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Leo Tolstoy,likehis contemporary Fyodor Dostoyevsky, was more than a novelist: He was a social and political thinker and an enormous moral force. In his writings, as in his life, he tried to uncover essential truths to give meaning to existence. His first published work, Detstvo (1852; Childhood), reveals at least two traits that run through all his fiction: penetrating psychological analysis of individuals and moral judgment of their behavior. These trends continue in various sketches of military life, such as Sevastopolskie rasskazy (1855-1856; Sebastopol Tales) and Kazaki (1863; The Cossacks).
Tolstoy’snovelVoina i mir (1865-1869; War and Peace) is both a family novel and a historical novel, and these two parts are linked by a quest for meaning. The novel is vast in every respect. The story takes place over a span of 15 years; its settings range from the drawing rooms of Saint Petersburg and Moscow to country estates and battlefields in Europe and Russia; and it has a cast of more than 500 characters, both fictional and historical, all vivid and sharply drawn. The book’s two major heroes are the skeptical, intellectual Andrei Bolkonsky and the enthusiastic, weak-willed Pierre Bezukhov. Bolkonsky and Bezukhov look for meaning for their own lives amid the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, which took place between France and other European nations from 1799 to 1815, and the French invasion of Russia in 1812. At the same time, Tolstoy looks for an explanation of the process of history itself. The meaning of both personal existence and the historical process, Tolstoy argues, lies in the spontaneous, irrational, day-to-day, natural living exemplified by his engaging heroine, Natasha Rostova.
Tolstoy’ssecondgreat novel, Anna Karenina (1875-1877) is narrower in focus, although it, too, is painted on a large canvas. Tolstoy here examines marriage and the family. Anna, a married woman of great charm and integrity with a high place in society, has an adulterous love affair with a young army officer. Torn by guilt over abandoning her son and unable to subscribe to the social hypocrisies of her circle that would have her hide her illicit relationship, she is eventually driven to suicide. In contrast to Anna’s tragic affair in the novel is the marriage of Konstantin Levin to Kitty Shcherbatsky. Although Levin and Kitty’s marriage is not uniformly smooth, and although Levin has gnawing doubts about the meaning of his life, the novel ends on a relatively happy note.
Bothofthesenovelsshow Tolstoy at the peak of his artistry. His characters come alive through vivid descriptions of their external, physical lives and penetrating analysis of their emotions. But at the height of his powers as a novelist Tolstoy turned away from literature. After a spiritual crisis in the late 1870s he elaborated on a doctrine of what he believed to be the essence of Christianity—the practice of universal love and nonviolence. He conveyed his ideas through a large body of nonfiction, but he also produced powerful short fiction, such as Smert’ Ivana Ilicha (1886; The Death of Ivan Ilyich). In addition, he also produced a final novel, Voskresenie (1899; Resurrection), a much darker and more opinionated work that contains passages of great force
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