fashion) wallowing in her own self-pity and self-loathing.

Oddly enough, it is an act of charity that shakes her out of this stupor. At realizing the peasants (muzhiks) have been without food for awhile now, Marya rallies to attempt to share with them from the stores of grain her father left behind and urges them to escape the oncoming French armies by traveling with her to Moscow. To her dismay and surprise, the muzhiks refuse her charity - whether out of a sense of pride or something other, Tolstoy never overtly states. I cannot imagine this refusal of her charity will inspire Marya, but will likely further burden her.

As stated earlier, it is my hope that Marya is able to find peace...