THE OVERCOMING OF HISTORY IN WAR AND PEACE

STUDIES INSLAVIC LITERATURE

AND POETICS

VOLUME XLII

Edited by

J.J. van BaakR. Grübel

A.G.F. van HolkW.G. Weststeijn

THE OVERCOMING OF HISTORY IN WAR AND PEACE

Jeff Love

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2004

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”.

ISBN: 90-420-1632-9Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2004Printed in The Netherlands

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii

INTRODUCTION 1

1. NARRATIVE AND STRIVING 12. PURPOSE AND OUTLINE OF THIS BOOK 43. THE CRITICAL TRADITION 9

CHAPTER ONE: SKEPTICISM 19

1. SKEPTICISM IN THE FICTIONAL TEXT 191.1. Schön Grabern 211.2. Counterpoint: Pierre and Helen 291.3. Austerlitz 321.4. Drissa 361.5. Dogmatic skepticism? The problem of mimesis orcreation ex nihilo 39

2. SKEPTICISM IN THE HISTORICAL ESSAYS 432.1. The infinity of causes 472.2. An objection 522.3. Reply 54

CHAPTER TWO: THE CALCULUS OF HISTORY 58

1. BORODINO 582. THE CALCULUS OF HISTORY 69

2.1. The calculus proposal 722.2. Two arguments against the calculus proposal 78

2.2.1. Berlin 792.2.2. Morson 80

Excursus: Organic and mechanistic interpretations of theworld 83The finite mind 852.3. A final objection to calculus 87

3. CALCULUS IN THE NOVEL 90

vi Table of Contents

CHAPTER THREE: A TEMPORALITY OF CONTRADICTION 96

1. TEMPORALITY IN THE NOVEL 971.1. Diegesis and mimesis 981.2. Linkages 1011.3. Patterns 1021.4. Tensions 105

2. EPIC AND NOVELISTIC TEMPORALITY 1063. THE END OF TIME 117

CHAPTER FOUR: THE FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE 123

1. THE PROBLEM OF HISTORY 1242. FREEDOM 133

2.1. Freedom as lack of connection 1342.2. Origin of freedom 1352.3. Consciousness 1382.4. The mystery of consciousness 142

3. THE RELATION OF REASON AND CONSCIOUSNESS 1433.1. The three grounds of representation 145

3.1.1. Space 1463.1.2. Time 1463.1.3. Causality 1483.1.4. Determination and construction 1503.1.5. The fundamental ground 1513.1.6. Nothingness and plenitude 152

4. THE PROBLEM OF HISTORY REVISITED 154

CHAPTER FIVE: MASTERY AND RETICENCE 157

1. NAPOLEON AND MASTERY 1582. THE TRAGIC PATH 1623. THE COMIC PATH 171

CONCLUSION: FREEDOM AND SILENCE 182

NOTES 189

WORKS CITED 203

INDEX 207

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

While this book owes an obvious and general debt to the manyfine critics Tolstoy has always managed to attract, I have incurred anumber of specific debts which it is a pleasure to acknowledge. Myadvisory committee, Vladimir Alexandrov, Robert Louis Jackson andMichael Holquist, provided valuable comments on the core of thisbook in its earliest form as a doctoral dissertation. Subsequently, Ibenefited from the careful scrutiny several readers gave the book atvarious stages of completion, in particular, Caryl Emerson, RichardGustafson, and William Mills Todd III. Donna Orwin has encouragedme both to take risks in my writing and to learn how to formulate mythoughts in a manner better suited to a broader audience of Tolstoyans(and non-Tolstoyans). I should like to thank her for granting permis-sion on behalf of The Tolstoy Studies Journal to reprint material herewhich was published in somewhat different form in volumes XIII andXV of the Journal as, respectively, “Tolstoy’s Calculus of History”and “The End of Knowing in War and Peace.” Thanks are also dueFrank Day and Sean McCambridge who kindly gave of their time toassist me in preparing the book for publication.

I am grateful to my colleagues, Margit Sinka and JohannesSchmidt, for their generous support and encouragement on all fronts.

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INTRODUCTION

…none of us has any senseof himself except in conflicts,

contradictions.1

1. NARRATIVE AND STRIVING

War and Peace is a great experiment. At once doubting and dog-matic, gliding between the minute cadences of everyday experienceand the overwhelming tonalities of historical becoming, the novelstretches the boundaries of narrative to achieve the impossible, to re-produce the immediate in the inescapably mediate, to capture the infi-nite in the finite forms of narrative discourse, to portray in word andimage what is beyond both. The fundamental pattern linking theseprotean and dynamic oppositions is one of striving, an almost tradi-tionally romantic or Faustian striving to take up the infinite wholewithin the nets of reason and thereby subject it to human mastery. Theinevitable failure of this striving, revealing the irreducible conflictbetween infinite desire and finite capacity, is at once the source ofnew beginnings and the repetition of old ones, a wellspring of per-petually renewed promises to obtain a synoptic vision of the wholethat cannot be fulfilled. Hence, this striving is essentially ambivalent,the origin of heroic aggression and tragic disillusionment, of Napo-leonic narcissism as well as the quietism of Kutuzov and Karataev: thegreat wheel of historical becoming continually offers a glimpse offreedom that turns out to be nothing more than illusion, a temptingmask of necessity.

This repetitive struggle between expansive hope and tragic despairconstitutes the productive structuring principle of the novel, its dy-namic center and principal trope. But it is also the source of the rest-lessness everywhere evident within it, a restlessness critics have toolong ignored or mistaken for a rather dogmatic skepticism. This rest-lessness is in fact profoundly erotic in a Platonic sense; it is at bottoman expression of the ebb and flow of ineradicable desire. In the words

2 Introduction

of one careful student of Plato, “[e]ros is continuously discontinuousor neither mortal or immortal, it waxes and wanes, lives and dies, andcan be defined only as the desire for what it lacks.” And, as Aristo-phanes says in the Symposium, “eros is the name for the desire andpursuit of the whole” (1997: 476).2 But this is a most unusual pursuit,for the “whole” is no more clearly defined by Plato than it is by Tol-stoy, while the fundamental presupposition, that knowledge of thewhole requires an intuitive grasp of all that is, of the boundless totalitythat inheres in the openness of immediate (and largely visual) appre-hension, is common to both. It is thus not surprising that the whole iselusive and malleable in the novel, a commandingly inarticulateplenitude and presence, which, as the retreating object of desire, isinflected in ever new ways by the means employed to capture andtame it, to turn the bad infinity of groundlessness into the good infin-ity of an intricately interwoven unity, a cosmos whose architecture isrecognizably human.

Regardless of the particular inflection the whole manifests, the un-derlying structure of striving remains the same, and at this point itmight be useful to provide a brief preliminary sketch of this structurefollowing Tolstoy’s account in the culminating arguments of the his-torical essays. There Tolstoy suggests that this structure consists of thedynamic interplay between two radically different kinds of cognition,one rational and mediate, the other non-rational and immediate. Thehistorical essays initially examine rational cognition in connectionwith historical events described in the novel. The narrator asserts thathuman reason cannot know a historical event completely because thelatter is an infinite totality arising from either an infinite causal seriesor infinitely divisible motion. In the Second Part of the Epilogue, thenarrator broadens the scope of this assertion to apply to all forms ofrational cognition by maintaining that reason is dependent on con-sciousness, an immediate source of “knowing” or “intuiting” the infi-nite whole, as form on content. He further claims that all genuine cog-nition results from a structuring process whereby reason gives finiteform to the infinite content of consciousness.

A useful clarification of this process may be achieved by compar-ing it to the diastolic and systolic functioning of the heart.3 The very

Introduction 3

act of giving form to the infinite content of consciousness is both anexpansion towards the infinite and a contraction towards the finite, forin giving form to the infinite, reason makes it finite. Just like a heart-beat or, indeed, the act of breathing (to employ another organic meta-phor suggested by Goethe), this continual interplay between reasonand consciousness is the primal rhythm of life in the novel, the deep-est expression of its striving for a durable form of unity; it is a fertiledynamism, a richly various negotiation between extremes that cele-brates conflict and contradiction as the essence of unity.

To cite but one example, the polarities of characterization in thefictional text reflect this interplay in several interesting ways. On theone hand, there are characters that resemble Napoleon because theyshow a supreme confidence in their ability to master events throughthe will directed by reason alone. Count Rostopchin and Speranskyare notable examples of this polarity which is typically associatedwith Western European influence and, in a frequently ironic way, withthe punctilious rationalism of the Austrian and German generals. Onthe other hand, there are characters who renounce the possibility ofmastery. The most striking representative of this group is PlatonKarataev, whose simple, peasant ways silently advocate a deep-seatedreticence about rational cognition and seem to embody an intuitiveattunement to the plenitude of being that is akin to consciousness.Kutuzov and Bagration display a similar reticence in marked opposi-tion to their European counterparts. This opposition is no accident, forsuch reticence proves to be a distinctively Russian trait in the novel.

These extremes appear within leading characters as well. PrinceAndrei wavers between mastery and reticence and then rejects themboth. At the beginning of the novel, he is much closer to the Napo-leonic “pole”—he both harbors an unreserved admiration for Napo-leon and seeks to model his career on that of the great man. At Aus-terlitz, however, as he lies wounded on the field of battle, Prince An-drei looks up at the sky and has a revelatory experience of the infinite.The most significant element of this experience is the comparisonbetween the infinite sky and the petty figure of Napoleon whose voicePrince Andrei likens to the “buzzing of a fly.”4

4 Introduction

This comparison impresses upon Prince Andrei the sublime maj-esty of an infinity which overwhelms any one individual no matterhow powerful. After Austerlitz, Prince Andrei seems to change. Atfirst, he renounces his Napoleonic hopes in the bitter realization thatthey are vain and futile. He retreats from active life to his estate atBogucharovo and seems to embrace a reticence about the possibilityof mastery. I use the word “seems” because Prince Andrei will ulti-mately revive his previous admiration of Napoleon in a different guisewhen he comes into contact with Speransky. Yet, he will soon there-after become disillusioned with Speransky and animated by love forthe “unaffected” Natasha. When this love fails, he will return to thearmy having forgotten that “infinite, receding vault of the sky that hadonce stood above him” (III/1/VIII). Prince Andrei entirely rejects hisprevious striving and, in a figurative sense, he ceases to be alive. Onthis account, his fatal wounding at Borodino evinces a trenchant logicsince it is the final fruit of this bitter rejection.

2. PURPOSE AND OUTLINE OF THIS BOOK

These examples are intended to hint at the importance that this dy-namic structure, this relentless striving, has on two different levels ofthe novel, that of the historical essays and the disposition of charac-ters, arguably the most abstract and the most concrete. But this re-mains just a hint, and it is the primary task of this book to examine indetail how the central figure of striving, by shuttling between thesetwo levels in the greater expanses of the narrative, both animates anddetermines the formal contours of the novel as a gathering point ofdifferent relations, of individual (part) and whole, concrete and ab-stract, subject and object. The overriding purpose for proceeding inthis way is to reveal the main conceptual underpinnings of the noveland thereby provide a new explanation for the peculiar generic aber-rations that have been the subject of considerable critical debate sinceWar and Peace was first published in the mid 1860s with the ostenta-tious caution that it was indeed not a novel. Moreover, by moving be-yond categorization of the novel as skeptical or dogmatic in its atti-tude towards the limitations of narrative, I hope to indicate just howprofoundly dynamic and fluid the borders between these ostensibly

Introduction 5

opposed stances are, that the essence of their interrelation is in factcaptured emblematically by the central figure of striving. And thisassertion leads inexorably to the fundamental observation that thenovel’s most powerful unifying action is to affirm that art and thoughtare intimately related, that the novel’s great art is no less a product ofthought than the historical essays.

Accordingly, I shall devote the balance of this study to analysis ofone of the novel’s most famous and distinctive features, the multi-layered reflexive relation between the historical essays and fictionaltext culminating in the Second Part of the Epilogue. By doing so, Iintend to show that the novel proceeds in stages to an ever more com-plete reflexivity about, or awareness of, its own structure, this ascentitself being a “realization” of both the striving for cognitive masteryover the whole and a characteristic paradigm of historical develop-ment. The first stage is representational and mimetic; Tolstoy portraysthe movement of history by describing “typical” historical events suchas councils of war and military engagements together with the every-day lives of a group of characters. The second stage introduces a se-ries of reflections on historical narrative into the fiction, while thethird, represented only by the discussions in the Second Part of theEpilogue, serves as an overarching metaphysical reflection on the pre-vious two stages that attempts to ground and thereby authorize theirunity.

This analysis is divided into two parts, each of which deals withone stage of reflexivity. In Part 1, I focus primarily on the fictionaltext while arguing that the essays’ discussions of historical narrativeare distinctively reflexive, that they articulate major tendencies in thestructure of the fictional text by skillfully exploiting a rich language ofconcepts with wide-ranging philosophical and scientific filiations. Thethrust of this analysis is to show that the skeptical arguments advancedin the novel justify the deployment of more holistic narrative strate-gies for which the mathematical method of calculus introduced inBook III is one experiment, albeit a crucial one, in explanation. In-deed, calculus acts as a compelling master figure for the basic struc-tural patterns that define the narrative form of the novel, one thatmoves beyond the limitations of Aristotelian poetics towards defining

6 Introduction

a new kind of narrative that hovers uneasily between the closure ofepic and the openness inherent in the novel. In Part 2, I give a closereading of the abstract thinking Tolstoy sets out at length in the Sec-ond Part of the Epilogue so as to provide a basis for understanding therelation of the historical essays to the fictional text in terms of the in-terplay between reason and consciousness. Here I emphasize the closeaffiliation Tolstoy’s views have with central positions in German ide-alist thought, especially the strand of post-Kantian thinking reflectedin the reading of Schopenhauer that emerges in the Second Part of theEpilogue. I then go on to examine the essential finitude or limitednessof human thought and action that the interplay between reason andconsciousness expresses—a formidable distance between man andGod—within the fictional text in the guise of the two polarities ofcharacterization, mastery and reticence, the former essentially tragic,the latter essentially comic. In this respect, I ultimately show moreclearly how the movement towards increasing reflexivity that shapesthe novel as a whole, as a sort of absolute movement, also emerges ona highly subjective plane in the lives of two crucial characters, PrinceAndrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov.

This division of the analysis also highlights a closely related aspectof striving in the novel, the attempt to move beyond the particularlimitations of subjectivity. Part 1 provides an overview of the ways inwhich the novel seeks to provide an objective account of the world inits historical becoming, to forge an objective identity not tainted by,but rather both preserving and subsuming, the errant partiality of sub-jective vision in a seamless whole such that neither part nor wholeneed be sacrificed to the other. Throughout this discussion, I empha-size the impetus to discover narrative forms that avoid the pitfalls in-herent in the modern turn to the subject as the basic unit of world con-struction. But Part 2 examines why these forms cannot achieve theirgoal. In this Part, I take a closer look at the subjective side of theequation and, specifically, at how Tolstoy seeks to authorize a newsynthesis of subject and object (through his conception of the relationbetween reason and consciousness) but also finally admits the impos-sibility of that synthesis, a point further articulated by some of theleading characters in the novel. This result is, however, shot throughwith ambiguity. While the ineluctable gap between subject and object

Introduction 7

affirms human limitation or finitude, the futility of seeking to know asa god might, it thereby also affirms freedom and continued life, aninvitation to a new beginning that echoes Augustine’s “si fallor, sum”[If I err, I am]. Human finitude means that cognition is essentially im-pure, that any assertion implies its negation, the source of its owndownfall and renewal.

Thus my analysis has several fundamental points of focus, all ofwhich refer to a specific aspect of the basic pattern of striving as wellas to the whole appropriate for it. Indeed, if this analysis unfolds as anascent, a movement towards a synoptic view, it also reveals the ironyof such an ascent, that the desire to achieve pure vision of the wholecannot escape the bonds of subjective contingency, that no matter howclosely subjective and objective views come to each other, they maynever be brought together as a transparent unity, and, if they could,that unity would be nothing more than a tyranny, a profound loss offreedom.5

To forestall an important objection: I recognize that this layeredway of dealing with the text has many affinities with Hegelian thought(and, more generally, the project of German idealism). One need onlyglance at the terminology to perceive a progression from “immediacy”to consciousness and, thence, to self-consciousness that recalls thebasic progression of Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit. This simi-larity may invite reference to Tolstoy’s apparent antipathy to Hegel ora hasty ascription of influence. Two arguments militate against identi-fying the movement in the novel too closely with Hegel. First, withinthe philosophical (and Christian) tradition, an ascent towards increas-ing awareness of the true structure of the world of appearances, of theunchanging being that lies concealed in the evanescent muddle of be-coming, is hardly a pattern unique to Hegelian philosophy. In its dif-ferent manifestations such an ascent has ancient precedents (i.e.,original theoria or visual contemplation of the Platonic ideas, a noeticcommunion with being, with “pure” unity), although as a movementof consciousness it is distinctively modern. Moreover, as a literaryphenomenon, this latter movement—albeit towards an uncertaingoal—was the principal trope of the Bildungsroman, a central form ofthe novel in the nineteenth century of which Goethe’s Wilhelm Mei-

8 Introduction

sters Lehrjahre is a prime example. In fact, there is a well-known lineof interpretation according to which Hegel’s Phenomenology is but aphilosophical adaptation of the Bildungsroman.6 Second, the suppos-edly dialectical logic of movement in Hegel has no echo in the Tol-stoyan text. If arguments to the contrary exist, they usually conflatesimple opposition with dialectic, as if Hegelian dialectic were merelya method of describing oppositions.

In point of fact, my approach is an indirect response to Boris Eik-henbaum’s famous thesis that the emergence of the essays at the half-way point in the novel signals a change of plan. According to thisview, Tolstoy originally conceived of the novel within the genericconfines of the family chronicle. As work progressed, however, heslowly began to transform this family chronicle into a historical epic,a fact which comes fully to the fore with the appearance of the histori-cal essays. Eikhenbaum uses the essays as evidence of epic intentionsby likening them to Homeric digressions. However tenuous this latterclaim may be—there is of course evidence both pro and contra—themain issue which Eikhenbaum addresses has to be taken seriously.Nevertheless, it seems fair to say that Eikhenbaum’s argument doesnot adequately account for the existence of important historicalthemes in the novel. One has only to recall that the first paragraph es-tablishes a historical frame for the ensuing action. Now, one may ofcourse argue that such historical details merely constitute an importantbackdrop for the family chronicle, but it is doubtful that such an ar-gument can adequately explain or justify the complex ways in whichhistorical events form an integral part of the text from the very begin-ning.7 Tolstoy himself seemed to conceive of the novel in these terms.In a rather acerbic draft for the Second Part of the Epilogue, he justi-fies his abstract meditations on history in the following terms (which,incidentally, tend to confirm the surmise that, for Tolstoy, art andthought have an underlying unity and are not intrinsically opposed toeach other):

I started to write a book about the past. While describing the past, I found thatit not only was not known, but that it was known and described in a way com-pletely opposite to what it was. And I began to feel the necessity to prove what Iwas saying and to articulate the views on whose basis I was writing. Perhaps, theywill say, it would be better not to express them. Nonetheless, as a justification, I

Introduction 9

can add that, if I had not had these thoughts, there also would not have been anydescriptions. (PSS 16: 241)

Finally, it may be worth noting that, although constantly temperedby concrete reference to the fictional text, long stretches of my analy-ses, especially those dealing with the Second Part of the Epilogue, areof necessity highly abstract. I recognize that such a level of abstrac-tion may seem beyond the needs of typical literary analysis, but, in myview, there is simply no other adequate way to grasp the basic ele-ments of the interplay of reason and consciousness in itself, and as itappears in the fictional text, than to strip away an occasionally obfus-cating rhetoric to reach the philosophical and theological foundationsof Tolstoy’s views. By taking this approach, however, I certainly donot seek to attribute specific positions to Tolstoy so as to establish aconvenient “genetic” or causal tie between him and one or more of theluminaries in the great tradition of Western religious and philosophi-cal thought. We have all heard sufficient professions of Tolstoy’sPlatonism, Rousseauism, Existentialism and Nihilism to perceive thatthese labels typically obscure the particularity of Tolstoy. Indeed, if Irefer to an array of scientific, philosophical and theological concep-tions to develop important aspects of my arguments in the pages thatfollow, I do so in order to offer a series of prisms with which to illu-minate the principal implications of the views Tolstoy espouses andnot to indulge in facile ascription of influence or to impose thereby aprecipitous and palliative categorization. This may seem to be a sortof scholarly dodge, a way of suggesting influence without having toindulge in the precarious task of proving what at best cannot beproved conclusively. Be that as it may, the fact remains that the con-ceptual tools Tolstoy himself uses have a history, and they are neatlydefined by that history in a way that helps one to see more clearly thephilosophical richness of Tolstoy’s views along with their connectionsto more general tendencies of thought.

3. THE CRITICAL TRADITION

Certainly there is no shortage of distinguished critical treatments ofTolstoy’s great novels, and the sheer prominence of War and Peace as

10 Introduction

an object of critical attention can hardly be overestimated. It is there-fore only reasonable to provide a preliminary account of how thisstudy seeks to develop or add to previous discussions of the novel.While this study in fact addresses a fundamental issue in the criticalreception of the novel, the vexed question of narrative form, of thenovel’s unity, it does so in a manner that both departs from the criticaltradition and tries to bring together significant divisions identifiablewithin it. To explain more specifically how this is so requires a suc-cinct interpretation of the main positions in the critical reception of thenovel dealing with the question of narrative form and unity.

Indeed, since the first books of War and Peace were published inthe late 1860s the question of unity has been at the very forefront ofcritical discussion. While the earliest Russian critics uniformly praisedthe brilliant and precise descriptions in the novel, they expressed atthe same time a powerful sense of dismay about its apparent lack oforder. They sought but were unable to find any central idea. Rather,the accumulation of detail, the apparently unmotivated sequence ofaction, and the sudden transitions between scenes of war and peaceproduced bewilderment. As one critic wrote in 1868:

…we expect a novel in the mode of Walter Scott and, not finding that, we be-come perplexed. It seems to us that the plot of Count Tolstoy has no goal, that theform of his multi-volume work is disconnected and abrupt, that this is no histori-cal portrait but simply a series of sketches pertaining to and related to each othermerely because they belong to the same time period.8

The early Russian critics considered this lack of order a seriousaesthetic flaw in the novel, one of whose most disturbing aspects wasthe unmistakable generic break between fictional description and thehistorical essays.

Turgenev captures the early critical attitude to the essays when hewrites that the “historical supplement about which readers are de-lighted is charlatanism and a puppet comedy.”9 Partially as a reactionto such criticism, in the 1873 edition of War and Peace Tolstoy de-leted portions of the historical essays and relegated the remainder to aseparate appendix at the end of the novel with the title “Essays on theCampaign of 1812.”10 Some notable Western European writers also

Introduction 11

shared this early contempt. Flaubert certainly did not appreciate theessays and complained that Tolstoy “repeats himself and philoso-phizes” in them.11

This early reaction was rather predictably followed by a re-appraisal of the novel’s form that reflected a sweeping rejection of thevalues of nineteenth-century criticism. The vanguard here wereprominent critics associated with Russian formalism who suggestedthat the apparent lack of order in the novel was not an aesthetic flawbut the result of a deliberate and carefully executed artistic plan. Vik-tor Shklovsky maintained that War and Peace attacked through theanomalies of its formal structure the traditional generic constraints ofthe novel. Boris Eikhenbaum wrote a series of important studies aboutTolstoy’s fiction. He too considered the novel’s formal deviationsfrom convention part of an overall artistic plan arising, as previouslynoted, from a rather pronounced change of generic design in favor ofthe epic genre.12 Eikhenbaum was also quick to discern that the phi-losophical content of the essays did not reflect a wholly eccentric po-sition. He provides a rich description of both the various historicalviews which Tolstoy entertained at one time or another while he waswriting the novel and Schopenhauer’s impact, which to this day hasnot been adequately assessed. In particular, Eikhenbaum shows thatSchopenhauer had a fundamental influence on the terminology Tol-stoy employs in the Second Part of the Epilogue.13

Sir Isaiah Berlin’s article, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” sets outthe basic outlines of the still dominant modern view about the novel.Although Berlin praises Eikhenbaum as having written the “best criti-cal work on Tolstoy in any language” (48), he seems to ignore Eik-henbaum’s broader claims concerning the essays and revives the ear-lier sense of dismay about them. Berlin does this in a rather compli-cated fashion. He stresses that the essays must be taken seriously, butin practice he dismisses them on the basis that they articulate only a“thin, ‘positive’ doctrine” (49) undermined by the fictional text. Berlinsimply cannot accept the determinist arguments which Tolstoy con-structs in the essays and enlists the fictional text to disprove them.Berlin’s generalizing characterization of this conflict is his primarycontribution to the critical tradition. He claims Tolstoy was torn be-

12 Introduction

tween a powerful desire to reduce the diversity of phenomena to asingle unifying theory in the essays and an acute appreciation of thatdiversity which informs the fictional text. Berlin is quick to decidethis conflict in favor of diversity and suggests further that Tolstoy wasinstinctually skeptical of any unifying theory. Berlin’s description ofTolstoy’s skepticism is worth reproducing since it continues to influ-ence attitudes about the novel:

Tolstoy was by nature not a visionary; he saw the manifold objects and situa-tions on earth in their full multiplicity; he grasped their individual essences, andwhat divided them from what they were not, with a clarity to which there is noparallel. Any comforting theory which attempted to collect, relate, ‘synthesize’,reveal hidden substrata and concealed inner connections, which, though not ap-parent to the naked eye, nevertheless guaranteed the unity of all things—the factthat they were ‘ultimately’ parts one of another with no loose ends—the ideal ofthe seamless whole—all such doctrines he exploded contemptuously and withoutdifficulty. (48)

George Steiner’s famous book Tolstoy or Dostoevsky appears toaccept Berlin’s thesis without further ado. Yet this acceptance is onlyapparent; in the final account, Steiner gives much greater credence tothe quest for unity in Tolstoy’s work, “…for the revelation of totalmeaning underlies Tolstoy’s art even where his sensuous perception ismost enthralled by the boundless diversity of life” (243). Steiner’sinsistence on the essential movement towards unity and completenessin Tolstoy’s works represents in fact a pronounced counterpoint toBerlin.

Berlin’s characterization of Tolstoy as a skeptic has, however,gained wide acceptance. One of the most influential recent mono-graphs on the novel, Gary Saul Morson’s Hidden in Plain View: Nar-rative and Creative Potentials in ‘War and Peace’ argues very muchin the spirit of Berlin that Tolstoy was fundamentally skeptical.Morson refers to Tolstoy as an “epistemic anarchist,” an “epistemicnihilist” and an opponent of “semiotic totalitarianism” (90, 109, 84).Unfortunately, Morson does not clearly define these terms, none ofwhich is by any means self-evident or anchored in a well-establishedphilosophical tradition. One must therefore judge from the argumentswhich Morson advances in the book itself. Morson extrapolates thesearguments from a reading of the essays in conjunction with the fic-

Introduction 13

tional text. Following the earliest critics, he maintains that the novelhas no orderly narrative structure, while at the same time attributingthis fact to a skepticism presented in the essays and illustrated in thefictional text. On this basis, Morson evaluates the novel as a form of“negative narration” or deliberate “parody” that intends to reveal theweaknesses of narrative by showing that any narrative “necessarilyfalsifies” (130, 132, 130). With this thesis, Morson reprises the workof the Russian formalists by attributing the novel’s formal anomaliesto an underlying order, while he differs from them in identifying thisorder as a philosophical position described in the essays. In doing so,however, Morson ironically puts himself in the awkward position ofsuggesting that Tolstoy asserts skepticism from a vantage point thatpresupposes superior knowledge thereby involving Tolstoy in an ele-mentary contradiction between the form of expression and its con-tent.14

Traces of Berlin’s ideas surface in modern Soviet criticism as well.Sergei Bocharov stands out among recent Soviet scholars for his at-tention to the importance of the historical essays. In his remarkablelittle book on War and Peace, Bocharov suggests that the historicalessays try to articulate the motivating principles of the fictional text(34-44). But Bocharov also maintains that the historical essays, byattempting to translate these principles into the language of rationalexposition, transform them. According to Bocharov, this transforma-tion takes place because the historical essays impose a logical struc-ture which cannot by definition account for the essential contradic-tions that are the source of the fictional text’s vitality. While thesecontradictions are variations of Berlin’s assertion that the novel pullsin two directions at once, Bocharov, unlike Berlin, finds that they cre-ate a tense unity in the novel.

Not all modern critics agree that Tolstoy displays a radical skepti-cism in the novel. R. F. Christian in fact represents a potent opposingview based on a careful examination of the novel’s genesis and struc-ture (1-59). He tries to show that Tolstoy gives a new kind of structureto his novel constructed from a complex series of antitheses, juxtapo-sitions and repetitions, which he calls “situation rhymes.” Christianthinks that this array of devices and, especially, the repetitions, illus-

14 Introduction

trate the elaborate and cunningly designed artistic unity of the novel aswell as its formal innovativeness.15 Christian does not make a case forthe unity of the historical essays and the fictional text. He simplycontends that the novel exhibits a thoroughgoing determinism whichTolstoy’s countervailing assertion of individual freedom does notcontradict, since, for Christian, the latter is only a psychological per-ception, an illusion of sorts.

Edward Wasiolek pays close attention to the interrelation of thehistorical essays and the fictional text. Moreover, outside of Eikhen-baum’s studies of Tolstoy, Wasiolek is almost alone in examining thelinchpin of the essays, the relation of reason and consciousness, indetail. He states his basic contention simply:

The totally free choice assumes that the individual can step out of the nexusof space and time and initiate an act abstractly; the totally rational view of theworld assumes that men can step out of space and time and conceive of thewhole series of events. In both, man plays at being God. In both the world isturned into an object, for the abstract ‘free will’ treats the world outside itself asan object just as surely as does the absolute reason. Total freedom and total ne-cessity meet. The real act, however, cannot be either, for man does not live out-side of history, but in history. Since he lives for history, he cannot step out ofhistory to initiate events (unreal freedom), nor can he step out of history to judgehistory (unreal necessity). (122-123)

Wasiolek goes on to assert that, to the extent characters try to betotally free or totally knowing, they live in “unreality,” since the truesense of reality emerges only in the limited, concrete, individual expe-rience of life. This distinction seems to blur the boundaries betweenreason and consciousness as different kinds of cognition. In fact, Wa-siolek does not adequately take that difference into account. Rather,he simply emphasizes that the essence of the relation is its hostility to“unreal” absolutes.

Two other works of American criticism are notable for their com-mitment to uncovering the religious dimension of thought in War andPeace. Richard Gustafson, in his book Leo Tolstoy: Resident andStranger, notes that the “central philosophical issue of War and Peaceis the problem of knowledge” and places this issue within the contextof the struggle of Tolstoy’s religious “world-view” with modernity

Introduction 15

(218). In doing so, Gustafson brings to the table the long-neglectedconnection of Tolstoy’s historical views with an essentially Christianmetaphysics that pits the finite creature, man, against the infinite anduncreated divine nature. Rather than skepticism, Gustafson maintainsthat Tolstoy is “working out a new theory of knowledge” whose “hid-den agenda was theological” and which was to be the forerunner ofTolstoy’s later doctrine of God and creation (224). Donna Orwin findsthe existence of “circular” or “harmonic” reason in War and Peace(107).16 This kind of reason is opposed to the linearity of logicalthought and affirms the harmonious interconnection of apparently di-verse phenomena ordained by God. Traditional metaphysical oppo-sites such as being and nothingness are seen as moments in a seamlesswhole and not as mutually exclusive opposites—one has only to recallunifying juxtapositions of this kind such as the early contrast of CountRostov’s lively, agile dancing of the “Daniel Cooper” with the turgidatmosphere surrounding the dying moments of old Count Bezukhov.

While this brief review of the critical reception of War and Peaceshows the importance of the debate about unity, it also shows a deeperpreoccupation with, if not unease about, the relation between narrativeform and knowledge, between artistic representation and ostensiblyrational exposition, that is fostered by the problematic status and con-tent of the historical essays. On the one hand, there are critics, like R.F. Christian, who see in the novel’s intricate organization and, indeed,in its very comprehensiveness an affirmation of the power inherent innarrative form to grasp the structure concealed within the flux of ex-perience. And, since the novel is ostensibly realistic, one that is sup-posed to imitate reality, to be a “wonder” of mimetic art, the obviousif tacit assumption must be that the flux of experience is not so elusiveas poets and thinkers have often claimed both before and after theheyday of the realistic novel. On the other hand, the novel has alsobeen seen by an important group of critics, of whom Sir Isaiah Berlinis one of the most influential, as an affirmation of the chaotic or infi-nite “character” of experience, its ineffability and uniqueness. Forthese critics, the novel shows how experience resists formal reductionof any kind and especially the pernicious artifice of narrative.

16 Introduction

Hence, one may with justification divide the critical reception ofthe novel into two broad tendencies that are strongly opposed to eachother. One claims the novel is the artistic expression of a positive viewof narrative as a means of transmitting knowledge, while the otherclaims that the novel shows how narrative is either a poor vehicle ofknowledge or, more radically, that the novel shows how all narrativesare ultimately deceptions, that in imposing form these narratives ex-clude all too much—they fail to portray the whole and, in this failure,can only misrepresent it. For these latter critics the cost of the terriblelabor of form is the loss or corruption of truth—form does not bringthe hidden to light, rather it merely conceals in attempting to do so. AsAristotle notes in Book I of the Metaphysics, the poets tell manylies—but what wondrous and beguiling lies they tell!

This polarity is extremely problematic. While both attitudes strikeat a crucial aspect of the novel, they also completely fail to escape onefundamental assumption they hold in common—the inevitability ofthe law of excluded middle. By this I mean that critics have tended toentertain either/or kinds of positions in regard to the novel’s guidingattitude towards knowledge, if indeed there is one, without taking intoaccount a third possibility; namely, that the novel consists of a com-plex series of negotiations between these two broad alternatives, thatis, between faith in, and distrust of, narrative as a vehicle of truth, as ameans of accurately representing the whole. In other words, criticshave tended to overlook the open-ended dynamism of the novel, theconstant struggle that I have characterized as a striving whose goalscondemn it to failure but which arises strangely renewed by failure tofurther activity. The intrinsically unstable synthesis of dogmatic andskeptical attitudes in this striving offers a “third way” that underminesand overcomes accounts of the novel tied to more traditional ranges ofinterpretation.

This “third way” has been overlooked because the philosophicalfoundations of the novel, expressed with admirable clarity in the rela-tion between reason and consciousness, have either been ignored ormisread. Hence, while this study has as a principal task the explora-tion of this rather new way towards the heart of the novel, it acquitsthis task by providing a necessary and much more wide-ranging ex-

Introduction 17

amination of the thought contained in the historical essays as well asthe fictional text. Tolstoy’s considerable talent for thinking has notbeen given its due, and one of the subsidiary aims of this study is toshow how astute and sophisticated a thinker Tolstoy was, that many ofthe positions he presents in the novel, far from being the eccentriccreations of a great writer and bad thinker, have important antecedentsin the most advanced and daring thinkers of the 19th century and suc-cessors in some important movements of the 20th, of which structur-alism and structuralist historical analysis are only two outstandingexamples. Indeed, the ultimate goal that informs this entire study isthe elimination of ingrained distinctions between thinker and artistthat re-emerged in the wake of Romanticism and have retained someof their power into our own time. War and Peace is, if nothing else,one of the most remarkable and radical assertions of the essentialunity of thought and art as two complementary aspects of human cog-nition, a unity that is nonetheless mysterious and difficult if not im-possible to grasp in itself.

PART ONE:THE INFINITE QUEST

CHAPTER ONE: SKEPTICISM

The object of philosophy—to dis-cover general laws, for which one

must renounce the individual.(PSS 7:132)

War and Peace seeks to move beyond the weaknesses of a purelysubjective presentation of events, one based on the notion that the in-dividual subject can shape events either directly by action or indirectlythrough the way those events are described. The narrative continuallyexpands to construct a more comprehensive, objective narrative edi-fice that overcomes and preserves subjective points of view by linkingthem together in a multi-layered mesh of distinctively recurrent pat-terns according to certain characteristic similarities; part and wholeare thus brought together in a unifying narrative, a collective identity,that does not efface but rather safeguards the individual by locating itperspicuously within the whole.

This movement appears with particular clarity in the ambiguousrejection of skepticism that is in fact one of the dominant patterns inthe novel. This movement is notably reflexive, and it permits therather self-conscious articulation of the principles which determine thenovel’s own structure, its narrative identity. Both the content and formof this articulation can best be understood by proceeding through thevarious steps in the novel’s long argument about historical narrativewhich originates in the early fictional descriptions and reaches itsgreatest intensity in the series of historical essays set forth in Book III;hence, I have thought it prudent to devote the first two chapters of thisstudy to this argument.

1. SKEPTICISM IN THE FICTIONAL TEXT

Before the emergence of the historical essays, Tolstoy’s panoramicdescriptions of historical events supply numerous anticipations of the

20 Chapter One

principal positions which his abstract arguments about historical nar-rative will formulate and refine. Of these descriptions the most fa-mous, if not the loci classici, involve battles, complete with the politi-cal and military calculations, preparations and manipulations subsidi-ary thereto, that formed the core of the traditional subject matter forthe histories of the Napoleonic Wars. At first glance these descriptionsseem to reveal an essentially skeptical view about the kind of knowl-edge historians may obtain concerning historical events. They tend toshow that the chaos of battle cannot be reduced to any tidy accountwhatsoever. For Tolstoy, such an account characterizes historicalevents as directed “solely by the will of a Napoleon, an Alexander, orin general the persons they [the historians] describe” (2E/II).

Prior to the appearance of the historical essays, Tolstoy makesthese points most clearly and elaborately in his complex narrative ac-counts of the battles of Schön Grabern and Austerlitz, the first detailedbattle sequences in the novel. Accordingly, in the following I shallbegin by providing an analysis of each of these battles that shows howthey collectively develop the case for skepticism and thereby clarifywhat skepticism means in the context of the novel. I shall then pro-ceed to examine the narrator’s description of the planning which takesplace under the direction of General von Pfuel at Drissa.

Both of these analyses deal with well-known, perhaps well-worn,aspects of the novel, and my intention here is not to engage in a strik-ingly different interpretation of these scenes, if that means to focus onneglected details or combinations of details. Rather, I intend to de-velop, through an analysis of the basic tendencies that these scenesreveal, a more precise account of skepticism in the novel than hasbeen the case thus far. This is a crucial preliminary task because skep-ticism as a way of thinking, as an attitude to the world, is all too oftenreduced to an unclear notion of doubt or suspicion of dogmatism.1 Butskepticism has had many forms in its long history, from apparentlyironic Socratic claims about the inevitability of ignorance to the Der-ridean infinite play of the signifier, the indefinitely deferred advent offinal meaning, that has so deeply marked recent thought in literatureand philosophy. As a result, it is of the utmost importance for any

Skepticism 21

analysis of the novel’s skepticism to start from the beginning, to graspthe phenomenon of skepticism in its own terms within the novel.

1.1. Schön Grabern

At Schön Grabern Prince Andrei is the focus of the narrativewhose structure is in part determined by the contrast between his ex-pectations (nurtured by traditional historical accounts) about whatshape the impending battle will take and his subsequent experience ofit. While Prince Andrei first believes that a battle is directed by acommander’s skill and intelligence, he discovers that chance and notthe will of any man rules the battlefield. Although this conclusion israther obvious, a repetition of the venerable pattern of illusions lost socharacteristic of the modern novel, the structure of the contrast revealsthe tacit implications of Prince Andrei’s discovery, and these, whileintriguing in and of themselves, are also very important for an under-standing of the novel’s skepticism.

Prince Andrei introduces this contrast on the morning of the battle.As a way of “setting the scene,” I would like to give a brief overviewof the circumstances leading to the battle in which chance seems tohave a significant role. Due to a ruse on the part of the French gener-als at Vienna, a considerable French force had been allowed to crossthe Danube and now threatens the Russian armies under Kutuzov withcomplete destruction. Hence, a chance victory of French cunning overAustrian credulity puts the entire Russian army, hitherto protected bythe Danube, in a desperate position. Only Prince Bagration’s meagerforce of 4000 troops stands in the way of the French army which with150,000 men is so many times larger that any engagement is morelikely to end in disaster than victory for the Russians. Fortunately forthe Russians, Murat, the French general who successfully fooled theAustrians at Vienna, believes that he is engaging the entire Russianarmy. He thus attempts to employ another ruse to win time so that hisarmy may prepare for an engagement. This ruse however merely helpsthe Russians to rest; it grants them a chance advantage. When Napo-leon learns of the situation, he suspects Russian treachery and imme-diately orders Murat into battle.

22 Chapter One

We rejoin Prince Andrei who, having chosen to stay with Bagra-tion’s forces, looks down at the battlefield from Captain Tushin’sbattery. From this vantage point over the whole area, he starts to thinkabout the upcoming engagement with the French:

Prince Andrei took out his notebook, and leaning on the cannon, sketched aplan of the position. He made some notes on two points, intending to mentionthem to Bagration. His idea was, first to concentrate all the artillery in the center,and second, to withdraw the cavalry to the other side of the dip. Prince Andrei,being always near the commander-in-chief, closely following the mass move-ments and general orders, and constantly studying historical accounts of battles,involuntarily pictured to himself the course of events in the forthcoming action inbroad outline. He imagined only important possibilities: ‘If the enemy attacks theright flank,’ he said to himself, ‘the Kiev grenadiers and the Podolsk chasseursmust hold their position till reserves from the center come up. In that case thedragoons could successfully make a flank counter-attack. If they attack our cen-ter we, having the center battery on this high ground, shall withdraw the leftflank under its cover, and retreat to the dip by echelons.’ So he reasoned.…(I/2/XVI—my emphasis)

The passage shifts immediately to a discussion among several offi-cers in which they speculate about what comes “after death.” Thisjuxtaposition outlines an initial response to Prince Andrei’s reflectionsby inviting a somewhat ironic comparison between them and specula-tion about the afterlife.

There are two levels to this response. First, the officers speak aboutan issue, life after death, of course a central and “weighty” preoccu-pation of many influential strains of religious and philosophical re-flection, in a remarkably simple and unpretentious manner.2 Suchsimplicity stands in distinct contrast to the perfervid grandiosity ofPrince Andrei’s reasoning about the forthcoming battle. Second, whilePrince Andrei concentrates on planning and the “important possibili-ties” that might be realized in the course of the battle, the other offi-cers think of the obvious and all-pervasive possibility of death, thestark and bitter reality with which the battle threatens them, for“‘[a]fraid or not, you can’t escape it anyhow’” (I/2/XVI). If PrinceAndrei’s thoughts betray a striving for military glory—as he will sayimmediately after the battle has begun, a desire to have his own“Toulon”—they do so with unmistakable vanity. By contrast, the offi-cers in their simplicity show a humility and respect for the terrible

Skepticism 23

seriousness of the battle that awaits them. Instead of glory, they thinkof death. Moreover, and I think this point is most telling of what fol-lows, the comparison ultimately insinuates that planning for a battle,that is, to try to envision it in advance, and attempting to determine thenature of the afterlife are equally futile and arid exercises in humanspeculation which turn one’s gaze away from what stands directly inone’s path. Prince Andrei’s reasoning obscures or conceals the simpletruth of the matter, that the battle brings death first and foremost.

The elements of this comparison have an ancient pedigree. Socra-tes in the Theaetetus interrupts the flow of the dialogue to tell a storyabout how the “first” Greek philosopher, Thales, while gazing at thestars fell into a well in the presence of a Thracian servant girl whomade a jest at his expense. Socrates adds that “…in his eagerness toknow the things in heaven, he [Thales] was unaware of the things infront of him and at his feet” (1997: 193).3 Lermontov, in Hero of ourTime, ironically reprises this topos when, in “The Fatalist,” Pechorinliterally steps on a slaughtered pig while resolving no longer to bebewitched by metaphysical speculations and to look always under hisfeet. Of interest is how Tolstoy alters this traditional topos, for theofficers are the ones who see better what lies before them by recog-nizing the simple fact of death and speculating about the afterlife—atraditionally metaphysical occupation—whereas Prince Andrei’s rea-sonings about the apparently practical planning of a battle seem toedge him closer to the metaphysical “star gazers.” This reversal hintsat an important aspect of the novel, that reason is cunning, a tool ofdeception permitting us to hide from or evade direct engagement withinconvenient and disturbing realities of human existence, the mostdaunting of which is death.4

In the remaining descriptions of the battle we come to see withever greater clarity and force the distance between Prince Andrei’spreconceptions, based on his experience as a staff officer as well as onhis reading of historical accounts of battles, and the actual course ofbattle. The basic problem is that Prince Andrei believes in what he hasread about battles; he is conditioned to believe in the authority of thecommander and his plans. But, at Schön Grabern, Prince Andrei can-not ignore the inadequacy, indeed, the almost fantastical nature of his

24 Chapter One

beliefs which, in consequence, he soon begins to question. Prince An-drei’s description of Bagration is a case in point.

Prince Andrei catches up to Bagration after the battle has begunand he expresses both curiosity and astonishment at Bagration’s re-markably passive demeanor; Bagration does not take charge in theway Prince Andrei seems to expect he would as a commanding gen-eral, namely, by issuing commands and thereby determining the over-all direction of the battle. Instead, Bagration presents a diffident andrather impassive figure with his “half-closed, dull sleepy eyes” andreadiness to greet all news of the battle with the terse response, “verygood.” To Prince Andrei, Bagration’s impassivity at first gives theimpression “that everything that took place and was reported to himwas exactly what he had foreseen” (I/2/XXVII). This impression be-trays Prince Andrei’s belief in the power of one man to direct eventsbased on his having superior foresight. Hence, Prince Andrei clings tothe assumption that Bagration is impassive because everything is un-folding as he has foreseen, i.e., according to plan. Like a Homericgod, Bagration calmly surveys from above what he knows is fore-ordained.

Several important details support a vastly different and ambigu-ously ironic view of Bagration. In this respect, Bagration’s attitudetowards Tushin is particularly instructive.

The narrator notes that Tushin’s guns, which had been intended tofire on the valley beneath the battery, were in fact firing directly at thevillage of Schön Grabern and continues: “No one had given Tushinorders where and at what to fire, but after consulting with his ser-geant-major Zakharchenko for whom he had great respect, he had de-cided that it would be a good thing to set fire to the village. ‘Verygood!’ said Bagration…” (I/2/XVII). There is no evidence whatsoeverthat Bagration had foreseen Captain Tushin’s decision to act in con-travention of the plan set for his battery and, hence, Bagration’s re-sponse, the ubiquitous approval “very good,” makes an almost comiccase for drawing the opposite conclusion, that Bagration rather thandirecting the battle simply accedes to the direction it takes, whatever it

Skepticism 25

might be. Bagration, far from being a Homeric god, is most certainlylimited like any other man.

As an additional and striking proof of this contention, I refer tohow Bagration reacts to a subordinate’s dubious report. During theheight of the battle, a regimental commander rides up to Bagrationwhile the latter tours the field and reports that his regiment had beenattacked and that this attack had been repulsed. The narrator’s com-ment here undermines and therefore complicates the regimental com-mander’s apparently straightforward description:

He said the attack had been repulsed, employing this military term to de-scribe what had occurred to his regiment, but in reality he did not himself knowwhat had happened during that half-hour to the troops entrusted to him, andcould not say with certainty whether the attack had been repulsed or his regimenthad been broken up. All he knew was that at the commencement of the actionballs and shells began flying all over his regiment and hitting men, and that af-terwards, someone had shouted ‘Cavalry!’ and our men had begun firing. Theywere still firing, not at the cavalry which had disappeared, but at the French in-fantry who had come into the hollow and were firing at our men. Prince Bagra-tion bowed his head as a sign that this was exactly what he desired and expected.(I/2/XVIII)

Bagration approves of a report which is fictitious or, at the veryleast, concocted in order to give a plausible account of what happened.The military language the regimental commander uses is meant to re-inforce plausibility by making his description fit into the conventionalexpectations of what takes place in a battle; he says what he believesmight have been expected to happen as a way of convincing Bagra-tion. Yet, Bagration, who is in any event plainly unable to judge theveracity of the regimental commander’s report, reacts in a manner thatis still surprising. Rather than making any inquiry whether that ac-count has any truth to it, he merely nods his approval. This latter caseonly more aggressively makes the point that Bagration has no idea ofwhat is going on during the battle. Foresight and planning have norelevance to him, and his approval, then, can only be a way of ap-pearing to know.

Prince Andrei is not slow to draw several trenchant conclusionswith wide-ranging implications from this conduct. His comments are

26 Chapter One

worth quoting in full, since they make the key point of the whole se-quence with exemplary clarity:

Prince Andrei listened attentively to Bagration’s colloquies with the com-manding officers and the orders he gave them, and to his surprise found that noorders were really given but that Prince Bagration tried to make it appear thateverything done by necessity, by accident, or by the will of subordinate command-ers, was done, if not by his direct command at least in accord with his intentions.Prince Andrei noticed however that though what happened was due to chance andwas independent of the commander’s will, owing to the tact Bagration showed,his presence was very valuable. Officers who approached him became calm; sol-diers and officers greeted him gaily, grew more cheerful in his presence, and wereevidently anxious to display their courage before him. (I/2/XVII—my emphasis)

At Schön Grabern the validity of Prince Andrei’s comments isdemonstrated by the operation of apparently chance events in a varietyof different forms (all of which are characteristic of subsequent de-scriptions of battles in the novel as well). To round out my analysis, Ishall take a closer look at this variety. If Prince Andrei’s observationof Bagration teaches that no one is “in command” in the acceptedsense, then these other examples of the operation of chance (which isnothing else than independence from the will of the commander) pro-vide illustrations of what kinds of factors obstruct or interfere withcommand. These factors teach us that the commander cannot possiblyimpose his will for there is no certain means of doing so. Reliance onmeans is in fact a sure sign of the commander’s dependence.

When I speak of “means” in this context, I look first to the problemof the giving and execution of orders that the narrator highlights in theaccount of Schön Grabern. At issue are both the faithful transmissionof the commander’s will to his subordinates who actually carry out theallotted tasks and the relation of the orders to the battle situation as itdevelops. The fragility of this transmission is a major proof that noone man can shape a battle as his will may direct. In this respect, thenarrator shows again and again that orders do not reach their destina-tion or reach it too late, in this sense becoming “stale.” When Bagra-tion entrusts Zherkov with the task of transmitting orders to retreat toa general commanding the left flank, Zherkov, who “could not gowhere it was dangerous,” fails to deliver the order because he deliber-ately seeks out the general and his staff “where they could not possi-

Skepticism 27

bly be” (I/2/XIX). Here Zherkov’s cowardice disrupts the chain ofcommand. Such disruptions need happen only some of the time to un-dermine the notion that complete command is possible.

The narrator also shows how narrowly selfish interests can inter-vene to confuse or delay the transmission of orders. As the battle getsunderway, the bickering between a German colonel of the hussars anda Russian general, who both place protection of their reputationsabove concern for the effective execution of their orders, results indelay and prevarication. This irresolution communicates itself to thetroops who respond to the vacuum in command by charging into thefray quite unexpectedly and regardless of any orders they may havehad. In another instance of a vacuum in command, we have seen thatTushin aims his guns at the town of Schön Grabern even though thisaction goes against a preceding intention to have those guns cannon-ade the valley. Since this intention was not properly communicated toTushin, he has to decide for himself. Ineffective transmission of or-ders compels soldiers to make autonomous decisions. Tushin decidesquite independently of Bagration; in fact, he confers with a “lowly”sergeant, and they together in effect usurp command authority bytaking it into their own hands. Later, as the roar of the battle over-whelms him, Tushin ignores orders because he is absorbed in his task.

If Tushin’s conduct is not restricted to his own case but appliesmore broadly, then one can also not escape the conclusion that a num-ber of different and ostensibly autonomous wills are inevitably atwork in a battle. This is an implication which one would be hardpressed to ignore, especially in light of the rather comic confusions ofthe first chapter in Part 2, the review near Braunau, where the troops,having changed into their dress uniforms after a long march, mustchange back into their dirty gear due to a vaguely worded order. ButTushin’s case also shows that these wills may have a more decisiveimpact on the battle than that of the commander. In this respect, oneshould recall that, after the battle is over, it is Prince Andrei himselfwho claims that the Russians carried the day due to the efforts ofTushin. I am of course referring to the famous scene in Bagration’stent where Tushin timidly appears before Bagration to explain the lossof two cannon. While the other officers look down on Tushin, who

28 Chapter One

hardly cuts the figure of the daring artillery officer (and one shouldnot forget here that Tushin’s efforts invite ironic comparison with Na-poleon who first made a reputation for himself as an innovative artil-lery officer), Prince Andrei justifies Tushin’s conduct, remarking that“…’we owe today’s success chiefly to the action of that battery andthe heroic endurance of Captain Tushin and his company’…”(I/2/XXI). Although Prince Andrei cannot help but attribute victory tothe actions of Tushin, thus perpetuating his original thinking that oneman can make all the difference in a battle, the more subtle message isstill clear: Tushin’s prominence in the battle is the result of chanceand not planning, that he decided to attack the village and not the val-ley, that he was able to hold out so long in a sort of feverish and in-toxicated state and not follow orders.

Prince Andrei’s comments about Tushin and surprise at Bagra-tion’s passivity underscore the lesson typically gleaned from the bat-tle: such events are manifestly not the product of the determining willof one man or group of men. Hence, Prince Andrei’s original positionproves to be quite mistaken. He sees that events result from a numberof different factors which seem to come together according to chanceagglomerations on which no one, not even a formidable general com-manding a large army, can possibly impose his will. Yet, as a corol-lary to this point of view, the description of Schön Grabern supportsan even more radical thesis about the function of command accordingto which the latter consists solely in reacting on an appropriatelyflexible and confident basis to the chaotic and unforeseeable events ofthe battle. Tolstoy implies that a commander’s skill is measured byhow effectively he gives the impression of seeming to be in command,indeed, of providing the illusion of being in command as a crucialsource of comfort to the army. In brief, the effective commander as-sumes the mantle of an authority he does not have—he pretends (sde-lat’ vid) to be in command.

These extremely unconventional views have wide-ranging impli-cations. If events happen thanks to a number of factors which coalesceby chance and not in accordance with the will of an individual orgroup of individuals, the conclusion that we in fact are all subject to afate which we cannot know is unavoidable. In other words, the ulti-

Skepticism 29

mate authority which determines the course of events is inscrutableand, as such, for us it is arbitrary, the pure operation of chance. It fol-lows that attempts to assume the authority to guide events must con-stitute an illusion or a pia fraus [a pious fraud or noble lie] designed toprotect us from the dangerous or unbearable truth that we are power-less. The full “sting” and acerbity of the comparison between PrinceAndrei’s reflections about the upcoming battle and the officers’(among whom we find Captain Tushin) speculations about the natureof the afterlife are now more readily apparent; for, in either case, thereis no way of attaining to the truth which would permit us to know and,therefore, to act in accordance with such knowledge, consequently,with at least a modicum of authority.

The result is that a “wise passivity” or acceptance of irremediableignorance seems to be in order, if not beneficial. Hence, those criticswho have noted the almost “oriental” fatalism of the novel seem am-ply justified in their opinion, one that is only underscored by the factthat the outstanding representative of this view in the Schön Grabernsequence is Bagration with his pronounced oriental accent and man-ners.5

1.2. Counterpoint: Pierre and Helen

The quotidian fictional chronicle of the novel offers a certaincounterpoint to the notion of “wise passivity.” Throughout the earlychapters of Part 3 of Book I which begin at the end of the SchönGrabern sequence and relate the events leading up to the marriage ofPierre to Helen, Pierre, like Bagration at Schön Grabern, is notablypassive. In what amounts to a comic echo of Bagration, he seems toadapt his behavior to the flow of events around him as completely aspossible.

Pierre has displayed this kind of passivity before. At the time of hisfather’s death, he submitted unquestioningly to the guidance of AnnaMikhailovna Drubetskaia (and was likened to an “Egyptian Statue,”again suggesting an association of passivity with essentially Easternmodes of thought and feeling). Then, however, Pierre was without a

30 Chapter One

secure position in society, being the illegitimate son of the old Count.Consequently, one could easily surmise that his passivity was but theoutward manifestation of insecurity and inexperience (although thereare signs to the contrary). Having inherited his father’s great fortune,Pierre is now extremely rich, well esteemed and, hence, an exemplaryif awkward social general—in short, he is an important personage.Yet, the text suggests that as a result of the dignity and power of hisnew position, Pierre submits to the society around him and, chiefly, tothe conniving solicitations of Prince Vasilii:

He felt as though he were the center of some important and general move-ment; that something was constantly expected of him, that if he did not do it hewould grieve and disappoint many people, but if he did this and that, all would bewell; and he did what was demanded of him, but still that happy result always re-mained in the future. (I/3/I)

It is perhaps even more surprising that Pierre is unable to resist thegravitational pull of society despite his own misgivings of which he isperfectly aware:

Pierre knew that everyone was waiting for him to say a word and cross a cer-tain line, and he knew that sooner or later he would step across it, but an incom-prehensible terror seized him at the thought of that dreadful step. A thousandtimes during that month and a half while he felt himself drawn farther and fartherinto that dreadful abyss, Pierre said to himself: ‘What is it? I need resolution. Canit be that I have none?’ (I/3/II)

These are, of course, hardly the words of a happy suitor. Pierre’ssense of dread proves to be prescient, since his marriage to Helen willbecome a source of pain and anguish. Still, he ridiculously accepts“his proposal” to Helen which consists in Prince Vasilii’s declaringhim to have done so. Nowhere are the extent and maleficence of Pi-erre’s passivity more glaring than in this rather pathetic acquiescence.

Yet, is this acquiescence any different from Bagration’s in regardto authority for acts over which the latter is shown to have had nocontrol? Bagration takes on the mantle of command because it isplaced upon him by the soldiers who believe or would like to believein his authority. Pierre takes on the obligation of marriage because it isplaced upon him by the society in which he moves; to Pierre this soci-

Skepticism 31

ety appears to demand that he marry Helen, the sheer inevitability ofhis love for her being a foregone conclusion. In both cases the suppos-edly central actor plays a role which is imposed upon him by others:the difference is in outcome.

There is another difference which, it seems to me, is of utmost im-portance to a proper evaluation of the juxtaposition of Bagration’spassivity with that of Pierre. Bagration’s acquiescence to the needs ofhis troops results from a greater submission to the flow of eventswhich lies outside the will of any one man or group of men; his ac-ceptance of the authority conferred on him is a subsidiary conse-quence of that submission and not its origin. Bagration is wise sincehe submits to the flow of events while recognizing and maintaining anillusion of authority for the troops’ benefit. Pierre, to the contrary,submits to the will of a small group of people while failing to perceivethe petty and selfish nature of their interests if not the foolishness andvanity of his own dependence on them. His passivity lacks the tinctureof wisdom because it elevates the will of a few less than admirablepeople to the level of an inevitable force. In this sense, Pierre confusesthe merely human and venal with that which is well beyond the hu-man. Hence, the counterpoint which Pierre’s unwise passivity pro-vides to that wise passivity of Prince Bagration is most instructive;whereas the former succumbs to the merely human, the latter recog-nizes what is beyond it.

But this is a peculiar conclusion that reveals the polemical under-current in the argument for wise passivity. If fatalism is the correctattitude towards human action, then all such action is always alreadypredetermined; no deliberation of any kind could have any signifi-cance or impact on the outcome of events. The plain fact is that fatal-ism simply obviates the assumptions that give rise to the notion ofwise or unwise types of action, for the latter are themselves predicatedon the utility of deliberation and thus on there being possibilities thatmay or may not be actualized depending on human choice. Fatalismentails, however, that possibility understood as such can only be illu-sory, and this brings out the crucial underlying assumption of fatalism,that we can somehow know that all our actions will be determined inadvance. Whence this knowledge, the possession of which seems to

32 Chapter One

contradict that elementary requirement of fatalism as expressed in thetext so far, that we cannot know?

A response to this question begins to unfold in the succeeding bat-tle sequences of the novel that point to a more nuanced interpretationof fatalism associated primarily with Kutuzov himself. If Bagrationintroduces a sort of “oriental fatalism,” a stock topos, Kutuzov willintroduce a peculiarly western form of fatalism, a “learned ignorance.”I might add that this quality of the text, its evaluation of slightly dif-ferent shades of a philosophical position, is absolutely essential tograsp if one is to come to terms with the novel’s careful and disci-plined differential technique of presenting its various philosophicalpositions—there is not one argument for fatalism, there is likewise notone underlying skeptical argument. Rather, as we have seen and shallsee, there are a number of different sketches or drafts of the main ar-guments advanced in the text, a trying out of different thought-chainsin these arguments, an analysis of the various possibilities they allow,that make any claim about determinism or skepticism in the novelquite superfluous unless it delves into the remarkably multi-facetedpresentation of such positions.

1.3. Austerlitz

If the description of the battle of Schön Grabern offers one view, afatalism born of human inability, the terrible ironies which announcethemselves in the narrator’s description of the battle of Austerlitz onlyconfirm that the lack of authority to guide events is a case of therebeing no possible theoretical basis for action.

Tolstoy maintains both that authority stems from knowledge andthat the kind of knowledge which we would need to obtain in order toensure that our authority is secured—that our actions achieve theirintended results—is simply not available to us. One would have toforesee every aspect of a battle including the various cases in whichplans become skewered by unexpected twists and turns of events.Authority is lacking, i.e., the will cannot impose itself on events, be-cause the knowledge required to do so is lacking. Moreover, will is

Skepticism 33

subordinate to knowledge; practice or action is subordinate to theory,and, thus, the operation of chance is in essence an expression of hu-man incapacity or ignorance. Characteristically this view entails thatthe illusion which Bagration creates is not wholly pernicious, since heseems to be in some way aware of it. By contrast, the Austrian gener-als at Austerlitz show through their unshakable faith in reason that thefailure to understand this illusion is truly pernicious, leading to disas-trous defeat.

On the eve of the battle of Austerlitz there is a great council of warattended by the highest ranking military personnel. The scene repre-sents a fundamental intensification of the negative attitude toward theutility of planning for a military engagement which we have alreadyseen in the account of the battle at Schön Grabern. Kutuzov’s sleepduring the council of war recalls Bagration’s “sleepy eyes” at SchönGrabern and suggests obviously enough that the careful preparation ofthe Austrian generals is of no consequence whatsoever, that, indeed,Kutuzov’s need for sleep is of far greater significance: “‘But before abattle there is nothing more important…’ he paused, ‘than to have agood sleep’” (1/3/XII). It might be tempting to dismiss these com-ments as jocular irony, but if they are unmistakably ironic, this ironyis not to be taken lightly.

To the contrary, Kutuzov’s irony points to his very serious doubtsabout the coming battle and his uncomplimentary judgment of theAustrians who, immersed in the minutiae of their preparations, paynot even the slightest attention to such unmistakably basic and im-portant matters as the status of the troops and the need to rest before abattle. (Here we find also an echo of the contrast between Prince An-drei’s attempt to imagine the battle of Schön Grabern and the unaf-fected speculations of the officers about the afterlife.) This immersionbecomes quite palpable during the council of war when Langeron asksquestions of Weyrother with a view to rattling the seemingly imper-turbable Austrian:

Langeron, trying as violently as possible to sting Weyrother’s vanity as authorof the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might easily attack instead of beingattacked, and so render the whole of his plan perfectly worthless. Weyrother met

34 Chapter One

all objections with a firm and contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehandto meet all objections be they what they might. (I/3/XII)

Langeron’s way of attacking the plan characterizes its most terribleweakness: it is based on a set of assumptions whose contingencyseems to be ignored. Moreover, Weyrother’s response to Langeronbrings out an additional weakness—its author is willfully blind to suchcontingency. The passage suggests that this latter weakness is, how-ever, an unavoidable one, since any plan, like the battle plan for Aus-terlitz, must be made on the basis of a series of assumptions whichthemselves must obtain for that plan to be effective. The problem isthat, as Langeron points out, if these assumptions are merely contin-gent, and if the plan is dependent on their not being so, the success ofthe entire plan hinges on that contingency. Hence, Weyrother’s com-plete refusal to accept contingency renders the whole plan suspect or,as Langeron says, worthless.

Langeron of course turns out to be sharper than the dogmatic Aus-trian general; the subsequent description of the battle supplies a mosteloquent refutation of Weyrother’s attitude. From the very beginningthe battle does not go according to plan. As if in confirmation of theacuity of Langeron’s question to Weyrother, the French initiate thebattle and thus explode one of Weyrother’s main assumptions. Thisassumption, however, is not the only one which proves to have beenmistaken and which shows its naked contingency to disastrous effectduring the battle. After Weyrother’s extensive and careful delineationof the dispositions, it is doubly ironic that the French are not at allwhere the Austrians believed they were but much more dangerouslyclose. Indeed, the Austrians have been fooled by the French yet again(one has only to think of the disaster at the bridge in Vienna), and Na-poleon commences his attack in a wholly unexpected way leading tothe rout of the Austrian and Russian forces.

This rout brings to light another extremely important reason whyeven the best of plans cannot hope to determine a battle. The Russianand Austrian forces panic, they are ruled by primordial emotion, fear,and not by the objectives of a rational battle plan. Tolstoy emphasizesthe emotional coloration of the battle through the narrative’s almost

Skepticism 35

nightmarish quality. In this fashion, the narrative reveals the battle asa confusing, reeling mess which has nothing to do with reason.

After initial excitement, both the Austrian and Russian armiesstumble into the battle in a somnolent state. The Austrians’ apparentfaith in the battle plan and the “dispositions” which seem to be etchedin stone lulls them into a dangerous unawareness of the possibility thatthe plan may not succeed. Nikolai Rostov awakens to the battle out ofa peculiar and dream-like state of drowsiness which seems to be alsoan ironic reflection of the effect that his infatuation with the tsar hason him (and the balance of the army). This lack of awakeness is moststrikingly expressed by the intense fog which sets in as the battle be-gins and surrounds the Russian army whose columns “moved forwardwithout knowing where, and unable from the masses around them, thesmoke, and the increasing fog, to see either the place they were leav-ing or that to which they were going.” The fog is a telling metaphorthat emphasizes the perilous confusion of both the Austrians and Rus-sians. Their whole joint enterprise is marked by a fundamental blind-ness which becomes demoralizing unease during the battle, an “un-pleasant consciousness of some dislocation and blunder” that commu-nicates itself through the ranks (I/3/XIV).

By contrast, Napoleon first appears in person during the battle de-scription from a position of superiority. Unlike the Austrians and Rus-sians below, Napoleon has a clear view of the whole battlefield fromthe village of Schlappanitz where it had already become quite light:“Above him was a clear blue sky, and the sun’s vast orb quivered likea huge, hollow, crimson float on the surface of that milky sea of mist.”Nothing could portray with greater concision the difference betweenthe two camps than this contrast between the Austrians and Russians,on the one hand, who find themselves in a foggy darkness, and Napo-leon’s vigorous army, on the other hand, whose leader stands, as itwere, level with the sun above the fray.

Curiously, in this scene Napoleon’s demeanor challenges the no-tion that chance, not the will of one man, controls the battle, for heindeed resembles a Homeric god whose “assumptions (predpolozhe-niia) were being justified” (1/3/XIV). From this literally and meta-

36 Chapter One

phorically exalted position, Napoleon gives the order for the action tobegin. The portrayal of Napoleon here seems to provide an intriguingcontrast to the otherwise rather dim view the narrative takes of com-mand authority. Yet, this contrast is probably more apparent than real,since it is quite likely that the narrator seeks to describe the self-satisfaction, the gloating confidence, that is characteristic of Napoleonwithout as yet showing him to be a fool. If one cannot dismiss the am-biguity of the narrator’s account, I think it is useful to note that thenarrator is highly mobile; he does not stand above the fray, he is notalways god-like and imperturbable. To the contrary, the narrator attimes shares the views of individual characters, merging with themand then asserting his own independent view. In this instance, the am-biguity arises from this issue of perspective. While the narrator seemsto praise Napoleon, it is not clear whether he is doing so from his nar-rator’s perch above the action or, so to speak, he is reflecting Napo-leon’s own attitude without comment accentuating the contrast be-tween Napoleonic assurance and allied weakness—a contrast that willgive added depth to the description of Napoleon at Borodino.

The remainder of the narrator’s account of the battle is a tale ofchaos and rout marked by panic and culminating in Rostov’s finallycatching sight of a shaken Alexander whose timidity and weaknesspresent a sharp contrast to Rostov’s earlier “idol.” One would be hardpressed to find a more eloquent “argument” exposing the inability ofthe Austrian generals’ battle plan to deal with its own contingency.Their insistence that the plan had eliminated contingency by havingforeseen all specific contingencies, and its unmistakable failure tohave done so, provide a stark confirmation of the limits of theoreticalknowledge and the dangers of succumbing to the illusion that suchlimits do not exist.

1.4. Drissa

To focus my argument more sharply, I would like to examine themost egregious case of this obstinacy, one both comic and pathetic,which is provided by General von Pfuel’s extensive planning for thefortified camp of Drissa. Once again, it is largely through the eyes of

Skepticism 37

Prince Andrei that the narrator describes the situation. But Prince An-drei has undergone a significant change; his epochal experience atAusterlitz has taught him to be cautious about the effectiveness ofmilitary science and cynical about the dedication of the military lead-ership to the task at hand. In this respect, Prince Andrei classifies withheavy irony the competing groups swirling around the emperor atDrissa. Of these he identifies no less than nine: 1) Pfuel and his adher-ents, the “military theorists” whom Prince Andrei defines as believingin “a science of war with immutable laws—laws of oblique move-ments, outflankings and so forth”; 2) those opposed directly to Pfuel,among whom one may count Bagration, who claim that “what one hasto do was not to reason, or stick pins into maps, but to fight”; 3)courtiers who try to arrange compromises between the first twogroups and in whom, we are told, the emperor has most confidence; 4)those who fear Napoleon and seek to conclude peace as soon as possi-ble; 5) those who demand that Barclay de Tolly take command; 6)those who demand that Bennigsen take command; 7) those who de-mand that the emperor take command; 8) those, outnumbering theothers “ninety-nine to one,” who seek private advantage and pleasure;and 9) the party of the “elders” (III/1/IX).

In an ironic analogy to a “real” battle, Prince Andrei’s classifica-tion gives the impression of considerable divergence and confu-sion—the reality of the camp is disorder and fraction. In particular,Prince Andrei emphasizes the broad spectrum of perspectives on whatmust be done, and this provides also an appropriately ironic contrastto his description of Pfuel as the very embodiment of faith in theoreti-cal order.

Pfuel is an extreme epigone of his unsuccessful predecessors as thenarrator does not fail to tell us: “There was about him something ofWeyrother, Mack, and Schmidt, and many other German theorist-generals whom Prince Andrei had seen in 1805, but he was more typi-cal than any of them.” To drive the point home, the narrator furthernotes that, “Prince Andrei had never yet seen a German theorist inwhom all the characteristics of those others were united to such anextent” (III/1/X).

38 Chapter One

Pfuel is the very caricature of the military theorist and, by exten-sion, of the theorist tout court. The narrator remarks that Pfuel “had ascience—the theory of oblique movement deduced by him from thehistory of Frederick the Great’s wars…” The principal target of thenarrator’s irony, however, is not merely that Pfuel has a theory, butthat Pfuel’s adherence to that theory makes him discount experience.For Pfuel, “…all he came across in the history of more recent warfareseemed to him absurd and barbarous—monstrous collisions in whichso many blunders were committed by both sides that these wars couldnot be called wars.” Here the narrator is acidly ironic about what is themajor presupposition of Pfuel’s “science” of war, that there are twokinds of wars, scientific and non-scientific of which the latter do notdeserve the name of war; i.e., they may safely be discounted, because“they did not accord with the theory and could not serve as materialfor science.” In other words, Pfuel’s theoretical presuppositions aboutwhat war should be “blind” him to experience precisely to the extentthat the latter does not agree with them.

Such dogmatism is indeed just another, more extreme variant ofWeyrother’s attitude at the council of war on the eve of Austerlitz.And this is no accident, for the narrator, in a most interesting and re-vealing outburst, attributes theoretical blindness specifically to Ger-mans (among whom he appears to include Austrians as well): “TheGerman’s self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsivethan any other, because he imagines that he knows thetruth—science—which he himself has invented but which is for himthe absolute truth.” Just a few lines before this remark appears in thetext, Prince Andrei had characterized Pfuel as “one of those hope-lessly and immutably self-confident men, self-confident to the point ofmartyrdom as only Germans are, because only Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract notion—science, that is, the sup-posed knowledge of absolute truth” (III/1/X).

These tremendously reductive and vituperative generalizations at-tack the “repulsive” reduction of experience to an a aprioristic kind of“science” that can only claim to be absolute by exclusion, a contra-diction the practical results of which are continuous defeats at thehands of Napoleon. What is more, the narrator claims that German

Skepticism 39

“science,” far from providing access to the absolute truth, is an inven-tion. In my view, this is the most radical claim that Tolstoy makes onthe nature of scientific theorizing about the course of events and, as aconsequence, I want to examine it in greater detail in the light of thepreceding analyses.

1.5. Dogmatic skepticism? The problem of mimesis orcreation ex nihilo

In these analyses, I have taken pains to identify the main featuresof the apparently skeptical attitude regarding knowledge of historicalevents that emerges in the early battle scenes. This skeptical attitude isdefined by one primary contention, that any attempt to know or, moreprecisely, to foresee what will happen is bound to fail because its pre-suppositions, in particular, that the will of one man or group of mencan direct the course of events, end up excluding essential informationand, thus, leave room for the operation of chance. Theory, as the mostrefined expression of this attempt to know, is, then, a rather inade-quate guide to practice because theory does not account for the rich-ness of experience; rather, it suppresses experience—it is too reduc-tive—and thereby precipitates its own failure.

This skeptical argument stands on the assumption that there is aninevitable incommensurability of thought and experience. The specificform it takes, that any theoretical account reduces experience by trac-ing it to a single grounding principle or concept like that of the will,has associations with basic themes of Romantic thought, an affinitywhich in turn points out the fundamentally theological bias of the ar-gument, its opening up of space for faith. Why is that so? The argu-ment conceals an essential contradiction, the same contradiction thatundermines fatalistic views; namely, how is it possible to know withcertainty that experience is not adequately characterized by reason? Inother words, how can one know experience in a manner not reducibleto knowledge? This way of formulating the problem begs the ques-tion—the answer must depend on how one defines knowledge. Ifknowledge can only be rational, then any other kind of knowledge isquite impossible. Therefore, to hold that thought and experience are

40 Chapter One

incommensurable must be to assert tacitly the existence of a kind ofknowledge not definable as rational or as the result of ratiocination.This is an essentially pre-theoretical form of knowledge, one based onimmediate intuition or revelation, modes of knowing more properlyassociated with faith. But what kind of knowledge is this? Is it knowl-edge that can be communicated through language? Even if this latterknowledge can be communicated through language—a highly ques-tionable assumption—it remains mantic, enigmatic and most assur-edly not subject to rational argument. Indeed, by cheating the bonds ofreason, knowledge based on revelation or faith is formidably dog-matic; it is god-like, it is because it is, and no further justification re-mains possible or necessary.

Hence, to maintain that theory is inadequate to experience is tomake a skeptical argument from a dogmatic basis that must somehowknow the true nature of experience. But to argue for the inadequacy oftheory is not the same as to suggest that it is a form of invention. Byclaiming that the German’s “science” (i.e. theory) is an invention,Tolstoy hints at a different and perhaps more sharply dismissiveviewpoint on theory, according to which theory is simply fantastic, animaginative creation of experience, a puppet theater of concepts withno possible relation to a pre-existing “reality.” The central assumptionof this argument is that theory can only be an invention because expe-rience does not and cannot have any intrinsic structure, for it is thepurest play of chance or chaos. There really is no pre-theoretical expe-rience to which theory may respond. Therefore, theory is but an at-tempt to impose an ever arbitrary order on primordial chaos; we knowonly what we make, since we do not passively experience the world asgiven to us, but rather produce our experience of it. In this case, thewill becomes paramount; knowledge does not direct the will, does notprovide a reliable guide for action, rather the will produces knowledgeas the pawn of conscious or unconscious desires—in other words, rea-son is subordinate to desire, it does not command but obeys.

Now, the implications of the two skeptical positions I have out-lined seem to be radically different. The first position holds out thepromise that theory can achieve knowledge of experience if it is prop-erly inclusive or responsive to it, the assumption being that there is an

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inherent coherence to experience which can only be revealed by a re-sponsive attitude to it as a totality. In this case, skepticism is a tool ofdiscovery that might “drive inquiring reason on to the attainment of itslofty goal.”6 The second position appears to undermine the first andprovides that theory cannot achieve knowledge of experience otherthan by producing it—in this sense, theory manufactures experiencewhich is otherwise “empty.” The essential distinction at work in thesetwo positions is between theoretical knowledge as mimesis of an ulti-mate order or as creation of order, a distinction that goes beyond no-tions of skepticism to a much more fundamental question about thenature of reality—whether it is subject to laws or an elementalchaos—and human access to it. But this distinction cannot conceal thefact that both claims are essentially dogmatic, that they both rely on anassertion not subject to rational or theoretical analysis. For the claimthat experience is chaos has the same form and can be no more know-able than its opposite: this claim also presumes a superior kind ofknowing, an absolute one, that points to revelation or faith, if in thiscase the faith is that no order exists—a God of plenitude has merelybeen replaced by nothingness, a god of emptiness, of the vacuum.

The great irony, then, is that both these apparently skeptical argu-ments are in the service of an underlying dogmatic thesis which re-mains hidden, unquestioned and unquestionable. Far from being askeptic, Tolstoy appears to be an extreme dogmatist, asserting via askeptical method either that experience has a shape which reason can-not adequately describe or that experience has no shape at all, a con-sequence reason shields from us through the invention of ever newfictions that dazzle and decay, that come to be and pass away, for noapparent reason other than the play of chance. The question is: Whichof these two dogmatic views is behind the skeptical approach in theearly battle scenes?

If the narrator attacks the calculative rationality of the Austriangenerals, that they claim to know what they cannot know, he does nothesitate to extol the superiority of an awareness of the inability toknow, of a kind of “learned ignorance” whose justification is ratherunclear. The narrator describes this attitude in the very same para-graph which contains his immoderate comments about German confi-

42 Chapter One

dence in theory, as a characteristically Russian trait: “A Russian isself-assured because he knows nothing and does not want to knowanything, since he does not believe that anything can be fully known.”The adverb “fully,” however, provides a crucial qualification of thenarrator’s statement; the narrator can only be taken to assert that Rus-sians know that there are limits to knowledge but not that they believeno knowledge to be possible. And, of course, their knowledge of thelimits of knowledge is itself a qualitatively higher form of knowledge,for they can steer away from the blinding dogmatism of the “Ger-man.”

Kutuzov is the exemplary figure here, for he possesses this supe-rior kind of knowing which, in realizing the limits of knowledge, goesbeyond them. Unlike Bagration who seems resigned before fate, Ku-tuzov is actively passive, his passivity is aggressive and comes fromdiscernment of the grand patterns at work in battles, if not in historyitself. As Prince Andrei notes later about Kutuzov:

….but he will hear everything, remember everything, and put everything in itsplace. He will not hinder anything useful nor allow anything harmful. He under-stands that there is something stronger and more important than his own will—theinevitable course of events, and he can see them and grasp their significance, andseeing that significance can refrain from meddling and renounce his personal wishdirected to something else. (XVI/2/III)

Kutuzov owes this discernment not to an ostensive belief in the fu-tility of human action, but in the futility of the ability of one man orgroup of men to direct an action. For Kutuzov, human action is a mostcomplex phenomenon, one that can only be read passively, therebygiving due respect to the complex kinds of interrelations that direct anevent. Any notion of planning or control of an event that ignores boththe event’s placement in a series, as part of a greater “flow” of humanaction, and the multiplicity inherent in that event, the mutually deter-mining actions of its many participants, is bound to fail.7

Whence Kutuzov’s knowledge? How has he learned to be activelypassive? Indeed, is Kutuzov’s knowledge “rational” or beyond rea-son? These questions are central because Kutuzov’s knowing seems toarise more from an intuitive grasp of patterns than from rational cal-

Skepticism 43

culation. While Kutuzov’s knowing is no doubt not rational in the nar-row sense, it is nonetheless a kind of thinking, albeit one that is moreinclusive—more holistic—more interpretive and less analytic. Kutu-zov reads the direction that events are about to take rather than in-dulging in calculations about that direction and, in this sense, he ismore philologist than natural scientist.

What then of the narrative itself? The skeptical views that havebeen frequently attributed to Tolstoy suggest that he was a rather un-usual skeptic, either naively unaware of, or tacitly concealing, thedogmatism behind his skeptical views. To assert skepticism dogmati-cally is an elementary inconcinnity that explodes the whole edifice ofTolstoy’s novel if the force of his descriptions is to embody a skepti-cism arising from the notion that experience either cannot be reducedto rational knowledge or cannot be known at all but only invented,thus collapsing the traditional notions of truth and falsity of a narrativeas well. Here Tolstoy may very well reveal a dogmatic tendency basedon a revelatory assurance of knowledge or, less benignly, on a pecu-liar self-assurance concerning his own ability to know what others didnot and cannot know—this is Tolstoy in the role of inspired and vaticpoet who somehow manages to portray truths not accessible to theuninspired. The skeptical view may represent yet another possibilityof thought about history that can neither be fully affirmed nor ex-cluded, neither proved nor refuted, but that remains open to question.And, indeed, the intimate relation of the two possibilities I have out-lined, theological or subjective assurance and essential insecurity,constituting an acceptance that knowledge and doubt are inextricablyrelated, that the one implies the other, that all human affairs are in factstricken by ambiguity, may itself be a more adequate interpretation.

2. SKEPTICISM IN THE HISTORICAL ESSAYS

To assign this complex and ambiguous skeptical position its properpurpose within the text, I turn to the first of the so-called embeddedhistorical essays with which Book III of War and Peace begins. Be-fore proceeding to an analysis of this chapter, however, I would like tocomment on both the nature of the term “historical essay,” as I have

44 Chapter One

rather loosely used it to this point and, also, on the signal fact that thehistorical essays begin with Book III and no sooner or later.

The term “historical essay” is a mere convenience, a descriptivelabel which attempts to classify a more elusive entity. I say this be-cause the historical essays are a complex of different kinds of reflec-tion on the text which both derive from, and contribute to, their sur-rounding context; they most certainly are not stand-alone disquisitionson assorted problems of historical narrative. In this respect, I thinkthat the term “essay” is partially misleading because it brings to minda more independent and complete form of exposition than the histori-cal essays achieve. The question is how to find an appropriate term forthe essays. Are they commentaries? Or aphorisms? Or digressive in-trusions by the narrator (à la Sterne) into the weave of the fictionaltext? The essays in fact display elements of a number of different gen-res yet in an integral sense they belong to none.

I raise the issue of generic identity at this point in my discussion tohighlight both the artificiality and utility of my terminology. If theterm “historical essay” is not, strictly speaking, a very precise one, itis nonetheless heuristically useful, since it permits me at least to iden-tify the entity whose true character will only emerge in the course ofmy analysis; namely, as an embodiment of a deeper structure withinthe text. For too long, I think, the term essay (or others such as digres-sion, commentary and so on) has imposed a crude generic separation,i.e., exposition versus description, which holds but fails to mine anydeeper in the text.

The sudden emergence of the essays in Book III has also been thesource of perplexity. I have already alluded to both Boris Eikhen-baum’s resolution of this issue and my own response, but I think thatadditional comment is necessary.

Henry James’ celebrated declaration of perplexity, the phrase“loose and baggy monsters” which he applied to Tolstoy’s novels, hashaunted and hindered discussion of the intricate structure of War andPeace. But the novel in fact shows a remarkable architectonic grace-fulness of thematic division into Books, Parts and Chapters.8 The three

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parts of Book I form a progression of three kinds of narrative domi-nated, respectively, by social and family matters, by military exploitsand by a synthesis of both in Part 3. This order is matched on a differ-ent scale by the progression from Books II to IV. Generally speaking,Book II is governed by social and Book III by military narrative;Book IV features an ingenious synthesis of both. Hence, the triadicstructure of Book I is reflected in the relation of Books II, III and IV,while this second triad differs from the first in that it introduces thehistorical essays thereby adding a new reflexivity to the narrative. TheFirst and Second Epilogues follow this division between representa-tion (First Epilogue) and reflection (Second Epilogue).

Diagrammatically one can render the novel’s architectonic thus:

This diagram is intended to suggest a movement upward, in short,an ascent to an ever more refined and abstract presentation of thesame triadic pattern until the two epilogues. These in fact rehearse the

Book I Part 1

Book II

Part 2

Part 3

Book III

Book IV

First Part of Epilogue

Second Part of Epilogue

46 Chapter One

same movement from narrative immediacy in the First Part of theEpilogue to the reflective thinking of the Second Part that marks thetransition from the first two books of the novel to the last two books inwhich the historical essays play a significant role. Hence, there aretwo main patterns that characterize the ascent to self-awareness of itsown structure which marks the Second Part of the Epilogue. On theone hand, there is a triadic structure alternating between descriptionsof war and peace. On the other hand, there is a dyadic structure mov-ing between relatively direct narrative presentation and reflections onthat narration—indeed, I think that one might also argue that in thislatter instance there is a further triad, since the reflections on the textultimately turn into a self-reflection in the final chapters of the SecondPart of the Epilogue.

I must also caution, however, that the first four chapters of the FirstPart of the Epilogue point out the limitations in my schematic of thetext by dealing exclusively with reflections on history, that is, therereally are no simple divisions; I am doubtful that any attempt to im-pose a simplistic architectonic on a novel as complicated and subtlyconstructed as War and Peace can justify itself in the final account.Yet, in my view, these reservations do not diminish the value of myapproach which permits one to see a defining structure in the novelthat is too often ignored.

Within this structure, the first chapter of Book III is a pivotaljuncture. As such a juncture, I think that it is not in the least accidentalthat this chapter, with its abrupt shift to a complex and abstract modeof presentation, should introduce the central event of the novel, Na-poleon’s invasion of Russia. The preceding narrative has given us de-tailed descriptions of great and terrible battles, none of which takesplace within Russia. With the invasion of Russia, however, a new self-consciousness emerges in the novel, focused on a much more explicitanalysis of the ways in which historical narratives are typically fash-ioned. I would venture the conjecture that the emergence of this newself-consciousness reflects the movement from the West to Russia;self-consciousness in this very Russian book being an indirect conse-quence of the turning of the historical narrative from Western Europeto Russia, from without to within. And it is abundantly evident that

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the narrator does not feign a god-like impartiality but is on the Rus-sian side.9 Moreover, in chapter 1 of Book III, the narrator takes overarguments which Prince Andrei had previously aired, this being aprime example of what I might call (following George Steiner) a“fugue-like” structure in the text where one view is taken up almostcontrapuntally by another voice, this time that of the narrator. In doingso, not only does the narrator advance arguments previously aired byPrince Andrei, he expresses other tendencies in the preceding fictionaldescription (some of which I have discussed in detail) through themedium of more direct rational argument. In other words, he castsPrince Andrei’s thoughts in new form and confers his own authorityon them.

In the analysis of Chapter 1 of Book III that follows I would like toshow how this chapter concentrates the tendencies of the precedingnarrative both by providing a summation of what I have called theskeptical view together with the foundations of an opposing viewwhose main outlines seem to illuminate the narrative ambitions ofWar and Peace itself. In the words of George Steiner, Tolstoy’s “ne-gations were axe-strokes to carve a clearing for the light” (229).

2.1. The infinity of causes

The chapter starts with an astounding rhetorical flourish:

From the close of the year 1811 an intensified arming and concentrating of theforces of Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces—millions of men reck-oning those transporting and feeding the army—moved from the west eastwardsto the Russian frontier, towards which since 1811 Russian forces had been simi-larly drawn. On the 12th of June 1812 the forces of Western Europe crossed theRussian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to humanreason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another suchinnumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money,burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders, as in whole centuries are not recorded inthe annals of all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed themdid not at the time regard as being crimes.

What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes? Thehistorians tell us with naïve assurance that its causes were the wrongs inflicted on

48 Chapter One

the Duke of Oldenburg, the non-observance of the Continental System, the ambi-tion of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, andso on.

These two paragraphs announce a comprehensive challenge tohistorical narrative. War turns the orderliness of civil society upsidedown and, in doing so, is “opposed to human reason and to humannature.” Why, then, do wars continually interrupt the peaceful conductof human affairs? This obvious question is nothing more than an at-tempt to find reasons (and, for Tolstoy, that means causes) for the oc-currence of an event opposed to reason. As such, the question seemsto involve contradiction or impossibility. War is a metaphor of chaos,the outbreak of the terrible and irrational. In short, war is the very in-carnation of an affront to, and defiance of, reason that can be neitherexplained nor ignored.

Tolstoy appears to dismiss any narrative which purports to explainwhy a war occurred. He derides historians who seek to find causes forwar in those historical phenomena which have at their core the di-recting will of one man or a group of men. There is, of course, nothingin this claim not already apparent or latent in the narrator’s precedingbattle descriptions—indeed, it pronounces the collective wisdom ofthose descriptions. The essential underlying issue is the same: Can oneunderstand a historical event as the product of the rational activity ofindividuals? What has changed is that, whereas in the battle descrip-tions the narrator primarily casts doubt on the possibility of rationalplanning as a basis for directing what will happen, he suggests herethat one cannot even provide a rational account of what has happened.

What is a rational account? The conception of rationality on whichthe narrator relies is finally explicit. Rationality ultimately consists ofthe determination of causes. Therefore, a rational account is aboutwhat causes that event. If one cannot find these causes, one cannotprovide a rational account: nihil est sine ratione (nothing is without acause/reason).

This problem of causation is the heart and lifeblood of the skepticalposition. The narrator comments:

Skepticism 49

We understand that the matter seemed like that to contemporaries. We under-stand that it seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by England’s intrigues(as in fact he said on the island of St. Helena). We understand that it seemed tomembers of the English parliament that the cause of war was Napoleon’s love ofpower; to the Duke of Oldenburg that the cause of the war was the violence doneto him; to merchants that the cause of the war was the Continental System whichwas ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the chief reason for thewar was the necessity of giving them employment; to the legitimists of that daythat it was the need of re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatistsof that time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between Russia andAustria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed from Napoleon, andfrom the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178. We understand that theseand a countless and infinite number of other causes, the number of which dependson the countless diversity of points of view, presented themselves to the men ofthat day; but to us, their descendants who view the completed event in all its mag-nitude and perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient.To us it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and torturedeach other either because Napoleon was power-hungry or Alexander was firm, orbecause England’s policy was cunning or the Duke of Oldenburg was offended.We are unable to grasp what connection these circumstances have with the actualfact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was offended, did thousandsof men from the other side of Europe kill and ruin the people of the Smolensk andMoscow districts and were killed by them.

To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried away bythe process of investigation and can therefore regard the event with uncloudedcommon sense, the causes suggest themselves in an innumerable quantity. Thedeeper we delve in the investigation of these causes the more of them are revealedto us, and each particular selected cause or whole series of causes appears to usequally legitimate, in itself, and equally illegitimate by its insignificance com-pared to the magnitude of the event and by its impotence (unless participatingwith all the other causes falling in together) to produce the completed event. To usthe willingness or unwillingness of this or that French corporal to serve a secondterm appears as much a cause as Napoleon’s refusal to withdraw his troops be-yond the Vistula and to restore the duchy of Oldenburg, for had the corporal re-fused to serve, and had a second, a third, a thousand corporals and privates, alsorefused, Napoleon’s army would have been so greatly reduced that the war couldnot have taken place.

This passage introduces two fundamental theses about causation.First, any particular cause or series of causes is incommensurable withthe event. Second, there are an infinite number of causes for anyevent. These theses seem to contradict what I have just said about arational account of war. In fact they simply refine what Tolstoy hasasserted. A rational account of war is in principle possible, if only we

50 Chapter One

could take into account all the causes. Because the causes are infinite,however, we can never take them all into account and, therefore, wereturn to Tolstoy’s original denial with a subtle difference: historymay very well be rational, but to grasp this rationality is beyond ourability.

Tolstoy affirms this apparently subtle difference (in which lies allthe difference) by asserting that events are necessitated:

The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose word the event seemed tohang, were as little arbitrary as the actions of each soldier who was drawn intothe campaign by lot or conscription. This could not be otherwise, for in order thatthe will of Napoleon and Alexander (those on whom the event seemed to de-pend) should be carried out, the concurrence of innumerable circumstances wasrequired, without any one of which the event could not have taken place. It wasnecessary that millions of men in whose hands the real power lay—the soldierswho fired the guns, transported provisions and cannons—should consent to carryout the will of those weak individuals, and should have been induced to do so byan infinite number of diverse and complex causes. (III/1/I)

Tolstoy claims that an event can be necessary while having an infi-nite series of causes. But infinity entails that a gap or residue of possi-bility cannot be eliminated, that new causes can be found supporting aview of the event ultimately different from what it presently seems tobe. If this is so, the narrator’s claim that events are necessary seems tocontradict his claim that they result from an infinity of causes.

The juxtaposition of two remarks by the narrator provides furtherevidence of this apparent contradiction; that events are at once irra-tional, that is, not accessible to finite human reason, and necessary.The narrator says that: “Fatalism in history is unavoidable as an ex-planation of irrational events (that is, events the rationality of whichwe do not understand). The more we try to explain such events inhistory rationally, the more irrational and incomprehensible they be-come for us.” By contrast, the narrator ends the chapter with anequally forceful affirmation of necessity, for he writes that “[e]veryact of theirs, appearing to them to be an act within their own choice, isin a historical sense not within their own choice; rather, it is connectedto the whole course of history and determined eternally.”

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These contradictory tendencies are highly instructive. While thenarrator seems to deny rational knowledge of history, he also affirmsthat there is a rationality and necessity in history. It is easy to objectthat this affirmation is puzzling, since the narrator clearly states thatthis rationality is one which we do not understand. But it is crucial tonote that both the notion of another rationality and necessity constituteclaims that there is an ultimate order or ground for knowledge.

The narrator’s paradoxical belief in such an order is usually associ-ated with an infinite being or intelligence. In this light, one may inter-pret it as a typically Christian gesture, since the introduction of neces-sity also reflects traditionally Christian reference to the divine mindwhich foresees and, thus, necessitates all. This presence is perhapsnowhere more evident than in the narrator’s citation of Proverbs 21:1,that the “King’s heart is in the hand of God.”

This curious presence of God in the narrator’s argument points to adifferent conception of history than the preceding arguments have ledus to expect. The narrator makes a claim for the inherent order of his-tory which is as sweeping as any skeptical claim. In doing so, the nar-rator recasts the supposed skepticism of his analysis of causation aswell. He in fact maintains that history is not the mere play of chance,but rather the expression of an ultimate order to which we do not haveaccess through the causes. This is hardly a paradoxical view, but theexpression of a firm theocentric position that assumes a differencebetween the understanding of God and that granted to man, betweenthe infinite and the finite mind.10

At last we have a preliminary answer to the question whether thenovel dismisses the possibility of order: Mimesis triumphs over crea-tion. Hence, the novel dogmatically (thus paradoxically) assumes thatthere is an ultimate order to which reason has scant access, but whichis not to be doubted.

52 Chapter One

2.2. An objection

Surely, it is appropriate to object, as Morson does, that incapacityis incapacity—to say that there exists an ultimate order which we can-not know is hardly a means of avoiding skepticism, rather it merelyreinforces it. A more probing explanation of both incommensurabilityand the notion of an infinity of causes lends support to this objection.Let me digress for a moment to explain why this is so.

Incommensurability is a gloss on the opening paragraph of the firstchapter of Book III. No matter how far one searches, the causes of anygiven event in the war cannot account for its breadth and complexity.What is more, the causes given seem to have a narrowly subjectiveorigin which does not undermine but rather limits their validity. Pi-erre’s moment of discovery after having delivered his speech to theMasonic lodge captures this stream of thought in the novel well: “Atthat meeting he was struck for the first time by that infinite variety ofmen’s minds which prevents a truth from ever presenting itself identi-cally to two persons” (II/3/VII). It seems impossible to give a suffi-ciently (i.e. absolutely) inclusive account of the causes coinciding inthe formation of any historical event so that the whole truth may berevealed. There is always an ineluctable gap between cause and effect.

This ineluctable gap is a more precise means of characterizingwhat is not rational about war. But this precision is surely most pecu-liar. Referring to a gap seems to evoke a sort of impenetrable darknesswhich will not yield its secrets to the light of reason. Returning to theLeibnizian formula, nihil est sine ratione, we can see that the notionof gap neatly overlaps with that of nihil. Incommensurability points toa nothingness, a negation of understanding, which threatens to under-mine our faith in the solidity of the world in which we live by show-ing that solidity to be limited and fragile.

This sense of limitation and fragility has everything to do with theinfinite; it is the correlate of Prince Andrei’s experience of the “infi-nite sky,” of the sublime terror of mystics and mathematicians before,in Pascal’s words, “the infinite immensity of spaces of which I knownothing and which know nothing of me.”11 With the infinite the skep-

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tical argument reaches the medium of its most destructive intensity.To see why this is so, I would like to set out the tacit assumptions ofthe narrator’s reference to the infinite.12

These assumptions are firmly rooted in a dominantly Greek tradi-tion of rejecting the infinite as an object of knowledge, and it is there-fore of heuristic value to examine them starting from the original for-mulations of Aristotle.

In his Posterior Analytics, Aristotle sets out the kernel of the ar-gument on which the narrator relies (1984: 117).13 This argument, afavorite of the ancient Skeptics and now commonly called an infiniteregress, denies knowledge of any particular thing because knowledgemust be complete, and no knowledge can be complete if it must en-compass an infinity of items.

Two primary conditions about what constitutes knowledge formthe basis of the infinite regress argument. First, knowledge must be ofcauses; it does not arise from bare assertion of the existence of a thing(to hoti,“the that”) but must also provide an account of the causes orreasons why (to dihoti, “the because”) that thing is or came to be assuch. “We think that we have knowledge of a thing as it is, but not inthe sophistical manner, as an accident, whenever we think that wehave come to know the cause through which the thing is, that it is thecause of this thing, and that it is not possible for it to be otherwise”(1984: 115).14 Second, knowledge must be complete or of a whole; itmust include all the causes of a thing, and it must not be possible toadd any causes.15

This interpretation of knowledge has its origins in the Greek dis-tinction between knowledge (episteme) and opinion (doxa). Any kindof knowledge not compliant with the two conditions I have describedis mere opinion.

Mere opinion is partial and incomplete. Yet, is it not an affront tocommon sense to argue that one cannot “know” a simple event, say,“that the man stands,” because the causal explanation can be bothmultiplicitous and incomplete?16 Tolstoy’s narrator holds that partial

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knowledge of an infinite series involves contradiction, since partialknowledge of the infinite is equivalent to almost no knowledge of it.

This most unusual nature of the infinite comes into sharp focuswhen one thinks of counting the infinite as the same as counting outsome partial quantity of a greater whole. There can be no partialcounting of an infinite whole because the whole is lacking, for, if theinfinite can never be counted to an end, it certainly cannot constitute awhole. If the infinite cannot constitute a whole, then it cannot haveparts. It is therefore impossible to determine a part of an infinitewhole.17

If, then, partial knowledge is subject to insuperable difficulties,knowledge of the infinite appears to be impossible in any mannerother than as a recognition of limitation or negation. Yet, of what is ita limit or negation? If one can only ever begin to know the infinite,how can one limit what has been begun? In other words, how is iteven possible to define any part of the infinite to which limits can beascribed?

The difficulties which these various arguments involve arise fromthe fundamentally contradictory activity of trying to give limits ormeasure to that which cannot be limited or measured and as suchtends to dissolve the notion of limit itself. Such difficulties do indeedsupport a drastic skepticism in so far as any partial view of the wholeis always mere opinion subject to revision or alteration at any time.Any more probing attempt to know must end in tautology. Tolstoywrites: “In consequence, all these causes—billions of causes—coin-cided in order to produce what occurred. And it follows that nothingwas the exclusive cause of the event, and the event had to happensimply because it had to happen” (III/1/I).

2.3. Reply

Despite its cogency, this objection still fails to appreciate the veryconsiderable difference between a view which posits an order, albeitone which we do not understand, and a view which posits that no such

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order exists on any level. Classical physics (Newton, Maxwell), oncethe very paradigm of scientific knowledge, entails a determinism verymuch like that introduced by Tolstoy’s narrator. In classical physics,the question is never one of the actual knowledge of all possiblecauses, but of the potential knowability of all the patterns which theyinitiate; that there is a fundamental order, that all phenomena have acause and, thus, are subject to a law of causality is assumed. Of equalsignificance, classical physics supposes that the finite mind can obtainknowledge qualitatively similar but quantitatively inferior to that ofthe infinite mind.18 This claim contains the germ of a response to theobjection I have raised, since it is the quality of the knowledge and notits quantity which becomes important as a standard. If knowledge is ofthe same quality as that of an infinite mind, then, no matter how min-uscule or inestimable its quantity, that knowledge is as certain as if itwere infinite.

The crux of this response, however, is a turn away from knowledgeof individual causes as such. This is exactly what Tolstoy begins topropose as a solution to the problem of causation which he has soforcefully articulated. As one of the first hints of this solution, Tolstoyconcludes chapter 1 of Book III with an analogy suggesting that akind of rational account of historical events is indeed possible if theobject of inquiry is changed:

When an apple has ripened and falls—why does it fall? Is it because of theforce of gravity, because its stem withers, because it is dried by the sun, because itgrows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing under thetree wants to eat it?

None of these is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions inwhich every vital, organic elemental event occurs. And the botanist who finds thatthe apple falls because the cellular tissue decomposes, and so forth, is just as rightand as wrong as the child who stands under the tree and says the apple fell be-cause he wanted to eat it and prayed for it to fall. In the same way the historianwho says that Napoleon went to Moscow and was destroyed because Alexanderdesired his destruction is just as right and as wrong as the man who says that anundermined hill weighing thousands of tons fell because of the last blow of aworkman’s pickaxe. In historic events the so-called great men are but the labelsgiving names to events, and like labels they have only the slightest connectionwith the event itself.

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The narrator typically emphasizes multiple causal explanations foran event, none of which alone may explain it. Each cause reflectsmerely the subjective presuppositions of the interpreter of the event.Hence, any causal explanation is as correct and as incorrect as anyother. Due to this absence of a single standard of correctness, attemptsto understand events by the causes must lead to contradictions thatcannot be resolved. In other words, as the narrator has already noted,any cause is as sufficient and insufficient as any other to explain theevent, and others can always be found.

An alternative to this impasse is to describe a historical event with-out regard to description of all the causes. The notion of “coinci-dence,” as the narrator interprets it in this passage seems to constitutea rejection of the search for all the causes of an event. The Russianword translated here by “coincidence” is, of course, “sovpadenie,”literally “a falling in together.” Of what? Of the “conditions in whichall vital and organic and elemental events occur.” Such a qualificationopposes interpretation of coincidence as a random concatenation ofcauses by providing that they may only coincide according to condi-tions determined by nature. This is a particularly intriguing suggestionin the text because, like the narrator’s preceding references to a ra-tionality which we do not understand and to necessity, it counters thenarrator’s apparent skepticism. For, if causes are infinite, they none-theless combine in characteristic ways so as to provide a basis for de-termining laws of combination. The narrator confirms this somewhattenuous conjecture at another point in the chapter by using the expres-sion “by the law of coincidence of causes” (po zakonu sovpadeniiprichin). If laws of combination are possible in principle, then, theremay also be a response to the infinite regress argument.

One might well ask how this response squares with the narrator’sassertion of subjectivity. If the perspectives the narrator mentions donot tend to coalesce in one unifying or defining perspective of anevent (i.e., one that must exclude as a condition of obtaining unity),they can cohere together in principle according to laws of combinationwhich themselves provide the ground for such coherence.

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Hence, the possibility of overcoming the infinite regress is basedon an elementary notion of legality, a “logic” of combination or inte-gration, that bypasses the infinite regress altogether in a way remarka-bly akin to classical physics.

CHAPTER TWO: THE CALCULUS OF HISTORY

The imposing central tableau of the novel, the narrative sequencedescribing the battle of Borodino, reinforces the progression awayfrom the kind of skepticism I identified in the preceding chapter. Justas the first historical essay deepens the skeptical argument in order toclear the way for a possible resolution of the problems the argumentposes, so the battle of Borodino provides the most extensive descrip-tion of the kinds of disorder depicted in the preceding battles at SchönGrabern and Austerlitz as a prelude to the birth of a new attitude andyearning in the novel, one of integration.

In the aftermath of the battle, Pierre has a dream in which he af-firms this new attitude with the famously ambiguous words, “onemust join together” (nado sopriagat’). The narrator also affirms thisnew attitude when, in a curious echo of his previous adoption of ar-guments first presented by Prince Andrei, he anticipates Pierre’s dis-covery through advancing a proposal for the radical restructuring ofhistorical narrative based on a method utilizing concepts borrowedfrom calculus.

This bold proposal, predating major trends in historical writing inthe twentieth century, is among the most intriguing and undervaluedaspects of the novel—it seems to provide one outstanding “masterfigure” for the idiosyncratic structural characteristics of the novel. Themain purpose of this chapter, then, is to examine the calculus proposalin detail within the context of the novel both as a response to the terri-ble experience at Borodino and an attempt to describe tendencies inthe structure of the novel as a whole.

1. BORODINO

In a manner strikingly similar to chapter 1 of Book III, the descrip-tion of the battle of Borodino begins with a polemical outburst aboutthe irrationality of war and the consequent mendacity of historians

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who offer an ostensibly rational account of it. Tolstoy argues thathistorians shape their narratives teleologically as a way of showingthat the event is the achievement of a coherent intention guided byreason. In short, historians interpret events in light of their outcomes,providing “cunningly devised evidence of the foresight and genius ofthe generals who of all the blind tools of history were the most en-slaved and involuntary” (III/2/XIX).1

The narrator seeks to prove how fallacious such readings of thebattle of Borodino can be:

Why and how were the battles at Shevardino and Borodino given and ac-cepted? Why was the battle of Borodino fought? There was not the least sense init for either the French or the Russians. Its immediate result for the Russians was,and was bound to be, that we were brought nearer to the destruction of Mos-cow—which we feared more than anything in the world; and for the French itsimmediate result was that they were brought nearer to the destruction of theirwhole army—which they also feared more than anything in the world. What theresult must be was quite obvious, and yet Napoleon offered and Kutuzov acceptedthat battle.

If the commanders had been guided by reason it would seem that it must havebeen obvious to Napoleon that by advancing thirteen hundred miles and givingbattle with a probability of losing a quarter of his army, he was advancing to cer-tain destruction, and it must have been equally clear to Kutuzov that by acceptingbattle and risking the loss of a quarter of his army he would certainly lose Mos-cow. (III/2/XIX)

The challenge to the putative rationality of war is by now familiar,perhaps overly so (one can see why Flaubert accused Tolstoy of re-petitiveness).2 But the emphasis on how historians read events as theproduction of a governing and rational will is nowhere more clearlystated.

This initial polemic sets the tone for the narrative’s descent into thechaos of war which we experience through the eyes of Pierre Bezuk-hov. “Descent” is more than just a fanciful expression here; it is agoverning metaphor of Pierre’s involvement at Borodino. Pierre quiteliterally descends into the fury of battle while observing and, then,participating in the action at “Raevsky’s Redoubt.” Before I discussthis crucial episode in the Borodino narrative sequence, I would like

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to go through the significant stages which precede it. They constitutean initial summation of the views expressed in the narratives of bothSchön Grabern and Austerlitz.

The sequence begins with Pierre’s leaving Mozhaisk for Borodino,since he is eager to witness a major engagement. But, while descend-ing the road to Borodino on foot, what Pierre first sees are woundedmen; an acquaintance whom he meets on the way says with laconicunderstatement, “[t]here will be something to see.” Pierre descendsever closer to the simplest realities of the battle, injury and death.

Pierre is almost painfully innocent of military matters and, hence,he cannot seem to grasp the simplest aspects of preparation for thebattle, let alone the vaunted subtleties of the generals. (And this is ofcourse another example of that ironic means of description likelystemming from eighteenth-century French satire, in particular, Vol-taire’s Candide, for which Shklovsky coined the term, “estrange-ment.”)3 In fact, as soon as he arrives at Borodino, Pierre takes it uponhimself to ascertain the dispositions of the two armies. Although hefinds an advantageous location from which to view the field pano-ramically, he is quite unable to discern where the armies are and hasno choice but to trust the opinions of those who are “supposed toknow,” i.e., the officers. Yet, in response to his inquiries he receives avariety of answers indicating that knowledge of the whereabouts ofboth armies is not clear to anyone. Even an officer who claims to beable to give an accurate description of the Russian positions, since he“constructed almost all our fortifications,” is not entirely correct. He,like almost everyone else whom Pierre encounters, presupposes thatthe French army will focus its attack in a way which turns out to bemistaken and organizes his account of the dispositions in accord withthis presupposition.

One can readily see why it is Pierre and not Prince Andrei whonarrates this sequence. Pierre’s lack of expertise or prejudice in regardto military matters allows Tolstoy to pit common sense against thecomplicated science of the military men, in this case, against CountBennigsen. In doing so Tolstoy gives fictional demonstration to aclaim made in the first historical essay; namely, common sense grants

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one a view less clouded than those of the supposed experts who, car-ried away by their own involvement in the matter, are unable to lookdispassionately upon it.4

The virtues of Pierre’s common sense show themselves to good ef-fect when he tours the battlefield with Boris Drubetskoi and CountBennigsen the evening before the battle. Pierre is soon perplexed:

Bennigsen turned to a general who approached him and commenced explain-ing the entire position of our troops. Pierre listened, straining all his faculties tograsp the essential points of the impending battle, but to his chagrin felt that hismental powers were not equal to the task. He could make nothing of it. Bennigsenstopped speaking and, noticing that Pierre was listening, said to him:

‘I don’t imagine this is very interesting for you.’

‘Oh, on the contrary, it’s very interesting,’ said Pierre not quite truthfully.(III/2/XXIII)

The irony, that Pierre could make “nothing” of what the generalsdiscuss, is by now a familiar touch implying, as had Kutuzov’s sleepat the council of war on the eve of the battle of Austerlitz, that thesediscussions are of no consequence. This point is made with causticirony at the end of the passage when Pierre becomes “more than everdoubtful of his capacity to comprehend military matters”(III/2/XXIII). The reason for Pierre’s doubt is that Bennigsen criti-cizes the poor positioning of troops because an elevation has been leftunoccupied. Bennigsen orders this “obvious” mistake to be corrected,and Pierre concludes that only his own limited understanding of mili-tary matters impedes his grasping why anyone could make such amistake. The narrator then tells us that the elevation had been left un-occupied as an ambush and that Bennigsen “unaware of this, movedthe troops forward according to his own ideas and said nothing to theCommander in chief.”

Pierre’s inability to understand is quite justified, since the sup-posed experts talk nonsense and blunder like the fools they are. Thisatmosphere of foolishness in fact pervades Pierre’s encounter withBoris. The contrast between the seriousness which Pierre observes onthe faces of the common soldiers around him and the self-serving fa-

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tuity of Boris could hardly be more pronounced and Juvenalian in itssatiric intensity; it is the best indication of the moral poverty of certaincommanding elements in the army as opposed to Kutuzov and thepeasant soldiers whom the former calls “…a wonderful, a matchlesspeople.”

If elementary perplexity is the beginning of Pierre’s journey to anunderstanding of the true nature of war, his meeting with Prince An-drei is a watershed. This meeting is remarkable in that both Pierre’sgood-natured credulity and Prince Andrei’s bitter, battle-hardenedseverity are a distant reflection of the attitudes the two friends struckwhen they talked on the raft near Bogucharovo almost seven yearsearlier. As before, Pierre expresses a faith in the directing power ofman, in this case that of the military commanders who foresee “allcontingencies” and the “adversary’s intentions.” Not surprisingly,Prince Andrei dismisses Pierre’s “naïve” faith in favor of a muchmore resigned and passive view, the fruit of his first-hand experienceof war. Still, at both meetings, Prince Andrei’s arguments seem to bethe bilious dispensations of a bitter and disillusioned man; the differ-ence resides, however, in the greater truth that the narrative seems togrant to Prince Andrei’s views in this second meeting in contrast tothe first where Prince Andrei was in fact quietly convinced by Pierrethat his own views did not represent the truth. The similarity of thetwo scenes—a classic situation rhyme in R. F. Christian’swords—leaves the matter ambiguous. And this ambiguity is of im-portance, since Prince Andrei unceremoniously refutes Pierre’s pre-supposition that military preparation and planning are decisive in-struments of war, that battles are like games of chess, maintaining thata battle is won “by those who firmly resolve to win it!” He continues:“‘Why did we lose the battle at Austerlitz? The French losses werealmost equal to ours, but very early we said to ourselves that we werelosing the battle, and we did lose it’” (III/3/XXV). Prince Andrei goeson to predict that the Russians will win the battle, and that victory isthe best warrant for the truth of his statements. Ambiguity is noteliminated, however, since both the Russians and the French claimBorodino as a victory. Moreover, Prince Andrei’s views retain hislongstanding belief in the will of individuals to determine the outcomeof a battle despite the fatalism of Bagration, Kutuzov and the narrator

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who at the end of the Borodino sequence holds that battles are di-rected by the “will of Him who governs men and worlds”(III/2/XXXIX).

Having left Prince Andrei, Pierre finds himself in a disturbed statewith the uncomfortable feeling that he will not meet his friend again.This rather elegiac coda to their friendship provides a sharp contrast tothe following chapters in which the narrator describes Napoleon onthe eve of the battle. Napoleon is an almost comic character, a dan-gerous fool in the guise of a king. Indeed, Napoleon is the incarnationof almost everything that Prince Andrei criticized in his meeting withPierre; he relishes his power, obviously believes in it, and looks at thearmies arrayed on the battlefield as at a collection of chessmen. Inbrief, the narrator shows the French emperor deeply ensnared in hisposition as a “great man.”

In this respect, Tolstoy again takes pains to illustrate that any at-tempt to dominate the battle, to fore-ordain its conclusion is quite im-possible. This time, the narrative focuses on Napoleon’s own order forthe battle of Borodino which the narrator takes apart paragraph byparagraph in order to show how it was not and could not have beenthe “blueprint” for the battle. For my purposes, what is most interest-ing about this characteristic attack on planning lies in the narrator’scomment that the order was no better or worse than before, that itmerely was not crowned by success and, thus, became suspect. Inother words, historians look for faults in it (or Napoleon, whose coldis said to have negatively affected his judgment) because of the ques-tionable outcome of the battle. The sequence has come full circle re-turning to its initial point, that historians read events in the light oftheir outcomes. Having come full circle, the narrative proceeds to adirect account of the battle through Pierre.

Pierre’s real descent into the dark precincts of battle begins onlyafter his meeting with Prince Andrei and the description of Napoleon;the debate over war ends with the actual experiencing of it. Pierreawakes the next morning to a cannonade and quickly heads forRaevsky’s Redoubt, the eventual center of the great battle. Havingwalked up to the battery at the top of the Redoubt, Pierre creates a

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most peculiar and disconcerting impression among the soldiers as heseems to observe the battle absent-mindedly from one of its most dan-gerous points. Pierre maintains this pose, observing the soldiers in analmost detached manner, and the soldiers come to accept him as if hewere a mascot. But, as the action’s intensity increases, he is drawninto the battle directly as a participant.

This increase is marked by the somewhat hackneyed metaphor of athunder cloud slowly approaching. Suddenly, “[t]he thunder cloud hadcome upon them, and the fire that Pierre had seen kindling nowflamed in every face.” Pierre then witnesses a literal incarnation ofthat thunder cloud in a most horrible explosion of grapeshot:

Suddenly something happened; the young officer gave a gasp, and bendingdouble sat down on the ground like a bird shot on the wing. Everything becamestrange, confused, and misty in Pierre’s eyes.

One after another cannonballs whistled by and struck the earthwork, a soldieror a gun. Pierre, who had not noticed these sounds before, now heard nothing else.On the right of the battery soldiers shouting ‘Hurrah!’ were running not forwardsbut backwards it seemed to Pierre.

Soon thereafter Pierre descends further into a hellish inferno in or-der to fetch ammunition boxes for the battery which has almost runout:

Pierre ran down the slope. ‘Where am I going?’ he suddenly asked himselfwhen he was already near the green ammunition wagons. He halted irresolutely,not knowing whether to return or to go on. Suddenly a terrible concussion threwhim backwards to the ground. At the same instant he was dazzled by a great flashof flame, and immediately a deafening roar, crackling and whistling, made hisears tingle. (III/2/XXXI)

Pierre experiences the total chaos of destruction. In this scene asperhaps in no other, we witness through Pierre that the energies re-leased by war are the utter negation of planning, that there is no timefor rational thought to tame the animal instincts that take over controlof one’s actions. This latter point becomes abundantly clear when Pi-erre, after having recovered from the blast, sees a French soldier

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coming right at him and holds him off with the brute force of undi-luted terror.

It is perhaps only more sharply ironic, then, that after this descrip-tion of Pierre’s descent into the netherworld of the battle, the narratorshifts back to the eerie calm surrounding Napoleon. But even in thiscalm there are intimations of chaos and defeat. If the sun shinesbrightly in the sky just like at Austerlitz, this time “its slanting raysstruck straight into Napoleon’s face.” Napoleon must shade his eyes inorder to see, but his vision remains impaired as he gazes intently at thebattlefield:

But not only was it impossible to make out what was happening from wherehe was standing down below, or from the knoll above on which some of his gen-erals had taken their stand, but even from the flèches themselves—in which bythis time there were now Russian and now French soldiers, alternatively or to-gether, dead, wounded, alive, frightened, or maddened—even at those flèchesthemselves it was impossible to make out what was taking place. (III/2/XXXIII)

Napoleon too experiences chaos, but he chooses to ignore it. Hisinstinct tells him that the battle is lost and he seems to freeze for a fewmoments in contemplation of the ruinous nature of the destruction hehas brought upon Europe. But, in the end, there is no salvation forNapoleon; he is the tool of his destiny—he is, in the narrator’s words,“predestined by Providence for the gloomy, ineluctable role of execu-tioner of peoples” (III/2/XXXVIII).

For Pierre, to the contrary, chaos is not destructive but productiveof a new apprehension of the world; the horror of war and human im-potence does not lead him to acknowledge a bitter cynicism or togrow tired of life as it does Prince Andrei. Indeed, here we see withever greater clarity that Pierre and Prince Andrei represent funda-mentally differing trajectories in the novel. If the skeptical views ofthe first part of the novel are often provided through the consciousnessof Prince Andrei, the new, emerging views, primarily integrative innature, are equally often provided by Pierre. The difference betweenPierre and Prince Andrei in fact underscores the central division in thetext, the movement from skepticism to integration, from a tragic to amore comic character (in the broader sense of the word comedia), Pi-erre, who strives above all for reconciliation as Prince Andrei simply

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cannot. In this context, Pierre’s dream after Borodino is of the utmostimportance.

We catch up with Pierre only after the battle of Borodino is over,the narrator having assured us that a mortal wound had been inflictedon the French:

The French invaders, like an infuriated animal that has in its onslaught re-ceived a mortal wound, felt that they were perishing, but could not stop, any morethan the Russian army, weaker by one-half, could help swerving. By the impetusgained, the French army was still able to roll forward to Moscow, but there, with-out further effort on the part of the Russians, it had to perish, bleeding from themortal wound it had received at Borodino. The direct consequence of the battle ofBorodino was Napoleon’s senseless flight from Moscow, his retreat along Smol-ensk road, the destruction of the invading army of five hundred thousand men,and the downfall of Napoleonic France, on which at Borodino for the first timethe hand of an opponent of stronger spirit had been laid. (III/2/XXXIX)

The complete destruction of the French invasion forces leads to arebirth of Russian power and an affirmation of Russian identity. Thisis an absolutely crucial pattern that informs all of Book III and, in amore abstract sense, the novel itself, for Borodino is arguably its cen-tral event. In what, then, does the affirmation of Russian identity con-sist? Identity is fundamentally an expression of integration—if chaosis the most extreme negation of form, order and harmony, affirmationof identity is a bringing together into a kind of order.

And this is why Pierre’s dream after the battle of Borodino be-comes a signal event in the movement of the novel. The dream comesas a momentous clearing of insight, a sort of epiphany offering a de-fining metaphor with which to grasp the remainder of the novel.

After the battle, Pierre simply wishes to escape the oppressive at-mosphere of the wounded and dying, of the remains of the great bat-tle, still everywhere around him:

The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was to get away quicklyfrom the terrible sensations amid which he had lived that day, and return to ordi-nary conditions of life and sleep quietly in a room in his own bed. He felt thatonly in the ordinary conditions of life would he be able to understand himself andall he had seen and felt. But such ordinary conditions of life were nowhere to befound. (III/3/VIII)

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Pierre makes his way from Borodino the day after the battle in thecompany of some peasant soldiers. On returning to Mozhaisk, he doesnot even remember that he has taken a room there, only a chance en-counter with his groom reminds him of it. He soon settles into a sleepdisturbed by recollections of the terrible fear he felt at Borodino andfeelings of shame about his cowardice in comparison with the braveryof the troops who fought beside him. Pierre then imagines himself at atable with a group of men whom he considers brave (Anatole Kuragin,Dolokhov, Nesvitsky and Denisov). They are shouting and singingwhile, at the same time, Pierre tries to hear the voice of his Masonicbenefactor Bazdeev (the table is in the Masonic Lodge). Here we havethe conflict between two voices, one collective, the other solitary, onerepresenting what appears to be the martial values of war, the other analtogether quieter, more serene sphere—I can only speculate that thislatter voice is an interruption of a higher realm into the boisterouschaos of earthly existence, the voice of divine order in opposition tothe empty garrulity of human discourse.

This speculation seems to be supported by the following facts ofthe dream, for Pierre finds himself alone. It is only in this isolationand quiet that Pierre is able to achieve a different, higher level of un-derstanding. He perceives that “[t]here were only thoughts clearly ex-pressed in words, thoughts that someone was uttering, or that he him-self was formulating.” Perhaps more strikingly, Pierre is also “con-vinced that someone outside him had spoken them.” Of these thoughtsPierre singles out one of particular significance:

The hardest thing (Pierre went on thinking, or hearing, in his dream) is to beable in your soul to unite the meaning of all. ‘To unite all?’ he asked himself. No,not to unite. Thoughts cannot be united, but to join all these thoughts together iswhat we need! Yes, one must join them, must join them. He repeated to himselfwith inward rapture, feeling that these words and they alone expressed what hewanted to say and solved the question that tormented him. (III/3/IX)

The dream breaks off at this moment, and Pierre hears his groomtrying to wake him with the words, “Time to harness, your excel-lency!..’ We must harness, it is time to harness…’” Pierre is hardlyeager to wake up and he fears that, once awake, he will be unable tocontinue the dream and unravel the rest of its meaning. Pierre says:

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“One second more and I would have understood it all.” He is alreadyawake, however, and realizes that the meaning of what he had seenand thought in the dream is no longer attainable (at least for the mo-ment).

The coincidence of Pierre’s thought with the groom’s trying towake him, the punning pair sopriagat’/zapriagat’ can mislead; onemight surmise that the punning has parodic overtones and seeks toundermine the possibility that Pierre has heard a voice from “onhigh.” While I have no wish to quibble with this argument, I do thinkthat there is another, important dimension to this episode that has beenlargely neglected and which tends to put this argument in question or,at least, reveals its inadequacy. In my view, there is a Platonic expla-nation for this coincidence having to do with the Platonic conceptionof recollection, anamnesis. One of the distinctive aspects of Platonicthought in this regard is that recollection of the eternal and immutabletruth can be triggered by humble means, by some reflection of thattruth in mundane reality.5 This way of thinking also corresponds withthe Christian notion that the divine shines through and in the mun-dane. Hence, one might argue that this kind of thinking also applies toPierre’s dream, that, if indeed the groom’s words have an influence onPierre’s dream, this may be merely an instance of recollection, in thiscase, of a divine truth.

Pierre’s descent into chaos and destruction and subsequent attain-ment of enlightenment evinces a basic mytheme which is enacted inmany forms throughout Tolstoy’s works and War and Peace in par-ticular; that is, characters come to grasp a truth only through a sort ofsuffering that seems to ready them for the acceptance of that truth.What, then, is the lesson of Pierre’s suffering?

The brief dream sequence is very complex, and I only wish to pointto the general movement from chaos and destruction to an immediatesense of wholeness, of the ever latent absolute, the tools for the reali-zation of which seem to be lacking. This new sense of the whole is, ofcourse, a response to Borodino; Pierre’s dream seems to enact in oneperson what will gather force after the burning of Moscow, i.e., thebringing together of the diversity of Russia against the common en-

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emy. Of particular interest are the terms that Pierre uses. Pierre speaksof thoughts—one cannot unite diverse thoughts, but only bring themtogether by “harnessing” them. Yet, this notion seems to have widerapplication. If we recall the apple analogy I briefly discussed in theprevious chapter, there is surely similarity between the elementarynotion of legality which the analogy contains and that of “harnessing”diverse thoughts together. The apple analogy describes a series of di-verse thoughts about a single occurrence as a way of showing the in-adequacy of causal accounts. The analogy implies that these diversethoughts, each of which is as correct and incorrect as any other, can-not be unified precisely for that reason; to create a unity would re-quire, as I have noted, exclusion of some causes to the extent theycontradict others. But this is certainly not the case if one were to bringthis diversity together under laws of some kind.

Both Pierre’s dream and the apple analogy present the bare ele-ments of a position that overcomes the skeptical view the narrator hasso effectively represented. In fact, as I have argued, the narrator’s ap-parent skepticism has clarified difficult problems of historical narra-tive so as to prepare the way for a new approach. This new approachchanges the object of historical narrative from the causes to the waysin which they come together in an event, i.e., to the relations amongthem. Its fundamental assumption, the very basis of its possibility, isthat an overall order or rationality operates in the world. If I may re-turn to previous terminology, thus bringing together several strands ofargument, according to this approach, knowledge is not creation butan attempt to master this deeper rationality mimetically. Moreover,Tolstoy suggests that this rationality is legalistic; it is an order gov-erned by certain laws to which phenomena are subject. Hence, if weare to grasp its secrets, we must discover these laws.

2. THE CALCULUS OF HISTORY

At the end of Book III, between the account of Borodino and Pi-erre’s dream, Tolstoy recommends applying the conceptual apparatusof calculus to historical narrative as a solution to the problems whichhe has raised. Tolstoy introduces this solution in an abstract discussion

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of history contained in the first chapter of Part 3 of Book III. Specifi-cally, the narrator, having dismissed causes as a fruitful object of his-torical inquiry, proclaims that the aim of history is the apprehension ofthe laws of continuous motion, for the “movement of humanity, aris-ing as it does from an infinite number of human wills is continuous.”Consequently, if one seeks to write history, one must face the problemof knowing continuous motion, yet another form of the infinite.

This problem has its origins in antiquity as the narrator is quick tonote in the opening lines of the chapter:

To the human mind absolute continuity of motion is incomprehensible. Lawsof motion of any kind only become comprehensible to man when he examines ar-bitrarily selected units of that motion. But, at the same time, a large part of humanerror flows from the arbitrary division of continuous motion into discontinuousunits.

We all know the so-called sophism of the ancients that Achilles will nevercatch up with a tortoise, even though he travels ten times as fast as the tortoise. Bythe time Achilles will cover the distance separating him from the tortoise, thetortoise will cover one tenth of that distance ahead of him: when Achilles willcover that tenth, the tortoise will cover another one-hundredth, and so on to infin-ity. This problem seemed to the ancients insoluble. The absurd answer (thatAchilles will never overtake the tortoise) resulted from this: that discontinuousunits (of motion) were arbitrarily selected, whereas the motion both of Achillesand the tortoise was continuous. (III/3/I)

Put simply, for the human mind, absolutely continuous motiondoes not appear to move. The narrator asserts that the human mind canknow only the discrete or finite, reaffirming his earlier denial thatknowledge of the infinite is possible. The human mind requires finitedifferentiae, specifically, of time and place, in order to comprehendmotion. For example, if an object is said to move between two places,A and B, time must elapse and its place must change. The only way inwhich one may become aware of this change is through these differ-ences. In this respect, not continuity but difference is the condition ofknowledge. But it is crucial to keep in mind that this difference is notat all “pure” (if that were possible) but dependent on a basic similar-ity, namely, that the object in motion not change in any other respect.

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Such unavoidable finitude, however, is the source of human errorand, in support of this claim, the narrator gives an account of what hecalls an ancient “sophism.” This “sophism” is in fact one of Zeno’scelebrated paradoxes (logoi) intended to prove that motion is not real.The paradox has come down to us in one primary source, Book VI ofAristotle’s Physics where Aristotle deals with the problem of motionand the infinite continuum (1984: 404-405).6

Aristotle spends much of Book VI attempting to refute Zeno andinitially purports to solve the Achilles paradox by reference to time.Zeno provides that Achilles must complete an infinite distance in afinite time which is quite obviously impossible. But, according to Ar-istotle, time is also infinitely divisible and, therefore, the problemsimply cannot arise. This solution, such as it is, does not ultimatelysatisfy Aristotle who provides another, more effective set of argu-ments to solve the problem later on in the Physics (1984: 439-440).7

Aristotle argues that Achilles cannot complete an actually infinite se-ries of divisions in the distance; that is, he can only proceed by ar-ticulating his motion in a finite number of actual steps. The point isthat, even if there may be a potentially infinite number of divisions inthe distance, once the divisions are actually made, they must be finite.Actually making divisions in the continuum changes its character, be-cause divisions render the continuum finite and, thus, accessible to thehuman mind.

To suggest that motion is potentially continuous or infinite andactually finite is very problematic; Aristotle in effect says that motionboth is infinite in one respect and is not infinite in another respect. InAristotle’s own terms this means that motion at once both is and isnot, a fundamentally ambiguous conclusion that completely negatesthe virtues of his solution. Hence, Tolstoy’s narrator is correct in sug-gesting that the ancients were unable to solve the problem revealed bythe Achilles paradox. Aristotle’s solutions, which exercised a decisiveinfluence on physics and mathematics until the advent of Newton andLeibniz, admit that knowledge of the continuous itself is impossiblebecause knowledge of the infinite is impossible. Now, it might seemconfusing or ironic that the narrator has come to the same conclusions

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about the infinite which motivated his exhortation to leave narrativebased on causes behind.

There is no futility in this move, however; the narrator has changedthe object of history in order to advance a possible solution to theproblems of the infinite, the modern mathematical method of calculus.It may be worth noting that there is external evidence indicating thatTolstoy certainly saw calculus in this way. Zaidenschnur reports:“Tolstoy considered such a view about history to be very fruitful for‘historical discoveries’ and he ‘succeeded,’ as he claimed, ‘only withthe help of this view of history to grasp from a new and, as it seems,correct point of view several historical events” (SS 7:419). Be that asit may, I do not mean to suggest in the following that Tolstoy seeks todevelop an exact narrative “science” based on calculus; rather, myintention is to tease out the salient features of Tolstoy’s use of calcu-lus, however imprecise, distorted or tentative, as a compelling “mas-ter” figure for some of the dominant structural characteristics of thenovel, of the way the narrative shapes the world it creates.

2.1. The calculus proposal

The narrator explains that the moderns have overcome the per-plexity of the ancients in regard to continuous motion via calculus:

A new branch of mathematics, having achieved the art of dealing with the in-finitely small, can now yield solutions in other more complex problems of motion,which used to appear insoluble.

This new branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, when dealing withproblems of motion, admits the conception of the infinitely small, and so con-forms to the chief condition of motion (absolute continuity) and thereby correctsthe inevitable error which the human mind cannot avoid when dealing with sepa-rate units of motion instead of examining continuous motion.

The narrator then advocates the application of this modern mathe-matical method to history in the crucial culminating paragraph ofthese comments: “Only having assumed an infinitesimal unit for ob-servation (the differential of history, that is, the uniform tendencies of

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men) and having attained the art of integration (taking the sums ofthese infinitesimals), can we hope to grasp the laws of history.” Thenarrator concedes that the infinite cannot be eliminated; rather it canbe mastered as motion, as a process. Yet, just how is one to apply aninfinitesimal calculus to history?

This is an absolutely crucial question, and, in my view, there canbe no doubt that the narrator intends calculus to be applied analogi-cally as a sort of ideal model of qualitative analysis permitting newkinds of narrative organization. For example, in Chapter XI of theSecond Part of the Epilogue the narrator clearly indicates that calculusis to be applied analogically in accordance with the specific exigen-cies of the relevant discipline. He first states that “mathematics seeksout law, that is those characteristics which are common to all un-known, infinitesimally small elements” and, then, concludes that“[a]lthough in another form, the other sciences have also proceededalong the same path of thought.”

Still, the notion of analogical application is by no means clear. Ifthe narrator advances a straightforward thesis, that a modern methodlike the infinitesimal calculus should be applied to historical narrativeand should in fact constitute a basic approach to historical events, heis much less forthcoming about the details. And it is in this context ofspecific application that one must be careful to establish exactly whatlevel of specificity is appropriate or warranted based on the narrator’scomments. Hence, the key preliminary question is: To what degreecan calculus apply to historical narrative, a linguistic form of repre-sentation whose nature is so different? As a starting point for this in-vestigation, I shall provide a thumbnail sketch of calculus, its centralfunction and concepts.

The revolutionary significance of calculus is that it allows the co-ordination of relationships of change such that a continuous dynamicprocess like motion can be measured or described with unprecedentedprecision. Calculus achieves this precision by coordinating infinitesi-mally small differences or “increments” of change8 to define a con-tinuous process in its essential dynamism either at every notional“point” as an instantaneous rate of change or as a whole ostensibly

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arising from these “points.” The definition of a continuous process atevery point is called differentiation while the definition of the processas a whole is called integration, the latter being the reverse of the for-mer. This reciprocity is a fundamental aspect of calculus and helps toexplain its enormous versatility as a tool to describe all aspects ofcontinuous processes, shuttling from the smallest particular to themost general, subsuming whole. Moreover, calculus can be used todevelop general descriptions of continuous processes via differentialequations that identify similarities in the patterns of change that gov-ern different kinds of continuous process; indeed, the relevant equa-tions may serve as “laws,” as ways of assigning the specifically dif-ferent to general patterns of behavior. Both of these aspects of calcu-lus reveal its tremendous underlying strength, its ability to describeand link with maximum precision the particular and the general, thepart and the whole, of a process in every changing “instant” of itsoverall becoming.

The narrator is clearly attempting to take advantage of this versa-tility in urging the application of calculus to history; he is looking fora means of describing the whole of a historical event or process bygrasping the interrelation of its parts in their continuous, and continu-ously changing, motion. The three central concepts the narrator ini-tially mentions, the infinitesimal, the differential and integration, re-veal both the limits of this approach and the outlines of its more sig-nificant implications for narrative form.

The infinitesimal is obviously a fundamental concept, and for thenarrator it seems to be a limit of the continuous motion of history, thatis, as he remarks, of the continuous motion arising from an infinitenumber of human wills (beschislennoe kolichestvo liudskikh proizvo-lov). It is thus tempting to assume that the narrator means to use theindividual human will as such as the liminal unit for historical investi-gation. To understand the narrator’s approach, we need to examinewhat he means by will.

The word, “will,” is in fact a rather inadequate translation of theRussian word “proizvol” which is very broad in meaning encompass-ing free-will, dominion (to do as one wishes), capacity and choice. It

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is similar to the Latin arbitrium or German Willkür, while it does nothave the more restricted acceptation of the Latin term as a choice be-tween alternatives.9 “Proizvol” fundamentally conveys freedom fromrestraint and the capacity to take advantage of that freedom to do asone pleases. It is a capacity-to-act, a pure potentiality, and thereforefutural; this capacity-to-act is directed to possibilities which may beactualized under appropriate circumstances. The distinction is impor-tant for our purposes because, more precisely defined, the motion ofhistory is a continuous “actualization” (sovershenie) “flowing from”(vytekaia) this capacity-to-act into the past. When the narrator says inanother passage that the continuous motion of history is the sum ofthese capacities-to-act, (summa vsekh proizvolov liudei), he refers to asum of actualizations of individual capacities-to-act, that is, to a sumof acts having taken place, having crystallized from future potentialityinto past actuality.

What, then, is the infinitesimal? Is it a “unit” of actualized potenti-ality, of this capacity-to-act of individuals? Not exactly—Tolstoy’snarrator in fact conceives of the infinitesimal more as a limit of thisactualized potentiality, a sort of infinitesimal and irreducible potenti-ality or freedom unknowable in itself. Since freedom as such belongsonly to human beings, it would be mistaken to argue that the infini-tesimal holds of anything other than the actualization, the combinedmovement, of individual capacities-to-act (proizvoly). It is, then, im-portant to keep in mind as well that the infinitesimal so defined,namely, as a limit of actualized motion, is not a static identity “in it-self,” not an individual “will” or “cause,” but rather the limit of a dif-ferential ratio of the central constituents of that motion, distance andtime—this ratio is in fact most like an “instantaneous rate of change”describing a smallest pattern of change, indeed, a smallest dynamicpoint of force in the continuous motion that makes history.10

Yet, when the narrator mentions the “differential of history,” heimmediately qualifies the term by adding that it is the “uniform ten-dencies of men,” and this raises questions about what precise sensethe term carries other than to constitute an arguably more exact way ofdescribing the differential as a point relation in a continuous process.Conversely, the narrator also seems to advocate the taking of a sum of

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“infinitesimals,” and this raises yet further questions, for, just as it isunclear how the “uniform tendencies of men” are the product of dif-ferentiation, it is also unclear how they may be integrated. What sortsof mathematical tools could help the analogy to survive in these con-texts? I doubt that any could because it is in these very contexts thatthe analogy reaches its limits of exactitude and can only begin tomystify; indeed, these brief discussions show just how difficult it is toconstruct an exact analogical relation between the central concepts ofcalculus and historical processes based on the narrator’s tantalizingsuggestions.

But this apparent limitation should not vitiate the general concep-tual utility of the proposal—at worst a sort of creative mispri-sion—within the context of the novel. Rather, it seems only more ob-vious that the narrator applies the conceptual apparatus of calculus tothe continuous motion of history with much less precision and fargreater conceptual generality. A simple imaginative model may serveas a starting point: if history is a continuous process resulting from theactualization of human capacities-to-act, the latter are motion and canthus be understood as constituting something like linear trajectoriesthat reflect the uniform tendencies of men. These trajectories can bedifferentiated as well as integrated and, in turn, may also be assimi-lated into greater combinations that present a more complete descrip-tion of the dynamic forms relating to a group of processes through theappropriate linking of these constituent processes or “parts.” In moregeneral narrative terms, this model suggests that the narrator is advo-cating a combinatory procedure that may both overcome and preservethe partiality of narratives based on the causal hypotheses he dis-misses; by spurning the wholly subjective narrative, one assuming thata central character can determine the contour of a story, the narratorpromotes in its stead a narrative emerging from combinations ofsmallest narrative configurations into greater wholes that mimics thecentral flexibility of calculus, its capacity to negotiate between thepart and the whole so that, as a consequence of their inner reciprocity,neither is sacrificed to the other. Moreover, the narrator speaks alwaysof laws as the principal goal of the new approach, and it is quite rea-sonable to assume that he does so on the conviction that attention tohuman action on the smallest level will yield similarities and linkages

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in dynamic, i.e., narrative, structure that in turn reveal the existence ofgeneral laws and permit the classification of particular human activi-ties under greater patterns. In this sense, laws are akin to Platonicideas or to paradigms; they are a formal distillation of truth capturingthe essence of the whole, and one can potentially—“in theory”—knowthe whole through them. To search for these laws, to describe them, is,then, to describe the general forms or paradigmata of human actionand their interrelation, for that is what history is—the expression intime and space of such paradigmata.

These views seem to echo Schopenhauer’s platonizing conceptionof history that was to have great importance for Tolstoy during thecompletion of the Second Part of the Epilogue:

Therefore, a real philosophy of history should not consider, as do all these[Hegelians—author’s note], that which is always becoming and never is (to usePlato’s language), and regard this as the real nature of things. On the contrary, itshould keep in view that which always is, and never becomes or passes away.Thus it does not consist in our raising the temporal aims of men to eternal and ab-solute aims, and then constructing with ingenuity and imagination their progressto these through every intricacy and perplexity. It consists in the insight that his-tory is untruthful not only in its arrangement, but also in its very nature, since,speaking of mere individuals and particular events, it always pretends to relatesomething different, whereas from beginning to end it constantly repeats only thesame thing under a different name and in a different cloak. The true philosophy ofhistory thus consists in the insight that, in spite of all these endless changes andtheir chaos and confusion, we yet always have before us only the same, identical,unchangeable essence, acting in the same way today as it did yesterday and al-ways. The true philosophy of history should therefore recognize the identical inall events, of ancient as of modern times, of the East as of the West, and shouldsee everywhere the same humanity, in spite of all difference in the special circum-stances, in costume and customs. This identical element, persisting under everychange, consists in the fundamental qualities of the human heart and head, manybad, few good. The motto of history in general should run: Eadem, sed aliter [thesame things, but in a different form]. (1966: 2/444)

Schopenhauer reveals what lies under a conception of history asthe expression of immutable paradigmata; namely, that history is acontinual return of the same in different guise, it is a continuous repe-tition. If this were not true, history would be a chaos.

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The narrator’s concern to define laws of history, to determine thosegreater paradigmatic patterns historical events characteristically ex-press by linking the part to the whole in a more precise and perspicu-ous way is the fundamental thrust of the calculus proposal and thecore of the analogy. Indeed, in this sense the calculus proposal be-comes a governing figuration or metaphor in the novel evincing thedesire to create a grand meta-narrative of general patterns that com-bines all the smallest constituent parts together into something ap-proaching but not necessarily achieving a seamless whole—in Jakob-sonian terms, the narrator expresses the search for a narrative capableof bringing about the completely harmonious integration of its para-digmatic and syntagmatic axes. Accordingly, the combinatorial artallowing for construction of such a narrative has a crucial role. Yet,the narrator’s reticence about details is especially problematic here: heprovides no guidance concerning how one may attain to the art of in-tegrating the smallest constituent parts of the narrative. Attaining tothis art, a purely formal one, becomes paramount and reveals itself asa central striving behind some of the most interesting narrative char-acteristics of War and Peace. But, as we shall see, there can be littledoubt that this striving cannot overcome the distance between the ide-ality of the mathematical concepts and the essential errancy of time-bound narrative, that ineluctable gap in precision the analogy neitherconceals nor rectifies other than by recourse to figuration or metaphor.

Before moving on to discuss possible reflections of the calculusproposal in the novel, I think it would be prudent to deal with two im-portant criticisms of the proposal together with the weaknesses theyseek to reveal in Tolstoy’s thinking.

2.2. Two arguments against the calculus proposal

Negative judgments of the narrator’s proposal have appeared sev-eral times in the reception of the novel.11

I would like to respond totwo important negative views, each of which holds that the analogy isa half-hearted and false one.

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2.2.1. Berlin

Tolstoy simply could not have been serious about applying calcu-lus to history. Sir Isaiah Berlin is the outstanding representative of thistendency and he suggests that Tolstoy’s proposal is but another vari-ant of a central paradox. This “paradox” lies in the conflict betweentheorist/thinker and artist in Tolstoy that, for Berlin, manifests itself inTolstoy’s desire to unify or integrate (theoretical) and in his counter-vailing desire to differentiate (artistic). Although the conflict whichBerlin identifies seems to be yet another expression of the durabledistinction between thinker and artist, it also has roots in the philoso-phical distinction between knowledge of the universal due to the in-tellect and “knowledge” of the particular due to the senses.

Berlin writes specifically about the application of calculus to his-tory that “[h]ere the paradox appears once more; for the ‘infinitesi-mals,’ whose integration is the task of the ideal historian, must be rea-sonably uniform to make this operation possible; yet the sense of ‘re-ality’ consists in the sense of their unique differences” (48-49). Berlinin fact uses the example of calculus to point out the flaws that under-mine Tolstoy’s thought as opposed to the surpassing quality of his art.He maintains that the theoretical aspect is weak because the in-finitesimals must be “reasonably uniform.” It is not clear what Berlinmeans by this criticism. He seems to imply that infinitesimals are rep-resentative of uniform quantities—perhaps even the “uniform tenden-cies of men.” But this is surely misguided. An infinitesimal is not rep-resentative of any uniform quantity because uniformity is the result ofa mathematical operation and not of empirical inquiry. Although Tol-stoy does seem to hold that infinitesimals are representational, hestipulates that they represent motion, an essentially dynamic relation,and not individuals as such.

Even if one accepts Berlin’s tendency to view infinitesimals as rep-resentational (or his suggestion that this is what Tolstoy does), thenotion of unique differences he advances is by no means clear; indeed,Berlin seems to go farther than Tolstoy, making infinitesimals intoobjects of some kind. If this means that infinitesimals derive their “re-ality” from their difference from each other, it is necessary to deter-

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mine what this difference is. Obviously, if they are completely differ-ent from each other, they cannot be referred to by the same term “in-finitesimal.” This should be a highly unlikely interpretation, but Berlindoes seem to oppose uniformity to difference while failing to considerthe consequences of advocating difference without a prior uniformity.This leads to the ironic conclusion that the “reality” of the infinitesi-mals consists in their not having the uniformity on which their differ-ence must depend.

Berlin offers up these ambiguous arguments so as to assert thatTolstoyan reality lies in particulars and not in generalizing categories.This assertion ultimately serves Berlin’s thesis that Tolstoy is not a“sincere” thinker but an artist, that the narrator’s proposal to applycalculus to history is a feeble attempt to impose uniformity on what isdifferent. But Berlin seems to ignore the intimate dialectical relation-ship that first permits identification of universal and particular, a pe-culiar avoidance his own recondite opposition between hedgehog andfox tends to foster. For works of art are very much works ofthought—in this regard, it bears repetition that the particular is mutewithout the universal and, likewise, the fox is also mute without someunifying principle that permits multiplicity and prevents multiplicityfrom exploding into chaos.12

Behind these criticisms, I think, lurks Berlin’s distaste for Tol-stoy’s holism which has a strongly platonic tendency and, thus, con-tinuously wavers between the all-too-neat extremes of hedgehog andfox. And this distaste is perhaps only natural for an empiricist andpositivist like Berlin. He senses that Tolstoy’s novel conceals asweeping metaphysics of which he, not Tolstoy, is instinctually mis-trustful. In my view, this is the heart of Berlin’s attack on Tolstoy andnot a terrible conflict or failing in the latter.13

2.2.2. Morson

If Berlin casts doubt on the seriousness of Tolstoy’s proposed so-lution, there is another rather tempting negative view represented byGary Saul Morson who finds complementarity rather than antagonism

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in the relation of causes to calculus. This view arises from the appar-ent ease with which the analysis of continuous motion might seem toapply to the problem of causation precisely as a sort of description ofthe causes.

According to Tolstoy, the only principle that might lead to a real understand-ing of history is the obviously impossible one of describing everybody and eve-rything—“histories of all, absolutely all those taking part in an event” (p.1421).At one point in War and Peace, Tolstoy raises the possibility that a generalizingprinciple might be discovered someday that would enable the historian to takeeverything into account. Perhaps a “calculus” could be invented that would “inte-grate” history’s infinitely numerous and infinitesimally small causes. Even then,however, historiography would be doomed to failure for other reasons. (107)

The problem is to suppose that the narrator means calculus to applyto causes, “infinitesimally small causes,” as a response to the demandthat every single individual be described in some fashion. If that werethe case, then one would have little choice but to infer that the narra-tor’s alleged solution to the problems of correct, i.e. holistic, historicalnarrative is empty and, perhaps, even deliberately so. Alternatively,one could simply hold that the narrator entertains contradictory pointsof view in regard to the possibility of knowledge of historical events.

While the narrator clearly advocates the impossibility of obtainingknowledge by means of the causes of a historical event, he just asclearly does not leave the matter at that. Instead, he maintains that theproper object of history is the discovery of the laws that govern his-tory. The unadorned nerve of the issue is that calculus applies to mo-tion without regard to an enumeration of the relevant causes—theemphasis is on “how” not “why.” Chapter XI of the Second Part of theEpilogue (from which I have already quoted) provides direct evidenceof the narrator’s position:

From that standpoint from which the science of history now regards its sub-ject, on that path, on which it proceeds, seeking out the causes of phenomena inman’s will, a formulation of these laws appropriate for science is impossible; for,however we may limit man’s freedom, as soon as we recognize it as a force notsubject to laws, the existence of all law becomes impossible.

Only by limiting this freedom to infinity, that is, by regarding it as an infi-nitely small quantity, can we convince ourselves of the utter inaccessibility of

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causes, and then, instead of seeking causes, history will set for its task the searchfor laws.

The search for these laws has long been begun and the new methods ofthought which history must adopt are being worked out simultaneously with theself-destruction towards which—ever dissecting and dissecting the causes of phe-nomena—the old history is proceeding.

All human sciences have followed the same path. Arriving at infinitesimals,mathematics, the most exact of sciences, abandons the process of dissection andenters on the new process of the integration of unknown infinitesimals. Aban-doning the conception of cause, mathematics seeks law, that is, the propertycommon to all unknown, infinitely small elements.14

In this passage, the narrator develops even more clearly the oppo-sition between two kinds of knowledge that is implicit in his advocat-ing calculus as a superior narrative model. The first kind of knowl-edge is derived from traditional Aristotelian science; it demands toknow the internal nature of the object, the occult forces which moveand shape it. This is the standard of knowledge the narrator seems toimpose in regard to causes, for causal chains are not knowable pre-cisely because they cannot be completely known—we cannot describeevery cause in itself because to do so we would have to describe everycause; we would have to end time or, in other words, be like God. Thesecond kind of knowledge represents a liberation from these restric-tions, being very much a product of the modern mathematical revolu-tion inspired by Descartes, and its object is the laws that governchange.15 Here the full import of laws may become somewhat moreexplicit, because it is the formality of laws that allows them to applyto diverse situations regardless of specific content. If the laws arisingfrom formal relations provide the basic objects of knowledge thatpermit knowledge, as it were, then these laws are in turn the basicformal conditions of objects. This is the beginning of a great epochalshift from knowing “the object itself,” as substance, to knowing theobject as a multiplicity, a characteristic nexus of formal relations thatpermit it to be known and of which the causal relation is merely one.

In terms of narrative, this shift is of fundamental importance. Thenarrator not only rejects the cherished principles of narrative con-struction derived in one way or another from Aristotle’s Poetics, but

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also proposes what is in essence a new narrative poetics based on amathematical model whose main building blocks are formal multi-plicities.

Excursus: Organic and mechanistic interpretations ofthe world

Tolstoy’s interest in this epochal shift is reflective of the dominanttrends in the modern era where mathematical science has became theparadigmatic standard of scientific knowledge to which all otherbranches of knowledge must aspire. In the words of Ernst Cassirer:

The development of the scientific view of nature of the modern era is guidedand determined by opposition to the Aristotelian system of ‘substantial forms.’ IfAristotle was concerned to reveal the inner source of all change, if he sought tolay bare the first beginnings, from which all becoming arises, modern sciencestarts from the recognition that we are given nothing more than the appearancesthemselves in their various relationships, and that the task of theory is restricted totracing them back to, and “understanding” them in the form of, generally applica-ble statements of law. Not the absolute, inner essence of things and changes, butonly the immanent rules of their disposition in space and recurrence in time areregarded as worth understanding. The fundamental task of Aristotelian physics layin the process of extracting from the particular phenomena the general teleologicalforces which condition and create them. All external reality was henceforth inter-preted through the interplay of such forces: each physical change was only the ex-pression of an inner transformation, by virtue of which the original “form” of athing strove gradually to unfold and realize itself. All material change was con-ceived therefore as a result and a combination of defined organic drives, each ofwhich is directed to the emergence of a specific individual form.16

The different notions of knowledge which Cassirer so elegantlysummarizes can be usefully explained by reference to the related dif-ference between organic and mechanistic interpretations of nature. Anorganic interpretation of nature is one which seeks to reveal the innerstructure of things based on a fundamental division of those things.Aristotle sets out this fundamental division at the very beginning ofBook II of the Physics where he distinguishes between those thingswhich exist or come into existence by nature and those which do not.In the first group Aristotle includes animals, plants and the four ele-ments or “simple bodies” of Greek science—earth, fire, water and air.

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In the second, he includes a bed, cloak and other objects wrought byhuman skill or craft (apo technes). The feature common to thingswhich exist or come into existence by nature is that “each of them haswithin itself a principle or origin of motion and of rest, some with re-spect to place, some with respect to increase and decrease, some withrespect to alteration” (1984: 329).17 By contrast things which do notexist or come into existence by nature are distinguished because theylack this internal principle or origin of motion and rest. In otherwords, to understand natural things, one must understand this innerprinciple or origin of motion (arche kinesos). This principle in turn isthe form of the thing, that structure which it is the thing’s nature tobecome. The form is then the ultimate end of motion in the thing. It isalso the nexus of those causes (efficient, material, formal and final)which one must know in order to know the thing, for form is the pri-mary explanatory ground of natural things. One of the difficulties ac-companying this interpretation of nature is that knowledge of a naturalthing is not possible if knowledge of the ultimate end for which itstrives is not possible. But this only hints at the more general diffi-culty of this interpretation which resides in the fact that any thing isthe product of a principle or origin of movement which transcends it.Hence, the attempt to determine the essential nature of any thingmeans that one has to attribute to it an internal nature, force (a Leib-nizian vis activa) or soul (anima/entelechy), beneath the appearancesthat only a god or God can truly know.

The mechanistic interpretation of nature marks a reaction to Aris-totelian physics. It in fact attempts to eliminate the difficulties of Ar-istotelian physics by interpreting nature in terms of quantitative rela-tions among the appearances. This can be achieved by the comple-mentary reduction of physical objects to the Cartesian notion of “resextensa” or extension. By reducing natural objects to “extendedthings” Descartes was able to apply mathematical techniques to naturewhile eliminating the need for the sort of explanations of occult forcesand teleology associated with Aristotelian physics. The basis of thisposition is set out in the Second Rule of the Regulae ad directionemingenii. Descartes writes that “from the foregoing it is not to be con-cluded that only arithmetic and geometry should be learned, but thatthose who seek the correct path of truth must occupy themselves with

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no object of which it is not possible to have a level of certaintyequivalent to proofs in arithmetic and geometry” (X: 366).18 As a re-sult, there is no longer any need to determine what natural things arein terms of metaphysical speculation about their internal nature,whether they have souls or spirits. All this kind of speculation be-comes perfectly irrelevant. Moreover, the mechanical interpretation ofnature assumes that this kind of speculation is irrelevant; it may beassociated with other forms of superstition or mere belief. This changein the focus of the investigation of nature goes hand in hand with achange in the focus of knowledge, if not in the kind of knowledgesought, since, for Descartes, knowledge must still be complete or per-fect: “And thus by this proposition we reject all forms of cognition inso far as they are probable, and only if they are complete (perfectecognitis), and cannot be doubted, do we maintain that they should bebelieved” (X: 362).19

The finite mind

In War and Peace the narrator’s argument in favor of a shift fromknowledge of causes to calculus reflects these two interpretations ofnature. And it is the limitations of human knowledge, its finitude,which recommend the mechanical approach to nature. This may notbe immediately evident from the preceding discussions of the calculusanalogy. One might agree that the Cartesian rejection of the array ofmetaphysical forces with which the Christian philosophers of theMiddle Ages augmented and transformed the fundamental distinctionsof Aristotelian physics is a means of progress to truly certain knowl-edge. In this sense, Descartes seeks to reveal the power of human rea-son to unlock the secrets of nature on its own terms. But there is an-other side to this issue. Descartes’ gambit is also fundamentally anadmission of the limitations of human reason vis-à-vis the divine in-tellect.

The human mind is finite and, accordingly, cannot possibly ascendto the kind of knowledge which its creator, the infinite deity pos-sesses. It is, then, the finitude of human reason that leads to a re-evaluation of knowledge as a first step in the attempt to render the

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knowledge of nature possible, even if this knowledge can never matchthat of the divine intellect. Indeed, it can match the divine intellectneither in quantity nor, ultimately, in quality of knowledge, for thedivine intellect is the intellectus intuitivus or intuitus originarius; assuch it intuitively knows all things as they are in themselves, their in-ternal natures and ultimate purposes, completely without restriction.Human knowledge as finite is indirect or discursive knowledge thatdepends on appearances and the relations among them.

This problem is discussed in the First Part of the Epilogue in theform of a characteristic Tolstoyan analogy:

As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself, and yet at thesame time only a part of a whole too immense for man to comprehend, so eachindividual bears within himself his own aims and yet bears them to serve a gen-eral purpose incomprehensible to man.

A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is afraid of beesand declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet admires the bee sucking fromthe chalice of the flower, and says it exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. Abeekeeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, saysthat it exists to gather honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the life of thehive more closely, says that the bee gathers pollen-dust to feed the young bees andrear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate its race. A botanist notices that thebee flying with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and seesin this the purpose of the bee’s existence. Another, observing the migration ofplants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that in this lies thepurpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by thefirst, the second, or third purpose that the human mind is able to discern. Thehigher the human intellect rises in the discovery of these purposes, the more obvi-ous it becomes that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.

All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee to other mani-festations of life. And so it is with historic characters and nations. (1E/IV)

For Tolstoy, there is a fundamental distinction between human un-derstanding and that other form of understanding, that rationalitywhich we do not know. The distinction points to an extremely impor-tant aspect of the novel to which I have already alluded; namely, thesubtle role of God in it. For how else can one explain the ultimatethrust of the narrator’s critique of causation than to suggest that we

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should turn away from seeking to know as God does or on the as-sumption that we indeed can know as God does? The narrator is clearthat this kind of knowing is not possible for the human mind becausethe human mind is finite; it is separated from the divine mind, the in-finite, the “cause of all causes” by an unbridgeable gap.

Yet, the narrator is careful not to conflate this assertion of finitudewith skepticism. In recommending the application of concepts derivedfrom calculus to human history, the narrator maintains that a kind ofknowledge is possible for the human mind, even if it is asymptotic.While our finitude entails that we cannot possess the same breadth ofknowledge as God, in principle we still can possess knowledge quali-tatively similar. Moreover, the narrator also suggests that the existenceof an order which is not completely accessible to the human mind isnot a cause for skepticism, but rather encourages that we seek knowl-edge of that order. In doing so, we seek the “cause of all causes,” God.And the narrator ensures us that we will continue to do so; despite thefact that we can obtain a kind of knowledge which eschews thecauses, we will always be tempted to pursue that knowledge which wecannot obtain, the answer to the question “why?,” for this “need tofind causes is implanted in man’s soul” (IV/2/I).

The narrator’s so-called skepticism emerges as something of a dif-ferent order altogether—as an expression of a fundamental gap be-tween God and man, the infinite and finite, which acts as an impetusto a striving that seems to hover between the two. “For, after all, whatis man in nature? A nothing compared to the infinite, a whole com-pared to nothing, a middle point between all and nothing, infinitelyremote from an understanding of the extremes...”20

2.3. A final objection to calculus

There is arguably another, oblique critique of calculus in the textitself that relates to the preceding comments. I am referring to the cu-rious antagonism between mechanical and organic kinds of being thatplays a significant role in the fictional text of the novel from the verybeginning. The narrator, in a justly famous simile, likens Anna Pav-

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lovna’s soirée to a machine shop where she is the foreman; Prince Va-silii speaks “like a wound-up clock,” and a machine-like predictabilityand monotony of operation not only dominate the atmosphere of thesoirée, they are of its essence: Anna Pavlovna’s invitations are all thesame, Helen smiles at everyone with the same unchanging smile, andeven the little Princess addresses the guests “in general” and speaks inthe same tone about clothing and her husband’s immanent departurefor the war.

Pierre’s appearance constitutes somewhat of an event. He does notbelong in this benumbing atmosphere:

Anna Pavlovna greeted him with the nod she accorded the lowest hierarchy inher drawing-room. But in spite of this lowest grade greeting, a look of anxiety andfear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the place, came overher face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was certainly rather bigger thanthe other men in the room her anxiety could only have reference to the clever,though shy, but observant and natural expression which distinguished him fromeveryone else in that drawing-room. (I/1/II)

The key adjectives in this description are “large” and “natural,”and they have interesting implications. They suggest the presence ofan energy that cannot fit within the petty confines of Anna Pavolvna’ssalon; a natural vitality, perhaps even a hint of the infinite that con-trasts sharply with the listless and exaggerated limitedness of the maincharacters at the salon.

Pierre’s brash behavior—he gaffes the ritual greeting of “matante”—causes even greater anxiety; namely, that he will disturb thehum of the machinery, that he will throw it out of whack. And AnnaPavlovna is quite right about this, as she soon finds Pierre in a livelyargument with the Abbé Morio. This argument leads to a subsequentbreakdown in the careful order of the soirée that is only repaired byPrince Hippolyte’s idiotic joke. Tolstoy’s point is not subtle. He con-trasts Pierre’s spontaneity and naturalness with the stiff and unnaturalchoreography that Anna Pavlovna seeks to impose on the soirée.

Why is this relevant to the calculus proposal? Within the context ofthe distinction between organic and mechanistic interpretations of the

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world, calculus clearly belongs to the latter; it is its very essence—theworld functions like a machine whose operations are completelyregular and calculable.21 In short, one of the fundamental aspects ofcalculus is its generality. This is the key to its utility as a method. Inprinciple one could discover the differential equations defining everypossible law of motion. If I examine this notion of calculus in light ofthe contrast between the mechanistic and organic that Tolstoy devel-ops in the opening sequence at Anna Pavlovna’s, the result implies acriticism of calculus as a mechanistic interpretation of the world. Theapplication of calculus to motion imposes the same kind of stiflinguniformity that we witness at Anna Pavlovna’s soirée because calcu-lus aims at describing the various kinds of motion and, to do so, as-sumes that the laws it finds apply without exception.

Thus we have a conflict of sorts. Tolstoy seems both to advocatecalculus as a solution to skepticism and to criticize its generalizingenergies, once again displaying an unmistakable skepticism aboutgeneralizations. There is, however, a basic difference here because Ithink that we can see more clearly how Tolstoy at once supports bothsides of the bargain. On the one hand, he sees that skepticism lies inpartiality, the inability of the finite mind to grasp the whole as such,and tries to remedy that partiality as a problem and fault. On the otherhand, he is suspicious of general solutions; while advocating calculus,he seems to realize that its application can only be imperfect.

To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of ourobservation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and study the com-mon, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are moved. No one cansay in how far it is possible for man to advance in this way towards an under-standing of the laws of history; but it is evident that only along that path does thepossibility of discovering the laws of history lie; and that as yet not a millionthpart as much mental effort has been applied in this direction by historians as hasbeen devoted to describing the actions of various kings, commanders, and min-isters and propounding reflections of their own concerning these actions. (III/3/I)

With calculus, Tolstoy wishes to find a means of writing historycapable of aspiring to the comprehension of the whole available to adivine intelligence. But striving remains just that—Tolstoy recognizedthat realization of this ideal would neither be easy nor desirable. In theFirst Part of the Epilogue, the narrator clearly expresses this latter

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point: “[i]f we concede that human life can be governed by reason, thepossibility of life is destroyed.”

3. CALCULUS IN THE NOVEL

How then does the calculus proposal apply to the narrative form ofthe novel? As an abstract preliminary answer I contend that the cal-culus proposal provides a very useful explanation for the way inwhich extremely varied and complex kinds of juxtaposition of smallernarrative configurations rather than an overarching causal progressiondominate the linear formal organization of the novel. Such juxtaposi-tions compel attention to the many ways in which rela-tions—essentially ones of difference and similarity—integrate partsand wholes of tremendously varied specific content in the novel.These relations are themselves emphatically not causal, not mere con-nections of cause and effect (though the latter of course do make up anessential stratum of the novel), but form the bases for a dynamic net-work of content-based linkages that reveal patterns and intricate inter-relations of patterns defining general types of human action in thenovel. Putting this dogmatic presentation aside, in what follows I shallpresent on a much more tentative basis a few brief examples that drawon the rich critical tradition to suggest the relevance of the calculusproposal for exploration of such a typology of characters, actions andevents; the goal is to sketch out some of the simplest ways in whichTolstoy strives to integrate dynamic particulars of character, actionand event into grand tableaux—fundamental patterns of human activ-ity—that attempt the impossible: a synoptic vision of the whole inceaseless movement.

The first question here again concerns what is to be integrated:What is equivalent to the infinitesimal? I have already indicated that,based on the evidence in the essays and the Second Part of the Epi-logue, the concept of the infinitesimal is difficult to apply precisely.Did Tolstoy claim that he had performed a sort of calculus to arrive athis characters? Are they “differentials” or “trajectories” or, indeed,paradigmata denoting both how a group or class did and must act incharacteristic situations? When we put the questions in this manner,

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Tolstoy’s proposal comes to resemble little more than an elaboratevariation of the well-worn commonplace that an artist seeks to revealthe universal in the particular, that art itself is a revelation of a greaterpurity of being in its lesser manifestations. And I think there is noquestion that this is true as far as it goes. Even Berlin admitted thatthis was the “real” meaning of calculus in the novel, and Tolstoy’snotes suggest that he sought to endow his characters with typical traitsof a certain group or class.22

Yet, when we concede that the novelfeatures types that are supposed to embody different categories ofpeople in typical or representative situations, we merely suggest thatTolstoy considered traditionally artistic means to be more effective inconveying historical truth than those of modern historiography—not avery remarkable conclusion that justifies Turgenev’s complaint aboutTolstoy’s regrettable tendency to “discover” the commonplace.23

Con-sequently, from this standpoint, the calculus proposal at best seems tobe a way of pointing to the underlying intentions of the novel—it is anexhortation to read the novel as a certain kind of narrative, and on thelevel of character and situation, this makes sense. But it is a meagerresult.

Now, as I have suggested, the broader significance of the calculusproposal is realized in a different manner on another level of the text;namely, that of the structure of the novel itself. The battle scenes pro-vide a useful example here, since it should be obvious from even acursory examination of the famous battle sequences at Schön Grabern,Austerlitz and, especially, Borodino that Tolstoy makes a considerableeffort to embed in the narrative an anti-heroic and anti-linear accountof events. While I suggest that Tolstoy’s narration of these battlestends to undermine a narrowly causal account of them as the fulfill-ment of the governing will of one man or group of men, the crucialquestion remains as to what new ordering principle is implied. Obvi-ously there is one, and I think it is far more substantial and complexthan the purely negative desire to prove that causal accounts are false,a desire that is in any case essentially dogmatic.

In this regard, I would like to refer to a very famous letter Tolstoywrote to Nikolai Strakhov in 1876 while working on Anna Karenina.Although this letter was written six years after the completion of War

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and Peace, I think it admirably expresses the fundamental contoursgoverning the practical application of the calculus proposal in thestructure of the novel:

In everything, in almost everything that I have written, I was guided by theneed to bring together thoughts linked among themselves, in order to express my-self. But every thought expressed by itself in words loses its meaning, becomesterribly debased when it is taken alone, out of the linking in which it is found.This linking is based not on thought (I think) but on something else, and to ex-press the essence of that linking in any way directly by words is impossible, but itis possible indirectly, with words describing images, actions, situations. (PSS 62:269)

With these words Tolstoy describes an ideal: to avoid a narrativebased on one isolated thought in favor of one linking thoughts to-gether in a grand mesh. This ideal is clearly similar to what the narra-tor outlines in the calculus proposal. Moreover, the “essence of thelinking” is that purposive inner rationality to which we have no ac-cess; we may only describe the relations or linkages of the phenomenaamong themselves and, in doing so, we in fact reveal the phenomenaas reflections of that deeper rationality, of its essential forms.

If I return to the original question of what is to be integrated, itnow seems that two answers incorporating a rather flexible notion ofsmallest narrative configuration are possible depending on the level ofthe text. On the one hand, it is a likely, if trivial, truth that the charac-ters to some extent “result from” a process of integration of individualtraits; in this sense they are paradigmata of a group or class, and theyact in representative ways in a series of characteristic situations of life.On the other hand, the novel is structured to reveal them as such onlythrough a wider process of integration involving specific images, ac-tions and situations. White hands, for example, are associated withNapoleon and his gallery of lesser epigones in the novel, includingSperansky and Rastopchin. In these cases, a repeated characteristic orimage brings together a number of diverse characters and implies anunderlying communality to their personalities and to their type of per-sonality. There are many other examples, important situations include,of course, battles, but also balls, dinners and other social and familialevents like the hunt; in each of these situations characteristic actions

The Calculus of History 93

and attitudes emerge. This kind of grouping together seems to be amuch more liberal procedure than the strict application of the conceptsof calculus might admit. But, in this regard, it is important to note thatTolstoy is writing history as an artist, and this allows him to take lib-erties to portray the whole man and not merely a historic personage:

An historian and an artist describing an historic epoch have two quite differenttasks before them. As an historian would be wrong if he tried to present an his-torical person in his entirety, in all the complexity of his relations with all sides oflife, so the artist would fail to perform his task were he to represent the person al-ways in his historic significance.24

Even so, Tolstoy’s approach still follows the basic rhythm of thecalculus—that is, to bring together a diversity of complexly imbri-cated parts within the ambit of a single law or set of laws that estab-lishes more general patterns.

It is, then, hardly surprising that, as the foregoing example of the“white hands” suggests, the central basis or principle of integration isrepetition, the intricate and insistent play of relations of difference andsimilarity, that has been noticed by many students of the novel.25 Thisis where Schopenhauer’s claim that history is a repetition of “thesame, but in a different form” has such resonance for an understand-ing of War and Peace. It reveals not only a central aspect of thenovel’s structure, but an essential postulate: history, like nature, is therepetition of fixed patterns and human beings are but another part ofthis process whose lives unfold in certain characteristic ways. This is aview of human nature as essentially invariable. Tolstoy writes aboutVera Rostova that she “as people of limited intelligence are fond ofdoing” imagines that she has “discovered and appraised the peculiari-ties of ‘our days’ and that human characteristics change with thetimes” (II/3/XXI).26

Repetition in the novel is extremely various. One of its familiarforms is manifested in the novel’s structural tendency to bring wholestogether by juxtaposing diverse accounts of certain basic events. Inthis regard, the battle scenes are conspicuous. We see the same eventthrough a number of different eyes. Hence, if we group the battlescenes together, we note that each contains numerous smaller narra-

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tives that provide different perspectives on the same battle. PrinceAndrei’s view of Austerlitz differs from that of Nikolai Rostov orKutuzov. The mere juxtaposition of these views establishes a syn-chronous unity of three different levels of seeing the battle and, in thissense, they create a more comprehensive account than any single, lin-ear narrative could. Further, these ways of seeing a battle all differfrom Pierre’s at Borodino. Yet, if we “attain to the art of integrating”this diversity, each element of which is arguably a summation of theperspective of a certain group, like concentric circles—Kutuzov at thecenter of command, Prince Andrei the adjutant near to command,Nikolai Rostov, the cavalry officer farther from command, Pierre thecivilian farthest from command, or Tushin and his crew on the outerlimits of command as a command unto themselves—we begin to seethe greater panorama of both the particular battle and what a battleessentially is as a recurring historical reality. We are thus led to agreater objectivity that through a series of layers defines the commonelements or characteristics of all battles. And this is the significance ofcalculus as an artistic structuring principle in the novel, since it bothallows and directs one to integrate different perspectives within agreater whole that becomes a sort of paradigm of that situation and thecharacteristic ways of human thought and action within it.27

This example features a linkage based on an event, a very commonone in the novel that R. F. Christian has referred to as a situationrhyme, but there are many others of different sorts. Both Christian andSankovitch in their painstaking taxonomies examine several catego-ries of repetitions; these include, among others, the constant repetitionof a word, of a kind of relationship between two characters or groupsof characters, and of certain kinds of experience, mundane orepiphanic. Viktor Shklovsky, who in typical fashion discerned thisaspect of Tolstoy’s narrative well before anyone else, maintains thatnot only repetition but other devices, namely parallelism, gradation(by which he means the way in which different characters evince a“graded” quantity of a certain quality) and antithesis, are crucial se-mantic elements of the narrative.28

While I completely agree withShklovsky’s observations, I prefer to consider these devices as speciesof repetition since they all depend on linkage through a similar ele-ment from which distinctions and differences, like an antithesis, flow.

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In other words, it is obvious that parallels are predicated on the repeti-tion or possession by each instance of a similar element such that theparallel may be established. There is, for example, a famous parallelbetween Nikolai Rostov’s behavior in battle and at the hunt. The fruit-ful comparisons that emerge through this parallel are based on therepetition of similar elements in both Nikolai’s behavior, the charge,and, of course, the violent nature of both activities no matter how dif-ferent that violence may be.

All these kinds of linkage work to establish paradigms—either of akind of character or event or theme—which arise out of the temporalflow of the novel. As I have said before, none of this may be particu-larly different from what happens in any novel, being an anticipationof modernist techniques (indebted to Tolstoy in any event) aptly de-scribed by the notion of “spatial form.”29 And yet this qualification isperhaps too cautious, thereby doing an injustice to the daring of Tol-stoy’s narrative innovation. For in War and Peace we have a narrativethat completely ignores some of the most influential aspects of Aris-totelian poetics, the careful prescriptions as to the causal coordinationof action, in favor of a mathematically governed narrative in whichformal relations of similarity among smaller strings of action tie to-gether the great variety of the novel, its cunningly un-Aristotelian dis-continuity, to create a vast, multi-leveled network of interlockingwholes that are themselves parts as well. This network, supported by aremarkable series of linkages, functions to reveal the t i me-less—indeed, almost mythic—patterns behind time-bound narrativeprogressions thereby evoking a continuous present, an epically unifiedreality far beyond, while entrenched within, the subjectivity of thenovel, its peculiar celebration of polyphony. In brief, limited points ofview are continually displaced in a more capacious narrative that sur-rounds and engulfs them all. And here we have paradox; a narrativeagainst narrative that strives to overcome temporality in order to offera synoptic view of the whole.

CHAPTER THREE: A TEMPORALITY OFCONTRADICTION

While War and Peace strives towards absolute vision, it also cer-tainly fails to achieve such vision, what amounts to a hyperboreanview belonging to the gods or God alone. In this very failure is thesecret of its remarkable realism, or rather, the illusion of realismwhich has struck so many readers of the novel; indeed, the clash ofboth skeptical currents and the striving for an infinite knowledge,sustained and immediate presence, give the novel that unfinishedquality which prompted George Steiner to remark that, for Tolstoy“narrative form must endeavor to rival infinity—literally the unfin-ishedness of actual experience” (112).1

This begs the question: When all is said and done is the novel askeptical or anti-skeptical narrative? The answer is “both.” And in thisanswer Tolstoy reflects a broadness and openness to experience that istruly holistic and Goethean: “All empiricists strive towards the ideaand cannot uncover it in the diversity of experience; all theorists seekthe idea in diversity and cannot pick it out” and “[b]oth however are tobe found together in life, in action, in art…” (12: 421).2 Indeed, theFaustian undercurrents in the novel are of considerable importance,especially the fact that skepticism acts as the engine of movement, therestless goad to new discovery and reformulation; skepticism in thissense is not only negation, it is also a form of affirmation.

Yet, the novel is both skeptical and anti-skeptical in such a waythat critics drawn to the skeptical aspects of the narrative, like Berlinand Morson, have been hesitant to accept the coexistence of thesecontradictory impulses in one novel. They become drawn up in itstemporality, one which so skillfully represents the “sense” of the pre-sent, that they are prone to deny an overall structure. This is so be-cause the narrative encompasses the conflict between two kinds ofmovement, being at once centripetal and centrifugal, and in this con-flict it defines its temporal texture and vitality.

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Hence, the temporal structure of the narrative itself incorporatesthe tension between unity and diversity, order and chaos, that I haveexamined in the preceding chapters. To wrap up my analysis of thislatter relation in the novel, then, I would like to make a few commentsabout this temporal structure and the curious problems of genericcategorization, the perennial question as to the genre of War andPeace, whether novel or epic or epic-novel, that seem to be intimatelybound up with it.

1. TEMPORALITY IN THE NOVEL

The temporality of the narrative is in fact marked by the latter’stendency to portray the present through a sort of montage, the con-trasting of different perspectives or aspects of a more general syn-chronous or nearly synchronous totality. This technique of contrastgives the impression of disjointedness and freedom which we associ-ate with the unstructured present. Yet, the cumulative impact of suchjuxtaposition is to construct or define a whole that emerges out of itsspecific temporal locality. In structuralist language, the breakdown oftypical causal syntax or plot compels a greater reliance on the para-digmatic “axis of selection” to permit integration of the various syn-tactic units of the narrative. As I noted, kinds of repetition guaranteethis paradigmatic stability. Nevertheless, no one overall “figure in thecarpet” dominates the novel. Rather, there is in fact an immense vari-ety of such figures, as the existing treatments of repetition attest,which are hidden from the immediate view of the reader. And Tolstoytries everywhere to depict immediacy.

In what follows, I shall examine these structures in Book I moreclosely by contrasting the temporality and spatiality of the narrativewith its underlying patterns; that is, I shall look more carefully at thetension between its syntagmatic and paradigmatic aspects. To borrowa striking image from Leo Spitzer, I would like to use this sequence inBook I as a “blood sample” that might permit a proper evaluation ofthe whole organism, for here the microcosm is a mirror of the macro-cosm (88).

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1.1. Diegesis and mimesis

The modern study of narrative structures tries to reduce any givennarrative to three primary elements: story, plot or narrative, and theact of narrating. One is supposed to be able to adduce the temporalitywhich governs a particular narrative from the interaction of the firsttwo of these three elements. In the words of Genette:

To study the temporal order of a narrative is to compare the order in whichevents or temporal sections are arranged in the narrative discourse with the orderof succession these same events or temporal segments have in the story, to theextent that story order is explicitly indicated by the narrative itself or inferablefrom one or another indirect clue. (35)

This seems straightforward enough, but if we look carefully at thisrelation in War and Peace we immediately run into telling difficulties.The general outline of the story is readily available in the historybooks. War and Peace does not create its own story on this level butadapts one that is well-known and, in doing so, creates its own storieswithin this story. To understand the plot or narrative, i.e., the specifictemporality of the novel, one has only to grasp how Tolstoy unfoldsthese stories. But here is the problem, one that many critics have no-ticed: How do the episodes of Book I unfold a story? In other words,where is the overall structure or plot that permits us to discern a nar-rative succession within it?

These questions are not merely unusual or insouciant, they speak tothe heart of the matter, for the novel does not construct a singular uni-fying plot, understood as a causal progression, either obvious or capa-ble of reconstruction à la Genette, rather it characteristically abjuresthis very kind of causality, developing as an alternative a series of“lines of relation,” those of which Shklovsky first took note and othershave since elaborated. This is merely to say in a different manner thatthe principle of selection in the novel, its episodic “syntax,” is oftenpredicated on relations that are not causal.

One of the principal reasons for this is that the novel foregrounds acontinuous present and causal chains emerge not in the present but inthe past; in other words, causation needs the passage of time, the very

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discontinuity that, according to Tolstoy, ensures an imperfect under-standing of history. This temporality appears most sharply in the in-herent tension of striving to portray the present while avoiding typicalcausal forms of narrative within a greater narrative. Perhaps this iswhy both Eikhenbaum and Orwin find that the novel is in fact pro-foundly anti-historical.3

The scenes which unfold in Book I provide a fine illustration ofthis tension. One of the most obvious examples of temporal“presencing” is the novel’s opening, a quite literally open one; to say,as some critics have, that the novel starts in medias res is misleading.While it is fair to claim that by means of the opening quote the narra-tive sets itself in a greater time line of general historical events, it doesnot then proceed to ground itself in a specific explanatory or ground-ing story as do traditional epics, and, in particular, the Iliad.4 One willrecall that this epic begins with a general invocation, moves directly toset the scene and then to the conflict between Agamemnon andAchilles. By avoiding this temporal “flashback,” War and Peace notonly gives the unbounded present, the moment in itself, at Anna Pav-lovna’s soirée and nothing more, it also resists the temptation to givean etiology of the events leading up to the soirée as if the latter were aproduct of those causes. This dismissal of purposive temporal coordi-nation is highly characteristic. Each of the specific scenes which con-stitute Book I live in a present that is balanced only by the promise ofhistoricity. But this promise, i.e., that the present exists within agreater context, seems abstract to the degree this latter context is notdirectly present.

Book I provides ample evidence of this temporality beyond the al-legation that it begins in medias res; having placed Anna Pavlovna’ssalon within 1805 Russia, on the eve of war with Napoleon, the nar-rator steadfastly remains in the present, carefully minimizing his ownrole. In fact the novel opens with a presencing through dialogue bal-anced by brief narrative descriptions.

The first chapter is a constant balance of these two different modesof representation, diegetic and mimetic. The terms trace their originsto Plato who attempted to distinguish between the enacting of dia-

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logue and the retelling of a narrative (1997: 1030-1033).5 The point isthat enacting the dialogue is an attempt at conveying an unmediatedpresent whereas retelling cannot help but draw attention to itself as aparticular construction or deployment of the events narrated.

Tolstoy tends to fuse these two modes (whose borders are none toodistinct at any rate) into a single narrative movement:

(1) Diegetic:

‘Eh bien mon prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now no more than family es-tates of the Bonapartes. No, I warn you, if you don’t say that this means war, ifyou still permit yourself to condone all the infamies, all the atrocities, of this An-tichrist—and that’s what I really believe he is—I will have nothing more to dowith you, you are no longer my friend, my faithful slave, as you say. But how doyou do, how do you do? I see that I am frightening you. Sit down and tell me allabout it.’

(2) Mimetic:

So spoke in July 1805 the renowned Anna Pavlovna Scherer, lady-in-waitingand confidante to the empress Marya Fyodorovna, as she greeted Prince Vasilii, aman of high rank and office, who was the first to arrive at her evening party. Forseveral days Anna Pavlovna had a cough, she had the grippe, as she said (grippebeing then a new word used only by the elite)…

This pattern continues to hold not only throughout the first chapterbut also throughout Book I. For Tolstoy both modes of narrative con-stitute a presencing of what is narrated. The narrator gives whatamounts to a direct report of action taking place contemporaneouslywith the dialogue he supplies, and this style of narration is crucial tomaintaining the very highest sense of presentness or synchrony be-tween story and narrative, as if the reader were witness to the actionsat the moment of their occurrence. Yet, the narrator also subtly revealsthat he is narrating something which has occurred long ago. Here henotes that the word “grippe” was not commonly used then. In chapterIII, the narrator remarks that Princess Helen’s shoulders, back andbosom were exposed “in the manner of the day” (“po togdashneimode”) disclosing once again his own temporal distance from the ac-tion. But such references to temporal distance recur remarkably infre-quently, affirming the essential character of the narration which is to

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portray everything as if it were happening in the same time frame asthat of the reader.

This particular narrative temporality permeates all of Book I. But itis still possible to discern three separate episodes judging primarilyfrom their spatial coordination; simple changes of scene articulate thenarrative sequence rather than temporal progression. Each of thesescenes is distinguished as a unit by constituting both a spatial andtemporal unity. At each of St. Petersburg, Moscow and “the country,”the locations for the salon, the nameday and death of Count Bezuk-hov, and the departure of Prince Andrei from Bald Hills, the actiontakes place in one stretch of time, either a single day as it runs intonight or, in the case of Prince Andrei’s visit to Bald Hills, the seam-less merging of one day into the night of another. The depiction of theday on which Prince Andrei arrives with the little princess merges intothe night of his departure on the following day. This is achievedthrough a simple division of scenes. The first day ends and the nextbegins following dinner such that the passage of time is almost imper-ceptible.

This kind of organization recalls that of a play, and it is rather sur-prising that critics have focused so much on the dramatic style ofDostoevsky while neglecting that of Tolstoy.6 I think that this omis-sion merely gives testimony to the subtlety of Tolstoy’s manipulationof temporal conventions, that he tends to intertwine both novelisticand dramatic attitudes by mixing diegetic and mimetic narrative in adeceptively seamless present.

1.2. Linkages

The three principal episodes of Book I are therefore not joined to-gether in the more conventional or Aristotelian sense by focus on aunifying principal character or event, or one single time scheme asone might find in any number of other nineteenth-century novels fromBalzac to Flaubert and Dickens to Trollope. Indeed, we only knowthat the last scene, Prince Andrei’s departure from Bald Hills, comessome time after the first scene at Anna Pavlovna’s. But this is not to

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say that the novel avoids conventional narrative linkages; they are infact quite in evidence and of the simplest kind.

We meet Anna Mikhailovna at Anna Pavlovna’s evening party; sheis an epigone of Prince Vasilii. And, like him, she has come to thesalon only to pursue a selfish end—the irony of course is that she im-portunes Prince Vasilii to do so. It is through her that the narrator“justifies” his introducing the Rostovs. This is an unusual move. It isnot immediately motivated by any obvious causal progression andAnna Mikhailovna will fade into the woodwork after Book I. She isdecidedly a secondary character whose major role is to secure the suc-cession of Count Bezukhov’s wealth to Pierre. The transition to thenext group of scenes which take place in Count Bezukhov’s palatialhome in Moscow is achieved by a famous juxtaposition of CountRostov’s dancing the sixth “Daniel Cooper” with the sixth stroke ofCount Bezukhov. The final transition to Bald Hills is perhaps moreconventional. The narrator has prepared us for Prince Andrei’s visit tothe country. The link, however, is with the first scene at Anna Pav-lovna’s and not with the immediately preceding scenes recounting thedeath of Count Bezukhov.

None of these transitions is unusual or unprecedented in itself.What is, however, most unusual and most characteristic is the avoid-ance of a conventional cause and effect relation between the scenes. IfTolstoy in a sense effaces temporal difference by constantly presenc-ing each part of the narrative, it is nonetheless possible to perceive atemporal progression, but this progression has a largely ancillary rolein developing the narrative.

1.3. Patterns

Book I works in a quite different manner. It provides three differ-ent views of the Russia of 1805. In a way that is very similar to themulti-perspectival description of battles, Book I as a whole provides alayered account that labors to convey the totality of that period. Thisconstruction of the narrative is only possible by integrating its units onthe basis of their common underlying elements and not of a traditional

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plot structure—strictly speaking, in Book I, there is no plot. The se-quence is, however, not static but sufficiently dynamic because of thenarrative’s constant temporal presencing.

If we integrate its units, the sequences that constitute Book I showseveral different sorts of patterns. On the surface one can see a transi-tion in epochs from that of Catherine the Great to Alexander. This isemphasized both by the death of Old Count Bezukhov and the de-scription of Old Prince Bolkonsky and his relation to his son. Onecould also point out that each description shows a different part ofRussia. The story moves from St. Petersburg to Moscow and then tothe country. We are thus provided with a view of the two main citiesof Russia, representing modern and ancient Russia, along with thecountryside which, one might also argue, is timeless. Likewise threekinds of families are depicted, the Kuragins, Rostovs and Bolkonskys.The first scenes give a multi-leveled portrait of Russia at a moment oftransition from one era to another.

There is, however, a more singular pattern of order dissolving intochaos which marks each of the three central episodes and foreshadowsthe first great movement of the novel into the chaos and disorder ofwar. The sequence that begins with the careful protocols of AnnaPavlovna’s salon descends into the utter nonsense of Prince Ippolit’s“joke” and, then, after a transition to Prince Andrei’s house, ends withDolokhov’s daring and Pierre’s drunkenness, a raucous night of de-bauchery in St. Petersburg. The second sequence celebrates the name-day of a mother and daughter and ends with the death of Count Be-zukhov, while the third describes the family reunion at Bald Hills andends just as quickly with separation.

Yet, here we find three kinds of order and three kinds of disorder.As always with Tolstoy, the pattern is not a monotonous repetition ofthe same, it is a repetition with subtle and telling differences. The or-der at Anna Pavlovna’s is not the same as that at the Rostovs’ or thatat the Bolkonskys’. The order at the Rostovs’ reflects an internal,natural harmony and not one imposed to permit the covert pursuit ofselfish ends as at Anna Pavlovna’s or to embody an intellectual idealas at the Bolkonskys’ where the associations of the Old Prince with

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aristocratic Enlightenment rationalism are quite obvious. Likewise,the sense of dissolution is not the same. The nonsense of Prince Ip-polit is a figuration of the emptiness of Anna Pavlovna’s salon coun-tered by the revels with which the first episode ends; these representan encomium to disorder as an expression of natural vitality in con-trast to the deadened atmosphere of Anna Pavlovna’s salon. In thisregard it is difficult to assign a sense of foreboding to this kind of dis-order which, like Pierre’s presence at Anna Pavlovna’s salon, is a signof life, the vitality without which life would be impossible. Count Be-zukhov’s death is of course quite different, for it represents an end tothat harmonious vitality that seems to permeate the Rostov household,but it also underlines a certain harmony (as Bocharov and Orwinnote)7 between the two borders of life, birth and death. LikewisePrince Andrei’s poignant departure presents at the same time an endand a new beginning.

In each of these cases both the surface and underlying patterns aresimilar and strikingly different. Each one comments on the other cre-ating a complex matrix of mutually illuminating structures, and in thismatrix, one that grows and mutates in an ever increasing geometricprogression, one finds the essence of the structurally unifying forcesof War and Peace. I am reminded of Mandel’shtam’s characterizationof Dante:

Dante’s thinking in images, as in the case of all genuine poetry, realizes itselfwith the help of a peculiarity of poetic material which I propose to call its con-vertibility or mutability. The development of an image may be called its develop-ment only in a qualified manner. And, in any case, imagine an airplane—leavingaside the technical impossibility—which in full flight constructs and launches an-other machine. In the same way this flying machine, while fully absorbed in itsown flight, nonetheless manages to assemble and launch yet a third machine. Forthe sake of precision in the supporting comparison just introduced, I will add thatthe production and launching of these technically unthinkable new machineshurled out in mid-flight are not additional or unimportant functions of the plane inflight, but constitute an essential attribute and part of the flight; they condition itsfeasibility and safety to no less a degree than the correctly operating rudder or theregular functioning of its motor. (2: 229-230)

Mandel’shtam’s wonderful metaphor captures the productive qualityof the patterns that criss-cross the novel as one proceeds through it. In

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Mandel’shtam’s terms, I might suggest that the tensions that existbetween these patterns collectively constitute the engine of the air-plane and the source of energy by which new machines are tossed offin flight through a vast inter-connected network that holds everythingtogether even though it threatens to collapse, if it does not actually doso, at every moment in the text.

1.4. Tensions

That the narrative maintains a focus on the present while compel-ling one to construct greater patterns that require time to perceive is atypical function of reading taken to a certain extreme in War andPeace. This tension between forces of present and past, experienceand reflection, immediacy and mediacy strives to imitate a certain ex-perience of time, of our being both “in” and “out” of it. This tension,then, is of course one which we experience in our ordinary perceptionof time that also constantly negotiates between an open present and anapparently closed past. As such, it is at once the most penetrating mi-metic gesture of War and Peace and a most effective expression of thebasic tension between order and chaos that permeates its structure andhas to lead to a different conception of skepticism in the novel. Inother words, the novel does not express a static structure, but onewhich challenges the so-called law of contradiction, displaying at thesame time and in the same respect divergent qualities. Any givenmoment in the novel is both open and closed, both a movement of ex-pansion and contraction; in this sense, one may liken reading thenovel to proceeding through a constant and multi-leveled movementof opening and closing, a movement intended to parallel the actualperception of the present and grounded in the metaphysics of the rela-tion to reason and consciousness described in the Second Part of theEpilogue.

If we look closely we can see that this structure of expansion andcontraction is mirrored in particular episodes of the novel, in the ac-tual process of reading it and in the tension between principles of or-der and the disorder of immediacy which is everywhere evident withinit. To say, then, that the novel is purely skeptical, that it shows how

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knowledge is impossible, is gravely to misunderstand this structure,the wellspring of its mimetic beauty—the novel decides neither forskepticism nor against it. As in Goethe’s great work Faust, Tolstoyseems to hold that a final decision is a termination or destruction ofthe vital network of tensions which make up finite being and whichTolstoy attempts to grasp by applying a mathematically inspired for-malism to the novel. To eliminate these tensions, to ignore their per-vasive influence is to search for a kind of peace that is illusory. Butmost characteristic of Tolstoy is that he recognizes the common desirewhich underlies any attempt to eliminate these tensions, howevernatural it might be, by seeking either the skeptical path or the path ofabsolute knowledge.

Thus the text is marked by patterns of images, situations andthought just as Tolstoy had indicated in his letter to Strakhov. Thecrucial aspect of these linkages is that they do not resolve or cannotresolve into a singular grand “superstructure” in the novel; rather,these linkages are like lines of force that emerge and dissolve in acontinual ebb and flow of self-definition. And this energy is a remark-able feature of the novel described succinctly in the image of theglobe that one may thus regard as one of its governing tropes.

2. EPIC AND NOVELISTIC TEMPORALITY

This basic conflict between expanding and contracting lines offorce, both a striving towards resolving human experience into a com-plete mimetic tableau of its primary varieties and a persistent recogni-tion of the disturbing consequences of such striving, that its goal is asort of suicide, a death in life, constitutes the novel’s “third way” thatweaves between dualistic extremes. The third way is an attempt atforging a new path for the narrative by eschewing both hegemonicclosure, that the novel can purport to convey a final view, as it were,“from the mountain top,” and radical openness, that the mimetic worldof the novel can express defiant indifference or difference made ab-solute.

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This conflict has considerable significance for the generic catego-rization of War and Peace and helps to explain why Tolstoy himselfwanted to distinguish War and Peace as an independent artistic formthat was indeed not a novel but “what the author wished and was ableto express in the form in which it was expressed.”8 While these wordssupport those who would claim that the novel is the product of untu-tored genius, a view that has had surprising longevity given the nu-merous analyses of Tolstoy’s painstaking concern with form, they alsopoint out an essential concern, that War and Peace not be seen as anexample of any particular genre.

Just what does Tolstoy mean? Why is the issue of genre important?The generic question is in fact a fundamental one that opens up an-other dimension of the dynamic structure of War and Peace, that ithovers between two primary generic categories, epic and novel, with-out belonging in any substantially final sense to either one. To seehow this is possible, a very condensed discussion of modern theoreti-cal attitudes to the relation of epic and novel is required. The primaryfigures involved are Mikhail Bakhtin and Georg Lukács. Bakhtin op-poses epic and novel as continuously possible forms of world inter-pretation, whereas Lukács, following Hegel, maintains that the novelis the modern development of the epic.9

Fundamentally at stake here is the philosophical investment ofthought in the notion of genre that identifies different genres as em-bodiments of consciousness, of an inherently reflexive attitude to theworld. On this view, epic and novel are the generic representations orcrystallizations of specific forms of consciousness. For the Hegelianline of thought that comes to its culmination in the work of Lukács,the emergence of particular genres is intimately related to a corre-sponding development of consciousness; they are in fact a sort of“witness” to the shapes that consciousness passes through on its voy-age towards absolute self discovery, the novel being a modern incar-nation of the epic. For Bakhtin, this teleological conception of devel-opment is anathema. He is concerned to show that the novel is notexclusively modern, not the culmination of a long historical process,but very much an ancient literary genre. In other words, Bakhtinmaintains that novel and epic are not linked in a chain of linear devel-

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opment from an inferior to superior stage of self-consciousness, butrather that both possibilities exist side by side, that epic and novel arein fact related more profoundly by their difference, by the opposednotions of consciousness they embody, one monologic, the other dia-logic. As Michael Holquist notes, “Bakhtin’s history conceives a con-stant struggle between two impulses that may be labeled epic andnovel” (77). If these two most powerful modern theorists of the noveldiffer considerably about their conception of what the novel is as agenre, they are profoundly in agreement as to the significance of thenotion of genre itself, that genre is a form of consciousness, and, fur-ther, that consciousness is the proper realm of philosophical investi-gation into the forms of human relation to the world whether theoreti-cal, practical or aesthetic. This agreement betrays their dependenceon, or common origin in, the central preoccupations and innovationsof Kantian thought as well as the parameters that Kant’s thought setfor the great debates of his successors. This concern with conscious-ness extends to Tolstoy; the Second Part of the Epilogue is in fact aremarkable essay about consciousness that tries to sketch out a modelof consciousness applicable to War and Peace as a narrative.

Hence, by canvassing briefly the views of Bakhtin and Lukácsabout the novel and its relation to epic, I think that the broader impli-cations of the peculiar narrative structure of War and Peace will be-come a good deal clearer. Moreover, the fact that War and Peace endswith a lengthy discussion of the relation between reason and con-sciousness, in other words, with an examination of consciousness it-self, may be placed in its proper context as capstone and justificationfor the narrative.

Bakhtin’s conception of the novel is a peculiar formalism. Indeed,according to this conception, one might easily and ironically turn Tol-stoy’s concern to distance his work from specific generic categoriza-tion around to say the opposite of what it apparently wants to say;namely, that Tolstoy only confirms the essential novelness of War andPeace by claiming that it departs from generic considerations, thisbeing an essential trait of the novel, that it has no essential traits or, atleast, that it subverts all essential traits. And here is the peculiarity ofBakhtin’s approach: the novel is the continuously self-transcending

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form, the expression of a negativity that does not wither away or anni-hilate itself in a final synthetic transparency, but one which is intrinsi-cally open and undisciplined, that takes on form only temporarily—torepeat, its essence is to have no essence. This inescapable contradic-tion is tremendously productive and serves as the very life blood ofthe genre, the source of its protean flexibility—in a word, its inconclu-siveness. Here Bakhtin is surely justified in claiming that the novel isin a certain sense unique among literary genres because, unlike themass of inherited genres, the novel tends most powerfully towardsradical openness, towards the continuous transformation of form, asort of permanent revolutionary negativity (and certainly not evolutionsince there is no defined telos or justifying causa finalis).

Bakhtin’s term for this negativity in its most basic form is the “ex-cess of seeing,” a concept that relies on the visual characterization ofknowing so central to the western tradition.10 This excess allows oneto assert that no dialogical relationship can be closed, that to assumeor assert closure is a mendacious and tendentious denial, since knowl-edge is always dependent, always a product of a knowing that cannotbe completely one’s own. Like so many other thinkers of the twentiethcentury, Bakhtin sketches out, through the concept of an excess ofseeing or dialogic negativity, a notion of radical finitude, that thoughtand being can never be united in an absolute harmony—this harmonybeing understood in the final instance as the control of subject overobject or the reverse—and that it is precisely in this absence of com-pletion, of access to the absolute, that the fundamental contours ofhuman action come to the surface. The novel’s crucial philosophicalimportance for Bakhtin lies in its recognition and celebration of dia-logic negativity, of the finite and, therefore, dependent nature of hu-man activity. Consciousness is never singular or closed for Bakhtin, itis not purely subjective or private, but rather it is a dialogic and socialcreation that cannot be brought to completion, but is always in theprocess of becoming, whatever that process might be. The dialogicother sees more but not quite enough to eradicate the possibility ofcomplete re-interpretation, of revolution. The dialogic relationship iscreative and inconclusive.

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If the novel is the triumph of this dialogic being, of the recognitionof the inevitably social nature of consciousness, it also betrays muchmore radically destructive impulses, for the novel must then also bethe genre of the decline of final (monologic) authority, the death ofGod and the rise of an ever inter-dependent subjectivity as unstablearbiter of what is; the novel becomes thus the embodiment of anarchicenergies, of a relativistic universe that shuns the absolute but has notyet drawn the appropriate conclusions, that the relative must also diealong with the absolute. Indeed, this is where Bakhtin’s conception ofthe novel reaches its limits and bares its hidden dogmatism, sinceBakhtinian openness is derived from an essentially dogmatic ground,the dialogical principle, which is itself closed to the very kinds ofrevolutionary transformation he identifies elsewhere. Bakhtin shrinksbefore the final step his own his praise of freedom invites; namely,that to be rid of the contradiction, for openness to be full and com-plete, it must decline into the chaos of complete indifference as to anydefining principle.

While the novel as a generic category tends towards this radicaland inherently inconsistent openness, Bakhtin argues that the epictends in the opposite direction, towards closure. For Bakhtin, the epicis primarily distinguished from the novel by the distance it createsbetween the present and the events it narrates. The latter are “walledoff” from the present. They constitute a discrete whole, a totalitywhose integrity is protected by virtue of distance:

These events and heroes receive their value and grandeur precisely throughthis association with the past, the source of all authentic reality and value. Theywithdraw themselves, so to speak, from the present day with all its inconclusive-ness, its indecision, its openness, its potential for re-thinking and re-evaluating.They are raised to the valorized plane of the past, and assume there a finishedquality. (1981: 18)

Epic is a genre of denial, in this sense monologic, and, since it triesto form one final hierarchical order not capable of subsequent modifi-cation, epic reality projects a monumental, finished structure that canbe felled only by revolution.

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This revolution comes about by way of a fundamental change inthe temporal limits and assumptions of narrative. It is no exaggerationto claim that Bakhtin’s whole analysis of the difference between epicand novel is shaped in decisive ways by an underlying distinctionbetween the kinds of temporality that govern the two genres. Whileepic time is a completed whole, a distinct creation of closed temporalform that seeks to avoid the distentio animi Ricoeur discusses so ablyin his major work, Time and Narrative, the novel welcomes this dis-tention, is in a sense nothing more than a celebration of the aporias ofthe present, its resistance to definition, the freedom of the free flowing“now” (nunc fluens), of actually experienced time.11 In other words,epic strives towards defining the nature of time and the course of be-coming and, in doing so, it turns time and becoming into a thing andnot that “in” which everything appears as a thing; this epic impulse isthen quite similar to what Heidegger calls “Seinsvergessenheit,” theoblivion of being, of the vibrant source that remains hidden in beings.Bakhtin maintains that “[t]o portray an event on the same time-and-value plane as oneself and one’s contemporaries (and an event that istherefore based on personal experience and thought) is to undertake aradical revolution, and to step out of the world of epic into the worldof the novel” (1981: 14). The present becomes the basic temporalquality that distinguishes the novel:

The present, in its so-called “wholeness” (although it is, of course, neverwhole) is in essence and in principle inconclusive; by its very nature it demandscontinuation, it moves into the future, and the more actively and consciously itmoves into the future the more tangible and indispensable its inconclusiveness be-comes. Therefore, when the present becomes the center of human orientation intime and in the world, time and world lose their completedness as a whole as wellas in each of their parts. The temporal model of the world changes radically: it be-comes a world where there is no first word (no ideal word), and the final word hasnot yet been spoken. For the first time in artistic-ideological consciousness, timeand the world become historical: they unfold, albeit at first still unclearly and con-fusedly as becoming, as an uninterrupted movement into a real future, as a uni-fied, all-embracing and unconcluded process. Every event, every phenomenon,every thing, every object of artistic representation loses its completedness, itshopelessly finished quality and its immutability that had been so essential to it inthe world of the epic “absolute past,” walled off by an unapproachable boundaryfrom the continuing and unfinished present. (1981: 30)

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The temporality of the novel, as Bakhtin understands it, representsa radical and permanent departure from the kind of temporal manipu-lation that has been the durable justification and refuge of epic narra-tive. It is thus no surprise that Bakhtin emphasizes the uniqueness ofthe novel because in a very direct way, the novel at its most extremedispenses with the attempt to disguise the aporias of temporalitythrough narrative structure, the attempt to tame the openness of thepresent by denying it. The upshot is that the novel becomes the genreof immediate freedom, of inevitable inconclusiveness.

Bakhtin’s view of the novel is radical, but he characterizes the epicin ways that follow the tradition stemming from Hegel’s discussionsof epic poetry in his Lectures on Aesthetics with the one key differ-ence that for Bakhtin epic is of course not a stage in an inexorableprogression towards a specific goal, but rather a permanent possibilityof world interpretation. For Hegel, the epic is very much the national“story,” the unifying narrative that establishes a basis for a culture, anoriginal whole that is the inexhaustible source from which a givenpeople draw to define their form of life, including its temporality.12

Hegel continually emphasizes that epic is the genre of totality, onethat portrays the entire life of a people, that grasps the essence of theirlife (1975: II/1044, 1077-1093). While Hegel goes further claimingthat the novel is one of the genres that has invaded the original domainof the epic in the modern period, he says little else about the exactsignificance of the novel (1975: II/1110). Here it is Georg Lukács whoextends and clarifies the Hegelian line of thought in his complex andpuzzling book, Theory of the Novel.

Lukács sets out the fundamental proposition of his own view whenhe writes that the novel is “the epic of an age in which the extensivetotality of life is no longer directly given, in which the immanence ofmeaning in life has become a problem, yet which still thinks in termsof totality” (56). The key concept here is again totality. Yet, just whatis this totality? The answers to this question of course differ as theunderlying philosophical concept of the primary desiderata of humanlife changes, as consciousness develops from immediacy to self-recognition. But, for Lukács, totality in the context of the novel is in-extricably tied to an essentially romantic notion of the absolute, of a

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lost immediacy and wholeness, of an all-embracing “oceanic feeling,”that emerges as shattered and irretrievable in the wake of the devel-opment of self-consciousness.

The epic individual, the hero of the novel, is the product of estrangement fromthe outside world. When the world is internally homogenous, men do not differqualitatively from one another; there are of course heroes and villains, pious menand criminals, but even the greatest hero is only a head taller than the mass of hisfellows, and the wise man’s dignified words are heard even by the most foolish.The autonomous life of interiority is possible and necessary only when the dis-tinctions between men have made an unbridgeable chasm; when the gods are si-lent and neither sacrifices nor the ecstatic gift of tongues can solve their riddle;when the world of deeds separates itself from men and, because of this independ-ence, becomes hollow and incapable of absorbing the true meaning of deeds in it-self, incapable of becoming a symbol through deeds and dissolving them in turninto symbols; when interiority and adventure are forever divorced from one an-other. (66)

Within this context, the novel is the genre that gives artistic ex-pression to modern self-consciousness, its agonizing sense of isolationand estrangement from a more originary experience of life, one notyet aware of its mediate nature and therefore blessed with an immedi-ate, if inchoate, sense of connection with objects and other individu-als, with the world beyond which there is nothing yet to see. Thus thenovel as a genre both identifies this sharp awareness of fallenness andattempts to redress its effects, to regain in some fashion a primordialunity.

These differing conceptions of the relation of novel to epic providestrikingly opposed views of the philosophical significance of thenovel. For the concern with generic categories that occupies Bakhtinand Lukács is admittedly merely a pretext for dealing with underlyingphilosophical problems. Both theorists assume that literature providesa reflection of thought and in this sense they are thorough converts ofGerman Romanticism, a tradition with which some modern criticstake exception.13 Be that as it may, the underlying concern is the greatpredicament of modern thought: How to deal with the loss of faith inauthority that is the final result of the Kantian revolution, the rapidhistoricizing of reason brought about by Hegel, Nietzsche and Hei-degger? If Bakhtin welcomes this loss of authority, the liberation from

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monologism, the so-called absolute word that needs no proof andbrooks no opposition, Lukács brings out a despairing view, one thatreveals a longing for an essentially harmonic whole, an authoritativeclosure, a god that is not God. Both views suffer from dangerouscomplications, Bakhtin seeks to impose freedom dogmatically, thusrisking far more than a purely formal contradiction, while Lukácsseeks wholeness without complete loss of freedom, a tyranny withouttyranny. If Bakhtin’s views threaten to sink into the tyranny of anar-chy, a groundlessness that amounts to chaos, Lukács invites whole-ness at the expense of the parts.

These views are in turn a variation on the momentous debate aboutthe relative virtues of modernity. The epic is an essentially ancientgenre, one based on the separation between gods and man. Epicwholeness and discreteness, its capacity to provide a fixed, synopticview of the events and characters it portrays, both of which act as ar-chetypes—the individual and particular being important only as anembodiment of the whole—are essential components of an ancienttradition to which we owe the notion of character and event as havingtypological “reality” in any case. And this is why the epic must havethe sanction of the gods or god-like insight, for it attempts to conveyin artistic form the kind of general truth vouchsafed to the gods. Thecorollary is that the epic portrays the frailty of human beings, theirterrifying ignorance and irremediable subjection to the inscrutablewhims of gods who have little or no understanding—how could theyafter all?—of mortal existence. Very much like tragedy, its peculiarAttic child, epic resolves, in the most powerful representation possibleof the vicissitudes of human life, intolerable and unrelieved suffering,and the human response to such suffering, that is essentially futile andall the more heroic for being so. Epic thus carries the dark burden ofthe ancient view of the world, a conviction about the limits of humanlife and the disaster that threatens to accompany any attempt to tran-scend those limits, to trespass upon the prerogatives of the gods.

While epic represents the ancient world, the novel represents therise of the subject, the foremost invention of modernity and the re-pository of its greatest hopes; the novel is thus a genre of daring, it isquixotic to the core, the representation of a new kind of experience of

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the world that did not belong to the ancients. This new kind of experi-ence brings out the depth and breadth of actual lived life and thereforethe time consciousness which Bakhtin so shrewdly identifies, anawareness that is profoundly subjective—it is particular, it is therhythm of the lived present. The world is then no longer a closed to-tality in which individuals play a part consigned to them by an in-scrutable fate, a sort of master plan that is the barely concealed ex-pression of hopelessness. Rather, the world is malleable; it is, inSchopenhauer’s phrase, “my representation.” The subject can pro-foundly influence the world; it can transform itself along with its ownconditions of life, it can thus dare to ascend to the heights of world-creation, rivaling the gods or God. But one must be rather cautioushere because the novel does not unequivocally share in this grand anddesperate vision—while the liberation of plurality, of openness andinconclusiveness which Bakhtin constantly evokes, is intimately tiedto the rise of the subject and the freeing of the subject from tradition,it also reflects another side of modern daring, the loss of all founda-tions. The liberation of the subject becomes a truly quixotic seeing ofillusions, the creation of a world that has no anchor in objectivity or,at the very least, in a transcendent reality, because that reality hasceased to exist. And this vertiginous feeling leads to the search forwholeness, for the return to a lost origin that is dogmatic nostalgia inBakhtin and nausea about modernity in Lukács.

The fundamental problematic with which Bakhtin and Lukács dealin terms of the relation of epic and novel also plays a central rolewithin War and Peace; it provides an appropriate means of beginningto grasp the significance of the competing patterns I have identified inthe novel. For the movement between ancient and modern that is im-plied by the generic categories that both apply and fail to isolate theessence of the novel is just as readily evident in the narrator’s choiceof calculus as against ancient (basically Aristotelian) ways of charac-terizing the world. The view of temporality that lies under this dis-tinction is equally indicative, since causal thinking is a major compo-nent of the creation of a linear temporality, whereas calculus creates atimeless temporality in the sense that the most powerful relations areconceptual and not purely temporal; they move the narrative out of theflow of time understood as a succession into a simultaneity that is

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nothing more than a continuous presentness. But, this simultaneity hastwo diametrically opposed consequences. On the one hand, the con-cealment of simple linear causality in War and Peace creates the samesort of open, novelistic temporality that Bakhtin describes so well. Onthe other hand, the ultimate fruit of that concealment, the creation of anew form of governing meta-narrative, a continuous presence, is notthat of the evanescent moment, but of God-like intuition where allobjects are present at once to the divine mind—in a word, an epicclosedness, the formidable expression of the desire to impose being onbecoming, to resolve the constantly shifting present of finite con-sciousness into the immutable presence of an infinite one.

Indeed, the novel’s foremost structural characteristic, the move-ment between part and whole in its various forms, as a movementbetween subjective and objective modes of knowing, between theimmediacy of the open moment and the global constructions thatshape that moment and, ultimately, between relative and absolute, fi-nite and infinite, is quite usefully analogous to the basic oppositionbetween novelistic and epic forms of representation. One may arguethat the essentially competing ways of fashioning the world that thesetwo genres embody govern the structure of War and Peace and shedlight on its deepest impulses. In this sense, Tolstoy’s admonitionabout generic classification of the novel points to the unsolved natureof the opposition, that rather than being one or the other, War andPeace is itself a continuous becoming, at once belonging and not be-longing to a particular genre. And this is all the more remarkable sincethe novel seems to move inexorably towards a conclusion, the con-sciousness of its own principles, the reflective capture of the basicmodel of consciousness that the text reveals on several levels at once,but mainly as a shifting between the merging of subject and object inhistory and the re-assertion of ineradicable subjectivity. This move-ment suggests a deceptive teleology, that War and Peace moves to-wards definitive closure. Yet, as we shall see, this grand gesture endsup in an unequivocal denial of the possibility and desirability of clo-sure. Rather, the movement in War and Peace is generated by failure,by the inability to reach the kind of final position that would excludeall other positions, that would complete history and render nugatoryany continued movement. In this context, the most penetrating irony is

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that a goal must both exist and not be capable of attainment. Imbal-ance, disharmony, and unavoidable difference are the primary motorsof life; war and struggle dominate over the stifling illusion of peace.

If we revisit the differing views expressed by Bakhtin and Lukácsabout epic and novel, War and Peace seems to embrace both Bak-htinian openness and the longing for a lost harmony, one that is im-possible to retrieve. In this sense, War and Peace displays both theunfinished and open qualities Bakhtin ascribes to the novel with thecrucial difference that there remains an inherent teleology, a never-silenced desire to achieve or retrieve the epic absolute, despite theknowledge that it may be impossible and undesirable to do so. Thenovel thus implies another dogmatic barrier to chaos, a suggestion thatrestlessness, that irresolvable movement towards a goal, an “infinitenearing,” is a first principle of some kind, one whose assertion mustbe dogmatic. Thus the novel also engages in a contradiction of sorts,at least until the Second Part of the Epilogue where the dogmatic rela-tion of reason and consciousness is fully revealed. By suggesting,however, that the striving for the whole is the basic if never satisfiedmovement of consciousness, Tolstoy avoids the deceptive rhetoric ofBakhtin and the all too romantic despair of Lukács.

3. THE END OF TIME

The hunt scene, the importance of which Tolstoy stressed in hisdrafts for the Second Part of the Epilogue, offers the rudiments of aninteresting countervailing position, an assertion of the possibility ofessential harmony that does not end up in a debilitating form of peace.In this sense, the claim that the scene represents a sort of idyll (as do aseries of other parallel scenes in Book II) seems entirely appropriate,at least at first blush. The scene in fact contains a somewhat comicmixture of generic elements from epic and novel, a curious juxtaposi-tion of venerable cultural tradition with the influx of seemingly incon-gruous modernity. Here the clash between a closed tradition and con-temporary life is sharp and telling, for the hunt scene is one of themost powerful evocations of pure Russian life in the novel with itsown hero of the stamp of Kutuzov, “uncle.”

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The hunt sequence begins with a clear indication of synthesis, ofthe union of two different worlds. When Nikolai wakes up on the dayof the hunt, he notes that “it was as if the sky were melting and sink-ing to earth without a breath of wind.” The suggestion is instruc-tive—two erstwhile separate worlds are coming together, heaven andearth, a surmise that is only further supported by the fact that thischapter follows introduction of the enigmatically metaphorical skyabove the wounded Prince Andrei at Austerlitz.14 This indication re-ceives confirmation in several distinctive ways in the sequence.Danilo, who is otherwise completely under the control of his master,Nikolai, is permitted to act as if he were on an equal or superior level:

At that moment there rang out a loud “O-hoy!” that inimitable huntsman’shalloo that unites the deepest bass with the highest tenor, and around the corner ofthe house came the huntsman and the whipper-in, Danilo, a gray, wrinkled manwith his hair cut straight across his forehead, Ukrainian fashion, and a long bentwhip in his hand. His face wore the expression of independence and scorn of eve-rything in the world that is seen only in huntsmen. Doffing his Circassian cap tohis master he looked disdainfully at him. This disdain was not offensive to hismaster: Nikolai knew that scornful and superior as Danilo appeared to be, he wasstill his man and his huntsman. (II/4/3)

Several important details emerge in this paragraph. The hunts-man’s “halloo” unifies high and low registers; in this sense it is verymuch a formal reflection of the merging of sky and earth. Moreover,Danilo is able to reach a level superior to that of his master, an inde-pendence that seems to brook no opposition, while at the same time,his master is not at all disconcerted about Danilo’s outburst but re-mains confident and calm. Important here is not just the fact thatDanilo can assume to be on the same level if not superior to his mas-ter, but also that he can act to the fullness of his own strength, that hecan express the basic traits of his nature without fear of reprisal. Thisis a fascinating harmony, where master and servant may maintain bothroles at the same time, if in different respects. The strict hierarchy oflife is reversed and retained, so that Danilo can be independent whilenot overtaking his master, while not being forced to destroy the latteras the price of independence. How is this so? The narrator suggests ananswer somewhat obliquely when he states that, at the beginning ofthe hunt, “[e]very dog knew its master and its call. Every man in thehunt knew his business, his place, and what he had to do.” The salient

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fact is that all the participants in the hunt know their place. There sim-ply are no radical dislocations, no basic deficiencies that cannot beremedied, that beckon to action, to the desire to eliminate or controlothers—the participants remain content.

But this contentedness is due neither to vegetative resignation norto a belief in the futility of all action. It results from an apparentlyimmediate or instinctual appreciation of one’s place and function, anappreciation not available to reason. The dominating physicality of thehunt, the quick changes, the unmistakable similarity of the hunters andthe hunted, all point to the diminishment of rational activity and theenhancement of pure action, of the pure exercise of our physicalselves. Yet, in this regard, the hunt sequence has a remarkably Di-onysian texture, as if the characters with their wild ululations wereengaged in a Dionysian frenzy, the submergence of rationality in pureecstatic physicality, in the supposedly deeper, primordial processes ofnature. While evidence that Tolstoy had such an echo in mind islacking, there is nevertheless little question that the hunt sequencebears an intriguing family resemblance to the kind of Dionysian free-dom from restraint that Euripides depicts in The Bacchae. This strangeecho raises more questions. If the sequence does reveal a sort of har-mony or, in any event, seems to stress unity as the harmonious inter-action of the various participants in the hunt, the latter’s wildnessalong with its bloody end points to another aspect of it that suggestsharmony is obtained only at the cost of a violent sacrifice, onlythrough the death of another creature.

The hunt sequence is thus thoroughly ambiguous. It offers a visionof harmony that, if initially idyllic, turns frenzied and bloody. Theimplications of this conclusion for the narrative are intriguing. Farfrom suggesting that a harmony between the different impulses in Warand Peace can be achieved, the ambiguous nature of the hunt se-quence reveals the brutality of this apparently “idyllic” reality, its pur-chasing initial harmony at the cost of a greater loss of order with con-sequent submergence in ecstatic and chaotic physicality, a world ofbrutal instinct. Here the underlying pattern departs from epic andnovel, to embrace the more basic opposition between human rule(nomos) and chaotic nature (phusis) that plays such a central role in

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Euripides’ dark play (while also hinting at the very Dionysian under-currents in Bakhtin’s thought).

At stake is a much more complex conception of the relation be-tween human beings and nature that points to the inherent lack ofharmony between them. The underlying argument here is a very an-cient one; the stoics after all were among the first to praise harmonywith nature as the highest achievement of the good life. The problemis of course suggested by the very need to encourage harmony, a needthat reveals the fact that such a harmony must be striven for, that it isnot natural but acquired. This leads to the obvious opposing view, thathuman beings are intrinsically “out of joint,” that we are at once partof, and radically other than, nature.

The hunt scene is thus a recognition of the vitality of the subject,that subjectivity cannot be eliminated, cannot be subsumed into thewhole without dire consequences—either a mechanical objectivity, anoverwhelming sameness, or a plunge into the silence of pure feeling.And this is merely another way of characterizing the central conflict inWar and Peace as one between subjective autonomy, the privilege ofthe moment, of undivided experience, and objective determinacy, thebasic factors that limit and thus tie together individuals in a world. Ifwe look at the most significant structural traits of the novel I have dis-cussed, they indeed all reveal a variant of this central conflict betweensubject and object understood as an underlying conflict between im-mediate undivided experience which is somehow “mine” and con-structed, hence, mediate, experience that belongs to all and none. Ifthe former slides towards chaos, as a kind of inchoate and necessarilysilent apprehension—indeed, an apprehension so unusual that it doesnot deserve or justify the term—the latter tends towards tyranny, a“semiotic totalitarianism” in Morson’s words. Either extreme failsbecause it denies the delicate balance, the necessary relation to itsother that permits the extreme to exist as a conceptual possibility inthe first place. Indeed, the extremes are a melting away of the tissue ofreality into an amorphous abyss of chaos or unity (understood as pureidentity). The extremes depend on underlying conflict.

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This conflict that spreads out concentrically in the novel like rip-ples of water from the impact of a stone finally comes to its funda-mental form in the Second Part of the Epilogue, where the root of con-flict is located in the basic contradiction between freedom and neces-sity, understood as one between reason and consciousness. This con-tradiction is an absolutely central one. No less a philosopher thanSchelling writes that the contradiction is the impetus to striving forknowledge without which the latter would be empty and trivial:

…it seems that the connection between the concept of freedom and a totalworld view will always remain the subject of an inevitable problem which, if it isnot solved, will leave the concept of freedom ambiguous and philosophy, indeed,totally without value. For this great problem alone constitutes the unconscious andinvisible mainspring of all striving for knowledge from the lowest to the highest.Without the contradiction of necessity and freedom not only philosophy but everynobler ambition of the spirit would sink to that death which is peculiar to thosesciences in which the contradiction serves no function.15

Schelling expands on these comments in another work and, in sodoing, provides a useful formulation applicable both to the principalpattern of struggle in the novel described thus far and to the argumentsof the Epilogue:

All life must pass through the fire of contradiction. Contradiction is the engine oflife and its innermost essence. From this it follows that, as an old book says, alldeeds under the sun are full of trouble and everything languishes in toil, yet doesnot become tired, and all forces incessantly struggle against each other. Werethere only unity and everything were in peace, then, truly nothing would want tostir itself and everything would sink into listlessness. Now everything ardentlystrives to get out of unrest to attain rest.16

PART TWO:THE FINITE PATH

The reason by which one may reason isnot eternal reason; a being which onemay name is not the highest being.1

For life is sweetest when we are freefrom the care of thought.2

CHAPTER FOUR: THE FUNDAMENTALSTRUCTURE

The movement from early and apparently corrosive skepticism to amore holistic approach to the narrative capture of historical eventsculminates in the Second Part of the Epilogue. Here the central rela-tion—indeed, the struggle—between the two most powerful compet-ing forces in the novel, the individual subject and the overwhelmingwhole, the objective reality that impinges on the subject and that thelatter seeks to shape to its own ends, comes to pregnant expression.Behind this relation lurks a deeper argument about freedom and ne-cessity in literary art that turns on the difficult question whether a lit-erary work can depict freedom, that is, whether a literary work canprovide an account of freedom. This question is so difficult becausethe giving of an ordered account of freedom—what must be beyondany order or structure to be—seems entirely contradictory, opposingtwo basically contradictory notions, that of freedom and system, im-mediacy and mediation. Yet, there is no narrative that can dispensewith this question if one grasps narrative as the conferring of form onthe immediate apprehension of occurrence, as the translation of theimmediate into the language of concepts, indeed, into language itself.For narrative from this perspective is the shape of consciousness; it isthe means by which consciousness comes to understand itself.

The Second Part of the Epilogue has a generic form radically dif-ferent from the rest of the novel; it is written as a sustained treatise.Hence, in examining it, I shall proceed in a manner appropriate to thatform, while also being cautious not to forget that this treatise is thefinal part of a long novel and the culmination of the remarks that thenarrator has scattered throughout its latter half in the historical essays.Tolstoy’s argument has two distinctive movements. In the first sevenchapters, the narrator is concerned both to state in what consist theobject and purpose of historical narratives and to point out once morehow modern historians have fallen wide of the mark by preferring to“answer questions no one asks” (2E/I). In the final five chapters, thenarrator reveals why historians have failed. He identifies the central

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problem as one of freedom and turns subsequent discussion directly tometaphysics. Specifically, having already argued that the explanationsupon which historians of various kinds have based their writing ofhistory are unsatisfactory, Tolstoy proceeds to trace this result to theirbelief in the reality of human freedom. In doing so, he develops hisown treatment of the problem, the relation of reason to consciousness,that proves to be the summit of rational argument in the novel, its full-est exploration of its own foundations.

1. THE PROBLEM OF HISTORY

The first lines of the Second Part of the Epilogue restate both theobject and great difficulty of historical writing with breathtaking sim-plicity: “The object of history is the life of peoples and of humanity.To capture directly and put into words—to describe—the life of hu-manity or even of a single people appears to be impossible.” This isthe kind of opening apothegm that sets up a trenchant and unavoidableirony, that conceives of the writing of history as a Sisyphean task, anexercise in the retention of ever frustrated hopes. And, of course, thisirony seems to hang over the novel itself which, after all, shows everyevidence of seeking to write history as historians have not. But it isworth questioning whether an ironical stance is entirely appropriate.The narrator continues:

The ancient historians all employed one and the same method to describe andseize the apparently elusive—the life of a people. They described the activity ofindividuals who ruled a people, and this activity expressed for them the activity ofthe whole people.

To the questions: In what manner did individuals compel peoples to act asthey wished and by what was the will of these individuals themselves guided? Theancients answered the first by acknowledging the will of a deity that subjectedpeoples to the will of a chosen man, and the second by acknowledging that thesame deity guided the will of the chosen man to predestined ends.

For the ancients these questions were solved by belief in the direct participa-tion of a deity in the affairs of mankind.

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These comments are an admission of limitation based on the dif-ference between God and man; to attribute a sense of irony to them isequivalent to suggesting that human finitude is simply ironic. But thisis surely a trivialization of their metaphysical significance. While thedesire to overcome limitation may be ironic, it is also heroic; ulti-mately it is the desire to know as a god, to throw off the “mortal coil”and possess the unmediated vision of the whole that our traditiongrants to the gods or God alone. Moreover, as such, this latter desire isthe basis for a people’s knowledge of itself. Tolstoy says that the goalof history is the “description of the movement of peoples and human-ity,” and he also appears to conclude that this description constitutesthe “self-awareness of peoples and humanity.”

Yet, human knowing is ineluctably mediate, and the narrator refersto the means the ancients chose in order to describe the ever elusivelife of a people. The finite mind cannot grasp the whole of this life asit is in itself, but only as it appears to us in terms of a given relation tothat whole.

This relation, then, is of utmost importance, the act of understand-ing depends on it, and that is why the narrator so quickly moves todiscuss means. According to him, the ancients write history throughthe prism of the chosen man who represents and guides his people to adivinely ordained goal. This prism is the relation, a form of mediationthat seeks to reflect the whole and whose accuracy or truthfulness isunderwritten by the assumption that the deity participates in humanaffairs. It is not clear on what basis Tolstoy makes these generaliza-tions about ancient historiography; they in fact seem to apply better toHomeric epic than they do either to Herodotus and Thucydides orSallust and Tacitus. It is also an open question whether they apply tonarratives in the Bible. It seems most likely that Tolstoy is trying tocombine Pagan and Christian forms of historiography in one set ofgeneralizations, a rather problematic endeavor to say the very least.

Perhaps the best one can do is to reduce Tolstoy’s analysis to twoprimary contentions. First, he claims that human history can be writ-ten only via mediations of some kind; the ancients looked to the cho-sen man both as an expression of his people and the will of the deity.

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Second, the suitability of this mediation to fulfill its purpose is guar-anteed by a belief in an active deity. In other words, the mediation isgrounded in a particular metaphysical belief. It is noteworthy thatTolstoy never criticizes the view that the deity participates in the af-fairs of men—he tacitly admits that there can be no argument amongdifferent metaphysical beliefs. Instead, Tolstoy simply goes on to in-dicate that this view is no longer satisfactory because the belief onwhich it is based has been rejected by modern historians. Here he ech-oes a line from Book III: “The ancients have left us model heroic po-ems in which the heroes furnish the whole interest of the story, and weare still unable to accustom ourselves to the fact that for our humanis-tic (anthropocentric) epoch a history of that kind is meaningless”(III/2/XIX).

While modern historians may have rejected the ancients’ belief inthe direct participation of a deity in history, they have not succeededin articulating a justification for their own approach to historical nar-rative. They in fact merely follow the ancients:

It would seem that having rejected the belief of the ancients in man’s subjec-tion to the deity and in a predetermined end towards which nations are led, mod-ern history should study not the manifestations of power but the causes that giveorder to it. But modern history has not done this. Having in theory rejected theview held by the ancients, it still follows them in practice. (2E/I)

This is the crux of the arguments which absorb the narrator’s at-tention until the end of chapter VII of the Epilogue. To employ tradi-tional metaphors, in these chapters Tolstoy seeks to tear down the edi-fice of modern historiography because its foundations are not capableof supporting it. In particular, the argument purports to show that,while modern historians have rejected the direct participation of thedeity in human affairs, they have in reality only transferred the roleperformed by the deity to new entities which, on closer inspection, aresimply not capable of fulfilling that role.

I would like to pause for a moment to address a peculiar aspect ofthis citation that will occupy us again further on in my analysis of theSecond Part of the Epilogue. Tolstoy says that historians should turntheir attention to the “causes that give order/shape” to historical

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events. But I have just shown in Part 1 that Tolstoy also said that his-torians need to divert their attention away from the search for causes ifthey seek knowledge of historical events. We are obviously in thepresence of a contradiction; the question is whether that contradictionis real or only apparent. I think that no simple answer is ready to hand.Rather, I suspect that Tolstoy’s language is somewhat lax here andreveals his occasional tendency to look on laws as having a quasi-causal function in describing historical events. In other words, he il-licitly confers on laws the status of a cause in the limited (and mis-leading) sense that one might well answer the question why an eventoccurred as it did by referring to its compliance with certain laws. Imean that one might say that a ball drops because of the law of grav-ity, thereby giving the law the status of a cause. But it should be clearthat this explanation is imprecise; the law of gravity does not causethe ball to fall, it does not initiate the motion, it merely describes it.There is a fine line here which is easily blurred and reveals a tensionin the notion of law that cannot be dismissed.

To show that historians have failed to provide a new basis for un-derstanding historical events, Tolstoy revives the incommensurabilitythesis to suggest that any of the new entities historians use to explainhistorical events cannot adequately explain why the event has come topass: “To find component forces equal to the composite or resultantforce, the sum of the components must equal the resultant” (2E/II).Or, as the narrator says in chapter III: “The only conception that canexplain the movement of peoples is that of some force commensuratewith the whole movement of the peoples.”

The problem, then, becomes one concerning force. The question ofwhat constitutes the force that causes historical events, the “locomo-tive” of history, to borrow an image Tolstoy himself uses, is abso-lutely central, “for the whole interest of history lies directly in thatforce” (2E/I). It is therefore not surprising that the next and secondchapter of the Epilogue begins with the question: “What force movespeoples?” The narrator first tries to answer this question by discussingthe different attitudes to it current among historians. He divides theminto three general groups: biographical (including historians of spe-cific peoples), general and cultural. In these three he identifies a

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common attempt to explain why events occur in the way they do bysearching for a force similar to that of the deity; each of these threekinds of historians seeks to find a single explanatory principle forevents based either on the activity of one individual or group (bio-graphical) or the interrelation of an individual and one or severalgroups (general and cultural). But in every case the narrator affirmsthat the explanatory principle fails to meet the threshold test of com-mensurability. As a result, historians resort to a murky concept ofpower to “fill in the gap,” one with which Tolstoy has in fact carriedon a polemical debate throughout the novel. He asks: How is it thatone man can be claimed to have power over others?

So long as histories are written of separate individuals, whether Caesars, Al-exanders, Luthers or Voltaires, and not a history of all, absolutely all, those whotake part in an event, it is quite impossible to describe the movement of humanitywithout the conception of a force compelling men to direct their activity towards acertain end. And the only such conception known to historians is that of power.(2E/III)

The narrator devotes a long discussion to the subject of power. Inthe absence of the notion of a ruling deity, how is it that men can beendowed with an equivalent power? Of what does this power consist?Tolstoy rehearses a series of arguments all of which deal with thisproblem: he rejects both the notion that individuals can exert directphysical coercion over the masses and that they can exercise a kind ofmoral authority over them. He also rejects the supposedly jurispru-dential argument that the people confer power upon their leaders torepresent them. He finally comes to the conclusion that explanationsof power are tautological; that is, they explain nothing, they end upstating that power is power. This leads Tolstoy to question whetherpower is anything more than a sort of phantasm, a wind-egg of theintellect.

In response he concludes that power has a phenomenal reality quiteapart from the conceptual parlor games of historians:

If the realm of human knowledge were confined to abstract reasoning, thenhaving subjected to criticism the explanation of power that science gives us, hu-manity would conclude that power is merely a word and has no real existence. Butman has, besides abstract reasoning, experience in regard to knowledge of phe-

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nomena by which he verifies his reflections. And experience tells us that power isnot merely a word but an actually existing phenomenon.

Not to speak of the fact that no description of the collective activity of mencan do without the concept of power, the existence of power is proved both byhistory and by observing contemporary events. (2E/V)

Tolstoy claims, using a baldly verificationist argument, that poweris a really existing phenomenon the explanation of which is insuffi-cient, and this is the continuing refrain of his subsequent analyses. Ofparticular interest in this regard is his quasi-Humean critique of a cer-tain kind of causation, the giving of commands, which deepens thepreceding criticisms set out at length in both the fictional text and thehistorical essays. I call this critique “Humean” because it essentiallydestroys the notion of a necessary connection between cause and ef-fect, i.e., a really existing or “metaphysical” necessity, just as Humehad in his famous treatment of causation.1 According to Tolstoy thereis and can be no necessary connection between the giving and execu-tion of a particular command. Indeed, there can be no relation otherthan an apparently coincidental one; strictly speaking, from this pointof view commands cannot be causes in the traditional sense:

Our false conception that an event is caused by a command which precedes itis due to the fact that when the event has taken place, and out of thousands of oth-ers those few commands which were consistent with the event [i.e. as it turnedout] have been executed, we forget about the others that were not executed be-cause they could not be. (2E/VI)

This thinking is completely consistent with the account of PrinceBagration’s manner of command at Schön Grabern. It asserts that thepower of a commander is illusory, that we cannot understand this kindof power as the exercise of direct coercion on the troops. Tolstoy in-troduces another thesis in this connection which is familiar from thenovel. He claims that the leaders, those who are supposed to exercisepower, are in fact dependent on the troops ostensibly under theircommand. The leaders have the least connection with the actual con-duct of the battle; they stand away from it and issue commands,whereas the troops are in the thick of things and they engage in thephysical act of killing that is the essence of war.

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Tolstoy employs the figure of a cone to explain this structure. Atthe top of the cone is the leader, the individual supposedly in com-mand. At the bottom of the cone are the troops who actually engage inthe basic activities. Between these two extremes, there are a series ofdifferent levels. Tolstoy asserts that all these levels are connected andthat the crucial explanatory merit of this figuration is that it explainsnot causes but the connections between those who ostensibly arevested with power or command and those who are not. But Tolstoy iscareful to point out that these connections are dynamic in so far aspower is a fatally divided phenomenon. He suggests that the com-manders exercise moral whereas the troops exercise physical power.One kind of power moves “downwards,” so to speak, while the othermoves “upwards.”

There is thus a constant dynamism between the two extremes ofthe cone and, hence, when one seeks to account for why a certain ac-tion is taken, both explanations recommend themselves; one is thereason for the other, and neither can stand alone. The hope to explainpower as a cause of what occurs is in this sense circular, and Tolstoyadmits as much:

Morally the wielder of power appears to cause the event; physically it is thosewho submit to the power. But as the moral activity is inconceivable without thephysical, the cause of the event is neither in the one nor the other, but in the unionof the two.

Or, in other words, the conception of a cause is inapplicable to the phenomenawe are examining.

In the last analysis we reach the circle of infinity—that final limit to which inevery domain of thought man’s reason arrives if it is not playing with its object.Electricity produces heat, heat produces electricity. Atoms attract each other andatoms repel one another. (2E/VII)

This circle is not necessarily a vicious one; it merely indicates thatthe search for a causal explanation of historical events is not the bestway to grasp them or fails to grasp their essence, one which lies indynamic interconnection. And this is of course a wholly expected re-sult. We have already seen that a very distinctive element of Tolstoy’sattitude to the problems of historical inquiry is to eliminate the tradi-

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tional notion of cause. We are no longer to ask “Why?” or “Whatfor?” If the narrator initially claimed that the question of force was thecrucial question of history, it is now obvious that looking for answersbased on a causal analysis is fruitless. This is so because it is impossi-ble to identify an ultimate cause for an event.

The deity is of course such a cause. But, having rejected the deity,historians should not expect to find a final cause as if the deity stillplayed a role in historical analysis. What is this role? As I have notedbefore, the deity is the ground, the guarantor of the meaningfulnessand truthfulness of explanation. In the narrator’s words, “[w]ithoutadmitting divine intervention in the affairs of humanity we cannot re-gard ‘power’ as the cause of events” (2E/5).

With this discussion, the first seven chapters of the Second Part ofthe Epilogue end inconclusively; they thus reveal a grave metaphysi-cal problem but do not explicitly provide an answer. On the one hand,it is clear that to provide a historical narrative which explains why anevent took place in the way it did is impossible without a grounding ina divine power, one not subject to time and space. On the other hand,it is equally clear that this divine power is no longer accepted and thatno successful substitute has emerged to take its place. Heidegger ex-presses the problem succinctly: “If God, the Christian God, has losthis place in the transcendent world, then this place itself still remains,although as one that has become empty.” Moreover, the “empty placeeven demands to be occupied anew and to have God replaced bysomething else now that He has disappeared” (1950: 225).2

This problematic is quintessentially modern in that it reveals thedifficulties inherent in any attempt at explanation which avoids theissue of a ground or basis that transcends the terms of the explanation.If no basis or final point for such terms exists, one cannot help butcome to that very “circle of infinity” that the narrator describes; ulti-mately, all explanations become tautologies; they assert that a thing isbecause it is.

This is another way of saying that the human mind is finite, that itmust posit either a ground of explanation for an event that exceeds its

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limited, empirical grasp or cease exploring why. “Why?” is the meta-physical question par excellence; it is the question which forces usbehind the appearances since its essence is not to accept but to look tothe roots under the tree. Tolstoy in this first argument of the SecondPart of the Epilogue seems to be arguing in another way the majorpoint made in the historical essays, that the search for causes is fruit-less, that a rational approach to history cannot seek to know whyevents occur because to do so it will have to step beyond its own lim-its.

Again, it is not hard to see that these views could be consideredskeptical. Yet, as before, they can only be considered skeptical in thelight of the very standards they seek to overcome. In other words, onewould have to define skepticism as relating only to knowledge ofcauses; any account that is unable to explain why an event occurredwould then be an invitation to skepticism. But Tolstoy’s attitude ishardly skeptical. He suggests that we should forget trying to knowwhy, to move beyond the appearances, that we should in fact acceptand trust them for what they are. History should attempt to knowevents as they are instead of organizing them on the basis of principleswhich move beyond them. We can know the world of appearances,but we cannot know what lies beyond them, that is the prerogative ofGod.

There are several important implications in this view which thesubsequent arguments of the Second Part of the Epilogue bring outwith greater clarity. In this sense, the first seven chapters act as a pro-legomenon to Tolstoy’s attempt to provide an account of the dynamicstructure that explains the problem of grounding and the need for reli-ance not on identification of causes but on general laws that describephenomena without reference to their origins or ultimate ends. Tolstoyintroduces this structure by questioning the nature of freedom, whilemoving forward to the heart of his discussion in a typically layeredmanner; he first establishes that freedom and system are in contradic-tion and then locates the origin of this contradiction in the peculiaritiesof the relation between subject and object; finally, he generalizes thisrelation as one between two different kinds of knowing, consciousnessand reason, thereby disclosing the central structure of the novel.

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I intend to examine each of these layers in detail in the course ofthe discussions that follow. By doing so I hope to reveal that Tolstoy’sthinking is rooted in an essentially Christian-Platonic metaphysicscouched in the philosophical language Tolstoy seems to have adoptedlargely from Schopenhauer. For Tolstoy, man is an inescapably di-vided creature, at once free and unfree, with one foot in the infiniteand the other firmly in the finite. Tolstoy addresses this circumstancethrough his own original conception of the productive relation be-tween consciousness and reason in which freedom and consciousness,the openness of the present, are associated with man’s inner life, whilereason is associated with closure and necessity, man’s external or“hive” life (roievaia zhizn’).3 But the core of Tolstoy’s position is notin either of the polarities of infinite and finite; it lies in the dynamicrelation between the two, in the very fact that man combines theseapparently divided spheres in a sort of “inbetween,” a liminal beingthat is neither god nor animal, but rather a sort of erotic daimonion,4 acontinuous dynamism that creates and destroys, that emerges and dis-appears just like the drops in the globe Pierre dreams: man is allstruggle, and this struggle is history.5

I should also point out that my analysis moves in two directions atthe same time. It both refers back, and adds a new dimension, to mypreceding discussions of the novel, where I have shown that a dy-namic struggle to know the infinite is a fundamental structural aspectof the text itself, and anticipates the final section of this Part in whichI try to show how a similar struggle plays out in the lives of two majorcharacters in the novel, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezuk-hov.

2. FREEDOM

Freedom brings to light the most intractable problems of historicalinquiry, but its presence remains unspoken. Near the beginning ofchapter VIII of the Second Part of the Epilogue, Tolstoy’s narratorsays:

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The presence of the nonetheless unspoken question about freedom of the willis felt at every step of history.

All seriously thinking historians are involuntarily led to this question. All thecontradictions and obscurities of history, and the false path taken by this science,are due solely to the lack of a solution to this question.

(2E/1)

To clarify the parameters of the question, I shall examine the wayin which freedom leads to the “contradictions and obscurities of his-tory,” the ineradicable incommensurability that undermines the writ-ing of history.

2.1. Freedom as lack of connection

Tolstoy stresses that freedom of the will leads to “contradictionsand obscurities” because it is a negative concept, defined as “freedomfrom” or a lack of connection. If history is characterized by lack ofconnection, then history is “accidental,” a collection of chance, iso-lated happenings which defy unification, having no intrinsic identity;it is an unsoundable chaos stripped of meaning. Freedom denies tohistory the very orderliness by virtue of which historians could inte-grate diverse “happenings” into meaningful narratives. Tolstoy com-ments:

If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man could act as he pleased,all history would be a series of disconnected accidents.

If even one man in a million once in a thousand years had the power to actfreely, that is, as he chose, it is evident that this man’s single free act in violationof the laws governing human action would destroy the possibility of the existenceof any laws for the whole of humanity.

But if there is so much as a single law governing the actions of men, free willcannot exist, for man’s will would be subject to that law.

In this contradiction lies the problem of freedom of the will… (2E/VII)

Tolstoy’s conception of history expresses a form of “superessen-tialism,” the proposition that absolutely all properties that can be spo-ken of a given entity are necessary to its identity and, hence, entails

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that history can be knowable only as the seamless connection of allthe “accidents” (which, of course, can no longer be referred to as suchif they come together as of necessity). Every action finds itself impli-cated in a complex web of relations reflecting the narrator’s conten-tion that there “…undoubtedly exists a connection among all contem-poraneously living beings…” (2E/II). For Tolstoy, knowledge of his-tory is impossible without this level of connection, and laws are theonly means by which the latter may be expressed in historical narra-tive. He does not accept the probable; laws must be absolute. For Tol-stoy no action can ever be free in the sense of being free from, or out-side the purview of such laws. Freedom of the will acts in oppositionto this absolute coherence.

Tolstoy maintains that freedom challenges system, in this case asystem of laws, and, ultimately, unity as well, for system is a unifyingstructure subsuming a multiplicity under one principle or hierarchy ofprinciples. Freedom impedes this kind of cognition and, as such, free-dom is a problem.

2.2. Origin of freedom

The narrator then proceeds to explain that this problem arises be-cause of the peculiar fact that human beings can observe themselvesobserving and that, in doing so, human beings have an impression thatthey are beyond determination as an object, that they are free. Theorigin of the ability to observe oneself remains mysterious, for thisorigin cannot go beyond itself to that which is greater and, hence,more original, because it is itself that which is forever greater andmore original, perpetually retreating from determination.

The narrator distinctively articulates this interpretation of the ori-gin of freedom only a few paragraphs into chapter VIII:

The question is that, looking at a person as an object of observation fromwhatever point of view—theological, historical, ethical or philosophical—we finda general law of necessity to which he, like all that exists, is subject. But lookingat him from within ourselves, as at that of which we are conscious, we feel our-selves to be free. (2E/VIII)

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When we observe one of ourselves as an object, we must assumethat this object conforms to the rules which have been fashioned togive definition to that object as object, what Tolstoy means by the“law of necessity.” Yet, this cannot hold when we observe one of our-selves as a subject. In this case, we consider the other as a subject likeourselves and can think of the other as being free only through thiskind of “translation.” This is why the narrator uses the verb soznavat’,“to recognize” or “to be aware of,” instead of nabliudat’, “to ob-serve,” to describe the kind of recognition of the other as a subjectwhich allows one to observe the other as a subject. That is, the other isnot observed as another subject, since the narrator seems to limit the

objects. The tortured locution “iz sebia kak na to chto my soznaem”emphasizes that the recognition of the other as a subject must be anidentification from within.

in greater detail the conception of subject and object on which Tolstoyrelies.

By definition, an object is other, that which is thrown opposite.6

Hence, it cannot stand alone. The crucial question here concerns thatto which an object is thrown opposite. This is certainly not anotherobject, but obviously a subject. Here is the grounding interpretation ofthe relation of human beings to the world which the modern age hasfashioned. It is the crucial distinction between us and “them” or allthings which achieve their “thinghood” by being thrown opposite us,by being in this sense, not us.

Now, if the subject is to know or define the object, the subject mustbe able to “encompass” the object; it must be greater than the object ornot totally exhausted by it. To use a simple analogy of perspective as aheuristic tool, I suggest that the subject can encompass the object onlyif the latter is “lesser than” or within the “view” of the subject.7 If theobject were not “lesser than” the subject, the subject would be unableto “take it in,” it would be unable fully to define the object. It followsthat anything “greater than” the subject cannot be fully defined. For itis one thing to define an object as what it is, and quite another to de-

notion of observation to “external phenomena” (vneshnie iavleniia) or

How is this possible? To answer this question we need to examine

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fine what it is as what it is not. The first kind of definition applies onlyto objects which are in some sense “lesser than,” while the secondapplies to that class of “objects” that are only objects in so far as theyare not objects, being always “greater than,” like the infinite. In thelanguage of our metaphors of perspective, objecthood is achievedwhen the object is “lesser than” and can be completely seen or defined(“fenced in”).

Therefore, when we observe a person as from within ourselves, weencounter a contradiction.

This contradiction consists in the fact that observing a person asfrom within ourselves requires that we consider him at once both aslesser and greater than the observing subject, both as definable andundefinable. On the one hand, as an object, the person is always lesserthan the observer. On the other hand, as a subject like the observer, wemust consider him greater than any one self in so far as he must ex-ceed any specific objectification as a self to be like us capable of rec-ognizing a self. This is but another way of saying that, as a subject, theother “conceals” the inner dimension from observation. And this ap-plies just as surely to reflection on one’s own self, where there is aseparation between object self and subject self which remains funda-mentally undefinable. In both cases it is precisely this inner dimensionthat is always hidden or “greater than” since it cannot be reduced toany one objectification.

Tolstoy draws an essential distinction between two aspects ofgrasping or perceiving a person, from without as an object and fromwithin as a subject. In the first case, a person observed strictly as anobject of a specific science is governed by the “law of necessity,”while in the second case, that same person cannot be looked at other-wise than as free. The inner dimension of the subject therefore tran-scends objectification and is in this sense free. As such, it is the originor ground of freedom called consciousness (soznanie).

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2.3. Consciousness

Consciousness is an awareness of mysterious immediacy. In thefollowing analysis, I try to shed light on this mysterious immediacy byexamining Tolstoy’s initial attempt to provide a sort of “definition” ofit (again in chapter VIII of the Second Part of the Epilogue). The nar-rator says that “…consciousness is a source of self-cognition com-pletely separate from and independent of reason. Through reason aperson observes himself; but he only knows himself through con-sciousness.” The definition accords with the claim that consciousnessis a means of describing an internal dimension of the subject. This canbe gathered from the distinction between “to observe” and “to know.”“To observe” (nabliudat’) suggests an externalization or objectifica-tion of the subject in so far as the subject must give itself as an objectto allow any observation. “To know” (znat’), on the contrary, suggestsanother kind of knowing which cannot be easily described as aknowing of any object. In a revealing draft for this chapter, Tolstoywrites that “[b]eing conscious of myself, I am free, representing my-self (to myself), I am subject to laws” (PSS 16: 255). Here Tolstoyreturns to the verb soznavat’ to describe the internal, subjective aspectand to the verb predstavliat’ to describe the external or “objective”dimension of knowing.

This antithesis harkens to the distinction between an inner or intel-ligible self which is free and an empirical self subject to laws that hasits roots in Kantian philosophy. Tolstoy seems to have encounteredthe distinction in these terms through his reading of Schopenhauer. Itis well-known that Tolstoy started reading Schopenhauer in 1869 ashe was working on the Second Part of the Epilogue to War and Peace.In a letter to Fet, dated May 10, 1869, Tolstoy writes:

What is the main reason why I am not afraid? Because that which I wrote, es-pecially in the epilogue, is not invented by me, but wrested with effort fromwithin. Another comfort is that Schopenhauer, approaching from another point ofview, in his Wille says exactly the same thing as I do. (PSS 61: 217)

Boris Eikhenbaum points out that the drafts for the Second Part ofthe Epilogue provide ample evidence of the extensive influence ofSchopenhauer and, in particular, of his famous prize essay, On Free-

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dom of the Will. Reference to Schopenhauer in fact establishes a con-text in Kantian philosophy that clarifies the antithesis between “beingconscious of” and “representing” as a tendentious variant of Kant’steaching about the divided nature of selfhood, that there is both anintelligible and phenomenal self.8

This distinction follows Kant’s essential division of the sourceswhich together constitute human knowledge, sensory intuition (An-schauung) and concepts (Begriffe), the latter constituted first andforemost by the table of categories or pure concepts. For Kant, knowl-edge can only result from a combination (Synthesis) of such intuitionsand concepts derived in judgments of the understanding (Verstand).This kind of knowledge (Erkenntnis), the only kind which Kant rec-ognizes as such, is dependent on, and, hence, limited by sensory in-formation received by a subject (die Rezeptivität des Gemüts); it isphenomenal in so far as it is based on how things appear to us. Kantmaintains that knowledge of a thing as it is “in itself” (Ding an sich)and not as it appears is noumenal and remains impossible for us.

Schopenhauer extends and rethinks this distinction in a very sig-nificant way by expressing it as one between the will and representa-tion (Vorstellung). The inner or noumenal nature of an object is willand as such is not knowable. But its external or phenomenal nature isknowable in the form of a representation in which a certain objectifi-cation of the will (Objektivation des Willens) emerges in conformitywith the conditions for understanding of the subject; namely, time,space and causality. By ascending to ever more complex and refinedobjectifications of the will through the activity of representing theworld and itself to itself, the will comes to “know” itself.

In the essay on free will, Schopenhauer uses a different termino-logical configuration, distinguishing between self-consciousness(Selbstbewußtsein) and the consciousness of other things (Bewußtseinanderer Dinge), the former applying to the inner nature, the latter ap-plying to the world outside (1999: 49). Schopenhauer indicates thatself-consciousness is immediate (unmittelbar) whereas the conscious-ness of other things is the mediate knowledge of the outside worldprovided by representations (Vorstellungen). Self-consciousness is

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nothing more than the consciousness of the will of its own self, and,since the will as it is in itself cannot be a representation, self-consciousness can only be unmediated.

Schopenhauer’s adaptation of Kant and his particular terminologyilluminates Tolstoy’s use of the noun soznanie and the equivalent verbsoznavat’ as well as the verb predstavliat’. Each of these terms corre-sponds to a German equivalent used by Schopenhauer in distinguish-ing between the internal and external. Soznanie corresponds to theGerman word for self-consciousness, Selbstbewußtsein (or bewußtsein which Schopenhauer also uses to translate the Latin equivalent tosoznanie, conscientia, in the prize essay). Predstavlenie is equivalentto the German word for representation, Vorstellung. This equivalenceallows one to surmise that Tolstoy’s narrator indeed does create a dis-tinction between two kinds of knowledge of the self that incorporatesor reflects Schopenhauer’s own interpretation.

Tolstoy seems to be closer to Schopenhauer because self-consciousness in the sense of an immediate apperception of “oneself,”although originally a Kantian term (1965: 136, 142, 153).9 is appro-priated in a distinctive way by Schopenhauer. In the essay on freewill, Schopenhauer writes: “…for self-consciousness is immediate.How ever that should be is our next question: What does self-consciousness contain? Or: how does a person become aware of hisown self? Answer: completely as a willing being” (1999: 50-51).10

The narrator uses remarkably similar language in the Second Part ofthe Epilogue: “As a living being a person knows himself in no otherway than as willing, that is, he is conscious of his own will.”

In an important draft version of Chapter VIII, Tolstoy is rathermore candid and refers directly to Schopenhauer in support of his ownposition (in the following translation I have retained the very unevenstyle of the original):

Schopenhauer, in my opinion, is the greatest thinker of the present centuryand the only direct heir of the great thinkers of modern philosophy, Descartes,Spinoza, Locke, Kant, having proved just as successfully as they, using the newtool of our century—the natural sciences (Der Wille in der Natur) in his essay onfree will crowned by the Academy, the law of necessity, to which man is subject,

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in deciding the question (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung and Grundproblemeder Ethik). By a complicated path of reasoning he comes to recognition of thesource of unmediated knowledge—the very same Ding an sich, which x for Kantremained or was understood as pure reason, and the source of this knowledge hesees [that] in the unmediated consciousness of the will—Der Wille zum Lebenwhich in essence is the very same as Kant’s reason and Ding an sich: it is nothingelse than unmediated consciousness, the very unmediated consciousness whichthese two great thinkers, through enormous and majestic labor, arrived at by wayof thought but which in all its force and clarity lies in the soul of everyone, eventhe most crude person, the very same consciousness against which Schopenhauerin his Preis[s]chrift über die Freiheit des Willen[s] not infrequently takes up armsand to which he constantly returns. (PSS 16: 246)11

The significance of Tolstoy’s closeness to Schopenhauer lies in thefact that consciousness as self-consciousness is not a transcendental ora priori unity as it might be in Kant (1965: 153)12 or thought in theprocess of thinking itself as it might be in Hegel (1977: 46-57).Rather, consciousness is not at all a realm of reason or thought. It isinstead a mysterious “sense” of immediacy whose exact character canonly be rather difficult if not impossible to describe. This difficulty, ofcourse, is not surprising since consciousness seems to relate to a“something,” the will, which cannot be known as an object; to do sowould indicate that it is “available” to mediation by reason as anyother object. But as the narrator indicates, consciousness is a source ofself-knowing not accessible to reason as it is in itself, in its immedi-acy.

Consciousness “of the” will is then a highly problematic expres-sion which can only be inaccurate. Consciousness is not “conscious-ness of” anything; in this sense, it is consciousness of nothing and isitself somehow a “nothing,” an awareness that we cannot explain.This is its link with freedom of the will which is also a “nothing” tothe extent it takes no specific phenomenal form, i.e., as it is in itself.Hence, consciousness “of” can only be a misleading phrase whoseessential negation works against its own assertion. Consciousness isboth “of” freedom and itself free.

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2.4. The mystery of consciousness

Consciousness “of” freedom is therefore a “locus” of unusualequivalencies which ever retreats from determination. When the nar-rator uses the verb “znat’” to distinguish knowledge of the self asalive from knowledge of the self as an observed or object-self, he isasserting the possibility of a kind of knowledge to which reason hasno access. What is more, the narrator asserts that this kind of knowl-edge is more fundamental than rational knowledge, which would beimpossible without it. The narrator says that “[w]ithout consciousnessof oneself no observation and no application of reason is conceiv-able.” This assertion forms part of a crucial paragraph in Chapter VIII.Although I have already examined portions of this paragraph, it isworth citing in its entirety:

To understand, observe, and draw conclusions, a person must first be con-scious of himself as a living being. As a living being a person knows himself in noother way than as willing, that is, he is conscious of his own will. His will, whichconstitutes the essence of his life, a person is conscious of, and cannot be con-scious of, other than as free.

Since one cannot be conscious of oneself other than as free, it fol-lows that freedom is unavoidable. Surely this is a peculiar conclusion.Yet, it is only a further affirmation of the difference between observ-ing an object from without as object and from within as subject. Thelatter, of course, is not observation in the sense of a representation ofthe self as an object at all, but as the problematic consciousness ofoneself.

The narrator proceeds to claim that, no matter how convincing theproof is that the will directs itself according to one and the same law, aperson cannot otherwise (ne mozhet inache) understand this same di-rection of his will than as a limitation (ogranichenie). Since only whatis free may be limited, the narrator concludes that a person imagineshis will to be limited only because he is conscious of it as free.

The remaining examples culminate in a rhetorically charged para-graph:

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But having learned with certainty that his will is subject to laws, he does notand cannot believe it.

However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under thesame conditions and with the same character he will do the same thing as before,yet when, under the same conditions and with the same character, he approachesfor the thousandth time an action that always ends in the same way, he feels ascertainly convinced as before the experiment that he can act as he pleases. Everyman, savage or sage, however incontestably reason and experiment may prove tohim that it is impossible to imagine two different courses of action in precisely thesame conditions, feels that without this irrational conception (which constitutesthe essence of freedom) he cannot imagine life. He feels that, however impossibleit may be, it is so, for without the conception of freedom not only would he be un-able to understand life, but he would be unable to live for a single moment.

…A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of life.

In all of the examples, evidence that the will is not free proves tocarry no weight whatsoever. The dual character of any particular ac-tion stands out. If one looks at an action as a nexus of causes or assubject to laws, i.e., as rational, it seems determinate and necessary. Ifone looks at the same action as produced from within oneself, thenone cannot help but look at this action as the product of free will,since one cannot consider oneself other than as free. This dualityseems to reside ultimately in the inability of the subject completely todetermine itself, for this kind of determination can only mean onething: death. And how can a subject possibly know of its own death?

3. THE RELATION OF REASON ANDCONSCIOUSNESS

In dealing with history, Tolstoy claims that no resolution of thisrelation of contradictories, between freedom and reason, is required,since history “concerns not the very essence of the will of man, butrepresentation of the appearance of this will in the past and underknown conditions.” The narrator restates this view a few lines furtherin the text: “[h]istory has as its object not the will of man itself, butour representation of it.” His repeated use of the word “representa-tion” (predstavlenie) is clear confirmation of the Kantian nature of therelation, since it is not the will in itself or as free which can be the

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object of history, but rather only a representation of it governed by thelaws of reason. This still leaves matters open as to what a representa-tion can be in the present context.

Tolstoy explains what he understands by this notion of representa-tion in Chapter X of the Second Part of the Epilogue. In doing so, hebegins to sketch the outlines of a relation between freedom and reasonwhich is much less dependent on Kantian thought as interpreted bySchopenhauer. To begin this discussion, the narrator makes an im-portant point:

And so the insoluble mystery concerning the unity of the two contradictories,free will and necessity does not exist for history, as it does for theology, ethics,and philosophy. History examines a representation of man’s life in which theunity of these two contradictories has already been achieved.

The narrator justifies a refusal to answer the question about theorigin of the relation of freedom and necessity. This justificationleaves a most important question unanswered, the very question whichthe preceding interpretation of freedom seems to raise; namely, why isthere any relation between freedom and reason at all? This questionwill remain unanswered, although an answer has been lurking withinthe novel all along; we cannot know why there is such a relation be-cause that knowledge is vouchsafed to God—the relation is the markof finitude, the lack that compels us to reason as a way to compensatefor the deficiencies in our intuitive knowledge of the world.

For the moment, however, it will suffice to examine how the nar-rator describes the unity of freedom and reason in history. The narra-tor begins this description by asserting that every action is a “product”(proizvedenie) of freedom and reason. This is so because knowledge isinescapably mediate. One learns about an event only by learning aboutthe conditions in which it took place, not as a thing in itself or throughimmediate intuition of some kind but through certain mediations.

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3.1. The three grounds of representation

The narrator calls these mediations “foundations” or “grounds”

about freedom and reason. They are three: (i) the relation of someonewho has completed an action to the external world; (ii) the relation totime; and (iii) the relation to the causes which produced the event(2E/X). Each of the grounds is a structure allowing for a variation inwhich greater definition of the basic category tends to necessity, i.e.,the laws of reason, while the opposite tends to freedom.

These grounds recall the three basic determinations Schopenhaueradapts from Kant: space, time and causality. As a result, it is onceagain tempting to gloss over the narrator’s detailed discussion of themby suggesting that Tolstoy has merely borrowed these determinationsfrom Schopenhauer. Aside from the fact that this reveals nothingabout Tolstoy’s argument other than to shrug it off as a borrowingfrom a famous thinker, it also is a questionable judgment; Tolstoy’sarguments in fact diverge from Schopenhauer’s whose touchstone isalways Kant. And, in this context, Boris Eikhenbaum’s judgment onTolstoy’s reading of Schopenhauer, that the former “assimilated”(“assimiliroval sebe”) the latter to his own purposes, is both prudentand accurate.13

Each of the three grounds establishes a network of connections.Their guiding function is twofold: to join together diverse elementsinto a whole and to provide a means of constructing unities. Withoutthem no notion of calculus would be possible—they constitute thebasic building blocks of physical knowledge; that Tolstoy takes thisapproach to historical narrative, that his sense of a more accurate andcomprehensive form of mediation flows from careful attention to thebasic relations which determine physical behavior, confirms his es-sentially modern attitude, the leaning towards a mathematically mod-eled solution to the problems of historical narrative that I have exam-ined at length in Part 1. Moreover, it is of the utmost importance tograsp the notion of a dynamic relation that Tolstoy brings to the forewith his analysis of these three grounding structures. This relation is avariant of the dynamic movement that culminates in the relation of

(osnovaniia) which underlie and make possible any representation

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consciousness to reason; it is in fact Tolstoy’s way of introducing thelimitations that reason cannot overcome thereby ensuring that the lat-ter relation will be forever dynamic and open. Hence, I shall look ateach of these structures in some detail.

3.1.1. Space

Space is defined as relative. It denotes the relation of a person tothe “outside world.” The narrator states that this first grounding is the“…more or less visible relation of a person with the outside world, themore or less clear understanding of the determined position whicheach person occupies in relation to all which simultaneously co-existswith him” (2E/IX). This does not resemble a Kantian definition ofspace, for Kant holds that an a priori “pure intuition” of space mustprecede any relative determination of it; it is a condition of the possi-bility of appearances [“Bedingung der Möglichkeit der Erscheinung”](1965:68).14

But, for Tolstoy, space in this sense is either already as-sumed or not in question, since the primary focus of his approach tospace is that it connects. Space is a determinant which measures thedegree of freedom a person may enjoy in proportion to the degree ofconnection of that person to the outside world.

3.1.2. Time

Time as a grounding is the “…more or less visible temporal rela-tion of a person to the world; the more or less clear understanding ofthat position which the action of a person occupies in time” (2E/IX).This also does not resemble a Kantian definition of time. As in thecase of space, Kant maintains that an a priori “pure intuition” of timemust precede any relative determination. For Kant time is an evenmore fundamental a priori condition of the possibility of experiencethan space, since time is a condition of “inner experience” and, hence,any experience at all [“aller Erscheinungen überhaupt”] (1965: 77).15

This distinction, which Schopenhauer upholds, is not clear at all in thenarrator’s discussion of time and likely plays no role in it.

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The emphasis is once again on connection. Tolstoy advances afairly unorthodox argument in this regard: “The degree of representa-tion of greater or lesser freedom or necessity in this relation dependson the greater or lesser period of time from the time the action wascompleted to the time of judgment about it” (2E/IX). Tolstoy meansby this argument that the more separated in time the judgment fromthe action, the less free the action appears. In support of this argument,the narrator produces some examples:

If I examine an act, performed a moment ago in circumstances approximatelythe same as those in which I find myself now, my action appears to me undoubt-edly free. But If I consider an act performed a month ago, then, finding myself indifferent circumstances, I cannot help recognizing that if that act had not beenperformed, much that resulted from it that was useful, pleasant and even neces-sary would not have taken place. If I recall to memory an action more remote, tenyears ago or more, then the consequences of my action appear still more obviousto me, and I find it hard to imagine what would have happened had that action notbeen performed. The farther I go back in memory, or, what is the same thing, thefarther I go forward in my judgment, the more doubtful becomes my belief in thefreedom of my action.

Exactly the same progression of conviction concerning the part played by freewill in the general affairs of mankind we find in history as well. A contemporaryevent appears to us to be undoubtedly the product of all the known participants;but in the case of a more remote event we see only its unavoidable consequences,which prevent our considering anything else possible. And the farther we go backin examining events the less arbitrary do they seem to us. (2E/IX)

The argument contained in this passage is not particularly clear atfirst glance. It seems to claim that the necessity of an action becomesevident only when one looks back from a distance sufficient enough torender other possibilities doubtful. The problem is that it remains quiteunclear why distance in time should render doubtful possibilitieswhich must have been available closer to the time of the action. Whyshould distance in time have any effect on such possibilities either toaffirm or eliminate them?

One should not deny, however, that there is psychological plausi-bility in this notion; as we have seen in the novel, characters fre-quently read the outcomes of events as “fated,” as having come topass as part of a grand design. Hence, Tolstoy starts from a psycho-

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logical insight but then tries to convert it into an ontological one,skipping from a subjective point of view to one that makes claimsabout the nature of reality. This latter transition is the problem. For inthis case there is a tension between the two views. Perhaps the mostappropriate response to this problem is one that does cross over intometaphysics, maintaining that such possibilities as seemed to be avail-able were illusory, that they were upon reflection the product of de-ceitful appearance rather than reality.

This is a means of asserting the ineluctable primacy of subjectiveperspective in judgment about actions at the time of their occurrence.One’s initial relation to an action determines one’s view of the possi-bilities inherent in it at that time. This relation is, however, limited bythe fact that it is only relative and has not sufficient time to take intoaccount other perspectives. For an action’s “true nature” first unfoldsin time as one examines more perspectives when they become avail-able after the fact. What may have seemed fortuitous or accidental at aparticular time seems necessary or unavoidable at a later time with thebenefit of a broader (more total) view of the action. This is a summaryof what I have shown to be the case in the fictional text where the em-phasis on perspective is unmistakable; Pierre is astonished at the vari-ety of opinions about his speech to the Masonic brethren and the battlescenes constantly stress perspective both by showing the limitednessof one point of view whether it be that of Pierre, Prince Andrei, Nik-olai or Petya, and by bringing those views together to present a fullerand more accurate picture of that battle.

3.1.3. Causality

The last grounding structure, causality, is the “greater or lesser ac-cessibility for us of that infinite nexus of causes.” This nexus ofcauses “constitutes the inevitable demand of reason and in which eachcomprehensible phenomenon, and thus every act of man must have itsown defined place as the consequence of the foregoing or as the causeof what follows” (2E/IX).

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Nowhere is the emphasis on connection more evident than in re-gard to causation. Here the narrator’s statement that “each compre-hensible phenomenon…must have its own defined place” either as aneffect or a cause is very close to the principle of reason. The principleof reason was first formulated by Leibniz and is the basic modernprinciple which holds out the possibility of connecting all things to-gether in a greater and encompassing rational unity or system; ac-cording to it literally no thing can exist as such unless that thing canbe traced to a cause or ratio which explains its origin. Hence, thisprinciple provides for the connection of all things by means of theircausal dependency on each other and is a basic way of giving form todiversity or identity to a multiplicity.

The narrator specifies that an event “becomes” more necessarywith an increase in the knowledge of its causes. Another way of mak-ing this point is that an increasing knowledge of the causes of an eventconvinces one of the density of the causal nexus, a density which canonly reduce and thereby restrict the possibility of freedom. As wehave seen in earlier discussions, the primary thrust of causation in thiscontext is its cognitive utility or its utility as a means of giving form toa diverse range of phenomena by recognizing the complexity of theirinter-connection.

Once again, Tolstoy seems to conflate laws and causes or, at thevery least, that there is a tie of some kind between the two, since bothperform the crucial task of connection or integration. This tie can infact be considerably closer, since causality, as an expression of a law-ful regularity in causal relationships, is essential to connecting phe-nomena. Indeed, the basic assumption of the narrator that there is anorder in the world seems to assume a causal order above all on whichapplication of calculus relies. If there were no patterns, no “homoge-neous tendencies” of mankind, then calculus would be of no conse-quence. These patterns are primarily causal—and what else could theybe? If they are patterns of movement, their very regularity or repeti-tion suggests causality. And this causality might have great diversity,for a number of different kinds of causality might govern the worldand the “tendencies of men.”

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From this standpoint, one could turn the tables and argue that cau-sality has an important role to play in grounding the possibility of ap-plying basic concepts of calculus to history and that to learn aboutcauses as a means of formulating laws is consistent with the narrator’sadvocacy of calculus. This would be in accord with classical physicswhere causality is a structuring principle whose efficacy in the naturalworld is simply assumed.16

3.1.4. Determination and construction

An important question remains: to what degree are these threegrounding structures in fact determinative? In other words, is it possi-ble for an action to be either entirely free or entirely necessary? Thenarrator makes an extended comment on this:

So that if we examine the case of a man whose connection with the externalworld is very well known, where the period of time between the action and ourjudgment of it is very great, and the causes of the action are quite accessible to us,we arrive at a concept of a maximum of necessity and a minimum of free will. Butif we examine the case of a man little dependent on external circumstances, whoseaction was performed very recently, and the causes of whose action are inaccessi-ble to us, we arrive at a concept of a minimum of necessity and a maximum offree will.

But in neither case—however we may shift our point of view, however clearwe may make to ourselves the connection between the man and the external worldor however inaccessible it may be to us, however long or short the period of time,however understandable or incomprehensible the causes of the action maybe—can we ever conceive of either complete freedom or complete necessity.

The narrator proceeds to outline this notion of limitation within theterms of the finite and infinite. He affirms: 1) that we can neither con-ceive of a person outside of space nor of all the spatial conditionswhich determine a person’s actions, since “the number of these condi-tions is as infinitely great as the infinity of space”; 2) that we can nei-ther conceive of a person outside of time, nor can we increase thedistance of time from the occurrence of a given action to infinity,since “this period is finite, but time is infinite”; and 3) that we can

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neither conceive of an action without a cause nor of all the causeswhich constitute the chain of causation relevant to the action (2E/X).

Hence, the grounding structures which permit rational knowledgeensure that it can only be finite. Finitude in this sense is a means ofdefining the limits of rational understanding of the whole, but it alsodefines the possibility of “life.” For, as the narrator is quick to note, acomplete lack of freedom would eliminate the notion of man:

But besides this, even if, admitting a least remainder of freedom equal to zero,we were to assume in some given case—as for instance in that of a dying man, anunborn child, or an idiot—complete absence of freedom, by so doing we shoulddestroy the very concept of man in the case we are examining, for as soon as thereis no freedom, there is no man. (2E/X)

3.1.5. The fundamental ground

The three foregoing grounds of representation are mediating func-tions which serve both to permit and to limit knowledge; such limita-tion is in fact the basic condition of freedom’s possibility. In thisparadox we see the bare outlines of the dynamic relation between con-sciousness and reason which Tolstoy fully describes at the end ofChapter X of the Second Part of the Epilogue. In this pivotal chapter,Tolstoy brings together diverse strands of argument about freedomand necessitating reason within a basic relation between conscious-ness and reason:

Reason expresses the laws of necessity. Consciousness expresses the essenceof freedom.

Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life in human conscious-ness. Necessity without content is reason in its three forms.

Freedom is the thing examined. Necessity is what examines. Freedom is thecontent. Necessity is the form.

Only by separating the two forms of cognition, related to one another as formto content, do we get the mutually exclusive and separately incomprehensibleconcepts of freedom and necessity.

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Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of human life.

Aside from these two concepts which mutually define each other in their ownunity, as form and content, no representation of life is possible.

All that we know of human life is but a certain relation of freedom to neces-sity, that is, of consciousness to the laws of reason.

These are the crucial culminating determinations of the SecondPart of the Epilogue and, indeed, the entire progression of commentson history by the narrator. They reveal a fundamental structure whichgrounds the preceding structures by bringing them together in a unity.This unity, of course, is the relation of consciousness to reason thatthe narrator describes in a striking way as a relation of content toform. This fundamental qualification of the relation of consciousnessto reason is difficult to grasp. For, how is it that consciousness offreedom or consciousness of freedom of the will, what we have previ-ously understood as a sort of immediacy, can serve as “content” toreason? If one interprets this relation within the framework of Kant, itis all too easy to assimilate it to that of sensory intuition and the con-cepts of the understanding. If one interprets this relation within theframework of Schopenhauer, it is equally easy to assimilate it to therelation of the will to reason. Neither of these interpretations providesan entirely accurate account of what the narrator means to say or notto say.

3.1.6. Nothingness and plenitude

Consciousness is consciousness “of” freedom and as such pureimmediacy; this means in turn that it can be literally nothing for rea-son except a border concept, something defined by what it is not.Freedom is therefore not only a border concept, but a root of negation,since freedom can only be defined as a not-x. This is what the narratorseeks to bring out in the relation of freedom to reason; that freedom isfor reason a not, a “thing” only in so far as this “thing” is defined byits not being any “thing,” by its not lending itself to determination.The narrator further maintains that freedom is an ineluctable not, thatno matter how one tries to determine something that determination

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can never be complete. As a result, the issue of what freedom is can-not arise other than as what freedom is not. Freedom as it is in itself,namely, freedom defined in a positive manner, must be impossible,since to define freedom is to eliminate it. Thus, freedom is alwaysonly understood as a relative not—as a defined not. Without defini-tion, one cannot begin even to speak of freedom.

This course of reasoning reveals the basic problem of conscious-ness of freedom. If consciousness, like freedom, only exists (“is”) inso far as it is a defined not, whence this defined not? For definition isa limitation of something greater. Hence, for example, if freedom is adefined not it must presuppose a “greater freedom,” as it were, whichexceeds any definition and, therefore, must be absolute. But an abso-lute freedom cannot be known at all. It can only be a sort of nihil ab-solutum which is absolute negation or “pure nothingness.” If con-sciousness were also this “pure nothingness,” there would be no wayto connect it to reason at all. But the fact that it can be conceived as“pure nothingness” already presupposes such a connection and, indoing so, must pose the most fundamental question of the possibilityof this connection in the first place.

While this question sheds light on the mystery of the connection ofconsciousness to reason, it does not clarify the characterization of thisconnection as one between content and form. How can reason recog-nize consciousness as content at all, if consciousness is a kind ofnothingness? Here the structure of the narrator’s argument starts tocollapse on its own. There must be a hidden assumption or somemeans by which the connection of consciousness to reason can be ex-plained. If consciousness is a “pure nothingness” it can never submitto reason. Yet, how is it that one can speak of a “pure nothingness” assuch?

Consciousness cannot be “pure nothingness” but must be pleni-tude. It is “nothingness” only in the sense that it can be no particularthing, but it cannot be a “pure nothingness,” for it is not nothing at all.On the one hand, “nothingness” describes a plenitude which can onlyever exceed definition; it is like the infinite in that it must always begreater than any particular representation of it. On the other hand, a

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“nothingness” which may be considered “pure” literally cannot beand, as such, can neither be thought nor be open to any kind of rela-tion. Consciousness, then, is an infinite “plenitude”—it is the immedi-ate intuition of life. Yet, we cannot be satisfied with the immediateintuition of life. We require reason to permit knowledge of life—weare finite. That we are finite begs the question of the possibility of theinfinite. Whence the notion of the infinite? Whence the lack which weseek to eliminate? It is in this very structure, where reason co-existswith the immediate intuition of a plenitude to which reason can haveaccess only by transforming the plenitude into something finite—athing which is incomparably less than the plenitude to which it owesthe very possibility of its existence.

Hence, at one moment, we are aware of both that plenitude and ourinability to grasp it. The term “grasp” is useful in this regard. It clari-fies the essence of the difficulty which lies in the fact that the attemptto grasp the infinite by reason is an endless labor, for reason can graspany thing only by making it finite—in attempting to grasp the infinitereason can only lose it and find itself again. This is the iron truth offinitude; the finite mind cannot grasp the infinite and only returns toitself in attempting to do so; the opposition between reason and con-sciousness, finite and infinite, cannot be overcome, it is in the broad-est sense always already there.

4. THE PROBLEM OF HISTORY REVISITED

Tolstoy’s placement of an elementary opposition at the heart ofhuman knowing suggests that no final cause or ultimate harmony willever be available to historians. While this view may seem disquieting,it also points to a way of grasping the force that makes history, that ishistory. In this respect, the real root of Tolstoy’s exploration of historyin War and Peace comes to light as an overriding concern to under-stand why history emerges at all—what is the motive force of historyor, indeed, why is there history? And, for Tolstoy, desire is this mo-tive force; namely, the desire to overcome the contradiction that Tol-stoy identifies in his relating of reason to consciousness, a relation thatis perpetually dynamic, that is homologous to the relations between

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mediacy and immediacy, thought and being, word and perception.Hence, history in the broadest sense is a narrative of desire that resultsfrom this contradiction, from not being able to find a resolution to thecontradiction, a stable or final ground for human action. History is therecord of this struggle, and War and Peace is a grand attempt to nar-rate the varieties of struggle that yields neither to Greek conceptionsof temporal circularity, nor to providential eschatology, nor toHegelian and Marxist narratives of alienation, whereby strugglecomes to an end in a necessary progression of steps towards the ab-solute, whether that be absolute knowing or disappearance of the statein a new economy of satisfaction.

While Tolstoy’s conception of history surely adopts a great dealfrom Schopenhauer, it has equally significant affinities with manycurrents in both late Enlightenment and early Romantic thought.17 Inthe final account, however, Tolstoy’s conception of history seemsclosest to Rousseau in its tragic dimension (and, in particular, to thelatter’s discussion of the beginnings of history in the Discourse on theOrigins of Inequality), while coming strikingly close to Schelling instressing the inherently creative nature of the fundamental contradic-tion in the relation of freedom and necessity; that this contradictioncan be resolved only through an ever-varying synthesis that is the es-sence of narrative representation. Here contradiction gives rise to ac-tion, an attempt to resolve contradiction, that is the origin of narra-tive.18 What ultimately seems most innovative about Tolstoy’s ap-proach is not only that he conceives of the nature of this contradictionin an unusually open way, being quite unwilling to define his mainterms, reason or consciousness, with any great precision, but also thathe combines both tragic and creative or comic attitudes to the contra-diction in the narrative possibilities that emerge from it. Indeed, Tol-stoyan holism is marked by the acceptance of both these differing at-titudes to contradiction, to what amounts to the impossibility of satis-fying desire, as necessary counterparts: despair and excitement overthe impossibility of fulfillment of desire move hand in hand. This iswhy Tolstoy appears to affirm the importance of discovering the lawsof history while also adding that to do so would eliminate any possi-bility of life. The identification of life with desire and struggle is un-mistakable, and one might be inclined to place Tolstoy in a more

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modern context of striving within a vacuum. But Tolstoy’s positionremains perplexing and ambivalent; he at once tends to affirm the ex-istence of an overarching order, suggesting that freedom is illusory,while asserting the precariousness of this illusion, its tendency to dis-sipate in the lived moment due to the difficulty of grasping that or-der.19 Tolstoy derives at least two general attitudes from these as-sumptions, one of frustration and one of elation at limitation, onetragic, one comic

Tolstoy’s conception of the centrality of contradiction is remark-able in that narrative becomes the expression of a resolution to thecontradiction, a point of view reflected in the immense network ofnarrative possibilities offered in War and Peace. Narrative triumphsover exclusively rational discourse because narrative combines thewarring elements of contradiction in a new, synthetic whole, even ifthat whole’s integrity must in fact be precarious. Here, in Tolstoy, onefinds an extremely audacious assertion of the sovereign power of theartist as cosmotheurgos or world-creator, since every narrative, as anopening up of time and space, is in the broadest sense the creation of aworld.20 This assertion of world-creation is inherently erotic, a re-sponse to elemental discontinuity, the divided nature of human beingrepresented by the central contradiction of reason and consciousness,and it raises radical questions about the authority of reason, whetherreason is sovereign or not, whether the artist writes in accordance witha defined notion of rationality or, in effect, defines rationality throughthe medium of narrative.

To examine these arguments in a new way I would like to return tothe fictional text. There, a cyclical, repetitive struggle between thefinite and infinite is vividly reflected in the polarities of mastery andreticence that determine the novel’s primary forms of characterization,reflecting the sinuous interplay of comic and tragic conceptions ofdesire.

CHAPTER FIVE: MASTERY AND RETICENCE

Tragic and comic attitudes are sounded in a variety of narrativetrajectories in the text and, in a striking way, in those trajectories thatconnect and distinguish the lives of the novel’s two main heroes,Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov. Both of these charac-ters display a desire to know, to master their destinies; they attempt togive definitive form to immediacy, that being the essence of action, ofthe will to act. But their responses to the inevitability of failure arevery different. Prince Andrei cannot accept failure, he cannot recon-cile his striving with failure, and at Borodino he ultimately turns hisback on the dynamic of attempt and failure that characterizes the de-sire to resolve contradiction. Pierre Bezukhov seems to find peace asPrince Andrei cannot, but revolts against that peace; at the very end ofthe novel, Pierre tacitly rejects the passivity he learned from PlatonKarataev to take an active role in what will become the Decembristuprising. In either case, however, the narrative is nothing else than therecord of struggle, of a continuous expansion towards the infinite andcontraction towards the finite; an essential rhythm that cannot beovercome—every end is at once an end and a beginning, itself and itsother.1

These polarities of mastery and reticence embody two broadly op-posed attitudes towards finitude. One represents a refusal to acceptlimits while the other submits to them; one denies while the other em-braces human frailty and impotence; for one, war is the governingtrope, for the other, peace.

In this chapter I shall explore the key varieties of this kind of expe-rience in the novel by looking at the principal representatives of theopposing tendencies, embodied on the most general level by Napoleonand Platon Karataev, and, more graphically and particularly, by thecomplex patterns of striving and submission which mark the peripa-tetic lives and differing fates of Prince Andrei and Pierre. In this latterregard, I suggest that struggle is a consequence of their dawning self-awareness, the so-called burden of consciousness that virtually con-

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demns Prince Andrei and Pierre to strive without end; indeed, theirlives manifest the liminal status characteristic of human being in amost explicit way primarily because of their reflective distance fromlife, a distance that is at the heart of their inability to be satisfied eitherwith a resigned acquiescence to the flow of events or the aggressivedrive to master one’s destiny.

And I use the word destiny here intentionally. To this point in myanalysis I have talked about destiny only in the guise of that distantrationality of which the narrator spoke in Book III, one that exists butis inaccessible to man, in the words of the narrator, the so-called “fateof the ancients” (III/1/I). Yet, Pierre and Prince Andrei give impetusto the problem of destiny or fate, for in both cases the turbulence oftheir lives, their suffering, seems to stem from an attempt to come toterms with that most singular destiny of the finite creature, death.2

1. NAPOLEON AND MASTERY

Napoleon is a figuration of the striving for mastery; he is that northstar of “power” and “genius” from which other characters, like PrinceAndrei, initially take their bearings.

As we have seen, the novel introduces Napoleon in its openingdialogue. Anna Pavlovna Scherer refers to him as “Antichrist.” And inthis, she echoes aristocratic sentiment about the Corsican usurperthroughout Europe. Yet, if “Antichrist” is rather too powerful a term,it is nonetheless true that, from the standpoint of the old aristocracy,Napoleon was a representative of evil surpassing the merely human.From another standpoint, however, he was a decidedly romantic figureadorned with a mantel of invincibility and mysterious genius as herolled his armies across Africa and Europe, at once presiding over ter-rible devastation and the building of a “new” society—he was theman, after all, of the bloody Egyptian expedition and the Code Na-poléon.

In either of these roles, Napoleon shows the indefatigable ambitionto create a new world, to tower God-like over vanquished and effu-

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sively “appreciative” peoples in contemplation of his creation, of themirror of his own countenance. In this sense, Anna Pavlovna is sur-prisingly clairvoyant (as she will be again when talking of Austria andthe future of the war in the same opening scene). She points to thedefining trait of Napoleon’s career, the reason why the aristocratshated him and he appealed to the Romantic age; he seeks to performthe greatest, most terrible and most daring feat of human en-deavor—to take the place of God, to be a self-designated king, both anabsolute beginning and a creator of worlds. For this role he naturallyalso arrogates to himself the power and dubious right of a destroyer ofworlds. Napoleon is in this respect like Antichrist; in endeavoring tousurp powers associated with the divine to himself, he seeks to be alaw unto himself.

None of these attitudes is particularly unusual; in fact, this com-pound image of Napoleon, his existence more as myth than man, wascurrent and important in Russia as one can glean from another Russiannovel which came out in the 1860s. In Crime and Punishment Napo-leon also represents the essentially criminal desire to cross all bounda-ries by setting them oneself. And Dostoevsky too, as is well-known,presents his own theory about “great men” in that novel.

Both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are addressing a heroic and Roman-tic interpretation of Napoleon that emerged within the Russian contextin part through the poetry of Lermontov. Despite his brilliant icono-clasm and predilection for the ironical and satiric, Lermontov propa-gated a view of Napoleon as heroic and demonic, a man “higher thanpraise, and glory, and humanity!…”3 Napoleon retains this dark mys-tique even in Lermontov’s later poetry where the theme of Napoleon’sexile takes on particular significance. Lermontov in fact combinesthese two aspects of Napoleon’s life, and the latter starts to look like avivid historical incarnation of the swirling energies that Lermontovcelebrates in his great poem “Demon.” In a sense, Napoleon verymuch is that great exiled spirit who can only rule and soar above themediocrity of the herd. These may sound rather like romantic clichésnowadays, and there is no question that Lermontov’s interpretation ofNapoleon is immersed in that shadowy world of sad and dark spiritswhich both he and Byron before him had celebrated. But Lermontov

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thus also puts the question in all seriousness, quid sit deus? [What isGod?] And it is to this question, I think, that Tolstoy and Dostoevskyrespond in their differing ways. In other words, Napoleon’s strivingfor mastery is a striving to be as a god.

Anna Pavlovna’s use of the term “Antichrist,” although partial, al-lows one access to this crucial aspect of Napoleon in the novel, appro-priately introduced at its very beginning. As her salon progresses, adebate ensues which emphasizes the centrality of the Napoleonictheme, the question becomes who will be God? The Viscount deMontmorency, whom Anna Pavlovna has “served” to her guests, de-scribes the assassination of the Duc d’Enghien in which Napoleon isshown to have been sinister and without honor. Simply put, Mont-morency is a royalist, and he is displaying the same distaste for thesocial upstart that we have already witnessed in Anna Pavlovna her-self. Here we have the aristocratic view in clear outline.

But there is a sharp reaction to the Viscount’s view in the offing.After the Viscount has finished his story, Anna Pavlovna returns tothe subject of Napoleon to bemoan the “comedy” of the coronation atMilan, and Prince Andrei gently mocks her by quoting Napoleon’sfamous words in both French and Italian upon accepting the crown,“God gives this to me, beware he who touches it!”4 Prince Andrei ar-gues against Montmorency and Anna Pavlovna that the old régime isgone for good and makes no efforts to conceal his admiration forNaploeon by quoting him. Pierre joins in:

‘The execution of the Duc d’Enghien,’ declared Pierre, ‘was a political neces-sity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed greatness of soul by not fearing totake on himself the whole responsibility of that deed.’

‘Dieu! Mon Dieu!’ muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.

Pierre continues: “‘Napoleon is great because he rose above therevolution, suppressed its abuses, preserved all that was good init—equality of citizenship and freedom of speech and of thepress—and only for that reason did he obtain power’.” These ideas ofcourse shock the aristocratic crowd. Pierre appears to them as a Jaco-bin, and, in a curious example of the narrator’s reinforcing the opinion

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of the aristocrats, Pierre is referred to several times during this ex-change with Montmorency as “monsieur” as if to underscore theFrenchness of his Jacobin views. This is a comic touch which tends toundermine the seriousness of the debate as a whole, adding an ironiccolor to issues of apparently great moment. Aside from the fact thatthis irony likely expresses a disdain for political discussion typical ofthe novel, it also exposes an important distinction between Prince An-drei and Pierre. If Prince Andrei’s admiration for Napoleon as an idealis an expression of a serious commitment on his part, one has the im-pression that Pierre’s adherence to such abstractions must not be ac-cepted at face value and might even be difficult or unnatural for him.In this respect, the scene’s dénouement is telling—Pierre’s vitality and“natural” goodness undermine the harshness of the positions he de-fends: “…everybody saw his smile, which said nothing, unless per-haps, ‘Opinions are opinions, but you see what a fine, good-heartedfellow I am.’ And everyone, including Anna Pavlovna instinctivelyfelt this was true” (I/1/V).

The striking aspect of this scene, however, is that both Prince An-drei and Pierre show an almost unqualified admiration for Napoleonthat is in sharp contrast to the society around them. Although thisseems to depict a generational attitude of the time, with the youngergeneration showing sympathy for the ideals of the Revolution andadmiration for the dominating figure of Napoleon, it also has the verybasic and simple effect of allying two crucial characters with the “en-emy of civilization,” the “Antichrist.” In this respect, as the quotesshow, there is a curious preponderance of language dealing with theissue of God, whether it be Napoleon’s impudent statement, attribut-ing his rule to God (as in fact hereditary monarchs had been doingalready for quite some time, at least in France) or Anna Pavlovna’sinnocent exclamation at Pierre’s approbation of Napoleon’s actions.Although I think it would be a mistake to attribute too much signifi-cance to the use of such language, it is certainly helpful in showingthat a theme of the utmost importance, the challenge or usurpation ofthe position of God by man, in this case a man, is evident throughoutthese early scenes in the novel.

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While Prince Andrei and Pierre side initially with Napoleon, theywill change their views considerably in the course of the novel. Theyrepresent two very particular trajectories in the life of the novel, eachof which manifests a dynamic “wavering” between a belief in the pos-sibility of human mastery, evidenced by their original admiration forNapoleon, and an apparently final rejection of all such attempts atmastery. For Prince Andrei, this rejection is connected with the failureof his engagement to Natasha, while for Pierre it emerges from hisencounter with Platon Karataev. Here, we have another example of astructure which repeats itself with telling differences.

I propose now to examine both these trajectories in detail to showhow they differently incorporate the “wavering” movement betweenmastery and reticence. In Prince Andrei’s case, such wavering occursbecause he is fundamentally unable to accept the limitations that fini-tude imposes on man, that man is but a small part of a whole too greatto understand, while Pierre wavers because he searches for, but cannotfind a way of integrating the grandiose and everyday, the boundlessinfinite and the immediate concerns of finite existence.

2. THE TRAGIC PATH

Until the battle of Austerlitz, Prince Andrei retains the same undi-luted admiration for Napoleon that was so much in evidence at AnnaPavlovna’s soirée. Napoleon is an ideal, a model, which Prince Andreistrives to emulate. Hence, Prince Andrei’s interest in strategy andplanning, the science of war. There is no need to review Prince An-drei’s growing disillusionment about this “science,” since I have al-ready discussed it in sufficient detail. It is well enough to note that theparticular logic of Prince Andrei’s admiration of Napoleon, his desireto have his own Toulon, ends up in disaster; the tremendous and acer-bic irony of this act in Prince Andrei’s career is that he finally gets tomeet his hero while lying wounded on the battlefield at Austerlitz, thatis, at the very moment when his preceding path in imitation of Napo-leon has shown its danger and bankruptcy to the fullest extent. Thelesson to take from this obvious irony is that Prince Andrei’s aspira-tion to be great like Napoleon leads him inexorably closer to his own

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death, that, for him, the desire for mastery and death are intimatelyrelated. This relation is in fact at the very core of Prince Andrei’stragic journey in the novel; the extremity of his striving brings himcloser not to mastery but to the basic limit of life, death, in Hegel’swords, the “absolute master” (1977: 117).

At Austerlitz, Prince Andrei undergoes a remarkable transforma-tion. Its essence is captured in one passage from the text describing hisencounter with Napoleon:

‘That’s a fine death!’ said Napoleon as he gazed at Bolkonsky.

Prince Andrei understood that this was said of him, and that it was Napoleonwho said it. He heard the speaker addressed as Sire. But he heard the words as hemight have heard the buzzing of a fly. Not only did they not interest him, but hetook no notice of them and at once forgot them. His head was burning, he felthimself bleeding to death, and he saw above him the remote, lofty, and everlastingsky. He knew it was Napoleon—his hero—but at that moment Napoleon seemedto him such a small insignificant creature compared with what was passing nowbetween himself and that lofty infinite sky with the clouds flying over it. At thatmoment it meant nothing to him who might be standing over him, or what wassaid of him; he was only glad that people were standing near him, and onlywished that they would help him and bring him back to life, which seemed to himso beautiful now that he had today learned to understand it so differently. He col-lected all his strength, to stir and utter a sound. He feebly moved his leg, and ut-tered a weak sickly groan which aroused his own pity.

‘Ah! He is alive,’ said Napoleon. ‘Lift this young man up and carry him to thedressing-station.’ (I/3/XIX)

Prince Andrei’s discovery, his awakening to a dimension of realitythat he had not known before, is beautifully conveyed in the passageby Napoleon’s framing comments which allow one to perceive amovement from death to life, a symbolic rebirth. And Prince Andrei’scontrast of the sky with Napoleon, his erstwhile hero, makes it clearthat a profound change has occurred, that Prince Andrei has realizedthe utter vanity of his imitation of Napoleon and come to a new levelof consciousness of the limitations of his previous attitudes, for allhuman attitudes are limited by the infinite. The specter of the infinitehangs over the remainder of Prince Andrei’s life in the novel; he isboth attracted to it and seeks to evade the devalorization of the merely

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human that it announces, and in this conflict one can discern the char-acteristic form and motivation of his pursuit of mastery.

Yet, his retreat to Bogucharovo after his return from the war is evi-dence of a bitter sort of resignation from life, almost a petulant ex-pression of dismay about the fragility of human endeavors. There isacid commentary in Prince Andrei’s choosing to lead what amounts toa quasi-monastic life at his estate shut off from the imperfect world.When Pierre visits, he is astonished by the simplicity and cleanliness,the Spartan order of Prince Andrei’s modest house. But these exces-sively clean closed spaces bespeak a lack of energy, a certain claus-trophobic immobility; they are like a coffin, and, as such, they clearlymirror the oppressive feeling of mortality that Prince Andrei is unableto escape; he ruminates about the futility of human action and harborsguilt because of the death of his wife.

Prince Andrei transforms himself after his meeting with Pierre, butthis renewal is only another turn of the wheel for him. While it is ac-companied by powerful, organic feelings of rebirth as emphasized bythe blooming of the famous oak tree, Prince Andrei typically begins tothink and plan as a “whole series of sensible and logical considera-tions showing it to be essential for him to go to Petersburg” crowd hismind (II/3/III). With his vigor returned, he does go to St. Petersburgand almost immediately falls prey to Speransky’s influence. As histhought of plans and projects of reform show, his renewal is in fact areturn to hopes of mastery formerly dashed by his experience at Aus-terlitz and his wife’s death. Perhaps the only difference this timearound is that Prince Andrei cannot sustain his admiration for Speran-sky. Of course it is likely that his own personal contact with Speran-sky, his growing awareness that the supposedly great man is petty andsmug, turns him away in disappointment. But it is remarkable howclosely his brief association with Speransky recalls his earlier admira-tion for Napoleon. Speransky is a ‘social general,’ and Prince Andrei“followed Speransky’s every word and movement with particular at-tention…” expecting to “discover in him the perfection of humanqualities” (II/3/V). There is no subtlety in the message here—PrinceAndrei is again looking for an ideal measured on the human scale, andthis is only peculiar if one recalls that his experience of the sky de-

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molished all mortal idols for him, that he came to see the shortsight-edness of his admiration for a mere man, Napoleon. Although PrinceAndrei refuses to accept the infinite sky, it still haunts him.

He thus also refuses to accept finitude, the limits which bind allhuman beings. In this refusal is the crux of Prince Andrei’s continuingpredicament. Because he can accept neither the infinite nor the finite,he is condemned to a peculiar liminal existence, an alternation be-tween the two extremes that is in fact the very essence of human fini-tude as expressed in the relation between consciousness and reason.This relation is reflected in Prince Andrei’s alternating faith in reasonand rejection of it, the former associated with Napoleon and Speran-sky, the latter with the infinite sky. Yet, Prince Andrei never discoversa way to integrate the two extremes; either one or the other rules hislife with increasing intensity after Austerlitz. He cannot grasp theirrelation and, hence, in a very real way fails to see the pattern that de-termines his life; in this sense he is driven by a necessity of which hehas only the faintest inkling. He moves in a bewitched and bewitchingcircle.

He comes closest to breaking out of this circle when he falls inlove with Natasha. But even this love cannot change him; indeed, it issuspect in so far as Prince Andrei’s attitude to Natasha and the differ-ent kind of life that she represents, “a strange world completely aliento him and brimful of joys unknown to him,” is never free of a curioustension that emerges strikingly in this same passage. The narrator re-marks how Prince Andrei’s love for Natasha invokes in him a “vividsense of the terrible contrast between something infinitely great andillimitable within him, and that limited and material something thathe, and even she, was. This contrast weighed on and yet cheered himwhile she sang” (II/3/XIX).

Natasha’s “song” never satisfies Prince Andrei. As stark evidenceof this, I refer to Prince Andrei’s unsettling and highly ambiguous re-action to Natasha’s acceptance of his proposal, hardly that of a happysuitor: “Prince Andrei held her hands, looked in her eyes, and did notfind in his heart his former love for her.” And the narrator tells us that“[s]omething in him had suddenly changed...there was no longer the

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former poetic and mystic charm of desire, but there was pity for herfeminine and childish weakness” (II/3/XXIII). Moreover, one has theimpression that, after Prince Andrei has been rebuffed by Natasha, itis his pride that suffers most and, by falling into his own vanity, hesuccumbs to his basic discomfort with the unadorned and everyday,the limitations that tie human beings to the earth.

The failure of this love seems to confirm that Prince Andrei cannotescape the destiny his peculiarly liminal existence sets for him. Thisdestiny begins to crystallize after Pierre’s final visit to Prince Andreion the eve of the battle at Borodino. Prince Andrei’s aggressive bitter-ness represents almost a complete rejection of the conflict that hasgoverned his life; he seeks to strive no more. Although he still thinksabout Natasha and Anatole, and thereupon “[j]umped up as if some-one had burnt him, and again began pacing up and down in front ofthe shed,” his mind is elsewhere. Another passage from this same se-quence furnishes penetrating insight into that state of mind:

He had received and given orders for next day’s battle, and had nothing to do.But his thoughts—the simplest, clearest, and therefore most terriblethoughts—would give him no peace. He knew that tomorrow’s battle would bethe most terrible of all he had taken part in, and for the first time in his life thepossibility of death presented itself to him—not in relation to any worldly matteror with reference to its effect on others, but simply in relation to himself, to hisown soul—vividly, plainly, terribly, and almost as a certainty. And from theheight of this perception all that had previously tormented and preoccupied himsuddenly became illumined by a cold white light without shadows, without per-spective, and without distinction of outline. All life appeared to him like magic-lantern pictures at which he had long been gazing by artificial light through aglass. Now he suddenly saw those badly daubed pictures in broad daylight andwithout a glass. ‘Yes, yes! There they are, those false images that agitated, en-raptured and tormented me,’ said he to himself, passing in review the principalpictures of the magic lantern of life and regarding them now in the cold whitedaylight of his clear perception of death. ‘There they are, those rudely painted fig-ures that once seemed splendid and mysterious. Glory, the good of society, loveof a woman, the Fatherland itself—how important these pictures appeared to me,with what profound meaning they seemed to be filled! And it is all so simple,pale, and crude in the cold white light of this morning which I feel is dawning onme.’ (III/2/XXIV)

This ‘morning’ of course signals the beginning of the slow end ofPrince Andrei’s terrestrial life. The rejection of earthly striving is a

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removal to a different perspective, one that is tied no longer to life butto death. The passage is saturated in imagery that recalls Plato’s fa-mous cave and that places Prince Andrei in a God-like “position”(which can be no position at all) outside of that cave, the habitation ofall limited, finite creatures as well as the realm of vibrant human life.Here, as in no other single passage in the novel, the finitude of humanbeing is expressed in the language of Platonic dualism, language thatdeclares a drastic separation between two unlike orders of reality.

This passage marks a crucial turning point that matches or sur-passes in intensity the two other cruces in Prince Andrei’s life, onebeing his experience at Austerlitz and the other his love for Natasha.In both these cases, Prince Andrei seems to accept that the pursuit ofmastery, the omnivorous desire to rise above others and impose one’sown particular views on the world, a variant of that “intellectualpride” of which Marya accused him before he left for the 1805 cam-paign, is a mistaken, ruinous and illusory one. Here Prince Andreiseems to approach the end of his struggle; he neither rejects masterynor passively acquiesces to the “flow” of events, but moves beyondboth to a shadowy transitional state that perfectly anticipates his fatalwounding. As he told Pierre: “…it has of late become hard for me tolive. I see that I have begun to understand too much. And it does notdo for man to taste of the tree of knowledge of good and evil…”(III/2/XXV). And I might add that his wounding seems almost an in-evitable consequence of this changed state; when the shell lands infront of Prince Andrei, he is quiescent, ready for the final blow thatwill come.

In this light, I think it is easier to see that the governing contrastbetween the infinite sky and the figure of Napoleon, of finite life, re-mains one of ineluctable opposition. Napoleon sets a sad figure nextto the sublime and infinite sky, an infinite that increasingly in thecourse of Prince Andrei’s life, as disappointments linger, will lose itsmystery and grandeur while turning into a mockery of the finite, anugly reminder of the essential dependence and insignificance of eachhuman being in comparison with that great whole, “too immense tograsp,” that prevents him from ever being satisfied with the merelyhuman. After the break with Natasha, the narrator remarks that Prince

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Andrei felt as if “that lofty infinite canopy of heaven that had oncetowered above him had suddenly turned into a low solid vault thatweighed him down…” (III/1/VIII). The infinite reminds Prince Andreionly of his finitude, and it lowers down on him like the lid of a coffin.As I have said, this is the tragic aspect of Prince Andrei’s life. Hecannot integrate the infinite into his life, cannot avoid the destiny ofmortality imposed upon him, and thus also cannot escape its crushingweight; where once there was possibility and mystery, only disillu-sionment is left over. His considerable intelligence, his leaning to rati-ocination, his faith in reason blind and frustrate him, they are thesource of his disquiet; in Goethe’s words:

The little god of the earth remains always the sameAnd is as wondrous strange as on the first day.He would live a little betterHad you not given him the glimmer of heaven’s light.5

Prince Andrei cannot finally be satisfied by giving up his belief inthe power of human reason to determine and grasp the true nature ofthings, despite all the countervailing evidence of the battles he hasparticipated in, both military and social, a belief that his experience ofthe infinite can only undermine.

Prince Andrei’s refusal to accept finitude has a fatal and necessarylogic; it tempts him inexorably to his own death and freedom from thelimitations of earthly existence. This kind of freedom is, however,fraught with ambiguities that complicate his slow death; his final en-counter with the infinite comes into sharp conflict with his desire tostay attached to life, as represented by his growing affection for Nata-sha. In these justly celebrated scenes, among the most powerful in thewhole novel, the conflict between the infinite and the finite in PrinceAndrei comes into its starkest and final definition.

Tolstoy employs an ingenious metaphor to describe Prince An-drei’s condition several days after having been wounded at Borodino.While he lies in a state that appears to be mildly delirious, he hears a“soft whispering voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating ‘piti-piti-piti’” and feels that “above his face, above the very middle of it,some strange airy structure was being erected out of slender needles or

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splinters, to the sound of this whispered music—‘it stretches,stretches, spreading out and stretching…’” (III/3/XXXII).6 These nee-dles recall the needle-like structure of a Gothic cathedral, and onemight conjecture that they have a similar significance in as much asthey represent Prince Andrei’s awakened spiritual aspiration. Here forthe first time in the novel Prince Andrei begins to think about a lovethat is not merely human, one that extends beyond a love “which lovesfor something, some quality, for some purpose.” Prince Andrei distin-guishes between human love and divine love. The former is narrowand limited, it can change to hatred, it can be destroyed by death—inshort, it is subject to the same limitations and weaknesses as any othermanifestation of human finitude. The latter, to the contrary, cannotchange, cannot be limited and cannot turn to hatred, for it cannot belimited, and hatred is limitation. Prince Andrei then thinks of Natashaand how he had judged her based on the limitations of human love. Indoing so, he is able to understand her in a way that had been barred tohim before, and this allows him to accept and appreciate her care.

Prince Andrei seems to waver between these two kinds of lovinguntil the very end of his life. Then, he senses the approach of “[t]hatinexorable, eternal, distant and unknown—the presence of which hehad felt continually all his life—was now near to him…” (IV/1/XVI).In other words, the infinite that had shadowed and pursued Prince An-drei throughout the novel after his experience at Austerlitz (and evi-dently before—what is the desire for glory other than a striving toovercome finitude?) finally comes closer to him, within reach, andonly as he is on the verge of dying. Indeed, the “more deeply hepenetrated into the new principle of eternal love revealed to him, themore he unconsciously detached himself from earthly life.” Love forNatasha, however, holds him back:

But after the night at Mystichshy when, half delirious, he had seen her forwhom he had longed appear before him, and had shed quiet tears of joy andpressed her hand to his lips, love for a particular woman crept imperceptibly intohis heart, binding him again to life.

On this last evening of his life, Prince Andrei wavers violently. Heboth professes his love to Natasha and changes the terms of his previ-ous thoughts:

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Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything I understand, I understandonly because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to diemeans that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

The image of a particle of love returning to its source clearly re-flects Pierre’s dream-image of the globe, of those drops that expandand contract. Yet, as the narrator laconically notes, these thoughtswere “only thoughts.” They were “too one sidedly personal and intel-lectual.” Prince Andrei then falls asleep and has a horrifying dream inwhich death breaks through the door. This dream triggers in PrinceAndrei an “awakening from life” (probuzhdenie ot zhizni) and he dies.

Prince Andrei’s death represents the darkly ironic terminal point ofhis struggle to overcome the inevitable limitations of finitude; masteryresides in contempt for the human, in a state equivalent to death. Andthis is the greater, ironic significance of his experience of the infinite,the shock that it brings to his desire to emulate Napoleon and to begreat and “immortal” himself; his vision of the infinite reveals for himthe emptiness of human striving, of finite life, as he says, “[a]ll isvanity, all is falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing,nothing, but that. But even it does not exist” (I/3/XVI).

Prince Andrei is in fact the great model for those who would insistthat the novel is skeptical. He cannot accept that finitude can have anyworth or meaning in the all-encompassing light of the infinite, sinceeverything that comes into being must pass away. In this sense, heseems to be very much like his friend Pierre at the beginning of hisjourney of discovery. This journey first takes shape in a moment ofsupreme despair. At the end of Book II, we find Pierre at the very na-dir of his reflections on life:

Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that soldiers in war when en-trenched under the enemy’s fire, if they have nothing to do, try hard to find someoccupation the more easily to bear the danger. To Pierre all men seemed like thosesoldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in ambition, some in cards, some inframing laws, some in women, some in toys, some in horses, some in politics,some in sport, some in wine, and some in governmental affairs. ‘Nothing is trivial,and nothing is important, it’s all the same—only to save oneself from it as bestone can,’ thought Pierre. ‘Only not to see it, that dreadful it!’

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While Prince Andrei’s rejection of finitude is a form of skepticismand an expression of despair to possess the absolute, Pierre succumbsto an equal despair, only to overcome it; his fate is different becausehe is more capable of accepting limitation; his need to believe in agreater meaning or presence in life is not accompanied by the essentialinability to do so that stymies Prince Andrei. And here we clearly seea fundamental difference in the attitude to limitation expressed byPrince Andrei and Pierre that can be associated with the distinctionbetween the tragic and comic.

Tragedy is a recognition of failure, of an inability to be contentwith the limitations of human life that is both heroic and disastrous.But the comic in its true sense is quite the opposite, being neither he-roic nor disastrous; rather, the comic is a recognition of failure as themost powerful affirmation of life in its inherent errancy and lack offinality—comedy is the willingness to entertain the never terminalconflict of opposites that tragedy must overcome—comedy is an im-pulse to openness, whereas tragedy seeks closure. Moreover, if trag-edy is thus monistic, comedy is pluralistic; if tragedy is despairing, aletting go of hope, then comedy is forever hopeful, even ridiculouslyso. Tragedy claims that no reconciliation with life is possible, whereascomedy is reconciliation itself, the spirit of deft movement, elastic andfree.

Prince Andrei seems to embody a tragic path, but Pierre seems es-sentially comic in his continued hopefulness. While Pierre begins hisjourney by looking at the same meaninglessness of human activity, ofits essential emptiness and vanity, that strikes Prince Andrei at Aus-terlitz, he cannot believe this to be true. If Prince Andrei evades theinfinite, if he cannot integrate it into his life, Pierre seeks to do littleelse; he continually asks, What is it?

3. THE COMIC PATH

After his duel with Dolokhov and interview with his wife in whichhe had to restrain himself so as not to hurt her, Pierre leaves Peters-burg. But he is obliged to wait at the Torzhok post-station, and it is

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during this wait that Pierre experiences a sort of revelation of theabyss, a moment where the meanings that had previously given orderand direction to his life dissolve. A result of this dissolution is thatlong dormant questions seize Pierre:

No matter what he thought about, he always returned to these same questionswhich he could not solve and yet could not cease to ask himself. It was as if thethread of the chief screw which held his life together were stripped, so that thescrew could not get in or out, but went on turning uselessly in the same place.(II/2/I)

This simile is a most effective means of describing Pierre’s essen-tial predicament, that he cannot find a basis capable of guiding his lifeand giving it a particular meaning or shape. The incessant turning ofthe screw that nonetheless fails to gain a secure foothold that wouldallow Pierre to hold his life together depicts an experience of ground-lessness aptly described by Heidegger as a state of affairs where“…every essential statement refers back to a ground that cannot bepushed aside, that demands instead only to be grounded more thor-oughly.”7

Here Pierre suffers the agony of finite limitation—that completeknowledge, a sure ground, is simply not available to the finite mind.Yet the finite mind cannot cease to ask the questions for which itknows there is no answer; these questions are in fact the most pressingand important—indeed, they are the very essence of finitude, for howcould any infinite mind need to ask a question? Kant wrote in hisPreface to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason: “Humanreason has the peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it isburdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of rea-son itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all itspowers, it is also not able to answer” (1965: 7).8 Kant sets out withprecision the very problem that confronts Pierre and that is basi-cally—to its core—of a metaphysical nature because the desire to findthe ground, the ultimate arbiter of truth, is nothing else than a desire totranscend finitude, to “grasp” that infinite sky that so oppresses PrinceAndrei. But Pierre, unlike Prince Andrei, desires more than anythingelse to be assured that there is an infinite deity, that there is an infinitemeasure without which one is condemned to the nothingness of fini-

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tude. In other words, Pierre’s attitude to the infinite shows none of theterrible ambiguities that trouble Prince Andrei; Pierre’s fear stemsfrom doubt that the infinite can be grasped by the finite—his entirestriving is not to overcome the infinite, but to begin to see it in thefinite, and this is the essence of the question of knowledge for Pierre.In other words, to bring finite and infinite together—to integratethem—is the dominant motif of Pierre’s striving and oscillation be-tween mastery and reticence in the novel.

It is, then, characteristic that Pierre does not seek military glory, todefeat and conquer, but rather he is constantly tempted into the vanityof human strivings by utopian plans of a final kingdom, heaven onearth, and the false prophets of this kind of salvation. Indeed, at thevery beginning of the novel, we find him in a spirited discussion withthe Abbé Morio about the latter’s plan for “permanent peace.” TheMasons also seem to entice Pierre into these peculiar realms. He firstencounters Freemasonry in the person of Alexei Bazdeev at the Torz-hok station. Bazdeev is another guide for Pierre, both better than AnnaMikhailovna, and worse than Platon Karataev—he guides Pierrethrough the second major transitional passage in his life. At Torzhok,as we have seen, Pierre has come to a point of extreme perplexity anddespair, and, as a consequence he is innerly willing to listen toBazdeev who talks of purifying oneself in order to accept the “highestwisdom”:

‘The highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone, not on those worldlysciences of physics, history, chemistry, and the like, into which intellectualknowledge is divided. The highest wisdom is one. The highest wisdom has butone science—the science of the whole—the science explaining the whole creationand man’s place in it. To receive that science it is necessary to believe and to per-fect oneself. And to attain this end we have the light called conscience, that Godhas implanted in our souls.’

‘Yes, yes,’ assented Pierre. (II/2/II)

Pierre leaves this supposedly chance meeting with a new sense ofpurpose; he is filled with the desire to do good, to be a benefactor ofmankind. After his initiation into the Masons, where Pierre in a typi-cally passive way proceeds through all the phases of the initiationrituals that appear by turns either bizarre or ridiculous, his faith in his

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new venture is somewhat shaken, but he ignores these doubts as if hewere trying to avoid that terrible it. The upshot is that Pierre is takenwith a genuine desire to help humanity and tries to institute a series ofradical changes on his estates in order to relieve the burdens of thepeasantry. He becomes a veritable general of philanthropy, but, un-fortunately, his measures are undermined by his estate manager andnumerous other minor functionaries who stand to lose by Pierre’s in-novations. In a manner strikingly reminiscent of Tolstoy’s pointedcriticisms of the transmission of orders from a commander to his sol-diers, Pierre’s desired ends are thwarted or modified at every turn andhe, like a commander, is saddled with the illusion that his beneficentintentions are actually being carried out, that they in fact can be car-ried out as he wishes.

Pierre is naïve and foolhardy about his grand plans, and we are toldthat Prince Andrei, who makes no great fanfare about it, was able toachieve much more than his friend because of his greater tenacity andhis head for detail. But, nonetheless, during their second meeting atBogucharovo, Pierre’s utopian thoughts make a tremendous impres-sion on Prince Andrei; they set in motion a sequence of growth andrenewal in Prince Andrei himself. While on the raft, a key figure oftransition, Pierre reveals as never before that his striving to integratethe finite and infinite is a desire to know God:

‘…Don’t I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast harmonious whole? Don’tI feel that I form one link, one step, between the lower and higher beings, in thisvast harmonious multitude of beings in whom the Deity— the Supreme Power ifyou prefer the term—is manifest? If I see, clearly see, that ladder leading fromplant to man, why should I suppose it breaks off at me and does not go farther andfarther? I feel that I cannot vanish, since nothing vanishes in this world, but thatbeyond me and above me are spirits, and that in this world there is truth.’(II/2/XII)

Pierre soon thereafter makes a crucial statement:

‘If there is a God and future life there is truth and good, and man’s highesthappiness consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we must love, and wemust believe that we live not only today on this scrap of earth but have lived andshall live for ever, there in the Whole,’ said Pierre and he pointed to the sky.

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Prince Andrei stood leaning on the railing of the raft listening to Pierre, andhe gazed with his eyes fixed on the red reflection of the sun gleaming on the bluewaters. There was perfect stillness. Pierre became silent. The raft had long sincestopped, and only the waves of the current beat softly against it below. Prince An-drei felt as if the sound of the waves kept up a refrain to Pierre’s words, whisper-ing:

‘It is true, believe it.’

Both these passages make a highly equivocal point; they suggestthat if there is no afterlife, no eternal life, then there is no God, there isonly finitude that can neither be overcome nor overlooked. Pierreseems to come very close to the position we have already ascribed toPrince Andrei; namely, a refusal to accept finitude, an equation of fi-nitude with weakness, smallness and the negation of meaning. In otherwords, Pierre affirms the necessity of transcendence without whichhuman life is a paltry and ridiculous satire. Hence, when Prince An-drei perceives a voice urging him to believe what Pierre has said, I canonly infer that this voice is urging him to believe that without a deity,without a guarantor of eternal life, human life is unlivable.

This is a powerful view, one that Dostoevsky advances as well, butit is a view of despair—for it suggests that we believe in God becausethe alternative would be too unpleasant to countenance. It is not sur-prising that Prince Andrei finds this view attractive. As we have seen,he is a sort of Platonist; the essence of his inability to accept finitudelies in his distress before the imperfection of the world and of humanbeings, an imperfection that becomes obvious to him under the influ-ence of his epiphanic vision of the lofty sky. But Prince Andrei’s de-sire to overcome the limitations of finitude eventually emerges as anihilistic inclination, a complete abnegation of the rhythm of mortallife, for he is ultimately never able to bear its transience.

Pierre is of another cast. The views he represents here do not lastlong with him. No matter how hard he tries to penetrate the obfuscat-ing mysticism of the Masons, to rise above everyday life, he is ulti-mately unsuited to such speculation, he is much better suited to life.Yet, as his utopian plans for his estates show, he also cannot acceptthis fact, a conflict revealed with satiric brio when Pierre attempts to

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discern his fate as the one destined to limit the power of Napoleon andthus become the savior of Russia in its hour of need.

Pierre tries to determine his fate by manipulating an arcane numer-ology that seems to be a parodic allusion to the true nature of the sa-cred “mysteries” so dear to the Masons. In view of his disillusionmentwith the Masons, his experience of their ever-present and corrosivehypocrisy, the great distance between word and action, Pierre’s“playing with” numbers seems to be an appropriate symbolic conden-sation of their influence on him. Clearly Pierre’s attempt to prove thathe is fated to kill Napoleon is thoroughly ridiculous; he finds a suit-able Biblical passage, in the Apocalypse, of course—Napoleon onceagain appears as the Antichrist, the beast—and “cooks” the numbersto fit an end desired by his heart and not his head, that he has someconnection to the career of Napoleon.

As it turns out, this connection hardens into an attempt to assassi-nate Napoleon, which ends with Pierre’s saving a young girl and hiscapture by the French. This contrast between grandiosity of inten-tion—to kill Napoleon and save all of Russia—and an ostensiblyhumble result, the saving of a little girl, is characteristic of Pierre. Itshows as no other aspect of Pierre’s journey in the novel does, that heis drawn to the immediate and finite, actual human life, and not theremote infinite horizons that attract and terrify Prince Andrei.

Hence, Pierre’s encounter with Platon Karataev seems to be a fit-ting culmination of this path. Through Platon Karataev Pierre learns toaccept and to value the immediate and everyday, to see the infinite inthe present, in that which is humble and simple. In another one ofthose repeating situations that represent the signature pattern of thenovel, Pierre meets Platon Karataev at a moment when his world has“fallen in” once again but in a way that is much more severe, destruc-tive and comprehensive than ever before. This time it is not the deathof a distant parent, not a duel, not a failed marriage, but the horror ofwitnessing an execution and the ambiguous elation of having his ownlife spared that compels Pierre to abandon those questions to whichthere is no answer and which make a tidy mockery of utopian ideas:

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From the moment Pierre had witnessed those terrible murders committed bymen who did not wish to commit them, it was as if the mainspring of his life, onwhich everything had depended and which made everything appear alive, hadsuddenly been wrenched out and everything had collapsed into a heap of mean-ingless rubbish. Though he did not acknowledge it to himself, his faith in the rightordering of the universe, in humanity, in his own soul and in God, had been de-stroyed. He had experienced this before, but never so strongly as now. (IV/1/XII)

Platon Karataev is a new sort of figure in Pierre’s life. He does notlead Pierre around for selfish gain, like Anna Mikhailovna, nor doeshe seek to instruct Pierre with edifying speeches like Bazdeev. PlatonKarataev does not seek to teach at all. But, for Pierre, he becomes aliving example of a way out of the labyrinth of unanswerable ques-tions and fearful suspicions that have directed his life since the duelwith Dolokhov and meeting with Bazdeev at Torzhok.

As I have already noted, Platon Karataev is characterized by themetaphor of roundness, of the circle. He is a living image of the wholeor, as Tolstoy writes, he is an “unfathomable, rounded, eternal per-sonification of the spirit of simplicity and truth” (IV/1/XIII). At leastone critic has complained that Tolstoy is writing poorly here, givingup fuller characterization in favor of what turns out to be somewhat ofa caricature, a mouthpiece for Tolstoy’s heavy-handed views.9 But Ithink that the very point of this less than detailed characterization is tosuggest the ideality that exists in Pierre’s relation to Platon, thatKarataev is in fact an ideal figure for Pierre. This is an extremely im-portant point because it shows that, if Pierre discovers through Platona new way to see life by experiencing the simple, everyday and non-intellectual, he does so by making Platon into an ideal, and, in so do-ing, cannot help but go against the very teaching that he seems to im-bibe from Platon. In this way, the curious mixture of the name Platonor Plato with the unobtrusive surname is highly indicative of the hy-brid nature of Platon who is an inherently unstable ideal for Pierre;namely, one whose content contradicts its form. And, in this sense, thesimplicity and immediacy that Platon seems to represent is at oddswith Pierre’s assessment of these qualities as ideals of a sort, i.e., asgeneralities by means of which he can direct his life towards the cor-rect path. I do not deny, however, that Pierre is transformed and liber-ated from his doubts, that in Platon’s simplicity he finds shelter from

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the emptiness that had initially pervaded his view of life after the exe-cutions. But I question whether Pierre has not merely found anothermeans of hiding from the terrible it, the abyssal experience of theworld or, rather, of its destruction that first assailed him after the duelwith Dolokhov.

The First Part of the Epilogue ends on a note that shows how Pi-erre has left behind the lessons he learned from Platon Karataev byembracing the utopian plans that will lead to the Decembrist plot.Once again, Pierre seems to slip into the belief that he can be a neces-sary agent in the realization of heaven on earth, that he can act as a‘social general’ not wholly unlike Speransky. And it is perfectly fairto argue that the tension inherent in his idealization of Platon leads toits own collapse and Pierre’s adherence to this new utopian ideal, onethat is far more capable of being idealized. I would like to clarify thebroader implications here: What does the phrase “capable of beingidealized” mean? Strictly speaking the notion of an ideal returns us toPlato and always carries the banner of its history as an image (eidos)that transcends experience but also somehow manifests itself in it. Anideal must be transcendental; anyone who proclaims an ideal is im-plicitly relying on its transcendental credentials, its authority as notmerely a human construct. The ideal is eternal. This kind of thinking,however, seems to belong to a different world than Platon Karataev.And, indeed, it does. Platon Karataev belongs very much to thisworld, the continuous present, and not to the world of transcendentcontemplation. Platon Karataev lives in immediacy, he displays anorganic harmony with his environment that betrays no reflection, noratiocination, no decision making about where to go and why. He islike the rose of Angelus Silesius that blooms we know not why.10 Heis an example of the simplicity and immediacy of nature, and in thissense his humanity is a very peculiar one. Yet, to create an ideal out ofliving in immediacy is already to betray it most harshly and to lose itforever; it reminds us once again of the bargain that we, as finitecreatures, must make with the world in order to participate in it, thatthe very condition of our access to the world is that it is conditioned,limited, mediated, and that all attempts to deny or escape that fact arebound to fail.

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Hence, even though Pierre’s journey ends in a less extreme mannerthan that of Prince Andrei, he is no more capable of escaping the pat-tern of mastery and reticence than was Prince Andrei. To escape byhis terms he would need to transcend the only reality he can know,thus ending up in the unenviable position of denying life in order trulyto know it. One can surmise from Prince Andrei’s experience that thiscourse has one direction and end. The circle of finitude cannot be bro-ken; we are destined to repetition, if not a Nietzschean eternal returnof the same.

While Prince Andrei and Pierre are central characters in the novel,establishing the relevance of the great patterns of struggle that coursethrough the text on so many levels within the context of lived life,there are many other characters who have important roles but to whichI have given scant attention. One of the primary reasons for this is thatTolstoy rarely grants sustained access to their inner worlds, their sub-jectivity, an honor in fact accorded most frequently to Prince Andreiand Pierre of all the characters in the novel. Indeed, Prince Andrei andPierre carry much of the burden of subjectivity; their inner lives arethe most carefully and elaborately articulated subjective points ofview that emerge in the course of the narrative. Here the mode of in-ner monologue reaches its early height in Tolstoy’s prose in starkcontrast to the ways that other characters are described, either fromthe outside by the narrator or through the filter of other characters.This directness of access to Prince Andrei and Pierre also issues fromthe fact that they are more reflective and ratiocinative than most of theothers. The only character who approaches them in this regard is Prin-cess Marya. Natasha, for example, while undoubtedly a major char-acter, is not endowed with an overly reflective nature, this being infact the essence of her extraordinary vivacity; her more direct connec-tion with life, and her mental states are seldom described with thesame intensity as those of Prince Andrei and Pierre.

These other characters, then, tend to appear as representations ofone of the polarities which are internal to Prince Andrei and Pierre. Assuch, they are frequently subtle epigones of the tendencies concen-trated in Napoleon and Karataev and complexly ramified in the tra-jectories of Prince Andrei and Pierre. Dolokhov, for example, shares a

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concern for his poor mother (sa pauvre mère) with Napoleon, whileshowing Napoleonic daring and cruelty in another light, one that addsconsiderable ambiguity to the Napoleonic image the novel otherwiseseeks to create. Natasha shares the immediacy and instinctual vitalitythat Platon Karataev demonstrates in a more abstract way—it is nosurprise from this point of view that she is eventually paired with Pi-erre, the irony being that she is also partially responsible for his notliving up to the curious ideal that Karataev had hitherto set for Pierre.

The upshot of these observations is that the predicament of PrinceAndrei and Pierre is one that confronts reflective consciousness in thenovel: it is in fact the very essence of the so-called burden of con-sciousness. Given the overuse of this expression, it might seem to be amere commonplace that characters endowed with greater awareness orconsciousness are brought to despair by it. But that is only one aspectof the issue in War and Peace. While it is fair to say that both PrinceAndrei and Pierre find themselves in a sort of perpetuum mobile offinitude of which they are in some manner aware and which they seekto transcend, this pattern is also the essential rhythm of life that theyexperience all the more acutely because of their reflective distancefrom it. If consciousness is a burden, it is also a heightened sense oflife. Such distance is the result of their having that glimmer of heav-enly light that other characters lack. And their own paths in the novelshow a movement from reflective immediacy, by which I mean amore or less conventional perception of order, to a reflective attitudethat puts that order in question. In this respect, they pass through thesame layers of consciousness as the novel itself. On the one hand, theoscillations that they experience are shifts of emphasis. They are at-tempts to overcome finitude either by eschewing thought for immedi-acy or by eschewing immediacy for thought. The former attitude ismore closely aligned with Platon Karataev, the latter with Napoleon.The former is a kind of reticence or resignation before the attempt toaccede to God-like understanding, the latter the most direct expressionof that attempt. Yet, in either case, Prince Andrei and Pierre cannot besatisfied by a way of living based on resigned immediacy or aggres-sive reason, and the pattern repeats itself in different ways for Pierre,while for Prince Andrei it finally comes to an awareness of itself, its

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limitedness, with his ascent to a new viewpoint (really a paradoxicalone since it is beyond all viewpoints) at Borodino.

Prince Andrei represents the tyrannical and tragic aspect of the de-sire to master that can only originate in the assumption that the worldis in a very strong sense a primordial chaos that must be tamed, thatmust be made human as a condition of its acceptability. Pierre repre-sents the comical aspect of mastery, the desire to grasp the essentialnature of the world in order to find one’s proper place within it, a de-sire that arises from an assumption totally foreign to Prince Andrei,that there is a structure to the world, that mastery is learning to placeoneself in harmony with the whole, rather than to conquer it. This dif-ference is one of the reasons that Prince Andrei seems so worldly incomparison to the “perpetual” innocent Pierre whose ability to culti-vate immaturity, to revive illusion, fuels his dynamism. This distinc-tion shows to a greater extent the remarkable way in which bothPrince Andrei and Pierre reveal different qualities of a basically eroticstriving that is ever restless, presenting two broad alternatives, onetragic, the other comic. These alternatives are interwoven both in thecontrapuntal relation of the two great erotic heroes of the novel andthe temporalities that are associated with them, epic and closed in thecase of Prince Andrei, circular and novelstic in the case of Pierre.

On these several levels, an underlying irony of finitude describesthe movement of history, both individual and collective, as the ascentto a self-consciousness that seeks to renew itself by a return to imme-diacy, its origins, that is not possible. Man seeks an ever elusive tran-scendence:

Give me your right hand,Father, and do not withdraw from my embrace.Thus he spoke, his face flooding with tears.Three times he tried to throw his arms around Anchises’ neckThree times the image fled from his hands’ vain graspLike light winds or most like a winged dream.11

CONCLUSION:FREEDOM AND SILENCE

Many are the wonders,Terrible and brutal,

But none is more wondrous,Terrible and brutal

Than man— 1

The distance of man from God is measured by freedom, an illusionof possibility and independence that deludes the finite mind to pre-sume well beyond its capacity and so dooms it to learn by suffering,by recognizing its own limitation, a tragic shortness of breath. Thispath of learning, the great rhythm of War and Peace, vibrantly echoesthe central conflict of Greek epic and tragedy between man and godswithin the thoroughly Christian context of Tolstoy’s field of vi-sion—the distance between man and God, different orders of being, isthe space of Tolstoyan evil. For Tolstoy freedom and evil are inti-mately linked. Man’s illusion of freedom compels him to transgress,to ignore and profane that divine rationality to which he has scant ac-cess; it is the source and primary tool of his disobedience and theendless struggle that accompanies it. This struggle leads topain—enlightenment is always a questionable gift—because throughit man learns of his weakness and dependence, that he is but one“link,” to quote Pierre, in a great chain of being that he neither origi-nates nor can hope to master. For Tolstoy, learning is precisely thiseducation in human limitation, the realization that we are an integralpart of a greater whole that functions according to the laws of a deitythat always lies beyond the reach of rational explanation. The pathfrom evil to good, from ignorance to knowledge, from falsehood intotruth is marked by an increasing acknowledgment of the mysteriouslinkage, the astonishing interconnection, of all living things.

Tolstoyan evil, then, is delusion, the state of understanding inwhich the subject, my I, claims that it determines the world, that itwrites the law. Hence, the fundamental striving of the novel, that de-sire to bridge the gap between finite and infinite is highly ambiguous.

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As a Napoleonic striving for mastery, it is an expression of evil. Butas a striving to grasp the myriad interconnections of things, like cal-culus, it seems much more benign, for it sets one on the road to truthby imitation not creation. This difference is a crucial one; the desire toknow is not evil if it seeks to discover the laws that determine us andnot set them down as if they were our creation. For Tolstoy, the pathof good is a path of acquiescence and acceptance of finitude; we learnto be content with the necessity that shapes us, that decries that wemust die. Hence, to learn more about this necessity cannot be evil.

There is yet a stronger ambiguity in the novel. If freedom is thesource of evil, it is also, as Tolstoy never tires of repeating, the sourceof life, the continuously enticing vitality that is the wellspring of hope.Does Tolstoy then maintain that this wellspring itself is tainted?Prince Andrei’s path in the novel seems to represent this view andillustrate its consequences. But what of Pierre? Does he not uncoveranother side of this argument? Does Pierre not speak for discoveringthe essential goodness in life no matter what the hardships? I thinkthat one has to split hairs here by arguing that for Prince Andrei andPierre freedom has radically different meanings. For Prince Andreifreedom is power; for Pierre it is recognition of powerlessness, acqui-escence to necessity, that allows one to be freed from the cycle ofstruggle that characterizes finite existence. Yet, even in Pierre’s casethere is additional ambiguity because he is still tempted into grandioseprojects at the end of the novel. In other words, there is a deep-seatedtension, a shadow of doubt about any resolution of human struggle,about the possibility of reconciliation with God—Prince Andrei’sspecter cannot be eliminated or explained away.

Schelling wrote that “[t]he character of finitude is that nothing canbe posited without at once positing its opposite” (1927: 1/104). Andthis claim applies equally well to describe the essential restlessnessthat these ambiguities reveal. The novel simply does not and cannotarrive at a final dogmatic view, at perpetual peace or satisfaction, al-though on the surface this may seem to be the case; rather, it weavesin increasingly complex ways between extremes, between skepticismand affirmation concerning knowledge, between openness and clo-

184 Conclusion

sure, tragic and comic, epic and novel, freedom and necessity—innone of these cases is the matter settled.

But there is a serious flaw in this claim that the novel comes to nofinal view because its own recognition of why this is so, the descrip-tion of consciousness as a relation between reason and consciousness,seems unmistakably dogmatic, exempt from the very prescriptions itotherwise imposes on knowing and action. What is this higher knowl-edge that permits the unification of oppositions even in their constantinstability and dynamism?

This is indeed an important question, one that cannot simply bedismissed out of hand, for it points to a distinctively vatic element inthe novel, however impure its manifestations may be. This dogmaticassertion of the impossibility of dogmatism is ultimately rather un-nerving—it points to its own fragility and reveals a far more profoundrestlessness, a contradiction that simply cannot be smoothed out oreliminated in any way. Far from merely suggesting that consciousnessarises out of the struggle between intrinsically opposed impulses, thiscontradiction stands to undermine the very model that permits thecontradiction to emerge in the first place. What is one to do? The en-tire edifice must collapse as a result of its own unstable grounding,proving in the most direct manner possible that the need to groundends up in futility, in re-asserting the doubts, the sense of vertiginousinstability, that it was intended to quiet; patterns of thought, their riseand fall, mirror the patterns of life, the cycle of birth and death, thatconstitute the underlying rhythm of life. The novel’s broad keel, itsbasic movement towards a final characterization of consciousness,towards grounding itself, proves to be just as fragile and illusory in itsfinality as the great epiphanic or revelatory moments experienced byPierre and Prince Andrei.

This raises the crucial question of the relation between the essaysand the fictional text again in quite a different light. By attempting toground basic patterns of the fictional text in an abstract speculationabout the nature of consciousness that reveals itself to be radicallyungrounded in any higher authority, does Tolstoy not undermine hisattempt to unify the two aspects of the novel? Does he not show that

Freedom and Silence 185

art and thought are in fact incommensurable, thereby reversing theprimary tendency of the novel towards their union and asserting in-stead that art is in some fundamental way silent, that even literature,the most garrulous of the arts in this sense, conceals a profound si-lence? Or can he seek yet another middle way between the extremesof silence and discursivity?

This question is intimately linked with fundamental philosophicalquestions arising from the definition of man as the animal rationale,as the “rational animal,” as a peculiar combination of mind and body,intellect and the senses. Philosophy in its many guises has typicallyoccupied the realm of the intellect, while the senses occupy the realmof art, what became aesthetics in the eighteenth century, the study ofthe sensory things, of art as sensual form, as perceptum.2 The basicquestion concerns their interrelation. Are the intellect and the sensestwo completely different sources of cognition? If so, the intellect cre-ates a world independent of the senses, and the senses give us a worldindependent of the intellect. The intellect talks constantly about thingsthat cannot be said to exist in the world perceived by the senses—theintellect talks about its own creations—and the senses do not talk atall, they are quite silent. Yet, if intellect and the senses are not whollyindependent, roughly three possibilities of combination arise; eitherthe intellect is dependent on the senses, whereby it learns to speak thelanguage of the senses (realist empiricism), or the senses on the intel-lect, whereby the latter teaches the senses to speak (idealist rational-ism), or both are dependent on the other, whereby they learn that theyspeak the same language (German idealism).

These ways of grasping the relation between intellect and thesenses are all relations of mind and nature, the inside and outside, theinvisible and the visible. Yet, it is one thing to speak of mind and na-ture, while it is quite another to speak of the significance of a work ofart that may be mimetic or representational or non-mimetic, abstractand fantastic. Mimetic art is based on re-presentation of an originalwhile non-mimetic is ostensibly free, creating art that has no directrepresentational relation to an original. No matter whether mimetic ornon-mimetic, art is a making, an artwork comes into being through theform-giving activity of the artist and not through itself as a natural

186 Conclusion

object, although the view of the artist as an inspired medium for thetruth from on high is still a powerful one. The giving of form impliesthe imposition of order, one that is objectively or inter-subjectivelyaccessible, that is, one that can be perceived and appreciated by oth-ers. In this sense, form must have a public face, must be reducible to acommon language whether verbal or symbolic or broadly semiotic.The point is that the language of art, whatever its particular form,must in some fashion be accessible to discursive treatment. If thiswere not the case, one could not discuss or share any feeling about awork of art; indeed, art would be quite simply subjective in the mostextreme sense. And the notion of a largely private artistic languagewould be subject to the same kinds of objections that have been lev-eled against the notion of a private language itself.3 Art must in somesense be discursively accessible; it must lend itself to treatment in alanguage.

If art must be discursively accessible, must that discursivity begrounded? What does it mean to ground a work of art, in effect, tojustify why it is as it is? These two questions both recognize theproblem of silence, the threat that silence can authorize any view ornone at all. Tolstoy’s emphasis at the very end of the novel on an ab-stract discursive treatment of major aspects of the novel’s fictionalrepresentations underscores the surmise that grounding is necessary toovercome silence, that the silence of art, pure mimesis, is problematic.And yet the fatal inconsistency between the mode of presentation ofthe model of consciousness and that model itself reveals the vulner-ability of Tolstoy’s justification, which turns against itself. This re-markable restlessness, the inner animation that can neither be fullyexpressed by, nor fully contained in, form, is wayward, a madness,and, in this sense, a kind of ceaseless and cautioning evil—an impla-cable contradiction that gives rise to freedom, is indeed the essence offreedom, while also restricting it as a product of contradiction. Thatthere is no way out, that the whole cannot be known but also not dis-carded as a goal of knowledge—here is the animate force of the novel.

The contradiction that ends the novel, that brings an ironic closure-non-closure to it, exists also on the most humble level of the text andis in a sense the most basic variant of the novel’s dilemma. For what is

Freedom and Silence 187

language, if not the attempt to end silence, to allow that to speakwhich has no voice? Here too language both allows and limits, givesform to and conceals what is in its immediacy. The episodes in thenovel are legion where vision communicates what language cannot,what language can only leave out or obscure. This is especially evi-dent with Pierre who realizes the limits of words in a very conven-tional way when he first perceives the gravity of his father’s situation,of the decline into death, when his father looks at him. In a similarfashion the famous moment of mutual recognition between Pierre andDavout saves Pierre’s life. The great irony here has traditional roman-tic elements; it is the irony of trying to convey through language whatcan only be corrupted by language, of trying to achieve a sort of “in-fection” (as the later Tolstoy would have it) through means that are ill-starred to infect in any way.

Thus both the highest planes of the novel, its grand and complexarchitectonics, and the most humble plane, that of the language it uses,are imbued with a contradictory essence, one that consists of an everrenewed striving to overcome that has both tragic and comic elements,that recognizes limits and tries to overcome them, that finds its centralcreative energy in this irrepressible movement, this constant strife de-scribed so succinctly in the saying of Heraclitus that “war is the fatherof all things” (polemos ton panton pater).

War and Peace like few other novels before or since weaves abrilliantly structured narrative from these fundamental conflicts thatonly intensifies them without ultimately breaking into dogmatic af-firmations of plenitude or absence. In this sense, it is indeed muchmore than a conventional novel, much more than simply an attempt toconvey a historical truth, but rather an exploration of the basic formsand possibilities of human thought and action that praises the life ofsimplicity on the surface while denying its viability under-neath—resolution to the novel’s conflicts is at once proffered and un-dermined. The underlying implication of this bit of cunning is thatpeace is impossible, that life is movement and that it is the ever trou-bled task of narrative to capture that movement, to impose being onbecoming. We encounter at the very foundations of the novel not achoice in favor of Napoleon or Platon Karataev, but an affirmation of

188 Conclusion

the impossibility of finally making such a choice, a restlessness ofdesire that cannot be eluded but that only takes on different masks atdifferent times. Desire seeks to comprehend the infinite, to encompassthe world, and, in seeking to do so by finite means, it ends up creatingby destroying or eliminating its ostensible object. Repetition is thusinevitable: if it is impossible to be a god, it is intolerable to remain aman.

NOTES

Introduction

1. Tolstoy as quoted by Gorky. See Fortunatov 463. Translation by ClarenceBrown. See Brown 34.

2. Rosen 17; Symposium 192e10-193a1 [“…tou holou oun tei epithumiai kai diok-sei eros onoma”]. The translation is mine. Unless otherwise noted, all translations thatfollow are my own. Citations from Plato and Aristotle in the parenthetical notation inthe body of the text will refer to the appropriate English translation listed in the WorksCited, while the page numbers indicated in the accompanying endnotes refer to theStephanus edition for Plato and the Bekker edition for Aristotle since the page num-bers in these latter editions are the standard for reference to the original Greek text inphilosophical literature. The Greek editions used are also listed in the works cited.

3. Goethe employed the metaphor to describe a rhythm of taking apart (analysis)and putting together (synthesis) which for him characterized an inherent quality ofrational activity. In comparing Kant’s use of these terms with his own, Goethe notes:“…for I had proceeded throughout my life, in writing and observing, synthetically,and then again analytically, the systole and diastole of the human mind was for melike a second draught of breath, never separate, always pulsing.” See Goethe 13: 27.Schelling also uses this metaphor more broadly in the 1815 draft of his Ages of theWorld (Die Weltalter) to describe the movement of expansion and contraction under-lying the essentially contrapuntal structure, the web of oppositions, that makes up thewhole. See Schelling 1927: 4/607.

4. Tolstoy SS 4: 394. All Russian quotations from War and Peace are based onthis edition which prints the text of the novel established by E. E. Zaidenshnur afterhaving conducted an exhaustive examination of published editions and manuscriptvariants in an effort to eliminate the many problems in the text. (For more information

pechataniia” (SS 7: 395-437)). All translations are based on two important Englishtranslations, one by Alymer and Louise Maude, the other by Ann Dunnigan, both ofwhich I have not hesitated to modify where necessary for the sake of greater accuracyand literalness. The locations of quotations are henceforth given by the relevant Book,Part and Chapter to facilitate reference for those using other editions of the novel.Books and Chapters are designated by Roman numerals, Parts by Arabic numerals.

5. This is one facet of Hölderlin’s famous statement in Hyperion that “[i]t has al-ways made the state a hell that man has wanted to make it a heaven.” See Hölderlin 3:31.

6. See Abrams 229. Also see Jay 55. The comparison remains highly and obvi-ously problematic, since the difference between the notion of education appropriate tothe novel and the pursuit of absolute knowledge that runs through Hegel’s Phenome-nology is perhaps so considerable as to undermine completely the utility of such acomparison. Yet, Hegel himself invites such comparison when he writes in the “Intro-

on the editorial principles involved, see Zaidenshnur’s article, “Istoriia pisaniia i

190 Notes to Introduction

duction” to the Phenomenology: “The series of shapes which consciousness passesthrough on this way is rather the detailed history of the education of consciousnessitself towards scientific knowledge.” See Hegel 1980: 56.

7. See Eikhenbaum 1928. Also see Zaidenshnur (SS 7: 396), where she shows thathistory was at the center of the projected novel from the beginning.

8. N. D. Akhsharumov, “Voina i mir” in Sukhikh 86.9. The citation is taken from a letter, dated February 26 (NS) 1868, to Pavel An-

nenkov who shared Turgenev’s dislike of the essays. See Turgenev VII: 64. Also seeP. Annenkov, “Istoricheskie i esteticheskie voprosy v romane gr. L. N. Tolstogo‘Voina i mir’” in Sukhikh 38-58.

10. For a discussion of the 1873 edition, see Zaidenshnur (SS 7: 420-421). Thiswas the third edition of the text which has never attained canonical status becausescholars consider this edition to be a concession to the novel’s critics; it both departsfrom Tolstoy’s original conception and also shows evidence of Nikolai Strakhov’sinvasive editing (which included the re-writing of sentences for “stylistic reasons”). Infact, the most commonly printed edition is based either on the first or second editionsof the novel (1868-69) but discards their division into six books in favor of the fourbook format introduced (by Tolstoy himself) with the third edition.

11. Flaubert’s comment comes from a letter to Turgenev who then sent on ex-cerpts (including this comment) to Tolstoy in a letter dated January 24, 1880. SeeTurgenev XII/2. Also see Berlin 25.

12. See Shklovsky 1928 and Eikhenbaum 1928: 2/2/317-319. Kathryn Feuer sug-gests in a manner reminiscent of Eikhenbaum that the novel evidences different stagesof composition which have different generic orientations. For Feuer there are threestages: what began as a “political novel” became a “novel of manners” and then a“philosophical novel.” See Feuer 3-4. For a remarkably similar division of the novel,see Pierre Pascal as quoted in Steiner 105-106.

13. See Eikhenbaum 1974: 98-99.14. This kind of contradiction is a staple of the deconstructionist approach and has

its origins in Heidegger’s curious dismissal of self-referential contradiction as amerely formal rule of thought. See, for example, Heidegger 1961: 1/501-502.

15. For a recent examination of repetition in Tolstoy, see Sankovitch.16. Orwin traces this notion to Sergei Bocharov. See Bocharov 34-44.

Part One

Chapter One

1. Berlin claims that the novel’s skepticism is a form of anti-reductionist empiri-cism or positivism, while Morson is apparently more radical, moving from skepticismto nihilism. What does nihilism mean here? It most likely means the raising of anessentially negative doctrine, that narratives cannot be true, to the status of a dogma.Yet, Morson is well supported by a tradition of Russian criticism that finds Tolstoy anihilist for the same reasons, that he seems to deny the possibility of truth with theassurance of one who already possesses it.

Notes to Chapter One 191

2. Philosophy is, after all, a preparation for death as Socrates says in the Phaedo(55 [64a4-6]). Moreover, the intimate relation between Christianity and death, thecurious fact that Christianity is born near the tomb, struck many writers of the Ro-mantic period. Melville, in an uncharitable mood, writes that “faith, like a jackal,feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vitalhope.” See Melville 55.

3. Theaetetus 174a4-8. [“hosper kai Thalen astronomounta, o Theodore, kai anobleponta, pesonta eis frear, Thraitta tis emmeles kai chariessa Therapainis aposkopsailegetai os ta men en ouranoi prothoumoito eidenai, ta d’emprosthen autou kai parapodas lanthanoi auton.”]

4. There is in this reversal an intriguing echo of the highly ambiguous attitudestowards the notion of khitrost’, understood as a certain dexterity of thought and ex-pression, that are evident throughout the medieval literary tradition in Moscovy andalso play a significant role in the writings of major figures in orthodoxy such as Av-vakum.

5. See (XVII/2/I). Konstantin Leontiev not only carried the fatalistic line forward,he also pointed out the obvious similarity between the closed universe of fatalism andthat of tragedy. See Leontiev, “On Tolstoy’s Qualities” in Knowles 381.

6. This phrase is taken from Fichte’s review of Aenesidemus, an important skepti-cal attack published in 1792 on the Elementarphilosophie of Karl Leonhard Reinhold,one of the Kantian philosophy’s early defenders. Fichte praises skepticism’s useful-ness, its essential role on the way to truth, noting that “it is undeniable that philoso-phizing reason owes all the human progress which it has made so far to the observa-tions of skepticism concerning the insecurity of every resting place yet obtained byreason.” See Fichte 59.

7. It is, however, worth mentioning that this representation of Kutuzov is not in-nocent. Rather, the fact that it is Prince Andrei who provides the representation leadsto the suspicion that this is just one more instance in which Prince Andrei accordsgod-like authority to an individual. The suspicion of bias may be confirmed by otherportraits of Kutuzov in the novel that deny him any such authority. The final result isinescapable ambiguity.

8. Christian was the first to identify these structures in the novel. See Christian125. See also the somewhat restrained comments in Silbajoris 92-107.

9. The narrator is not omniscient; to claim, as several critics have, that this is thecase, fails to account for the variety and complexity of narrative postures in the novel(what is, perhaps, not surprising in so far as Western critics often assume a more sta-ble adherence to narrative convention in Tolstoy than the evidence warrants).

10. That belief in chance is equivalent to ignorance is a position set out in the sec-ond chapter of the First Epilogue. As to modern philosophy, Spinoza is a notablerepresentative of a similar position outside the overtly Christian context: “But a thingis called contingent only because of a defect of our knowledge…because the order ofcauses is hidden from us, it can never seem to us either necessary or impossible. Sowe call it contingent or possible.” [“At res aliqua nulla alia de causa contingens dici-tur, nisi respectu defectus nostrae cognitionis…propterea quod ordo causarum noslatet, ea numquam, nec ut necessaria, nec ut impossibilis videri nobis potest, ideoqueeandem vel contingentem, vel possibilem vocamus.”] See Spinoza 107. (Translationof Part I, Proposition XXXIII, Scholium I of the Ethics by Edwin Curley)

192 Notes to Chapter One

11. Pascal 563. [“…l’infinie immensité des espaces que j’ignore et quim’ignorent…”]

12. The narrator uses three Russian words to describe the infinite in this chapter

properly translated by the word “infinite” whose Latin precursor, “infinitum,” exactlyresembles the Russian in word structure and meaning, for in is equivalent to the prefix“bez” while “finis,” border or end, is near in semantic range to “konets.” “Beskonech-

termini” and can be construed to include within its scope almost any kind of infinite.

infinity as a numerically defined quantity and, specifically, as a non-denumerablequantity, that is, a quantity which can never be counted out in full.

3 at 72b7-16 sets out the infinite regress argument: “Those who suppose that one can-not have complete knowledge (holos epistasthai), asserting that we are led back with-out end since we do not understand the later things through the prior things of whichthere are no grounds, speak correctly—for it is impossible to survey infinitely manythings.”

That this argument became a favorite skeptical argument can be gleaned from theprimary source of the arguments of that “school,” the writings of Sextus Empiricus.See Sextus Empiricus 165-177.

14. Posterior Analytics 71b9-13. The translation is mine.15. This dominant Greek understanding of knowledge assumes a particular onto-

logical attitude to the infinite. There is only one kind of infinite (whether of the greator small), the potential infinite (to einai dunamei apeiron). The potential infinite’speculiar ontological status consists in its not being, i.e., its being is confined to nega-tion or limit. Hence, nothing which is can be infinite; to be is to be finite or complete.Moreover, knowledge of any thing that is must also be complete or finite. Therefore,knowledge of the infinite is a contradiction and, as such, impossible; it is knowledgeof nothing. See Physics 206a14-25.

16. The point is that the narrator does not say that the event as a phenomenologi-cal “fact” cannot be known, but rather that the causes for the event without which, as Ihave noted, knowledge of the event is not possible, cannot be known.

17. Finite number can only provide an illusion of partial quantity, for what amountof infinity can any finite number be? One may illustrate the problem by performingthe simple operation of adding 1 to the infinite. If 1 is added to the infinite the sumdoes not equal the infinite +1, for this would suggest that the infinite is a definitenumber, i.e. finite, but rather the infinite +1=the infinite. One must therefore relin-quish the desire to obtain some knowledge of the whole, if the whole is infinite, be-cause partial knowledge of the infinite is only ever a beginning of knowledge of it.See Benardete 116. Benardete relates a celebrated anecdote given by David Hilbert inhis lectures on infinity, that of the Grand Hotel. The Grand Hotel contains an infinitenumber of rooms. One night a traveler is unable to find lodging and asks for a room atthe Grand Hotel. The manager takes pity on the traveler and announces over a tele-phone system which provides him with access to all the rooms in the hotel that, due to

lent for “neischislennyi” may be “uncountable.” The Russian word “beskonechnyi” is

nyi” can be construed to apply to the broadest definitions of “without limits, ends or

Both the definitions of “beschislennyi” or “neischislennyi” refer more explicitly to

“neischislennyi” may be translated by “innumerable,” although a more exact equiva-

13. See Posterior Analytics 72b7-16; 83b5-9; 86a4-10; Metaphysics 994b16-27. A

without regard to different shades of meaning among them. Both “beschislennyi” and

Notes to Chapter One 193

unforeseen circumstances, each lodger must leave his present room and move to theone next door. The lodger in room 1 will move to room 2 and so on. The manager,having completed his announcement, turns to the traveler and tells him to take roomnumber 1. The number of rooms does not change, but the number of lodgers does.

18. My interpretation of classical physics follows that of Ernst Cassirer and Alex-andre Kojève. See Cassirer 3-25 and Kojève 25-46.

Chapter Two

1. Historians are not alone in this practice; it seems to be a psychological tendencyand is shared by notable characters in the novel as well. Natasha cannot help but thinkthat her love for Prince Andrei was fated from their first meeting at Otradnoe: “Itseemed to Natasha that even at the time she first saw Prince Andrei at Otradnoe, shehad fallen in love with him” (II/3/XXII). But we are led to suspect from Prince An-drei’s description of this first meeting that Natasha hardly noticed him. A difference isthat Natasha sees her love for Prince Andrei as fated by a greater power, whereashistorians look to the human will as the determining force in history. Like Pierre inthe period preceding his marriage to Helen, historians fail to distinguish betweenheaven and earth, the divine and the merely human.

2. See Berlin 25.3. For this observation, I am indebted to John Bayley. See Bayley 103. I should

note that Shklovsky was of course well aware of the French sources of Tolstoy’stechnique. See Shklovsky 63.

4. See Bayley 103.5. The locus classicus for this thinking is Plato’s dialogue Meno in which Socrates

shows that an ignorant slave boy can attain to mathematical knowledge through a kindof prompting that permits him to recollect the truth that his soul possesses but losesupon its return to a body. See also, Gutkina, “The Dichotomy between Flesh andSpirit: Plato’s Symposium in Anna Karenina” in McLean 84-99.

6. Physics 239b14-29.7. Physics 263a4-263b9.8. I use the term “infinitesimal” in this explanation because that is the term Tol-

stoy uses in the novel. The concept is troubling (how can one obtain a “sum” of in-finitesimals?) and was in fact eliminated by the innovations of Cauchy and Weier-strass in the 19th century, although it has been revived in the 20th century by Abra-ham Robinson’s non-standard analysis. Generally speaking, modern calculus employsin place of an infinitesimal difference (equivalent to zero) the complex notion of alimit; there are no more mysterious infinitesimal quantities to ponder. Tolstoy seemsto have been unaware of these developments or the problem itself—this may be thefault of his sources. See Eikhenbaum 1928: 2/2/351-388.

9. See Arendt II: 89. Arendt maintains that arbitrium is to will as a faculty whosechoices are set (arbitrium) is to one which sets its choices (will).

10. This interpretation arguably does violence to the notion of infinitesimals ascommonly understood and, of course, one could object that the term ‘differential”merely denotes one of the infinitesimal differences (differentiae as Leibniz originallycalled them) that forms an element of the differential relationship, the differential co-

194 Notes to Chapter Two

efficient or derivative in modern terminology. This is a plausible argument suggestingthat Tolstoy conflates the differences, notionally infinitesimal measures of change,with motion, a “product” of the differential relation between these infinitesimals,specifically, between distance and time. The key distinction between the two possibleinterpretations is that one suggests Tolstoy understands that motion is essentially re-lational, while the other does not, assuming that the infinitesimal segments simplyneed to be added up to get to laws of motion. Among other difficulties, it seems to methat this latter thesis renders the notion both of a limit to activity (apparent exercise offreedom) and of attaining to an “art” of integration incoherent, since, in the latter case,one has only to add a series of “units.” Hence, I suspect that Tolstoy is loose with histerms and assumes a relation when the narrator mentions the differential and not aninfinitesimal difference of some kind, e.g. distance or time. Having said that, I do notwish to glide over the difficulties a detailed interpretation of the narrator’s notion ofthe infinitesimal has to address. Perhaps the danger of incoherence here only revealsmore clearly that a different approach, one that assumes much less precision is notonly warranted but necessary. Indeed, the lack of precision on Tolstoy’s part may alsobe a nod in this direction.

11. See Eikhenbaum 1928: 2/2/ 341-385.12. Hegel provides a most penetrating modern treatment of this relation in the

chapter entitled “Sense Certainty” (“Die Sinnliche Gewißheit“) of the Phenomenology(1977: 58-66; 1988: 69-78). In that chapter Hegel reveals the weakness of the opposi-tion of the particular and the universal by affirming their necessary prior grounding inthe universal (“das Allgemeine”). Hegel also asserts that language expresses that gen-erality without which indeed no expression of any kind would be possible.

13. Berlin’s view can also give rise to suspicion about the sincerity of the narra-tor’s claims. That Tolstoy may be exercising a form of esoteric writing seems par-ticularly relevant in this regard if only to those who believe that the narrator cannot beserious about calculus. By esoteric writing, I mean the ostensibly ancient practice ofconcealing unacceptable meaning under an acceptable cover as brought to light in thiscentury by Leo Strauss. In his book, Persecution and the Art of Writing, Straussmakes the case for the widespread practice of this writing of concealment wherebydangerous truths may be transmitted to those worthy of them. Strauss claims that oneof the characteristic ways in which writers have diverted the attention of the “vulgar”is to commit “such blunders as would shame an intelligent high school boy.” In thepresent case, one might make the claim that the narrator’s proposal to use calculusconceals a dangerous skepticism. But if that were so, it is difficult to understand whythe narrator would directly express skepticism in regard to causation and only latermute that expression. See Strauss 30.

14. The narrator affirms this view in similar terms earlier in the novel, in the ThirdPart of Book III:

There is, and can be, no cause of an historical event except the one cause ofall causes. But there are laws directing events, and some of these laws are knownto us while we are conscious of others we cannot comprehend. The discovery ofthese laws is only possible when we have quite abandoned the attempt to find thecause in the will of some one man, just as the discovery of the laws of motion of

Notes to Chapter Two 195

the planets was possible only when men abandoned the conception of the fixity ofthe earth. (III/3/I)

15. Another argument Morson advances to combat Tolstoy’s determinist outlooksuggests that a greater number of laws is somehow not supportive of determinism,since more laws means uncertainty. I can only assume that this argument means to saythat an infinity of laws runs against determinism. But this is not clearly the case, sinceto deny our ability to know the deterministic structure of the world is not to deny thereality of that structure; such a position is in fact based on the assumption, a distinctlyproblematic one, to the effect that only what we can know at any given time is real.Further, as Alexandre Kojève notes: “The idea of an infinite system of equations [i.e.laws] is not at all contradictory in itself, and it is not the presence of the infinite whichcan stop the mathematician” [“L’idée d’un système infini d’équations n’a en soi riende contradictoire, et ce n’est pas la présence d’un infini qui peut arrêter lemathématicien]. See Kojève 56. While this comment may seem overly glib, there is auseful point to it: simply because one cannot presently grasp the whole structure ofreality, find that uniform field theory or theory of theories that scientists are quiteactively seeking, does not mean that the basic premise of such a theory, that the uni-verse is knowable because it obeys certain laws, is to be dismissed out of hand. Thenotion, for example, that the quantum universe has once and for all refuted determin-ism is certainly not without its detractors, principal among whom was Einstein him-self. The persistence of the “hidden variable” notion shows the vitality of deterministviews and a concern that the probabilistic nature of quantum physics is nothing morethan an affirmation of finite limitation, of our inability to see the final patterns thatgovern the universe. It is also obvious (if still worth mentioning) that the curious co-incidence of quantum thinking with the breakdown of old certainties in Europe and,especially Germany, is a highly suggestive one—here the pride of modern science hasweakened and taken a form which some scientists refer to as a kind of “mysticism.” Inany event, the fact is that theological determinism, that God knows what we onlyglimpse, is quite compatible with quantum thought. See Hemion 97. I am grateful toArkady Kholodenko for this latter reference.

16. This citation comes from Cassirer’s introduction to a German translation ofthe principal writings of Leibniz. See Leibniz 1: xxxix-xl. The German reads: DieAusbildung der wissentschaftlichen Naturansicht der neuren Zeit ist durch denGegensatz gegen das Aristotelische System der “substantiellen Formen” bestimmtund geleitet. Wenn Aristoteles den inneren Urgrund alles Geschehens zu enthüllengedachte, wenn er die ersten Anfänge bloßzulegen suchte, die alles Werden aus sichhervortreiben, so beginnt die moderne Wissenschaft mit der Selbstbescheidung, daßuns nichts anderes als die Erscheinungen selbst in ihren mannigfachen Verhältnissengegeben sind, und daß die Aufgabe der Theorie sich darauf beschränkt, sie auf allge-meingültige, gesetzliche Ordnungen zurückzuführen und in ihnen zu “verstehen.”Nicht die absoluten, inneren Wesenheiten der Dinge und der Veränderungen, sondernnur die immanente Regel ihrer räumlichen Ordnung und ihrer zeitlichen Wiederkehrgilt es zu begreifen. Die wesentliche Aufgabe der Aristotelischen Physik lag darin,von den besonderen Phänomenen auf die allgemeinen zwecktätigen Kräftezurückzuschließen, die sie bedingen und hervorbringen. Die gesamte äußere Wirk-

196 Notes to Chapter Two

lichkeit ward nunmehr in ein Spiel derartiger Kräfte umgedeutet: jede physikalischeVeränderung war nur Ausdruck einer inneren Wandlung, kraft deren die ursprüngli-che “Form” des Dinges sich allmählich zu entfalten und zu verwirklichen strebt. Allesmaterielle Geschehen war damit als ein Ergebnis und ein Zusammenwirken bes-timmter organischer Triebe gedacht, deren jeder auf die Hervorbringung einer beson-deren individuellen Gestaltung gerichtet ist.

17. Physics 192b13-15 [ta men gar phusei onta panta phainetai echonta enheautois archen kineseos kai staseos—ta men kata topon, ta de kat’auksesin kaiphthisin, ta de kat’alloiosin—].

18. The Latin reads: “Jam vero ex his omnibus est concludendum, non quidemsolas Arithmeticam & Geometriam esse addiscendas, sed tantummodo rectum verita-tis est iter quaerentes circa nullum objectum debere occupari, de quo non possinthabere certitudinem Arithmeticis & Geometricis demonstrationibus aequalem” (X:366).

19. The Latin reads: “Atque ita per hanc propositionem rejicimus illas omnesprobabiles tantum cognitiones, nec nisi perfecte cognitis, & de quibus dubitari nonpotest, statuimus esse credendum.”

20. Pascal 610 [“Car enfin, qu’est-ce l’homme dans la nature? Un néant à l’égardde l’infini, un tout à l’égard du néant, un milieu entre rien et tout. Infiniment éloignéde comprendre les extrêmes…“].

21. Leibniz writes in one of his German texts:

Mathematics or the art of measuring can elucidate such things very nicely, foreverything in nature is, as it were, set out in number, measure and weight or force.If, for example, one sphere meets another sphere in free space and if one knowstheir sizes and their paths and directions before collision, one can then foretell andcalculate how they will rebound and what course they will take after the impact.Such splendid laws also apply, no matter how many spheres are taken or whetherobjects are taken other than spheres. From this one sees then that everything pro-ceeds mathematically—that is, infallibly—in the whole wide world, so that ifsomeone could have sufficient insight into the inner parts of things, and in addi-tion had remembrance and intelligence enough to consider all the circumstancesand to take them into account, he would be a prophet and would see the future inthe present as in a mirror.

This is quoted in Cassirer 11-12. Cassirer comments that the “same infallibilitythat discloses itself in mathematical thought and inference must obtain in nature, for ifnature did not possess this infallibility it would be inaccessible to mathematicalthought. In this mode of argument there is expressed the characteristic subjectivefervor that inspired the first founders and champions of classical rationalism.” It isworthwhile to add that the essence of the modern striving to mathematize nature is anovercoming of the reticence of Greek and Christian culture in regard to the possibilityof obtaining true knowledge, the prerogative of the gods or God. Hence, the narrator’sjuxtaposition of the ancients and the moderns, as it were, in his discussion of continu-ous motion, seems entirely consonant with this interpretation of modernity.

22. Berlin 46. Zaidenschnur (SS 7: 404). Christian 1-59.23. As noted in Eikhenbaum 1974: 69.

Notes to Chapter Two 197

24. Translation by George Gibian. Note the similarity between the statementsmade in the letter and the passage quoted above in note 2 from Pierre’s dream afterBorodino. Goethe, whose closeness to Tolstoy is no secret, being one of those unusualartistic affinities that emerge in the course of our tradition, writes in a similar vein thatthe “truth, identical with the divine, never allows itself to be known directly, we see itonly in its reflection (Abglanz), in example, in symbol, in individual and related ap-pearances; we perceive it as incomprehensible life and yet cannot relinquish our wishto understand it.” See Goethe 13: 305. Elsewhere, in the great fragment, Pandora,Goethe writes that man is “fixed to see what is illuminated and not the light.” SeeGoethe 5: 362.

25. “Neskol’ko slov po povodu knigi ‘Voina i mir’” (SS 7: 385).26. Christian 122-147. Also see Sankovitch for her comprehensive treatment of

repetition.27. This statement recalls Goethe’s well-known comment to Eckermann: “‘The

world remains always the same,’ said Goethe, ‘conditions repeat themselves, onepeople lives, loves and feels like another…’” [“‘Die Welt bleibt immer diesselbe,’sagte Goethe, ‘die Zustände wiederholen sich, das eine Volk lebt, liebt und empfindetwie das andere…’”] See Eckermann 128.

28. Nietzsche writes in a Goethean vein: “…the more affects we allow to speakabout one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, themore complete will our ‘concept’ of this thing, our ‘objectivity’ be.” [“…je mehrAffekte wir über eine Sache zu Worte kommen lassen, je mehr Augen, verschiedeneAugen wir uns für dieselbe Sache einzusetzen wissen, um so vollständiger wird unser‘Begriff’ dieser Sache, unsere ‘Objektivität’ sein.”]. See Nietzsche 5: 365.

29. See Shklovsky 1991: 61-65; Todorov 22.30. See Joseph Frank. Calculus is indeed the key to grasping the spatial form of

War and Peace—eadem, sed aliter—and, in my view, the calculus proposal advocatesreading the novel in a way that also reflects very closely in its basic outlines the prin-ciples of modern structuralism. It is, after all, fair to say that the techniques of struc-turalism represent a formalization of literary analysis inspired by mathematical for-malism as so many other areas of modern inquiry. Moreover, with its emphasis on asystem outside the subject, on discovering the laws of that system and on viewingindividual literary works as manifestations of those laws, I think structuralism is re-markably close in intent and execution to the calculus analogy. Indeed, even the basicquestion of the infinitesimal or minimal unit is vital and vexing both in regard tostructuralism and the calculus proposal.

Chapter Three

1. I am quite aware of the dangers that employing the term realism incurs. Real-ism as mimetic verisimilitude is a modern problem and concept. What we think isrealistic may not apply to other periods. Hence, I think it is best to qualify my com-ments by suggesting that the novel captures a certain modern experience of the world,one which passed and still passes for realistic. Much of this has to do, as Nabokovnoted, with Tolstoy’s depiction of time. See Nabokov 141. See also Jakobson, “OnRealism in Art” in Jakobson 19-27.

198 Notes to Chapter Three

2. The German reads: “Alle Empiriker streben nach der Idee und können sie inder Mannigfaltigkeit nicht entdecken; alle theoretiker suchen sie im Mannigfaltigenund können sie darinne nicht auffinden. //Beide jedoch finden sich im Leben, in derTat, in der Kunst zusammen…”

3. Orwin 101.4. This structure is followed by Virgil and the tradition that takes the Aeneid as its

model (in varying degrees this includes Camões, Ariosto, Tasso, and Milton).5. Republic 392c-395.6. This is a constant refrain in Steiner’s book and a reputed discovery of Nabokov

who archly suggests that Dostoevsky might have “done better” as a dramatist.7. See Bocharov 34-44 and Orwin, 107.8. “Neskol’ko slov po povodu knigi ‘Voina i mir’” (SS 7: 382).9. My intention here is to examine the problematic “novelness” of War and Peace

from the perspective of the patterns I have thus far identified. The problem of genericclassification has been a significant one in critical discussions of the novel since itwas first published. While there are a number of studies relating to the novel’s genericidentity, Eikhenbaum’s writings on Tolstoy in the 60s being one of the most notablein this regard, the philosophical motivations of the relation of between epic and novelin War and Peace present an arguably more tenuous topic. For a useful summary ofthe main issues involved in regard to the generic classification of War and Peace, seeMorson 37-65 and Silbajoris 108-123.

10. See Bakhtin 1990: 22-27. The association of knowledge with vision is foundedin Greek thought and, specifically, in its expression, the ancient Greek language. Theancient Greek verb “to know” (eidenai) is a perfect form of the verb “to see” and hasthe same root as the Greek eidos, idea or form. The Greek word Theoria derives fromthe root thea, a look or view. The Greek origins have left a permanent imprint, deci-sively influencing subsequent thought. The highest form of knowledge is still visionor an immediate intuition of what is. Such knowledge is to be distinguished fromdiscursivity that remains dependent on it. This dependence becomes a fundamentalissue in the modern era, the debate over priority, whether that of reason (rationalism)or of the senses (empiricism) or a synthesis of the two (Kant) where reason as under-standing is dependent and as itself in its purity is independent, a radically self-legislating “faculty.”

11. See Ricoeur 1: 3-30. Ricoeur notes that “time becomes human to the extentthat it is organized after the manner of a narrative; narrative, in turn, is meaningful tothe extent that it portrays the features of temporal experience” (1: 3). Bakhtin is moreradical. Temporal experience is the result of narrative or narrative is a specific con-figuration of temporal experience. For Bakhtin there is no time outside of narrativetime, the chronotope, Bakhtin’s development of the Transcendental Aesthetic.

12. “Consequently the content and form of epic proper is the entire world-outlookand objective manifestation of a national spirit presented in its self-objectifying shapeas an actual event.” Hegel 1975: II/1044. (Also see Hegel 1970: 15/325-415.)

13. Jean-Marie Schaeffer argues against the “speculative theory of art” that he as-sociates with the great German idealist thinkers and, above all, with Hegel. Schaefferrejects the notion that art requires a metaphysical justification, that it is somehow oneroute to grasping metaphysical truths. He believes that philosophy has invaded anddistorted art leading to the circulation of fashionable ideas such as the “death of art,”

Notes to Chapter Three 199

which merely reflect the same kind of grounding crisis that many attribute to modernphilosophy in the wake of Hegel and Heidegger.

14. I owe this observation to Vladimir Alexandrov.15. Schelling 1936: 9. The German reads: Denn diese große Aufgabe allein ist die

unbewußte und unsichtbare Triebfeder alles Strebens nach Erkenntnis von demniedigsten bis zum höchsten; ohne den Widerspruch von Notwendigkeit und Freiheitwürde nicht Philosophie allein, sondern jedes höhere Wollen des Geistes in den Todversinken, der jenen Wissenschaften eigen ist, in welchen er keine Anwendung hat.

16. Schelling 2000: 90 (translation modified). The German reads: Alles Lebenmuß durchs Feuer des Widerspruchs gehen; Widerspruch ist des Lebens Triebwerkund Innerstes. Davon kommt’s, daß, wie ein altes Buch sagt, alles Thun unter derSonne so voll Mühe ist und alles sich in Arbeit verzehrt und doch nicht müde wird,und alle Kräfte unaufhörlich gegeneinander ringen. Wäre nur Einheit und alles inFrieden, dann fürwahr würde sich nichts rühren wollen, und alles in Verdroßenheitversinken, da es jetzt eifrig hervor strebt, um aus der Unruhe in die Ruhe zu gelangen.

Part Two

1. Tolstoy’s adaptation of Lao-tsu in The Way of Life (Put’ zhizni) (PSS 62: 69).2. Sophocles 24 [at line 554: “en toi phronein gar meden hedistos bios”].

Chapter Four

1. See Hume 1978: 72-83; 1975: 60-79.2. The whole passage reads as follows in the original: Wenn nämlich Gott im

Sinne des christlichen Gottes aus seiner Stelle in der übersinnlichen Welt verschwun-den ist, dann bleibt immer noch die Stelle selbst erhalten, obzwar als die leer gewor-dene. Der leer gewordene Stellenbereich des Übersinnlichen und der idealen Weltkann noch festgehalten werden. Die leere Stelle fordert sogar dazu auf, sie neu zubesetzen und den daraus entschwundenen Gott durch anderes zu ersetzen.

3. Tolstoy uses the term “hive life” in the first chapter of Book III.4. To daimonion (or daimon) is the Greek term that Socrates reports Diotima us-

ing to describe the half-state of human striving or eros in the Symposium (193[202d13-14]).

5. Tolstoy wrote about Dostoevsky that the latter was “all struggle” and that “onecannot place on a pedestal for the instruction of posterity” such a man. There seems tobe no discrepancy between this view and those Tolstoy advances in the Second Part ofthe Epilogue. The ideal characters in the novel like Platon Karataev are not all strug-gle; it is precisely his lack of struggle, his inner harmony that distinguishes Platon.See Jackson 112-113.

6. This translates the Latin, ob-iectum, from the preposition ob, meaning “before,”“in front of,” “over against,” and the verb iacio, “to throw before,” “offer,” “expose.”The Russian, predmet, would seem to have a quite similar structure; all evidence isthat it is an eighteenth-century calque from Latin. The preposition pred also means“before” or “in front of,” while met comes from the verb metat; which means “to

200 Notes to Chapter Four

throw” or “to fling.” I might add that the Latin etymology is debated—there is ques-tion about the underlying verb, whether it is iacio (“to throw”) or iecio (‘to lie”)—andI have made my own choices based on both the Russian and German calques.

7. Metaphorical language is unavoidable here, for I am attempting to describeknowledge in terms of the language of perspective or vision. This approach is hardlynew. In fact, as noted earlier, it can be traced back to the Greeks as a legion of schol-ars and philosophers have noted in this century.

8. See Eikhenbaum 1974: 93-101. Also see Orwin 150. Orwin suggests more ag-gressively that Tolstoy simply borrowed the “argument on the relationship of deter-minism and freedom of the will in the second epilogue.” While this latter positioncannot be denied, evidence that Tolstoy adapted the argument in telling ways must begiven due weight as well.

9. Kritik der reinen Vernunft A107, A117, B132. Citations from Kant in the par-enthetical notation in the body of the text will refer to the English translation listed inthe Works Cited, while the page numbers indicated in the accompanying endnotesrefer to the standard form of reference (to the first (A) and second editions (B)) to theGerman text used in philosophical literature.

10. “…denn das Selbstbewußtsein ist unmittelbar. Wie dem auch sei, so ist unserenächste Frage: was enthält nun das Selbstbewußtsein? oder: wie wird der Mensch sichseines eigenen Selbsts unmittelbar bewußt? Antwort: durchaus als eines Wollenden.”Schopenhauer’s language reflects the impact of Schelling’s essay on free will whereSchelling asserts that “Willing is original being.” See Schelling 1936: 24 (translationmodified).

11. This important passage is also quoted by Harry Walsh who recognized thebarely digested presence of Schopenhauer in the Second Part of the Epilogue. SeeWalsh 573-574. Also see McLaughlin 15-45.

12. Kritik der reinen Vernunft B 132.13. See Eikhenbaum 1974: 98.14. Kritik der reinen Vernunft A24/B39.15. Kritik der reinen Vernunft A34/B50.16. See Cassirer 3-25 and Kojève, 25-46.17. See Crocker 3-35. Here one can perceive the seminal influence of the great

debates among the eighteenth-century philosophes concerning rival conceptions ofman either as being merely another “part” of an indifferent, non-teleological nature oras having a special place in nature. Tolstoy’s place in this debate is rather more com-plex than it might appear at first glance and, hence, cannot be examined closely oradequately here; rather, the many as yet unexplored filiations of Tolstoy’s thoughtwith his predecessors merit in their own right an independent study.

18. Rousseau 1992: 43-44; See Schelling 2000: 90.19. This point of view is certainly not unique to Tolstoy and reflects some of the

central tensions in Enlightenment thinking about freedom and determinism. Diderot,for one, expresses very similar views in Jacques the Fatalist. See Crocker 155. Alsosee Gustafson 264-27. But it is hardly surprising that, once again, Rousseau’s pres-ence is probably the decisive one. See Rousseau 1997: 561 and Rousseau 1979: 272-274. Also see Orwin 102.

20. Manfred Frank 155-174.

Notes to Chapter Five 201

Chapter Five

1. As I noted in my introductory comments, this terminology is derived fromSchelling who uses the Goethian analogy of diastole and systole broadly in the 1815draft of his Ages of the World to describe the movement of expansion and contractionunderlying the essentially contrapuntal structure, the web of oppositions, that makesup the whole. See Schelling 2000: 21. Patricia Carden identifies a similar movementrelating more specifically to the self or subject with what she calls (using terms fromIsaiah Berlin), “expressivity.”

2. This is not to deny, however, that another sense of destiny is also alive in thenovel. One has only to think of the series of apparent coincidences that “permit” Pi-erre to marry Natasha. Here the suggestion that there is a divine order and plan isunmistakable. But I think that this latter kind of destiny is another hint in the novel atthe reality of the divine presence in human life useful but not determinative for thecharacters themselves. For them doubt about that presence is more immediate andpersuasive; it in fact drives their desire to find the truth, to master an elusive and hos-tile reality.

3. M. Yu. Lermontov, “Napoleon.” See Lermontov 1: 28.4. “Dieu me la donne, gare à qui la touche”/”Dio me la dona, guai a chi la tocca.”5. Faust in Goethe 3: 17 at lines 281-285. The German reads:

Der kleine Gott der Welt bleibt stets von gleichem SchlagUnd ist so wunderlich als wie am ersten Tag.Ein wenig besser würd er leben,Hättst du ihm nicht den Schein des Himmelslichts gegeben ...

6. See John Weeks, “Love, Death and Cricketsong: Prince Andrei at Mystishchi”in McLean 61-83.

7. Heidegger 1961: I/503. The German reads: “…jeder wesentliche Satz weist aufeinen Grund zurück, der sich nicht beseitigen läßt, der vielmehr nur fordert, gründli-cher ergründet zu werden.”

8. Kritik der reinen Vernunft AVII in Kemp Smith’s translation. The Germanreads: Die menschliche Vernunft hat das besondere Schicksal in einer Gattung ihrerErkenntnisse: daß sie durch Fragen belästigt wird, die sie nicht abweisen kann; dennsie sind ihr durch die Natur der Vernunft selbst aufgegeben, die sie aber auch nichtbeantworten kann; denn sie übersteigen alles Vermögen der menschlichen Vernunft.

9. Steiner 275. Quoting this very line, Steiner says that the “…weak writing hereis revelatory. The figure of Platon and his effect on Pierre are motifs of a‘Dostoevskian’ character. They lie on the limits of Tolstoy’s domain.”

10. “The rose is without a reason why; it blooms because it blooms, It pays no at-tention to itself, nor asks if one is looking at it.” [“Die Ros ist ohn warum; sie blühet,weil sie blühet, Sie acht nicht ihrer selbst, fragt nicht, ob man sie siehet.”] This isquoted in Heidegger 1957: 77.

11. Virgil VI: 697-702. Hermann Broch uses these lines as an epigraph to hisnovel, The Death of Virgil, which questions the ability of language to deal with death,

202 Notes to Conclusion

to describe what strips away all illusions of perdurance. The connection with Tolstoyseems obvious and pertinent.

Conclusion

1. Sophocles 196 [at lines 332-333 : “polla ta deina kouden an/ thropou deinoteronpelei”].

2. See Manfred Frank’s interesting discussion of the turn to aesthetics in ManfredFrank 7-24.

3. This is of course Wittgenstein’s famous argument that winds through most ofthe Philosophical Investigations in a number of different contexts. Saul Kripke’streatment of its implications is particularly suggestive if also rather controversial; yet,it has the virtue of revealing in an extremely lucid way the inherently public nature ofrules and standards.

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Publishing Co., 1953.

INDEX

Abrams, M. H., 189n.6Akhsharumov, N. D., 190n.8Alexandrov, V. E., 199n.14Annenkov, P., 190n.9Architectonic, 44-46Arendt, Hannah, 193n.9Aristophanes, 2Aristotle, 16, 53, 71, 82, 83, 192nn.13,

14 (Posterior Analytics) and 15(Physics), 193nn.6 and 7 (Physics)

Augustine, 7

Bakhtin, M. M., 107-113, 115, 117,120, 198n.10

Bayley, John, 193nn.3 and 4Benardete, J. A., 192n.17Berlin, Sir Isaiah, 11-13, 15, 79, 80,

91, 96, 190n.11, 193n.2, 194n.13,196n.22, 201n.1

Bildungsroman, 7Bocharov, Sergei, 13, 104, 190n.16,

198n.7Broch, Hermann, 202n.11Brown, Clarence, 189n.1

Calculus, 5, 69, 72-74, 76, 78-82, 85,87-94, 115, 145, 149-150, 183,193nn.8 and 10, 197n.30

Carden, Patricia, 201n.2Cassirer, Ernst, 83, 193n.18, 195n.16,

196n.21, 200n.16Cauchy, Augustin-Louis, 193n.8Causation, 48-49, 51, 55, 81, 86, 98,

129, 149, 151, 194n.14Chance, 21, 26, 28, 33, 35, 39, 40, 41,

51, 67, 134, 173, 191Chaos, 20, 36, 40-41, 48, 59, 64-68,

77, 80, 97, 103, 105, 110, 114, 117,120, 134

Christian, R. F., 13, 15, 62, 94Comic (the), 6, 65, 155-156, 157, 171,

184, 187. See also tragic (the)Consciousness, 138-145; and reason,

2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 14, 16, 105, 108, 117,121, 123, 124, 132, 133, 137, 146,151, 152, 153, 154, 165; and ge-neric form, 107-117 passim; con-tradiction between freedom and,121, 155-157; burden of, 157, 180;grounding of, 184, 186

Continuity, 70, 72Continuous motion, 70-72, 74-76, 81,

196Continuum, 71Contradiction, 3, 13, 39, 48, 50, 54;

law of, 105; openness and form,109-110, 114, 117; between free-dom and necessity/and system, 121,132; subject and object, 137; over-coming of, 154-157; self-referential, 184, 186, 190; andknowledge of the infinite, 192

Creation (ex nihilo), 39-43Crocker, Lester, 200n.17

Dante, 104Descartes, René, 82-85, 140Desire: restlessness of, 1-2, 188; and

reason, 40; and epic absolute, 117;motive force of history, 154-156;and mastery, 157, 167, 169, 175;and grounding, 172, 182

Determinism, 14, 32; in classicalphysics, 55, 195n.15, 200n.19

Dialectic, 8Diderot, Denis, 200n.17Diegesis, 98Differentiae, 70, 194n.10

208 Index

Differential: and presentation of phi-losophical ideas, 32; of history, 72,75; equations, 74, 89; co-efficient(calculus), 193n.10

Digression, 44Dostoevsky, F. M., 12, 101, 159, 175,

198n.6, 199n.5Doxa, 53Dunnigan, Ann, 189n.4

Eikhenbaum, Boris, 8, 11, 14, 44, 99,138, 145, 190nn.7, 12 and 13,193n.8, 194n.11, 197n.23, 198n.9,200nn.8 and 13

Epic: and novel, 6, 107-117; genericchange to, 8, 11; and temporality,110-112; and beginnings, 99,198n.4; and tragedy, 182, 184

Episteme, 53Eros, 2, 189n.2, 199n.4. See also De-

sireEuripides, 119, 120Evil: and freedom, 182, 183, 186

Failure: and striving, 1; and absolutevision, 96; and movement, 116; in-evitability of, 157; tragic and comicinterpretation of, 171

Fatalism, 31, 32; "oriental," 29; 191n.5Fate, 28, 42, 115, 158, 171, 172, 176Feuer, Kathryn, 190n.12Fichte, J. G., 191n.6Finitude, 6; and freedom, 7, 151; and

the infinite mind, 85-87; radical,109; irony of, 125, 181; and duality,143; and Prince Andrei, 165, 168,170; and tragedy, 171; and Pierre,172

Flaubert, Gustave, 11, 59, 101,190n.11

Force: dynamic points of, 75; andfreedom, 81; as internal nature (visactiva) of things, 83-84; and link-ages, 106; and incommensurability

thesis, 127-128, 131; and history,154, 193n.1

Form: and the infinite, 3; and narra-tive, 5, 10-16, 96, 123; self-unfolding, 83-84; and calculus, 90;spatial, 95, 197n.30; of conscious-ness, 107-117; and immediacy, 157;pursuit of mastery, 164, 171; andorder, 186, 187; or eidos, 198n.10

Fortunatov, N. D., 189n.1Frank, Joseph, 95, 197n.30Frank, Manfred, 201n.20, 202n.3Freedom: and finitude, 7, 168; and

proizvol ("will"), 81; and the pre-sent, 97; and novelistic temporality,110-117 passim; and the hunt, 119-121; as the "problem of history,"133-135; origin of, 135-138; andconsciousness, 139-143; and rea-son/necessity, 144, 151-152; andsilence, 182-184; and determinism,200n.19

Fugue structure, 47

Genette, Gérard, 98Genius, 59, 107, 158Genre, 97; importance of, 107; epic

and novel, 107-117Gibian, George, 197n.24God, 15, 41, 51; and finitude, 6, 82,

84, 86-87, 144, 182, 183; and ab-solute vision, 96; intuition, 86, 116;and historical writing, 125, 131,132; quid sit deus? 160; and Napo-leon, 160-161; and Pierre, 174

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 3, 7, 106,168, 189n.3, 197n.24, 198n.2,201n.1

Gustafson, Richard, 14, 200n.19Gutkina, Irina, 193n.5

Hegel, G. W. F., 7, 107, 112, 113, 141,163, 189n.6, 194n.12, 198n.12

Heidegger, Martin, 111, 113, 131, 172,190n.14, 199n.13, 201n.7

Index 209

Hemion, Geoffrey, 195n.15Heraclitus, 187Hilbert, David, 192n.17Historical essays, 2, 4, 19, 20, 123,

129, 132; relation to fictional text,5, 6; generic role of, 8, 10-17 pas-sim; skepticism in, 43-47; genre of,44

Historiography, 81, 91, 125, 126History: movement of, 5, 181; fatalism

in, 50-51, 193n.1; calculus (laws)of, 70-78, 87, 89; differential of, 75;Berlin on, 79-80; Morson on, 81-82; problem of, 124-133, 134, 154,155

Hölderlin, Friedrich, 189n.5Holism, 80, 155Hume, David, 129, 199n.1

Identity, 6, 19, 120, 149Infinite regress, 53, 56, 57, 192n.13Infinitesimal, 72-76, 193nn.8 and 10;

and narrative structure, 90-91,197n.30; critique of, 79, 80, 81

Infinity: and causation, 2, 47-54, 81;and continuous motion, 70-72; andknowledge, 96; circle of, 131; andlaws, 195n.15

Integration, 57, 58, 65, 66, 73,194n.10; and differentiation, 74;and narrative, 78, 79, 92, 93, 97;and laws, 82, 149;

Intuition: immediacy of, 40, 86, 144,154, 198n.10; and God, 86, 116;sensory (Kant), 139, 152; a priori(space and time), 146

Jackson, Robert Louis, 199n.5Jakobson, Roman, 198n.1Jay, Martin, 189n.6

Kant, Immanuel, 108, 139, 140, 141,145, 146, 152, 172, 189n.3,

198n.10, 200nn.9, 12, 14, and 15,201n.8

Kholodenko, Arkady, 195n.15Knowledge: of the whole, 2; theory of,

15, 16; and narrative, 20, 29, 31,106-117, 123-124; object of, 39-43,51; Greek notion of, 53-54; modernnotion of, 55; transition from Greekto modern notion of, 70-78, 82, 83-85, 127, 130-131; infinite, 96; andcontradiction, 121; sources of(Kant), 139; and self-consciousness(apperception), 140-141, 145-151passim; and the infinite, 154, 167,172; and evil, 183-186

Kojève, Alexandre, 193n.18, 195n.15,200n.16

Kripke, Saul, 202n.11

Law: of excluded middle, 16; of con-tradiction, 105

Laws of history, 70-78, 87, 89; versuscausal accounts, 70-78, 82, 83-85,131. See also Calculus

Leibniz, G. W., 71, 149, 194n.10,196n.21

Leontiev, Konstantin, 191n.5Lermontov, Mikhail, 23, 159, 201n.3Locke, John, 140Lukács, Georg, 107, 108, 112, 113,

115, 117

Mandel’shtam, O. E., 104Mastery, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 156, 157, 158,

160, 162, 163, 164, 167, 173, 179,183

Maude, Aylmer and Louise, 189n.4McLaughlin, Sigrid, 200n.11Melville, Herman, 191n.2Mimesis, 39, 41, 98, 186Morson, Gary Saul, 12, 52, 80, 96,

120, 190n.1, 195n.15, 198n.9Motion: continuity of, 70-72; laws of,

76-77

210 Index

Nabokov, V. V., 197n.1, 198n.6Narrative: striving and, 1-9; critical

reception of, 10-19; principles of,72-78, 90-95; mathematical vs. Ar-istotelian, 82-83; repetition in, 93-95; temporality of, 97-106; genreof, 106-117; and freedom, 123-124,135, 154-156

Necessity: and freedom, 1, 14, 50-51,183, 184; (as central contradiction),121, 123, 133, 135, 136, 137;and/as reason, 143-155 passim

Nietzsche, F. W., 113, 197n.28Nihilism, 9Nothingness, 41, 52, 172; and pleni-

tude, 152-154Novelness, 108, 198

Orwin, Donna, 15, 99, 104, 190n.16,198n.3, 200n.8

Pascal, Blaise, 52, 190n.12, 192n.11,196n.20

Passivity, 28, 29, 30, 31, 42, 157Plato, 2, 77, 99, 167, 177, 178, 189n.2

(Symposium), 191nn.2 (Phaedo)and 3 (Theaetetus), 193n.5 (Meno)

Plenitude, 2, 3, 41, 187; and nothing-ness, 152-154

Plot, 10, 97, 98, 103, 178Polarity: of characterization, 3-4; of

critical reception, 16; mastery andreticence, 157

Predstavlenie, 140Presentness, 100, 116Proizvol, 74-75

Rationality: calculative, 41; conceptionof, 48; beyond the finite mind, 50,69, 86, 92; and necessity, 50-51;submergence of, 119; and the artist,156

Realism, 96, 197

Reason: and consciousness, 2, 3, 6, 9,14, 105, 108, 117, 121, 124, 132,133, 138, 151-154, 184; historiciz-ing of, 113; as mediation, 144, 148-149; authority of, 156

Reinhold, Karl, 191n.6Repetition: of struggle, 1; in history,

77; in the novel, 93-94, 97, 103Representation, 15, 45, 73, 111, 144;

diegetic and mimetic, 99; forms of,116; and Kant, Schopenhauer, 139-143; grounds of, 145-150

Reticence, 3, 4, 6, 78, 156, 157, 162,173, 179, 180, 196

Ricoeur, Paul, 111, 198n.11Robinson, Abraham, 193n.8Rosen, Stanley, 189n.2Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 155,

200nn.18 and 19

Sankovitch, Natasha, 94, 190n.15,197n.26

Schaeffer, Jean-Marie, 198n.13Schelling, F. W. J., 121, 155, 183,

189n.3, 199nn.15 and 16, 200n.18,201n.1

Schopenhauer, Arthur, 6, 11, 77, 93,115, 133, 138, 139, 140, 141, 144,145, 146, 152, 155, 200n.11

Selbstbewußtsein, 139, 140, 200n.10Shklovsky, V., 11, 60, 94, 98, 190n.12,

193n.3, 197n.29Silbajoris, R., 191n.8, 198n.9Silesius, Angelus, 178Skepticism: and the critics, 1, 12, 13,

15; and the fictional text, 20, 21,32; dogmatic, 39-43; in the histori-cal essays, 43-51; and incommen-surability, 52; and concept ofknowledge, 54, 56, 58; overcomingof, 69, 87, 89, 123, 132; skeptical oranti-skeptical, 96, 97; different con-ception of, 105; and the novel's"third way," 106; utility of, 191n.6

Sophocles, 199n.2, 202n.1Soznanie, 137, 140

Index 211

Spinoza, Benedict de, 140, 191n.10Spitzer, Leo, 97Steiner, George, 12, 47, 96, 190n.12,

198n.6, 201n.9Strakhov, N. N., 91, 106, 190n.10Strauss, Leo, 194n.13Striving, 1, 4, 5, 7; structure of, 2; for

unity, 3; and subjectivity, 6; andstruggle, 16; and integration, 78,173; and finitude, 87; as fortuitousfailure, 89, 96, 106, 117; and con-tradiction, 121; and submission,157; and mastery, 158, 160, 163,166; emptiness of, 170; ambiguityof, 182, 187; and eros, 199

Structuralism, 17, 197n.30Struggle, 1; and striving, 16; between

epic and novel, 108, 117; and con-tradiction, 121; individual and thewhole, 123; to know the infinite,133; history as record of, 155-157;and Prince Andrei, 170, 179; andfinitude, 182-184; "man is all," 133,199n.5

Teleology, 84, 116, 117Temporality, 96, 97, 106-117Todorov, Tzvetan, 197n.29Tolstoy, L. N.: and structure of striv-

ing, 2; and movement of history, 5;and new synthesis of subject andobject, 6; and Hegel, 7; and genreof novel, 8; Flaubert on, 11; asskeptic, 12-14; as thinker, 17; andscientific theorizing, 39-43; andlaws of combination, 55-56; andmytheme of suffering, 68; and cal-culus, 72; holism of, 80; ancientsand moderns, 83-85; on linkages,92; on history as art, 93; anticipates

structuralism, 95, 197n.30; on genreof War and Peace, 107; andSchopenhauer, 138, 140, 141; onmotive force in history, 154-156; onsignificance of Napoleon, 159; andevil, 182-183; as vates, 184; mis-trust of language, 186-187

Tragic (the), 1, 6, 65, 182; conceptionof history, 155; conception of de-sire, 156; and comic, 157, 171, 181,183, 187. See also comic (the)

Turgenev, I. S., 10, 91, 190n.11

Unity: as cosmos, 2; conflict as es-sence of, 3; of art and thought, 5,17; and critical reception of Warand Peace, 10-17; and perspective,56; and laws, 69; synchronous, 94,97, 101; and epic, 113; and thehunt, 119-121; and system, 135;and consciousness, 141; of freedomand reason, 144, 152

Virgil, 198n.4, 202n.11Vorstellung, 139, 140, 141

Walsh, Harry, 200n.11Wasiolek, Edward, 14Weeks, John, 201n.6Weierstrass, Karl, 193n.8"Willing" (volition), 140, 142, 173Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 202n.4

Zaidenshnur, E. E., 72, 189n.4,190n.10

Zeno, 71