shwang/foreword.txt

## foreword.txt
This foreword falls into two sections. The first, immediately following, is an attempt at a discussion of some of the literary qualities of War and Peace. The second draws a few obvious analogies between Napoleons Russian campaign, as described by Tolstóy, and Hitler’s Russian campaign, as it seemed to a nonmilitary observer toward the middle of February, 1942.

[...]

War and Peace has been called the greatest novel ever written. These very words have been used, to my knowledge, by E. M. Forster, Hugh Walpole, John Galsworthy, and Compton Mackenzie; and a similar judgment has been made by many others. Note that it is particularly novelists themselves who hold this opinion. Is not this the book all novelists would like to write? Is it not to the novelist what Hamlet is to the playwright?

That War and Peace is one of the greatest novels ever written is beyond question. But I do not know what is meant by calling it “the greatest”. No calipers exist to measure the relative greatness of great novels. It is more useful, rather, to repeat the judgment of J. Donald Adams: “Reading it again and again is to realize the immeasurable gulf that is fixed between a merely good book and a great one.” Let us not fret therefore over whether War and Peace is the greatest novel ever written. Let us rather try to discover together why it is a great novel.

The first thing to do is to read it. A supreme book usually argues its own supremacy quite efficiently, and War and Peace is no exception. Still, we may be convinced of its magnitude and remain puzzled by certain of its aspects—for no first-rate book is completely explicit, either.

[...]

War and Peace may not have a classic form. But it does have a classic content. It is full of scenes and situations which, in slightly altered forms, have recurred again and again, and will continue to recur, in the history of civilized man.

Not long ago I happened to observe a mother lifting her eight-year-old boy in her arms. As she did so she laughed and said, “You’re getting so big you’ll be lifting me soon.” It was the simplest of statements. Yet I felt something transiently touching about the scene merely because millions upon millions of mothers reaching back into the dawn of history must have said the same thing to their children at some time and because other millions will say it in the remote future long after this mother and child are dead. Here is a minor example of a recurrent human situation.

You will End hundreds of these recurrent situations—small and large—in the pages of War and Peace, and indeed in the pages of any great novel or play. It is as if the human race, despite its apparent complexity, were capable of but a limited set of gestures. To this set of gestures great artists have the key. You may recollect Aristotle’s comment upon the dramatic value of the “recognition scene” in Greek tragedy. One of the great climaxes of War and Peace is just such a recognition scene, after Natásha is told that the wounded officer who has been traveling with her family is Andrew. The scene is not only great in itself but it gathers up something of the greatness of all the other supreme recognition scenes in literature.

A great many of the moments in the story most charged with emotion have this quality of permanence: Andrew on the battlefield looking up at the sky and comparing its vastness with the littleness of Napoleon, Pierre listening to the peasant wisdom of Karatâev, Natásha at the ball, Mary receiving her mystical, fey peasants. These are timeless moments; they help to make a timeless book—as we May-fly mortals measure time.

Also the very looseness of the book’s form, the fact that it has neither beginning nor end, helps to convey the sense of enduring life. As we read the first page we seem to encounter people who have been living for many years, and as we turn the last page, little Nicholas is merely carrying on the life that has been streaming through this vast story and these nineteen years of time.
	This foreword falls into two sections. The first, immediately following, is an attempt at a discussion of some of the literary qualities of War and Peace. The second draws a few obvious analogies between Napoleons Russian campaign, as described by Tolstóy, and Hitler’s Russian campaign, as it seemed to a nonmilitary observer toward the middle of February, 1942.

	[...]

	War and Peace has been called the greatest novel ever written. These very words have been used, to my knowledge, by E. M. Forster, Hugh Walpole, John Galsworthy, and Compton Mackenzie; and a similar judgment has been made by many others. Note that it is particularly novelists themselves who hold this opinion. Is not this the book all novelists would like to write? Is it not to the novelist what Hamlet is to the playwright?

	That War and Peace is one of the greatest novels ever written is beyond question. But I do not know what is meant by calling it “the greatest”. No calipers exist to measure the relative greatness of great novels. It is more useful, rather, to repeat the judgment of J. Donald Adams: “Reading it again and again is to realize the immeasurable gulf that is fixed between a merely good book and a great one.” Let us not fret therefore over whether War and Peace is the greatest novel ever written. Let us rather try to discover together why it is a great novel.

	The first thing to do is to read it. A supreme book usually argues its own supremacy quite efficiently, and War and Peace is no exception. Still, we may be convinced of its magnitude and remain puzzled by certain of its aspects—for no first-rate book is completely explicit, either.

	[...]

	War and Peace may not have a classic form. But it does have a classic content. It is full of scenes and situations which, in slightly altered forms, have recurred again and again, and will continue to recur, in the history of civilized man.

	Not long ago I happened to observe a mother lifting her eight-year-old boy in her arms. As she did so she laughed and said, “You’re getting so big you’ll be lifting me soon.” It was the simplest of statements. Yet I felt something transiently touching about the scene merely because millions upon millions of mothers reaching back into the dawn of history must have said the same thing to their children at some time and because other millions will say it in the remote future long after this mother and child are dead. Here is a minor example of a recurrent human situation.

	You will End hundreds of these recurrent situations—small and large—in the pages of War and Peace, and indeed in the pages of any great novel or play. It is as if the human race, despite its apparent complexity, were capable of but a limited set of gestures. To this set of gestures great artists have the key. You may recollect Aristotle’s comment upon the dramatic value of the “recognition scene” in Greek tragedy. One of the great climaxes of War and Peace is just such a recognition scene, after Natásha is told that the wounded officer who has been traveling with her family is Andrew. The scene is not only great in itself but it gathers up something of the greatness of all the other supreme recognition scenes in literature.

	A great many of the moments in the story most charged with emotion have this quality of permanence: Andrew on the battlefield looking up at the sky and comparing its vastness with the littleness of Napoleon, Pierre listening to the peasant wisdom of Karatâev, Natásha at the ball, Mary receiving her mystical, fey peasants. These are timeless moments; they help to make a timeless book—as we May-fly mortals measure time.

	Also the very looseness of the book’s form, the fact that it has neither beginning nor end, helps to convey the sense of enduring life. As we read the first page we seem to encounter people who have been living for many years, and as we turn the last page, little Nicholas is merely carrying on the life that has been streaming through this vast story and these nineteen years of time.