Big Book Blog

As we can all tell, Leo Tolstoy was a pretty interesting dude. I’m sure we’ll talk about this more as the class progresses, but it’s worth noting that Tolstoay was a progressive man for his time. He was also a huge fan of Abraham Lincoln, even referring to him as “A Christ in miniature, a saint of humanity.” While this isn’t all that surprising - Lincoln was one of the few progressive political heroes of his day - this one anecdote from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography of Lincoln reveals quite a bit about the author:

In 1908, in a wild and remote area of the North Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy, the greatest writer of the age, was the guest of a tribal chief “living far away from civilized life in the mountains.”

Gathering his family and neighbors, the chief asked Tolstoy to tell stories about the famous men of history. Tolstoy told how he entertained the eager crowd for hours with tales of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon.

When he was winding to a close, the chief stood and said, “But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock…His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.”

“I looked at them,” Tolstoy recalled, “and saw their faces all aglow, while their eyes were burning. I saw that those rude barbarians were really interested in a man whose name and deeds had already become a legend.” He told them everything he knew about Lincoln’s “home life and youth…his habits, his influence upon the people and his physical strength.” When he finished, they were so grateful for the story that they presented him with “a wonderful Arabian horse.”

The next morning, as Tolstoy prepared to leave, they asked if he could possibly acquire for them a picture of Lincoln. Thinking that he might find one at a friend’s house in the neighboring town, Tolstoy asked one of the riders to accompany him. “I was successful in getting a large photograph from my friend,” recalled Tolstoy. As he handed it to the rider, he noted that the man’s hand trembled as he took it. “He gazed for several minutes silently, like one in a reverent prayer, his eyes filled with tears.”

Tolstoy went on to observe, “This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

“Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country — bigger than all the Presidents together.

“We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do.

“His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”

Although it is amazing to think of Tolstoy the great novelist telling stories that were probably similiar to War and Peace to Cacausian tribesmen, his admiration for Lincoln seems to be in tension with the worldview in W&P. W&P certainly has its great man - Napoleon - and it concerns itself with large scale historical events on the scale of anything Lincoln was involved in, but Tolstoy seems to be telling his readers that individuals, even great ones, have little hope of shaping history. This is an odd message for Tolstoy, after all, W&P isn’t entirely great battle scenes (thought it has plenty of those), it also nuanced, sensitive depictions of a great number of individuals. We are lead to think that even though the historical forces whipping around Natasha, Pierre and Andrei are much greater than any of them, that their desires, struggles and actions are still meaningful.

But yet, it’s impossible to say that any of these characters, even Napoleon, have real influence over history or their circumstances. “The sovereign” in Volume I is beloved by his troops, especially Rostov. Rostov almost worships the Russian emperor and is convinced that his presence will lead them to victory. When that doesn’t happen, when the sovereign is diminished away due to defeat and humiliation, Rostov’s faith in his leader falters, but only slightly. We’re also led to believe in the futility of greatness by Andrei’s near-death and his interactions Napoleon himself. During the Battle of Austerlitz, Andrei is struck by a vision of greatness and inspired to lead a suicidal charge, during which he is struck down. Nearly dying, he comes to realize that his striving for greatness ultimately amounted to nothing: “How come I haven’t seen this lofty sky before? And how happy I am that I’ve finally come to know it. Yes! everything is empty, everything is deception, except this infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing except that.”

When he is finally rescued, by his hero Napoleon no less, we would expect to see a great man who has influenced history, Napoleon has just devastated the Russian armies and won the Battle of Austerlitz after all; instead, we see a vain, small and unimpressive man through Andrei’s eyes: “at that moment, Napoleon seemed to him such a small, insignificant man compared with what was now happening between his soul and this lofty, infinite sky with clouds racing across it…Looking into Napoleon’s eyes, Prince Andrei thought about the insignificance of grandeur, about the insignificance of life, the meaning of which no one could understand. ”

So how are we to reconcile Tolstoy’s diminishment of a man who is considered by many to be one of the most influential historical figures with his lofty words for Lincoln? David Brooks summarized Tolstoy’s view of history thusly:

Tolstoy had a very different theory of history. Tolstoy believed great leaders are puffed-up popinjays. They think their public decisions shape history, but really it is the everyday experiences of millions of people which organically and chaotically shape the destiny of nations — from the bottom up.

In Tolstoy’s approximation, America’s destiny was hardly shaped “organically,” instead, Lincoln actively shaped it. Lincoln was no “puffed-up popinjay.” What are we to make this apparent discrepancy?