我在文学城写的第一篇博文，是关于孩子教育的文章，修佛者的育儿经。在这篇文章里，我提到了女儿和我的辩论，还说我太太和我两个人加起来都吵不赢她。很多网友读了以后不信，觉得大人的生活经验和思维逻辑，应该远远在孩子之上，如果不是小朋友胡搅蛮缠，搞定她们应当不难。其实不然，社会在进步，时代在更新，至少以我自己的亲身经历，有些事还真不能搬老黄历。
这两天在家没事，整理了一下所收藏的女儿小时候的一些东西，无意中翻出了一篇她在九年级的时候，读了托尔斯泰长篇小说《战争与和平》之后写的读后感，颇有些触动。
很多人说，写文章是需要天赋的。我也觉得有天赋和没天赋确实是有区别的，我自己吭哧吭哧这么多年下来，写了不下上百万字的学术论文，而且也都是用的英文。但是估计再给我二十年，我也写不出这样的文章来。我一个字没改她的，拿出来和网友们分享一下，也想请大家看看我的判断是否靠谱。
我也曾经写过一篇关于《战争与和平》的文章，几本最喜欢的书 - 《战争与和平》，自己当时感觉写得还不错。现在又翻出来读了一遍做个对比。哎，正所谓没有对比就没有伤害，真是惭愧之极，不知道我这些年书都读到哪里去了。
现在女儿离开了家，去追寻自己的诗和远方了。空荡荡的房子里就剩了太太和我两人，回想起她带给我们的欢乐和美好记忆，由衷地感恩：
生命中有了你，真好！
War and Peace
Tolstoy’s greatest work chronicles the two migrations of the early 19th century during the Napoleonic era - the first east to west invasion of Russia headed by Napoleon, and the subsequent west to east push back headed by Emperor Alexander. His characters are reinforcements of the reality of war, conquest, and the home front; they oppose the simplistic archetypes that stem from the glorification of conflict, and present a detailed picture of the oftentimes conflicting emotions at the core of mankind. Over the course of the novel, they shed their simple and shallow desires throughout the story and embrace their mortality, with the search for the meaning of life being a primary theme in the book. They move as if connected by threads of destiny, as they struggle with their fates and positions in life. Yet even though the great and small individuals in Tolstoy’s masterpiece move in relation to underlying grand themes, Tolstoy is able to poignantly portray everyday human passions, along with domesticity and marital relations. At its core, War and Peace seeks to forward two main ideas: the first is about the movement of history, and the second about the search for the meaning of life. Tolstoy dissects these ideas slowly as Napoleon’s invasion unfolds, unafraid to depict the painful disillusionment many characters face as they recognize the emptiness and artificiality of earthly life.
Tolstoy’s philosophy of the movement of history is one that is not driven by the actions of a singular being; instead, hidden between the pages of War and Peace is an in-depth analysis of the realistic limits to leadership. War and Peace displays the actions of men, not gods, and Tolstoy makes that clear while the lofty leaders Napoleon and Alexander are revered to the point of self-sacrifice for the awe-struck citizen, they are but ordinary men, just like Platon Karatev, a humble peasant. Whether Napoleon is bluffing and puffing his chest out with pride within his salon, boasting to a messenger, or sitting on a camp-stool at the Battle of Borodino, miniscule and detached from the heat of the fray, it is clear he is not the great emperor he imagines he is. History is not his creation, to be molded as he sees fit, but rather the results of millions of individual chains of cause and effect too small to be analyzed independently, millions of chances that provide him power and the agreement of men to cooperate and confirm that power by acting on behalf of him. For instance, many historians believe that the French did not win the battle of Borodino because Napoleon had a cold, and so in logical extension of that if that cold’s existence never came to be, the orders he gave before and during the battle would have been even still more full of genius, and Russia would have been lost. The problem with that statement, as Tolstoy writes, is that if Napoleon’s will to fight depended on the manifestation of a cold, so too would a valet omitting to bring Napoleon his boots, or a horse falling behind in pace, or the sun rising later in the day. In that sense, the course of human events is not formed from the will of one man, but rather is predetermined to be dependent on the wills of all who take part in that event - so one man’s perceived influence on those events is purely fictitious. Just like the man who perceives Napoleon as the last link between victory and defeat, the man who perceives the movement of a locomotive as the movement of the wheels and the whistling of the vehicle may see that as the final irrefutable cause, but has no right to conclude that what is observed is the cause of the movement of the locomotive.
If that is the case, how can one define the force that moves the nations? Tolstoy gives this definition through two lenses - that of chance and power. The first is relatively simpler to comprehend; chance accompanies Napoleon throughout his life, from Malta surrendering without a shot, to slipping past the enemy fleet, to being untouched from the plague, to being welcomed by the shrewd rulers of France, instead of turned away. This notion of chance gives him power, the same chance that forms the characters of the rulers of France who submit to him, forms the character of Paul I of Russia who recognizes him, defends him from defeat at Austerlitz. However, chance does not equate ‘power’. For Napoleon or Alexander to have commanded such respect, they would have needed some measure of this ‘power’ - but from where? To a religious individual, this power could be satisfactorily distinguished as divine intervention - a power given by God. However, if one does not admit that, as Tolstoy does not, then it can be further reasoned that this power could not be from some Herculean physical might, nor a distinct intellectual or moral quality, as seen from the Louis XIVs and George IIIs of the world, although they might represent an opposite extreme of the spectrum. If that is the case, as Tolstoy reasons, this source of power must then lie in the relations of the man who wields the power, rather than the man themselves - and thus power is better understood through jurisprudence. Then, given that power is the collective will of the people transferred to one person, under the conditions that that person represents the will of the whole people, Tolstoy defines the movement of history as one that occurs from the relation that exists between the expression of someone’s will and the execution of that will by others, rather than a force that exists from the will of the hero, defined by rules beyond human comprehension.
Before discussing the search for the meaning of life, it is important to note the fickleness of said search; Tolstoy makes a point to repeatedly emphasise the irrationality of human motives throughout War and Peace. The irrational actions within the book, from General Kutuzov’s constant revision of his plans, to the seemingly improbable love that manifests between Natasha and Pierre, shock the reader with their sudden decisiveness. Yet, Tolstoy makes it clear that the vast majority of these irrational actions in the novel turn out successfully - in accordance with his thoughts on the greater meaning of destiny and human life, these asinine decisions correspond to human instincts that frankly, the reader will never comprehend. After establishing this irrational thought process intrinsically linked with human desire, Tolstoy creates the majority of his characters as individuals suffering with a panging hunger for unattainable, Sehnsucht, with a gnawing dissatisfaction with the artificiality of their lives. Andrew is disillusioned with his empty life and the shallow people around him, while Pierre is simply unable to find any meaning behind his life. Focusing on the latter, Pierre attempts multiple times to inject a sense of vitality back into his everyday life, rejecting his superficial wife, and turning to Freemasonry, although quickly finding himself bored with the passivity of their approach to life. Falling prey to his id, Pierre grasps at a crazed obsession with assassinating Napoleon, believing his heroism will open his eyes to the truth of his existence. But that too, fails. Even though it seems Pierre and Andrew are doomed to a life of apathy, Tolstoy presents the solution to the infinite dilemma through two facets - Love and Death. While the experience of real love with Natasha finally gives meaning to Pierre’s life, Andrew requires close encounters with death in order to have a spiritual epiphany. If the meaning of life for Pierre grounded him to the beauty of the world, the revelatory power of death stripped away all earthly values from Andrew’s shoulders, as the external world faded in importance to the dying man, who, as Tolstoy reveals, is finally at peace with himself.
Within War and Peace, Tolstoy displays the questions at the core of human existence in their full, unashamed, honest selves - how has human existence been powered through centuries of history, and what is the meaning of that existence to begin with? And while Tolstoy might not have necessarily answered those questions, is that not also the whole point? Our questions will remain answered, and yet humanity will continue to thrive through its irrationality, through love and death - and War and Peace is fundamentally about humanity.
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