War And Peace

Pierre said what he had been going to say. It was a continuation of his rather smug reflections on his success in Petersburg. At that moment he felt he was destined to give a new direction to Russian society as a whole, and the world in general.

‘I was just going to say that all ideas that have a huge impact are always simple ones. And my idea comes down to this: if all the bad people can get together and show strength in unity, honest men must do the same. You see – it’s as simple as that.’

‘Yes.’

‘What were you going to say?’

‘Oh, nothing, just a bit of nonsense.’

‘No, tell me . . .’

‘Oh, it’s nothing. I’m just being silly,’ said Natasha, though her broad smile was broader than ever. ‘I was only going to tell you about Petya. Nurse came to take him from me today, and he laughed and wrinkled his little face and snuggled up close – I’m sure he thought he was hiding away. He’s such a sweetie . . . That’s him crying. I must be off!’ and she walked away.

Meanwhile, downstairs in young Nikolay Bolkonsky’s bedroom the little lamp was burning as always. (The boy was afraid of the dark and couldn’t be cured of this weakness.) Dessalles was asleep, propped up high on his four pillows, and snoring steadily through his Roman nose. Nikolay had just woken up in a cold sweat, and he was sitting up in bed, wide-eyed and staring. He had been woken up by a bad dream. He had dreamt that he and Uncle Pierre were wearing helmets like the ones in his illustrated edition of Plutarch. He and Uncle Pierre were leading a huge, marching army. The army was one mass of white threads slanting through the air like those floating autumn spider-webs that Dessalles called gossamer. Ahead of them lay glory, thread-like itself though a bit more substantial. The pair of them – he and Pierre – were speeding along, getting nearer and nearer to their goal. Then suddenly the threads that worked them became droopy and tangled. It was heavy going. And suddenly there was Uncle Nikolay, grim and menacing, waiting for them.

‘Did you do this?’ he said, pointing to a pile of broken sealing-wax and pens. ‘I used to love you, but now I’m under orders from Arakcheyev, and I shall kill the first one of you that moves.’ Nikolay looked round for Pierre, but Pierre wasn’t there. Pierre had been replaced by his father – Prince Andrey – and his father had no shape or form, but he was there, and the moment he saw him Nikolay felt weak at the knees with love, he turned to jelly like a man with no skeleton. His father took pity and cuddled him. But there was Uncle Nikolay bearing down on them, getting closer and closer. Nikolay felt a great wave of horror – and woke up.

‘My father!’ he thought. (There were two very good portraits of Prince Andrey in the house, but Nikolay had never thought of his father in human form.) ‘My father was with me. He gave me a cuddle. He was pleased with me; he was pleased with Uncle Pierre. I’ll do anything he says. Mucius Scaevola²⁰ put his hand in the flames. But why shouldn’t that kind of thing happen to me one day? I know they want me to study. And I will. But one day I’ll have finished, and then I shall go out and do things. I ask only one thing of God: let what happened to Plutarch’s men happen to me, and let me do what they did. No, I’ll do more. Everybody will know me and love me and admire me.’ And suddenly Nikolay’s chest was choked with sobs, and he burst into tears.

‘Are you feeling ill?’ came the voice of Dessalles.

‘No,’ answered Nikolay, and he sank back down on his pillow. ‘He’s such a nice, kind man. I do love him!’ He was thinking of Dessalles. ‘But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man he is! And then there’s my father. Father! Father! Yes, I’m going to do something even he would have been pleased with.’

PART II

CHAPTER 1

The subject matter of history is the life of peoples and humanity. To catch hold of and express in words, to describe directly, the life of a single people, let alone the whole of humanity, is beyond possibility.

Ancient historians all employed the same technique for catching the apparently uncatchable – describing the life of a people. They would describe the activities of individual rulers and accept these activities as an expression of the activity of an entire people.

Questions arose. How did these individuals compel whole nations to act in accordance with their will? And what was it that directed the actual will of these individuals? The answer to the first question was that the will of a Deity subjected a people to the will of one chosen person; and the answer to the second question was that the same Deity directed the will of the chosen person to a predetermined end.

For the ancients these questions were resolved by a belief in the direct intervention of the Deity in human affairs.

Both propositions are now unacceptable to modern historical theory.