This is one of the phenomena most closely analyzed by Tolstoï—this variable influence exerted upon man by his surroundings. He likes to plunge his characters successively into different atmospheres,—that of the soldier’s life, the country, the fashionable world,—and then to show us the corresponding moral changes in them. When a man, after having for some time been under the empire of thoughts and passions previously foreign to him, returns into his former sphere, his views on all subjects change at once. Let us follow young Nikolai Rostof when he returns from the army to his home, and back again to his cavalry regiment. He is not the same person, but seems to be possessed of two souls. On the journey back and forth to Moscow, he gradually lays aside or resumes the one which his profession requires.
It is useless to multiply examples of Tolstoï’s psychological curiosity, which is ever awake. It forms the principal feature of his genius. He loves to analyze the human puppet in every part. A stranger enters the room; the author studies his expression, voice, and step; he shows us the depths of the man’s soul. He explains a glance interchanged between two persons, in which he discovers friendship, fear, a feeling of superiority in one of them; in fact, a perfect knowledge of the mutual relations of these two men. This relentless physician constantly feels the pulse of every one who crosses his path, and coolly notes down the condition of his health, morally speaking. He proceeds in an objective manner, never directly describing a person except by making him act out his characteristics.
This fundamental precept of classic art has been adopted by this realistic writer in his desire to imitate real life, in which we learn to comprehend people by trivial indications and by points of resemblance, without any information as to their position or qualities. A good deal of art is required to discern clearly in this apparent chaos, and you have a large choice in the formidable accumulation of details. Observe how, in the course of a conversation or the narration of some episode, Tolstoï makes the actors visibly present before us by calling our attention to one of their gestures, or some little absurd, peculiar habit, or by interrupting their conversation to show us the direction of their glances. This occurs constantly.
There is also a good deal of wit in this serious style; not the flashes and sallies of wit that we are familiar with, but of a fine, penetrating quality, with subtle and singularly apt comparisons.
III.
Among the numerous characters in “War and Peace,” the action is concentrated upon two only—Prince André Bolkonski and Pierre Bezushof. These remarkable types of character are well worthy of attention. In them the double aspect of the Russian soul, as well as of the author’s own, is reflected with all its harassing thoughts and contradictions. Prince André is a nobleman of high rank, looking down from his lofty position upon the life he despises; proud, cold, sceptical, atheistic, although at times his mind is tortured with anxiety concerning great problems. Through him the author pronounces his verdicts upon the historical characters of the time, and discourses of the various statesmen and their intrigues.
André is received at Speranski’s. We know the wonderful influence acquired by this man, who almost established a new constitution in Russia. Speranski’s most striking trait, in Prince André’s opinion, was his absolute, unshaken faith in the force and legitimacy of reason. This trait was what particularly attracted André to him, and explains the ascendency that Speranski acquired over his sovereign and his country. André, having been seriously wounded at Austerlitz, lies on the battle-field, his eyes raised to heaven. The dying man exclaims:—
“Oh, could I now but say, ‘Lord, have pity upon me!’ But who will hear me? Shall I address an indefinite, unapproachable Power, which cannot itself be expressed in words, the great All or Nothing, or that image of God which is within the amulet that Marie gave me?… There is nothing certain except the nothingness of everything that I have any conception of, and the majesty of something beyond my conception!”
Pierre Bezushof is more human in character, but his intelligence is of quite as mysterious a quality. He is a stout man, of lymphatic temperament, absent-minded; a man who blushes and weeps easily, susceptible to love, sympathetic with all suffering. He is a type of the kind-hearted Russian noblemen, nervous, deficient in will, a constant prey to the ideas and influence of others; but under his gross exterior lives a soul so subtle, so mystic, that it might well be that of a Hindu monk. One day, after Pierre had given his word of honor to his friend André that he would not go to a midnight revel of some of his young friends, he hesitated when the hour of meeting came.
“‘After all,’ he thought, ‘all pledges of words are purely conventional, without definite meaning, when you reflect about it. I may die to-morrow, or some extraordinary event take place, in consequence of which the question of honor or dishonor will not even arise.’