Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature.

“I can neither taste nor smell,” he remarked, sniffing at his glass. “This cold is tiresome. They talk about medicine – what is the good of medicine when it can’t cure a cold! Corvisart gave me these lozenges but they don’t help at all. What can doctors cure? One can’t cure anything. Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with remedies. Our body is like a perfect watch that should go for a certain time; watchmaker cannot open it, he can only adjust it by fumbling, and that blindfold… Yes, our body is just a machine for living, that is all.”

by Leo Tolstoy (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910)
from War and Peace (1869)
Chapter XXIX
Image – openDemocracy

Napoleon is Unhappy about Being Sick

War and Peace is an epic historical fiction set in the Napoleonic era. In this passage Leo Tolstoy describes Napoleon, supreme emperor in the midst of invading Russia, stricken with a mundane, everyday reason to complain about the unfairness of things. Napoleon has a cold.

Napoleon says “Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its nature.” A natural next step would be to ask about what else is “nature.”

Natural Facts behind War and Peace

The Setting

Tolstoy described the setting of War and Peace as “the time of our grandfathers.”

During the years described in War and Peace, Russia’s impending end came from outside, courtesy of Napoleon. True to history, War and Peace describes Russians retreating before the largest invasion force in history, destroying what the French could use as they left: “Moscow was burned by her inhabitants it is true; but not by the inhabitants who had lingered on, but by the inhabitants who had abandoned her. Moscow did not, like Berlin, Vienna, and other towns, escape harm while in the occupation of the enemy, simply because her inhabitants did not receive the French with the keys, and the bread and salt of welcome, but abandoned her.”

The Russians had retreated in advance of the French, who overextended themselves in pursuit. The French expected some negotiation on the part of Moscow’s authorities, to assure good treatment. Instead, they found Moscow barren. The French starved, froze and retreated: about ten thousand of half a million troops made it out of Russia.

The Russians weren’t in great shape either, but they had their pride and their country.

The Audience

In contrast, during Tolstoy’s time, destruction came from within. This novel was written primarily between 1864 and 1869. Though Russian serfdom had been abolished in 1861, Georgian serfs would not be freed for another ten years. In the mid 1800′s 40% of the population were serfs, virtually slaves. Freeing them created an unsettled, impoverished mass of newly free Russians, some landless, some with small plots of land. Both landowners and the landless struggled to pay high taxes. Some of the struggling landowners were former serf owners, selling off property to pay taxes and maintain themselves in luxurious lifestyles that were no longer practical. The stage had been set for the end of Russia as they knew it, from both top and bottom of the social strata.

Life was hard. The Napoleonic years were hard, too, but the knowledge that invading Russia was to be a disaster for Napoleon had to give Russian readers of War and Peace some encouragement. War and Peace was a hit.

History and a Head Cold

Historical fiction can use the past to create a shared appreciation of present-day issues that may otherwise be too raw or divisive. We’ve already lived through the past. We know how it ends. We may like the past because we’re satisfied with how we did, or it may push us to more awareness of the present day. A writer like Tolstoy takes the underlying reservoir of trust that comes with a shared history, and uses it to show readers to themselves. It helped that he did exhaustive research and incorporated writing from his own experience of serving in a war: he was Tolstoy.

Life and death, war and peace, power and social change were not enough: when French and Russian units were suffering through the bloodiest battle of the war, Tolstoy thought to remind us that Napoleon had fallen to that most ubiquitous of winter maladies, the head cold. True story.

I think including this line about being a machine for living was a wink at Napoleon’s fallibility. Napoleon really did have a cold, and at a very inconvenient time. A machine, he was not.

Tags: Health, Nature, War and Peace
Posted in Leo Tolstoy

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