Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy (nice books to read .txt) 📖
- Author: graf Leo Tolstoy
Book online «War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy (nice books to read .txt) 📖». Author graf Leo Tolstoy
“And what’s your name?”
“Peter KirĂlych.”
“Well then, Peter KirĂlych, come along with us, we’ll take you there.”
In the total darkness the soldiers walked with Pierre to Mozháysk.
By the time they got near Mozháysk and began ascending the steep hill into the town, the cocks were already crowing. Pierre went on with the soldiers, quite forgetting that his inn was at the bottom of the hill and that he had already passed it. He would not soon have remembered this, such was his state of forgetfulness, had he not halfway up the hill stumbled upon his groom, who had been to look for him in the town and was returning to the inn. The groom recognized Pierre in the darkness by his white hat.
“Your excellency!” he said. “Why, we were beginning to despair! How is it you are on foot? And where are you going, please?”
“Oh, yes!” said Pierre.
The soldiers stopped.
“So you’ve found your folk?” said one of them. “Well, good-by, Peter KirĂlych—isn’t it?”
“Good-by, Peter KirĂlych!” Pierre heard the other voices repeat.
“Good-by!” he said and turned with his groom toward the inn.
“I ought to give them something!” he thought, and felt in his pocket. “No, better not!” said another, inner voice.
There was not a room to be had at the inn, they were all occupied. Pierre went out into the yard and, covering himself up head and all, lay down in his carriage.
Scarcely had Pierre laid his head on the pillow before he felt himself falling asleep, but suddenly, almost with the distinctness of reality, he heard the boom, boom, boom of firing, the thud of projectiles, groans and cries, and smelled blood and powder, and a feeling of horror and dread of death seized him. Filled with fright he opened his eyes and lifted his head from under his cloak. All was tranquil in the yard. Only someone’s orderly passed through the gateway, splashing through the mud, and talked to the innkeeper. Above Pierre’s head some pigeons, disturbed by the movement he had made in sitting up, fluttered under the dark roof of the penthouse. The whole courtyard was permeated by a strong peaceful smell of stable yards, delightful to Pierre at that moment. He could see the clear starry sky between the dark roofs of two penthouses.
“Thank God, there is no more of that!” he thought, covering up his head again. “Oh, what a terrible thing is fear, and how shamefully I yielded to it! But they... they were steady and calm all the time, to the end...” thought he.
They, in Pierre’s mind, were the soldiers, those who had been at the battery, those who had given him food, and those who had prayed before the icon. They, those strange men he had not previously known, stood out clearly and sharply from everyone else.
“To be a soldier, just a soldier!” thought Pierre as he fell asleep, “to enter communal life completely, to be imbued by what makes them what they are. But how to cast off all the superfluous, devilish burden of my outer man? There was a time when I could have done it. I could have run away from my father, as I wanted to. Or I might have been sent to serve as a soldier after the duel with DĂłlokhov.” And the memory of the dinner at the English Club when he had challenged DĂłlokhov flashed through Pierre’s mind, and then he remembered his benefactor at TorzhĂłk. And now a picture of a solemn meeting of the lodge presented itself to his mind. It was taking place at the English Club and someone near and dear to him sat at the end of the table. “Yes, that is he! It is my benefactor. But he died!” thought Pierre. “Yes, he died, and I did not know he was alive. How sorry I am that he died, and how glad I am that he is alive again!” On one side of the table sat Anatole, DĂłlokhov, NesvĂtski, DenĂsov, and others like them (in his dream the category to which these men belonged was as clearly defined in his mind as the category of those he termed they), and he heard those people, Anatole and DĂłlokhov, shouting and singing loudly; yet through their shouting the voice of his benefactor was heard speaking all the time and the sound of his words was as weighty and uninterrupted as the booming on the battlefield, but pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what his benefactor was saying, but he knew (the categories of thoughts were also quite distinct in his dream) that he was talking of goodness and the possibility of being what they were. And they with their simple, kind, firm faces surrounded his benefactor on all sides. But though they were kindly they did not look at Pierre and did not know him. Wishing to speak and to attract their attention, he got up, but at that moment his legs grew cold and bare.
He felt ashamed, and with one arm covered his legs from which his cloak had in fact slipped. For a moment as he was rearranging his cloak Pierre opened his eyes and saw the same penthouse roofs, posts, and yard, but now they were all bluish, lit up, and glittering with frost or dew.
“It is dawn,” thought Pierre. “But that’s not what I want. I want to hear and understand my benefactor’s words.” Again he covered himself up with his cloak, but now neither the lodge nor his benefactor was there. There were only thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts that someone was uttering or that he himself was formulating.
Afterwards when he recalled those thoughts Pierre was convinced that someone outside himself had spoken them, though the impressions of that day had evoked them. He had never, it seemed to him, been able to think and express his thoughts like that when awake.
“To endure war is the most difficult subordination of man’s freedom to the law of God,” the voice had said. “Simplicity is submission to the will of God; you cannot escape from Him. And they are simple. They do not talk, but act. The spoken word is silver but the unspoken is golden. Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself. The hardest thing (Pierre went on thinking, or hearing, in his dream) is to be able in your soul to unite the meaning of all. To unite all?” he asked himself. “No, not to unite. Thoughts cannot be united, but to harness all these thoughts together is what we need! Yes, one must harness them, must harness them!” he repeated to himself with inward rapture, feeling that these words and they alone expressed what he wanted to say and solved the question that tormented him.
“Yes, one must harness, it is time to harness.”
“Time to harness, time to harness, your excellency! Your excellency!” some voice was repeating. “We must harness, it is time to harness....”
It was the voice of the groom, trying to wake him. The sun shone straight into Pierre’s face. He glanced at the dirty innyard in the middle of which soldiers were watering their lean horses at the pump while carts were passing out of the gate.
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