ABSTRACT
Of the innumerable influences on War and Peace Tolstoy openly invited comparison only to Homer, with whom consideration of the work as an epic structure must therefore begin. Homer, no more than Tolstoy, cannot negotiate this radical turning without an element of contradiction, as emerges most disconcertingly when the Iliad's heroes reappear as somewhat different characters in the Odyssey. Tolstoy's Helene is in fact an unmistakable imitation of that Helen of Troy, and her entrance into Anna Scherer's soiree reenacts Helen's entrance onto the walls of Troy in the Iliad. Tolstoy does not let his readers long forget that epics are what the great monsters of history carry around with them: Alexander carried his copy of the Iliad to India; Napoleon has his text of Ossian with him at Moscow. Tolstoy, then, is entirely typical in ending on a note that seems furthest from the tradition.
