THE CHARACTER DESCRIPTION INFO DUMP

Am I about to put up a full chapter of Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace as an example of what not to do? Isn’t this one of the greatest works of literature of all time? Surely it can only be used as a source of positive examples, to show us lesser authors how to do this thing, right?

Wrong.

Whatever your feelings are of War & Peace, and whatever mine might be (I’m still trudging my way through it, since January 1) let’s please at least stipulate that the novel as an art form has evolved considerably since War & Peace was first published in full book form in 1869. That’s 154 years of novelists and editors inching things this way and that, responding to massive changes in the culture, and so on.

So then, yes, Leo Tolstoy, by today’s standards, really crapped out in Volume IV, Part XII, Chapter XII of War & Peace when he wrote this full power character description info dump:

***

Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials were confined in the shed in which Pierre had been placed and where he remained for four weeks.

When Pierre remembered them afterwards they all seemed misty figures to him except Platón Karatáev, who always remained in his mind a most vivid and precious memory and the personification of everything Russian, kindly, and round. When Pierre saw his neighbor next morning at dawn the first impression of him, as of something round, was fully confirmed: Platón’s whole figure—in a French overcoat girdled with a cord, a soldier’s cap, and bast shoes—was round. His head was quite round, his back, chest, shoulders, and even his arms, which he held as if ever ready to embrace something, were rounded, his pleasant smile and his large, gentle brown eyes were also round.

Platón Karatáev must have been fifty, judging by his stories of campaigns he had been in, told as by an old soldier. He did not himself know his age and was quite unable to determine it. But his brilliantly white, strong teeth which showed in two unbroken semicircles when he laughed—as he often did—were all sound and good, there was not a gray hair in his beard or on his head, and his whole body gave an impression of suppleness and especially of firmness and endurance.

His face, despite its fine, rounded wrinkles, had an expression of innocence and youth, his voice was pleasant and musical. But the chief peculiarity of his speech was its directness and appositeness. It was evident that he never considered what he had said or was going to say, and consequently the rapidity and justice of his intonation had an irresistible persuasiveness.

His physical strength and agility during the first days of his imprisonment were such that he seemed not to know what fatigue and sickness meant. Every night before lying down, he said: “Lord, lay me down as a stone and raise me up as a loaf!” and every morning on getting up, he said: “I lay down and curled up, I get up and shake myself.” And indeed he only had to lie down, to fall asleep like a stone, and he only had to shake himself, to be ready without a moment’s delay for some work, just as children are ready to play directly they awake. He could do everything, not very well but not badly. He baked, cooked, sewed, planed, and mended boots. He was always busy, and only at night allowed himself conversation—of which he was fond—and songs. He did not sing like a trained singer who knows he is listened to, but like the birds, evidently giving vent to the sounds in the same way that one stretches oneself or walks about to get rid of stiffness, and the sounds were always high-pitched, mournful, delicate, and almost feminine, and his face at such times was very serious.

Having been taken prisoner and allowed his beard to grow, he seemed to have thrown off all that had been forced upon him—everything military and alien to himself—and had returned to his former peasant habits.

“A soldier on leave—a shirt outside breeches,” he would say.

He did not like talking about his life as a soldier, though he did not complain, and often mentioned that he had not been flogged once during the whole of his army service. When he related anything it was generally some old and evidently precious memory of his “Christian” life, as he called his peasant existence. The proverbs, of which his talk was full, were for the most part not the coarse and indecent saws soldiers employ, but those folk sayings which taken without a context seem so insignificant, but when used appositely suddenly acquire a significance of profound wisdom.

He would often say the exact opposite of what he had said on a previous occasion, yet both would be right. He liked to talk and he talked well, adorning his speech with terms of endearment and with folk sayings which Pierre thought he invented himself, but the chief charm of his talk lay in the fact that the commonest events—sometimes just such as Pierre had witnessed without taking notice of them—assumed in Karatáev’s a character of solemn fitness. He liked to hear the folk tales one of the soldiers used to tell of an evening (they were always the same), but most of all he liked to hear stories of real life. He would smile joyfully when listening to such stories, now and then putting in a word or asking a question to make the moral beauty of what he was told clear to himself. Karatáev had no attachments, friendships, or love, as Pierre understood them, but loved and lived affectionately with everything life brought him in contact with, particularly with man—not any particular man, but those with whom he happened to be. He loved his dog, his comrades, the French, and Pierre who was his neighbor, but Pierre felt that in spite of Karatáev’s affectionate tenderness for him (by which he unconsciously gave Pierre’s spiritual life its due) he would not have grieved for a moment at parting from him. And Pierre began to feel in the same way toward Karatáev.

To all the other prisoners Platón Karatáev seemed a most ordinary soldier. They called him “little falcon” or “Platósha,” chaffed him good-naturedly, and sent him on errands. But to Pierre he always remained what he had seemed that first night: an unfathomable, rounded, eternal personification of the spirit of simplicity and truth.

Platón Karatáev knew nothing by heart except his prayers. When he began to speak he seemed not to know how he would conclude.

Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words, would ask him to repeat them, but Platón could never recall what he had said a moment before, just as he never could repeat to Pierre the words of his favorite song: native and birch tree and my heart is sick occurred in it, but when spoken and not sung, no meaning could be got out of it. He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life. But his life, as he regarded it, had no meaning as a separate thing. It had meaning only as part of a whole of which he was always conscious. His words and actions flowed from him as evenly, inevitably, and spontaneously as fragrance exhales from a flower. He could not understand the value or significance of any word or deed taken separately.

***

That was a lot, right? And was any of it happening in the narrative “now”? Was there anything at stake in the moment? Did this move the story of War & Peace forward? Does this show at all or just tell?

Now, if you tell me you write exactly this sort of thing in your notes, to solidify a character in your mind before or while you write? Fantastic! But if you have a chapter in your book—or even part of a chapter—that reads like this, cut that up and show us all about this character when and if some part of the character’s personality, mannerisms, actions, etc., come up organically as part of your story.

Tolstoy wrote all this before his fellow countryman Anton Chekhov evoked his famous gun. If you don’t now what I mean by that, read this and/or watch this. But, basically, now we, Mr. Tolstoy’s readers, will feel we have to remember all of this stuff about Platón Karatáev, otherwise, why is it in here? And then any part of it that doesn’t somehow or another play out or circle back or in some way or another pay off feels like a loose thread. How much of this am I supposed to care about? All of it, right—or it wouldn’t be here…?

Okay, Tolstoy, Russia, 1869… the novel form itself very much a work in progress (and it still is!).

But hey, authors, America (at least), 2023… no on the character background info dump!

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—Philip Athans

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Absolutely not one word of this post was in any way generated by any version of an “AI” or Large Language Model.

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