EARLY WORK: TALES OF THE CAUCASUS
_The Story of my Childhood_[1] was commenced in the autumn of 1851,
at Tiflis; it was finished at Piatigorsk in the Caucasus, on the 2nd
of July, 1852. It is curious to note that while in the midst of that
nature by which he was so intoxicated, while leading a life absolutely
novel, in the midst of the stirring risks of warfare, occupied in the
discovery of a world of unfamiliar characters and passions, Tolstoy
should have returned, in this his first work, to the memories of his
past life. But _Childhood_ was written during a period of illness,
when his military activity was suddenly arrested. During the long
leisure of a convalescence, while alone and suffering, his state
of mind inclined to the sentimental;[2] the past unrolled itself
before his eyes at a time when he felt for it a certain tenderness.
After the exhausting tension of the last few unprofitable years, it
was comforting to live again in thought the "marvellous, innocent,
joyous, poetic period" of early childhood; to reconstruct for himself
"the heart of a child, good, sensitive, and capable of love." With
the ardour of youth and its illimitable projects, with the cyclic
character of his poetic imagination, which rarely conceived an isolated
subject, and whose great romances are only the links in a long historic
chain, the fragments of enormous conceptions which he was never
able to execute,[3] Tolstoy at this moment regarded his narrative
of _Childhood_ as merely the opening chapters of a _History of Four
Periods_, which was to include his life in the Caucasus, and was in all
probability to have terminated in the revelation of God by Nature.
In later years Tolstoy spoke with great severity of his _Childhood_, to
which he owed some part of his popularity.
"It is so bad," he remarked to M. Birukov: "it is written with so
little literary conscience!... There is nothing to be got from it."
He was alone in this opinion. The manuscript was sent, without
the author's name, to the great Russian review, the _Sovremennik_
(_Contemporary_); it was published immediately (September 6, 1852), and
achieved a general success; a success confirmed by the public of every
country in Europe. Yet in spite of its poetic charm, its delicacy of
touch and emotion, we can understand that it may have displeased the
Tolstoy of later years.
It displeased him for the very reasons by which it pleased others. We
must admit it frankly: except in the recording of certain provincial
types, and in a restricted number of passages which are remarkable for
their religious feeling or for the realistic treatment of emotion,[4]
the personality of Tolstoy is barely in evidence.
A tender, gentle sentimentality prevails from cover to cover; a quality
which was always afterwards antipathetic to Tolstoy, and one which
he sedulously excluded from his other romances. We recognise it;
these tears, this sentimentality came from Dickens, who was one of
Tolstoy's favourite authors between his fourteenth and his twenty-first
year. Tolstoy notes in his _Journal_: "Dickens: _David Copperfield_.
Influence considerable." He read the book again in the Caucasus.
Two other influences, to which he himself confesses, were Sterne and
Töppfer. "I was then," he says, "under their inspiration."[5]
Who would have thought that the _Nouvelles Genevoises_ would be the
first model of the author of _War and Peace?_ Yet knowing this to
be a fact, we discern in Tolstoy's _Childhood_ the same bantering,
affected geniality, transplanted to the soil of a more aristocratic
nature. So we see that the readers of his earliest efforts found the
writer's countenance familiar. It was not long, however, before his
own personality found self-expression. His _Boyhood_ (_Adolescence_),
though less pure and less perfect than _Childhood_, exhibits a more
original power of psychology, a keen feeling for nature, and a mind
full of distress and conflict, which Dickens or Töppfer would have been
at a loss to express. In the _Russian Proprietor_ (October, 1852[6])
Tolstoy's character appeared sharply defined, marked by his fearless
sincerity and his faith in love. Among the remarkable portraits of
peasants which he has painted in this novel, we find an early sketch
of one of the finest conceptions of his _Popular Tales:_ the old man
with the beehives; a the little old man under the birch-tree, his
hands outstretched, his eyes raised, his bald head shining in the sun,
and all around him the bees, touched with gold, never stinging him,
forming a halo.... But the truly typical works of this period are those
which directly register his present emotions: namely, the novels of
the Caucasus. The first, _The Invasion_ (finished in December, 1852),
impresses the reader deeply by the magnificence of its landscapes:
a sunrise amidst the mountains, on the bank of a river; a wonderful
night-piece, with sounds and shadows noted with a striking intensity;
and the return in the evening, while the distant snowy peaks disappear
in the violet haze, and the clear voices of the regimental singers rise
and fall in the transparent air. Many of the types of _War and Peace_
are here drawn to the life: Captain Khlopoff, the true hero, who by no
means fights because he likes fighting, but because it is his duty; a
man with "one of those truly Russian faces, placid and simple, and eyes
into which it is easy and agreeable to gaze." Heavy, awkward, a trifle
ridiculous, indifferent to his surroundings, he alone is unchanged in
battle, where all the rest are changed; "he is exactly as we have seen
him always: with the same quiet movements, the same level voice, the
same expression of simplicity on his heavy, simple face." Next comes
the lieutenant who imitates the heroes of Lermontov; a most kindly,
affectionate boy, who professes the utmost ferocity. Then comes the
poor little subaltern, delighted at the idea of his first action,
brimming over with affection, ready to fall on his comrade's neck; a
laughable, adorable boy, who, like Petia Rostoff, contrives to get
stupidly killed. In the centre of the picture is the figure of Tolstoy,
the observer, who is mentally aloof from his comrades, and _I_ already
utters his cry of protest against warfare:
"Is it impossible, then, for men to live in peace, in this world so
full of beauty, under this immeasurable starry sky? How is it they are
able, here, to retain their feelings of hostility and vengeance, and
the lust of destroying their fellows? All there is of evil in the human
heart ought to disappear at the touch of nature, that most immediate
expression of the beautiful and the good."[7]
Other tales of the Caucasus were to follow which were observed at
this time, though not written until a later period. In 1854-55.
_The Woodcutters_ was written; a book notable for its exact
and rather frigid realism; full of curious records of Russian
soldier-psychology--notes to be made use of in the future. In 1856
appeared _A Brush with the Enemy_, in which there is a man of the
world, a degraded non-commissioned officer, a wreck, a coward, a
drunkard and a liar, who cannot support the idea of being slaughtered
like one of the common soldiers he despises, the least of whom is worth
a hundred of himself.
Above all these works, as the summit, so to speak, of this first
mountain range, rises one of the most beautiful lyric romances that
ever fell from Tolstoy's pen: the song of his youth, the poem of the
Caucasus, _The Cossacks_.[8] The splendour of the snowy mountains
displaying their noble lines against the luminous sky fills the
whole work with its music. The book is unique, for it belongs to the
flowering-time of genius, "the omnipotent god of youth," as Tolstoy
says, "that rapture which never returns." What a spring-tide torrent!
What an overflow of love!
"'I love--I love so much!... How brave! How good!' he repeated: and he
felt as though he must weep. Why? Who was brave, and whom did he love?
That he did not precisely know."[9]
This intoxication of the heart flows on, unchecked. Olenin, the hero,
who has come to the Caucasus, as Tolstoy came, to steep himself
in nature, in the life of adventure, becomes enamoured of a young
Cossack girl, and abandons himself to the medley of his contradictory
aspirations. At one moment he believes that "happiness is to live for
others, to sacrifice oneself," at another, that "self-sacrifice is
only stupidity"; finally he is inclined to believe, with Erochta, the
old Cossack, that "everything is precious. God has made everything
for the delight of man. Nothing is a sin. To amuse oneself with a
handsome girl is not a sin: it is only health." But what need to think
at all? It is enough to live. Life is all good, all happiness; life is
all-powerful and universal; life is God. An ardent naturalism uplifts
and consumes his soul. Lost in the forest, amidst "the wildness of the
woods, the multitude of birds and animals, the clouds of midges in the
dusky green, in the warm, fragrant air, amidst the little runlets of
water which trickle everywhere beneath the boughs"; a few paces from
the ambushes of the enemy, Olenin is "seized suddenly by such a sense
of causeless happiness that in obedience to childish habit he crossed
himself and began to give thanks to somebody." Like a Hindu fakir, he
rejoices to tell himself that he is alone and lost in this maëlstrom of
aspiring life: that myriads of invisible beings, hidden on every hand,
are that moment hunting him to death; that these thousands of little
insects humming around him are calling:
"Here, brothers, here! Here is some one to bite!"
And it became obvious to him that he was no longer a Russian gentleman,
in Moscow society, but simply a creature like the midge, the pheasant,
the stag: like those which were living and prowling about him at that
moment.
"Like them, I shall live, I shall die. And the grass will grow above
me...."
And his heart is full of happiness.
Tolstoy lives through this hour of youth in a delirium of vitality
and the love of life. He embraces Nature, and sinks himself in her
being. To her he pours forth and exalts his griefs, his joys, and his
loves; in her he lulls them to sleep. Yet this romantic intoxication
never veils the lucidity of his perceptions. Nowhere has he painted
landscape with a greater power than in this fervent poem; nowhere
has he depicted the type with greater truth. The contrast of nature
with the world of men, which forms the basis of the book; and which
through all Tolstoy's life is to prove one of his favourite themes,
and an article of his _Credo,_ has already inspired him, the better to
castigate the world, with something of the bitterness to be heard in
the _Kreutzer Sonata_.[10] But for those who love him he is no less
truly himself; and the creatures of nature, the beautiful Cossack girl
and her friends, are seen under a searching light, with their egoism,
their cupidity, their venality, and all their vices.
An exceptional occasion was about to offer itself for the exercise of
this heroic veracity.
[1] Published in English as part of _Childhood, Boyhood, Youth._
[2] His letters of this period to his Aunt Tatiana are full of tears
and of sentimentality. He was, as he says, _Liovariova,_ "Leo the
Sniveller" (January 6, 1852).
[3] The _Russian Proprietor_ (_A Landlord's Morning_) is the fragment
of a projected _Romance of a Russian Landowner. The Cossacks_ forms the
first portion of a great romance of the Caucasus. In the author's eyes
the huge _War and Peace_ was only a sort of preface to a contemporary
epic, of which _The Decembrists_ was to have been the nucleus.
[4] See the passage relating to the pilgrim Gricha, or to the death of
his mother.
[5] Letter to Birukov.
[6] Completed only in 1855-56. _The Two Old Men_ (1885).
[7] _The Invasion._
[8] Although completed much later--in 1860--and appearing only in
1863--the bulk of this volume was of this period.
[9] _The Cossacks_.
[10] For example, see Oleniln's letter to his friends in Russia.