Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

Petersburg from I 803 to I 8 I 7, and his exquisitely written and often

uncannily penetrating and prophetic diplomatic dispatches and letters,

as well as his private correspondence and the various scattered notes

on Russia and her inhabitants, sent to his government as well as to his

friends and consultants among the Russian nobility, form a uniquely

valuable source of information about the life and opinions of the ruling

circles of the Russian Empire during and immediately after the

Napoleonic period.

He died in I 82 I , the author of several theologico-political essays,

but the definitive edition of his works, in particular of the celebrated

Soirees de Saint-Pitershourg, which in the form of Platonic dialogue

dealt with the nature and sanctions of human government and other

political and philosophical problems, as well as his Corrtspondance

diplomatique and his letters, was published in full only in the 50s and

early 6os by his son Rodolphe and by others. Maistre's open hatred

of Austria, his anti-Bonapartism, as well as the rising importance of

the Piedmontese kingdom before and after the Crimean War, naturally

increased interest in his personality and his thought at this date. Books

on him began to appear and excited a good deal of discussion in Russian

literary and historical circles. Tolstoy possessed the Soirees, as well as

Maistre's diplomatic correspondence and letters, and copies of them

were to be found in the library at Yasnaya Polyana. It is in any case

quite clear that Tolstoy used them extensively in War and Peact.1

Thus the celebrated description of Paulucci's intervention in the

debate of the Russian General Staff at Drissa is reproduced almost

verbatim from a letter by Maistre. Similarly Prince Vasily's conversation at Mme Scherer's reception with the 'homme de beaucoup de merite' about Kutuzov, is obviously based on a letter by Maistre, in

1 See Eikhenbaum, op. cit. (p. 48, note I above).

sa

THE H ED G E H O G AND THE FOX

which all the French phnses with which this conversation is sprinkled

are to be found. There is, moreover, a marginal note in one of

Tolstoy's early drafts, 'At Anna Pavlovna's J. Maistre', which refers

to the rarmte11r who tells the beautiful Helene and an admiring circle

of listeners the idiotic anecdote about the meeting of Napoleon with

the Due d'Enghien at supper with t�e celebrated actress MlleGeorges.

Again, old Prince Bolkonsky's habit of shifting his bed from one room

to another is probably taken from a story which Maistre tells about

the similar habit of Count Stroganov. Finally the name of Maistre

occurs in the novel itself, as being a01ong those who agree that it

would be embarrassing and senseless to capture the more eminent

princes and marshals of Napoleon's army, since this would merely

create diplomatic difficulties. Zhikharev, whose memoirs Tolstoy is

know11 to have used, met Maistre in 1 807, and described him in

glowing colours;1 something of the atmosphere to be found in these

memoirs enters into Tolstoy's description of the eminent �migr� in

Anna Pavlovna Scherer's drawing-room, with which War and Peau

opens, and his other references to fashionable Petersburg society at

this date. These echoes and parallels have been collated carefully by

Tolstoyan scholars, and leave no doubt about the extent of Tolstoy's

borrowing.

Among these parallels there are similarities of a more important

kind. Maistre explains that the victory of the legendary Horatius over

the Curiatii-like all victories in general -was due to the intangible

factor of morale, and Tolstoy similarly speaks of the supreme importance of this unknown quantity in determining the outcome of battlesthe impalpable 'spirit' of troops and their commanders. This emphasis on the imponderable and the incalculable is part and parcel of Maistre's

general irrationalism. More clearly and boldly than anyone before

him Maistre declared that the human intellect was bu� a feeble instrument when pitted against the power of natural forces; that rational explanations of human conduct seldom explained anything. He maintained that only the irrational, precisely because it defied explanation and could therefore not be undermined by the critical activities of reason, was

able to persist and be strong. And he gave as examples such irrational

institutions as hereditary monarchy and marriage, which �urvived

from age to age, while such rational institutions as dective monarchy,

1 S. P. Zhikharev, Z.pisli swrtmtflflila (Moscow, 1934-), vol. 2, pp. 1 1 2-

1 3.

59

R U S S IAN T H I N K E R S

o r 'free' personal relationships, swiftly and for no obvious 'reason'

collapsed wherever they were introduced. Maistre conceived of life

as a savage battle at all levels, between plants and animals no less than

individuals and nations, a battle from which no gain was expected,

but which originated in some primal, mysterious, sanguinary, selfimmolatory craving implanted by God. This instinct was far more powerful than the feeble efforts of rational men who tried to achieve

peace and happiness (which was, in any case, not the deepest desire of

the human heart-only of its caricature, the liberal intellect) by planning

the life of society without reckoning with the violent forces which

sooner or later would inevitably cause their puny structures to collapse

like so many houses of cards. Maistre regarded the battlefield as

typical of life in all its aspects, and derided the generals who thought

that they were in fact controlling the movements of their troops and

directing the course of the battle. He dedared that no one in the

actual heat of battle can begin to tell what is going on :

On parle beaucoup de batailles dans le monde sans savoir ce que

c'est; on est surtout assez sujet � les considerer comme des points,

tandis qu'elles couvrent deux ou trois lieues de pays: on vous dit

gravement: Comment ne savez-vous pas ce qui s'est passe dans ce

combat puisque vous y etiez? tandis que c'est precisement le contraire

qu'on polurait dire assez souvent. Celui qui est � Ia droite sait-il ce

qui se passe � Ia gauche? sait-il seulement ce qui se passe � deux pas

de lui? Je me represente aisement une de ces scenes epouvantables:

sur un vaste terrain couvert de tous les apprets du carnage, et qui

semble s'ebranler sous les pas des hommes et des chevaux; au milieu

du feu et des tourbillons de fumee; etourdi, transporte par le

retentissement des armes � feu et des instruments militaires, par des

voix qui commandent, qui hurlent ou qui s'eteignent; environne de

morts, de mourants, de cadavres mutiles; possede tour a tour par

Ia crainte, par !'esperance, par Ia rage, par cinq ou six ivresses

differentes, que devient l'homme? que voit-il? que sait-il au bout

de quelques heures? que peut-il sur lui et sur les autres? Parmi cette

foule de guerriers qui ont combattu tout le jour, il n'y en a souvent

pas un seul, et pas meme le general, qui sache ou est le vainqueur.

II ne tiendnit qu'a moi de vous citer des batailles modernes, des

batailles fameuses dont Ia memoire ne perira jamais, des batailles

qui ont change Ia face des affaires en Europe, et qui n'ont ete

perdues que parce que tel ou tel homme a cru qu'elles l'etaient; de

manil:re qu'en supposant toutes les circonstances egales, et pas une

goutte de sang de plus versee de part et d'autre, un autre general

6o

THE H E D G E H O G AND THE FOX

aurait fait chanter le Tt Dtum chez lui, et fore� l'histoire de dire

tout le contraire de ce qu'elle" dira.1

And later:

N'avons-nous pas fini m�me par voir perdre des batailles gagn�es?

. . . Je crois en general que les batailles ne se gagnent ni ne se

perdent point physiquement.1

A nd again, in a similar strain:

De m8me une armee de .f.O,OOO hommes est inf�rieure physiquement t une autre armee de 6o,ooo: mais si Ia premiere a plus de courage, d'experience et de discipline, elle pourra battre Ia seconde;

car elle a plus d'action avec moins de 1Ila.S$C, et c'est ce que nous

voyons t chaque page de l'histoire.3

And finally:

C'est }'opinion qui perd les batailles, et c'est !'opinion qui les

gagne.'

Victory is a moral or psychological, not a physical issue:

qu'est ce qu'une botailk perdue? . . . Cest une botaille qu'on croit

avDir ptrdut. Rien n'est plus vrai. Un homme qui se bat avec un

autre est vaincu lorsqu'il est tu� ou ter�. et que }'autre est debout;

il n'en est pas ainsi de deux arm�: l'une ne peut @tre tuee, tand.is

que }'autre reste en pied. Les forces se balancent ainsi que les mons,

et depuis surtout que }'invention de Ia poudre a mis plus d'�it�

dans les moyens de destruction, une bataille ne se perd plus mat�riellement; c'est-t-dire parce qu'il y a plus de morts d'un cOt� que de

)'autre: aussi Fr�d�ric II, qui s'y entendait un peu, disait: Yainrrt,

c'tst avanctr. Mais que} est celui qui avance? c'est celui dont Ia

conscience et Ia contenance font reculer l'autrc.6

There is and can be no military science, for 'C'est }'imagination qui

perd les bataill�',8 and 'peu de batailles sont perdues physiquement-

1 J. de Maistre, us Soirlts tk Silitrt-Pittrs6Durg {Paris, 196o), entretien 7,

P· :n8.

I ibid., P· 229.

1 ibid., pp. Z:Z.f.·S· The last sentence ia reproduced by Tolltoy almost

verbatim.

' ibid., p. z:z6.

1 ibid., pp. 226-7.

1 ibid., p. 227.

RU SSIAN TH INKERS

vous tirez, je tire • • . le viritable vainqueur, comme le viritable vainaa,

c'est celui qui croit l'etre'.1

This is the lesson which Tolstoy says he derives from Stendhal,

but the words of Prince Andrey about Austerlitz-'We lost because

we told ourselves we lost' -as well as the attribution of Russian victory

over Napoleon to the strength of the Russian desire to survive, echo

Maistre and not Stendhal.

This close parallelism between Maistre's and Tolstoy's views about

the chaos and uncontrollability of battles and wars, with its larger

implications for human life generally, together with the contempt of

both for the naive explanations provided by academic historians to

account for human violence and lust for war, was noted by the eminent

French historian Albert Sorel, in a little-known lecture to the Ecole

des Sciences Politiques delivered on 7 April 1 888.1 He drew a parallel

between Maistre and Tolstoy, and observed that although Maistre

was a theocrat, while Tolstoy was a 'nihilist', yet both regarded the

first causes of events as mysterious, involving the reduction of human

wills to nullity. 'The distance', wrote Sorel, 'from the theocrat to the

mystic, and from the mystic to the nihilist, is smaller than that from

the butterAy to the larva, from the larva to the chrysalis, from the

chrysalis to the butterAy.' Tolstoy resembles Maistre in being, above

all, curious about first causes, in asking such questions as Maistre's