"Of all that which he afterwards called sufferings, but which at the time he scarcely felt, the worst was from his bare, bruised, scurvy-scarred feet. The horse-flesh was palatable and nourishing, the saltpetre odour of the gunpowder which they used instead of salt was even pleasant ... the vermin which fed upon him warmed his body. The one thing hard at that time was the state of his feet. On the second day of the retreat, Pierre, examining his sores by the fire, felt that it was impossible to take another step on them; but when all got up he went along, treading gingerly, and afterwards, when he was warmed to it, he walked without pain, though when evening came it was more than ever terrible to look at his feet. But he did not look at them and turned his thoughts to other things.... He saw and heard not how the prisoners who straggled were shot down, although more than a hundred had perished in this way.... The more trying his position, the more appalling the future, ... the more joyful and consoling were the thoughts, recollections, and visions which came to him."
Tolstoy's account of this terrible retreat is Homeric in its tragic nobility; Homeric, too, is the spirit of the Russian army: they are short of food, short of clothes, sleeping in the snow at twenty degrees below zero; they melt away to half their numbers, yet they grow ever happier and happier, more and more cheerful, for all the poor-spirited, the weak, and cowardly succumb, and only the heroes remain. In his previous life Pierre has been miserable, disenchanted, and disillusioned, but he emerges from this hell of suffering a man finally happy. And Tolstoy makes us see that it could not be otherwise; his hero has learnt for ever the tremendous capacities of the human soul.
Of Tolstoy's two heroines the Princess Mariya is the nobler type; she is what he imagined his mother to have been, and to this, no doubt, a large part of her fascination may be traced. In her the author has drawn a woman exceedingly plain, not particularly clever, without accomplishments and melancholy by temperament, yet, by sheer spiritual beauty, she compels admiration, affection, even passionate love.
Her physical appearance, on which Tolstoy dwells, gives the clue to her nature; she treads heavily and blushes unbecomingly in patches; this heavy tread shows us her awkwardness and self-distrust, and the blushing her almost painful modesty.
But she is one of those who have life's secret—the gift of love; she idolises her brother; she loves and admires her little selfish sister-in-law, the Princess Lisa; she bears, year in and year out, with the exasperating and even cruel tyrannies of her father, and loves him dearly to the end; she cherishes her nephew. Ultimately, though slowly, she wins her reward for all this patient sweetness; her brother has always understood her at her full value, her father dies acknowledging her as his good angel, and we are not surprised when Nikolai Rostof, cold to more beautiful and more attractive women, turns and gives her his love.
And yet the portrait is not sentimentalised or made incredibly virtuous; the Princess Mariya does not find self-abnegation easy, she longs for a home and happiness, she is jealous of Natasha because Natasha is young and beautiful, and has achieved the poetry of love; to the end, notwithstanding her deep affections, she finds it a little hard to comprehend others.
Tolstoy's second heroine, Natasha Rostof, is, for pure fascination, the most enthralling character in the book. Tolstoy seems to have drawn her from an actual person—his sister-in-law; and she has all the reality of a minute portrait.
Natasha is beautiful or, it would be more correct to say, has the promise of beauty; she has also a lovely voice; but her most remarkable gift is her power of winning love. From her first introduction she is the idolised of all; she and her younger brother, Petya, are her mother's favourite children; Natasha is the adored of her brothers and her father, and almost every man who visits the house falls in love with her. Tolstoy makes us understand why. Natasha is herself prepared to see all that is delightful and all that is good in others; she is highly vitalised; she has strong affections, and an intense joy in life; wherever Natasha is things move; it is she who is always ready to suggest games and amusements; it is she who perceives poetry and romance where others cannot or only in much less degree. Morning in the forest, a moonlight night in spring, sledging over the snow, music—all are to her enrapturing things. That magical period of youth, that period of half-childhood, half-adolescence, when the world is suffused by "the light that never was on sea or land," has nowhere been more beautifully depicted than in her. It is this romantic charm which so powerfully attracts the somewhat cold but poetic nature of Prince Andrei. In the midst of the gloomy tragedies of bloodshed and battle Natasha Rostof shines like an incarnation of springtime, the very joy of life in a human form. The most beautiful passage in the whole novel is probably that which describes Prince Andrei's first meeting with her.
He is in a mood of some sadness, and feels, after all his experiences, old beyond his years; he drives to the Rostofs and perceives a number of young girls running among the trees. "In front of the others ... ran a very slender, indeed a strangely slender maiden, with dark hair and dark eyes, in a yellow chintz dress, with a white handkerchief round her head, the locks emerging from it in ringlets."
It is Natasha, and, that same night, Prince Andrei hears her conversing with her cousin Sonya at the window above his own. "The night was cool and calmly beautiful. In front of the window was a row of clipped trees, dark on one side and silver-bright on the other.... Farther away, beyond the trees, was a roof glittering with dew; farther to the right a tall tree with wide-spreading branches, showed a brilliant white bole and limbs; and directly above it the moon, almost at her full, shone in the bright, nearly starless spring night. Prince Andrei leaned his elbows on the window-sill and fixed his eyes on that sky."