War and Peace Group Read 2011 - Epilogue II

The final thread for this group read - cheers for everyone who made it here!

Edit: we will have one very last "wrap up" thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/115924

I am really, really trying to like this 2nd epilogue. But the sentences are so long and repetetive that I just can't follow Tolstoi's thoughts for more than a half paragraph. I checked the German version on Gutenberg to make it a little easier for me and guess what? It ends after epilogue I. So had I chosen a German edition I'd already be finished with the book.
*sigh*
18 pages left...

I moved my eyes over 18 more pages of epilogue. So I am done. And I wished the words "The End" had been printed under the last paragraph of IV/4/XX.

If anyone would like to discuss this epilogue in depth I'd be willing to try and reread some chapters, but I doubt a second reading would help much. The most accessible bit for me was the analysis of freedom, but in the end this section is not only long but also quite outdated. I understand it was all new and special in the 1860s, but for me it was just a little too much.

Yeeeee haaa!! Congratulations on finishing!

This is Tolstoy’s self-indulgent wrap up of his views on history, philosophy and science. If I had realized there was no more story at all in here (as in wrapping up minor characters, or taking the “plot” theme from Epilogue 1 forward) I probably wouldn’t even have read this epilogue. But he deserves it, and I sort of liked it. He had obviously spent a lot of time pondering on why what happened happened, and came to the conclusion (I think) that it did because it had to, and because what appeared to be the free will and actions of millions of people were in fact driven by a necessity and laws that historians don’t yet understand, as surely as the natural world is driven by laws. It’s an interesting view, and one in keeping with his stance throughout, that no one “decided” to have certain battles, events, etc., but they just happened – looking random to us, but perhaps subject to unshakeable laws of history that we don’t perceive.

Okay, so now what?? Just like the characters in the book, I've been through something extraordinary in reading this book, and things need to settle back down. I guess a few lighter reads are in order......

#5 Now, if only Tolstoy had summed it up as concisey as you, Janet, we'd all be a lot happier...I, too, just moved my eyes over Epilogue II. To me, I wish he had incorporated some of these ideas into the novel itself-- BRIEFLY--maybe a paragraph or two sprinkled throughout, or within a conversation. I remember the conversation between Pierre & Andrei about life--too bad he didn't put his philosophy of history into another conversation, and forget the pedantic Epilogue.

Yes, now on to something light, maybe even something funny....but I want to thank all of you for having this forum. I not sure I would have finished the book without this incentive to keep reading. So thanks for sharing your observations & thoughts, and for keeping me plugging along!

#6 - Congratulations on finishing!

#6: Congratulations from me too!

Rebeki posted this link on the thread for Volume I Part 2: http://www.shmoop.com/war-and-peace/summary.html%20 and although you could argue about style and language used there, I found it really helpful and now at least I know what that 2nd epilogue was about.

Sometimes I prefer "easy" words, especially when reading such deep thoughts.

kac522, congrats on finishing! I love how you said you just moved your eyes over Epilogue II. That's exactly how I felt!
I've read 6 books so far in June since I finished, which I think is a reaction to being free of W&P, even though I really loved it (except Ep II and even I.) Everything else seems so un-dense now.

Nathalie thanks for posting that link - I saw you refer to it and couldn't see where it was. I'm enjoying it.