The Cold White Light of Truth — War and Peace

On that bright evening of August 25, Prince Andrew lies leaning on his elbow in a broken-down shed in the village of Knyazkovo at the further end of his regiment's encampment. Through a gap in the broken wall he can see, beside the wooden fence, a row of thirty-year-old birches with their lower branches lopped off, a field of oat shocks, and bushes near which rises the smoke of the soldiers' kitchens. Narrow and burdensome and useless to anyone as his life now seems, he feels agitated and irritable on the eve of battle as he did seven years before at Austerlitz.

He has received and given the orders for next day's battle and has nothing more to do. But the simplest, clearest, and therefore most terrible thoughts will give him no peace. He knows tomorrow's battle will be the most terrible of all he has taken part in, and for the first time the possibility of death presents itself not in relation to any worldly matter or its effect on others, but simply in relation to himself, to his own soul, vividly, plainly, terribly, almost as a certainty. From the height of this perception all that had previously tormented him is illumined by a cold white light without shadows or perspective. All life appears like magic-lantern pictures long gazed at by artificial light through a glass. Now he sees those badly daubed pictures in clear daylight. Glory, the good of society, love of a woman, the Fatherland itself: how important they seemed, with what profound meaning. And it is all so simple, pale, and crude in the cold white light of this morning he feels is dawning for him. Three great sorrows hold his attention: his love for a woman, his father's death, and the French invasion that has overrun half Russia. Love, that little girl who seemed brimming over with mystic forces. Yes, he loved her. He made romantic plans. Oh, what a boy he was. He believed in some ideal love that was to keep her faithful for the whole year of his absence, like the gentle dove in the fable. It was all much simpler, and horrible.

When his father built Bald Hills he thought the place was his: his land, his air, his peasants. Napoleon came and swept him aside, unconscious of his existence, as he might brush a chip from his path, and Bald Hills and his whole life fell to pieces. Princess Mary says it is a trial sent from above. What is the trial for, when he is not here and will never return? For whom then is the trial intended? The Fatherland, the destruction of Moscow! And tomorrow I shall be killed, perhaps not even by a Frenchman but by one of our own men, by a soldier discharging a musket close to my ear as one did yesterday, and the French will fling me into a hole that I may not stink under their noses, and new conditions of life will arise, which will seem quite ordinary to others and about which I shall know nothing. I shall not exist. He looks at the birches shining, motionless green and yellow foliage, white bark. To die, to be killed tomorrow, that I should not exist, that all this should still be, but no me. The birches, the curly clouds, the campfire smoke change and seem terrible. A cold shiver runs down his spine. He rises quickly, goes out, and walks about.

When he returns, voices are heard. Captain Timokhin, formerly Dolokhov's squadron commander, now from lack of officers a battalion commander, enters shyly with an adjutant and the paymaster. Andrew gives further instructions. Then a familiar lisping voice: Devil take it! Pierre has tripped over a pole and nearly fallen. It is unpleasant for Andrew to meet people of his own set, and Pierre especially, who reminds him of all the painful moments of his last visit to Moscow. You? What a surprise! What brings you here? His eyes and face express more than coldness: hostility, which Pierre notices at once. He had approached full of animation; now he feels constrained. I have come, simply, you know, it interests me. I wish to see the battle. Oh yes, and what do the Masonic brothers say about war? How would they stop it? Well, and how's Moscow? And my people? Have they reached Moscow at last? Yes. Julie Drubetskaya told me so. I went to see them, but missed them. They have gone to your estate near Moscow.