And rejoiced the sinner, and spake: "Now verily shall I be let in.
Peter and David shall admit me because they know the weakness of
man, and the grace of God; but thou shalt admit me because thou hast
much love. For hast thou not writ in thy book, O John, that God is
Love, and that whosoever knoweth not Love, knoweth not God? Wert not
thou he that spake in his old age unto men only this one word:
'Brethren, love ye one another'? How then shalt thou now hate me and
drive me hence? Either renounce thine own words, or learn to love
me, and admit me into the kingdom of heaven."
And the gates of heaven opened, and John embraced the repenting
sinner, and admitted him into the kingdom of heaven.
11. Tolstoy, then, is the sole example among men of the harmonious
combination of loftiest aspiration with highest artistic skill. Tolstoy
sees in himself only the preacher, and therefore at the age of sixty he
does not hesitate to repudiate all those works of his which are not
those of the preacher, however great their value as works of art.
Turgenef sees in him only the artist, and therefore beseeches from his
death-bed his fellow-craftsman to give himself back to the forsaken art.
Both are here right, both are here wrong. For each sees only one side,
while Tolstoy is neither the preacher alone nor the artist alone.
Tolstoy, like Janus of old, is two-faced,--the artist, when his soul is
in a state of war; the preacher, when his soul is in a state of peace.
Turgenef looks only upon the face of the artist; Tolstoy looks out into
the world with the face of the preacher.
12. This noble combination of the preacher and the artist has
accordingly determined the character of Tolstoy's art. For the first
question Tolstoy asks of every event, of every phenomenon he has to
depict, is, What effect has this on the soul of man; what bearing has
this on the life of man; what, in short, is its moral meaning? Hence
when Tolstoy paints, he paints not only objectively, but also
subjectively. In the storm-scene, for instance, which I have read you at
the first lecture, Tolstoy is not satisfied to give you merely the
outward appearance of the storm, its appearance in Nature, he rests not
until he has painted also its effect on the soul; and the progress of
the terror inspired keeps pace with the advance of the cloud. Hence the
sudden introduction of the beggar from under the bridge, with his
horrible stump of hand stretched out as he runs beside the carriage
begging for alms. This incident is as much part of the storm, and as
terrifying to the little Katenka and the little Lubotshka as the glare
of the lightning and the crash of the thunder. Tolstoy the artist never
sees Nature with the eyes of the body, but with the eyes of the spirit,
he never sees matter without the underlying mind; he never sees the
object without its complement, the subject. Tolstoy, therefore, is the
first great artist (and if the one-eyed prophets of the merely
_objective_ art prevail, who now clamor so loudly, he promises, alas! to
remain also the last) who has painted Nature entire. Tolstoy is the
first great artist, therefore, into whose pictures enter not only the
details visible, but also the details invisible. To Tolstoy, the
vibration of the string is not described in completeness until he has
also shown how its music has made to vibrate not only the air, but also
the soul. Painter then of the inward universe as well as of the
outward, of the spiritual as well as of the natural, of the things
unseen as well as of those seen, Tolstoy has exhausted Nature. He has
plunged into her nethermost depths, like Schiller's diver, and lo! forth
he comes from the abyss with her swallowed-up treasure. Verily, here
Tolstoy is unapproachable. Only one other man of letters hath here even
distant fellowship with him, and this is Ralph Waldo Emerson.
13. That an art which is born of such a union of the preacher with the
worshipper of beauty as it exists in Tolstoy, can only be of the
highest, and must be of the highest, I therefore no longer hesitate to
affirm. Read, therefore, in this light the successive chapters in
Book VII. of "Anna Karenina," where is told the birth of a son of Kitty
and Levin. Our modern apostles of the gospel of fidelity at all hazards,
even though it be the fidelity of dirt, would have here made you look at
the blood, at the towels, at the bowls, at the bottles, would have made
you smell the odors,--they would have recounted to you all those
details which, however pathetic to those doomed to be by-standers in the
sick-room, can only be nauseating to those out of the sick-room. Tolstoy
the preacher is impressed with the immeasurable pain which attends the
entrance into the world of a newly-born human soul,--agony unendurable,
all the more unendurable because inexplicable, inscrutable. His great
artistic soul rests not until it hath relieved itself with at least a
cry over such sorrow. Paint it therefore he must; but he paints it,
observe, not directly, by photographing the tortures of Kitty, but
indirectly, by picturing the agony of Levin; for the one would have only
nauseated, the other stirs the reader to his very depths. The husband
suffers more than the wife, because he sees her not with the eyes of the
head, but with the eyes of the heart; the groans of Kitty, which reach
him from the neighboring chamber, can indeed be silenced by the
physician's drug; but no drug can silence the groan of Levin, for it is
pressed out by the agony, not of the body, but by the agony of the soul.
And as love, sympathy, is ever an eye-opener, so here Tolstoy, the
consummate artist, has reproduced the scene of the sick-room with the
highest fidelity, because he has reproduced it not with the arts of cold
mechanical photography, but with those of warm, sympathetic imagination.
Tolstoy reproduces therefore with the highest faithfulness because he
too sees not with the eye of the head, but with the eye of the heart.
14. And for the highest example of such art I will venture to read to
you the passage in which Tolstoy tells of Anna Karenina's fall. Until
the reader comes to this passage, there is not a syllable to tell him
that she _has_ fallen. Observe then Tolstoy's manner of telling it. I
venture to think it far more faithful than any realistic art could have
made it by furnishing details not necessarily more true because less
delicate:--
"That in which during almost a whole year consisted the one,
exclusive longing of Vronsky's life, that which had supplanted all
his former wishes, that which to Anna had been a dream of
impossible, terrible, yet for this reason all the more fascinating
happiness,--this wish was at last gratified. Pale, with his lower
jaw trembling, he stood over her and begged her to quiet herself,
not knowing himself how and what.
"'Anna, Anna,' he spake with trembling voice. 'Anna, for God's
sake!'
"But the louder he spake, the lower sank her head, once proud and
glad, now abased; she now crouched, and was sinking from the sofa,
where she had been sitting, to the floor, at his feet. She would
have fallen on the carpet had he not supported her. 'O my God,
forgive me!' she sobbed, and pressed his hands to her breast.
"So criminal and so guilty she felt herself, that the only thing
left her was to humiliate herself and to beg forgiveness. But now
she had no one in life left her but him, and to him she turns with
prayer for forgiveness. As she gazed at him she physically felt her
degradation, and she could say nothing more. And he on his part felt
what a murderer must feel when beholding the body he has just
deprived of its life. This body, deprived by him of its life, was
their love, the first period of their love. There was something
horrible and repulsive in the memory of that which was purchased at
the terrible price of shame. The shame of her moral nakedness was
stifling to her, and this stifling feeling communicated itself also
to him. But, in spite of all the horror before the body of the
slain, the body must be cut into pieces, must be hidden away, and
use must be made of what the murderer had obtained by his murder.
"And as the murderer with fierceness, almost with passion, throws
himself upon the body and drags it and hacks it, so he too kept
covering with kisses her face and her shoulders. She kept his hand
and moved not. Yes, these kisses,--this it was which was bought with
this her shame. 'Yes, and this one hand which will always be mine is
the hand of my--confederate.' She raised this hand and kissed it. He
dropped on his knees and wished to see her face, but she hid her
face and said naught. At last, as if making an effort over herself,
she rose and pushed him away. Her face was indeed as handsome as
ever, but it was now pitiful all the more.
"''Tis all ended,' she said. 'I have nothing left but thee. Remember
this.'
"'I cannot help remembering what constitutes my life. For one minute
of this blessedness ...'
"'Blessedness!' she uttered with terror and disgust, and her terror
communicated itself to him. 'For God's sake, not a word, not one
word more!'
"She quickly rose and turned away from him.
"'Not another word,' she repeated; and with an expression strange
to him, with an expression of cold despair on her face, she parted
from him. She felt that at this moment she could not express in
words her feeling of shame, joy, and terror before this entrance
into a new life, and she did not wish to speak of it, to lower that
feeling with inexact words. But even later, on the morrow, and on
the third day, she not only could find no words for expressing the
whole complexity of these feelings, but she could not find even
thoughts, in revolving which she might clearly define to herself
whatever was going on in her soul.
"She said to herself, 'No, I cannot think this out now; later, when
I shall be more calm.' But this calmness for her thoughts never
came; whenever the thought came to her of what she had done, and of
what was to become of her, and of what she must do, terror came upon
her, and she drove away these thoughts.
"'Later, later,' she repeated, 'when I am more calm.'
"But in sleep, when she had no control over her thoughts, her
situation appeared to her in all its ugly nakedness. One dream came
to her almost nightly. She dreamed that both were her husbands, that
both were spending upon her their caresses. Alexei Alexandrovitsh
cried as he kissed her hands, and said, 'Ah, how good this is!' And
Alexei Vronsky was there, and he also was her husband. And she
wondered why all this had hitherto seemed to her impossible, and
explained to them laughingly how simple all this was, and that now
they were both content and happy. But the dream oppressed her like
an Alp, and she awoke every time in terror."
15. And of such unapproachable art the examples in Tolstoy are well-nigh
innumerable. There is hardly a single work of Tolstoy in which he does
not display that marvellous fidelity which has made Mr. Howells exclaim:
"This is not a picture of life, but life itself!" And this fidelity
Tolstoy attains not so much by depicting the event itself as by
depicting its effect on the soul; just as the silent sight of the
wounded on the field tells of the battle more loudly than the thunder of
the cannon. I say this is the highest art, because its method is
universal, where all others are only particular; for men may indeed
differ in the language of the tongue, but they do not differ in the
language of the spirit.
16. Read in the same light, then, his unparalleled gallery of
life-scenes in "Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth." Read in the same light
the death-scene of Count Bezukhoi in "War and Peace;" read the war-scene
on the bridge, the wounding of Balkonsky; read the skating-scene in
"Anna Karenina," the racing-scene, the meeting between Anna and her
darling Seriozha. My friends, in the presence of such art words fail me;
I can only cry to you, "Read, read, and read!" Read humbly, read
admiringly. The reading of Tolstoy in this spirit shall in itself be
unto you an education of your highest artistic sense. And when your
souls have become able to be thrilled to their very depths by the
unspeakable beauty of Tolstoy's art, you will then learn to be ashamed
of thought that for years you sensible folk of Boston have been capable
of allowing,--the Stevensons with their Hydes, and the Haggards with
their Shes, and even the clumsy Wards with their ponderous Elsmeres, to
steal away under the flag of literature your thoughtful moments. You
will then learn to understand how it comes to pass that the artistically
cold passionless Mr. Howells even, the apostle of heartlessness in
art,--however brave and full of heart the noble man be in actual
life,--can be struck with awe before the mighty presence of Tolstoy, and
how it is possible that the only words he can whisper is, "I cannot say
aught!" The preface of Mr. Howells to Tolstoy's "Sebastopol" has been
declared by wiseacres to be the symptom of his decadence. My friends,
believe it not. This admiration of Mr. Howells for Tolstoy is verily not
the symptom that he is beginning to fall, but rather that he is just
beginning to rise.
17. I consider this double-faced presentation, this combination of the
subjective method with the objective, as the highest in art, because it
is the most comprehensive. Not that Tolstoy is incapable of employing
the objective method alone with the highest success; when he does employ
it he is here second to none, not even to Turgenef. Witness for example
the following description of the arrival of a railway-train; still, the
essence of Tolstoy's art is the universality with which he grasps
whatever comes under his creative impulse.
18. Vronsky, engaged in a conversation, suddenly breaks off. "However,"
says he, "here is already the train."
"In truth, in the distance was already whistling the engine. In a
few minutes the platform began to tremble, and puffing with steam
driven downward by the frost, in rolled the engine with the
connecting-rod of its centre wheel slowly and rhythmically bending
in and stretching out, and with its bowing, well-muffled,
frost-covered engineer. Behind the tender, ever more slowly, and
shaking the platform still more, the express car came with its
baggage and a howling dog. Lastly, slightly trembling before coming
to a full stop, came up the passenger coaches.
"A smartish, brisk conductor, whistling, before the train came to a
full stop jumped off; and following him began to descend one by one
the impatient passengers,--an officer of the guard with military
bearing and frigid gaze, a smiling, lively small tradesman with a
bag in his hand, and a peasant with a sack over his shoulder."
19. And from the same union of the mighty preacher with the mighty
artist springs the second great characteristic of Tolstoy's art, that
which in contrast to Turgenef's architectural manner I must call
Tolstoy's panoramic manner. I have spoken in the last lecture of
Turgenef as the great architect in the art of fiction. Tolstoy is the
great panorama painter of fiction. Of architectural regularity there is
little to be found in him, but not because he lacks the line sense of
proportion of Turgenef, and the sense of beauty of form, but because his
art is of a nature in which regularity of progress and rigid outline of
form are not required.
20. Tolstoy's masterpieces therefore are panoramas, and his art
instinctively seeks that material which easiest lends itself to such
purpose. Hence his "Cossaks," hence his "Scenes before Sebastopol,"
hence his "Nekhludof." But a panorama needs no plot. Hence his
"Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth" contains not even a trace of a plot. It
is merely a series of pictures, each indeed in itself a thing of
unspeakable beauty, but all grouped in such a manner as to give
collectively a panorama of the entire growth of a human soul from the
moment it ceases to be animal until it becomes man. In a panorama it
matters little where each particular group is placed; just as in
Kaulbach's "Era of the Reformation" it matters little whether the figure
of Luther is on the left or on the right. "War and Peace" is thus like
the Battle of Gettysburg, a vast panorama, and "Anna Karenina" is a vast
panorama; the one is a panorama of the political life of the State, the
other is a panorama of the spiritual life of the individual. But a
panorama requires not so much plots as groups; hence "War and Peace" is
not one story, but three stories; and each is the story not of one
person or of one pair, but of a group of persons, of a group of pairs.
And the same necessity we see in "Anna Karenina;" here again Tolstoy's
materials are not persons but groups. Viewed as a work of architecture,
the book seems to lack form, the author seems to lack the sense of
proportion; for the book could be easily split into two different
novels,--the novel of Levin and Kitty on the one hand, and the novel of
Vronsky and Anna on the other. As works of architecture, neither would
suffer if severed from the other. But as a panorama of the unfolding of
heaven in the soul of Levin, and of hell in the soul of Anna, the story
of Kitty and Levin cannot be read apart from the story of Anna and
Vronsky and still remain a unit, and still remain intelligible.
21. This fact of Tolstoy's art being essentially panoramic and not
architectural, accounts for the vast expanse of his two great works,
"War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina." For it is the very nature of a
panorama to be on an extensive scale. The objection therefore made to
these two masterpieces that they are too voluminous would indeed be
relevant, if they had been conceived as works of architecture; but it is
totally irrelevant when applied to a panorama. Which form of art is
superior, which inferior,--the concise, compact, rigid severity of the
architect's art, or the overflowing, expanding, hence unshackled art of
the panorama? Methinks you can best answer this question yourselves by
asking another. Which is higher as a work of art, that tender song
without words by Mendelssohn, called "Regret," or that indescribably
affecting capriccio of his marked as "Opus 33"? Which is higher as a
work of art,--that in its sadness unparalleled song of Shakespeare,
"Blow, blow, thou Winter wind," or his "Othello"? Or again; which is a
higher work of art, a nocturne by Chopin, or a sonata by Beethoven; an
Essay by Macaulay, or a "Decline and Fall" by Gibbon? Lastly, which is
higher as a work of art,--the wonderfully accurate spiritedness of
Schreyer's painting of a horse, or the indescribable power of Wagner's
Race in a Roman Circus? On its plane each of the above is indeed of the
highest; but that the one is on a higher plane than the other few can
fail to observe. For, execution of design being equal, the broader the
scene, the wider the horizon, the more comprehensive the view, the
higher must be the art. The less extended, because more easily
comprehended, may indeed at first give more pleasure than the second;
but if the final arbiter in art be the amount of immediate pleasure to
be got from it, then Barnum's Circus is indeed a greater work of art
than Emerson's Book, and Mark Twain a greater writer than Carlyle. But
if creative power be the final measure of art, execution in the
different planes being equal, then Beethoven must rank higher than
Chopin, Shakespeare higher than Blanco White, Wagner than Meyer von
Bremen, and Tolstoy than Turgenef.
22. "Have you seen any of my later writings?" Tolstoy inquired of a
visitor who came to him as the admirer of "The Cossaks," of "War and
Peace," of "Anna Karenina." The question referred to his religious
writings. When he was told no, Tolstoy could only exclaim, "Ah, then you
do not know me at all. We must then become acquainted." In his
"Confession," he is no less emphatic; there he boldly declares the art
of which he has been a noble follower for some twenty years,--"balovstvô,"
foolish waste of time.
23. A most wonderful spectacle is thus presented: on the one hand a
writer gaining Shakespearian renown for works he repudiates; on the
other, a public reading and admiring him because of the very art he
thus repudiates. For 'tis idle to assert that Tolstoy's religious
writings are what draws readers unto him. Had he published _only_ his
religious writings, they might have indeed been bought, they might have
found their place on parlor table, they might have even occasionally
been glanced into; but read and studied and pondered they would not have
been. For Tolstoy's religious writings, in their spirit, are not one
whit different from that of _The_ Book which has indeed been for ages
lying in the parlors of almost every Christian household; but it is
_not_ read, it is _not_ discussed, it is _not_ talked about, like the
latest somersaulting performance of some popular magazine-scribe. Nay,
the surest way to make one's self unavailable nowadays at social
gathering of the parlor sort would be to talk therein solemnly of the
very book which in so many houses forms such indispensable part of
parlor outfit. Nay, has it not come in society to such a pass that the
very presence of _The_ Book on parlor table is already an evidence that
the host is _not_ a member of the circle which looks upon itself as
_the_ circle,--the select, the exclusive, the highest, in short?
24. The public, then, is interested in Tolstoy the artist more than in
the preacher, for the same reason that when Emerson lands in England
only a handful of mortals greet him; while when Mr. Sullivan lands in
England the streets cannot hold the thousands who flock to receive him.
Tolstoy, on the other hand, protests that whosoever looks to him as the
artist, sees not him, knows not him; that he is aught else now; that
mere art, in fact, is to him a business no longer worthy of a serious
soul. The public again, in its ever-confident patronizingness, says unto
him: "But for thy great artistic genius, O Leo, son of Nicolas, with thy
latest religious antics and somersaultings, we would call thee--a crank.
But as to a great genius we shall be merciful unto thee, and bear with
many a confession, many a cobbled shoe, if thou givest us only more of
Olenins, more of Karenins."
25. Who is here right, who is here wrong,--the public with its millions,
Tolstoy in his loneliness?
26. That genius should often misunderstand its own strength, and seek it
where it is weakest, is indeed no new phenomenon in its history.
Frederick the Great prides himself more on his flute-playing than on his
kingship; and it is not so very long ago that in our very midst a
university professor called the happiest day of his life not that on
which he discovered a new Greek particle, but that on which the crew of
his university won the boat-race. And a mere chance tour on a Sunday
through our churches would quickly show the lamentably frequent
misapprehension of genius by itself; for many a fine genius for the
actor's art is spoiled by an imaginary call to the pulpit. The
presumption therefore is indeed against the great Tolstoy in his dispute
with the great public. Still, I venture to side with Tolstoy. I too
venture to think that Tolstoy's greatest work is found not so much in
his works of pure art as in his works of pure religion; and with God's
blessing, my friends, I trust you will see it with me in the next
lecture.