Having things both ways

It all comes out of War and Peace? Well, Tolstoy makes a good starting-point anyway for such an adroit historian of place and people as Dr Figes. In an early chapter Natasha, the young Countess Rostov, is visiting ‘Uncle’, an old family friend and retired army officer who has gone native and lives in a wooden izba beside the forest with his peasant mistress. Some visiting locals start to dance, and without thinking or knowing the complicated rustic measure Natasha joins in and executes the steps correctly, to general applause.

Well, well. However unaware of it she may be Natasha lives in two worlds, and finds herself as much at home dancing among the peasants as she has come to be in a Moscow ballroom. At least so Tolstoy says, and the idea clearly gives him great satisfaction. Figes omits to make the further point, heavily emphasised by Tolstoy himself, that Natasha must be taught the artificial culture of the West, exemplified by the ballet, which at first seems to be merely absurd and silly, while she instinctively responds to and joins in the peasants’ dance.