The hero of my tale—whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all its beauty, who has been, is, and always will be beautiful—is Truth.
—“Sevastopol in May,” 1855
Pick an ism, any ism: Materialism, Atheism, Liberalism, Positivism, Pietism, Spiritualism, Communism, Slavophilism, Pan-Slavism, or—if you’d just like to do away with the whole rotten mess and start from scratch—Anarchism. Such was the veritable smorgasbord of warring ideological agendas gracing the Russian intellectual scene in the 1860s. All this ideological mudslinging rather saddened Tolstoy, not only because he believed it to be responsible for a fair amount of the pain we humans persistently inflict on one another, but also because he believed that smug claims about knowing the truth almost certainly never succeed in leading us there. Amid this maelstrom of competing agendas, he ruefully noted in an 1858 letter to the literary critic Vassily Botkin, “there are no people who would simply bring others together and reconcile them through the power of goodness.” Or, he might have added, through the power of art.
War and Peace challenges intellectual arrogance of all stripes, shows life to be infinitely more complex than acknowledged by any of our beliefs and theories—so often motivated by blind self-interest. Indeed, a character’s certainty about something is a pretty good indication of his or her being wrong about it, or at the very least, insufficiently right . . . Perhaps a healthy serving of good ol’ Russian self-doubt isn’t such a bad thing, after all—by which Tolstoy means the sort of searching honesty and self-awareness exhibited by Pierre in the end. “ ‘I don’t say we should oppose this or that. We may be mistaken,’ ” he tells his wife Natasha just after returning from Petersburg, where Pierre has been trying to unite conservatives and liberals, who are at each other’s throats over the future direction of the country. “ ‘What I say is: let’s join hands with those who love the good, and let there be one banner—active virtue’ ” (1176). Exactly what form that virtue will take is not yet clear to Pierre, for he is not so arrogant as to assume he knows the precise destination to be reached, let alone quite how to get there. Experience has taught him the wisdom of Turgenev’s observation in an 1857 letter to Tolstoy that “the truth is like a lizard; it leaves the tail in your hand and escapes, knowing that it will soon grow another.”
It’s this sort of humility and honest self-reflection, Tolstoy believed, that was lacking among most of the people working in the “truth business,” that is, pundits, scientists, historians, academics, and fanatics of all persuasions—of which there were quite a few in Russia in those days. The explosion of knowledge and advances in science in the second half of the nineteenth century created many new academic specialties and subspecialties. Yet even if Russia’s last great Renaissance man was widely read, and counted among his friends some of the era’s leading scientists and academics, Tolstoy remained as skeptical of scientific knowledge as he was of social and political agendas to address life’s deepest challenges. Social scientists, who claim to have come up with the solution to perennial human questions by means of their experimental techniques and analytical arguments, are, he says in War and Peace,
like plasterers assigned to plaster one side of a church wall, who, taking advantage of the foreman’s absence, in a fit of zeal smear their plaster all over the windows, the icons, the scaffolding, and the as yet unreinforced walls, and rejoice at how, from their plastering point of view, everything comes out flat and smooth. (1203)
Then there were the historians, whose books Tolstoy read by the hundreds in preparation for writing War and Peace. Not surprisingly, he found many of them lacking, especially the ones arguing that Napoleon was perhaps the greatest military genius the world had ever known. Why, then, Tolstoy asks, did he make decisions that led directly to the destruction of his 422,000-man army, followed a few years later by confinement on the South Atlantic island of St. Helena, where he died of stomach cancer? His rapid string of military successes must have lulled him into the false belief that he had the world all figured out . . . He didn’t. None of us does; least of all anyone who insists on it. Yet too many of these authors saw the world through the lens of Great Man theory, which assumes that it is powerful men and women who shape historical events. Not true, Tolstoy says:
[W]e need only inquire into the essence of any historical event, that is, into the activity of the entire mass of people who took part in the event, to become convinced that the will of the historical hero not only does not guide the actions of the masses, but is itself constantly guided. (987)
Far better, if you want the truth about how history really happens, to study works of fiction:
A historian and an artist, describing an historical epoch, have two completely different objects. . . . For a historian, considering the contribution rendered by some person towards a certain goal, there are heroes; for the artist, considering the correspondence of this person to all sides of life, there cannot and should not be any heroes, but there should be people.
And indeed, we eventually come to realize that there are no great people in War and Peace, just multifaceted, full-blooded human beings who in their essence are strikingly similar to those who came before them and will continue to come after. Some things, Tolstoy tells us, don’t much change over time. And human nature is one of them.
The nature of the world is another. Nowhere does Tolstoy make this more wrenchingly clear than in the fate of young Petya Rostov. At the very moment that Pierre is suffering in captivity, Tolstoy reintroduces us to Petya, the youngest of the Rostov children, and a character we have met briefly at various points throughout the novel—first as a young boy, later as a budding adolescent. Now, in the very last section of the novel, this relatively minor character is suddenly thrust into the foreground for eight unforgettable chapters.
It is 1813, and Napoleon’s army is on its way out of Russia, yet the partisan efforts continue, and battles are still being fought, to the delight of fifteen-year-old Petya, who has just been promoted to officer. He volunteers and is chosen to be sent to a detachment of Russian partisans, which, by some gigantic coincidence, happens to be commanded by one Vassily Denisov, the man who had once mentored Petya’s brother Nikolai when he was just starting out eight years earlier, eventually becoming one of Nikolai’s dearest friends. No wonder Denisov feels both a special bond with, as well as a sense of responsibility toward, this boy, who is like family to him.
And he certainly has his hands full. The general who sent Petya over to Denisov’s detachment expressly forbade Petya to take part in any more military action, because of the way the young man galloped right into a line under French fire during a recent battle and shot off his pistol like some wild Cossack. But Petya just hasn’t been able to help himself: ever since being promoted to officer and taking part in active duty, he has “constantly been in a state of happily excited joy that he was grown up, and in constantly rapturous haste not to miss any occasion for real heroism” (1045). He therefore decides not to tell anyone about the general’s order, especially after learning that Denisov and his men are planning an attack on the evening of his arrival. They are real heroes, after all, whom Petya wouldn’t dream of abandoning in this difficult moment.
That familiar Rostovian impetuousness, then, is alive and well in Petya, as is his family’s largeness of spirit, evident in the way Petya wants to take care of a recently captured drummer boy, and showers the men in his detachment with one gift after another: his pocketknife, coffeepot, flint, and anything else he might happen to have on him. “ ‘Good heavens! I completely forgot,’ ” he suddenly cries at one point. “ ‘I’ve got wonderful raisins, you know, the seedless kind. . . . I bought ten pounds. I’m used to something sweet. Would you like some?’ ” (1046). Indeed, Petya is used to something sweet—he’s a happy, coddled Rostov, after all—and his overflowing youth and kindness cannot but infect the men and the reader alike.
Later that night, as Petya dozes off, dreamily anticipating the upcoming battle, his first real action in weeks, he imagines that he
was in a magic kingdom, in which there was nothing resembling reality. Maybe the big black spot was indeed the guardhouse, but maybe it was a cave that led into the very depths of the earth. Maybe he is indeed sitting on a wagon now, but it very well may be that he is sitting, not on a wagon, but on a terribly tall tower, from which, if you fell, it would take you a whole day, a whole month, to reach the earth—you would keep falling and never get there. Maybe it is simply the Cossack Likhachev sitting under the wagon [sharpening Petya’s saber], but it very well may be that he is the kindest, bravest, most wonderful, most excellent man in the world, whom nobody knows. Maybe it was indeed a hussar who came for water and went back into the hollow, but maybe he just vanished from sight, vanished completely, and never was.
Whatever Petya might have seen now, nothing would have astonished him. He was in a magic kingdom in which everything was possible. (1054–55)
Then, as he quietly rocks himself to sleep, he enjoys an extraordinary concert unlike any he’s ever heard before. Listen in:
Drops dripped. Quiet talk went on. Horses neighed and scuffled. Someone snored.
“Ozhik, zhik, ozhik, zhik . . .” whistled the saber being sharpened. And suddenly Petya heard a harmonious chorus of music, playing some unknown, solemnly sweet hymn. Petya was musical, like Natasha, and more so than Nikolai, but he had never studied music or thought about music, and therefore the melodies that unexpectedly came to his head were especially new and attractive to him. The music played more and more audibly. The melody grew, passing from one instrument to another. What is known as a fugue was going on, though Petya had not the slightest idea of what a fugue was. Each instrument, now resembling a violin, now trumpets—but better and clearer than violins and trumpets—each instrument played its own part and, before finishing its motif, merged with another, starting out almost the same, and with a third, and with a fourth, and they all merged into one and scattered again, and merged again, now solemn and churchly, now brightly brilliant and victorious.
“Ah, yes, it’s me dreaming,” Petya said to himself, rocking forward. “It’s in my ears. And maybe it’s my music. Well, again . . . Go on, my music! Now! . . .”
He closed his eyes. And on all sides, as if from far away, sounds trembled, began to harmonize, scattered, merged, and again all joined in the same sweet and solemn hymn. “Ah, how lovely that is! As much as I like and however I like,” Petya said to himself. He attempted to conduct this huge chorus of instruments.
“Softer, softer now, fade away.” And the sounds obeyed him. “Fuller now, merrier. More, more joyful.” And swelling, solemn sounds rose from an unknown depth. “Now, voices, join in!” Petya ordered. And voices, first men’s, then women’s, came from far away. The voices grew, grew in a measured, solemn effort. Petya felt frightened and joyful hearkening to their uncommon beauty.
The song merged with the solemn, victorious march, and drops dripped, and bzhik, zhik, zhik . . . whistled the saber, and again the horse scuffled and neighed, not disrupting the chorus, but entering into it. (1055)
This is one of those scenes in War and Peace, like the hunt, in which all of the teeming diversity of life is concentrated into one shining moment. It’s all here: the human and natural worlds, the sounds of impending battle and the incredible calm, the laserlike specificity of the senses, and, encompassing all of it, the sense of life’s mysterious, musical grandeur.
When the battle commences at the crack of dawn, a very stimulated (and very tired) Petya is hardly able to contain his excitement. Hearing the sound of whistling bullets, seeing the dense, undulating smoke, he gallops down a village road ahead of the other troops toward the place the shots seem to be coming from. Approaching a courtyard where, unbeknownst to him, French soldiers are ensconced behind a wattle fence, Petya lets out a giant “Hurra-a-h!” and breathlessly charges straight into a thick cloud of magical powder smoke.
Somewhere deep in that cloud a bullet pierces his skull and kills him.
“I can’t believe it!” exclaims one upset reader.
“No way!” rues another. “Aren’t we supposed to be, like, inspired by Petya’s spirit? Isn’t this the very sort of . . . vitality Tolstoy’s been celebrating the whole way through?”
The sadness and shock readers feel at Petya’s sudden death is perfectly understandable. It breaks my heart, too, every time I read it.
How, after all, can we blame this happy, gung ho fifteen-year-old for being the coddled kid that he is, reveling in the seemingly limitless possibilities of his young life? Reading these pages in the novel, you feel Tolstoy’s almost paternal tenderness toward this character, this boy so full of sweetness and pluck. But no amount of wishful thinking can get around the hard facts of reality: a fortified French encampment being ambushed at dawn by a Russian infantry in the middle of war is not, and never will be, a magic kingdom. No, this is a venue where inexperienced adolescent boys charging happily into gun smoke are going to get killed. Tolstoy was too honest a writer to pretend otherwise. Perhaps if he had eventually become a Hollywood screenwriter, like his son Ilya, Tolstoy might have ended the Petya story line with his young hero, say, skillfully slicing up the Frenchmen ensconced behind the wattle fence to become one of the youngest Russian soldiers ever to win the St. George Cross. Fortunately for our sake, Tolstoy stayed put in Yasnaya Polyana, and decided to tell the truth. And the truth, like life itself . . . hurts.
It can also heal us, though, in a way that our rational concepts, or abstract ideas—to say nothing of our fantasies about the world—rarely can. The bittersweet reality is that each one of our lives is but a note—even a melody—in the gorgeous concert of life. Those notes and melodies may be fully appreciated on their own, but far more important is how they’re heard in conjunction with all the others. That Petya is attuned to this higher reality makes perfect sense, for he possesses the same vitality and sensitivity to the musicality of life that all of the Rostovs seem to share. Alas, in his final, fatal moment of youthful rapture, he seeks to conduct the fugue, to control all those instruments and notes and melodies, when in reality, he is merely one of them.
But does his song ever truly vanish, in the same way that the hussar in his magic kingdom “just vanished from sight, vanished completely, and never was”? (1054). Not exactly. Tolstoy, who studied musical theory in his youth, had considered a career as a composer. Often reduced to tears while listening to Bach, he knew well the power of music to affect listeners—even long after a performance has ended. Not surprisingly, he is equally attuned to the ways in which every human life, even as it eventually fades back into the whole, leaves its indelible trace on the world, in often unpredictable ways. At some deep, intuitive level, the Rostovs, too, know this. They know that Petya’s death, crushing as it is, in a strange, terrible way, remains part of the music of life—serves, indeed, as Natasha will herself discover, as a clarion call to life.
Distraught over the death of Prince Andrei, she has been wandering around the house ghostlike for days, annoyed by the humdrum concerns of all those people around her whose “words and feelings seemed to her an insult to that world in which she had been living recently, and she was not only indifferent, but looked at them with hostility” (1078).
And then the Rostovs get the news about Petya. Natasha, not yet aware of what has happened, notices her father stumbling over to a chair into which he collapses, and covering his eyes, he begins to weep. In an instant she is transformed from self-absorbed child back to keenly aware adult; Tolstoy describes this sudden shift of perspective as an experience almost of physical violence: “She felt a terrible pain; it seemed to her that something had torn inside her and she was dying. . . . Seeing her father and hearing her mother’s terrible, coarse cry from behind the door, she instantly forgot herself and her grief” (1079)—in fact, Tolstoy goes on, “[t]his was the way Natasha’s wound healed. She thought her life was over. But suddenly her love for her mother showed her that the essence of life—love—was still alive in her. Love awoke, and life awoke” (1080).
Love awoke, and life awoke. These five words strike to the very core of War and Peace: To love, Tolstoy says, is to see. To see is to know the truth. And to know the truth is to truly live. No wonder, then, that this novel chock full of clear, honest reflection about the pain of living is also one of the most life-affirming works of fiction one will encounter.
It is not just Natasha whose experience is upended by Petya’s death. As we discover, Pierre is saved by the very detachment with which Petya was fighting when he died. Nor is this the only coincidence at play here. A certain Dolokhov, who happens to be one of the commanders of those Russian troops, marches with the Cossacks as they escort Petya’s body to a pit dug in the garden. Dolokhov, the very man who once nearly destroyed Petya’s brother Nikolai at the poker table, and almost killed Pierre in a duel! This rather dreadful fellow, it seems, has found an outlet for his native cruelty on the killing fields, an embodiment of Tolstoy’s belief that evil, too, plays a necessary role in the larger scheme of things. “ ‘Finished,’ ” he says with characteristic iciness upon seeing Petya’s lifeless body, “as if uttering this word gave him pleasure” (1058). Denisov, present as well at that moment, says nothing after learning what has happened. Instead, with trembling hands, he turns the pale, blood- and mud-stained face of young Petya toward him, and, wailing hysterically while grabbing hold of a nearby wattle fence, suddenly recalls Petya’s words from the night before: “ ‘I’m used to something sweet. Excellent raisins, take them all’ ” (1058). That sweetness will continue to live on through Pierre’s and Natasha’s third child, a son, whom they name Petya. All of this, taken together, creates the impression that the world is indeed a mysterious place, with a unique sort of poetic justice, and with its own special kind of “harmony,” which, as Tolstoy wrote in an 1863 diary entry, “only art feels.”
We tap into this harmony when we loosen our attachment to our own ideas, to our egos, when we overcome our insistence that the world be the way we think it should be: when, in other words, we learn to see as Tolstoy sees. Sure, it might be comforting if Tolstoy were to offer some clear rational or religious justification for why young Petya Rostov has to die while his namesake Pierre Bezukhov survives. His goal as an artist is not to offer a superficial prescription for what ails us, however, but merely an accurate description of the way things are. And the way things are, he suggests, is neither as lovely as we might wish, nor as bleakly senseless as we often fear. Joy and tragedy, sweetness and sadness, are the yin and yang of life, forever giving meaning to each other, even as they balance each other out. Not that this sort of awareness does much to lessen the very real grief felt by the Rostovs; nor should it. But it may at least create a wider context for understanding the meaning of that grief: a context that allows the Rostovs to discover possibilities within their pain, just as it helps all of us to recognize sorrow as an essential, and in its own way, beautiful, refrain in the whole concert of life.
Four short chapters and six or so pages after we learn of Petya’s death, Pierre, still in captivity and worn-out from hunger and exhaustion, falls into a half-delirious sleep and recalls a long-forgotten old geography teacher of his back in Switzerland. In the dream the teacher shows him a globe:
This globe was a living, wavering ball of no dimensions. The entire surface of the ball consisted of drops tightly packed together. And these drops all moved and shifted, and now merged from several into one, now divided from one into many. Each drop strove to spread and take up the most space, but the others, striving to do the same, pressed it, sometimes destroying, sometimes merging with it.
“This is life,” said the old teacher.
“How simple and clear it is,” thought Pierre. “How could I have not known this before?” (1064–65)
Because, Tolstoy would say, it often requires years of struggle and searching before the simplest, most obvious truths become evident to us. Much of our lives is but a drop on that wavering globe, isn’t it? As each of us journeys through life, striving to realize ourselves according to our ideas, our ideals, while at the same time continually buffeted by outside circumstances, we come into contact with others on their own trajectories. Our paths cross and collide, sometimes with sudden intensity, as with Nikolai and Marya, amid the turmoil of 1812; at other times, as with Pierre and Natasha, slowly, over long periods of time. Now and again entire populations clash, as do the French and Russians here, resulting in a reordering of the political and cultural landscape. Yet through it all, life flows endlessly on, forever changing, forever renewing itself.
Why, we may well wonder, on top of that lengthy description of the nighttime fugue Petya hears, would Tolstoy employ yet another elaborate metaphor to convey life’s beautiful fluidity? For the same reason that he has marshaled nearly six hundred characters over the span of more than a thousand pages in order to describe the countless variations on the novel’s central theme of man’s search for meaning in a relentlessly unstable world: just as no individual experience encapsulates the meaning of human existence, so no single metaphor is going to capture the whole truth about life. And so Tolstoy just kept on writing, creating new characters and scenes, revisiting familiar characters in fresh contexts, exploring metaphor after metaphor in his quest to contain in words that which is not readily contained. In the same way that every human journey in the novel is at once unique and integrally connected with those of the other characters, so the fugue and the globe offer two slightly different versions of one and the same idea of what Tolstoy once referred to as “life in all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations.” If the fugue is an embodiment of some higher musical harmony in the world, then the globe suggests life’s inevitable conflict and instability. War and Peace embodies both of these dimensions of experience as powerfully as any novel ever has. And in the epilogue, they are brought together and held in perfect, creative tension.
So there they are after the war: three generations of Rostovs living under one roof along with the Bezukhovs, as aristocratic families often did in those days, at Bald Hills, the Bolkonskys’ country seat. The world has changed. Gone is the Russia before the Napoleonic Wars, when the Rostovs threw parties at their home on Povarskaya Street, the count’s corpulent body heavily twisting and twirling on the dance floor, while young Natasha clapped and demanded that all her guests “look at papa!” Nikolai, now a father himself, is so worn-out from the hard work of digging the Rostov family out of debt and securing a future for his children that he spends much of his time on the couch in his study; only occasionally will he allow himself to give his daughter Natasha “a little gallop around the room” before putting her down, out of breath (1153). Gone, too, are the wonderfully eccentric old Prince Bolkonskys, those scions of an old aristocratic order who presided, tsarlike, over their vast estates, suspicious of anybody or anything that might threaten their traditional way of life. Russia at the end of War and Peace is a country no longer quite so certain about its collective national identity; indeed, it seems headed for yet another upheaval:
Seven years had passed since 1812. The churned-up historical sea of Europe settled back within its shores. It seemed to have grown still; but the mysterious forces that move mankind (mysterious because the laws that determine their movement are unknown to us) continued their action.
Though the surface of the historical sea seemed immobile, mankind moved as ceaselessly as the movement of time. Various groups and human connections were made and unmade; causes were prepared for the formation and decomposition of states, for the displacement of peoples.
The historical sea did not, as formerly, direct its surges from one shore to another: it seethed in its depths. (1129)
The defeat of Napoleon in 1812 unleashed a surge of patriotism resulting in calls for reform, which were themselves snuffed out by a conservative crackdown in the capital. Pierre, now in his thirties, is at the center of a movement to form a secret society of aristocrats and government figures who will work to reform Russian society, ridding it of corruption. Listening to him speak, one can’t help hearing strong echoes of the idealist he once was, under the influence of Freemasonry, who’d always wanted to bring about a more just world: “ ‘My whole thought,’ ” he now tells Natasha, “ ‘is that, since vicious people band together and constitute a force, honest people need only do the same’ ” (1177). At last, then, his reformist intentions of so many years ago are beginning to bear actual fruit, although in a form Pierre could never have predicted. We have this sneaky suspicion, moreover, that the older, wiser Pierre might even succeed this time around—albeit, again, in a way that neither he nor we can quite envision.
Pierre’s brother-in-law Nikolai Rostov, on the other hand, insists during one of their many fiery debates that the government for which he and millions of other Russians sacrificed so much back in 1812 is not nearly as corrupt as Pierre thinks. As for Pierre’s secret society, well, it is as dangerous as it is unnecessary. In fact, were Nikolai ordered this instant by the infamous, iron-fisted chief counselor to the tsar, Arakcheev, to go against Pierre with a squadron and cut him down, then by God, he’d do it! Really? We know enough about Nikolai’s character to be certain that, for all his bluster, he is a good and kind man who, were he ever forced to make such a choice, would choose his family ties over his political loyalties. Indeed, this particular argument with Pierre ends, as the debates at Bald Hills always do, with the disputing sides parting “on the most friendly terms” (1171): “As in every real family, several totally different worlds lived together in the house at Bald Hills, each maintaining its own particularity and yielding to the others, but merging into one harmonious whole” (1160).
What, then, are we to make of Nikolenka Bolkonsky, Prince Andrei’s son born on that wintry March night fifteen years earlier, who now often sits alone in corners, breaks pens and sticks of sealing wax, and dreams of conquering the world like the Roman generals he reads about in Plutarch? With no memory of his biological father, Nikolenka is being raised by Uncle Nikolai and Aunt Marya, who admittedly have trouble connecting to this odd, curly-headed, sickly-looking boy. “ ‘I’m afraid I forget about him because of my own,’ ” Marya confesses to Nikolai. “ ‘We all have children, we all have relations; but he has nobody. He’s eternally alone with his thoughts’ ” (1173). Of which Nikolenka has quite a few, stirred up in no small measure by the sorts of heated political arguments he often overhears at Bald Hills.
As a matter of fact, Nikolenka happens to be sitting in the shadows at a writing table by the window in Uncle Nikolai’s study during the argument in which Nikolai tells Pierre that he’d cut him down if Arakcheev ordered him to. That night Nikolenka has a dream. He dreams that he and Uncle Pierre are marching at the head of a huge army consisting of slanting white lines like the spiderwebs that hang in the air in the fall. Just ahead of them is their destination, “glory,” a slightly denser version of those very webs. As Nikolenka and Uncle Pierre close in on their goal, the threads supporting them and their army weaken and tangle, and suddenly Uncle Nikolai stands menacingly before them. Pointing to the broken-up wax and pencils, he tells Nikolenka that Arakcheev has given him orders to kill the boy. Nikolenka turns immediately to look at Uncle Pierre, but instead of Pierre he sees his father, who has no image or form, but who nevertheless caresses his son and fills him with tender love. Still, that love isn’t quite strong enough to stop Uncle Nikolai from moving closer and closer, at which point the boy awakens in a cold sweat, a flurry of thoughts rushing through his head:
“Father,” he thought. “Father” (though there were two portraits of a good likeness in the house, Nikolenka never pictured Prince Andrei in his human image), “father was with me and caressed me. He approved of me, he approved of Uncle Pierre. Whatever he says—I’ll do . . . I know they want me to study. And I will study. But some day I’ll stop. And then I’ll do it. I ask God for only one thing: that it’s the same with me as with the men in Plutarch, and I’ll do the same. I’ll do better. Everybody will know me, love me, admire me.” (1178)
Sound familiar? Many years earlier, on the eve of the battle of Austerlitz, Prince Andrei had similar thoughts: “ ‘[I]f I want this, want glory, want to be known by people, loved by them,’ ” he thinks, “ ‘it’s not my fault that I want it, that it’s the only thing I want, the only thing I live for’ ” (265). Fortunately, Nikolenka is still young, and will have many more opportunities to define, and redefine, his personal definition of “glory” before actually throwing himself in front of enemy fire on the battlefield. He also has his tutor Dessales to comfort and guide him:
“Are you unwell?” Dessales asks in French.
“Non,” replied Nikolenka, and he lay back on the pillow. “He’s kind and good, I love him,” he thought of Dessales. “But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man! And father? Father! Yes, I’ll do something that even he would be pleased with. . . .” (1178)
With his idealistic and ambitious nature, Nikolenka might well go on to do good and important things in the world. But then again, if the tragic circumstances of his birth as well as this terrifying nightmare on the last page of the book are any indication, he might not. Nikolenka will come of age, after all, at a time when his compatriots will march on Senate Square in Petersburg in 1825, demanding political reforms, only to wind up in Siberian exile—or hanged. Might Nikolenka, who will be twenty-one at that time, himself become one of those very Decembrists?
We cannot know—Tolstoy never tells us. What is clear is that the cocoonlike environment in which his parents grew up has dissipated, becoming tangled up like those airy spiderwebs in his dream. For now, Dessales is at his side, but at some point Nikolenka will be on his own in the world, the mounting tensions of Russian political life battling it out within his soul. Soon enough it will be his turn to seek answers to the very questions his forebears grappled with so intensely: What does he value? What kind of a person does he wish to be? What sort of society does he want to help build for his children?
Having recently become a father, I find myself thinking more and more about these questions from a perspective rather different than the one I had when I began this book some years ago. As I watched that tiny being emerge, with his wobbling limbs, his swollen eyes, his shrieking little mouth, love awoke and life awoke within me as never before. Suddenly, the ending of War and Peace took on fresh personal significance, compelling me to consider questions I’d never thought to ask before: Given all he’d experienced, what advice would Prince Andrei, were he alive, offer his son? After all my years of studying Tolstoy, what advice will I offer my own son?
What would please Prince Andrei most, I’d venture to guess, would be for Nikolenka to carve out a path though life inspired by the traditions and memories of those who came before him, yet illuminated by a light uniquely his own. Surely, though, he would wish Nikolenka to know something that he himself discovered only in the end: that one is much more than his successes and failures, his plans and frustrations, or the circumstances in which he may happen to find himself at any given point in time.
Andrei would probably encourage Nikolenka to spend more time listening to the stories of wonderful, old Uncle Pierre—for instance, the tale about that one evening, while in captivity, when Pierre tries to cross to the other side of a road, in order to chat with another group of captive soldiers, only to be stopped by a French sentry who tells him to go back. Pierre does go back—only not to the campfire or to his comrades, but rather to an unhitched cart, beside which he sits alone on the cold ground. After an hour of sitting there with crossed legs and a lowered head, he suddenly bursts into a hearty, good-natured laugh:
“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: “The soldiers wouldn’t let me go. They caught me, they locked me up. They’re holding me prisoner. Who, me? Me? Me—my immortal soul! Ha, ha, ha! . . . Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed, with tears brimming his eyes. (1020)
Whereupon he looks up at the full moon standing high in the bright sky, sees the forest and fields spreading into the wavering, endless distance, peers into the depths of the retreating, twinkling stars, and thinks joyously to himself: “ ‘And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me!’ ” (1020)
There, Nikolenka—dear reader—is the truth, in all its stark, liberating beauty, the truth Tolstoy managed to give us before he was done.
