Volume II, Part V, Chapter VI

Back to business.  The count, with Natasha and Sonya, arrives in Moscow. They stay with Marya Dmitrievna.  (Remember her?  She was the ball-busting powerful lady from the first part who terrified everyone but Natasha, who was just as forceful at 13- - she’s charmed and Natasha’s her goddaughter).

She knows the score, and bosses everyone around. She takes Natasha to get dresses made, and she intimidates the dressmaker to her own financial advantage.  Rostov is checking on selling the Moscow estate. 

Marya gives Natasha some advice about how to make Princess Marya and the old Prince like her, but Natasha is silent.  Marya takes it as acquiescence, but in reality Natasha disliked any interference in the matter of her love for Prince Andrei, wich appeared to her so set apart from all human affairs that no one, to her mind, could understand it.

Marya says it’s better if she would try to be friends with them, and easier if they like her.

It would be, but they’re a challenging lot. 

Volume II, Part V, Chapter V

This is all Julie and Boris’ entrapment, uh, I mean engagement. 

Boris is interested in Julie, but as a rich bride. He’s drawn to Marya, but doesn’t know how to talk to her, and she’s completely ignorant.  Julie, meanwhile, is wealthy and prone to melancholy.  Boris thinks it may be all show, but they both bond over the sadness of the world and how difficult everything is, ending in death. 

Julie has an album (I guess in the 18th and 19th century young women would have albums in which they would keep keepsakes and mementos, and friends would draw in them) in which Boris draws trees and writes (in French) “Rustic tress, your gloomy branches shake darkness and melancholy down on me”.  Charmer! And at one point a tombstone which reads:

(translation from the French here - it’s in French) “Death is helpful and death is peaceful/ Ah! Against sorrows there is no other refuge.”

Nice. 

Of course, Anna Mikhailovna is all over this, and tells her son who close she’s becoming to Julie, and mentioned her enormous estates.  Boris gets her “simple-hearted slyness”, but still listens to her.

Meanwhile, Boris can’t propose because “some secret feeling of aversion for her, for her passionate desire to get married, for her unnaturalness, and a feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility of true love, still stopped [him].”

She’s also described as being too plump, and covering herself with powder.  Sounds attractive, right?
 

Boris finally proposes, mostly because he’s horrified at the thought of having spent all this time in Moscow for nothing.  Excellent. I hope they’re really happy.

Of course, as Boris predicted, all showers of melancholy disappeared once the wedding was announced.  Surprise!!

Volume II, Part V, Chapter IV

Marya is completely ignorant that Boris might be paying her any attentions, and ends up sitting with Pierre as he is the last of the guests to leave.  Pierre jokes with her, and also lets her know if Boris’ attention to Julie Karagin. 

She lets it slip that some days she feels she’d marry anyone available, and that she must go away (from the earlier dictum of her father, though she doesn’t mention that).  Pierre turns serious and beings questioning her, but she deflects it.  She asks when the Rostov’s will come and what Pierre thinks of Natasha.

She keeps asking him to tell the whole truth about her, which indicated to Pierre that she wanted to her something against Natasha, but he could not.  Of course, it’s clear she wants to have a reason to dislike Natasha.  Pierre tells her that she’s enchanting--

”I decidedly don’t know what kind of girl she is; I simply cannot analyze her.  She’s enchanting.  But why, I don’t know that’s all one can say about her.

Princess Marya sighed, and the expression on her face said” Yes, that’s what I expected and was afraid of.”

“Is she intelligent?” asked Princess Marya. Pierre pondered.

“I don’t think so,” he said, “although--yes.  She doesn’t deign to be intelligent....Ah,no, she’s enchanting, that’s all.”

Princess Marya again shook her head disapprovingly....

“Ah, I wish so much to love her! Tell her that if you see her before I do.”

Yeah, right. She’s got her mind made up, and is threatened, it’s clear.  You know they would get along, if they would let themselves, but Natasha’s lightness and Marya’s darkness could easily annoy the other beyond any reason. I think Marya thinks she wants to love Natasha, but we’ll see if it comes to pass.

Volume II, Part V, Chapter III

I can only say I am liking the old count less and less.

It's his birthday, he's in a foul mood, and he tells Marya not to let anyone in who is not on a list.  He's been seeing a handsome tall French doctor, who decides he'll do what he wants anyway.  The old count is furious, blames Marya, and says she must go away permanently.  And then, adding insult to injury, he wonders aloud why no one will marry her, as if he hasn't sent them all away.

You kind of wonder if he's pushing her to see if she will finally blow up.  Anyway, there's a small dinner (somehow Boris has wheedled his way in), and it's clear he's serious.

He's severely unpleasant. Maybe it's the best thing for her.

Volume II, Part V, Chapter II

Meanwhile, in Moscow as well, old Nikolai Bolkonsky (the old count - Andrei's father) is being hailed as a center of opposition to the government. He's as cantankerous and senile as ever.  He's making his daughter's life hell.

She can't go out and be social without him, since he won't permit her.  He's becoming closer to Mlle Bourienne, which angers Marya.  Julie, her friend in letters, seems completely different to her and is entertaining suitors.  The old count, meanwhile, turns away any suitors Marya may have. She finds herself getting angry with Nikolushka, then crying at how awful she is.

Her father actually kisses Mlle Bourienne's hand and Marya blows up at her.  The next day, the old count has Mlle Bourienne served first, and when one of the servants forgets, he explodes and yells that Bourienne is first in the house now, and that if Marya forgets herself again he'll show her who's boss and she should apologize.

So she does, and feels bad because she sees how old he's getting, and how could she be so angry at such a helpless man. 

This is one twisted relationship.

As time passes, it's amazing the clear light he's throwing on all of these dynamics. What might have been entertaining or endearing is now close to reprehensible, sad.  The relationships are souring, and people are being challenged. Their making choices to remain in ruts, or not even choosing - unknowingly staying where they are on their paths.  Some are good possibly, but most seem frustrating - who's even headed for any happiness at this point.

The brilliance of it is you can see why they're headed this way- the thousand tiny little steps that have backed them into these corners. I have a feeling this is not a romance. He's unsparing - not cruel at all - but unsparing how he looks at all of them.

Volume II, Part V, Chapter I

There's a lot to this one. I'm heading to bed, so I'll follow up on this. Great things said in this chapter, and almost too much to quote, but an amazing paragraph about people deceiving themselves. We're back with Pierre, and he's disillusioned, but unable to do much but drink, and keep himself busy. He's not doing well.

Pierr is becoming an old "gentleman-in-waiting" in Moscow, just being at parties, beloved by everyone for his wit and his wallet. He has moved into his house in Moscow with the "dried-and drying-up princesses" since for him "Moscow was comfortable, warm habitual, and dirty, like an old dressing gown."

It's such a deft portrayal of someone falling into a rut of drinking and loss. There's a long paragraph I won't retype here that just catalogs the counter-intuitiveness of thought and action of everyone around him, from finding his wife witty and charming while he knows she's "never loved anything except her own body, and is one of the stupidest women in the world" to Napoleon, to the outward appearance of piety and giving of his Masonic brothers who will not give to their own community or poor. He sees a Christian law that everyone gives lip service to but no one follows - a universally acknowledged lie.

"He experienced the unfortunate ability of many people, escpecially Russians--the ability to see and believe in the possibility of goodness and truth, and to see the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to be able to participate in it seriously."

So he keeps busy, and he drinks - "Nothing is either trivial or important, it's all the same; only save yourself from it as best you can!" thought Pierre. "Only not to see it, that dreadful it!"

He's putting it off, to think about it later, while it destroys him now. Not a good place, this one.

I love that he puts in "especially Russians". He knows his audience. I'm quarter Ukranian/Hungarian Jew and quarter Russian Jew. I wonder if that counts? Certainly, for this world view, it may. It sounds awfully familiar...

One day, we keep hoping for Pierre, one day.

Volume II, Part IV, Chapter XIII

Oh, the countess is not happy. The count is unhappy, since he knows that if he wasn't such a bad manager of his affairs and being robbed by Mitenka, then they wouldn't be in the position they are in.

So the countess is outright mean to Sonya, and Nikolai almost says something he'll regret forever. He threatens to get married in secret. The count goes to Moscow to sell the estate with Sonya and Natasha, and Nikolai goes back into the army. Natasha's too sad to write to Andrei any way but perfunctorily.

Well, this is just a sad ending to this part. We're into part five next, and I'm hoping that we get some of this out of the way. It's not looking good. I think war might come in between here. But I'm really sad for the Rostovs. I know I should be rooting for Nikolai, but he's so clueless it's a little challenging. He even knows a bit about the finance, but living with his head in the sand like his father. Sigh.

The writing, as always, is beautiful.