Consolation in Tolstoy's War and Peace

I begin with a quote from Tolstoy's War and Peace, book VII:  

'Natasha, Nicholas and Petya took off their wraps and sat down on the sofa. Petya, leaning on his elbow, fell asleep at once. Natasha and Nicholas were silent. Their faces flowed, they were very hungry and very cheerful. They looked a on another (now that the hunt was over and they were in the house, Nicholas no longer considered it necessary to show his manly superiority over his sister), Natasha gave him a wink, and neither refrained long from bursting into a peal of ringing laughter even before they had a pretext ready for it.’

In the above passage, Tolstoy describes a hunting party collapsing ecstatically into the small lodge of a neighbouring country farmer tired, happy and experiencing simple pleasures such as food, warmth, and pleasant company. For Nicholas and Natasha in particular, born amongst the ‘silk’ of aristocracy, the humble dwelling into which they gratefully enter is an opportunity to experience their Russian roots. Russian folk songs are sung and Natasha dances a traditional dance, ‘the movements were those inimitable and unteachable Russian ones’. The small household gathers around the dancing countess in the cramped room that smells of ‘tobacco and dogs’, delighted at the Russian dancing and the unity they experience with her through her appreciation of their shared culture. For Tolstoy, the Russian dance is a symbol of how Natasha had ‘imbibed from the Russian air she breathed’ a certain spirit of Russianness that allowed her to ‘understand all that was…in every Russian man and woman.’ It is as though the return to this countryside house is an opportunity for Tolstoy to show this Russian spirit residual in the graceful countess.

If the joyful scene depicts a return to a residual Russian identity, it also demonstrates a moment of consolation, in which childhood is revisited for Nicholas and Natasha. On one level, hunting has been seen as a consolation for one’s ‘species life’. The act of hunting has been described by Roger Scruton amongst others as a return to ‘species being’ and is thus an act of consolation for the participants in as much as the hunters acknowledge the animal nature within themselves and raise it beyond the animal to something more profound through the rituals of the hunt itself. Taking this idea further, collapsing after experiencing this return to nature in the gallop of horses and the chase of the fox, the scene depicts that which Hegel has termed ‘unmediated unity’, a togetherness of spirit synonymous with a Romantic world pre-industrial fall in which the innocence of childhood is lost. Brother and sister return to a state of childhood or arcadia, laughing and unifying themselves with each other and with the humble guests who are so kind to them. The setting of the hunter’s lodge is demonstrative of the comfort at the end of one’s effort to remind oneself of the animal nature one naturally harbours within and is reflective of the calm and humble social unity that follows when one engages with rather than avoiding this natural state.

Thus these young people have found a source of consolation for themselves. We are mindful from the narrative surrounding the scene – the coach that arrives from the worried parents, and the thoughts about suitors and army matters that encroach on Nicholas and Natasha when they leave the cottage that this was a brief but enlightening experience without the rigidity of parental instruction, the war from which Nicholas is on leave, or of Moscow or St Petersburg society. Consolation has been found amongst the very rural and very Russian traditions, food and music.

Reading Tolstoy’s passage, one is reminded of the need for such a consolatory experience in our own time. In particular, one thinks of the TV and considers the imposition it would make in the environment described by Tolstoy. The brother and sister decline the invitation of the host, preferring instead to curl up in front of a Netflix binge. The destruction caused by the TV in this alternative case is the destruction of consolation, social unity and of valuable traditions. By watching TV in our hypothetical scenario, the brother and sister detach, rather than engage from, the traditions around them and do not experience the hardship of the hunt, and the comforting experience of togetherness that follows the exertion. The experience of a return to the animal life and the experience of tradition and the experience of company and reconciliation with one’s dream of a return to a more home-like place are mediated through the rural, pastoral and Romantic ideas in Tolstoy’s prose. Prompted by such beautiful visions, one thinks of the English walk and a country pub and other reflections of our own contemporary opportunities to seek a consolation for one’s weary soul in the enjoyment of the simple pleasures of real life.