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The Rostov family gets lots of help from Uncles and Aunts. It’s the Aunt’s turn now to guide Nicholas to the correct path, to Maria. And fortunate he is this Aunt is here otherwise he may have wound up dishonoring that man’s wife and who knows what would have happened. But we also see Nicholas’ stubbornness in his devotion to Sonia. And he is honorable to still honor her, but it can never be.
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Nicholas has gotten rather too comfortable in his military life. Even the war is far away to him and so he lives easily, with everything provided for him: perhaps even other men’s wives. I think Tolstoy is trying to show us that military life is not quite the honorable, heroic, selfless activity we make it out to be, but rather an insulated and, though sometimes terrifying, simple world.
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Here we see how much power an adviser, Michaud, can have over the more powerful Emperor. He leads the emperor to think the Army is afraid … of peace. The very thing that should happen, peace, is the very last thing anybody with any power to make it happen will sue for. And like chess the Pawn controls the King.
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he met and knew James Joyce who was honestly creating the new art to rise out of the ashes of WW1
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Lenin actually wrote to Rolland asking him to accompany him to Russia in that sealed train.
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(on meeting his friend, Rolland, who was French and both were determined to not let the war hinder their friendship) “We felt no obligation to participate in an absurdity merely because the world behaved absurdly.”
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Just over the border in Switzerland the food is plentiful, and the people free, unoppressed, and alive. 5 minutes away men are sent to the front to die. An arbitrary line in the mud is what saved some and killed millions. The distance between trenches was greater than this.
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“I could not escape the feeling that these simple, primitive people had understood the war more truly than our University professors and poets: namely, as a disaster that had come over then with which they had nothing to do, and that everyone who had happened info this misfortune was somehow a brother.”
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“For even in exile – I have experienced it to the full – it is not as difficult to live alone as it is in one’s own country.”
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it’s almost as if all Germany blamed Lissauer for the entire war. His hate poem riled everyone up, but that’s easy to do, it’s a lot harder to be rational.
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(dfn wikipedia): Shirt of Nessus, Tunic of Nessus, Nessus-robe, or Nessus’ shirt in Greek mythology was the poisoned shirt that killed Heracles. It was once a popular reference in literature. In folkloristics, it is considered an instance of the “poison dress” motif.
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Max Schneckenburger’s ‘Watch on the Rhine’:
A voice resounds like thunder-peal,
‘Mid dashing waves and clang of steel:
The Rhine, the Rhine, the German Rhine!
Who guards to-day my stream divine?
Dear Fatherland, no danger thine;
Firm stand thy sons to watch the Rhine!
They stand, a hundred thousand strong,
Quick to avenge their country’s wrong;
With filial love their bosoms swell,
They’ll guard the sacred landmark well!
Dear Fatherland, no danger thine;
Firm stand thy sons to watch the Rhine!
The dead of an heroic race
From heaven look down and meet this gaze;
He swears with dauntless heart, “O Rhine,
Be German as this breast of mine!”
Dear Fatherland, no danger thine;
Firm stand thy sons to watch the Rhine!
While flows one drop of German blood,
Or sword remains to guard thy flood,
While rifle rests in patriot hand,
No foe shall tread thy sacred strand!
Dear Fatherland, no danger thine;
Firm stand thy sons to watch the Rhine!
[And whether my heart in death does break,
French we will not let them you make,
Rich in water as is your flood,
So Germany is in heroes’ blood!]
Dear Fatherland, no danger thine;
Firm stand thy sons to watch the Rhine!
Our oath resounds, the river flows,
In golden light our banner glows;
Our hearts will guard thy stream divine:
The Rhine, the Rhine, the German Rhine!
Dear Fatherland, no danger thine;
Firm stand thy sons to watch the Rhine!
[So lead us on, you are well-proved;
Trusting in God, reach for the sword,
Hail Wilhelm! Down with the brood!
And redeem dishonor with enemy blood!]
Dear Fatherland, no danger thine;
Firm stand thy sons to watch the Rhine!
Source of English translation: Eva March Tappan, ed., The World’s Story: A History of the World in Story, Song and Art, 14 vols., vol. 7, Germany, The Netherlands, and Switzerland. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914, pp. 249-50.
Lissauer’s ‘Hymn of Hate’:
French and Russian, they matter not,
A blow for a blow and a shot for a shot!
We love them not, we hate them not,
We hold the Weichsel and Vosges gate.
We have but one and only hate,
We love as one, we hate as one,
We have one foe and one alone.
He is known to you all, he is known to you all,
He crouches behind the dark gray flood,
Full of envy, of rage, of craft, of gall,
Cut off by waves that are thicker than blood.
Come, let us stand at the Judgment Place,
An oath to swear to, face to face,
An oath of bronze no wind can shake,
An oath for our sons and their sons to take.
Come, hear the word, repeat the word,
Throughout the Fatherland make it heard.
We will never forego our hate,
We have all but a single hate,
We love as one, we hate as one,
We have one foe and one alone —
_ENGLAND!_
In the Captain’s Mess, in the banquet hall,
Sat feasting the officers, one and all,
Like a sabre blow, like the swing of a sail,
One seized his glass and held high to hail;
Sharp-snapped like the stroke of a rudder’s play,
Spoke three words only: “To the Day!”
Whose glass this fate?
They had all but a single hate.
Who was thus known?
They had one foe and one alone–
_ENGLAND!_
Take you the folk of the Earth in pay,
With bars of gold your ramparts lay,
Bedeck the ocean with bow on bow,
Ye reckon well, but not well enough now.
French and Russian, they matter not,
A blow for a blow, a shot for a shot,
We fight the battle with bronze and steel,
And the time that is coming Peace will seal.
You we will hate with a lasting hate,
We will never forego our hate,
Hate by water and hate by land,
Hate of the head and hate of the hand,
Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown,
Hate of seventy millions choking down.
We love as one, we hate as one,
We have one foe and one alone–
_ENGLAND!_
Translation by Barbara Henderson, as it appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES of Oct. 15th, 1914.