never till then attained by any master of literature nor ever likely to be surpassed.
The two heroes, Prince Andrew and Pierre Bezukhoff, deserve special attention. They are the incarnation of the two sides of Tolstoy’s nature, so inclined to analysis and scepticism. When he wrote “War and Peace” he had not achieved that great synthesis of reason and love which later inspired all his works. Prince Andrew and Pierre represent the two forces always at strife in Tolstoy’s own soul: cold reason and invincible idealism. The truth was lying on the distant crossing point of those two lines, where reason became the highest reason and idealism was transformed into love.
In the artistic portion of the novel, Tolstoy has interwoven his own idea with the philosophy of history, which he expounded more fully in a special article:
“A few words on ‘War and Peace.’ The point of greatest interest for me is the insignificant role played in the development of historical events by the so-called great men. Studying the highly tragic period of the Napoleonic wars, so crowded with great events, so recent, on which such varied traditions are preserved, I come to the definite conclusion that the causes of historical events are concealed from our reason.
