The West Narrates Itself: Tolstoi and his Orientalist Universalism in War and Peace and Other Works

What is War and Peace? Tolstoi himself declares that it is neither a novel, a poem, nor a historical chronicle.(1) The work is a bold attempt at dismantling the genre of novel, or more broadly, the entire tradition of mimetic literature. It is a novel foregrounding the impossibility of a novel. As Gary Saul Morson explicates in Hidden in Plain View, Tolstoi holds that, if a fiction is an artificial, though plausible, representation of reality, a historical narrative is as much a human construct.(2) In Tolstoi's view expounded in War and Peace, reality is so contingent and complex that any narrative on it cannot but be fictitious. When the distinction between the mimetic construct (a plausible narrative) and the historical account (a true story) dissolves, representation and reality become hard to differentiate.

Another aspect of Tolstoi's radical challenge to literary conventions is that, in this major classic of the Western literary canon, he relates his anti-novelistic theory to his anti-Eurocentric, non-Orientalist sentiments. In Tolstoi's ideas, the failure of Western historians to realize the contingency of a narrative, and hence, to realize the limit of human access to reality, or "truth," is on a par with their ignorance of other kinds of "realities" taking place beyond their Eurocentric perspectives. For instance, in an essay written roughly at the same time as War and Peace, he criticizes the notion of "progress," a concept which he considers as purely Occidental: "We are aware of a law of progress in the dukedom of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, which has three thousand inhabitants. We are aware of China, which has two hundred millions of inhabitants and which refutes our entire theory of progress, and we do not doubt for a minute that progress is the common law of all mankind, and that we who believe in it are right while those who do not believe in it are wrong, and we go with canons and guns to inspire the Chinese with the idea of progress."(3) Tolstoi, thus, reveals the internal connection between the imperialistic operations of the West and the problems of Western historiography which, in its Eurocentrism, fails to realize the contingency and complexity of the world.

In War and Peace, the crudity of the Western perspective on the non-West, its ignorance as to the complicated outer world, is symbolized by its tendency to generalize the Others. Napoleon is said to have called the Church of Vassily the Blessed la Mosquèe. Elsewhere, Russian churches are given different characterization: "Moscou, le capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville sacrée des peuples d'Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrable églises en forme de pagodes chinoises!" (xi, 132). As Tolstoi sees it, such Orientalism à la française, in which the Muslim, Chinese, and Russian cultural assets are indifferently labeled as mere alterity, justifies Napoleon's military intentions.

In a similar vein, Tolstoi, following his doctrine that sees no distinction between fiction and history, uses French historical discourse in his "literary" works. In the description of Napoleon's departure into Russia, Tolstoi adds French original words to indicate that the ideas are taken from the French historians: "[Napoleon] saw the Cossacks posted on the opposite bank [of the Niemen], and saw the stretching steppes (les Steppes), in the midst of which was Moscou la ville saint, capital of an empire like the Scythian empire into which Alexander the Great had marched" (xi, 8). Tolstoi, in an adroit intertextual treatment, lets the French soldiers echo the historians: "Vive l'Empereur! Les voilà donc les Steppes de l'Asie! Vilain pays toute de mème" (xi, 9). Historical narratives do not reproduce, but produce colonialistic discourses, both fictitious and historical. Colonialism functions in the control of both discourse and reality.The mimetic theory which requires the distinction between fiction and history is a condition not only for the reliability of historical narratives, but for the ostensibly accurate representation of the non-West in Western terms, representation authorized by (Western) historical discourse, by definition non-fictitious. The Orient, thus represented, turns into an object to be conquered.

Now, such non-Orientalist, anti-Eurocentric gestures of Tolstoi are expedited by the ambiguous position which Russia is believed to possess between the East and the West. Taking advantage of the common notion that Russia has partly derived from the Asian heritage, and in antagonism against the West, Tolstoi chooses to identify Russia with the East. I have already quoted the passage from War and Peace in which Russia is equated with Islam and China. Such identification, originally intended as derogatory, is re-read by Tolstoi as a positive aspect of Russian culture. Tolstoi repeatedly describes the movement of the French troops into Russia as the campaign "from the West to the East" with capitals W and E. While Europeans are censured for their crippled confidence in human intellect and in the doctrine of rationality, he characterizes "Russian wisdom" russkii um as a capacity for awareness both of contingent human existence and of the need to humbly abide by the Divinity. The latter feature, which is, in Tolstoi's view, a trait of Eastern thinking as well, corresponds to Tolstoi's deconstruction of Western mimetic theory, i.e., to his conviction that all narratives are more or less contingent and that the "truth" as "represented" is not to be tested for its accuracy by means of reason and intellect, but has to be accepted as such by faith. Thus, Tolstoi juxtaposes Napoleon to Kutuzov, the former being a petty human being who defies the course of history, the latter being a representative of "Russian wisdom," an ability to sense and follow the Providential Will.

In this instance Tolstoi is straightforward a Slavophil, patriot and nationalist. While the West is doomed for its logocentrism and humanistic androcentrism, Russia has a chance of overcoming them thanks to its close tie with the Eastern traditions.

If Tolstoi's respect for "Asian wisdom" leads to his critique of mimetic literature, it also concerns his overall attitude toward Asian art. In What Is Art? Tolstoi expresses his appreciation of "exotic" forms of art: "The songs of a Kirghiz and a Japanese touch me, though in a lesser degree than they touch a Kirghiz or a Japanese. I am also touched by Japanese painting, Indian architecture, and Arabian stories. If I am but little touched by a Japanese song and a Chinese novel, it is not that I do not understand these productions but that I know and am accustomed to higher works of art [which is inferior to simple, folk art]" (xxx, 109).

In making a critique of the ignorance, and hence, the restriction of the Western aesthetics, Tolstoi uses a "demographic" reasoning similar to the one that he employs in a critique of Western historiography. In War and Peace, he argues: "The art we [Westerners] have is the whole of art, the real, the only art, and yet two-thirds of the human race (all the peoples in Asia and Africa) live and die knowing nothing of this sole and supreme [late European] art" (xxx, 81).

However, it may be that Tolstoi's appreciation of Asian art stems not so much from his simple admiration of it as from his "cosmopolitan" ideas on art. Asian arts are appreciated not as such, but as an expression of universal and eternal humanity. Consequently, cultural differences are downplayed while the universal essence is emphasized. From his point of view, Japanese art can impress him in spite of his inability to understand Japanese, of his unfamiliarity with Japanese culture, provided that the given art represents in some form a universally aesthetic experience. Therefore, the reverse can take place. Hence, another hypothesis from What Is Art?: "The story of Joseph, translated into the Chinese language, touches a Chinese" (xxx, 109)

Let us now return to literature, and to the issue of narrative and novel. It is quite natural that Tolstoi's works, challenging the novelistic literary conventions, should fail to interest Mikhail Bakhtin, who consecrates the genre as the ultimate form of literature. In Problems of Dostoevskii's Poetics, drawing comparison to novels by Dostoevskii, Bakhtin dismisses Tolstoi's Three Deaths on the condition that it is a static work, not containing a dialogic confrontation of ideas, and rejects the author as a monologic writer.(4)

Three Deaths is one of Bakhtin's very few references to Tolstoi, but Bakhtin would probably protest against Tolstoi's use of absolute statements of conviction that marks War and Peace, too, as something unwelcome in a literary work. For, Bakhtin rejects any unmediated, finalized voice in literature. In contrast, for Tolstoi, a simple statement of "truth" is no contradiction in a novel, if a truth-claim itself is a "disease" which the principle of mimesis brings about. Thus, he philosophizes freely in what is supposed to be a fiction.

We can defend Tolstoi against Bakhtin's criticism in several ways. For instance, it may be argued that Bakhtin himself is subject to Eurocentric biases, of which Tolstoi makes a convincing critique. When Bakhtin speaks of novel as the ultimate form of literature, his perspective is contained by the Western canons. As Earl Miner, Konishi Jin'ichi et al argue, the dominance of the authorial voice and "the lack of an opponent and systematic opposition" is one of the major features of East Asian literatures.(5) If so, it follows that, in Bakhtin's formula, certain systems of literature, different from the Western literary devices, are all doomed as non-dialogic. Tolstoi would, then, accuse Bakhtin for being ignorant of "two-thirds" of the world literature. Of course, Bakhtin is probably aware of his scope. But, it is a queer contradiction that Bakhtinean theory, foregrounding the inclusiveness of other voices, is found closed to alien literary systems. Can we argue that his theory, valorizing the novel as a dialogic form of literature, is itself not polyphonic?

However, if Bakhtin's theory may be problematized for its concealed Eurocentrism, Tolstoi's version of cosmopolitanism may prove more problematic. For, his universalism may well be mere Russocentrism, or ultimately, Eurocentrism in disguise.

Tolstoi's radical revision of narrative theory is, for him, related to his religious convictions. If Kutuzov is highly evaluated for his resignation before the contingent, French historians are scorned for their absurd belief in their ability to understand and represent complex reality. This inexplicably contingent and complex entity is nothing but Providence.

Of course, in Tolstoi's cosmopolitan pantheism, the Divine is not necessarily the Christian God, but a certain form of divinity which any culture can share. Just as true art (a true poem, a true song, etc) transcends its cultural, linguistic formulation, and impresses everyone, "true" god should transcend national and ethnic boundaries. However, Tolstoi, in spite of his keen interest in, and active research on, Eastern religious ideas, on the whole adheres to the vocabulary of Christianity. This is most clear toward the end of his career. What is more problematic, his study of other religions leads to systematization and hierarchization of world religions, in which Christianity is the highest religious ideal, integrating all others. In an essay, "Religion and Morality," Tolstoi flatly declares: "This [most recent] relationship [of man] to the universe leads to the highest religious teaching known to us, the seeds of which already existed among the Pythagoreans, Therapeutae, Essenes, and among the Egyptians, Persian, Brahmins, Buddhists, and Taoists in their higher representatives, but which only received its complete and final expression in true and unperverted form, in Christianity."(6)

For Tolstoi, what is universal is what is the loftiest and finalized, which, in a surprising anticlimax, considering Tolstoi's antagonism for the Western civilization, is expressed through Christianity. Tolstoi's universalism, his ostensible appreciation of the Eastern religious traditions, proves to be a means of incorporating them, and of effacing the other religions in the name of the "universal."

This is exactly the point where Tolstoi's universalism collapses, and reveals itself as an eccentric form of Orientalism. By criticizing Western civilization, and by pointing to the vast area of other human activities, Tolstoi obtains a ground for his universalist beliefs. Nevertheless, by subsuming the other paradigms into his hierarchized system of universalism, he returns to Christ, and to the West. Not being able to speak in the unknown paradigm, Tolstoi's narrative begins to narrate not the universal, but the Western.

Tolstoi rejects Eurocentric views and insists on understanding the East as part of the larger humanity. In spite of his limited knowledge of Eastern cultures, he claims access to them on the pretext of universalist doctrine and of the affinity of Russian culture to them. He claims he knows them, and that he can represent them. For, universalism is a system of identity. Thus, the unknown Other gets represented by the known vocabulary. No matter: universalism is a kind of epistemology in which everything has already been known. In this void of language, Tolstoi ironically joins in the colonialistic discourse of the French soldiers in War and Peace, in which the Asian land is toute de méme, all the same.

A hybrid entity of Russia allows Tolstoi to ideologically criticize the West, at the same time speaking in the Western vocabulary, and eventually, to represent the East on Western terms, constructing it as an illusory universal. In his radical narratology, Tolstoi identifies reality with a narrative. But, what Tolstoi's own narrative narrates is a story of Russia, and ultimately, of the West. Tolstoi, thus, negotiating a conceptual framework of universalism and the popular belief concerning the unique position of Russian culture between the West and the East, creates a new version of Orientalism, Orientalism à la russe, in which he can identify, represent, and then subsume the Other.

1. "A Few Words about the Book War and Peace" as quoted in Tolstoy: The Critical Heritage, ed. by A. V. Knowles (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978) 125.

2. Hidden in Plain View: Narrative and Creative Potentials in 'War and Peace' (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1987) 102-21 et passim.

3. Progress i opredelenie obrazovaniia. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii vol. 8 (Moscow: Khudozestvennaia literatura, 1936) 333. Further quotations from Tolstoi's works will be indicated by the volume number and the pagination from the Jubilee edition.

4. Caryl Emerson, tr. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Pr, 1984) 69-72. Caryl Emerson's attempt at recuperating Tolstoi within a framework of Bakhtin's theory of polyphony, though remarkable, does not concern us here (cf. "The Tolstoy Connection in Bakhtin" in Rethinking Bakhtin [Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1989]).

5. Earl Miner. Comparative Poetics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1990) 116-17. Konishi Jin'ichi. A History of Japanese Literature vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP) 12-13.

6. Leo Tolstoy. "Religion and Morality" in A Confession and Other Religious Writings (NY: Penguin Books, 1987) 136.