Midway through 'War and Peace'
Hair 'á la grecque', men with personalities wrapped in professions, and the modalities of boredom apropos fiction
This post carries my notes, observations, and fancies as I read Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace in the chapter-a-day readalong conducted by Simon Haisell. It is a combination of the fifth and sixth of twelve such planned monthly instalments (I missed posting last month). Reading these posts doesn’t require you to have any familiarity with War and Peace. You don’t have to read the posts in sequence either, though if you want to check out the first four monthly posts, you can find them here.
Destiny’s Hairstyle
In my reading of the novel in early May, two of the novel’s central characters, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky (31) and Countess Natasha Rostova (17), get engaged. Tolstoy paints a detailed portrait of their mutual attraction, which begins to come into illumination when they dance with each other at a ball. For this moment, Tolstoy feeds our visual imagination amply over the preceding chapters, building anticipation with the same expository verve that he employed before the commencement of the battles of Schöngrabern or Austerlitz1. We see things when Andrei and Natasha come together to dance. A part of this seeing derives from how patiently we are introduced to the ballroom and how we come to regard its spatiality (including the locations of several characters). But the more significant constituent here is how well-aided our visualization of the two main characters inside the ballroom is.2
Tolstoy spares no effort with Natasha, especially. We know what she’s dressed in: white gauze over pink silk slip, with roses on her bodice and her hair dressed à la grecque3. We also know that her feet, hands, necks, and ears are washed, perfumed and powdered4. We also know she is wearing open-work silk stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons5.
BBC’s 2016 adaptation handled the outfits and the dance well, though I think they missed pink in Natasha’s dress (and what about the bodice?). Their Andrei did, it must be said, correspond with Tolstoy’s short description: ‘the white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing stockings and dancing-shoes’.
As must be apparent above, Tolstoy takes time to describe characters’ outfits, especially at social gatherings, and tends to focus on fine details. Even so, his ability to do that with female characters, down to the level of particularities like accessories6 and coiffures and whether or not shoes have ribbons, speaks to a particular bent of novelistic mind, one that is endowed with powers of observation and visualization, yes, but one that is also invested in repertoire-building and sees descriptive range as a way of interfacing with a richer (and richer across genders) fictional world. The underlying here is the understanding that objects are not just objects, that they not only fill our world but also make us us7, and that interiority is possible only with the feedback loop and stations of the exterior. This is in contrast to Dostoyevsky8, which might be significant for a certain history of the novel, for the novel of ideas believes it owes more to Dostoyeski than to Tolstoy, and has—I claim—ended up following Dostoyesky’s characteristic object-level scantness as some kind of value, ignoring the likelihood that this scantness is most likely derived from nothing more considered than a lack of descriptive repertoire. I can’t make myself go as far as Nabokov, who rated Dostoyevsky C- while he rated Tolstoy A+, and who is said to have told his Cornell students that ‘style and structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash’, but I see no point in not describing a room or an outfit or landscape in precision and detail: for its own joy: for building a denser world: for introducing more micro-actions and micro-choices to the story: for giving characters’ interiorities more to cling on to.
The more the objectival density in a world of fiction, the more interconnections there can be between different strands of the narrative. Andrei’s attraction to Natasha is based on perceiving her as full of life. But there might be an objectival element to it too, one available to him at first glance towards Natasha, and doing its instantaneous work on his perceptions even as he remains unconscious of both the element and its effect. That element is Natasha’s coiffure, à la grecque, for it is not the only time a woman is shown to have done her hair like that in Andrei’s life. A few chapters before the dance, while transitioning from grief-addled despair in a rural setting to a commitment to urban activity, Andrei looks at a portrait of his dead wife Liza, ‘who with hair curled à la grecque looked tenderly and gaily at him out of the gilt frame.’ This is the only other mention of the hairstyle in the novel.
So it turns out that Andrei’s attraction to Natasha may have something to do with an image of his dead wife. Tolstoy does not explicitly articulate this connection for us; it takes an alert reader to spot it (I’ll be taking compliments here). But it bears emphasising that without the impulse towards precise description and without the necessary repertoire to pull it off, there would be no connection for an alert reader to spot. Andrei wasn’t affectionate to his wife, who died in childbirth just as he returned from war in 1805, and there was a feeling of guilt in him. That perceiving Natasha as lively is the counterweight to a failure to see the same in Liza, and that being joyous with Natasha is the counterweight to being a curmudgeon with Liza are high psychological insights. But the connection through the hairstyle is what earths the circuitry of these psychological currents. The fact that Andrei remains unaware of this earthing and yet is attracted to Natasha, makes him all the more human.9
Andrei’s infatuation with Natasha is so total, in fact, that it gives him life-changing vibes. Here is Andrei alone after spending a day with Natasha:
It did not enter his head that he was in love with Natasha, he was not thinking about her, but only picturing her to himself, and in consequence all life appeared in a new light. ‘Why do I strive, why do I toil in this narrow, confined frame, when life, all life with all its joys, is open to me?’ said he to himself. And for the first time for a very long while he began making happy plans for the future.
Inevitably, these happy plans for the future begin to include their raison d’etre: Natasha. Firstly, Andrei acknowledges to himself that he’s in love. After some delicate wooing followed by an awful delay of a month (which is caused by Andrei’s desire to seek permission from his father, and which torments a clueless Natasha to no end), Andrei declares his love to Natasha and proposes marriage to her. Natasha is delighted, of course. But Tolstoy gives us a little wiggle of doubt from Andrei’s mind right after receiving the ‘Yes, yes!’ and ‘Oh, I am so happy!’ from Natasha.
Prince Andrei held her hands, looked into her eyes, and did not find in his heart his former love for her. Something in him had suddenly changed; there was no longer the former poetic and mystic charm of desire, but there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness, fear at her devotion and trustfulness, and an oppressive yet joyful sense of the duty that now bound him to her for ever. The present feeling, though not so bright and poetic as the former, was stronger and more serious.
This contrarian flash’s inclusion in Andrei’s and Natasha’s exchange is a testament to Tolstoy’s depth of understanding of the human mind. As soon as love is accepted, as soon as it is found to be reciprocated and the obstacles to its consummation erased, it becomes vulnerable to the sensible. All that was until now negated by heat and ardour, all that was papered over by passion, all that was occluded by love-fugue, all that was drowned in the flood of good feeling—all of it turns up as fodder to reason. Andrei disliked his first wife’s enjoyment in society, her disinclination for philosophical enquiry, and the odd demand or two her presence in his life put on him. With his proposal accepted, he realizes things aren’t going to be much different. For his overall feeling, Tolstoy still uses the word joyful, but there is also pity, and fear, and a sense of the oppressive.
Such a guy, Andrei, letting á la grecque go full circle.
Danilo and Balaga
Andrei’s war wound, suffered in 1805 at the Battle of Austerlitz, still wracks his health, and recovery requires him to head for the resorts of middle Europe. For this reason, his wedding to Natasha shall take place a year after the engagement. The other reason for this delay is housed in the hope that a year would be enough for his father to accept the match (senior Bolkonsky is a complex killjoy).
Such a delay obviously signals doom for the lovers. Tolstoy gives us nothing of Andrei’s life in Switzerland, preferring a teenaged Natasha’s emotional upheavals more than Andrei’s sedate constancy (of feeling and action).
A few months after Andrei’s departure, in September, the action moves to the Rostov estate in Otradnoe (apparently not too far from Moscow), where Tolstoy sets a series of chapters of a cinematic wolf hunt involving Natasha and her brother, Nikolai. These chapters, with their killing for fun, with scores of borzois and hounds chasing witless wolves and foxes, with their tendency towards spectacle, were distressing for many of my co-readers. That the author displays no sentiment for the wild animal perhaps adds to the distress. Assuming this was a done thing among Russian aristocrats at the time (early 19th century), and focusing on its process-level specifics, helped me draw some enjoyment out of this segment, which ends with a superlatively merry party, where Natasha dances to Russian folk songs. This is the same dance that gave Orlando Figes’ Cultural History of Russia its title. Figes finds in Natasha’s dance a signal movement for Russian aristocracy—away from Frenchified delicateness and hypocrisy, towards rooted Russian ruggedness. It is notable that the alcohol Natasha has had before the dance is not high wine but rustic mead.
The wolf hunt before the dance is almost carnivalesque, and requires not a small amount of expertise. The Rostovs, apart from raising many borzois for this very purpose, have expert huntsmen in their employ. The head huntsman, one named Danilo, is rendered by Tolstoy in great, striking precision:
‘O-hoy!’ came at that moment that inimitable huntsman’s call which unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and round the corner came Danilo the head huntsman and head kennel-man, a grey, wrinkled old man with hair cut straight over his forehead, Ukrainian fashion, a long bent whip in his hand, and that look of independence and scorn of everything that is only seen in huntsmen. He doffed his Circassian cap to his master and looked at him scornfully. This scorn was not offensive to his master. Nikolai knew that this Danilo, disdainful of everybody and who considered himself above them, was all the same his serf and huntsman.
In describing a visceral aristocratic pastime, then, of which it is possible Tolstoy knew details only because of his own aristocratic background, the Russian master pauses to describe the serf who makes it all possible, granting him, in the same profile, the quirk of aloof superiority. One senses in this a certain regard of expertise on the author’s part10, and also a keen awareness of how a specialist’s narrowed-down world-view becomes a curious constituent of personality. Danilo’s sense of superiority is limited to the activity of hunting, but the resultant disdain has, one assumes from just the evidence of this paragraph, spilt over and become general. We see a gruff old man, fully accepting of his station in life and given, presumably, to communicating through winking and spitting and cussing and making animal noises, one who can give no thought to the possibility that those he softly scorns for, say, misreading the weather or mishandling borzois or letting prey pass in indecision might, in other near or distant worlds, know and do things he cannot. Danilo hasn’t seen other worlds.
Tolstoy’s regard of expertise is held by the aristocrats in the Rostov family too. In fact, there is an element of consternation in their interface with Danilo. Nikolai Rostov is careful with the head huntsman, speaking timidly in the beginning. His father, Count Rostov, is later berated by Danilo for letting a wolf pass: he shakes a bit with those words, but takes them without umbrage or complaint.
With such working-class side characters as Danilo, who have relevance for the novel only in the clutch of chapters they make an appearance in, Tolstoy shows himself as considerate and attentive through just the act of including them in their full person and personality. It is clear that he has a keen understanding of both the rural and urban specimens of this mould, and can differentiate between the two through somewhat essentialist portraiture. A few chapters down the line, we meet Balaga, a troika driver in Moscow, who is similar to Danilo in that he’s made available to us primarily through, and for, his profession. His appearance:
Balaga was a fair-haired, short, and snub-nosed peasant of about twenty-seven, red-faced, with a particularly red thick neck, glittering little eyes, and a small beard. He wore a fine, dark-blue, silk-lined cloth coat over a sheepskin.
Like Danilo, Balaga also winks, but the similarity carries no further. He is a Moscow cab driver for a couple of rich bad boys in the novel, a job that requires him to jaw a bit. He is boastful, in fact, and does not shy away from recounting his exploits with horses. Just like the aristocrats he serves, whom he serves with no permanence, unlike Danilo’s case with the Rostovs, and whom he understands as needing his services only for mischief, Balaga is performatively rash and unscrupulous by principle. There is greed and appetite in him. One could say that he is wise to the ways of the city, as he has to be. While Danilo has benign masters, Balaga has an indulgent clientele. Tolstoy knows what the difference is.
The Modalities of Boredom
After the thrills of the wolf hunt and the party following it, Natasha’s life returns to being a wait for Andrei’s return. As Christman approaches, boredom peaks.
The boredom of a character is, I realise, a solid technical problem for a fiction writer, for boredom’s precondition is nothing significant happening, neither in the realm of action nor interiority. Boredom may lead to epiphany, but as soon as there is an epiphany, boredom vanishes. How do you keep a character bored on screen? And what does this keeping achieve? As I write these lines, I try to recall any instances of reading a chapter or a page with a character who was just, well, bored. That I can’t think of a single instance is a private proof of sorts. Fiction differs from real life, and insofar as that difference can be located in its preference for significance, the boring parts of our days and months are edited out (or, as is more likely, never written).
Tolstoy shows us Natasha’s boredom through a simple insight: that boredom of certain kinds manifests in arbitrary action, aimed at nothing more salutary than animating the surroundings and gaining momentary relief. Before I provide a glimpse of how Tolstoy does that, ie., enlivens Natasha’s state of boredom, let me philosophize a bit on the kinds of boredom.
Boredom in solitude, wherein the bored person feels a general disinclination for private action of any kind and has no hope or desire for company. Such boredom is impossible for fiction to sustain, for all that is available as the material is internal monologue committed to staying in arenas of immateriality or micro-actions of the same genre (like filing nails, beating the tattoo on a table, or humming a song half-heartedly).
Boredom in solitude, wherein the bored person feels a general disinclination to private action of any kind but has hope or desire for company. Such boredom can be ameliorated by seeking company, and this seeking may be included in fiction.
Boredom in silent company, wherein the bored person feels an inclination for privacy. Such boredom is simply killed by going into one’s own room. But it may lapse into the first category.
Boredom in silent company, wherein the bored person feels no inclination for privacy. Such boredom is killed by trying to animate the company. This animation is forced, brought about through slightly zany actions, and may or may not provide momentary relief.
Boredom in loud company, wherein the bored person has no hope of privacy. This boredom must be suffered, and can be a savvy inclusion in fiction, for what bores the character in the conversation on the table may not be so boring for the reader and can deepen the characterisation of those who are speaking as well the one who is silently bored.
Boredom in loud company, wherein the bored person has a hope of privacy. This boredom is killed by getting away from company and seeking either silent, understanding company, or solitude. It’s not a particularly attractive boredom for fiction, I think.
Natasha Rostova’s boredom is Type 4. At the Rostov mansion, Natasha is bored when alone and bored when she’s with her family, who are just sitting around and not doing anything fun. So what does she do? She raises some hell with the servants, creating a load of activity out of pure whim. She goes first into the maids’ room, releasing a young maid from the scolding of an older one; then crosses the dancing hall (memories of Andrei?) to go to the vestibule, where she orders the card-playing footmen to bring her a fowl, a cock, some oats, and a piece of chalk from the yard (we don’t learn for what reason; possible a game?); then goes to the butler’s pantry and asks them to bring a samovar even though it is not time for tea yet; and then asks the buffoon (they have a buffoon of their own!) what sort of children should she have:
No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble as Natasha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to send them on some errand. She seemed to be trying whether any of them would get angry or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no one’s orders so readily as they did hers. ‘What can I do, where can I go?’ thought she, as she went slowly along the passage.
‘Nastasya Ivanovna, what sort of children shall I have?’ she asked the buffoon, who was coming towards her in a woman’s jacket.
‘Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers,’ answered the buffoon.
‘O Lord, O Lord, it’s always the same! Oh, where am I to go? What am I to do with myself?’ And tapping with her heels she ran quickly upstairs to see Vogel and his wife who lived on the upper storey.
While reading this section—Natasha’s dire boredom in full whimsical splendour—I wondered what Tolstoy’s intentions were. What tendency of Natasha’s character is illustrated here? The answer was clear on consideration. The section was written to render an indelible portrait of Natasha’s childishness, a trait that Andrei had noted in her during his marriage proposal. Children are liable to suffer boredom out of a constant need for animation and excitement. Natasha is a betrothed child, then, and when she considers that the next big excitement in her life (her wedding) requires her to wait, her situation seems insufferable to her. Here is Natasha’s exchange with her mother just before her fickle rounds with the servants
‘Mama, I want him. Why should I be wasted like this, Mama?’
Her voice broke, tears poured from her eyes, and she turned quickly to hide them and left the room.
For Natasha, to wait is to be wasted. This episode of boredom, then, set right in the epicentre of her waiting, is one of the most important foregrounding events of her life. In other words, Tolstoy has just made boredom significant.
For a novel with war scenes and matters of life and death, one tiny miracle of War and Peace, a miracle without which it would not have earned its name, is how high the stakes remain for characters during peace-time
Tolstoy addresses not just our verbal imagination, but—even more—our visual imagination.
Orhan Pamuk, The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist
There’s a fur cloak, too. But it is removed when she enters the hall.
Dall-E didn’t do too well with the description, getting a bit too flustered about the bodice-roses and making Natasha look like she's been forced into a life of beauty.
I regard Tolstoy’s specification of washed here as an early-19th-century peculiarity. It seems that even rich people weren’t daily bathers then, least of all, I imagine, in chilly Russia.
Also, odd to insist that the feet are washed when they are anyway going to be clad in satin shoes. But this is Tolstoy going the full measure
I have written a whole post about fichus.
In fiction, when you describe my room, you’re describing me
Whereas Tolstoy's world is teeming with suggestive, subtly placed objects, Dostoyevsky's rooms almost seem to be empty.
Orhan Pamuk, The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist
The fact that Tolstoy doesn’t make the connection explicit may mean there is no intended connection. The cathedral of my argument collapses in this scenario. But it’s also true that Tolstoyan omniscience is peculiarly delimited, in that he could not have made this connection explicit even if he wanted to. What I mean here is that the Tolstoyan narrator knows objective details like battle formations and subjective details like characters’ interiorities, but with the latter, its awareness is not total and does not extend into the unconscious. What a character doesn’t know about the objective world can be told to us, but what a character is unaware of in their subjective world is simply inaccessible. So if Andrei didn't know of the connection, there’s no way Tolstoy could have told us.
Ivan Turgenev, Tolstoy’s contemporary, published in 1852 a cycle of short stories available in English as A Sportsman’s Sketches (I couldn’t find a translator’s name). These stories carry profiles of huntsmen like Danilo, and I wonder if it was to have some sort of conversation with Turgenev’s earlier work that made Tolstoy write the hunting chapters and include Danilo. The book was suggested to me by co-reader Arthur Manzi.