Pierre’s march with the prisoners out of Moscow was very difficult, but from this hard situation Pierre gained spiritual insights about how to bear suffering.
Pierre’s march with the prisoners out of Moscow was very difficult, but from this hard situation Pierre gained spiritual insights about how to bear suffering.
Book 14, Chapter 12
Pierre’s march with the prisoners out of Moscow was very difficult, but from this hard situation Pierre gained spiritual insights about how to bear suffering.
Summary:
Pierre’s march in the French convoy, from Moscow to the village where he was eventually freed, was very disordered and difficult. The convoy was melting and constantly changing. Half of the convoy’s wagons, laden with provisions, had been captured by Cossacks, the other half had gone on ahead. Many French had deserted the convoy. Much of the artillery was gone and was replaced with Marshal Junot’s enormous baggage train. Many wagons were captured or abandoned. Many of the prisoners had escaped, been shot or died. Of the 350 prisoners who left Moscow, only 100 were left. The separated groups of prisoners which departed Moscow had merged into one group. Pierre was able to rejoin Karatáev along the way, but since Karatáev was very ill Pierre now for some reason found it difficult to spend time with him. Pierre was shoeless and his feet gave him great pain. He was dirty and lice infested. Yet, there were spiritual insights to be gained from this experience. Pierre learned that suffering and joy are relative, and that it is possible to carry on under great privations with the proper outlook. The more difficult his position became, Pierre found, and the more terrible the future, the more independent of that position in which he found himself were the joyful and comforting thoughts, memories, and imaginings that came to him.
quote from the chapter:
While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth-that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing shoes he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feet that were covered with sores-his footgear having long since fallen to pieces. He discovered that when he had married his wife-of his own free will as it had seemed to him-he had been no more free than now when they locked him up at night in a stable. Of all that he himself subsequently termed his sufferings, but which at the time he scarcely felt, the worst was the state of his bare, raw, and scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh was appetizing and nourishing, the saltpeter flavor of the gunpowder they used instead of salt was even pleasant; there was no great cold, it was always warm walking in the daytime, and at night there were the campfires; the lice that devoured him warmed his body.) The one thing that was at first hard to bear was his feet.
Click here to read full text of this chapter.
Please help improve this shared document by posting your suggested corrections, clarifications, and changes below. Thank you!