CONCLUSION
The struggle was ended; the struggle that had lasted for eighty-two
years, whose battlefield was this life of ours. A tragic and glorious
mellay, in which all the forces of life took part; all the vices and
all the virtues.--All the vices excepting one: untruth, which he
pursued incessantly, tracking it into its last resort and refuge.
In the beginning intoxicated liberty, the conflict of passions in the
stormy darkness, illuminated from time to time by dazzling flashes of
light--crises of love and ecstasy and visions of the Eternal. Years of
the Caucasus, of Sebastopol; years of tumultuous and restless youth.
Then the great peace of the first years of marriage. The happiness
of love, of art, of nature_--War and Peace_. The broad daylight of
genius, which bathed the whole human horizon, and the spectacle of
those struggles which for the soul of the artist were already things of
the past. He dominated them, was master of them, and already they were
not enough. Like Prince Andrei, his eyes were turned towards the vast
skies which shone above the battlefield. It was this sky that attracted
him:
"There are men with powerful wings whom pleasure leads to alight in the
midst of the crowd, when their pinions are broken; such, for instance,
am I. Then they beat their broken wings; they launch themselves
desperately, but fall anew. The wings will mend. I shall fly high. May
God help me!"[1]
These words were written in the midst of a terrible spiritual tempest,
of which the _Confessions_ are the memory and echo. More than once
was Tolstoy thrown to earth, his pinions shattered. But he always
persevered. He started afresh. We see him hovering in "the vast,
profound heavens," with his two great wings, of which one is reason and
the other faith. But he does not find the peace he looked for. Heaven
is not without us, but within us. Tolstoy fills it with the tempest of
his passions. There he perceives the apostles of renunciation, and he
brings to renunciation the same ardour that he brought to life. But it
is always life that he strains to him, with the violence of a lover. He
is "maddened with life." He is "intoxicated with life." He cannot live
without this madness.[2] He is drunk at once with happiness and with
unhappiness, with death and with immortality.[3] His renunciation of
individual life is only a cry of exalted passion towards the eternal
life. The peace which he finds, the peace of the soul which he invokes,
is not the peace of death. It is rather the calm of those burning
worlds which sail by the forces of gravity through the infinite spaces.
With him anger is calm,[4]and the calm is blazing. Faith has given him
new weapons with which to wage, even more implacably, unceasing war
upon the lies of modern society. He no longer confines himself to a
few types of romance; he attacks all the great idols: the hypocrisies
of religion, the State, science, art, liberalism, socialism, popular
education, benevolence, pacificism.[5] He strikes at all, delivers his
desperate attacks upon all.
From time to time the world has sight of these great rebellious
spirits, who, like John the Forerunner, hurl anathemas against a
corrupted civilisation. The last of these was Rousseau. By his
love of nature,[6] by his hatred of modern society, by his jealous
independence, by his fervent adoration of the Gospel and for Christian
morals, Rousseau is a precursor of Tolstoy, who says of him:
"Pages like this go to my heart; I feel that I should have written
them."[7]
But what a difference between the two minds, and how much more purely
Christian is Tolstoy's! What a lack of humility, what Pharisee-like
arrogance, in this insolent cry from the _Confessions_ of the Genevese:
"Eternal Being! Let a single man tell me, if he dare: I was better than
that man!"
Or in this defiance of the world:
"I say it loudly and fearlessly: whosoever could believe me a dishonest
man is himself a man to be suppressed."
Tolstoy wept tears of blood over the "crimes" of his past life:
"I suffer the pangs of hell. I recall all my past baseness, and these
memories do not leave me; they poison my life. Usually men regret that
they cannot remember after death. What happiness if it should be so!
What suffering it would mean if, in that other life, I were to recall
all the evil I have done down here!"[8]
Tolstoy was not the man to write his confessions, as did Rousseau,
because, as the latter said, "feeling that the good exceeded the evil
it was in my interest to tell everything."[9] Tolstoy, after having
made the attempt, decided not to write his _Memoirs;_ the pen fell from
his hands; he did not wish to be an object of offence and scandal to
those who would read it.
"People would say: There, then, is the man whom many set so high! And
what a shameful fellow he was! Then with us mere mortals it is God who
ordains us to be shameful."[10]
Never did Rousseau know the Christian faith, the fine modesty, and
the humility that produced the ineffable candour of the aged Tolstoy.
Behind Rousseau we see the Rome of Calvin. In Tolstoy we see the
pilgrims, the innocents, whose tears and naive confessions had touched
him as a child.
But beyond and above the struggle with the world, which was common to
him and to Rousseau, another kind of warfare filled the last thirty
years of Tolstoy's life; a magnificent warfare between the highest
powers of his mind: Truth and Love.
Truth--"that look which goes straight to the heart," the penetrating
light of "those grey eyes which pierce you through"--Truth was his
earliest faith, and the empress of his art.
"The heroine of my writings, she whom I love with all the forces of my
being, she who always was, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth."[11]
The truth alone escaped shipwreck after the death of his brother.[12]
The truth, the pivot of his life, the rock in the midst of an ocean.
But very soon the "horrible truth"[13] was no longer enough for him.
Love had supplanted it. It was the living spring of his childhood; "the
natural state of his soul."[14] When the moral crisis of 1880 came he
never relinquished the truth; he made way for love.[15]
Love is "the basis of energy."[16] Love is the "reason of life; the
only reason, with beauty."[17] Love is the essence of Tolstoy ripened
by life, of the author of _War and Peace_ and the _Letter to the Holy
Synod_.[18]
This interpenetration of the truth by love makes the unique value
of the masterpieces he wrote in the middle part of his life--_nel
mezzo del cammin_--and distinguishes his realism from the realism of
Flaubert. The latter places his faith in refraining from loving his
characters. Great as he may be, he lacks the _Fiat lux!_ The light of
the sun is not enough: we must have the light of the heart. The realism
of Tolstoy is incarnate in each of his creatures, and seeing them with
their own eyes he finds in the vilest reasons for loving them and for
making us feel the chain of brotherhood which unites us to all.[19] By
love he penetrates to the roots of life.
But this union is a difficult one to maintain. There are hours in which
the spectacle of life and its suffering are so bitter that they appear
an affront to love, and in order to save it, and to save his faith, a
man must withdraw to such a height above the world that faith is in
danger of losing truth as well. What shall he do, moreover, who has
received at the hands of fate the fatal, magnificent gift of seeing the
truth--the gift of being unable to escape from seeing it? Who shall
say what Tolstoy suffered from the continual discord of his latter
years--the discord between his unpitying vision, which saw the horror
of reality, and his impassioned heart, which continued to expect love
and to affirm it?
We have all known these tragic conflicts. How often have we had to
face the alternative--not to see, or to hate! And how often does an
artist--an artist worthy of the name, a writer who knows the terrible,
magnificent power of the written word--feel himself weighed down by
anguish as he writes the truth![20] This truth, sane and virile,
necessary in the midst of modern lies, this vital truth seems to him
as the air we breathe.... But then we perceive that this air is more
than the lungs of many can bear. It is too strong for the many beings
enfeebled by civilisation; too strong for those who are weak simply in
the kindness of their hearts. Are we to take no account of this, and
plunge them implacably into the truth that kills them? Is there not
above all a truth which, as Tolstoy says, "is open to love"? Or is the
artist to soothe mankind with consoling lies, as Peer Gynt, with his
tales, soothes his old dying mother? Society is always face to face
with this dilemma: the truth, or love. It resolves it in general by
sacrificing both.
Tolstoy has never betrayed either of his two faiths. In the works of
his maturity love is the torch of truth. In the works of his later
years it is a light shining on high, a ray of mercy which falls upon
life, but does not mingle with it. We have seen this in _Resurrection_,
wherein faith dominates the reality, but remains external to it. The
people, whom Tolstoy depicts as commonplace and mean when he regards
the isolated figures that compose it, takes on a divine sanctity so
soon as he considers it in the abstract.[21]
In his everyday life appears the same discord as in his art, but the
contrast is even more cruel. It was in vain that he knew what love
required of him; he acted otherwise; he lived not according to God
but according to the world. And love itself: how was he to behave
with regard to love? How distinguish between its many aspects, its
contradictory orders? Was love of family, to come first, or love of all
humanity? To his last day he was perplexed by these alternatives.
What was the solution? He did not find it. Let us leave the
self-sufficient, the coldly intellectual, to judge him with disdain.
They, to be sure, have found the truth; they hold it with assurance.
For them, Tolstoy was a sentimentalist, a weakling, who could only be
of use as a warning. Certainly he is not an example that they can
follow: they are not sufficiently alive. Tolstoy did not belong to the
self-satisfied elect; he was of no Church; of no sect; he was no more
a Scribe, to borrow his terms, than a Pharisee of this faith or that.
He was the highest type of the free Christian, who strives all his life
long towards an ideal that is always more remote.[22]
Tolstoy does not speak to the privileged, the enfranchised of the world
of thought; he speaks to ordinary men_--hominibus bonæ voluntatis_.
He is our conscience. He says what we all think, we average people,
and what we all fear to read in ourselves. He is not a master full of
pride: one of those haughty geniuses who are throned above humanity
upon their art and their intelligence. He is--as he loved to style
himself in his letters, by that most beautiful of titles, the most
pleasant of all--"our brother."
[1] _Journal_, dated October 28, 1879. Here is the entire passage:
"There are in this world heavy folk, without wings. They struggle down
below. There are strong men among them: as Napoleon. He leaves terrible
traces among humanity. He sows discord.--There are men who let their
wings grow, slowly launch themselves, and hover: the monks. There are
light fliers, who easily mount and fall: the worthy idealists. There
are men with powerful wings.... There are the celestial ones, who
out of their love of men descend to earth and fold their wings, and
teach others how to fly. Then, when they are no longer needed, they
re-ascend: as did Christ."
[2] "One can live only while one is drunken with life." (_Confessions_,
1879). "I am mad with living.... It is summer, the delicious summer.
This year. I have struggled for a long time; but the beauty of nature
has conquered me. I rejoice in life." (Letter to Fet, July, 1880.)
These lines were written at the height of the religious crisis.
[3] In his _Journal,_ dated May 1, 1863: "The thought of death." ... "I
desire and love immortality."
[4] "I was intoxicated with that boiling anger and indignation which
I love to feel, which I excite even when I feel it naturally, because
it acts upon me in such a way as to calm me, and gives me, at least
for a few moments, an extraordinary elasticity, and the full fire and
energy of all the physical and moral capacities." (_Diary of Prince D.
Nekhludov,_ Lucerne, 1857.)
[5] His article on _War,_ written on the occasion of the Universal
Peace Congress in London in 1891, is a rude satire on the peacemakers
who believe in international arbitration:
"This is the story of the bird which is caught after a pinch of salt
has been put on his tail. It is quite as easy to catch him without it.
They laugh at us who speak of arbitration and disarmament by consent
of the Powers. Mere verbiage, this! Naturally the Governments approve:
worthy apostles! They know very well that their approval will never
prevent their doing as they will." (_Cruel Pleasures._)
[6] Nature was always "the best friend" of Tolstoy, as he loved to
say: "A friend is good; but he will die, or he will go abroad, and one
cannot follow him; while Nature, to which one may be united by an act
of purchase or by inheritance, is better. Nature to me is cold and
exacting, repulses me and hinders me; yet Nature is a friend whom we
keep until death, and into whom we shall enter when we die." (Letter
to Fet, May 19, 1861. _Further Letters_.) He shared in the life of
nature; he was born again in the spring. "March and April are my best
months for work." Towards the end of autumn he became more torpid.
"To me it is the most dead of all the seasons; I do not think; I do
not write; I feel agreeably stupid." (To Fet, October, 1869.) But the
Nature that spoke so intimately to his heart was that of his own home,
Yasnaya Polyana. Although he wrote some very charming notes upon the
Lake of Geneva when travelling in Switzerland, and especially on the
Clarens district, whither the memory of Rousseau attracted him, he
felt himself a stranger amid the Swiss landscape; and the ties of his
native land appeared more closely drawn and sweeter: "I love Nature
when she surrounds me on every side, when on every hand the warm air
envelopes me which extends through the infinite distance; when the very
same lush grasses that I have crushed in throwing myself on the ground
make the verdure of the infinite meadows; when the same leaves which,
shaken by the wind, throw the shadow on my face, make the sombre blue
of the distant forest; when the very air I breathe makes the light-blue
background of the infinite sky; when not I alone am delighting in
nature; when around me whirl and hum millions of insects and the birds
are singing. The greatest delight in nature is when I feel myself
making a part of all. Here (in Switzerland) the infinite distance is
beautiful, but I have nothing in common with it." (May, 1851.)
[7] Conversations with M. Paul Boyer _(Le Temps,_ August 28, 1901).
The similarity is really very striking at times, and might well deceive
one. Take the profession of faith of the dying Julie:
"I could not say that I believed what it was impossible for me to
believe, and I have always believed what I said I believed. This was as
much as rested with me."
Compare Tolstoy's letter to the Holy Synod:
"It may be that my beliefs are embarrassing or displeasing. It is not
within my power to change them, just as it is not in my power to change
my body. I cannot believe anything but what I believe, at this hour
when I am preparing to return to that God from whom I came."
Or this passage from the _Réponse à Christophe de Beaumont,_ which
seems pure Tolstoy:
"I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. My Master has told me that he who
loves his brother accomplishes the law."
Or again:
"The whole of the Lord's Prayer is expressed in these words: 'Thy Will
be done!'" (_Troisième lettre de la Montague._)
Compare with:
"I am replacing all my prayers with the _Pater Nosier._ All the
requests I can make of God are expressed with greater moral elevation
by these words: 'Thy Will be done!'" (Tolstoy's _Journal,_ in the
Caucasus, 1852-3.)
The similarity of thought is no less striking in the province of art:
"The first rule of the art of writing," said Rousseau, "is to speak
plainly and to express one's thought exactly."
And Tolstoy:
"Think what you will, but in such a manner that every word may be
understood by all. One cannot write anything bad in perfectly plain
language."
I have demonstrated elsewhere that the satirical descriptions of
the Paris Opera in the _Nouvelle Héloise_ have much in common with
Tolstoy's criticisms in _What is Art?_
[8] _Journal_, January 6, 1903.
[9] _Quatrième Promenade._
[10] Letter to Birukov.
[11] _Sebastopol in May, 1853._
[12] "The truth.... the only thing that has been left me of my moral
conceptions, the sole thing that I shall still fulfil." (October 17,
1860.)
[13] _Ibid._
[14] "The love of men is the natural state of the soul, and we do not
observe it." (_Journal,_ while he was a student at Kazan.)
[15] "The truth will make way for love." (_Confessions._)
[16] "'You are always talking of energy? But the basis of energy is
love,' said Anna, 'and love does not come at will.'" (_Anna Karenin._)
[17] "Beauty and love, those two sole reasons for human existence."
(_War and Peace._)
[18] "I believe in God, who for me is Love." (_To the Holy Synod,_
1901.)
"'Yes, love!... Not selfish love, but love as I knew it, for the first
time in my life, when I saw my enemy dying at my side, and loved
him.... It is the very essence of the soul. To love his neighbour,
to love his enemies, to love all and each, is to love God in all His
manifestations!... To love a creature who is dear to us is human love:
to love an enemy is almost divine love!'" (Prince Andrei in _War and
Peace_.)
[19] "The passionate love of the artist for his subject is the soul of
art. Without love no work of art is possible." (Letter of September,
1889.)
[20] "I write books, which is why I know all the evil they do." ...
(Letter to P. V. Veriguin, leader of the Doukhobors, 1898. _Further
Letters_.)
[21] See the _Russian Proprietor,_ or see in _Confessions,_ the
strongly idealised view of these men, simple, good, content with their
lot, living serenely and having the sense of life: or, at the end of
the second part of _Resurrection,_ that vision "of a new humanity,
a new world," which appeared to Nekhludov when he met the workers
returning from their toil.
[22] "A Christian should not think whether he is morally superior or
inferior to others; but he is the better Christian as he travels more
rapidly along the road to perfection, whatever may be his position
upon it at any particular moment. Thus the stationary virtue of the
Pharisee is less Christian than that of the thief, whose soul is moving
rapidly towards the ideal, and who repents upon his cross." (_Cruel
Pleasures_.)
INDEX
(_The names of characters and titles of books are in italics._)
ALEXANDRA, Tolstoy's aunt
Ancestry, Tolstoy's
Analysis, self-
_Andrei Bolkonsky, Prince_
_Anna Karenin_ (novel)
_Anna Karenin_ (character)
Arabian Nights
Art--
Attacks on modern
Tolstoy's conception of
His ignorance of
His religious ideal of art
Christian art extinct
The art of the future
Endowment of
Mission of
Austerlitz
BACH
Bachkirs, the
_Bagration_
Beethoven
Bers family, the
Bers, S. A., 179
Bers, Sophie, _see_ Countess Tolstoy
Besoukhov, Pierre
Bloody Sunday
Böcklin
Boyer, Paul
_Boyhood_
Brahms
Breton, Jules
Brothers, Tolstoy's
_Brush with the Enemy, A_
Bylines
CAUCASUS, Tolstoy joins Army of the
Census, the, Tolstoy assists in taking
Chavannes, P. de
Childhood, Tolstoy's
_Childhood, Boyhood, Youth_
Begun in the Caucasus
Tolstoy's later opinion of
See _Boyhood_ and _Youth_
China, Tolstoy's admiration for,
Christ, Tolstoy's conception of
_Concordance and Translation
of the Four Gospels,_
_Confessions,_
_Cossacks, The,_
Countess Tolstoy--
Character and abilities
As model
Letter to
Creed, Tolstoy's
Crimea, transference to the
_Criticism of Dogmatic Theology_
Criticism of art, destructive
_Cycle of Readings_
_DEATH OF IVAN ILYITCH, THE_
_Decembrists, The_ (a projected novel)
_Diary of a Sportsman,_
_Diary of Prince D. Nekhludov_
Dmitri Tolstoy
Death of
Don Quixote
Dostoyevsky
Dreyfus Affair, the
Droujinine
EDUCATION, Tolstoy's ideas concerning
_End of a World, The_
England, Tolstoy contemplates retiring to
_Erochta,_ the old Cossack
Execution, effect of a public
FAITH, Tolstoy's, brings no happiness
Family, Tolstoy's
Family dissensions
_Family Happiness_
Father, Tolstoy's
Feminism, Tolstoy's attitude towards
Flaubert's opinion of Tolstoy's work
GAPON, FATHER
George, Henry
Georgians, the
Goethe
Gontcharov
_Great Crime, The_
Greek, Tolstoy studies
_Gricha,_ the idiot
Grigorovitch
HADJI MOURAD
Hebrew, Tolstoy studies
Home, Tolstoy's, _see_ Yasnaya Polyana
Hugo, Victor
Hunting, renounced
IBSEN
Introspection, Tolstoy's faculty of
_Invasion, The_
_Irtenieff, Nikolas_
JOSEPH, the History of
_Journal, Tolstoy's_
_KARENIN_
Karatayev
Kazan
_Khlopoff, Captain_
_Kitty Levine_
Klinger, Max
_Kozeltoff,_ brothers, in _Sebastopol in August, 1855_
_Kreutzer Sonata, The_
_Kutuzov_
_LEVINE_ in Lhermitte
Liberal Party, Tolstoy's disdain of the
_Life_
Literary Society of St. Petersburg,
Tolstoy's dislike of
Logic, heroic
Love--
Definition of
Tolstoy's attitude towards sexual
Law of
Lucerne, incident of the singer
MANET
Marriage, Tolstoy's views concerning
_Marie, Princess_
Marie Tolstoy
_Maslova_
_Master and Servant_
Michelangelo
Millet
Molière
Moscow, effect of visit to
Music--
Love of
Ignorance of modern music
In the _Kreutzer Sonata_
Dread of
Suggested State control over
_NATASHA_
_Nekhludov_
_Nekhludov, Diary of Prince D._
Nikolas Tolstoy
Dies of phthisis
Non-Resistance
OLD BELIEVERS, the
_Olenin_
Orthodox Church, Tolstoy's relations with the
Ostrovsky
_PAKHOM THE PEASANT_
Parents, Tolstoy's
Pascal
Pedagogy
_Polikushka,_
_Popular Tales_
Popular idiom
Portraits of Tolstoy--
Of 1848
Of 1851
Of 1856
Of 1885
_Posdnicheff_
_Power of Darkness, The_
_Prashhoukhin,_ death of
REASON (letter upon)
Reason, Tolstoy's distrust of
Religion--
Tolstoy's vague agnosticism as a youth
Revival of, in the Caucasus
Rembrandt
_Resurrection_
Revolution, Tolstoy prophesies
Roumania, Tolstoy joins Army of
Rousseau, J. J., worship of
_Rules of Life_
_Russian Proprietor, A_
Written in the Caucasus
Russo-Japanese War
ST. PETERSBURG, Tolstoy's dislike of literary society of
Samara
Schopenhauer
Science, Tolstoy attacks
_Sebastopol in December, 1854_
_Sebastopol in May, 1855_
_Sebastopol in August, 1855_
Sebastopol, the siege of
Sexual morality
_Shakespeare_
Shakespeare, no artist
Siegfried, hasty judgment on
"Smartness," Tolstoy's worship of
Socialism, Tolstoy's hatred of
Society, pictures of Russian
Sophia Bers, _see_ Countess Tolstoy
_Sovremennik,_ the (Russian review)
Spelling-book, Tolstoy's
State, the, a murderous entity
Stepan Arcadievitch
Sterne, influence of
Story-teller, a blind
Strauss
Stuck
Suarès
Suicidal tendencies
TATIANA, Tolstoy's aunt
Tchaikowsky
Terror, attack of nervous
_Three Deaths_
_Three Old Men_
Tolstoy, Countess
Tolstoy, Dmitri
Death of
Tolstoy, Leo--
Reception of his work in France
Influence of Rousseau and Stendhal
Organic unity of his life
Ancestry and inheritances,
Childhood
Student days
Personal appearance _(see_ Portraits)
Joins Army of Caucasus
Religious experiences
First literary work
Effects of illness
Early work
Love of life
Transferred to Crimea
Narratives of Sebastopol
Enters St. Petersburg literary society
Quarrels with Tourgenev
Travels in Europe
Studies pedagogy
Effect of his brother's death
Courtship
Marriage
_War and Peace_
_Anna Karenina_
Effect of Dmitri's death
Suicidal tendencies
His "conversion"
Joins the Orthodox Church
Leaves it
Visits Moscow
Commences to write on religious subjects
Differences with Countess Tolstoy
Spiritual loneliness
Attacks upon modern art and science
His ignorance of art
Ignorance of modern music
Attack upon Shakespeare
Religious and æsthetic ideals
His fear of music
Political ideals
Religious ideals
Old age
Political hopes
Loneliness
Intends leaving his family
Death
Tolstoy, Nikolas
Töppfer, influence of
Tourgenev
Criticism of Tolstoy
Turkey, war declared upon
_Two Hussars, The_
_VOLODYA_, see _Kozeltoff_
Vogüé, Melchior de
_Vronsky_
WAGNER, Tolstoy's hasty judgment of
_War and Peace_
_What I Believe_
_What is Art?_
_What shall we do?_
Woman, Tolstoy's ideal of
_Woodcutters, The_
YASNAYA POLYANA
Tolstoy returns to
Experiments at
_Youth_--
Written during the siege of Sebastopol
Lyrical beauty of