Professor David Peimer
Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace

Professor David Peimer | Leo Tolstoy War and Peace | 05.31.22

- [Judi] So welcome back. And welcome to everybody that’s joining us from around the world. David, when you’re ready, over to you.

Visuals displayed and video played throughout the presentation.

• Right. Thanks so much again, Judi. And just, if I may say again, thank you to everybody for your forbearance, and apologies for the complete Zoom crash on Saturday. And perhaps it was inevitable with a book as as big and thick as “War and Peace”. Anyway, thank you very much and hope everybody’s well everywhere. So, I’m going to look today at this gentleman Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy and his remarkable, insane, crazy, massive, intriguing, enchanting phenomenal, phenomenon of a book “War and Peace”. Like I’m sure everybody would feel, I had a big hesitation before even imagining doing anything on “War and Peace” in, you know, one of one of these talks. And then thought again, why? And to take it away from the phenomenon and the image we all have of reading it, and, you know, taking two or three years to read such an extraordinarily thick book, but then to think, why look at it today? Does it hold any resonance? Does it have anything to say to us, written, you know, nearly 150 years ago? And that in itself would be the main criteria, not how thick, or how much, or how endless the book might be. And thinking, yes, I think it does, and I think it actually throws a lot of questions, not answers, but questions for us today. And to separate the mythology around the book and the length of the book from some of the content, some of the ideas inside it, which I think do resonate in our times. First, I’m going to to divide this into two parts. The first is looking a little bit about Mr. Tolstoy himself, and then going into this insanely, you know, thick book “War and Peace”. As we say it even, you know, we just get this image of such a huge phenomenon, more than a book.

So, Tolstoy, first of all, as I’m sure many know, so I’m not going to spend to much time on his life because I’m sure that many people know it. He lived 1828 to 1910. Now that’s interesting because he’s living through extraordinary change historically, but is dying in 1910. So a lot of technological changes happened; photography, aeroplane, beginnings of perhaps motion picture, and changes in medicine, changes in societal structures, and of course the First World War is looming very soon. Changes in transportation, in knowledge transfer, in communications happening so much faster and so on. Russia moving into Europe, Russia moving into the world, and the world and Europe moving into Russia. And I think that’s an important context together with some of the others, which I’m going to mention. I know that others have been lecturing on this historical period, and we’ve been looking at Russia. But I think Tolstoy really does bridge over his 80-something years of life, an extraordinary range in change, not only in Russia, but in global societies, ways of worlds being together, and ways of structuring society. And let’s never forget the communist revolution is coming a few years after his death. So, enormous changes in revolution, in nationalism. in let’s say modernization. in the influence of the ideals of the French Revolution of the Enlightenment, all starting to move more and more between Russia and Europe and the sense of perhaps far greater isolation changes. And it’s also, he’s living at a time as a follow-on from the Napoleonic wars, the Napoleonic era. And without going into Napoleon very much, it did result in such a confluence of all the nations of Europe. And of course Russia being, you know, one of the great conflicts in terms of that Napoleonic era.

But not only with war and conquest, but nationalisms, nation states, enlightenment, militarization, technological advancements, and flow of ideas, flow of new ideas of ways to live post French Revolution through the Napoleonic era into the absolute despotism of Tsarist Russia. Okay, so, Tolstoy, you know, as I’m sure many know, is born into an extremely wealthy family and he’s a count, and they have huge amount of land and can have many peasants, would be called peasants at the time, peasants working on the land have, you know, the different class or strata. And his family comes from an ancient Russian noble family. There’s mythology, whether it was Lithuanian originally or not, in a mixtures, et cetera, but none of that’s hard fact. But, he comes from an ancient Russian aristocratic family, and that’s really important. He is living in the cream of the crop, is part of the aristocratic world. His mother dies when he’s two, and his father dies when he is nine. Now that’s important because it forges in young Tolstoy the urge to find his own identity from a pretty young age: his own ideas, his own thoughts. Not only what he’s going to do with his life, but his understanding vision of life. Because he’s forced to in a way, although he is born into privilege and aristocracy, he’s got to make his way.

The influence of the father and the mother is minimal. The influence of the aristocratic world and the world of Russia under the Tsar, and Russia and the aristocrats in this context I’ve described of Europe, that’s what becomes crucial. Pictures here you can see, these are the obvious ones of Tolstoy, you know, the bottom two, much older age. The bottom one is one of the very early photos, photography with colour, and the others, obviously this is much later on in his life. The top left is interesting to me because he’s trying to dress almost like a semi-Russian. Is he a soldier? Is he a, a peasant? A bit of mixture. What’s he trying to show consciously through his clothing? We can see a mixture of things and the long beard, you know, the prophet, the wise man, you know, all of these archetypes as well. All inside for me, these images. Here we can see a couple of other images. The top left, that’s from the third draught of his writings for “War and Peace”. He went through at least nine draughts that we know of in total. Then at the bottom left, walking through the snow. The top in the middle, the picture there by the lake, you know, that’s obviously much older Tolstoy; the wise man, the prophet, you know, all of this, the guru. There next to it playing chess. And then next to this here is the image of working on the land. Because we will talk about that, you know, the importance of the land in Russian nationalism.

In Tolstoy’s imagination, the land, the peasantry, the people who work on the land as opposed to the people who own the land. “War and Peace” is serialised in 1865 and it’s published finally in Russian for the first time in 1869. So those are the crucial dates. This is a picture here of a young Tolstoy. He’s joined the military, he’s in the army, a dashing young aristocratic gentleman. Classic of this era of Tsarist Russia and of European nobility, or European elite, at least. At an age, a bit younger than this in the image, he has gambling debts, he’s a bit of a dilatant, and a bit of a play around, and so on. He goes with his older brother trying to find his way, find his meaning in life. Goes with his older brother to the caucuses, joins the army, and he’s in the Crimean War, I’m not going to get into the contemporary Crimea, et cetera, and he’s part of the 11-month siege of Sevastopol. Now it’s important because he is in the army for a long time. He sees the cold, brutal reality of war, the absolute cheapness, or shall we say, almost throw away value of human life. ‘Cause this is the time of the Crimean War, we are, you know, Charge of the Light Brigade. We are moving away from horses completely, and, you know, spears, we are in gunfire, we’re in serious weaponry and cannons. We’re in serious butchery of a huge numbers of armies, not small armies, which clash by night or day.

This is now moving really post Napoleonic era into massive, into huge armies where soldiers can just be brought in to die, literally, cannon fodder. He sees the absolute horror of war, the mechanisation of war, the brutality of it through mechanisation: and he’s one of the first. Later we know what will result in the slaughterhouse of the First World War, and Wilfred Owen and the great poets. But, this is the beginnings of what culminates in that First World War. He experiences the army. Then he has two trips around Europe, in 1857, where he writes that, “The state is a conspiracy "designed to exploit and corrupt its citizens.” So, already in 1857, he’s writing about the state, he’s thinking and talking to his friends, and the aristocratic educated elite, the small elite. He has the advantage of travelling Europe. The advantage of speaking French, because the Russian aristocrats were, shall we say, at minimum, encouraged to learn French, and perhaps more, it was almost a requirement to speak French. French was seen as, you know, sort of the top of the European tree, you know, intellectually, and modernity, et cetera, for the Russians under the Tsar. Because it’s always under the Tsar. So, he’s writing about the role of the state, and the peasants, and the aristocracy, the leadership. He’s seeing a military, he’s grown up in such extraordinary privilege. This is what is forming him, much more than, of course, his own parents who died young.

He meets Victor Hugo. He reads “Les Miserables”. And we all know, and the effect of Victor Hugo’s work and “Les Miserables”. He sets up 13 schools for the children of Russia’s peasants, more or less in the area and greater area around his home family estate. And let’s never forget that in 1861, crucial date in Russian history, it’s the emancipation of peasants from serfdom. So we can almost see that as the end of feudalism, at least legally in Russia, 1861. He starts to read the “Sermon on the Mount”. He becomes very literal with the New Testament, becomes fervent Christian, a pacifist. He becomes an advocate of non-violent resistance. Later, the influence on Mahatma Gandhi is huge. And Gandhi talks about Tolstoy, and in fact sets up a farm, a community farm in South Africa, based on Tolstoyan and ideas, and acknowledges it fully. He becomes influenced literally, by the “Sermon on the Mount”, and, of course, other teachings of Christianity. “Turn the other cheek”, “love thy neighbour”, you know, all the phrases. He denounces the intervention of the Boxer Rebellion in China, the intervention of Russia. He denounces the Boer War against imperialism of the British. He denounces the Filipino-American War. So, this young guy is engaged with thinking about the world, about war, about structures of society, community, philosophy, about literature, of course. He’s writing and he’s not scared to speak out. And let’s never forget, he comes from one of the most privileged groups imaginable in Tsarist Russia. Much later in his life, in 1902, he denounced Nicholas, Tsar Nicholas II, the activities in China.

In 1908, two years before his death, he wrote a letter to a Hindu, where he wrote the letter to Gandhi outlining his belief in non-violence as a means to India, specifically, gaining independence from British rule, Colonial rule. And in 1909, Gandhi read the letter, and copies and there was communication, et cetera. So, this is a character who wants to, he wants to stride the world. He wants to be engaged in things way beyond his upbringing, way beyond literature, and way beyond what is expected, I guess, of Russian aristocracy living under the pretty despotic times of the Tsar. He’s looking outward, he’s looking inward into his own culture, his own world. And he’s looking out to the Anglo-Boer War, nevermind all the other stuff. And he’s writing letters about, you know, Indian independence in the early 1900s, Vladimir Lenin wrote essays about Tolstoy and Revolution, disagreeing with Tolstoy’s ideas. And Lenin wrote that the 1905 Russian Revolution was a failure because of its backwardness, because the revolutionaries, and he would possibly link Tolstoy with this, “Wanted to dismantle mediaeval forms of oppression "and replace them with the old patriarchal village commune.” Now that’s an important phrase of Lenin, because Tolstoy idealised, and you see it in “War and Peace”, he idealised what Lenin calls, “The old and patriarchal village commune.” The peasantry and so on, the land, et cetera.

But Lenin and the communists, and the Bolsheviks, of course, take into a certain kind of nationalism, the land, and the unemployed, and the peasantry. Not only the urban and the soldiers, you know, dying and desperate from the First World War. So, these are ideas pre-figuring the Russian revolution of 1917. He sets up his own communes for emancipated serfs, peasants, on his own estate and elsewhere, schools. He believes in education. He talks about the printing press, and the massive advance of publishing, and books, and literature, and reading, and education, and the massive advance happening for him in the 19th century. And, of course, he’s trying to help influence Russia as much as possible with that. He idealises peasantry, the land, and a certain Russian nationalism through it. And I think that goes very deep. If we look at Russian history and literature, certainly, and mythology, the land, and nationalism. And working on the land is so inextricably linked, as we all know, as in many other countries, but very profoundly here. And he’s tapping into that, you know, and I’m not talking about today and whatever, but he’s tapping into a very ancient mythology of the linkage, if you like, of those facets, which can become very dangerous around the word nationalism. He’s physically fit, very active all his life. He’s a nobleman, he’s an aristocrat. He refused to have a single servant. He not only mowed the lawn, but cleaned his own bedroom and cleaned his house every day.

Okay, the Russian Orthodox church later excommunicates him because he speaks out questioning and challenging them based on his very literal, purest ideas, if you like, on Christianity, and some of the things I’ve mentioned. The Tsarist government often put him under police surveillance. And he was trying to unite a popular vague pacifism with Christianity, with a belief in the land, Russian identity, nationalism. And in a way, this is what Gandhi picks up on. When Gandhi called his co-operative colony in South Africa, he named it after Tolstoy. This is his wife Sophie. He marries her, he’s 32 and she’s 16, sorry, she’s 18, and he was 34. She’s a daughter of a physician who works in the court of the Tsar. Weeks after the pair meet, they start to get together, and he’s working on “War and Peace”. Over the next seven years, she’s really important in his life. She, even though she’s what, 16, 17 years younger, she rewrites all his manuscripts of “War and Peace”, “Anna Karenina” et cetera, et cetera. It was all written by hand. So she transcribes all his notes, all his crossings out that I showed you earlier. And she does so much of sheer blood and sweat work with writing to get it into a decent form to send off to be published. He’s not exactly a nice guy with her. And she’s doing all this hard work while running the estate as a business, making sure there’s money, trying to get publishing contracts, running the business side of his writing, the business side of the estate, and giving birth to four of their 13 children. 13 kids that these two have. And she’s giving birth to four of them while she’s spending seven years helping him with his endless manuscripts on “War and Peace”.

Not a nice gentleman. The night before their marriage, and this is apparently true from what I’ve researched, he forced her to read his diaries, which are full of his premarital sexual exploits. His interest in the family wanes. He gets caught up in all the ideals that I mentioned and of course his own writing every day. And, of course, they’re super rich, you know, he’s inherited this massive estate, he’s a count, and so on, he can write. Sophia runs the business. He has started wearing peasant clothing; changing to become this kind of archetype, guru, wise figure character, all of this stuff. She demands that he signs over control of publishing royalties, because she’s scared he’s going to bankrupt the family, bankrupt for her or the children, bankrupt everything. 'Cause he’s getting more and more lured towards everything I’ve been describing in terms of his faith and belief. Then, he finally goes at the age of 82, in 1910, 82, he fled the family home: Mr. Tolstoy. Much later picture shortly, couple years before his death. And he flees the family home, the marriage is terrible, it lasts for 50 years. Because she’s treated so badly and he is obsessed and carries on with his own vision that I’ve been talking about. And, of course, writing all the time, writing these remarkable books, “War and Peace”, “Anna Karenina”, and so many other things. 1910, age of 82, he flees the family home and in the middle of the night with one of his daughters who became completely, like a secretary, daughter, PA, completely enamoured, beloved with her father.

And his disappearance caused a media sensation at the time. 'Cause he’s become huge in Russia and globally, of course through his books, you know, he’s absolutely enormous. I guess today we’d call it almost like a global superstar, almost like a rockstar today. So popular and so widely read. Now that’s important because he is still widely read, but this is his personal life I’m describing. Anyway, so, he flees and gets to a railway station dressed in peasants clothing, is a bit out of it, not really knowing what’s going on or anything. Eventually the wife comes and some of the other family, and finally they find him, and he dies a few days later of pneumonia in a tiny little place next to the railway station. So, this is to give you a vision of an extraordinary life, a life pretty well lived. Some of the parts are obnoxious, some of them are remarkable, perhaps just human and all too human. Some of them are caught up totally with self-image and self-mythologizing. But, from an early childhood, being aware of these big ideas, if you like, about life and society and an extraordinary change going through Russian history at the time. And I think he’s very much a product of that. And if we look at our own times, post the second world war into, you know, where we are now, extraordinary amount of change, Cold War, post Cold War, just everything, technologically, and so on.

Not only the pandemic or the Ukraine or whatever, but if we rarely look, you know, extraordinary amount of things and life that gets caught up in all these times. How on earth does one reflect it in literature? How on earth does one try and capture? And can this guy teach us anything about his own period or this period, or our own period or his period? Okay, I want to go onto one or two fun things. This is his great-great granddaughter Victoria Tolstoy. She is a singer in Sweden. A part of her family immigrated around the time, the Russian Revolution, a lot of them, to America, to England, to parts of Europe, and to Sweden and elsewhere. And she’s currently a singer in Sweden, Victoria Tolstoy. Well, there were so many children, 13 children, you can imagine how many grandchildren. They reckon there are at least 200 descendants of Tolstoy, of Leo Tolstoy and Sophia Tolstoy today.

One of them is a deputy in the Russian duma, another one is a PR in Moscow, another one works for state television in Moscow, another one was a deputy of a deputy minister advising Putin in the early 2000s, whatever. I give you this sense because this is an extraordinary individual and the life and the legacy that we’re all caught up in with this word, these three words, “War and Peace”, “Anna Karenina”, and this guy Tolstoy. We cannot escape, I think, the iconic impact on the collective Western, and Asian, and Russian, and global imagination that this guy has had. Okay, one or two other quick pictures. This is a picture of part of his family. You can see Tolstoy and his wife Sophia, and you can see some of their children, obviously at a young age on their estate, et cetera. And you get a sense of the aristocracy and the being out in the farm, and the summer. You get a sense through the clothing and all of that of, you know, this huge family. Okay, and then the last image, this is the Tolstoy farm in South Africa in 1910, which Gandhi set, called the Tolstoy Farm. So, the influence of his ideas stretches, what, 15, 16,000 miles to South Africa in 1910 to Gandhi via England, and so on. So, just one example of many of how huge the range of influence of his life, not only his great novels.

Okay, “War and Peace”. I want to go onto it for the second half of the talk. It’s 580 characters. It’s insane to even try and think of them. It’s insane to imagine writing it. Some of them historicals, most of them fictional, some of them mixtures. He has Napoleon thrown into the mix: fictionalised Napoleon. He has the court of Alexander, the Battles of Austerlitz, some really important battles. The Battle of Borodino, the cause of the Decembrist Revolt, which I spoke about with Pushkin. Pushkin being centrally involved, or at least the soldiers and officers carrying Pushkin’s poetry on liberty, “Ode to Liberty” in their backpacks and being found, and Pushkin being arrested et cetera, et cetera. But all of this ties up in a fascinating way, how these elite, from the aristocratic background in Russia, educated, knowledgeable, in touch with Europe, in touch with America, technological and ideas and knowledge, innovation, and ultimately go back to the Enlightenment. Trying to bring the enlightenment ideals of democracy, of freedom, of human rights to their own countries, caught up, and it’s all just before the First World War. So they are imbued with the sense coming from this very privileged background, and of course how that feeds in later to the war, but also the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

Dostoevsky, although, you know, living in a slightly, there’s a 30-year age difference, admired him hugely. Flaubert, the great French novelist, Flaubert wrote, “What an artist, what a psychologist, "what a life.” And I think those three questions kind of get to the essence of some of Tolstoy. What an artist, what a psychologist, what a life. Trying to combine history, psychology, artistry, philosophising everything in his novels. Chekhov would go and visit Tolstoy almost like visiting a God, you know, in his country estate. And Chekhov wrote, “When literature possesses a Tolstoy, "literature possesses life.” This is Chekhov. The British poet Matthew Arnold wrote, “A novel by Tolstoy is not a work of art, "it is a piece of life.” And then on the other hand, Arthur Conan Doyle, as we all know of the Sherlock Holmes fame, he writes, “I am attracted by his earnestness "and by his power of detail. "But I am repelled by his looseness "of construction of sentence and paragraph, "and by his most unreasonable mysticism "and belief in certain faiths.” This is Arthur Conan Doyle. I love all these phrases. You get a sense of the intellectual and literary elite of the time. Virginia Woolf wrote, “Tolstoy is the greatest of all novelists, "no one will supersede him.” James Joyce wrote, “He is never dull, never stupid, "never tired, never pedantic, never theatrical. "That is Tolstoy.” “You be the judge,” as Dennis, you might say. whether who you agree with or disagree with in terms of this guy and his books.

He writes interestingly that when the enemy were approaching Moscow, when Napoleon and his armies were approaching Moscow, and this is before the burning of Moscow. And the, you know, the tsars and the army burning Moscow in order to avoid, well, you know, to give a pyrrhic victory to Napoleon. He wrote, this is what’s really interesting to me, that it was the Muscovites knew Napoleon’s armies were on the march and very close to Moscow. “But, they did not grow more serious, "on the contrary, they became frivolous. "This seems to always happen "when people see a great danger approaching. "At the approach of danger, there are two voices "that speak with equal power in the human soul. "One voice, reasonably, says, 'Escape. Run.’ "The other voice says, ‘No, it is too depressing ”'to think of the danger, “'better to think about more pleasant and lighter things.’ "So it is now with the inhabitants of Moscow, "they were happy, and gay, and dancing "shortly before Napoleon’s armies reached Moscow.” Now, the reason I wanted to read that, and it’s from “War and Peace”, I’m slightly adapting from the translation here. I’ve just edited it a bit. It’s such an insight into human nature and the detail that Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and some of these others talk about, that attention to detail. What do people do when the armies are approaching? Do they run, which is reasonable, you know, or do they stay and dance and be happy, and, you know, almost be like Nero, you know, the fiddling before Rome burns and so on, and so on.

I mean, what do people do in these moments of great danger? And he’s fascinated to see, and this is what’s extraordinary to me about “War and Peace”. The tiny attention to the detail of human nature in times of extreme human experience. An army marching on a city, a marriage, a wedding, the wedding night, the children, the ceremonies, the quirks, the contradictions, the paradoxes of human nature. That’s to me what speak from the novel together with trying to create such a panoramic view of history. And in fact it is fiction and history like Homer does with the “Odyssey” and the “Iliad”, like so many other ancient and more contemporary writers of the last three centuries, to combine history and fiction, “Ivanhoe”, “Ivan the Terrible”. We’ve looked at so many of these movies. You know, there are so many films, novels which try to fictionalise history, historicize fiction to find that remarkably creative tension between the two, of history and fiction. It’s almost chicken and the egg, which comes first; the myth, the fiction or the history? What lives in our imagination, we think of the word “War and Peace”, the word Tolstoy? Is that myth? And then we investigate, discover the true history of this guy’s life. What is “War and Peace”? You know, even just the very words coming from a collective fiction as Harari would say that collective fiction made myth in our own imagination before we go and source historical research, or historical research first and then bring it in.

When he writes about Napoleon in the novel, Napoleon is through the eyes of an ordinary Russian soldier, the Battle of Austerlitz. And imagine, glance up at Napoleon, seeing this ordinary short little guy, overweight, bit fat, bit this and bit that, you know, shouting, barking commands, but who cares? And the shock of the ordinary Russian soldier at seeing the ordinariness of this character called Napoleon. So, he’s trying to demystify history in “War and Peace”. There’s nearly 600 characters, they are thrown together in a maelstrom, trying to make sense of history, trying to make sense of their upbringing, their times, their loves, their hates, their falling in love, their falling out of love, their desires, trying to make sense, but in fact caught up almost like dancing in a circus. Which is history? Which is life? Is there logic, a la the enlightenment? Is there rational path, a la the enlightenment? Is it chaotic and random chance? Is it a mixture? These are the profound questions you feel. That’s why these other writers, Joyce and the other, talk about it as a piece of life more than a piece of art. And that’s why it’s so hard to pin down, ‘cause it’s not just a story of the goody, the baddy and, you know, the obstacles to overcome for the character.

And in the end, the hero wins out, or loses, or dies, as he or she wins, you know, whatever. We don’t have that simplicity. We have that hodgepodge. We have the complete, almost like bustling marketplace, of humanity in his book: history and the individual. That people who participate in events, he’s totally against the great mythical leader figure, whether it be the Tsar or whether it be Napoleon, whoever, and he satirises them, a lot of comedy, the great figures of history. He says, “No, history is driven by other forces.” History is not driven by just, you know, a few great leaders, there are too many other forces at work. Is fiction used to explain history or history used to explain fiction? You know, we have characters, Pierre, the rational one. We have Natasha, the passion for life energy, Prince Andrei, the more intellectual, you know, the brave, the solid. In love, out of love, Natasha and the others. Who wins the lottery, who gets the whatever, Andrei happens, the war. “War and Peace” for me is a metaphor that marriage, love, all human relationships, business, work, everything, is a form of war and peace. Because he spent 11 months in the Caucasus and in the army so much, saw the horror of slaughter beginning in the mechanised age in Europe and Russia: Napoleonic, post-Napoleonic period.

For me, he sees war and peace as the metaphor for human nature and human life. “We humans,” and this is paraphrasing from a translation, “we humans need a conflict, "a battle to give us meaning. "Perhaps drama, perhaps chaos, "perhaps falling in love is like going to war. "Battles, conflicts, ceaseless with moments of reprieve. "Forgiveness happens: Andrei forgives the enemies, "Natasha, et cetera.” You know, we have Kutuzov who’s the Russian general: old school. Represents the spirit of the army, and the battle, and, you know, the heroic, and all that stuff, sort of almost chivalry, a la mediaeval times. Napoleon represents a modern machine and just, you know, war and win. He sets up these archetypes in the novel. He idolises the peasants when after the burning of Moscow, and the ashes, one of the main characters, Pierre, is captured by the French, in Moscow. He’s thrown into prison with a Russian peasant and he’s raw and he’s honest, and, you know, the classic idealised, romanticised image. And this is a spiritual freedom for Pierre, this is where meaning can be found. For us, it’s naive, for us, it’s idealistic. And it’s got that tinge of a dangerous nationalism to idealise working on the land.

Philosophically, we get huge tracts in the novel, which drive me crazy. Philosophy is influenced by Schopenhauer, the rationalists, Descartes You know, the, “Think before I am”, and the belief in rationality. And on the other hand, he’s influenced by the empiricists; Hume and Locke. Where experience leads to understanding, not rationality leads to understanding. He’s influenced by Immanuel Kant, trying to bring the rationalists and the empiricists together. So that, what is reality? Reality is our perception of experience, which involves rationality. I don’t want to get too much into all of this, but the one important point is with Schopenhauer, who’s his real big philosophical influence, it’s about the human will. And he recognises human will, Tolstoy. And the will is the lens through which we understand our experience, through which we understand our history, and our life, and war.

Finally, I think he does come to sense that free will is an illusion. Which goes way back two-and-a-half-thousand years to the Ancient Greeks and their tension between destiny and free choice. So, it’s fascinating to me trying to bring some of the key ideas which I take out of this ridiculously huge, long, meandering book. Of course, nationalism. And he satirises Napoleon, which is important. Napoleon talks about the “shadowed lands of backwardness”, barbarism in the East. Let’s not forget that, because that’s used in Europe and in the West, thinking of Russia, thinking of parts of even Eastern Europe, a certain barbarism, a backwardness, shadowed lands. He gets it, Tolstoy, he gets the perception of Europe towards Russia, towards, you know, and I don’t want to talk about Putin now, but he gets the perception of a superior inferior dichotomy. And he gets profoundly the Russian nationalist narrative, inside that as well. Okay, I want to show a couple of clips from some of the films if we can. The first one is Judi. This is from a trailer in the 1950s.

[Clip plays]

• [Narrator] “War and Peace”. Now after a decade of preparation and two years of photography, this unparalleled motion picture encompasses all the novel’s tremendous scope, the chaos of war, the glittering pomp and spectacle of peace, with these great stars; Audrey Hepburn reaching the pinnacle of her career as Natasha, the glowing beauty who was torn between the conflicting loves of three men. Henry Fonda, entirely different than you’ve ever seen him as Pierre, the idealist who worshipped her.

• If I were not myself, but the handsomest, cleverest, best man in the world, and if I were free, I should not hesitate for one moment to ask, on my knees, for your hand and your love.

• [Narrator] Mel Ferrer, scoring a triumph of artistry as Andrei, the cynical officer who surrendered to her heart-touching innocence.

• [Andrei] Do you love me?

• Yes. Yes.

• [Narrator] Vittorio Gassman as Anatole, the decadent playboy who unleashed a guilty passion that almost destroyed her.

• I can’t, you know, I can’t.

• Gorgeous Anita Ekberg, perfectly cast as the sensuous Helene, who made many men her slave. These, and a host of other stars, reflecting the life of an incredible era. The luxurious country estates in the calm before the storm, the conquering hordes of Napoleon, poised for his greatest adventure. The gallant defenders of the Motherland marching to victory. Their drunken revels on the eve of battle, toasting the glory in store. A dream shattered by the thunder of cannon and the bloody point of the bayonet, as tens of thousands clash in mortal combat. The nightmare of crushing defeat, the terrifying panic of a city in flight. And through it, shines the eternal light of a love story that will live through the ages. Now you’ll see it all, the overwhelming spectacle of Moscow in flames. The death march through the white hell of Russian winter. History’s most awesome panorama, in the motion picture of the century.

[Clip ends]

• Okay, thanks Judi. Thanks for that. That’s from 1956, the first really big Hollywood version of the novel. And, I mean it’s pretty obvious, you know, the heroism, and they’re focusing much more on a couple of, you know, characters, making them into great heroes, and love story, and passion, and so on. And, also romanticising and making glorious, you know, the Napoleonic wars and Russia, et cetera; completely taking real historical context out and taking out nuance of the human nature detail that I was mentioning, and any philosophising and all the other big stuff of it. So, it’s a classic example of what Hollywood can do to just take a few things and make that the drive. But, it’s captivating 'cause it’s Aubrey Hepburn, let’s never forget, much more than Fonda. She’s brilliant, and she’s passionate, and young, and we follow it really through her. Although she’s not such a major character in the whole novel. Okay, thank you. If we could go onto the next one is from a BBC trailer.

[Clip plays]

• You seem to have the gift of happiness.

• Well, don’t we all have it? Some moment in us.

• I’ve never experienced anything like it before.

• You are Count Bezukhov now. It is for the young ladies to make themselves pleasing to you now.

• [Anatole] Does it frighten you?

• [Natasha] Not a bit. I love it.

• I’m in love my friend.

• I challenge you.

• [Prince Vassily] Everything ends in death. Everything.

• [Narrator] In the shadow of war can young lives shine.

• [Helene] This is your future.

• [Narrator] Epic new drama, “War and Peace”, coming soon to BBC One.

[Clip ends]

• Thanks Judi. And so, this is from a BBC TV series of 2016. That’s the trailer. And it’s only six years ago. Fascinating. It’s much more visceral, it’s much more bloody. The zoom, the closeup zoom camera shots, we’re taken right in, much closer. The body is the site of performance. The body is the site of performance, of history, of war, of peace, of love, everything. Whereas in the previous trailer with the Hollywood, the camera’s more distant often, and then occasionally we get the closeups. We’re much more in the world of closeup. We’re much more in the world of needing that extra intensity, blood, and guts, and gore. There’s also a certain amount of subtlety in the acting, very minimal; looks, glances, words, phrases. And much softer compared to the huge vastness and the war: and the war is pushed much more. Nothing heroic like in the Hollywood image of 1956. Not heroic, you know, it’s the blood and guts and the horror of war in 2016 in that BBC trailer series. And I find it fascinating to see the same novel and yet twisted another way. Andrew Davies, who was the director, was accused of turning it into far too much of this kind of sex adventure and de-historicizing, which is always going to be the debate. How much of history do you have? How much don’t you? And he certainly goes for the characters and the sexual connections and the passions of love and hate and so on. Okay, if we can show the next one, please. This is the waltz.

[Clip plays]

• [Count Bezukhov] May I have this dance? May I take you hand for this dance?

• Of course.

• Countess Rostova, may I request the pleasure of a dance with your daughter, Natalia?

• Of course, she’ll be delighted.

• It’s him.

[Clip ends]

• Okay, if we can hold it there, Judi? Thank you. We can see here classic contemporary filmmaking with so much more tension in Eisenstein’s phrase, “The montage”, the juxtaposition of images. The story is told, not only told through the juxtaposition of image, but how feeling is evoked in the audience through the images that we choose to juxtapose; a hand around her waist, a glance of the eyes, her glance slightly down. Every time the story is told, but not only is the story told, but emotion is conveyed to us through how the montage of images is edited and put together. Minimal words, and how the music is minimalist. Even the dance and the panoramic picture, is minimalist. So, the credible irony of today’s film, less is more, brevity, cut, cut, cut. And that actually, ironically, produces far more emotional effect on us. Take out so many of the words from the original “War and Peace”, just capture the underlying essences of human nature and the connections of, in this case, passion, and emerging youthful passion. If we can show the next one, sorry, the second last one, please, Judi. This is Audrey Hepburn in the dance that we’ve just seen. So, from 1956 compared to the 2016.

[Clips begins]

• Don’t you just love dances?

• Not ordinarily. This is the first one I’ve come to in more than two years.

• I’m so glad you did come. I mean, after the night of the hunt, mamma and pappa said how nice it was that you came to visit and they hoped you’d come again. I mean-

• I hope you tell mamma and papa, that I intend to come and visit often, very often if they’ll permit me.

• I certainly shall tell them.

• And on moonlit night, do you still want to hold yourself tight and fly off-

• I’m sorry Judi, if we could go back. It’s the one after the one we just saw. Apologies, it’s the fourth one.

• [Natasha] Why must I keep thinking of Prince Andrei? Am I so much in love with him that all others seem ridiculous? We saw so little of each other and yet I remember every moment. Oh, if only he could’ve brought me here tonight. Why doesn’t he like this city? It isn’t right for a man to shut himself off for months and months as he does.

• [Prince Andrei] I am so delighted to see you again. Will you honour me with his dance?

• Pierre, nice to see you again.

• Pierre, my boy.

• Will you honour me with this dance?

[Clip ends]

• Thanks, Judi. So, I mean, just if I may say as we come to the end, what’s interesting is that the Hollywood one is actually showing us images of the other aristocrats. Showing us, you know, the long shot of all these in incredibly privileged aristocrats coming from Tolstoy’s own milieu, and their interaction, the formality, the convention, the social politeness, the finesse, all of these social external portrayals are captured. And I think in an ironic twist, we get a more sense of kind of period drama, and period. Whereas in the other one, in the 2016, we’re taken much more into the emotional inner life of character. Perhaps at the price of some of the historical, the historical events, you know, that is going on. But, is it possible to do both? Can you show, you know, passion and sexuality, and the emotion, and the body, and all the historical stuff that I’ve mentioned before, and the ideas, enlightenment, everything else, or do you have to go for one or the other? Can you try and ever get a mix of the two? And in these two examples, of the BBC One and the Hollywood movie, I think we get the two contrasts.

One speaks to our period more and the other one speaks to a difference. Does history help us write the fiction? Does fiction help us write the history? Always that tension, an extraordinary creative to and fro between them. And I think that there isn’t a simple answer, of course. With something as huge, as magnificently insane as this novel “War and Peace”, it will throw out endless opportunity to interpret these questions, which do speak to us today. How do you show history in art? How do you show artistry in history? How do you bring in these big ideas of rationality, freedom, passion, love, human rights, war? Where does “War and Peace” lie as a metaphor for human nature? Does it lie? And I think just going back to the ancient writers, Dante, all the others, these big questions are all there. The difference with Tolstoy, he chooses a ridiculous number of characters, nearly 600, to try and show life in all its messy, gory, and magnificent detail. He doesn’t try and just tease it out, and just show two or three, and follow a couple of characters all the way through. It makes it maddeningly annoying to read, and the philosophising, but I think it also makes it enchantingly endless, full of depth of possible stuff that we can get inside it. So, that’s a tiny taste of Mr. Tolstoy and this novel. Thanks very much everybody.

• [Judi] Thank you. David, do you have time to look at some of the Q&A?

Q&A and Comments

• Yeah, sure. Okay, just starting at the top. Thank you Betty. it’s appreciated. Okay, Jennifer, thank you. Okay, Wilma, thank you again. Okay, appreciate, Stephanie. “Had a wonderful German Pointer who decided "to eat his way through volume one of 'War and Peace’, "but declined to continue with volume two.” I know. I know, it’s a nightmare. Marilyn: “From December ‘69 until May, 1970, "BBC did a dramatisation in 21 episodes on radio.” Ah! “There was a booklet available. "Still have that booklet.” Fantastic, thank you. That’s really interesting.

Q: Romaine: “Was Tolstoy a romantic?” A: Great question. I think, yes. And I’m tempted to say because he came from a privileged background, part of the elite, which was part of his romantic streak. But, I think that has to be balanced with, I cannot get over his year in the army. And the horror, you know, Ernest Hemingway said that he learned how to write about the horrors of war from Tolstoy. And many others have quoted that Hemingway phrase. When you look at the writing about war, he gets it. Not only the blood, and guts, and gore, and slaughterhouse, but he gets the human insanity of so much of butchering, and sometimes the human glee, and sometimes the human happiness, excitement and terror of it. He gets it all. So was he romantic? I think partly, but I think he was a realist as well because of that war experience, you know, to me.

Q: Gene: “What happened to his older brother? "Didn’t the oldest inherit the estate by law?” A: Yes. As far as I know, yes. But you know, of course there’s all the stuff with his wife and so on, as well.

Betty: “Who had the other nine children, if his wife..” No, she had the four of them during the seven years that “War and Peace” was being written, and rewritten, and rewritten and edited and redrafted by her. So when the first four children and then after “War and Peace” were finished, then came all the other nine children. Same wife, Sophia, after “War and Peace”.

Q: Arlene: “What is the best English translation?” A: Whoa. Great, great question. I’d have to get back to you on that 'cause there are a few.

Dennis: “Phillip Glass’s opera concerns Tolstoy and Ghaney in South Africa, and Gandhi.” Oh, fantastic. I didn’t know. Thank you. I must listen to that.

Q: Arlene: “Who raised Tolstoy?” A: It was the extended family, aristocrats, nannies, you know, nurse maids and so on. Yep. Good question.

Judith: “There are a lot of movies on "War and Peace”. “Strongly recommend the Russian one.” I know. Bondarchuk. “The Borodino Battle was using the real Soviet army.” Yes. Unfortunately I couldn’t find good clips of the Bondarchuk version, and with English subtitles. Mike: “Venice danced as Napoleon attacked.” There you have it. And the main thing for me was looking at the little bit of detail that Tolstoy doesn’t miss, whereas many other writers would miss that, in, you know, describing a massive invasion and a massive attack of a huge enemy force. I mean, Napoleon had 400,000 soldiers marching on Moscow. Mike: “Get married before going to war.” Yep. One of the debates in the movie, in the book. Mike: “Napoleon was 5'7”, not short, false news.“ Okay, thank you. I’m saying from the perspective of a character in the novel. From the perspective of the ordinary Russian soldier in the novel, that’s what he sees. He’s trying to demystify the iconic image, Tolstoy.

Q: Barry: "Did his interest in communes inspire Jews "to create the kibbutzim?” A: Fascinating question Barry, I don’t know. I’ll find out. Thank you.

Natasha: “Thank you. Natasha is remarkable.” Audrey Hepburn and the Lily James, the BBC and the Hollywood. King Vidor directed the Hollywood one.

Q: David: “How was the movie received?” A: Very well.

Q: Betty: “Can the movie be found anywhere?” A: Yep. Should be able to get it on the internet.

Q: Tasha: “Do you know the Russian film?” A: That’s the one we were talking about. Yep. Henry: “The Russian version?” Yes, absolutely. I would’ve loved to have shown it, but I didn’t want to show it without the subtitles. Neville: Hi Neville, hope you well.

Q: “Talk of Tolstoy’s opinion of Napoleon. What do you think Napoleon would think of Tolstoy?” A: That’s great. “Napoleon for good or evil was a man of action. Fought wars, destroyed country. Tolstoy was a recorder of history: more detached.” Absolutely. “The Napoleonic code and so on.” Great point. And in fact that would make a fascinating drama itself. You know, the ordinary writer and the great military leader. And never forget, Napoleon, you know, freed the Jews, emancipated. And Napoleon, you know, so many things, which I think we are living with today, brilliantly, which he introduced. Yep. It’d be fascinating, almost like the play “Copenhagen” where you put the, you know, Tolstoy and Napoleon together in a fictitious meeting. Neville:

Q: “Following on, Ridley Scott is completing his epic 'Napoleon’. Do you think Tolstoy is mentioned?” A: I don’t know. We’ll wait and see.

Thanks Neville. Faye: “I saw an eight-hour Russian version "with English subtitles.” Fantastic. You know, when you read the research and some of these contemporary descendants of Tolstoy, and you read some of their interviews with them, and it’s quite funny because they talk about their schoolmates being furious with them because of their great-great-great-grandfather. They’ve had to sit through endless hours at school in Russia trying to wade through godforsaken “War and Peace”, nevermind “Anna Karenina”. It’s fascinating little anecdotes of, you know, the contemporary descendants. Jerry: “Thank you.”

Q: Mike: “Was there a party before the Battle of Waterloo?” A: Well, fascinatingly in the movie “Waterloo”, there is a huge ball which is shown where Wellington and the aristocratic elite of Europe, not just England, are all gathered and they’re in a ball and dancing. And it’s very similar to some of this, you know, and Wellington is completely cynical about the ordinary soldier, you know, “They’re idiots, they’re peasants, they’ll just die. "We don’t care how many do, "they’ll just die for king and country.” And his wife is questioning. It’s fascinating how they’re portrayed, utterly ruthless and cynical about the ordinary soldier, you know, dying for their countries. So Waterloo, and it’s shown in the context of a ball, of the dance. And it’s often used even in “The Godfather”, you know, the scene of the opera and then comes the killing. So often the artistic forms of dance, and ball, and other things, before the horror, you know, before the storm. It’s certainly used as a fictional device. But what Tolstoy is saying is that it happened in history.

Ross: “I liked the earlier BBC with Anthony Hopkins.” Yep. Mike: “Live for today, tomorrow we die.” Yeah. Thanks Melvin, and Beulah, thank you. Robert: “Why the beard?” Not sure. Okay, thank you from Zoom. And “Quietly Flows the Don.” Oh, that’s, these are lovely ideas. Bobby, thank you. Jennifer, thank you very much. Gail. “Hope you’re well in Jo'burg.” Thank you. Sharon: “Thank you.” And then 834, from Linda, sorry, Linda in Toronto. Thanks Yvonne. Margaret, Hazel, Gloria. Nicki: “There was a televised series of the novel on the BBC. Oh, yes, young Anthony Hopkins playing Pierre.” Brilliant. Yes. It’s just hard to get good clips of these. That’s why I’ve chosen. And these two I thought would give a contrast between Hollywood version, King Vidor, and much more up to date BBC version. That’s James Norton, who is a really brilliant up and coming young British actor.

Q: Catherine: “Any comment on the Russian version?” A: Yeah. That would be a totally immersive, as you say. I think the Russian one is the best. I do. I think it’s fantastic. But you have to know a lot of the story because the problem is the subtitles.

Q: And, Janet: “The Last Station?” A: Ooh, that’s another whole discussion.

Q: Bev: “How do you relate ‘War and Peace’ to Putin’s emperor fantasy?” A: Well, you know, I think that Putin is tapping into, obviously in a way, Russian nationalism, the land, whether it’s, you know, all of these things. And I think he knows it. And the empire, I think he’s more about pre-communism and going way back to Tsarist Russia. I think Putin is land and nationalism, and aristocracy within, obviously, what he has created in a total mafia-state, and a total dictatorship.

Catherine, thank you. Marion: Oh! “Gone with the Wind”. Brilliant point, Marion. Yes, I was going to mention. There’s one other clip which maybe I’ll show on Saturday before “Anna Karenina”, where you’ve see Natasha coming back after the war, an utterly destroyed home. But she comes back, and from this naive, romantic, passionate young woman, she’s comes back as a mother courage. She’s learnt endurance, suffering, survival. She’s learned through experience, as empiricist would say for Tolstoy, through experience. And she comes back tough. “Right, we’ll rebuild the house, we’ll rebuild this, "we’ll get on with life, we won’t stop.” I’m going to show that clip on Saturday. And that’s the Audrey Hepburn character. So you see the contrast and the journey she’s gone on, as Natasha, in the novel. And that links with “Gone with the Wind” because, of course, you know, the end of an entire era historically in “Gone with the Wind” and the beginning of something new. “The old is dead, but the new is not yet formed.”

Gronsky’s phrase, and the interregnum rules. Barbara, thank you. Then, Erica: “ ‘72 in the BBC.” Yeah. And Susan, thank you so much. Baasha: “Russian, 'Erosion’ was directed "by the person who plays Pierre.” Ah, I didn’t know. Okay, great. Okay, I think that’s pretty much the questions and thank you so much to everybody. Judi, thank you.

• [Judi] Thank you David. And we look forward to seeing you again on Saturday.

• Thanks and you too, and to everybody participating. Take care.

• Take care. Stay safe everybody. Bye-Bye.