>I say: Well, of course not every (or any) turn of caharcter in a >literary work has to be a Lesson, though in Tolstoi's case you can >bet that that every turn is intended to be. The narrator (whom I think we can equate with the voice of Tolstoy) takes care to lay out a Lesson in the first and second epilogues, which concerns how we are to understand history, Yeah, well, that's not the sort of Lesson I mean. T makes the same point better in the battle scenes, with Napolean clearly not in charge at Borodino, and this is only one theme in a big book. The question of whether it's best to live without reflection is another.   YF says: I don't know if Tolstoy thought of living without reflection as an ideal for himself (and great artists like him), but it is clear that he idealized it for women and peasants.\ . . . Tolstoy's women in War and Peace led Turgenev, who was still estranged from Tolstoy, to ask a friend: "Why is it that all his good women are unfailingly not only females--but fools? And why does he try to convince the reader that if a woman is wise and cultured she is without exception a phrasemonger and a liar?"7... Actually I think he did idealize it for himself too. It seems to have been a source of agony to him that he was born with a brain that would not stop going. The brainy guy in the book (W&P), Prince Andre, is a picture of misery, and Pierre is never so unhappy as when he uses his limited apparatus to try to think. jks <hr size=1>Do you Yahoo!? <a href="http://rd.yahoo.com/mail/mailsig/*http://mailplus.yahoo.com">Yahoo! Mail Plus</a> - Powerful. Affordable. <a href="http://rd.yahoo.com/mail/mailsig/*http://mailplus.yahoo.com">Sign up now</a>