"On the 12th of June, 1812 the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes."
..."war...an event...opposed to human reason and to human nature."
Book nine, chapter 1 of "War and Peace", published in 1869 by Leo Tolstoy.
Even a hundred and thirty six years ago he had it pegged.
C.S. Lewis was a "thinking person" who had little time for stories and novels that were not true. Then he picked up a novel "in which the people and places were so vividly described and clearly illuminated, all within the context of a profoundly Christian view of life and history, that his vision of what fiction could do was changed forever."
ReplyDeleteThe novel was Tolstoy's War and Peace.
...and now you know the rest of the story.