#npgc1812

All quotes used for this round of fact checking come from Book Eight, Chapter X of the Louise and Aylmer Maude translation of War and Peace (the translation used as the basis for the musical's lyrics). I also reference the translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky, which I believe to be more reliable and overall the better translation— you will see in part where I come to this conclusion in the post below.

Thanks for your patience and I hope you enjoyed!

Check out the rest of the series here:

Prologue, Pierre, Moscow, The Private and Intimate Life of the House, Natasha & Bolkonskys, No One Else, The Opera

hey guys is this anything

Ha, well I do admit it's mostly projection. It's this verse, mainly:

I view it in the most literal context. Pierre is sober now but still struggling with the temptation to return to alcohol.

I've had my own struggles with alcohol and drug abuse, but am almost... 6? years sober now (yuuup i was an underage alcoholic! and do not have an official sobriety date because it's hard to label "when i gave up for addiciton reasons" vs "when i literally indulged last", but either way, it is 2025 and 2019 was the last year i touched anything whatsoever, even if my "last" use varies in context and i dont have an official date for anything), well technically im California sober as I occasionally endulge in weed, but that was never an addiction for me so I don't count my occasional use in that as a relapse.

Anyway lol enough about me and my own mental health, basically I just found that line in particular to be about mental illness in general, especially addiction! Perhaps I was a bit inaccurate to say that the Epilogue fully implies it - as to my knowledge there is no indication in the song nor in War And Peace if Pierre gets sober or not -- send a follow up in a few days maybe when I have access to my book so I can confirm/deny the W&P thing! I'm out of town now for work :> But I find the epilogue, as a whole, to be about Pierretasha HEALING. Healing TOGETHER. And I think Pierre sobriety is a part of that :)

Obviously say this with bias - I struggle to see a non-sobriety interpretation of it, if that makes any sense at all? It could just be he's still mentally ill in general, but keeping those thoughts at bay? But because so many of Pierre's songs and Pierre's arc in general involves him drinking, it's not so hard to interpret it as him giving up the drink - especially as a parallel to Dust And Ashes, a drunken soliliquy that ends with him wanting to wake up and fall in love. And in the epilogue, hes done that.