1 Introduction
One of the best-known themes in Plato is that of a journey between the mundane and the eternal, a journey famously represented in the cave allegory of the Republic, but also described in the Symposium, Phaedo, and Phaedrus, where it is closely linked to discussions of love and death. This theme has metaphysical, ethical, and epistemological aspects, bringing with it a cluster of other well-known ideas in Plato: in metaphysics, the distinction between forms and particulars; in epistemology, the theory of recollection; and in ethics, the purification or catharsis of bodily passions and desires.
Quintessentially Platonic, these ideas have played a major role in the philosopher’s reception. This study looks at the way they play out in certain passages of Tolstoy’s fiction. Tolstoy had a long-standing interest in Plato and ranked him very highly among the many philosophers he studied. My focus is on the way in which some of the Platonic themes just described manifest themselves in specific episodes in Tolstoy: passages in which a central character, initially hemmed in by the mundane, catches a glimpse of the eternal or the divine. As in Plato, this vision transforms his previous outlook and results in the purification of harmful emotions. The capacity for such a transformation lies deep within the soul, even if it requires an external stimulus to bring it to life. In one case, this process is presented as an analogue of recollection.
These Platonic episodes are to be found in Tolstoy’s most famous works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, written in the 1860s and 1870s, respectively, and two of them are prompted by a character encountering a peasant named Platon.Footnote 1 This is not to say that these are the only works in which characters experience epiphanies. There are certainly examples to be found in Tolstoy’s later fiction, especially in the novel Resurrection and a clutch of novellas written in the last twenty years of his life.Footnote 2 But these epiphanies are more overtly Christian, more like Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus than a Platonic ascent. They depict people feeling repentance for their previous actions or character flaws, sometimes in a spirit of self-disgust. Such episodes are quite narrowly focused on the ethics of the individual concerned, whereas the epiphanies in War and Peace and Anna Karenina are panoramic in their scope: the characters I shall be discussing are inspired to think about the eternal and the divine in relation to the mundane world around them and, against this background, to understand their lives in a new way. It is especially this panoramic quality that makes it appropriate to call these epiphanies Platonic.
To avoid any misunderstanding about the aims and scope of this study, I should emphasise one distinction from the start. My principal aim is to exhibit the points where there are important affinities or parallels between Tolstoy and Plato: similar themes, ideas or even theories, specifically the ascent towards the eternal, moral catharsis, and recollection. But this is not quite the same as discussing Platonic influence, which is a causal notion. A mere affinity might be purely coincidental, but to say an author is directly influenced by a philosopher is to go further and claim that the affinity in question arises from the author being familiar with the philosopher’s work and then incorporating it into their writing. (In such a case, one may also say that the author is alluding to the philosopher, which would not be appropriate if the affinity was just a coincidence.)
Of course, because we know that Tolstoy was well-read in Plato and greatly admired him, such affinities as we may find cannot be purely coincidental. There must have been some kind of causal connection at work. So where the parallels are close, I shall assume that the affinity in question is the result of influence. However, it is beyond my remit to probe the details – exactly what form the influence took and what the channels were. This would be a formidable task requiring a Tolstoy scholar with all the relevant linguistic, historical, and archival knowledge. Such a study would also have to take account of the different possibilities inherent in the notion of philosophical influence. For one thing, even if we can be confident that there is a direct causal link between Tolstoy’s reading of a particular passage in Plato and an episode in one of his works (e.g., because the affinities are so specific), the process might have been unconscious. There is also the possibility of indirect influence. Tolstoy might have been influenced by reading a particular thinker (e.g., Rousseau or Schopenhauer) who was in turn influenced by Plato.Footnote 3 Another possibility is co-influence: reading Plato alongside a like-minded philosopher may have influenced what Tolstoy wrote.Footnote 4 The range of possibilities is wide, especially when one considers the enormous amount of reading Tolstoy that managed over the course of life.
Even though I have limited my ambitions by focusing on the Platonic affinities in Tolstoy rather than the exact channels of influence, I hope that this study will be of interest to Tolstoy scholars, opening up new opportunities for interdisciplinary research (even if in the process they detect various errors, omissions or simplifications in my views about his life and work). My other primary audience, of course, consists of readers who come with a strong, pre-existent interest in Platonic philosophy. They will surely be interested to find his ideas alive in Tolstoy’s fiction and to see how they manifest themselves in some of the greatest passages in literature. One particular benefit will be seeing the emotional dimension of Platonism being brought to life. Plato often tells us about the extraordinarily powerful effect that the ascent will have on whoever takes it, but except for some passages in the Symposium and Phaedrus, he rarely shows us what this would feel like. Tolstoy succeeds magnificently here, something that should interest committed readers of Plato.
After outlining Tolstoy’s fascination with Plato (Section 2), I present an overview of the Platonic themes that we shall find present in Tolstoy, drawing on the four dialogues just mentioned: the Republic, Symposium, Phaedo, and Phaedrus (Section 3). I then turn to the main business of the work, focusing on Platonic affinities in War and Peace (Section 4) and Anna Karenina (Section 5).
2 Tolstoy’s Interest in Plato
Tolstoy’s interest in Plato ran from the beginning to the end of his adult life. Between the ages of twenty and thirty-five (1848–63), the Symposium and the Phaedo were among the nine most important books to him (alongside works by Homer, Goethe, Victor Hugo, and three Russian poets).Footnote 5 In his short story The Raid (1852), he describes a conversation between two soldiers in the Caucasus about courage, which draws on the Laches and one of its definitions of courage (as a form of knowledge).Footnote 6 According to his son Sergei, a draft of his early works Boyhood and Youth showed the influence of Plato’s Republic on his thoughts about music.Footnote 7 From the 1850s onwards, his diaries contain references to specific Platonic dialogues, including the Republic, Statesman, and Laws.Footnote 8 In 1870, he decided to learn ancient Greek, with a plan to read Plato (among others) in the original.Footnote 9 In a long letter to his friend Nikolai Strakhov in 1875 (written while he was at work on Anna Karenina), he talks about philosophy and philosophical method, singling out Plato and Schopenhauer for special praise.Footnote 10 And his interest in Plato continued well into his later years. His treatise What is Art? (1898) includes several references to Plato, including to the Republic, and towards the very end of his life he published an abridged translation of the Phaedo, intended for a wide audience.Footnote 11
Tolstoy’s attitude to Plato was by no means uncritical, as can be seen from What is Art?, where he takes issue with the philosopher on the relation between beauty and goodness.Footnote 12 But for the most part his admiration shines through. What attracted him? The topics, of course: love and death in the Symposium and Phaedo and, more generally, morality and religion. And there is the style of Plato’s philosophy: in a letter written in 1871, Tolstoy argues that true philosophy does not renounce the poetic and religious side of things: ‘Purely intellectual philosophy is an ugly Western product; and neither the Greeks – Plato – nor Schopenhauer, nor the Russian thinkers understood it in this way’.Footnote 13
Tolstoy also applauded both philosophers for rejecting materialism and positivism. Of course, so did many others. But Plato had a particular approach to philosophy, which Tolstoy thought essential:
‘Plato, Schopenhauer and all religious teachings set a true objective for philosophy and in its exposition do not adhere to the scientific method, i.e., do not correct their listeners’ primitive and simplest concepts, but seek the meaning of life without dividing into their constituent parts the essential things which make up the life of every man’.Footnote 14
In the same letter he goes on to explain what he means by a philosophy that holds fast to our ‘primitive and simplest concepts’. In studying the phenomenon of fire, for instance, a scientist might come up with an understanding that rejects the everyday experience of fire and replaces it with something completely different. But when it comes to the fundamental concepts of human life, a different approach is needed. Plato used his abstractions to understand the basic concepts and experiences of the human condition.
Some readers of Plato might be surprised at this assessment: wasn’t Plato the philosopher who, par excellence, replaced our everyday concepts with his own, often highly counter-intuitive, theories?Footnote 15 Think of his account of learning as recollection from a preincarnate existence, not to mention the odd way in which Diotima defines love in the Symposium, or the explanation of death that Socrates gives in the Phaedo.Footnote 16 All this seems to echo the cave allegory in the Republic, which portrays the revisionary approach philosophy takes to common conceptions. Outside of the dialogues, the famous anecdote about his lecture on the form of the Good almost epitomises the approach to philosophy that Tolstoy thought Plato rejected: he advertised a lecture on the Good; people came expecting to learn about human happiness but were instead subjected to a lengthy disquisition on mathematical unity.Footnote 17
Nonetheless, there is a kernel of truth in what Tolstoy says. His understanding of the Platonic method actually fits with the cave allegory in the Republic, once read in its entirety. True, the prisoner leaves the cave on a journey of increasing abstraction, but they then return to the inside to try and explain what they have seen to others. This suggests the idea of a periodos – a ‘roundtrip’, a journey that leaves a particular point (common intuition and experience) but then returns to it in the light of the theory that has been discovered. Plato himself follows this procedure in the Republic: he begins with quite intuitive challenges to the value of justice, then explores a more abstract definition before returning to the original challenge to show how it can be answered.
Plato certainly gives quite abstract and surprising accounts of love and death, yet, through the dialogue form and the use of images and allegories, he never loses sight of the human perspective: think of Alcibiades’ experience of love in the Symposium or the account of Socrates’ death in the Phaedo.Footnote 18 As Tolstoy says, Plato never loses touch with the original concepts that launched him on his philosophical journey. He is at once vertiginously abstract and completely grounded. In this respect, Tolstoy ranked him even higher than Schopenhauer.Footnote 19
3 The Platonic Background
Although references to Plato will run throughout this study, it will be useful early on to present a brief overview of the Platonic themes that we shall find in Tolstoy: the journey between the mundane and the eternal, the need for moral purification, and the theory of recollection. The first of these is described in some very well-known passages, such as the cave allegory of the Republic, the climax of Diotima’s speech in the Symposium, and the allegory of the philosophical lover in the Phaedrus. The theory of recollection is concentrated in well-known passages in the Meno, Phaedo, and Phaedrus. By contrast, the idea of moral catharsis is more dispersed around different texts and less conspicuous than the other two themes. So in this overview, I shall spend somewhat longer piecing together Plato’s account of catharsis, in the process showing how it connects to the other two themes. In what follows, I shall proceed dialogue by dialogue.Footnote 20
3.1 The Phaedo
This dialogue recounts the day of Socrates’ execution following the Athenians’ decision to convict him of impiety and corrupting the young. Plato had already written the Apology, Socrates’ defence speech given in front of the jury; now he writes about the conversation he had with his closest friends in the hours before his death. The dialogue starts in the morning when they come to visit him in prison, spending the whole day until he is made to drink hemlock at sunset. They find him calm, almost cheerful. To forestall their surprise, even shock, he offers to give a second defence or ‘apology’ (64b–69e):Footnote 21 death, he explains, is merely the separation of the soul from the body and, since the body is a source of corruption, this can only be a good thing. In fact, he has been practising for death most of his life. After listening to the speech, his friends raise the more fundamental question of whether the soul can actually survive the death of the body, the topic that takes up most of the subsequent conversation. The work ends with a description of Socrates’ death.
The Phaedo contains all the themes I have mentioned: not just the journey from the mundane to the eternal and the theory of recollection, but also the need for moral catharsis. Indeed, where catharsis is concerned, this is the dialogue where Plato gives it most prominence.
First, a general word about the meaning of the term ‘catharsis’ in Plato. The Greek word katharsis is linked to the adjective katharos, meaning ‘pure’, so katharsis denotes the process of purification; and whatever instigates that process, the ‘purifier’, can be called the katharmos. In ancient Greek philosophy, the most famous figure to talk of catharsis was Aristotle, who claimed in the Poetics that tragedy has as its goal the catharsis of pity and fear (6, 1449b22–8). In the Politics, he also talks of the cathartic power of music (VIII 7, 1341b32–1342a15; cf. VIII 5, 1340a8–12).Footnote 22
Plato is less often linked to catharsis. He did not claim that music or drama purges the listener of unwanted emotion, or at least not explicitly. His explicit comments tend to be making the very opposite point, that music and poetry increase our emotional level, usually in a harmful way. Nonetheless, he certainly did have a concept of catharsis as a process of weakening harmful feelings and desires, and the concept is very important to him. But rather than seeing music or drama as the instigator of the cathartic process, he gives that role to philosophy, most explicitly in the Phaedo. The discussion of philosophical catharsis comes in Socrates’ second apology, where the process turns out to have two aspects. The first involves weaning ourselves off the use of the bodily senses as sources of knowledge (66a, 66d and 67a–b): if we rely on perception, absolute knowledge is unattainable, because the senses can so easily deceive us. The second involves ridding ourselves of various bodily feelings that distract the soul from the attainment of wisdom.
To understand the first aspect, we need to say something about Platonic forms, which make their first appearance at this point in the work. Forms are entities such as absolute beauty, justice or goodness, as distinguished from physical particulars, for example, beautiful people or objects. As a rough approximation, we might call them the essences of beauty, justice, and so forth. But they also act as paradigms in the sense that physical particulars derive their properties by ‘participating’ in the forms and approximating to them. Furthermore, the forms are separate from the material world. They are also eternal and unchanging, even divine in nature. ‘Transcendent’ is a word commonly used for them, and Plato frequently refers to them as ‘pure’, by which he means that they exist separate from any matter, unmixed.
On this view, any physical instance of (say) beauty in some way instantiates the form, but the beauty the object possesses is ‘mixed’ and ‘impure’, contaminated by the presence of matter. As such, it confuses us when presented to the senses: if our aim is to use a physical instance to understand what beauty is in itself, we shall be misled, because we are unable to determine which aspects of it belong to it because of beauty or because of its physical properties. So we need to purify the soul of its reliance on the bodily senses. This constitutes intellectual catharsis. As Socrates famously argues a little later on, at 72e–76e, progress towards understanding the forms in this way is really a process of recollecting knowledge that the soul once possessed in a previous existence.
The second aspect of catharsis is moral purification. As well as providing us with sensory inputs, the body is also the source of certain kinds of desire, for example, for food, drink, and sex, which corrupt the soul and turn it away from its true calling, the attainment of wisdom. Socrates broadens these motivations to include other worldly aspirations, such as desires for wealth, honour, and power (68c). Hence the need for moral purification: just as we need to rid ourselves of reliance on the physical senses as sources of information, we also need to disdain and weaken the desires or emotions that result from contamination with the body (65d and 68c–d).
If a soul can achieve this state, it has achieved something the best religions always strived for. So, by the end of the speech, catharsis appears under yet another aspect: it is likened to religious initiation and purity (69c–d). Socrates also characterises the process of purifying and liberating the soul from the body as some kind of journey (67c–d, cf. 82d), which will ultimately result in a state of tranquillity (84a).
3.2 The Republic
Our next stop is the Republic, nowadays Plato’s best-known work, particularly famous for its description of the ideally just state. One of its most notorious proposals is that the ideal state would be ruled by philosophers. As in the Phaedo, philosophers strive for knowledge of forms, and a crucial part of this process involves freeing themselves from reliance on the senses and from immersion in bodily desires. Midway through the work, Socrates describes the cathartic effect that philosophy has on the character (VI 485a–487a), likening the soul and its motivations to a channel of water that can be diverted in a certain direction (485d). This causes the flow of water to dry up in other directions. Analogously, if someone has very strong desires for one kind of object, their desires for other things weaken, possibly to the point of drying up entirely. Thus, driven by their desire to understand the forms, philosophers cease to feel strong desires for physical pleasures. Though he does not explicitly use the term here, this amounts to a form of catharsis. In the same passage, he also describes some other qualities engendered by philosophy (486a–b). One of these is ‘high-mindedness’ (megaloprepeia): because the philosopher focuses on timeless and immutable truth, ordinary day-to-day concerns, desires and ambitions come to seem petty and trifling. In fact, even human life is not so important in the grand scheme of things, and that includes one’s own. Lacking a fear of death, the philosopher becomes courageous.Footnote 23
Not long after this passage, we encounter the allegory of the cave, an account of philosophical enlightenment, which involves a journey from the world apprehended by the senses to the world of forms grasped by pure intellect (514a–517a). We start with a group of prisoners at the bottom of a cave, perfectly content with their lot: they sit chained in a row watching shadows being cast on the wall in front of them. Behind them, illuminated by a fire, some people are moving objects along a screen to create the shadows on the wall of the cave. Unaware that they are chained, the prisoners think that the shadow-play in front of them is reality, competing to see who is best able to predict what will come next. Then, one of their number is released. Turning around, he is at first blinded by the light of the fire, but eventually grows accustomed to the light and begins to realise the illusion to which he was formerly subject. As he ascends out of the cave he is again blinded, this time by the light of the sun. But once his eyes have become accustomed, he can look directly at the objects in the real world. These serve as analogues to the forms, described (as in the Phaedo) as being ‘pure’ (520d).
The cave is obviously concerned with intellectual catharsis, that is, about the process of ridding the soul of its reliance on the senses.Footnote 24 But there is an important respect in which moral catharsis appears. Very soon after setting out the allegory, Socrates talks about the requirement for the philosophers to return to the cave and rule in the ideal state. At 521b he emphasises their unwillingness, saying that they disdain political rule – in stark contrast to those whom he terms ‘lovers of rule’, power-hungry politicians who dominate in normal states. If the freed prisoner was ever like that, his journey out of the cave has completely purged him of any desire to compete in the rough and tumble of everyday politics.Footnote 25 Later on, he states that the philosopher will see ruling as a chore, with nothing noble or beautiful (kalon) about it (VII 540b). This shows a particular kind of catharsis, the purging of any desires to do with power, honour or political competition, the same category of desires that the philosopher disdains in Phaedo 68c.
3.3 The Symposium
The other two dialogues we shall consult, the Symposium and the Phaedrus, both contain discussions of love. The Symposium describes a gathering of eminent Athenians at a dinner party, who all agree to give a speech in praise of love. In the first half of the work, one of the speakers, Pausanias, draws a sharp distinction between a lower form of love based on sexual desire and a higher one capable of morally elevating the soul. The idea of love as an elevating force reappears with particular emphasis in Socrates’ speech, in which he reports the teachings of the priestess Diotima. Particularly memorable is the culmination of this speech, which describes how the best kind of lover will ascend a series of steps until they encounter the form of beauty itself, pure and unalloyed (210a–212b). At the beginning of this journey (often referred to as the ‘ladder of love’), the lover is captivated by the physical beauty of another individual. But gradually, they realise that beauty is instantiated in other ways, such as beauty of character or beauty as revealed in the sciences (e.g., mathematical beauty), and so they ascend through different levels of love. As they approach the summit and contemplate ‘the great ocean of beauty’, surveying all that they have seen before, they suddenly have an epiphany (210d–e): a vision of absolute beauty, pure and unmixed with anything of this world. This stage constitutes the highest form of love and the highest life to which we can aspire. Once the lover reaches the summit, they look back at their former way of life and feel shame at the way they used to hanker after a beauty that was only physical or particular. Indeed, from this vantage-point, they look down on physical beauty as ‘mortal trash’.Footnote 26 This brings out with particular clarity how two of the themes I have highlighted go hand in hand: the ascent and the process of catharsis. The philosophical lover is transported to a place that they never imagined existing and, once there, they are purged of their earlier obsessions, now viewing them as petty and trivial.
3.4 The Phaedrus
Although the Phaedrus is also famous for its account of Platonic love, it actually begins as a conversation about rhetoric.Footnote 27 Breaking his usual habits, Socrates is taking a walk outside the city walls. Here he chances upon his friend Phaedrus, who has spent the morning listening to the orator Lysias deliver a speech about love. Phaedrus has a copy of it with him, which Socrates asks him to recite. They choose a particularly beautiful place to lie, under the shade of a plane tree beside a cooling stream, where the reading begins (230e). Lysias’ speech is highly critical of love, seeing it as a destructive force that causes the lover to inflict various kinds of harm on his beloved. After hearing the speech, Socrates condemns it as ill-composed and proceeds to give a speech of his own, arguing towards similar conclusions but better organised in structure and focus (237b). In his quest for greater clarity, he explains the destructive power of love by first defining it as a form of madness, in which the lover’s reason has become displaced by passion. But some way through the speech, he comes to an abrupt pause, realising that he has just blasphemed against Love (241d–243d). He was about to cross the stream and return home, but his ‘divine sign’ (daimonion) forbids him to do so until he has given a recantation, or ‘palinode’: a new speech, this time in praise of love (244a–257c). Here he describes it in a completely different way from before, when it had been treated merely as lust or physical desire. Now it is a force that responds to the sight of beauty by awakening in the lover an awareness of the divine and transcendent. As a case of inspiration or enthusiasm, it is still a form of madness, but a beneficial one, like the madness of divinely inspired poets and prophets.
Most of the speech is taken up with a famous allegory in which the discarnate soul is likened to a charioteer with two horses journeying around the heavens (246a), borne aloft by a pair of wings. This image applies to all kinds of souls, both human and divine, and the object of any soul’s journeying is to gain a vision of the forms, which are to be found in a place beyond the heavens. While the gods encounter no obstacles in their journey, humans make their approach to the forms only with difficulty. In the scuffle to gain a clear vision, their wings are easily damaged. Should they actually lose them, they fall from the heavens down to earth, where they are locked inside a body. In the process, they forget whatever knowledge they had of the forms. Once incarnated, the only way a soul can regain its wings is to use physical objects as reminders of the forms. As the knowledge re-emerges, the wings start to regrow (249e). In this process, beauty has a special place. Down on earth, it is this form that shines through most clearly. So, upon encountering the beauty of another person, a soul can start to recollect the form and regrow its wings. This is where love re-enters the speech, because it turns out that the recollection of beauty goes hand in hand with the better kind of love. The intensity of the experience also explains why love is accounted a form of madness: it induces a form of tunnel vision, which makes the lover blind to all other considerations, including family, friends, property, and social convention (252a).
The palinode encapsulates many of the most famous tenets of Platonism, including the notion of an ascent from particulars to forms and the theory of recollection, two of the main themes with which we shall be concerned. But it also presents a vivid account of moral catharsis (253c–256e). Part of the point of calling philosophical love madness is to stress the way it rids us of many desires and concerns that afflict normal people. But Socrates also has much to say about the way in which recollection can help purge us of sexual desire. Not that the process is in any way smooth or straightforward: the Phaedrus portrays it as a protracted struggle. In the speech, there is a worry that the same object, a physically beautiful particular, can pull the lover in opposite directions: either towards recollection of absolute beauty or towards sexual gratification. Initially, there is an almost violent conflict between two forces. The epiphany occasioned by the recollection of Beauty produces a profound sense of reverence. Yet, alongside it, there is also intense sexual desire, arising from our carnal nature. At first, the two battle it out. But over time, carnal desire is tamed – at least in the best cases: sexual appetite diminishes and, to the extent that it does arise, it is overwhelmed by the sense of awe and shame in the presence of Beauty. So there is a process of catharsis – purging the soul of harmful desires; but it takes time, and on this occasion (unlike the other passages we have examined) Socrates describes the pain associated with this process in some detail.
3.5 Tolstoy and Intellectualism
This should give an outline of the themes that we shall find present in Tolstoy. We shall delve into the details of Platonic interpretation as the occasion demands. But before turning to look directly at Platonic affinities in Tolstoy, a word of caution is in order. Although I shall be exploring several parallels between them, there are also some marked differences to be found. In Section 5, for instance, I shall discuss a parallel between Platonic recollection and an episode in Anna Karenina where Konstantin Levin finds within him a deep well of moral truth. But this is not to say that he experiences Platonic recollection in the literal sense, involving the pre-existence of the soul. Rather, this is a Christianised version of anamnesis, where truths lie hidden and dispersed within the soul, without any suggestion that the soul existed before the body. Similarly, when we find passages in both works talking about an ascent from the mundane to the eternal, parallel to the cave allegory, we do not find any commitment to Plato’s theory of forms. Instead, Tolstoy talks more vaguely in terms of the infinite, the eternal, and the divine.
Such differences are to be expected. But there is one significant contrast that should be highlighted early on: for Plato, unlike Tolstoy, the journey towards the transcendent and divine is profoundly and rigorously intellectual. In the Republic, the hard trudge out of the cave requires ten years of mathematical study, followed by five years of intensive dialectic. As is well known, he required his own students to have studied geometry and placed an inscription over the entrance to the Academy barring those unversed in the subject from entry. In contrast, Tolstoy, for all his learning, reveals a strong antipathy to professors and academics. For his characters, the ascent out of the cave may be formidably difficult, but it does not involve the long-drawn-out intellectual process that we find in Plato. As the narrator of War and Peace says at one point of the character Pierre Bezukhov, enlightenment arises not from words and arguments but from direct personal experience and feeling (IV iv 12).
4 War and Peace
War and Peace is a vast work, comprising four volumes and an epilogue. Most of it spans Russia’s involvement in the Napoleonic Wars from 1805 to 1812, combining a historical narrative about the military campaigns with one about a cluster of aristocratic families caught up in the tumult. Woven into the historical episodes are several chapters on the philosophy of history, which step back to consider questions about the nature of historical causation, including a famous critique of the ‘great man’ theory of history, as well as a highly abstract discussion of human agency, free will, and determinism in the second part of the Epilogue.
Although our interest is philosophical, it is not connected to the philosophy of history (one area that Plato did not explicitly address). Instead, the focus will be on two of the principal characters, the young aristocrats Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov, and on the spiritual journeys they undertake, journeys with a profoundly Platonic character.
Close friends to one another, they initially appear in very low spirits: Andrei is unhappily married and deeply frustrated by ‘vacuous nonsense’ of Petersburg society (I i 6, 30);Footnote 28 Pierre feels completely directionless, unable to decide what to do with himself. The work charts their separate but intertwined attempts to find meaning in their lives as they navigate their way through love, marriage, politics, and the chaos of war.Footnote 29
4.1 Andrei Bolkonsky
4.1.1 Overview
Andrei is the son of Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky, an eminent general in the eighteenth century who had close connections to the court but was subsequently sent into exile by the Czar (still a source of wounded pride). When the work begins in St Petersburg in 1805, Andrei has decided to join the army to escape the tedium of his life. Fired up by military ambition, he is soon caught up in the battle of Austerlitz, where he is seriously wounded and taken for dead. Despite the severity of his wounds, he survives and returns home just as his wife, Lise, is giving birth. The baby is safely delivered, but Lise dies in the process, sending Andrei into a deep depression. He leaves to go on a tour of Europe and to look after his fragile health. Returning to Russia in 1807, he initially spends most of his time in the country but eventually re-engages with Petersburg society. By now he has become fascinated by the young Countess Natasha Rostov. After falling in love with her, he decides to propose but first needs his father’s permission. The old man agrees – on the condition that they delay the marriage for a year. Andrei makes his proposal, then leaves on his own for Europe.
While he is away, events unfold disastrously. Natasha is seduced by the odious Anatole Kuragin and attempts to elope with him. Though the plot is foiled, Andrei is devastated. Now back from his travels, he re-enlists in the army to track his rival down and challenge him to a duel.
By now, it is the summer of 1812, and the French invasion of Russia is imminent. Soon after Napoleon’s forces cross the border, they engage with the Russians at the Battle of Borodino. Andrei is wounded by a grenade, leaving him with severe injuries, which will eventually claim his life. He is transferred to a field hospital, then taken by carriage towards Moscow in retreat from the advancing French. By chance, he is reunited with the Rostov family, also fleeing the enemy, and together they go to Yaroslavl, where he is tended by Natasha, with whom he is reconciled. His sister and son eventually join him not long before he dies.
Such are the bare bones of his story. Much of the time his mood is low: bored, irritated or simply depressed. But these moods are sometimes offset by moments of intense inspiration, in particular by a series of epiphanies that raise him to a higher level of awareness, a perspective from which he can look back on his previous experience in a completely different light. And it is in these visionary moments that we find some of the strongest Platonic parallels in the work, including the perspective shift illustrated by the cave allegory and the resulting sense of catharsis.
The first such epiphany comes just as he has been wounded at the battle of Austerlitz. Lying on the ground, he looks up at the sky and, for the first time, becomes transfixed by its beauty. Compared to the infinity of what he sees above him, all his previous concerns and ambitions seem tawdry and inconsequential. After this point, we see him recalling this experience in a series of follow-up epiphanies and in each case doing so with renewed joy. Throughout this part of his narrative, the memory of the sky at Austerlitz acts as his North Star.Footnote 30
Another undeniably Platonic echo comes just before the battle of Borodino in August 1812. Having recently had a premonition of death, he experiences a vision that bears strong parallels with the cave allegory. Here is a brief sample:
And from the height of that picture, all that used to torment and preoccupy him was suddenly lit up by a cold, white light, without shadows, without perspective, without clear-cut outlines. The whole of life presented itself to him as a magic lantern, into which he had long been looking through a glass and in artificial light. Now he suddenly saw these badly daubed pictures without a glass, in bright daylight.
His perspective here makes everything else in his life seem unimportant, and he goes on to dismiss all his erstwhile preoccupations, including ‘honour and glory, philanthropy, love of a woman, love of Fatherland’. Although this reversal of attitude may sound like another version of the Austerlitz epiphany, this time his mood is quite different: bleak and nihilistic, a vision containing no joy.
But Andrei does not stay in this mood for long. After being wounded at Borodino, he has a further succession of visionary moments, paradoxically suffused with joy, which enable him to come to terms with his impending death. These also exhibit Platonic affinities; indeed, the final death scene bears striking resemblances to the passages from the Phaedo.
This is just an outline of Andrei’s narrative and a preview of some of the Platonic themes within it. We can now look through his different epiphanies in more detail, beginning with his experience at the Battle of Austerlitz.
4.1.2 The ‘Lofty, Infinite Sky’
When he is first introduced, Andrei appears arrogant and aloof (cf. esp. I i 3, 14). His guiding light is a desire for glory, which he attempts to satisfy through pursuing a military career.Footnote 31 Surprisingly, perhaps, this ambition goes hand in hand with a deep admiration for the enemy: Napoleon. The point first emerges in I i 6, 29 and I i 24, 104 but is most explicit as the battle of Austerlitz draws closer.Footnote 32
When the battle takes place, Andrei and his men find themselves caught in the thick of it. At one point, with the Russians in disarray, the standard of Andrei’s group has fallen to the ground and soldiers are fleeing for their lives. His spirit racing, he grabs the standard and tries to hold it aloft.Footnote 33 Very soon afterwards, an enemy soldier hits him on the head with a huge piece of wood, leaving him seriously wounded.
As he lies on the ground, he suddenly becomes aware of the infinite vastness of the sky, whose beauty leads all other preoccupations to fade away:
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 at all like when I was running,’ thought Prince Andrei, ‘not like when we were running, shouting, and fighting; … 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, tranquillity. And thank God! … ’
A few chapters later, we find him still lying where he fell, losing blood, and passing in and out of consciousness (I iii, 19). Eventually he opens his eyes and becomes aware once more of ‘that same lofty sky with floating clouds rising still higher, through which showed the blue of infinity’ (290). Then he hears the voices of approaching horsemen: it is Napoleon himself with two adjutants, come to gloat over his triumph. He stops over Andrei, assuming him to be dead: Voilà une belle mort (‘there’s a fine death’, 291). Andrei’s reaction to encountering his erstwhile hero shows the extent of his transformation:
He knew that it was Napoleon – his hero – but at that moment, Napoleon seemed to him such a small, insignificant man compared with what was now happening between his soul and this lofty, infinite sky with clouds racing across it. To him it was all completely the same at that moment who was standing over him or what he said about him; 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.
With this resurgent love of life, Andrei forces himself to move as a way of attracting their attention. Once Napoleon realises that he is alive, he has him transferred to a field hospital, where the two encounter each other again a few hours later. The emperor is inspecting some of the high-ranking prisoners lying there wounded. When he comes to Andrei, he asks him how he is. But Andrei makes no reply:
Then, too, everything seemed so useless and insignificant compared with that stern and majestic way of thinking called up in him by weakness from loss of blood, suffering, and the expectation of imminent death. Looking into Napoleon’s eyes, Prince Andrei thought about the insignificance of grandeur, about the insignificance of life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and about the still greater insignificance of death, the meaning of which no one among the living could understand or explain.
It is with this episode that Tolstoy’s Platonic affinities come so clearly into view,Footnote 34 although even before the epiphany at Austerlitz, Andrei bears a strong resemblance to a recognisably Platonic type: the timocratic character, honour-obsessed and dominated by the spirited part of the soul (Rep. VIII 548d–550c). So to this extent, the work has already shown a parallel to an important strand in the Republic. But Andrei is not irredeemably honour-living, as becomes clear when he gazes up at the sky. In doing so, he comes to resemble a different, and nobler, kind of Platonic character: someone who experiences a transformation in perspective following an encounter with the transcendent. In this transformation, what previously seemed of the highest importance (viz. honour or glory) now appears trivial. And the man who embodies those values is made to look tiny and inconsequential.Footnote 35
In terms of relevance, the closest passage in Plato for comparison is the account of the philosophical nature in Rep. VI (discussed in Section 3.2). Here, Socrates describes what happens as someone develops their propensity to study true being rather than mere becoming. As we saw, their desires are likened to a channel of water that flows most strongly in one direction at the expense of others. The result is that many typically human desires diminish. One specific outcome is the emergence of the quality of megaloprepeia (‘high-mindedness’, 486a–b):
What makes the parallel between Plato and Tolstoy so strong is that, in both passages, the vision (of true being, or of the sky) leads to a sense that human life is unimportant, as is death (cf. I iii 19, 293).
All this helps to show that there is a broad similarity between Plato’s idea of the cathartic ascent and Andrei’s epiphany at Austerlitz. But if we probe both sides of the parallel more closely, the comparison becomes ever more intriguing.
We can start with a closer look at the passage from Rep. VI. The context concerns the qualities that one should require of the ruler in the ideal state: specifically, why expect that philosophers, a notoriously absent-minded group, will have the appropriate temperament for wielding power in the state? Here Plato is arguing that, far from disqualifying them from practical politics, their detachment makes them supremely qualified, since they will possess all the virtues that can make them trustworthy as rulers: because they disdain worldly pleasures and ambitions, they won’t be greedy, unjust, cowardly or small-minded. But the passage I have quoted goes so far in this direction as to make one wonder why they would have any inclination to rule at all: if human life is not worth taking seriously, why would they even care about looking after the state?
This challenge is very well known to modern-day students and scholars of Plato’s Republic, and it reflects a more general distinction between two ways of understanding his account of the relation between the mundane and the divine, that is, between the world of becoming (the particulars) and the world of being (the forms). In The Great Chain of Being, A. O. Lovejoy described these two approaches as respectively ‘this-worldly’ and ‘other-worldly’.Footnote 37 The former fits particularly well with the Timaeus, where Plato attempts to show how the order of the forms is reflected in the natural world. On this approach, we can easily understand, even celebrate, the value of the mundane world as approximating the ideal. But Plato has also been read in a very different way, as expressed in the ‘other-worldly’ approach. Here the Phaedo comes to mind: the physical world is essentially ‘trash’ (phluaria) and the senses (which are bound up with it) drag us down towards it and away from the good. The proper reaction should be to escape to the divine order, the body being a kind of prison of the soul.
The Republic could be seen as reflecting this distinction, even as being caught between its two poles, especially when the distinction is considered in a political context (as befits the dialogue): the question now becomes whether to detach oneself from the polis or to immerse oneself in it. A ‘this-worldly’ approach would celebrate political activity in the ideal state as a positive opportunity for the philosopher to promote approximation to the form of the Good in human affairs, rather as the divine craftsman of the Timaeus modelled the natural world on the forms.Footnote 38 But one could also take an ‘other-worldly’ approach, as some scholars have done, and claim that, even in the ideal state, philosophers re-enter the cave only because they are compelled to do so by the law, indebted as they are to the state for their education. Their default mode would be one of withdrawal and quietism, treating political activity merely as a chore, imposed on them from without. This approach recalls the spirit of the Phaedo, and as a reading of the cave allegory, it emphasises the way Socrates refers to the inside of the cave as a kind of Hades, where the inhabitants are only to be pitied (Rep. VII 521c).
The reason I dwell on this distinction in Plato’s case is that we can see something similar in Andrei’s experience at Austerlitz. At three points he has a very extreme reaction to his vision of the sky. (1) When he first looks up at it, he thinks to himself: ‘everything is empty, everything is a deception, except this infinite sky’ (emphasis added). (2) Even more emphatically, adds, ‘There is nothing, nothing except that. But there is not even that, there is nothing except silence, tranquillity’ (I iii 16, 281). (3) And, as we have just emphasised, later in the recovery tent he muses about ‘the insignificance of grandeur, about the insignificance of life … and about the still greater insignificance of death’ (I iii 19, 293). This suggests a very extreme degree of catharsis, where nothing has any significance except the beauty and majesty of what has been revealed in the epiphany.
And yet, just one page before, we find him showing a much more positive view of human life, suggesting that his catharsis has not been so extreme as to negate all that it has to offer: his only desire was ‘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’ (291). The epiphany gives him a renewed love of life, and he takes enormous pains to attract attention so that Napoleon’s adjutants can bring him to safety.Footnote 39
These two reactions are clearly delineated at the end of this episode. Following the departure of Napoleon, and left under the care of the French doctors, Andrei imagines ‘a quiet life and peaceful family happiness at Bald Hills’. In Platonic terms, this sounds like a return to the cave from the heights of his epiphany: a descent (katabasis) of a benign, ‘this-worldly’ sort. But then, in his imagination,
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 tranquillity.
Here, Andrei puts his imagined katabasis aside and flees to the otherworldly perspective, where all that matters is the vision of the sky.
In sum, these two reactions track the distinction between the two kinds of Platonism: between an other-worldly view and a more life-affirming approach to human affairs. In what follows, I shall show that Andrei’s oscillation between these two outlooks should not just be dismissed as the temporary result of trauma-induced confusion. Even though that must play some part in his experience at Austerlitz, it is not the whole story. As we shall see, his oscillation persists right through the rest of his narrative until it is resolved at his death.
Before we move on from the scene at Austerlitz, we should take note of the religious aspect of Andrei’s epiphany. At the end of I iii 16, as he lies wounded on the battlefield and awed by his vision of the sky, he thinks:
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, tranquillity. And thank God! … ’
That he exclaims to himself, ‘thank God!’ is striking, especially as he has had atheistic leanings in the past.Footnote 40 Religion becomes an important theme as lies in the recovery tent, following his second encounter with Napoleon (Chapter 19). At this point he has become preoccupied with the icon that his sister Marya had given him for his protection. Contemplating the icon and its significance prompts Andrei to turn his thoughts explicitly to religion. Though not a theist like his sister, he seems to envy her simple faith:
‘It would be good if everything was as clear and simple as it seems to Princess Marya. How good it would be to know where to look for help in this life and what to expect after it, there, beyond the grave! How happy and calm I’d be, if I could say now: Lord, have mercy on me! … But to whom shall I say it? Either it is an indefinable, unfathomable power, which I not only cannot address, but which I cannot express in words – the great all or nothing,’ he said to himself, ‘or it is that God whom Princess Marya has sewn in here, in this amulet? Nothing, nothing is certain, except the insignificance of everything I can comprehend and the grandeur of something incomprehensible but most important!’
There is a clear train of thought in this passage, despite its allusiveness (not least in the phrase, ‘the great all or nothing’). Andrei cannot share his sister’s faith and instead espouses a deep scepticism, but he does at least end up committing himself to the existence of something possessing grandeur and importance. This is not outright atheism or nihilism, but a tentative glimpse of something that lies beyond the limits of his own reason.
But this raises an important question. How is this ‘something’, which he calls ‘most important’, related to the eternal sky that triggered his epiphany and so captured his thoughts? Which is more important?
Since there is already so much Platonism in this passage, let me offer a Platonic suggestion by way of a provisional answer. Recall the moment at the end of Chapter 16, just before he thanks God: ‘There is nothing, nothing except that. But there is not even that, there is nothing except silence, tranquillity’. Here, even the sky seems to be pushed aside. Perhaps this is just a fleeting moment – the memory of the sky, as we shall see in the next section, keeps recurring in his mind over the next few years, prompting further epiphanies. But another possibility is that, when he thinks that there is not even the infinite sky, he is treating even the sky as a pointer to something beyond itself, and that its beauty acts as the catalyst for glimpsing the transcendent, the ‘something’ that comes at the culmination of his religious train of thought in Chapter 19. I hope to show that this suggestion acquires more plausibility as we carry on reading through Andrei’s narrative, right up to the moment of his death in vol. IV.Footnote 41
4.1.3 From Austerlitz to Borodino
In the next Section 4.1.4, we shall focus on Andrei’s vision just before Borodino, with its allusion to Plato’s cave allegory. But before we reach this passage, there are three other epiphanic moments to consider, if only because each of them recalls his experience at Austerlitz, which shows that his capacity to be transported from the mundane to the eternal was not a one-off, but a permanent feature of his character, deeply woven into his plotline. Additionally, as we look at these episodes, we can pause to ask if they suggest further Platonic parallels or allusions, over and above their connection to the Austerlitz epiphany with its close similarities to Rep. VI.
So let us pick up Andrei’s story following his wounding at Austerlitz and his removal to the recovery tent. We do not encounter him again until II i 8, 326, where he makes a dramatic re-appearance at his father’s estate, just as his wife Lise is about to give birth. The effects of his epiphany at Austerlitz are immediately apparent to his sister Marya, who notices a new and ‘strangely softened’ expression on his face (p. 326). The change is evident when he rushes to Lise’s room and addresses her: ‘“My darling!” he spoke words he had never said to her before. “God is merciful …”’ (II i 9, 327).
One might think this rush of sympathy is caused just by seeing her in the throes of childbirth. But he had already changed his attitude to her before stepping into the house. This is confirmed by a later passage, where he remembers back to the point when he saw her in her room – as someone dear to him, bound up with him, but also as someone whom he had wronged. But just as he had resolved to make it up to her, suddenly she suffered in agony and died (II ii 12, 388–9). Note how his resolution here preceded seeing her in pain. It was the result of the epiphany at Austerlitz, that part of it that did not negate the value of all human experience, but left room for love, family and friendship.
The Ferry Scene
After the death of his wife, Andrei leaves for Europe, completely depressed. The next time we encounter him, it is 1807, and he is managing his own estate in the country, his mood still low (II ii 8). But things change in II ii 11–12 when his friend Pierre comes to visit. At one point, their conversation turns philosophical, developing into a full-blown debate about ethics, in which Andrei defends a bleak form of egoism and Pierre a gospel of altruism, closely bound up with his recent conversion to the Masonic creed: our souls participate in eternity, existing both before and after our earthly state. We are all connected to the divine, and our happiness lies in achieving truth and goodness. ‘We must live, we must love, we must believe’ (II ii 12, 389).
For most of the argument Andrei treats Pierre’s idealism with an attitude bordering on contempt, but just at the end, inspired not so much by Pierre’s words as by his enthusiasm and by the beauty of the surroundings (they are on a ferry, crossing a river while watching the setting of the sun), he recalls the Austerlitz epiphany, and a new and much brighter phase begins in his life:
… and for the first time since Austerlitz saw that high, eternal sky he had seen as he lay on the battlefield, and something long asleep, something that was best in him, suddenly awakened joyful and young in his soul. … The meeting with Pierre marked an epoch for Prince Andrei, from which began what, while outwardly the same, was in his inner world a new life.
This represents a major turning point for Andrei and introduces a much more hopeful phase in his story. It shows as clearly as one could wish that his capacity for Platonic catharsis was not an isolated event. Before we go to the next epiphany moment, it is worth considering if there are other more specific Platonic allusions in this passage. I think there may be, though I shall not press them too hard.
First, Pierre’s new-found philosophy seems very Platonic, with an emphasis on the eternity of the soul and its affinity with the divine, not to mention the importance attached to living for truth and goodness. However, the content of this passage need not be considered specifically Platonic; it reflects a whole tradition of thought, which may indeed have had Plato as an ancestor, but also incorporates many other subsequent developments in philosophy and theology. Indeed, the only philosopher actually mentioned by name is Johann Herder.Footnote 42 One prominent reference is that made to the ‘great chain of being’. This was an idea not articulated not by Plato, but by Plotinus (among others). Nonetheless, although Pierre’s philosophy does not draw on Plato specifically, we can at least see him as espousing something Platonic in spirit and ancestry.
For something more specifically Platonic, one might look at the form of the conversation between the two friends. In some of the best-known dialogues (including the Republic and the Phaedrus), a philosophical conversation is triggered by a single remark made by one person to another: something about what they have been doing, some view they hold, or a claim they make about themselves. The ensuing dialogue presents an opposition of views, initially empirically grounded, with plenty of practical examples, but then rising to a more abstract, even transcendent, level. This is also what we find in the ferry scene. At the beginning, Pierre mentions a duel he has recently fought, expressing guilt at the idea that he might have ended up killing someone. Andrei dismisses his scruples (‘It’s even very good to kill a vicious dog’) and, before they know it, they are off on an argument about egoism and altruism. Initially (Chapter 11), the debate is conducted at the practical level, replete with examples, but in the following chapter, as Pierre unveils his own philosophy, appealing to immortality and the great chain of being, the level becomes transcendent and religious.
So there does seem to be scope to draw comparisons between Plato and Tolstoy as regards the form of the dialogue. Indeed, one scholar has devoted an entire article to the comparison.Footnote 43 I leave it to the reader to decide how Platonic the conversation is in form, though I would like to offer one (rather speculative) suggestion, which concerns the Phaedrus. As we saw in Section 3.4, in the first part of this dialogue Socrates gives two speeches about love. The first presents it as a dangerous force with the power to override reason. In arguing that it is never safe to indulge someone who is in love, it characterises relationships transactionally, taking a narrow and self-centred perspective that rejects the value of love. By contrast, the second speech associates love with our capacity to transcend the corporeal and rise to the level of the divine: this is why love is such a beneficial form of madness. Compared to the first speech, this opens up huge vistas – moral, metaphysical and religious. This juxtaposition finds a parallel in the contrast between Andrei’s narrow, self-centred view of human relationships and the much grander vision that Pierre pits against it.
And the parallel may be even more specific. At the end of Chapter 12, Andrei suddenly finds himself sympathetic to Pierre’s view, in part because he is inspired by the sheer beauty of his surroundings. Compare the beauty of the place where Socrates and Phaedrus are sitting, in the countryside outside Athens, near a stream, a locus amoenus. This setting helps inspire Socrates to give his second speech. Furthermore, Pierre and Andrei are crossing a river on a ferry but do not get off on to the other side until Andrei has started to feel differently about the narrow and mundane view he had expressed before. This is surely a ‘palinodic’ moment for him, parallel to the way Socrates rejects the mundane view of love in his first speech and cannot cross the stream until he has given his speech about the human and the divine, and about transmigration – all the grand vistas of the palinode.
More generally, this episode seems to recall the journeying theme so prominent in some of the Platonic texts we have considered. The debate between the two friends starts at home, where Andrei is completely unconvinced, but then moves into the open as they travel to the river crossing. Once they continue to argue in the open air, Andrei eventually comes round to Pierre’s point of view. As part of this spatial imagery, we find Pierre pointing towards the fields to signify the mundane world, but then up to the sky to draw his friend’s attention to the eternal. While Andrei listens to Pierre finishing his speech, he looks downwards at the reflection of the sun in the water, succumbing to the beauty of the place; by the end, he is looking directly up at the sky (II ii 12, 389) – echoes, perhaps, of the cave allegory. But, as I said, I shall not press these comparisons too hard. They remain at the more speculative end of the spectrum of Platonic possibilities.
Natasha
The ferry scene is undoubtedly an important moment in Andrei’s narrative. Even as he describes the epiphany, however, the narrator adds a note of caution: the feeling of joy that he had experienced would disappear as soon as he ‘re-entered the habitual conditions of life’ (389), although in some way it would remain inside him. And sure enough, he returns to his gloom as he sets about managing his estate and assisting his father, now in charge of military recruitment. The year is now 1809, two years after he had been based in the country.
This is the point at which Natasha Rostov enters his life. From the beginning of II iii onwards, we see Andrei becoming gradually drawn to her and falling in love, a process that culminates in his proposal in II iii 21–3. His fascination with her is marked by two further epiphanies, both continuous with his experience at Austerlitz.
He first catches sight of her while on a business visit to her family’s estate. That night, he is staying in the room directly beneath her, unable to sleep because of the warmth. He opens the shutters and the windows to let the air in. In one of the most lyrical scenes of the entire book, the narrator describes the beauty of the trees outside and, above them all, ‘the moon almost full in a clear almost starless spring sky’. He then hears Natasha speaking to her cousin Sonya in the room above. Natasha is completely entranced by the beauty outside and imagines being able to fly upwards and away. He, in turn, is captivated by hearing her talk:
In his soul there suddenly arose such an unexpected tangle of youthful thoughts and hopes, contradictory to his whole life, that, feeling himself unable to comprehend his own state, he fell asleep at once.
The following day, on his way back, he passes through a wood that he had visited on his way to the estate. Then he had seen a gnarled old oak tree, leafless and at odds with the spring burgeoning all around. In his gloom, he felt a bond between them. But now, as he returns through the wood again, he sees it utterly transformed, ‘spreading out a canopy of juicy, dark greenery, basked, barely swaying, in the rays of the evening sun’:
‘Yes, it’s the same oak,’ thought Prince Andrei, and suddenly a causeless springtime feeling of joy and renewal came over him. All the best moments of his life suddenly recalled themselves to him at the same time. Austerlitz with the lofty sky, and the dead, reproachful face of his wife,Footnote 44 and Pierre on the ferry, and a girl excited by the beauty of the night, and that night itself, and the moon – all of it suddenly recalled itself to him.
‘No, life isn’t over at the age of thirty-one,’ Prince Andrei suddenly decided definitively, immutably. ‘It’s not enough that I know all that’s in me, everyone else must know it, too: Pierre, and that girl who wanted to fly into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life is not only for myself; so that they don’t live like that girl, independently of my life, but so that it is reflected in everyone, and they all live together with me!’
I mention this episode not to press the case for finding further Platonic parallels,Footnote 45 but because (like the ferry scene) it confirms the pattern of a character highly susceptible to being moved by a sense of the transcendent, while at the same time aspiring to live for others and rejecting egoism (which reflects one of the two tendencies aroused in his Austerlitz epiphany, the ‘life-affirming’ attitude).
After encountering Natasha for the first time, Andrei returns to St Petersburg, where he re-engages with the world, both politically and socially. As his love for her grows, he has another epiphany, which also brings together his feelings for her alongside his natural ability to grasp the transcendent. In II iii 19, he visits the Rostovs’ house and hears her singing:
Prince Andrei stood by the window, talking with the ladies, and listened to her. In the middle of a phrase, Prince Andrei fell silent and suddenly felt choked with tears, which he did not know was possible for him. He looked at the singing Natasha and something new and happy occurred in his soul. He was happy, but at the same time he felt sad. … The main thing he wanted to weep about was a sudden, vivid awareness of the terrible opposition between something infinitely great and indefinable that was in him, and something narrow and fleshly that he himself, and even she, was. This opposition tormented him and gladdened him while she sang.
Later that night, as he lies awake reflecting on the experience,
he felt as joyful and new in his soul as if he had gone from a stuffy room into God’s open world. It did not occur to him that he was in love with Miss Rostov; he was not thinking of her; he only pictured her to himself, and owing to that his whole life appeared to him in a new light. … ‘Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while I’m alive, I must live and be happy,’ he thought.
The reference to emerging from a ‘stuffy room into God’s open world’ ties this episode to the epiphanies at Austerlitz and at the ferry crossing. His sense of ‘something infinitely great’ brings with it a sense of optimism about his own future and a desire to engage with the world.
In some respects, this passage is deeply Platonic because we witness Andrei rising to the level of the transcendent and emerging from the cave-like existence in which he had previously felt confined. He is prompted to do so by Natasha, who seems to act as an image of something else (cf. Phaedrus 251a): a catalyst for thinking about his life in a new way. (The suggestion that Natasha and the music prompt him to think of something beyond them, something possibly divine – ‘God’s open world’ – relates to the suggestion I made at the end of Section 4.1.2, that the sky at Austerlitz was a pointer to something beyond it, something transcendent. I shall return to this suggestion at the end of Section 4.1.5.) Another Platonic echo can be detected in his sense that something ‘infinitely great’ is within him, a point that echoes the idea developed in some dialogues of the soul being divine and possessing an affinity to the forms.Footnote 46
The strange sadness he feels at hearing Natasha sing could also be viewed from a Platonic perspective. The charioteer in the Phaedrus is simultaneously awed by the recollection of transcendent beauty, but ashamed of feelings of physical attraction. And sexual desire is not the only passion that can provoke a sense of shame. In the Symposium, Alcibiades is made aware of the capacity to be entranced by the beauty of Socrates’ philosophy; and yet he is also tormented by his inability to stay the course, as his love of worldly fame draws him back into the grubby world of politics (216a).Footnote 47
But in another respect, Tolstoy departs from Plato: in the suggestion that the beauty of music is able to raise us from the mundane to the eternal.Footnote 48 Of course, the Phaedrus treats perceptible beauty as a catalyst for recollecting the form when the lover confronts the beauty of the beloved. The work also shows Socrates being inspired by the natural beauty of his surroundings to deliver his palinode, in which he himself glimpses the eternal and the divine.Footnote 49 But the beauty of music is another matter. In Republic III, Socrates stresses the importance of music to moral education through its ability to train the emotions and prepare the ground for the development of reason later on.Footnote 50 One thing he has in mind is the need to nurture certain feelings and restrain others. But this is not a point about music catalysing reason to think of the forms. The idea that forms exist outside the world of becoming has not yet been mentioned in the work, and when it is, music is not given the role of leading us out of the cave, at least not music in the usual sense: in Book VII, Socrates discusses the role of mathematics in leading the eye of the soul upwards, and one kind of mathematics is harmonics. This is not music in the obvious sense, but an intellectual grasp of the ratios that underlie aural experience.
So, if Plato himself did not grant music the power of opening the eye of the soul to the transcendent, one might wonder who or what led Tolstoy to give it that role. Perhaps he was drawing on other philosophical influences, such as Schopenhauer.Footnote 51 But a simpler explanation is that the idea of music having such inspirational power arose directly from his own experience. According to his daughter Alexandra,
Music had an enormous influence on Tolstoy. What he experienced was far more complex than mere enjoyment. Music penetrated the deepest recesses of his soul, it stirred his whole being, it released in him embryonic thoughts and emotions of which he himself was not cognizant. … ‘What is it?’ he would say, ‘Why is it that a certain combination of sounds impresses you so much, stirs your emotions, sometimes brings out the best spiritual forces concealed in your soul? I can’t explain it!’Footnote 52
Perhaps his experience of music merged with his admiration of Plato to produce the description we find of Andrei’s transports in this passage.
4.1.4 Borodino
We now turn to the events surrounding the Battle of Borodino. After the euphoria of falling in love followed by the misery of betrayal, Andrei is back in the army. On the eve of the battle, 25 August 1812, he is with his regiment, having done everything he can by way of preparation. There is nothing left to do but ruminate, and his thoughts are predictably desolate. Two weeks earlier, as he watched his soldiers cheerfully bathing in a pond, he had a premonition of the slaughter to come: their bodies seemed like cannon fodder (chair à canon: III ii 5, 703–4; cf. III ii 37, 813). Now the prospect of death – his own death – ‘presented itself to him … vividly, almost with certainty, simply, and terribly’ (III ii 24, 769). This is the point where he has the vision that I briefly quoted (4.1.1). Here is a fuller extract:
And from the height of that picture, all that used to torment and preoccupy him was suddenly lit up by a cold, white light, without shadows, without perspective, without clear-cut outlines. The whole of life presented itself to him as a magic lantern, into which he had long been looking through a glass and in artificial light. Now he suddenly saw these badly daubed pictures without a glass, in bright daylight. ‘Yes, yes, there they are, those false images that excited and delighted and tormented me,’ he said to himself, turning over in his imagination the main pictures of his magic lantern of life, looking at them now in that cold, white daylight – the clear notion of death. ‘There they are, those crudely daubed figures, which had presented themselves as something beautiful and mysterious. Glory, the general good, the love of a woman, the fatherland itself – how grand those pictures seemed to me, how filled with deep meaning! And it’s all so simple, pale, and crude in the cold, white light of the morning that I feel is dawning for me’.
As I said above, this is without doubt an allusion to Plato’s cave allegory,Footnote 53 the white light corresponding to the sun outside the cave, the artificial light to the fire within. I shall return to this in a moment. But first we should look at this episode in the broader context of the work.
Andrei’s experience here should certainly be read alongside his epiphany at Austerlitz: in both places, he mentally ascends to a vantage-point from which earlier preoccupations seem trivial and pointless. But the comparison is not straightforward. In Section 4.1.2, I brought out the two strands in his reaction to seeing the sky at Austerlitz, which differ in the extent of the catharsis involved. In his less extreme moments, he sees his earlier ambitions as tawdry, but still values life, love and family. But at other points, even life ceases to matter, and his joy consists in the contemplation of the infinite sky (or even of something beyond it).
One might think that what we have here at Borodino corresponds to this more extreme form of catharsis, since he explicitly lists all the most important concerns of his life hitherto and dismisses them as being of no value. But this is not right: he no longer mentions the infinite sky or any other compensating vision of beauty or grandeur. There is literally nothing, just the prospect of annihilation. And since there is no positive vision to compensate, there can be no joy to offset the dismissal of his earlier enthusiasms, as there was even with the more extreme form of catharsis at Austerlitz. The vision is now unremittingly bleak and nihilistic.Footnote 54
We can now return to the affinities between this passage and Plato’s cave allegory. In both cases, we find two kinds of light, natural and artificial, the play of characters created by the use of the latter kind of light, and the sense of waking up from an illusion to realise that what seemed real before is merely artifice. But there is a crucial difference. Even the most extreme other-worldly Platonist would insist that the philosopher experiences intense joy upon leaving the cave. They come to see everything else as tawdry because of the magnificence of what they have seen outside. Andrei experienced something analogous at Austerlitz, even when he insisted that nothing mattered except the sky. Here at Borodino, on the other hand, he exits the cave to have a vision powerful enough to make everything seem meaningless, but that is a vision of death – of total extinction and nothingness. What we have here is more of a parody of Plato’s allegory than a tribute to it.Footnote 55
4.1.5 Andrei’s Death
After this point, as Andrei takes part in the battle and is critically wounded, we might expect his nihilistic depression to become completely entrenched. But instead, we find him experiencing a variety of different moods, some of them surprisingly positive, even euphoric. At the crucial point where he looks at the grenade just prior to the explosion, he is suddenly gripped by a love of life and, consequently, a powerful fear of death. In III ii 37, as he lies in agony in a makeshift hospital tent alongside other soldiers, he is overwhelmed by love for his enemy, even Anatole, who happens to be lying right next to him (904). This is compared to a distinctively Christian love, divine in origin,Footnote 56 something that echoes Pierre’s outlook expressed on the ferry back in II ii 11, with his emphasis on ‘living for others’ (384).
As he is reunited with the Rostov family, Andrei’s euphoria is still with him, again despite the agony he is in.Footnote 57 When Natasha appears and asks for his forgiveness, he replies that there is nothing to forgive. Their love is rekindled, and from that point on she spends all the time she can at his bedside.
In contrast to his gloom just before Borodino, he now feels something like the joy he experienced at Austerlitz and at various episodes thereafter. In fact, if we look at his mood in the light of the Austerlitz epiphany, it seems that of the two tendencies he showed there, the other-worldly and the life-affirming, it is the latter that has returned. Recall again the way this tendency made him open to the possibility of love for a woman (the very thing dismissed on the bleak view just before Borodino): this openness comes to the fore in the almost rapturous intimacy that he shares with Natasha as she looks after him.
But this state does not last. Once they have reached Yaroslavl, and just a few days before Marya and his son Nikolai arrive, he undergoes a profound change (IV i 14): as Natasha puts it, ‘this suddenly happened … ’ (978). Gone is the warmth and happiness of the love that he felt just before.Footnote 58 Now he is icy and remote, at a loss to know how to deal with Natasha, Marya and Nikolai. His whole attitude is encapsulated in the next chapter:
In his words, in his tone, especially in that gaze – a cold, almost hostile gaze – there could be felt an alienation from everything of this world that was frightening in a living man. He clearly had difficulty now in understanding anything living; but at the same time it could be felt that he did not understand the living, not because he lacked the power of understanding, but because he understood something else, such as the living could not understand, and which absorbed him entirely.
This change had come about because of a dream. In it, he is in a room, surrounded by people who don’t matter to him. One by one they leave. He becomes obsessed with keeping the two leaves of the door closed, because behind it is death trying to push its way in, and he is filled with the terror of death. In the end, his efforts fail: ‘the two halves open noiselessly. It comes in, and it is death. And Prince Andrei died’ (IV i 16, 985). But then he wakes up and registers the great change that has taken place within him:
‘Yes, that was death. I died – I woke up. Yes, death is an awakening’. Clarity suddenly came to his soul, and the curtain that until then had concealed the unknown was raised before his inner gaze. He felt the release of a force that previously had been as if bound in him and that strange lightness which from then on did not leave him.
From that time on, ‘there began for Prince Andrei, along with his awakening from sleep, an awakening from life’. But the narrator adds: ‘there was nothing frightening and abrupt in this relatively slow awakening. His last days and hours passed ordinarily and simply’ (985).Footnote 60
Andrei has not returned to the vision he experienced just before Borodino. There, when he rejected all the values of human life, he did so in a spirit of pure nihilism with no positive vision to compensate. But now he has returned to something much more like the ‘other-worldly’ tendency he experienced at Austerlitz, where the vision of the infinite sky managed to bleach out all human concerns, including life itself, while still offering something beautiful in its place – hence the joy he felt. Similarly, in IV i 15, shortly before his death he does have an awareness of something ‘such as the living could not understand, and which absorbed him entirely’ (979). ‘Something else, more important, had been revealed to him’ (980). Marya also senses ‘the eternal, the unfathomable, whose presence over the dying man was now so palpable’ (IV i 15, 982). And at the beginning of the following chapter, we read:
He experienced an awareness of estrangement from everything earthly and a joyful and strange lightness of being. Without haste or worry, he waited for what lay ahead of him. The dread, the eternal, the unknown and far off, of which he had never ceased to feel the presence throughout his life, was now close to him and – by that strange lightness of being he experienced – almost comprehensible and palpable.
Andrei’s experience is described only in highly mystical and allusive terms.Footnote 61 But whatever he sees, it is a source of joy and comfort, while at the same time eclipsing all human concerns and creating the icy exterior that so disturbs his companions.
At the end of Section 4.1.2, I suggested that, when Andrei has his epiphany at Austerlitz, the sky might be a catalyst for the apprehension of something else, something with a religious dimension: ‘the grandeur of something incomprehensible, but most important’ (I iii 19, 293). Similarly, when he hears Natasha sing and reflects on the experience afterwards, she acts as an image that opens his mind to ‘something infinitely great’ and gives him a sense of escaping to ‘God’s open world’ (II iii 19, 467). These passages should be read alongside the phrases just quoted: ‘something else, more important, had been revealed to him’ (980); ‘the eternal, the unknown and far off … was now close to him’ (982). Although Tolstoy’s Platonism does not involve accepting the theory of forms, Andrei does have a sense of something transcendent, however mystically expressed. And it is this that brings him tranquillity at the end.
4.1.6 Tolstoy’s Use of the Phaedo
Andrei’s mood in his final days, therefore, matches the more extreme form of catharsis that we found in the description of his epiphany at Austerlitz, where even the value of life pales into insignificance, and death is no longer something to fear. This shows that the Platonism inherent in his death-scene is very much of the ‘other-worldly’ variety: the kind that comes to the surface in the passage from Republic VI 486a–b quoted in Section 4.1.2, in which the philosopher, inspired by a vision of true being, will not ‘consider human life to be something important’ nor ‘death to be a terrible thing’.
But Republic VI is not the only text we should be thinking of here. A closer look at some of the details of Andrei’s death-scene reveals some clear allusions to the Phaedo.Footnote 62 There is of course the general idea of someone who, while dying, explicitly confronts the fear of death, purifying themselves of mortal concerns. But what shows that Plato is an actual influence on Tolstoy here is the way he alludes to certain particularities of the Phaedo. For one thing, there is the emphasis with which Tolstoy talks of Andrei’s cold indifference to his son, not to mention Natasha and Marya. This recalls Socrates’ curt dismissal of his wife Xanthippe and his young son at the beginning of the Phaedo (60a).
Then there is the way Andrei dies. As with Socrates, the final stages proceed with calmness and dignity. At the end, his body convulses – an important detail. In the Greek, Socrates’ body ‘moves’ (118a), but in the French translation by Cousin (which Tolstoy would have depended on at this stage in his life), he suffers convulsions. Both Socrates and Andrei die with their eyes open. And finally, it is left to Cebes and Natasha, respectively, to say their last farewells and close them. There seems little doubt that Tolstoy is modelling the death of Andrei on the closing pages of the Phaedo.Footnote 63
4.2 Pierre Bezukhov
Now that we have brought out the Platonism in Andrei’s narrative, we are ready to turn to his friend Pierre to see if a similar pattern can be found. As before, I shall start with a synopsis of his plotline, before focusing on the critical period of his transformation: his time held in French captivity during the campaign of 1812.
4.2.1 Overview
Pierre is the illegitimate son of an enormously wealthy nobleman, Count Kirill Bezhukov, who shortly before his death petitions to have him recognised as his legitimate heir. The fact that Pierre occupies a socially liminal space perhaps affects his psychology, making him something of a lost soul, unable to decide what to do with his life. He is also prone to strong appetites, a source of deep guilt. Quite early on in the book he inherits his father’s vast fortune along with his title, which only makes matters worse, as people make increasing demands on him. He soon becomes tricked into a disastrous marriage to Hélène Kuragin (sister of Anatole), whom he then suspects of cheating on him. He challenges one of her friends, a soldier named Dolokhov, to a duel. Miraculously, he wins, wounding his opponent and emerging unscathed, though the whole affair leaves him under a cloud and plunges him even further into depression.
The next we hear of him is a passage describing his low mood in moral and existential terms (II ii 1, 348: ‘Why live, and what am I?’). But this sets the stage for the first major turnaround in his story. A chance encounter with an eminent Freemason, Osip Badzeyev, prompts a sudden conversion to the brotherhood and its beliefs. Their conversation is philosophical, covering the existence of God and the ways in which we come to know Him, before passing to the moral implications of theism, including the need for self-purification and the performance of good works. He duly throws himself into the world of the Masons and begins to spend his wealth on philanthropic ventures. Because he is so impractical, most of his efforts come to nothing, though he remains fired up by the creed, as is evidenced by the debate with Andrei that we discussed in Section 4.1.3. But before long he is disillusioned with Masonry, not with its underlying philosophy or its emphasis on moral purification, but with the failure of individual Masons to live up to their ideals. Gradually he distances himself from them.Footnote 64
In the next phase of his story, a new factor comes to the fore: his love for Natasha Rostov. Because of his closeness to the Rostov family and his friendship with Andrei, it falls to him to break the news of her failed elopement, as well as to confront Anatole and throw him out of the city. But in the course of trying to console both Andrei and Natasha, his feelings for her grow in strength. This brings us to the midpoint of the work, the close of vol. II. In the early chapters of vol. III, he decides to stop seeing Natasha, such is his love for her. Instead, his preoccupations turn to the war, now that the French have crossed into Russia. Having sponsored a regiment, he decides to visit the battlefield at Borodino and is duly shocked by what he sees there. He returns to Moscow, which is now engulfed by flames, and becomes caught up in the chaos. Suspected by the invaders of being an arsonist, he is sentenced to death by firing squad but reprieved at the last minute and held captive. The experience is so horrifying that he falls into his deepest depression yet.
Then, in a parallel to his encounter with Bazdeyev, he meets another figure who will turn him around, a humble peasant soldier named Platon Karataev, only this time the encounter will affect him much more profoundly and help bring about the kind of purification he so desired before.
Pierre’s captivity lasts several weeks. At first, he is confined to a makeshift prison in Moscow, but eventually he is forced to march with the French as they retreat. Conditions turn increasingly grim, and yet Pierre is not broken; on the contrary, the experience of deprivation, coupled with Platon’s companionship and influence, brings him inner strength. What inspires Pierre’s spiritual renewal is Platon’s ability to see goodness all around him, an ability rooted in his religious faith. After Pierre has spent four weeks held in captivity, Platon falls ill. Now too sick to continue marching, the French have him shot (IV iii 14). But just a day later a group of Cossacks attack the French and come to the rescue of the Russian prisoners. Pierre’s captivity has come to an end.
He then attempts to return to Kyiv but falls ill en route at Orel, where he is forced to convalesce for three months. In IV iv 12–13, the narrator describes the change that his captivity has had on him, beginning with his inner state, then turning in ch.13 to the way in which it has transformed his relations to others. He has also become much more practical: he feels the presence of an inner judge who enables him to make decisions about his affairs, notably those concerning money. The remaining chapters of vol. IV show him meeting Natasha again. They acknowledge their love for each other, and so the main part of the work comes to an end. Finally, they reappear in the first part of the Epilogue, having settled down with their children a few years later.
4.2.2 Platonic Affinities
In discussing Andrei’s narrative, we uncovered some deep Platonic affinities. I now turn to see whether we can do the same with Pierre. At first sight, they seem very different characters. And yet there are strong resemblances between them. Across the work, both are represented as embarked on spiritual journeys. Andrei is not always aware of this, but from the start Pierre is consciously trying to find meaning and purpose in his life. In Andrei’s case, this journey often involved a cathartic movement from the mundane to the eternal. As we shall see, Pierre is embarked on a similar kind of quest and, in what seems like a climactic moment at the end (IV iv 12, 1104), the narrator tells us that he has finally found the eternal and seen it reflected in the mundane world around him. But this also shows a notable difference from Andrei. As I shall argue, what Pierre achieves here is a resolution involving a ‘this-worldly’ Platonism, which was what Andrei had intermittently embraced before finally discarding the mundane world altogether.
In what follows I shall be focusing mainly on Pierre’s time in captivity. But before doing so, it is worth noting two earlier episodes in vol. II that anticipate his ability to achieve the transformation that he undergoes towards the end of the work.
We have already remarked on the philosophical position that he tries to press upon Andrei in the ferry scene (II ii 12). In discussing this in Section 4.1.3, I cautioned against seeing his philosophy as specifically Platonic rather than as something arising from a broader Platonist tradition. Nonetheless, even though there are many other influences at work here than Plato, the fact that Pierre espouses this philosophy so wholeheartedly is some indication of a soul hankering after the divine and the eternal.
A more obviously Platonic moment comes midway through the work. Here, with his love for Natasha surging within him, he has an epiphany in which the sky, heavens and the Great Comet of 1812 all converge to generate a feeling of euphoria. It is cold and clear outside, and he is alone. ‘Above the dirty, semi-dark streets, above the black roofs, stood the dark, starry sky’. And it is only by looking at the sky that Pierre can avoid feeling ‘the insulting baseness of everything earthly compared with the height his soul had risen to’ (II v 22, 600). In a manner that parallels the palinode of the Phaedrus, Natasha is able to trigger a sense of the transcendent; and just as the epiphany that Andrei experienced on first hearing her talk was partly catalysed by the moonlight and the beauty of nature, Pierre’s is also triggered by the beauty of the night sky and the comet moving across it.
So it should not be surprising if Pierre also goes on to follow a Platonic path, like the journey out of the cave. But to take the issue further, we should concentrate on his time in captivity, which is where his most radical transformation takes place. In particular, I wish to focus on the role played by his mentor, Platon Karataev. Is Tolstoy’s choice of name a way of signalling that Pierre is being subjected to something specifically Platonic? Is Karataev some sort of Russian Plato, a reincarnation of the philosopher, come to help Pierre in his quest for moral purification and lead him out of the cave? As we shall see, there is indeed a deep vein of Platonism running throughout this passage, both in the presentation of Karataev and, even more, in the effect that he has on Pierre. At the same time, there are other influences at work and in many respects, Karataev seems quite unlike Plato the philosopher. So we should be wary of oversimplifying matters.Footnote 65 I shall start with a sketch of Platon’s character, before assessing the extent to which his character and presence introduce any Platonism into the work.
Platon Karataev
Pierre meets Platon on his first day in captivity, when he has sunk to the deepest levels of despair. He has just witnessed the dehumanising force that takes over the French soldiers as they execute a group of prisoners. The effect on him has been catastrophic.Footnote 66 But then, almost immediately afterwards, he experiences the complete opposite: in his very first encounter with Karataev, he finds someone deeply concerned with his suffering and keen to give him what solace he can. Here are Karataev’s opening words to Pierre:
‘So you’ve seen a lot of misery, master? Eh?’ the little man suddenly said. And in the man’s melodious voice there was such an expression of tenderness and simplicity that Pierre wanted to reply, but his jaw trembled, and he felt tears rising. The little man, in that same second, not giving Pierre time to show his confusion, spoke in the same pleasant voice. ‘Ah, don’t grieve, little falcon,’ he said with that tenderly melodious gentleness with which old Russian women speak. ‘Don’t grieve, little friend: you suffer an hour, you live an age!’
He then offers Pierre some food – just potatoes – but made all the more enticing for having salt spread over them. Pierre has never tasted anything so delicious in his life.
As the conversation goes on, one of Platon’s most striking features turns out to be his capacity to see the good in other people and in the circumstances in which he finds himself, however grim they appear. A case in point is when he tells Pierre how he came to be conscripted into the army. A false accusation of theft had been made against him, so he was sent off to fight. But had it not been him, it would have been his brother, who had a family to look after; Karataev was single and without responsibilities. So when he returned from duty, his father made all the family bow before him in gratitude. Karataev sees nothing but good in the whole course of events and communicates his joy to Pierre.
Straight after this first encounter, Pierre begins his recovery: ‘he felt that the previously destroyed world was now arising in his soul with a new beauty, on some new and unshakable foundations’ (IV i 12, 972). This radical transition – from the deepest depression to a sense of rebirth – occurs in just one chapter, purely through meeting Karataev, which leaves no doubt as to the role he plays in Pierre’s spiritual journey. Given the importance of this role, it comes as no surprise that the following chapter is entirely devoted to a description of Platon.
He is simple but sage at the same time. Everything about him seems round – his movements, his body. The narrator describes his folksy way of talking, his singing, his ability to fall asleep immediately and wake up refreshed, the affection others have towards him, and his deep religiosity. There is also his strange way of relating to others: he loves everyone but seems not particularly attached to any particular individual. He never remembers a word of what he has said, however many nuggets of wisdom fall from his lips.
What is it about this extraordinary individual that explains the transformation he produces in Pierre? A large part of the answer lies in his complete equanimity, his cheerfulness and his ability to see the good even in the most difficult circumstances. This inspires Pierre to view the world and his place in it in a similar way. And his success is remarkable: over the course of their time together in captivity in vol. IV,Footnote 67 Pierre undergoes the spiritual transformation and catharsis he had longed for in the past. One might describe it as an epiphany in slow motion, punctuated by specific moments of heightened inspiration.Footnote 68 By the end of his time with Karataev, he is a new man. This change is made evident in IV ii 12–13, by which time four weeks have passed since he was first imprisoned. Despite his circumstances, he is now strangely contented and has increased his standing among both his captors and fellow captives, gaining their respect. Ironically, it is the very experience of deprivation that has helped lead to his newfound contentment.
Platon’s complete equanimity is also evident in the period leading up to his death. By IV ii 15, he has fallen ill and is failing fast. But one evening, Pierre finds him conversing with a group of prisoners and telling them his favourite anecdote. The story is about a man who was falsely accused of murder and sent to Siberia. He accepts his fate, saying that, although he is innocent of the specific charge, he is still guilty for his sins in the eyes of God. When he finally comes to die, he realises that God is ready to accept him and so must have forgiven his sins. He dies in a state of happiness, one that Platon himself shares:
It was not the story itself, but its mysterious meaning, the rapturous joy that shone in Karataev’s face as he told it, the mysterious significance of that joy, that now strangely and joyfully filled Pierre’s soul.
The following day, the prisoners must continue their march, but Platon is too ill to go with them. Two French soldiers take him to a tree. The shot rings out, and the soldiers run down the hill with shame in their eyes. Platon is dead. But in his final moments there was a look of joy on his face and, at the same time, solemnity.Footnote 69
How Platonic is Platon Karataev? As one looks more closely at his portrayal, one may not notice any particularly strong connection to the philosopher. For one thing, Tolstoy’s portrait is resoundingly unintellectual. The peasant has no theories to expound; he even forgets what he has said from one moment to the next. What is distinctive about him is his manner of life and the attitudes he holds to people and events, all informed by a deep religiosity; but it is not a matter of theorising about them.
If you were looking for a model from ancient philosophy, the closest would be some sort of Stoicism, which is strikingly close to Platon’s inclination to see the good in everything, even when, to most people, the circumstances seem dire.Footnote 70 A case in point is the story he tells of his own conscription and of the good it brought to his family, not to mention his joy at speaking about it all. This aspect of Stoicism is perhaps its best-known feature: all that happens in the world is part of the design of the beneficent all-pervading Reason (logos). At a more informal level – and in a manner that Platon would surely approve – the Stoics took examples of everyday irritants, such as mice or bedbugs, and offered providential explanations for them.Footnote 71 His farewell story, about the man falsely accused of murder, also sees the good in what happened, albeit from a very Christian perspective. And even at a more abstract level, one can see traces of Stoicism. At one point, the narrator says that his life ‘as he looked at it, had no meaning as a separate life. It had meaning only as a part of the whole, which he constantly sensed’ (IV i 13, 974). It was, of course, a central tenet of Stoicism that we must understand ourselves and our lives, including our ‘misfortunes’, merely as parts of a bigger whole.Footnote 72
Nonetheless, there are reasons for thinking that Tolstoy’s description of Platon also has a distinctively Platonic dimension. One curious feature is his circularity, both in his appearance (his eyes, head, and body) and in his movements. Plato placed great importance on the figure of the circle in the Timaeus, and, although we cannot be sure, this parallel may be no coincidence.Footnote 73 If so, it immediately becomes a pointer to other possible similarities, which are not hard to find. Gina Kovarsky, a scholar who makes the Timaeus connection, writes:
In creating the character of Karataev, Tolstoy subtly takes up this idea, central to Western thought, of a correspondence between microcosmic man and the macrocosmic order of the universe.Footnote 74
This is quite right: even though Karataev does not propound philosophical theories, he, like the Platonic just person (or the Stoic stage), has within his soul the same structure found in the cosmos at large. In Plato, this point is made succinctly in Rep. VI 500a–d and more pervasively in the Timaeus. So calling Karataev ‘Platon’ seems apt.
Over and above this parallel, there is the fact that Karataev reveals a particular interest in finding the right attitude to death, facing it not just with equanimity, but even joy. This is the point of the anecdote he tells the captives in IV iii 13, an anecdote that he has told repeatedly. This makes for a clear parallel with Socrates in the Phaedo, a connection that we have already found at work in Andrei’s death-scene. As I have stressed, the Phaedo was a particular favourite of Tolstoy’s, both immediately prior to the publication of War and Peace and subsequently in his life.
Also striking is Karataev’s own death. We encounter him while he is in prison and, like Socrates, he is eventually executed, a fate he bears with complete equanimity, having talked previously about welcoming death when it comes (IV iii 13–14). In drawing this parallel, however, we should remember that Plato’s nuanced portrait of Socrates contains an important ambivalence: Socrates is completely remote in his behaviour towards his wife and child, but warm and friendly towards his friends – his philosophical companions in arms, as it were (cf. n. 63). In recalling the Phaedo in Andrei’s death-scene, Tolstoy echoes the first of these aspects, but where Karataev is concerned, the parallel is with the second.
Pierre’s Transformation
Moving on from the figure of Karataev himself, we can also find Platonic resonances in the transformation he helps bring about in Pierre. One particularly obvious parallel with Plato is the catharsis theme. The narrator talks quite explicitly of Pierre’s moral cleansing: as a result of his captivity, Natasha says that he has changed so much for the better that it is as if he has come back from the bathhouse, morally speaking (IV iv 17, 1118). While Andrei’s problem was his infatuation with military glory – his spirited desires – Pierre’s was mainly his appetites. In addition, he had long been weighed down by an existential anxiety about the meaninglessness of his life, and life in general, something that the influence of Platon has helped to relieve.
A second parallel concerns the immortality of the soul. In IV ii 14, Pierre is still in captivity, though now filled with his newfound strength of spirit. Wandering around the camp one night, he is accosted by a French sentry who bars his way. The incident sparks an epiphany:
‘Ha, ha, ha,’ laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: ‘The soldier wouldn’t let me go. They caught me, they locked me up. They’re holding me prisoner. Who, me? Me? Me – my immortal soul! Ha, ha, ha! … Ha, ha, ha! … ’ he laughed, with tears brimming his eyes. … The full moon stood high in the bright sky. Forests and fields, invisible earlier beyond the territory of the camp, now opened out in the distance. And further beyond these forests and fields could be seen the bright, wavering, endless distance calling one to itself. Pierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the retreating, twinkling stars. ‘And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me!’ thought Pierre. ‘And all this they’ve caught and put in a shed and boarded it up!’ He smiled and went to his comrades to lie down and sleep.
We have already detected allusions to the Phaedo when discussing the deaths of Andrei and Platon. In highlighting Pierre’s belief in the immortality of the soul, this passage also constitutes a clear parallel with the dialogue. And it is not only the theme that recalls the Phaedo, but also the context: Pierre affirms the immortality of the soul while being held a prisoner – a fact that is brought right in front of our eyes by the presence of a soldier rudely blocking his way. In fact, there may be an even more specific allusion to the dialogue through the phenomenon of laughter. Pierre finds the soldier’s attitude hilarious, the underlying joke being the absurdity of thinking that the immortal soul is trapped in, or reducible to, the physical world. The same idea is made an object of ridicule in the Phaedo. Strikingly, this is the only dialogue in which Plato shows Socrates laughing.Footnote 76 He does so twice (84d and 115c), and the second of these occasions comes when Cebes has asked what they are to do with his body. Socrates laughs at the thought that his friend still identifies him with his body, despite all his arguments to the contrary. For both men, Socrates and Pierre, the joke is about trying to catch or ensnare the soul as if it were something material.
This passage also brings out an important Platonic similarity between Pierre and Andrei. In Section 4.1.3, we focused on Andrei’s sense of the infinite existing within him as he hears Natasha singing (II iii 19, 467). This same realisation hits Pierre as he wanders around the camp. In Andrei’s case, we also connected the existence of this internal force to his ability to glimpse the eternal, as evidenced in the series of epiphanies we discussed. Indeed, it is not implausible to detect an affinity with Platonic anamnesis here.Footnote 77 Now one might think that Pierre presents a rather different case: whereas Andrei’s moments of illumination seemed to derive from within, even if they have to be triggered by the beauty of something or someone outside of him, Pierre seems much more reliant on the influence of Platon Karataev, spending long periods of time in his company. But, as the current passage shows, he too has the inner resources for his own salvation, through the presence of his immortal soul (if that is understood along the lines of the Phaedo). So, important though Platon may be as a guide, he is still just a stimulus for reawakening what lies within Pierre’s soul. A further sign of this is that Pierre has this epiphany alone, having left all his comrades behind him in order to contemplate the vastness of the sky; Platon is not there to coach him, nor does he need to be. More generally, we can see that there must be something internal to Pierre that responds to Platon’s influence, since he is the only one of the prisoners who sees the extraordinary qualities of the man; the others just see him as an ordinary soldier (IV I 13, 974).
The third Platonic parallel, and the most important, is the same as the one we found running through Andrei’s story: the journey between the mundane and the eternal. As we saw in Section 4.1.2, there is a distinction within Platonism between a ‘world-affirming’ approach and an ‘other-worldly’ one that takes a wholly negative view of the mundane, involving (among other things) a rejection of the body. This distinction can be seen mirrored in the contrast between the approaches that Andrei and Pierre ultimately take to the transcendent.Footnote 78
Andrei glimpsed the transcendent, but this ultimately drew him away from the mundane, alienating him from normal human concerns. He ended up espousing the ‘other-worldly’ version of Platonism, hence his iciness towards others at the end of his life. Pierre also embarks on a quest for the eternal, but in his case it has a ‘this-worldly’ outcome. True, midway through the work, when he sees the Great Comet of 1812, he did have an other-worldly moment: he looked at the sky with a desire to escape ‘the disgusting squalor of all earthly things as compared with the heights to which his soul had now been taken’ (II v 22, 600).Footnote 79 But this outlook is eventually moderated during his captivity. With Platon’s help, he manages to unite the transcendent and the mundane in one harmonious whole:
Formerly he had been unable to see the great, the unfathomable and infinite, in anything. He had only sensed that it must be somewhere and had sought for it. In all that was close and comprehensible, he had seen only the limited, the petty, the humdrum, the meaningless. … Now he had learned to see the great, the eternal, and the infinite in everything, and therefore, in order to see it, to enjoy contemplating it, he had naturally abandoned the spyglass he had been looking through until then over people’s heads, and joyfully contemplated the ever-changing, ever-great, unfathomable, and infinite life around him. And the closer he looked, the calmer and happier he became.
So like Andrei, Pierre ascends to the level of the eternal, but then returns to his familiar world – his friends, his servants, and society in general, seeing them in a new light, a light thrown by the goodness of the divine that transforms his vision of everything and everyone around him.Footnote 81 This is what explains why, on his return, he has a completely different way of relating to others (IV iv 13). He is fascinated to get inside their souls; he listens, he sympathises and, just like Platon, he has acquired the ability to see the good in them. One might say that it is Platon’s Stoic outlook that has helped change Pierre’s Platonism into more of a ‘this-worldly’ kind, in contrast to Andrei’s.
This contrast is linked to the fact that Pierre’s outlook is distinctively Christian, with an emphasis on God’s immanence in the mundane world. His new state is expressed in strongly religious terms. Even though he calls God’s nature ‘unfathomable’ (IV iv 12, 1104), he has nonetheless acquired a robust faith in a ‘living, ever-sensed God’, who is ‘here, right here, everywhere’. For his part, Andrei does show an openness to the idea of the divine, as we saw in Section 4.1.2: he senses ‘the grandeur of something incomprehensible, but most important’ (I iii 19, 293), and in IV i 16, 982 he is said to have felt the presence of the eternal and the ‘far off’. But all this is very allusive and contains no suggestion of God’s immanence in the world.
Pierre’s Dream
Before we turn to Pierre’s final appearance, which comes in the first part of the Epilogue, there is one other philosophical point in his spiritual journey to be mentioned. Just after Platon’s execution, Pierre has a dream (IV iii 15, 1064–5). It begins with someone saying, ‘Life is everything. Life is God. Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God.’ Then he hears the voice of an old teacher who shows him a liquid globe, ‘a living, wavering ball of no dimensions’. Its entire surface consists of drops tightly packed together, sometimes combined from several into one, at others divided from one into many. Each drop tries to expand and take up the most space, so that they press against each other, sometimes merging together: ‘“This is life,” said the old teacher. … “In the centre is God, and each drop strives to expand in order to reflect Him in the greatest measure. It grows, merges, and shrinks, and is obliterated on the surface, goes into the depths, and again floats up. Here he is, Karataev, see, he spread and vanished.”’
It seems that Platon has been reabsorbed into the centre, into God; as an individual, he no longer exists. A similar point emerged in Andrei’s own musing on death: ‘Love is God, and to die – means that I, a part of love, return to the common and eternal source’ (IV i 16, 984). This idea is obviously of great philosophical and religious interest, which is why I mention it here, but I would not hold it up as an example of something particularly Platonic. That death involves a return to another state is something, of course, familiar across a number of dialogues, but the suggestion that this return involves the complete negation of the individual goes beyond what we find in Plato’s own texts. If one is looking for an ancient influence here, the Stoics again come to mind, at least as Tolstoy would have encountered them in reading Marcus Aurelius, who wrote that, upon death, our souls ‘are changed, diffused, rekindled, and resumed into the universal productive spirit’.Footnote 82
4.2.3 The Epilogue
Finally, I should say something about the first part of the Epilogue to the work (chapters 5–16). Here we move a few years later, up to 1820, by which time Pierre is married to Natasha, and her brother Nikolai to Andrei’s sister Marya. Both couples have children and sometimes live together under one roof, together with young Nikolai, Andrei’s son. Pierre is often away in St Petersburg, where he is involved in attempts at political reform. Natasha is completely absorbed in her young children. This situation raises a number of questions. Pierre’s political involvement – his immersion in the life of the cave – may strike readers as ominous: the movement with which he is affiliated was (presumably) going to result in the Decembrist revolt of 1825, where several liberal-minded aristocrats failed in an attempted coup and were either executed or sent to Siberia.Footnote 83
But the book also leaves us with a sense of moral anxiety about his political activities, an unease that comes to a head in Chapter 16 of the first part of the Epilogue. On the positive side, when Pierre tells Natasha about his activities, he gives them a clear Platonic character. ‘What I say is: let’s join hands with those who love the good, and let there be one banner – active virtue’ (1176). Here is someone returning to the cave, fired up by thoughts of the Good, and engaging in the life of active politics, all in a joyful spirit of ‘this-worldly’ Platonism. This prompts Natasha to think of Platon Karataev: from what Pierre has told her, he still treats him as the arbiter of goodness. ‘Would he approve of you now?’ she asks. At first Pierre replies that he would, but then changes his mind:
‘No, he wouldn’t approve of me, said Pierre, having reflected. ‘What he would approve of is our family life. He wished so much to see seemliness, happiness, peace in everything, and I would have shown us to him with pride’.
Then, on the following page, the narrator reinforces this sense of unease about Pierre’s political activities by referring to his ‘self-satisfied discourse about his success in Petersburg’, and adding: ‘It seemed to him at that moment that he was called upon to give a new direction to the whole of Russian society and the whole world’ (1177).Footnote 84 This is disconcerting: in Platonic terms, we may wonder whether he is starting to lose his affinity with the transcendent and slip towards the goals of spirit.
To give even more edge to this anxiety, the narrator also focuses a great deal on young Nikolai, who admires Pierre with his political ambitions and has every intention of following him on the path to glory (1177–8). He dreams of joining Pierre at the head of an army, and the chapter closes with him wishing to do his dead father proud. We seem to have come full circle to Andrei’s mindset before his epiphany at Austerlitz.Footnote 85
I shall not attempt to pin down exactly how far Pierre (and others) may have lapsed.Footnote 86 I merely wish to show that the need for Platonic catharsis – especially purification from spirited desire – remains emphatically with us right to the end of the whole narrative. The dangers of returning to the cave are always present.
Emphasising such dangers is, of course, very much in the spirit of Plato. In Rep. VII he is clearly concerned about the risk of philosophers becoming corrupted, even in the ideal state. When detailing the different stages of their curriculum, he stipulates that, after five years of studying the forms through dialectic in their thirties, they should spend fifteen years in administrative and military tasks (539e). This is partly to give them the necessary experience for ruling, but it is also to test whether they really can be trusted with power. In terms of the cave allegory, the period of dialectic, as the study of forms, must correspond to a period outside the cave, looking at real objects. He then sends them down again to see whether they will live up to the ideals to which they have been exposed. The underlying assumption must be that, even if someone has managed to exit the cave and spend some time outside it, they might still fall away from their principles, given enough time back in the cave. A similar anxiety can be detected in Tolstoy’s version of the allegory.
4.3 Conclusion
We have now reached the end of our discussion of Platonism in War and Peace. In the course of it, we have found numerous parallels, some quite general, others much more specific. For the most part it is safe to assume that these affinities are not coincidental, but in some way influenced by Tolstoy’s reading of the relevant dialogues. For example, the description of the Austerlitz epiphany, with its reference to an indifference to human life and death, is strikingly close to the description of the philosopher’s high-mindedness in Rep. VI; and the allusion to the cave allegory in the vision before Borodino is particularly close, as are the details of the way Andrei dies when viewed against the background of the Phaedo.
But not all the parallels we have found can be so confidently attributed to influence, especially some of the more literary affinities to do with the physical setting of a scene. For instance, I was very tentative about seeing Tolstoy’s miraculous oak tree in II iii 3, 423 as inspired by the myth of the prophetic oak in the Phaedrus (n. 45). I was also cautious about claiming that the physical details of the ferry scene are Platonically influenced. It remains an open question as to whether such parallels are coincidental or not.
I wish to end by raising this kind of question about what is perhaps the most intriguing affinity that we have found. I have tried to show that Tolstoy’s narrative does not just parallel the general notion of a Platonic ascent accompanied by the catharsis of typically human feelings and desires; when we look closely at Andrei’s spiritual journey, we find an oscillation between two grades of catharsis that reflects a well-known distinction between two brands of Platonism. And the same difference appears when we compare the two destinations that Andrei and Pierre ultimately reach: one taking an ‘other-worldly’ perspective, the other a ‘this-worldly’ one. The question naturally arises of how Tolstoy arrived at this bifurcated view.
One possibility is that, while he was indeed influenced by the general idea of a Platonic ascent coupled with moral catharsis, the idea of splitting Andrei’s reaction in two, Platonic as it may be, was something that emerged from Tolstoy himself, rooted in his own personality. He was clearly someone torn between the practical and the contemplative: he immersed himself in the world in so many respects, for example, through the education of the children on his estate, land management, political activism and religious teaching; yet he was also deeply solitary, spending hours locked in his study, roaming his estate, and visiting monasteries. So when he took up Plato’s idea of the ascent and thought about what sort of catharsis might be the result, his own personality took over, and he developed the idea in opposite directions, following the ambivalence within his own psyche.
5 Anna Karenina
Completed eight years after War and Peace, Anna Karenina encompasses two dominant narratives. There is, of course, the story of Anna herself, who falls in love with Vronsky, then separates from her husband, leaving herself ostracised by society and cut off from her son. This strand of the novel reaches its finale with her suicide at the end of Book VII. The other centres around Konstantin Levin, an aristocratic landowner. It is a story marked by his love for Kitty Shcherbatsky, who rejects his proposal of marriage in Book I but then accepts it in the middle of the work. His is a happier tale, and the novel closes at the end of part VIII with Levin, Kitty and their baby son Dmitri surrounded by their extended family on his country estate.
And it is with Levin that the name Plato(n) makes its first appearance in the novel. In I 11, 49,Footnote 87 he is having dinner with his friend Oblonsky, and the subject turns to love. Levin mentions Plato’s Symposium and its distinction (actually introduced by Pausanias) between two kinds of love, one sensuous and one pure.Footnote 88 Placed so early on in a novel that will contrast two loves, Anna’s for Vronsky and Levin’s for Kitty, this reference might suggest that the distinction mentioned in the Symposium has a seminal role to play.Footnote 89
Developing this idea would certainly enable one to explore Platonic affinities right across the novel. But this study has a narrower focus, viz. on the kind of epiphany in which a character is inspired to reassess his life amid thoughts of the eternal and the divine. We find another variation on this theme towards the very end of Anna Karenina, where, prompted by hearing about a virtuous peasant called Platon, Levin has an epiphany that bears many of the hallmarks of those experienced by Andrei and Pierre in War and Peace. It is this passage that will be the focus of our attention.
5.1 Levin’s Crisis and Its Resolution
Across the work, Levin has been beset by an existential crisis, one that is rooted in his acceptance of a mechanistic view of the universe, a form of positivism that has no place for God, goodness, or the soul’s survival after death. Amid such bleakness, he keeps asking, what is the point of anything that we do? There are intimations of the problem even in the first book (I 7, 29), but it comes to the fore in Book III, when he watches his brother becoming increasingly sick with consumption. As he stays up all night, unable to sleep and listening to his brother’s violent coughing, we read:
Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible force. …
‘I am working, I want to do something, and I had forgotten that it will all end in Death!’
‘Death would come, and end everything, so that it was useless to begin anything … ’.
Yet, despite the angst that pervades his thinking, Levin realises that ‘life had to be got through somehow till death did come’.
The crisis continues in V 20 as he witnesses his brother actually dying. Things come to a head in Book VIII, when he is plagued by memories of his brother’s death and the inevitability of death in general, juxtaposed by what seems like all the pointless effort he and others are putting into their lives. In chapters 8–10, the narrator reviews Levin’s life over the last two years, stressing the duality between his depressive bouts of reflection and the periods when he just gets on with living. At the reflective level, his mood has become so extreme as to be suicidal. But at the practical level he immerses himself in managing his estate, working long hours, while also caring for his family – not just his wife and child, but also his sister-in-law and her children (VIII 10, 931).
The peak of the crisis comes in VIII 11 at one of the busiest times on his estate, when everyone is working flat out mowing, reaping, threshing and ploughing. Initially, the sight of so much phrenetic activity just exacerbates his sense of pointlessness. But then, during a brief pause in the work, he has a conversation with Theodore, one of his farmworkers. This changes everything, triggering an epiphany that will finally release him from his suicidal depression. The conversation, recounted at the end of Chapter 11, is about an innkeeper who lives on Levin’s estate, known for being tight-fisted and ruthless with his debtors. Theodore contrasts him with another well-to-do peasant named Platon, who would never ‘skin a man’:
‘He’ll lend, and sometimes he’ll let a man off, and so run short himself. It all depends on the sort of man’.
‘But why should he let anyone off?’
‘Oh, well, you see, people differ! One man lives for his own needs. Take Mityuka, he only stuffs his own belly, but Platon is an upright old man. He lives for his soul and remembers God’.
‘How does he remember God? How does he live for the soul?’ Levin almost cried out.
‘You know how: rightly, in a godly way. You know, people differ! Take you, for instance, you wouldn’t injure anyone either …
‘Yes, yes! Good-bye!’ uttered Levin, gasping with excitement, and turning away, he took his stick and walked quickly away towards home. At the peasant’s words about Platon living for his soul, rightly, in a godly way, dim but important thoughts crowded into his mind, as if breaking loose from some place where they had been locked up, and all rushing towards one goal, whirled in his head, dazzling him with their light.
Having broken off the conversation, Levin retreats to a wood, feeling as if he has had an electric shock.
The next two chapters (12–13) duly ‘unpack’ his epiphany, as he lies under a tree piecing together all the disparate thoughts that have so suddenly been brought to life within him. First and foremost, he is struck by what he now sees as the truth of the principles that Theodore attributed to Platon: that you should live not ‘for your belly’, your own material interests, but for the good of your soul, for truth and for God.Footnote 90 He understands these principles and assents to them wholeheartedly, without any need for rational thought; suddenly, in this moment, nothing could feel more certain to him. And he is not alone: the same principles have been grasped by millions of people, from all places and all ages, without the need for any reasoning. Earlier, he could never acknowledge the truth of such principles; instead, from the perspective of his positivistic convictions, they seemed merely childish. Now, somehow, they strike him as true beyond any possible doubt; by contrast, it is the positivistic outlook that seems childish (VIII 13).
He also realises that, although he is only now embracing the principles at a conscious level, he had already been doing so implicitly:
He had lived (without being conscious of it) by those spiritual truths which he had imbibed with his mother’s milk; but in thought he had not only not acknowledged those truths, but had studiously evaded them.
Not only were these beliefs implicit in the way he lived, but they were also the source of any joy or happiness he was able to experience. Without them, he tells himself, ‘nothing of that which constitutes the chief joys of my life would have existed for me’; in fact, it was only through these principles that he was able to live (VIII 12, 939).
Now that he has embraced them at a conscious level, Levin is ‘filled with a sense of relief from long-continued suffering’ (VIII 12, 938); he has banished his feelings of existential despair. In embracing the principles of living for God and for one’s soul, he has answered the questions that so plagued him before (VIII 9, 929 and 10, 930): Who am I? What am I for? His life will no longer suffer the dysfunctional split between living and thinking. At the reflective level, he will be in complete harmony with the principles he had been following in everyday life (a point made explicit at the very end of the novel, VIII 19, 963).
As Levin continues to interpret his epiphany, he also asks where these beliefs came from:
What gladdens me? What have I discovered? I have discovered nothing. I have only perceived what it is that I know.
But how did he already know them? Not from any process of reasoning, for sure. Did he learn them as a child? In a sense he did – he talks of imbibing them with his mother’s milk (VIII 12, 939). But that is not the real explanation:
They told me [that I must love my neighbour] when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul.
Once his epiphany is complete, he lies back and stares at the sky:
Levin ceased to think, and only, as it were, harkened to mystic voices that seemed to be joyously and earnestly discussing something.
‘Can this really be faith?’ he wondered, afraid to believe in his happiness. ‘My God, I thank Thee!’ he uttered, repressing his rising sobs, and wiping away with both hands the tears that filled his eyes.
In the remaining chapters of the novel (14–19), he comes down from his cloud and returns in a horse and trap to his family. At the very end, he realises that his epiphany will not change so much after all – the way he behaves, his relations with others – but it has banished the existential anxiety and, with it, all thoughts of suicide.
5.2 The Platonic Dimension of Levin’s Epiphany
5.2.1 Philosophical Parallels
Why is the peasant who sparks Levin’s epiphany called Platon?Footnote 91 When we raised this question about Platon Karataev in War and Peace, we considered two possibilities: first, that there is something specifically Platonic about Karataev himself; second, that there is something Platonic about the wider context in which he appears, especially the effect he has on Pierre. As far as the Platon of Anna Karenina himself is concerned, we could say that his principles, living for his soul, for truth and for God, are thoroughly Platonic. After all, if you had to boil down Plato’s approach to ethics into a few words, the need to take care of your soul (rather than pursue the life of appetite, ‘filling your belly’) might well be the result. It recurs repeatedly in his dialogues, from the earliest to the latest. Religion is also central to Plato’s philosophy. This is particularly evident from the Laws, but from many other works as well. The need to take the right attitude to the divine is important to the educational framework of the Republic (II 376e–383c), and in general, the dialogues are littered with religious myths and allusions.Footnote 92
But beyond this, there seems to be little resemblance to the philosopher. Platon is not presented as someone who propounds theories to support his moral principles; he just lives by them. However, if we look at the context in which he appears, Platonism begins to loom much larger. For one thing, the worldview Levin is rejecting, which had been the source of all his misery, is the same kind of materialist outlook that Tolstoy saw Plato opposing in his philosophy.Footnote 93 This opens up the possibility that the idea of a journey from the mundane to the divine also underlies this passage, just as it did the stories of Andrei and Pierre. So too the catharsis theme: Levin’s epiphany eventually purges him of the existential angst that so plagued him before.
I shall return to these two possibilities in Section 5.5, but for now I wish to highlight the presence of another theme: recollection, which I mentioned in the introduction as a theory bound up with the notion of the ascent in Plato. So far, it has not made much of an appearance in this study because its presence in War and Peace is at best discreet.Footnote 94 In Anna Karenina, however, things are very different. As we have seen, Levin asks himself where the knowledge of his moral principles comes from and realises that it has been him all along. As some scholars have already noted, this bears a strong affinity with Platonic anamnesis.Footnote 95 Tolstoy was very familiar with the theory,Footnote 96 and I think this is an obvious case where we can move from finding a mere affinity with Plato to assuming actual influence. As I argued in the introduction, however, such influence need not involve Plato alone, but also the mediation of subsequent thinkers. In this case, it is plausible to assume that Tolstoy was influenced by a Christianised version of recollection. Although it is beyond the scope of this study to probe the details about which sources might have fed into Tolstoy’s conception, this is an occasion where I do have a suggestion to offer.
Numerous philosophers and theologians have taken inspiration from Plato’s theory of recollection as a way of expressing the idea that knowledge of moral and religious principles stems from within the soul, rather than being inculcated from the outside. Particularly influential was Augustine, who originally embraced the theory of recollection, including the pre-existence of the soul, but then retracted the literal thesis while still holding on to a version of innatism and converting the original Platonic theory into the idea that truth is illuminated by God from within.Footnote 97 According to his adaptation of recollection in his Confessions, truths that lie in the recesses of the mind are ‘scattered and neglected’ prior to illumination; ‘they must be brought together so as to be capable of being known; that means they have to be gathered from their dispersed state’.Footnote 98
Levin’s epiphany is described in strikingly similar ways. In VIII 11, 936, the immediate effect of hearing about Platon is that
dim but important thoughts crowded into his mind, as if breaking loose from some place where they had been locked up, and all rushing towards one goal, whirled in his head, dazzling him with their light.
Near the opening of the following chapter, we read:
The words the peasant had spoken produced in his soul the effect of an electric spark, suddenly transforming and welding into one a great group of disjointed impotent separate ideas which had always interested him.
Given the closeness of this description to Confessions X, it seems plausible to treat Levin’s epiphany as yet another episode in the centuries-old reception of Platonic recollection, in which Augustine had played so crucial a role.Footnote 99
5.2.2 Literary Parallels
But now the plot thickens. If we continue looking at this passage, we can see that Tolstoy’s use of Platonic recollection is also embedded in a nexus of literary allusions to one of the dialogues that features the theory so prominently: the Phaedrus.
As we saw in Section 3.4, the palinode in the Phaedrus synthesises many of the most famous views espoused in other dialogues – about the nature of the soul, love, the forms, recollection, and immortality. Central to the whole passage is the moment of epiphany when the lover begins to recollect the form of beauty through seeing the physical beauty of his beloved: he experiences overwhelming joy coupled with awe, even fear (250c–252b and 253c–254e). This also helps explain the appearance of madness: the lover is in a state of divine inspiration or ‘enthusiasm’.
But the lover is not the only person in the Phaedrus who is said to be divinely possessed. Before describing love as a form of benign madness, Socrates cites the example of poets and prophets, who speak under divine influence and without the aid of human reason. And there is another example of the same phenomenon: Socrates himself, as he delivers his recantation. He is initially prompted to do so by his ‘divine sign’ (daimonion). This forbids him to leave until he has corrected the error of his earlier speech, which represented all love as a harmful form of madness (242b–d). But when he looks back on his recantation afterwards, he claims that it was inspired by the local deities and by the cicadas, the messengers of the Muses.Footnote 100 By likening himself to the prophets described at the beginning of the palinode, he seems to disclaim responsibility for his speech, attributing it to divine forces instead.
The setting and place where Socrates and Phaedrus are sitting also play a role in creating this sense of magic. They are just outside the city, in a sacred place with a cool and refreshing stream. In the heat of the day, they find a plane tree for shade. As they lie beneath it, Socrates sings the praises of the place:
By Hera, it is a charming resting place. For this plane tree is very spreading and lofty, and the tall and shady willow is very beautiful, and it is in full bloom, so as to make the place most fragrant; then, too, the spring is very pretty as it flows under the plane tree, and its water is very cool, to judge by my foot. And it seems to be a sacred place of some nymphs and of Achelous, judging by the figurines and statues. Then again, if you please, how lovely and perfectly charming the breeziness of the place is! And it resounds with the shrill summer music of the chorus of cicadas. The most delightful thing of all is the grass, as it grows on the gentle slope, thick enough to be just right when you lay your head on it.Footnote 101
It is this setting that I think Tolstoy is recalling in his description of Levin’s epiphany. At the end of VIII 11, as soon as he hears Theodore’s words about Platon, Levin leaves and makes his way back home. He takes the highway, a dusty road, trying to make sense of the new condition in his soul, registering the ‘electric shock’. Gradually, the epiphany unfolds (as described Section 5.1). It is a hot day, and he is sweating under his hat (compare the way Phaedrus and Socrates refer to the heat of the day at 229a, 242a, and 279b). Eventually he turns off the high road and heads for a wood (938), where he seeks out the shade of an aspen tree (Socrates and Phaedrus turn off the main road and head for the shade of a plane tree: 229a and 230b). The narrator then speaks of the lushness of the grass, where he can lie propped on his elbow (Socrates praises the lushness of the grass, where they can lie back and rest their heads: 230c). Almost immediately, Levin becomes interested in a green insect crawling over the grass (Socrates refers to the cicadas at 230c and 258e–259d).
The references I have just highlighted all come from the setting in which Socrates is inspired to give his speech – an account of how we draw closer to the divine, as Levin does in his moment of epiphany. But in this part of the novel, there are also echoes of the actual allegory recounted by the speech. As I have stressed, the idea of Levin finding truth about the divine within himself echoes the lover’s recollection (249c–250c). And when he gets up from his trance and returns home in a trap and horse, the narrator refers to the animal as ‘the good horse’ (VIII 14, 944): a detail that is not obviously connected with the narrative then unfolding, but one that echoes the way Socrates describes the better of the two horses in the palinode (253d).
In sum, I can count nine points of contact with the Phaedrus:
(1) The use of the name Platon.
(2) The inspiration theme: the sense of having an epiphany.
(3) The content of the epiphany: connecting the human with the divine.
(4) Recollection or learning from within.
(5) The heat of the day.
(6) The shade of a tree.
(7) Reclining on the lush grass.
(8) A focus on the local insect life.
(9) The reference to ‘the good horse’.
Taken in isolation, any one of these parallels with the Phaedrus might be coincidental. But as an ensemble, they create a strong case for seeing Tolstoy as making deliberate use of the work – though, if any one of the allusions is most potent, I would single out the grass: it is not just grass under a tree, but lush and ideal for lying on – not a verbatim quote from the Phaedrus, but close. And both authors go out of their way to emphasise the presence and lushness of this grass: Tolstoy by mentioning it no fewer than six times; Plato by singling it out as the most exquisite feature of the place.
Once we assume that the Phaedrus is in the background here, there is one immediate pay-off. Perhaps the most mysterious paragraph in the description of Levin’s epiphany comes near the end of ch. 13: ‘Levin ceased to think, and only as it were listened to mystic voices that seemed to be joyously and earnestly discussing something’ (VIII 13, 943). What are these ‘mystic voices’? If Tolstoy is drawing on the Phaedrus, this may be another reference to the cicadas, those enigmatic creatures whose singing has inspired Socrates and connected him to the divine. They are mentioned early on in the Phaedrus at 230c, but the most extended reference comes just after the palinode in the myth of their origin (258e–259d). As human beings, their ancestors were so captivated by the joy of listening to music, which had been just introduced, that they forgot to eat or drink. Now, as a divine gift, their descendants exist as insects whose singing takes the form of philosophical conversation.
Levin too hears voices conversing; and, like the cicadas, they talk ‘joyfully and earnestly’. The latter term has also been translated as ‘intently’,Footnote 102 implying that the voices are preoccupied by whatever they are talking about. If I am right about the other Phaedrus-echoes, Tolstoy might be picking up on the way the cicadas are completely intent on their singing, just as their human ancestors were completely taken up with the joy of music.Footnote 103
5.3 Why the Phaedrus?
Given that the echoes of the Phaedrus in this passage are so strong, the question arises as to why Tolstoy went to this particular text in presenting Levin’s epiphany as an analogue of recollection. The answer, I suggest, is that the Phaedrus emphasises the emotional dimension of recollection, which matches Levin’s heightened state in Book VIII.
Consider how the presentation of recollection in this dialogue differs from its appearance in the Meno and the Phaedo. In the Meno, it features mainly as an epistemological doctrine, helping to explain the possibility of learning. There are other aspects as well – moral and religious – but no clear indication that the process of recollection would involve powerful emotions. In the Phaedo, the wider implications of the theory are more developed: in recollecting, the soul not only (re)-discovers certain truths, it also develops its affinity with the divine (the forms) and thus advances to ever greater levels of happiness (78b–84b). Even so, there is still no explicit description of any strong emotions that the soul may experience in the process.
This is precisely where so much of the emphasis of the Phaedrus lies. The moments when the soul draws the truths from within are always suffused with joy. This is because of the effect that contemplation or recollection of the forms has on the subject, an effect couched in terms of the allegory: it is through seeing the forms that the wings of the soul are nourished in the heavenly region (248b–c), and it is by remembering the form of beauty that they can regrow down on earth (249c–e and 251b). Non-allegorically speaking, recollection helps to make us whole again (250c); it has a healing power (252a). There is also the suggestion that it restores us to our original nature, our true selves.Footnote 104
Levin’s ‘recollection’ has comparable effects. In a general way, his epiphany serves to heal him of his previous sufferings (VIII 12, 938). He is able to harmonise all the moments of his life, leaving his fractured state behind. In this sense, he achieves wholeness in his life. One might also say he achieves a type of self-realisation:Footnote 105 the principles that he now consciously endorses are authentically his own (not merely inculcated by society or upbringing).
And there is a more specific parallel with the Phaedrus, when we think of Levin’s experience from the inside. Before hearing about Platon, he is in a state of alternation between periods of joy in living – unreflectingly following the principles exhibited by Platon – and periods of anguish when he thinks about the meaninglessness of human existence. In the routines of everyday life, he is living by his ‘spiritual truths’ (VIII 12, 939). To the extent they are operative in him, he has already embarked on ‘recollection’; the epiphany is not the first moment they emerge.Footnote 106 So he is comparable to the soul whose wings have started to regrow. But, as he says, in rejecting them in his reflective moments, ‘I have been destroying the spiritual blessings by which I live’ (VIII 12, 941), and his ‘recollection’ comes to an abrupt halt.
This kind of alternation parallels the lover’s experience of recollection in the Phaedrus. The experience of restoration, the point when the wings start to regrow and the wax melts, is supremely pleasurable; but when the regrowth stops (in the absence of the beloved), the pores are clogged up again, resulting in acute pain. This alternation is vividly described at 251a–e. So too in Levin’s case: when he is just living, he draws on the spiritual truths within him (allowing his pores to open up), and this brings him real joy. But when he reflects, he pushes away those truths (his pores clog up again), and so experiences acute pain.
5.4 Levin’s ‘Anti-Philosophy’
Before we go any further, we need to address a problem about the presence of so many Platonic echoes in this passage. As Levin interprets his epiphany, he keeps stressing that his insights are coming not from reason, but through some other means: feeling, perhaps, or faith. In this way, there is a strong current of anti-intellectualism in the passage. Now, on its own, this is not problematic for us. As I stressed in Section 3.5, we should expect to encounter discrepancies between Tolstoy and Plato alongside the parallels, and one such discrepancy lies in Tolstoy’s general antipathy to intellectualism. What is problematic is a specific passage describing the way Levin tried to deal with his existential crisis before he had his epiphany. In VIII 9, 928, we are told that he tried to deal with the crisis intellectually, reading and re-reading a number of rationalist philosophers – including Plato. None of them were of any use, and his attempts to solve his existential crisis by reason ended in failure. So the challenge for us is to explain why Tolstoy would characterise Levin’s epiphany in so Platonic a way, having just presented him as finding Plato’s works unhelpful.
One way of approaching the problem is to compare Levin’s spiritual crisis and its resolution with Tolstoy’s Confession, written very soon after Anna Karenina. As is clear from this short work, Tolstoy was himself tormented by the same existential crisis as Levin.Footnote 107 In his efforts to resolve it, he also consulted those writers he considered the summit of human wisdom, from Solomon down to Schopenhauer, but found them unequal to the task; all they did was to bring the problem into sharper focus (Chapter VI). Plato is not mentioned by name, but at one point Tolstoy is clearly thinking of the Phaedo when he cites Socrates’ description of death as an escape from life, implying that human life is hopeless and meaningless (VI 40–41 and 44).Footnote 108
Tolstoy eventually solved his problem by noting that people who worry about the existential crisis tend to come from the leisured classes, whereas the great mass of people, including the peasants, despite all the hardship they have to bear, simply get on with life and seldom contemplate suicide, as Tolstoy himself had done (VIII 50). The reason is that they live by religious faith (IX 53). And it is indeed the belief in God that would address the question that had tormented him: ‘Why do I live?’ (IX 52). Answer: ‘the single most important aim of my life is to improve myself, that is, to live according to [God’s] will’ (XII 65). But how can one develop a belief in God? Tolstoy agreed with Kant that philosophy can never prove His existence (XII 63). This, in a nutshell, is why it can never strike at the root of his problem. Instead, he sought God through prayer. Eventually he began to find Him and, whenever he experienced His presence, he felt joy; whenever that presence retreated, misery (XII 64–5).
But none of this is to say that studying philosophical texts is entirely worthless; just that it cannot be deployed at a particularly critical point in a person’s spiritual development. They first need to ground themselves in some other way. Once they have done that, reading philosophical and theological texts can provide further support (‘faith seeking understanding’). We know that Tolstoy must have believed this because he continued to study and cite the great religious thinkers and philosophers, including Plato, right up until his final years. And in a letter written later in his life, he advises a friend to work through the philosophers, but only once he has grounded himself properly.Footnote 109
All this can be easily applied to Anna Karenina part VIII. What Levin needs at this precise juncture is faith in the reality of God and goodness (and the conviction that they are not merely human constructs). Idealist philosophy, working through proof and argument, is not able to provide this, any more than it could in Tolstoy’s own case. So it is unsurprising that Levin also finds reading such books of no use. However, nothing in the novel implies that they could never be of value to him. He just needs to consult them when he is ready.Footnote 110
So the point is not about dismissing Plato entirely, but about cautioning against using his works prematurely. But if this is not the right moment in Levin’s life to read Plato, why are there such strong Platonic allusions in these chapters? Why is he relevant here at all? The answer is that, although the attempt to apply the arguments found in Plato’s works to his existential problem proved fruitless, the experience he feels when he actually solves it – the way in which his faith springs into light – is Platonic (on a Christianised understanding of Plato). I am referring, of course, to Levin’s experience of Platonic inspiration, in which several hitherto disparate thoughts are suddenly made conscious and welded together into a unity. For Tolstoy, this is akin to Socrates’ enthusiasm as he delivers his second speech and to the epiphany of the lover described within it.
So I think we can solve the appearance of paradox in Tolstoy’s approach to Plato.Footnote 111 And in doing so, we can see a further reason why the Phaedrus is so relevant to these chapters. A number of scholars have been puzzled by Plato’s idea of philosophical madness in the palinode. It seems an oxymoron: madness implies irrationality; yet philosophy is the epitome of rationality. Some scholars attempt to downplay the element of irrationality in the speech; others think that he genuinely embraced the idea of the irrational, whatever he says elsewhere in opposing madness or irrationality and philosophy.Footnote 112 If one takes the latter approach, one can see how the Phaedrus makes a perfect resource for Tolstoy’s purposes when describing Levin’s epiphany. For him, the crucial contrast is between faith and reason, one divine in origin, the other human. So he might well have thought that this echoed Plato’s own distinction between merely human thought and divine inspiration. Of all the Platonic texts to which he might have turned on this occasion, the Phaedrus, with its account of philosophical madness, would have been the most appropriate.Footnote 113
5.5 Levin, Catharsis and the Cave Allegory
In discussing the Platonic character of Levin’s epiphany, I have focused on the theory of recollection. But in 5.2.1, I also promised to explore whether the themes so prevalent in War and Peace are also in evidence here: moral catharsis and the journey between the mundane and the eternal.
It is not difficult to find catharsis in play at the end of Anna Karenina. By coming to see his previous convictions as childish, Levin purges himself of all the anxiety and depression that afflicted him before (VIII 12, 938). In fact, this is the most important outcome of the epiphany, and it is underlined in the very closing paragraph of the novel: from now on, every moment of his life ‘is no longer meaningless as it was before’ (VIII 19, 963). Exactly this kind of catharsis was also a central feature of Pierre’s spiritual journey: the wording used to describe Levin’s angst is very close to that used in War and Peace for Pierre’s depression just before he meets Bazdeyev.Footnote 114 For another example, think of the even deeper depression that he experiences just before his first encounter with Platon Karataev (n. 66). By the time he leaves prison, he has been completely cleansed of it.
What about the journey between the mundane and the transcendent? As we have seen, this involves not merely an ascent (anabasis) to the eternal, but also the subsequent descent (katabasis) to the mundane, a return to the cave. The notion of the ascent is certainly marked in Anna Karenina. In fact, we do not have to wait until the end of the novel to find it. Recall how Pierre had a Platonic epiphany midway through War and Peace, when, completely indifferent to the cold, he feels his love for Natasha surging within him and simultaneously watches the Great Comet of 1812 passing through the sky (Section 4.2.2). Levin also experiences an epiphany halfway through Anna Karenina when his friend Oblonsky hosts a party carefully designed to bring him and Kitty together. When Levin hears that she is present,
he was suddenly filled with such joy and at the same time with such fear, that it took away his breath and he could not utter what he wished to say.
This should put us in mind of the lover in the palinode of the Phaedrus, who is overwhelmed by the combined feelings of fear and joy at seeing the beloved (251a and e). And the parallel continues as the chapter goes on:
Levin felt as if he had grown a pair of wings. Levin knew she was listening to his words and that she was the only thing he cared about. Not only in that room but in the whole world there existed for him nothing but Kitty and himself. He felt himself at a height that made him giddy, and there, somewhere far below, were all those good excellent Karenins, Oblonskys, and the rest of the world.
Compare Levin’s ascent here with the behaviour of the lover in Socrates’ palinode:
But since he separates himself from human interests and turns his attention toward the divine, he is rebuked by the vulgar, who consider him mad and do not know that he is inspired. All my discourse so far has been about the fourth kind of madness, which causes him to be regarded as mad, who, when he sees the beauty on earth, remembering the true beauty, feels his wings growing and longs to stretch them for an upward flight, but cannot do so, and, like a bird, gazes upward and neglects the things below.
Unlike Plato’s lover, Levin feels as if he has actually succeeded in spreading his wings and flying upward, but the general train of thought is very similar.
Turning back to part VIII, we can see that the idea of an anabasis is also present. Levin’s conversation about Platon triggers a transformational encounter with the divine, following a journey that departs from the earthly and materialistic worldview in which he had previously been imprisoned. This movement is mirrored by the physical description in these chapters: the way he leaves the cool, shady barn and goes out alone into the sun outside; and the way he retreats into solitary contemplation, after separating himself from the hive of activity in the barn. As in the cave allegory, the journey involves a radical perspective shift: previously, his convictions based on scientific materialism felt authoritative; any thoughts of God and goodness seemed pure stupidity, the naïve residue of his childhood upbringing. Now he has experienced a complete inversion: the absolute conviction that he has in Platon’s principles is the firmest knowledge he can have; by contrast, all his previous convictions are considered mental stupidity and ‘mind-swindling’ (or, in the analogy of VIII 13, childishness).
The reverse notion of a katabasis is also strongly marked in Levin’s narrative in Book VIII. After his epiphany he must return home (Chapter 14), prompting the question of how well he will fare as he pits his new-found vision against the realities of his former life. Just before his return, he starts to think about how his epiphany will transform his relationships:
His brother, his wife, and the unknown visitor appeared in a different light to him now. It seemed to him that his relations to everyone now would be changed. ‘There will be no disputes; with Kitty never any quarrels again; with the visitor, whoever he may be, I shall be amiable and kind; and with the servants, with Ivan, everything will be different’.
All this may recall the ways in which both Andrei and Pierre transformed their own relationships through their respective ascents. Andrei came to see his wife Lise in a way he had never done before, and Pierre found himself seeing the good manifested in others, which in turn radically changed the way he related to them.
But Levin’s katabasis disappoints to an extent, just as Andrei and Pierre both showed signs of backsliding at various points. As soon as he emerges from his contemplative isolation, he gets into an argument with his driver (VIII 14, 944) and then has an unpleasant political debate with his half-brother and a professor who have come to visit (VIII 15–16). Squabbling about politics is, of course, exactly what Plato might have predicted for anyone returning to the cave. And yet, as we learn from the closing words of the novel, Levin does ultimately retain something of supreme importance, even if it is not the happiness he had experienced at the height of his epiphany:
I shall still get angry with Ivan the coachman in the same way, shall dispute in the same way, shall inopportunely express my thoughts; there will still be a wall between my soul’s holy of holies and other people; even my wife I shall still blame for my own fears and shall repent of it. My reason will not understand why I pray, but I shall still pray, and my life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before, but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness which I have the power to invest in it.Footnote 115
6 Envoi
‘How glad I am that God inflicted such madness on me!’Footnote 116 So wrote Tolstoy in 1871, celebrating his decision to learn ancient Greek not long before. He proved to be a brilliant student, leaving an eminent classics professor in awe of his abilities after just three months. His wife Sofia was not so happy, and probably agreed with his use of the term ‘madness’: he mumbled Greek in his sleep and, in the words of one of his biographers, Henri Troyat, ‘imagined himself living in Athens; as he tramped through the snow at Yasnaya Polyana, sinking in up to his carves, his head was filled with sun, marble and geometry’.Footnote 117 If Sofia was alarmed at the effects that his new craze might have on his future success as a novelist, those fears would only have increased when he wrote about the experience of coming face to face with the crystalline beauty of the Greek language: never again, he vowed, would he pen such ‘verbose nonsense’ as he had written in War and Peace.Footnote 118 Fortunately for her – and for us – he came down from the dizzy heights of his epiphany to write Anna Karenina.
But the image of him opening his mind to the world of the ancient Greeks and allowing it to infuse his Russian surroundings – an inhabitant of two worlds at once – seems an appropriate way to end our study. In a sense, we have been engaged in a similar exercise, bringing a Platonic light to shine on Tolstoy’s extraordinary depictions of nineteenth century Russia. I hope that the effort has been worthwhile, whether it has resulted in fresh perspectives on Plato, Tolstoy, or both.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank James Warren, editor of the series, for his support in bringing this study to publication. I am also enormously grateful to the reviewers, both of the original proposal and of the final draft, whose comments have been invaluable. I have benefitted from discussing the themes of this study in seminars at Oxford and Groningen, and from numerous conversations, especially with Ivana Asenova, Laura Biron-Scott, Maurice Biriotti, Emily Daly, Veronika Dijsktra, Gail Fine, Stephen Halliwell, Terry Irwin, Hannah Laurens, Flora Nelson, Madeleine Parkinson, Andrey Pavlov, and Sara Trickey.
Dominic Scott is Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University. He is the author of Recollection and Experience (CUP 1995), Plato’s Meno (CUP 2006), Levels of Argument: A Comparative Study of Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (OUP 2015), Listening to Reason in Plato and Aristotle (OUP 2020), and Contemplation and Civic Happiness in Plato and Aristotle (Cambridge Elements 2024).
James Warren
University of Cambridge
James Warren is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Epicurus and Democritean Ethics (Cambridge, 2002), Facing Death: Epicurus and his Critics (2004), Presocratics (2007) and The Pleasures of Reason in Plato, Aristotle and the Hellenistic Hedonists (Cambridge, 2014). He is also the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Epicurus (Cambridge, 2009), and joint editor of Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy (Cambridge, 2018).
About the Series
The Elements in Ancient Philosophy series deals with a wide variety of topics and texts in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, written by leading scholars in the field. Taking a theme, question, or type of argument, some Elements explore it across antiquity and beyond. Others look in detail at an ancient author, a specific work, or a part of a longer work, considering its structure, content, and significance, or explore more directly ancient perspectives on modern philosophical questions.
