Susanna J. Sturgis   Martha's Vineyard writer and editor
writer editor born-again horse girl

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Tolstoy on the Big Picture

February 12, 2007

It's not true that I'm about to put a bumper sticker on my truck that says "Tolstoy said it, I believe it, and that settles it." Toward the very end of the book I got a whiff of his views on women's role and women's rights, which without much extrapolation must color his views on any class of people less privileged than he. Since he, being Russian, landowning, wealthy, educated, and noble, was very privileged indeed, this includes just about everybody. However, the breadth and depth of the guy's knowledge blows me away. He's at home on the battlefield; he's at home in the drawing room. He's even at home where a mother and young daughter are talking and there are no men within earshot.

What I love about War and Peace is the connection between big pictures and small. True, Tolstoy does plenty of telling, but he's earned the right with all his showing. Consider this (which, like previous passages I've quoted, is from an online translation, not the one I'm working on):

It is natural for us who were not living in those days to imagine that when half Russia had been conquered and the inhabitants were fleeing to distant provinces, and one levy after another was being raised for the defense of the fatherland, all Russians from the greatest to the least were solely engaged in sacrificing themselves, saving their fatherland, or weeping over its downfall. The tales and descriptions of that time without exception speak only of the self-sacrifice, patriotic devotion, despair, grief, and the heroism of the Russians. But it was not really so. It appears so to us because we see only the general historic interest of that time and do not see all the personal human interests that people had. Yet in reality those personal interests of the moment so much transcend the general interests that they always prevent the public interest from being felt or even noticed. Most of the people at that time paid no attention to the general progress of events but were guided only by their private interests, and they were the very people whose activities at that period were most useful.

Some people I know are obsessed about stolen elections, the U.S. war on Iraq, the religious right, the foolishness of Bush, the self-interested sleaziness of so many of his friends and colleagues . . . "How can anyone support this policy and this administration?" they cry, which leads to much hair-tearing, teeth-gnashing inveighing against the stupidity or right-wingedness of the U.S. electorate, red-staters, Republicans, or some other large group of people.

I've almost given up explaining that most people, including myself, are nowhere near as obsessed as they are about stolen elections, the war, the religious right, Dubya Bush, or anything else to do with national or international events. Either they don't believe me or they do believe me and take this for further evidence of how screwed up the country is. I understand completely. About 35 years ago I was obsessed with the war on Vietnam, Nixon, Agnew, Watergate, the religious right, etc., etc., and if anyone had tried to explain to me that most people were not similarly obsessed I would have thought pretty much the same thing.

"Most of the people at that time paid no attention to the general progress of events . . ." Tolstoy got it. Maybe this is why I remember almost nothing from my first reading of War and Peace, which I read when I was 19 and wholly immersed in my obsession with national and international events. Maybe I thought Tolstoy was passé, or deluded by his own privilege. Maybe his words went right over my head.

The song running through my head at the moment: "But I was so much older then -- I'm younger than that now."

Tolstoy will be going back to New York by the end of the week. Am I gonna miss this guy or what?

 

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