WAR AND PEACE ( (Voina i Mir'). In the early sixties Count Tolstoy was engaged in Fathering material for a novel that should mtroduce some of the surviving participants in the famous °Dekabrist,'" or December Con spiracy of 1825, and portray their relationship to the changed conditions in Russia, after the accession of the liberal Emperor Alexander II, who permitted these surviving exiles to re turn from Siberia to their former homes. He wrote several chapters and parts of chapters. but was irresistibly drawn back to the primal causes of the Conspiracy in the fateful period of Napoleon and of mystical-minded Alexander I. He laid aside his project of producing a contemporary romance and energetically went to work on a historical novel which should depict the epoch ending with Napoleon's in vasion of Russia, the burning of Moscow by Count Rostopchin and the disastrous retreat of the French. He had three chief objects in view. One was to give living pictures of the great events not only in Russia but also in Europe that brought about the downfall of Napoleon. The second was to evolve a theory of Chance or Fate as overruling the apparently free actions of even the greatest of men. The third was to expound and illustrate a phi losophy of life. 'His dramatis personm com prise emperors, famous statesmen and gen erals, gantlemen and ladies of the court, and a host of landed proprietors, princes and other titled personages, soldiers, peasants, each care fully individualized and, however insignificant, yet introduced so as to become an integral part of the whole. The conversations also, even when trivial, are so managed as to help create the general effect of reality.
The flow of the narrative is occasionally in terrupted by philosophical disquisitions in them selves forming a complete treatise which has been translated and published in both French and English. Its English title is 'Napoleon and the Russian Campaign,) and its main argument tries to prove that great leaders, like Napoleon and the Emperor Alexander I, were not, as they themselves believed and as historians have talc.= for granted, the prin cipal factors in the great movements of man kind, but were merely like the kings, castles, knights and bishops on a gigantic chessboard directed by a higher power which Tolstoy calls Chance or Fate. He argues that even their mistakes and blunders were vital links in the woven chain of circumstance leading to their successes, and actions which viewed from the standpoint of ordinary common sense would seem to have been to the last degree fatuous were turned to their advantage; while, on the other hand, lofty intentions and admirable qualities were made the instruments of mis fortune. He shows how mighty preparations were brought to naught and petty circum stances led to immense consequences. There is, therefore, deep meaning attached to slight episodes and to snatches of idle dialogue: they are like the chips floating on a broad current, making evident to the eye in which direction the river flows. The epilogue also has been pub lished by itself under the title of 'Power and Liberty,) in which Tolstoy scouts the theory of Free Will. Three characters, Prince Andrei
Bolkonsky, Count Nilcolai Rostof and Pierre Bezukhaf in a very distinctive way illustrate the author's own mental and religious develop ment They are members of families from which— the names being only slightly changed -- Count Tolstoy himself was descended, and their careers follow rather closely the records and traditions that had come down to him, modified by an infusion of his personal ex periences in a somewhat •similar environment abroad, in Moscow and Petrograd, in the army and in the activities of country life. In the character and theories of the philosophic muzhik, Paton Karatayef, may be seen ex emplified the religious ideals which Count Tolstoy later developed as the guide of his life and which, carne to be the culmination of his teachings, in accordance with which he re nounced his wealth, his title, his home, his family, everything usually held dear by men of his station. These three characters are swept into the great maelstrom of the Napoleonic Wars; their individual actions are contrasted with the historic figures that appear and re appear Napoleon, Alexander, General Ku ttizof, Prince Adam Czartoriski, Speranslcy, General Bennigsen, the Countess Potocka and many other famous men and women of that day. There is a kaleidoscopic succession of de scriptions of scenes in palaces and in peasants' izbas, in catnps and in battles. There are horse-races and balls, quarrels and duels, flirtations and elopements, proposals of mar riage, realistic descriptions of births and of deaths, drinlcing bouts and gambling, country idyls and workingmen's riots, councils and con ferences, the orgies during the conflagration of Moscow, the horrors of the French invasion, hunting and harvest scenes— all depicted with perfect realism, so that the whole seems like a transcript from life, while the element of fiction is fused into a vast transcript of history.
As a novel 'War and Peace) has serious faults, but its greater merits place it in the front rank not only of Russian but also of world literature. It is of retnarkable length. The original covers more than 2,000 pages, aggre gating not far from 650,000 words. It appeared between 1864 and 1869 in the Russia's Messen ger (Russky Vyistnik). It was enthusiastically received, and when published in six volumes went through many editions. In the later and less expensive popular editions the dialogue, which, in order to represent the fashion of the last century, was given with a considerable ad mixture of French, is all put into Russian. The sixth edition is dated 1886, and in this year the first English edition made by Clara Bell from the French version was reprinted in New York. In 1898 the first translation from the original Rus.sian, by Nathan Haskell Dole, ap peared in six volumes. It is also comprised in the later versions of Tolstoy's complete works made by Leo Wiener and by Constance Garnett.