The first 50 pages and the last 50 pages of War And Peace are the most difficult and boring to read. Pretty much everything else was grand.

Well that being said, was he right or was he just coping? Did Napoleon move all these men to conquer or was it they who moved him? Is the great man of history just an easy explanation for historians? Are Alexander, Charlemagne, Napoleon, etc. just figureheads for movements of peoples that can't be explained any other way but that some guy told them to do it and "He was a genius!"?

It was all very well summed up in one of the most poignant passages of the book. The end of Epilogue Part 1 (Epilogue Part 2? Forget about it). Is this the explanation for why humans try to explain great movements of peoples with one singular man at any given time?

“My father!” he thought. (Though there were two good portraits of Prince Andrew in the house, Nicholas never imagined him in human form.) “My father has been with me and caressed me. He approved of me and of Uncle Pierre. Whatever he may tell me, I will do it. Mucius Scaevola burned his hand. Why should not the same sort of thing happen to me? I know they want me to learn. And I will learn. But someday I shall have finished learning, and then I will act. I only pray God that something may happen to me such as happened to Plutarch’s men, and I will act as they did. I will do more. Everyone shall know me, love me, and admire me!” And suddenly his bosom heaved with sobs and he began to cry.

“Are you ill?” he heard Dessalles’ voice asking.

“No,” answered Nicholas, and lay back on his pillow.

“He is good and kind and I am fond of him!” he thought of Dessalles. “But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man he is! And my father? Oh, Father, Father! Yes, I will do something with which even he would be satisfied....”

Either way I thought this passage was the perfect end to this book. Artistically it was perfect.

BTW is Anna Karenina better than War And Peace? Sounds boring to me but I will probably eventually read it.

>>24583693 (OP)
First of all, War and Peace is anti-Napoleon propaganda, plain and simple. But regardless, it was 100% Napoleon’s decision to invade. All his advisors warned him that going to war with Russia was a bad idea, and he went ahead with it anyway.

I agree with what you said 100%. I found it baffling for Tolstoy to pretend that there were only thousands of commands from napoleon but there was no distinguishable intention or guiding will towards attacking russia

>>24583705
Why did he want to conquer Moscow?
Were the histories that treat him like a genius propaganda too though?

>>24583693 (OP)
I found AK decent (though inferior to Flaubert and Eliot). War and Peace meanwhile was an unbearable bore to me. Attempted it twice, dropped it 100 pages and 300 pages in on my first and second read respectively.

>>24583705
Reducing the intentions of War And Peace to propaganda is either ignorant or dishonest.

>>24583741
I’m not. But it’s an aspect that often gets overlooked when it comes to Russian lit. Dostoevsky does the same thing, so it’s fair to point it out.
>>24583713
>Why did he want to conquer Moscow?
He didn't.
>Were the histories that treat him like a genius propaganda too though?
No? He’s a genius in multiple areas. His achievements speak for themselves.

>>24583693 (OP)
It's very interesting how much people in the 19th century were driven by the "great man theory" and constantly discussed it, yet today it's utterly irrelevant, nobody even considers the idea that a great man could single-handedly shape history even with people like Trump dominating politics for the past decade. They totally wiped this theory out of memory and discourse after Hitler, and its proponents like Thomas Carlyle are shunned.