War And Peace

During his convalescence it took Pierre quite some time to ease himself away from the impressions left with him from the last few months, which had become a habit of mind, and get used to the idea that no one was going to get him moving tomorrow, no one would take his warm bed away, and he was quite sure of getting his dinner, tea and supper. But for a long time to come his sleep would be disturbed by dreams of his life as a prisoner. And only by the same gradual process did Pierre come to understand all the news he had heard since his escape: the death of Prince Andrey, the death of his wife and the defeat of the French.

A blissful sense of freedom – the complete and inalienable freedom inherent in man that had made itself felt only at that first halting-place outside Moscow – began to flood through Pierre’s soul during his convalescence. He was surprised to find this inner freedom, which did not depend on external circumstances, now transformed into outward freedom seemingly decked out with luxury and excess. He was alone in a strange town, without acquaintances. No one made any demands on him; no one sent him anywhere. He had everything he wanted, and the worries about his wife that he had once found so agonizing had gone, because she was gone.

‘Oh, that’s wonderful! It’s marvellous!’ he said to himself, when a neatly set-out table was moved towards him with an appetizing bowl of broth, or when he climbed into his soft, clean bed at night, or when the thought struck him that his wife and the French had gone. ‘Oh, it’s wonderful! It’s marvellous!’ And from habit he would start asking himself questions. ‘What comes next, then? What am I going to do?’ And immediately he knew the answer: ‘Nothing. I’m just going to live. Oh, it’s marvellous!’

The one thing that had tormented him in earlier days, the constant search for a purpose in life, had ceased to exist. The ending of his search for a purpose was more than a chance event or a temporary development: he now sensed that it did not and could not exist. And it was the lack of any purpose that gave him the complete and joyous sense of freedom underlying his present happiness.

He could seek no purpose now, because now he had faith – not faith in principles, words or ideas, but faith in a living God of feeling and experience. In days gone by he had sought Him by setting purposes for himself. That search for a purpose had really been a seeking after God, and suddenly during his captivity he had come to know, not through words or arguments, but from direct personal experience, something that his old nurse had told him long ago: God is here, here with us now, here and everywhere. In captivity he had come to see that Karatayev’s God was greater, more infinite, more unfathomable than any Architect of the Universe recognized by the masons. He felt like a man who finds what he is looking for right under his feet after straining his eyes to seek it in the distance. All his life he had been peering into the distance over the heads of those around him when all he had to do was stop straining his eyes and look down right in front of him.

In those earlier days he had been unable to see the great, the unfathomable and the infinite in anything. All he had was a sense that it must exist somewhere, and he had gone on looking for it. In anything close to and well understood he had seen nothing but limitation, workaday triviality and pointlessness. He had armed himself with a mental telescope and peered into the far distance, where that same workaday triviality, shrouded in the mists of remoteness, had seemed great and infinite, but only because it couldn’t be clearly seen. This was how he had looked on European life, politics, freemasonry, philosophy and philanthropy. But even then, at times that he had mistaken for moments of weakness, his mind had penetrated the furthest distance and recognized the same workaday triviality and pointlessness.

Now he had learnt to see the great, the eternal and the infinite in everything, and naturally enough, in order to see it and revel in its contemplation, he had thrown away the telescope that he had been using to peer over men’s heads and now took pleasure in observing the ever-changing, infinitely great and unfathomable life that surrounded him. And the more closely he watched, the more he felt himself to be happy and at peace. The terrible question that had destroyed all his carefully structured thinking in the bad old days – the question Why? – no longer existed. His soul now had a ready-made, straightforward answer to the question Why? – because God is, and without God not one hair of a man’s head shall fall.

CHAPTER 13