One must not conclude that Tolstoy freezes his characters into immobility by this process. On the contrary, believing that human personality is multiple, dynamic and changing, he contrives to show his people in different lights according to their surroundings. Prince
Andrey is not the same in "society" as when he is alone with Pierre, or with Bilibin the diplomat, or among the officers of his regiment, or in his father's presence, or escorting his sister, or with Natasha. Each time we see him through the eyes of the people with him, and discover a new side of his character. But these psychological fluctuations do not affect the rock on which the individual's entire personality is built, always perceptible beneath the waves that occasionally engulf it. Even when the foundation contradicts itself, it docs not cease to exist. What gives so much life to the protagonists in War and Peace is that they are all defined in terms of each other.
"Returning to Moscow from the army," writes Tolstoy, "Nicholas Rostov was welcomed by his close relativesf as the best of sons, a hero, the irreplaceable Nikolenka; by the other members of his family as a pleasant, easy-going and wcll-manncrcd young man; by his friends as a good-looking lieutenant of hussars, a first-rate dancer and one of the most eligible young men in Moscow."
Prince Andrey, on the other hand, is much sought-after by the high society of St. Petersburg: "The pro-reform party opened their doors wide to him—first, because he was noted for his intelligence and culture, and then, becausc by freeing his serfs he had acquired tire reputation of being a liberal. The discontented old men sought his favor because, for them, he was first and foremost his father's son and as such, they thought, he must disapprove of the reformers. The ladies welcomed him with open arms because he was an eligible bachelor, rich, notorious and surrounded by an aura of romance because he had been thought dead at the front and had just lost his wife."
Among Kutuzov's staff officers, "Prince Andrey had two conflicting reputations. Some—a minority—realized that he was an unusual person and cxpected great tilings from him, listened to him, admired and imitated him. . . . Others—a majority—did not like him and considered him insufferably haughty-, cold and unfriendly."
Through a thousand observations of this type Tolstoy creates a definite atmosphere around each of his characters. Each one is caught up in an extremely subtle net of sympathies and antipathies. His slightest gesture resounds in several other consciousnesses. Prince Andrey, Pierre, Natasha and Princess Marya are not flat images, always seen from the same side; the reader moves around them and feels their interdependence with all the other characters. They all obey the law of relativity.
The historical figures are painted "in motion" like the fictional
f Italics in this and the following two quotations by the author.
ones. For them, too, the author chooses a few physical traits that recur, rather like a leitmotiv, and assist in their rapid identification: Napoleon—his rounded belly and "plump hands"; Kutuzov—his sleepiness, his fat neck, his one eye and his scar. But although Tolstoy remains remarkably impartial toward the products of his own imagination, he loses every semblance of self-control when Napoleon enters the scene. The rage he felt long ago in the crypt at the Invalides in Paris pours into his brain. Unconsciously, the veteran of Sevastopol is wreaking his vengeance on the French, pen in hand. His descriptive method serves him admirably in this work of demolition. To clear himself of the chargc of partiality, he protests that lie "invented nothing," that he gleaned "every detail" from contemporary memoirs. No doubt; but the only details he selected from the memoirs were those that would make the emperor of the French appear ridiculous. The description of Napoleon performing his toilette, for example, is exact: his "fat and furry chest," his "snorting," his "yellow, bloated" face, his expression, "Go to it!" "Harder!" while his manservant is rubbing him with cologne water—all arc confirmed by Las Cases, but the scene took place during the sinister period of idleness of St. Helena, not on the eve of Borodino. Never mind! At all costs, the Latin tyrant, the profaner of Russian soil, must be made to appear grotesque. These few strokes, artfully applied, make him into an aging, fatuous creature whose allegedly statesmanlike stratagems misfire because of a head-cold, who never forgets for one moment to act out his little play before his aides-de-camp, his soldiers, his mirror. No psychological intuition, no military genius, nothing but nervous twitches. The fate of the world hanging upon one man's digestion. "An insignificant tool of history who never, anywhere, even in exile, displayed any human dignity," one reads in War and Peace. And what he didn't put in his book, Tolstoy found room for in his diary—there, he calls Napoleon a "poor rider," a "robber of paintings and statues" who delights in strolling through battlefields, where he "thrills at the sight of the corpses and wounded men." "He is not interesting, but the crowds around him are, those he affects. At the beginning, he is narrow-minded but fair, in comparison with Murat and Barras; then groping, complacent and happy; and finally, insane: wanting to take the daughter of the Caesars into his bed. Total madness, senility and incompetence at St. Helena. The false grandeur simply because the field of action was so great, but as soon as it began to shrink —incompetence. And a shameful death!"1' Next to this bloodthirsty monster, Alexander appears an angel of light: intelligent, kindly, sensitive, from the height of his great power he is seeking his way, he has set out in quest of virtue.10 Where, in this portrait, is the scheming, weak and fickle prince of whom Pushkin wrote, "In appearance and in action, he was a clown"?11
The person who profited most by this patriotic distortion of the truth was not Alexander I, as it happens, but Kutuzov. The superiority of the old one-eyed general drowsing through his staff meetings lies in the fact that, unlike Napoleon, he does not take himself for a genius, he is not eternally posing for the historians of future generations, he never makes a plan, he never gives an order; he lets himself be carried along by events. "He plainly had no patience with book-learning and intelligence, he had some other and more decisive form of knowledge," wrote Tolstoy. And he possessed that "decisive" knowledge because he was Russian and therefore had a sense of fatality. At the opposite pole from Napoleon, he is not a "strong personality," but an incarnation of the people; hence his modesty, his habit of taking his time, his superhuman sixth sense. "The people, by strange ways, chose him [Kutuzov] because they rccognizcd that the old man who had fallen out of favor possessed this sense; they chose him against the will of the tsar, and made him their representative in a people's war. It is this sense alone that raised him to the position of supreme power, in which, as commander-in-chief, he strove with all his might, not to slay and exterminate, but to save and spare." Here the writer, the great exponent of the "shade," is abruptly transformed into a hagiographcr. Chauvinism gives him a heavy hand. Everything is rose-colored 011 the Russian side, black on the French.
But he regains his stride when he turns from his critique of great men to describe great events. His battles are not observed and commented upon by a placid historian; they arc lived—by three, five, a score of frightened, exhausted, uncomprehending participants. On all sides, the fearful din, death, helplessness, incoherence. Orders are lost on the way or arrive too late. The fate of an engagement hangs on one battery which may or may not hold out, a bridge which may or may not blow up, an officer who will or will not dare to lead his men out under fire. One bridgehead resists and another gives way, by chance. Nothing ever happens according to plan. And after it is all over the generals invent logical causes for the uncontrollable movements of their men. The truth is that victory and defeat are determined by the morale of the army, that is, the people. And the Russian people are fighting to defend their desecrated soil. Therefore, they cannot help but prevail over their enemies: "Pierre saw that the latent heat—as they say in physics—of patriotism animated everyone he saw and explained why they were calmly and almost gaily going about their preparations to die."