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Friday
In yesterday’s essay I wrote about how John Limbert, one of the Iranian hostages, found comfort in War and Peace when he was imprisoned in the American Embassy basement. “Amid chaos and insanity, humanity and family endure,” Limbert wrote.
Limbert shared his experience after reading an article on the novel’s insights into diplomats by former diplomat Fletcher Burton, my late brother’s best friend. “Practitioners of the diplomatic profession today can learn a lot about how a brilliant writer once viewed this profession and how many people still regard it,” Fletcher writes. “Diplomacy is the fascinating third strand of War and Peace.”
Fletcher notes that Tolstoy’s understanding of diplomats derived in part from the ambassadors who were among his ancestors, and Pierre, the novel’s protagonist and partial stand-in for Tolstoy, considers going into the diplomatic corps at one point. Fletcher speculates that perhaps Tolstoy himself contemplated diplomacy at one point.
Perhaps that’s why Tolstoy gives us a “sometimes bemused, sometimes mocking” depiction of diplomats. While they loom large in the novel, Fletcher says, their diplomacy is often “small-bore.”
The most prominent diplomat is Bilibin, a complexly drawn Russian ambassador who has both strengths and limitations. Fletcher says that he is not “one of the run-of-the-mill diplomats who advance solely by speaking French and keeping their head down” but a hard worker who “takes pains in producing memos and reports (what we would call tradecraft).” He has also a “facility with bon mots”:
Time and again, he launches them at social events. To signal their coming, Bilibin always screws up his face, as Tolstoy describes a dozen times in his most sustained satirical sally. Bilibin assumes they are so sparkling, they will be repeated often. If, however, he senses the company is not appreciative, he “treasures them up.” Mostly these are puns and wordplays, amusing but not profound, drawn from incidents of the day or—here a Tolstoyan zinger—from Bilibin’s own dispatches.
Bilibin’s major failing, Fletcher contends, is one that is common amongst diplomats: he “seems more concerned with the ‘how’ in chronicling events than the ‘why’ in comprehending them.” It’s a “resounding critique,” he says, because Tolstoy
is supremely interested in the big Why. He scoffs at discussions among his characters as to whether a diplomatic note was well or awkwardly composed. Trivial matters these, in his Olympian view. He dismisses the contention that a certain Diplomatic Note No. 178, through its poor wording, marked a turning point in the Napoleonic wars.
Tolstoy does not entirely reject skillful diplomacy. He even seems to relish diplomatic gamesmanship, such as how to address Napoleon in a way that doesn’t bestow upon him any undue status. Since “Emperor” or any other exalted question is out of the question, Bilibin comes up with an ingenious solution: “To the Chief of the French Government.” Yet for all such cleverness, Fletcher says, in the end Tolstoy “seems to whisper small potatoes.”
And even though Tolstoy seems impressed by how Bilibin responds to a Napoleon challenge, he has the same reaction. Napoleon drops his handkerchief in front of the ambassador, “a cunning test of both his manners and loyalty.” Realizing that “turning on his heel would be bad form, and bending to retrieve the article even worse,” Billibin quickly devises
a face-saving stratagem: He drops his own handkerchief on the same spot … and then picks it up … and leaves the other. Tolstoy seems to enjoy this rebuke to Napoleon…. Well done, ambassador. But again that whisper, just a piece of linen.
For all of Bilibin’s cleverness, Tolstoy has more respect for the peasant Karataev, Pierre’s prison companion, who exudes “earth sagacity and simple integrity.” He also prefers General Kutuzov, who doesn’t even bother “to read dispatches or absorb briefings, the very stuff of diplomacy.” Instead, the general “operates on a higher, or deeper level. He moves on a Tolstoyan plane.”
For instance, Kutuzov demonstrates a deeper understanding of diplomacy than Bilibin at one key moment, one which reminds me of the current jockeying between “Art of the Deal” Donald Trump and Chinese premiere Xi. First to Kutuzov:
Having clashed with Kutuzov at Borodino before advancing to occupy Moscow, Napoleon assumes the tsar would be ready for a peace settlement. To initiate talks, he sends him a note in St. Petersburg and awaits a reply. None is forthcoming, so another note is transmitted. Again, no answer from the imperial capital.
In the event, there would be no reply to Napoleon and no negotiations. Tolstoy portrays this diplomatic silence as a masterstroke, the very absence of diplomacy as a Russian triumph. Facing a burnt-down Moscow and an icily silent St. Petersburg, the French invader realizes the snare has sprung. After five weeks in Moscow, Napoleon orders the winter retreat of his Grande Armée out of Russia, back across the Nieman. It is one of the most harrowing retreats in history and most gripping in literature.
While I’m have no special insight into current trade talks, it appears that Xi is driving Trump crazy by simply not responding to his various threats. The more that Xi remains silent, the weaker Trump looks. Meanwhile, China is starting to forge new alliances with America’s former allies, including Japan, South Korea, and Europe, while America retreats across the Nieman.
Back to Bilibin, who has become no more than a sideshow by the end of the novel. Fletcher explains why:
Its memorable characters—Pierre, Natasha, Andrey—endure great suffering and, at the same time, achieve wisdom, a peace after war. This is an echo of Aeschylus that wisdom comes because of suffering, not in spite of it….Our dear Bilibin, the consummate diplomat, the paladin of high society, the spinner of gossamer witticisms, never suffers … that is, until he is forced to leave Vienna for a charmless village.
I love how Fletcher draws on a lifetime in the foreign service to examine War and Peace and how he uses the novel as a practical guide for diplomats. As he observes,
Puns are not policy. Cleverness is not wisdom. Intuition can be a better compass than information. Humility in the face of complexity is a virtue. Time and patience, Kutuzov’s two strategic principles, should be cultivated. The craft of How is inferior to the quest for Why….Sometimes silence is the best response. St. Petersburg is not Moscow. Nor is it Borodino, nor the vast countryside. The capital (read: the Beltway) may be the room where it happens, but it is not the front line, the realm where it happens, where History really happens.”
Fletcher concludes, “And literature, especially a magnificent epic, is a marvelous teacher. It can offer guidance. Maybe even deliverance.”
