BOYHOOD AND YOUTH
He studied at Kazan.[1] He was not a notable student. It used to be
said of the three brothers[2]: "Sergius wants to, and can; Dmitri wants
to, and can't; Leo can't, and doesn't want to."
He passed through the period which he terms "the desert of
adolescence"; a desert of sterile sands, blown upon by gales of the
burning winds of folly. The pages of _Boyhood_, and in especial those
of _Youth_[3] are rich in intimate confessions relating to these years.
He was a solitary. His brain was in a condition of perpetual fever.
For a year he was completely at sea; he roamed from one system of
philosophy to another. As a Stoic, he indulged in self-inflicted
physical tortures. As an Epicurean he debauched himself. Then came a
faith in metempsychosis. Finally he fell into a condition of nihilism
not far removed from insanity; he used to feel that if only he could
turn round with sufficient rapidity he would find himself face to face
with nothingness ... He analysed himself continually:
"I no longer thought of a thing; I thought of what I thought of it."[4]
This perpetual self-analysis, this mechanism of reason turning in the
void, remained to him as a dangerous habit, which was "often," in his
own words, "to be detrimental to me in life"; but by which his art has
profited inexpressibly.[5]
As another result of self-analysis, he had lost all his religious
convictions; or such was his belief. At sixteen years of age ceased
to pray; he went to church no longer;[6] but his faith was not
extinguished; it was only smouldering.
"Nevertheless, I did believe--in something. But in what? I could not
say. I still believed in God; or rather I did not deny Him. But in what
God? I did not know. Nor did I deny Christ and his teaching; but I
could not have said precisely what that doctrine was."[7]
From time to time he was obsessed by dreams of goodness. He wished to
sell his carriage and give the money to the poor: to give them the
tenth part of his fortune; to live without the help of servants, "for
they were men like himself." During an illness[8] he wrote certain
"Rules of Life." He naively assigned himself the duty of "studying
everything, of mastering all subjects: law, medicine, languages,
agriculture, history, geography, and mathematics; to attain the highest
degree of perfection in music and painting," and so forth. I had
"the conviction that the destiny of man was a process of incessant
self-perfection."
Insensibly, under the stress of a boy's passions, of a violent
sensuality and a stupendous pride of self,[9] this faith in perfection
went astray, losing its disinterested quality, becoming material and
practical. If he still wished to perfect his will, his body, and his
mind, it was in order to conquer the world and to enforce its love.[10]
He wished to please.
To please: it was not an easy ambition. He was then of a simian
ugliness: the face was long, heavy, brutish; the hair was cropped
close, growing low upon the forehead; the eyes were small, with a hard,
forbidding glance, deeply sunken in shadowy orbits; the nose was large,
the lips were thick and protruding, and the ears were enormous.[11]
Unable to alter this ugliness, which even as a child had subjected him
to fits of despair,[12] he pretended to a realisation of the ideal man
of the world, _l'homme comme il faut._[13] This ideal led him to do as
did other "men of the world": to gamble, run foolishly into debt, and
to live a completely dissipated existence.[14]
One quality always came to his salvation: his absolute sincerity.
"Do you know why I like you better than the others?" says Nekhludov to
his friend. "You have a precious and surprising quality: candour."
"Yes, I am always saying things which I am ashamed to own even to
myself."[15]
In his wildest moments he judges himself with a pitiless insight.
"I am living an utterly bestial life," he writes in his _Journal_. "I
am as low as one can fall." Then, with his mania for analysis, he notes
minutely the causes of his errors:
"1. Indecision or lack of energy. 2. Self-deception. 3. Insolence.
4. False modesty. 5. Ill-temper. 6. Licentiousness. 7. Spirit of
imitation. 8. Versatility. 9. Lack of reflection."
While still a student he was applying this independence of judgment to
the criticism of social conventions and intellectual superstitions. He
scoffed at the official science of the University; denied the least
importance to historical studies, and was put under arrest for his
audacity of thought. At this period he discovered Rousseau, reading his
_Confessions_ and _Émile_. The discovery affected him like a mental
thunderbolt.
"I made him an object of religious worship. I wore a medallion portrait
of him hung round my neck, as though it were a holy image."[16]
His first essays in philosophy took the form of commentaries on
Rousseau (1846-47).
In the end, however, disgusted with the University and with
"smartness," he returned to Yasnaya Polyana, to bury himself in the
country (1847-51); where he once more came into touch with the people.
He professed to come to their assistance, as their benefactor and their
teacher. His experiences of this period have been related in one of
his earliest books, _A Russian Proprietor_ (_A Landlord's Morning_)
(1852); a remarkable novel, whose hero, Prince Nekhludov, Nekhludov
figures also in _Boyhood_ and _Youth_ (1854), in _A Brush with the
Enemy_ (1856); the _Diary of a Sportsman_ (1856); _Lucerne_ (1857);
and _Resurrection_ (1899). We must remember that different characters
appear under this one name. Tolstoy has not always given Nekhludov the
same physical aspect; and the latter commits suicide at the end of the
_Diary of a Sportsman_. These different Nekhludovs are various aspects
of Tolstoy, endowed with his worst and his best characteristics, is
Tolstoy in disguise.
Nekhludov is twenty years old. He has left the University to devote
himself to his peasants. He has been labouring for a year to do them
good. In the course of a visit to the village we see him striving
against jeering indifference, rooted distrust, routine, apathy, vice,
and ingratitude. All his efforts are in vain. He returns indoors
discouraged, and muses on his dreams of a year ago; his generous
enthusiasm, his "idea that love and goodness were one with happiness
and truth: the only happiness and the only truth possible in this
world." He feels himself defeated. He is weary and ashamed.
"Seated before the piano, his hand unconsciously moved upon the
keys. A chord sounded; then a second, then a third.... He began to
play. The chords were not always perfect in rhythm; they were often
obvious to the point of banality; they did not reveal any talent for
music; but they gave him a melancholy, indefinable sense of pleasure.
At each change of key he awaited, with a flutter of the heart, for
what was about to follow; his imagination vaguely supplementing the
deficiencies of the actual sound. He heard a choir, an orchestra ...
and his keenest pleasure arose from the enforced activity of his
imagination, which brought before him, without logical connection, but
with astonishing clearness, the most varied scenes and images of the
past and the future...."
Once more he sees the moujiks--vicious, distrustful, lying, idle,
obstinate, contrary, with whom he has lately been speaking; but this
time he sees them with all their good qualities and without their
vices; he sees into their hearts with the intuition of love; he sees
therein their patience, their resignation to the fate which is crushing
them; their forgiveness of wrongs, their family affection, and the
causes of their pious, mechanical attachment to the past. He recalls
their days of honest labour, healthy and fatiguing....
"'It is beautiful,' he murmurs.... Why am I not one of these?'"[17]
The entire Tolstoy is already contained in the hero of this first
novel;[18] his piercing vision and his persistent illusions. He
observes men and women with an impeccable realism; but no sooner does
he close his eyes than his dreams resume their sway; his dreams and his
love of mankind.
[1] From 1842 to 1847. Science was as yet unorganised; and its
teachers, even in Western Europe, had not the courage of the facts they
taught. Men still sought for an anchor in the philosophic systems of
the ancients. The theory of evolution, put forward at the beginning
of the century, had fallen into obscurity. Science was dry, dogmatic,
uncoordinated, insignificant. Hence, perhaps, the contempt for science
which distinguished Tolstoy throughout his life, and which made the
later Tolstoy possible.--TRANS.
[2] Nikolas, five years older than Leo, had completed his studies in
1844.
[3] The English translation is entitled _
Childhood, Boyhood,
Youth._
[4] _Youth_, six.
[5] Notably in his first volumes--in the _Tales of Sebastopol_.
[6] This was the time when he used to read Voltaire, and find pleasure
in so doing.
[7] _Confessions,_ vol. i.
[8] In March and April, 1847.
[9] "All that man does he does out of _amour-propre,_" says Nekhludov,
in _Boyhood._ In 1853 Tolstoy writes, in his _Journal_: "My great
failing: pride. A vast self-love, without justification.... I am so
ambitious that if I had to choose between glory and virtue (which I
love) I am sure I should choose the former."
[10] "I wanted to be known by all, loved by all. I wanted every one, at
the mere sound of my name, to be struck with admiration and gratitude."
[11] According to a portrait dated 1848, in which year he attained his
twentieth year.
[12] "I thought there would be no happiness on earth for any one who
had so large a nose, so thick lips, and such small eyes."
[13] "I divided humanity into three classes: the 'correct,' or 'smart,'
who alone were worthy of esteem; those who were not 'correct,' who
deserved only contempt and hatred; and the people, the _plebs,_ who
simply did not exist." (_Youth,_ xxxi.)
[14] Especially during a period spent in St. Petersburg, 1847-48.
[15] _Boyhood._
[16] Conversations with M. Paul Boyer _(Le Temps),_ August 28, 1901.
[17] _A Russian Proprietor._
[18] Contemporary with _Childhood._