Dannykenyon > Recent Status Updates

“Oh how absurd you are! It is not beauty that endears, it’s love that makes us see beauty.”

“There was a new feature in Pierre’s relations with Willarski, with the princess, with the doctor, and with all the people he now met, which gained for him the general goodwill. This was his acknowledgement of the impossibility of changing a man’s convictions by words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling, and seeing things each from his own point of view.”

“The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one’s needs, and consequent freedom in the choice of one’s occupation, that is, of one’s way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man’s highest happiness.”

“we need only penetrate to the essence of any historic event—which lies in the activity of the general mass of the people who take part in it—to be convinced that the will of the historic hero does not control the actions of the mass but is itself continually controlled.”

“Natasha and Princess Marya also wept now, but not because of their own personal grief; they wept with a reverent and softening emotion, which had taken possession of their souls at the consciousness of the simple and solemn mystery of death that had been accomplished in their presence.”

‘Since the world began and men have killed one another no one has ever committed such a crime against his fellow-man without comforting himself with this same idea. This idea is le bien public, the hypothetical welfare of other people.’

He took his seat beside the aide-de-camp on duty and drove into the suburb. ‘Moscou déserte!’ he said to himself. ‘Quel événement invraisemblable!’

‘To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of our investigation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and study the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are moved.’

Catching up on the Battle of Borodino as I whizz home from a long weekend in Milano. Tolstoy is unsubtle in showing how little he thinks of Napoleon’s ‘military genius’ and his nationalistic undercurrent is jarring in parts. Onwards to Moscow we go (or home in my case)!

‘“Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified at what they have done!” he thought, aimlessly going towards a crowd of stretcher-bearers moving from the battlefield.

But behind the veil of smoke the sun was still high, and in front and especially to the left, near Semyonovsk, something seemed to be seething in the smoke…’

“‘I will tell you what to do, and what I do. Dans le doute, mon Cher,’ he paused, ‘abstiens-toi;’ he articulated the French proverb deliberately.”

“She felt in her heart a devout and tremulous awe at the thought of the punishment that overtakes men for their sins, and especially of her own sins, and she prayed to God to forgive them all, and her too, and to give them all, and her too, peace and happiness.”

‘So others are even more afraid than I am!’ He thought. ‘So that’s all there is to what is called heroism! And did I do it for my country’s sake? And how was he to blame, with his simple and blue eyes? And how frightened he was! He thought I would kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand trembled. And they have given me a St. George’s Cross. I can’t make it out at all.’

“Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east to the west slaying their fellows.”

Beginning book three, set 1812.

“So they went through their memories, smiling with pleasure: not the sad memories of old age, but poetic, youthful ones—those impressions of one’s distant past in which dreams and realities blend—and they laughed with quiet enjoyment.”

“The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labour—idleness—was a condition of the first man’s blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race not only because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our brows, but because our moral nature is such that we cannot be both idle and at ease.”

Back in the upper echelons of Russian society after the chaos of Austerlitz, Rostov is going off the rails meanwhile Pierre has found spiritual purpose via a cult. An indelible line:

“Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alive—live: tomorrow you’ll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in comparison with eternity?”

Details of the battle of Schön Grabern are immersive and feel well grounded by the heroics of little Tushin. His deflation and confusion during the post-battle debrief with the elitist officers felt poignant.

Several main characters are starting to feel more fleshed out; I.e., Price Andrei’s moral compass, strength of character in the face of adversity, etc.