The Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin isolated what he considered to be some of the most prevalent characteristics in Dostoevsky's (later) works. One of these characteristics he dubs "polyphony" or "multi-voicedness": characters in Dostoevsky's novels are allowed to voice their own ideas and their own beliefs, even when their beliefs contradict those of the author himself. We are so accustomed to equating a character to an author, to believing that authors use their characters as mouthpieces for their own thoughts. But one reads Dostoevsky in that way at one's own risk; to equate author and character often results in completely misunderstanding Dostoevsky's work.
Bakhtin also calls Dostoevsky a "dialogic" writer. His characters, according to Bakhtin, engage in dialogue with each other. Rarely do they think, speak, or act in isolation; they repeat each other's words, react to them, or continue each other's thoughts. In contrast, Bakhtin calls Tolstoy a supremely "monologic" writer. Tolstoy's characters, again according to Bakhtin, rarely engage in dialogue with each other. Sure, Andrei and Pierre might have a conversation on a ferry by the river, and Tolstoy's narrator might tell us that Pierre's words exerted a great deal of influence on Andrei's thinking. But when Andrei pontificates, he thinks his own thoughts, engages in his own monologues; his ideas and beliefs are his own, not echoes or continuations of his arguments with Pierre.
Bakhtin states that Tolstoy is monologic for another reason: his characters (at least his main characters) seem more clearly to be mouthpieces for their author's ideas. Many scholars disagree with Bakhtin, or at least feel that he overstates his case.
If Tolstoy is really a supremely monologic writer, we would expect utter consistency from him. In many cases, we get it: Kutuzov once again appears in this section of the novel as the embodiment of "wise passivity," as opposed to the foolishness of Napoleon, who mistakenly thinks that he controls everything through his will. Much like Bagration earlier, Kutuzov's "orders" are not orders at all; the narrator tells us, "He was not giving any orders; all he did was say yes or no to suggestions." In contrast, Tolstoy provides us in chapter 27 with a detailed account of Napoleon's dispositions for the Battle of Borodino, and then an equally detailed account of how none of these orders were carried out, nor could they have been.
As if this weren't enough, we are convinced of Kutuzov's wisdom and Napoleon's foolishness through the prism of Andrei. In chapter 15, Andrei meets Denisov, who has come to find Kutuzov in order to propose to him a plan of guerrilla warfare. Note how Tolstoy structures the meeting between Andrei and Denisov. At first, we have no indication that it is Denisov who has arrived; all we are told is that "a swarthy little lieutenant-colonel of hussars with prodigious mustaches and sideburns rode up to the gate." But with Denisov's first words, we know exactly who it is: "You, too? Waiting for the commander-in-chief? They say he's weady to weceive evewybody, thank God! Not like those widiculous kwauts!"
As they sit waiting for Kutuzov, Andrei and Denisov are connected through Natasha, through bittersweet memory of their love for her. Andrei, who has been avoiding everyone and everything that reminds him of Natasha, finds "that these particular memories had left him alone for long periods, and when they did come to mind they didn't hurt with anything like the old intensity." Denisov finds the same thing: "And as far as Denisov was concerned, the associations evoked by the name of Bolkonsky belonged to a romantic time in the distant past, when one evening after supper, much affected by Natasha's singing, he had proposed to a little fifteen-year-old girl without really knowing what he was doing." The two men are united by more than their distant love for Natasha; they are united through a sense of time. Natasha is now more or less in the past for them, and time is starting to heal all wounds.
How does this relate to Kutuzov? In the next chapter, Kutuzov reveals to Andrei the secret to successful warfare: time and patience. "There's nothing stronger than those two old soldiers - time and patience. There's nothing they can't do...," he states. Kutuzov's wisdom stretches across the battlefield and into life itself: time and patience are the two "old soldiers" that heal the characters' wounds. The impression of Kutuzov as the wise leader is reinforced through Andrei's own healing process.
In contrast, when Pierre meets up with Andrei on the evening before the Battle of Borodino, he states, "They do say war is a bit like playing chess." Andrei disputes Pierre's claim: "Yes, it is, but there's one little difference. In chess you can take as long as you want over every move. You're beyond the limits of time. Oh, there is one other difference: a knight is always stronger than a pawn and two pawns are always stronger than one, whereas in war a battalion can sometimes be stronger than a division, and sometimes weaker than a company." Not "little differences," to be sure! Andrei points out the obvious: unlike chess, war is no game, and it is dependent on a multitude of factors that the player cannot foresee ahead of time. In chess, you can calculate a sequence of moves; in war, you cannot. In an echo of Pierre and Andrei's conversation, Napoleon repeatedly equates war with chess. At one point, he states, "The board's set up. The game begins tomorrow." At another point, he complains, "Tell the King of Naples that it is still not midday, and I cannot yet see my chess-board clearly."
Napoleon's equation of chess and war is utterly mistaken in one sense, completely horrifying in another. Not only does he not understand the realities of war as Andrei, Kutuzov, and the narrator understand them, he also views war as a game. He is not concerned with the human cost of war, the destruction and the violence. Instead, war is a game that is set up in partially in order to bring him greater glory, partially to bring him amusement. Napoleon's courtier de Bausset brings him a portrait of his infant son, the "King of Rome," playing cup and ball, with the ball representing the earth and the stick in his hand representing a sceptre. When Napoleon sits and stares at this portrait, it is as if he is looking into a mirror: two children playing games with the world as their toys.
So in many ways, we do have that monologic consistency: Kutuzov is always wise, on the battlefield and off, while Napoleon is always foolish. But then there are moments of utter inconsistency in the novel as well. In the earlier chapters of this section, we saw the peasants as they interacted with Princess Marya. Stubborn, recalcitrant, unwilling to listen to reason or accept assistance, Marya's peasants are depicted as a dark, wild, chaotic force. They are irrational: they have a tendency to suddenly, for no apparent reason, pick up and move hundreds of miles to another part of the country, and then just as suddenly, again for no apparent reason, pick up and return to the place they left. They are superstitious: the Bolkonskys' steward Alpatych enjoys the reputation of being a wizard. All he has to do is exclaim "I can see three yards beneath you!" and it becomes true. They are subservient and submissive: Nikolai, along with two or three other officers, can bend them into submission, and they will even hand over their own belts and tie each other up, to boot.
At the same time, however, when Pierre tours through the town of Mozhaysk, he is struck by the conscripted peasants preparing for the coming battle. They are "brimming with energy and running with sweat," and working with "raucous comments and roars of laughter." They seem to embody the same life force that we saw earlier with the drunken party and the tying of a bear to a policeman, the same life force of Natasha dancing her native Russian dance at Uncle's cabin. It is these peasants who "told Pierre more about the primacy and solemn meaning of the here and now than anything he had yet seen and heard." For Pierre, they are the embodiment of the spirit of the army, and more importantly, of living in the present moment. And so when an officer passes by them, holding his nose and exclaiming, "Ugh, filthy swine!" we can't help but feel a bit offended, perhaps even feel a bit of wounded national pride, even if we aren't Russian. I'm speaking here purely in terms of the world of the novel. Tolstoy has set us up to feel this wounded national pride in the same way that he set us up to feel it in Volume I, Part I, chapter 5, when Hippolyte Kuragin tells a French viscount, "And you told me that Russian ladies weren't as good as French ladies. You just have to know how to get things going." In both cases, what is natively Russian is being slandered.
The peasants and common soldiers are depicted as being "truly Russian" - note their sincere devotion and solemnity during the procession with the icon of Smolensk, as opposed to the falseness and hypocrisy of Boris Drubetskoy as he plays both sides, courting both Kutuzov and Bennigsen, to ensure that he will receive a medal no matter what. Pierre notes the distinction between the peasants and the common soldiers on one hand and Boris and the officers on the other: "But what struck Pierre was that the reason for all the excitement on some of the faces had to do with questions of personal success, and he could not get out of his mind a different kind of excitement seen on other faces that had to do with universal questions rather than personal ones, questions of life and death." This is, perhaps, one of those monologic moments of Tolstoy's: the common soldiers are unquestionably on a higher moral plane than the officers. At the same time, though, the peasants had earlier been portrayed as a chaotic, irrational, uncomprehending mob. So both points of view are presented, and part of the beauty of the complexity of the novel is to accept both of them.
In the same vein, some of Prince Andrei's speeches are so disturbing, I have to believe that Tolstoy is allowing him to speak in his own voice, not that of his creator. One example is in his earlier conversation with Pierre when he drops by to see Andrei at his estate at Bogucharovo. Depressed and bitter after his wife's death, Andrei insists that the only way to be happy is to live for oneself alone. On some level, his arguments make sense, but on another level everything human in us recoils from what he says. It is important to remember that when Andrei states that he cannot possibly know what is good and what is bad, that there is no sense in improving the peasants' life through education and hospitals, that one has to find happiness in oneself and let everybody else go to the devil, he is in a state of profound depression. When Pierre finds Andrei on the eve before the Battle of Borodino, Andrei is again depressed and bitter. He delivers a long speech about taking no prisoners in war, stating that "war is not being nice to each other, it's the vilest thing in human life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war. It's a terrible necessity, and we should be strict about it and take it seriously. It comes down to this: no more lying, war means war and it's not a plaything. Otherwise war will be a nice hobby for idle people and butterfly minds..." On some level, Andrei's words strike us as true - war is vile, and we shouldn't play at it and allow it to be the plaything of people like Napoleon. At the same time, though, there is something horrible in Andrei's words "Don't take any prisoners! Kill and be killed! Anyone who has got this far, as I have, through suffering..." The thought of no mercy, no magnanimity, goes against everything in us that is human.
Again, I have to believe that Andrei is speaking with his voice, not that of Tolstoy. Andrei is speaking through his own perception and experience, an experience colored by suffering, betrayal, and a desire for revenge. Andrei states, "Stop taking prisoners. What's the sense in taking prisoners? It's just medieval chivalry. ... They're my enemies, they're all criminals - that's the way I see it. ... They must be put to death. If they're my enemies, they can't be my friends, whatever might have been said at Tilsit." But let's think back to Nikolai as he charged across the field and attacked the French. With the instincts of the hunt coursing through him, he picked out his prey, took aim, and... looked into the blue eyes of his target. He noticed that the young Frenchman had a dimple. And... he couldn't do it, couldn't kill him. The simple act of looking into a man's eyes, of making a human connection with him, made Nikolai unable to kill a person who was supposedly his enemy.
If we think back to Natasha, we remember her praying in church, revelling in the sensation of forgiving and loving her enemies, even wishing she had more enemies to love and forgive. We remember Natasha's confusion at the priest's command that she pray that the enemies of Russia be trampled underfoot. Princess Marya gave Andrei the advice: "If you think someone has done you wrong you must forgive and forget. We have no right to punish others. And you will know the joy of forgiveness." In this section, Pierre again meets Dolokhov, but inspired by the possibility that he might die on the battlefield the next day, Dolokhov asks Pierre for forgiveness for his past offenses. The theme of forgiving one's enemies has become more and more prevalent in these last sections. And it is in this part of the novel that Andrei once again encounters Anatole.
After chasing Anatole all over the Russian Empire, bent on meting out punishment and revenge, Andrei finally meets Anatole in a medical tent, when both are seriously wounded. Prince Andrei has been hit by shrapnel, Anatole has his leg amputated. It is both horrifying and deeply touching when Anatole asks the doctors to show him his amputated leg. His character and all of his actions have been based on his physical attractiveness. Everything that has defined him is now taken from him and shown to him, with a boot still on it. At the sight of Anatole's pain and suffering, Andrey is moved not to feelings of hatred of his enemies and revenge; he does not revel in the fact that Anatole has been punished by some higher power. Instead, he feels intimately connected to Anatole, and he experiences the profoundest of emotions: pity and love. We read, "Everything came back to him, and his heart filled with a blissful surge of passionate pity and love for this man." Andrey also comes to the profoundest of revelations: "Sympathy and love, for our brothers, those who love us and those who hate us, for our enemies. Yes, the kind of love God preached on earth, that Marie told me about I could not understand..." Andrei's previous words about killing all prisoners, that they are my enemies and must be killed, dissolve in a pure moment of love and connection.
And yet, in the very next chapter, Tolstoy's narrator once again rails on Napoleon! For a moment, Napoleon seems to understand the horror of the battlefield and the destruction he has helped to bring about. He feels sick at heart, unable to stop the thing that supposedly depends solely on his will. "For one brief moment personal, human feelings won out over the artificial apology for a life that he had been leading for such a long time." But then, "like a horse on a treadmill," Napoleon resumes the role that was his destiny, and the narrator lashes out at him with unmitigated vehemence: "though he never, to the end of his days, had the slightest understanding of goodness, beauty, truth, or the significance of his own deeds, which were too far removed from truth and goodness, too remote from anything human for him to be able to grasp their significance." The narrator's outburst seems to be in complete contrast to Andrei's revelation. After all, if Andrei has learned to forgive his enemy, why can't the narrator?
It has been suggested to me that perhaps the narrator of War and Peace is a character like any other, with his own prejudices and opinions like any of the other characters. It also seems to me like there are different narrators, who are allowed to speak in their own voices. There is the more distanced and objective narrator who delivers abstract discourses on the theory of history, and then there is this narrator, subject to venomous outbursts against Napoleon. Andrei seems to have learned the ultimate lesson of pity, forgiveness, and brotherly love, but this narrator still seems to have a ways to go.
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