In 1864, Tolstoy, thirty-six years old, happily married and, like all Russians, a lover of horses and hunting parties, in one of them he breaks his arm and must resign himself to immobility. This is how he begins to write what he proposed: a great historical novel, “War and peace”. The topic was Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and the defense of the Russian army in what was called the “patriotic war.” The novel is historical fiction: it is set sixty years before Tolstoy’s time, but he managed to speak with people who lived through the war and thoroughly documented the military aspects and the strategic genius of Napoleon, in addition to consulting archives, history books, philosophy texts, novels, diaries, biographies of Napoleon, etc. The origin of the novel dated back a long time and the theme had been different. He was interested in the Decembrist revolt, and that was going to be the title: “The Decembrists”. In 1860 Tolstoy He had a scheme based on the return from Siberia, after his thirty-year sentence, of one of the martyrs of the Decembrist revolution of 1825, Prince Volkonski, his uncle. When he returned, Volkonski was celebrated as a hero by the students, who idolized him as a living symbol against oppression. In new times, his figure linked the ideas of the Decembrists with the populist wave of liberation (…).
As the research progressed, the idea deepened and took it to 1812 and Napoleon: in that war were the roots of the officers’ insurrection and the desire for change (…). Already with that idea, in 1863 he undertook the composition of the monumental novel that had the title “War and peace” and that it would take five years of work. Some Russian critics and historians believe that it should be called a “national epic” rather than a novel, since it is the Russian people who are the true heroes, placed at the center of the action at a decisive moment of tension. But aspects of “family chronicle” also appear, since, as I said, one of the main characters, Prince Andrei Volkonski, in the fiction represents his uncle, years before his conviction. The novel was first published in chapters and in 1869 it appeared as a book. Critics agree on the national character of the work, which advances chronologically from 1805 and follows the order from the battle of Austerlitz, in 1806, that of the Three Emperors; then move on to the description of life in Moscow and St. Petersburg; later, the battle of Borodino, in 1812, the abandonment of Moscow and its burning by its inhabitants, the occupation of Moscow by Napoleon and then its withdrawal, the guerrilla war to which the Russian army subjected it and the winter that struck completely to the French army. The epilogue is divided into two parts: first, the further fate of the main characters, and second: Tolstoy’s ideas about the story.
What does the complex and monumental “War and Peace” tell us? Against the background of the great historical events that shook Europe and Russia, he investigates, describes and makes live the apparently minor story of the destiny of several families: the Rostovs, to which Natasha belongs; the Bezukov, which is that of Pierre, Tolstoy’s alter ego; the Volkonskis, that of Prince Andrei and the Kuragins. In Peace, he describes the love relationships, interests, ambitions, betrayals and disappointments of members of the aristocratic society of Moscow and St. Petersburg; then, in war, the horrors, vicissitudes and calamities suffered by the common soldiers, the patriotism of some officers, the envy and pride of caste depending on the closeness of each one with the emperor, always inaccessible together with his staff preparing your strategy.
Against the background of war, the lives, loves, joys and bitterness of the characters are woven linked to historical events. Pierre Bezukov, identified by Isaiah Berlin as an example of the “superfluous man,” is adrift from his thoughts, his doubts, and his inclinations; By his own decision he is left out of the war and searches for his place in life without finding it. In the gigantic story of the battle of Borodino, between General Kutuzov and Napoleon, there is a civilian who tours the surroundings of the battlefield, the batteries, the tents that serve as a hospital, of horrifying scenes, it is Pierre Bezukov, who goes from civil, observing the disposition of the armies and their movements. Tolstoy transfers here his own experience in the Crimea and the Stendhal scene that I already mentioned.
Tolstoy has a power of psychological analysis of characters as sharp as Dostoevsky, but fundamentally different: Tolstoy’s characters in “War and Peace” live the passage of time. The years modify them, the events that happen to them affect them, they change them, they are not always the same. Tolstoy shows the character’s psychological response to each situation. And in each instance, as in life, they do not react the same. This is present in all of his literature.
The counterpoint between the two worlds that “War and Peace” covers is speculative in terms of the social pyramid: on both sides, the protagonists are aristocrats. But at the front, in the barracks and in the trenches, you can see a second row of characters on a lower social scale and from the common people. And at this moment and throughout the chapters or parts of the “war” side, the theme that was the seed of the novel appears: that of the Decembrists. Nobles such as Prince Volkonski and Nikolai Rostov witness the dedication and unprecedented sacrifice of the common soldier, peasants recruited in the villages and in the countryside. This direct knowledge awakens that feeling of camaraderie that transcends ranks and wealth and that can only occur in the face of the imminence of death; brothers by the fact that he is fighting in defense of the country. Feeling that the officers will bring, after the triumph over Napoleon, and it is what Tolstoy wants to show: the sacrifice of the Russian people in that fight.
The narrative, we could say cinematic, unfolding of the meeting of the three emperors before the battle of Austerlitz, and then in the decisive battle of Borodino, is astonishing. The novel is completed with an epilogue divided into two parts: one tells the final destiny of the characters; the other is an exposition in which Tolstoy criticizes the philosophy of history that predominated at the time. It is like an anticipatory glimpse of the contemporary concept of “microhistory”, promoted by the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg; I warn you that I am simplifying a lot. It is interesting because it shows us the intelligence of a writer working with what there is and how he reads the ideas of his time, projecting himself beyond, into the future.
This is what Tolstoy already hints at in this epilogue. Succinctly: the powerful make decisions that affect thousands of people according to a limited bias of the facts, seen from their own narrow point of view. He says in his “Diary”: “There are historians who attribute the events of history to the acts of a few individuals, that is, the power of certain individuals, without explaining to us the concept of ‘power’.” We must search, consequently, in the minimal, cellular plot of those men and women who made history from below, and not in those great names in which history has abounded. It is a very revolutionary concept for the discipline of history and was also highly criticized and pointed out as an error.
His two great novels, different from each other, nevertheless have a common denominator: Russian life and history; the description and criticism of his class, the nobility; deep knowledge of peasant life, rural work methods, the need and practice of education. And the union and recognition of those two spheres of the country that do not touch each other, in the great patriotic war.
VI Lenin writes in “Tolstoy: mirror of the revolution”: “Tolstoy has made himself known as a writer since the time of serfdom. In a series of brilliant works that he composed in the course of his literary career of more than half a century he painted mainly the old pre-revolutionary Russia which had remained, even after 1861, in a state of serfdom; to village Russia, to the Russia of the landowner and the peasant. Describing this historical period of Russian life, Tolstoy has been able to raise such a number of immense problems in his books, he has been able to rise to such artistic power that his works have been placed in the first rank of international literature.
Sylvia Iparraguirre is a writer. Her latest book, “Russian Literature Classes” (Alfaguara) brings together the classes she gave in Malba in 2014 and 2015.
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