Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace
Tolstoy: Introduction to War and Peace
Description
With rhetorical mastery, psychological insight and an artist’s vision of the world, the prolific Russian author Leo Tolstoy (1828—1910) takes a few narratives, a brutal war, and a modern view of history to capture all of life in his 1,200 page epic War and Peace. Tolstoy asks this pivotal question: how are decent people capable of war and slaughter? Then, Tolstoy digs deeper; what causes anyone’s behavior at all? War and Peace is Tolstoy’s answer to the question of human motivation, desire and interaction, from the scope of monarchs and peasants, soldiers and slaves, in country and city life alike. The finished product is one of the finest achievements in human civilization.
Favorite Quote
“Take no prisoners,” Prince Andrei went on, “That alone would change the whole war and make it less cruel. As it is, we’ve been playing at war––that’s the nasty thing, we act magnanimously and all that. It’s like the magnanimity and sentimentality of the lady who swoons when she sees a calf slaughtered; she’s so kind, she can’t bear the sight of blood, but she eats the same calf in sauce with great appetite. We’re told about the rules of war, about chivalry, about parleying, sparing the unfortunate, and so on. It’s all nonsense. I saw chivalry and parleying in 1805: they cheated us, we cheated them. They loot other people’s houses, spread false banknotes, and worst of all––killed my children and my father, and then talk about the rules of war and magnanimity towards the enemy. Take no prisoners, but kill and go to your death! Whoever has come to this, as I have, through the same sufferings. . .”
Prince Andrei, who had thought that it made no difference to him whether Moscow was or was not taken, as Smolensk had been, all at once stopped in his speech from an unexpected spasm that seized his throat. He silently paced up and down a few times, but his eyes glittered feverishly and his lips trembled when he began to speak again.
“If there was none of this magnanimity in war, we’d go to it only when it was worth going to certain death, as now. Then there would be no war because Pavel Ivanych offended Mikhail Ivanych. But if there’s war like now, then it’s war. And then the intensity of the troops would not be like now. Then all these Westphalians and Hessians led by Napoleon wouldn’t follow him to Russia, and we wouldn’t go to fight in Austria and Prussia, not knowing why ourselves. War isn’t courtesy, it’s the vilest thing in the world, and we must understand that and not play at war. We must take this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. That’s the whole point: to cast off the lie, and if it’s war it’s war, and not a game. As it is, war is the favorite pastime of idle and light-minded people.”
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. (New York: Alfred A. Knope, 2007), pg 775.
Notes
- The intro music for this series is a section from a piece by Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844—1908) titled The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship. Rimsky-Korsakov was a contemporary of Leo Tolstoy and my favorite Russian composer of the era. I hope you enjoy the segment and the podcast.
- The artwork is titled Battle of Moscow, 7th September 1812, painted in 1822 by Louis-François Lejeune.