Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism

Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1863-9), which many claim to be the realist masterpiece par excellence, has the largest possible theme: what are war and peace if not the twin poles between which nations have swung from time immemorial? But, apart from the campaigns, victories and defeats for which the historical record vouches, the events that affect Tolstoy’s characters have nothing out of the ordinary: old people die, young people fall in and out of love, get married and have children, the thoughtful meditate on the meaning of life, the thoughtless give themselves up to enjoyment; they all grow older, more sedate, more serious, as the years march on. In the plot of War and Peace there is nothing in any way exceptional; Tolstoy made of it an exceptional novel by the art with which he wove his epic story round dozens of lives, all distinct, all fascinating, because they were all, in their different ways, utterly human, truer than any biographer could make his subject.