Eyes
and Lips in War and Peace
Tolstoy often uses descriptions of
gestures or bodily features to cement his characterizations or move the plot
along. When Prince Andrei Bolkonsky returns to the family estate after he and
the Russian army have retreated from Smolensk—in Vol. 3, Part 1, Ch. 8—the
relatives he encounters after a long absence are all described. His sister
Princess Marya “was the same timid, plain, aging maiden, fearful and suffering perpetual
moral crises, living out the best years of her life uselessly and joylessly.”
No mention here of her “radiant, glistening eyes,” a description that often
accompanies her.
Young Prince Nikolushka is
described as having grown and changed. He has dark curly hair, and “unaware of
this himself, when laughing and having fun, he would raise his attractive upper
lip in exactly the same way as had his late mother, the little princess.” Dead
in childbirth by this point in the novel, the little princess, we recall, is almost
constantly accompanied by that gesture of lip raising when she smiles.
Later on in Volume 3 (Part 2, Ch.
13), Tolstoy needs to show the haggard Princess Marya at her best, in the
scenes where Nicholas Rostov first meets her (they will later become man and
wife). At this point she is in dire straits, since her father, the old prince,
has just died, the French are advancing upon the Bolkonsky estate, and her own
peasants are preventing her from leaving. But when Rostov walks into the room,
“she cast her deep and radiant gaze upon him and began speaking in a breaking voice
that quavered with emotion.” There we have it: despite her plain looks,
Princess Marya’s radiant eyes, along with the helplessness of her
position—which affords Nicholas Rostov the opportunity to play the role of
knight/savior of the damsel in distress—carries the day, and Nicholas is won
over.
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