All That Is Moving And All That Is Not

Day 97 of A Year of War and Peace

Photography by Lincoln Harrison (Source)

In photography long exposure erases moving objects. The fleeting subjects of the frame disappear leaving behind only light and unmoving things. This technique is often used to create images capturing the passage of time. Just think of those wonderful photographs of the night sky, the starlights blurred into vast hallucinatory concentric circles hovering like a Van Gogh over an unmoved landscape below. The eye is drawn to the starlight but it’s the landscape we should be looking at. Because there, constant among all that is fleeting, stand the durable objects of permanence, seemingly impervious to a ceaseless, shifting environs.

So it is with exposure to hardship in the human experience. Difficulty tends to peel away all that is frivolous and passing, focusing the mind only on that which truly matters.

That is why I believe Nikolai Rostov’s second tour of duty with his regiment is so important to his character’s development. For his whole life he’s been accustomed to luxury and privilege. But look at him today: he’s literally living in a hole in the ground. He’s also nearly starving. So much so, in fact, that Denisov, the regiment commander, in the major plotline of this chapter, resorts to hijacking the supply line of the Russian army just to secure food provisions for his men. Finally, in addition to suffering hunger, Rostov, being back at war, is open to attack by the French. It must be difficult for him. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this exposure to hardship — and today’s chapter is only the beginning of great difficulty for Rostov — is where we finally start to see him change from a petulant boy into the responsible man he’ll become by the end of the novel.

All this difficulty may force Rostov to focus on what is important and permanent within him. So it might actually be a good thing for him to experience the deprivations he endures with his regiment. Surviving this situation just might help him deal with any loss of privilege and status he may experience in the future given his family’s financial problems.

DAILY MEDITATION

We can be rich with easier mind if we are convinced that poverty is not a disaster.

Seneca, Letter on Holidays

This is the ninety-seventh installment in a daily, yearlong, chapter-by-chapter reading devotional and meditation on Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. For more information on this project please read the introduction to the series here.

I’m also very interested in hearing what you have to say about the novel. So leave a comment and let me know.

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