Why "classics" still hold interest or should still hold interest in a vastly different society is a complicated question that sparks a lot of debate and probably can't be answered in one blog post. Instead, I'd like to talk specifically, not about the enduring of or relevance (a little of that below) of War and Peace, but about how it lives as a text and what that means. I think it is important to look at War and Peace as something that "lives", meaning that it can be built upon and can change, despite the death of the author over 100 years ago. And it has to "live" to be interesting and to have relevance to a reader today rather than being just a historical document that tells us about Leo Tolstoy just in case anyone is interested in that. War and Peace "lives" because its characters "live", meaning that their interest (or the interest given to them) exists beyond the text. They exist in the narrative and outside of the narrative in that we can say more about them beyond what the novel itself and Tolstoy himself says about them.
Let's just use Napoleon Bonaparte as an example. There are several different levels or layers of a historical character:
1. The reader's presuppositions or "pre-knowledge" of Napoleon. This varies from person to person, as some people may have no or very limited knowledge of Napoleon, while others may have understandings of Napoleon taken from books or other media. So instantly, if a hundred thousand people read War and Peace, we have a hundred thousand different Napoleons. And because no one who is alive right now has ever had an experience with the historical character of Napoleon Bonaparte, it is all passed down or inherited knowledge about the person and not connected to the person itself.
2. Tolstoy's interpretation of the figure of Napoleon, his beliefs about him, and his portrayal of Bonaparte in the novel. These could be separated into three different levels, but what we are most interested in here is how he writes Napoleon in the novel and what he thought about Napoleon. What he meant to write and what he did write can be two different things, but what is Napoleon in War and Peace?
3. History's portrayal and understanding of Napoleon Bonaparte. This is really relevant since most of our engagement with history does not come with an actual connection with "historical data" but instead interpretations or distillations of "historical data". Again, this is not uniform because each historian has their own interpretation of the "historical data" and that historical data changes over time. That's why in our context, when we are talking about War and Peace, it is important to at least realize and remember that what we know or understand about Bonaparte's actions is different than the historical data that was available for Tolstoy when he was writing War and Peace. How different and who has better access to the data is an interesting question I am definitely not qualified to answer (even though Tolstoy was much closer to the events, we usually tend to believe we have the better point of view when it comes to history, which is probably a bias), but it should be considered as something that exists. Perhaps more importantly, the perception of Napoleon is certainly different now than it was in Tolstoy's time, and this does not count geographical and national differences of perceptions.
4. "Historical data". What records we have or could have of Napoleon's actions or words such as memoirs, bulletins, letters, official records, or any other primary source that can be used to construct narratives or help understand what happened, what was said, etc.
5. Napoleon's words and actions. These could be separated into different levels, as what one says and does are often two very different things, and this is certainly true when talking about Napoleon. Just combining them for ease, we have what he actually did and said, which is of course different than the "historical data" because the "historical data" is what is saved and passed down and subject to all the things that go into preserving an event or phrase, such as misremembering, untruths, or simplification. A great example of this is Napoleon's memoirs, which are widely considered to be subject to all of these things.
6. Lastly, we have Napoleon Bonaparte as he knew himself, as well as his thoughts and inner life. This of course differs from the outer life and actions, as our perceptions of self and what we keep inside is often very different from what we do, how we appear, or how we are perceived by others. It is important to concede that not only can we not know this Napoleon Bonaparte, we really can't know this about anyone, even our most intimate relations, as we interpret them from what they say, do, and how we perceive them.
All these levels, layers, and different versions of Napoleon Bonaparte collide and become different Napoleons. We would probably agree that the real Napoleon is/was either the last or the second to last Napoleon, but as the levels or layers above show, this is really impossible to get to. So we have a real person that existed, that had wants, needs, desires, inclinations, suffered pain, felt enjoyment, and it is someone we can't really know and instead create our own versions of, with Tolstoy's being only one of the most famous ones. Tolstoy's Napoleon is no more real than the version of Napoleon portrayed in a biography or podcast of Napoleon or you trying to describe Napoleon to a friend or for some sort of project. That of course doesn't mean every Napoleon is equal, as some conceptions of Napoleon are clearly better than others. Problems really arise, however, when Napoleons that are vastly different are difficult to evaluate.
On the other hand, characters like Pierre don't really exist and came out of Tolstoy's mind (and perhaps experiences). A gray area is created in characters like Denisov or Nikolai Bolkonsky, who are characters based in part on either historical characters or people Tolstoy knew or knew about.
But these characters in themselves exist on many different planes and become many different characters in the different translations and each reader or critic's conception of that character creates, in itself, a different character. The most obvious examples are in the different adaptations of the novel in which different actors and directors make different conceptions of the characters. In fact, when you Google "Andrei Bolkonsky", his name is attached to pictures of the actor who played him in the latest BBC adaptation of the novel. In fact, personally, despite all the descriptions Pierre gets in the novel, it is almost impossible for me not to picture Anthony Hopkins playing the character.
This is important to understand because it means that as long as a text like War and Peace or the texts around War and Peace exists, it "lives" and the characters inside of it "live". As with Napoleon, each point of view and bit of information "adds" to who he is and how he is perceived (of course not every piece of information is good, bad, or even neutral). Through these information pieces and perceptions, we construct competing narratives about Napoleon, Pierre, or the Bolkonskys, and through those discussions make the novel meaningful in ways Tolstoy couldn't have possibly fathomed. The meaning or value of the novel does not lie in what Tolstoy meant to say in the novel. In many ways, Tolstoy's intention for War and Peace is irrelevant to its survival because I doubt severely the enshrined classics of literature, film, and art continued to exist as living texts because of the author's intent. Instead, they continue to exist because of the connection they make with readers and the interest they have to scholars. Without going too deep into the history of War and Peace's influence and survival, its connection to Russian history and the character of the Russian people plays a large role in its survival in Russia, while its survival in the West most likely lies in its plot and characters. It continues to live here and keeps getting adapted, at least in Europe, because it provides an epic scale (its length, which is its most famous characteristic, is probably the biggest reason for its connection to popular culture) and has characters that go through a tremendous amount of suffering and reflection.
And this is the infinite beast of War and Peace. Just as characters, especially Napoleon, have and can have countless pages written about them, videos made about them, or just words spoken about them, novels, art, or any kind of work can be broken down into irreducibly complex pieces or abstracted into something so large or alien that it resembles the abstractor more than the work itself. For War and Peace, because of its length, characters, historical terrain, and for non-Russians, exotic culture, this idea of a living, growing, and abstracted text is true to an exaggerated nature. It can continually be added to both personally, as the person knows more and more about the novel and its subject, and as a society, as new readers bring their own new suppositions and realities to the text, it continues to grow as well. The only way that it can shrink, from a societal standpoint (on a personal level, it is very easy to forget much of the information and impact the novel can have), is if the text and its surrounding texts, such as the works of Leo Tolstoy, Russian history, Russian literature, or Napoleon, are no longer read or discussed, which is of course a possibility. Even if these subjects lose their share in the market of ideas, the work shrinks in its share of impact on society, and becomes more of just an abstract scholarly interest. This is at once scary and acceptable from a societal standpoint, depending, of course, on what it is replaced by. The "untouchable classics" (does Ovid hold any impact on culture or anything other than a select group of scholars today?) become replaced by new "classics" or, as culture sways and reorganizes, by entire genres and technological innovations, redefining the culture and its texts. Some of these developments can be called "morally good" or "morally bad" and it is up to the culture and those in and out of the culture to debate which ideas are "good" or "bad" (just as with political, religious, and social decisions) and decide where the culture should head.
The main point that can be gleaned however, is that we are at a moment in which it is easier than ever to access information relevant to War and Peace while the prevailing belief is that "literacy" and interest in "the classics" is severely waning, if not dead. Whether or not "literacy" and "the classics" are actually dying, and what that means for us and what our obligation is in society, "the classics" and more specifically, War and Peace, sit at an interesting time where they can be reevaluated and discussed in a new and hopefully interesting way.
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