For Tolstoy and Hemingway, as for Homer, writing about war was the natural thing. They did not exactly worship the demands of 'hateful Ares', as Homer calls him; but they knew that war as hell was the proper field of the heroic, and thus of narrative itself. The story of what happens in a football match today is our equivalent of yesterday's battle; and it can be established later, as game, in the same heroic sequence. Who is taking care of the left flank? What is General Grouchy up to, and how soon can the Prussians be in action? At the height of his description of the Battle of Borodino Tolstoy breaks off to imagine a spirit of the pities, who cries to the combatants: 'Just a moment!' and 'Consider what it is you do!' But having satisfied, as it were, the requirements of amazement and revulsion, Tolstoy the narrator, and the soldiers he writes about, go right back to the business in hand. That is the world's business after all, as it is the tale of what happens in the world.

LRB 26 May 1994 | PDF Download