Chapter 25: Nekhlyudov goes to the advocate and feels better that he has done something and the weather matches his mood until depression captures him as he walks, deciding to get in a cab after first rejecting them. War and Peace has several moments of depression for Pierre, as well as moments of rather sudden jolts of mood, both positive and negative. I think the big moment here, as is the whole of Pierre's Mason arc, is that Nekhlyudov does "something" and that "something" makes him feel better, only to realize that the "something" is rather meaningless and his positive contribution does not match the negative contribution he has had on Maslova's wife. This setup really mirrors the Tolstoyan (and leftist) critique of charity from the rich, in which the rich rob the poor and actively oppress them through the system they have created to maintain their political power and wealth, but then give a small amount of their wealth back to feel better about themselves, and are often honored for doing so. I think Tolstoy here wants to make sure that we do not see Nekhlyudov's going to the advocate, which was just something the president told him to do in order to get him out of the way so he can go have an affair in a hotel, as something that was actually either helpful or an action that has any moral value. It is only when Nekhlyudov walks and self-reflects that he realizes this and the emptiness of his actions. At the risk of reading too metaphorically, I think we can see the decision to get into the cab as an attempt to break from self-reflection and how technology allows us to disengage from having to reflect on our moral actions and our mental health. Even though technology has allowed us to have more "down time" than most civilizations throughout history have, that technology eats up our down time, which is probably why meditation movements have gained a foothold in our culture, as a reaction to how technology has caused us to avoid looking inside of ourselves for happiness and moral/mental clarity.
Chapter 26: Nekhlyudov goes to the Korchagins to see the one he seems to be on the way to getting betrothed to. We are introduced to several characters, and I'll hit the highlights or most important ideas. One lady is a rabid Slavophile, while another is a bank director and liberal (just as War and Peace has the separate Franco-centric and Russian patriotic courts, Russia at this time was divided in a debate of whether to embrace its own/Asian culture or Euro-centric culture, a debate that also happened in Catherine the Great's time). The elder Korchagin is a man who is known for his senseless cruelty when he was a provincial governor, which reminds the reader of the cruelty of the country and how Maslova is getting crushed by it (and that despite his cruelty, Korchagin has suffered no consequences). The liberal gets incredibly angry about an article from a reactionary newspaper that argued against trial by duty. Missy's (the woman that Nekhlyudov appears to be getting betrothed to) behavior reminds everyone through her use of pronouns that she is intimate with Nekhlyudov, which makes him uneasy. On one hand, clearly Tolstoy does not have positive representations of women who take charge of their love lives (at the end of War and Peace before the epilogues, Natasha and, especially, Marya, passively allow their marriages to happen, and previously in the novel Marya rightly rejects a proposition and Natasha's "aggression" or at least participation toward the same person, Anatole, brings about what many characters at one point consider her "ruin"), but part of it in the context of the novel appears to relate to Nekhlyudov's guilt, as he is having a relationship with a married woman, but more importantly, his rape and role in Maslova's imprisonment.
"today everything in the house jarred - everything, beginning with the doorkeeper, the wide staircase, the flowers, the footmen, the table decorations, even Missy herself, who now seemed unattractive and affected. Nor did he care for Kolossov's self-satisfied, commonplace Liberalism; he did not like the ox-like, conceited, sensual appearance of old Korchagin, or the French phrases of the Slavophile Katerina Alexeyevna....Nekhlyudov had always wavered in his attitude to Missy...."
Just as with the cracking of the ice during the rape of Maslova, the surroundings of Nekhlyudov reflect his inner moral state, but here, rather than something ominous and odd, we get things that (though it is an introduction to them for us) Nekhlyudov is used to, but now finds abhorrent. This is because he has been taken out of his normal state and his comfortable life by his participation in the jury of Maslova's trial. At first, this shaking of the foundations of life comes with despair and malaise
(just as before resurrection, there must be a death) and an awakening of the emptiness around them. Everything that once seemed valuable and important becomes ridiculous, which mirrors Pierre's revelations throughout War and Peace. Notice here too that Tolstoy continues to put himself and his characters outside of the normal political debates, finding them ridiculous and transitory, and meaningless to the average person attempting to better their moral self. He has no love for liberalism, conservatism, or epicureanism. As we've seen, Tolstoy is certainly not apolitical and cares deeply about the suffering of peoples and how they can be alleviated. However, he rejected the Slavophile versus Westerner debate, just as he rejects the conservatism versus liberal debate because he sees it as missing the point, especially in the context of an individual's progression of their moral self.
"He was sorry and ashamed at having hurt her feelings, but he knew that if he showed the smallest signs of weakness it would be the end of him, that is, would bind him to her. And today he feared that more anything"
Nekhlyudov does not want to be in a situation where he is bound to Missy and this can come off as perpetuating Tolstoy's sexism (and I think it does), but to look at it contextually in Tolstoy's work, we can compare the "binding", both negative and positive, of Pierre in War and Peace. First, Pierre gets bound to Helene, almost by force, but he desires it and awkwardly consents to it, and this leads to her manipulation of him that he has to then withdraw from (and accept to being the strange husband that doesn't participate in her parties and living with her like a sister). Then, late in the novel, he is completely bound to Natasha, but she reciprocates by giving up everything for her family and taking the motherly role. By this point in Tolstoy's thinking, this also isn't ideal and is distracting from moral progress, especially for Nekhlyudov, who has to atone for his sins (to use Christian traditional language).
Chapter 27: The chapter begins with Missy's mother, who is in a relationship with one of the other characters at the dinner (and always eats dinner alone and has the defining characteristic of pretending to be much younger than she is). After furthering cementing the decadence of these characters, Nekhlyudov admits that "one has no right to sit in judgement" (perhaps ironic considering Tolstoy's judgment of these characters). This is of course a key tenant of Tolstoyan thought and perhaps the key point of the novel. Systems created to subjugate or classify people into different groups (whether guilty/non-guilty, rich/poor, or Slavophile/Westerner) are inherently flawed because people are inherently equal, flawed, and unable to know the inner workings of each person.
Tolstoy spends time talking about the difference between the drunkenness of peasants, "who drink seldom....reel about or talk nonsense", and the nobility, which are "excited and self-satisfied" when drunk, which I think shows the way the two classes operate and reveal, as alcohol often does, the essential parts of their character. The characters talk about the importance of mysticism in poetry, which is absolutely antithetical to everything that Tolstoy believed about art, as mysticism does not look for infecting an audience with sincerity or a message that the author wants to give to the reader. Tolstoy gives these characters these opinions intentionally, just as he gives the characters for War and Peace abhorrent opinions (such as defending Napoleon, fighting for glory, or serfdom), in order to define those characters and to alienate the reader from those characters, to make them sound ridiculous (this is easier in War and Peace when there is historical irony that can be played with). The mother especially is shown to be a rather pathetic character.
The more important and relevant conversation is about heredity, which Nekhlyudov says he doesn't believe in while picturing the other characters naked. The heredity point is essential and needs to be borne out a little more, but goes with Tolstoy's belief that people are equal (an anti-classist and hierarchy standpoint) and born essentially good and are shaped by social conditions, not biology. While obviously in a bad mood, he continues to fight off Missy and "understood how a horse must feel when it is being coaxed into its bridle and harness." This section begins with someone losing their literal political freedom while this chapter focuses on Nekhlyudov's social and internal freedom.
Chapter 28: In what is almost entirely a self-reflection chapter, a depressed Nekhlyudov repeats "Disgraceful and disgusting". He remembers wanting his mother to die and sees a picture of her almost entirely undressed and remembers seeing Missy in the same state. While Tolstoy wouldn't have any love for psychology or Freudism, it wasn't completely out of the ordinary for Tolstoy to have weird sexual family dynamics (see, for example Helene and Anatole's relationship) and it is a broader indictment of the sexual dynamics of society as a whole (Tolstoy also wants to have mothers be completely post-sexual, as we saw in the last chapter and Natasha in the epilogue). He thinks about leaving and going to Constantinople and Rome after getting the Maslova situation fixed, resolving to break it off with both Missy and the married woman he is having a relationship with. He resolves to make rules for himself to clean his soul but realizes that every time he has done this in the past and it hasn't worked. The obvious parallels to Tolstoy's own life with his diaries and his rules for how he should live his life and how those rules have failed. He decides to pray and ask God to help him, "to enter into him and cleanse him; and in the meantime that which he asked had already happened." This spiritual reformation and inward turning, rather than the attempt at rule-based morality, is what truly changes a person. Just as with Nikolai's prayer being instantly answered towards the end of War and Peace, prayer for Tolstoy, who does not otherwise believe in miracles, works. Just how it works, whether it is literal, a "it-works-when-it-is-in-God's-will-thing", or more about inward change, like meditation, isn't entirely clear. The chapter ends with his attitude completely reversed.
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