Going to War in 'War and Peace'

• In Event: Tolstoy’s Novels: Lived Experience in Text

Abstract

The first book of "War and Peace" describes at length the reactions of the members of the Bolkonsky and Rostov clans, their friends, and acquaintances to the imminent departure of Prince Andrei and Nikolai Rostov for the war. In Tolstoy’s novel leaving your home and going to the war is not just a biographical event or an element in narrative structure, but an intervention of history destroying the ahistorical idyll of family life – these two forces fight for the lives and souls of the heroes, their extended families, and the nation as a whole. The future death of Andrei and the return of Nikolai to the “natural way of life” illustrate these two contrasting visions. The paper argues that the description of Andrei’s departure also reflects Tolstoy’s own lived experience in the first years of his marriage when he contemplated leaving his wife, his newly born son, and the novel he just began writing to go to suppress the Polish rebellion.

Author

• Andrei Zorin, U of Oxford (UK)