“In these three depictions of death the author observes excellently and with all possible precision available to the human mind those nuances and differences, some of which depend on the nature of the illness or on injury to the organism in general, and others on the nature of the dying man himself and the ideals by which he lived.
“Praskukhin is not sick. His death is sudden, in the tumult and confusion of battle. Of course, the thought of death is constantly in his mind, because men are being killed all around him, but there is no preparation whatsoever of his emotions for separation from life. Moreover, Praskukhin is by no means ideal—not in any sense; he is not even religious, not Orthodox in his feelings, as in the case of Mikhailov, the other officer whom Tolstoy describes in the same sketch. When Mikhailov suffers a bloody gash in the head from a rock, he thinks he has been killed . . . Praskukhin, on the contrary, imagines that he is merely contused, and gives no thought whatsoever to God or his soul.
“One can more or less successfully imagine the confusion of thought and emotion during combat in an ordinary man, who, while being no coward, is not particularly brave either, and who cherishes no lofty ideal in his heart. It is possible to experience this in time of combat danger, quite independently of how the battle may end for one: in death, a wound, or no harm whatsoever.
“But we definitely do not know what a person thinks or feels upon crossing that elusive boundary called death. To depict the change of thoughts and emotions in a contused or wounded man is artistic courage; but to depict the postmortal state of the soul is no longer courage—it is feeble pretence, and nothing more.
“I find, for example, that the depiction of Prince Andrey’s last days and minutes contains not only more poetry, but also more truth than the death of Praskukhin or Ivan Ilyich, because in these latter two deaths Count Tolstoy permits himself to look more boldly behind that fearful and mysterious veil which separates earthly life from the life beyond the grave; in the description of Prince Andrey’s death, he very skilfully avoids this.
“Praskukhin is killed: ‘He neither saw nor heard nor felt anything more,’ et cetera.
“Ivan Ilyich, on the contrary, experiences no fear whatsoever in his very last minutes, because there is no death.
“In place of death, there was light. . . ‘Death is finished,’ he said to himself. ‘It is no more.’ He drew in a breath, stopped in the middle of a sigh, stretched out, and died.
“Of course, such an expedient is incomparably more clever, profound, and subtle in an artistic sense than the flat assertion that Praskukhin thought or saw no more . . .
“. . . from the standpoint of semi-scientific, or even of completely scientific accuracy, Ivan Ilyich’s death is better and truer than Praskukhin’s.” (Leontiev, op. cit.)
[34] sidewhiskers: during the reign of Nicholas I, sidewhiskers and moustaches could only be worn by members of the armed forces. They seem to have been particularly popular among the medical corps.
[35] Mikhal, Mikhailo: Ukrainian forms of the name “Michael” (Russian “Mikhail”).
[36] Kazarsky: Aleksandr Ivanovich Kazarsky (1797-1844), the commander of the brig Merkuriy, whose crew distinguished itself in a battle with two Turkish warships on 14 May 1829.
[37] enough of this: this scene is based on the encounters Tolstoy had with members of the allied forces during the occasional truces and ceasefires that were arranged to make possible the clearing away of the dead bodies. There is also an echo here of his encounter with French and British prisoners of war during 1854. These face-to-face meetings with the citizens of Western nations made a profound impression on Tolstoy. On 5 November 1854, he noted in his diary: “Saw French and British prisoners . . . the very appearance and gait of these men somehow filled me with a sad conviction that they are far superior to our troops.” Subsequent conversations with these foreign nationals made Tolstoy anxious to visit the West, and may have largely been at the root of his decision to visit Paris in 1857.
[38] cadet corps: “In 1855 there were twenty-three of these, with 8,300 students and 1,400 instructors . . . Once enrolled, the cadets took a general course of four years, with great stress on mathematics, along with history and geography, Russian grammar and literature, and French and German . . .” (Curtiss, op. cit.) In the two upper years of these military educational establishments the cadets took military subjects: tactics, fortification, gunnery, topographic sketching and military history, and also physics, chemistry and higher mathematics. They also did much drilling—posture, marching, and the study of the manual of arms.
[39] Nobody seemed to know . . . : “One of the chief reasons for Menshikov’s failings as an administrator was his lack of a staff capable of handling the necessary routine work, which led to general disorder. One officer who was in Sebastopol reported: ‘His whole staff consisted of Colonel Wunsch, chief of staff, and several clerks: the army had no Quartermaster General, no intendant, no director of hospitals. In the clerical section . . . there was such chaos that sometimes they did not know where a certain regiment was . . .’ According to a Colonel Batezatul who served in the Crimea, Colonel Wunsch ‘concentrated in his person all the functions: chief of staff, general on duty, Quartermaster General, intendant, director of the chancellery, hospitals and posts, general police master, and so on.’ Thus from the beginning of operations in the Crimea, great disorder existed in the administration of the army.” (Curtiss, op. cit., pp. 328-9.)
[40] Totleben: Eduard Ivanovich Totleben (1818-84), the Russian general and military engineer who supervised the building of the fortifications around Sebastopol. Author of A Description of the Defence of Sebastopol, the two volumes of which appeared, in both French and Russian, in St Petersburg in 1863 and 1868.
[41] the Belbek: river running parallel to the Great Bay of Sebastopol.
[42] Pellisier: Jean-Jacques Pellisier (1794-1865), commander-in-chief of the French force from May 1855 onwards.
[43] Gorchakov: Mikhail Dmitriyevich Gorchakov (1793-1861) commander-in-chief of the Russian Crimean army from February 1855 onwards.
[44] the Korabelnaya: the eastern district of the South Side of Sebastopol, on the opposite side of the harbour from the North Side.
[45] his estimates are for ten roubles fifty: see Introduction, pp. 23-5.
[46] Polish zrazy: meat pies stuffed with rice, buckwheat porridge, etc.
[47] Fatherland Notes: a journal which was published in St Petersburg from 1839 until 1884.
[48] Volkovo Polye: an artillery range in St Petersburg.
[49] two cubic sazhens: a sazhen, or sagene, was equivalent to 134 metres.
[50] a Kantonist: the son of a soldier, trained for lifelong military service in a special army school.
[51] the Malakhov Hill: Malakhov kurgan, “the Malakoff”—one of the principal fortifications of Sebastopol, situated on the eastern side of the defence line between the 2nd and 3rd bastions; it was considered the key to the whole Sebastopol position. A suburb of Paris is named after the hill.
[52] a handspike: an instrument used for turning guns and lifting heavy weights. “Maj. Mordecai in his report remarked . . . that the Russians had ingenious devices for pointing the guns without exposing the men to enemy fire” (Curtiss, op. cit., p. 150).
Leo Tolstoy, The Sebastopol Sketches
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