War and Peace, and Advent
With the Advent season already on our doorstep, I found an unlikely source of reflection on the meaning of the Incarnation, and the hope we have in Jesus. I found it in Pierre Bezukhov, one of the protagonists in the great Russian classic, War and Peace.
War and Peace is considered one of the greatest books of the nineteenth century. It explores the French invasion of Russia in 1812, delves into the complex relationships and characters of two families, the Rostovs and the Bolkonskies, and offers a critique of the oft-romanticized view of history of the war that many of Tolstoy’s contemporaries were offering up.
Its author, the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, is also responsible for another one of the century’s great works, Anna Karenina, and influenced the leaders like Mahatmas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. with his pacificism and nonviolent application of the New Testament teachings. My version of War and Peace was translated by power couple Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokvosky, known also for translating enduring Russian classics such as Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Gogol’s Dead Souls.
Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy is a genius at what’s sometimes called psychic distancing. His project is ambitious—to cover one of the most sweeping and consequential military invasions in Russian history, and to create, at the same time, compelling fictional characters who are both implicated in the world event but also stand on their own. Tolstoy often “zooms out” and ponders the meaning of the war, entering philosophical forays that deal with determinism, chance, and genius. Then he “zooms in,” shuffling the psychic distance so we get a close and dazzlingly real portrait of human beings, which, if you’re like me, is what the reader cares about the most. That, I’d argue, is one of the many powers of the literary craft—keeping both pictures in harmonious tension. There’s world history and its nebulous trajectory, and then there’s the impending marriage between the fiery Natasha Rostov and the serious, reserved Prince Andrei. There are nations at war, and then there are dinners in high society in Moscow, where gossip and games are common fare.
As admirable as Tolstoy’s craft is in those respects, the character arc of Pierre Bezukhov is perhaps his most stunning achievement in the novel. Pierre starts out as an illegitimate son with a penchant for mean pranks and dissipation. He is a drunkard, gambles, has affairs with women, and lacks purpose in life. Through a disappointing marriage and frightful duel in which he’s luckily spared, Pierre joins the esoteric Mason society, devoting himself to abstract teachings that are purportedly derived from Christianity. At first, his spirit is lifted to new heights, and he thinks he has found the meaning he’s long been looking for. But, over time, the zeal fades, and Pierre goes back to searching and to his old habits. A series of events finds him in the decisive battle at Borodino, and ultimately, a prisoner of war at the hands of the invading Frenchmen.
You might think 1,000 pages is unnecessary to get to this point, but the sense of journey you get by reading War and Peace is not accidental. While arduous, the journey towards maturity is , and so Pierre’s development feels believable.
A wealthy man, Pierre is suddenly experiencing deprivation. But, after all his years of seeking fulfillment in other places, even in the religion of the Masons, he realizes a profound truth. This quote won’t give away the plot, but it shows just how far this character has come along, and furthermore, why it made me think of Advent.
“He could have no purpose, because he now had faith—not faith in some rules, or words, or thoughts, but faith in a living, ever-sensed God. Before he had sought for Him in the purposes he set for himself. This seeking for a purpose had only been a seeking for God; and suddenly he had learned in his captivity, not through words, not through arguments, but through immediate sensation, what his nanny had told him long ago: that God is here, right here, everywhere. He experienced the feeling of a man who has found what he was seeking under his own feet, while he had been straining his eyes looking far way from himself. All his life he had looked off somewhere, over the heads of the people around him, yet there was no need to strain his eyes, but only to look right in front of him" (p. 1103-4)
I value the proper place of argument and abstract thought to contemplate truths about God, but this passage hit me. What if God is not just a concept in my head, but is a real Person who exists apart from my conceptions of who He is? The passage was a timely introduction to the Advent season, when Christians are reminded at the end of yet another sin and darkness-ridden year, that God’s answer to our poor estate was to send us a baby. His name? Immanuel, or “God with us.”
These past months, I’ve been distracted by words. Ideology, politics, Twitter, (even good books like War and Peace) have all swerved me from the Word made flesh, God made man, who remains among us even today. Pierre suddenly realized that he didn’t have to vault through the heavens to reach some secret, Gnostic truth. He only had to look and see the God who had vaulted through the heavens to get to him.
Advent comes at the darkest time of the year. Pierre found God during the darkest time of his life, in a prison, half-starved and near death. The experience upended his perspective. He no longer pursued the conventional paths of meaning-making. All those paths pointed to God, but left him wanting. I hope this Christmas season, our worn-out paths will turn again to Bethlehem, where the ancient truth can be renewed again: God is with us, no matter how dark it is, or how far we have drifted.