Vol IV, Part Three, Ch IV - XI: Petya Rostov / Point of View / Psychic Distance

The novel becomes exquisitely vivid and engaging once again with the story of Petya Rostov (Natasha's little brother). Denisov reappears as a senior officer, as does Dolokhov. On my paperback, I noted oodles of admirable detail, etc, but as I've become repetitive already, I'll skip blogging about that...

What especially impressed me in this section was Tolstoy's sudden switch in point of view and pull-back in psychic distance in describing the death of Petya Rostov. I think it works brilliantly to show the death and also infuse a sense of strangeness and horror.

pp. 1057- 1058

"Wait?... Hurra-a-ah!..." shouted Petya, and, not losing a moment, he galloped towards the place from which the shots were coming and were the powder smoke was thickest. A volley of shots rang out, stray bullets whined and splattered into something. The Cossacks and Dolokhov gallopped after Petya through the gates of the house. In the dense, undulating smoke some of the French dropped their weapons and ran out of the bushes towards the Cossacks, others ran down the hill to the pond. Petya galloped on his horse across the manor courtyard, and, instead of holding the reins, waved both arms somehow strangely and quickly, and kept slipping further to one side in his saddle. Running into the campfire smoldering in the morning light, his horse balked, and Petya fell heavily onto the wet ground. The Cossacks saw how his arms and legs jerked rapidly, though his head did not move. His head had been pierced by a bullet."

So we're right with Petya as he shouts out, then we move to some distant omniscient point of view ("stray bullets whined and splattered into something"), then for the rest of the paragraph we're with the Cossacks.

But to nitpick, the last sentence could have been cut.

P.S. I was amused to find this blog post by an English reader.

I'm still catching up with blogging and very close to finishing by Dec 31st.

Vol I, Part Three, Ch XV: On the Field at Austerlitz

It belatedly occurs to me that Tolstoy's readers (during his lifetime) would have been as familiar with the Battle of Austerlitz and all the rest of them as people in the late 19th century US would have been familiar with the Battles of the Civil War. He writes for them-- there are so many references that have to be explained in footnotes and yet, he also writes for the ages.

p. 276 love the vividness of this glimpse (and the imagery):

... In the emperors' suit there were picked fine young orderly officers, Russian and Austrian, from the guards and infantry regiments. Among them were grooms leading the handsome spare horses of the royalty in embroidered cloths.

As fresh air from the fields suddenly breathes through an open window into a stuffy room, so youth, energy, and certainy of success breathed upon Kutuzov's cheerless staff as these brilliant young men galloped up.

p. 277 Politics! Kutuzov vs the Emperor. Seems an eternal story.


p. 278 Quite extraordinary: Tolstoy's narrative moves into the point of view of a horse:

The sovereign's horse shied at the sudden shout. This horse, who had carried the sovereign at reviews while still in Russia, also carried her rider here, on the field at Austerlitz, enduring the distracted nudges of his left foot, pricked up her ears at the sound of gunshots just as she did on the Field of Mars, understanding neither the meaning of the shots she heard, nor the presence of the emperor Franz's black stallion, nor anything of what her rider said, thought, or felt that day.

Vol I, Part Three, Ch VIII: Big Scenic Stuff, Then Rostov's POV

The Russian and the Austrian emperors review the combined 80,000 man army. It reads sort of slow, impersonal, cinematic, then, on 245, the narrative drops into Nikolai Rostov's point of view, his ardent feelings for the emperor, and it picks up speed. Precisely because it is no longer impersonal.

Vol I, Part Three, Ch VI: Points of View

You could write 5 PhD theses on Tolstoy's use of the roving omniscient point of view... which is a fancy way of saying "God's" POV. But on a practical level, what it means is that the writer has a menu, sometimes a vast menu, of choices for point of view in any particular scene. In the scene where Anna Mikhailovna brings Nikolai's letter to his mother, Countess Rostov, here's what happens:

p. 236

"Don't come in," [Anna Mikhailovna] said to the old count, who was following her, "later," she said, and closed the door behind her.
The count put his ear to the keyhole and began to listen.

At first he heard the sounds of indifferent talk, then only the sound of Anna Mikhailovna's voice making a long speech, then a cry, then silence, then both voices again, speaking together in joyful intinations, and then footsteps, and then Anna Mikhailova opened the door to him. Anna Mikhailovna's face bore the proud expression of a surgeon who has completed a difficult amuptation and admits the public so that it can appreciate his art.

"C'est fait!" she said to the count, pointing with a solemn gesture to the countess, who was holding the snuffbox with the portrait in one hand and the letter in the other, and pressing her lips first to the one, then to the other.

I think this strategy -- distancing the reader from the two women, blurring the whole scene-- makes it palatable. I start to imagine the scene written in a straightforward way: ooh, icky.