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Book Reviews - Review 92

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Leo Tolstoy


War and Peace

Category: Fiction | Published: 1869 | Review Added: 17-02-2004

Rating: 4 - A top read

A while since I read this, so I can't remember much about it. It traces the lives of loads of Russian aristos during the period of the Napoleonic wars. For the most part, the novel steers scrupulously clear of purveying any kind of personal message from the author. The aim is both more humble and more gigantic than this: to portray a tableau of human life in all its richness, with all its inconsistencies and contradictions intact.

It would be presumptuous for an insignificant little technical author like me to praise the novel's brilliance and insight; what I must confess, though, is that there are many lesser novels that I have enjoyed more. It was never Tolstoy's aim to create a drama out of human life: a key part of his project, a cynic might say, was to keep the dull bits in. So while one can't fault the novel's lack of narrative pace, I don't think one can deny it either. Additionally, the resolute stylistic neutrality precludes much sense of intimacy with the author, to leave one feeling ultimately rather cold - one is, as it were, presented with a glorious edifice to admire, but never invited in for a drink with its owner.

Well, not until the end, anyway: but then the drink is not profered for consumption so much as thrown in the visitor's face. Here Tolstoy launches on an extended, profoundly subjective rant about the place of great men in history. Those commonly held up as great men, he insists, are merely tools of some indefinable 'power that moves nations': he tries to explain history as an abstract, pseudoscientific process that is entirely divorced from human psychology. At least, I think he does: it's very difficult to wring any sense out of his sophistic convolutions. Anyway his underlying aim is very clearly to explode the cult of personality surrounding Napoleon and try to make everyone see that it's Russia, not France, that is the Great Nation. Not very objective at all, really.

That said, extensive though the latter drivel is, it occupies only a tiny fraction of this 1400-page literary doorstep. I think the best way to enjoy the novel, if you're a tortoise like me, is to read it in sections over several months, throwing in pacier reads in between.

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