'Swarm Life' and the Biology of War and Peace

Autor:	Thomas Newlin
Rok vydání:	2012
Předmět:	Cultural Studies History Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) Swarm behaviour Environmental ethics
Zdroj:	Slavic Review. 71:359-384
ISSN:	2325-7784 0037-6779
Popis:	In the spring of 1863, Lev Tolstoi, newly married and soon to be a father, began to conceive of the work that would eventually become War And Peace. That same spring he also took up beekeeping. While in practical terms his “bee passion” proved relatively short-lived, it was an exceptionally intense engagement with a miniaturized and uniquely observable biological and social universe. In this article, Thomas Newlin explores how Tolstoi's dual enmeshment in “swarm life”—that is, in the biologically fraught realms of marriage and beekeeping—influenced both the unconventional form of War and Peace and its equally unconventional ideas (in particular Tolstoi's linked conceptions of the nature of history and of consciousness). The implications of a “swarm” model of history ultimately troubled Tolstoi, however; his doubts about the imperatives of biology do not play themselves out fully in War and Peace but instead lurk just beneath its surface.
Databáze:	OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz:	https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_________::0adbbbc0f3701c1fe93376d208c3720a https://doi.org/10.1017/s0037677900013656 Zobrazit plný text záznamu