War, Peace, and Paganism
The Literary Function and Historical Basis of Occult Imagery in Tolstoy’s War and Peace
Tolstoy’s turbulent relationships with mainstream Christianity and the Orthodox church are well documented – after all Christian anarchists who re-write the bible on their own terms tend to attract attention. In his life-long struggle with organized religion Tolstoy flirted with atheism, Ghandi-ism, and Chinese philosophy before converting to his particular version of Christianity around his fiftieth birthday.[1] Tolstoy also held a life-long fascination for (a possibly-romanticized version of) the Russian peasantry and their folk beliefs and he seeded War and Peace with both implicit and explicit references to folk paganism. One of the most unusual and often-overlooked scenes in the early part of the novel is the divination scene in which Natasha and Sonya play a game with mirrors and candles, and in which both lie about the outcome. This is the most obvious time that we see Natasha being associated with paganism. Tolstoy, however; does not jump right into the divination scene. He scatters the chapter before it with significant objects, times, and rituals that reference popular Russian folk beliefs. Tolstoy uses pagan imagery for various reasons throughout the novel; the two most prominent being to illustrate the nature of Natasha Rostova’s character and in order to foreshadow the imminent death and destruction of the titular war. It is also possible that the inclusion of occultism in the novel is simply the product of the eccentric author’s fascination with peasant life and “pagan philosophers”.[2] In either case, the scenes featuring fortune-telling and mysticism offer a fascinating glimpse into a little-studied element of daily life of many seventeenth-century Russians: popular magic.
Although she is an upper-class woman, Natasha Rostova is described throughout the book as more connected to the land and the peasantry than her family members, Laura Olsen writes that “she provides [them] a link with the spontaneous folk spirit” of ordinary Russians.[3] This may best be seen in the way she instinctively picks up the old country dance her uncle invites her to participate in despite being “brought up by an émigré French woman”.[4] In his analysis of this scene, John Hagan views Natasha’s joy in the old uncle’s song as stemming from her sudden closeness to the “natural Russian life” to which is “unconsciously akin” but prevented from fully experiencing while she is trapped in her usual aristocratic surrounding.[5] Natasha is more emotional and driven by her feelings than most of the other characters, which fits the archetype of the peasant as described by historian Anne Applebaum who characterizes the peasantry as an “idealized alternative nation, more primitive …more authentic, more emotional, and more poetic”.[6] Tolstoy imbues Natasha with all of these qualities; she is charmingly unsophisticated, hiding among the potted plants in wait for Boris and then “smiling and almost weeping with excitement” when he finds her.[7] Natasha’s unstudied and bird-like singing is referenced numerous times throughout the book as evidence of her unspoilt nature. For example, Natasha’s voice is compared favourably with the voices of the singers at the opera who acquired or refined their talent through study – showcasing Tolstoy’s belief in the superiority of the natural over the learned.[8] Unlike the opera singers, she comes by her gift naturally and she can therefore use it to access her emotionality as well as allowing other characters to access theirs. Prince Andrei, for instance, thinks that for him to be “choked with tears” is impossible until he hears Natasha singing while playing the clavichord.[9] Normally restrained characters like Andrei can use Natasha as a conduit to access the true meaning of being Russian and become unshackled from “convention and rationality”.[10] In order to access this power, she has to breathe “Russian air” which connects her to the higher power that is Russia itself.[11] Her vocal prowess is directly connected to her affiliation with the purest elements of the Russian spirit, Olsen describes it as “a spontaneous source of aesthetic power” which is drawn from her “closeness to the folk roots of the people”.[12] This singing even has healing qualities, Natasha’s “gentle, caressing voice” is the only thing that can comfort Countess Rostov during her bereavement.[13] It is not a stretch to connect this kind of healing power to witches, sages, and the other semi-mystical people who may step in to help in rural areas bereft of conventional doctors. Although the exact bird her singing voice resembles is never described there are associations in Russian folklore between witches and birds – particularly magpies.[14] Natasha is even directly referred to, albeit jokingly, as a “sorceress” by Denisov during their courtship in volume II.[15] Like other wild elements of her character, Natasha’s voice is tamed by the end of the novel once she has been “Christianized” by Princess Marya and married to Pierre. This makes it clear that her voice was intended as an offshoot of her pagan-ness, once the latter is gone she also loses the former.
It is in the pages leading up to Natasha and Sonya’s attempt at mirror divination that Tolstoy makes most of his references to folk rituals and beliefs. Early in this section the time of year is described as being “Christmas time … the third day of the feast”, this sets up the divination scene as occurring during the time between Christmas and Epiphany that was known to be a particularly magical or spiritual time of year.[16] During this period devils and other spirits were said to be particularly active and more willing to intervene in the affairs of humans than during the rest of the year. Sviatki, as this period of twelve days is called, is an especially good time for the “divination of marital prospects” which is what it appears Natasha and Sonya are doing with the mirrors during the penultimate scene.[17] Earlier on the same page, a bored and despondent Natasha orders a servant, Misha, to “bring a rooster … [and] some oats”.[18] She might simply be testing her powers over the people of the Rostov household by demanding an unusual snack, but this may also be another reference to the occult. In The Bathhouse at Midnight, W.F. Ryan describes one type of marital divination common in Novgorod wherein a woman could use oats in order to see her future husband in a dream. To do this, a woman would “sprinkle herself with oats” before going to sleep and then recite a saucy rhyme translating roughly to “come reap your oats” or in other versions “come tend your garden”.[19] The man she would marry would be drawn by her offer and appear to her in a dream. As Natasha spends the pages previous to this pining for Andrei and asking to see him, she may have been hoping that he would appear if she fulfilled the ritual. The rooster (or chicken) is also a common item used in folk divination, and Bathhouse contains many references to animal divination and the use of chickens in particular. There are, to quote Ryan, “many kinds of chicken oracle”.[20] One common divination game involved placing various items in front of a cock and the order in which the animal pecked at the objects was said to foretell various aspects of one’s future. This kind of divination may have roots as far back as ancient Rome where “laws were passed or rejected based on a chicken’s refusal to eat”.[21] The practice then made its way North in the times of the ancient Kievan Rus civilization through contact with the Byzantine Empire.[22] It would then have become absorbed into local traditions and eventually been observed by Tolstoy.
The masked revelry in which the young Rostovs participate in volume II, XI is another popular Svyatki tradition. They dress up in costumes and go mumming before being invited to stay at Pelageya Danilovna’s house for dancing and games. Dressing up, playing practical jokes, and of course fortune-telling are all common ways of celebrating this least holy and most magical time of year. At Danilovna’s, the young people play games with “a ring, a piece of string, and a one-rouble coin” all objects used in popular divination rituals of the time.[23] Rings are a very common divination item across Europe, although there are fewer explicit references to ring divination in Bathhouse than many of the other items Tolstoy includes in this chapter. Rings can, however; be used in chicken divination – one method was to place silver and copper rings before the animal and then to interpret the order in which the rings were pecked.[24] Rings could also be looked through by hopeful young people as another way to “see” one’s future spouse.[25] Burning a thread, which could easily stand in for the “string” in Tolstoy’s text featured in a Russia Beyond article published in 2016 concerning traditional fortune-telling. According to the article girls would each “take a thread of the same length” and light them on fire, the thread that burned the fastest signaled that the girl holding it was destined to marry first.[26] Coins are another more-rarely-mentioned item, but their association with flipping or gambling still means that coins conjure images of chance, luck, or fate in keeping with the mystical themes of the chapter.
While Natasha is involved in most of the pagan activity described in the book, Sonya’s trip out to the barn on page 528 of War and Peace may have been more than a mere breath of fresh air. Sonya is told to “stand silently and listen” once she gets outside, which may indicate that the young people were engaging in sound divination.[27] Ryan describes this style of fortune-telling as “divination by sounds and overheard words…listening in specified places and circumstances”.[28] Going out alone at night during the yuletide period would certainly fulfill these criteria. While Tolstoy never mentions what, if anything, Sonya hears outside, almost anything could be significant. For example, hearing “wood on wood” or “woodcutting” during sound divination meant that a death was imminent.[29] That Sonya was going towards the barn is another mystical reference – sending a young woman or girl alone into a barn (often after dark) was another game to divine what kind of husband she would marry. A girl should “put [her] han[d] into a barn window at night” and wait for something to reach out and touch her, “if no one touched it she would remain an old maid, if a smooth hand stroked it she would marry a poor man, if a rough hand then a rich man”.[30] What exactly was said to be doing the stroking is left unspecified as have been a million-other sleepover-game entities for as long as young people have been toying with the supernatural. Other variations of this kind of divination also existed, including a more racy version in which girls were instructed to pull up their skirts and “sit naked on a shelf in the barn” and then interpret the roughness or smoothness of the wood as predictive of the richness or poorness of one’s future life.[31] That even the staid and sensible Sonya is caught up in pagan magic during this chapter may be due to the time of year or to her proximity to Natasha – it is at this point that the two are as close as sisters before drifting apart by the end of the book. Sonya is also flush with her love for Nikolai Rostov and this heightened emotional state may have brought her briefly closer to a Natasha-like affinity for paganism.
Finally, Tolstoy may have been using the various divination games mentioned to slyly let the reader know that Natasha’s marriage to Prince Andrei wold never happen. Although many of the rituals are never given an ending, the few that are completed point to an upcoming death. To return to the idea of listening divination, the bell that Nikolai and Natasha overhear on the way to Danilovna’s may foreshadow Prince Andrei’s death later in the novel. While hearing a small bell during listening divination could mean marriage a large bell like the “deep-toned” one mentioned on page 525 signifies death.[32] That Natasha does not see Andrei during the mirror-divination scene may be another subtle hint that he will never marry her. Like the oats mentioned earlier, candles and mirrors could be used in order to see the face of the man one would marry. This ritual is much more intricately described by Tolstoy than the glancing mentions of other divination games in the chapter, Natasha sits “looking at the row candles going into the depths of the mirror” expecting to see either a coffin or the face of “him”, presumably Prince Andrei.[33] This is almost word-for-word the same description given in Bathhouse of a popular form of marriage divination in which candles are lit before a mirror and the participants wait for an image to appear. Both the bell and the empty mirrors signal an ominous future, potentially referencing Andrei’s death or the chaos of the upcoming war more generally.
Natasha Rostova is one of two ideal female forms as envisioned by Tolstoy in War and Peace. Princess Marya is Tolstoy’s ideal civilized Christian female whereas Natasha symbolizes the “wild primitive Russian-ness” of the pre-Christian era.[34] Tolstoy plays out the Christianising of the Russian peasantry through Natasha and Marya’s relationship. In the beginning of the work, she is untainted by the “learned” version of religion; she is the “child of Nature” to Marya’s “child of God”.[35] During the hunting scene this idea becomes even more apparent when Natasha is compared to Diana, a goddess worshipped in the pre-Christian Roman empire.[36] Their relationship is initially turbulent and resentful, but by the end of the book and after great tragedy she has been “converted” and comes to see Marya’s point of view.[37] At this point she also gives up the singing and dancing that were so associated with her earlier and she enters into a very conventional marriage to Pierre. For Tolstoy, Natasha represents, as Nicholas Warner explains, “Russia and all that we are meant to see as good in it”.[38] She is family-oriented, natural, feminine, and emotional – Tolstoy’s ideal Russian woman uncorrupted by foreign or learned influences. She “closes the gap between aristocracy and folk” bringing her family closer to what Tolstoy considered the perfect Russian existence.[39] Tolstoy makes this association most clear in the divination scene in which traditional paganism is used to attempt to divine future love. It is the ultimate encapsulation of Natasha and her character, as well as a fascinating glimpse into popular divination games of Russia in the 1600s.
Works Cited
Bodde, Derk, and Galia Speshneff Bodde. Tolstoy and China. Princeton University Press, 1950. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183pt9r.
Brougher, Valentina G. “The Occult in Russian Literature of the 1990s.” The Russian Review 56, no. 1 (1997): 110–24. https://doi.org/10.2307/131488.
Christoyannopoulos, Alexandre. Tolstoy the Peculiar Christian Anarchist. Anarchy Archives. n.d. http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/tolstoy/chrisanar.htm
Curtis, James M. “The Function of Imagery in War and Peace.” Slavic Review 29, no. 3 (1970): 460–80. https://doi.org/10.2307/2493160.
Denton, Brian. “Natasha and the Infinite Mirrors”. Medium.com, 2017, May 20. https://brianedenton.medium.com/natasha-and-the-infinite-mirrors-1b0dd665e6e6
Hagan, John. “Patterns of Character Development in Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’: Nicholas, Natasha, and Mary.” PMLA 84, no. 2 (1969): 235–44. https://doi.org/10.2307/1261280.
Menzel, Birgit et al. eds. The New Age of Russia: Occult and Esoteric Dimensions. Sagner.
Mirasola, Kris. “Chicken Divination”. Tremr.com. 2016 January 6. https://www.tremr.com/kris-mirasola/chicken-divination
Novruzov, Rafiq. “To the Moral and Religious Views of Leo Tolstoy”. International Journal of Language and Awareness 1, no.1 (2018): 39-44. https://doi.org/10.33390/homeros.2019148829
Olson, Laura J. “Russianness, Femininity, and Romantic Aesthetics in War and Peace.” The Russian Review 56, no. 4 (1997): 515–31. https://doi.org/10.2307/131563.
Revinskaya, Elena. “Christmas Season Fortune Telling – Russian Style”. Russia Beyond. 2016 January 6. https://www.rbth.com/articles/2013/01/06/christmas_season_fortune_telling_-_russian_style_21443.
Ryan, W.F. The Bathhouse at Midnight: An [sic] Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia. United States: Pennsylvania State University Press., 1999.
Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. United States: Vintage Books, 2008.
Warner, Nicholas O. “Character and Genre in War and Peace: The Case of Natasha.” MLN 100, no. 5 (1985): 1012–24. https://doi.org/10.2307/2905442.
[1] Derk Bodde and Galia Speshneff Bodde, Tolstoy and China (United States: Princeton University Press, 1950).
[2] Rafiq Novruzov, “To the Moral and Religious Views of Leo Tolstoy”, International Journal of Language and Awareness 1, no.1 (2018): 40. https://doi.org/10.33390/homeros.2019148829
[3] Laura J. Olsen, “Russianness, Femininity, and Romantic Aesthetics in War and Peace.”, The Russian Review 56, no.4 (1997): p.521, https://doi.org/10.2307/131563.
[4] Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (United States: Vintage Books, 2007), 512.
[5] John Hagan, “Patterns of Character Development in Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’: Nicholas, Natasha, and Mary.” PMLA 84, no. 2 (1969): 217. https://doi.org/10.2307/1261280.
[6] Anne Applebaum, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine (United States: Penguin Random House, 2017), 3.
[7] Tolstoy, War and Peace, 44.
[8] Ibid., 561.
[9] Ibid., 467.
[10] Olsen, “Russianness, Femininity, and Romantic Aesthetics in War and Peace”, 522.
[11] Ibid, 522.
[12] Ibid, 516.
[13] Tolstoy, War and Peace, 1080.
[14] W.F. Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia (United States: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 81.
[15] Tolstoy, War and Peace, 335.
[16] Ibid, 517.
[17] Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight, 131.
[18] Tolstoy, War and Peace, 517.
[20] Ibid., 107.
[21] Kris Mirasola, “Chicken Divination”, Tremr, 2016 January 13, https://www.tremr.com/kris-mirasola/chicken-divination.
[22] Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight, 9-11.
[23] Tolstoy, War and Peace, 527.
[24] Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight, 108.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Elena Revinskaya, “Christmas Season Fortune Telling – Russian Style”, Russia Beyond, 2016 January 6, https://www.rbth.com/articles/2013/01/06/christmas_season_fortune_telling_-_russian_style_21443.
[27] Tolstoy, War and Peace, 528.
[28] Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight, 104.
[29] Ibid, 104.
[30] Ibid, 105.
[31] Ibid, 105.
[32] Tolstoy, War and Peace, 525.
[33] Tolstoy, War and Peace, 531.
[34] Olsen, “Russianness, Femininity, and Romantic Aesthetics in War and Peace”, 524.
[35] John Hagan, “Patterns of Character Development in Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’: Nicholas, Natasha, and Mary”, 242.
[36] Tolstoy, War and Peace,
[37] Hagan, “Patterns of Character Development in Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’: Nicholas, Natasha, and Mary”, 242.
[38] Nicholas O. Warner, ““Character and Genre in War and Peace: The Case of Natasha.” MLN 100, no. 5 (1985): 1017. https://doi.org/10.2307/2905442.
[39] Olsen, “Russianness, Femininity, and Romantic Aesthetics in War and Peace”, 521.