Book 2 Part 3 Chapter 6 (Chapter 109 Overall)

Chapter Summaries: Dole: Prince Andrei's absorption in affairs. Intimacy with Speransky. Speransky's personality. Prince Andrei appointed a member of the Committee on Revision of the Military Code.
Briggs: Andrey agrees to work on a committee for the reform of the Legal Code.

VI.

At the first time of his stay in Petersburg, Prince Andrey felt all his mental thoughts, worked out in his secluded life, completely darkened by those petty worries that covered him in Petersburg.

From the evening, returning home, he in his memory book wrote down four or five necessary visits or appointments487 at designated hours. The mechanical life, the disposition of the day so that to keep on time everywhere, took away the majority of the share of his energy in life. He did nothing, and did not even have time to think, but only spoke and with success spoke about what he had time before to think out in the village.

He sometimes noticed with displeasure that he happened to on the same day, in different societies, repeat one and the same thing. Yet he was so busy the whole day that he did not have time to think about that he thought about nothing.

Speransky, as in the first appointment with him at Kochubey’s, and then on Wednesday at his home, where Speransky eye to eye, accepting Bolkonsky, long and trustingly spoke with him, made a strong impression on Prince Andrey.

Prince Andrey counted such a huge number of people as despicable and insignificant creatures, so he wanted to find in a friend a living ideal of this perfection which he sought, that he easily believed that in Speransky he found this ideal in a quite reasonable and virtuous man. Should  Speransky have been from this same society of which Prince Andrey was from, with the same upbringing and moral habits, then Bolkonsky would have soon found him a weak man, not a heroic party, but this strange for him logical mind inspired more respect in him and he did not quite understand him. Besides this, Speransky, whether because of how he appreciated the abilities of Prince Andrey, or because of how he found it fit to acquire him, Speransky flirted before Prince Andrey his impartial, calm mind and flattered Prince Andrey with that subtle flattery, connected with arrogance, which consisted in tacit recognition of his interlocutor with himself together as the only men capable of understanding all of the stupidity of all the rest, and the intelligence and depth of their thoughts.

In the time of their long conversation on Wednesday night, Speransky not once said: "In us watches all that exits from the common level of deep-rooted habits..." or with a smile: "but we want for the wolves to be full and the sheeps intact..." or: "they may not understand this..." And all with such an expression that said: "We: you and I, we understand who they are and who we are."

This first, long conversation with Speransky only strengthened in Prince Andrey that feeling with which he had at the first time he saw Speransky. He saw in him a reasonable, strict, and huge mind of a man with an energy and tenacity reaching authority and using it only for the good of Russia. Speransky in the eyes of Prince Andrey was that person to reasonably explain all the phenomena of life, recognizing valid only that which was reasonable, and to all able to apply a measure of reason, which he himself so wanted to be. All was presented so simply, clearly in the statement of Speransky that Prince Andrey unwittingly agreed with him in all. Should he object and argue, that was only because he wanted to purposely be independent and not really obey the opinions of Speransky. All was so, all was okay, but one thing embarrassed Prince Andrey: this was the cold, mirrored, not omitted to himself look in the soul of Speransky, and his white, tender hands, at which Prince Andrey unwittingly looked at, as usual watching the hands of people that have power. The mirrored look and tender hands for some reason annoyed Prince Andrey. The unpleasantness that astounded Prince Andrey more was the too great contempt to people which he noticed in Speransky, and the variety of techniques of evidence which he brought in confirmation to his opinions. He used all the possible guns of thought, excluding comparisons, and too boldly, as it seemed to Prince Andrey, went over from one to another. He began on the ground of practical activist and condemned dreamers, then on the ground of a satirist ironically chuckled above his opponents, then became strictly logical, then suddenly lifted into the region of metaphysics. (This latter gun of evidence he especially often used.) He carried over a question to metaphysical heights, went over to the definition of space, time, and thought, then carried out from there rebuttals, again lowering it into the ground of argument.

The main feature of the mind of Speransky, startling Prince Andrey, was the undoubted, unshakable faith in the force and lawfulness of the mind. It was seen that never in the head of Speransky could come the common for Prince Andrey idea that it cannot be to all the same express only what one thinks, and never come to doubt that all that I think and all that I believe is nonsense. And this special mind of Speransky only attracted Prince Andrey more.

From the first of his acquaintance with Speransky Prince Andrey fed to him the passionate sense of admiration, similar to that which he had at sometime felt to Bonaparte. The fact that Speransky was a son of a priest, who could be foolish people, as this was and made many, despised in the quality of a shopkeeper or clergyman, forced Prince Andrey to especially carefully treat his feelings to Speransky, and unconsciously reinforced them in himself.

On that the first evening which Bolkonsky spent with him, entering into conversation about the commission drawing up laws, Speransky with irony told Prince Andrey that the commission of laws existed for 50 years, cost millions and did nothing, and that Rosenkampf glued the tags on all articles of comparison legislation.

— And here and all, for what did the state pay millions! — he said. — We want to give new judicial power to the Senate, but we have no laws. Therefore for people such as you, prince, it is a sin not to serve in it.

Prince Andrey said that for this one needs legal formation, which he did not have.

— Yes he has nothing, so that’s the same as you wanting? This is the bewitched circle488 from which we need to exit with effort.

In a week Prince Andrey was a member of a commission making military regulations, and, what he in no way could see, the head of the branch of commission making laws. By request of Speransky he took the first part in forming a civil code and, with the help of the Napoleonic code and the code of Justinian,489 worked above the division making: the right of persons.

487 rendez-vous (appointments)

488 circulus viciosus,

489 Code Napoléon and Justiniani, (Napoleonic and Justinian Code)

Time: evening, Wednesday, a week later

Mentioned: 150 years

Locations: St. Petersburg, house of Kochubey, Andrei's house
Mentioned: Russia

Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes:

Andrei has the problem faced by Pierre throughout the novel and outright avoided by Andrei's father through his living in the country, the swamp of city life, the way it sucks people in and runs their entire life, a feeling of being
pulled rather than directing their own lives. "he was so busy for while days that he had no time to think about the fact that he was doing nothing."

More on the growing relationship between Andrei and Speransky, which is predicated through Speransky's ability to make an us versus them differentiation when they are alone speaking. "but one thing disconcerted Prince
Andrei: it was Speransky's cold, mirror-like gaze, which let no one penetrate to his soul, and his tender white hand".

Speransky's main instrument of proof: "He would transfer the question to metaphysical heights, go on to definitions of space, time, thought, and, deriving his refutations from there, descend again to the ground of the
argument. In general, the main feature that struck Prince Andrei in Speransky's mind was his unquestionable, unshakeable faith in the power and legitimacy of reason." For Tolstoy, it is not hard to see that this is where
he seals Speransky's fate.

Line break after "It's a circulus viciosus (Speransky complaining about the legislative commission not doing anything since its creation) which we must make an effort to break out of."

Characters (characters who do not appear, but are mentioned are placed in italics. First appearances are in Bold. First mentions are underlined. Final appearance denoted by *):

Prince Andrei Bolkonsky

Speransky

Kotchubey (more in reference to his party)

Rosenkampf

Napoleon (in reference to "Code Napoleon", in the same vein, the "Justinian" reference is more of a reference than a character)

Abridged Versions: Line break after "It is a circulus vitiosus from which we must break a way out" in Mandelker. Briggs, Dunnigan, Garnett, Wiener, and Dole have one in the same spot. End of Chapter 2 in Bell.

Gibian: End of chapter 2.
Fuller: Entire chapter is cut.

Komroff:  Everything before Andrei goes to Speransky's on Wednesday is removed and a lot of the detail about how Andrei views Speransky is shortened. Followed by a line break.

Kropotkin: Entire chapter is cut.
Simmons: Entire chapter is cut.

Additional Notes:

Russell (Page 700):

the Social Contract became the Bible of most of the leaders in the French Revolution, but no doubt, as is the fate of Bibles, it was not carefully read and still less understood by many of its disciples. It reintroduced the habit of

metaphysical abstractions among the theorists of democracy, and by its doctrine of the general will it made possible the mystic identification of a leader with its people"

Isaiah Berlin

Tolstoy’s Attitude Towards History in War and Peace 

Tolstoy perceived reality in its multiplicity, as a collection of separate entities round and into which he saw with a clarity and penetration scarcely ever equalled, but he believed only in one vast, unitary whole...He advocated a single embracing vision; he preached not variety but simplicity, not many levels of consciousness but reduction to some single level--in War and Peace to the standard of the good man, the single, spontaneous, open soul: as later to that of the peasants, or of a simple Christian ethic divorced from any complex theology or metaphysic.

Moser/Rowe

Page 48: .three...involvement with the rationalist Speransky..