I Know, But: The “1812 Overture”

When Tolstoy began working on what would become War and Peace, his 1869 opus that moves fluidly between historical novel and philosophical treatise, he initially had a completely different story in mind. Rather than craft a constellation of parallel and intersecting histories between 1805 and 1820 (with a particular focus on Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia), Tolstoy had wanted to write something rooted in the present: He would begin in 1856, and tell the story of an elderly member of the Decembrists returning to Moscow after three decades in Siberian exile.