rank amongst the few supremely great masterpieces of the world’s literature. It is a prose epic of vast dimensions, the history of the life and death struggle of the whole Russian nation with its most terrible adversary the first Napoleon, for the Russian nation is the real hero of the romance, even the leading characters, Kutuzov and Platon Karataev, being mere idealised exponents or representatives of the nation at large. Yet when Tolstoi forgets the philosopher in the artist, and condescends to probe the personal characters of the protagonists in the terrible struggle, he convinces as no other great writer has ever succeeded in convincing. The character of Napoleon is of itself a revelation. A great critic has well said that after reading the description of Alexander’s interview with Bonaparte at Tilsit, one cannot rid oneself of the conviction that Tolstoi must have been concealed somewhere in the same room, for nowhere else do we seem to see “the little corporal” so vividly in the flesh as in the pages of “Voina i Mir.” The philosophy of the book, as already hinted, is not without a tinge of Schopenhauerism. Thus, man’s reason, coupled with his exacting egoism, is held to be the source of all human suffering. The main duty of man is self-renunciation and absolute subjection to the will of the mass of humanity which makes up the nation. Kutuzov was a great man simply because he understood this, and had no
not change, but I am confident at present that Schopenhauer is the greatest of geniuses . . . and I can only attribute his being so little known to the fact that the world at large is made up of mere idiots.”
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