As a counterbalance to the first scenes, Tolstoy takes us to a family party in Moscow with Marya Dmitryevna's frankness and warmth as counterpoise to Anna Pavlovna's superficiality and coldness. Joy, affection, youth, generosity, and spontaneity characterize the name-day celebration, with Natasha as the radiant focus for these qualities. We recognize her potential intensity and intuitive force immediately. Her emotional freedom and readiness to love identify her as the female protagonist, and we see, as they dance, the first connection between Pierre and his future bride. With Nikolay's patriotism stirred, with Natasha's singing,and with her father and godmother dancing, Tolstoy provides a sense of the fullness of life as the party is in full swing.
Now we are ready to learn of death. Without irony, Tolstoy tells us that as the Rostovs dance the"sixth anglaise" Count Bezuhov suffers his sixth stroke. This is but one of many ways that the author devises to emphasize a favorite idea: We cannot know life without knowing death. At this early juncture, however, the statement merely prefaces what Tolstoy considers a basic investigation in the novel. The youthful characters of War and Peace have yet to discover the awesomeness of life before this death can deeply touch them. Here, the loss of the old count shows the symbolic passing of the old order while the new generation blooms on this name-day. We have yet to see the intensifying throes of maturation and the actual tension between generations to come later.
