andrei bolkonsky is truly the most "dead since the beginning" character. in his last few days he reaches a very explicit state of undeathness ("they were not attending on him (he was no longer there, he had left them) but on what reminded them most closely of him—his body"), but really, is it the first time he has been like this? in his first chapter, when he walks into anna pavlovna's soiree, "it was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen to them". he goes through the social motions but doesn't really feel them (except with pierre, who understands instinctively many things about him, like that their meeting before borodino is their last), and he's just like that before the end. the night before austerlitz he declares "death, wounds, the loss of family—i fear nothing", and it's close to the absence of terror and general feeling he feels after his last nightmare. he's assumed to have died at austerlitz by everyone and reappears at home with zero explanation. the same thing happens after borodino. during both the near-death experiences, he feels some sort of "awakening" ("death is an awakening"). he identifies himself in an old oak tree that appears to be dead until spring (love) draws some last signs of life from him. and literally the only thing that seems to keep him alive is his last-minute unwillingness to separate himself from love, which to tolstoy is life - "i cannot, i do not wish to die. i love life—i love this grass, this earth, this air". this man is a zombie. he returned from the metaphorical and literal (the battlefield) land of the dead not once but twice with terrible wounds, despite all his efforts he can never find a complete and lasting connection to liveliness but falls back again and again in his mechanical, detached way of moving through situations. even his connection to natasha, life and joy, is perceived to be doomed from the beginning by many. "ah, my friend, it has of late become hard for me to live. i see that i have begun to understand too much" he says to perhaps the only person he has always been honest with, pierre, before receiving his final wound. and when he does die it's impossible to tell. marya can't pinpoint the moment when he's gone physically, and as for his spirit, even little nikolai knows it was torn from him earlier. but it doesn't feel like a sudden and new thing. we've seen him in this state before, though perhaps not on this level. but really, it looks like his struggle to keep death out of the room has been going on throughout the entire novel, and he could never hold the door completely closed. we've never seen him completely alive. on a meta level too, because he is maybe the only main character tolstoy didn't base on anyone but created from scratch, with the specific intention to kill him. when did he die exactly? at borodino? at austerlitz, where tolstoy originally intended him to? when he had his nightmare? when he left natasha? when lise died? when his mother died? before we ever met him, it seems. he died in a dream.
romaincrisis
snowghoul
titsay
pixelskylines
andulkaphoto
turnnoffyourmind
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
