It's a book again.

Here's the thing: I know it's earned a reputation as being an overly-long, pretentious brick of paper, but I assure you, I only started reading War and Peace because I listened to the musical adaptation of its middle few chapters: Dave Malloy's Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. It's the most soap-operatic and romantic part of the novel, and set to techno beats and Russian folk melodies– well, what's a lowbrow lad to do? I wanted more.

With 1215 pages, Tolstoy has ample space to develop characters that are rich and riotous. The narrative moves fluidly between their internal monologues and exterior action, giving humanity to characters of all ages and stations. Old, thorny Marya Dmitryevna, hedonistic playboy (read: blonde) Anatole, introverted, devout Princess Marya– they all get a fair treatment under Tolstoy's hand.

It's not difficult to empathize with all of them, but I found particular affinity with the two protagonists, whose dilemmas and flaws I find myself oscillating between at this stage in life. Natasha Rostova is naïve and proud, a youth whose impulsiveness and puckish nature get her in over her head; Pierre Bezukhov is a bon vivant whose early years of adulthood have left him jaded and tired, wondering what to do next.

Compound that with the general feeling in Moscow that the distant rumblings of Napoleon will never reach them (much as the woes of the world at large today haven't penetrated the insular gardens of Lincoln, Nebraska) and you've got a book that landed in my lap at an eerily appropriate moment.

Natasha and Pierre belong primarily to the Peace chapters of the novel; the War segments follow Pierre's best friend (and Natasha's eventual fiancé), Andrei, and the big man himself– Napoleon. 

Some readers have claimed that one can skip some of the War and be just fine, and to them, I say that there's a reason it's long. Tolstoy himself served in combat, and it's his answer to human violence, making it so arduous to endure. War isn't a quick action-packed episode; it's pure destruction, the impact of which is often felt for generations. It's an on-and-on kind of nightmare.

The War chapters also allow Tolstoy to provide his thoughts on humanity: its existence and habits, and how studying it often raises more questions than it does answers. It's his complete worldview in essay form, and it's far more articulate and philosophically sound than anything I could ever hope to pen. Near the end of the book, he ruminates on history in general, and the rather approximate way we approach it. Why, he asks, did all those men from Western Europe march thousands of miles eastward toward Moscow? Simply because Napoleon asked them to? Maybe, but his word couldn't keep them from looting and deserting. It's not as easy as saying, "Napoleon ordered it, so it happened," because there were several hundred thousand soldiers with intellects and wills and arms that at any point could deviate from their orders, and many did. Tolstoy asserts that the Napoleonic Wars happened because they had to. Men do the same things over and over again, every day, but what keeps them from going mad is the illusion that they have the power to act differently, should they choose. If one feels completely bound to never changing, one dies. 

The Peace chapters (a Tumblr user who speaks Russian provided the insight that the translation of Tolstoy's original title, Война и миръ, could more accurately be translated as War and Society, implying that the juxtaposition between the words is not simply action vs. inaction, but bloody chaos vs. social order) address the problems already inherent in the Russian aristocracy a century before the Revolution of 1917. They are idle, wasteful, and for the most part, unequipped to deal with existing outside of their extravagantly choreographed leisure. But my, are they entertaining.

As per usual, I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll leave off with a quote that has stuck with me since finishing this behemoth.

"To understand all is to forgive all."

– This one stuck with me because I know from experience that it is much harder to forgive someone when you can't comprehend where they're coming from. In turn, once you can empathize with a person, it's much harder to hold on to a grudge. In the context of war, it's why diplomacy is so important. If you can reach common-ground before you reach a battleground, you can save a lot of time and resources. And limbs.

//

I did the cover far more minimally than I typically do for anything else, but it's War and Peace, man, come on. The title is enigmatic and grand and too much embellishment would be gilding the lily. I did sample a bit of illustration from the British Library's public domain Flickr account, since it's filled to the brim with material from around the time of the novel's publication. The comet motif is a nod to Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, but also to the reason that title was chosen for the musical: in a time where men wreak so much destruction, the arrival of the comet is a reminder of the immensity of the universe and the foolishness of mortals who commit acts of atrocity in their minutes on earth. 

Also, I kept it stripped back because I modeled the type off of a modernist Cyrillic typeface from a Soviet toothpaste ad, and I didn't want to hide it with frippery.