[7] Here is a characteristic instance of Tolstoy's enslavement by his creative genius: his Journal is interrupted for thirteen years, from November 1, 1865, when the composition of War and Peace was in full swing. The egoism of the artist has silenced the monologue of the conscience.—This period of creation was also a period of robust physical life. Tolstoy was "mad on hunting." "Hunting, I forget everything...." (Letter of 1864.) In September, 1864, during a hunt on horse back, he broke his arm, and it was during his convalescence that the first portions of War and Peace were dictated.—"On recovering consciousness after fainting, I said to myself: 'I am an artist.' And I am, but a lonely artist." (Letter to Fet, January 29, 1865.) All the letters written at this time to Fet are full of an exulting joy of creation. "I regard all that I have hitherto published," he says, "as merely a trial of my pen." (Ibid.)
[8] Before this date Tolstoy had noted, among the books which influenced him between the ages of twenty and thirty-five:
"Goethe: Hermann and Dorothea—Very great influence."
"Homer: Iliad and Odyssey (in Russian)—Very great influence."
[9] The two first parts of War and Peace appeared in 1865-66 under the title The Year 1805.
[10] Tolstoy commenced this work in 1863 by The Decembrists, of which he wrote three fragments. But he saw that the foundations of his plan were not sufficiently assured, and going further back, to the period of the Napoleonic Wars, he wrote War and Peace. Publication was commenced in the Rousski Viestnik of January, 1865; the sixth volume was completed in the autumn of 1869. Then Tolstoy ascended the stream of history; and he conceived the plan of an epic romance dealing with Peter the Great; then of another, Mirovitch, dealing with the rule of the Empresses of the eighteenth century and their favourites. He worked at it from 1870 to 1873, surrounded with documents, and writing the first drafts of various portions; but his realistic scruples made him renounce the project: he was conscious that he could never succeed in resuscitating the spirit of those distant periods in a sufficiently truthful fashion. Later, in January, 1876, he conceived the idea of another romance of the period of Nikolas I.; then he eagerly returned to the Decembrists, collecting the evidence of survivors and visiting the scenes of the action. In 1878 he wrote to his aunt, Countess A. A. Tolstoy: "This work is so important to me! You cannot imagine how much it means to me; it is as much to me as your faith is to you. I would say even more." (Correspondence) But in proportion as he plumbed the subject he grew away from it; his heart was in it no longer. As early as April, 1879, he wrote to Fet: "The Decembrists? If I were thinking of it, if I were to write it, I should flatter myself with the hope that the very atmosphere of my mind would be insupportable to those who fire upon men for the good of humanity." (Ibid.) At this period of his life the religious crisis had set in; he was about to burn his ancient idols.
[11] Pierre Besoukhov, who has married Natasha, will become a Decembrist. He has founded a secret society to watch over the general good, a sort of Tugelbund. Natasha associates herself with his plans with the utmost enthusiasm. Denissov cannot conceive of a pacific revolution; but is quite ready for an armed revolt. Nikolas Rostoff has retained his blind soldier's loyalty. He who said before Austerlitz, "We have only one thing to do: to fight and never to think," is angry with Pierre, and exclaims: "My oath before all! If I were ordered to march against you with my squadron I should march and I should strike home." His wife, Princess Marie, agrees with him. Prince Andrei's son, little Nikolas Bolkonsky, fifteen years old, delicate, sickly, yet charming, with wide eyes and golden hair, listens feverishly to the discussion; all his love is Pierre's and Natasha's; he does not care greatly for Nikolas and Marie; he worships his father, whom he has never seen; he dreams of growing like him, of being grown up, of doing something wonderful, he knows not what. "Whatever they tell me, I will do it.... Yes, I shall do it. He would have been pleased with me."—And the book ends with the dream of a child, who sees himself in the guise of one of Plutarch's heroes, with his uncle Pierre by his side, preceded by Glory, and followed by an army.—If the Decembrists had been written then little Bolkonsky would doubtless have been one of its heroes.
[12] I have remarked that the two families Rostoff and Bolkonsky, in War and Peace, recall the families of Tolstoy's father and mother by many characteristics. Again, in the novels of the Caucasus and Sebastopol there are many of the types of soldiers, officers and men, which appear in War and Peace.
[13] Letter of February 2, 1868, cited by Birukov.
[14] Notably, he said, that of Prince Andrei in the first part.