Book 2 Part 3 Chapter 8 (Chapter 111 Overall)

Chapter Summaries: Dole: Overtures for reconciliation with Ellen. Pierre's melancholy. His diary. Iosiph Alexseyevitch's exposition of the Masonic doctrines. Pierre receives his wife back.
Briggs: Pierre, wanting to do good, agrees to a reconciliation with Helene.
Pevear and Volkhonsky: Pierre depressed, Letters from mother-in-law and Helene. Goes to Moscow to see Bazdeev. Pierre's diary. Reconciliation with his wife.

Translation:

VIII. In Pierre again was found that yearning which he was so afraid of. He for three days after uttering his speech at the lodge lied at home on his couch, taking nobody and leavin for nowhere. At this time he received a letter from his wife, which begged him about an appointment, writing about her sadness by him and about the desire to devote to him all of her life. At the end of the letter she informed him of how on the next day she would come to Petersburg from behind the border. Following behind the letter in the privacy of Pierre burst one of the less respected by him brother masons and, aiming the conversation to the conjugal relationship of Pierre, in seeing the brotherly council, expressed to him the idea about how the austerity to his wife was unfair, and that Pierre retreated from the first rules of masonry, not forgiving the repentant. At this very same time his mother-in-law, the wife of Prince Vasiliy, sent for him, begging him for a few minutes to visit her for negotiations about a quite important case. Pierre saw that it was a conspiracy against him, that he would like to unite with his wife, and this was not even unpleasant to him in this condition in which he was found. He did not care: in life Pierre did not count any business of big importance, and under the influence of longing, which now controlled him, he did not cherish his freedom, or his tenacity in the punishment of his wife. "Nothing is right, no one is to blame, it has begun and she is not to blame," — he thought. — If Pierre did not express immediately the same consent in combining with his wife, that was only because of how in the condition of longing in which he was found, it was not in his forces to undertake anything. If his wife would arrive to him, he would now not drive her away. What was there to care about in comparison with that which occupied Pierre, to live or not live with his wife? Not answering his wife or his mother-in-law, Pierre at a time late at night gathered on the road and left for Moscow, so that to see Iosif Alekseevich. Here is what Pierre wrote in his diary. "Moscow, 17 November. Now only have I arrived for my benefactor, and hasten to write down all that I have experienced. Iosif Alekseevich lives poorly and suffers for a third year an agonizing disease of the bladder. Never have I heard groans from him, or murmured words. From morning to late at night, with the exception of the hours in which he eats very simple food, he works at science. He accepted me graciously and planted in the bed in which he lied; I made him the sign of the Knights of the East and Jerusalem, he replied to me with the same, and with a meek smile asked me about what I found out and brought from the Prussian and Scottish lodges. I told him all as I was able, delivering those foundations that I suggested in our Petersburg lodge and informed him about the bad reception made to me, and about the break that happened between the brothers and I. Iosif Alekseevich, considerably kept silent and thought at all this outlined by me with a look, which instantly illuminated to me all the verified and future way presented to me. He amazed me, asking about whether I remembered what the threefold objective of the order was: 1) in the storage and cognition of the sacrament; 2) in cleaning and fixing himself for the perceptions thereof and 3) in correcting the family human through striving to such purification. What is the most important and the first objective of these three? To ensure one’s own correction and purification. Only to this goal can we always seek whatever from all circumstances. But together with this objective requires from us the most work because, to be mistaken in pride, we, omitting this objective, take for the sacrament, which is unworthy to perceive by our impurities, or we take for the correction of the human family, when from ourselves we reveal an example of abominations and debauchery. The Illuminati is not a pure teaching because of how it carried away public activity and was full of pride. In this foundation Iosif Alekseevich condemned my speech and all of my activity. I agreed with him in the depth of my soul. By the occasion of our conversation about my family deeds, he said to me: "The main duty of a true mason, as I said to you, consists in the development of yourself. But often we think that removing from ourselves all the difficulty of our lives, we will reach these goals; the opposite, my sir, he said to me, only in an environment of societal unrest can we reach the three main goals: 1) self-knowledge, for a person may experience themselves only through comparison, 2) development, only the struggle to reach it, and 3) to reach the main virtue — the love of death. Only the vicissitudes of life may show us the futility of it and may promote — our congenital love of death or revival in a new life. These words were more wonderful in that Iosif Alekseevich, despite his severe physical misery, never burdens life, but loves death which he, despite all the purity and the height of internal man, does not feel himself ready enough. Then the benefactor explained to me the matters of the great square of the universe and pointed out that the triple and seventh number were the crux of the foundation only. He advised me not to step back from communication with the Petersburg brothers and to occupy only an office of the 2nd degree, to try distracting the brothers from hobbies of pride, and draw them to the true way of self-knowledge and development. Besides this he personally advised me first only to follow them by myself, and with this purpose gave me a notebook, that very one in which I am writing and will inscribe henceforth all my actions." "Petersburg, 23 November. "I again live with my wife. My mother-in-law in tears arrived to me and said that Elen is here and that she begs me to listen to her, that she is innocent, that she is unhappy with my abandonment, and many others. I knew that should I only admit myself to see her, that it would not be in my force of will to refuse her and the desire of her. In this doubt I did not know to whose assistance and advice I could resort to. Would my benefactor be here, he would speak to me. I retired to myself, reread the letters of Iosif Alekseevich, remembered my conversations with him, and from that only brought out that I should not refuse her asking and should give every hand of assistance, by that more as a person related with me, and should carry her across. But should I for virtue forgive her, and let her combine my will with her to have only a spiritual objective. So I decided and wrote so to Iosif Alekseevich. I said to my wife that I beg her to forget all the old, that I beg her to forgive me, that I could be to blame before her, but that for me to forgive her there was nothing. I was happy to say this to her. Let her not know how heavy it was to again see her. I am arranged in the big house in the upper chambers and test the happy feeling of updating."

Time: three days later, November 17th, November 23rd

Mentioned: nearly three years, early morning until late at night

Locations: Pierre's home, St. Petersburg, Moscow
Mentioned: abroad, Orient (East in Mandelker, Dole, and Dunnigan), Jerusalem, Prussian and Scotch lodges (Prussia and Scotland in Briggs. Maude, Mandelker, and Garnett have Scottish.)

Pevear and Volokhonsky Notes:

After the rejection, "Pierre was again overcome by that anguish he feared so much." The problems with his wife arise as she tells him she wants to see him again and a fellow Mason comes by to tell him that he has treated
his wife wrongly. "Pierre considered nothing in his life to be of great importance, and under the influence of the anguish that now possessed him, he valued neither his freedom nor his persistence in punishing his wife."

Pierre's diary excerpt: Iosif Alexeevich has been ill, but receives Pierre and helps him out by basically telling Pierre that he was wrong and prideful, which those at the lodge had done, but does so in, at least according to the
diary, a way that recalls his conversation with Pierre earlier in the novel, kind but direct. The importance should be on correcting yourself, not on social activity, according to Iosif Alexeevich, which parallels the other narrative
in this part thus far, the Andrei/Speransky narrative. "Iosif Alexeevich, despite his great physical suffering, is never burdened by life, but loves death".

Pierre begins to live with his wife again after his mother-in-law visited him.

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 *):

Pierre

Ellen (also "his wife".)

The wife of Prince Vasili (and "his mother-in-law". Could be argued she is in the chapter since she sent for Pierre to talk to him)

Iosiph ("Bazdeyef". Garnett uses "Osip Alexyevitch". Maude, Wiener, and Mandelker also use the first two names in that first mention. Pierre later uses the first two names in his diary. Briggs uses the first and third names
in the first mention and then just the first name in the diary. Edmonds uses all three names in the first mention again, and then the first and second names in the diary. Bell just uses "Bazdeiew" again. He is also "the
Benefactor".)

(there is also a member of the lodge that he respected less than others.)

Abridged Versions: Bell seems to have a line break rather than a chapter break (it is hard to tell whether or not it should be considered a line break since it is the end of a letter).

Gibian: End of Chapter 3
Fuller: We go straight from Pierre getting the letter from his wife, then his mother-in-law, to him deciding to neither fight it or accept it to the diary entry that he has reconciled with his wife again (the November 23 entry
that ends the chapter in the full versions.) The Iosiph Alekseyevitch references in that letter are removed. This is followed by a line break.

Komroff: The first diary entry is shortened slightly, but mostly kept. Line breaks follows the second diary entry, making a well preserved chapter.

Kropotkin: The first, the long, diary entry is removed, keeping the chapter focus on the wife plot. No break.
Simmons: The first letter is shortened. End of chapter 3.

Additional Notes: Maude (Norton): "This incident recalls Tolstoy's own experience on the few occasions when he ventured to make a public speech--to him always a trying ordeal and one in which he had little success."

Resurrection: "After that dreadful night she eased to believe in god and goodness...after that night she was convinced that no one believed in him and that all they said about God and goodness was just in order to cheat

people...And no one in the world cared for anything else but pleasure just this pleasure. The old writer with whom she lied during the second year of her life of independence had confirmed her still more in this belief. He

used to tell her in so many words that all the happiness of life consisted in this - he called it poetry and aesthetics." "When you feel depressed - have a cigarette or a drink or, best of all, make love, and it will pass."

Kathyrn Feuer (The Book That Became War and Peace)

The politics, too, of the first drafts was much more explicit and polemical. Indeed, War and Peace seems to have been first planned as a political novel...We can assume that the second volume would have recounted Pierre’s experiences as a revolutionary and that the third would have described his “true” regeneration--his rejection of political activism and his attempts to achieve spiritual self-perfection, probably through his association with peasants in Siberia...for Pierre’s protracted dissipation, one drunken party, marriage to the depraved Helene, and a single duel would serve; for his revolutionary activity, ideological error was substituted--admiration for Napoleon, attempts to better the conditions of his serfs, Masonry, then a patriotic plan to kill Napoleon; rather than thirty years of redemptive exile, the experiences of seven years would be sufficient for his successive disillusionments with the liberal panaceas and his eventual achievement of spiritual regeneration with the help of Platon Karataev instead of the Siberian peasants..

The Godson: Page 122: “he saw it was only when he had ceased to take thought for himself that his heart had been purified, and he had been able to purify the hearts of others. And the highwayman went on: “But the first real change of heart took place in me when you ceased to fear death at my hands.”’