II.

War and Peace and Anna Karenina

War and Peace, considered one of the greatest novels ever written, is an epic of Russian society between 1805 and 1815, just before and after the Napoleonic invasion. It contains 559 characters, commemorates important military battles, and portrays famous historical personalities, but its main theme is the chronicle of the lives of five aristocratic families. The work is a masterpiece of Realism. The characters are brilliantly realized by the descriptions of significant physical details, and by Tolstoy's penetrating psychological analysis that illuminates their inner worlds, showing how they seem to themselves and to others at different moments of their lives. Spontaneous, unaffected Natasha Rostova, one of the most famous heroines in Russian literature, who matures from an exuberant adolescent into a solid matron, embodies Tolstoy's ideal of womanhood and is modelled on his sister-in-law, Tanya Bers. Natasha remains unchanged in character, engrossed in private concerns of love, marriage, and children and symbolizes Tolstoy's own optimistic belief in the natural stages of human life. She confirms Tolstoy's iconoclastic views, expounded in separate philosophical chapters in the novel, of the historical process; history, for him, was the result of anonymous motivations and personal happenings rather than great public events instigated by national leaders. A profoundly optimistic philosophy emanates from the vast novel. Despite the revelations of the horrors of war and acknowledgement of human failings, the general message of War and Peace, inspired by Tolstoy's personal happiness during these creative years, is a zestful love of life in all its manifestations.

Tolstoy's shorter masterpiece, Anna Karenina, is one of the greatest modern psychological novels. The same creative methods convey reality, but the novel has more artistic unity than the earlier work, and exuberance gives way to pessimistic overtones; the inner conflicts of the main protagonists remain unresolved. Anna's adulterous passion for the young officer Vronsky, set against a background of St Petersburg society life in the 1860s, is effectively contrasted with the lawful union of Kitty and Constantin Levin and their life on a country estate, reaffirming Tolstoy's belief in the superiority of rural, natural life over the superficialness of urban life. Tolstoy shows deep compassion for his beautiful, erring heroine, but ultimately she is condemned to suffering and suicide for her transgression of moral and social laws. The principal hero, Levin, is an autobiographical character. He echoes the author's disapproval of intellectuality and urban sophistication, and he becomes tormented by the same doubts about the meaning of life and the relation of human beings to the infinite that assailed Tolstoy when he was completing Anna Karenina.