War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
April 7, 2015.
Volume 1;
The book started with a party given by Anna Pavlovna Scherer (the best friend of the Empress Dowager who was the most powerful woman at the court of her son, Tsar Alexander) in St. Petersburg in 1805 and introduced Pierre Bezukhov and his good friend Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and the Kuragin family. Pierre is one of the illegitimate children of Count Bezukhov, an old and wealthy aristocrat. Although he behaved a little strange and asocial, he was his father’s favorite child and was educated abroad for several years. Prince Andrei Bolkonsky was the son of Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky, who used to be a general under Catharina The Great and retired afterwards to the family’s country estates at Bald Hill. Andrei was an intelligent and integer person with a slight sarcastic trait that caused him sometimes unwanted trouble. He had a complete contempt for his wife Lisa (who was a big superficial socializer) and even displayed that publicly. His unhappy family life and the superficial mentality of St Petersburg’s elite made him to confide to Pierre that he contemplated about enlisting into the army. Also at the party was Prince Kuragin and his depraved family; his sons Hypolite (the family moron) and Anatole (intelligent, complete amoral womanizer and boozer) and their sister Helene ( an amoral beauty of low intellect but a keen manipulator). The main occupation of the Kuragin family was to take care of themselves; they focused at that time on finding wealthy partners for their offspring to cover for the dwindling family fortune. Andrei specifically warned Pierre not to hang out with that bunch and to get a grip on his drinking and womanizing. Pierre promised him he would but was shortly afterwards sent away from St Petersburg with Anatole and his friends when after a drunk escapade they tied up a policeman to a bear.
They land in Moscow where the book introduced the family of Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov and his wife a loving couple who were constantly fussing about their ad hoc financials and their four adolescent children. Their thirteen years old daughter thinks that she’s in love with Boris Drubetskoy, an impoverished noble who is about to get a commission as an officer into the imperial army but who had to lend the five hundred rubles needed to buy his first uniform from his uncle, count Bezukhov. The 20 year old Nikolas has set his mind upon his cousin Sonya, a fifteen years old orphan that was brought up by the Rostov family while the oldest one, Vera was set to marry a Russian-German officer, Adolf Karlovich Berg, whose family was well off.
Shortly afterwards count Bezukhov got a sixth, fatal stroke and his legitimate heirs already warmed up to the prospect of receiving a big chunk of his heritage, when they suddenly learned that the old count had written a letter to the Tsar asking him to legalize posthumously Pierre so that he could inherit title, land and fortune. With the help of Princess Anna Mihalovna Drugotbetskaya (an impoverished family member) he managed to retrieve the letter just before the count died and the other family members could destroy it. In return he promised to support her and her son Prince Boris Drubetskoy, who was pursuing a career into imperial service.
Meanwhile at the Bolkonsky estate at Bald Hills, Prince Andrei left to join the army to be an aide-de-camp to Prince Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov while the Russian army was readying itself for a war with France in Austria. He left his pregnant wife into the care of his bucolic father and his super-religious sister Marya, who was constantly verbally abused by their father.
Into the preparations of the war, the 20 years old Nikolai Rostov got drafted to serve as an ensign into a hussar regiment and would have his first battle experience at the Schöngrabern engagement. As so many young soldiers he was influenced by the charisma of Tsar Alexander and fell into idolatry of the Tsar. After that Boris introduced him to Andrei and in a fit of righteous impertinence, he insulted Andrei, who decided to let it pass by. Soon after that they were all engaged into the disastrous battle of Austerlitz, where Andrei would get wounded.
9 April 2015.
Volume 2.
Nikolai Rostov returned home to Moscow on a leave from the army to find his family tethering of the brink of a bankruptcy. His mother begged him to marry a rich girl, but he remained headstrong about marrying his penniless cousin Sonya. He’s accompanied on holydays by a fellow officer called Denisov, who proposed to his sister, the beautiful Natasha, but his proposal was rejected.
After receiving his heritage and new title, Pierre Bezukhov turned into a very eligible bachelor, but got by the old Prince Kuragin lured into marrying his amoral, stupid but beautiful daughter Helene who was rumored to have an incestuous relation with her brother Anatole. After the marriage she starts a romance with Dolokhov, who openly mocks Pierre about it. Finally Pierre lost his temper and challenged Dolokhov to a duel. Although Dolokhov was an experienced duelist, Pierre managed to wound him and remained unharmed. After the duel he threw his wife out and in search for a new spirituality he joined the free masons where he got embroiled with their esoteric philosophy and internal policies. Into his quest to become a better person he tried to liberate his serfs but got instead swindled by the manager of his estates and in the end realized nothing from al his good intentions while thinking he did.
His friend, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky managed his estates as an enlightened despot; he created schools and hospitals for the serfs, improved their living and working conditions and liberated them without breathing a word about it while Pierre was boasting about his reforms that behind his back went nowhere. On top of it, when his wife Helene begs him to take her back, again all common sense but inspired by some metaphysical teachings of the free masons, he took her back. Despite her superficiality, she was shortly afterwards running the most thriving intellectual and artistically salon of St Petersburg.
While Pierre was lost in the esoteric theories of the freemasons, his friend Andrei was composing a study about the shortcomings of the Russian army and how to overcome them. When he finished his essay, he felt compelled to present it to the Tsar or to someone with influence at the court and went to St Petersburg. There he meets the 17 years old Natasha Rostov and was revitalized by her youth and charm. After a couple of visits to the family, he proposed and they accepted, but his father imposed a year delay of the wedding. Initially the would be wedded were crushed, but then Andrei decided to go abroad to cure from his injuries and the Rostovs returned to Moscow to visit some old friend.
When the Rostovs went to the opera in Moscow, they ran into Anatole and Helene Kuragan. Anatole lusted for Natasha and with the complicity of his sister and a friend, he developed an ingenious plan to seduce her. They exchanged very passionate letters and at some point Natasha wrote a letter to Andrei’s sister Marya, announcing that she broke the engagement and decided secretly to elope with Anatole. At the very last moment her plans are torpedoed by her cousin Sonya. Pierre was called in because he was Andrei’s best friend to mediate and from him she learned that Anatole was already married to a Polish woman and had no intention to marry her. She would have been eternally dishonored and shamed because she fell for an egoistic womanizer. Andrei returned all her letters and presents to Pierre and announced that his honor didn’t allow him to renew his proposal. While intermediating between Natasha and Andrei, Pierre discovered that he fell in love by himself with Natasha and interpreted the Great Comet of 1811 as a good omen; indicating a new start.
The Maharajagar 