.png)
By Stewart, March 2022
Have you ever read a book so powerful and with such depth that everything that you do and encounter afterwards somehow reminds you of that reading? Of course we think of the Bible when posed a question like that given the tremendous power that it has; the likes of which has never been matched by anything else penned by man. However, if there was ever a single people-group on this Earth that could earn that second place with their cumulative literature, it might be the Russians.
After reviewing N.T. Wright’s Paul: a Biography, I decided that it was time for me to return to Russian literature. I still have several Fyodor Dostoyevsky books waiting for me and a rereading of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago that is getting impatient with me procrastinating my return to that misery (I’m being quite honest when I say that I dread returning to that book; there really is no other work like it). However, I decided that I had a chance to finally read one of the true great works of history: Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace.
“Now Stewart”, I hear you asking, “why did you read War & Peace? Also, who are you and why aren’t you on the…”
Good question, loyal reader. ‘Was it to read one of the most influential books in history?’ - yes, a little bit. ‘Was it so just so that you could boast about how you’ve read it?’ - also yes. ‘Was it so that you could prove that you were somehow a better person than the rest of the Second Rate Saints?’ - yeah, that’s mostly it to be honest.
However, after reading, I have come to a conundrum. See, War & Peace is an undeniable masterclass of literature and this one book has forced me to view Tolstoy with remarkable respect if only because of the grace with which he handles the ideas that the book addresses. That said, War & Peace deals with a lot of ideas and its characters go through fascinating and intricate journeys that ultimately result in them feeling remarkably human. All of which culminates in a thunderous conclusion that I truly did not anticipate when beginning my read. And this is where my problem is, War & Peace demands multiple readings for you to truly appreciate the workings of Tolstoy’s machine. After taking a month to read War & Peace, I needed a week to just process what he was talking about as I was awestruck struck by the profundity of his message. All this to say is that I am not ready to review War & Peace because it is the kind of work that one has to sit with, dwell with, wrestle with, and come to peace with eventually. To do otherwise would be a disservice to an incredibly thoughtful author and a woeful overestimation of my own abilities. It’s conclusion approaches inexorably but is never definitively clear until you come to the very end of the book and realize that War & Peace is not just a historical fiction, it is not just a classical epic, nor is it a critique of historical intellectualism as some have postulated. War & Peace, and I can not stress this enough, is explicitly an argument for the existence of God.
Now, let’s talk about Dune: Messiah for a moment. After I finished Tolstoy’s epic, I found that I desperately needed to recharge and think upon the unexpected message of War & Peace. So, in desperation I turned to my bedside bookshelf where I saw two separate books that were gifted to me by Josh. The first was Dune: Messiah, the controversial follow-up to Frank Herbert’s original epic. Next to that, Plato’s Republic. I chose the former because I thought to myself that if I had to read another ‘great’ piece of literature that my head might explode. So I picked up Frank Herbert’s much maligned sequel and, to my surprise, found another story tackling many of the same themes of War & Peace.
Was this similarity Death of the Author in action? No, definitely not. The sequel to Dune revolves around one of the most interesting king figures in all literature. One would not be misguided if they saw striking similarities between Paul Atreides and the comically powerful Emperor of Man from the Warhammer 40k series (apologies to those who aren’t complete basement dwellers and are unfamiliar with the reference). However, unlike the Emperor of Man, and the rest of the 40k universe as a whole for that matter, Herbert manages to present a nearly all-powerful entity with a thoughtfulness that balances the unbelievability of such a thing with a striking vulnerability. Herbert infuses Paul Atreides with that undeniable-reality that is our human experience. Paul Atreides is a utterly human character who, after thousands of years of careful genetic selection, is effectively the closest thing man has ever come to creating a perfect living being, divine even. He is next to all powerful (supposedly), all knowing, and even his corporeal body can not entirely limit him. This idea of god-like being is incredibly important for Dune: Messiah, hence why the sub-title connotes a religious dimension to this Paul-centric story. However, in keeping with the utterly-humanness of Paul’s nature, he is far from a salvific figure as he is party to egregious acts of atrocities that would put Ghengis Khan and Hitler to shame (a comparison they explicitly make in the book).
Paul is, to many people, god. A particularly interesting line in the book has him explicitly, and presumably with no hint of hyperbole, declare that people kill, wed, love, and cross the street in his name. He is the closest thing this universe has to a god and the people know it. People worship him, even those who knew him before he was emperor. Whatsmore, people die for him, a lot. And people revere him as something super-human. So, what kind of struggle can a god-king like Paul have in a story?
In short, Dune: Messiah is the story of the inexorable downfall of Paul Atreides. When not following Paul, the reader is following those who would seek to dethrone him. Are they pious and benevolent? No, they are wicked, degenerate, and conniving, even more so than Paul is. Paul, for all of his sins, is presented as the morally superior figure in this story. Yet, he eventually falls regardless. While there is a degree of hope that Paul ‘ensures’ by his actions, it is far from the kind of messianic saving that one might normally expect.
Before I make the connection between these two stories explicit, allow me to indulge my narcissism for a moment. If you are anything like me, you have, on more than one occasion, spent time reading Winston Churchill quotes. The man was quite possibly the single most quotable person in the last 2000 years. There is simply no end to his witticisms and they have an undeniable staying power that lingers in your mind. This reverence for the man, like so many others, often lead us to regard them as Great Men. In fact, there is even a whole view of history that regards these Great Men as the primary forces that define human history. We look to men like Churchill, Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, Julius and Augustus Caesar as these hurricanes of will, seemingly bending history to their whims. We look to others like Napoleon and Hannibal Barca as similarly Great Men who could do no wrong but were set upon by the very world. It is as if it took the entire collective will of the universe to stop these titans of history. Whatsmore, we fantasize about how if only one minute detail was different, we could have had an entirely different world from the one we know today. These are our Great Men of history and legend.
Only, there are no Great Men, or at least we don’t truly believe there are with today’s modern sensibilities. The best historians today will account for innumerable factors that influenced events and mitigated possible results. This shift in analysis has seen the cause-and-effect understanding of reality become much more sophisticated with individual men only comprising a minor portion of that initial cause. And yet, no matter how long we practice this view of a more sophisticated history, there is still an undeniable allure to certain persons in history.
Tolstoy spent years of his life exploring the Great Man Theory of history, in addition to great swaths of Russian histories in general. In fact, the Great Man Theory is the most explicit theme in War & Peace, hence why the work is often incorrectly regarded as a critique of historical intellectualism and fantastical historians. This incorrect analysis is not misguided however given that Tolstoy, with increasing frequency as the story continues, interrupts War & Peace with interlude chapters wherein he provides a commentary his characters can not. It is in these interlude chapters that Tolstoy most explicitly analyzes the many, many real details and peoples of the time before providing scathing commentary, often at the expense of contemporary opinion and thinkers. A particular duo that Tolstoy spends a great deal of time analyzing is that of Napoleon and Kutuzov, the latter being the Russian General that lead the 1812 defensive campaign. During his time, and throughout our own as well, Napoleon was revered as one of history’s Great Men. He, ingeniously, subdued Europe and made himself the greatest among the kings and emperors of the continent, that is until the world itself seemingly turned against him. Kutuzov however was regarded as an unremarkable and bumbling general that won an eventual victory over the French not by his own actions, but by the misfortune of Napoleon. Tolstoy goes through great lengths to examine this dichotomy and, eventually, invert the popular view. For Kutuzov, Tolstoy goes to great lengths to explain how he was put in an untenable position where there was no feasible way for him to maneuver without encountering remarkable strife. Kutuzov’s woes ranged from the army’s belligerent mid-level commanders who desired only glory for themselves to even the Emperor himself who originally desired to be directly involved in planning of the campaign. The politicking that followed hamstrung the Army and costed the Russians thousands of lives. Whatsmore, the factors that created the scenario for this all to happen could not have been avoided by any action Kutuzov could have taken. He truly was an unfortunate figure who was in a poor place in a poor time and was nearly driven mad by the strain of the situation.
As for Napoleon and the French, they stormed through Russia’s original defenses with ease, though this was not due to any particular brilliance on their leaderships’ part. Rather, Tolstoy meticulously details how the advancement of the French was actually due to the misfortune of the Russians. Furthermore, the misfortune of the Russians was not something that could have been reasonably prevented by its leaders. Rather, there is this foreboding sense that no one is really in control of the war or its outcomes. Returning to Napoleon, the man gains even greater confidence as the war wages on until he eventually takes personal command of the war efforts. It then seems that this change in command to Napoleon directly results in surprising catastrophes for the French forces, tainting that impeccable image people often have of the military genius. However, Napoleons eventual retreat from Russia is not a result of his actions, but by forces greater than even himself.
The analysis of The Great Man Theory is the most clear, and least abstract, theme Tolstoy plays with in War & Peace, thus why the book is often regarded as a critique of historians and intellectualism by readers afterwards. However, the characters in the story undergo an undeniably more religious journey. While I would love to dissect each character and expand upon their intricacies, I will relegate myself to just one. My translation gave him the peculiar name of Andrew, though in other versions I have seen his name written as Andrei. Andrew is an aristocratic figure with lofty aspirations; he is intent on becoming a great man in history like those kings and emperors of Europe. While he would never dream of overthrowing the current system and good Emperor Nicholas, he quickly enlists in the army in search of glory and, more importantly, power. Not long into his journey however, Andrew is disillusioned with his ambitions as he witnesses the true brutality and darkness of war. Whatsmore, he sees the belligerence of the military leadership as it is filled with self-interested narcissists who care little for the consequences of their actions beyond the effect they will have on their future ascendancy in that hierarchy that is society.
Andrew proceeds to move through society himself, but never with the same largely self-centered ambitions as before. However, in spite of his work, his world only seems to become worse as he is either wronged by others or witness to people acting unconscionably. At one point, he even loses his fiance to a salacious man who used her for nothing more than a night of fun and games. This leads Andrew to become increasingly pessimistic and woeful, even declaring near the end of his story aloud to his best friend how he can not rationalize any just reason for experiencing the pain that they do. It is a heartfelt cry that resonates so greatly that the two men are overwhelmed with a sense of defeat that seems truly fatal. And yet, they persist. Eventually, by the end of his story, Andrew has the closest thing the book has to a purely existential/surreal chapter wherein he undergoes what can only be described as a revelation. By the end of it, he looks around him and he sees the inevitable and undeniable fingerprints of God in all that which surrounds him. The reader is promptly left to process the abstract resolution to Andrew’s story as the book continues on to other characters’ journeys, yet the dramatic and bizarre ending lingers with the reader regardless.
Skipping to the second epilogue, Tolstoy walks the reader through a thoughtful lesson on cause and effect. Every event must have an initial cause. So often, we attribute these causes to the will of Great Men, the likes of which we can only aspire to, as Andrew did, since these ‘Greats’ are next to godliness in their abilities, bending history to their whims. And yet, Tolstoy’s borderline historical work takes the time to explore numerous critical and minute details of this specific period to conclude that men due not truly make history, rather the will of history creates men. To explain, this is not some cheap inversion of rhetoric that facades as enlightened thought. Rather, Tolstoy is arguing that those like Napoleon are the first in a herd of wild animals. A herd of wild raving beasts is a powerful force that has all the ability to trample over anything that stands in its way. However, it is in the nature of the herd to have someone at the head. They are not ordained, nor are they selected, chosen, or created. Rather, they are consistently occurring natural coincidences. Furthermore, one must return to the idea of the herd to understand that the leading beast is not in control of the herd, rather they are truly the most subservient to it. A beast can turn to the left or right, it makes no difference. The lead beast will be overrun and killed by the heard because it is in the herd’s nature to move forward. The only thing that can move the heard are the forms of the land, features that no beast can influence.
When Napoleon invaded Russia, it is not because he was a cunning genius that single-handedly possessed the secret knowledges of war to overcome his enemies. No, he did not. Even the war scholars who appear in the book, often characterized as Germans, are made out to be fools over the course of the story as their plans and wills often prove insufficient. Napoleon moved to Russia because it was the will of the land that Napoleon would invade Russia.
This is a grand claim made by Tolstoy, a reality he understands. Consequently, he steps back and analyzes Napoleon further. He poses the question, what makes a great man great? It can not be might, otherwise, Napoleon would never rule given his famously unremarkable stature. Was it his charisma? No, because a word can not move a boulder. An idea perhaps? If so, would Napoleon’s writings not have to make Socrates’ look like a child’s ramblings? The answer historians often presented was that Napoleon was great because he was powerful. This popular assertion prompted Tolstoy to then deconstruct the idea of power itself by asking, ‘what is power?’ The historian would answer saying that power is the ability to make a man do one’s own will. Tolstoy then inquires further, asking ‘why does the commoner then do the Great Man’s will?’ The historian would then explain that it is because the Great Man has the power of course. Thus, the definition of power becomes a cycle. Power is because power is. Power exists because powerful men exist and powerful men exist because power exists.
The cyclical nature of power is foolishness as far as Tolstoy is concerned. Much like the Copernican model of the solar system, Tolstoy posits that it is just as absurd to believe this definition of power as it is to believe that the Earth is the centre of the solar system. Consequently, we are left with 2 options. We can either embrace an idea that seems offensive beyond belief or we can hold to an increasingly problematic theory that, in truth, we know to be insufficient. In other words, we must let go of a lesser truth in exchange for a greater one. What is that greater truth then? Tolstoy argues, in no uncertain terms, that that greater truth is God.
This conclusion is unignorable in the end of the book with Tolstoy saying it explicitly. The question eventually becomes ‘what cause can move mountains, move nations, inspire millions, and save millions more?’ It was, for whatever reason, God’s will that Napoleon become emperor when he did. It was God’s will that Europe fell to him and that French ideas dispersed throughout the world. Why can Tolstoy argue this? Because the ‘land’ did not permit for anything else to happen. It did not matter what any of the characters did in their journeys throughout the course of the book, the war was destined or, if you will, determined to happen. This is where Tolstoy gets especially interesting as he makes a remarkably compelling argument for determinism. Whatsmore, he provides one of the best images for this type of reality. To paraphrase, it is easy to condemn a man based on his actions, asserting them to be exercises of his free will. However, upon taking more and more contextual information into account as a jury does, it becomes increasingly clear that they had less and less of a choice in the committing of the act. This section, more so than any other, demands multiple readings as it is unclear to me at the moments whether Tolstoy is arguing for a purely deterministic existence or whether free will does in fact play an influencing role in the making of history. From my current understanding, it seems that Tolstoy argues that our wills do play a role in influencing our future, but only in so far as they allowing us to understand God’s role in our lives. No matter what Andrew’s fiance chose, to be fidel or not, it was determined that he would die in the war. However, it is not obvious to me that this is indeed Tolstoy’s final conclusion so I will leave that assertion to someone more learned than I.
Each character in War & Peace goes on a religious journey of some sort and comes to their own understanding of reality. By the end of War & Peace, some characters have found a greater truth and are quietly leading more hopeful and loving lives while others have remained content with something they know, deep down, to be less than the full truth. There is an air of contentment, but it is clear that not all things that appear equal are. It is this absolutely human ending that leaves one with hope, and despair, but also an awful love for the Lord who watches over them and is indeed in control. I am reminded particularly of Habakkuk 3:16-19 when writing this as it largely addresses so many of the ideas and themes addressed in the book, with the prophet praising God saying:
When I heard, by belly trembled;
my lips quivered at the voice:
Rottenness entered into my bones,
And I trembled in myself,
That I might rest in the day of trouble:
When he cometh up unto the people,
He will invade them with his troops.
Although the fig tree shall not blossom,
Neither shall fruit be in the vines;
the labor of the olive shall fail,
And the fields shall yield no meat;
The flock shall be cut off from the fold,
And there shall be no herd in the stalls:
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength,
And he will make my feet like hinds’ feet,
And he will make me to walk upon mine high places
So, let's return to Dune: Messiah. Paul Atreides is one of literature’s great men. Nearly all-powerful, all-knowing, and effectively all present if you consider his government (which is essentially a cult) and extension of himself. Yet, he is a reluctant god-king. He does not want his role as ruler for various reasons. But most importantly, he never accepts this idea that he is something higher than the rest of man, that he is by any definition divine. Don’t mistake him for humble, mind you because he is far from. But he recognizes that he is human and is being elevated by people who do not understand him, much the same way people did Napoleon or Tzar Nicolas in War & Peace.
However, in spite of his immense power, Paul is beset by forces that even he can not fully comprehend. Worse yet, it is the will of these forces that he either die or submit to them. Paul, intent on not simply rolling over and letting these forces have their way, recognizes that there is a definite finality in this journey and that he will not be allowed to exit the stage quietly. Rather, he takes it upon himself to die a martyr’s death - much like a particular messiah (good job on noticing that). What differs between the second Dune novel and Tolstoy’s epic is that Paul is making very real choices that influence what ‘vision’ comes to pass - that much is clear.
This is where I, your humble essayist, is beginning to reach the limits of my understanding of both books. Herbert emphasizes the power of free will to a greater degree than Tolstoy’s overwhelming determinism. Yet, even Herbert recognizes that nothing short of a truly divine being can stand against the wills of that greatest cause. In Dune: Messiah’s case, that will is that of the collective universe in the form of an alliance between nearly every major political and commercial force. Because of this great will set against Paul, he sees essentially 2 major paths set before him and he chooses that which he deems best, even at the dear cost of those around him. This is the great shared theme between these two works and our own lives, the overwhelming force of the ‘land’. No matter what choice Paul made, he was never going to win. Furthermore, he was essentially forced to become Emperor by his own account. It was not his own will to become ruler, it never was. It was determined that he would become ruler. I will not pretend to be familiar with Herbert’s religious convictions, but there is undeniably an important theme to be discerned in his work that testifies to the supremacy of the will of the ‘land’. Though I find it unlikely that Herbert ever intended for an explicit Christian thought to be discerned in his work, Dune: Messiah testifies to the undeniable reality of the human experience in that there are no truly great men in life, only servants of the great will.
These books, whether intentional or not, testify to the supremacy of God’s will. While I hesitate to make such a claim with Herbert’s work, I would posit that he asserts a lesser truth that is subordinate to that testified by Tolstoy. Ultimately, both arguments when taken to their final conclusion testify to the unparalleled power that God wields, though I question whether “power” is the correct word in this instance. Regardless of whether man does in fact exercise a role in his own fate, I am not convinced either single book is conclusive, though both require second reads (and sequels to address in one case). Yet, both testify, intentionally and not, to the superiority of Scripture and the greater Truth that lays within.
Comments