Chutes & Ladders: a classic reversal

Posted on January 23rd, 2008 in War & Peace by benmc

The end is near . . . I’m in Book 14, less than 200 pages still to go!

[To get you up to speed, the French are retreating as quickly as possible from Moscow and the Russian army is trying to chase them out. Pierre, my favorite character, has been dragged along by the French as a prisoner of war. He’s bare-footed with threadbare clothes and meager rations. The weather is turning cold, and people are dropping left and right — French and Russian alike — from sickness, cold and exhaustion.]

Pierre, always seeking, always learning, has come to a hard-fought realization: in spite of the horrible situation, he’s found a measure of peace and contentment. Pierre finds he’s grateful for the little food, clothes, and companionship he has. Tolstoy writes:

Pierre passed through hardships almost up to the extreme limit of privation that a man can endure. . . . And now without any thought of his own, he had gained that peace and that harmony with himself simply through the horror of death, through hardships, through what he had seen in [his fellow prisoner] Karataev.

Peace through pain . . .

Recently I visited a Lutheran worship service where the pastor preached on truth and pain. He said:

“To seek the truth is to subject yourself to pain — the pain of change or the pain of regret.”

This line rings true with what Pierre is going through. He’s finding truth — about his privilege, his limits, his vulnerability — and he’s enduring physical pain in a way that’s new to him. And in the process, he finds truth.

Yet this moment of clarity is just that — a moment. As the prisoners are driven farther through rain and mud, Pierre loses some of his “fresh perspective” and settles into survival mode.

That’s something I like about Tolstoy. The characters have ebbs and flows. Earlier in the book, Pierre sees himself as the Russian counterpart to Napoleon. And by this point in the book, Tolstoy isn’t shy about telling readers that the historians got it wrong: Napoleon was not great hero of history, no “grand homme.”

As Book 14 winds down, Tolstoy inverts one of Napoleon’s favorite phrases — “Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas” which I’d translate as “The sublime is only a step away from the ridiculous” — and declares Napoleon nothing more than a stupid, conceited fool.

In Tolstoy’s game of Chutes & Ladders, Napoleon has fallen, and Pierre is on the path to redemption. He finishes the chapter with:

“And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness and truth.”

interrupting the perfect day

Posted on January 6th, 2008 in War & Peace by benmc

So yesterday I was on track to have the perfect day…

  • cozy breakfast at home
  • a morning of skiing in the Kettle Moraine trails in southern Wisconsin
  • a relaxing bath afterwards with time to read
  • an afternoon walk with Joy and our dogs
  • supper with friends and evening conversation over tea

Everything was pointing toward Sabbath.

But… on the way home, we were driving and this horrible noise started coming from our VW Beetle. Joy was driving and figured out that it was coming from the front left — probably a flat tire. We exited as soon as we could and stopped at the first gas station, on the corner of a very busy intersection (North and Western).

I should mention that it was 11:30 p.m.

Fortunately (?), Chicago had been warming up all day, so by the time I was crouching in front of the left-front tire, it was about 50 degrees — a far cry from the sub-zero temperatures the last time I had changed a flat on this car.

As I was struggling to get the lug nuts loose with Joy offering advice and counsel, a guy came over to “offer help.” He said he was a professional tire-changer, but in a glance we could see that he was simply looking for a quick buck. I let him try his hand at the lug nuts, but they held tight.

We were apparently making quite a scene, because another guy came over. He offered me a “warmer” — vodka in a plastic cup — and watched as I kept tugging on the wrench.

Finally, I got some purchase and the nuts budged, one by one. By this time, the second guy had offered Joy a notepad with his business info on it — boarding and wrecking services — while the first guy was keeping up a nonstop banter.

It wasn’t until we had put the spare tire on, stowed the other tire away, and were driving off that I realized (with Joy’s help) how precarious our situation was. My shirt was soaked with sweat, my hands were grimy and I felt fortunate that we hadn’t been mugged in that dark corner of the gas station.

And this is the part where “War and Peace” comes in…

The section I’ve just read follows Pierre — the clueless Russian aristocrat who is bumbling his way through Moscow as the French occupy the capital. He has survived the battle of Borodino, and now he is taken prisoner and tried for starting the fires that are consuming Moscow. It’s only at the last moment — when he is facing the French commander who has his life in the balance — that he stands up and makes a plea for his life.

For some reason (I still don’t fully understand why), Pierre’s life is spared. Yet he has to witness the other five men who are executed by firing squad.

OK, so my life is not nearly that dramatic. (Thank God!)

But as I read it, I’m reminded of how life thrusts itself on you in ways you don’t expect. I’m having a perfect day and then the tire blows out. Pierre’s living a complicated, but comfortable, upperclass existence when a war comes through his country. And everything is turned upside down.

Know what I mean?