Journal articles on the topic 'Lev Tolstói War and Peace'

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.Edmund BurkeSince its first appearance in 1971, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn'sAvgust Chetyrnadtsatogo(henceforth to be referred to asAugust 1914)has been compared to, and measured by the standards of, Lev Tolstoi'sWar and Peace.One might say that both the subject of the novel and the scope of the historical events described in it, as well as its numerous references to Tolstoi, made such comparisons inevitable. Even though virtually all critics were unanimous that Tolstoi was a predominant presence in Solzhenitsyn's mind when he was writing the first “knot” of the multivolume novel cycle, they disagreed about the precise nature of Solzhenitsyn's relationship to Tolstoi. While some critics have been more inclined to see Solzhenitsyn's novel as an emulation of Tolstoi's masterpiece, others have emphasized the antagonistic and polemic quality of Solzhenitsyn's attitudes toward his predecessor—whether Tolstoi the “historiosoph” ofWar and Peace(1865— 1869) or Tolstoi the moralist and aesthetician of the later period.

In the spring of 1863, Lev Tolstoi, newly married and soon to be a father, began to conceive of the work that would eventually become War And Peace. That same spring he also took up beekeeping. While in practical terms his “bee passion” proved relatively short-lived, it was an exceptionally intense engagement with a miniaturized and uniquely observable biological and social universe. In this article, Thomas Newlin explores how Tolstoi's dual enmeshment in “swarm life”—that is, in the biologically fraught realms of marriage and beekeeping—influenced both the unconventional form of War and Peace and its equally unconventional ideas (in particular Tolstoi's linked conceptions of the nature of history and of consciousness). The implications of a “swarm” model of history ultimately troubled Tolstoi, however; his doubts about the imperatives of biology do not play themselves out fully in War and Peace but instead lurk just beneath its surface.

In 1869, shortly after completing War and Peace and in seemingreaction to an intense spiritual crisis known as "the Arzamas terror," Lev NikoJaevich Tolstoi appears to have decided to abandon the narrative fiction at which he excelled. Within a decade he had begun to produce the religious and didactic writings which were to bring him equal fame as a Christian moralist and philosopher. By 1883, when he published What I Believe (V chem moia vera?), Tolstoi was counseling absolute nonresistance to evil. In subsequent years he quarreled with the Russian Orthodox Church, rejected the state and its coercive apparatus, and became a corrosive critic of his society.

La recreación de la experiencia bélica ha estado caracterizada durante buena parte de la historia por su adscripción a los modelos épicos y heroicos típicos de las literaturas clásicas. La cartuja de Parma (Stendhal), La roja insignia del valor (Stephen Crane) y Guerra y paz (Lev Tolstoi), tres obras del siglo XIX gestadas en diferentes contextos culturales, suponen un hito en la representación literaria de la guerra al trasgredir los modelos tradicionalmente utilizados y emplear nuevos recursos expresivos destinados a mostrar el caos y la capacidad de la destrucción de la experiencia bélica, incorporando así en ocasiones un mensaje de corte pacifista capaz de enfrentarse al oficial. El artículo repasa los principales ejemplos de literatura bélica de la historia universal de la Literatura y analiza las tres obras citadas, centrándose en su valor como “nuevo paradigma”. Traditionally, the literary recreation of the warlike experience has been linked with the epic and heroic typical models of the Classic Literature. The Charterhouse of Parma (Stendhal), The Red Badge of Courage (Stepehn Crane) and War and Peace (Lev Tolstoi) changed the representation of the war in the 19th century. These novels used new expressive resources destined to show the chaos and the capacity of the destruction of the warlike experience. The article revises the principal examples of warlike literature of the universal history of the Literature and analyzes these novels, centring on its value as “new paradigm”.

The Vereshchagin episode, describing the execution of a young student during the fall of Moscow in 1812, occupies Chapters 24 and 25 of Part 3, Book 3 of Lev Tolstoi's Voina i mir (War and Peace). This dramatic scene, in which Mikhail Vereshchagin is cut down by a dragoon on the order of Count Fedor Rastopchin, has received little critical attention given the breadth of work on the novel as a whole. This is understandable on the grounds that the text does not constitute a large portion of Voina i mir and its characters are far from principal players. Yet investigating the episode reveals how Tolstoi deliberately added psychological, ideological, and theological subtexts to the early drafts, marking such subtexts by changes in narration, language, and direct allusions. Episodes such as this one are intricately structured to produce emotions, raise questions, and initiate a philosophical inquiry into the actions and thoughts of the characters concerned.

“War always interested me,” wrote the twenty-three-year-old Leo Tolstoy in “the raid” (1853), an early story inspired by his personal experience of a brutal border skirmish in the Caucasus. “Not war in the sense of maneuvers devised by great generals … but the reality of war, the actual killing” (1). The focus of Tolstoy's interest here remained absolute throughout his long and brilliantly inconsistent life. As a second lieutenant during the Crimean War in 1854–55, he wrote three “Sevastopol Stories” about that city under siege, which were so cannily constructed and voiced that the new tsar, Alexander II, deeply touched, decreed that they be translated into French so that Russian courage would reach a European audience—whereas other readers took these tales as critical of the imperial war effort, even as subversive. Tolstoy revealed his own chauvinist side in the mid-1860s while writing the final books of War and Peace. Napoléon was a caricature from the start, of course, but, in a rising arc of patriotic disdain, Tolstoy proceeded to ridicule almost every alien nation's soldiers, generals, and tacticians; only simple Russian peasants, partisans, Field Marshal Kutuzov, and the occasional clear-seeing field commander were exempt from the author's scorn. By the end of his life, Tolstoy professed radical Christian anarchism and pacifism, preaching nonviolent resistance to evil and urging young men to oppose the military draft. But he never lost his fascination with close-up “actual killing.” The greatest literary achievement of Tolstoy's final decade, the Caucasus novel Hadji Murad, ends with such graphic slaughter, so many grotesque hackings and mutilations, and even the beheading of the hero described at such epic leisure that it is difficult to believe Tolstoy ever doubted the veracity of languages of violence.

The article deals with the female characters in “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy. The aim of the article is to advance a new view at Tolstoy’s heroines and to improve and extend the modern ideas of Tolstoy’s gender perceptions. The applied methods are the structural, semiotic and mythopoetics analyses. General opinion about Tolstoy’s gender perceptions is based on the character of Natasha Rostova. The usual approach to the study of Tolstoy’s matrimonial philosophy has passed into belief that Natasha Rostova is the main and the ideal female character in Tolstoy’s novel. So it is generally accepted that Leo Tolstoy gives recognition to the patriarchal family only (Bezukhov’s family in the epilogue of “War and Peace”). But to obtain a fuller understanding of Tolstoy’s gender perceptions it is necessary to introduce the analysis of other female characters. First of all, it is princess Mary. She became aware of the cruelty of war and overcame the tragedy of loneliness. She is a self-sacrificing daughter and aunt (her little nephew is an orphan). So her life is much more sorrowful than Natasha’s. However, her family in the epilogue of “War and Peace” is not patriarchal. Tolstoy represented two kinds of women and two types of families in the epilogue of his novel. According to the traditional view, Tolstoy confines a woman to her family circle, but the character of princess Mary is connected not only with the family problems, but with the problems of philosophy of history, folk confidence, non-resistance and the most profound spiritual achievements of Tolstoy’s as well. The image of Princess Mary Bolkonskaya in Tolstoy’s novel “War and peace” is a rare female image in the history of world literature that invites the reader to discuss a wide range of topical philosophical, religious, and socio-historical issues.

L. N. Tolstoy does not make any direct statements about the great French Revolution, although a probe into the writer’s attitude to this historical event allows us to understand his interpretation of phenomena contemporary to him. In this sense, the analysis of the early drafts of the novel War and Peace (1864) conducted in this article is of great interest. In these drafts, French politicians of the Directory period are called ‘rich upstarts’ and ‘yesterday’s bourgeois gentilhommes.’ Bonaparte himself is referred to as “a clever, cunning and evil successful bourgeois.” And in the outline of the preface to the novel Tolstoy repeats this comparison again: “funny and disgusting, like a Philistine in the nobility.” All of these formulas date back to the famous comedy by J. B. Moliere Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670). Although Napoleon Bonaparte was not a bourgeois by birth, his origins in the provincial Corsica led to a mention of him as a “bourgeois nobleman,” or parvenu in the drafts of War and Peace. This expression had a negative connotation due to the hereditary pride and prejudice of the aristocrat Tolstoy against the lower classes and his reaction to the novel by N. G. Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? (1863). In the final text of War and Peace, influenced by the news of the civil execution and exile of Chernyshevsky, Tolstoy removed these direct characteristics, although the overall negative assessment of Napoleon remained. Later Tolstoy repeatedly used images of this comedy, but did not attach negative connotations to them. Establishing the connection between the image of Napoleon and the “bourgeois gentilhommes” in the drafts for Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace allows us to more accurately determine the writer’s political views in the mid-1860s.

The article deals with the polemical discourse of A.S. Norov, who was the hero of the war 1812, which he leads with Leo Tolstoy from the point of view of the direct participant in the battles with Napoleon. Analyzing then description of the events of the Patriotic War of 1812 in the novel of Leo Tolstoy “War and Peace”, A.S. Norov opposes them to a description which was made by the hero Yermolov of the war of 1812. The authors speculate that the polemics of A.S. Norov with the Leo Tolstoys’ point of view to the driving forces in the war of 1812 would not be so acute if it is considered in the categories of literary criticism, as a polemical discourse of the work with artistic fiction (the novel by Leo Tolstoy) with a work of documentary where fiction is excluded (wroks by A.S. Norov).

Comparative analysis of A. Platonov’s wartime stories (1941–1945) and Leo Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Stories, War and Peace and Hadji Murat is performed. Items reviewed: 1) Both Red Army fighters in Platonov’s works and soldiers in Tolstoy’s works identify themselves not with an abstract “Fatherland,” but with their local “small motherland.” 2) Both for Tolstoy and Platonov, neither skilful strategy nor overpowering armaments become the war decisive factor but every single soldier’s courage. The battle often develops as an intersection of planned and unforeseen happenings, and everyone bears his own responsibility in it. 3) Platonov’s “truth,” like Tolstoy’s “providence,” is linked to the attacked side and serves as a moral justification of resistance to the aggressor. 4) Platonov, however, like Tolstoy (who speaks as a consistent pacifist in his later works), sees the danger of moral degradation as the result of war, and degradation signs had been notable before the war. Sacrifices (including, in this context, Platonov’s own son) are not in vain only if there is better life after the war.

Comparative analysis of A. Platonov’s wartime stories (1941–1945) and Leo Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Stories, War and Peace and Hadji Murat is performed. Items reviewed: 1) Both Red Army fighters in Platonov’s works and soldiers in Tolstoy’s works identify themselves not with an abstract “Fatherland,” but with their local “small motherland.” 2) Both for Tolstoy and Platonov, neither skilful strategy nor overpowering armaments become the war decisive factor but every single soldier’s courage. The battle often develops as an intersection of planned and unforeseen happenings, and everyone bears his own responsibility in it. 3) Platonov’s “truth,” like Tolstoy’s “providence,” is linked to the attacked side and serves as a moral justification of resistance to the aggressor. 4) Platonov, however, like Tolstoy (who speaks as a consistent pacifist in his later works), sees the danger of moral degradation as the result of war, and degradation signs had been notable before the war. Sacrifices (including, in this context, Platonov’s own son) are not in vain only if there is better life after the war.

The reflection and transformation of philosophical ideas in the fiction and essays by Leo Tolstoy and in his life is demontrated in the discussion of the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force. The spiritual growth of a person is not only a philosophical idea, but also a life plan and «life-teaching» of Leo Tolstoy presented in the works A Confession, The Gospel in Brief, My Religion, On Life, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence and in the novels War and Peace, Anna Karenina and Resurrection.

This article re-examines Lev Tolstoy’s novel Voina i mir (War and Peace) in light of recent research in the field of translingual literary studies. This Russian novel contains numerous passages, phrases, and words in French. Tolstoy’s extensive use of the French language in a Russian novel puzzled many of his contemporary critics; it has also tended to be less visible in translations into other languages. The article surveys previous research on the multilingual dimension of War and Peace by well-known scholars such as Viktor Vinogradov, Viktor Shklovsky, Boris Uspensky, R. F. Christian, and Gary Saul Morson. Among the explanations offered for the presence of French in the text are realism, characterization, and ostranenie (defamiliarization). Applying Formalist principles and Thomas O. Beebee’s concept of transmesis, the current article suggests a translingual reading of this canonical novel. The analysis focuses on selected passages in which multiple languages are at play, showing how they draw the reader’s attention to language as a medium through depictions of code-switching and multilingual situations; metalinguistic commentary; biscriptuality; and code-mixing on the level of the text.

The article deals with the problem of Nikolay Strakhov's assessment of the genre originality in Leo Tolstoy's works. The author of the article believes that Strakhov's philosophical observations of the 1870-s were especially significant for the artistic and moral search of Tolstoy, who, mainly under the influence of Strakhov's ideas, strove for allinclusiveness. Strakhov was the first to speak boldly enough about the religious foundations of Tolstoy's art, which demanded a special artistic form that could «embrace the unembraceable», accommodate people's life in its diversity and fullness. Strakhov's articles on War and Peace make accurate remarks about the artist's epic talent based on religious art, about his elevation above the traditional novel conflict. The author of the article shows that unlike K. N. Leontiev, who spoke of Tolstoy's growing objectivity as he freed himself from the allegedly pernicious influence of the natural school, Strakhov in his articles on War and Peace stresses the writer's truthfulness, absence of hypocrisy and reveals remarkable features of his epic narrative. In Tolstoy's works, life is not generalized in advance, the writer's position does not obscure the versatile and complex nature of existence. Step by step Strakhov comes to understanding the epic nature of Tolstoy's artistic worlds, which is understood not just as a calm and unhurried manner of narration, but as a revival of the scope of ancient epics in the new literature. Strakhov's subtle outline of the two foundations of Russian epic art showed a profound connection between the family theme in Russian literature and the idea of progress. By comparing the works of Tolstoy and Pushkin, Strakhov raised the figure of the former significantly above the momentary disputes, above his contemporary literature engulfed by nihilistic trends, defining the significance of the writer in the formation of truly people’s art.

The title of this review “War and peace” is not accidental and the analogies with a well-known literary masterpiece have absolutely justified ground. As in the case of Lev Tolstoy’s novel this title has a profound philosophical meaning, although at first glance it may seem quite obvious. The word «war» may well correspond to those hostile changes of microorganisms leading to the current problem of antimicrobial resistance recognized worldwide. This is the “war” we have to wage against the antibiotic-resistant bacteria today. And the «peace» in this context is considered as the world, the entire universe, all people, the whole society and its reaction to what is happening. On the other hand, the word «peace» means something opposite in meaning to the word «war». Thus, the essence of the title bears a sharp contrast between military actions and peacetime, between something that carries a threat to life and peace, or illness and recovery. Preserving original novel’s structure the authors of this review consistently consider justification of fosfomycin trometamol as a first-line drug in the treatment of acute uncomplicated cystitis in women taking into account the latest research, publications and global trends.

The article analyzes female characters in Leo Tolstoy's novels: from “Family Happiness” to “Resurrection.” By analogy with the autobiographical hero, the changing character of a heroine is revealed in the writer's works, while considering peculiar epic measures chosen by Tolstoy in the mid-1850s, which he used to evaluate a woman: beauty, intelligence, ability for solitude, attitude to work, religiosity. It is noted that the ideal of Tolstoy's woman was largely formed in letters to Valeria Arsenyeva while the writer was pondering his own path. Masha in “Family Happiness” begins a series of Tolstoy's heroines, who reflect Tolstoy's idea of ​​the best qualities of a woman. Tolstoy considers indifference, even contempt for society and worldly pleasures one of the most important components of a woman’s correct life. The author of the article examines central female images of the epic novel “War and Peace,” novels “Anna Karenina,” “Resurrection” in their relation to secular society. In the course of analyzing drafts and comparing them with final texts, the author demonstrates the writer’s work on the appearance and inner world of heroines by constructing them from often contradictory, contrasting descriptions, excluding unnecessary details from draft materials as well as episodes that had unambiguous and evaluative specifications.

The article is devoted to the issues of teaching the Russian literature in high school. The author of the article, based on the concept of structure and on the basis of structural analysis, where the part is considered as part of the whole and carries the properties of the whole, suggests using this law to solve the following question: a small fragment of the text can give an idea of the meaning of the work as a whole, its ideas, the features of the writer’s skill, the creative process and the writer themselves. A special semantic message in the article is put on the term “theme”, which is characterized in the article as a specific, clearly organized emotional and imaginative material that has the ability to develop further, reincarnate in accordance with the general idea of the work and with its own laws. Moreover, the author emphasizes the paradoxical nature of the topic, since accuracy in it is born of inaccuracy: invariance is fused with variability, constancy with variability, statics with dynamics, so that it is impossible to separate one from the other. The article combines two types of research. One refers to the fundamental problems of the philological science: emotionality as the basis of the nature of literature and other arts, the specifics of the structure of a literary work, the concept of a topic in the literary science; the other puts specific questions of a methodological nature before teachers of literature. The approach to the analysis of a literary work stated above is demonstrated by the example of L.N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and peace”. In this case, it is taken into account that L.N. Tolstoy is the only one of the classical writers who went through three bloody military campaigns as an artillery officer in the active army and used his experience in creating “War and peace”.

The general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. — Sun TzuWorld War II saw a proliferation of maps. From command posts to the pages of National Geographic to the pages of daily newspapers, they were everywhere (Schulten). The era also saw substantive developments in cartography, especially with respect to the topographical maps that feature in our selected films. This essay offers a preliminary examination of the battle-map as depicted in two films about the Second World War: Franklin J. Shaffner’s biopic Patton (1970) and Jack Smight’s epic Midway (1976). In these films, maps, charts, or tableaux (the three-dimensional models upon which are plotted the movements of battalions, fleets, and so on) emerge as an expression of both martial and cinematic strategy. As a rear-view representation of the relative movements of personnel and materiel in particular battle arenas, the map and its accessories (pins, tape, markers, and so forth) trace the broad military dispositions of Patton’s 2nd Corp (Africa), Seventh Army (Italy) and Third Army (Western Europe) and the relative position of American and Japanese fleets in the Pacific. In both Patton and Midway, the map also emerges as a simple mode of narrative plotting: as the various encounters in the two texts play out, the battle-map more or less contemporaneously traces the progress of forces. It also serves as a foreshadowing device, not just narratively, but cinematically: that which is plotted in advance comes to pass (even if as preliminary movements before catastrophe), but the audience is also cued for the cinematic chaos and disjuncture that almost inevitably ensues in the battle scenes proper.On one hand, then, this essay proposes that at the fundamental level of fabula (seen through either the lens of historical hindsight or through the eyes of the novice who knows nothing of World War II), the annotated map is engaged both strategically and cinematically: as a stage upon which commanders attempt to act out (either in anticipation, or retrospectively) the intricate, but grotesque, ballet of warfare — and as a reflection of the broad, sequential, sweeps of conflict. While, in War and Cinema, Paul Virilio offers the phrase ‘the logistics of perception’ (1), in this this essay we, on the other hand, consider that, for those in command, the battle-map is a representation of the perception of logistics: the big picture of war finds rough indexical representation on a map, but (as Clausewitz tells us) chance, the creative agency of individual commanders, and the fog of battle make it far less probable (than is the case in more specific mappings, such as, say, the wedding rehearsal) that what is planned will play out with any degree of close correspondence (On War 19, 21, 77-81). Such mapping is, of course, further problematised by the processes of abstraction themselves: indexicality is necessarily a reduction; a de-realisation or déterritorialisation. ‘For the military commander,’ writes Virilio, ‘every dimension is unstable and presents itself in isolation from its original context’ (War and Cinema 32). Yet rehearsal (on maps, charts, or tableaux) is a keying activity that seeks to presage particular real world patterns (Goffman 45). As suggested above, far from being a rhizomatic activity, the heavily plotted (as opposed to thematic) business of mapping is always out of joint: either a practice of imperfect anticipation or an equally imperfect (pared back and behind-the-times) rendition of activity in the field. As is argued by Tolstoj in War and Peace, the map then presents to the responder a series of tensions and ironies often lost on the masters of conflict themselves. War, as Tostoj proposes, is a stochastic phenomenon while the map is a relatively static, and naive, attempt to impose order upon it. Tolstoj, then, pillories Phull (in the novel, Pfuhl), the aptly-named Prussian general whose lock-stepped obedience to the science of war (of which the map is part) results in the abject humiliation of 1806:Pfuhl was one of those theoreticians who are so fond of their theory that they lose sight of the object of that theory - its application in practice. (Vol. 2, Part 1, Ch. 10, 53)In both Patton and Midway, then, the map unfolds not only as an epistemological tool (read, ‘battle plan’) or reflection (read, the near contemporaneous plotting of real world affray) of the war narrative, but as a device of foreshadowing and as an allegory of command and its profound limitations. So, in Deleuzian terms, while emerging as an image of both time and perception, for commanders and filmgoers alike, the map is also something of a seduction: a ‘crystal-image’ situated in the interstices between the virtual and the actual (Deleuze 95). To put it another way, in our films the map emerges as an isomorphism: a studied plotting in which inheres a counter-text (Goffman 26). As a simple device of narrative, and in the conventional terms of latitude and longitude, in both Patton and Midway, the map, chart, or tableau facilitate the plotting of the resources of war in relation to relief (including island land masses), roads, railways, settlements, rivers, and seas. On this syntagmatic plane, in Greimasian terms, the map is likewise received as a canonical sign of command: where there are maps, there are, after all, commanders (Culler 13). On the other hand, as suggested above, the battle-map (hereafter, we use the term to signify the conventional paper map, the maritime chart, or tableau) materialises as a sanitised image of the unknown and the grotesque: as apodictic object that reduces complexity and that incidentally banishes horror and affect. Thus, the map evolves, in the viewer’s perception, as an ironic sign of all that may not be commanded. This is because, as an emblem of the rational order, in Patton and Midway the map belies the ubiquity of battle’s friction: that defined by Clausewitz as ‘the only concept which...distinguishes real war from war on paper’ (73). ‘Friction’ writes Clausewitz, ‘makes that which appears easy in War difficult in reality’ (81).Our work here cannot ignore or side-step the work of others in identifying the core cycles, characteristics of the war film genre. Jeanine Basinger, for instance, offers nothing less than an annotated checklist of sixteen key characteristics for the World War II combat film. Beyond this taxonomy, though, Basinger identifies the crucial role this sub-type of film plays in the corpus of war cinema more broadly. The World War II combat film’s ‘position in the evolutionary process is established, as well as its overall relationship to history and reality. It demonstrates how a primary set of concepts solidifies into a story – and how they can be interpreted for a changing ideology’ (78). Stuart Bender builds on Basinger’s taxonomy and discussion of narrative tropes with a substantial quantitative analysis of the very building blocks of battle sequences. This is due to Bender’s contention that ‘when a critic’s focus [is] on the narrative or ideological components of a combat film [this may] lead them to make assumptions about the style which are untenable’ (8). We seek with this research to add to a rich and detailed body of knowledge by redressing a surprising omission therein: a conscious and focussed analysis of the use of battle-maps in war cinema. In Patton and in Midway — as in War and Peace — the map emerges as an emblem of an intergeneric dialogue: as a simple storytelling device and as a paradigmatic engine of understanding. To put it another way, as viewer-responders with a synoptic perspective we perceive what might be considered a ‘double exposure’: in the map we see what is obviously before us (the collision of represented forces), but an Archimedean positioning facilitates the production of far more revelatory textual isotopies along what Roman Jakobson calls the ‘axis of combination’ (Linguistics and Poetics 358). Here, otherwise unconnected signs (in our case various manifestations and configurations of the battle-map) are brought together in relation to particular settings, situations, and figures. Through this palimpsest of perspective, a crucial binary emerges: via the battle-map we see ‘command’ and the sequence of engagement — and, through Greimasian processes of axiological combination (belonging more to syuzhet than fabula), elucidated for us are the wrenching ironies of warfare (Culler 228). Thus, through the profound and bound motif of the map (Tomashevsky 69), are we empowered to pass judgement on the map bearers who, in both films, present as the larger-than-life heroes of old. Figure 1.While we have scope only to deal with the African theatre, Patton opens with a dramatic wide-shot of the American flag: a ‘map’, if you will, of a national history forged in war (Fig. 1). Against this potent sign of American hegemony, as he slowly climbs up to the stage before it, the general appears a diminutive figure -- until, via a series of matched cuts that culminate in extreme close-ups, he manifests as a giant about to play his part in a great American story (Fig. 2).Figure 2.Some nineteen minutes into a film, having surveyed the carnage of Kasserine Pass (in which, in February 1943, the Germans inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Americans) General Omar Bradley is reunited with his old friend and newly-nominated three-star general, George S. Patton Jr.. Against a backdrop of an indistinct topographical map (that nonetheless appears to show the front line) and the American flag that together denote the men’s authority, the two discuss the Kasserine catastrophe. Bradley’s response to Patton’s question ‘What happened at Kasserine?’ clearly illustrates the tension between strategy and real-world engagement. While the battle-plan was solid, the Americans were outgunned, their tanks were outclassed, and (most importantly) their troops were out-disciplined. Patton’s concludes that Rommel can only be beaten if the American soldiers are fearless and fight as a cohesive unit. Now that he is in command of the American 2nd Corp, the tide of American martial fortune is about to turn.The next time Patton appears in relation to the map is around half an hour into the two-and-three-quarter-hour feature. Here, in the American HQ, the map once more appears as a simple, canonical sign of command. Somewhat carelessly, the map of Europe seems to show post-1945 national divisions and so is ostensibly offered as a straightforward prop. In terms of martial specifics, screenplay writer Francis Ford Coppola apparently did not envisage much close scrutiny of the film’s maps. Highlighted, instead, are the tensions between strategy as a general principle and action on the ground. As British General Sir Arthur Coningham waxes lyrical about allied air supremacy, a German bomber drops its payload on the HQ, causing the map of Europe to (emblematically) collapse forward into the room. Following a few passes by the attacking aircraft, the film then cuts to a one second medium shot as a hail of bullets from a Heinkel He 111 strike a North African battle map (Fig. 3). Still prone, Patton remarks: ‘You were discussing air supremacy, Sir Arthur.’ Dramatising a scene that did take place (although Coningham was not present), Schaffner’s intention is to allow Patton to shoot holes in the British strategy (of which he is contemptuous) but a broader objective is the director’s exposé of the more general disjuncture between strategy and action. As the film progresses, and the battle-map’s allegorical significance is increasingly foregrounded, this critique becomes definitively sharper.Figure 3.Immediately following a scene in which an introspective Patton walks through a cemetery in which are interred the remains of those killed at Kasserine, to further the critique of Allied strategy the camera cuts to Berlin’s high command and a high-tech ensemble of tableaux, projected maps, and walls featuring lights, counters, and clocks. Tasked to research the newly appointed Patton, Captain Steiger walks through the bunker HQ with Hitler’s Chief of Staff, General Jodl, to meet with Rommel — who, suffering nasal diphtheria, is away from the African theatre. In a memorable exchange, Steiger reveals that Patton permanently attacks and never retreats. Rommel, who, following his easy victory at Kasserine, is on the verge of total tactical victory, in turn declares that he will ‘attack and annihilate’ Patton — before the poet-warrior does the same to him. As Clausewitz has argued, and as Schaffner is at pains to point out, it seems that, in part, the outcome of warfare has more to do with the individual consciousness of competing warriors than it does with even the most exquisite of battle-plans.Figure 4.So, even this early in the film’s runtime, as viewer-responders we start to reassess various manifestations of the battle-map. To put it as Michelle Langford does in her assessment of Schroeter’s cinema, ‘fragments of the familiar world [in our case, battle-maps] … become radically unfamiliar’ (Allegorical Images 57). Among the revelations is that from the flag (in the context of close battle, all sense of ‘the national’ dissolves), to the wall map, to the most detailed of tableau, the battle-plan is enveloped in the fog of war: thus, the extended deeply-focussed scenes of the Battle of El Guettar take us from strategic overview (Patton’s field glass perspectives over what will soon become a Valley of Death) to what Boris Eichenbaum has called ‘Stendhalian’ scale (The Young Tolstoi 105) in which, (in Patton) through more closely situated perspectives, we almost palpably experience the Germans’ disarray under heavy fire. As the camera pivots between the general and the particular (and between the omniscient and the nescient) the cinematographer highlights the tension between the strategic and the actual. Inasmuch as it works out (and, as Schaffner shows us, it never works out completely as planned) this is the outcome of modern martial strategy: chaos and unimaginable carnage on the ground that no cartographic representation might capture. As Patton observes the destruction unfold in the valley below and before him, he declares: ‘Hell of a waste of fine infantry.’ Figure 5.An important inclusion, then, is that following the protracted El Guettar battle scenes, Schaffner has the (symbolically flag-draped) casket of Patton’s aide, Captain Richard N. “Dick” Jenson, wheeled away on a horse-drawn cart — with the lonely figure of the mourning general marching behind, his ironic interior monologue audible to the audience: ‘I can't see the reason such fine young men get killed. There are so many battles yet to fight.’ Finally, in terms of this brief and partial assessment of the battle-map in Patton, less than an hour in, we may observe that the map is emerging as something far more than a casual prop; as something more than a plotting of battlelines; as something more than an emblem of command. Along a new and unexpected axis of semantic combination, it is now manifesting as a sign of that which cannot be represented nor commanded.Midway presents the lead-up to the eponymous naval battle of 1942. Smight’s work is of interest primarily because the battle itself plays a relatively small role in the film; what is most important is the prolonged strategising that comprises most of the film’s run time. In Midway, battle-tables and fleet markers become key players in the cinematic action, second almost to the commanders themselves. Two key sequences are discussed here: the moment in which Yamamoto outlines his strategy for the attack on Midway (by way of a decoy attack on the Aleutian Islands), and the scene some moments later where Admiral Nimitz and his assembled fleet commanders (Spruance, Blake, and company) survey their own plan to defend the atoll. In Midway, as is represented by the notion of a fleet-in-being, the oceanic battlefield is presented as a speculative plane on which commanders can test ideas. Here, a fleet in a certain position projects a radius of influence that will deter an enemy fleet from attacking: i.e. ‘a fleet which is able and willing to attack an enemy proposing a descent upon territory which that force has it in charge to protect’ (Colomb viii). The fleet-in-being, it is worth noting, is one that never leaves port and, while it is certainly true that the latter half of Midway is concerned with the execution of strategy, the first half is a prolonged cinematic game of chess, with neither player wanting to move lest the other has thought three moves ahead. Virilio opines that the fleet-in-being is ‘a new idea of violence that no longer comes from direct confrontation and bloodshed, but rather from the unequal properties of bodies, evaluation of the number of movements allowed them in a chosen element, permanent verification of their dynamic efficiency’ (Speed and Politics 62). Here, as in Patton, we begin to read the map as a sign of the subjective as well as the objective. This ‘game of chess’ (or, if you prefer, ‘Battleships’) is presented cinematically through the interaction of command teams with their battle-tables and fleet markers. To be sure, this is to show strategy being developed — but it is also to prepare viewers for the defamiliarised representation of the battle itself.The first sequence opens with a close-up of Admiral Yamamoto declaring: ‘This is how I expect the battle to develop.’ The plan to decoy the Americans with an attack on the Aleutians is shown via close-ups of the conveniently-labelled ‘Northern Force’ (Fig. 6). It is then explained that, twenty-four hours later, a second force will break off and strike south, on the Midway atoll. There is a cut from closeups of the pointer on the map to the wider shot of the Japanese commanders around their battle table (Fig. 7). Interestingly, apart from the opening of the film in the Japanese garden, and the later parts of the film in the operations room, the Japanese commanders are only ever shown in this battle-table area. This canonically positions the Japanese as pure strategists, little concerned with the enmeshing of war with political or social considerations. The sequence ends with Commander Yasimasa showing a photograph of Vice Admiral Halsey, who the Japanese mistakenly believe will be leading the carrier fleet. Despite some bickering among the commanders earlier in the film, this sequence shows the absolute confidence of the Japanese strategists in their plan. The shots are suitably languorous — averaging three to four seconds between cuts — and the body language of the commanders shows a calm determination. The battle-map here is presented as an index of perfect command and inevitable victory: each part of the plan is presented with narration suggesting the Japanese expect to encounter little resistance. While Yasimasa and his clique are confident, the other commanders suggest a reconnaissance flight over Pearl Harbor to ascertain the position of the American fleet; the fear of fleet-in-being is shown here firsthand and on the map, where the reconnaissance planes are placed alongside the ship markers. The battle-map is never shown in full: only sections of the naval landscape are presented. We suggest that this is done in order to prepare the audience for the later stages of the film: as in Patton (from time to time) the battle-map here is filmed abstractly, to prime the audience for the abstract montage of the battle itself in the film’s second half.Figure 6.Figure 7.Having established in the intervening running time that Halsey is out of action, his replacement, Rear Admiral Spruance, is introduced to the rest of the command team. As with all the important American command and strategy meetings in the film, this is done in the operations room. A transparent coordinates board is shown in the foreground as Nimitz, Spruance and Rear Admiral Fletcher move through to the battle table. Behind the men, as they lean over the table, is an enormous map of the world (Fig. 8). In this sequence, Nimitz freely admits that while he knows each Japanese battle group’s origin and heading, he is unsure of their target. He asks Spruance for his advice:‘Ray, assuming what you see here isn’t just an elaborate ruse — Washington thinks it is, but assuming they’re wrong — what kind of move do you suggest?’This querying is followed by Spruance glancing to a particular point on the map (Fig. 9), then a cut to a shot of models representing the aircraft carriers Hornet, Enterprise & Yorktown (Fig. 10). This is one of the few model/map shots unaccompanied by dialogue or exposition. In effect, this shot shows Spruance’s thought process before he responds: strategic thought presented via cinematography. Spruance then suggests situating the American carrier group just northeast of Midway, in case the Japanese target is actually the West Coast of the United States. It is, in effect, a hedging of bets. Spruance’s positioning of the carrier group also projects that group’s sphere of influence around Midway atoll and north to essentially cut off Japanese access to the US. The fleet-in-being is presented graphically — on the map — in order to, once again, cue the audience to match the later (edited) images of the battle to these strategic musings.In summary, in Midway, the map is an element of production design that works alongside cinematography, editing, and performance to present the notion of strategic thought to the audience. In addition, and crucially, it functions as an abstraction of strategy that prepares the audience for the cinematic disorientation that will occur through montage as the actual battle rages later in the film. Figure 8.Figure 9.Figure 10.This essay has argued that the battle-map is a simulacrum of the weakest kind: what Baudrillard would call ‘simulacra of simulation, founded on information, the model’ (121). Just as cinema itself offers a distorted view of history (the war film, in particular, tends to hagiography), the battle-map is an over-simplification that fails to capture the physical and psychological realities of conflict. We have also argued that in both Patton and Midway, the map is not a ‘free’ motif (Tomashevsky 69). Rather, it is bound: a central thematic device. In the two films, the battle-map emerges as a crucial isomorphic element. On the one hand, it features as a prop to signify command and to relay otherwise complex strategic plottings. At this syntagmatic level, it functions alongside cinematography, editing, and performance to give audiences a glimpse into how military strategy is formed and tested: a traditional ‘reading’ of the map. But on the flip side of what emerges as a classic structuralist binary, is the map as a device of foreshadowing (especially in Midway) and as a depiction of command’s profound limitations. Here, at a paradigmatic level, along a new axis of combination, a new reading of the map in war cinema is proposed: the battle-map is as much a sign of the subjective as it is the objective.ReferencesBasinger, Jeanine. The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre. Middletown, CT: Columbia UP, 1986.Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbour: U of Michigan Press, 1994.Bender, Stuart. Film Style and the World War II Combat Genre. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.Clausewitz, Carl. On War. Vol. 1. London: Kegan Paul, 1908.Colomb, Philip Howard. Naval Warfare: Its Ruling Principles and Practice Historically Treated. 3rd ed. London: W.H. Allen & Co, 1899.Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975.Deleuze, Gilles. 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