Peripeties of Empathy in War and Peace

• In Event: Mental, Physical, and Artistic Journeys in Tolstoy’s War and Peace

Abstract

Although the term “empathy” and even Robert Vischer’s “Einfühlung” (and their Russian equivalents) did not exist when War and Peace was written, it is no surprise that Tolstoy was exploring this phenomenon from his first days as an artist. This paper, part of a projected study on empathy in Russian literature, examines a series of specific moments in War and Peace in which Tolstoy examines nuances, failures, and progress in some of his main characters’ empathetic and non-empathetic experiences of the minds around them.

Author

• Stephen Blackwell, U of Tennessee