It was in July 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pávlovna Schérer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Márya Fëdrovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili, a man of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception."
War and Peace is famous for many things, probably mostly for its bloated length. So why did I read it again? It's a good question, given that (especially at the beginning), so much of the book details mind-numbing details of high Russian society. But Tolystoi's prose has an incredible power, his scenes - especially the battle scenes - are powerfully cinematic, and his dense plot is highly captivating. (I should mention that I skipped over the sections where he pontificates about military strategy.)
And you just don't see powerful extended analogies anymore, like the one about bees that Tolystoi used to explain Moscow after the Tsar has left it:
In a queenless hive no life is left though to a superficial glance it seems as much alive as other hives.
The bees circle round a queenless hive in the hot beams of the midday sun as gaily as around the living hives; from a distance is smells of honey like the others, and bees fly in and out in the same way. But one has only to observe that hive to realize that there is no longer any life in it. The bees do not fly in the same way, the smell and the sound that meet the bee-keeper are not the same. To the bee-keeper’s tap on the wall of the sick hive, instead of the former instant unanimous humming of tens of thousands of bees with their abdomens threateningly compressed, and producing by the rapid vibration of their wings an aerial living sound, the only reply is a disconnected buzzing from different parts of the deserted hive. From the alighting-board, instead of the former spirituous fragrant smell of honey and venom, and the warm whiffs of crowded life, comes an odor of emptiness and decay mingling with the smell of honey. There are no longer sentinels there sounding the alarm with their abdomens raised, and ready to die in defense of the hive. There is no longer the measured quiet sound of throbbing activity, like the sound of boiling water, but diverse discordant sounds of disorder.
Tolystoi goes on but you get the point: without the queen/Tsar, the vitality is gone from the hive/Moscow, and thus Napoleon's victory is a hollow one. And these scenes are some of the most moving of the entire book; the chaos of the retreat, the disorder of those who are left behind, and the lethargy of the French army as they try to take pleasure in sacking a city whose life force has fled beyond their reach.
