NOTE TO READERS: Page numbers in parentheses in the main body of my text refer to War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, translation copyright © 2007 by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Goup, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all other translations from Russian language sources are mine.
All dates from Tolstoy’s life are given according to the old-style Julian calendar, in effect in Russian until 1918. The Julian calendar was twelve days behind the Western (Gregorian) calendar in the nineteenth century, and thirteen days behind it in the twentieth.
Book Epigraph
“To be able to”: Diary entry, December 19, 1900. Quoted in L. N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [The Complete Collected Works of L. N. Tolstoy], 90 vols. (Moscow, 1928–58), vol. 54, p. 74.
An Invitation to the Reader
“It’s the same”: L. N. Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii v dvadtsati dvukh tomakh [Collected Works in 22 Volumes] (Moskva: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1978–85), vol. 14, p. 477.
“In clever art criticism”: R. F. Christian, ed. and trans., Tolstoy’s Letters, vol. 1, 1828–1879 (New York: Scribner, 1978), p. 295.
“we need people”: A. A. Donskov, ed., L. N. Tolstoy and N. N. Strakhov: Complete Correspondence, 2 vols. (Slavic Research Group at the University of Ottawa and L. N. Tolstoy State Museum, 2003), p. 268. Also quoted in Lev Tolstoi ob iskusstve i literature (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1958), p. 517.
Introduction
“The storm is approaching”: Alexander Herzen, “The Russian People and Socialism. A Letter to Michelet” (1851), in The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen, vol. 4 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1968), p. 1649.
“We are starting”: Quoted in Boris Eikhenbaum, Tolstoi in the Sixties, trans. Duffield White (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1982), p. 29.
“The day before”: Letter of September 1869, in R. F. Christian, ed. and trans., Tolstoy’s Letters, vol. 1, 1828–1879 (New York: Scribner, 1978), p. 222.
“What, indeed, had I done”: Leo Tolstoy, Confession, trans. David Patterson (New York: Norton, 1983), Part 11, p. 70.
“a reflector as vast”: Quoted in Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1996), p. 1114.
“I must have”: Entry from May 1853. Quoted in R. F. Christian, ed. and trans., Tolstoy’s Diaries, vol. 1, 1847–1894 (London: Athlone Press, 1985), p. 67.
“Sensuality torments me”: Entry from August 1857. Ibid., p. 141.
“I’m so disgusted”: Entry from January 1855. Ibid., p. 100.
“Played cards again”: Ibid., p. 100.
“It’s absurd”: Entry from June 1855. Ibid., p. 105.
One John Levitt: His letter can be found in N. Velikanova and R. Wittaker, eds., L. N. Tolstoi i S.Sh.A.: Perepiska [L.N Tolstoy and the U.S.A: Correspondence] (Moscow: Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2004), p. 937.
“I am sure”: Quoted in ibid., p. 500.
“That the novelist”: New York Times, November 13, 1910.
“No man is justified”: Quoted in ibid.
“There probably isn’t”: Diary of September 26, 1865. Quoted in Christian, ed., Diaries, vol. 1, p. 184.
“No matter how old”: Letter to V. G. Chertkov, February 1890; L. N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii L. N. Tolstogo [The Complete Collected Works of L. N. Tolstoy], 90 vols. (Moscow, 1928–58), vol. 87, p. 10.
“Man is flowing”: Tolstoy, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 5, p. 262.
“Take a broom”: Quoted in Alexandra Popoff, Sophia Tolstoy: A Biography (New York: Free Press, 2010), p. 163.
“Every activity”: M. N. Bakhtin, Literaturno-kriticheskie stat’i (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1986), p. 113.
“The hero of my tale”: From the short story “Sevastopol in May” (1855), in Michael R. Katz, ed., Tolstoy’s Short Fiction (New York: Norton, 1991), p. 43.
“The goal of the artist”: Letter to P. D. Boborykin, published in Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, ed. George Gibian (New York: Norton, 1996), p. 1084.
Chapter 1: Plans
Epigraph: “The mind’s game”: Diary entry from March 3, 1863, in R. F. Christian, ed. and trans., Tolstoy’s Diaries, vol. 1., 1847–1894 (London: Athlone Press, 1985), p. 177.
“(1) To study the whole”: Ibid., p. 11.
“RULES FOR DEVELOPING”: Ibid., pp. 12–16.
“The first rule”: Ibid., p. 11.
“It is easier to write”: Ibid., p. 4.
“The mind’s game”: Diary entry from March 3, 1863, in ibid., p. 177.
“I cannot determine”: Quoted in Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1996), p. 1089.
Chapter 2: Imagination
Epigraph: “What is War and Peace?”: “A Few Words Apropos of the Book War and Peace,” originally published in Russkii Arckhiv (Russian Archive) in 1868. Quoted in Appendix of Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Knopf, 2007), p. 1217.
“loose baggy monster”: Quoted in Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, ed. George Gibian (New York: Norton, 1996), p. 1395.
“[T]his 1805 presents”: Quoted in Boris Eikhenbaum, Tolstoi in the Sixties, trans. Duffield White (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1982), p. 169.
“everything is mixed”: V. A. Zelinskii, ed., Russkaia kriticheskaiia literatura o proizvedeniiakh L. N. Tolstogo: khronologicheskii sbornik kritiko-bibliograficheskikh statei, 8 vols. (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1966), vol. 3, pp. 143–44.
“a disordered heap”: Eikhenbaum, Tolstoi in the Sixties, p. 236.
“Evidently the author”: Zelinskii, ed., Russkaia kriticheskaiia literatura, vol. 3, p. 3.
“To my own”: Eikhenbaum, Tolstoi in the Sixties, p. 164.
“What is War and Peace?”: “A Few Words Apropos of the Book War and Peace,” quoted in Appendix of Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Knopf, 2007), p. 1217.
“Free entrance and exit”: Eikhenbaum, Tolstoi in the Sixties, p. 30.
“It seemed so strange”: Ibid., p. 71.
“I am now”: R. F. Christian, ed. and trans., Tolstoy’s Letters, vol. 1, 1828–1879 (New York: Scribner, 1978), p. 170.
“—Eh bien, mon prince”: L. N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [The Complete Works of L. N. Tolstoy], 90 vols. (Moscow, 1928–58), vol. 9, p. 3.
“The reproach that people”: Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Pevear and Volokhonsky, p. 1218.
“that French way”: Ibid.
“relate, portray, but do not judge”: R. F. Christian, Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’: A Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 178.
“I was afraid”: Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1996), p. 1087.
“A complete picture”: From Strakhov’s 1870 essay about War and Peace, republished in Nikolai Strakhov, Kriticheskie stat’i ob I. S. Turgeneve i L. N. Tolstom (1862–1885), vol. 1, 4th ed. (Kiev: Izdanie I.P. Matchenko, 1901; reprint: The Hague: Mouton, 1968), p. 277.
“realist in the higher sense”: In his notebooks Dostoevsky writes: “I am called a psychologist: that is not true, I am only a realist in the higher sense, that is, I portray all the depths of the human soul.” Cited in Donald Fanger, Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism: A Study of Dostoevsky in Relation to Balzac, Dickens, and Gogol (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), p. 215.
Chapter 3: Rupture
Epigraph: “Once we’re thrown”: Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Knopf, 2007), vol. 4, part 4, chapter 17, p. 1118.
“When shall I cease”: R. F. Christian, ed. and trans., Tolstoy’s Diaries, vol. 1, 1847–1894 (London: Athlone Press, 1985), p. 97.
“really the soul”: Quoted in Ernest J. Simmons, Leo Tolstoy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1946), p. 116.
“the dirtiest creature”: Christian, ed., Diaries, p. 100.
“a great idea”: Ibid., p. 101.
“It’s amazing how loathsome”: Ibid., p. 105.
“you are not sufficiently serious”: This letter was written in response to Shaw’s play Man and Superman, which the playwright had recently sent to Tolstoy. Quoted in R. F. Christian, ed., Tolstoy’s Diaries, vol. 2, 1895–1910 (London: Athlone Press, 1985), p. 678.
Chapter 4: Success
Epigraph: “There is no greatness”: Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Knopf, 2007), vol. 4, part 3, chapter 18, p. 1071.
“[T]here are things”: R. F. Christian, ed. and trans., Tolstoy’s Diaries, vol. 1, 1847–1894 (London: Athlone Press, 1985), p. 90.
“Lying, stealing, promiscuity”: Leo Tolstoy, Confession, trans. David Patterson (New York: Norton, 1983), p. 18.
“vanity, self-interest, and pride”: Ibid., p. 18.
“Very well, you will have”: Ibid., p. 27.
“was meaningless and evil”: Ibid., p. 58.
“Six feet from his head to his heels”: Leo Tolstoy, The Raid and Other Stories, trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 227.
“The essential difference”: A. V. Knowles, ed., Tolstoy: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 115.
“If the cause”: Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, ed. George Gibian (New York: Norton, 1996), p. 1088.
Chapter 5: Idealism
Epigraph: “To seek, always to seek”: Quoted in Ernest J. Simmons, Leo Tolstoy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1946), p. 772
“And just as I believed”: Quoted in ibid., pp. 21–22.
“Blessedness”: Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, trans. Constance Garnett (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), p. 52.
“is just like telling”: Ibid., p. 99
“[O]verwhelmed”: Mohandas Gandhi, An Autobiography (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), pp. 137–38.
“those Russian people”: Fyodor Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, vol. 1, 1873–1876, trans. Kenneth Lantz (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1994), p. 876.
Chapter 6: Happiness
“He who is happy”: R. F. Christian, ed. Tolstoy’s Diaries, vol. 1, 1847–1894 (London: Athlone Press, 1985), p. 177.
“[T]he best way”: Entry from May 12, 1856, quoted in ibid., p. 113.
“I will never serve”: Quoted in Chronology, Donna Tussing Orwin, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 6.
“[i]n Russia things are”: Letter of August 18, 1857, in R. F. Christian, ed. and trans., Tolstoy’s Letters, vol. 1, 1828–1879 (New York: Scribner, 1978), p. 106.
“life in Russia”: Ibid., p. 106.
“I experienced a feeling”: Ibid., p. 108.
“It’s only honest anxiety”: Ibid., p. 110.
“that it’s possible”: Ibid.
The original intention: Martin E. P. Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Positive Psychology: An Introduction,” American Psychologist 55, no. 1 (2000): 5–14.
“the whole philosophy”: Nikolai Ivanovich Kareev, Istoricheskaia filosofiia gr. L. N. Tolstogo v ‘Voine i mire’ (Petersburg, 1888), p. 43.
“So-called self-sacrifice”: Christian, ed., Tolstoy’s Diaries, vol. 1., p. 177.
“very good at saying”: R. F. Christian, Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’: A Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 168.
“Since the world of thought”: From Pisarev’s essay “The Old Gentry,” quoted in Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, ed. George Gibian (New York: Norton, 1996), p. 1101.
Here is life: “Without false modesty,” Tolstoy told the young writer Maxim Gorky, “War and Peace is like the Iliad.” Quoted in Maxim Gorky, Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Andreyev (London: Hogarth 1948), p. 57.
“piece of life”: From Arnold’s essay “Count Leo Tolstoy,” which was first published in the Fortnighlty Review, December 1887. Citation taken from Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1995), p. 766.
“The hunt is described”: L. N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [The Complete Works of L. N. Tolstoy], 90 vols. (Moscow, 1928–58), vol. 15, p. 241. Also cited in Sergei Bocharov, Roman L. N. Tolstogo “Voina i mir,” 4th ed. (Moskva: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1987), p. 33.
Chapter 7: Love
Epigraph: “Everything I understand”: Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Knopf, 2007), vol. 4, book 1, chapter 16, p. 984.
“It could have been better”: Alexandra Popoff, Sophia Tolstoy: A Biography (New York: Free Press, 2010), p. 167.
“I’ve come to say”: This whole scene is described in Sonya’s letter to her sister, Tanya, quoted in ibid, pp. 150–51.
“My departure will”: R. F. Christian, Tolstoy’s Letters, vol. 2, 1880–1910 (New York: Scribner, 1978), p. 710–711.
“And really the main feeling”: R. F. Christian, Tolstoy’s Letters, vol. 1, 1828–1879 (New York: Scribner, 1978), p. 70.
“[O]ur happiness is terrifying”: Diary entry from March 1, 1863, quoted in R. F. Christian, ed. and trans., Tolstoy’s Diaries, vol. 1, 1847–1894 (London: Athlone Press, 1985), p.176.
“Every time he speaks”: Henri Troyat, Tolstoy, trans. Nancy Amphoux (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967), p. 259.
“It’s awful, terrible”: Christian, ed., Tolstoy’s Diaries, vol. 1, p. 178.
“impossibly pure and good”: Diary entry from March 3, 1863, quoted in ibid., p. 177.
“One can’t help loving”: Diary entry from September 15, 1858, quoted in ibid., p.152.
“Forgive me”: Troyat, Tolstoy, p. 692.
“Oh, constantly”: New York Times, December 27, 1925.
Chapter 8: Family
Epigraph: “The family is flesh”: Quoted in L. N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [The Complete Works of L. N. Tolstoy], 90 vols. (Moscow, 1928–58), vol. 49, p. 32.
“The novel of contemporary man”: From Introduction to Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Adolescent: A Novel, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Vintage Classics/Random House, 2003), p. vii.
“[I]t really is”: Quoted in Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865–1871 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 434.
“I am a husband”: R. F. Christian, ed. and trans., Tolstoy’s Letters, vol. 1, 1828–1879 (New York: Scribner, 1978), p. 182.
“now that it’s trimmed”: Alexandra Popoff, Sophia Tolstoy: A Biography (New York: Free Press, 2010), p. 48.
“I do not understand”: Aylmer Maude, The Life of Tolstoy: Later Years (London: Constable, 1911), p. 669.
“[I]n the course of”: A. V. Knowles, ed., Tolstoy: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge, 1978), p. 146.
While it may be: A. N. Wilson points out that ads for products claiming to cure venereal disease were a staple of Petersburg newspapers in the nineteenth century, and that sexual promiscuity and venereal disease were widespread throughout provincial Russia. A. N. Wilson, Tolstoy (New York: Norton, 1988), p. 374.
Chapter 9: Courage
Epigraph: “What would you call”: L. Tolstoy, Father Sergius and Other Stories (Moscow: Raduga, 1988), p. 9.
“[T]rue life begins”: Leo Tolstoy, “Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?” in Recollections and Essays, trans. Aylmer Maude, reprint ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 81.
“Pure vitality in man”: Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 84.
“can, if used by demagogues”: Ibid.
“[D]o heroes see themselves”: Patricia Carden, “Nicholas and Mary: An Inquiry into the Moral Structure of ‘Vojna i Mir,’ ” Russian Literature 51 (2002): 14. In fairness to Carden, it should be pointed out she qualifies her skepticism with the observation that both “humor and sympathy play out” (p. 14) during the course of this scene.
“killers of history”: Quoted in Dan Ungurianu, “Visions and Versions of History: Veterans of 1812 on Tolstoy’s War and Peace,” Slavic and East European Journal 44, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 48.
“Before and after Borodino”: Ibid., p. 49.
“spark of heroism”: From Strakhov’s 1869 essay about War and Peace, republished in Nikolai Strakhov, Kriticheskie stat’i ob I. S. Turgeneve i L. N. Tolstom (1862–1885), vol. 1, 4th ed. (Kiev: Izdanie I. P. Matchenko, 1901; Reprint: The Hague: Mouton, 1968), p. 196.
“appear before us”: Ibid., p. 208.
Chapter 10: Death
Epigraph: “The closer we come”: Letter to Vladimir Chertkov, August 1910, quoted in Vladimir Chertkov, The Last Days of Leo Tolstoy (Moscow, 1911), trans. Benjamin Sher, http://www.linguadex.com/tolstoy/chapter3.htm. Original source: V. F. Chertkov, O poslednikh dniakh L’va Nikolaevicha Tolstogo (Ranenburg, 1911), December 27, 1910, p. 30, http://feb-web.ru/feb/tolstoy/critics/pdt/pdt-001-.htm. According to Chertkov, Tolstoy wrote these words in a letter to him.
“death, death, death”: Leo Tolstoy, What I Believe, trans. Constantine Popoff (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2009), p. 131.
“and I rode round”: In R. F. Christian, ed. and trans., Tolstoy’s Diaries, vol. 1, 1847–1894 (London: Athlone Press, 1985), p. 118.
“Two hours have gone by”: Ibid., p. 119.
“I had come”: Quoted in Henri Troyat, Tolstoy, trans. Nancy Amphoux (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967), p. 135.
“I am glad”: Ibid., p. 199.
“Nothing in life”: Letter of October 1860, quoted in Christian, ed., Tolstoy’s Diaries, vol. 1, pp. 141–42.
“Why should I live?”: Leo Tolstoy, Confession, trans. David Patterson (New York: Norton, 1983), Part 5, p. 35.
“by renouncing what”: Lev Tolstoi, On Life and Essays on Religion, trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), p. 72.
“Although I admire”: Quoted in introduction to Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, trans. Lynn Solotaroff (New York: Bantam, 1982), p. 25.
“so that death”: What I Believe, p. 131.
“Life is life”: What I Believe, quoted in George J. Gutsche, “Moral Fiction: Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” in Gary R. Jahn, ed., Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Il’ich: A Critical Companion (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999), p. 90. Original text found in L. N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [The Complete Works of L. N. Tolstoy], 90 vols. (Moscow, 1928–58), vol. 23, p. 399.
“conveyed a psychological truth”: George Steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism (New York: Knopf, 1959), p. 274.
“needed a brilliant young man”: Letter to L. I. Volkonsaya, May 3, 1865, quoted in R. F. Christian, Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’: A Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 17.
Chapter 11: Perseverance
Epigraph: “The hardest and most blissful thing”: Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Knopf, 2007), vol. 4, part 3, chapter 15, p. 1064.
The famous Soviet: In Viktor Shklovsky, Lev Tolstoy (Moscow: Progress, 1978), pp. 378–81.
“As is proper”: Quoted in Ernest J. Simmons, Leo Tolstoy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1946), p. 291.
“There is only one thing”: Quoted in Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 87.
“He who has a why”: Friedrich Nietzsche, “Maxims and Arrows,” in Twilight of the Idols. Quoted in ibid, p. 109.
Chapter 12: Truth
Epigraph: “The hero of my tale”: From the short story “Sevastopol in May” (1855), In Michael R. Katz, ed., Tolstoy’s Short Fiction (New York: Norton, 1991), p. 43.
“there are no people”: Quoted in Boris Eikhenbaum, Tolstoi in the Sixties, trans. Duffield White (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1982), p. 8.
“the truth is like”: Quoted in V. Vinogradov, O iazyke khudozhestvennoi literatury (Moscow, 1959), p. 506.
“A historian and an artist”: “A Few Words Apropos of the Book War and Peace,” quoted in Appendix of Leo Tolstoy War and Peace, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Knopf, 2007), p. 1219.
“only art feels”: March 3, 1863. Quoted in R. F. Christian, ed. and trans., Tolstoy’s Diaries, vol. 1, 1847–1894 (London: Athlone Press, 1985), p. 177.