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(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Like practically all topics investigated by Tolstoy scholars, this one is not new. It has long been established that the figure of Napoleon is based on the "contradiction between the true pettiness of his role and his own opinion of himself as a great reformer" (... 66). The only reason to return to this topic is if one approaches the study of literature (...) as the study of human nature (...). Tolstoy himself described this principle in 1853 when he proposed
to write a Russian history from Mikhail Romanov to Alexander I, explaining all historical events in human terms [...] It is critical to explain every historical fact in human terms [...] and to avoid routine historical expressions. (PSS 46: 293, 212)
It is not my intent to demonstrate either that Tolstoy did not like Napoleon, or that he nurtured his antipathy for the man long before he began War and Peace. Here I am interested in three issues. The first has to do with the parameters of Tolstoy's anti-Napoleonism. I am aware that it is nearly impossible to explain adequately Tolstoy's antipathy, and that is why I confine my inquiry to clarifying how Tolstoy himself explained matters. The second issue pertains to the ways this antipathy was expressed in War and Peace. Finally, the third issue raises the question of Tolstoy's "Napoleonism," that is, the similarities between the commander and the writer.
Tolstoy's Three Antipathies
In the drafts of War and Peace, Tolstoy explains his dislike for Napoleon simply: It is not befitting an aristocrat to approve of a parvenu. Consider Count Mortemart's remarks on Napoleon's affair with Mademoiselle Georges:
"In 1803, friends wrote me from Paris that Mademoiselle Georges did not lack for admirers, and that among the crowds of new people, parvenu de la finance, administrators, and this entire, unsavory new breed of people that now reigns in Petersburg, she did not deign to throw her handkerchief to anyone; when, at one soirée, her admirers saw Roustan, cette âme damnée, ce valet de cet autre valet qui s'appele Buonaparte at the new goddess's door." (PSS 13: 213)
And a bit further: "'When all these gens de dessous terre [...] realized that their master was their rival...