How War and Peace drew on The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
A documented line of influence: Leo Tolstoy demonstrably engaged Laurence Sterne’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Laurence Sterne · 1759
EnlightenmentThe influenced
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy · 1869
The Age of the NovelRelevance
7/10
On War and Peace’s page
- When the narrator of War and Peace stops the war to lecture you on what really drives history, that habit traces back to Sterne
- Tolstoy counted Tristram Shandy's author as a formative influence and translated his work — the digressive, self-interrupting form is the acknowledged precursor to these philosophical excurses
- Read Sterne first and Tolstoy's swerves stop looking like flaws and start looking like inheritance
On The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman’s page
- Tolstoy named Sterne among the writers who most strongly impressed him early on, and translated A Sentimental Journey as a young man
- Sterne's narrator who can't stop interrupting himself — looping back, philosophizing, refusing to just tell the story — is the seed of the great digressive engine in War and Peace
- The shape goes forward: those author-intruding swerves become Tolstoy's long excursions on history and free will