And yet, as though to disprove his own theory, he created Princess Marya Bolkonsky, ugly and awkward but sensitive, dignified, devout, capable of total abnegation, who, far from losing her own personality in marriage, remained as before, her soul turned "toward the infinite, the eternal, the perfect."
Among the men, the two heroes, Andrey Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov, are the two parts of Leo Tolstoy. Into one he put his appetite for life, his pragmatism, his brutality, and into the other his aspirations toward ideal peace and charity, his naivete, his awkwardness, his hesitation. He brings them together in conversation at Bogucharovo, by the side of a lake, and at Lysya Gory—and it is Tolstoy conversing with himself in his private diary. Prince Andrey has a skeptical turn of mind;
lie mistrusts his heart and hides his feelings in irony. Ambitious, he sees the war as a means of proving himself in action. But his thirst for glory vanishes on the battlefield of Austerlitz, under the vast sky filled with drifting gray clouds. After his wife's death he determines to improve the lives of his peasants, but not at all out of compassion for their wretched lot. "An excellent intention, to free the serfs," he says to Pierre. "But it will not be a good thing for you—who have never, I suppose, had anyone flogged or sent to Siberia—and still less for them. Besides, if they are beaten and flogged and deported now and then, I don't believe they are any the worse for it. In Siberia they go on living the same animal existence, the marks of the whip will be scarred over, and they will be just as happy as before."
In a burst of patriotic enthusiasm in 1812, he momentarily forgets his sorrow and disgust at Natasha's betrayal. But it takes a fatal wound at Borodino to bring about the moral rebirth he has been hoping for. The sky he had believed was empty leans down over him at last, the inner peace he had been seeking in vain logins to grow in his heart as his strength gradually fails. He, the atheist, suddenly thinks, "Love is God, and to die means that I, a part of that love, shall return to the great whole, the eternal source of things. . . ."
Opposite him is Pierre Bczukhov—massive, ungainly, short-sighted —made of such permeable stuff that the wildest schemes pass through him without leaving a trace. His good-will is equaled only by his boundless naivete. He plunges head-first into debauchery', marriage, duels, freemasonry, patriotism, heroism in civilian dress, schemes to murder Napoleon, communion with the people and love of Natasha. I Ie says, "We must love, we must have faith . . ." But he doesn't know in what or whom. In the end it is he—uncertain, shifting, bewildered Pierre—who finds happiness on earth, just as the somnolent Kutuzov triumphs over the most wily strategists. Pierre's revelation docs not come in a bolt of lightning on the battlefield, but in listening to the peasant Platon Karatayev. Thereafter, in moments of doubt, he need only think of the humble muzhik, killed by the French, to be reconciled with the world.
Tolstoy put much of himself into Pierre Bczukhov and Andrey Bolkonsky, but he also allotted a few of his features to Nicholas Rostov: his strength and health, his pagan love of nature, his exaggerated sense of honor and his passion for hunting. But Nicholas Rostov is a boy of very average intelligence, anxious above all to avoid doing anything contrary to the established rules. He wants to belong to his time and his circle. Natasha, who knows him very well, says, "Nicholas has one fault: he cannot like a thing unless everyone else likes it first!"
Alongside these stars of the first magnitude, mention should be made of little Sonya, Anatol Kuragin, Dolokhov, Petya Rostov, old Prince Bolkonsky, Dcnisov, and so many others! . . . When, how, did Tolstoy describe them? Impossible to tell exactly. Each of their portraits is composed of a thousand separate strokes scattered throughout the book. The author docs, it is true, have occasional recourse to internal monologue to document his characters' states of mind, but most of the time he suggests their thoughts by an attitude or gesture, or the play of facial expressions caught on the wing. Ilis people never merely smile, they do so "with sudden good-will," "condescendingly," "with a touch of melancholy." The word "shade" is often found in his writing, and proves the importance he attaches to the exact translation of an emotion. After his father's death, Pierre is received by Anna Pavlovna "with a shade of mournfulncss," Prince Andrey speaks of happiness "with a shade of bitterness and irony," in Nikolenka's love for his uncle there is "a barely perceptible shade of contempt."
In spite of the monumental dimensions of the book, this preoccupation with detail never deserts Tolstoy for one moment. When lie shows the surgeon coming out of the operating tent, he notes that "he held his cigar carefully, between thumb and little finger, for fear of staining it"; Kutuzov, talking to the tsar, has "a trembling of his upper lip"; when Anatol talks to Princess Marya, he "slides one finger through the buttonhole of his uniform." Minor characters arc identified by some external feature that recurs whenever they appear. The first thing the author notes about the little Princess Bolkonsky* is "her short upper lip, slightly down-shadowed." This "short lip" is mentioned four or five times, and after the young woman's death the angel on the monument over her grave is also given "an imperceptibly raised upper lip." The lovely Elena, Pierre's wife, always appears with "her smile," "her plump hand," "her marble shoulders and throat." Dolokhov is identified by his light blue eyes and the lines of his mouth, the upper lip of which "came down far over the large lower lip, forming an acute angle." Vercshagin, a Moscow merchant turned over to the mob by Rostopchin, has for distinguishing marks his "fox fur jacket," his "shaved skull," his "long thin neck" and "frail hands." Bilibin the diplomat is noteworthy for the mobility of his face: "Sometimes his brow would be grooved by broad wrinkles and his eyebrows would rise, and sometimes they lowered and deep furrows formed in his checks."