War and peace

A NOTE BY THE DRAMATURGE
Romain Rolland wrote the following about “War and Peace” – “This work, like life itself, has no beginning, no end. It is life itself in its eternal movement”.
And the truth is that Tolstoy’s novel has no beginning and no end in a conventional sense. 
The first chapter takes us to the salon of Anna Pavlovna Scherer, where St. Petersburg aristocracy and intelligentsia gather. Along with vivid discussion about Napoleon, Tsar Alexander, Austria, Prussia, the coming war, deals are also made through the royal family, marriages of convenience arranged, while all eyes are on the best dressed person in the salon. No introduction, no explanation, or any special indication is made as to which of the characters present will be the main ones, who are to be the secondary ones, and whose only appearance in the novel is in this chapter. Thus, the narrative end (the very end of War and Peace is actually a longer essay on Tolstoy’s understanding of history) instead of concluding the plot, introduces a new topic, a new event: the beginning of the Decembrist Revolt in Russia in 1825.
 It is interesting to see why War and Peace ends like this. Tolstoy actually wanted to write a novel about the Decembrist Revolt, but in his research he realized that the roots of that event lie in the Napoleonic wars that were fought from 1803 to 1815. Therefore, War and Peace was written almost as an introduction to what Tolstoy was really interested in – but, alas, in the end, Tolstoy never wrote a book about the Decembrists.
And yet, what is the main idea of War and Peace? The main idea, it seems to me, is the search. The protagonists of the novel are in constant search, looking for God, love, glory, happiness, the meaning of life ... Pierre Bezukhov wonders: “What is the purpose of our life? Why are we in this world? What are people and humanity supposed to build and create with their lives?” I think that is the main question that Tolstoy raises, the main theme of the book – and accordingly, the main theme of this dramatisation and performance.

Fedor Šili

A WORD BY THE DIRECTOR
Tumultuous sea called Mankind and History is like nature itself – at one point it seems peaceful as if nothing can disturb that peace, and yet the storm that will change everything is on the horizon; just like the sea when it becomes restless. And we are but tiny bits, residents of that body of nature. Sometimes we think that we control that body unaware that waves are those that lift us up, throw us down and scatter us all around. We may be the same, but the wave lifts some of us up at one point and we see a leader, a genius, strength, while others get scattered by the same wave only to become victims and losers. That is Tolstoy’s tumultuous sea of history. We see leaders and commanders and initiators and wars, and Tolstoy sees a natural and yet incomprehensible process for us – a sea of history that became restless. The restless sea of Europe – now more turbulent than ever in its recent history. What is happening? The world is changing like at the start of the 19th century when Napoleon brought a new world order in Europe and spoke of a common fatherland – Europe without borders. He left behind millions of dead who refused to accept his kind of freedom. The world was facing “the greatest war that has ever been waged” until then. What is happening? “Do not try to understand”, Tolstoy shouts. “Because you will not be able to”. The same as the animals in a pen do not understand when the farmer chooses one ram and feeds him better than others. Other animals think that ram is a genius and a leader. And then they are dumbfounded and scared when that same ram gets slaughtered and eaten first. They wonder what happened, what he did wrong. This logic is beyond us. The only thing that we can understand is that we are mere tools in the hands of history. That history is guided by inevitable events. How can one direct War and Peace? The same as Kutuzov led the Battle of Borodino, by understanding the circumstances that surround us and realising that the process is run by chance and inevitabilities that should be constantly recognized, while always bearing in mind that we are mere bits in that large organism of War and Peace. As Peter Brook says, nothing is more important in a play than the people who participate in it.  

Boris Liješević