After reading Karnika's "At War With Shakespeare", I became interested in Tolstoy's thoughts on the art of writing. Beginning on page 1083 of our text are a few of Tolstoy's letter and diary extracts. On March 19th, 1865 Tolstoy wrote:
I became absorbed in reading the history of Napoleon and Alexander. In a cloud of joy and awareness of the possibility of doing great work, the idea caught up to me of writing a psychological history of Alexander and Napoleon. All the meanness, all the phrases, all the madness, all the contradictions of the people around them and in themselves...I must write my novel and work for this (Tolstoy, 1083).
This passage caught my eye because in Book Two of War and Peace, Tolstoy uses clouds and smoke as dark symbols, to cover the free and happy open sky. Yet Tolstoy describes his "joy and awareness" as a cloud. How did the cloud imagery in War and Peace come to represent the opposite of what it means to Tolstoy in 1865? Maybe Tolstoy understands clouds as urgent and excited clusters of mental activity, and in the war scenes of War and Peace, all mental activity is directed towards the dark activities of war, thus the clouds are dark symbols. Is this a stretch? Also,how did Alexander and Napoleon get marginalized (as far as we've read) ? Could there be a link between his hopes for writing a "great work" and including the theme of "great men" in war?
I think it is very probuble that Tolstoy used cloud as two separate symbols to represent his mental process and to describe the war. I also found your comment about the emperors fascinating. So far, we see the emperors largely as symbols. Tolstoy was not focusing on them for testing subjects of the story. I think he wanted to demonstate that the "great" men don't make history any more than the ordinary people. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteIt seems Tolstoy found an aristocrat's experience of the war to be more fruitful than an emperor's, however, its hard to say that the average soldier had more of an impact on history than Napoleon or Alexander. The antagonists in War and Peace are rich characters because they are shaped by the times; instead of chronicling the great men themselves, Tolstoy describes the reverberations of their actions on aristocratic society.
DeleteThis is a very interesting comparison and I think it is very smart of you to identify the contrast Tolstoy has. I do think the object of a cloud are two different things in this passage. When he says "cloud of joy and awareness", I think he means he was in a bubble of happiness when he read their works. When he uses clouds and smoke in his work, he may be more literally referring to physical clouds and fog.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the recognition of the contrast I presented and your addition to it! I agree that Tolstoy was in a bubble of happiness while he was reading, and it could be totally different than the use of cloud in War and Peace.
DeleteBut I wonder why Tolstoy would write about clouds or smoke arbitrarily, without any meaning attached to it. What do you think?