Vol I, Part Three, Chs XIII-XIV: Details

I love how Tolstoy shows us the horses. p. 267

"Maybe him, or maybe just so," the hussar said, "a night thing. Easy now!" he cried to his horse, who was stirring under him.

Rostov's horse was also restive, stamping its hoof on the frozen ground, listening to the sounds and looking at the fires.

Tolstoy shows us Napoleon's charisma-- without which the whole war itself would have seemed far less interesting:

p. 269

The cries and fires in the enemy camp came from the fact that, while Napoleon's orders were being read to the troops, the emperor himself rode around his bivouacs. The soldiers, seeing the emperor, set fire to bundles of straw and ran after him, showting, "Vive l'empereur!"

p. 270 I loved the vivdiness and strangeness of this:

A soldier in movement is as hemmed in, limited, and borne along by his regiment as a sailor by his ship.

and a little later, same page:

The fog was so thick that, though day was breaking, one could not see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like enormous trees...


Then, p. 272 we again see Napoleon, this time close up:


... An unbroken see of fog spread below, but at the village of Schlapanitz, on the heights, where Napoleon stood, surrounded by his marshals, it was perfectly light...

We get a marvelous description of him and:

He peered silently at the hills, which seemed to rise up from the sea of fog, and over which Russian troops were moving in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of gunfire in the hollow. On his face, still lean at that time, not a muscle stirred; his glistening eyes were fixed motionlessly on one place. His conjectures turned out to be correct.

Then, p. 273

When the sun had fully emerged from the fog and its dazzling brilliance sprayed over the fields and the fog (it was as if he had only been waiting for that to begin the action), he took the glove from his beautiful white hand, made a sign to the marshals, and gave the order for the action to begin.

These sharply focussed details are exquisite.

Vol I, Part Three, Ch XII Imagery Makes It Vivid

p. 260

Weyrother obviously felt himself at the head of the movement which had now become irrepressible. He was like a horse harnessed to a wagon and running downhill.

That second sentence makes it so vivid-- and for me, such vivid imagery, droplets of it sprinkled throughout, keep me gratefully reading. (Without them, the book falls flat and reader puts it down.)

p. 263

"He has forty thousand men, if that," Weyrother replied, with the smile of a doctor being told by a wise woman how to treat a patient.

Vol I, Part Two, Ch XXI: The Dark, the Light

Some of the descriptions are so exquisitely vivid, e.g., p. 200:

He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of the night hung three feet above the light from the coals. A dust of falling snow flew through that light.

The contrast makes this vivid. The specificity: "a dust."

Vol I, Part Two, Ch. IV-VIII: More War/ How They Ride Horses / Hairy Fingers

So the war grinds on... or races on, I guess, if you like this sort of historical fiction. I cannot say I am as charmed by these chapters as I was the city scenes in peacetime. But this is just my taste-- I remain in awe of this novel.

I'm blogging lightly here so I can make some more progress and finish on schedule...

What strikes me: some of the descriptions of how different men ride their horses, e.g.:

p. 138

"He called the Cossack with the horse, told him to put the bag and flask away, and lightly swung his heavy body into the saddle."

p. 144

"...the whole squadron, as if on command, with all their similarly dissimular faces, holding their breath while the cannonball flew over, rose in their stirrups, then lowered themselves again."

p. 146

"Striking his horse with his long, muscular legs, as if it was all the horse's fault..."

And I admired the vividness of the description of Denisov, p. 144:

"Vaska Denisov's pug-nosed and black-haired face, and his whole small, compact figure with his sinewy hand (the short fingers covered with hair), in which he gripped the hilt of his bared saber..."

Such a fine example of using detail for vividness. I go on about that rather endlessly in my workshops.

Vol. I, Part One, VI: First View of the City

On p. 30, another thing amazed me-- we've come from Anna Scherer's party, then a series of tight, close indoor scenes, and all of a sudden:

"It was already past one o'clock when Pierre left his friend's house. It was a duskless Petersburg June night. Pierre got into a hired carriage with the intention of going home. But the closer he came, the more he felt the impossibility of falling asleep that on night, which more resembled an evening or a morning. One could see far down the empty streets."


One could see far down the empty streets.


Is this not vivid? Refreshing? Huge? I feel transported, zoom, I can see it.

Ah, but I know this trick. My amiga the travel writer and memoirist Sara Mansfield Taber (pictured left) spelled it out for me once, when reviewing one of the drafts of my essay, "Picadou's Mexico City or, the Essential Francisco Sosa." As I recall, she said, of a somewhat flat description of the street, "can you tell me, what's behind you? What's ahead of you?" Instantly I realized this is a technique for, at once, "grounding" and scene and making it "pop." (Just because you come up with some description, however, doesn't mean you have to use it.)

It's funny, but when I come across a line like "One could see far down the empty streets," I feel such gratitude-- and then I really want to keep reading.