ABSTRACT 
   
Title of dissertation:  ENGAGEMENTS WITH TOLSTOY: 
REPRESENTATIONS OF CRISIS IN NOVELS 
BY HEMINGWAY, WHARTON, 
PASTERNAK, AND GROSSMAN 
 
  Nataliya Pratsovyta, Doctor of Philosophy, 2017 
Dissertation directed by:  Professor Brian Richardson, Department of 
English 
Professor Elizabeth Papazian, School of 
Languages, Literatures, and Cultures 
  
This project examines the problem of historical representation in literary fiction, 
taking as its subject the twentieth-century novel. As a project in comparative literature, it 
brings together literary works of American and Russian authors of the twentieth century 
with works of critical theory and philosophy to analyze artistic representations of crisis, 
understood as moments of social and cultural transition and change, across cultures.  
Looking at literary works from the USA and the Soviet Union reveals the points of 
contact between two countries that both presented claims for cultural domination at the 
beginning of the twentieth century. The representation of crisis in works of literature that 
have become canonical from both countries allows us to trace the rich cross-cultural 
exchange between them. 
One way in which such cultural exchange was realized was through the cultural 
uses of Leo Tolstoy’s nineteenth-century novel War and Peace (1869). This dissertation 
argues that Tolstoy’s novel served as a model for twentieth-century writing in both 
countries. Through the close examination of two American novels, Ernest 
Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and Edith Wharton’s The Age of 
 
 
Innocence (1920), and of two Russian novels, Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago (1957) 
and Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate (1959), this dissertation uncovers the specific 
Tolstoyan techniques that each of these authors appropriated and readapted for his or her 
own purposes. 
The philosophical concept of the I-other relationship as elaborated by Emmanuel 
Levinas (1906-1995) and the theories of the dialogic representation of reality in the novel 
by Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) are used as lenses for reading these literary texts. The 
dissertation argues that applying the Levinasian model of the I-other relationship to the 
above-mentioned works of fiction allows for a deconstruction of the totalizing vision of 
history, a feature which comes to define the historical writing in these major literary 
works in the twentieth century.  
The novelty of the present work consists in asking the question of what can be 
learned about literary representations of crisis by looking at intertextual literary contacts 
between Russian and American literature from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth 
century. The Russian and American authors considered in this dissertation all seek to 
respond to their own historical moment and work out models of historical representation 
in the context of social change.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
ENGAGEMENTS WITH TOLSTOY: REPRESENTATIONS OF CRISIS IN NOVELS 
BY HEMINGWAY, WHARTON, PASTRNAK, AND GROSSMAN 
 
by 
Nataliya Pratsovyta 
 
 
 
 
Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the 
University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment 
of the requirements for the degree of 
Doctor of Philosophy 
2017 
 
 
 
 
 
Advisory Committee: 
 
Professor Brian Richardson, Chair 
Professor Elizabeth Papazian, Chair 
Professor Sheila Jelen 
Professor Peter Mallios 
Professor Mikhail Dolbilov (Dean’s Representative) 
 
  
 
II 
 
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
 
I thank God for His constant help; I am grateful that during the years of my 
studies He revealed to me so many things about myself, awakened my dormant dreams, 
and open my eyes to visions which were closed to me before. 
I want to express my sincere gratitude to all the members of my dissertation 
committee, Dr. Brian Richardson, Dr. Elizabeth Papazian, Dr. Sheila Jelen, and Dr. Peter 
Mallios, who stimulated my professional development and growth over the years that I 
was working on this project and under whose guidance I discovered my own voice. I am 
very grateful to my dissertation director, Dr. Brian Richardson, for his immense 
knowledge, for the hard questions that stimulated me to expand my research, and for his 
generosity with time. I am gratefully indebted to Dr. Elizabeth Papazian who co-directed 
this dissertation for the great ideas that were born in the course of our conversations, for 
her tireless work helping me to become a better writer, and for introducing me to and 
sometimes causing me to change my mind about some important concepts in literary 
analysis. My sincere gratitude goes to Dr. Sheila Jelen for her expert guidance and 
counsel throughout the time of my studies, as well as for her endless support that made 
the completion of this dissertation possible. I am very thankful to Dr. Peter Mallios for 
helping me to discover connections between the texts which seemed incomparable. 
I give thanks to my parents, Dozyslav and Olha Kuryliak, for their unwavering 
support, love that never fails, and the example they set for me every day of my life. Many 
thanks go to my husband Andriy and my daughter Kateryna for their continuous 
understanding and for the much needed joyful encouragement. I want to thank my dear 
III 
 
friend Ivan Tymtsiv for all his support, and to his family for their kind encouragement 
and prayers.  
  
IV 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 
Chapter I: The Face-to-Face Encounter in Tolstoy: Understanding Crisis in War  
and Peace ................................................................................................................... 15 
 
Chapter II: “Inglés” in Spain: Linguistic and Cultural Otherness in  
Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls .................................................................... 66 
 
Chapter III: Innocence before the Fall: the Decomposition of Totality in  
Wharon’s The Age of Innocence ................................................................................ 114 
 
Chapter IV: A Shared Sense of History: Poetry, Surgery, and Revolution  
in Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago .................................................................................. 160 
 
Chapter V: The Construction of a Critical Reader in Vasily Grossman’s  
Novel Life and Fate ................................................................................................... 201 
 
Conclusion: Historical Crisis and the Other ............................................................ 241 
Works Cited ............................................................................................................... 247 
 
 
 
1 
 
INTRODUCTION 
Leo Tolstoy’s renowned masterpiece War and Peace, which describes the 
Russian war with Napoleon’s army, contains a curious episode. Count Pierre Bezukhov, 
a wealthy Russian aristocrat, thinks of assassinating Napoleon upon the latter’s entrance 
into Moscow to end Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. With this intention, Pierre remains in 
the city while all the inhabitants desert it, obtains a pistol, and stays in the house of his 
friend Osip Bazdeev. At that time Osip’s mad and drunk brother Makar Alexeich takes 
possession of Pierre’s pistol. As the French enter the house where Pierre stays, Makar 
Alexeich points the loaded pistol at the French officer and fires, while Pierre throws 
himself at the drunken man and prevents the shot from reaching its destination. The 
French officer Ramballe, grateful to Pierre for saving his life, refuses to believe that 
Pierre is not French, though Pierre assures him otherwise. Ramballe offers his hand as a 
sign of friendship to Pierre. This gesture of the Frenchman is so good-natured and simple 
that Pierre, “responding with an unconscious smile to the smile of the Frenchman, 
pressed the hand held out to him,” forgetting both that Ramballe is his enemy and his 
earlier intention to assassinate the leader of the French army (Tolstoy Vol. III, 904). The 
above episode demonstrates various ways one may imagine and respond to “otherness”: 
Pierre, who intended to kill the general of the hostile army, ends up saving the life of his 
enemy and joining him at the table for a wide-ranging conversation. 
This moment of Pierre’s recognition of the possibility of seeing Ramballe as a 
friend instead of an enemy represents one of the ways Tolstoy addresses and handles 
moments of extreme crisis. Moments of personal crisis oftentimes overlap with social 
and historical ones, and become the author’s response to such larger crises within society. 
2 
 
The example of Pierre illustrates a fictional move which stands in opposition to what 
Paul Fussell refers to as “gross dichotomizing” in his book about the First World War, 
The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), a book which describes fictional 
representations of the First World War. By “gross dichotomizing” Fussell understands “a 
persisting imaginative habit of modern times, traceable, it would seem, to the actualities 
of the Great War. ‘We’ are all here on this side; ‘the enemy’ is over there. ‘We’ are 
individuals with names and personal identities; ‘he’ is a mere collective entity. We are 
visible; he is invisible. We are normal; he is grotesque” (75). Though Pierre is one of the 
main characters in War and Peace, Ramballe is not devoid of personal identity. This 
secondary character is not shown as a “collective entity”: while talking with Pierre over 
dinner, the reader catches a glimpse of his character, as he, at Pierre’s request, forgives 
Makar Alexeich for shooting at him. Such a response to a major historical crisis in 
society – the French invasion of Russia – goes against what Fussell sees as “a persisting 
imaginative habit of modern times” to imagine the enemy as de-individualized, abnormal 
and grotesque.  
This dissertation argues that episodes similar to that just discussed, which seek to 
respond to massive crises on personal levels, make Tolstoy’s War and Peace into an 
important model for representing crisis in the twentieth century, when the sense of social 
and historical crisis became particularly acute. War and Peace came to be read 
extensively in Russia, Tolstoy’s homeland, and abroad at the beginning of the twentieth 
century. This dissertation looks at the engagements of Russian and American writers with 
Tolstoy’s War and Peace as ways to address the crises of the twentieth century. Such 
writers as Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), Edith Wharton (1862-1937), Boris Pasternak 
3 
 
(1890-1960), and Vasily Grossman (1905-1964) look at Tolstoy’s novel in order to, 
paraphrasing Wharton, find a cure for the present evils in the examples of the past.  
The authors’ engagements with Tolstoy vary, ranging from the use of a Tolstoyan 
model of historical representation to address the crisis of the Second World War and 
post-war periods in the Soviet Union, as is the case in Grossman’s extensive Life and 
Fate written in 1959, to an open polemics with Tolstoy, as visible in Hemingway’s For 
Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). On the other hand, Pasternak’s dialogue with Tolstoy in 
Dotor Zhivago (1957) can be explained through the comparison of the author’s vision of 
the novel as medium for the fictional representation of history. Wharton highly praises 
Tolstoy’s vision of “life as whole” in his novels; however, her The Age of Innocence 
(1920) reveals her disagreement with Tolstoy with regard to what constitutes historical 
progress. These writers are chosen for analysis in this dissertation because, at some point 
or another, they all refuse the vision of the other as a collective entity devoid of personal 
traits. The moments of historical crisis reflected in these works do not necessarily trigger 
what I call, following the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), a 
totalizing vision of the other, but seek for broader representations of otherness, as is the 
case is the example drawn from War and Peace.   
These attempts to imagine otherness and address it in moments of intense 
historical and social change resonate with the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, which seeks 
to respond to the crisis of the twentieth-century associated with the two world wars and 
the emergence of authoritarian societies. Levinas’s ethics of the I-other relationship 
postulates the primacy of the other and calls for the responsibility of the I towards the 
other as a way to maintain a relationship that leads to the peaceful existence between the 
4 
 
I and the one termed “other.” In War and Peace, Pierre follows his basic instinct in 
saving the French officer, forgetting the “otherness” of the Frenchman; he fulfills his 
responsibility towards the other by saving him and, at the same time, allowing him to 
remain other. Levinas opposes what he calls the “totalizing” image of the other, where 
the other is reduced to only certain characteristics, and emphasizes that the other is never 
fully visible or known to the I.  
The present project works out the mechanisms of the philosophy of Emmanuel 
Levinas, which can be referred to as the ethics of the I-other relationship, in order to 
critically analyze historical imagination in works of fiction. I argue that Levinas’s ethics 
of the other is a productive lens for explaining the literary processes at work in novels 
which attempt to represent historical crises. Levinasian philosophy is developed as a 
response to the tragic events of the twentieth century, primarily to the World Wars and 
the emergence of totalitarian societies. The philosopher begins the Preface to his famous 
Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (1961) by describing war as the greatest of 
ordeals, which affects everyone on a personal level: 
Does not lucidity, the mind’s openness upon the true, consist in catching sight of 
the permanent possibility of war? The state of war suspends morality; it divests 
the eternal institutions and obligations of their eternity and rescinds ad interim the 
unconditional imperatives. In advance its shadow falls over the actions of men. 
War is not only one of the ordeals – the greatest – of which morality lives; it 
renders morality derisory. (21) 
Levinas sees war as inadvertently casting its shadow over many aspects of human 
functioning, depriving things of their meanings, as it “divests the eternal institutions and 
5 
 
obligations” and “renders morality derisory.” It is precisely on this personal level, the 
level of personal morality, that Levinas recognizes the greatest crisis which proceeds 
from the ordeal of war. The scholar asserts that morality of people is so affected that their 
vision of the other, the one different from the I, becomes limited: 
But violence does not consist so much in injuring and annihilating persons as in 
interrupting their continuity, making them play roles in which they no longer 
recognize themselves, making them betray not only commitments but their own 
substance, making them carry out actions that will destroy every possibility for 
action. Not only modern war but every war employs arms that turn against those 
who wield them. It establishes an order from which no one can keep his distance; 
nothing henceforth is exterior. War does not manifest exteriority and the other as 
other; it destroys the identity of the same. (21) 
The violence that is associated with every war, according to Levinas, positions one 
outside of the “role” he or she was committed to fulfilling and makes one “carry out 
actions” which do not correspond to one’s personal “commitments” or to one’s “own 
substance,” forcing one to betray oneself. In this state, the I does not recognize the other 
as having an autonomous existence and having the right to be different, that is, to be 
“other” then the I. And in reducing this otherness of the other, one’s own identity is 
destroyed. 
Levinas’s ethics in the twentieth century aims at de-centering the I from the 
position of primacy and opposes identification of the I with the other. It postulates the 
primacy of the other with regards to the I. The encounter between I and the other is 
envisioned as a “face-to-face” encounter, which always calls for a response from the I. 
6 
 
The I is bound to respond to the call of the other; and this response, Levinasian 
“responsibility,” or the calling to respond to the other, comes prior to philosophy or any 
kind of knowledge. This response entails the recognition of the radical alterity of the 
other in relation to the I, the acceptance of this otherness without attempting to 
appropriate it or otherwise bring the other towards the same. Levinas asserts that the I is 
in the constant state of responsibility before the face of the other and is defined by the 
response to the other (Totality 43). Levinas is highly critical of the assimilation or 
appropriation of the other by the I. In the essay “Philosophy and the Idea of Infinity” 
(1957) he writes: 
Freedom, autonomy, the reduction of the other to the same, lead to this formula:  
the conquest of being by man over the course of history. This reduction does not 
represent some abstract schema; it is man’s ego. The existence of an ego takes 
place as an identification of the diverse. So many events happen to it, so many 
years age it, and yet the ego remains the same! The ego, the oneself, the ipseity 
(as it is called in our time), does not remain invariable in the midst of change like 
a rock assailed by the waves (which is anything but invariable); the ego remains 
the same by making of disparate and diverse events a history — its history. And 
this is the original event of the identification of the same, prior to the identity of a 
rock, and a condition of that identity. (Time 48)  
This process of identifying the other with the self is seen as a reduction of the other 
towards the categories of the “self” and is, in fact, an act of violence – “a conquest,” a 
totalization which makes it impossible for the I to respond to the singularity of the other. 
This reduction of the other is akin to the appropriation which can be carried through on 
7 
 
the level of history: appropriating past experiences, the “events of history,” makes the 
historical message into one’s own narrative and totalizes the vision of the past. The ego 
of the self feeds on such appropriations. On the other hand, the ethical response to the 
other is the acceptance of the uniqueness of other; it is also abandoning of the ego and the 
impulse towards violence. This movement towards recognition of the right of the other to 
remain other is associated for Levinas with the idea of “infinity.” 
Richard Cohen, a contemporary Levinasian scholar, comments on the opposition 
between “totality” and “infinity” in Levinas’s book of the same name, and recognizes this 
work as an important political gesture which responds to totalitarianism. Cohen writes: 
Levinas’s opposition to this totalitarianism in all its dimensions, from the alleged 
serenity of contemplation (purchased at what cost!) to the outright violence, the 
concentration camps, the gulags, the thought-control of all real-politics, is perhaps 
the central philosophical and political teaching of Totality and Infinity, which is 
able to make good on this lesson precisely because it opposes Infinity to Totality, 
an Infinity that cannot — or rather that ought not — be totalized. (110) 
By bringing up the opposition between totality and infinity as a way of understanding of 
the other, Levinas raises the question of the ethical relationships between people, 
associating totality with the violence of non-acceptance of the otherness of the other and 
infinity with the embrace of the uniqueness and singularity of any human being. 
According to Cohen, Levinas opposes totalitarianism as a larger societal phenomenon 
and on the level of the individual’s relationship with the other by associating the 
acceptance of otherness with the idea of infinity, which is opposed to totality.   
8 
 
 A similar rejection of totality on multiple levels can be observed in the theoretical works 
of the Russian literary theorist and philosopher of language Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-
1975), who similarly responds to his historical moment. Bakhtin develops a dichotomy 
between the epic and the novel as genres which differ not only through formal 
characteristics, but primarily through the worldview which they represent. For Bakhtin, 
the characters of the epic are immutable, unable to change or break through their molds, 
and incapable of growth. This characteristic for Bakhtin signifies the “totality” of the 
characters of epic, which thus ensures the “absoluteness” of the past the epic characters 
dwell in (see Bakhtin “Epic”). The novel, on the other hand, is a genre characterized by 
its dynamic nature, openness to change, and inclusion of a multiplicity of voices. Bakhtin 
characterizes the characters of the novel as “unfinalizable” (“незавершенные”) in his 
Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1963), which signals their constantly changing nature, 
a nature that is always in flux and in formation, as opposed to the closure of the epic. 
Based on the opposition of these genres, the philosopher sees the epic worldview as that 
of totality and monologism, resistant to change and progress; he privileges the worldview 
that the genre of the novel reflects, one which allows for observation of ideas in the 
process of their formation, where the characters are open to the possibility of change. 
Though Bakhtin famously uses Dostoevsky’s novels as examples of 
unfinalizability, and sometimes refers to Tolstoy’s works as bearing traces of a 
monologic totalizing worldview, the episode of Pierre saving the French officer reveals a 
moment when Pierre as a character is open to change. Pierre’s spontaneous, even 
involuntary attempt to save the French officer, while also putting his own life at risk, 
demonstrates the Levinas’s ethical response to the other. On the other hand, Pierre’s 
9 
 
refusal to define any individual French person through the totalizing label of an enemy, 
reveals Pierre as a Bakhtinian unfinalizable character. Levinas’s ethics of the I-other 
relationship helps explain the non-totalizing element in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. This 
episode also calls to mind the consideration of the I-other relationship in Bakhtin’s 
discussion of the dialogic character of Dostoevsky’s prose. Bakhtin maintains that the I 
perceives everyone as the other, as already opposed to the I. However, the I only 
becomes fully visible in its relation to the other. Caryl Emerson, a Bakhtin scholar, writes 
that for Bakhtin “it is impossible to construct oneself out of a single consciousness. 
Painting one’s self-portrait, looking in the mirror or at the photograph of oneself, is 
always somehow false” (“The Tolstoy Connection” 70). It is through the interaction 
between the I and the other that the I can maintain its individual identity.  
The present dissertation brings together Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869), Edith 
Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (1920), Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago (1957), 
Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and Vasily Grossman’s Life and 
Fate (1959) in order to look at the figure of the other as cultural and historical construct. 
It seeks to explain how these authors use this construct in their works to talk about their 
respective historical moments and construct their unique visions of history. At the same 
time, the current project looks at models of I-other relationships in these works as the 
authors’ attempts to address the crises of their time and respond to their historical 
situations. The argument presented is that Tolstoy’s model of historical imagination 
proves constructive for the development of the twentieth-century novel, and becomes 
visible in the formation of the figure of the other in the novels under consideration. 
Though these authors do not entirely eliminate the vision of totality in their works, they 
10 
 
attempt to create a model of historical representation that seeks to deconstruct the vision 
of the other as totality and embrace a democratic vision of the other.  
The first chapter looks at the ways in which the Levinasian model of I-other 
relations can be applicable to the analysis of War and Peace. The chapter argues that this 
model allows for deconstruction of Tolstoy’s monologic vision, as defined by Bakhtin. 
Though Bakhtin famously opposes Dostoevsky’s dialogism to Tolstoy’s “monolithic 
monologism,” he still sees Tolstoy’s works within the larger framework of polyphonic 
structures. In his Discourse in the Novel (1934-35) Bakhtin looks at the novel as 
incorporating a multiplicity of various, often opposing, voices, which is the main 
characteristic of the genre. Tolstoy’s novels similarly incorporate this “polyglossia.” 
Bakhtin insists that the I-other relationship is a necessary element of character 
development in a novel. The Bakhtin scholar Caryl Emerson comments on the necessity 
of the figure of the other for Bakhtin: “In this sense, one can speak of the absolute 
aesthetic need of one person for another, for the seeing, remembering, gathering, and 
unifying activity of the other, which alone can create his externally completed 
personality; this personality will not exist if the other does not create it” (“The Tolstoy 
Connection” 34). The complexity of Tolstoy’s discourse, if we consider it in light of 
Bakhtin’s thought, lies in his extensive employment of the figure of the other for the 
development of his characters. While some of the characters of Tolstoy recall those of the 
epic, as described by Bakhtin, oftentimes they are able to break through their molds 
through a crucial encounter with the other. Such vision is presented, for example, when 
Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, a proud and self-centered character, is able to sympathize with 
and weep for his enemy, Anatole Kuragin, who is suffering from injury. The discourse of 
11 
 
the other in Tolstoy’s works disrupts the “single consciousness” or the single message 
that the author has in mind while constructing his characters. The revelations that the 
characters undergo in crucial moments of historical change allow Tolstoy to build a 
model of historical representation that is not closed into the monologic epic mold, but 
allows for critical rethinking and reevaluation of the social historical reality. 
Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls is discussed in the second chapter of this 
dissertation. Unlike Hemingway’s earlier fiction, which has become known for 
presenting disillusionment with regards to war, the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) 
recognizes the necessity of war and expresses this view through its main character Robert 
Jordan, an American fighting on Spanish territory against fascist forces. Jordan does not 
desert the battlefield when he finds a source of comfort in his love for Maria; he 
recognizes the necessity of fighting for his beliefs and, ultimately, gives his life for the 
advancement of the cause. Though the novel is driven by a strong sense of purpose for 
the war against fascism, it does not diminish the crimes committed on the other side, a 
fact that accounts for the unfavorable reception of the novel in the Soviet Union.   
In this chapter I look at Hemingway’s construction of the other through the 
character of Robert Jordan, who is initially perceived as the other among the Spanish 
guerrillas. Jordan’s journey from otherness towards identification with the Spanish earth 
reveals Hemingway’s political vision at the time, namely his recognition of the necessity 
of a unified front against fascism. 
Hemingway famously imagines his encounter with Tolstoy as a boxing match, 
and the novel polemicizes with Tolstoy’s historical vision that prioritizes national 
sentiment. At the same time, Hemingway, like Tolstoy, declares his dedication to tell the 
12 
 
truth when working on the novel. He writes to his Russian translator, Ivan Kashkin: “in 
stories about the [Spanish Civil] war I try to show all the different sides of it, taking it 
slowly and honestly and examining it from many sides... it is very complicated and 
difficult to write about truly...” (Selected Letters 480). Thus, the novel seeks to answer 
the question about how telling the truth is possible when stories are always told from a 
particular ideological standpoint, and answers it by offering various perspectives on the 
event and a sympathetic portrayal of the other. 
The third chapter of this project focuses on Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, a 
novel which in many ways mirrors Tolstoy’s historical representations. The chapter 
maintains that Wharton, though insisting on the vision of totality in her works of 
criticism, reveals the impossibility of holding on to such a worldview at the end of the 
nineteenth century. Wharton deconstructs the vision of totality by introducing the 
character of Ellen Olenska into the New York society of the 1870s, a character who 
presents a challenge to the traditionalism of old New York.  
Reading Wharton’s novel alongside Tolstoy’s War and Peace reveals that the 
difference in the historical visions of the authors consists in different understandings of 
and attitudes to the concept of progress in society. For Tolstoy, a return to the natural 
ways associated with Russian folk culture opens up a possibility for overcoming the 
conventionality associated with high society, which mirrors the French culture. Wharton, 
on the other hand, imagines a society that would rid itself from the burdens associated 
with old traditions, thus becoming more open towards otherness.  
In Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, discussed in the fourth chapter, the Levinasian 
model of the other is employed to create a sense of collectively shared history and 
13 
 
collective mourning of historical loss. Unlike the case with Tolstoy, Pasternak’s 
characters are often not clearly differentiated through language, but are deliberately 
presented as a single voice of people who are unified through historical reality. However, 
like War and Peace, Doctor Zhivago is a work which reflects on the genre of the novel as 
a medium for historical imagination and, through its main character, who combines the 
identities of a doctor and a poet, explores the ways history is reflected in the 
consciousness of an artist. Historical events in Doctor Zhivago are often presented 
through extended metaphors, as, for example, those of sickness and madness, to reflect 
the post-revolutionary reality in Russia. The role of the main character Zhivago is dual in 
the novel. On the one hand, as a doctor, Zhivago is called to “diagnose” and possibly 
even find a “cure” for the existing “disease” of his age, while, as a poet, he attempts, 
through artistic inspiration, to give expression to the grief of the nation and create a 
possibility of collective mourning for the losses associated with the revolution and the 
subsequent civil war. 
In this chapter I look at several instances of the construction of the other, most 
importantly at the confrontation of Yuri Zhivago, the novel’s main character, with Pavel 
Antipov/Strelnikov. I argue that through the erasure or blurring of some of the distinct 
antagonistic qualities between these two characters at the end of the novel, Pasternak 
communicates a sense of collective mourning which does not divide people into “us” and 
“them.” Such erasure of the barriers between the antagonistic characters appears to be 
symptomatic of the society’s restrictions on certain visions of history, as well as on 
expression of emotions with regards to such visions. The erasure of oppositions between 
14 
 
the two characters thus elicits the author’s view of the necessity for a collective mourning 
of the victims of the revolution. 
The fifth and final chapter draws attention to the multiple common features that 
Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Grossman’s Life and Fate share. The contiguity between 
these works extends beyond these formal similarities: in his Life and Fate Grossman, a 
renowned Soviet Socialist Realist writer returns to Tolstoy’s model to characterize and 
wage his criticism on post-World War II Soviet society. The work effectively de-
aestheticizes and de-romanticizes the Soviet past and questions the Soviet project as a 
whole. In this chapter I look at how Grossman’s construction of the other reflects his 
project of critically rethinking the reality of the Soviet Union. In particular, I look at the 
ways the figure of the other functions in the novel to break the myth of the Great Patriotic 
War which was perpetuated at the time. 
The book overflows with scenes that bring together people of opposing 
ideologies. One of the most telling episodes in the novel takes place when a Russian 
soldier in a scene of intensive bombing is comforted by the presence of a German in the 
same trench where both of them hide. Blinded by the massive bombardment, the Russian 
does not realize that the hand he is holding belongs to his enemy until the bombing has 
ended. This moment which suggests a possibility of interaction between the I and the 
other where it is least expected reveal the Levinasian ethical relationship with the other as 
possible even in the most complex situations of historical crisis. Grossman’s attempt at 
having the book published in the Soviet Union despite its strong deviation from the 
Socialist Realist canon reveals Grossman’s attempt to change the official view of history 
in the Soviet Union.  
15 
 
Chapter I: The Face-to-Face Encounter in Tolstoy: Understanding Crisis in War and 
Peace 
War and Peace “is not a novel, still less is it a poem, still less a historical 
chronicle. It is what the writer wished and was able to express in the form in which it is 
expressed.” Leo Tolstoy “Some Words on War and Peace” (1868) 
 
Since the first publication of War and Peace in 1869, the question about the 
work’s genre continues to fascinate critics and scholars. The work’s deviations from 
some ideal novel form are well known: for example, the lack of unity and coherence, the 
inadequate beginning and ending, the presence of authorial language, and the lengthy 
digressions, often unrelated to the immediate events of the plot, to name but a few. 
Today, however, the view on War and Peace has changed. Since the time of the Second 
World War, to be precise, War and Peace has come to be seen as “the perfect 
embodiment of the tradition of the novel in general and of the historical novel in 
particular” (Morson Hidden 2). 
If the overall aim of this study is to answer the questions of how War and Peace 
was used by several prominent Russian and American writers in the twentieth century, 
what made it so attractive for them, and what features contributed to its becoming a 
model for a war narrative, the genre discussion, especially of genre as mirroring the 
values inherently present in a society, becomes relevant. The discussion of the genre 
specificities in Tolstoy’s novel allows us to see Tolstoy’s form as reflective of his 
outlook on the society and on its values; it also reveals some tensions within this novel. 
The genre characteristics of War and Peace acquired new interpretations in the 
first half of the twentieth century in the context of the discussion of Georg Lukacs (1885-
1971), a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, and Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), a Russian 
16 
 
literary critic and theorist. Both scholars (contrary to the Russian Formalists) viewed the 
genre of a literary work as a reflection of larger societal values and ascribed certain 
values to very specific genre characteristics. Both critics’ interpretations of Tolstoy stem 
primarily from their understanding of genre as vehicle for particular societal values. In 
their understanding a genre constitutes “a concept one needs in order to approach the 
work of art as an expression of a particular outlook. Genre models the content of this 
outlook and selects those elements which can be translated into the language of the work 
of art” (Tihanov The Master 55). Lukacs views Tolstoy as a writer whose works reveal a 
longing for epic totality, while Bakhtin sees Tolstoy’s novelistic discourse as monologic, 
which, according to Bakhtin, precludes the dynamic exchange of ideas within the novel. 
The works of Mikhail Bakhtin and Georg Lukacs help account for the meaning of 
totality in Tolstoy’s works and access its significance on the scope of literary and cultural 
traditions. Lukacs’s genre criticism establishes the vision of literature as reflecting 
historical processes within society, while Bakhtin’s genre analysis concentrates primarily 
on the philosophy of language. Each theorist draws attention to very specific instances of 
epic worldview in Tolstoy’s works. But Tolstoy’s vision in the novel can be given a quite 
different interpretation when viewed alongside the ethics of the French-Lithuanian 
philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), who also uses the figure of totality to 
address the crisis of the first half of the twentieth century. Levinas’s theories, particularly 
that of the I-other relationship, respond to historical crisis and attempt to work out 
models which explain it and point to possible ways to represent it. In his novel, Tolstoy 
seeks to respond to the very specific event of the Russian war against the Napoleonic 
army, a conflict on a massive scale that presents a challenge to artistic representation. 
17 
 
The subject matter of the novel establishes its specific relation to reality; the theories of 
Bakhtin and Lukacs can explain only a certain level of the novel’s aesthetic choices, as 
they do not expose the work’s relation to the historical phenomena it responds to. A 
theoretical lens which ties the literary work to the specific social phenomena it describes, 
precisely that of crisis, allows us to further situate the work within the specific context of 
war novels. Reading War and Peace through the lens of Levinas alongside the theories of 
Bakhtin and Lukacs helps to explain the durability of War and Peace as the epitome of 
the genre, as well as its role as the source of inspiration for other authors who represent 
various cultures and develop diverse visions of history, but who, like Tolstoy, seek to 
respond to the crises of their time. 
The problem of responding to the context of crisis during the first half of the 
twentieth century, particularly to the violence of the Second World War, can be 
addressed through what Emmanuel Levinas has called the ethics of the relationship of the 
I and the other. In his book Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (1961) Levinas 
presents a view of the relationship between the I and the other as potentially violent. 
Levinas’s ethics of the other, his concepts of totality, response, and responsibility are 
important for the analysis of Tolstoy’s representation of the realities of war in his novel. 
Understanding the other as unknown and unknowable and asserting the primacy of the 
other in the I-other relationship constitute the key elements of Levinas’s philosophy. 
These notions take on great importance in War and Peace: Tolstoy’s vision of the 
unknown other deconstructs the totality of his authorial vision in many instances in the 
novel and establishes a particular understanding of the concept of otherness which 
similarly emphasizes the other’s mysterious, unknowable nature.  
18 
 
The following episode from War and Peace illustrates the character’s encounter 
with the mystery of the sky. In this episode, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky lies wounded after 
the Battle of Austerlitz:  
But [Prince Andrei] did not see anything. There was nothing over him now except 
the sky – the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with grey clouds 
slowly creeping across it. “How quiet, calm, and solemn, not all like when I was 
running,” thought Prince Andrei, “not like when we were running, shouting, and 
fighting; not at all like when the Frenchmen and the artillerist, with angry and 
frightened faces, were pulling at the swab – it’s quite different the way the clouds 
creep across this lofty, infinite sky. How is it I haven’t seen this lofty sky before? 
And how happy I am that I’ve finally come to know it. 
Yes! Everything is empty, everything is a deception, except this infinite sky. 
There is nothing, nothing except that. But there is not even that, there is nothing 
except silence, tranquility. And thank God!....” (Tolstoy Vol. I, 281)  
The scene, which can be read as an example of Tolstoy’s uncompromising monologism, 
as the thoughts and feelings of the character are presented to the reader through the 
authorial vision, also illustrates the moment of the Levinasian encounter with mystery of 
the other discussed in Time and the Other (75-76). Prince Andrei’s epiphany is presented 
as an unknowable experience which he first describes as the “lofty,” “not clear,” 
“infinite” sky. Andrei slowly loses even this image as he thinks “there is not even that, 
there is nothing except silence, tranquility.” This encounter with the mystery of the 
“lofty,” “infinite” sky changes Andrei’s understanding of the world around him and his 
own place within this world.  Presented up until this moment as a self-centered character, 
19 
 
he now sees his personal strivings, desires for glory and recognition through bravery in 
battles as petty and insignificant compared to the great mystery he witnesses. The 
encounter with the unknowable other is conceived of, in Levinas’s philosophy, as a 
relationship with mystery, a relationship that has the potential to change the I. This 
moment of epiphany in the novel, when Andrei lies wounded and sees the world in a new 
light, remains short-lived, ephemeral, and unclear; its nature such that even the authorial 
voice cannot fully explain it.  
 This moment of Andrei’s epiphany which cannot be retained beyond the moment of 
dying creates a tension in Tolstoy’s novel from the perspective of form. Georg Lukacs 
views the very moment of revelation as a reflection of the novel’s movement towards the 
epic form, or the novel’s epic “foundations.” An insight, which makes the character’s life 
complete and meaningful, is the expression of Tolstoy’s struggle for unity with nature, 
the perfect harmony available only in the epic, according to Lukacs. However, the fact 
that the epiphany does not last reveals for Lukacs the internal conflict within the novel 
form, as he writes in his book The Theory of the Novel (1916): 
Tolstoy, with the paradoxical ruthlessness of true genius, shows up the profoundly 
problematic nature of his form and its foundations: these crucial moments of bliss 
are the moments of dying – the experience of Andrey Bolkonsky lying mortally 
wounded on the field of Austerlitz, the scene of the unity of Karenin and Vronsky 
at Anna’s deathbed – and it would be a true bliss to die now, to die like that. But 
Anna recovers and Andrey returns to life and the great moments vanish without 
trace. Life goes on in the world of convention, an aimless, inessential life. (149) 
20 
 
The tension between nature and culture is irreconcilable for Lukacs: Andrei who aspires 
to perfect unity with nature, feels so happy having finally reached unity, cannot hold on 
to it once immersed in culture, his life sinking into inessentiality and aimlessness. 
Tolstoy’s novel is illustrative of such conflict for Lukacs precisely because of its struggle 
towards epic, revealed in “epic” moments of epiphany. Lukacs explains, “the overlapping 
into the epic only makes the novel form still more problematic, without coming 
concretely closer to the desired goal, the problem-free reality of the epic” (151). 
Tolstoy’s novel in its very form reflects the impossibility of reaching the “desired goal,” 
but still aspires to catch glimpses of the great epic. The unfulfilled longing for the reality 
of the epic, the tension between nature and culture remains problematic and cannot be 
easily resolved for Lukacs precisely because the contemporary society with class 
distinctions and class conflicts cannot give birth to the epic, a form which is a reflection 
of a world in perfect harmony with nature.  
The genre question also becomes central in the literary theory of Mikhail Bakhtin, 
though his view on Tolstoy differs from that of Lukacs. Both Lukacs and Bakhtin view 
genre as a relatively stable element of the composition of the literary work. Galin 
Tihanov explains the scholars’ approach to the question of genre in his book The Master 
and the Slave: Lukacs, Bakhtin, and the Ideas of Their Time (2000): 
[…] literary genre does not change quickly nor easily because it serves to express 
ideas about the world which themselves only change slowly. Literary genre, for 
both Bakhtin and Lukacs, is a concept one needs in order to approach the work of 
art as the reflection of a particular outlook. Genre models the content of this 
21 
 
outlook and selects those elements which can be translated into the language of 
the work of art. (55) 
Lukacs and Bakhtin definitely agree that genre plays a decisive role in the expression of a 
particular outlook, social position, or belief. This fact makes the literary work expressive 
of the author’s idiosyncratic worldview, but even more importantly, of the larger 
underlying vision of historical moment, thus situating the work of art firmly within its 
social historical context.  
Lukacs’s and Bakhtin’s views, however, differ significantly when it comes to 
understanding of the role of art in society at the present moment. In the polemics stated in 
Lukacs’s essay “Realism in the Balance” (1938) and Bakhtin’s “Epic and Novel” (1941) 
the differences in their view become clearly exposed, which is significant for 
understanding their views of Tolstoy’s novel. “Realism in the Balance” is a criticism of 
the avant-garde movements in literature, which Lukacs strictly opposes to realism. 
Lukacs states:   
But both emotionally and intellectually [avant-garde literary schools] remain 
frozen in their own immediacy; they fail to pierce the surface, to discover the 
underlying essence, i.e., the real factors that relate their experience to the hidden 
social forces that produce them. On the contrary, they all develop their own 
artistic styles – more or less consciously – as a spontaneous expression of their 
immediate experience. (36-37) 
According to Lukacs, the non-realist modes of expression fail to represent the totality of 
life, as they do not consider the underlying structures of people’s experiences, but present 
the immediately visible reality only. The representation of these underlying structures, 
22 
 
the relations established within the society which lie at the core of people’s interactions 
expressed in literature, give totality to literary expression, which is the necessary 
condition for the literary reflection of reality. Realism, for Lukacs, can satisfy this 
condition: “Great realism, therefore, does not portray the immediately obvious aspects of 
reality but one which is permanent and objectively more significant, namely man in the 
whole range of his relations to the real world, above all those which outlast mere fashion” 
(48). Realism, in this interpretation, goes beyond the surface of the visible, as it seeks to 
represent the structures which underlie the immediate experiences. The “objectively more 
significant reality” necessarily supersedes the one that is visible and immediately 
attainable for the author, and realism reaches out for this underlying structure, the 
structure which allows seeing the “whole” picture of the real world in its totality.  
Lukacs’s much earlier work, The Theory of the Novel (1920), claims that only the 
epic can reflect the organic totality of life; Galin Tikanov explains this view stating that 
the novel for Lukacs can only make visible “the totality of contradictions between the 
atomised social agents within a society that breeds hostility and competition” (Lukacs 
31). As Lukacs understands the novel as “the temporary suspension of the great epic 
tradition” (Tihanov Lukacs 31), it is not surprising that his example of the great realist 
novel, which at times comes close to and even overlaps with epic, is Tolstoy’s novel. In 
Tolstoy’s realistic novel the contradictions within the society are exposed and presented 
as a tension within the form. Prince Andrei’s failure to retain the unity with nature 
beyond the moment of dying reveals the conditions of culture which preclude this 
organic unity, and make visible the collision between the totalizing epic worldview and 
the more fragmented novelistic one. Tolstoy’s War and Peace, therefore, illustrates the 
23 
 
tension within the novelistic form, which lies primarily in its struggle to encompass 
totality, which can never be attained within the society of Tolstoy’s time. 
Though the question of genre is similarly central to Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary 
theories, his view of the essence of the novel is quite different. Unlike Lukacs, Bakhtin 
doesn’t see the novel as struggling towards the totality of representation. On the contrary, 
the novel is opposed to this totality as it opens up dialogue on multiple levels, that is, 
allows for the free exchange of ideas between the characters, the author and the character, 
the author and the reader, the author and the culture of the time, etc. The novel does not 
gravitate towards the epic, but encompasses the searching and dynamic quality 
characteristic of modernity. The novel genre becomes the defining genre of modernity 
with its characteristics influencing and molding other genres. In “Epic and Novel” 
Bakhtin talks about the “novelization” of other genres:  
[The genres] become more free and flexible [in comparison with epic or tragedy], 
their language renews itself by incorporating extraliterary heteroglossia and the 
“novelistic” layers of literary language, they become dialogized, permeated with 
laughter, irony, humor, elements of self-parody and finally – this is the most 
important thing – the novel inserts into these other genres an indeterminacy, a 
certain semantic openendedness, a living contact with unfinished, still-evolving 
contemporary reality (the openended present). (7) 
Not only does the novel maintain “living contact” with the present in its content, but also 
impacts the dynamics of representation of the present through its influence upon other 
genres. The novel’s indeterminacy or semantic openendedness are the features which 
define the nature of the novel as being constantly in transformation and flux, rather than 
24 
 
prove the novel to be a form that seeks totality. It is therefore not Lukacs’s totality which 
is the ultimate goal of the novelistic expression, but dynamics and flux. 
As an example of the dynamic and dialogic nature of the novel, Bakhtin famously 
uses the works of Dostoevsky, particularly in his book Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics 
(1963). Here Bakhtin sees Dostoevsky’s novel as manifesting searching and dialogic 
qualities primarily through its treatment of the characters that are given a distinct voices 
and, therefore, discourses of their own: “The genuine life of the personality is made 
available only through a dialogic penetration of that personality, during which it freely 
and reciprocally reveals itself” (59). Due to such multiplicity of voices, i.e., the 
characters’ voices, the narrator’s voice, the author’s voice, etc, the novel expresses an 
exchange of ideas, which makes the novel into a dialogic genre. The dialogue within the 
novel ensures its openendedness, as it presupposes polemics not only within the novel, 
but externally, such as, between the novel and the historical period or between the 
character and a certain philosophical thought, with ever new potential layers added to the 
dialogue. In Problems Bakhtin also introduces the concept of “unfinalizability” 
(“незавершенность”) as a characteristic feature of Dostoevsky’s novel, a notion closely 
linked to such feature as “unclosedness” (53). Caryl Emerson in The First Hundred Years 
of Mikhail Bakhtin (1997) explains “unfinalizability” in a following way: “In an 
unfinalized world, everything (even a bad thing) can change (even if only a little) – and 
in the process, it gives birth to something new” (37). In Dostoevsky’s novel, according to 
Bakhtin, nothing is predetermined and devoid of the potential to change. The characters 
are similarly unfinalizable: the views they express are subject to change. Furthermore, the 
characters’ voices may be in dialogue with the voice of the author himself; such 
25 
 
characters may even escape the total control of the author and acquire autonomy to 
express their own views in the novel. 
Bakhtin contrasts these features of Dostoevsky’s novelistic expression with the 
discourse in the works of Tolstoy:  
Tolstoy, for example, calmly introduces the final thoughts of his dying hero, the 
final flicker of consciousness with its final word, into the fabric of the story and 
straight from the author (as early as the “Sevastopol Stories,” but it is especially 
evident in the later works, “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” “Master and Man”). For 
Tolstoy the very problem does not even arise; he has no need to stipulate the 
fantastic nature of his device. Tolstoy's world is monolithically monologic; the 
hero's discourse is confined in the fixed framework of the author's discourse about 
him. Even the hero's final word is given in the shell of someone else's (the 
author's) word; the hero's self-consciousness is only one aspect of his fixed image 
and is in fact predetermined by that image, even where  thematically 
consciousness undergoes a crisis and the most radical inner revolution (as in 
“Master and Man”). (Problems 56) 
For Bakhtin, Tolstoy’s authorial discourse overpowers and “confines” the “hero’s 
discourse” in the novel, a feature which limits the dialogic expression of ideas within the 
novel and renders the characters finalizable. Tolstoy’s outlook as expressed in his works 
is “monolithically monologic,” as he clings to the authorial vision only. Dostoevsky’s 
characters, in Bakhtin’s view are “free people”  (Problems 6), as they can express their 
own thoughts, feelings and aspirations that function independently of the authorial vision. 
Gary Saul Morson in his book Hidden in Plain View (1987) explains that for Bakhtin “To 
26 
 
represent a genuine freedom the author must narrate entirely from within the perspective 
of the characters and forever renounce the privileged position in his own work” (187). 
This type of narration, which allows for individual voices to be heard, creates the 
conditions for a dialogue within the novel. 
In his analysis of Tolstoy’s short story “Three Deaths” Bakhtin maintains that “a 
dialogic position with regard to his characters is quite foreign to Tolstoy” (“Tolstoy’s 
Three Deaths” 390). Tolstoy’s characters are not only denied voices of their own, but 
also the possibility of diverging from the predetermined plan, being “finalized” within 
the author’s design. With regard to Tolstoy’s characters, Bakhtin continues, “All of [the 
characters], with their fields of vision, with their quests and their controversies, are 
inscribed into the monolithically monologic whole of the novel that finalizes them all and 
that is never, in Tolstoy, the kind of “great dialogue” that we find in Dostoevsky” (391). 
This “finalized” quality also takes away the dynamic element of the novel. The 
“monologic” worldview of Tolstoy’s characters and the monologism of the resulting 
discourse mean, for Bakhtin, the absence of the inner split and problematics of the 
characters. The reader sees the finalized version of the consciousness of each character, 
who does not espouse any idea of his own, but reflects ideas predetermined for him by 
the author.  
In her article “The Tolstoy Connection in Bakhtin” (1985), Bakhtin scholar Caryl 
Emerson explains Bakhtin’s concept of “monologism” as a “brand of idealism that insists 
on the unity of a single consciousness” (69). This “single consciousness” prevails in 
Tolstoy’s worldview, which manifests itself in his novels where the characters’ voices 
are presented through that of the author. “The final thoughts” of the dying Prince Andrei 
27 
 
Bolkonsky after the battle of Austerlitz are mediated through the author’s voice and are, 
therefore, denied their own expression as an autonomous part of novelistic discourse. The 
scene of Andrei’s encounter with the mysterious sky and the experience of unity reveal 
Tolstoy’s monologic outlook, according to Bakhtin. 
Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist note in their profound study of Bakhtin’s 
life and thought, “Bakhtin erects a whole cultural anthropology on the basis of shifting 
relations among authorial and reported speech” (236). In his division of the novel into 
“monoglot,” or monologic, and “heteroglot” Bakhtin reveals his partiality towards the 
latter, which allows for the dialogue to continue on multiple levels, ensuring the free 
exchange of ideas independent from the position of the author. Michael Holquist insists 
that for Bakhtin “Dialogism is a way of looking at things that always insists on the 
presence of the other, on the inescapable necessity of outsideness and unfinalizability” 
(Dialogism 190). This possibility of dialogism became for Bakhtin the defining feature of 
a novel.  
In “Epic and Novel,” Bakhtin effectively contrasts these eponymous genres, with 
the epic as expressive of the monologic outlook and the novel as embracing the dialogic 
perspective. Bakhtin associates the epic with a totalizing impulse in the representation of 
reality: “the great organic epics of the past – those of Aristotle, Horace, Boileau, – are 
permeated with a deep sense of wholeness of literature.” And: “By its very nature the 
epic world of the absolute past is inaccessible to personal experience and does not permit 
any individual, personal point of view or evaluation” (322). The sense of the “wholeness 
of literature,” according to Bakhtin, is alien to novelistic discourse, as this sense of 
totality prevents the personal and individual from penetrating the finished and the 
28 
 
absolute world of the literary work. Thus, the present has no voice in the totalizing world 
of the epic, which is always turned towards the past. 
The heroes of the epic represent molds or types for Bakhtin, who are devoid of 
development: “There is nothing to seek for [the epic hero], nothing to guess at, he can 
neither be exposed nor provoked; he is all of a piece, he has no shell, there is no nucleus 
within. Furthermore, the epic hero lacks any ideological initiative (heroes and author 
alike lack it)” (“Epic” 35). The character of the epic does not change or evolve, he, 
similarly to the author remains unchanged throughout the work. The epic genre with its 
orientation towards the past and its characters, who appear as fully formed and lacking in 
any dynamic element, loses its relevance for the present moment. The novel is, therefore, 
a genre of the present – as it retains strong ties to the present – and also a genre which has 
the potential to continue into the future, owing to its dialogism and the ability to mix with 
or even appropriate other genres. In contrast to Lukacs, for Bakhtin the novel does not 
reflect inherent societal contradictions, but a multiplicity of various ideas which 
sometimes create tensions and sometimes work together to eliminate them, sometimes 
support each other and sometimes are mutually exclusive. Meaning for Bakhtin is 
revealed within this multiplicity of voices in the novel, which in turn intersect with the 
extraliterary social context, rather than in the exposure of the society’s underlying 
structures. The novel, therefore, deconstructs the totality of representation, rather than 
revealing the struggle to recreate it. 
Considered within its historical context, Bakhtin’s discussion of the epic as 
contrasted to the novel can also be read as a critique of the Soviet approach to literature, 
as his view of the epic is reminiscent of the Soviet Socialist Realist novel, the state-
29 
 
sponsored and state-imposed mode of artistic representation that favored semantic 
closure and authoritative discourse in fiction. Katerina Clark reads “Epic and Novel” as 
the criticism of constraints imposed on artistic representations in the Socialist Realist 
mode. Clark writes: “The epic is told as a legend; it is sacred and incontrovertible. Thus 
‘epic,’ in the sense that Bakhtin uses it, bears comparison with one half of the Soviet 
novel’s fatal split: depicting what ‘ought to be’” (The Soviet Novel 38). Clark sees 
Bakhtin’s discussion of the epic as a veiled critique of the Socialist Realist novel, with 
the epic as a metaphor for the urge to depict a perfected reality and the desired vision of 
history.  
Understanding Bakhtin’s discussion of the epic as a critique of the Soviet 
approach to literature helps explain a crucial difference in the views of Bakhtin and 
Lukacs, which consists in the approach to the genre as an expression of authorial vision 
as opposed to a larger societal values. For Lukacs, a Marxist critic, a genre reflects the 
inherent problems and conflicts within modern society, as shown in his analysis of 
Tolstoy’s novel. The occasional overlap of War and Peace with the epic reveals the 
problematic nature of modern society, which makes it impossible to achieve the harmony 
of the epic. For Bakhtin, however, a genre not only mirrors society, but also bears the 
potential to project its influence onto society by opening (or denying) the dialogic flow of 
ideas. Reflecting on Bakhtin’s vision of the genre, Tihanov writes: “Genres no longer 
reflect the world, rather, they represent and model it” (The Master 59). In Bakhtin’s 
view, Tolstoy’s novel, with its monologic core, would have less potential to “represent” 
and “model” the society than a more dialogic novel, such as that of Dostoevsky. 
30 
 
When Bakhtin’s view of novelistic discourse and character is applied to War and 
Peace, Tolstoy’s novel does reveal some features of Bakhtin’s totalizing epic worldview. 
It is precisely this worldview and the existence of characters who represent types that 
allows War and Peace to be partially appropriated later by the Soviet authors and critics, 
whose Socialist Realist style is reminiscent of the Bakhtinian epic.
1
 An analysis of the 
Soviet appropriation of War and Peace for the grade school and university students is 
presented by N. N. Shneidman in the article “Soviet Approaches to the Teaching of 
Literature. A Case Study: L. Tolstoy in Soviet Education” (1973). The scholar states that 
the interpretation of Tolstoy’s works consisted in criticizing certain views of the author, 
as, for example, his insistence on a Christian approach to life, while stressing other 
aspects of his works. Shneidman insists that in the Soviet interpretation of the characters, 
“The unquestionable devotion to the Russian government […] is often identified in the 
Soviet school with the unquestionable dedication to the present Soviet state, and in such 
an analysis the character Rostov may serve as a valuable educational weapon” (340). The 
character of Nikolai Rostov, who at one point in War and Peace “falls in love” with the 
tsar and displays an unquestionable devotion to him, was used as a “positive hero” in the 
Soviet interpretation of the novel. Katerina Clark in her book The Soviet Novel: History 
as Ritual (1981) insists on the necessity of “positive heroes” in the context of Soviet 
fiction, stating that such heroes served the educational purposes and represented 
“someone the reading public might be inspired to emulate”; “A novel’s positive hero(es) 
stand primarily for ‘what ought to be,’ and it is left for lesser protagonists, or sometimes 
for ‘negative characters,’ to represent ‘what is’” (46). The Soviet critics looked for the 
moments when the characters represented the devotion to their government or for the 
                                                        
1
 On Bakhtin’s discussion of epic in the context of Socialist Realism see Chapter V. 
31 
 
times of the characters’ unity with the common people; these moments had the potential 
to “inspire” and served as positive examples for the reading public. In other words, the 
critics used the elements most similar to Bakhtin’s immutable and monologic qualities to 
align them with the task of educating the Soviet reader. 
However, many of the characters resist such interpretations. In this respect, Soviet 
criticism did not fully agree with Tolstoy’s portrayal of the character of Kutuzov, the 
Russian general, who greatly contributed to the defeat of the Napoleon’s army. 
Shneidman states that, “the portrayal of Kutuzov as a passive old man who lets the things 
take their own course, minimizes the importance of the heroic figure, to the extent that he 
becomes a passive tool of a spontaneous movement of events” (341). The real problem 
that Soviet critics encountered with this character is his dialogic nature. The image of 
Kutuzov, though undoubtedly positive in War and Peace and associated with the great 
victory, is far from monologic. In the novel, Kutuzov is not a strong-headed leader of the 
masses, as Soviet criticism would like him to be. On the contrary, Kutuzov submits to the 
invisible forces of history, and “worthily fulfill[s] his role of seeming to command” 
(Tolstoy Vol. III 785). Kutuzov shows little to no interest in the preparation and planning 
of the battles, as he “despised the intelligence, the knowledge, and even the patriotic 
feeling showed by Denisov […]. He despised them with his old age, with his experience 
of life” (742). The character does manage to be a great leader due to his ability to 
understand the “spirit of the troops” and the soul of every Russian. On the one hand, 
Kutuzov’s distrust for “intelligence” and “knowledge” aligns him with the simple 
Russian people, the masses, a characteristic which could be recognized and approved by 
the Soviet critics.  
32 
 
Furthermore, Prince Andrei realizes that Kutuzov’s unique ability to rule the army 
stems from his Russianness: “And the main reason why one believes him […] is that he’s 
Russian, despite the Genlis novel and the French proverbs” (745). Kutuzov’s association 
with the whole nation constituted the necessary element for him to become a positive 
hero and a leader of the masses. On the other hand, however, his lack of conventional 
“patriotic feeling” and the zealous struggle for victory “minimizes the importance of the 
heroic figure” in the novel and turns Kutuzov into “a passive old man.” A prominent 
example of such “minimizing” of his role in history happens when Kutuzov is spotted by 
Prince Andrei reading a French novel, Les chevaliers de Cygne, by Mme de Genlis on the 
eve of one of the most important battles, the Battle of Borodino (744). This fact reveals 
Kutuzov as a dialogic character whose patriotic feelings do not blind him to the cultural 
fashions of the time. Kutuzov’s reading the French novel became also the reason why 
some of Napoleonic war veterans despised Tolstoy’s portrayal of him in his own time. 
According to Dan Ungurianu in his book Plotting History: The Russian Historical Novel 
in the Imperial Age (2007), certain veterans who participated in the battle of Borodino 
were insulted by the previously mentioned episode, considering it “a totally improbable 
and inappropriate detail” (110).  Avraam Norov, one of the participants in the battle, 
offers a legend to counter Tolstoy’s description: on the day of the battle, an eagle flew 
over Kutuzov’s head symbolizing the forthcoming victory of the Russian troops (117). 
The veterans viewed Tolstoy’s Kutuzov as lacking in the qualities of patriotism. 
Similarly, the Soviet critics considered the depiction of Kutuzov as diminishing the 
significance of the historical figure and making him not so convincing in his role of a 
leader of the masses. 
33 
 
In his discussion of realism, Brian Richardson singles out the strength of this 
method; Richardson states: “Realism can refute a variety of dubious or inaccurate 
worldviews and ideologies, especially those based on some form of idealism” (3). The 
case of the war veterans rejecting Tolstoy’s portrayal of some of the characters and 
scenes in War and Peace reveals their favoring of the previous romantic tradition (one of 
the veterans even quoted Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter (1836) as an effective 
example of a historical novel) (see Ungurianu 118). Tolstoy’s realism demystified some 
of the myths associated with the war of 1812. The romantic tradition, which can be seen 
as grounded in idealism, favored the legends and somewhat idealized versions of the 
participants of the war and of the battle scenes, as attested by the legend that Norov 
offered as suitable for illuminating the character of Kutuzov. Soviet criticism similarly 
sought for the idealized versions of reality that could be aligned with the ideas of 
socialism and used for “educating” people. Tolstoy’s portrayal of Kutuzov defies both the 
romantic and the Soviet models.  
War and Peace, however, also offers characters who had the potential to be used 
and were used according to the purposes of Soviet criticism. A character who adequately 
fills his mold is the enemy Napoleon. As a literary character, he represents an immutable 
epic villain who does not progress or change throughout the novel. As at the beginning of 
the novel, when the reader sees Napoleon as self-centered and egotistical, so in the 
picture of the final retreat of the French, suffering from deprivation, hunger, and cold, 
Napoleon is similarly unshaken and unmoved by the sufferings of his soldiers. Tolstoy 
described the retreat in the following episode: “Their supreme leader put on his fur coat 
and, getting into a sledge, galloped off alone, abandoning his comrades” (Tolstoy Vol. 
34 
 
IV, 1069). Tolstoy repeats a similar idea in the next chapter, making the contrast between 
Napoleon and his men even more pronounced: “And Napoleon, in his warm fur coat, 
clearing off for home from his perishing men, who are not only comrades, but in his 
opinion, people he has brought there, feels que c’est grand, and his soul is at peace” 
(1070). Both quotations describe Napoleon’s abandonment of his own people, 
emphasizing the physical comfort he experiences by drawing attention to his fur coat and 
a sledge, as contrasted with his “perishing men,” whose retreat Tolstoy also compares to 
the struggle of a wounded animal. The soul of Napoleon is “at peace” as he leaves the 
other to suffer and to die; it is for this reason that this character is not presented here 
through either inner monologues or dialogues – he becomes a picture of an epic villain, 
the Bakhtinian immutable character, even despite his often caricaturized images.  
In his book Antinomies of Realism (2013),  Fredric Jameson, basing his thought 
on earlier scholarship, notes that some “powerful anti-war novels written at the wake of 
World War I to warn their readers occasionally had the opposite effect” (257). Unlike 
this effect at the beginning of the First World War, Soviet criticism strategically 
presented War and Peace as a text which emphasized patriotism at the time of the 
Second World War. A.N. Wilson describes the popularity of War and Pease at that time: 
“not only, by then, was Tolstoy the most published author in Russia (there were more of 
his works in print then there were those of Lenin) but also he was given the title the Great 
(velikii), an adjective at that time reserved, in all official publications, for Stalin himself” 
(235).  Wilson shows that War and Peace was used as propaganda at the time of the 
Second World War in Russia and was used in the production of the “national myth” 
which emphasized patriotism. 
35 
 
Some of the characters in War and Peace can be seen as monologic in their 
unwavering association with the idea of the nation and Russianness, a vision which made 
it possible for Soviet criticism to embrace the novel. The example of such a character is 
Natasha, the young daughter of count Rostov. Though Natasha is born into the 
aristocracy, her association with the spirit of the Russian people is evident throughout the 
novel. The most prominent example of Natasha’s closeness to the common people of 
Russia can be seen when she performs the Russian folk dance in the country house of her 
uncle. The peasant woman Anisya who observes Natasha dancing a Russian folk dance 
immediately recognizes a natural kinship with Natasha: “Anisya Fyodorovna […] wept 
through her laughter, looking at this slender graceful countess, brought up in silk and 
velvet, so foreign to her, who was able to understand everything that was in Anisya and 
in Anisya’s father, and in her aunt, and in her mother, and in every Russian” (Tolstoy 
Vol. II, 512). Natasha’s affinity for and even association with the common people, the 
peasants, constitutes one constant aspect of her character. This closeness to the simple 
people, the masses, was seen as a feature which allied Natasha with the agenda of Soviet 
fiction, an aspect that was emphasized in Soviet schools (see Shneidman 337). 
Though Natasha can be seen within the framework of totality, or Bakhtinian 
finilizability, she does escape this structure through her association with both the 
aristocracy and the common people. Just as Natasha engages in the folk dance in her 
uncle’s house, she is also charmed by St. Petersburg balls. At her first ball, she is 
described in the following way: “Natasha fell in love the moment she entered the 
ballroom. She was not in love with anyone in particular, but with everyone. She fell in 
love with whomever she looked at, the moment she looked at him” (Tolstoy Vol. II, 334). 
36 
 
Natasha feels enchanted by the atmosphere of the ball, while her ability to feel 
comfortable in the peasant’s house and in the fashionable St. Petersburg ballroom make it 
impossible to see her association with the folk as the only dimension of her character. 
Natasha breaks conventions easily, as, for example, after singing a song after dinner, she 
asks Prince Andrei, who came to the Rostovs’ as a guest, “how he liked her voice.” The 
narrator explains that Natasha “asked this and became embarrassed just after she said it, 
realizing that it was not a question to be asked” (467). Breaking the convention and 
overstepping conventional social boundaries become characteristic features of Natasha; 
her ability to behave unpredictably and her often unexpected view of events make it 
similarly impossible to see this this character as the embodiment of totality.   
The association of the characters with the image of the national can be seen as a 
feature associated with monologism, which makes their appropriation for educational 
purposes in the Soviet Union possible. In many cases, however, as for example, in the 
case with the character of Kutuzov, such appropriation becomes problematic. Therefore, 
calling War and Peace a novel which gravitates towards reflection of totality creates 
problems. First of all, Bakhtin attests that the characters who are not given their own 
voice, are not “free” characters, but “slaves” to the author’s design (Problems 6). In this 
sense, the “free” characters have the possibility of escaping the author’s design; they may 
reflect thoughts and ideas of their own in the novel. Though Prince Andrei is denied a 
voice of his own in one of the most crucial scenes in the novel, he does acquire a certain 
type of autonomy of his own: as attested by the earlier drafts of War and Peace, Tolstoy 
conceived of Prince Andrei as a short-lived character who would only live until he met 
the moment of glory in the battlefield (see Jespen). In the course of the novel’s creation, 
37 
 
however, Andrei evolved into one of the most prominent characters, who lives through 
most of the novel and dies only toward its end. The character, therefore, disrupts the 
monologic design of the author, gaining a life of his own within it.  
The view of Tolstoy’s War and Peace as a novel which reveals a totalizing 
impulse in representation is changed when the thematic and the philosophical planes of 
the novel are taken into consideration. The contiguity of Tolstoy’s ideas and those of 
Emmanuel Levinas allows us to see War and Peace as a novel which seeks to respond to 
the violence of war and deconstructs the totality in representation through its engagement 
with the concept of otherness. Levinas’s ethics of the I-other relationship explains the 
other as a potential object of violence for the I. The prime violence is done to the other 
when the I approaches the other as known or knowable; this attempt to reduce the other 
to known concepts represents the impulse to see the other as totality for Levinas. This 
approach to the other is tantamount for Levinas to the metaphorical killing of the other. 
Levinas, therefore, postulates the Biblical command “You shall not kill” as the center of 
his philosophy, and sees this command as making an ethical relationship with the other 
possible (Difficult Freedom 8-10). In Levinas’s book Totality and Infinity: An Essay on 
Exteriority (1961), the concept of “totality,” which consists in the totalizing vision of the 
other, is contrasted with the idea of “infinity,” a vision opposed to “totality,” which 
allows for the other to retain his infinite unknowable nature.  
Emmanuel Levinas was born in 1906 in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania, a part of the 
Russian Empire at the time. His family later moved to Kharkov, Ukraine, which also 
belonged to the Empire. Having gained his secondary education in Kovna and Kharkov, 
Levinas was undoubtedly familiar with Russian nineteenth-century classics; he names the 
38 
 
death of Tolstoy as one of his earliest recollections (see Hand).  In the concluding essay, 
“Signature,” in his book Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism (1963) Levinas 
enumerates his early influences in the following way: “The Hebrew Bible from the 
childhood years in Lithuania, Pushkin and Tolstoy, the Russian Revolution of 1917 
experienced at eleven years of age in the Ukraine” (291).  Seán Hand states “the great 
Russians” constituted Levinas’s early readings and insists that “It was the preoccupations 
of these Russian writers that led Levinas in 1923 to Strasbourg” where he began his study 
of philosophy (1). Levinas’s familiarity with the works of Tolstoy, as well as with the 
general cultural milieu of the Russian Empire, both before and in the years following the 
1917 Revolution, found reflection in his later works, which address the violence 
associated with the wars and revolutions of the first half of the twentieth century. Like 
Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Levinas’s ethics seeks for spiritual solutions to the problems 
which arise as a result of profound conflict. Levinas’s ethics of the I and other, when read 
alongside Tolstoy’s War and Peace, helps uncover the ways in which both authors 
deconstruct the concept of totality, understood within the framework of relations of the I 
with the other, in Levinasian terms. 
The monologism of Tolstoy’s fiction, as understood by Bakhtin with regards to 
fiction, is a figure that can be compared to the Levinasian figure of totalization, which 
presupposes approaching the other as already known and knowable. Bakhtin sees this 
figure as limiting, to an extent, the relationship with the other in the novel. Totality, in 
Levinas, refers to assuming that the other, understood mostly as another person, is 
knowable and can be understood and categorized as a being distinct from the I (see 
Levinas Totality). Levinasian totalization reveals the tendency to assume the ability to 
39 
 
know the other when confronted with him. Reading Tolstoy through Levinas allows for a 
reevaluation of the Tolstoyan figure of totality with consideration of the I-other 
relationship.  
Totalizing vision, undoubtedly a characteristic of Tolstoy’s fiction to a certain 
extent, illustrates precisely Levinas’s concept of the egocentric being. Looking at the 
figure of the other in War and Peace reveals the challenge presented to such egocentrism 
in the encounter with the other. A deconstruction of totality is possible and is attained in 
War and Peace through the encounter with the other – that is, in the sense of Levinasian 
concept of assuming responsibility for the other. Thus, one way that Tolstoy deconstructs 
the vision of totality in his characters is through their reevaluation of the relationship with 
the other, and through their acquisition of the vision of the other as unknowable. 
Tolstoy’s own totalizing vision in the novel is deconstructed as a result of such 
confrontations of his characters with the unknowable other. Like the operation of the 
unknowable forces of history which Tolstoy describes in the second epilogue to War and 
Peace, his own totalizing vision is similarly dissolved, allowing room for the unknown 
and unknowable, which neither he nor his characters can conceive of or explain. The 
Levinasian ethics of the other allows for tracing this deconstruction of the totalizing 
impulse even within Tolstoy’s authorial vision. The concept opposed to totality in 
Levinas’s philosophy is that of infinity; it is connected with a vision that does not attempt 
to frame otherness in any way. In Tolstoy, the characters often gain a similar vision, 
which in War and Peace is associated with a moment that the characters experience in 
time of distress. The pursuit of such infinite vision, as Andrei obtains when wounded 
40 
 
after the battle of Austerlitz, constitutes one of the main goals of the characters of War 
and Peace and one of the main tasks of Levinas’s I. 
Several important aspects of Levinas’s ethics of the other become particularly 
important in light of their applicability to the analysis of Tolstoy’s vision in War and 
Peace. One of the most important elements in the I and other relationship, according to 
Levinas, is what the Levinas scholar Marina Riemslagh defines as “the ethical primacy of 
the other” (191). Levinas shifts the emphasis away from the individuality and 
egocentricity of the I cultivated by Western philosophy. In his Totality and Infinity: An 
Essay on Exteriority (1961), Levinas sees the I as breaking from his totality through the 
encounter with the other. And it is through the encounter with the unknowable other, who 
retains his mysterious existence, that the I is transformed and comes into contact with 
infinity: 
To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at 
each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is 
therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means 
exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But this also means: to be taught. (Totality 
51) 
The encounter with the unknown and unknowable other, who threatens the I by his 
unknowable nature, creates the condition for breaking the totality which encloses the I 
and bringing in the qualitative change in the I. And it is in this encounter that the I is 
“taught” and transformed into a new being. 
41 
 
The Levinasian other is characterized by his unknowable nature, the feature 
which is central to most of Levinas’s works. Considering this characteristic in his earlier 
work Time and the Other (1947), Levinas writes:  
To be sure, the other [l’Autre] [sic] that is announced does not possess this 
existing as the subject possesses it; its hold over my existing is mysterious. It is 
not unknown but unknowable, refractory to all light. […] The relationship with 
the other is a relationship with a Mystery. The other’s entire being is constituted 
by its exteriority, or rather its alterity [….] (75-76) 
Here the other is understood through his radical alterity in relation to the I. His existence, 
“refractory of all light,” is ungraspable, and his alterity cannot be overcome.  Thus, the 
“Mystery” that the other presents in the eyes of the I becomes a source of the fear that the 
I experiences when the I-other encounter takes place: “From its infancy, philosophy has 
been struck with the horror of the other that remains other – with an insurmountable 
allergy” (Levinas “Trace” 346). The other threatens the I as he possesses a mysterious 
“hold” over the I’s existence, while being an entity that is entirely unknown to the I. The 
“horror” that the other imparts stems from the fact that the other retains his otherness 
even in the face of the I.  
The unknowability of the other is one of the key concepts for understanding the 
dynamics of I-other relations, as it explains the roots of intolerance to or outward denial 
of otherness, which the Levinasian I displays. Levinas’s approach explains why otherness 
has long been feared and not accepted in Western philosophy, which has privileged the 
egocentric approach to the I. The relationship with something that is inconceivable to the 
I, yet which still happens, is threatening to the I because of its mysterious nature. Levinas 
42 
 
recognizes the I-other relationship as possible in the crucial moments of the existence of 
the I, as he writes: “only a being whose solitude has reached a crispation through 
suffering, and in relation with death, takes its place on a ground where the relationship 
with the other becomes possible” (Time 76). For Levinas, the relationship with the other 
becomes possible after the I experiences “crispation through suffering”; suffering here is 
associated with a spasmodic contraction that shapes the I into a different being, making 
the I ready for the encounter with the other. It is thus through experiencing suffering and 
the proximity of death that the I approaches the mystery of the other, and gains 
understanding the other as one who resists categorization. This moment in Levinas’s 
philosophy brings it close to Tolstoy’s vision of I-other relations, as Tolstoy’s characters 
often reach a new level of understanding of such relations in moments of proximity to 
death. Prince Andrei is able to reevaluate his vision of the world at the moment he lies 
wounded after the Battle Austerlitz; at this time he is no longer concerned with the 
worldly matters of pride, envy and desire for power, emotions which limit his view of 
others. 
The Levinasian I is understood as primarily an egotistical being who views the 
world from the points of view of necessity and convenience. In Levinas’s later works, 
Totality and Infinity (1961) and Difficult Freedom (1963), the I, understood as “the being 
whose existence consists in identifying itself; in recovering its identity through all that 
happened to it,” lives in the world by feeding on its sensual experiences which become 
one with the I (Totality 36). The existence of the I is to a great extent determined by such 
appropriation, which Levinas also calls nourishment: “Nourishment, as a means of 
invigoration, is the transmutation of the other into the same, which is the essence of 
43 
 
enjoyment; an energy that is other, recognized as other, recognized ... as sustaining the 
very act that is directed upon it becomes, in enjoyment, my own energy, my strength, 
me” (Totality 111). Things like daily bread, sleep, work, shelter, etc. nourish the I and 
play a role in the identification of the I. The enjoyment derived from nourishment 
constitutes the egocentric existence of I, as this enjoyment is tantamount to “exploitation 
of the other” (Totality 115). 
The progressive movement from the state of egotistic existence to that of the 
recognition of the absolute autonomy of the other can be traced in the example of 
Tolstoy’s character of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. At the beginning of War and Peace we 
encounter Prince Andrei as a character who already has established views and opinions. 
He despises the vain and manipulative ways of the St. Petersburg high society, which 
concerned primarily with its own interests. Yet even this positive character is revealed as 
harboring prideful ambitions of personal glory, and becomes an example of the 
Levinasian egotistical being. Prince Andrei’s inner monologue on the eve of the battle of 
Austerlitz reveals a Levinasian objectification of the other, as Andrei contemplates his 
desire to gain glory in the eyes of others. Through victory on the battlefield, and the 
literal defeat of his personal hero and adversary of the Russian people, Napoleon, Andrei 
dreams of ensuring himself the love of others:    
“I don’t know what will happen…I don’t want to know and I can’t know, but if I 
want this, want glory, want to be known by people, loved by them, it’s not my 
fault that I want it, that it’s the only thing I want, the only thing I live for. Yes, the 
only thing! I’ll never tell it to anyone, but my God! What am I to do when if I 
love nothing except glory, except people’s love? Death, wounds, loss of family, 
44 
 
nothing frightens me. And however near and dear many people are to me – my 
father, my sister, my wife – the dearest people to me – but, however terrible and 
unnatural it seems, I’d given them all now for a moment of glory, for triumph 
over people, for love from people I don’t know and never will know.” (Tolstoy 
Vol. I, 264-65) 
At this instance of the novel, Prince Andrei comes close to the Bakhtinian epic hero – 
that is, one who shows little potential for change. The emphasis on the necessity of 
personal glory brings this character particularly close to Homeric epic heroes, who 
sought no other reward in the battlefield than to make their own names glorious and 
immortal. Laura Jepsen suggests a parallel between him and Achilles, basing her vision 
on the earlier drafts of the novel: “Like Achilles, Andrei was first designed as a short-
lived hero who would die gloriously, ‘leaving manhood and youth,’ according to the 
Homeric lament. As in the example of Achilles, Andrei's death is foretold following the 
battle of Austerlitz, though the rumor is false […]” (6). The character undoubtedly also 
reveals heroic features in the battle of Austerlitz, when he carries the banner and leads the 
charge. The proximity between the Bakhtinian vision of the epic hero and Prince Andrei 
highlights the heroic impulse of this character, characteristic of the egocentric orientation 
prevalent in the Western philosophy, with its roots in the epic that recalls of egotistical 
existence of the Levinasian I.  
Andrei’s longing demonstrates the “feeding on sensual experiences” described by 
Levinas in Time and the Other. The character reveals his desire for primacy, 
appropriating the way others think of and feel about him. The concepts of “glory” and 
“triumph over people” reflect the idea of the reduction of others to objects of 
45 
 
“nourishment” for Andrei’s “I;” such objectification reveals Tolstoy’s recognition of the 
prevalent societal values of his time and exposes them as detrimental to the relationship 
of the I and the other in the prevalent culture. 
On the level of language, the pronoun “I” dominates the paragraph. The 
character’s readiness to sacrifice even his closest family members indicates the 
egocentric impulse which becomes obvious even to him in this moment of excitement 
before the battle. In his reading of Andrei’s struggle, Andrew D. Kauffman states: “What 
Prince Andrei seeks in this moment of the novel is an embodiment of what he seeks 
philosophically throughout the work: a sense of mastery over his environment […]. It is 
this need to mentally ‘conquer’ that motivates his aspiration to become, like Napoleon, 
real conqueror” (78). The literal act of conquest would gain for Andrei the glory in the 
eyes of others. At the same time, his striving to literally defeat Napoleon and his army 
serves as an illustration of the Levinasian “killing” of the other. Society, familiar to 
Prince Andrei, with its fear of Napoleon and veneration of him as a military genius, 
would similarly recognize Andrei were he to “triumph” over his adversary. In this sense, 
Andrei Bolkonsky’s struggle for “triumph over people” becomes akin to that of the 
Levinasian “killing” of the other by literally adopting the image of Napoleon as his own.  
The exploration of Andrei’s deepest feelings about the other also reveals 
Tolstoy’s critique of the prevalent relations which exist between I and the other, deeply 
rooted in people’s frequent vision of the heroic triumph over the other, as well as in the 
necessity for vainglory. Like Levinas, who shifts the hierarchy towards the primacy of 
the other, Tolstoy illustrates that the established mechanism of relations is highly 
limiting. This type of relations precisely obstructs the vision of infinity that ultimately 
46 
 
serves as the core of happiness for every individual, and therefore, is the object of 
people’s unrecognized longing.  
The encounter with the other is a single radical event in the egotistic existence of 
the I which bears a transformational potential for the I, as the other is the only being that 
cannot be appropriated for the needs of the I. The encounter with the other, which in 
Totality and Infinity is seen as that of a face, that is, a person-to-person interaction, 
challenges the structure of the independent being of I. This moment comes to the I as it is 
confronted with something which it looks to appropriate for enjoyment, seeking to make 
the other a part of the self, yet cannot do so. From the very first encounter the other 
presents its call to the I, which is the Biblical command, “You shall not kill.” Levinas 
writes: “The Other is the only being that one can be tempted to kill. This temptation to 
murder and the impossibility of murder constitute the very vision of the face. To see a 
face is already to hear ‘You shall not kill’” (Difficult Freedom 8). Upon its appearance, 
the face of the other presents its unique alterity which threatens the I and provokes the 
desire to “kill” the other. “You shall not kill,” for Levinas, signals a warning against the 
reduction of this radical alterity of the face to knowable concepts. Killing here signifies 
approaching the other as already known or even knowable; killing thus is “not real, but 
moral” (Difficult Freedom 10).  Marina Riemslagh explains this concept as follows: 
“Speaking about the other and reducing him to my own categories of understanding, and 
reducing him to my own definitions, are forms of killing, broadly speaking. 
Understanding the other is in fact boxing him in” (193). To approach the other with 
certain conceptions about him constitutes the prime violence that the I may commit 
against the other, which for Levinas violates the Biblical command “You shall not kill” 
47 
 
and constitutes “totalization.” This refusal to accept the other as other, reduction of 
otherness to known categories, appropriating the other with the ultimate goal of 
nourishment and enjoyment is something which brings about violence for Levinas. 
In Totality and Infinity, Levinas conceives of the relationship to the other as 
bringing the I into contact with infinity:  
Infinity is produced by withstanding the invasion of a totality, in a contraction that 
leaves a place for the separate being. Thus relationships that open up a way 
outside of being take form. An infinity that does not close in upon itself in a circle 
but withdraws from the ontological extension so as to leave a place for a separate 
being exists divinely. (104) 
Refusal to construct a totalizing picture of the other, but allowing space for the other to 
be a “separate being,” not appropriated to the being of the I, enables the relationship with 
infinity, which is unknowable and divine. The contact with the other – unlike the contact 
with things that can be appropriated for enjoyment – makes the break from totality 
possible for Levinas, and thus allows for the fulfillment of the very aim of being of the I, 
which is to fulfill his responsibility before the other. The other does not complement the 
being of the I for Levinas, who insists on solitude as a definitive characteristic of the I; 
yet it is in the other and not “in opposition to the other” that the soul of the I becomes 
visible, and the I is revealed as a spiritual being. The encounter with the other does not 
mean the end of the solitude of the I; rather, it is because of the solitude that the “break-
up” of totality may be accomplished: “The I is thus the mode in which the break-up of 
totality, which leads to the presence of the absolutely other, is concretely accomplished. 
It is solitude par excellence” (Levinas Totality 118). Solitude constitutes the existence of 
48 
 
the I which is not interrupted by the other. What really opens up the possibility of the 
relationship with the other is the experience of suffering, through which the I can 
overcome the impulse to approach the other as totality and can recognize the autonomy 
of the other (see Levinas Time 76). 
Levinas theorizes his concept of responsibility for the other, which comes as the 
ability to respond to the needs of the other: “The face speaks. It speaks, it is in this that it 
renders possible and begins all discourse. [...] [I]t is discourse and, more exactly, 
response or responsibility which is this authentic relationship,” says Levinas in a 
published interview of 1985 (Ethics, Ch. 7). The act of speech elicits the relationship 
between the I and the other, and calls the I to responsibility: “The first word of the face is 
the ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ It is an order” (Ethics, Ch. 7).  In this act of speech, when the 
unknown other approaches the I, the I is endowed with the responsibility which lies in 
accepting and allowing for the otherness it encounters, thus responding to the other’s call. 
Commenting on his own work Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1974) in the 
1985 interview, Levinas explains the concept of responsibility: “I understand 
responsibility as responsibility for the other, thus as responsibility for what is not my 
deed, or for what does not even matter to me” (Ethics, Ch. 7).  The ability to respond, or 
assume responsibility for the other, for the deed which does not constitute the identity of 
the I, defines the transformation that the encounter with the other produces, and 
constitutes one of the most important aspect of Levinas’s understanding of the I-other 
relationship. 
Tolstoy’s War and Peace in many ways represents the Levinasian concept of not 
killing the other in the refusal to categorize the other or by exposing such categorization 
49 
 
as inevitably erroneous. Particularly in its treatment of the concept of not killing the other 
and assuming of responsibility for the other, War and Peace can be seen as illustrating 
particular aspects of Levinasian ethics. Tolstoy’s world lacks the Bakhtinian dialogic 
split, that is, the characters do not recognize their own thoughts in the context of the 
others’ speeches, nor do the characters voice each other’s unuttered (and even 
unutterable) inner thoughts, as is the case in Dostoevsky’s prose, according to Bakhtin. 
However, the totality of their inner monologues and thoughts, which appear to be full of 
authoritative totalizing vision, is deconstructed as the characters envision themselves in 
relation to others, and recognize the Levinasian idea of the impossibility of knowing the 
other, as well as the necessity to make room for the otherness of the other within their 
own monologic universes. 
Prince Andrei gains his first glimpse of infinity as he lies wounded in the 
battlefield after the battle, contemplating the sky in the scene quoted at the beginning of 
this chapter. This experience is not a face-to-face encounter with the other, yet it 
illustrates the Levinasian concept of the encounter with a mystery as other. The mystery, 
for Levinas, helps comprehend the unknowable nature of the other, and therefore 
represents the other in Levinas’s early works. The “lofty,” “infinite” sky which Prince 
Andrei not only contemplates, but which retains its mysterious grip over his existence, 
reveals to his desires for glory and triumph as insignificant and trifling. His need to feed 
on the others’ thoughts and opinions makes no sense compared to the new sensation of 
infinity he acquires. This episode of Andrei’s epiphany reflects the Levinasian infinity, as 
Andrei recognizes and embraces the unknowable other in the figure of mystery.  
50 
 
However, Tolstoy’s understanding of the vision of infinity cannot transcend the 
boundaries of the moment. The sensation of the infinite and the acceptance of the 
unknown that Prince Andrei experiences are impossible to maintain. Andrei’s newly 
acquired happiness –“how happy I am that I’ve finally come to know it”– does not follow 
him into the future, as the experience dissolves almost immediately as Andrei loses his 
consciousness and, after regaining it, wonders, “‘Where is it, that lofty sky, which I never 
knew until now and saw today?’ was his first thought. ‘And I never knew this suffering 
either […]’” (Tolstoy Vol. I, 290). Similarly to the Levinasian concept of suffering as 
key for obtaining a new vision of the other and gaining the ultimate acceptance of the 
difference or the “otherness” of the other, Tolstoy’s character acquires this vision in the 
moments of suffering or proximity to death. 
Fredric Jameson reads Prince Andrei’s experiences as examples of affect in 
Tolstoy’s novel. Jameson writes: 
What is thus crucial here is the changeability of the affects, which in turn provides 
the registering apparatus, the legibility of various states. For they can only be read 
distinctly against a constant variation: a single affective tonality, like a single note 
or pedal-point held without variation, becomes in the long run indistinct or 
imperceptible against its background, or else slowly takes on a pathological 
dimension which demands motivation in its own right. But what the chapter in 
question demonstrates is the ceaseless variability from elation to hostility, from 
sympathy to generosity and then to suspicion, and finally to disappointment and 
indifference: there are in principle in Tolstoy no moments in the narrative which 
51 
 
lack their dimension of affect, to the point at which one is tempted to say that 
these movements and variations are themselves the narrative. (84-85) 
These changes in the dynamics of character’s inner world, the constant variability not 
only in his circumstances but in him, demonstrates the mechanism of Tolstoy’s use of 
affect which becomes a driving force of the narrative. Though Prince Andrey moves 
quickly between the different emotional states, as Jameson describes, the vision of 
infinity that he gains after the Battle of Austerlitz is shown as that which is most 
authentic and natural.  
Tolstoy does not allow Prince Andrei to hold on to the vision of infinity beyond 
the time on the battlefield.  The vision he gets, though short lived, allows Andrei to 
temporarily transcend the division of people into friends and enemies, as he sees the 
Frenchmen approaching the dead and the wounded after the battle. Tolstoy describes 
Andrei’s vision of the French in the following: “he was only glad that people had stopped 
over him and only wished that those people would help him and bring him back to life, 
which seemed so beautiful to him, because he now understood it so differently. He 
gathered all his strength in order to stir and to produce some sound” (Vol. I, 291). The 
sound that Andrei produces overcoming his weakness due to the extensive loss of blood 
is akin to Levinasian response to the other, no longer seeing the others as enemies, but as 
the ones of the same kind, capable of reaching out to him, as he reaches out to them. Now 
Andrei does not strive to triumph over Napoleon, his former enemy and hero, as this man 
no longer embodies either a threat or awe for him.  
So much is Andrei’s scale of values changed, that he can no longer recognize a 
heroic figure in Napoleon, at the same time as his acceptance of all otherness becomes 
52 
 
gradually decomposed. The character can no longer relate to the former vision of 
Napoleon and loses his understanding of his otherness: “To him at that moment all the 
interests which occupied Napoleon seemed so insignificant, his hero himself seemed so 
petty to him, with his petty vanity and joy in victory, compared with that lofty, just, and 
kindly sky […]” (Vol I, 292-93). At the short instance when lying helpless in the field, 
Andrei discerns Napoleon as one of the people who can help him; but this vision begins 
to change quickly. As the features which defined Napoleon for Prince Andrei, the 
“vanity” and “joy in victory,” lost their significance, Napoleon himself becomes 
diminished in Andrei’s eyes, and Andrei finds himself unable to respond to him. The 
vision of infinity he gained dissolves gradually, as Andrei finds himself in the camp. 
Here, the reader clearly discerns a contrast between Andrei’s former acceptance of 
otherness and his vision of the vain Napoleon, who in the book begins to embody an 
impulse opposite to the one Andrei just witnessed. The author presents Prince Andrei’s 
state in his delirious vision: “[Andrei] was already enjoying his happiness, when 
suddenly little Napoleon appeared with his indifferent, limited gaze, happy in the 
unhappiness of others, and doubts and torments set in, and only the sky promised 
tranquility” (293). Napoleon, “indifferent” to the suffering of others and “happy in the 
unhappiness of others,” takes Andrei away from his happy vision of the infinite sky. The 
incapability of the acceptance of the other and impossibility of sympathy with the other 
become the features which define Napoleon, illustrating the egotistic impulse which 
precludes assuming responsibility for the other. With the picture of Napoleon recalling 
the Bakhtinian epic hero, Tolstoy deviates from the Levinasian vision of the other as 
53 
 
unknowable. The objectification of Napoleon in the novel reveals the monologic impulse 
to which both Bakhtin and Lukacs point in the novel. 
Like Levinas’s vision of infinity, which can only be reached as a momentary 
glimpse, Tolstoy denies his characters this view lasting longer than a brief moment of 
epiphany. Prince Andrei cannot carry his newfound wisdom into the life in St. Petersburg 
society, in which relations of rivalry, envy, and personal gain rule even to a greater extent 
than they do in the battlefield. Andrei returns to the world of convention that Lukacs talks 
about in The Theory of the Novel, when describing the conflict between nature and 
culture in Tolstoy (149). When Andrei returns from his travel to Europe, he finds out that 
his beloved Natasha nearly eloped with Anatole Kuragin, breaking off their engagement. 
Feeling betrayed and angered, Andrei reimagines his former beloved Natasha in the 
egotistical terms: ‘“I understood her,’ thought Prince Andrei. ‘I not only understood her 
but it was that inner force, that sincerity, that inner openness, that soul of hers, which was 
as if bound by her body, it was that soul that I loved … loved so strongly, so happily.’ 
[…] He [Anatole] didn’t need any of that” (Tolstoy Vol. III, 777). Andrei reflects on 
“knowing,” “understanding” Natasha by reducing her to his own categories of 
understanding. In his denial of autonomy to Natasha, Prince Andrei reflects Levinas’s 
metaphorical “killing” of the other, approaching him as known or knowable. In this 
gesture, Andrei similarly objectifies Anatole Kuragin, now his enemy, by assuming that 
he himself was capable of understanding Natasha’s inner aspirations, her soul, better than 
Anatole. Thus Andrei accuses Anatole of “killing” Natasha in the Levinasian sense by 
objectifying her, while he himself is also trying to reduce Natasha to his own categories 
of understanding. At this instance, the reader may agree with Prince Andrei, recognizing 
54 
 
that Anatole Kuragin viewed Natasha as an object of his personal manly victory. But at 
the same time, the reader also shares the broader author’s vision, which allows seeing the 
same limitations of Prince Andrei’s view of Natasha, as Andrei is not capable of truly 
understanding and forgiving her childish infatuation with Anatole at this moment. At this 
time in the novel, Andrei becomes a predictable character, and the reader is allowed to 
see his limitation trough Tolstoy’s authorial vision. This character once again reflects the 
monologic view at this moment, as he is incapable of seeing beyond the scope of the 
immediately visible reality.  
However, recognition of the Levinasian ethical primacy of the other becomes the 
sole purpose of Prince Andrei’s life journey, as becomes obvious in the moment of his 
death. When mortally wounded in the operating tent, Andrei sees beside him the one 
whom he has considered his greatest enemy. Anatole Kuragin, who nearly eloped with 
Andrei’s beloved Natasha, destroying Andrei’s hope for family happiness, suffers 
greatly, as his leg has been amputated. Instead of enjoying the vision of his enemy 
defeated, Andrei experiences quite a different sensation which again allows transcending 
the division of people into enemies and friends, and see Anatole as another suffering 
human being: 
[Andrei] now remembered the connection between him and this man, who was 
looking at him dully through the tears that filled his swollen eyes. Prince Andrei 
remembered everything, and a rapturous pity and love for this man filled his 
happy heart.  
55 
 
Prince Andrei could no longer restrain himself, and he wept tender, loving 
tears over people, over himself, over their and his own errors. (Tolstoy Vol. III, 
814) 
In Andrei’s refusal to see a man in the opposing bed as an enemy, he accepts the 
otherness of his neighbor, fulfilling the commandment “You shall not kill.” Not only 
does Andrei forget his former desire to avenge Anatole by killing him, he cries “over 
people, over himself, over their and his own errors,” assuming responsibility for others as 
well. Though Andrei has spent much time trying to find and avenge Anatole, now he 
responds to Anatole’s suffering with his own tears of sympathy. Unlike in the moment 
when Andrei assumed understanding of Anatole, asserting his own moral supremacy over 
him, Andrei denies any hierarchy that could obstruct his recognition of Anatole as the 
other in his own right. Such a moment of epiphany Levinas characterizes as one in which 
the I glimpses infinity.  
But Tolstoy does not grant every individual in War and Peace a vision of infinity. 
Anatole, one of the most villainous characters in the novel, is looked at with compassion 
and acceptance as he goes through the suffering, which harbors the potential to open for 
him a vision similar to that of Prince Andrei’s, though it is never shown in the novel. 
Napoleon, as was mentioned before, represents everything which denies the very 
possibility of face-to-face encounter. Throughout the novel Napoleon embodies the 
egotistic and self-centered impulse for Tolstoy, the very refusal of assuming 
responsibility for the other.  
By leaving the remains of his troops to die in the cold, Napoleon is unable to 
respond even to his comrades, who are also more than comrades, “not only comrades,” 
56 
 
but those whose lives are directly in Napoleon’s responsibility, as he “has brought them 
there.” Napoleon’s act of abandonment is the refusal of response, as well as the refusal to 
see the other face-to-face. This denial of the face-to-face encounter to Napoleon may be 
read as the author’s inability to transcend his nationalistic vision, which results in the 
inconsistent application of his philosophy in the novel. The fact that one of the greatest 
villains in War and Peace, Anatole, gains the moment of acceptance while Napoleon 
remains a static character throughout the novel, is evidence of this reading.  
However, Tolstoy grants the vision which is associated with Levinasian infinity to 
his characters who represent lower social ranks; these characters are able to see beyond 
the totalizing definitions of the national in the episode when the Russian and the French 
soldiers communicate with each other across the enemy lines. The character Dolokhov 
who knows French starts a conversation with the French. Other characters imitate the 
language without knowing it; the experience ends with jokes. Tolstoy describes the scene 
in the following: 
“Ho, ho, ho! Ha ha, ha, ha! Hoo, hoo!” Peals of such healthy and merry 
guffawing came from among the soldiers that it crossed the line and involuntarily 
infected the French, after which it seemed they ought quickly to unload their 
guns, blow up their munitions, and all quickly go back home. 
But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in the house and fortifications 
looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon remained turned 
against each other just as before. (Vol. I, 177) 
The soldiers are able to communicate with each other and exchange jokes without 
language even though they are on different sides of the divide and are in a state of war 
57 
 
with each other. Being able to see the other beyond the borders which divide people 
constitutes a Levinasian moment in the book, as the soldiers do not define people on the 
other side through the totalizing definition of enemies. The fact that “the guns remained 
loaded” and “the unlimbered cannon remained turned against each other” is shown as 
unnatural after the good laughter that both the Russians and the French shared. It is also 
not the fault of the soldiers that “the guns remained loaded” but of forces which are 
beyond their grasp. The fact that the common soldiers, who are not trained in the ways of 
the high society, and do not, like Prince Andrei or Napoleon harbor prideful ambitions, 
do not totalize the other but gain the infinite vision of him reveals Tolstoy’s view on 
nation and culture as concepts which are taught and acquired. For Prince Andrei it is 
necessary to abandon his prideful ambitions that are harbored while he belongs to the 
high society to be able to recognize the infinity of the sky and accept the otherness of the 
other.    
 Tolstoy’s representation of historical crisis is closely linked to the depiction of the 
I-other encounters. Dolokhov and the Russian soldiers gain a brief vision of the French 
soldiers not as enemies but as human beings similar to them. Prince Andrei is able to 
reevaluate his views of life as a result of such encounter. The atmosphere of historical 
crisis for Tolstoy opens up a possibility for the characters to reevaluate their positions and 
to gain a different understanding of life. Pierre Bezukhov in the novel also undergoes 
spiritual change under the circumstances of crisis, when he finds himself in French 
captivity. Tolstoy describes Pierre’s time in captivity and after it as follows:  
All Pierre’s dreams were now turned to the time when he would be free. And yet 
afterwards and for the whole of his life Pierre thought and spoke with rupture of 
58 
 
that month of captivity, of those irrevocable, strong, and joyful sensations, and 
above all, of that full peace of mind, that perfect inner freedom, which he 
experienced only in that time. (Vol. IV, 1013) 
Paradoxically, Pierre experiences the “perfect inner freedom” while in captivity and 
enjoys “full peace of mind” when his life is threatened daily. While being captive, 
Pierre’s desires are reduced to basic natural human needs. The state of profound crisis 
puts Pierre into a position which is closer to nature than life in high society. Pierre 
realizes that happiness is found in the simplest things, when basic human needs are 
satisfied. This realization sets him free and Pierre understands that happiness is possible 
even in the direst circumstances. At one point Pierre starts laughing to himself; the fact 
that he is held prisoner does not make sense to him because he realizes that his soul is 
free: “‘Ha, ha, ha,’” laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: “‘The soldier won’t let 
me go. They caught me, they locked me up.  They are holding me prisoner. Who, me? 
Me? Me—my immortal soul! Ha, ha, ha!’” (Vol. IV 1020). It seems ridiculous to Pierre 
that someone keeps him as a prisoner, him, whose “immortal soul” is free. 
The revelations that both Prince Andrei and Pierre gain in the moments of intense 
crisis  are not the ones they can hold on to beyond the battlefield, as the final recognition 
of the vision of infinity for Tolstoy can be seen as, to a certain degree, incompatible with 
life and everyday challenges. Though trying hard, individuals in the novel cannot hold 
onto their revelations, which only sparkle in brief moments, often at the time between life 
and death. Just as Levinas concludes that only suffering and the proximity of death serves 
as a key to uncover the potential of full recognition of otherness, Tolstoy’s characters, 
particularly, Prince Andrei, acquire such a vision only at the crucial moments between 
59 
 
life and death – after the Battle of Austerlitz and before his death from the wound he 
received  in 1812. In his final conversation with Natasha, when she asks his forgiveness 
for her unfaithfulness, Prince Andrei responds to her, saying “‘I love you more, better, 
than before,’ said Prince Andrei raising his face with his hands so that he could see her 
eyes” (Tolstoy Vol. III, 922). Andrei’s response illustrates his recognition of his 
responsibility towards her, the responsibility of responding to the plea of the other, 
which, in this case, implied forgiving her. Earlier in the novel, when Andrei learned of 
Natasha’s near elopement with Anatole, he refused to hear about her and objectified her, 
assuming he knew and understood her. Andrei reacts quite differently in responding to 
Natasha now. Seeing her without false assumptions, Andrei is capable not only of 
responding but of loving Natasha in a new “better” way, a way which implies full 
acceptance of the otherness he now sees. Here Andrei does not assume that he “knows” 
or “understands” Natasha, instead he accepts her. The encounter with the other’s face, 
which for Levinas constitutes a speech act in itself, necessitates a response, which Andrei 
is capable of giving. The moment of suffering for both Tolstoy and Levinas is one which 
allows uncovering the way to infinity. Through his own suffering, Andrei is able to 
respond to the other, to assume responsibility for the other, and to forgive. Similarly 
Natasha, who thoughtlessly and egotistically attempted to elope with Anatole, comes to 
recognize the primacy of the other and the necessity of responsibility towards him. 
Reflecting on history, Tolstoy writes: “The totality of causes of phenomena is 
inaccessible to human mind” (Vol. IV, 987). Therefore, he offers to break down this 
totality which is unknowable to the smallest possible units: “Only by admitting an 
infinitesimal unit of observation—a differential of history, that is, the uniform strivings 
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of people—and attaining to the art of integrating them (taking the sum of these 
infinitesimal quantities) can we hope to comprehend the laws of history” (Vol. III, 822).  
The visions that the characters gain as a result of their encounters with the unknown other 
in situations of crisis help us to understand Tolstoy’s larger vision of history. In his 
descriptions of the characters, Tolstoy pays particular attention to the moments of 
revelation that they experience that are usually very short in duration and sometimes 
fleeting. Such experiences often pass very soon, as is the case with Prince Andrei, 
Dolokhov and other characters. However, Tolstoy concentrates on them and explains 
them scrupulously and in much detail. Such moments for Tolstoy can be added up or 
“integrated” to define historical crisis. In the moments of crises many of the character 
who were perceived as monologic at one point or another become multidimensional and 
nonfinalizable due to the broad vision of otherness that they acquire and the subsequent 
reevaluation of their existential positions in life.  
Another prominent character whom the reader perceives as monologic, who yet 
breaks through the mold of monologism, is Princess Lise Bolkonsky, or the little 
princess, the wife of Prince Andrei, who dies in childbirth The moment of crisis for 
Princess Lise is associated with childbirth. In the moment of intense crisis before her 
death she is shown as a multidimensional character. The initial monologism of Lise 
becomes visible through her association with the culture of high society, with the 
artificiality of social manners, and with everything French. Princess Lise is often 
described in French expressions, as, for example, when Prince Vassily Kuragin calls her: 
“Quelle delicieuse personne, que cette petite princesse!” [What a delightful person this 
little princess is!] (Vol. I, 9). The little princess speaks predominantly French and is 
61 
 
mostly addressed as Lise, in a French manner; Prince Vasily calling her “delicieuse,” 
which can also be translated as “delicious,” reflects high society’s admiration for her, 
while also revealing the princess’s association with coquettish and shallow social 
customs. Prince Andrei shares his intimate thoughts about Lise with his friend Pierre: 
“‘My wife […] is a wonderful woman with whom one can be at ease regarding one’s 
honor; but, my God, what wouldn’t I give now not to be married!’” (28).  Prince Andrei 
finds his marriage to Lise suffocating due to her inability to act beyond the norms of 
society and the artificiality associated with her manners, manners which in Russian 
society of the time emulate French ways. Princess Lise Bolkonsky is perceived as a 
perfect example of the character who follows a prescribed orbit, and can never deviate 
from her course and be open for a dialogic interpretation.  
At the same time as Lise Bolkonsky embodies the qualities of artificiality and 
shallowness, she is also described as a product of the culture she has learned and 
absorbed further in the novel. Princess Marya characterizes Lise, saying, “She is a child, 
such a dear, merry child,” and explains to her brother Prince Andrei why he should treat 
his wife with understanding: “But one must be indulgent towards little weaknesses – who 
doesn’t have them, André! Don’t forget that she grew up and was formed in society. And 
then, her position now isn’t very rosy. One must enter into each person’s position. Tout 
comprendre, c’est tout pardonner. [To understand all is to forgive all]” (105; 106). 
Princess Marya sees Lise as still a “child,” who “grew up and was formed in society.” In 
this respect, Lise’s sometimes naïve and even infantile behavior, and her devotion to the 
ways of the society can be seen as a result of her training, and the character herself can be 
seen as a victim of such training. The vision of Lise as a product of the society reaffirms 
62 
 
her as a monologic character in Lukacs’s sense. She becomes a visible manifestation of 
the flaws inherent in the society which molded her.  
However, Princess Lise is shown in a very different light as she is close to her 
death during childbirth. When Andrei sees her, Lise’s expression seems to him to be 
saying reproachful words about his inability to understand her: “I love you all, I did no 
harm to anyone, why am I suffering? Help me” (Vol. II, 327). Her expression is further 
described as “questioning […]” “with childlike reproach.” Lise’s reproach to Andrei is 
her rebellion against his objectification of her; in this sense it becomes a call that the 
other presents to the I. Andrei failed to recognize that Lise was and is much more than a 
product of society, and thus failed to respond to her and extend his love to her. It is ironic 
that Andrei, who saw his wife as incapable of thinking beyond the ways that society has 
taught her, fell victim to the same flaw, as he objectified his wife and was unable to 
recognize her potential. It is at the moment before the princess’s death that Andrei calls 
Lise “darling” for the first time in his life, recognizing that her reproachful glance was 
not groundless. Here Lise becomes a Levinasian other who is denied the response of the 
I. Like Prince Andrei, the reader is able to see Lise Bolkonsky in a new light, not as a 
naïve and shallow princess, but as a suffering human being who had no ill intentions, and 
as a wife and potentially a mother who longed for love but was denied it. At this time in 
the novel, the moment of Levinasian responsibility is turned towards Prince Andrei and 
towards the reader, who both realize their unfairness towards the character of Lise. Prince 
Andrei now sees his wife as much more than a society coquette, unable to progress or 
change, but as a suffering person in need of help and compassion. The character of Lise 
is unexpectedly given a breadth which allows seeing her outside the totalizing frame in 
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which she was shown at the beginning of the novel. The reader, like Andrei, sees Lise as 
a multidimensional character, rather than as one who is reflective of totality.  
The case of Lise Bolkonsky illustrates that Tolstoy’s characters have a potential 
to overcome the monologic molds imposed on them by their social life, and the moments 
of crisis in the novel provide an opportunity to see these characters in a new light. 
Therefore, Lukacs’s model of society and its structure as key to understanding the 
characters is denied. The Levinasian moment of recognition and responsibility is shown 
as that which helps deconstruct such vision. Lise becomes a Bakhtin’s non-finalizable 
character, as she does not follow the path once chosen for her, but reveals her potential 
for change.  
Bringing Tolstoy’s figure of the other in War and Peace into the Bakhtinian 
discussion of the dialogue as an inevitable element of the novel allows recognizing 
dialogic elements in Tolstoy’s novel. The encounter with the other and the ability to 
respond to the other’s call is central to Tolstoy’s vision in War and Peace, as it is central 
to Levinas’s ethics of the other. Though in his novel Tolstoy does not rely on dialogues 
to the extent Dostoevsky does in Bakhtin’s reading, his philosophy, with its emphasis on 
the primacy of the other, is dialogic. The face-to-face encounters, which for Levinas 
constitute speech acts in their own right, serve the same function in Tolstoy’s scenes, 
where the characters come to recognize the ethical primacy of the other. The response to 
the call of the face of the other becomes a central motif in Tolstoy’s novel, which allows 
breaking through the totality of the characters’ monologic worlds. Prince Andrei 
Bolkonsky becomes a non-finalizable character, as through the book he progresses from 
an egotistical person with an ambition of becoming, like Napoleon, a conqueror, to 
64 
 
gaining a non-egotistical perspective of the other and recognition of his responsibility 
towards the other.  
War and Peace does contain elements which are associated with the monologic 
worldview, oftentimes in relation to the characters’ association with either the Russian or 
the foreign French culture. Through the aspect of belonging to a certain culture, some 
characters, such as Natasha, who is strongly associated with Russian culture, have the 
potential to be seen as monologic. However, a close reading of the novel reveals that 
Natasha has a much broader potential than that associated with Russian culture. 
Furthermore, the scene with the soldiers being able to communicate and even joke across 
the enemy lines clearly demonstrates that culture is treated in the novel as something 
which is taught and learned, rather than something which is inborn. Thus, Lise 
Bolkonsky can become a multidimensional character once she is seen outside the 
atmosphere of artificiality associated with the Russian high society and its foreign French 
ways.  
The Levinasian moments where the characters embrace otherness and assume 
responsibility for the other reveal War and Peace as a novel which rejects the totalizing 
images of the characters. In his article “The Hedgehog and the Fox: an Essay on Tolstoy's 
View of History,” Isaiah Berlin states that Tolstoy maintains the vision of a “fox” that is 
keen and sharp, knowledgeable of many things, and encompassing multiple and diverse 
aspects of life. Tolstoy’s vision, according to Berlin, operates on the assumption that 
people need to see the coherent picture of life, which is why he tries to hide and mask his 
“fox”-like vision, creating the illusion of finality (see Berlin).  Berlin’s theory helps 
explain why the vision of totality can be seen as characteristic of Tolstoy’s works. 
65 
 
Tolstoy’s view on nation and culture as potentially defining the traits of his characters 
can be interpreted as an impulse to show them in a monologic light. However, the 
moments of Levinasian acceptance, when the characters are shown outside their learned 
cultural molds, and recognize the humanity and suffering of others, even of their own 
enemies, reveal that this cultural barrier can be overcome. 
Though not all of the characters are shown in light of the Levinasian face-to-face 
encounter, it is through the recognition of the primacy of the other that Tolstoy 
deconstructs the totality of the vision he presents through his characters and criticizes the 
egotistical existence. Bringing Tolstoy’s vision alongside that of Levinas can be also seen 
as one of the important twentieth-century uses of Tolstoy, particularly in light of the fact 
that Tolstoy is one of Levinas’s early influences. Levinas’s ethics, particularly as 
expressed in his Totality and Infinity can be understood as a response to the violence of 
the twentieth century world wars, as he seeks to theorize and explain the view of the 
other which diverges from that established in the Western philosophy, and postulates 
“You shall not kill” as the main principle of I-other relationships. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Chapter II: “Inglés” in Spain: Linguistic and Cultural Otherness in Hemingway’s For 
Whom the Bell Tolls  
“I can write it like Tolstoi and make the book seem larger, wiser, and all the rest of it. But 
then I remember that was what I always skipped in Tolstoi….” Ernest Hemingway 
Selected Letters 1917-1961, “To Maxwell Perkins” 
 
Ernest Hemingway claims he can write like Leo Tolstoy in the letter to his editor 
Maxwell Perkins in 1940, where he talks about the complete draft of his novel For Whom 
the Bell Tolls (FWTBT), commenting on some of his own writing choices. Putting 
together the puzzle of several of Hemingway’s occasional statements on Tolstoy it is not 
difficult to understand what he thinks should be skipped in the writings of Tolstoy. The 
object of Hemingway’s criticism was always what he considered Tolstoy’s moralizing 
and the grand philosophical questions, as well as the speculations which Tolstoy engages 
in in his works, particularly in War and Peace. In his introduction to a massive anthology 
on war writings that he edited in 1942, Hemingway writes: 
I love War and Peace for the wonderful, penetrating and true descriptions of war 
and of people but I have never believed in the great Count’s thinking. I wish there 
could have been someone in his confidence with authority to remove his heaviest 
and worst thinking and keep him simply inventing truly. He could invent more 
with more insight and truth than anyone who ever lived. (Men at War xviii) 
Elsewhere, Hemingway remarked about the unnecessary “big Political Thought 
passages” in War and Peace, which Tolstoy “undoubtedly thought were the best things in 
his book when he wrote it” (in Meyers 134). The “great Count,” according to 
Hemingway, could “invent truly,” and this invention forms the gist of his writing, 
particularly of historical writing. Interestingly, Tolstoy himself is very likely to agree that 
67 
 
truthful depiction should be the core of any narrative, as he famously declares in his 
Sevastopol Sketches (1855-56): “the hero of my tale, the one I love with all the power of 
my soul, the one I have tried to reproduce in all its beauty, just as he has been, is, and 
always will be beautiful, is Truth” (110). 
Their engagement with large social historical issues and the preoccupation with 
the necessity of writing about them bring the two authors together and generate the 
question of how each of them understood novelistic truth, a truth which needs to be 
transmitted by means of the language of the literary work. The question of 
interdependence of the form and the content of a literary work is discussed by Mikhail 
Bakhtin, who shows that the creation of the literary work is dependent on social factors. 
In his “Discourse in the Novel” Bakhtin writes: “Form and content in discourse are one, 
once we understand that verbal discourse is a social phenomenon – social throughout its 
entire range and in each and every of its factors, from the sound image to the furthest 
reaches of abstract meaning” (260). The novel, defined by the “diversity of social speech 
types, sometimes even diversity of languages and a diversity of individual voices” reveal 
the multiplicity of social issues that are brought together and juxtaposed within the novel. 
The way these issues are brought together and organized in the novel reveals an 
individual author’s style, as well as his or her individual beliefs and convictions.  
This chapter maintains that by expressing his mistrust of Tolstoy’s “great political 
Thought,” Hemingway showed his disapproval not only of lengthy political reflections 
(which are absent in Hemingway’s own novels) but primarily of Tolstoy’s attitude to 
presentation of social historical issues, which often involves their consideration in a 
certain light. What Bakhtin calls Tolstoy’s “monologic” attitude to the presentation of 
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reality is most visible in the juxtaposition of the Russian and the French languages within 
the text of War and Peace, where French is often shown as a beautiful language of 
artificial expression and Russian is presented as a simple and truthful means of 
communication. By presenting the French language in this light, Tolstoy defines the 
status of the French culture as that of the other in the Russian society of the first half of 
the nineteenth century. Hemingway, who also uses two languages, English and Spanish, 
in his FWTBT, employs them for quite different purposes. The two languages in FWTBT 
serve the purpose of blending and even eliminating cultural differences between 
Hemingway’s character Robert Jordan, an American who comes to fight in the Spanish 
Civil War, and the Spanish people he encounters. Tolstoy’s ordered use of French, which 
is reserved for the depiction of specific scenes or constructing of specific dialogues, 
contrasts with Hemingway’s somewhat desultory use of Spanish, which can often be 
interchangeable with the English version which precedes the Spanish. However, the 
textual evidence in both of the novels, as will be shown in this chapter, proves that the 
issue goes much deeper than the language competence of both of the authors, understood 
as Tolstoy’s sophisticated French and Hemingway’s “poor” Spanish. Looking at both 
novels through the lens of the Levinasian philosophy of the other allows us to compare 
different definitions and treatment of cultural otherness in both texts. When placed 
alongside Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Hemingway’s novel negotiates the necessity of 
erasure of cultural otherness that separates Hemingway’s American character from his 
Spanish friends. This necessity is reflected from the beginning of the novel, in the 
epigraph borrowed from the famous poem “No Man is An Island” (1624) by John Donne. 
The position with regards to cultural otherness advocated by Hemingway may also be 
69 
 
reflective of his political view, that is, his vision of the necessity of a unified front against 
Fascism. The present chapter looks at some of the usages of languages and imagery in 
Hemingway’s FWTBT, placing them alongside outwardly similar phenomena in 
Tolstoy’s War and Peace, to trace the different attitudes towards cultural otherness that 
the two novels adopt. 
 Looking closer at the existing connection between the two novels helps define the 
dialogic relationship between them. Tolstoy’s truthfulness of descriptions and the power 
of invention make him, in Hemingway’s eyes, into his own lifelong rival. On multiple 
occasions Hemingway imagines the encounter between himself and Tolstoy in the format 
of a boxing match, as shown by Hugh McLean in his article “Hemingway and Tolstoy: A 
Pugilistic Encounter.” However, it becomes obvious upon a closer look that these authors 
of massive historical novels on war had some similar experience, which was relevant to 
and preceded the writing of their historical novels. Both Tolstoy and Hemingway 
personally participated in battle and subsequently described their war experiences in 
writing. Tolstoy participated in the armed conflicts in the Caucasus and in the Crimean 
War. He wrote his Sevastopol Sketches (1855) describing the experience of the 
Sevastopol siege as an immediate response to what he witnessed in the Crimean War, 
while his short novel The Cossacks (1863) is partially based on his experience in the 
Caucasus.  
Hemingway also had a rich personal experience of participating in wars and even 
being on the front lines prior to writing of his FWTBT, experience which he considered 
invaluable for a writer. During World War I, Hemingway became a volunteer Red Cross 
ambulance driver stationed in northern Italy. He briefly ran the mobile canteen there 
70 
 
before he was wounded. Upon his return, Hemingway wrote on political subjects related 
to World War I as a correspondent for the Kansas City Star (in Hemingway on War 
xxiii). He reported on the Greco-Turkish War. And as soon as the Spanish Civil War 
started, he was covering it for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), an 
experience which made it possible for him to write his novel FWTBT about the Spanish 
Civil War (xxiii). 
Hemingway considered the experience of war indispensable to the writer who 
intends to write about the subject; and Tolstoy, in Hemingway’s view, was well equipped 
for writing on war. In the Green Hills of Africa (1935), he talks about Tolstoy’s 
Sevastopol Sketches:  
Tolstoy’s Sevastopol […] was a very young book and had one fine description of 
fighting in it, where the French take the redoubt and I thought about Tolstoi and 
about what a great advantage an experience of war was to a writer. It was one of 
the major subjects and certainly one of the hardest to write truly of and those 
writers who had not seen it were always very jealous and tried to make it seem 
unimportant, or abnormal, or a disease as a subject, while, really, it was just 
something quite irreplaceable that they had missed. (108) 
In Hemingway’s view, one has to be deeply familiar with his subject to be able to write 
truly about it; the writer needs the intimate, insider’s knowledge before he can write, 
especially about a subject as complex as a war. Tolstoy, in Hemingway’s opinion, 
possessed this knowledge and could “invent truly” about his subject. Tolstoy’s novel The 
Cossacks also resonates with Hemingway’s understanding of what it means to write 
truly: “In [The Cossacks] were the summer heat, the mosquitoes, the feel of the forest in 
71 
 
different seasons, and the river that the Tartars crossed, raiding, and I was living in that 
Russia again” (Green Hills 108). Hemingway’s praise of Tolstoy’s work tells us of some 
of the features he most valued in the writings of Tolstoy and in writing in general. 
Besides the compelling depiction of reality, the writer needs to create an atmosphere 
which immerses the reader into the situation described, just as Hemingway is able to 
experience living in “that Russia” that Tolstoy described. 
Despite his criticism of Tolstoy’s “huge” and “overwhelming” thought (Men at 
War xviii), Hemingway treated War and Peace as a great classic of war writing, as he 
mentions to his editor Maxwell Perkins in 1926: “After I read War and Peace, I decided 
there wasn’t any need to write a war book and I’m still sticking to that” (Selected Letters 
202). Later, he included three excerpts from War and Peace, “Bagration’s Rearguard 
Action,”  “Borodino,” and “The People’s War,” into the massive anthology Men at War: 
The Best War Stories of All Time (1942)
 
, which he edited.
2
  
There are several studies which suggest that Hemingway looked to Tolstoy in his 
own writing. The question of literary influence is discussed by Marina T. Naumann in her 
article. Naumann describes the similarities between Tolstoy’s and Hemingway’s beliefs 
with regards to war writing and offers insightful close readings of the episodes which are 
parallel in War and Peace and FWTBT. Also, the article provides a comparative study of 
the episodes from War and Peace and Chapter twenty-seven from FWTBT, “The Fight on 
the Hilltop,” which Hemingway also included into the anthology Men at War. In a more 
recent article Dale E. Peterson finds parallels between Tolstoy’s Olenin in The Cossacks 
                                                        
2
 A detailed analysis of Hemingway’s treatment of the excerpts from War and Peace in the anthology Men 
at War can be found in McLean 1999. 
72 
 
and Hemingway’s Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Peterson recognizes the 
commonalities between Hemingway’s novel and Tolstoy’s War and Peace as well:  
For Whom the Bell Tolls has much in common with War and Peace, especially in 
its plausible reproduction of live episodes in the chaos of actual warfare. We 
observe that same irresistible push toward battle and the same arbitrary acts of 
individuals which determine victory or defeat for whole armies. […] For 
Hemingway, as for Tolstoy, war is a messy, nasty business which follows no 
leader or plan. (34) 
The features mentioned above undoubtedly point to the important characteristics that War 
and Peace and FWTBT share. There are also common features in the worldview of the 
authors and in their understanding of war and how it should be narrated, as pointed out 
by Peterson. 
 Hemingway built a reputation for himself as an anti-war writer who avoided political 
engagements prior to the publication of his FWTBT. His public speech in 1937 at the 
Writer’s Congress, which was delivered after he spent two months on the Spanish front 
as a war correspondent, revealed his strong antifascist views, and is, therefore, regarded 
as marking the end of Hemingway’s apolitical stance (Josephs For Whom 4). FWTBT, 
which appeared in the 1940, engages heavily with political issues. The nature of the 
book’s engagement with politics, however, raised some questions among contemporaries. 
Carlos Baker in his article “The Spanish Tragedy” points to some of the extreme 
interpretations of the novel. According to the critic Edmund Wilson, Hemingway’s book 
should be read as bearing a Stalinist sentiment (116). Hemingway responded to this 
statement denying any Stalinist sympathies. Hemingway also explicitly expresses his 
73 
 
position about the Spanish Civil War in his letter to the writer Harry Sylvester, where he 
states: “The Spanish war is a bad war, Harry, and nobody is right” (In Josephs For Whom 
4). In accord with this statement, Baker, as well as most of the critics, suggests that the 
book is free of any political extremes, and Hemingway’s main character, Robert Jordan, 
remains a “free man” who is not tempted by any of the ideologies.  
The reception of the novel in the Soviet Union is also of interest. According to 
Stephen Jan Parker, Hemingway’s book on the Spanish Civil War was eagerly awaited in 
the Soviet Union, where Hemingway was considered one of the friendly Western writers. 
Upon the appearance of the novel, however, it was considered “unsuitable for 
publication” in the Soviet Union and the author “was seldom mentioned in press for the 
next fifteen years” (178). Parker further explains the unfavorable reaction of the Soviets 
to the book:  
The disparaging remarks Hemingway made about the Comintern figures: André 
Marty and Passionara; his humane treatment of the Fascist officer Lieutenant 
Berrendo; his lengthy description of the brutal slaughter of fascists by the 
loyalists; and his persistent reiteration of the theme that no cause was ever worth 
taking the man’s life were sufficient reasons to have prevented the book’s 
publication. (178) 
Though Hemingway’s characters fight on the side of the Republic in the Spanish Civil 
War, his presentation of this side is far from an idealization, which accounts for the 
unfavorable evaluation of the novel in the Soviet Union. In his novel Hemingway 
includes passages which reveal crimes on both political sides.  
74 
 
 Although the scholars such as Naumann and Peterson point to the parallels 
between War and Peace and FWTBT, as well as to the contiguity of certain aspects of the 
authors’ worldviews, the specific uses of languages in the respective texts have never 
been a subject of close analysis. Though each of the novels is predominantly written in 
one language (Russian in War and Peace and English in FWTBT), the authors 
incorporate sentences or paragraphs which are written in French and Spanish 
respectively, with these secondary languages becoming indispensable formal elements 
and stylistic devices within both novels. About two percent of War and Peace is written 
in French (see Pevear xi), while FWTBT extensively incorporates Spanish phrases and 
sentences into the dialogues between the characters. Furthermore, scholarship has noted 
Hemingway’s non-standard use of English in the novel (see Gladstein), which reveals the 
influence of the Spanish upon English in the text of FWTBT. To use Bakhtin’s 
terminology, the internal dialogue of each of the novels becomes affected by the systems 
of the secondary languages, which disrupts the internal unity of the discourses and 
dialogize the units of language already on the formal level. 
The literal existence of two different languages in the texts of the novels creates 
tensions in the composition of these works which call to mind the Bakhtinian analysis of 
the stylistics in novelistic discourse. In “Discourse in the Novel” Bakhtin writes:  
The social and historical voices populating language, all its words and all its 
forms, which provide language with its particular concrete conceptualizations, are 
organized in the novel into a structured stylistic system that expresses the 
differentiated socio-ideological position of the author amid the heteroglossia of 
his epoch. (300) 
75 
 
Bakhtin views discourse within the novel as reflective of the social aspects inherent in the 
historical period when the work was written, in the existing problems of a given society, 
as well as in the specific beliefs and convictions of the author, etc. Furthermore, 
novelistic discourse for Bakhtin establishes relations with all the discourses which 
preceded it or come after it. The specificity of the novelistic discourse is the unity of the 
form and the content in mirroring of the multiple aspects of the society, and this social 
aspect becomes crucial for understanding the internal discourse of the novel.  
 The coexistence of the two languages in Tolstoy’s War and Peace brings up key 
questions. As a nineteenth-century Russian aristocrat, Tolstoy possessed an intimate 
knowledge of French, which was the language still used in aristocratic circles in his own 
time. Reflecting the high Russian society of the time which preceded his own, where 
French was the dominant language used for communication in high society, it appears 
logical for Tolstoy to use French in his novel to achieve verisimilitude in representing the 
Russian society of the early nineteenth century. However, over the years the scholars 
have noted that the function of French in the text is more complex than it first appears to 
be. Notably, the Russian Formalists commented on the special character of the French 
language within the text. In his 1928 book “Material and Style in Lev Tolstoy’s Novel 
War and Peace” Viktor Shklovsky mentions that French in the novel becomes a stylistic 
device which is developed throughout the text (see Shklovskij).  
Viktor Vinogradov, also a prominent figure associated with Russian Formalism, provides 
a detailed and extensive analysis of the stylistic implications of French in the text of War 
and Peace, referring to the novel as bilingual (“двуязычный”). Though Vinogradov 
notes that the use of French was necessitated by the demand for realistic portrayal of the 
76 
 
socio-linguistic situation in the early nineteenth century Russia, he states that the use of 
French “casts ‘shadows’ on the use of Russian” and should be studied in detail (123, 
translation mine). Vinogradov points out that the bilingualism in the text and the varying 
structures of the languages reflect the social-political uncertainty of the people in Russia 
at the time of the war with Napoleon (127). That is, with French being the language of 
the aristocratic society, its members found themselves torn between the traditional 
demand of their class to communicate in French and patriotic feelings which presupposed 
using the national language in the time of war. However, the most interesting use of 
French that Vinogradov notices is for the purposes of its juxtaposition to Russian. The 
language here becomes more than just the mode of transmission of information, but a 
vehicle of certain values ascribed to them by the social-political atmosphere of the 
depicted period in Russia, as well of the values that the author ascribes to them for the 
stylistic purposes. The contrast that Vinogradov sees between the languages lies in the 
qualities they represent in the novel. The specific qualities of each of the languages are 
put forth and emphasized: French, shown as naturally inclined towards theatricality and 
conventionalities, is juxtaposed to Russian, which is seen as “simple and honest, alien to 
anything conventional” (150, translation mine). The scholar also states that the French 
and the Russian language are juxtaposed as anti-national and national languages. The 
French in the novel is, according to Vinogradov, associated with beautiful expression, 
which can be empty and deceitful in its essence. Here the scholar quotes Tolstoy’s use of 
the French word “grand” (English “great,” “grand”), combining the honorable, even 
pompous sound of the word with a context which is far from honorable: Tolstoy’s 
Napoleon is shown leaving the remnants of his defeated, dying army while feeling “que 
77 
 
c’est grand” (Tolstoy Vol. I, 151).  The language characteristic of the majority of St. 
Petersburg’s aristocracy serves to expose their deceitfulness masked under the beautiful 
rhetoric and expression. The Russian language, on the other hand, is associated with 
simplicity and truthfulness which contrasts with the artificial beauty of the French and 
calls to mind nationalistic elements within the culture. Thus, the speech of Pierre 
Bezukhov, one of the main and undoubtedly positive characters of the novel, is always 
rendered in Russian, though the reader is informed that Pierre speaks predominantly 
French due to his education abroad as a Russian aristocrat. Later in the novel, the reader 
learns that Pierre hardly speaks French after his return from French captivity (157). 
Vinogradov’s analysis proves useful for our study as it looks at the use of the 
languages as vehicles for the authorial imagination in the context of certain social-
historical situations within the novel. The interrelation of the Russian and the French in 
War and Peace form the basis around which a certain aspect of the novel’s internal 
dialogue is constructed. Mikhail Bakhtin in his analysis of novelistic discourse pays close 
attention to this phenomenon; he sees internal dialogism as what “[…] occurs in a 
monologic utterance as well as in a rejoinder), the dialogism that penetrates [the novel’s] 
entire structure, all its semantic and expressive layers” (“Discourse” 279). This internal 
dialogue may encompass the views of the characters, which are juxtaposed, as well as 
those of the character and the author, or even a reader. The socio-cultural views which 
are in polemical relationships within the discourse of the novel are those which are 
characteristic of a given society at a particular historical moment; however, this discourse 
establishes relations with the ideas of the previous times. The novels of Dostoevsky, 
whose works Bakhtin most frequently uses to illustrate his own concepts, are marked by 
78 
 
such dialogic relations on multiple levels; Bakhtin calls the interaction of the characters 
in Dostoevsky’s works “an arena of never-ending struggle with others’ words,” stating 
also that the internal conflicts within such works can never be resolved, despite the 
outward completion of the plot (“Discourse” 349). 
The works of Tolstoy, in Bakhtin’s view, project the internal dialogism 
differently. Bakhtin writes:  
Thus, discourse in Tolstoy is characterized by a sharp internal dialogism, and this 
discourse is moreover dialogized in the belief system of the reader - whose 
peculiar semantic and expressive characteristics Tolstoy acutely senses - as well 
as in the object. These two lines of dialogization (having in most cases polemical 
overtones) are tightly interwoven in his style: even in the most “lyrical" 
expressions and the most "epic" descriptions, Tolstoy's discourse harmonizes and 
disharmonizes (more often disharmonizes) with various aspects of the heteroglot 
socio-verbal consciousness ensnaring the object, while at the same time 
polemically invading the reader's belief and evaluative system, striving to stun 
and destroy the apperceptive background of the reader's active understanding. In 
this respect Tolstoy is an heir of the eighteenth century especially of Rousseau. 
This propagandizing impulse sometimes leads to a narrowing-down of heteroglot 
social consciousness (against which Tolstoy polemicizes) to the consciousness of 
his immediate contemporary, a contemporary of the day and not of the epoch; 
what follows from this is a radical concretization of dialogization (almost always 
undertaken in the service of a polemic) […] (“Discourse” 238). 
79 
 
The juxtaposition of the two languages and their relations in the text of the novel, as 
analyzed by Vinogradov, reveals these two lines of dialogization that Bakhtin describes, 
while also adding one more, the metalinguistic line, to the Bakhtinian understanding of 
the internal dialogue within the discourse of Tolstoy. When languages are seen as objects 
of depiction, the status of the French language as of the language of culture and erudition 
is undermined. The belief system of the reader, though the reader is Tolstoy’s 
contemporary, is critically engaged, while the Russian language with its simplicity of 
expression is juxtaposed to empty and flowery expressions in French. Thus, the 
“propagandizing impulse” of which Bakhtin writes becomes visible in the author’s use of 
the polemics of the two languages to ensure the reader sees the principles upon which the 
dichotomy operates, revealing the bias towards one of the languages. 
 However, the metalinguistic level – Tolstoy’s use of the languages to picture them 
in a certain light – does add complexity to the mechanics and structure of the internal 
dialogue of the novel. Such juxtaposition serves the purpose of clearly showing the inner 
world of characters who are to be treated as suspicious, of lower moral standard, or even 
dangerous. This singling out of the cultural other within the novel helps divide the 
characters not by the principle of belonging to one of the nationalities: in the novel, it is 
not the French who are always rendered in French and not the Russians who are always 
rendered in Russian. The words of Pierre Bezukhov are rendered in Russian, though the 
reader knows he often speaks French in the novel.  
Princess Bolkonskaya, or the little Princess, is characterized through French 
expressions: “la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg” [“the most seductive woman 
in Petersburg”] and “Quelle delicieuse personne, que cette petite princesse!” [What a 
80 
 
delightful person this little princess is!] (Tolstoy Vol. I, 8; 9). The French language used 
to describe her here adds some extra characteristics to the character of the little Princess, 
whom the reader recognizes as a beautiful but shallow character. Similarly, the reputation 
of Hélѐne is described as that of “une femme charmante, aussi spirituelle que belle” [“A 
charming woman, as witty as she is beautiful”] (Vol. II, 439), though Pierre, as well as 
the reader, eventually learns that this statement does not correspond to the truth, as 
Hélѐne is one of the most deceitful and intellectually short-sighted characters in the 
novel. Interesting in this respect is Nepoleon’s comment on Hélѐne, when he sees her in 
the theatre in Erfurt: “C’est un superbe animal” [That is a superb animal]. Though this 
French comment is omitted from the 2008 Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of War 
and Peace, it provides an additional insight into Tolstoy’s masterful use of the language 
to subtly present Hélѐne’s vices. Though in the context, Napoleon’s comment is meant as 
a compliment – Hélѐne’s success as a charming woman in the high society is so big that 
even Napoleon notices her – the content of the phrase, calling Hélѐne “an animal,” 
reveals the carnal association this character elicits, rather than the respect or admiration, 
more suited for the lady of her status. Here Napoleon’s French “compliment” is meant to 
be a sarcastic statement which does reflect Hélѐne’s personality.  
 Tolstoy’s use of the two different languages complicates the internal dialogue of 
the novel; however, the author’s purpose for bringing the two languages together remains 
monologic. The languages are juxtaposed for the specific purpose of highlighting the 
features which the author decides to ascribe to them. In addition to helping to develop 
and describe the characters, Russian and French acquire almost independent existence 
within the text, as they convey certain ideas about the social usages of languages as such 
81 
 
within the novel and convey the authorial vision of them. Thus the languages become 
stylistic tools which serve specific purposes within the text and also become into 
independent objects for description.  
 Despite several outward similarities, the characteristics and the purpose of 
Hemingway’s bilingualism in FWTBT are quite different. Unlike Tolstoy, Hemingway 
did not possess a deep knowledge of Spanish, as he confesses: “I am not Spanish and I 
did not know the language. It took a while to learn even to speak it. You had to get rid of 
Italian, all of it. After I could talk, read, and understand it I still knew I did not know it.”3 
Despite his limited knowledge of Spanish, Hemingway incorporates it into his novel 
obviously placing a significant value on it both as a means for communicating the content 
and as a stylistic device.  
There have been several important attempts to account for Hemingway’s use of 
the Spanish language alongside English in the novel over the years. The scholarship 
differs in its critical evaluation of the phenomenon of the two languages in the text. Some 
of the studies concentrate on the various possible stylistic implications of the 
bilingualism, while others point to the incorrect usages of the Spanish, and to strange 
non-standard English expressions which are frequent in the novel. Patrick O. Stephens 
sees the use of two languages in the text as a particular stylistic device. In his 1972 
article, Stephens claims that the practice of languages creates a type of a mythic and 
symbolic medium in the novel which helps Robert Jordan as a character to create rather 
than to discover reality (152).  Allen Josephs in his 1983 article “Hemingway’s Poor 
Spanish: Chauvinism and Lack of Credibility in For Whom the Bell Tolls” is critical of 
                                                        
3
 The citation is a sentence taken from the early version of Hemingway’s novel Death in the Afternoon. 
Later, Hemingway shortened the version of the novel, cutting the section which contained this sentence. 
See Beegel 57 
82 
 
Hemingway’s use of Spanish and states that there are over sixty distinctive language use 
mistakes within the novel (see Josephs “Hemingway’s Poor Spanish”). However, in his 
later 1994 book, For Whom the Bell Tolls: Hemingway’s Undiscovered Country, Josephs 
dedicates an Appendix to Hemingway’s language use, where he rethinks the meaning of 
the Spanish, conceding that the language use in the novel may have stylistic value. At the 
same time, Josephs points out: “how well this highly original style works depends on 
individual reader or critic’s ear and knowledge or lack thereof, of Spanish (156).  Carlos 
Baker, one of the early Hemingway critics, in his 1962 article, pays attention to one 
specific quality of Hemingway’s use of language in the novel; he sees Hemingway’s 
“intentionally heightened language,” the frequent use of the archaic forms in FWTBT, as 
one of the means which help Hemingway create a contemporary epic (see Backer).  
Generally, contemporary studies tend to overlook the language inconsistencies within the 
novel. Mimi R. Gladstein in the article published in 2006 persuasively shows that 
Hemingway’s usage of Spanish in FWTBT “has an appeal to a new generation of 
American readers, a generation more attuned to bilingualism, who may have lived on the 
border between the United States and Mexico” (83).  
Diverse as the studies of Hemingway’s bilingualism in FWTBT may be, none of 
them systematically brings in Tolstoy’s War and Peace or Bakhtin’s “Discourse in the 
Novel” as texts which help account for Hemingway’s uses of languages. There are 
several stylistic functions that languages play within the novel. As in War and Peace, the 
languages serve to differentiate two distinct outlooks, that of Robert Jordan, an American 
in Spain, and the other characters he comes to know. Language remains the factor which 
marks Robert Jordan’s status of an outsider. However, the frequent and persistent use of 
83 
 
Spanish sentences and phrases blended with English, signal the author’s attempt to create 
a linguistic situation which is inclusive of otherness and eventually creates a cultural and 
linguistic space which does not differentiate or single out otherness. Thus the use of the 
two languages in the text of FWTBT, when seen alongside Tolstoy’s bilingualism, reveals 
an impulse quite opposite to that found in Tolstoy. In his novel Hemingway does not 
juxtapose the languages to highlight the specific characteristics of each of them, but 
attempts to bring them together and blend them, in order to create a space where the 
various points of view can be considered and a multiplicity of perspectives can be 
exposed.  
Initially, the language principle in the novel marks the difference of Robert 
Jordan, Hemingway’s main character; it also reveals the process by which this character 
attempts to overcome his status of a foreigner. Robert Jordan, an American who comes to 
help fight fascism in Spain, encounters small guerilla units in the mountains, with whose 
help he carries off his task of blowing up the bridge. An American character, who 
willingly comes to fight in the Spanish Civil War, struggles to belong in Spain. Jordan’s 
love for this country and its people and his desire to integrate function as metaphorical 
bridges which help connect him with the people he meets. The languages are put 
alongside each other not to create internal friction, as we consistently observe in War and 
Peace, but to build a platform for inclusion of a wider international perspective into the 
text of the novel. Robert Jordan, as a linguistic, ethnic, and cultural other, makes it 
possible for the author to bring up the question of otherness, revealing a specific attitude 
towards otherness in the text. 
84 
 
The language which the characters speak in Hemingway’s novel does not always 
present a consistent blending of the two languages, but rather an inconsistent one. 
Professor John J. Allen suggests that though “the English of Hemingway’s Spaniards is 
anything but an objectively accurate rendition of the original, it reflects dynamically the 
author’s impression both of the people and of the language” (7). This observation 
suggests that Hemingway was trying to capture a certain impression of the Spanish 
language and transmit the “feeling” of this language into the English text. Fenimore 
further notes that the language patterns within the novel “play an immeasurable role in 
creating the direct and, in a sense, primitive atmosphere of language which, in the context 
of For Whom the Bell Tolls is accepted as Spanish” (86). Hemingway’s brief, abrupt 
sentences are called to transmit a certain “atmosphere of language,” but in no case to 
provide the English translation for the Spanish expressions. We would like to further 
emphasize that, unlike the pattern of language use in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, the 
languages in Hemingway’s novel are not juxtaposed and locked in polemics with regards 
to each other. Though the reader is made aware of Robert Jordan’s status of a foreigner 
due to his national, linguistic, and cultural difference, the English and the Spanish are 
made to work together to create one language atmosphere in the novel which reflects the 
author’s larger vision, as was mentioned before, and also to describes the process of 
acculturation of the character who is linguistically and culturally displaced.  
The language which the characters in the novel speak is neither accurate English, 
nor Spanish accurately rendered in English, but it often presents a blending of the two. 
Robert Jordan addresses Maria in Renaissance English: “How art thou called?” 
(Hemingway FWTBT 14). This intentional choice of the question form which is 
85 
 
structurally closer to the Spanish “¿Cómo te llamas?” suggests this blending. Though 
Hemingway might not have known Spanish well, he surely knew standard contemporary 
English; he creates a new variant of the two languages, finding forms in English, which 
correspond to those existing in Spanish. The use of the archaic forms, or Elizabethan 
English, as Edward Fenimore calls them in one of the early studies of the novel (74), may 
add epic overtone to the given passage, as suggested by Baker, whose study was 
mentioned earlier. However, these forms are also taken from the sixteenth-century 
English to correspond to the contemporary Spanish forms: “tu” (Early Modern English:  
thou/thee) and the formal/polite form “Usted” (Early Modern English: ye; you). The 
pronoun forms which correspond to the now archaic English forms “thou” and formal 
“you” are used in Spanish today. Hemingway may have employed them deliberately to 
stress the distinction between “you” as an informal address and “you” as a polite or 
formal one to preserve the correspondence of his variant of the language with the 
Spanish. Therefore, Jordan addresses old Anselmo: “How are you called?”, using “you” 
to correspond to the polite form of the pronoun, whereas in his address to Maria, Jordan 
uses the informal pronoun “thou”: “How art thou called?” (Hemingway FWTBT 3; 14). 
The bringing of the two languages together is suggested in many other instances 
of the novel. Notably, English text is populated by Spanish words or phrases to suggest 
the authenticity of the characters’ language: mujer of Pablo, guardia civil, Cabrones!, 
Camarada; and exclamatory sentences, such as: “Viva la Anarquia!”,“Viva la 
Libertad!”, etc. Also, there are many instances when Spanish colloquial words and 
phrases are meant to be organically integrated into the dialogues, without any extra 
emphasis. Such phrases are the often repeated “qué va” [come on; no way]; also, “duesde 
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luego” [of course], “buen provecho” [bon appetite], hombre [people; guys], Hola [Hello], 
Salud [greetings!], etc. The function of the Spanish language in the text is the opposite to 
that of the French language in War and Peace: the Spanish words or phrases integrated 
into the English text suggest the authenticity of the characters and of the conversations 
that are led. Unlike the French-speaking characters who are prone to theatricality, 
conventionality, and deceitfulness in War and Peace, the Spanish-speaking guerillas in 
FWTBT are truthful and dedicated to the cause they are fighting for. Furthermore, the 
blending of English and Spanish suggests that the position of Robert Jordan, the English-
speaking character, coincides with that of other characters. 
To suggest further blending of the languages, the sentences or phrases given in 
Spanish are preceded or followed by English versions. This strategy is widely used 
throughout the novel; for example: “‘But since a long time he is muy flojo,’ Anselmo 
said. ‘He is very flaccid. […]’”; “‘[…] Now he would like to retire like a matador de 
toros. Like a bullfighter’” (Hemingway FWTBT 15); “‘What a fine town but how the 
buena gente, the good people of that town, have suffered in this war’” (74); “‘Eight men 
and four horses. Faltan caballos,’ he said. ‘Lacks horses.’”; “‘Dentro de la gravedad,’ he 
said in Spanish. ‘Within the limits of the danger.’”; “But I am also very delicate. Soy muy 
delicada”; “‘Pues me voy,’ Pilar said. ‘Then I am going’”; etc. Such repetitions of the 
content in two languages suggests the conscious attempt to give the English “the feeling” 
of the Spanish and vice versa. Hemingway does not choose to write the sentences in 
Spanish and rely on footnotes for translation for the American reader. Instead, he brings 
together the two languages in the same text. The result of putting together the 
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interchangeable content is a curious stylistic device, which blends the distinctive 
boundaries between the languages. 
The language principle in the novel becomes the main marker of Robert Jordan’s 
otherness, which the character strives to overcome throughout the book. Jordan’s status 
of a “foreigner” is secured through the nickname “Inglés” which he is given in the 
guerilla camp. Even Maria, his beloved, often refers to him by this name, as in the 
following dialogue: 
[…] “Oh, Inglés,” [Maria] said.  
“My name is Roberto.”  
“Nay. But I call thee Inglés as Pilar does.”  
“Still it is Roberto.” “No,” she told him. “Now for a whole day it is Inglés. And 
Inglés, can I help thee with thy work?”  (Hemingway FWTBT 95) 
Though Jordan insists on the name “Roberto,” revealing his desire to assimilate, he is still 
called by the name of his native language. Interestingly, Jordan gets his nickname by the 
native language principle and not by the principle of origin or the place of birth, i.e.: 
“Americano”; his otherness becomes delineated primarily linguistically, and the native 
language becomes a crucial factor of the divide between Jordan and the Spanish guerillas. 
Though Jordan loves the beautiful Spanish landscapes which he observes, and is 
willing to fight for the freedom of Spanish people, the reader is made conscious of the 
fact that Jordan does not fully belong to the place. The character’s status as a foreigner in 
the text, his otherness with regards to the people he meets, as well as his desire to 
overcome this status, is stressed in multiple conversations he has. When talking to Pablo, 
Jordan states: “That I am a foreigner is not my fault. I would rather have been born here” 
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(Hemingway FWTBT 10). The tension created by the fact that Jordan comes from a 
different country and is not a native Spanish speaker is repeatedly brought up in the 
novel. On learning that Jordan teaches Spanish for living, Fernando finds it unusual that a 
“foreigner,” that is, not a native language speaker, should teach Spanish, while Anselmo 
defends Jordan’s case by saying “‘He speaks Spanish as we do,’ […] ‘Why should he not 
teach Spanish?’” (115). On the same occasion Pedro calls Jordan “a false professor,” 
revealing his distrust of Jordan and of his occupation (115). Though most of the times the 
partisans agree with Jordan and are ready to help him, his otherness is brought up 
regularly in the conversations and his status as that of the other is emphasized.  
The linguistic difference becomes symptomatic of even further rift between the 
people Jordan encounters and himself. His belief system differs from their convictions. 
The guerillas are, for the most part, fervent believers in the Republic, while Jordan’s 
beliefs are more complicated. This difference in understanding of reality and in the belief 
systems are exposed in the novel through Jordan’s conversations with Pilar. Pilar 
confesses her very strong and ardent belief in the Republic to Jordan even though she 
knows of the crimes committed on the republican side, as she says: “I believe firmly in 
the Republic and I have faith” (50). When asked if he shares her beliefs, Jordan replies: 
“‘Yes,’ he said, hoping it was true,” revealing the uncertainty which once again signals 
his own difference from those around him (51). 
The rift between Jordan’s political views was pointed out by Carlos Baker in his 
“The Spanish Tragedy”: “Robert Jordan is with, but not of, the communists. […] Robert 
Jordan will remain as an essential nonconformist, a free man not taken it, though doing 
his part, in the perennial attempts which free men must make if the concept of freedom is 
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to last” (120). As a “free man,” Jordan is not taken in by ideology, but retains the ability 
to recognize the crimes on both sides. He is shaken by the terrible crimes committed by 
fascists when Maria and Joaquin tell their tragic stories. And he is deeply shaken to hear 
Pilar’s story of the terrifying massacre of the people in a small town who associated 
themselves with fascists by the supporters of the Republic. In his internal monologue, 
Jordan also reveals his disgust with the crimes of the Republicans in Spain, on whose 
side he fights:  
But you were always gone when it happened. The partizans did their damage and 
pulled out. The peasants stayed and took the punishment. I’ve always known 
about the other, he thought. What we did to them at the start I’ve always known it 
and hated it and I have heard it mentioned shamelessly and shamefully, bragged 
of, boasted of, defended, explained and denied. But that damned woman made me 
see it as though I had been there. (Hemingway FWTBT 75) 
This consideration of the suffering of the other side, reflected in Jordan’s complex 
thought process, supports Baker’s vision of Robert Jordan as a “free man” who cannot be 
fully entrapped in one ideology. Remaining a “free man,” Jordan cannot help but be 
skeptical of the values of the Republicans, as he recognizes their crimes. The internal 
thought process of Jordan is given in English, without Spanish interjections, signaling its 
belonging to Jordan’s internal monologue, which is not to be shared with others. In this 
monologue, the very word “partisans” is spelled unconventionally as “partizans” and 
italicized for emphasis; here Jordan does not include himself as one of them, pointing out 
his unwillingness to be associated with the partisans’ crimes. Further in the passage, 
however, Jordan admits his belonging to the Republicans by using the first person plural 
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pronoun “we”: “What we did to them at the start […],” admitting that he hates these 
wrongdoings. 
 The internal dialogism of the novel reflects the collisions of beliefs on several 
levels. On the one hand, Robert Jordan’s skepticism is stressed. On the other hand, 
Jordan’s recognition that fascism should be fought against is expressed, as he states: 
“‘We cannot destroy [the fascists]. But we can educate the people so that they will fear 
fascism and recognize it as it appears and combat it.’” (Hemingway FWTBT 114). Hence 
comes Jordan’s recognition of the necessity to do his duty, to bring his own contribution 
into this combat, as he tells it to Pilar (51), yet his knowledge about the crimes committed 
by his own side makes the whole idea of fighting hateful to him. Jordan wants to be one 
with the Spanish people, as he states, “I would have rather been born here” (10), but 
remains “Inglés” within the novel. 
 Jordan’s presence and the difference in his beliefs from those of the guerillas 
bring out the aspects in the guerillas which would not otherwise become visible except 
through the contact with the outsider, the foreigner, who fights on the same side as they 
do, yet maintains his otherness and autonomous point of view. Pilar admits to Jordan: “I 
confess a sadness to you, but do not think I lack resolution” (Hemingway FWTBT 50). 
Anselmo, one of the guerillas, confesses to Robert Jordan that he is highly disturbed by 
killing that fighting for the Republic demands: “But of the killing of a man, who is a man 
as we are, there is nothing good that remains” (23). He later adds that he is “against all 
killing of men,” which contrasts with the expectations that the others are placing on him 
as a guerilla (24). 
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 Hemingway uses his characters to discuss various aspects of language, and its 
relation to conflict. He exposes the quality of language to create terms which divide 
people and preclude them from reaching agreement. The elderly Anselmo watches the 
fascists in the old windmill and concludes that the only distinctions between people are 
the ones that are artificially created by them:  
I have watched [the fascists] all day and they are the same men that we are. I 
believe that I could walk up to the mill and knock on the door and I would be 
welcome except that they have orders to challenge all travelers and ask to see 
their papers. It is only orders that come between us. Those men are not fascists. I 
call them so, but they are not. They are poor men as we are. They should never be 
fighting against us and I do not like to think of the killing. (Hemingway FWTBT 
106) 
The language expressed as “orders” becomes an instrument that is used to reflect 
the artificial divisions among the Spanish people, as people on both sides speak the same 
language. Anselmo realizes that the people he watches are not different from himself or 
his comrades, and it is only because of their belonging to the opposite political camp they 
have to maintain hostility.  
 The elderly Anselmo serves as an interesting point of comparison with Platon 
Karataev in War and Peace, as both of the characters make explicit statements about the 
nature of otherness, the necessity of peaceful coexistence, and the ethics of forgiveness. 
Pierre Bezukhov, one of the main characters in Tolstoy’s novel, meets Platon Karataev in 
French captivity in 1813; Platon is a peasant soldier from the simple people whose 
gentleness and kindness singles him out among others. Platon in Tolstoy’s novel is a 
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bearer of national wisdom; he is a representative of the people, and is able to restore 
spiritual strength to the young educated aristocrat, Pierre Bezukhov (see Grebenschikov). 
The ultimate message that Karataev leaves with Pierre is a story about the merchant that 
he tells to the captives. The merchant was falsely convicted of murder, and was 
condemned to many years of hard labor. One time, being an old man, the merchant tells 
his story to other convicts, among whom the real murderer happens to be present. Having 
recognized the merchant, the murderer confesses that it was he who committed the crime 
and put the blame on the merchant. As the convict asks for the merchant’s forgiveness, 
the latter forgives him and dies soon afterwards without ever living to see his own 
rehabilitation. Karataev’s “story within a story” builds strongly on Christian morality, 
stressing the necessity of forgiving and love for others, even in the situations which make 
these qualities particularly hard. 
 Anselmo in FWTBT is appalled by killing, as was mentioned previously. Unlike 
Platon, he is not at peace and does not have the reassuring words for others to share, yet 
he also expresses the simple wisdom of life. In his view, it is ultimately wrong to bring 
harm to any of the people; he also asserts the necessity of being forgiven for hurting 
others. Anselmo recognizes that the people he is fighting against are in fact not very 
different from himself. His position is expressed in the following: 
[Killing] must really be a great sin, he thought. […] All the other things are 
forgiven or one had a chance to atone for them by kindness or in some decent 
way. But I think this of the killing must be a very great sin and I would like to fix 
it up. Later on there may be certain days that one can work for the state or 
something that one can do that will remove it. (Hemingway FWTBT 109) 
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Both Tolstoy’s Platon Karataev and Hemingway’s Anselmo expressing wisdom and 
common sense with regards to people’s treatment of each other in the times of conflict; 
they raise the questions of the moral dimension of human relations, especially in the 
situation of war. The philosophy expressed through these characters is that of the ethical 
treatment of the other regardless of circumstances. As is the case with Platon, Anselmo is 
a peasant and tends to look at people without discriminating among them. The crucial 
difference between him and Tolstoy’s Platon, however, lies in Anselmo’s inability to live 
up to his philosophy. It is only in his dreams of the future that Anselmo envisions a 
society which allows for atonement for one’s sins and life in harmony with others. 
 Anselmo’s language in the story is imbedded with simplicity and straightforward 
reasoning, as seen in the example, where he reflects on killing. This simplicity and 
truthfulness in language is contrasted with the artificiality of elevated language and 
political slogans in FWTBT. Similar to Tolstoy’s dislike of the artificiality of beautiful 
expression, Hemingway is distrustful of the pathos present in loud phrases and slogans. 
In the famous battle on the hillside, when El Sordo’s guerilla unit is trapped on the 
hillside and about to be destroyed by the plains, Joaquin, the youngest of the guerillas, 
starts quoting the famous communist slogan: 
“Resistir y fortificar es vencer.” Joaquin said, his mouth stiff with the 
dryness of fear which surpassed the normal thirst of battle. It was one of the 
slogans of the Communist party and it meant, “Hold out and fortify, and you will 
win.”  
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Sordo looked away and down the slope at where a cavalryman was sniping 
from behind the boulder. He was very fond of this boy and he was in no mood for 
slogans. (Hemingway FWTBT 332) 
The elder guerillas respond to Joaquin’s rhetoric briefly: “Mierda” and “Mierda again,” 
which is a vulgar expression meaning “crap.” Joaquin quotes the famous Republican 
orator Passionaria in this passage, turning to elevated political rhetoric, yet unable to 
cope with the feeling of fear. The elder soldiers, unlike Joaquin, are able to recognize the 
uselessness of such slogans before he can. Joaquin refuses to believe that Passionaria’s 
son stays hidden in Russia; when the others tell him of it, he denies this: “‘It’s a lie,’ 
Joaquin said. ‘She would not do such a thing as keep a son hidden in Russia out of the 
war’” (332). Here Hemingway demonstrates the firm roots of the loud political rhetoric 
in the mind of a young soldier. Yet, the uselessness of elevated political rhetoric in the 
time of realistic danger is exposed, as the slogans cannot sustain Joaquin in the time of 
closeness to death. Having started with the passionate slogan, Joaquin turns to prayer as 
the hill is bombed (332).   
 Here again language plays an important role in communicating the meaning of the 
passage. In a way similar to that of Tolstoy, Hemingway makes the reader suspicious of 
elevated rhetoric. For Tolstoy, French is used to expose and stress such an expression, 
whereas in the above episode of FWTBT, the original Spanish serves to emphasize such a 
quality of language. The communist slogan does not sustain young Joaquin in the time of 
danger and he turns to quoting the words of the prayer. “Resistir y fortificar es vencer” 
sounds loud and expressive in Spanish, the language in which it was first originally 
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spoken. Further on, the words of the prayer are offered in English, which sounds familiar 
and simple, compared to the loud expressiveness of the slogan.  
 Hemingway’s specific literal use of the two languages, as well as the descriptions 
of various collisions of people within the novel, encompass and communicate these 
contradictions, revealing the hidden authorial intensions. In his analysis of novelistic 
discourse Bakhtin writes:  
As we have said above, the narrator's story or the story of the posited author is 
structured against the background of normal literary language, the expected 
literary horizon. Every moment of the story has a conscious relationship with this 
normal language and its belief system, is in fact set against them, and set against 
them dialogically: one point of view opposed to another, one evaluation opposed 
to another, one accent opposed to another (i.e., they are not contrasted as two 
abstractly linguistic phenomena). This interaction, this dialogic tension between 
two languages and two belief systems, permits authorial intentions to be realized 
in such a way that we can acutely sense their presence in every point in the work. 
The author is not to be found in the language of the narrator, not in the normal 
literary language to which the story opposes itself (although a given story may be 
closer to a given language) - but rather, the author utilizes now one language, now 
another, in order to avoid giving himself up wholly to either of them; he makes 
use of this verbal give-and-take, this dialogue of languages at every point in his 
work in order that he himself might remain as it were neutral with regard to 
language, a third party in a quarrel between two people (though he might be a 
biased third party). (“Discourse” 314) 
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Though Bakhtin speaks of the way one language within the novel may be stratified to 
reflect the oppositions of various beliefs, Hemingway’s use of the two different 
languages to stress Robert Jordan’s desire to overcome his otherness, at the same time as 
to outline his difference, becomes an interesting case of novelistic language use. As 
Bakhtin describes the authorial position within the novel, Hemingway as an author 
struggles “not to be found in the language of the narrator.”  
Baker stresses that “For Whom the Bell Tolls offers many examples of the 
author’s determination to maintain that balance without which art may degenerate into 
propaganda. One of the most conspicuous is Pilar’s account of the massacre of the 
leading citizens of a town near Avila by Pablo and his mob” (118). FWTBT carefully 
avoids what Bakhtin calls a “propagandizing impulse”; the languages are not divided by 
any definitive principle into “ours” or “theirs,” but they work together in the novel to 
expose the contradictions which lead to division among people.  
 The novel’s ultimate message about unity is reflected in Robert Jordan’s struggle 
to overcome his otherness in Spain. It is possible that Hemingway is writing his own 
feelings about the country into the novel, as his love for Spain is well-known (see 
Ammary 55). The language of the novel emphasizes unity with the Spanish earth as a 
way to overcome the otherness associated with foreign status, native languages, and 
differences in cultural heritage. The descriptions of the beautiful Spanish landscape 
proliferate in FWTBT. The most interesting are the images which suggest Robert Jordan’s 
acculturation and acceptance of Spain as his own land. The novel starts with the 
description of the landscape which Jordan observes: 
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He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded 
arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. The 
mountainside sloped gently where he lay; but below it was steep and he could see 
the dark of the oiled road winding through the pass. There was a stream alongside 
the road and far down the pass he saw a mill beside the stream and the falling 
water of the dam, white in the summer sunlight. (Hemingway FWTBT 2) 
The image of Robert Jordan lying “flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest,” 
open to the beautiful view of the mountainside with the winding road, the stream, and the 
mill already suggests the character’s physical unity with this beautiful earth. The view of 
the earth, described with the vivid colors of the forest green and the white of the snow, 
draws the readers’ attention throughout the text. In her study Silvia Ammary notes that 
“The novel For Whom the Bell Tolls probably exemplifies that sacredness of the Spanish 
earth the most, and the most admirable characters are the ones that are associated with it” 
(66). Jordan’s physical closeness to this beautiful earth gains a symbolic meaning in the 
novel: though a foreigner, Jordan strives for the unity with this earth, as he is ready to 
give his life for it. 
It is through Jordan’s love for Maria, the girl he meets in the guerilla camp, that 
he can become closer to the Spanish earth, which Maria symbolically represents. 
Ammary states that Maria “is associated with Mother Earth in her innocence and her 
fragility.” The scholar further argues that “Maria represents the abused earth, the Spanish 
earth that was raped and violated by the Fascists” (69). Maria was taken by the guerillas 
after she escaped from imprisonment after a train wreck. He body was severely violated 
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during her imprisonment. The language of the novel stresses Maria’s innocence and 
beauty; it also abounds in imagery that makes Maria into a symbol of the Spanish earth.  
The linguistic description of Maria’s presence in the novel suggests her symbolic 
significance through the association with the earth. Ammary notices that “even if [Maria] 
appears very vulnerable or even not realistically depicted, it is because of her importance 
as a symbol” (69). First of all, it is important to point to the significance of Maria’s 
nickname, which Jordan gives to her, “conjeho” (English: “rabbit”). For several 
generations scholars have pointed to the controversy of this nickname without 
consideration of the larger historical background to interpret it. Allen Josephs calls 
Hemingway’s choice of the nickname “one ‘error’ which has been a critical bone of 
contention” (For Whom 156). Basing his comments on earlier critical works, Josephs 
explains that this nickname coincides with a vulgar expression associated with females. 
Josephs, however, agrees that Hemingway might not have been aware of this colloquial 
meaning, stating that the word can still be interpreted positively in the context of the 
novel. More recent scholarship offers a quite different interpretation of Maria’s nickname 
which explains it in a larger context of Hemingway’s intentions.  
Douglass Edward LaPrade in his essay “Sources of Hemingway’s For Whom the 
Bell Tolls” builds on Hemingway’s deeper knowledge of Spanish history, rather than on 
his ignorance. LaPrade states that by offering the nickname “conjeho” to Maria, 
Hemingway pays tribute to the historical name of the country. According to one of the 
theories of the etymology of the contemporary name Spain (Hispania), it was given by 
the Phoenician explorers, who first saw it as a land abundant in rabbits. LaPrade further 
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argues for the strong association of the character of Maria with Spain and points to many 
other historical references in FWTBT (see LaPrade). 
The descriptive language of the novel supports this interpretation of the character. 
Maria is often associated with the natural world: “Her hair was a golden brown of the 
grain field that has been burned dark in the sun but it was cut short all over her head so 
that it was but little longer than the fur of the beaver pelt”; Maria’s hair is further shown 
as “thick and short and rippling” “as a grain field in the wind on a hillside” (Hemingway 
FWTBT 25; 27). Looking at Joaquin and Maria, Jordan observes that: “the boy and the 
girl are like young trees” (75). He further notes that “The old trees are all cut down and 
the young trees are growing clean like that. In spite of what has happened to the two of 
them they look as fresh and clean and new and untouched as though they had never heard 
of misfortune” (75). Maria is associated with the beauty of the Spanish earth, with its 
golden fields of grain and trees. The capacity of the nature to renew itself after 
misfortune is also used to describe her. Jordan’s love for Maria and his decision to marry 
her strengthen his association with Spain and its people. 
In War and Peace it is Natasha who, like Maria, symbolically embodies the traits 
associated with her country. Nicholas O. Warner, in his study of Natasha states that “Of 
all the characters in War and Peace, Natasha is the one who combines a maximum of 
multilayered individuation with a maximum of symbolic value” (Warner 1015). Though 
Natasha as a character does present a “multilayered individuation” and cannot be reduced 
to only one interpretation, looking at this character alongside Maria, reveals parallel lines 
of symbolic meaning in them.  
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The critical interpretation of Natasha as a character follows several lines. Paul 
Romney argues that she represents “the Eternal Feminine: an essence varying in its 
manifestation, according to the male who is exposed to it, from good fairy or enchantress 
(Prince Andrei, Denisov) to jailbait (Anatole Kuragin)” (58). Natasha does reveal varying 
feminine qualities with regards to each male character she interacts with; however, her 
character preserves a certain consistency and unity throughout the book, which is 
associated with her spontaneity of emotional responses and gravitation towards 
everything natural and authentic. From the early chapters of the novel where the reader 
sees a thirteen-year-old Natasha who spies on her elder brother and her cousin in the 
conservatory to the much more mature woman at Prince Andrei’s deathbed, she presents 
a captivating image of both authenticity of feeling and romantic longing. Andrew 
Kaufman, an American Tolstoy scholar, calls her “one of those ‘broad Russian souls’ 
with big heart and a childlike openness to the world” (38), capturing the essential traits of 
Natasha’s character. It is through the association with the “broad Russian soul” that 
Tolstoy extends symbolic meaning to the character. Natasha, the true heroine of the book, 
in many ways incarnates the “broad Russian soul” and stands for everything natural and 
authentic which is hidden in the Russian character; in this sense, Natasha can be also seen 
as an embodiment of Russia itself in certain parts of the novel, where the fate of this 
character mirrors the fate of the land. This symbolic meaning of the leading female 
character is also present in Hemingway’s image of Maria in FWTBT. 
The language used in the descriptions of Maria clearly indicates her proximity to 
the Spanish earth, signaling Maria’s embodiment of its innocence and trauma. In War 
and Peace, the character of Natasha in its embodiment of everything Russian differs 
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considerably from Maria’s. The essence of Russia for Tolstoy is hidden in the authentic 
folk tradition. Natasha is shown in her beauty, her liveliness, her charm, in her family 
life, and also in her sadness and grief; whenever the reader encounters this character, she 
is endowed with a spirit of authenticity that alludes to the Russian folk tradition. 
Natasha’s poor French is emphasized to strengthen her association with everything 
Russian. When Prince Andrei falls in love with Natasha, he notices her “mistakes in 
French” which, in his eyes, make her character stand out among other people in society 
and make him like her even more (Tolstoy Vol. II, 461). Natasha’s name is almost never 
used in its French version in the novel (in contrast to the character of Hélène, who is 
mostly referred to as Hélène). And when Natasha is referred to as Natalie, it is by the 
negative characters as, for example, by her elder sister Vera, or in the situations when the 
character dislikes Natasha, as during Natasha’s first meeting with Princess Marya. 
Therefore, Natasha contrasts with everything which is man-made and artificial in society, 
which also means French ways and the French language as the sources of artificiality, in 
Tolstoy’s view.  
The description of Natasha is important in terms of the culture that this character 
is called to represent, a culture which is authentically Russian, and which is in contrast to 
French influences. Rather early in the novel Tolstoy talks about Natasha’s voice as 
genuine and authentic, which, though not devoid of flaws, brings joy to everyone who 
hears it:  
While this unpolished voice with its wrong breathing and strained transitions was 
singing, even the critical connoisseurs said nothing and merely enjoyed this 
unpolished voice, merely wanted to hear it again. Her voice had that virgin, intact 
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quality, that unawareness of its strength, that unpolished velvetiness, which were 
so combined with the deficiency in the art of singing that it seemed impossible to 
change anything in this voice without spoiling it. (Tolstoy Vol. II, 342-43) 
Natasha’s voice is one not touched by the societal norms which define good singing, but 
is authentic and natural. This description to a great extent defines the character of 
Natasha. Throughout almost all of the novel she remains true to the instinctive responses 
characteristic of authentic feelings. 
 Natasha brings her “natural” grace to high society. This is how Tolstoy describes 
Prince Andrei’s interest in Natasha: “Prince Andrei, like all people who have grown up in 
society, liked to encounter things in society that did not have the general society stamp on 
them. And Natasha was just that, with her astonishment, joy, and timidity, and even her 
mistakes in French” (Tolstoy Vol. II, 461). The “astonishment,” “joy,” and “timidity,” 
authentic emotions, are contrasted with the artificiality of the manners accepted in 
society, where everyone is governed by prescribed rules. Natasha, in Prince Andrei’s 
eyes, though being an aristocrat, does not “have the general society stamp” on her, but 
represents something authentic which the artificial society lacks. This authenticity makes 
Natasha’s mistakes in French sound natural and attractive, as they further contrast her 
with the general and accepted culture of her time. 
Natasha’s closeness to the natural and to the folk tradition is emphasized 
throughout the novel. Despite being born and raised an aristocrat, Natasha is able to feel 
the joys of being connected to nature and is happy and content experiencing simple joys. 
Telling is the scene when Natasha accompanies her elder brother Nikolai on a hunt. 
Ilagin, Rostovs’ hunting rival, says that the young countess Natasha “represented Diana 
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both in her passion for hunting and in her beauty, of which he had heard so much” 
(Tolstoy Vol. II, 504). She impresses everyone with her skill in horseback riding which is 
natural to her. Later, after the hunt, in the house of the neighbor  referred to as “uncle” in 
the story, Natasha engages in a folk dance with him, similarly demonstrating a natural 
grace which surprises and impresses everyone who sees it: 
Where, how, and when had this little countess, brought up by an émigré 
Frenchwoman, sucked this spirit in from the Russian air she breathed, where had 
she gotten these ways, which should have been long supplanted by the pas de 
châle. Yet that spirit and these ways were those very inimitable, unstudied 
Russian ones which the uncle expected from her. As soon as she stood there, 
smiling triumphantly, proudly, and with sly merriment, the fear which had first 
seized Nikolai and all those present – that she would not do it right – went away 
and they began to admire her. (512) 
Natasha embodies the very essence of the Russian “spirit” in this scene that sets everyone 
wondering “where” and “how” she was able to pick up the skills of the folk dancing. The 
culture she represents and stands for is presented in contrast to the French one, as the 
Russian dance is compared to the French shawl dance (“pas de châle”), which had to be 
taught to Natasha. The folk tradition, on the contrary, was picked up by the countess 
effortlessly, like breathing in the “Russian air.” Natasha dances “proudly” and 
“triumphantly,” setting everyone who watches and participates at ease, bringing joy to 
them and touching their hearts:  
She did it exactly right, and so precisely, so perfectly precisely, that Anisya 
Fyodorovna, who at once handed Natasha the kerchief she needed for it, wept 
104 
 
through her laughter, looking at this slender graceful countess, brought up in silk 
and velvet, so foreign to her, who was able to understand everything that was in 
Anisya and in Anisya’s father, and in her aunt, and in her mother, and in every 
Russian.” (512) 
Anisya, who lives among the peasants and initially perceives Natasha as someone 
“foreign” to herself, a countess raised “in silk and velvet,” now recognizes the common 
culture shared by both of them. Natasha’s dancing moves are “perfectly precise,” and 
through them Anisya can see the depth of Natasha’s understanding of the common life of 
Russian peasantry, a life which stands in harmony with the ways of nature. Reading the 
scenes of Natasha’s dancing, John Hagan notes that “The artificial class barriers which 
have kept [Natasha] […]–separated from such a household as Uncle's fall away, and she 
achieves for the first time a profound instinctive rapport with a simple, natural, Russian 
life, to which she herself is so unconsciously akin” (239). This natural ability to 
understand the culture of the people, the “rapport” she feels with the “simple, natural, 
Russian life” makes up the symbolic level of Natasha’s presence in the book, as she is 
identified with “every Russian.” 
 Tolstoy contrasts the “natural” peasant life with that of the artificiality of high 
society, with Natasha bridging the two worlds effectively, yet staying true to her 
authentic natural ways. Already at the uncle’s house in Mikhailovka, after hearing him 
sing, Natasha decides “she would no longer study the harp, but would only play the 
guitar. She took the uncle’s guitar and at once found the chords for the song” (Tolstoy 
Vol. II, 513). Abandoning the harp for the guitar, an instrument closer to the simple 
Russian life, once again signals Natasha’s kinship with the common natural life, yet her 
105 
 
aristocratic upbringing and the way of life make this character into an ideal representative 
of “every Russian.”   
 In terms of language, Natasha is one of the most inarticulate characters in the 
novel. She struggles to articulate her vision of others: Natasha describes Boris, her 
childhood love, to her mother as “so narrow, like a dining-room clock… You 
understand? … Narrow, you know, gray, light grey…” (Tolstoy Vol. II, 452). Like 
Natasha’s voice that is untrained but sounds beautiful and authentic, her language, though 
fragmented, reflects the truth as she sees it. Though Natasha clearly struggles to express 
her opinion in words, the reader does gain a sense of Boris being a narrow-minded 
character, a vision that is consistent throughout the novel. Natasha’s movements, the 
sound of her voice, and her gestures are much more telling than her words. Natasha 
symbolically embodies everything natural and instinctive throughout the novel, features 
that further link her to the Russian culture that is associated with authenticity. 
Through his presentation of this character, Tolstoy once again negotiates his 
opposition to the French culture as artificial and unnatural in the Russian milieu. In 
negotiating such vision, Tolstoy is also placing the two cultures in a distinct opposition, 
as he does with the two languages, constructing a vision of the folk Russian culture as 
more truthful and at the same time alluring, as is Natasha’s beauty. The view offered 
does not presuppose the fruitful cross-pollination of the two cultures, or does not open 
the possibility of one culture learning from the other. Instead, everything pertaining to 
Russia appears as natural, while everything French appears as artificial. Though she has 
never been taught, Natasha is able to make all the folk dance moves “perfectly precisely,” 
106 
 
similarly, she can also play guitar without practicing; however, she makes mistakes in her 
French, though taught and forced to speak it constantly. 
When viewed alongside Tolstoy’s Natasha, Maria can be seen as the embodiment 
of the spirit of Spain, though through quite different associations. Maria is not associated 
with the folk and the traditional arts, as Natasha is. However, she becomes the broad 
embodiment of the Spanish earth, its nature and landscape, as well as its history and 
trauma. Maria’s body, hurt and violated during the war, represents the earth “raped and 
violated by the Fascists” (Ammary 69). Maria bears the scars from the wounds on her 
body. Yet, like the earth, she is able to be revived, be happy, and bring happiness. Her 
love for Robert Jordan, a “foreigner,” symbolically represents the embrace of an 
international perspective by Spain at the time of crisis.  
Through his love for Maria, Robert Jordan is able to love Spain and to overcome 
his status of a foreigner. Alex Link in his article writes that the novel “is particularly 
insistent on combining romantic love with utopian idealism, implying that Jordan can 
love both Maria and, through her, a Republican Spain” (137). Jordan’s romantic, 
idealized love once again suggests the image of unity that makes him one with the earth. 
Emphasizing this oneness, Maria says to Jordan: “Thou hast no heart but mine” and “And 
if thou dost not love me, I love thee enough for both” (Hemingway FWTBT 142; 146). As 
the two of them part, Robert Jordan tells Maria: “As long as there is one of us there is 
both of us. Do you understand?”; “If thou goest then I go, too. Do you not see how it is? 
Whichever one there is, is both”; “Now you go for us both. Truly. We both go in thee 
now”; “Thou art me too now. Thou art all there will be of me. Stand up” (247). In his last 
words to Maria, Jordan uses the pronouns “thee” and “you” freely and interchangeably, 
107 
 
which shows his creation of a language which successfully unites the features of both 
languages. Though Jordan cannot escape after blowing up the bridge because he is 
wounded, he reassures Maria of their connectedness and their oneness, which is 
confirmed in the language. After Maria leaves, he makes himself believe it is possible for 
him to join her. His love for Maria, the images of connection and unity of the two, 
suggest that Jordan can finally overcome his foreignness and become integrated into the 
land and culture he is fighting for.  
The final scene of the novel shows Jordan in harmony with the Spanish earth: “He 
was completely integrated now and he took a good long look at everything. Then he 
looked up at the sky. There were big white clouds in it. He touched the palm of his hand 
against the pine needles where he lay and he touched the bark of the pine trunk that he 
lay behind” (Hemingway FWTBT 251). This scene bears comparison to the opening 
paragraph of the novel, where Jordan is also shown lying flat on the Spanish earth. 
Unlike in the opening scene, the image suggests completion of the full cycle: Jordan is 
“completely integrated” with the earth.  
This image of integration is confirmed through the name used by Maria to address 
Robert Jordan. Frequently in the novel Maria addressed Jordan by the nickname Inglés. 
However, in the last scenes of the novel, Maria calls Robert Jordan “Roberto,” the name 
he uses to introduce himself to her and other guerillas, and the name he insists on: 
“’Roberto,” Maria turned and shouted. ‘Let me stay! Let me stay!’” (Hemingway FWTBT 
248). To this Jordan answers: “‘I am with thee,” Robert Jordan shouted. “I am with thee 
now. We are both there. Go!,’” emphasizing, once again, the unity which exists between 
them (248). Ironically, the moment of full integration is also the moment which precedes 
108 
 
Jordan’s death, suggesting that unity is possible for a brief second, and the otherness can 
only be overcome when Jordan sacrifices his life for others. Here, the character of Jordan 
recalls Tolstoy’s Prince Andrei who, being wounded after the Battle of Austerlitz, feels 
the unity with the sky and gains a vision of infinity at that moment.
4
 
In her study Silvia Ammary suggests that “Throughout the novel, Jordan has 
become more and more hispanized, loving this land as Hemingway loved the simpler, 
earthier, more natural and traditional lifestyle that the Spanish had” (70). The images of 
Jordan’s unity with the Spanish earth, which is constructed primarily through the 
symbolic role of Maria in the novel, suggest that this “hispanization” is completed 
towards the end of the novel. Though he remains a “free man,” who dreams of returning 
to the United States, he still makes the choice of giving his life to help save the lives of 
his friends, and thus to protect what he loves in Spain.  
Looking at the image of Jordan and his “hispanization,”which occurs as his 
language becomes affected by the Spanish and through the images of unity with Maria 
and with the Spanish earth, alongside the case of Natasha Rostova and Pierre Bezukhov, 
opens up a new vision of the latter couple. Through his communion with Natasha, Pierre 
also becomes integrated into the natural and “earthier” world of a family, which once 
again is contrasted with the ways of the high society. Though Natasha is depicted as 
having lost her charm after marriage, her ways have become attuned to the natural and 
traditional way of life. After marriage Natasha has abandoned most of the practices 
accepted and admired in society:  
Natasha took no trouble either about her manners, or about the delicacy of her 
speech, or about showing herself to her husband in the most advantageous poses, 
                                                        
4
 For a discussion of the character of Prince Andrei see Chapter I. 
109 
 
or about her toilette, or about not hampering her husband with her demands. She 
did everything contrary to these rules. She felt that the charms which her instinct 
had taught her to make use of before would now only be ridiculous in the eyes of 
her husband, to whom, from the first moment, she had given herself entirely – that 
is, with her whole soul, leaving not leaving one little corner that was not open to 
him. (Tolstoy Epilogue, Part One, 1155) 
It has become customary to look at Natasha as fully changed after her marriage to Pierre, 
and see her as one who has lost all her fire and loveliness afterwards. However, in acting 
contradictory to man-made societal rules, she, once again and finally, turns to a more 
natural way of living. Tolstoy further writes that “Natasha did not follow the golden rule 
preached by intelligent people, especially the French, according to which a girl, once 
married, should not let herself go, should not abandon her talents […]” (1154).  Acting in 
a simpler, natural manner, without artificial behaviors, such as caring about manners, 
speech, toilette, etc., allows Natasha to come closer to the more simple folk Russian 
ways, which she has always had an affinity with. At the same time, Natasha is free from 
the perceived necessity of following the French rules of fashion and behavior. 
 Her husband Pierre finds a feeling of joy in the unity with his wife: “After seven 
years of married life, Pierre felt a joyful, firm consciousness that he was not a bad man, 
and he felt it because he saw himself reflected in his wife. […] But only what was truly 
good was reflected in his wife; all that was not entirely good was rejected” (Tolstoy 
Epilogue, Part One, 1157). Tolstoy stresses the good and positive side of Pierre’s union 
with Natasha. Pierre accepts Natasha’s simple natural ways and finds happiness with her. 
However, he does not reach the perfect state of completeness, as does Robert Jordan 
110 
 
through his unity with the Spanish earth in FWTBT. In the Epilogue, the reader learns of 
Pierre’s political activity, as Pierre discusses it with Nikolai Rostov; Pierre talks about 
the “inevitable upheaval” and of the necessity for people to “join hands, as many and as 
closely as possible, to oppose the general catastrophe” (1169). Unlike his earlier 
engagements with the Masons, this time Pierre talks about action, and his “animated and 
rapturous figure” reveals how passionate he is about his engagement (1169). At the end 
of the novel, Pierre is still a seeker, unable to reach the state of “complete integration” 
achieved by Hemingway’s Robert Jordan and Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, discussed in 
Chapter I of this dissertation. 
 As noted by Lukacs, Tolsoy’s characters cannot carry their revelations beyond the 
moments they experience them and into the world they live in. In The Theory of the 
Novel, Lukacs writes that “At very rare, great moments—generally they are moments of 
death—a reality reveals itself to a man in which he suddenly glimpses and grasps the 
essence that rules over him and works within him, the meaning of life”; however, “these 
crucial moments of bill are the moments of dying” (149). Hemingway’s Robert Jordan 
and Tolstoy’s Prince Andrei experience these great near-death moments where they reach 
“complete integration.” Yet such integration is denied to Pierre who continues to live and 
seek for the meaning of life. 
 Hemingway and Tolstoy reveal their preference for the simple and natural ways 
of life both through linguistic expression and the imagery used within the novels. 
However, the simple and the natural are understood quite differently in each novel. For 
Tolstoy, the Russian language and the Russian folk tradition stand for authenticity. 
Hemingway sees the natural in the integration of the otherness of his character into the 
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cultural atmosphere of Spain, and in Jordan’s union with the Spanish earth. In the case of 
Tolstoy’s War and Peace, the French language is used to juxtapose the Russian and the 
French cultures, while also to oppose the culture of the high society with the one of the 
peasants who adhere to folk traditions. Tolstoy’s rejection of the French language and 
culture as potentially productive forces within early nineteenth-century society reveal his 
monologic vision in the novel, especially taking into consideration the fact that Tolstoy 
as a writer remains highly influenced by French authors, particularly by Stendhal in his 
construction of war scenes and psychological aspect of character development in War 
and Peace.
5
 Tolstoy’s presentation of French culture as the other is largely motivated by 
his subject, which is the Russian war with Napoleon; and despite “the Count’s great 
[political] thinking,” which Hemingway criticized, the novels share a gravitation towards 
the images of natural and authentic, which are associated with the truthful depiction of 
reality.  
When Hemingway’s FWTBT is examined closely in relation to Tolstoy’s War and 
Peace, Hemingway’s bilingualism, as well as his use of the imagery, reveals a different 
purpose. Hemingway uses the language factor to construct a story of the integration of 
his main character into Spanish Republican culture. While Robert Jordan remains 
linguistically and culturally different throughout a significant part of the novel, his 
otherness allows for opening up a discussion about various sides of the conflict in the 
novel; Jordan’s difference reveals points of view which can only become visible in 
relation to his otherness. The English and the Spanish in FWTBT are not juxtaposed; the 
blending of these two languages creates a complex language atmosphere which makes 
room for inclusion of a multiplicity of perspectives. The acculturation and even 
                                                        
5
 Stendhal’s influence on Tolstoy’s writing is discussed by Buyniak.  
112 
 
“hispanization” of Robert Jordan, which may be reflective of Hemingway’s political 
view of the necessity of the unified front, also constructs a culturally inclusive space, 
which is open to multicultural perspectives. Hemingway’s rhetoric of self-sacrifice, 
undertaken by Robert Jordan at the end of the novel, as necessary for overcoming of 
otherness and protecting of the loved ones, further strengthens the author’s emphasis on 
the necessity of unification and inclusion. 
Though Tolstoy’s treatment of language reveals his monologic vision, the novel 
also allows for an alternative interpretation when the Levinasian ethics of the I-other 
relationship is considered alongside War and Peace. As shown in Chapter I, the 
monologic vision, or the vision of totality, is deconstructed in War and Peace when the 
characters gain a different vision of the other, when they accept otherness and no longer 
objectify the other. Such a vision is open to Prince Andrei when he forgives his enemy 
Anatole Kuragin and learns to love Natasha in a new and selfless manner at the time 
before his death (Tolstoy Vol. III, 814; Vol. III, 922).
6
 Andrei’s experience is comparable 
to that of Robert Jordan, who similarly gains a new vision of Maria at the moment before 
his death. For the first time in the novel Jordan is “completely integrated” at the time 
before his death; like Prince Andrei, he also “looked up at the sky” acknowledging his 
new vision. Before his death, Prince Andrei says to Natasha: “‘I love you more, better, 
than before’” (Vol. III, 922), words that also reflect the vision of Robert Jordan. Jordan’s 
sacrifice to save the lives of Maria and other guerillas reveals the Levinasian vision of the 
primacy of the other that he gains. His love for Maria and for the Spanish earth is no 
longer tied to the visual images that we see throughout the novel, but is transformed into 
a larger realization of responsibility before the other. It is in fulfilling of his responsibility 
                                                        
6
 The examples mentioned here are discussed in detail in Chapter I. 
113 
 
before the other, which demands a sacrifice from him, that Jordan is able to finally feel 
“completely integrated” into the culture that was alien for him. Through these new 
visions, the characters of Prince Andrei and Robert Jordan overcome monologism but 
acquire a broader understanding of otherness. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Chapter III: Innocence before the Fall: the Decomposition of Totality in Wharton’s The 
Age of Innocence 
 “[…] in a sympathetic study of the past might lie the secret of dealing with present 
evils.” Edith Wharton The Valley of Decision (1902) 
 
In her only collection of critical essays which were gathered and published as a 
separate book under the title The Writing of Fiction (1924), Edith Wharton, the Pulitzer 
Prize-winning American novelist, writes: “The artist of other races has always been not 
only permitted but enjoined to see life whole; and it is this, far more than any superiority 
of genius, that lifts Balzac, Stendhal and Tolstoy so high above even Thackeray when the 
universal values are to be appraised” (64). The vision of “life whole” is for Wharton a 
key feature the key feature that elevates such writers as Balzac, Stendhal and Tolstoy 
over writers who, in her view, lack such a perspective. Wharton persistently defends the 
necessity of holistic or total vision for a novelist in her critical works, which later leads to 
her conflict with modernist writers. Wharton is particularly fond of what she sees as 
Tolstoy’s outstanding ability to set the stage for the key personages so that the totality, or 
a larger conflict of the novel, becomes visible in various scenes that Wharton describes 
from War and Peace (1869). As she explains, “The evening party with which ‘War and 
Peace’ begins is one of the most triumphant examples in fiction of the difficult art of 
‘situating’ the chief actors in the opening chapter of what is to be an exceptionally 
crowded novel. […] Tolstoy with one mighty sweep gathers up all his principal 
characters and sets them before us in action” (99). Wharton’s ambition to give a total 
picture of the “old New York” of a time before the First World War in her Pulitzer-Prize 
winning novel The Age of Innocence (1920) is what prompts her to look for examples in 
the works of authors who dealt with periods of profound social changes and crisis. In 
115 
 
particular, Tolstoy’s examples in his novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina (1973-
77) help Wharton to set the stage for the representation of a time of crisis in her novel. 
While Wharton continues to defend the necessity of a vision of “life whole” in her 
theoretical writings, her novel The Age of Innocence reveals that holding on to such a 
vision becomes increasingly problematic at the turn of the century. Wharton’s picture of 
“old New York,” (which served as the first working title of the novel (see Lewis Edith 
Wharton)), reveals a society which imagines itself as a totality and struggles to preserve 
such a vision at a time when its views and values are challenged. Wharton attacks the 
traditionalism associated with the ways of New York society of the 1870s with the 
limitations it imposes on its members. The novel reveals Wharton’s ambivalent attitude 
towards totality: she mourns the loss of it in the novel but conspicuously reveals its 
limitations, and recognizes the impossibility of holding on to such a vision beyond the 
pre-war “age of innocence.” In this sense, The Age of Innocence becomes a commentary 
on a time of historical change, marking the transition from a society driven by 
nineteenth-century values to those of the twentieth century.  
Though Wharton consistently advocates for the traditional realist novel form in 
her theoretical works, she introduces the elements of modernist aesthetics into her novel 
to show the disintegration of the traditional social mechanisms associated with old New 
York. Through the character of Ellen Olenska, who does not fit into the traditional ways 
of the society and eventually finds herself ostracized from it, Wharton explores modernist 
aesthetics and deconstructs the vision of totality in the novel.   
The title of the novel, The Age of Innocence, calls attention to the novel’s 
temporal setting – before the First World War – which by the time the novel is written in 
116 
 
1920 is already a site of history. The title makes a reference to the war as a crucial 
watershed that brought about significant social changes, causing the “age” to lose its 
“innocence.”  At the time she was working on The Age of Innocence, Wharton offered a 
comment on the post-war novel’s relationship with history to art historian, Bernard 
Berenson:  
Before the war you could write fiction without indicating the period, the present 
being assumed. The war has put an end to that for a long time, and everything will 
soon have to be timed with reference to it. In other words, the historical novel 
with all its vices will be the only possible form of fiction. (In Lewis 425) 
Wharton recognizes that all works of fiction appearing after the war are, to an extent, in 
dialogue with this event and posit it as a crucial point of reference. The war thus is seen 
as interrupting an organic continuity that was assumed to follow its natural course before 
the war. Wharton’s article “Tendencies in Modern Fiction” (1934) opens with a 
statement which reveals her understanding of contemporary culture in the context of the 
post-war world: “The moral and intellectual destruction caused by the war, and by its far-
reaching consequences, was shattering to traditional culture; and so far as the new 
novelists may be said to have any theory of their art, it seems to be that every new 
creation can issue only from the annihilation of what preceded it” (170). Wharton blames 
primarily the war for “shattering” the “traditional culture” and destroying the values of a 
generation.  
Though Wharton sets her novel before the war, there are two distinct time 
periods, and two distinct chronotopes within the novel. The collision of the “old” and the 
“new” ways is presented in pictures of old New York of 1870s, when new ideas and new 
117 
 
aesthetic visions begin to penetrate and change society. Later, the novel also offers a brief 
glimpse of society approximately a quarter of a century later. This transition from the old 
to the new ways is marked by the painful decomposition of the old New York society’s 
vision of itself as a totality. The novel details the less-than-harmonious coexistence of 
spaces in old New York: ballrooms, opera houses, lavish dining parlors, as well as the 
unfamiliar, “foreign,” and modernist spaces, like Ellen Olenska’s dwelling, to show the 
problematic integration of the elements of the new twentieth-century culture into the 
tradition-driven old New York. Wharton shows the worldview and aesthetic crisis 
associated with the transition towards twentieth-century values, a crisis which renders the 
view of “life whole” impossible. However, the world where this transition took place 
would soon be shattered; and whatever continuity it maintains with the old tradition it 
will be destroyed by the war, marking the end of the “age of innocence.” Therefore, the 
definition of the “age of innocence” in the novel is not limited to the picture of old New 
York of the 1870s but extends towards the beginning of the twentieth century. Wharton’s 
novel, written from a post-World War I perspective, therefore, is undertaking the task 
that Wharton declared should be done in her earlier historical novel The Valley of 
Decision (1902): it looks into the crisis of the past to find the “secret of dealing with 
present evils” (63). 
Wharton witnessed the devastation and suffering brought by the war first-hand. 
She was deeply involved in the war relief efforts in Europe, and her contribution in this 
sphere is hard to underestimate. Her efforts during the war years are discussed by Alan 
Price in his study The End of the Age of Innocence: Edith Wharton and the First World 
War (1996), where the author offers a detailed account of Wharton’s charity activities. 
118 
 
From the first months of the war Wharton got involved in charity works, joining the 
25,000 women from America who volunteered for the relief efforts. She is credited with 
organizing and managing many civilian and war charities and establishing the American 
Hostels for Refugees with the help of her friends; these facilities provided the refugees 
with housing, employment, medical care, and even offered different levels of education. 
Wharton actively cooperated with the French Red Cross. In 1915, she established the 
Children of Flanders Rescue Committee, whose primary task was to “car[e] for six 
hundred and another two hundred aged and infirm Flemish refugees” from Belgium 
(Price ix). Together with the other Americans present in France at the time, Wharton got 
involved and became a vice president of the Tuberculeux de la Guerre organization, a 
charity committed to helping fight tuberculosis among civilians and soldiers, sanctioned 
by the French government. Wharton’s relief effort included the publication of The Book 
of the Homeless (1916), an anthology of essays, poetry, art and musical works by 
renowned writers, artists, and composers of the time. The profit earned from the sales of 
the book was used for the benefit of war refugees. Being involved in multiple charitable 
organizations, Wharton went through periods of exhaustion, and was forced to take 
several-week breaks from her work with the charities. After periodic rest, she would 
return to carry on the fund-raising and other activities with the charities.  Wharton’s 
efforts during the war were recognized as she was awarded with The Legion of Honor by 
the French government and Queen Elizabeth’s medal by the Belgian government (Price 
xxii).  
 Besides her charitable work, Wharton also addressed the war-related issue in 
writing. Her works which address the First World War are a series of essays describing 
119 
 
various aspects of life during the war; these essays were later published as a separate 
book entitled Fighting France (1915). Her war writing includes a brief novel The Marne: 
A Tale of the War (1918). Later, Wharton also wrote the novels The Son at the Front 
(1923) and The Mother’s Recompense (1925), which also look back to the war 
experience. Wharton’s war writing was given less consideration due to its portrayal of 
war as driven by a didactic purpose. One of the influential first critics of Wharton’s war 
writings Blake Novius states that her works on war “add nothing to her laurels; on the 
contrary, it proves that a novelist whose detachment was always precariously maintained 
could, when confronted with reports of German atrocities, lose her head as easily as the 
average newspaper reader” (In Price xxii). The vision of Wharton’s works as, in a sense, 
glorifying and elevating the purpose of fighting in the First World War prevailed in 
literary criticism for decades. 
Contemporary critics, however, tend to see Wharton’s war writing in the broader 
context of her ideas about the society and culture. They stress the element of shock that 
the war created, bringing massive casualties, wrecking people’s lives, and destroying the 
familiar cultural landscape. Furthermore, the profound sense of crisis which followed the 
war contributed to Wharton’s perception of reality and molded her literary response to 
the war. Considering Wharton’s vision after the war as reflected in the aesthetics of her 
writing, Price comments:  
Wharton entered one type of world and witnessed the emergence of another after 
the First World War. Even though England and France won the war, the world 
Wharton valued was largely lost. It was obliterated by the mass world, a world 
without taste, a world without the aristocracy of intellect. Finally, the convergence 
120 
 
of historical forces that transformed Wharton from the ironic social satirist into a 
partisan war reporter provides one of the few periods in her life when she was not 
in control of what happened. The war was not just a shock; it was a catastrophe 
that threatened one’s ability to make a world. For a novelist who created fictional 
worlds and for a woman who created aesthetic spaces (her houses and their 
gardens), the loss of control was potentially devastating. The First World War 
ushered in the true end of the age of innocence. (Price xvii) 
Price’s comment sheds light on Wharton’s perception of the world during and after the 
war. The senses of shock, catastrophe, and profound crisis defined Wharton’s attitudes, 
dominating also her aesthetic visions. Ushering in the end of “the age of innocence,” the 
war also destroyed the stable image of the world as Wharton knew it. Wharton’s 
biographer Hermione Lee remarks, that “[Wharon’s] war writing was felt to be 
embarrassing and sentimental, an aberration from the sharp satire and better social 
dramas she was known for” (Lee 45). However, the forces which “transformed” “the 
ironic social satirist,” as Price notes, are closely related to the sense of crisis that 
“threatened one’s ability to make a world.” Viewed from such perspective Wharton’s 
war-related writing seeks to compensate for loss through imagining the world as totality.  
Wharton’s vision of the necessity of giving completion to elements which seem 
incoherent in life echoes Georg Lukacs’s critique of modernist trends precisely for their 
embrace of a fragmentary depiction of reality. Lukacs sees the novel as “seek[ing], by 
giving form, to uncover and construct the concealed totality of life” (The Theory 60). The 
constant “seeking” of epic unity is symptomatic of the twentieth-century crisis for 
Lukacs; in his view a thriving society must be able to present itself as a totality in art. 
121 
 
Tolstoy’s novelistic form, in Lukacs’s view, “overlaps to the maximum extent to the 
epic” (145). Similarly, Wharton praises the authors who seek out this unity in 
representation, singling out Balzac, Stendhal and Tolstoy as striving to represent “life 
whole”; this longing for totality in representation in art is seen not as a feature 
characteristic of a certain period in the development of society, but as a timeless and 
“universal” value, the greater purpose of art. 
Lukacs envisions a novel as a form symptomatic of the present time; a novel, 
according to Lukacs, “is the epic of an age in which the extensive totality of life is not 
directly given, in which the immanence of meaning in life has become a problem, yet 
which still thinks in terms of totality” (The Theory 56). In this sense, the novel is 
constantly aspiring for the vision of totality which has been lost in the present age, but 
which should be pursued by the authors.  
An example of the pursuit of such vision of totality as described by Lukacs can be 
found in Wharton’s war writing, which has often been accused of unrealistic portrayal 
and glamorization of war. The hero of the novel The Marne, for example, is a young 
fifteen-year old boy, Troy Belknap, an American who together with his parents happens 
to vacation in France at the time the war breaks out. Finding himself unable to travel 
back to the United States due to the mother’s sickness, Troy is forced to observe the 
destruction and devastation of France caused by the war. Troy and his family do return to 
the United States; for the three years that follow their return Troy reflects on the war and 
specifically on the glorious moment of the Battle of Marne, where the French were 
victorious. Having visited the grave of M. Grantier, the soldier who had fallen in the 
Battle of Marne, Troy is unable to stop thinking about the battle. Three years later, 
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having reached the age of eighteen, Troy returns to France to join the French troops as an 
ambulance driver. Eventually he participates in the battle that also happens to be on the 
River Marne in 1918. As the fighting goes on, Troy is wounded and wakes up in the 
hospital. All Troy recalls is a vision of M. Grantier who, so it appears to Troy, appears on 
the battlefield and comforts him. At the hospital Troy learns that his life was saved by an 
unidentified soldier who carried him away at the time of danger.  
Undoubtedly, Troy represents the heroic and romanticized figure in the story; he 
is also a perfect character of the epic in Lukacs’s sense. The vision of this character is 
narrowed down to a single preoccupation with war. The only desire Troy has is to join 
the lines of the French troops to defend the country of France which he has learned to 
love very much. In his description of an epic character, who presents the picture of the 
totality of life, Lukacs writes: 
The epic hero is, strictly speaking, never an individual. It is traditionally thought 
that one of the essential characteristics of an epic is the fact that its theme is not a 
personal destiny, but the destiny of a community. And rightly so, for the 
completeness, the roundness of the value system which determines the epic 
customs creates a whole which is too organic for any part of it to be so enclosed 
within itself, so dependent upon itself, as to find itself as interiority – e.g., to 
become a personality. (Lukacs The Theory 66) 
Troy’s life is so connected to the life of the “community” that in his fantasies it merges 
with the life of M. Grantier, who, it is assumed, comes to save Troy. Both of the 
characters become heroes of war, and their lives reflect nothing else but the identification 
with those fighting for the freedom of France. Wharton also chose the name for her 
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character which best reflects her vision of him. Through his name, Troy is immediately 
associated with the Trojan War, the war against the ancient city of Troy by Achaeans 
described in the Iliad.  
 The character of Troy can be compared to that of Petya Rostov, the young 
character in War and Peace, who is similarly too young to join the army. Petya, however, 
does join the army and takes part in a battle. He is so impatient and zealous to participate 
that he immediately throws himself into the most crowded and dangerous spot he sees: 
“When Peyta galloped up, the Frenchmen had already fallen. ‘Late again,’ flashed in 
Petya’s head, and he rode to where he heard the sounds of rapid gunfire” (Tolstoy Vol. 
IV, 1057). Petya is shot in his very first battle he is shown participating and his figure 
becomes heroic in the novel. Both Troy and Petya are characters whose identities come 
to represent symbolic images; they reflect the “the completeness, the roundness of the 
value system” in the respective novels. In this sense they become elements which help 
construct a totalizing vision in the works.  
Wharton becomes an advocate for such holistic vision as she criticizes the 
fragmentary nature of modernist fiction. In The Writing of Fiction she states: 
But there is another difference between the great novel and merely long one. Even 
the longest and most seemingly desultory novels of such writers as Balzac, 
Flaubert and Tolstoy follow a prescribed orbit; they are true to the eternal effort of 
art to complete what in life seems incoherent and fragmentary. This sense of a 
great theme sweeping around on its allotted track in the “most ancient heavens” is 
communicated on the first pages of such novels as “War and Peace” and 
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“L’Education Sentimentale”; it is the lack of this intrinsic form that marks the 
other kind of long novel as merely long. (107) 
Wharton praises authors who seek out this unity in representation, singling out Tolstoy 
and Gustave Flaubert, who manage to retain such a vision. In her war fiction, as shown 
above, Wharton aspires to such representation. 
 Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, however, operates on somewhat different 
principles. Though the novel aspires to providing a coherent picture of an epoch and to a 
vision of totality of life, it ends up showing the problematic collision of various 
worldview systems and also aesthetic visions. This conflict of the “old” and the “new” is 
visible in Wharton’s own polemics with the new tendencies in fiction writing, which 
reveal, on the one hand, her dedication to tradition, but her recognition of the necessity of 
change and progress, on the other. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Edith 
Wharton, R.W.B. Lewis explains that after the war, Wharton “was aware of the need to 
restore both continuity and rootedness of her existence” (419), which meant reconnecting 
with the previous artistic traditions. Wharton persistently criticizes the new tendencies 
which she associates with the loss of connection with tradition, as she states: “it seems to 
be that every new creation can issue only from the annihilation of what preceded it” 
(“Tendencies” 170). Wharton, therefore, looks for ways to connect the artistic tradition 
which preceded the war with what she sees at the moment. 
This loss of continuity Wharton links to the loss of a moral vision in literature and 
the loss of an overall sense of purpose in writing. In her 1934 article with a telling title 
“Permanent Values in Fiction” Wharton defines a novel as “a work of fiction containing 
a good story about well-drawn characters” (175). She further accuses the contemporary 
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writers, specifically singling out Woolf and Joyce, of losing sight of the purpose of 
writing: “The modern writer with a purpose (no less a purpose because no longer a moral 
one) is unhampered by such restrictions.” The novel, in the traditional understanding of 
it, is associated for Wharton with a moral vision that constitutes the novel’s larger 
purpose. The moral vision in fiction constitutes one of the permanent values for Wharton, 
one that is closely linked to novelistic form. This vision, therefore, may potentially 
connect the post-war writing to the earlier tradition.  
 Despite her insistence on maintaining the connection with the earlier realist 
tradition, Wharton firmly believes in progress, which for her constitutes building 
something new based on the examples of the old: “Since the world began, and man 
pictured his first stories on the walls of pre-historic caves, forms have been unceasingly 
and irresistibly modified by having new life poured into them […].” Wharton affirms her 
belief in the “incessant renovation of old types by new creative action” and states that 
“There is no fear of monotony while the creative springs perpetually bubble up in new 
intelligences” (“Permanent Values” 176). Robin Peel in the study Apart from Modernism 
argues that “On the one hand [Wharton’s] interrogation of early modernism is informed 
by an antipathy to change, but on the other it is informed by developed aesthetic 
recognition that all art, including literature, has evolved and must evolve, if it is to be 
vital and serious” (12). Wharton recognizes the potential in the constant development of 
art, as she sees that art forms “have been unceasingly and irresistibly modified by having 
new life poured into them.” However, the change for Wharton should be based not on the 
rejection of the old, but on building on what has already been achieved. 
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Though Wharton’s critique of modernism oftentimes echoes Lukacs’s visions, her 
novel The Age of Innocence reveals an important disparity between her own views on 
what constitutes forward movement in the historical development of art as a reflection of 
society, and the views of Lukacs. For Lukacs, the desirable ideal state in the development 
of art is when it reflects the society as totality, with the epic as an example of such 
development. Though Wharton mourns the loss of such a totalizing vision in both her 
theoretical writings and in the novel, progress for her is never a return to the total epic 
vision; it is, instead, associated with gradual modification and change of the societal and 
artistic tradition, without detaching it from the fertile ground of previous artistic 
traditions. Therefore, her view does not create a framework for art, as Lukacs does, but 
allows for its evolutionary development. As The Age of Innocence reveals, tradition can 
be a double-edged sword in both society and art; it can either facilitate progress, or hinder 
and detain it. Progress is necessary and inevitable for Wharton on condition that what she 
calls the “permanent values” are preserved intact. Wharton’s response to the crisis of the 
new age consists in reinstating the seemingly lost value of self-sacrifice as a way to 
preserve the order and the cultural heritage of the past but allows for evolutionary 
progress to take place both in society and in art.  
Wharton’s understanding of and belief in the historical development of society 
and art also mark the difference between her own historical imagination and that of 
Tolstoy. Wharton envisions and describes social change as an inevitable and natural 
transition from the state of closed totality to a more liberal state of inclusion. This 
transition occurs as the people overcome conventionality and learn to be accepting of 
otherness. For Tolstoy, conventionality cannot be overcome when a person is within 
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society, which operates according to its own conventions. Life free from convention can 
be achieved through a return to natural ways and through association with folk culture 
which is closer to nature than the culture of high society. As Lukacs points out, the 
characters achieve such freedom in near-death experiences when they no longer associate 
themselves with the vain values that operate in the society. Wharton, therefore, imagines 
a society that can be free from conventionality, while for Tolstoy, it is only the individual 
who distances him- or herself from the society who can achieve such freedom. Wharton’s 
novel allows for a short glimpse into the new society at the end of the novel, where such 
freedom from convention is possible. For the author, the “age of innocence” extends to 
the period of the 1890s when the society has already evolved into a more inclusive space 
than it originally was. However, the novel also anticipates, through its title and through 
the time period it covers, that this “age of innocence” will end with the war, and the 
gradual evolutionary movement of the society and art will be disrupted.   
Like her post-war critical writings, Wharton’s The Age of Innocence responds to 
the crisis of the beginning of the twentieth century. Yet it also affirms the necessity and 
inevitability of social change. R.W.B. Lewis states that Wharton’s object is ¨the world in 
which she has passed her adolescence and the first years of her womanhood – a safe, 
narrow, unintellectual, and hidebound world, but from the tremendous distance of time 
and history, an endearing and an honorable one” (424). On the one hand, Wharton does 
show the “safety” and comforting “narrowness” of this world; however, she also 
understands how limiting this “narrowness” is and recognizes the inevitability and the 
positive side of progress.  
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Many critics have pointed to Wharton’s expert picture of the New York of her 
youth, which is filled with nostalgic longing. In his 1968 introduction to Wharton’s The 
Age of Innocence, R.W.B. Lewis argues that the novel represents Wharton’s “reminiscent 
and shrewdly ambivalent survey of her own old New York, and it is a novel in which 
perspective—the long gaze backward across the ruins of time—is everything” (9). A 
similar opinion is expressed in a more recent book, Edith Wharton: Traveller in the Land 
of Letter (1990) by Janet Beer Goodwyn, who states that “The New York [Wharton] 
sought to celebrate and memorialise in her formal autobiography is better served by The 
Age of Innocence: the city and its values are the only victors in this story, but their 
expectations are fulfilled here for the last time” (133). The scholars rightly point to the 
nostalgic element present in the depiction of the epoch that has already become history 
by the time Wharton writes about them.  
The character who becomes most associated with the time as a product of old 
New York, is May Welland, the beautiful and innocent young woman, who becomes a 
wife of Newland Archer. At the beginning of the novel, Archer sees her as a sincere and 
graceful creature: “Miss Welland, evidently about to join the dancers, hung on the 
threshold, her lilies-of-the-valley in her hand (she carried no other bouquet), her face a 
little pale, her eyes burning with a candid excitement” (The Age 19). When Archer learns 
of the arrival of Ellen Olenska, May’s cousin who escaped from her husband, he realizes 
that “He hated to think of May Welland’s being exposed to the influence of a young 
woman so careless of the dictates of Taste” (The Age 12-13).  May’s innocence and 
beauty, as well as her need to be protected from bad influences, are stressed at the 
beginning of the novel. May is a perfect product of the society, like Princess Lise 
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Bolkonsky is in War and Peace. As the events of the novel progress, Wharton 
deconstructs this image of innocence that surrounds May, as well as the vision of the old 
New York society as a safe space. Wharton shows the historical moment when the 
society which envisions itself as totality and guards its own “purity,” as Archer attempted 
to guard the purity of May, becomes vulnerable to outside influences and can barely hold 
the image of its own totality. 
Aspiring to define the time of historical change in the Age of Innocence, as does 
Tolstoy in War and Peace, Wharton introduces the character of Ellen Olenska. This 
character challenges old New York’s ways and represents the positive promise of the 
new age. The picture of Olenska in the novel further reveals Wharton’s interest in the 
artistic representation of the foreign and “exotic” other. Corinne Viglietta suggests that 
“despite her criticism of American modernity and modernism, Wharton manages to 
endow her female protagonist with a ‘modern’ American sensibility” (Viglietta). In many 
ways, the character of Ellen is associated with the new aesthetics of the twentieth 
century; her aesthetic tastes present a challenge to the old New York society. At the same 
time, however, Ellen’s choice to sacrifice her own happiness at the end of the novel 
reveals her commitment to some of the values of the past, values that Wharton considers 
to be permanent ones. Thus, The Age of Innocence seeks to reinstate certain values which 
were lost after the war, while at the same time to confirm a belief in progress of society 
associated with the twentieth century.   
The novel concentrates on the appearance of Ellen Olenska in her native New 
York after years of living in Europe. Ellen, who was orphaned early in life, moved to 
Europe, where she married a rich Polish count. Her marriage proved unhappy, with 
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details never revealed but hinted at. Count Olenski, Ellen’s possibly unfaithful and 
abusive husband, is described as an “angry blackguard,” who brought immense suffering 
to his wife (The Age 83).  Now Ellen returns to New York in search for a new home and 
support from her relatives, the Mingott and the Welland families. They are ready to 
extend their help, even presenting Ellen publically together with them, but only to the 
point where this support would not endanger their own reputation. Thus, they insist that 
Ellen should remain married; and Newland Archer, who happens to be a lawyer and is 
soon to marry May Welland from the family, undertakes the task of persuading her to do 
so. In the course of their interaction, Newland realizes the hypocrisy of the society he 
lives in. He and Ellen fall in love with each other, yet at the decisive moment Ellen 
leaves for Paris alone. 
The Age of Innocence describes the clash of the old and the new values and 
aesthetic principles, and therefore combines the chronotopes associated with the best 
traditions of realist fiction and those which signal the crisis, the beginning of the new 
age. Wharton uses what Bakhtin calls the chronotope of “parlors and salons (in the broad 
sense of the word),” introduced by Stendhal and Balzac, and that of a “threshold,” which 
Bakhtin defines as the chronotope of “crisis and break in life” (“Forms” 21). Chronotope 
is defined by Bakhtin as “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships 
that are artistically expressed in literature” (15). With chronotopes serving as “the 
organizing centers for the fundamental narrative events of the novel” (20), the co-
existence of these two types of chronotopes in The Age of Innocence signals the 
manipulation of time and space in the novel to convey the clash between the two 
historical worldviews that Wharton addresses.  
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Similarly to the old masters of realist novel, Wharton opens up her novel with a 
scene at the opera, using the typical chronotope of the nineteenth-century realist novel. 
This opening reminds us of her commentary on the power of Tolstoy’s introduction of 
characters and their stories in the opening scene of War and Peace, quoted earlier in this 
chapter. Wharton similarly gathers all of the main characters in the opening scene, 
allowing for the larger conflict to be visible.  
The opening already suggests the vision of the society as a closed totality. 
Wharton’s criticism of it becomes visible through a subtle but clear touch of irony, as she 
comments on the assembly of the New York society of the 1870s. Newland Archer 
arrives at the theatre late, for no other reason but due to his adherence to the fashion of 
the time: “But, in the first place, New York was a metropolis, and perfectly aware that in 
metropolises it was ‘not the thing’ to arrive early at the opera; and what was or was not 
‘the thing’ played a part as important in Newland Archer's New York as the inscrutable 
totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years age” (The 
Age 4). Comparing the old New York traditions to the “totem terrors” and the keepers of 
these customs to people who lived “thousands of years ago” reveals Wharton’s criticism 
of the useless and even ridiculous but firmly rooted traditions, which defined what it 
meant to be accepted by the society. Furthermore, the society is shown as a world with its 
own rules and regulations, a world that is closed in itself and impervious to change. This 
world calls to mind the picture of epic totality described by Bakhtin in his “Epic and 
Novel,” a world that is perfectly immutable and finalized.7 In his discussion of the epic 
hero Lukacs notes that “the epic hero, as bearer of his destiny is not lonely, for this 
destiny connects him by indissoluble threads to the community whose fate is crystallised 
                                                        
7
 On Bakhtin’s “Epic and Novel” see Chapter 1 
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in his own” (The Theory 67). In picturing the collectively followed society rules, 
Wharton imparts a sense of a collective destiny, predictable and safe, that the members of 
the society share. Newland Archer at this point of the novel reflects the collective vision 
of the members of the society, whose behavior is linked to rituals that resemble those 
used in tribes. Therefore, the ironic stance that the author adopts in describing the society 
distances the representation from Lukacs’s vision of totality, but reveals reality as more 
problematic than it appears at first glance. 
Comparing this scene to the opera scene in War and Peace, which Viktor 
Shklovsky famously used in his essay “Art as Device,” first published in 1925, as an 
example of defamiliarization in fiction, one can see a similar technique used in The Age 
of Innocence, as well as the similar emphasis on the artificiality of the traditional ways. 
Through his presentation of the atmosphere at the opera as false, Tolstoy wages his 
criticism on the society that places a big emphasis on outward appearances, creating the 
atmosphere of artificiality and falsehood. In Tolstoy’s scene, Natasha, the innocent 
observer at the opera, finds it impossible to concentrate on the storyline of the opera, but 
perceives only the falsity of its production and is surprised at people’s indifference to 
what she perceives to be a deceit. Tolstoy writes:  
[…] she saw only painted cardboard and strangely dressed-up men and women, 
who moved, talked, and sang strangely in the bright light; she knew what it was 
all supposed to represent, but it was all so pretentiously false and unnatural that 
she first felt embarrassed for the performers, and then found them ridiculous. She 
looked around at the faces of the spectators, seeking in them the same feeling of 
mockery and perplexity that was in her; but all the faces were attentive to what 
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was taking place on stage and expressed admiration – feigned, as it seemed to 
Natasha. (Tolstoy Vol. II, 561). 
The feeling of “unnaturalness,” pretense, and “falsehood” dominate Natasha’s thoughts at 
the opera, where the important people of the Moscow society have gathered. Alienated 
from the man she is in love with, Natasha perceives the atmosphere at the opera quite 
differently from the people around her. Natasha’s “embarrassment” and “perplexity” is 
not shared among the people who are so used to conventionality that find it impossible to 
see beyond it. Shklovsky describes Tolstoy’s method, which the author uses in fiction as 
a way of “removal of [an] object from the sphere of automatized perception” in the 
following way:  
[Tolstoy] does not call a thing by its name, that is, he describes it as if it appears 
for the first time, while an incident is described as if it were happening for the 
first time. In addition he forgoes the conventional names of various parts of a 
thing, replacing them instead with the names of corresponding parts in other 
things. (Shklovsky 6) 
Natasha’s mind registers the “painted cardboard and strangely dressed-up men and 
women,” instead of recognizing them as the stage set and the costumes used for the 
opera. Her vision calls attention to the element of pretense inevitably involved in 
theatrical productions, which reflects the general atmosphere of insincerity present in 
high society, the members of which become accomplices in this production. The example 
of estrangement in the opera illustrates for Shklovsky the elements which Tolstoy 
criticizes within the Russian society of the time, namely its hypocritical and deceitful 
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ways (8-9). Natasha here appears to be the lens through which the author shows things as 
he wants them to be perceived by the reader and how, according to him, they really are. 
 Just as Tolstoy presents the opera scene through Natasha’s innocent gaze, 
Wharton offers her account of the opera scene through eyes which are similarly innocent. 
Young Newland Archer, preoccupied with his forthcoming engagement to May Welland, 
listens to Faust at the Old New York Academy. The descriptions of the actors in the 
opera impart the atmosphere of falsity similar to that found in the Moscow opera house: 
M'ama . . . non m'ama . . . " the prima donna sang, and "M'ama!", with a final 
burst of love triumphant, as she pressed the disheveled daisy to her lips and lifted 
her large eyes to the sophisticated countenance of the little brown Faust-Capoul, 
who was vainly trying, in a tight purple velvet doublet and plumed cap, to look as 
pure and true as his artless victim. 
And further:  
In the centre of this enchanted garden Madame Nilsson, in white cashmere 
slashed with pale blue satin, a reticule dangling from a blue girdle, and large 
yellow braids carefully disposed on each side of her muslin chemisette, listened 
with downcast eyes to M. Capoul's impassioned wooing, and affected a guileless 
incomprehension of his designs whenever, by word or glance, he persuasively 
indicated the ground floor window of the neat brick villa projecting obliquely 
from the right wing. (The Age 6) 
The singers, referred to by their real names and not by the names of the characters they 
represent, as is also the case in Tolstoy’s scene, appear rather ridiculous trying to play 
their parts, overflowing with an excess of feigned emotions, which they try to convey in 
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an artless manner. The close attention to their clothes and movements reveals the 
artificiality of their intentions. Wharton estranges the experience of the opera that 
Newland observes to reveal the atmosphere prevalent in society, employing the strategy 
which Tolstoy used in his opera scene. The skills of the actors in themselves are not the 
objects which both authors criticize, but the atmosphere of deceit in which the spectators 
are immersed. Newland, who has always been a part of the society and is used to it, 
follows its ways blindly unaware of their “design”; the scene in the opera which he 
observes with an open mind foreshadows his awakening later in the novel.  
 The opera scenes in both novels symbolically stand for larger pictures of the 
societies of the early nineteenth-century Russia and New York of 1870s, criticizing their 
overreliance on outward appearances of propriety and good taste. Both works similarly 
deconstruct the visions of societies as closed worlds through the appearance of innocent 
observers who start seeing things as they really are. Natasha’s and Archer’s concentration 
on the mechanisms of opera production, rather than on the final product – the opera, is 
symbolic of their further realization of the mechanisms by means of which societies 
operate. Soon after the opera scene, Natasha nearly elopes with the dishonest and corrupt 
Anatole Kuragin, the experience which opens her eyes to the deceptions inherently 
present in the high society. Archer’s marriage to May similarly awakens him to the 
mechanisms through which the society expels those who break its rules to preserve its 
image of totality.   
 Despite the obvious contiguity between the described opera scenes, the events that 
follow in the novels reveal the difference in the authors’ visions of historical progress and 
development. Natasha and Newland Archer are able to gain visions of the world free 
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from conventionality through association with very different settings. Natasha in War 
and Peace is free from the conventions imposed by the high society through her 
association with nature. Her sense of freedom becomes obvious in the scene of hunting 
when Natasha lets out a scream that would have been inappropriate and embarrassing had 
it been heard in the society. When out hunting, accompanied by her brother and uncle, 
Natasha cannot hide the emotions which overwhelm her: 
At the same time, Natasha, without pausing for breath, let out a joyous and 
rapturous shriek, so shrill that it made their ears ring. With this shriek she 
expressed everything the other hunters had expressed with their simultaneous talk. 
And this shriek was so odd that she herself would have been embarrassed at such 
wild shrieking, and they all would have been surprised at it, if it had happened at 
any other time. (Tolstoy  Vol. II, 507) 
At this time of hunting Natasha is free from the conventionality which surrounds her in 
high society; she is close to nature and behaves according to her instincts. The excitement 
she feels as the dog chases and catches a hare is beyond words, but requires some other, 
extra-verbal means of expression. Natasha’s shriek, which would have been weird and 
out of place anywhere else but in this wild setting, signals her ability to transcend 
conventionality and experience natural and authentic feelings. The escape from 
conventionality is possible for Natasha as she connects to the natural ways associated 
with the folk culture of the peasants. Natasha further performs a folk dance and plays the 
guitar, the instrument similarly associated with the folk tradition, both of which she does 
without prior training. These experiences show her connection to folk ways, revealing the 
authenticity of her character.  
137 
 
 Conventionality in Tolstoy’s novels can be overcome through near-death 
experiences that force the characters to recognize and accept otherness. Andrei, dying in 
the field after the Battle of Austerlitz in War and Peace, recognizes the vanity of his 
worldly pursuits and egotistical intentions.
8
 Similarly, in Anna Karenina Vronsky and 
Karenin, who are enemies, are able to reconcile, knowing that Anna is near her death. 
Addressing these episodes in both novels, Lukacs writes that “[…] Anna recovers and 
Andrey returns to life, and the great moments vanish without trace. Life goes on in the 
world of convention, an aimless, inessential life” (Lukacs The Theory 149). Lukacs treats 
such moments in Tolstoy as  
[…] factual assurance that an essential life really does exist beyond 
conventionality – a life which can be reached through the lived experiences of a 
full and genuine selfhood, the self-experience of the soul, but from which one 
must irremediably  fall back into the world of convention. (147) 
The “essential life” free from conventionality is indeed possible for Tolstoy, but the 
characters can only catch brief glimpses of it through connectedness with nature or 
through near-death experiences, which also force them to think in terms other than those 
dictated in society. Therefore, for Tolstoy authentic and genuine experience of life is not 
possible in high society. It is only in separating themselves from the high society that 
people overcome convention.  
For Lukacs, such contrast between “nature” and “culture” reveals the problematic 
nature of the novel form, which reflects life as its problematic. In the society, according 
to Lukacs, which can imagine and express itself as totality in the form of an epic, such 
disparity would not exist. Lukacs states:  
                                                        
8
 For the discussion of Andrei’s experience after the Battle of Austerlitz, see Chapter 1.  
138 
 
The natural, organic world of old epics was, after all, a culture whose organic 
character was its specific quality, whereas the nature which Tolstoy posits as the 
ideal and which he has experienced as existent is, in its innermost essence, meant 
to be nature (and is, therefore, opposed, as such, to culture). (The Theory 146) 
The epic, which reflects the “natural” and “organic” world, does not contain the 
opposition between nature and culture. For Lukacs, the epic is therefore the desirable 
form which reflects the world as totality and does not pose the ideal against the reality. In 
this sense, the form becomes a reflection of what Lukacs calls the “historico-
philosophical substratum.”  
Wharton imagines quite a different picture of the historical progress of society 
and art. She envisions a society where conventionality can be overcome and genuine 
authenticity is possible. For Wharton, authenticity is reached when Archer recognizes the 
injustice with which the society treats Ellen who came to New York searching for help. 
Ellen asks Archer to teach her how to fit in when she arrives in New York. But it is in 
fact she who causes Archer to see things he never noticed before. Referring to the unjust 
means the society uses to preserve its traditional ways, Archer says to Ellen: “It's you 
who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see 
them” (The Age 63). Conventionality can be overcome for Wharton not just for a short 
moment but permanently through the acceptance of otherness which Archer does in the 
face of Ellen.  
 The possibility to overcome convention in society is associated with novelty and 
change. To introduce the notion of social change at the end of the nineteenth century, the 
novel repeatedly uses the image of the threshold in the important moments of the story, 
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signaling that such moments are the moments of crisis, of the crucial encounter of the old 
and the new ways. According to Bakhtin, “The word ‘threshold’ itself already has a 
metaphorical meaning in everyday usage (together with its literal meaning), and is 
connected with a breaking point of a life, the moment of crisis, the decision that changes 
a life (or the indecisiveness that fails to change a life, the fear to step over the threshold)” 
(“Forms” 21). The moments built around the chronotope of the threshold vary. May 
Welland waits on the threshold of the ballroom for the arrival of Newland Archer for him 
to announce their engagement. At this crucial moment of the story, Archer, who also 
finds himself on the threshold, distinctly feels that something is wrong with the old 
tradition which defines the way things, even the most intimate events, should be treated. 
Wharton writes: 
Archer paused a moment. It was at his express wish that the announcement had 
been made, and yet it was not thus that he would have wished to have his 
happiness known. To proclaim it in the heat and noise of a crowded ball-room 
was to rob it of the fine bloom of privacy which should belong to things nearest 
the heart. His joy was so deep that this blurring of the surface left its essence 
untouched; but he would have liked to keep the surface pure too. It was something 
of a satisfaction to find that May Welland shared this feeling. Her eyes fled to his 
beseechingly, and their look said: “Remember, we're doing this because it's right.” 
(The Age 19-20) 
The feeling of the need for privacy which overwhelms Newland Archer signifies the 
inner desire to live beyond conventionality dictated by tradition, which, in his eyes, 
“robs” him and his beloved of something intimate and very important. The very time and 
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space, “the heat and noise of a crowded ball-room,” which demands of the couple to 
follow a standard route making them go public with their private lives, becomes the 
object of criticism here. Though Archer and May do cross the threshold together, with 
Newland announcing their engagement, it only leads them to the “noisy” and “crowded” 
space; they do not break the traditional order of things and do not move beyond 
convention.  
The tension between the “old” and the “new” is further shown as that between the 
conventional and traditional versus the unfamiliar, mysterious and even foreign. Wharton 
pays close attention to aesthetics of building and general scenery as representative of 
changing aesthetics. The members of old New York society sentimentally cling to their 
old Academy to listen to musical performances, as is shown in the novel: 
Though there was already talk of the erection, in remote metropolitan distances 
“above the Forties,” of a new Opera House which should compete in costliness 
and splendour with those of the great European capitals, the world of fashion was 
still content to reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the 
sociable old Academy. (The Age 3) 
The picture of the old Academy with its “shabby red and gold boxes” becomes an 
element that is associated with a nostalgic vision of the past. The society adheres to the 
place, even though the new Opera House will compete with “those of the great European 
capitals.” However, the author further undermines the vision of the Academy as a 
treasured site of the past by explaining that society’s preference of the old Academy to 
the new Opera House is also dictated by rather selfish motives: “Conservatives cherished 
it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the ‘new people’ whom New 
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York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to; and the sentimental clung to it for its 
historic associations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so problematic a 
quality in halls built for the hearing of music” (The Age 3). The means by which the “new 
people,” those who only recently gained their fortunes and settled in New York, were 
kept from entering the conservative society are shown as a part of the hypocritical ways 
which define this society. At the same time, the society is again shown as guarding its 
own closed ways and its totality not allowing alien elements to penetrate into their world. 
Wharton uses the classic realist chronotope of “parlors and salons” to present the 
atmosphere into which she introduces the elements that disrupt the custom-driven life of 
the society.  
 This chronotope, associated with conventionality, is contrasted with that which is 
new and unfamiliar. Further in the novel Archer stands on the threshold of Countess 
Olenska’s dwelling place and is overcome with strong and unknown feelings: “As he 
stood on Madame Olenska's threshold curiosity was his uppermost feeling. He was 
puzzled by the tone in which she had summoned him; he concluded that she was less 
simple than she seemed” (The Age 58). The sensations evoked by “hot” and “crowded” 
ball-room, where everything happens according to the prescribed rules, are contrasted 
with “curiosity,” “puzzlement” and mystery evoked by Olenska. Coming to visit her at 
her lodging, Archer arrives at his second threshold, which sparks his interest in the 
newcomer, May’s mysterious cousin who has lived in Europe for most of her life and 
with whom he later falls in love. Here, on the threshold of Olenska’s dwelling, Wharton 
presents the collision of the old and the new worldview and aesthetic systems. 
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May and Ellen are contrasted in the story as the old and the new ways. Susan 
Goodman in her book Edith Wharton’s Women: Friends and Rivals (1990) suggests: 
“Again, the fair and the dark women make a perfect whole: May is as fresh and virginal 
and definitive as her name, and Ellen is as dramatic and passionate and mysterious as a 
‘hot-house exotic’” (96). Wharton uses the names in the novel symbolically to represent 
the larger concepts that she puts into her characters, as May is “fresh and virginal” as is 
suggested by her name, but the image of Ellen contains an element which threatens to the 
world of totality that May represents. The dichotomy of May’s association with 
innocence and beauty and Ellen’s with the dark sides of human nature is further 
complicated and questioned in the novel, as Ellen is further shown as a victim of 
society’s prejudices that would not allow for her to be accepted into the family and 
society.  
Ellen’s otherness is further represented through the style of her lodging, in the 
scenes where Wharton presents the changing aesthetic tastes. In Archer’s eyes, the rooms 
she lives in are strikingly unconventional. Through the style associated with Olenska, 
Wharton introduces the elements of modernist aesthetics which appear so foreign and 
even exotic to Archer’s unaccustomed eye. The dim lighting and alien objects of 
decoration contribute to creation of a mysterious atmosphere, which further separates 
Ellen from the society she is in. As a designer and an aesthetician, who had published 
two books on decoration and design, The Decoration of Houses (1897) and Italian Villas 
and Their Gardens (1904), Wharton had a keen sense of changing tastes and styles. 
Olenska’s room presents quite a distinct chronotope, where Archer is forced to recognize 
and reflect on the incoming change in aesthetic tastes: 
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What [Archer] saw, meanwhile, with the help of the lamp, was the faded shadowy 
charm of a room unlike any room he had known. He knew that the Countess 
Olenska had brought some of her possessions with her - bits of wreckage, she 
called them - and these, he supposed, were represented by some small slender 
tables of dark wood, a delicate little Greek bronze on the chimneypiece, and a 
stretch of red damask nailed on the discoloured wallpaper behind a couple of 
Italian-looking pictures in old frames. (The Age 58-59) 
Archer finds Olenska’s room to be “unlike any room he had known”; the unusual 
decoration and lighting produce a strong effect upon him. A “delicate little Greek 
bronze” and “Italian-looking pictures,” as well as the “stretch of red damask” which calls 
to mind oriental ornamentation, demonstrate the Countess’s openness to international 
artistic styles. The casual mixture of styles associated with different time periods as well 
as with different parts of the world signals the transition towards the more liberal and less 
confining modernist style. As the new style both bewilders and fascinates Archer, it also 
promises a possibility of the new life, free from convention, possible for him. 
Wharton pays particular attention to the way the room is perceived by Archer: 
“Newland Archer prided himself on his knowledge of Italian art. But these pictures 
bewildered him, for they were like nothing that he was accustomed to look at (and 
therefore able to see) when he travelled in Italy […]” (The Age 59). Archer’s further 
observations shed light on Ellen’s “foreignness” even further, stressing the elements of 
mystery and exotic allure that surround her: 
[…] what struck [Archer] was the way in which Medora Manson's shabby hired 
house, with its blighted background of pampas grass and Rogers statuettes, had, 
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by a turn of the hand, and the skillful use of a few properties, been transformed 
into something intimate, "foreign," subtly suggestive of old romantic scenes and 
sentiments. He tried to analyse the trick, to find a clue to it in the way the chairs 
and tables were grouped, in the fact that only two Jacqueminot roses (of which 
nobody ever bought less than a dozen) had been placed in the slender vase at his 
elbow, and in the vague pervading perfume that was not what one put on 
handkerchiefs, but rather like the scent of some far-off bazaar, a smell made up of 
Turkish coffee and ambergris and dried roses. (The Age 59-60) 
Newland Archer is attracted to this mysterious “foreign” otherness; he is fascinated by 
how “shabby hired house, with its blighted background of pampas grass and Rogers 
statuettes,” indicative of the older setting, “by a turn of the hand” has been made into a 
“foreign” site.  The scents of the two roses in a vase, of “vague pervading perfume that 
was not what one put on handkerchiefs,” Turkish coffee, and of a “far-off bazaar” are 
suggestive of unfamiliar places, associated with Ellen’s personality, which add up to her 
description, making her into a foreign and exotic other.  
 Ellen’s further association with the new aesthetics is strengthened when Archer 
realizes Ellen lives in “Bohemian” part of town: he remembers Olenska telling him that 
the family “objected to her living in a ‘Bohemian’ quarter given over to ‘people who 
wrote.’ It was not the peril but the poverty that her family disliked; but that shade 
escaped her, and she supposed they considered literature compromising” (The Age 87). 
Ellen’s insistence on living in “Bohemian quarters,” open to “people who wrote,” further 
stress her “foreignness” in old New York society that is shown as provincial, and her firm 
connection modernist aesthetics. The books which Archer sees “scattered about her 
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drawing room” include “such new names as those of Paul Bourget, Huysmans, and the 
Goncourt brothers” (The Age 87-88), writers associated with French naturalism.  
 The picture of unconventional culture which surrounds Ellen allows Archer to see 
his own contemporary New York society in a new light. In this sense, Ellen’s 
unconventionality deconstructs the image of totality that the New York society embodies 
in the eyes of Archer. He recognizes that May is a product of the totalizing vision that 
society had been instilling in women and men for generations. Archer thinks about May: 
“It would presently be his task to take the bandage from this young woman's eyes, and 
bid her look forth on the world. But how many generations of the women who had gone 
to her making had descended bandaged to the family vault?” (The Age 69). Archer 
imagines himself “educating” May to overcome the conventions of the society they both 
live in; here Archer imagines a companion who, similarly to him, would strive for 
authenticity and the genuine experience of life. Thinking of May, however, leads him to 
remember the case of “the Kentucky cave-fish,” described in a recent science book, 
where the fish “had ceased to develop eyes because they had no use for them. What if, 
when he had bidden May Welland to open hers, they could only look out blankly at 
blankness?” (The Age 69).  The blind adherence to convention is what constitutes the 
totality of the old New York society for Wharton. The people within this society, like 
“the Kentucky cave-fish,” are unable to see beyond the image of totality constructed for 
them. 
Ellen, through her looks alone, challenges the conventions and the totality 
associated with the society. She is perceived as distinctly other in the society from the 
very first day she appears there. The Countess’s look immediately earns disapproval and 
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rejection from the refined and fashionable society present at the opera. Wharton makes it 
a point to describe the elements of Ellen’s appearance to point out her lack of belonging. 
In the opera Archer sees her as:  
[…] a slim young woman, a little less tall than May Welland, with brown hair 
growing in close curls about her temples are held in place by a narrow band of 
diamonds. The suggestion of this headdress, which gave her what was then called 
a “Josephine look,” was carried out in the cut of the dark blue velvet gown rather 
theatrically caught up under her bosom by a girdle with a large old-fashioned 
clasp. (The Age 8) 
Wharton continues her description with a note that “The wearer of this unusual dress, 
[…] seemed quite unconscious of the attention it was attracting” (8).  Ellen Olenska’s 
style with its imitation of the earlier “Josephine look” appears old-fashioned in New 
York, a detail which seems ironic in light of the fact that Ellen is associated with the less 
constrained worldview and aesthetics of the twentieth century. Except for an old-
fashioned dress, Ellen’s look is not very unusual; however, Wharton draws attention to 
the way others react to her appearance. Ellen’s status of a “black sheep” is confirmed 
when the theatre box waits “in suspense” for Mr. Sillerton Jackson, the recognized 
authority in family connections, character traits, and scandals in New York and beyond, 
to pronounce his judgement over Olenska, which the whole society is going to adopt. Mr. 
Jackson does it, declaring: “I didn’t think that Mingotts would have tried it on,” the 
phrase which signals his strong disapproval of Mingott’s decision to welcome Ellen in 
public (The Age 9).  Ellen’s unawareness of the attention her appearance was stirring, as 
well as her unexpected old-fashioned look present a picture of her as of a somewhat 
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naïve newcomer, who is unaware of the rules of the society, and expects to be accepted 
as she is, the vision that presents a contrast with her association with mystery and exotic 
foreignness. 
The scene elicits a parallel with the theater scene in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the 
novel that is also set in the 1870s. Anna, the main character of the novel, though 
scandalously estranged from her husband, decides to appear publicly at the opera. 
Tolstoy describes Anna through the eyes of her lover Vronsky, who, like Archer, spots 
her at the opera. Anna, unlike Ellen, is perfectly conscious of society’s hostility towards 
her; as the reader further finds out, Mrs. Kartasova, a lady from high society, has 
publically insulted Anna at the theater. Tolstoy describes Anna’s situation in the 
following:  
Anyone who did not know her and her circle, who had not heard all the utterances 
of the women expressive of commiseration, indignation, and amazement, that she 
should show herself in society, and show herself so conspicuously with her lace 
and her beauty, would have admired the serenity and loveliness of this woman 
without a suspicion that she was undergoing the sensations of a man in the stocks. 
(Tolstoy Anna Karenina 640) 
Anna challenges the traditional ways of the society with her non-conventional behavior 
that almost no one would dare. Her appearance at the opera “so conspicuously with her 
lace and her beauty” causes “commiseration, indignation, and amazement” in the 
audience, where she, like Ellen, becomes a center of attention. The parallel between Ellen 
and Anna is further stressed through their looks. Ellen is constantly presented as a “dark 
lady”: “The light touched to russet the rings of dark hair escaping from her braids, and 
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made her pale face paler” (The Age 64).  Ellen’s dark hair bears resemblance to that of 
Anna; furthermore, Tolstoy often mentions the “straying lock” of Anna’s hair that 
escapes her hairdo, symbolically representing Anna’s moving astray from the traditions 
of the society she lives in. Ellen’s “rings of dark hair” similarly escape her braids. The 
similarity in looks of Anna and Ellen draws attention to a larger similarity in the fates of 
these characters: Anna Karenina finds love outside her marriage and Ellen Olenska 
strives for freedom from her unfaithful and possibly abusive husband. The images of both 
women being observed and evaluated at the opera reveal the pictures of the societies at 
the time; and the fact that both novels are set in 1870s furthers the parallel. Unlike Anna, 
Ellen does not attempt to challenge society; neither does she abandon her husband for a 
lover. However, the society remains similarly blind to her needs.  
Wharton, unlike Tolstoy, gives us a picture of society where there can be a space 
for Ellen, showing Ellen’s later emigration to France, where she finds home. Ellen comes 
close to Wharton’s idea of the “real Frenchwoman” that she describes in her book French 
Ways and Their Meaning (1919), where she describes French women as aspiring to and, 
to a great extent, benefiting from involvement in intellectual life and equality in their 
relationship with men (100-101). In French Ways Wharton emphasizes the backwardness 
of American customs compared to those in France, and Ellen embodies the qualities of a 
Frenchwoman that Wharton admires. Wharton stresses that although Ellen is perceived as 
a mysterious dark lady, her true identity is that of a simple and well-minding cousin. 
Ellen explains to Archer that she was not aware of the hostility the society felt towards 
her: “Yes. I was perfectly unconscious at first that people here were shy of me – that they 
thought I was a dreadful sort of person. It seems they had even refused to meet me at 
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dinner. I found that out afterward […]” (The Age 144-145). Ellen does not immediately 
see that her situation and status could cause her problems within the society. She is 
democratic in her choice of company and expects to be treated as equal in her interactions 
with men. Inviting Archer to her own lodging, Ellen sincerely seeks advice from him on 
how to win approval in the New York society: “But you'll explain these things to me – 
you'll tell me all I ought to know,” – Ellen asks Archer (The Age 27).  She openly meets 
male representatives of society without suspecting possible gossip shortly after her 
arrival, and expects true companionship. Ellen’s association with Wharton’s “real 
Frenchwoman” is stressed through her rejection of the conventionality of the society. 
Under the totalizing gaze of the society, however, Ellen does not show much 
discretion in her choice of company, as she is seen with the “wrong” people, who are 
shunned by the members of New York society, as they threaten to break the traditional 
ways to which the society clings. Ellen “was seen walking up Fifth Avenue this afternoon 
with [Beaufort] by the whole of New York” (The Age 27), a fact which further 
emphasizes her status of the other in the novel. This association with a man of 
questionable reputation and even more mysterious past, a “newcomer” in New York 
whom people disliked, does not pass unnoticed and harms Ellen’s reputation. Further in 
the story, Ellen becomes friendly with Mrs. Beaufort, supporting her after her husband’s 
massive business failure accompanied by a scandal. When told that she should not visit 
Mrs. Beaufort because the latter is “a wife of a scoundrel,” Ellen answers: “and so am I, 
and yet all my family want me to go back to him” (The Age 254).  This character reveals 
democratic views, supporting those ostracized and disliked by the society; people around 
her do not understand this behavior, calling Ellen’s kindness a “taste for peculiar people” 
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(The Age 268).  It is therefore ironic that Ellen who expects to be taught by Archer turns 
out to be the one who is able to reveal to him the hypocrisy and the shortcomings of the 
traditional society. 
In French Ways and Their Meaning Wharton famously pronounces that “like the 
men of her race, the Frenchwoman is grown up,” emphasizing and presumably placing a 
value on the intellectual maturity of French women.
 
Wharton continues, stating that 
“Compared with the women of France the average American woman is still in the 
kindergarten” (French Ways 177). Despite her somewhat naïve ignorance of the customs 
of New York society, Ellen represents this maturity in the novel, as she expects 
acceptance and more open and honest relationships between people in the society. Unlike 
May, who is compared to “the Kentucky cave-fish” that lost its ability to see, Ellen is 
able to discern many things that the society does not want to see, closed in its totality. 
She expects equality and friendship from males and is able to comfort Mrs. Beaufort after 
the downfall of her husband. Therefore, Ellen’s vision is show as much broader than that 
of the people of the society; her intervention into the society deconstructs its totalizing 
image.  
Furthermore, Ellen appears more mature than Archer when he offers her to run 
away together to another country where both of them can be free from constraints of the 
society. To this Ellen responds: 
“Oh, my dear - where is that country? Have you ever been there?” she asked; and 
as he remained sullenly dumb she went on: “I know so many who've tried to find 
it; and, believe me, they all got out by mistake at wayside stations: at places like 
Boulogne, or Pisa, or Monte Carlo - and it wasn't at all different from the old 
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world they'd left, but only rather smaller and dingier and more promiscuous.” 
(The Age 244-45)    
Thus Ellen does not repeat the mistake that Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina does when she 
travels to Italy with her lover Vronsky, failing to find a space where both of them can live 
free from conventions. Archer’s idealistic and romantic vision contrasts with Ellen’s 
more pragmatic and down-to-earth view. Her response, though sympathetic, suggests a 
degree of maturity which involves both disillusionment with the romantic imagination 
and a sense of responsibility for others. Towards the end of the novel, Ellen leaves for 
Paris alone, sacrificing her happiness to preserve the family of May and Archer. 
It has become customary to imagine the twentieth century as a time when the 
value of sacrifice is rejected, as shown by Renée D.N. van Riessen in his chapter “The 
Subject of Sacrifice: Levinas’s Confusing Critique of Idealistic Subject Philosophy” in 
the extensive study The Actuality of Sacrifice: Past and Present (2014). Jürgen Habermas 
“regards the abolition of the morality of sacrifice as the essence of modern ethics” (305). 
Van Riessen further emphasizes that there appears a tendency to understand the notion of 
sacrifice in a different, “human” context, which simply means giving up one thing to 
obtain the other, as, for example, “sacrificing” socializing with friends to succeed in an 
exam or, in the context of war, giving one’s life for the country (307). The scholar also 
names the philosophers Jacques Derrida and Luc Ferry as having complicated the 
relations between the religious and the ethical contexts of the notion of sacrifice, viewing 
it, however, with “apprehension.”  
Emmanuel Levinas embraces the notion of sacrifice and uses it in a positive 
sense; for Levinas, according to van Riessen, “freedom must be understood as based on 
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responsibility and substitution, and thus fundamentally connected with the notion of 
sacrifice” (320). The Levinasian vision of the responsibility towards the other inevitably 
involves a notion of sacrifice as a means through which the relationship with the other is 
realized. The other for Levinas is always primary in I-other relations, and it is I who 
bears the responsibility for the other and not otherwise. Tomáš Tartanský argues that 
Levinas’s ethics “is not an ethics of sacrifice in general, but an ethics of exclusively and 
inalienably my sacrifice”  (296). Tartanský proceeds to quote the statement of Levinas in 
Ethics and Infinity (1982), offering his own reading of it: “I am responsible for the Other 
– says Levinas – without waiting for reciprocity, were I to die for it. Reciprocity is his 
affair.” Levinas’s ethics reinstates the value of responsibility towards the other, even to 
the point of sacrificing oneself for the other. The attitude where the “I” takes 
responsibility and embraces the ethics of personal sacrifice builds the relationship of 
peace, as Levinas affirms in the conclusion of his Totality and Infinity (305-6). 
 The present study, which presents the Levinasian concept of the ethical 
responsibility before the other as a response to the world wars of the twentieth century, 
allows for drawing a connection between his understanding of the other and that of Edith 
Wharton’s novel, which is seen as a response to the crisis aesthetics of the pre-war 
period. Wharton’s emphasis on the necessity of sacrifice towards the end of The Age of 
Innocence, when Ellen decides to leave New York and abandon any relationship with 
Archer, with whom she is in love, can be read as an answer to the time when the 
traditional values are lost, and the belief in the power of an individual to bring a change 
to the world is shattered.  
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The picture of the old New York society ends with the description of the farewell 
dinner scene, which is given in honor of Ellen after she decides to leave for Europe, 
where the vision of the society as totality is clearly presented. Ellen is once again shown 
as a threat to such totality; the triumph of the society’s totalizing view over the “new” 
culture, however, is only temporary in the scene. As is the case at the beginning of the 
novel, Wharton returns to the traditional realist chronotope of dinner parties to comment 
on the hypocrisy of the old society and its inability to see beyond convention. The 
farewell dinner scene calls to mind Tolstoy’s depictions of parties, where the peaceful 
atmosphere is often shown as a battle. Similarly, Wharton describes this dinner in honor 
of Ellen’s departure with the help of military vocabulary. Archer “felt like a prisoner in 
the centre of an armed camp,” as he perceives the “conspiracy” targeting Olenska and 
himself (The Age 282). He perceives that New York society assumes he is having an 
affair with Countess Olenska, but decides to cover it up and feign ignorance as long as 
Ellen leaves for Europe. Wharton describes the atmosphere of false kindness at the party: 
It was only at an entertainment ostensibly offered to a “foreign visitor” that Mrs. 
van der Luyden could suffer the diminution of being placed on her host's left. The 
fact of Madame Olenska's “foreignness” could hardly have been more adroitly 
emphasised than by this farewell tribute; and Mrs. van der Luyden accepted her 
displacement with an affability which left no doubt as to her approval. There were 
certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and 
thoroughly; and one of these, in the old New York code, was the tribal rally 
around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe. There was nothing on 
earth that the Wellands and Mingotts would not have done to proclaim their 
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unalterable affection for the Countess Olenska now that her passage for Europe 
was engaged; and Archer, at the head of his table, sat marvelling at the silent 
untiring activity with which her popularity had been retrieved, grievances against 
her silenced, her past countenanced, and her present irradiated by the family 
approval. (The Age 281) 
The open reference to Ellen as a “foreigner” now, when she is leaving, confirms her lack 
of belonging in the old New York society, whose ways are once again described as 
“tribal.” Unlike at the beginning of the novel, when Newland sees the performance in the 
opera, now he understands that he has become an accomplice in a “play” of falsehood 
and presence.  The exaggerated kindness of the family to Olenska confirms to Archer 
their decision not to have her in their company. The honorary guests, Mr. and Mrs. van 
der Luyden, even concede to and approve of being “displaced” to less honorary seats at 
the table for the sake of performing this necessary New York “ritual.” The “tribal rally” 
gathered to pay the last tribute to “a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe,” 
reveals the superficial kindness and false attitudes for the sake of keeping their ways and 
preserving the order as they understand it. Archer feels “inexorableness of his captors” as 
they speak of Beaufort, who disgraced his family, the analogy which strikes Archer as 
meant for him and Olenska. As in the New York old Academy at the beginning of the 
novel, Archer observes a “ritual,” which becomes a part of the chronotope and defines 
the totality to which the society clings. This time Archer is enlightened and understands 
all the hidden meanings of the “ritual”; he finds them false and oppressive. He is struck 
by society’s desire not to accept the truth, as he is not guilty of adultery. The evening is 
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further described as May’s “triumph,” stressing once again that behind the peaceful scene 
a cruel action of expelling Ellen from the family circle is taking place. 
 War and Peace reveals a similar atmosphere of pretense throughout its storyline. 
The scene of a supper on Hélène’s name day, which sealed the fate of Pierre and Hélène, 
is particularly telling in its presentation of societal ways observed by an innocent 
spectator. During the supper, Pierre becomes aware that the food, the anecdotes told, the 
people’s laughter are all false, and the real purpose of the supper is in fact to look at him 
and Hélène with the expectation that they are getting engaged: 
Whatever the others said, however they laughed and joked together, whatever the 
appetite with which they savored the Rhein wine, the sauté, the ice cream, 
however they avoided glancing at this couple, however indifferent or inattentive 
to them they seemed, the feeling for some reason was, from the occasional 
glances cast at them, that the anecdote about Sergei Kuzmich, and the laughter, 
and the food were all a pretense, and all the power of attention of the entire 
company was directed only at this couple – Pierre and Hélène. (Vol. I, 210)  
During the supper, amid of everything that is said and done, Pierre concentrates on the 
aspect of “pretense,” the falsity of the anecdote and of laughter; he perceives that the real 
purpose of the event is not to celebrate Hélène’s name day, but the day of Hélène’s and 
his own engagement. This innocent at first glance curiosity of guests, however, puts 
pressure on Pierre, which is so subtle that he initially confuses it for the goodwill of 
others. He reflects on his perspective marriage to Hélène: “Now I know that, not for her 
alone, not for me alone, but for all of them, this inevitably had to come about. They all 
expect this so much, they are so certain it will be, that I simply cannot disappoint them” 
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(Vol. I, 211). This gentle “goodwill” leads Pierre to making the biggest mistake in his 
life, which is his marriage to Hélène. Hélène is described as a woman of “unquestionable 
and all too strong and triumphantly effective beauty” that Pierre observes with 
“enraptured, almost frightened eyes” (Vol. I, 12; 15). May’s “triumph” at the farewell 
dinner in Wharton’s novel recalls the “triumph” of Hélène and her kinsmen, which is 
achieved through pretense and falsehood. During the supper, Pierre recognized the 
atmosphere around him and watches with almost paralyzing helplessness as the society 
not only expects but pressures him to marry Hélène. 
 In War and Peace and in The Age of Innocence the high societies are presented as 
totalities which adhere to conventions and operate through deceitful mechanisms. Both 
novels, however, deconstruct the visions of totality through the innocent observers who, 
though appear victims of these societies, as Ellen, Archer, and Pierre are, acquire a vision 
that allows them to transcend conventionality and gain a fuller visions of life. In The Age 
of Innocence, it is through recognition and acceptance of otherness that moving beyond 
conventionality becomes possible.  
Wharton gives her novel a traditional closure. Archer remains a good husband to 
May and learns to love and appreciate his life with her. Ellen is said to have left for Paris 
after having learned of May’s pregnancy, and she never physically appears again. 
However, the character of Ellen does not remain entirely erased. Ellen finds a 
comfortable home in Paris, where the society has, in Wharton’s understanding, to a large 
extent overcome conventionality. Wharton also gives us a glimpse of the society a 
quarter of a century later, where the society in New York no longer adheres to blinding 
convention. In one of the earlier scenes in the novel, one of the representatives of high 
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society points out that if the society does not guard its purity from people of questionable 
reputation, “we shall see our children fighting for invitations to swindlers' houses, and 
marrying Beaufort's bastards” (The Age 285). At the end of the novel, Archer’s son 
Dallas is soon to marry Beaufort’s illegitimate daughter Fanny Beaufort, and his choice is 
not questioned in society. The “triumph” of May and of the totalizing vision was 
therefore only temporary in the novel, as it ultimately gave way to a more open society. 
The question that needs explanation is why Archer refuses to see Ellen in the final 
turn of events when he travels to Paris with his son more than twenty years after the 
events described in the main part of the novel. After May’s death, the meeting of the two 
would not be questioned. To explain this Wolff sees Archer’s choice as suggesting the 
“integrity of his life” by making this final gesture he remains true to the values he chose 
(in Goodman 103). On the other hand, Susan Goodman insists that Archer remains 
“myopic,” embracing the fantasy of Ellen instead of the real person, as he previously did 
in his relationship with May (103). For Wharton it is not May, who represents the “old” 
ways, and not Ellen, who is symbolic of “new” ideas and aesthetics who can offer an 
impartial vision of the two worlds. Wharton chooses Archer to pass the final comments 
on the changing society, and therefore he remains a mere spectator till the end of the 
novel. Wharton begins the novel by showing Archer as a spectator in the New York old 
Academy; and he remains in this role till the very last pages of the book. His vision of the 
past and of the present remains the most impartial in the novel. The character of Archer 
remains consistent throughout the novel, and through him Wharton gives to her novel a 
sense of closure.  
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Archer’s reflections on the past and the present shed light on the novel’s overall 
message and reveal Wharton’s stance with regards to the changing traditions and values. 
Thinking of the past with May, Archer states: “Their long years together had shown him 
that it did not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept the dignity of 
a duty: lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of ugly appetites. Looking about him, 
he honoured his own past, and mourned for it. After all, there was good in the old ways” 
(The Age 292), Archer sees value in the traditional structure of the family, sees the 
“dignity of the duty,” which with time he learned to love. His recognition of the positive 
aspect of the traditional family confirms Wharton’s  often expressed ideas about 
morality.  
Along with these ideas, Archer also speculates about the present. When looking at 
the pictures of his wife May and daughter Mary Chivers, he recognizes the fact that his 
daughter is able to lead a more fulfilling life than that her mother led, the difference 
between the two which is symbolically revealed in their appearances: 
Mary Chivers's mighty feats of athleticism could not have been performed with 
the twenty-inch waist that May Archer's azure sash so easily spanned. And the 
difference seemed symbolic; the mother's life had been as closely girt as her 
figure. Mary, who was no less conventional, and no more intelligent, yet led a 
larger life and held more tolerant views. There was good in the new order too. 
(The Age 293-94) 
Archer recognizes that his daughter is able to lead a “larger,” more fulfilling life than that 
of her mother. The “new order” allows for Mary to develop her natural talents, which 
was never an option in the society May lived in. Furthermore, Archer’s son is engaged to 
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Fanny Beaufort, the daughter of a man who disgraced his family, and Archer does not see 
it as improper for the two to build their happiness together. Though he mourns the good 
of the old days, Archer also recognizes that the “new order” frees people from blinding 
conventionality and opens up a possibility of a fuller, more genuine and sincere 
existence.  
 Returning to Wharton’s statement about the necessity of timing all the novels with 
regards to the First World War allows for imagining the novel as projected into the 
future. The war that will break out in Europe will inevitably disrupt the natural order of 
things and disconnect the pre- and post-war traditions. In the novel, it will influence the 
lives of Archer’s children. The “old” moral values, as Wharton mentions in her critical 
articles, will be shattered. The pre-war time will become history and the “age of 
innocence” with no connection to the present. The Age of Innocence, therefore, shows 
that there is value in the time which preceded the war. Primarily, this value lies in the 
evolutionary progress of society and art; this movement, though not always smooth, was 
a forward movement, and the “new” was still connected to the “old.” In this sense, The 
Age of Innocence attempts to show that bridges can be built across the rift that the war 
created, and the lessons from the “age of innocence” about the evolutionary development 
of society and art can be still useful after the war. 
 
 
 
 
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Chapter IV: A Shared Sense of History: Poetry, Surgery, and Revolution in 
Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago 
Immediately after Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago (1957) was published in the West, 
the majority of the critics viewed the novel as a manifestation of the brave voice of the 
oppressed Russian people, an attempt to “rescue” the times from the official Soviet 
history, as Nicola Chiaromonte wrote in 1958, “Here is Russia, once again speaking out 
freely” (Pasternak 231). The history of the book’s publication contributed to its popular 
status in the West. In 1956 Pasternak’s novel was rejected for publication in the Soviet 
journal Novy Mir (Новый мир) where the author had submitted it. Pasternak, who did not 
lose hope of making the novel available to the public, passed it to the Italian publisher 
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who had offered to have the novel published in Italy. Thus the 
novel, which was forbidden from publication in the Soviet Union, was translated into 
Italian and published in Italy in 1957, creating an international sensation, which led to 
Pasternak being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1958. The letter from the editors of Novyi 
Mir, which had rejected the novel in 1956, was published openly in the Soviet Union two 
years later in 1958 in the Soviet journal Literaturaia Gazeta (Литературная газета). It 
addresses the novel’s unacceptable character: “The spirit of your novel is one of non-
acceptance of the socialist revolution. The general tenor of your novel is that the October 
Revolution, the Civil War, and the social transformation involved did not give the people 
anything but suffering, and destroyed the Russian intelligentsia, either physically or 
morally” (“Doctor Zhivago”: Letter 649). Pasternak was forced to refuse the Nobel 
Prize, which he did reluctantly. The novel was not published in the Soviet Union in 
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Pasternak’s lifetime, and appeared there only in 1988, soon before the Soviet collapse 
(see Livingstone). 
However, the novel stirred controversy right after its original publication in 1957 
with regards to its involvement with history. Isaac Deutscher (1907-1967), a Polish 
political activist and writer who immigrated to the United Kingdom and is known for his 
biographies of Soviet leaders and comments on the Soviet Union, saw the novel as less of 
a declaration for the necessity of democratic changes and more as a nostalgic outcry for 
the previous tsarist Russia. Deutscher’s primary criticism of the novel echoes his own 
sympathies with the revolution in Russia, the sympathies he does not see reflected in 
Doctor Zhivago. However, he is one of the first critics to bring forth a comparison 
between Doctor Zhivago and Tolstoy’s War and Peace on the grounds of both works’ 
engagement with history. Deutscher notes that Pasternak’s novel, which was heralded as 
primarily a historical novel, does not describe the historical realities which it claims as its 
focus. Looking at the novel alongside Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Deutscher writes: 
Tolstoy takes the characters of War and Peace straight into the center of the great 
events of their time. He throws them right into the stream of history, which carries 
them until they are overwhelmed or come on top. Pasternak places his characters 
into backwoods and backwaters. They do not participate in any single important 
event; nor do they even witness any such event. Yet what would War and Peace 
have been without Austerlitz and Borodino, without the fire of Moscow, without 
the Czar’s court and Kutuzov’s headquarters, and without the retreat of the grand 
Armée, all reproduced by Tolstoy’s epic genius? […] The drama of 1917-1921 
was at least as great as that of 1812; and it is far more momentous in its 
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consequences. Yet Pasternak never manages to give us a single glimpse of its 
main theme, of its central occurrences, and of its significant actors. (244-45) 
Isaac Deutscher argues that the historical events are not described vividly and oftentimes 
are simply absent from the novel, claiming that it “runs away from history.” The scholar 
places an emphasis on the descriptive language of Tolstoy, and asserts that Pasternak’s 
novel lacks the “eye for the historic scene.” Deutscher does praise Pasternak for his non-
conformist attitudes in the Stalinist era; however, he sees Pasternak’s role as that of 
“passive resistance” and does not recognize the novel as a genuine challenge to the 
Soviet society precisely because of its lack of direct engagement with history (see 
Deutscher 256-57).  
 Deutscher’s views have been challenged and are still being challenged from 
several perspectives, which will be considered later in this chapter. It is worth mentioning 
that Deutscher’s critique of Pasternak’s method of depicting history appears similar to the 
criticism that the veterans of the 1812 Russian war with Napoleon’s army waged against 
Tolstoy. The veterans were concerned with Tolstoy’s inadequate picture of historic 
events. In particular Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky, a participant in many events described by 
Tolstoy, calls War and Peace a “protest against the year 1812” and considers Tolstoy to 
be a “killer of history” (in Ungurianu109). According to Dan Ungurianu, the veterans 
were primarily concerned with Tolstoy’s “distorting [of] the truly heroic atmosphere of 
the Patriotic War in his disparaging and irrelevant tone as well as use of sensationalist 
details” (109). The veterans further refuted Tolstoy’s blending of history and fiction, 
which, in their perspective, could mislead the readers into believing he or she is reading 
history and not a novel (118).  
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 In light of the veterans’ critique of Tolstoy’s method of historical representation, 
Deutcher’s claims about Pasternak’s failure to engage “central occurrences” and 
“significant actors” to the extent to which they are engaged in War and Peace does not 
necessarily devalue Doctor Zhivago as a historical novel. In fact, such “absences” 
characterize Pasternak’s unique vision of the times. Pasternak, though telling about the 
events in the stories which the characters narrate, often does not show or describe them 
with the precision which can be found in Tolstoy. Scenes of battles and bloodshed, the 
images of political turmoil, do not capture the “spirit” of these events for Pasternak. 
Historical transformation in the novel is shown through artistic metaphors and analogies 
which the author uses as symbolic representations of events. Therefore it is typical for his 
historical imagination to envision the initial excitement of the revolution in symbolic 
terms: “Stars and trees come together and converse, night flowers philosophize, and stone 
buildings hold meetings” (128). This unique attitude to history constitutes the main 
difference between Tolstoy’s and Pasternak’s presentations of history: the former 
recognizes the necessity to recreate events as reflected in many individual minds, and the 
latter attempts to convey them as symbolic reflections of history. In avoiding precision 
and rejecting what he himself calls “Tolstoy’s unswerving faithfulness to the facts” 
(Doctor Zhivago 173), Pasternak pursues symbolic ways to represent the times.  
The present chapter argues that Pasternak’s philosophy of history is closely linked 
to his vision of art as a medium for communicating history. The novel presents art as a 
possibility of speaking historical truth. In Doctor Zhivago, the character Nicolai 
Vedeniapin refutes the claim of another character who states, “Russia needs schools and 
hospitals, not fauns and nenuphars,” by claiming that art has been humanity’s bare 
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necessity alongside all other things, as it opens up a possibility of telling “the unarmed 
truth” (70). History for Pasternak is a process, which is mysterious and impossible to 
detect: “[History] is not visible, just as it is impossible to see the grass grow” (405), but it 
is also a natural and organic process, as the analogy with the growing of plants shows. In 
demonstrating their unique approaches to history and methods of its artistic 
representation, both War and Peace and Doctor Zhivago become commentaries not only 
on the respective historical moment they engage with, but also on art, the process of 
creativity, and art’s capacity as a medium for narrating history.  
Irvine Howe responded to Deutcher’s critique of Pasternak’s presentation of 
history in his 1959 essay “Freedom and the Ashcan of History.” Howe draws attention to 
Deutscher’s claims that Doctor Zhivago is a “political act,” and not a work of art. In fact, 
Howe argues that the novel should be seen as “anti-political,” as “one that deals with the 
effort of man to survive in his own being at a time when the imperious demand of politics 
is total” (260-61). The critic asserts that the greatest value in the novel is placed on 
“independent consciousness”: Pasternak values such independence and attempts to show 
that survival is contingent on the compromise of the independence of consciousness (261; 
262).  
  A more recent study by Angela Livingstone argues that it does not do justice to 
the novel to reduce it to either philosophical, or political, or ethical messages. In her 1989 
book Livingstone states that “It is symptomatic of Pasternak’s method that both of the 
1917 revolutions, which most Soviet novels present through crowd scenes with noise, 
speeches and collective excitement, are reflected by him in the response of one man 
hearing the news from afar” (69). For Livingstone Pasternak’s filtration of history 
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through the single consciousness of the novel’s protagonist Yuri Zhivago is not a sign of 
a lack of historical perspective, but a way to engage with a broader picture of the era and 
define the moment. As to the comparison with Tolstoy, Livingstone writes:  
One could never say of Pasternak’s characters, as readers often claim of 
Tolstoy’s, that one feels one has really met them, nor (as Bakhtin has shown of 
Dostoevsky’s) that each one speaks from a separate and unique centre of 
consciousness. On the contrary, they tend to merge, overlap and add up to a single 
mind. Pasternak deliberately set out to oppose the realist tradition (6). 
Livingstone further quotes Pasternak’s letter to Stephen Spender, an English poet, in 
which Pasternak responds to criticism about the lack of character development in his 
novel: “more than to delineate [the characters] I tried to efface them” (in Livingstone 6). 
Livingstone makes it clear that neither the precision of historical thinking with concrete 
descriptions of the events, nor the development of individual characters, are objectives 
which Pasternak set for himself to accomplish in his work. On the other hand, 
Livingstone also notes that his work stands apart from the European modernist tradition 
in rejecting innovations of form. The scholar argues that the novel is unique in its form 
and in its content, and takes on “public moral responsibility when even [Pasternak], poet 
of gardens and weathers, singer of love and language, finally steps on to the public stage 
to record history, judge society, debate and define the nature of human being” (6). 
Livingstone’s study outlines various aspects of Pasternak’s vision in Doctor Zhivago in 
broader context of its time, viewing it primarily as a historical novel and as one which 
offers invaluable view on the nature of human being and society. 
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 In his book The Paradox of History (1969), Nicola Chiaromonte compares the 
visions of history offered by Tolstoy and Pasternak in their respective historical 
masterpieces War and Peace and Doctor Zhivago. The scholar states:  
[…] Pasternak, like Tolstoy, was determined to rescue a crucial epoch in the story 
of the Russian people from the falsehood of official history. Like Tolstoy, he was 
inspired by the conviction that history as we actually experience it is not a rational 
concatenation of events or the outcome of decisions in high places but a mass of 
infinitesimal accidents and unexpected incidents.
 
(119) 
Chiaromonte rightly sees the similar impulses in both novels, the impulses to define and 
to “rescue” histories which would otherwise be distorted, misrepresented, and 
misunderstood. Chiaromonte calls Doctor Zhivago “a modern sequel to War and Peace” 
in its attempt to define the epoch and to present the author’s perspective on the 
unexplainable mechanisms of history. In this sense, Pasternak’s novel calls for a 
comparison with War and Peace.  
The nature of Pasternak’s involvement with history has remained and, to an 
extent, still is a subject of discussion, as Isaac Deutscher argued. Pasternak, the “poet of 
gardens and weathers,” as Livingstone called him, turns to a historical subject which 
immediately forces him to express political stance with regards to Russia’s recent history, 
a move that came as a surprise to many. However, Pasternak’s novel in many ways 
serves as a reflection of the author’s own experience. Like many Russian intellectuals, 
the Pasternak family initially welcomed the Revolutions of the 1905 and 1917, as these 
events were connected with the hope for liberation from the tsarist autocratic rule and 
promised democratic transformations and social reforms. The belief that the liberation of 
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Russia from monarchism would bring in democratic changes and would “usher in an era 
of unparalleled creativity” was a common conception among the circles of the educated 
elite (Zubok 2). As his family immigrated to Germany in 1921, Pasternak, who initially 
joined them, later decided to return to Russia. Commenting on this choice to return, Algis 
Valiunas in the article “The Man who Dared” (2014) states that “At the time, Pasternak 
hoped that his singularity might find room for its free development within the brave new 
world of Soviet Man. In due course he would recognize that the obliteration of true 
individualism was essential to the survival of the new social organism, diseased and 
misshapen as it was from its conception” (Valiunas  46). In Russia Pasternak continued 
to write and publish his original and innovative poetry, simplifying the language of 
expression to make it more acceptable to various social groups of people. However, the 
persecutions of intellectuals and clergy that followed disillusioned many of the initial 
supporters of the social changes in Russia, including Pasternak. 
The years of the Soviet Union’s involvement in the Second World War unified 
the country, granting the people hope for a better life after the war. Renewed by this 
hope, Pasternak published his collection of poems On Early Trains (На ранних поездах, 
1944). The Stalinist terror did not stop after the war, bringing disillusionment to those 
expecting peaceful life following the years of deprivation. Referring to the situation in 
the Soviet Union after the war, Pasternak later stated: “If, in a bad dream, we had seen all 
the horrors in store for us after the war, we should not have been sorry to see Stalin fall, 
together with Hitler. Then, an end to the war in favour of our allies, civilized countries 
with democratic traditions, would have meant a hundred times less suffering for our 
people than that which Stalin again inflicted on it after his victory” (in Ivinskaya 80) It is 
168 
 
in this atmosphere of constant disillusionment and suffering that Pasternak thought about 
the position of the poet in the society; his vision took form in his novel Doctor Zhivago. 
Pasternak himself stressed the novel’s involvement with history of the era; he 
considered his Doctor Zhivago to be a masterpiece and the summation of his life 
experiences precisely through its engagement with the time. In a letter to a friend 
Pasternak expressed his excitement about the work he had finished:  
You cannot imagine what I have achieved! I have found and given names to all 
that sorcery that has been the source of suffering, bafflement, and dispute for 
several decades. Everything is named in simple, transparent, and sad words. I also 
once again renewed and redefined the dearest and most important things: land and 
sky, great passion, creative spirit, life and death. (In Zubok 1) 
It is the argument of this chapter that the “creative spirit,” the nature and origin of artistic 
inspiration, and the role of art as means of historical description remain important 
subjects of Pasternak’s pursuit in his Doctor Zhivago; and Pasternak’s historical vision 
becomes visible and can be explained in relation to these themes. Pasternak attempts to 
tell the truth about the epoch in “simple, transparent, and sad words,” yet his main focus 
always remains on the “creative spirit,” which makes it possible to approach and to talk 
about the unknowable history.  
  Pasternak’s vision of history is presented in Zhivago’s silent monologue towards 
the end of the novel, as he experiences creative inspiration and attempts to define the 
movement and the course of history: 
[Zhivago] again thought that his notion of history, of what is known as the course 
of history, was not at all the same as the accepted one, and that he pictured it as 
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similar to the life of the vegetable kingdom. In winter, under snow, the bare 
branches of the deciduous forest are as scraggly and pathetic as the hair on the old 
man’s wart. In spring the forest is transformed in a few days, rises to the clouds; 
one can lose oneself, hide oneself in its leafy maze. This transformation is 
achieved by a movement that surpasses in speed the movement of animals, since 
animals do not grow as quickly as plants, and that can never be observed. A forest 
does not move; we cannot catch it, cannot surprise it changing place. We always 
find it immobile. And it is in the same immobility that we find the eternally 
growing, eternally changing life of society, history, in its unobservable 
transformations. (Doctor Zhivago 405) 
Pasternak understands historical processes, the “course of history,” as organic, natural 
processes which are invisible and therefore unknowable. “A forest does not move; we 
cannot catch it,” Pasternak writes; yet the process of “growth” is constant and 
transformational. Fast, as the growth of plants, it changes lives of nations; and the 
“unobservable” processes transform societies. These processes, though unknowable, can 
be envisioned with the help of the metaphor of plant growth. In a moment of inspiration, 
Zhivago is able to describe, with the help of metaphorical expressions, the likeness of the 
processes in societies to those in nature. It is only by means of artistic expression that 
such a complex process as the “course of history” can be defined for Pasternak. 
 Pasternak’s vision of history makes an interesting comparison with that of Tolstoy 
as expressed in his War and Peace, an approach which helps explain the theoretical 
lenses that both novels adopt in their presentation of events. Pasternak deliberately puts 
170 
 
his historical vision alongside that of Tolstoy, defining his own vision as a more 
elaborate expression of the view that Tolstoy attempted to convey: 
Tolstoy did not carry his thought through to the end when he denied the role of 
initiators to Napoleon, to rulers, to generals. He thought precisely the same, but he 
did not voice it with full clarity. No one makes history, it is not visible, just as it is 
impossible to see the grass grow. Wars, revolutions, tsars, Robespierres – these 
are its organic stimulants, its fermenting yeast. Revolutions are produced by men 
of action, one-sided fanatics, geniuses of self-limitation. In a few hours or days 
they overturn the old order. The upheavals last for weeks, for years at the most, 
and then for decades, for centuries, people bow down to the spirit of limitation 
that led to the upheavals as to something sacred. (Doctor Zhivago 405) 
Pasternak views historical processes as unknowable and as that which cannot be 
controlled or even properly understood by men, as he claims that history “is not visible, 
just as it is impossible to see the grass grow.” This view he shares with Tolstoy, who 
asserts at the beginning to his Second Epilogue to War and Peace that “The subject of 
history is the life of peoples and of mankind. To grasp directly and to embrace in words – 
to describe – the life not only of mankind, but of one people, appears impossible” 
(Epilogue, Part Two, 1179). However, Pasternak disagrees with Tolstoy as to the role of 
the “great men” in history; he sees them as organic “fermenting yeast” which reflects 
larger processes within the nation. Pasternak claims that Tolstoy “did not carry his 
thought through to the end when he denied the role of initiators to Napoleon, to rulers, to 
generals.” Tolstoy, on the other hand, describes the flaws of historians who attempt to 
account for historical processes through the concept of power, leadership, and free will of 
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men; denounces these visions, claiming that “The life of peoples cannot be contained in 
the lives of several men, for the connection between these several men and the peoples 
has not been found” (1192). In Tolstoy’s understanding of history, the laws which can 
define historical movement cannot be explained by the will of the leaders or through the 
concept of power. Chiaromonte asserts that “What [Tolstoy] attacked in his argument and 
deflated in his artistic representation was the dominant nineteenth-century idea that man 
could discover the true laws of history, thereby justifying his demiurgical claim that he 
could direct events and make history” (Chiaromonte “Paradox” 36)  
Tolstoy denounces the concept of man’s free will using the analogy between 
astronomy and history:  
As in the question of astronomy then, so now in the question of history, all 
the difference in views is based on the recognition or non-recognition of an 
absolute unit serving as a measure of visible phenomena. In astronomy this was 
the immobility of the earth; in history it is the independence of the person - 
freedom. [….] 
In the first case [the case in astronomy,] the need was to renounce the 
consciousness of a nonexistent immobility in space and recognize the movement 
we do not feel; in the present case, [the case in history,] it is just as necessary to 
renounce the nonexistent freedom and recognize a dependence we do not feel. 
(Epilogue Part Two 1214-15) 
Tolstoy opposes the concept of the free will of man as capable of changing the course of 
history, but emphasizes time, chance, and foremost divine will in directing the lasting 
consequences of historical events. As in astronomy the vision of the immobility of the 
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earth obstructed for centuries the knowledge about the real locations and movements of 
stars, so in history, Tolstoy, asserts, the concepts of man making history and 
understanding its laws are illusory. For Tolstoy, historic events are subordinated to the 
higher divine order but are not the result of organic natural processes, as he writes: “Only 
the expression of the will of a divinity not dependent on time can pertain to a whole 
series of events that are to take place over several years or centuries, and only a divinity, 
without cause, by its will alone, can determine the direction of mankind’s movement.” 
(1195). For Tolstoy, it is divine will that directs “mankind’s movement.”  For Pasternak, 
however, “the great men of history” do appear as an expression of the energy of nations 
and societies, the organic “yeast” which brings forth processes which are already taking 
shape within societies. 
 Though Pasternak and Tolstoy share the vision of history as unknowable, 
Pasternak attempts to capture the “spirit” of change through poetic language; the 
“movement of history” becomes visible for him in the glimpses of artistic inspiration that 
his character Yuri Zhivago experiences, and can only be addressed in terms of poetic 
metaphorical expression. Tolstoy, on the other hand, attempts to describe the events fully 
and clearly as they appear in people’s individual consciousness; the author stresses that 
the laws by which history operates are not accessible to people. Tolstoy’s character 
Kutuzov approaches an understanding of history by submitting to the invisible forces of 
history and to the unknowable divine will. Pasternak’s character Doctor Zhivago is able 
to understand and envision the movement of history and respond to them only in the 
moment of artistic inspiration.  
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This vision of history reflects Pasternak’s life-long interest in the nature of artistic 
creativity, expressed earlier in his philosophical and poetic works, as well as declared in 
his autobiographical Safe Conduct, where he writes “the world’s best creations, those 
which tell of the most diverse things, in reality describe its own birth” (70). By calling 
attention to the artistic quality of language which is capable of addressing what is 
inaccessible and impossible to detect through other means, Pasternak creates a novel that 
is as much about history as it is about the process of creation and the nature of artistic 
inspiration.  
At the beginning of the novel, Zhivago’s uncle, Nikolai Nikolaievich Vedeniapin 
(uncle Kolya) has a passionate conversation with his guest, the minor character 
Vyvolochnov, who questions Vedeniapin’s interest in arts, asserting that “Russia needs 
schools and hospitals, not fauns and nenuphars.” Without denying this, Nikolai 
Nikolaievich engages into an extended explanation of his point of disagreement with 
these ideas: 
“[…] But the point is precisely this, that for centuries man has been raised above 
the animals and borne aloft not by the rod, but by music: the irresistibility of the 
unarmed truth, the attraction of its example. It has always been up to now that the 
most important thing in the Gospels is the moral pronouncements and rules, but 
for me the most important thing is that Christ speaks in parables from daily life, 
clarifying the truth with the light of everyday things. At the basis of this lies the 
thought that communion between mortals is immortal and that the whole of life is 
symbolic because it is meaningful.” (37) 
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Given the fact that the characters in the novel are called to merge into a single voice, 
Nikolai Nikolaievich here expresses the main idea of the novel: art has an incredible 
capacity to bring forth “everyday” reality, to symbolically reflect the “unarmed truth” of 
life, and therefore of history. The “music” of art is of the same importance as schools, 
education and all the benefits of civilization, because it is what differentiates a man from 
an animal – the capacity to see the truth conveyed in a symbolic form which art provides.  
Furthermore, Pasternak’s idea of the “unarmed truth” presents a contrast to the 
vision of “truth” as it was presented in the official Soviet discourse. The truth, often 
referred to as “the Party’s truth” or the higher order “Lenin’s truth” in official Soviet 
discourse (see Clark The Soviet Novel), was always a concept that empowered an 
individual, we can even say “armed” him or her against the views and ideologies which 
did not correspond to those propagated by the Communist Party. Soviet education aimed 
to empower individuals by propagating the “true” ideas, the ideas of communism to 
people. This understanding of “truth” relates to the use of the term “enlightenment” in the 
official Soviet discourse. In her 2013 article Elizabeth Papazian states that this term was 
used in relation to Soviet education to bring out the association with the historical 
Enlightenment and the ideas of “free will and agency for an individual.” Thus, the Soviet 
discourse reveals what Papazian calls “the paradox of the transformative impulse 
underlying Soviet propaganda: it aims to enlighten at the same time as it aims to control” 
(68). Therefore the official “truth” aimed to “enlighten” and simultaneously to control 
individuals, and it is this kind of truth that Pasternak rejects.  
Bringing forth the idea of “unarmed truth,” Pasternak opposes the vision of truth 
in the Soviet official discourse; the author presents art as a medium which has the 
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potential to convey such bare “truth” to people. Fascination with the potential of artistic 
expression and its power to speak the “unarmed truth” defines the novel’s historical focus 
and constitutes the important theme of its own. Reflecting on art and the history of 
humanity, Pasternak leads his character Doctor Zhivago to “record history,” “judge 
society” and “debate and define the nature of human beings.” He goes through times of 
elevated excitement and bitter disappointments, always taking historical moments on a 
personal level and evaluating their potential to inspire creativity and art. Thus doctor-poet 
Zhivago reflects on the Russian Revolution of 1917 and its effect upon him in 
metaphorical terms. In his conversation with Lara, who is soon to become his beloved, 
Zhivago conveys the great excitement of the feeling of liberation from tsarist despotism 
which was associated with the revolution:  
“I watched a meeting last night. An extraordinary spectacle. Mother Russia has 
begun to move, she won’t stay put, she walks and never tires of walking, she talks 
and can’t talk enough. And it’s not as if only people are talking. Stars and trees 
come together and converse, night flowers philosophize, and stone buildings hold 
meetings. Something gospel-like, isn’t it? And in the days of the apostles. 
Remember, in Paul? ‘Speak in tongues and prophesy. Pray for the gift of 
interpretation.’” (128-29) 
Zhivago reflects Pasternak’s own excitement when he saw the great potential of the 
revolution, which Russian intelligentsia shared, expecting the ending of censorship and 
welcoming the “era of unparalleled creativity,” as Zubok points out. Immediately Lara 
echoes Zhivago’s feeling, making both of them sound as one voice. She says: “About the 
meetings of trees and stars I understand. I know what you want to say. The same has 
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happened to me too” (129). The stars, trees, flowers and even buildings seem to be 
awakened by the incredible energy of the revolution and its promise of freedom. The 
voices of the characters merge into one as they discuss the promises of the revolution. 
The feelings they experienced can only be expressed with the help of metaphors, as the 
“meetings of trees and stars” and as the “movement” which encompasses the whole of 
Russia. 
Zhivago heralds the revolution as an uplifting moment for a person’s dignity in his 
description, which also relies heavily on poetic language: 
“Just think what a time it is now! And that you and I are living in these 
days! Only once in eternity do such unprecedented things happen. Think: the roof 
over the whole of Russia has been torn off, and we and all the people find 
ourselves under the open sky. And there’s nobody to spy on us. Freedom! Real, 
not just in words and demands, but fallen from the sky, beyond all expectation. 
Freedom by inadvertence, by misunderstanding.  
“And how perplexedly enormous everyone is? As if each of them is 
crushed by himself, by the revelation of his own heroic might. (128) 
Pasternak glorifies the sensation of freedom that the revolution has brought and the vision 
of an individual as enormous and grand, capable of bringing about this freedom. The time 
is described through metaphorical expression: “the roof over the whole of Russia has 
been torn off,” signaling the unprecedented and spontaneous character of the historical 
change. People “find [them]selves under the open sky,” overwhelmed by the enormous 
sensation of freedom which overtakes them.  
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Describing Pasternak’s method of narrating history, Livingstone explains: 
“[Pasternak] says nothing about the monarchy, the Provisional Government, the Soviets, 
the violence in Petrograd, or conflicting ideologies. Instead, he talks of the change in the 
quality of existence, the sheer experience of what it feels like for an entire country to be 
altered by a political event” (Livingstone 69). The scenes of the violence happening in 
the streets of Petersburg or Moscow are deliberately not put into the main focus; they are 
often given in brief sentences, as, for example, when the patients in the hospital where 
Yuri Zhivago serves get excited and shout in brief incomplete sentences: “An event of 
extraordinary importance. Disorder in the streets of Petersburg. The troops of the 
Petersburg garrison have gone over to the side of the insurgents. Revolution” (114). 
Pasternak deliberately does not give realistic pictures of violence of the events, but 
attempts to convey the sensation of freedom that the intelligentsia experienced and 
contrast it to the later disappointment they experienced.  
 Zhivago frequently refers to the image of the sky: freedom is described as “fallen 
from the sky” and people find themselves “under the open sky.” The references to the sky 
in the novel accompany the descriptions of the great excitement that Zhivago and, it is 
assumed, the whole Russia, go through associating the revolution with the great promise 
of democratic change in the country. Such moments recall the encounter with the sky that 
Prince Andrei experiences after the Battle of Austerlitz in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. 
Doctor Zhivago, like Prince Andrei, cannot hold on to the sensation of freedom that he 
gains for just a brief period of time. Both character return to what Lukacs defines as the 
world of convention. Analyzing such moments of revelation in Tolstoy, Lukacs states 
that they are “a factual assurance that an essential life really does exist beyond 
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conventionality—a life which can be reached through the lived experiences of a full and 
genuine selfhood, the self-experience of the soul, but from which one must irremediably 
fall back into the world of convention” (Theory 147). Doctor Zhivago’s experience is 
similar to that of Prince Andrei as neither of them can hold on to the sensation of the 
inner freedom that they gain. However, the genuine epiphany that Prince Andrei feels is 
associated with his closeness to nature in War and Peace, while the sensation of freedom 
in Doctor Zhivago is connected to the creativity and artistic inspiration. 
Zhivago as a poet further describes the revolution as bearing an enormous 
potential for artistic creativity and originality. The revolution in Russia becomes a 
symbolic spiritual rebirth, which becomes an inspiration for artists, as Zhivago sees it: 
“[…] Everyone revived, was reborn, in everyone there are transformations, 
upheavals. You might say that everyone went through two revolutions, one his 
own, personal, the other general. It seems to me that socialism is a sea into which 
all these personal, separate revolutions should flow, the sea of life, the sea of 
originality. The sea of life, I said, the life that can be seen in paintings, life 
touched by genius, life creatively enriched. But now people have decided to test 
it, not in books, but in themselves, not in abstraction but in practice.” (129) 
As many representatives of Russian intellectuals at the time, Zhivago expects the “era of 
unparalleled creativity” to burst into being after the revolution reaches its goal of fighting 
the tsarist regime (Zubok 2). The revolution is not described in terms of its violent 
encounters, fighting, casualties, but as the “personal” revolution in mind that promised 
“the sea of life, the sea of originality.” Pasternak describes the historical period in terms 
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of its relation to the artistic expression; he highlights the moments of artistic inspiration 
which helped construct the novel, illustrating also the process of artistic creation. 
 At this stage of his life Zhivago imagines the revolution as first and foremost a 
cultural phenomenon, as the transformation of personalities which leads to originality of 
expression. Zhivago tries to see it as something which has become a part of Russian 
culture, like “Pushkin’s unconditional luminosity” and “Tolstoy’s unswerving 
faithfulness to the facts” (114). A cultural phenomenon that, though happened 
unexpectedly, was somehow already foretold by the great poets and writers in Russia.  
 However, the association of the revolution with the “spirit” of creativity becomes 
more and more problematic as the novel progresses. Pasternak brings forth a metaphor of 
surgery to define and describe the revolution. When trying to explain and rationalize the 
revolution, Zhivago describes it as follows: “What magnificent surgery! To take and at 
one stroke artistically cut out the old, stinking sores! Simply, without beating around the 
bush, to sentence age-old injustice […]” (173). The “surgery” is described as 
“magnificent,” however it is associated with blood and intervention into a human body, 
the images that no longer present a romantic image or inspire poetry. The image of 
Russia is associated with human body that tries to recover after the surgery. 
The historic events soon lose their association with “honesty” and 
“productiveness”; they also lose their potential to inspire creativity. Zhivago tries 
desperately to hold on to the images of regrowth and “renewal,” to the “spirit” of 
creativity and inspiration, as he thinks: “After the war, he wanted to go back to that spirit, 
to that renewal and continuation, just as he longed to be back home after his absence” 
(141). Zhivago longs for the promises of the revolution to be fulfilled, but now he is 
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burdened by the experience which throws ambiguity onto the promises of the revolution. 
He thinks of the “new” experiences that come to define the revolution:  
To this new belonged the war, its blood and horrors, its homelessness and 
savagery. To this new belonged the trials and the wisdom of life taught by the 
war. To this new belonged the remote towns the war brought you to and the 
people you ran into. To this new belonged the revolution, not as idealized by 
university intellectuals in 1905, but this present-day one, born of the war, bloody, 
a soldier’s revolution, reckless of everything, led by connoisseurs of this element, 
the Bolsheviks. (141-42) 
These later images of the period are not described in terms of extended metaphors as they 
lose their potential to inspire creative response. The “blood and horrors,” “homelessness 
and savagery” are the things that contrast strongly with the spirit of “genius” and 
“originality” described previously, when Zhivago shared his hopes and expectations. 
Now, having served at the hospital during the war, Zhivago can no longer hold on to the 
“idealized” version of the revolution, but sees the “bloody” and “reckless” image of it; he 
is also tired and angered by the unrelenting pressure of the Bolsheviks, whom he calls the 
“connoisseurs” of war and destruction. The images of “blood,” “recklessness,” and 
“savagery” further the vision of the revolution as surgery “surgery.”  
Contrary to Zhivago’s expectations, instead of bringing up the spirit of creative 
originality, the revolution seems to have effaced the personalities of his friends, making 
them sound as if they have lost their individual voices:  
In the course of the next few days it became clear how alone he was. […] 
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His friends had become strangely dim and colorless. Not one of them had 
preserved his own outlook, his own world. They had been much more vivid in his 
memory. He must have overestimated them in the past. (154) 
Zhivago even initially blames his friends for losing their “originality” due to the loss of 
their privileged status in the society. However, he becomes increasingly aware that the 
whole of his country has become “dim and colorless” as the promises of the revolution 
were never fulfilled. The impending threat to freedom of expression and even to life in 
the new society seems to efface the personality traits which used to define people.  
 Here Zhivago’s profession of a doctor helps him to “diagnose” society; as a 
doctor, he is able to see that the “surgery” has failed. Excitement of the initial stage of the 
post-revolutionary period is change to the realization of the present-day hardships. 
Zhivago reflects: “People in the cities were helpless like children in the face of the 
approaching unknown […]” (163). The “helplessness” of the Russian people in the face 
of the unknown future becomes similar to a disease, the association that helps explain 
Zhivago’s identity as a doctor. Pasternak writes: “But the doctor saw life unvarnished. Its 
condemnation could not be concealed from him. He considered himself and his milieu 
doomed. They faced ordeals, perhaps even death. The numbered days they had left 
melted away before his eyes” (163). Zhivago as a doctor who can diagnose sicknesses 
sees “life unvarnished” and realizes that the intelligentsia not only lost their spirit of 
creativity, but face the problem of survival in the new regime of persecutions and 
aggression to all associated with the former privileged classes.  
Contrasting the high expectations that people had with the present state of the 
“unknown” and fear for life, Pasternak imparts a sense of the unknowablility of history 
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and the impossibility of prediction of its outcomes. Zhivago identifies the post-
revolutionary life and the whole movement of history as defying the norms of logic and 
reason. Travelling in a train, he addresses the character Samdeviatov: “There, you see, 
you’re a Bolshevik and you yourself don’t deny that this isn’t life, but something 
unprecedented, phantasmagorical, incongruous” (235). The subsequent Civil War that 
breaks out in Russia turns the message and promise of the revolution into violence. The 
revolution and its aftermath can only be describes as something “unprecedented, 
phantasmagorical, incongruous.”  
This understanding of historical events as irrational and ultimately unknowable is 
also characteristic of Tolstoy’s vision. Unlike Pasternak, Tolstoy writes about historical 
events, defining their precise location and time, and describing the details of landscape, 
while Pasternak attempts to convey the general feeling of the event, as well as to draw 
attention to the importance of the artistic expression in conveying of this general 
sensation. Both authors attempt to picture historical events as incongruent and baffling. A 
moment which comes close to Tolstoy´s descriptions of war takes place in Pasternak´s 
novel when Yuri Zhivago participates in a battle after being forcibly conscripted as a 
doctor into a Red partisan unit during the Civil War. Here he unintentionally breaks the 
rule of the Red Cross International Convention, which proscribes medical workers´ 
participation in fighting, and takes part in the defense of the partisan unit. Zhivago, who 
has been taken to the Red partisan encampment against his will, sympathizes with the 
young boys who lead the attack upon his unit. However, he also feels compelled to 
support the defense of his unit and “to do what the others were doing” (300). Having 
submitted to the general chaos of the moment, Zhivago shoots a young White soldier. 
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Though the doctor has aimed at the tree, the confusion of the battle leaves no time for 
him to carefully wage his actions; full of pity Zhivago wonders: “Why did I kill him?” 
The war is shown as a site of extreme confusion, where Zhivago cannot understand the 
purpose of fighting and killing, yet cannot stay away from the environment which pushes 
him to take action.  
It is impossible for Zhivago to draw a distinct line between enemies and allies. 
Forced to defend his camp, Zhivago strongly empathizes with the White soldiers. 
Looking into their faces, he images that these are the faces of the people he knows or 
used to know:  
The doctor did not know any of them, but the faces of half of them seemed to him 
habitual, seen, familiar. They reminded him of his former schoolmates. Could this 
be that these were their younger brothers? Others he seemed to have met in street 
or theatre crowds in the years gone by. Their expressive, attractive physiognomies 
seemed close, kindred. (298-99) 
This episode in the novel reflects Levinasian acceptance of the other, as Zhivago cannot 
label people on either side as his enemies. Zhivago is in the Red Army unit, however, he 
feels that it is only accidentally that he is found in the position of an enemy with regards 
to those young and innocent faces who fight on the other side. He compares them to the 
people he knew and imagines meeting those who are in the position of his enemies in 
casual everyday situations. These visions erase the presentation of the young soldiers as 
enemies and evoke sympathy for them.  
Pasternak further confuses the distinction between the people on the battlefield 
and complicates the vision of them as enemies. While examining the bodies of the dead 
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telephonist who belonged to the partisan unit and the White soldier he has shot, Zhivago 
finds that both men kept the same Ninety-first Psalm hidden among their belonging. 
Though the psalms are written in different styles, the White soldier has it written in 
canonical Old Church Slavonic, while the telephonist has it in plain spoken Russian, the 
kinship between these two people is emphasized, as both of them share the same beliefs 
and both seek consolation in prayer. When Zhivogo discovers that the soldier he shot was 
just wounded, he secretly takes him to his unit’s hospital and nurses him back to health 
despite the fact that “[the soldier] did not conceal from his saviors that he would return to 
the ranks of Kolchak’s army and continue fighting the Reds” (302). The scene shows 
Zhivago as belonging simultaneously to both hostile encampments. Though serving as a 
doctor for the Red partisans whose unit is under attack, he feels that people on the White 
side are close to him in their education, morals, and upbringing. As a doctor, he also 
maintains the position in-between the enemy camps. Zhivago is in the unique position to 
observe that both, the partisan and the White soldier, say the same prayers, which makes 
the ideological distance between them not so radical. Despite the slight differences in 
expression, these people display the same need for comfort and alleviation of fear in 
times of trouble. Zhivago is compelled to help people on both sides, as he nurses the 
wounded soldier back to health. His position of being in-between the two camps also 
allows him to perceive the confusing atmosphere of the battle most poignantly. 
Livingstone notes that the “motif of the same poetic text being shared by very different 
people” is a unifying force of life (76). The shared text becomes symbolic of the shared 
history and destiny despite the differences in social standing and the political interests 
which divide people. The prayer that both soldiers share discovered by Zhivago becomes 
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symbolic of the acceptance of otherness in the novel: the two characters that imagined 
each other as enemies are shown as having more in common than they suspected. 
Zhivago’s effort to save the young soldier and let him go demonstrates Levinas’s 
responsibility towards the other and acceptance of otherness that becomes of importance 
at the moment of national crisis.   
Though Livingstone rightly points to the importance of poetic expression in the 
novel, the mentioned scene also conveys a sense of unknowable but shared history, 
which remains invisible in the general confusion created by massive events, but can be 
approached in the moments when the enemies are forced to recognize commonality of 
attitudes or behaviors. In Pasternak’s novel, this mutual sense is found in a prayer-song 
which unites the enemies. A similar scene can also be found in War and Peace; the 
characters here visibly share the mutual sense of confusion and fear. When Pierre 
observes the Battle of Borodino as a civilian, he cannot make sense of the happenings 
around him and in the confusion seizes a French officer and the officer also seizes Pierre. 
For a moment the two are unsure as to who is the captive and who is the captor: “For a 
few seconds the two men looked with frightened eyes into their mutually alien faces, and 
both were perplexed about what they had done and what they were to do. ‘Am I taken 
prisoner, or have I taken him prisoner?’ each of them thought” (Vol. III 797). The sense 
of mutual misunderstanding of the situation, as well as the erasure of the clear line 
between the enemies is characteristic of the historical visions of both authors.  
The dramatic moment of Zhivago shooting the young White soldier is reminiscent 
of another moment in Tolstoy’s novel, the death of young Petya Rostov who, having 
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entered battle with high expectations for glory, perishes in the dim and confused 
atmosphere of the battle.  
“Wait?... Hurra-a-ah!...” shouted Petya, and not losing a moment, he galloped 
towards the place from which the shots were coming and where the powder 
smoke was thickest. A volley of shots rang out, stray bullets whined and splatted 
into something. The Cossacks and Dolokhov galloped after Petya through the 
gates of the house. In the dense, undulating smoke some of the French dropped 
their weapons and ran out of the bushes towards the Cossacks, others ran down 
the hill to the pond. Petya galloped on his horse across the manor courtyard, and, 
instead of holding the reins, waved both arms somehow strangely and quickly, 
and kept slipping further and further to one side in the saddle. Running into the 
campfire smoldering in the morning light, the horse balked, and Petya fell heavily 
onto the wet ground. The Cossacks saw how his arms and legs jerked rapidly, 
though his head did not move. His head had been pierced by a bullet. (Vol. IV 
1057-58) 
In describing this scene, Tolstoy allows the readers to hear the ringing of shots, see the 
thick “powder smoke” and the light from the camp fire, as well as to feel the confusion of 
people running in the field. Petya’s slightly strange behavior  – “instead of holding the 
reins, [he] waved both arms somehow strangely and quickly, and kept slipping further 
and further to one side in the saddle” – is not immediately associated with death, but with 
the general atmosphere, where nothing is clear because of the shots, the smoke, and 
people’s rapid movements. 
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This kind of description is not characteristic of Pasternak’s narrative. Tolstoy 
goes into detail describing the impulses registered by human senses as the events are 
unfolding, while Pasternak narrates his scene from Zhivago’s perspective, allowing us to 
see the confusion in Zhivago’s desperate question “Why did I kill him?” Though the 
techniques that the authors use are quite different in both novels, the battle scenes remain 
visible only through glimpses of confusion and in their aftermath. 
Pasternak continues to draw attention to artistic expression as a means which 
allows talking about history and transmitting the experience of it. The revolution in the 
novel is further described through the metaphors of “disease.” Zhivago’s role as a doctor 
is to try to make sense and possibly even find “cure” for the traumatic present that the 
county’s sick body experiences after the revolution. Zhivago also becomes a poet and 
writes more and more as the novel progresses because the scientific approach associated 
with medicine fails to provide him with a vision necessary to find this “cure,” which 
consists in finding the form to express the historical moment. 
In the novel, Zhivago is constantly surrounded by the images of disease, 
deception, and chaos; these images become metaphors that help define the historical 
moment in the book. The most striking is an episode of Zhivago travelling with a young 
hunter, who introduces himself as Pogorevshikh and who, Zhivago finds out, is deaf but 
has learned to talk. Zhivago correctly guesses that this person must be the one who 
assisted in creation of the independent republic of Zybushino, where a small 
administrative unit declared independence from the whole country of Russia refusing to 
obey the Provisional Government of the time. Zhivago realizes that this youth has 
deceived the uneducated people of Zybushino by pretending to miraculously gain the 
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capacity of speech in the moments of inspiration, and thus manipulating people’s 
decision to separate from the country (143-44). This episode stresses the general 
atmosphere of chaos in the country, where people, “helpless like children,” can no longer 
distinguish between the truth and lies, and can be manipulated into senseless deeds. 
The image of a deaf leader who deceives people in this episode contrasts with 
Tolstoy’s symbolic use of the image of disability in his novel. Such characters as Pierre 
and Princess Marya Bolkonsky are shortsighted in the novel, however, they possess a 
vision that allows them to understand other people and situations better than other 
characters understand them. The character of Kutuzov is blind in one eye, yet he is able 
to command the lead the whole army, and under his leadership the army is victorious. 
These characters are not tied to their sensory experiences but gain a vision beyond such 
experience. In War and Peace, Prince Vasily mocks the fact that Kutuzov is appointed 
commander in chief of the Russian army, saying: “Is it possible to appoint as commander 
in chief a man who cannot mount a horse, who falls asleep at a council, a man of the 
lowest morals! […] but is it possible at such a moment to appoint a man who is decrepit 
and blind, plain blind? A fine thing to have a blind general!” (Vol. III 707). The character 
of Kutuzov helps Tolstoy to develop his idea about history as impossible to understand or 
grasp. Kutuzov, though he lacks sight, understands that history cannot be comprehended. 
He possesses a wisdom that is not accessible to people with a perfect sight who try to 
understand and control the course of history. Kutuzov leads the army to victory because 
he possesses a larger understanding that “great men” cannot make history.  
The themes of chaos and madness are connected in Doctor Zhivago to the theme 
of people’s misused talents, the spirit of mediocrity, or as Pasternak calls it, the “geniuses 
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of self-limitation” (405), which lead to the loss of historical opportunities. Pasternak 
mourns such loss of talent, originality and creativity. He explains people’s submission to 
“revolutionary madness” by overreliance on rational and calculated thinking, and 
forgetting about the impulsive and spontaneous, which inspires creativity.  
The prominent example of a person who becomes trapped in such “revolutionary 
madness” is the character of Antipov/Strelnikov. Antipov is trained as a historian, but 
abandoned this field and teaches himself mathematics. In the context of the novel, his 
choice to pursue mathematics can be seen as reflecting his desire to find a totalizing 
vision of the world, which he cannot find in history. Antipov’s reliance on rigid logical 
thinking and categorization and an attempt to explain everything cannot save him from 
his limited vision and even obstructs his capacity to do good. In addition to medicine, 
Zhivago embraces poetry, which grants him a vision that is broad and complex, and 
enables him to understand and artistically recreate reality.  In the novel Pasternak 
describes Antipov in the following way: 
But for the activity of a scientist laying new paths, his mind lacked the gift 
of unexpectedness, that power which, with unforeseen discoveries, disrupts the 
fruitless harmony of empty foresight.  
And for doing good, he, a man of principle, lacked the unprincipledness of 
the heart, which knows no general cases, but only a particular ones, and which is 
great in doing small things. (223-24) 
Antipov, a kind and studious person, who “possessed a rare degree of moral purity and 
fairness,” mistakenly sees the revolution as a path to fulfillment for all people. His lack 
of the “gift of unexpectedness” and the eye for “unforeseen discoveries” contrast him to 
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Zhivago, who combines the compassionate perspective and the diagnostic ability of a 
doctor with the spontaneous and original mind of a poet. Unlike Antipov who embraces 
logical and calculated understanding of the world, Zhivago can understand ambiguity. 
Though initially enchanted by the energy of the revolution, Zhivago preserves the 
capability to see life “unvarnished,” while Antipov mistakenly envisions life “as 
enormous arena where people, honorably observing the rules, compete for perfection” 
(224). Antipov’s marriage to Lara does not provide him with the fulfillment he expected 
from it; he also cannot find fulfillment in his profession, as he cannot move to teach to St. 
Petersburg due to the war. Antipov finds the escape from his unfulfilling marriage and 
profession by joining the army to fight against Bolsheviks, then later he secretly joins the 
Reds, having changed his name to Strelnikov. This character seeks self-assertion and 
fulfillment through acts of cruelty and violence. Having discovered that life is not as fair 
as he has imagined it, Antipov holds on to the offence and sees violence as a means of 
combating and avenging unfairness. “The gift of unexpectedness” and the power of 
“unforeseen discoveries” are qualities which poetry is capable of pursuing. Striving for 
perfection and always adhering to the rules, Antipov lacks these qualities; he also lacks 
the “heart,” the creative approach, which can, at times, violate the principles which an 
individual has chosen for himself and achieve greatness by pursuing small good things, 
such as showing love and compassion towards others.  
Pasternak emphasizes a “rare degree of moral purity” as Antipov’s characteristic 
trait, which calls to mind the preoccupation of the leaders of the Communist Party with 
purges and creation of pure society, free from those who were seen as enemies of the 
people. Purity here can be also seen as opposed to diversity, as the state sought to create 
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the society where all individuals conformed to a certain standard. Antipov, through his 
limited vision, imagines all people as uniform and “compet[ing] for perfection.” This 
character who seeks for a vision of the world as totality and lacks the breadth of poetic 
imagination cannot understand or tolerate the irrational, unexpected, and impure.  
 Antipov’s mind is opposed to that of the poet, as it is associated with an 
unnatural, even mechanical worldview. Elliott Mossman draws attention to the fact that 
Pasternak turns to the mechanical metaphor to describe Antipov. Mossman states that 
“the mechanical image was a common one in the post-Symbolist search for metaphors to 
equal the wayward force and unpredictable path of the Revolution” (258). Zhivago, 
reflecting on his meeting with Antipov/Strelnikov, states that “The arbitrariness of the 
revolutionaries is terrible not because they are villains, but because it’s a mechanism out 
of control, like a machine that’s gone off the rails” (Pasternak Doctor Zhivago 266). 
Antipov, who lacks “heart,” has become into a “machine” “gone off the rails” who settles 
his accounts with life for the suffering he went through. Antipov’s adopted name, 
“Strelnikov” (“the shooter”) supports the development of this mechanical metaphor. 
Pasternak adopts this metaphor to outline the limitation in the personality of Antipov: the 
self-destructive ambition of this character, his inability to extend love toward his 
neighbors, and accept his life as a sacrifice for the good of others. Through 
Antipov/Strelnikov, Pasternak is able to express his vision of historical transformation as 
a mechanistic process, which is opposed to natural development of society and which has 
gone out of control. As his name which includes the preposition “anti” indicates, Antipov 
is opposed to Zhivago, who combines the sensibility of the poet with the compassionate 
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but logical reasoning of a doctor and is able to both feel and comprehend historical 
processes.  
 During the final encounter of Antipov and Zhivago, when Antipov is persecuted 
by Bolsheviks who no longer need his services, he “was possessed by the same spirit of 
self-exposure, re-evaluated himself entirely” (408). Now Antipov, no longer needed by 
Bolsheviks, embodies an element that is different from the uniform vision that 
communism was trying to achieve, he becomes an “impurity” similar to that he was 
trying to eliminate while fighting with the Red Army. Listening to his feverish and 
desultory confessions, Zhivago is able to discern and give a “diagnosis” to the whole 
epoch: 
This was the sickness of the age, the revolutionary madness of the epoch. In 
thought everyone was different from his words and outward show. No one had a 
clear conscience. Each with good reason could feel himself guilty, a secret 
criminal, an unexposed deceiver. On the slightest pretext, a rage of self-
castigating imagination would play itself out to the uttermost limits. People 
fantasized, denounced themselves, not only under the effect of fear, but also 
drawn on by a destructively morbid inclination, of their own free will, in a state of 
metaphysical trance and passion for self-condemnation that, once set loose, could 
not be stopped. (408)  
Zhivago is able to sympathize with Antipov, who fell ill with the “sickness of the age,” 
submitted to the “revolutionary madness of the epoch.” The doctor realizes that “no one 
had a clear conscience. Each with good reason could feel himself guilty” for letting this 
madness thrive among them. The “morbid inclination” and “self-destructive” impulse 
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associate the age with sickness and madness. In his realization that no one’s conscience is 
clear, Zhivago is able to sympathize with Antipov and the two are able to understand 
each other before Antipov commits suicide. 
 The moment when Zhivago is able to sympathize with Antipov demonstrates a 
clear Levinasian moment in the novel. Zhivago and Antipov are no longer opposed to 
each other. In the image of the other, whom Antipov represents, Zhivago is able to 
recognize himself and see his own “sickness,” as well as the “sickness” of the whole 
epoch: this sickness is defined as the “revolutionary madness,” of which everyone was 
guilty. The borders between I and the other are erased at this moment of unity, and the 
two characters, the representatives of different ideologies, are able to speak in one voice. 
The metaphorical image of sickness unites the two characters, who are able to reconcile 
towards the end of the novel. 
The epoch of “sickness” and self-destructive impulses can no longer inspire 
creativity. At this time Zhivago finds his inspiration in his personal life, in his love for 
Lara. She is the one who encourages him to write and publish his works, and, as Adonica 
Sendelbach argues, becomes a co-creator of his poetry (see Sendelbach). Zhivago 
experiences a great outburst of creativity when he mourns his loss of Lara, after he 
himself convinces her to leave with Komarovsky for safety. Overcome by grief, Zhivago 
experiences inspiration as “a multitude of thoughts descended upon him while he 
worked, simultaneously and in passing” (Doctor Zhivago 405). Pasternak describes 
Zhivago’s inspiration as follows: “With the lament for Lara, he also finished scribbling 
down his stuff from various periods about all sorts of things, about nature, about 
everyday life” (408). Through his mourning Zhivago is able to feel the pain of his people, 
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sympathize with them even more and artistically describe the history of his time which is 
also tragic. Zhivago feels that “what was visceral, still pulsing and warm, was forced out 
of the poems, and instead of the bleeding and noxious, a serene breadth appeared in [the 
poems], raising the particular case to the generality familiar to all” (408).  
Thus, the poems that Zhivago writes at that time become a metaphorical “cure” 
for the nation, the cure he was looking for throughout the novel. The “bleeding and 
noxious” body is no longer visible, but the doctor’s vison acquires “a serene breadth” 
which encompasses all nation. Through “generality” that he achieves in his writing, 
Zhivago is able to capture the tragedy of the whole nation; he achieves the impersonality 
of expression, where one voice is able to speak for all, in the language that is “familiar to 
all,” where “what was visceral, still pulsing and warm” becomes artistically transformed, 
and reflects the shared history of the nation that everyone can identify with. Zhyvago’s 
personal sorrow is elevated to the “generality” that now can encompass the 
disappointment and sorrow of the nation, creating a possibility for collective mourning 
over the hope and promise of the revolution which were lost. 
As a doctor, Zhivago is able to see “life unvarnished,” but the true understanding 
of people’s suffering comes to him only at the time of inspiration; as a poet, he is able to 
express the “unarmed truth” about history and the suffering of the whole nation without 
dividing them into two opposing camps. Pasternak ascribes some of his own best poems 
to Zhivago; these poems are given as a supplement to the book and are meant to outlive 
Zhivago in the novel. At the moment of inspiration, Zhivago echoes the early statement 
of his uncle Nikolai Vedeniapin, when the latter talks about the significance of parables 
for conveying the truth through simple everyday examples (37). Using his own situation 
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of grieving, Zhivago is able to express the truth with the help of artistic expression in his 
poems; he reflects the tragedy of the nation whose early belief in the revolution is lost 
and whose hopes were turned into fear and “sickness.” 
 In War and Peace, the character who comes closest to comprehension of history 
is the Russian general Mikhail Kutuzov who realizes that battles and great events of 
history are not “made” by men, but are governed by the higher power. Due to this 
realization, Kutuzov remains calm in all situations, submitting willingly to the events of 
history. In the novel this character does not look for the meanings of events but willingly 
submits to the course of history; he is the only one who realizes that history is ultimately 
unknowable and that humans are not in control of situations. Therefore Kutuzov is never 
interested in the planning of battles; in fact, he even falls asleep during the discussion of 
the forthcoming Battle of Borodino. He is not interested in the news and reports that are 
brought to him, yet he is still able to guide the troops and gain victories. Tolstoy 
describes this character’s attitude in the following way: 
[…] as he listened to the reports, it seemed that he was not interested in the 
meaning of the words being said to him, but that something else in the expression 
of the face, in the tone of the reporter’s speech interested him. By many years of 
military experience he knew, and by his old man’s mind he understood, that one 
man cannot lead hundreds of thousands of men struggling with death, and he 
knew that a fate of a battle is decided not by the commander in chief’s 
instructions, not by position of the troops, not by the number of cannon or people 
killed, but by that elusive force known as the spirit of the troops, and he watched 
this force and guided it, as far as that lay in his power. (Tolstoy Vol III 805) 
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Prince Andrei, who observes Kutuzov, is always reassured by the old man’s calm 
demeanor and gains a sense that in letting go of the attempt at total control of battles, 
Kutuzov is actually gaining a larger perspective of the events and is able to direct the 
“spirit of the troops.” As Zhivago can connect with everyone by achieving a “generality 
familiar to all” in his poetry, so can Kutuzov reach the “soul of every Russian man” 
through his intuitive ability to connect with the “spirit of the troops.” 
 Napoleon, on the other hand, attempts to retain total control over the situation and 
his people. Observing the Battle of Borodino, he tries to find a position that would allow 
for the clearest and most precise picture of the battle. He tries different locations to 
observe the battle. Tolstoy writes: 
Napoleon, standing on the barrow, looked through a field glass, and through the 
small circle of the field glass he saw smoke and people, sometimes his own, 
sometimes Russians, but when he looked again with the naked eye, he could not 
tell where what he had seen was. […] 
 Not only from the place below, where he was standing, not only from the barrow 
where some of his generals now stood, but from the fléches themselves […], it 
was impossible to understand what was happening on that place. (Vol. III 799) 
No matter where Napoleon stands, he fails to get a complete picture of the battle. There is 
no defect in Napoleon’s eyesight and he also uses a field glass to see the situation on the 
battlefield better. However, he still cannot attain understanding of the situation on the 
field. Napoleon’s adjuncts constantly bring him reports but “these reports were false,” 
because the situation is difficult to understand and because it changes so quickly that the 
information that reaches Napoleon becomes incorrect (799). Therefore Napoleon’s 
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instructions “either had been carried out before he even gave them or were not and could 
not be carried out” (800). Napoleon’s vision operates on the assumption that he can 
understand and therefore control the forces of history, while, in reality, he cannot 
comprehend them, as he cannot understand the course of the battle.   
Napoleon’s vision is contrasted to that of Kutuzov. The “mysterious connection” 
with the troops that Kutuzov is able to achieve is described further in the novel: 
And by some incidental, mysterious connection, which maintains 
the same mood through the entire army, which is known as the spirit of the 
army, and constitutes the general nerve of war, Kutuzov’s words, his order 
to fight the next day, were conveyed simultaneously to all ends of the 
army. 
It was far from the same words, the orders that passed through the 
last links of the chain. […] but the sense of these words communicated 
itself everywhere, because what Kutuzov had said came not from clever 
considerations, but from the feeling that was in the soul of the commander 
in chief, just as it was in the soul of every Russian man. (Tolstoy Vol. III 
808) 
 The “mysterious connection” which Kutuzov maintains with the troops stems from his 
ability to understand “the soul of every Russian man,” as well as his understanding that 
one person cannot make history. Kutuzov submits to the divine power and through his 
submission he is able to guide people and connect with them. Zhivago is able to approach 
understanding of history in the process of artistic creation; through this process of 
creation he is able to connect with his whole nation. 
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 Both Pasternak and Tolstoy resist a mechanical vision of history. Tolstoy 
emphasizes that it is the invisible and intuitive soul-to-soul connection with other people 
and the realization of the unknowability of the rules of history that guide Kutuzov to 
victory. The scene of Zhivago’s death from a heart attack, which happens in a tram while 
he tries to solve a mathematical problem, further confirms this view. Pasternak describes 
Zhivago’s thoughts preceding his heart attack as follows:  
Yuri Andreevich recalled school problems on the calculation of the time and order 
of arrival of trains starting at different moments and moving at different speeds, 
and he wanted to recall the general method of solving them, but failed to do so 
and, without finishing, skipped from these memories to other, much more 
complicated reflections. (436) 
Though it has become customary to associate the scene of Zhivago’s death with that of 
the beginning of “political and cultural repression” which started in 1928 (Rylkova 151), 
this association can be further extended, and the scene can be interpreted as that of the 
poet’s death in an atmosphere where the calculated and mechanistic attitude to history 
prevails. Zhivago realizes that there can be no “general method” for the solution of the 
multiple problems that his nation faced in the present and mathematical logic proves 
futile when faced with them. The Soviet five-year plans applied to all spheres of life from 
economics to culture, which proved themselves ineffective by the time Pasternak was 
writing and which he also criticizes in the novel, are an example of such mechanistic 
approach. There is no place for a poet, according to Pasternak, in an atmosphere where 
the “spirit of limitation” prevails, a spirit which does not recognize the significance of art 
as a medium for telling the truth and narrating history (405).  
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 The image of Zhivago’s heart attack in the streetcar contrasts with the vision of 
his coffin, surrounded by a “multitude of flowers,” “whole bushes of white lilacs, rare at 
the season, cyclamens, cineraria in pots and baskets” (438). These living flowers are so 
multiple and blooming that they are said to even “block the light from the window.” The 
vision of flowers which survive and bloom even though it is not the season for them, 
symbolize Zhivago’s poems which are lovingly read by his friends after his death, and 
which are Zhivago’s reflection of the era he lived through. Pasternak’s vision of history 
remains strongly associated with artistic expression which gives form to his character’s 
experiences and to unknowable history.  
 The purely scientific approach is opposed in the novel to the poet’s creative vision, as the 
opposition between Zhivago and Antipov proves. The poet dies in an atmosphere where 
free thinking associated with creativity has no place. However, Zhivago’s poems which 
contain the “unarmed truth” and are opposed to the “spirit of limitation” remain and are 
treasured by people; in these poems his vision continues to live. In the novel it is the 
creative vision which allows for Zhivago to gain a broad perspective on history and to 
understand people’s suffering.  
 In Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Kutuzov, despite his disability, has a better 
understanding of situations than anyone else in the novel. Kutuzov’s decisions are not 
based on pure logic but rather on intuition, and he does not strive for the total control as 
does Napoleon. Neither Napoleon’s favorable location on the battlefield, nor the device 
he uses to see the events, cannot grant him a larger vision, the vision that help him 
understand the forces of history.  Tolstoy strongly refutes the opinion that “great men” 
make history, and the character of Kutuzov knows that he is not in control of the events. 
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Pasternak, on the other hand, sees “great men” as capable of changing history, as people 
like Antipov who rely on mechanical thinking and logic and do not recognize the country 
as a living body come to power. Zhivago’s creative vision helps him understand that this 
mechanical approach cannot be applied to the living body. Though the people holding to 
the mechanical vision are triumphant at the time Zhivago lives, his poetry lasts even after 
he dies and thus has a potential to overcome the “spirit of limitation.”  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Chapter V: The Construction of a Critical Reader in Vasily Grossman’s Novel Life and 
Fate 
Vasiliy Grossman’s novel Life and Fate, which was written over the period 
starting 1950 till 1959, can be seen as a phenomenon of Khrushchev’s Thaw, the time of 
a relative lessening of the political repressions and a less intense censorship in the Soviet 
Union. Katerina Clark in her study The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (1981) states that 
at that time the writers were encouraged “to be bolder in exposing […] the absurd and 
counterproductive extremes to which various key Stalinist values had been taken” (210).  
Lasting for approximately a decade, from the early fifties till early sixties, the Thaw 
period saw criticism of the previous Stalinist regime and of life in the Soviet Union in 
general. Grossman, an acclaimed Socialist Realist writer, who was nominated for a Stalin 
Prize, the highest award for literary achievements in the Soviet Union, three times, 
attempted to have his novel published in 1960 only to have the book banned (see Garrard 
and Garrard).  Not only was the publication of the book refused, but even the manuscripts 
and the typewriter ribbons were confiscated in 1961. Having foreseen such possibility, 
the author gave a few manuscript copies of the book to his close friends, who saved it. 
Despite the strict ban, Grossman continued to fight for the publication of what he saw as 
the major work of his life. In his 1962 letter to Nikita Khrushchev, Grossman famously 
writes:  
I ask you to release my book from jail. I ask that my book be read and 
criticized and reviewed with me and editor, and not by officials of the KGB. 
There is no sense, no truth in the present situation, whereby I am 
physically free, but my book, to which I have given my life, remains in jail. After 
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all, I wrote the book; I have not renounced it, and will never do so. Twelve years 
have passed since I began writing the book. I still think, as I did when I was 
writing it, that I spoke the truth. I wrote the book out of love and pity for ordinary 
people, out of my belief in them, I ask you to release my book. (In Garrard and 
Garrard 356-57) 
Despite Grossman’s passionate defense of his book, it was never published in his 
lifetime. In 1974 Life and Fate was smuggled abroad with the help of Grossman’s 
friends; the full Russian version of the book was first published in 1980 in Switzerland 
(Ellis 17). 
 The novel’s “dangerous” status was confirmed in the conversation that Grossman 
had with Mikhail Suslov, The Chief Ideologue of the Communist Party, where Grossman 
was given reasons why the book could not be published. This conversation, which took 
place in 1962, was retrospectively recorded by Grossman from memory. Suslov insisted 
that “[The] work is dangerous for the Soviet people. Its publication would bring harm not 
only to the Soviet people and the Soviet state, but also to all those who are struggling for 
communism beyond the borders of the Soviet Union [….]” (In Garrard and Garrard 357). 
The Chief Ideologue urged Grossman to write “what is needed and useful for society” 
and compared the book to “atomic bombs” prepared by the enemies to strike the Soviet 
Union (358). The vivid comparisons that Suslov utilized to illustrate his points about the 
dangerous status of the book confirm the book’s serious ideological flaws; and his 
insistence that it could not be published clearly attests to the novel’s deviation from the 
accepted Socialist Realist conventions.   
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The novel Life and Fate presents an interesting phenomenon in the fate of its 
author. Grossman was known in the Soviet Union for his fictional works, which adhered 
strictly to the conventions of Soviet Socialist Realism. Notably, he authored such novels 
as Stepan Kol’chugin (1937-40) and For a Just Cause (1952)9, which, though not 
approved by everyone among the Soviet critics, were highly praised by many and 
nominated for a Stalin Prize, though failed to receive it. Grossman was also known as a 
World War II veteran who had worked as a correspondent for the war newspaper Red 
Star (Krasnaya Zvezda), a service which made his name into a household name in the 
Soviet Union (Ellis 5). Grossman received several awards for his efforts at the front, 
importantly, the award of the Orders of the Red Banner and Red Star. 
Critics and scholars have wondered about the nature and the time of Grossman’s 
transformation from the unwavering supporter of the Soviet cause to the harsh critic, who 
must have harbored ambition of a reformer. Most scholars support the conclusion of 
Shimin Markish who stated his belief that “the path towards the duel with Soviet power 
began for Grossman on 22 June 1941,” the date when the Nazi German troops invaded 
the Soviet Union in the Second World War (In Ellis 21). The war, in which Grossman 
participated as a reporter and which he vividly described in his Life and Fate, 
undoubtedly played a crucial role in his life, influencing his worldview significantly. The 
novel’s attempt at sincere portrayal of the multiple aspects of the life of people in the 
Soviet Union inevitably contained a harsh criticism of such reality. The writer obviously 
overestimated the extent to which the Soviet publishers and government officials would 
be tolerant and open to criticism of the authorities in the period of Khrushchev’s Thaw 
                                                        
9
 The publication of For a Just Cause in 1952 was significantly delayed. Life and Fate continues the 
storyline of For a Just Cause, forming a sequel to it, yet altering the original ideological stance. See 
Garrard and Garrard 204; 227. 
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following Stalin’s death. Grossman’s  repeated steps towards having the novel published, 
calling it the book to which he “[has] given [his] life,” and refusal to ever denounce it, 
signal the great significance he himself placed on the book as a means of influencing the 
society he lived in. In its attempt to educate the public, the book calls to mind the 
conventions of Socialist Realism. On the other hand, its criticism of the Soviet reality 
questions some of the crucial characteristics that Socialist Realist fiction strongly adheres 
to, namely, the suppression of reader’s critical response through the oversimplified 
treatment of those termed “others” or enemies.  
This chapter argues that through his Life and Fate Grossman, the acclaimed 
Socialist Realist writer, reimagines the borders of the Soviet Socialist Realism as a mode 
of representation of Soviet reality. Certain formal features of the work set it apart from 
the established Socialist Realist conventions; yet the author’s repeated steps to introduce 
this work to Soviet public signal his attempt to make the novel into a part of Socialist 
Realist canon. These features lie primarily in the novel’s orientation towards presentation 
of any phenomenon in its dialogic relationship to material, historical reality, which also 
ties the work to the pre-Soviet tradition of the Russian historical novel, namely to the 
nineteenth- century masterpiece War and Peace (1869) by Leo Tolstoy, at the same time 
that it establishes a specific kind of relationship with Socialist Realism. In his attempt to 
change the society in the Soviet Union by envisioning a critical reader, Grossman 
challenges the existing conventions of Socialist Realism, attempting to make the Soviet 
Socialist Realist novel into a dialogic genre, open for a multiplicity of voices and 
perspectives. 
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Rather than asserting the truth as a given fact for the reader to be reminder of and 
educated by, as the Socialist Realist principles demanded, the novel invites analysis by 
giving the reader the possibility to see various perspectives on one and the same 
phenomenon. The novel explores multiple “truths” as they appear to multiple characters; 
instead of assertion of a particular idea, this structure invites doubt by creating 
uncertainty as to whose “truth” is the right one. It is not surprising then that after 
numerous attempts to have the book published, Grossman got the following response 
from a Party official: “why should we publish your book and begin a public discussion as 
to whether anyone needs the Soviet Union or not?” (Garrard and Garrard 359). Thus, 
through its literary form, the book calls for revision of the very norms and structures by 
means of which the ideology of the Soviet Union operated. This construction of a 
critically-minded doubtful reader is by no means new in Russian literature; Lev Tolstoy’s 
War and Peace has sometimes been viewed as guilty of the same sin by its 
contemporaries (see Ungurianu 109-124).  The construction of a critical reader is not the 
only connection between War and Peace and Life and Fate, a connection clearly 
announced in Grossman’s title; the similarities between the two works extend towards 
formal, as well as narratological principles. In fact, one work can be seen as modeled 
upon the other. It is also true that Grossman’s novel retains a strong contact with the 
present historical moment, and its characters obviously mirror Grossman’s 
contemporaries who themselves went through the experience of the war. However, it is 
of interest that the acclaimed author of Socialist Realist fiction choses to turn to the 
nineteenth century realist novel War and Peace as the primary model for writing his 
account of the lives of people during the Second World War, rejecting his earlier loyalty 
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to the state-sponsored mode of artistic representation that is contemporary and prevalent 
in his lifetime.  
The novel’s adoption of a skeptical stance of both its characters and the readers 
towards material, historical reality problematizes its relationship with Socialist Realism 
as the only mode of representation of this reality accepted by the state. Soviet Socialist 
Realism declared as the mode of presentation of Soviet reality by the First Congress of 
Soviet Writer’s Union offered a certain perspective for recreation/artistic construction of 
this reality by artistic means. However, with Socialist Realism as the only mode of 
representation of Soviet reality accepted at the time, there appeared a danger of a lack of 
a reader who would be able to take up a critical stance for evaluation of Soviet reality, as 
well as its representation in art. Grossman’s novel opens up a possibility for such a reader 
to critically engage with Soviet reality by presenting many aspects of it as not yet 
definitive and thus allowing for critical intervention. Thus, the novel constructs a critical 
reader who has a skeptical attitude toward Soviet reality. Adoption of a critical stance 
towards its object of depiction diverges from the conventions of Soviet Socialist Realism 
to which Grossman’s earlier works adhere. This feature necessarily problematizes the 
relationship between this novel as an ostensible Socialist Realist novel and the Socialist 
Realist canon, as will be discussed further. By introducing such a critical stance 
Grossman reimagines the Socialist Realist conventions by establishing a connection of 
Socialist Realist novel to the earlier Russian realist fiction and reestablishing the 
continuity of the literary tradition.  
One way that the novel establishes its criticism of the material historical reality 
and manifests its divergence from the Soviet Socialist Realist canon is through its critical 
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reevaluation of the I-other relationship. The novel deconstructs the totalizing vision of 
the other by refusing to accept the one-dimensional picture of the other, promoted by the 
character-types in the Socialist Realist canon. It is of interest to look at the figure of an 
enemy (both, the enemy in the battlefield and the ideological enemy of the people in the 
Soviet Union) as the Levinasian other in the analysis of this novel. This approach 
exposes Grossman’s questioning of the accepted Socialist Realist division of literary 
characters into “us” as ideologically correct ones and “them” as ideologically wrong ones 
without compromising the basic autonomy of “them” and “us.” Grossman’s work, 
contrary to the expectations of his contemporaries, does not intend to gratify its potential 
reader with showing “us” as always correct and rewarded, and “them” as always wrong 
and punished. In fact, the Soviet people, understood also as the novels’ intended readers, 
are sometimes shown in the wrong and bearing the tragedy of their ideological blindness. 
With the artistic means Life and Fate exposes the totalizing vision of the other as limiting 
through problematizing the very idea of an enemy. This is very often done in the novel 
through deconstruction of the figure who would be a positive hero in the Socialist Realist 
novel and showing this hero-to-be as potentially harboring the ideologically “wrong” 
sentiments.  
While oftentimes blending the line between “us” and the enemies/“others,” the 
novel does not question the just cause of the war. Like Tolstoy’s War and Peace, there is 
a historical necessity for the war as self-defense recognized in Life and Fate. As in War 
and Peace the concept of peace in a society where everyone is preoccupied with personal 
interests is questionable, so in Life and Fate the concept of war extends beyond the 
battlefield into the “peaceful life” where the ideology is handed down to people often 
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forcing them to make amoral choices. The characters of the novel are far from one-
dimensional and the peace scenes are far from idyllic or even “peaceful” in the novel, 
which sets the work sharply apart from the norms expected from the Soviet novel. 
The aspect of creation of a critical reader reveals the proximity of Life and Fate to 
Mikhail Bakhtin’s vision of the function of a novel in the society. And the novel’s 
constant inquiry into the established doctrines, ideologies and worldviews through the 
mode of dialogic confrontations echoes Mikhail Bakhin’s juxtaposition of the genres of 
novel and epic. In his “Epic and Novel: Toward a Methodology for the Study of a Novel” 
Bakhtin views the novel as a dynamic and developing genre that calls for dialogue as a 
means of defining historical reality and a critical engagement with it. The epic, by 
contrast, is viewed as relying on static, closed and finalized descriptions that does not 
allow for interventions from inside or for further developments. Describing the 
characteristic features of the epic Bakhtin writes,    
In general, the world of high literature of the classical era was a world projected 
into the past, on to the distanced plane of memory, but not into a real relative past, 
tied to a present by uninterrupted temporal transitions; it was projected rather into 
a valorized past of the beginnings and peak times. This past is finished, distanced 
and closed like a circle. (19) 
This turning to the past and precisely to the “valorized” moments within it, defines the 
principle that governs the epic worldview, according to Bakhtin. This principle lies in the 
vision of the world as static and utterly completed. The world of the past cannot be 
changed or challenged in any way; moreover, it cannot be re-evaluated or viewed from a 
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different angle. The epic is understood as “the world of ‘beginners’ and ‘peak times,’” as 
that of “’firsts’ and ‘bests’” (13).  
Therefore, following Bakhtin’s train of thought, the epic worldview can be imagined as a 
storage place for valorized memories, a “closed chest” that is full of the stories from the 
past. The function of this “chest” is to present a model and inspire the coming 
generations, yet it cannot be supplemented or revised itself. 
Katerina Clark views Bakhtin’s “Epic and Novel” as providing a “theoretical 
framework” for the understanding of the development of the novel in Soviet times (The 
Soviet Novel 38). The epic orientation towards the finalized picture of the world is 
reminiscent of the Socialist Realist demand of presentation of a certain type of a hero in 
fiction and development of a certain types of themes. These themes were presented in the 
statutes of the Soviet Writer’s Union of 1934: 
The victory of socialism, the rapid growth of productive forces unprecedented in 
the history of humanity, the burgeoning process of liquidation of classes, the 
elimination of all possibilities for exploitation of man by man and the elimination 
of the contrasts between the city and the countryside, and, finally, the progress of 
science and culture create limitless possibilities for a qualitative and quantitative 
increase in creative forces and for the expansion of all types of art and literature. 
(In Robin 11) 
Thus the writers were called to recreate a specific aspect of the material, historical reality 
and view it at a very specific angle. The assertion of the “victory” of socialism, the “rapid 
growth” of “productive forces,” and the “progress of science and culture” were to be seen 
as unquestioned facts, the “absolute truth” that could not be challenged. The list of 
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themes above was called to “create limitless possibilities for a qualitative and quantitative 
increase in creative forces and for the expansion of all types of art and literature.” Thus, 
this list was seen as opening creative possibilities for the Soviet artists, rather than 
limiting them to adopt a specific view. 
 In an attempt to explain the characteristic features of Socialist Realism, Katerina 
Clark emphasizes that it evolved as a practice rather than a theory and even defines it as 
“a doctrine defined by its patristic texts” (The Soviet Novel 3). The scholar singles out 
certain characteristic features of the doctrine, such as, “optimism,” “accessibility to 
masses,” “party-mindedness,” yet stresses that the evolution of the novelistic “master-
plot” as the definitive characteristic of Socialist Realism (3-9). The master-plot, which 
“shape[s] the novel as a sort of parable for the working-out of Marxism-Leninism in 
history” (9), often worked as an element which explained and proved the legitimacy of 
the victory of communism on Soviet terrain, and expressed an unwavering hope in its 
ultimate victory, as well as in the attainment of the common good through such victory.  
The master-plot was derived from the pre-Revolutionary and later post-Revolutionary 
novels, which clearly displayed and propagated party-minded ideals. Such novels 
included Maksim Gorky’s Mother (1906), Dmitry Furmanov’s Chapaev, Fyodor 
Gladkov’s Cement (1925), Nikolai Ostrovsky’s How the Steel was Tempered (1936) and 
others (4). Over time, some of the characteristics of the master-plot were crystalized and 
became its defining features, like that of the narrative mirroring the stages of the 
Revolution. The other characteristics include the existence of the positive hero and the 
revolutionary elder, defined as “someone tested by revolutionary or enemy fire,” who has 
the capability to instruct the younger generation in the positive values of loyalty to the 
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state and perseverance in the times of trouble (169). Though over time these set 
character-types might have undergone certain evolutions, their main functions of 
presenting a somewhat romanticized version of reality through the ideological 
perspective remained unchanged.   
This attitude towards the artistic presentation of the material, historical reality 
echoes Bakhtin’s discussion of the epic worldview, which can be seen as a metaphor for 
the Socialist Realist novel. In the epic, according to Bakhtin, it is “impossible to change, 
to re-think, to re-evaluate anything” because “it is completed, conclusive and immutable, 
as a fact, an idea and a value.” (“Epic” 17) This immutability and conclusiveness 
eliminates the possibility of questioning or bringing in any critical stance for reevaluation 
of the given idea, fact or value. According to Clark, the task of literature was to 
encourage people to “look not alongside, to their ‘brothers,’ but upward to their ‘fathers’” 
(The Soviet Novel 136), which fact indicates the overall obsession with the past rather 
than the present in the Soviet literature. The existence of the master-plot which included 
certain character-types call to mind the epic immutable character-molds discussed in 
“Epic and Novel.” The carefully chosen historical material served as an important 
background in the Soviet novel and a certain positive hero reflected a very concrete set of 
ideological ideas. These features served the purpose of “educating” people, as mentioned 
in the statutes of the Writer’s Union: “the veracity and the historically concrete aspect of 
the artistic representation of reality have to be allied to the task of ideological change and 
the education of workers in the spirit of socialism” (in Robin 11). The necessity to “ally” 
the work with the “spirit of socialism” that gave to the fiction of the period its static 
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dimension is also reminiscent of Bakhtin’s epic, whose task is to concentrate on the 
heroic element of the past.  
By contrast, Bakhtin understands a novel as a dynamic genre which allows for an 
un-finalized pictures of its subjects. In the novel, “authorial language lies on the same 
plane as the ‘depicted’ language of the hero, and may enter into dialogic relations and 
hybrid combinations with it” (“Epic” 27). Thus, the world of the novel is open, allowing 
for a constructive reevaluation of historical reality by consideration of a plurality of 
viewpoints. This dialogue of the author with the depicted subject is seen as impossible 
under the conditions of epic representation, where the “absolute past” cannot be entered, 
and therefore, challenged in any way. The definite and immutable picture of an epic hero 
was overcome, in Bakhtin’s vision, when the novel became the dominant literary genre, 
allowing for representation of the characters and ideas that are in flux and existentially 
problematic within themselves. 
 It is significant that Grossman’s legacy includes the examples of both worldviews. 
For example, the author’s first novel, Stepan Kol’chugin (1937-40), mentioned earlier, 
was presented for the Stalin’s Prize in literature as it clearly reflected the values of the 
state and corresponded to the structural demands of Soviet Socialist Realism. Stepan 
Kol’chugin follows the fate of a typical Soviet Socialist Realist hero. Stepan, as a 
representative of the working class, comes to the realize the “correctness” of the socialist 
views and the progressive and life-transforming role of the Communist Party in the lives 
of people, particularly in that of the workers. As an “industrial novel” of the 1930s, the 
novel which is centered on the lives of the workers at the factories, Stepan Kol’chugin 
describes a small mining town of Donbass region, Ukrainian Soviet Republic, 
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concentrating on the hard life and work conditions in the town. It can only be speculated 
why Stalin rejected this novel for the prize. It is possible that the reason for this was the 
novel’s pronounced emphasis on the necessity to address the problems of the Donbass 
miners to improve their living conditions, instead of stressing the necessity of sacrificing 
everything for the cause of the world victory of the Revolution. Katerina Clark notices 
that Stepan, the main character of the novel, “conceives of the progress to communism in 
terms of building the city” (“Engineers” 258), which, though subtly, turns the reader to 
the necessities of the present moment, the very present which Bakhtin contrasts to the 
“absolute past” of the epic. The work was allegedly called a “‘Menshevik’ novel” by 
Stalin himself and the nomination withdrawn despite the novel’s mirroring of the master-
plot with the typical character-hero who comes to be an ardent believer in communist 
ideas, and the explicit unquestioned didactic message expressed in it (Shrayer 539).  
Though Grossman’s works which preceded the Second World War might have 
betrayed certain subtle sentiments which diverged from the officially propagated 
positions, as was likely the case with Stepan Kol’chugin, in their form these works 
remained faithful to Socialist Realist conventions, and in content attested to the deep 
belief in the glorious future of people under the leadership of the Party. Though not so 
well received, Stepan Kol’chugin does illustrate Grossman’s early acceptance of the 
Soviet communist ideas, as well as his early attempt at writing within the Socialist 
Realist method. The idealistic character, Stepan, demonstrates some of the most 
pronounced characteristics of the positive hero in the novel. While being imprisoned, the 
“enlightened” Stepan reflects on freedom, allying his fate with the collective fate of his 
countrymen and all the people on earth:  
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— Воля, воля! — повторил несколько раз Степан. 
[…]. Степан понял: что бы ни ждало его, он не свернет. 
Он чувствовал, что свобода нужна не только ему одному, не только 
близким его, не только жившим в каторжных тюрьмах, в ссылке, в 
арестантских ротах, а всей огромной трудовой земле. (811) 
[“Freedom, freedom!” Stepan repeated several times. 
[…]. Stepan understood that no matter what awaited him, he wouldn’t turn 
back. 
He felt that freedom was necessary not only for him alone, not only for his 
family and friends, not only for those who were in convict prisons, in exile, or in 
penal battalions: it was necessary for the whole wide toiling earth. ] (Translation 
mine) 
While suffering from adverse circumstances, Stepan realizes that he is not afraid of 
anything, even death upon which he also reflects, but he will stay loyal to his ideological 
convictions and “will not turn away” from the course of communism, which he 
recognizes as a way to freedom not only for himself and his loved ones, but for the whole 
humanity. This character, who becomes a mouthpiece for the communist ideology, comes 
to represent the Bakhtinian monologic character of the epic. The character of Stepan 
becomes important as it illustrates precisely the Socialist Realist character-type which 
becomes deconstructed later in Grossman’s writing career, and whose one-dimensionality 
becomes problematized and complicated through the characters in Life and Fate.  
As mentioned previously, the majority of Grossman scholars see the Second 
World War as a turning point in Grossman’s worldview, which separate Grossman 
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conformist works from those that question and undermine the official position of the 
state. However, in his book Vasily Grossman: The Genesis and Evolution of the Russian 
Heretic Frank Ellis argues that Grossman’s diversion from the dominating ideology of 
the state was a gradual process which was slowly taking root throughout most of 
Grossman’s adult life. In particular, Ellis singles out “collectivization; industrialization; 
and 1937” (the year of purges and liquidation of kulaks) as the major events that led to 
the writer’s reconsideration of his early views, and sees the Stalinist terror as a major 
“turning point” in Grossman’s perception of the politics of the state (see Ellis 21-26). 
Grossman’s failures to receive the Stalin Prize two more times after the rejection of his 
Stepan Kol’chugin can be seen as evidence in support of Ellis’s theory of the more 
gradual ripening of the author’s social position which manifested itself, though very 
lightly, in his pre-Second World War writings.  
Though the master-plot of the post-Second World War writings was expected to 
inherit most of its classic features, with a possible substitution of the Revolution by the 
new myth of the Great Patriotic War, Grossman’s Life and Fate builds a picture of a 
totally new reality, rejecting most of the Soviet literary norms. It is very hard to draw a 
definitive line that marks the change in Grossman’s ideological views which reflect his 
rejection of Soviet Socialist Realism. In fact, even Grossman’s post-war novel For a Just 
Cause, the edition of 1952, to which Life and Fate is a sequel, was nominated for the 
Stalin’s Prize by some of its reviewers, and is often seen as strictly adhering to the 
ideological and formal demands to the Soviet literature, as Robert Chandler, the 
translator of Life and Fate into English, notes in the Introduction to the novel.  
216 
 
Grossman’s Life and Fate is remarkable in a sense that it creates tensions in the 
system of Socialist Realism by calling for a critical reader through presentation of 
multiple dialogic juxtapositions of various views and ideas and allowing the reader to 
choose whom he allies with. On the level of content the characters of the novel present 
the positions and express ideas which are juxtaposed to those of others. Ideas, which the 
novel develops and presents in lengthy scenes, are suddenly destroyed through their 
juxtaposition to other scenes. And finally, the novel reveals and exposes the inner split of 
the characters, the inner dialogs of separate individuals, showing personalities that are not 
static in their convictions. The presentation of a multiplicity of viewpoints and their 
consideration among various characters and within individual minds create a specific 
attitude that the reader develops to the text: the reader grows suspicious of the characters 
which represent a totalizing view towards an idea, anticipating that this view will be 
deconstructed later in the novel. In a similar way, the novel molds the reader who is 
suspicious of the totalizing vision of the other, allowing the reader to recognize the inner 
split within the characters, thus denying the novel its positive hero found in the Socialist 
Realist canon. Instead, the novel encourages the reader to constantly look for multiple 
angles under which a phenomenon can be evaluated and promotes questioning and 
reevaluation of the idea of the “other.”    
  Life and Fate presents a great multiplicity of characters. Similar to Tolstoy’s War 
and Peace, the actions are concentrated around two related families, that of the 
Shaposhnikovs and the Strums. There are also characters, who stand out alone, who are 
not apparently related or otherwise connected to either of the families, but are devoted 
much time to and considered in their dynamic development throughout the novel.  
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One of such characters is Mikhail Sidorovich Mostovskoy. The beginning pages 
of the novel build the picture of the German camp for “criminals who had not committed 
a crime” but had the potential to be do so as they were suspected of incorrect political 
beliefs (Grossman Life 21) Here the novel introduces Mostovskoy, a communist, who is 
devoted and strong in his convictions. Advanced in age, this character is akin to 
“revolutionary elder” in the Socialist Realist novels, fit to instruct the younger generation 
in the spirit of Communism. Mostovskoy believes in the absolute authority of the 
Communist party, in its potential to make all people happy and prosperous, as well as in 
its right to demand sacrifices for this just cause. At first sight this character, an inspiration 
for other communists also imprisoned in the camp, recalls the ideologically unshakable 
and loyal to the Party epic hero of the Socialist Realist fiction. Mostovskoy’s longing for 
freedom echoes this same outcry of Stepan Kol’chugin from Grossman’s early novel 
Stepan Kol’chugin, as Mostovskoy states “How could a man be unhappy outside the 
camp” (21). Stepan’s dream of the necessity of freedom for the whole humanity is now 
literally placed within the multicultural environment of the camp, where Mostovskoy 
encounters not only the representatives of many European countries, but even a Persian 
and a Chinese, and where all people express the same longing for freedom. Mostovskoy, 
despite his age, believes in the correctness of Communist ideas possibly with the same 
fervor Stepan does, yet his position becomes deconstructed in the novel, turning the 
character from the positive hero or “revolutionary elder” to a complex multi-dimensional 
character. 
The inner conflict of Mostovskoy becomes visible when he is called for 
interrogation by one of the high-ranking German officials, Liss, who suddenly expresses 
218 
 
the idea of the proximity and even the identity of the essential principles of Communism 
and National Socialism. In their conversation Liss makes a striking comparison: “your 
terror killed millions – and we Germans were the only ones who could understand, the 
only men in the world who thought: ‘Yes, that’s absolutely right, that’s how it has to be’” 
(Grossman Life 399).  This collision between the two characters is one of the typical 
moves that the book makes. The convictions of a person are suddenly shaken by a 
confrontation with a viewpoint that seems opposed to their convictions on the surface 
level, but which simultaneously appears to grow out of their own deep suspicions. The 
idea expressed by Liss undermines the authority of communist ideology as the one that 
aims at attaining freedom for humanity, thus positioning the early Stepan’s (and possibly, 
Grossman’s own) dream against the reality which became apparent in the reality of the 
war.  
Mostovskoy is desperately trying to suppress and eliminate the burning thought 
about the proximity of his ideology and that of his enemy, but against the most stubborn 
efforts of his will, he starts to see more and more logic behind the idea. Liss’s statement 
about both systems relying on violence as their means and his vision about both 
ideologies “gazing into a mirror” represent something that Mostovskoy’s is already 
aware of, yet tries to silence. (Grossman Life 395).    
Liss’s views reveal a crucial split within Mostovskoy’s own mind and challenge 
his own convictions. Therefore, the most important for the development of this character 
are not his dialogues with Liss, during which he tries to be silent, but his inner dialogues. 
Mostovskoy tries to deny the statements Liss made, not to Liss, but to himself. The inner 
dialogue he leads makes this split manifest to the reader, revealing the character as 
219 
 
problematic first of all from within: “What if [these] doubts were not just a sign of 
weakness, tiredness, impotence, lack of faith, contemptible shilly-shallying? What if 
these doubts represented what was most pure and honorable in him…?” (399). 
Mostovskoy goes even further in his realization that “All he had to do to defeat Liss, […] 
he had to condemn what he had always lived by. […] He would have to condemn 
Lenin…! This was the edge of the abyss” (399). 
Thus, the inner world of the character opens up a space for the collision of the 
two conflicting worldviews; Mostovskoy strives to counteract Liss’s statements and sees 
that in order to do so he needs to denounce all the convictions he holds on to. The 
dialogization of Mostovskoy’s inner self reveals him as a character who is not completed, 
whose potential for change is not used up within the novel. Though at the beginning he is 
seen as a typical mouthpiece for the communist ideology; his inner dialogue makes him 
resistant to being typified. And though Mostovskoy is able to ward off the dangerous 
thought about the two ideologies “mirroring” each other at least for some time, the reader 
cannot do so when confronted with this character. 
 Not only is Mostovskoy in dialogue within himself, his whole situation remains in 
dialogue with the situations of other people in the novel. Mostovskoy denounces Liss’s 
(and his own) suspicions and views, but there is a big plane in the novel that he is just not 
aware of as a character. At the time when Mostovskoy endures his interrogations, there 
are characters enduring the same hardships in a Soviet camp for the Soviet political 
prisoners, confirming Liss’s statement about both systems relying on violence as their 
means. The character who appears parallel to Mostovskoy is Abarchuk. Abarchuk is one 
more devout communist-character in the novel. A similar split in his mind is negotiated 
220 
 
through the repeated phrase “despair of the camps” which overcomes him and never goes 
away. Abarchuk divorced his first wife as he thought she would fail to raise their son in 
the true spirit of socialism and communism. Abarchuk has been subjected to tortures and 
hard labor at the camp, but still dreams that his son will “grow up a good communist” 
(Grossman Life 178). He envisions that upon meeting his son he would tell him: 
“Remember, your father’s fate doesn’t matter. That’s just a detail. But the cause of the 
Party is something holy” (178). This character views his fate as just a trifling element in 
the advance of a great cause and is ready to help his country with hard labor, if that is 
what the Party requires from him. He dreams about a happy future for all under 
communism, as he reveals it in his inner dreams directed to his son. The tragedy of this 
character lies in the fact that he has to denounce all the people whom he loves dearly to 
remain faithful to the idea. In the camp Abarchuk meets his teacher, Magar, who first 
taught him the ideas of communism. Magar admits to being mistaken in his overreliance 
on the Revolution a means for bringing happiness for people. Abarchuk renounces this 
person who for a long time had remained the only dear soul to him. 
Both Mostovskoy and Abarchuk are faced with similar problems: Mostovskoy 
feels he has to renounce all his convictions to remain true to himself, and Abarchuk 
renounces everyone he loves to remain true to his convictions. The bitter irony that 
Abarchuk’s situation uncovers is that in his striving to bring happiness for all, he has to 
make the people he loves unhappy. Moreover, his life, the life of a devout communist, is 
ruined by the labor camp and he finds no reward for his sacrifices but just the camp 
“despair.” Though this character does not express doubts openly, he evokes pity and 
221 
 
skeptical evaluation of the reader, who discerns the senselessness of the ideals he is 
fighting for.  
In one of the letters that Grossman received from Maxim Gorky, the celebrated 
writer in the Soviet Union, Gorky instructs the young writer in the attitude to the truth 
which needs to be adopted by the author of fiction. Gorky discusses the existence of “two 
truths” which inevitably appear in the work of fiction, one “truth” associated with the 
past and the other “truth” with the future. According to Elizabeth Papazian, Gorky’s 
message asserts that “the truth of the past must be presented critically while the truth of 
the future is affirmed” (134). Gorky, therefore, advised to the young writer Grossman to 
present the reality as he envisions it in the future and to adopt a critical stance in 
representing the past, which would not obstruct or question the picture of the bright 
future. The affirmation of the strong belief in the bright future that waits ahead was a 
constant move in the Soviet fiction, which also mirrored the same element in the political 
discourse. Gorky’s advice is certainly not followed in Life and Fate, where the author is 
in dialogue with both the past and present reality. Mostovskoy and Abarchuk represent 
the characters who want to believe in Gorky’s statement about the future; Abarchuk 
sacrifices everything for his belief that in future things will be better for everyone. 
However, the situations of doubt and disappointment that the characters find themselves 
in in the present undermine their belief. 
 The problematics that both Mostovskoy and Abarchuk are engaged with makes 
them unsuitable for the role of positive heroes in the Socialist Realist novel. In her study 
of Soviet fiction Clark talks about the picture of Soviet positive hero as being in the 
process of formation through the whole Soviet period, as the “hero” needed to reflect the 
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changing attitudes to better serve as an educational model for every coming generation. 
For example, the “hero” of the beginning of the Revolution is often portrayed as a “static 
revolutionary martyr,” whereas in the twenties this model is replaced by a “dynamic man 
of action” (The Soviet Novel 68) In spite of this variability, the function of the “positive 
hero” remained more or less static: “To be an emblem of Bolshevik virtue, someone the 
reading public might be inspired to emulate, and his life should be patterned to ‘show the 
forward movement of history’ in an allegorical representation of one stage in history’s 
dialectical process” (46).  Both Mostovskoy and Abarchuk present some of the 
characteristics of the revolutionary martyrs, enduring the hardships of the camp life, yet 
such portraits remains inconsistent since they are shown as sacrificing for the false 
convictions. The role of the man of action may be assigned to Mostovskoy, who 
regardless of his age gets involved in the prisoners’ secret plan of rebellion. However, 
such a picture is equally inconsistent due to the doubts he suffers. 
By the 1940s, there emerged a number of charismatic characters in the Soviet 
literature who represented the positive heroes that survived for years, appearing later in 
various interpretations. An example of such a character can be found in Dmitry 
Furmanov’s novel Chapaev (1923). Furmanov’s work successfully negotiates the 
romanticized revolutionary perspective and was reworked multiple times, most notably in 
the movie Chapaev of 1934. This process of production of the “emblematic” figures in 
fiction, who simultaneously inspire the “emulation” and call to mind the “glorious” 
historical past, remind of the Bakhtinian discussion of the epic worldview.  
Grossman’s characters refute this model. Mostovskoy’s inner dialogues and 
doubts prevent him from entering the category, while the irony of Abarchuk’s situation 
223 
 
does not allow him to enter it either. Both these characters are shown in the dynamic 
reevaluation of their life positions; their situations are not completed or positively 
resolved by the end of the work, revealing their potential as too great to be encompassed 
within the novel. Consideration of the existential situations of the above mentioned 
characters helps the reader to form a critical stance for evaluation of the historical reality 
that the novel describes. 
The interactions of Grossman’s characters illustrate particular relations with the 
other as shown in the example of Mostovskoy’s conversation with Liss. The ideological 
and the military enemy and generally a negative character Liss is shown as in fact much 
closer to the positive character Mostovskoy then anyone could have suspected. The novel 
goes even further in its exploration of the portrayal of the other. One of the scenes 
pictures a Russian and a German soldier unknowingly holding hands in a trench. During 
one of the offensives launched by the Germans in Stalingrad, a Russian scout Klimov and 
his friend, the old soldier Polyakov, get into the trench to hide themselves from bombing. 
In the dark the scout Klimov grabs the hand of what he thinks is the old soldier, his 
companion. But when the bombing is over, and the soldiers try to get out of the trench 
the scout discovers it was a German soldier, who was also hiding in the same trench and 
whom he was holding by the hand throughout the whole time of danger. The episode 
following Klimov’s revelation is worth being quoted at length:  
As Klimov staggered to his feet, he saw a German soldier lying beside 
him. Battered, covered in dust, he looked as though he had been chewed up by the 
war from the peak of his cap to the toes of his boots. 
224 
 
Klimov had no fear of Germans; he had an unshakeable confidence in his 
own strength, his own miraculous ability to pull a trigger, throw a grenade, strike 
a blow with a knife or a rifle-butt a second earlier than his opponent. Now, 
though, he didn't know what to do. He was amazed at the thought that, blinded 
and deafened as he was, he had been comforted by the presence of this German, 
had mistaken his hand for Polyakov's. Klimov and the German looked at one 
another. Each had been crushed by the same terrible force, and each was equally 
helpless to struggle against it. 
They looked at one another in silence, two inhabitants of the war. 
The perfect, faultless, automatic reflex they both possessed – the instinct 
to kill – failed to function. (Grossman Life 436) 
This scene of Klimov’s recognition of the failure of his ‘perfect” instinct – “the instinct to 
kill” – illustrates the Levinasian moment of the encounter with the face of the other. The 
literal enemies who unknowingly shared the hiding place at the time of mortal danger are 
forced to look at each other, recognizing each other’s humanity. For Levinas “to see a 
face is already to hear ‘You shall not kill,’” the call that demands a response from the “I” 
(Levinas Difficult Freedom 8). A response to this call is only possible for Levinas when 
the “I” does not assume the other to be a known or even knowable entity, that is, refuses 
the impulse of seeing the other as a totality. The moment of Levinasian recognition of the 
call of the other is presented through the confusion which Klimov, and most likely the 
German soldier as well, experience. Klimov, “amazed” by the encounter and the 
unexpected humanity of the other who is able to extend comfort and experience a similar 
need for it, surrenders his killing instinct to a new and unknown sensation which is the 
225 
 
recognition and the acceptance of otherness. After what has happened to him, Klimov no 
longer labels the German soldier with the totalizing term “an enemy.” Instead, he is 
forced to recognize that the German looks “battered,” “covered in dust” and “chewed up 
by the war.” Such recognition, as well as the failure to kill the enemy here illustrates the 
Levinasian response to the other, which here becomes reciprocal. Though non-verbally, 
the soldiers of the opposite armies reach an agreement, as they assume responsibility for 
each others’ lives. This episode also calls to mind the case of Tolstoy’s character Andrei, 
who, seeing his long-time enemy Anatole, refuses to take delight in his misfortune but 
recognizes humanity of the other. 
 The characters of Grossman’s novel are not typified and cannot be seen as 
mouthpieces for a particular idea or doctrine, they are not static but shown in the moment 
of change, in the process of “becoming,” to use Bakhtin’s term (“Epic” 5). However, to 
say that the novel does not in any way negotiate the concept of the heroic and glorious 
moments and individuals in history would be to miss one of its very important aspects. 
Thinking about an example of the character who represents these values, the portrait of 
Colonel Novikov, the commander of one of the four divisions that attacked the fascist 
troops near Stalingrad later in the novel, comes to mind. Novikov is a charismatic 
individual; he can be seen as a romantic hero, whose unhappy love story is described 
with tenderness. As is the case with many other characters, Novikov’s personality 
becomes visible in a dialogic confrontation with the cunning Commissar Getmanov. 
Novikov shows great concern for human resources; for him human life is always the first 
priority. Getmanov is suspicious of Novikov’s devotion to the cause of the Communist 
Party and constantly tests him, even on trifling occasions. Novikov, sensing the 
226 
 
Commissar’s attitude, strives to remain true to his beliefs without compromising himself. 
When prompted to propose the first toast at some occasion, Novikov deliberately defers 
proposing it to Stalin’s health, as the convention requires, and proposes it to “to men 
we’re about to lead into battle. Here’s hoping they don’t shed too much blood!” 
(Grossman Life 218). Similarly, at the time of a crucial battle he defers the advance of the 
troops, disregarding Stalin’s direct order but saving lives of the soldiers in his command. 
This character, modeled upon a historical prototype, comes close to the hero that was 
expected from the Socialist Realist novel. However, the scenes of confrontation with 
Getmanov, as well as the scenes of him disobeying the order, undermine his status as a 
character loyal to the Party cause. For Novikov, protecting human life presents the main 
priority and is superior to the commands of the Party; this character recognizes the 
importance of victory, however, he refuses to blindly follow the Party’s instructions, 
especially when he sees flaws in them. Getmanov, who, according to Robert Chandler, 
was modeled on the historical character of Khrushchev whom Grossman came to know 
as a war commissar in Stalingrad (see Chandler), puts the orders of the Party prior to 
human lives and insists on the advance of the troops regardless of danger. In contrast to 
Novikov, who does not see the party authority as unquestioned, Getmanov comes off as a 
sly, self-centered character. Though Novikov comes close to representing the typical 
positive hero of the Soviet novel, the scenes of his overly liberal behavior make this 
character unfit for entering the Socialist Realist canon. Novikov cannot be turned into a 
romanticized hero as Grossman’s Stepan Kol’chugin or Furmanov’s Chapaev were, 
because his human factor is shown as ultimately stronger than his convictions.  
227 
 
The feature that also undermines Novikov’s status as a strong heroic figure who 
keeps everything under control is his unhappy love for Yevgenia Shaposhnikova. When 
Yevgenia informs him about her decision to return to the man she was preciously in love 
with, Krymov, Novikov steps out of the role the reader expected him to play. This 
moment of weakness of spirit is sharply contrasted to the image of a strong and 
determined man that the reader saw before. This new feature of Novikov suggests that 
there is a dimension to this character that the reader is not yet familiar with, suggesting 
also that there may be more such invisible dimensions. Further, Novikov’s fate is not 
revealed to the reader; he is left at the moment of grieving, rage, and self-pity. Novikov’s 
story clearly reveals that there are dimensions to the characters which cannot be fully 
contained in the novel.  
One more character who comes close but does not “fit” into the canon is General 
Grekov (“the house-manager”) who, with only a few men repelled multiple German 
attacks, using the famous building 6/1 in Stalingrad as his base. Reckless in battles, a 
man of extraordinary leadership skills, he, however, allows questioning the usefulness of 
collectivization and other aspects of the politics of the Party. He also tries to seduce a 
young radio operator, Katia Vengrova, the fact that also renders him unsuitable as a 
model for emulation.  
Both Novikov and Grekov are romanticized individuals, whom the reader learns 
to love and respect in the course of the novel. These characters obviously bear 
similarities to the positive heroes, the “dynamic men of action” expected from them by 
the Socialist Realist canon. The reason why they cannot reach the Socialist Realist ideal 
that the character of Stepan Kol’chugin attained is that they are too multidimensional to 
228 
 
be suitable for negotiation of a single idea. Their heroic aura is dimmed in this multi-
directedness. Therefore, it is not surprising that they did not make it into the canon.  
The same problem was noticed with the characters of War and Peace by the 
veterans of the Russian war with Napoleonic army in 1812. The veterans saw the heroism 
of the commanders and soldiers compromised in Tolstoy’s work, which deprived the 
historic event of its status as cherished and glorious “national memory.” Tolstoy was 
accused of using realism to unjust ends and even compromising history (see Ungurianu 
109-124). One of the scenes in War and Peace that was interpreted as undermining the 
heroic ideal is the scene of General Kutuzov reading a cheap novel by a French author 
immediately before the battle.
10
 This detail destroyed the overall picture of the General as 
a model of a true patriot. Therefore, one of the veterans proposed to supplement the 
portrait of Kutuzov by narrating an anecdote about an eagle flying over the General 
before the battle as an omen of great victory and a symbol of Kutuzov’s power (see 
Ungurianu 116-17). Dan Ungurianu in his study of Russian historical novel explains the 
reasons why Tolstoy’s heroes were not accepted at the time: “Tolstoy’s realism 
challenged some core beliefs by the survivors of the Romantic age. Totally unpalatable to 
the old romantics was Tolstoy’s philosophy of history, his scorn of the so-called great 
men and heroes” (Ungurianu 116). This insight reveals the split between the older 
generation which was still under the influence of the Romantic age and Tolstoy as a 
representative of a new realistic aesthetics. Romantic portrayal of war leaders as heroes 
was one of the key expectations at the time, and the one Tolstoy failed to meet. 
Divergence from these criteria was regarded as an intervention and distortion of historical 
“truth.”  
                                                        
10
 For detailed analysis of the character of Kuyuzov see Chapter I. 
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The critique that Tolstoy’s characters were subjected to could have been 
applicable to those of Grossman, had the work been published. This critique also 
illuminates one of the reasons why it was not published. Grossman’s work did not make 
it to the readers of the time because it did not present any characters that could be 
regarded as unquestionable models according to Socialist Realist convention. Like 
Tolstoy’s characters, who cannot be seen as mouthpieces for a particular concept, 
Grossman’s characters resist as a one-dimensional perspective. As was mentioned earlier, 
the writers of the time were prompted to follow the master-plot, the purpose of which 
was to provide the examples which help to “educate” people “in the spirit of Socialism” 
(in Robin 11). This demand for “educating” people using the example of positive heroes 
reveals a certain degree of romantic aura that surrounded the heroes and helped “educate” 
the masses in the “right” way. The aura that surrounds Grossman’s Grekov and Novikov, 
though also romantic, could not have served the “educational” purposes, as both of them 
are not idealized, as was shown earlier. In other words, the eagle that should have flown 
over Kutuzov’s head, had to fly over that of Grekov’s and Novikov’s for them to be able 
to enter the cannon. That is, these characters would have to represent Bakhtinian 
immutable epic molds. 
Grossman’s presentation of history shares some important characteristics with 
that of Tolstoy. One of these is Tolstoy’s “scorn of the so-called great men and heroes,” 
as Ungurianu defined it (116). In his conversation with Grossman, Mikhail Suslov, the 
Chief Ideologue of the Communist Party, clearly noted this feature: 
Your book contains direct comparison between us and Nazi Germany. It contains 
a false and untrue picture of our people and communists. How could we have 
230 
 
triumphed in the war with the kinds of people you describe? You speak favorably 
in your book about religion, about God, about Catholicism. You defend Trotsky. 
You often express serious doubts about our Soviet system. (In Garrard and 
Garrard 358) 
Suslov accuses Grossman of the “untrue picture of the [Soviet] people” and asks “How 
could we have triumphed in the war with the kinds of people [Grossman] describe?” Like 
Tolstoy, Grossman is accused of distorting the picture of people who should appear as 
heroic and romanticized images that can be used in presentation of a certain picture of 
reality in the Soviet Union. Like Tolstoy, Grossman takes away the romantic aura from 
his characters, which makes them unsuitable for the purposes of the Soviet Socialist 
Realist novel.  
Furthermore, Suslov points to the atmosphere of doubt that Life and Fate creates 
as to the feature that makes the book unacceptable for publication at the time. He 
repeatedly stresses this assertion throughout the conversation and concludes: “But your 
book Life and Fate is politically dangerous to us; it is full of question marks. You 
examine Soviet life from an absolutely non-Soviet viewpoint, you cast doubt upon 
everything” (In Garrard and Garrard 358). Interestingly, Gary Saul Morson, quoted in 
Ungurianu’s study, views Tolstoy’s engagement with history in War and Peace as 
adopting a profoundly skeptical attitude to the past: “Fiction [in War and Peace] is used 
to indicate the skepticism that should accompany all attempts to reconstruct the past 
(Morson Hidden 139; in Ungurianu 127). Grossman’s “non-Soviet viewpoint,” to which 
Suslov refers describing Life and Fate, is closer to Tolstoy’s skepticism than to the 
Socialist Realist demand for glorification of the past. Grossman allows for the 
231 
 
discussions to be unfinished and for conflicts to remain unresolved, as is the case in the 
episode where Mostovskoy’s conversation with Liss is described. Leaving the dispute 
unfinished, Grossman redirects the remaining questions to the reader, letting the reader 
decide whether the ideologies of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are in fact similar. 
Grossman’s Life and Fate creates an atmosphere that is “full of question marks” and does 
not provide a clear picture of reality, but expects and creates a reader who critically 
engages with the material historic reality.  
Both Tolstoy and Grossman leave the questions in their novels open for the reader 
to draw his or her own conclusions; they also present the scenes without explaining their 
exact meanings. In this respect Tolstoy’s scene of Tsar Alexander I throwing biscuits at 
the crowd of people as a sign of his kind generosity can be considered. Petya Rostov, the 
youngest of Rostov family, decides to see the tsar as the latter arrived in Moscow and ask 
for his permission to join the military despite his young age. As Petya arrives to the 
Kremlin, he sees a large crowd gathered to see the tsar; Petya nearly gets crushed in the 
crowd of people. Tolstoy describes the atmosphere of an overwhelming general 
excitement that borders on madness when the people see the tsar and especially when the 
throws the biscuits to people: 
Petya’s eyes became bloodshot, the danger of being crushed aroused him still 
more, he rushed for the biscuits. He did not know why, but it was necessary to 
take a biscuit from the tsar’s hands and necessary not to give it up. He rushed and 
tripled up a little old woman who was trying to catch a biscuit. (Tolstoy Vol. III, 
675) 
232 
 
The atmosphere described by Tolstoy is that of a wild excitement; Petya sees the people’s 
“wild faces” in the crowd (673); he does not understand the value of catching a biscuit 
from the tsar, but rushes to do so following the crowd and even carelessly “trips up” an 
old woman and ends up snatching a biscuit from her. Though Tolstoy describes Petya’s 
excitement as genuine, the overall picture of people’s adoration of the tsar leaves a 
negative impression on the reader.  
 Grossman describes the cult of personality in the Soviet Union in a similar 
manner. The character Getmanov, visiting a family of friends, encounters a picture of 
Stalin’s portrait in family album and “Stalin's face in the portrait had been scrawled over 
in coloured pencil” (Grossman Life 110). Though the boy who colored Stalin’s face is 
only four years old, Getmanov does not know how to react. The character remembers a 
similar instance when a young student was severely punished for a similar act that was 
meant as a joke, and feels compelled to react: “‘It's not just a prank, it's malicious 
hooliganism,” said Getmanov with an angry sigh” (110). Like Tolstoy, Grossman forces 
the reader to realize the negative effect of people’s adoration of their political leaders; 
Getmanov, though realizing that it is ridiculous to blame a four-year-old boy for what he 
did, is still ready to equate the boy’s drawing with a crime.  
During his meeting with Grossman, Suslov reproached the author: “Remember how 
passionately Tolstoy expressed his hatred for tsarist autocracy. That is why Lenin called 
Tolstoy the ‘mirror of the Russian Revolution’” (In Garrard and Garrard 358). Tolstoy in 
his War and Peace does not express his “hatred” for autocracy, but in subtle ways hints 
at its flaws. Failing to recognize Tolstoy’s techniques, Suslov also fails to see the 
similarity between the techniques used by Tolstoy and Grossman. In the episode 
233 
 
described above, Grossman, like Tolstoy, allows the readers to critically evaluate the 
situation without presenting a definitive conclusion. 
In his discussion of War and Peace, Ungurianu states that the novel marks a 
moment when “Literary fiction ceases being an antonym to nonfiction, turning into a 
something of a supportive discipline in the writer’s comprehensive analysis of the world” 
(120). This qualitative change in fiction marks the transition from the romantic to realist 
tradition. Grossman’s novel incorporates some important elements of Tolstoy’s realist 
novel, primarily through its deconstruction of the heroic images of the characters and 
through adoption of a critical stance towards the described reality. Rather than provide a 
monologic picture of the world as can be found in Grossman’s earlier novel Stepan 
Kol’chugin, Life and Fate works out tools for the “comprehensive analysis of the world” 
in the Soviet context. 
Characters in Life and Fate often question or reevaluate their positions, step out 
of the expected roles, and become something different from what is expected from them; 
they reveal a dynamic element, which Bakhtin contrasts with the features of an epic. It is 
only in the novel that the author, according to Bakhtin, “appears in a new relationship 
with the depicted world. Both [the author and the world] find themselves now subjects to 
the same temporally valorized measurements” (“Epic” 27). The author of the epic could 
not intervene into the world he depicted, as he only transmitted the story of the past 
which already supplied its point of view. The author of the novel, however, is able to 
negotiate positions and evaluative judgments; he is able to offer statements that could 
bear more than one interpretation.  
234 
 
In fiction, following Bakhtin’s view, one-dimensional presentation was overcome 
by the possibilities that the novel uncovered. These possibilities are inseparably 
connected to the development of dialogue, following the Socratic dialogues, which are 
also called “the novels of their time” in “Epic and Novel” (22). These dialogic 
relationships allow for juxtaposition of various opinions or views, often sharply opposed 
to each other, within one text of the novel. Moreover, they open a possibility for the 
reader to choose which of the opposed views he supports and which considers erroneous. 
Placing elements in dialogic relationship allows exposing the strengths and weaknesses 
of each of the elements, giving a reader the possibility to intervene into the novel with his 
own judgment, the maneuver which was impossible with epic genres, according to 
Bakhtin.    
 Grossman poses this invitation for critical intervention of the reader, creating a 
picture of a multiplicity of viewpoints and juxtapositions of ideas and views. Mostovskoy 
and Abarchuk, as well as Novikov and Grekov, and many other characters of the novel 
are not presented as fully-formed and definitive models. They do not know the right 
answers and ways out of their situations but are trying to find them alongside the novel’s 
reader. Thus, the novel calls for the reader who can engage critically with the historical 
reality that the novel presents, seeing its positive and negative sides. It expects the reader 
who feels the necessity to reevaluate the historical reality, as the characters of the novel 
are trying to do. In the same way the novel invites the reader to engage with his own 
present moment and rethink it in light of the presented multiplicity of juxtaposed views. 
Instead of advancing of the “spirit of socialism” the novel calls for a critical reader of the 
Soviet reality, the feature that sets it apart from Socialist Realist mode of presentation. 
235 
 
 Not only does Life and Fate step out against one-dimensional presentations of 
phenomena, it also redefines the Soviet attitude to sacrifice, as it was presented in the 
Socialist Realist novel. In Socialist Realist novel, according to Clark, “Ideally, […], the 
hero should make a supreme sacrifice of his life” in a fight for the victory of the 
communist views (The Soviet Novel 49). Grossman, however, rethinks the idea of 
sacrifice, presenting it not as a means for advancement of the Revolutionary ideas, but on 
the micro level of an individual life of a person. Addressing the Holocaust in his novel, 
Grossman presents the character of Sofya Osipovna Levinton, a Jewish doctor, who is 
taken to the concentration camp in August 1941. On her way to the camp, Sofya, who 
never had children of her own, meets a young boy David, who is left alone without any 
relatives to help or support him. Sofya takes care of David throughout the trip and in the 
camp. Standing in line to the gas chamber, Sofya purposefully misses the call for doctors 
to step out of the line and enters the chamber together with David, so that the small boy is 
not alone and can be comforted in the last moments of his life, her last thought  being 
“‘I’ve become a mother’” (554). Sofya assumes the role of a mother to the little boy, and 
regains the agency in the moment when the possibility of the expression of this agency 
seems to be impossible. Sofya’s sacrifice becomes a powerful expression of protest 
against the inhumanity of the Holocaust. Through this example, Grossman reestablishes 
the value of self-sacrifice not as a means for furthering the ideas of communism, but as a 
way of bringing comfort to the life of one young boy. The act of sacrifice does not 
become a loud expression of political position, yet its meaning as a stance against 
inhumanity sounds much more powerfully then any expression of political rhetoric in the 
novel. Separating the notion of sacrifice from the context of Soviet rhetoric, Grossman 
236 
 
reinstates the value of sacrifice in Levinasian sense of it: the sense, which requires that 
the sacrifice should be “nothing but ‘for the other,’” according to Denis King Keenan (6). 
Levinas places a great emphasis on the value of such sacrifice in the I-Other 
relationships. Grossman in his Life and Fate bring forth this notion and reestablished its 
value beyond the context of Soviet history, but in a broader sense, as a universal value.  
 Analyzing the period of Khrushchev’s Thaw, the time when Grossman attempted 
the publication of his novel, Clark writes that though the period was met with high 
expectations for liberalization in literature, “A closer look at the actual substance of the 
changes reflected in fiction under Khrushchev reveals that they were often not as radical 
as the rhetoric has suggested” (The Soviet Novel 211). Clark further concludes that “The 
great traditions of Soviet Socialist Realism were largely intact” (212). Though the time 
under Khrushchev was marked by “destalinization,” when the steps were taken to 
eradicate the existing cult of the personality of Stalin, the works of fiction did not 
radically deviate from the previous canon; with some minor adjustments to the master-
plot, which were mostly limited to the declaration of faith in the new Party leadership, 
fiction literature remained faithful to its earlier goals. In light of Clark’s observations, 
Life and Fate stands out as the work which persistently expands the boundaries of 
Socialist Realist novel by its insistence on radical reevaluation of the recent past.  
 Grossman addresses the period at the end of the War, maintaining that this time 
did not mark the transition to a happy life in the Soviet Union. The time is shown as 
filled with anxieties and unfair treatment of people on the part of the authorities. 
Grossman’s character, Viktor Shtrum, who is Jewish suffers discrimination in the 
Institute where he works. In describing Viktor’s troubles, Grossman can be partially 
237 
 
referring to his own experiences, when, for example, he was pressured to change the title 
of his novel from Stalingrad to For a Just Cause, because as a Jewish writer he could not 
be trusted with the task of writing “about one of the most glorious chapters of Russian 
history” even after his considerable writing achievements and his service at the front 
(Chandler ix). 
Grossman’s character Shtrum is a prominent scientist who makes a 
groundbreaking discovery in the area of nuclear physics; at first his achievement is 
recognized by his friends and colleagues. Later, however, as a wave of anti-Semitism 
starts in the Soviet Union, Viktor Shtrum becomes a “pariah” in the Institute, when even 
his friends avoid talking to him. Shortly, his work is declared contradictory to “the 
materialist view of the nature of matter” (Grossman Life 583); Viktor is harshly criticized 
for allegedly anti-Soviet views, a groundless accusation, which, however, could cost him 
his job or even freedom. Viktor is urged to write a letter of repentance and present it at 
the Institute meeting by his close friends; after a time of doubts and self-torment, Viktor 
takes the decision not to undertake the necessary act of public repentance. Shtrum is 
saved, however, by a call from Stalin himself, who, possibly recognizing some potential 
in Shtrum’s work, not only allows him to carry on his research, but surrounds him with 
benefits. Recognizing the fact that he owes his now comfortable living to Stalin’s whim 
and not to his own achievement, Shtrum reflects on a feeling of constant anxiety and fear 
that he is not able to ward off: “For a while after Stalin's telephone call, he had thought 
that he need never know fear again. But it was still there; only its outer trappings had 
changed. Now it was simply a more aristocratic fear, a fear that travelled by car and was 
allowed to use the Kremlin telephone switchboard” (829). Though Stalin’s telephone call 
238 
 
changes Viktor’s life and makes it much more comfortable in the material sense, Viktor 
does not feel safe or happy. He constantly feels the pressure of maintaining a certain 
image, as he worries if “He'd said the wrong thing then,” or if “he'd laughed at the wrong 
moment” (829). In his presentation of the Soviet reality, Grossman not only criticizes the 
cult of personality of Stalin and the tremendous power he had in the Soviet Union, which 
was a customary move in the literature of Khruschev’s Thaw, but presents the 
atmosphere in the Soviet Union as grim and oppressive, where even unique talents need 
to be subservient to the ideology of the dominating ideology, and where the development 
of virtually all of the spheres of life needs to be allied with the ideological demands of 
the Party. It is this fear that later prompts Shtrum to put his signature under a collective 
letter condemning the innocent doctors and writers who were arrested in the Soviet 
Union, the act for which he feels terrible remorse.  
Thus, Shtrum’s story does not end with the happy resolution of his conflicts, or 
the strong belief in the bright future, as the convention of the Socialist Realist novel 
demands, but with the promise Shtrum gives to himself: “Every hour, every day, year in, 
year out, he must struggle to be a man, struggle for his right to be pure and kind. He must 
do this with humility. And if it came to it, he mustn’t be afraid even of death […]” 
(Grossman Life 841). Shtrum’s realization that remaining true to his own beliefs requires 
a constant effort and struggle in the circumstances he lives in confirms the existence of a 
conflict between the State and an individual who struggles to maintain his integrity. The 
problems of functioning in the Soviet society with its demand for ideological conformity 
remain unresolved for Shtrum, who does not envision easy ways of aligning his views 
with those promoted by the Party. His resolution to remain true to his values even if it 
239 
 
means going against the Soviet ideology reminds of Grossman’s own later decision to 
fight for the publication of Life and Fate.  
In his Life and Fate Grossman reimagines the boundaries of the Soviet novel. The 
demand for a positive picture of historical reality and of the picture of socialism as a 
common good was not met in Life and Fate, which actually reveals the erroneousness of 
such an approach. The angle that Grossman’s novel chooses in its treatment of either its 
characters or themes thus diverges from those expected from a Socialist Realist novel. 
Life and Fate works out particular means for a critical evaluation of historical reality, 
which it presents to the reader. These means lie in consideration of the multiplicity of 
views in their dialogic relationship to each other, and it is in consideration of the dynamic 
element in human nature that resists being understood as static and completed. In his 
essay Bakhtin views the novel as a means for negotiation of such dynamics and sees it as 
a “zone of maximal contact with the present (the contemporary reality) in all its 
openendedness” (“Epic” 11). In spite of the Socialist Realist demand to look “upward” 
“towards the ‘fathers’” (The Soviet Novel 136), Grossman’s novel flaunts its relationship 
to the present moment through its presentation of the characters that refuse to be typified 
and ideas that are in flux. The novel presents a call for critical reevaluation of the 
Socialist Realist character-types through the artistic exploration of the figure of the other 
in Life and Fate. Grossman not only rethinks the Socialist Realist conventions, but 
reestablishes the novel as a genre that opens up a new vision of the other in the Soviet 
Union, the vision which is akin to Levinasian ethics of the I-Other relationship. Thus, 
Grossman reestablishes the genre of a novel as necessary for the formation of a reader 
240 
 
who would adopt a critical stance for understanding of his historical reality and would 
have the potential to change it. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
241 
 
Conclusion: Historical Crisis and the Other 
  The engagements of the authors discussed in this dissertation with Tolstoy’s War 
and Peace show that, like Tolstoy, the authors attempt to reimagine otherness in such 
terms as to make room for the Levinasian other within the cultures they describe. As all 
the literary works analyzed here describe historical moments of crisis with their 
inevitable collisions of worldviews and ideologies, the authors’ engagement with 
otherness constitutes an important aspect of their historical imagination. 
Looking at several episodes which deal with the authors’ treatment of otherness 
in the contexts of crisis selected from the works discussed in the present dissertation 
illuminates this central theme and allow for its critical re-thinking and re-evaluation in 
light of  cross-cultural communication and dialogue. 
The central character of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Robert Jordan, 
talks to himself about killing others in an imaginary dialogue: 
But I won’t keep a count of people I have killed as though it were a 
trophy record or a disgusting business like notches in a gun, he told himself. I 
have a right to not keep count and I have a right to forget them. 
No, himself said. You have no right to forget anything. You have no right 
to shut your eyes to any of it nor any right to forget any of it nor to soften it nor to 
change it. Shut up, he told himself. [...] 
Nor ever to deceive yourself about it, himself went on. (FWTBT 304) 
Prior to this imaginary dialogue, Jordan assures himself that he is disgusted at killing 
others. He still emphasizes his right “not to keep count” and “to forget them.” Jordan’s 
imaginary self, however, contradicts him: “You have no right to shut your eyes to any of 
242 
 
it nor any right to forget any of it nor to soften it nor to change it.” His imaginary self 
states that there is nothing that can justify wrongdoings against others and asserts that he 
has “no right” to “to shut [his] eyes to any of it” or “forget any of it.” This insight 
reiterates the Levinasian idea about the other expressed in the Biblical command “You 
shall not kill.” Forgetting the other or any of the offences done to the other is equated in 
the novel to “killing” the other. Hemingway’s novel problematizes the idea of otherness 
as it details the process of cultural integration of its main character into the Spanish 
culture, and presents the political divisions between people as artificial. A relationship 
between the I and the other is one of the key elements of representation of crisis in 
Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Jordan as well as other characters in the novel 
are constantly reminded of people who fight on the other side and reflect on what it is 
that divides them and what the relationship with the other should be. The novel’s 
treatment of the question of otherness constitutes its response to the historical crisis of 
the Spanish Civil War. 
As is the case in Hemingway’s novel, the emphasis of Pasternak’s Doctor 
Zhivago is on the image of unity of the nation which, though torn by complex historical 
transformations, is united by a common history. Pasternak also stresses the necessity to 
accept otherness. His character Vedeniapin expresses this idea in the following way: 
[…] [M]an does not live in nature but in history, and […] in present-day 
understanding it was founded by Christ, […] its foundation is the Gospel. And 
what is history? It is the setting in motion of centuries of work at the gradual 
unriddling of death and its eventual overcoming. Hence the discovery of 
mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, hence the writing of 
243 
 
symphonies. It is impossible to move on in this direction without a certain uplift. 
These discoveries call for spiritual equipment. The grounds for it are contained in 
the Gospels. They are these. First, love of one’s neighbor, that highest form of 
living energy, and the idea of life as sacrifice. Bear in mind that this is still 
extremely new. The ancients did not have history in this sense. Then there was the 
sanguinary swinishness of the cruel, pockmarked Caligulas, who did not suspect 
how all oppressors are. They had the boastful, dead eternity of bronze monuments 
and marble columns. (Doctor Zhivago 9) 
The vision of history expressed in this quotation is closely linked to that of acceptance of 
otherness, as Pasternak emphasizes that the history of the “present day” starts with the 
basic idea of “love of one’s neighbor.” This central idea is a “spiritual equipment” that 
makes all the achievements, such as the “discovery of mathematical infinity and 
electromagnetic waves” and “writing of symphonies” meaningful and worthwhile.  
Pasternak’s opposition between ancient and modern times recalls the Bakhtinian 
opposition between the epic and the novel as genres that reflect the monologic and the 
dialogic worldviews respectively. Pasternak takes this dichotomy to define his historical 
vision. The achievements of ancient times are described as a boastful dead entity,” 
incapable of progress or change, while “modern” times are associated with life and 
progress as it is grounded in the truth of the Gospels about the “love of one’s neighbor” 
and “the idea of life as sacrifice” – ideas which reflect Levinasian vision of the other.  
Pasternak states that history in its “present-day understanding” emerges when one 
recognizes the love of one’s neighbor as a key principle in the relationship between 
people. The author voices this view on history while living in the totalitarian state where 
244 
 
the meaning of history consisted in building a uniform society and attaining a collective 
good. For Pasternak history starts on the level of individuals – with love of one’s 
neighbor. Therefore, modern history is defined through relationships between individuals 
and the question of individual’s relationship with the other becomes of primary 
importance. The moments of historical crises bring forth the confrontation of the I with 
the other and therefore allow for exploration of the I-other relationship as an element of 
historical novel. 
Edith Wharton takes the discussion of otherness to the level of society in The Age 
of Innocence, stating that old New York society’s attempt to close itself to the outer 
influences impoverishes the lives of both the society and those who are not accepted and 
othered. Wharton writes: 
[Newland Archer] knew that there were societies where painters and poets and 
novelists and men of science, and even great actors, were as sought after as 
Dukes; he had often pictured to himself what it would have been to live in the 
intimacy of drawing-rooms dominated by the talk of Merimee (whose “Lettres a 
une Inconnue” was one of his inseparables), of Thackeray, Browning or William 
Morris. But such things were inconceivable in New York, and unsettling to think 
of. [...] he always came away with the feeling that if his world was small, so was 
[the world of these people in letters and science], and that the only way to enlarge 
either was to reach a stage of manners where they would naturally merge. (The 
Age 87) 
Newland Archer imagines a society that has reached such a level of its historical 
development that it is open to cultural otherness, and the “natural” alliance between the 
245 
 
“old” and the “new” ways is possible and beneficial to both. Archer is unsettled by the 
thought that even trying to talk about things that are of interest to him in New York 
society is “inconceivable” and will not be understood. Archer’s vision, however, does 
not prompt him to take action and try to change anything either in society or in his own 
life.  
Vasily Grossman in his Life and Fate sees the impulse to reduce the other as an 
act which contradicts nature. The novel presents its vision of otherness in the form of a 
dichotomy, as it compares the uniformity of the structure of the German camp for 
political prisoners to the uniqueness of people’s dwellings: 
Then the fence of the camp appeared out of the mist: endless lines of wire 
strung between reinforced-concrete posts. The wooden barrack-huts stretched out 
in long broad streets. Their very uniformity was an expression of the inhuman 
character of this vast camp. 
Among a million Russian huts you will never find even two that are 
exactly the same. Everything that lives is unique. It is unimaginable that two 
people, or two briar- roses, should be identical... If you attempt to erase the 
peculiarities and individuality of life by violence, then life itself must suffocate. 
(Life and Fate 19) 
The “uniformity” of the structure of the camp reveals its “inhuman character” for 
Grossman, as it does not allow for otherness and reduces everyone to the same. In 
Levinas’s understanding, denying otherness to the other is violence against the other. 
Grossman asserts that everything that exists is unique and its uniqueness should be 
246 
 
preserved. Grossman raises the question of the acceptance of otherness in the context of 
the Second World War as a way to preserve life. 
Consideration of the figure of the other as elaborated in Tolstoy’s War and 
Peace and in the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas helps us understand how the authors 
discussed here define the historical moments which their works describe. One feature 
that makes War and Peace into an important model for representing crisis for twentieth-
century writers is its engagement of the figure of the other and elaboration of the model 
of the I-other relationship at the given historical moment. The twentieth-century novel 
that adopts a historical perspective also turns to the figure of the other and discusses 
various ways that one may respond to otherness in the context of crisis. The chronotopes 
of the novels discussed in this dissertation can be defined as the moments of historical 
crisis. The analysis of the figure of the other in these novels allows us to define and 
crystallize this concept as a twentieth-century construct that emerged as a response to 
crisis. 
The concept of otherness as elaborated in Tolstoy’s novel and found in the ethics 
of Levinas is essentially tied to the events that took place in Europe; the American 
authors adopt Tolstoyan vision to describe the historical situation in Europe, as is the 
case with Hemingway, and in the United States, as is the case in Wharton’s novel. 
Engagements of these authors with Tolstoy reveal an important aspect of cross-cultural 
communication which allows for a broader perspective on otherness and consideration of 
it in multiple historical contexts.  
 
247 
 
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