There will be time--two of the best warriors!

I really like the Arabian Nights. It's possibly one of my favorite stories--plural, because there are SO many stories in it. Although, if you know me well enough, you could argue that one reason it is one of my favorite stories is because there are many stories in Arabian Nights--so many that English does not know, that an English storyteller could make up their own stories and claim they are a part of the Arabian Nights collection, and people would believe them, even though they were the storyteller's own invention.
That's not the topic I want to discuss in this essay, though I think it does point out something significant in literature that is intriguing and, if analyzed carefully enough, it brings insight into several aspects of human nature. (I can think of the fact that people are often okay with not taking credit for their own creations if those creations are bigger than they could ever be--humans want to be a part of something bigger than themselves)

My favorite book of all time is War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. Arabian Nights comes in a close second, but I think War and Peace has more that my American culture can relate to than the absurdities you might find in Arabian Nights... This weekend I had the privilege of watching the film for War and Peace over Netflix--it was my first time, I enjoyed the film, though I don't think that it is the kind of film a normal person would enjoy--you have to read the book in order to enjoy it, I'd argue. The film does little more than summarize the book in just over 3 hours, but it skips many important scenes and their interpretation (and the casting! Ugh, of the main character, Piere, is so terrible!) [Dear director, Piere is a nerdy, timid, bumbling giant.--not the Henry Fonda type...]. I liked the film mostly because it brought up my memories of the book--my connections with the book. The cherished moments I enjoyed as I discovered things about human nature, and myself, while reading the book. It's such a powerful book, it's only a shame that in order to experience those things which the book has to offer, the reader has to embrace a book from the top 20 longest books of all time (and one of the very few from that list which are translated into English!)

With such length, you either have to have some sort of incentive for finishing it, or you have to be a complete genius in relation to human behavior. --I was both, and I barely made it through. I have completed it_once_. It was the months before my LDS mission. My sister gave it to me for either Christmas or Birthday, I can't remember which, but the book is long enough that it could have been Christmas... Either way, I began reading and finished a month before I set off, pledging not to read anything other than the scriptures for 2 years. My incentive was that I wanted to read something--something big, so that my heart would be set and capable of lasting for 2 years. If I didn't finish it, I would be disappointed for 2 years. That was my incentive
To portray to you my "incentive" I want to use a metaphor: Imagine you are taken captive by Persian pirates, who tell you "I will give you one last request before we must kill you" To which you say: "I am a scholarly type, my last request is that I may read one book before I perish." The pirate king agrees and asks "which book would you have me fetch for you?" Your response: "War and Peace." --Why War and Peace? --it's obvious isn't it? Because that could buy you some time as you think about your life coming to an end, and maybe it could even give you the time you need to convince the pirate king to let you live.
Pirate kings and Arabian nights aside, I had a goal that I wanted to read the book so that I could say I read it--little did I know that it would be the best book ever written! The movie argues that the main theme of the book is that no matter how rough life is, we need to learn to enjoy it, and it closes the film with the following quote from the book: "The most difficult thing--but an essential one--is to love Life, to love it even while one suffers, because Life is all. Life is God and to love Life means to love God."--I think that is ONE of the themes, but I'm not settled yet on it being the MAIN theme.

Lately, I have been thinking of a specific story in War and Peace, that of Andre Bolkonsky. In the beginning, he abandons his wife to fight for his country, a noble act, but he tells his friend that it is to get away from his wife and his father. In war he gets injured, while being a war hero--a true hero-- and his heroic act impresses Napoleon, his enemy, who lends him his doctor and ultimately saves his life in time to return home to his wife just to watch her die giving birth to his son. He then falls in love with a younger, naive, girl because she brings him back to happiness, but she betrays his love and trust during their lengthy engagement period, and he refuses to forgive her until he is on his death bed. He is on his death bed because he tries to escape life, again, by going off to war, and a cannon shell hits him, mortally wounding him.

Some people claim that Andre is the epitome of the pessimist, but I think those people don't read enough into his character. He is only a pessimist because of what he has seen, and he has seen more than the other characters. Each of the characters have a "down" moment--a pessimist moment. What separates Andre is that he sees through all of the "fake" parties that his wife attends, he sees through all of the military shows, the religious doctrine, he sees right through all of the politics and the assumptions that the other characters have. He is very much a realist and he has a knack for recognizing the root of everything. He sees quite clearly. The other characters always have something to hide behind--Pytor becomes mystified by war and is led astray into believing that it will bring him to a greater, more heroic end--he is killed quite non-heroically in battle. Piere is intellectual and is mystified by what he thinks he understands, and often argues about things he doesn't know anything about, does things he doesn't know what he's doing, &c.--he makes several people offended, marries a gold digger, &c.. Natasha is just a silly little girl who thinks life is all about romance and is mystified by the thing called love, when Anatole tells her he loves her, she thinks she's found love and it turns out Anatole is just a rake, and she ruined her chances with a much better man. Andre isn't a pessimist--he's just the only character who sees things the way they really are. He isn't hindered by having to frame reality into his little world. He accepts things the way they are and although he struggles by having those views, I don't see why someone could confuse his complaints about how gruesome war is or how upset he is about the fakeness of society life, because that's just how war and peace really is. War is gruesome and peace is often false.
I am more inclined to believe that the main theme of War and Peace is that no matter how you look at the world, it still exists and everything you do makes a difference, or put another way: no matter what you believe, the truth about life is that it simply is.

Everything in Andre's life that he does, thinking it is a good cause, turns out to only bite him in the rear once it is over; poor guy. I think everyone has experienced this before in their life. The devil just doesn't relent. Like I said, I have been thinking about Andre's story lately because I feel I can relate to him quite well, and as I look at my life I am concerned about similar things that I think Andre was concerned about. We both have a knack for seeing through the costumes and fluff and looking at the bare bones, root of reality. We both have been disillusioned by the things we once held precious. We've both experienced what it is like to give our friends advice only to have them disregard it because they are too blinded by their own desires.

--

I'm 22 years old. Quite young really. I've looked into my future--as best as any man can guess at how his life is going to pan out--maybe I'm superstitious for believing that I know myself well enough and how life works that I can make reasonable estimates of my future. In one of T.S. Eliot's poems, "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Proofrock," Alfred keeps telling himself that "there will be time" to talk to women, and so he never has a relationship with any of them and he sees himself dying without a woman in the end, even though it is something he wants. I have my reasons for wanting the same thing, maybe it's something all men want deep down, to get married. But I don't see myself getting married any time soon. I don't WANT to get married any time soon. Not that I don't think I could handle it, not because I'm scared, or timid, and I don't think getting married is going to hold me back--if anything it will set me free, make me less scared, less timid, and what man COULD handle getting married, am I right? (I'm beginning to understand the old saying: "women, can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em").
Because I see my future, the root of it mind you, I know that I have to be very picky about how I handle marriage. It is going to be a very tricky subject for me, finding a woman capable of sticking with me, and I honestly don't know how to go about it. I've go through every trick in the book that I know how, save one, and none of them work. My final option is to trust in Tolstoy's advice about the two greatest warriors "patience and time..." I'm sure many wars were won that way. . .

But I have one other wild-card up my sleeve--I've always thought this would be a good idea, but I'm not sure how it would work or rather I wasn't sure if it was a card I wanted to play. Now I'm beginning to think that it is the BEST card in my hand and that I MUST play it, otherwise I'll never win:

Before I consider marrying anyone, I'm going to force my future wife to read War and Peace. In fact, given the low probability of things I'll be quite direct, open, and simple. If any attractive, single, young, LDS woman can read War and Peace from the beginning to the end and can give me ONE new insight about the book or how it relates to life that I don't already know, I will pledge my soul to them. That's my ONLY requirement about marriage.

It sounds very much like a story out of The Arabian Nights... In fact, it is quite similar! And I'm willing to share my requirement because I know that it is so difficult. I know that very few women can handle it--very few people in the entire history of the world have read the book entirely without skipping a few pages. I'm also fairly confident that anyone who reads that book will feel, and learn, all of the human emotions that I expect my future wife to experience before marrying me. And if any woman can tell me something very intriguing that I don't already know about War and Peace, then she is more intelligent than I am, and that would put her very high on my list.

As I said before, you need one or two things in order to finish the book: incentive, or being a genius. I'm merely providing you with the incentive--if you're a genius, it will be an easy read for you.


"Open up your mind and see like me" and if you still can't see my vision in presenting this requirement,  "please don't complicate" and just listen to this song and picture me singing it to you on our wedding night.



so, what are you waiting for? Get started! http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400079985/ref=rdr_ext_sb_ti_hist_1