Count Tolstoï’s literary life is divided very sharply into three
periods; or, if the expression be preferred, his powerful talent,
original from the very first, has passed through three phases. He began
by writing works which are mainly the working up of reminiscences
or illustrations of personal impressions. In the “War Sketches,”
in “Childhood and Youth,” in “The Cossacks,” the writer confines
himself to narration. Of these three writings, the one that best
shows Tolstoï’s talent in the first part of his career is the romance
entitled “Kazaki,” which, to use Turgénief’s words, is “an incomparable
picture of men and things in the Caucasus.” In a detailed analysis of
this masterpiece, we shall find the definition of Tolstoï’s manner at
the time of his forceful youth.
The second period is that of ripe age; it is filled by the two great
novels “War and Peace,” and “Anna Karénina.” The writer’s manner has
singularly broadened; even the dimensions of the frame-work of the
fiction have taken an almost exaggerated aspect. “War and Peace”
makes not less than eighteen hundred pages. “Anna Karénina” appeared
in the “Russki Vyestnik,” not in the course of months, but of years.
It is true that between two parts of the work the author stopped, as
though he had lost interest in its publication. But the public did
not lose its interest by waiting; and when, after more than half a
year, the narrator resumed the broken thread of his story, his readers
found themselves, as it were, dazzled by the return of the brilliant
characters of the romance, after this long and dismal eclipse.
In the novels of this second period, argument forces its way in under
cover of fiction. Thus, in “Anna Karénina,” which is the story of an
adultery, Tolstoï has not only tried to present us with a very accurate
picture of aristocratic customs in Russia; he has not only wished to
show as the centre and powerful fascination in this series of pictures,
the very subtle, very penetrating, very accurate study of a soul
wounded by love, the wound of which becomes more and more painful under
the effect of the friction and worriments following her first fault:
but he has also wished to attack, to settle in his own way, a problem
in the social order; he wished to express his opinion about marriage,
about separation, about divorce, about celibacy, about unions freely
agreed upon and religiously maintained.
“War and Peace,” likewise, is a sort of semi-military, semi-domestic
epos; or, if you like, it is a broad study of Russian life, and
especially of aristocratic life, whether in the camps, whether in
the parlors, whether in the residences of the proprietors during the
first quarter of this century, and more especially at the time of the
invasion. But within this ample scope the author expresses his theories
on military art, his private opinions on the state of war and on the
state of peace, his philosophic doctrine of destiny, or his religious
fatalism. Some of the characters in “War and Peace” seem at certain
times to give a prophetic hint of the dogma which Count Tolstoï will
adopt a little later. In Pierre Bezukhof are seen the aspirations
towards the ideal which the author of “My Religion” will soon be
preaching to men.
If his teaching at this time encroaches on the romance, still it
understood how to use marvellously well that vehicle for dissemination
wherever the Russian language is spoken; and we shall see, in analyzing
them, that the two works of Tolstoï’s second manner show a power and
a brilliancy that are truly Shaksperian. But the mysticism, traces of
which are found in these works, will develop in their author to such
a degree as to make him look upon a novel as an object of scandal,
as a “flood of oil thrown on the fire of erotic sensuality.” He will
therefore renounce the inventions of romance; he will sacrifice
fiction, which now he calls “licentious;” he will not take up the pen,
except to perform the work of a doctor or an evangelist; he will write
“My Confession,” “My Religion,” the “Commentary on the Gospels.” Of
these three works which illustrate Count Lyof Tolstoï’s third manner,
the reader will be interested especially in knowing about the first
two. He will even find that we have already said enough about “My
Confession,” and he will take it kindly if we reserve merely “My
Religion” for analysis. In return, he will allow us to dwell upon it,
and to speak of it entirely at our ease.
Before entering upon the study of “The Cossacks,” it will not be idle
to run quickly over a little story which might serve in place of an
introduction to a translation of this romance. This story, consisting
of only a few pages, is entitled “Recollections of a Scorer.”[47] It is
the story of a rich young man, who, having full control of his fortune,
is led by laziness in a short time to degradation and ruin. Nekliudof
falls into the society of debauchees and professional gamblers. They
pluck him, and ruin him. At his first appearance in this society, he
has a feeble nature, but not vulgar. He had some honor: disgusted by
the lowness of one of the gamblers, he demands reparation, calls him
a coward when he refuses to fight, and compels him to leave the club
forever. He had a sense of shame: on the day following a most debasing
night, when he had been made intoxicated and initiated into all the
depths of debauchery, he bursts into tears, declaring that he will
never forgive either himself or his companions in the orgie. Passion
for gambling keeps him bound to them; he sinks so low that soon he
plays, not only with his habitual partners, but with the servant who
fills the functions of scorer. One by one he descends all the steps of
a sickening and abject degradation. He is ruined, and disappears.[48]
He returns one fine day, enters the club, asks for writing materials,
and, having finished his letter, summons the scorer: “I would like
to try one more game with you.” He gains. “Haven’t I learned to play
well? Hey?”--“Very well.”--“Now go and order my carriage.” “He started
to walk up and down the room. Not suspecting any thing, I went
down to call his carriage; but there was no carriage there. I went
up-stairs again; and, as I approached the billiard-room, I thought I
heard a slight noise, like a knock with a cue. I went in. I noticed a
strange smell. I looked around: what did I see? He was stretched out
on the floor, bathed in his own blood ... a pistol near him. I was so
terror-struck that I could not make a sound. He gave a few signs of
life; he stretched out his legs, gave the death-rattle, and all was
over.”
If this young Russian had possessed a stronger nature or less enfeebled
elasticity, he would have done like Olénin, the hero of “The Cossacks,”
or like Tolstoï, who is himself represented under that name. He would
have torn himself from his habits; he would have started for the Far
East: he would have been certain to find there enough new impressions
to refresh his weary brain; enough manly occupations or vivifying
pleasures to strengthen his nerves, and build up his muscles; enough
perils and accidents or proofs of every kind to regenerate his soul,
purify it from the tares of vice, and again raise the wheat of more
than one virtue.
Tolstoï was not the first of these superficially blasé emigrants who
went off to Asia to find a powerful diversion from irksomeness, from
the disgust of an idle and disorderly existence. Pushkin had pointed
out the road for him; and the author of “The Gypsies” had himself
followed the traces already marked through the desert by the _britchka_
which carried Griboyédof, and the ox-cart which brought him back.[49]
“On the high river bank,” says Pushkin, “I saw before me the fortress
of Herhera. Three torrents, with roar and foam, come tumbling down
the banks. I had just crossed the river. Two oxen, hitched to an
_arba_, were climbing the steep road. A few Georgians accompanied
the _arba_. ‘Where from?’ I asked them. ‘From Teheran.’--‘What are
you carrying?’--‘Griboyéd.’ It was the body of the assassinated
Griboyédof, which they were taking back to Tiflis.”
More fortunate than Griboyédof, Tolstoï will come back alive, and,
like Pushkin, will be able to describe this adventurous existence;
but he will describe it without embellishments, above all without
exalting it. He will let the people whom he finds there, and whom he
studies entirely at his leisure, appear in all the bold relief of their
natures. He will not take away the strange grace and the perfume of the
wildflower from this nature in which he feels a voluptuous delight.
The evolution of the romance is rapid and fascinating. We are at
Moscow. The night is done. The busy city is waking little by little.
The indolent youth are finishing their evenings. At the Hotel
Chevallier a light, the presence of which is against the rules, filters
through the blinds. A carriage, sledges, and a travelling _troïka_, are
before the door, near which the porter, muffled in his _shuba_, and a
grumbling lackey with pale, drawn features, are waiting.
In the dining-room three young men are finishing a farewell supper.
One of them, in short _shuba_, strides up and down the room, cracking
almonds in his strong, thick, but well-cared-for hands. At first glance
we feel moved by sympathy for him: there is such an expression of life
in his smile, in his heated cheeks, in his brilliant eyes, in his fiery
gestures, and in his animated voice. He is off for the Caucasus, in the
capacity of _yunker_.[50]
Olénin found himself, without family and without curb, at the head
of a great fortune, which at twenty-four he has already half wasted.
The dominant trait of his character is scorn for all authority. Yet
he remains capable of every impulse, even of the most generous. He
has experimented with social relations, with service of the State,
with farming occupations, with music, with love. He feels that he is
_blasé_, but he believes that he is capable of beginning life anew. He
is not one of those men “who, born for the bridle, put it on once, and
never take it off till the day of their death.” He has the spirit and
the vivacity which impel him to pick up and cast far from him all the
weight of servitude.
After having followed a whole net-work of unknown and obscure streets,
after having felt a softening of the heart during this drive, not about
his friends, not about his mistresses, but about himself, as though
his tears were homage rendered to all that he felt that was still good
and beautiful and strong and hopeful in him, Olénin suddenly finds
himself before the wide, snow-bound plain. He turns his mind to the
past. He thinks about his farming, about his debts, about his follies;
and he comes to the conclusion that he is, “in spite of all, a very,
very clever young man.” Having made the first relay, he endeavors to
bring about equilibrium in his budget, so as to pay up his creditors
in the briefest possible time; and, his conscience being now eased, he
falls asleep. He dreams of Circassian beauties, of battles, of glory,
of passionate love, of some wild beauty tamed, civilized, and freed
by his hand. His tailor Capelli, whom he owes nearly seven hundred
rubles, comes across this gilded dream, which is rudely interrupted by
the second relay. His journey is broken or filled only by these halts,
by tea served at the station, by watching the rumps of the horses, by
a few words with his valet Vanya, by a certain number of indefinite
dreams, and, most of all, by the nights of sound sleep, such as is
granted to youth alone.
According as Olénin advances towards the Caucasus, calm takes
possession of his soul. The evidences of civilization which he sees on
the route are a trial to him. At Stavropol he is disagreeably impressed
to find fashionable attire, cabs, and round hats. But as soon as he
is beyond the city the country assumes and retains a wild and warlike
character. In the territory of the Don the air becomes already so mild
that he has to ride without his furs. Nothing is so delightful as this
unexpected spring. But here is something better: danger begins. At any
moment they may be attacked by bandits. Then the mountains rise on the
horizon. The first impression, at twilight, and from the distance, and
through the clouds, is disappointing; but the next morning at early
dawn, in the clearness of the sky, they take a new and superb aspect.
“From this moment, all that he saw, all that he thought, all that he
felt, took on the new and sternly majestic character of the mountains.
All his recollections of Moscow, his shame and his regret, all his idle
dreams about the Caucasus, departed, never to return.”
It is on the banks of the Terek that Olénin is going to dwell, to
struggle, to love, to hate,--in a word, to live,--for a number of
seasons. It is this river, therefore, that Tolstoï begins to describe
for us, with its heaps of grayish sand, and its border of reeds on the
right bank, with its low, steep left bank, gullied and crowned with
oaks or “rotten plane-trees.” On the right are the villages of the
Tcherkes, on the left the _stanitsas_ (stations) of the Kazaki. “In old
times the majority of these _stanitsas_ were on the very bank; but the
Terek, moving annually north of the mountain, has washed them away, and
now only the traces can be seen of thickly-overgrown ancient ruins,
abandoned gardens, pear-trees, lindens, and poplars, woven together
with mulberries and wild vines. No one dwells there now; and on the
sand only the tracks of stags, wolves, hares, and pheasants, which love
these places, can be seen.”
A delicious impression of buoyant air and joyous light fills Olénin’s
heart as soon as he sets foot in the Novomlinskaïa _stanitsa_, in the
midst of the Kazak tribe of Grebna. His arrival in the clear twilight,
when the whitish mass of the mountains stood out distinctly against
the brilliant rays of the setting sun, is described with a vivacity of
coloring which deliciously translates emotions never to be forgotten.
“Young girls in tucked-up petticoats, with switches in their hands,
ran, merrily chattering, to meet the cattle hurrying home in a cloud of
dust and gnats from the steppe. The satiated cows and buffaloes scatter
through the streets, followed by the Kazak children in their variegated
Tatar tunics. Their loud conversation, merry bursts of laughter, and
shouts are commingled with the lowing of the cattle. Here an armed
Kazak on horseback, having leave of absence from his outpost, rides up
to a cottage, and, leaning down from his horse, raps at the window; and
in a moment the pretty young head of the Kazak girl appears, and one
hears their gay, affectionate talk. Here comes a ragged, high-cheeked
Nogai laborer back with reeds from the steppe. He turns his creaking
_arba_ into the captain’s broad, clean _dvor_, and throws off the
yokes from the shaking heads of the oxen, and talks in Tatar with the
_esaul_. Around the puddle which fills nearly the whole street, and by
which people, all these years, have forced their way, crowding against
the fence, a bare-legged Kazak girl is picking her way, bending under
a bundle of fagots, and lifting her skirt high above her white ankles;
and a Kazak horseman, returning from the chase, laughingly shouts out,
‘Lift it higher, wench!’ and he aims at her. The Kazak girl drops her
skirt, throws down her wood. An old Kazak, with turned-up trousers and
bare gray breast, on his way home from fishing, carries his silvery
fish, still flopping in the net, and, in order to take a shorter path,
crawls through his neighbor’s broken hedge, and tears a rent in his
coat on the thorns. Here comes an old woman dragging a dry branch, and
the blows of an axe are heard around the corner. Kazak children shout
as they whip their tops wherever there are level places in the streets;
women crawl through the fences so as to save going round. The pungent
smoke of burning dung rises from all the chimneys. In every _dvor_ is
heard the sound of the increased bustle that precedes the silence of
the night.”
Amid these new faces, there is one whom Olénin catches a glimpse of the
very first thing: it is the girl to whom he is going to lose his heart.
How she comes upon the scene, this wild young maiden, with her noble
features, her statuesque form, her gloomy and burning eyes, with her
red lips, her golden complexion, her supple and nervous muscles, her
turbulent blood, her savage heart! She comes in with her cattle, which
break their way through the open wicket, following a huge buffalo-cow
driven wild by the gnats of the steppe. “Marianka’s face is half
concealed by a kerchief tied round her head: she wears a pink shirt,
and a green _beshmet_, or petticoat.” She hides under the pent-house
of the _dvor_; and her voice is heard as she gently wheedles the
buffalo-cow, which she is about to milk: “Now stand still! Here now!
Come now, _mátushka_!” How could Olénin escape the impression of “the
tall and stately figure, ... her strong and virginal form, outlined by
the thin calico shirt,” of those beautiful black eyes, which at first
will shun him, but which later will gaze at him “with childish fright
and savage curiosity.” Love will be born all the more easily from the
fact that Marianka is the daughter of the people with whom Olénin is
quartered, and that he will find her in his path at every step.
But this feeling is not destined to be met with return. If Marianka
is Olénin’s ideal of maidenly beauty, this civilized Russian cannot
arouse in the young girl’s heart any feeling of admiration, and, in
consequence, no love. He is not ill-favored, or a weakling, or foolish,
stupid, or cowardly; but he has not the triumphant beauty, or the
marvellous vigor, or the ever-watchful shrewdness, or the pitiless
courage, of the young Kazak, Lukashka. What woman would not love the
latter? He is so tall and so well shaped; he wears his soldier’s rig
so proudly, his torn kaftan, his woollen cap knocked in behind; he has
such elegant weapons, and such unrivalled skill in the use of them!
There is nothing sweet, nothing tender about him; but the ardor and the
life of all the passions show on his face, with its black brows, with
its falcon eyes, with teeth of dazzling whiteness. He appears to us for
the first time at the Kazak post, near the Terek. His great hands are
laying snares and traps for the pheasants, and he is whistling. His
comrade (Nazarka), brings him a live pheasant, not daring to kill it.
“‘Give it here!’ Lukashka took a small knife from under his dagger, and
quickly cut the pheasant’s throat. The bird struggled, but did not have
time to spread its wings before its bleeding head bent over and fell.”
Whatever character Tolstoï gave these young figures of Marianka and
Lukashka, he does not find that they express all that ideal of strength
and power with which at this time infatuated. Accordingly he calls
up the image of a more striking savagery, in the person of the old
Yeroshka, the colossal huntsman with his voice of thunder, his animal
habits, his ogre-like appetites, and his childlike character. “Over
his shoulders was thrown a ragged woven _zipún_, and his feet were
shod in buck-skin _porshni_, or sandals, fastened by cords, which were
twisted about his legs. On his head was a rumpled white fur cap. On
his back, over one shoulder, he carried a _kobuilka_ [an instrument to
catch pheasants], and a sack with pullets and dried meat, to bring back
the falcon; over the other shoulder a dead wild-cat was swinging by a
strap; behind him, fastened to his belt, were a bag containing bullets,
powder, and bread, a horse-tail for keeping off the gnats, a big dagger
in a torn sheath, stained with blood, and two dead pheasants. This
giant has, for distinctive traits, the discreet and silent way in which
he walks in his soft sandals, and the odor which he exhales, “a strong,
but not unpleasant odor mingled of fresh wine, of vodka, of powder,
and of dried blood.” He has an inexhaustible fund of anecdotes, about
his past life, his hunting, his exploits, his horse-thefts. Yet he is
only a child, compared to what his father was, who carried on his back
a four-hundred-pound wild boar, and drank at a draught two buckets of
vodka. He likes to repeat this saw of a Western man, whom he knew: “We
shall all die, the grass will grow on our grave, and that is all.”
He is stout and hearty for his seventy years, although a witch had
ruined him a little with her spell. On the chase, in the woods, he
does not cease to whisper, God knows what mysterious monologue. When
he returns, if he finds some host at whose table he can sit, and if he
can only have wine furnished according to the measure of his thirst,
he gets drunk, until he falls stiff on the floor. Hunting scenes,
scenes of love, scenes of ambuscade or of combat, go to make up almost
exclusively the matter of all this work. But all these scenes are so
variously true, and so profoundly the result of experience, that the
romantic thread designed to connect them seems almost needless. What
reader, however, would have the courage to disengage it? I should like,
for my part, to give by way of analysis, and by short quotations, an
idea of the most powerful scenes here pictured. I will present them in
the order in which they come.
Here we are in ambush, on the banks of the river: “They were hourly
expecting the Abreks--as the hostile Tchetchens were called--to cross
and attack them, from the Tatar side, especially during the month of
May, when the woods along the Terek are so dense, that a man on foot
has difficulty in breaking through, and when the river is so low that
it can in many places be forded.” The Kazak Lukashka is gazing at the
sky, with its flashing of heat lightning. He spreads down his kaftan at
the foot of the reeds. “Occasionally the reeds, without any apparent
reason, would all begin to wave and to whisper to each other. From
below, the waving feathers of the sedge looked like the downy branches
of trees, against the bright background of the sky.” He listens to
all the noises of the night, the murmur of the reeds, the snoring of
the three Kazaks who have come with him to keep his secret guard, the
buzzing of the gnats, and the rippling of the water, from time to time
a far-off shot, the fall of a part of the bank washed away, the splash
of some big fish, the crashing of the underbrush as some animal forced
its way through. “Once an owl, slowly flapping its wings, flew down the
Terek; over the heads of the Kazaks, it turned and flew towards the
forest, with faster flapping wings, and then fluttering settled down in
the branches of an old _tchinar_ (plane tree). At every such unusual
sound the young Kazak pricked up his ears eagerly, snapped his eyes,
and slowly examined his gun.”
Suddenly (it is now almost daybreak) a log with a dry branch floating
in the river attracts his attention. He immediately notices that
the log, instead of going according to the will of the current, and
floating down stream, is crossing the river. Here follows several
minutes of strange excitement: the whole inner drama which is enacting
in this young savage’s soul is expressed with so much truth and force,
that you come to follow with him the voice of the ferocious instinct
which controls him. He puts his gun to his shoulder and waits, while
his heart is violently beating at the thought that he may miss his
human game; finally he draws a long breath and shoots, muttering,
according to the Kazak custom, the “In the name of the Father and the
Son.” The tree trunk, rocking and rolling over and over, swiftly floats
down the stream, freed from the weight which it carried.
And when the Kazaks come hurrying down, both on foot and on
horseback (the first thing, in case of a surprise, was to send for
re-enforcements), what a scene is that where the lucky marksman plunges
into the water to go and bring his fish from the sandbank, and flings
the corpse on the bank “like a carp”! What barbarous coloring in the
exclamations of the spectators! “How yellow he is!” says one. “He was
evidently one of their best _jigits_,” says Lukashka: “his beard is
dyed and trimmed.” While they are on the spot, the chief claims the
_jigit’s_ gun, one Kazak buys the kaftan for a ruble, another promises
two gallons of vodka for the dagger.
But the marvellous fragment of this broad, animated, boldly lighted
canvas is this group, this contrast between the living man triumphant
in his nakedness, and the corpse lying on the ground, naked also,
but rigid and terrible to see under the strange coloration and the
disconcerting expression of death. “The cinnamon colored body, with
nothing on but wet, dark-blue cotton drawers, girdled tightly about
the fallen belly, was handsome and well built; the muscular arms lay
stiffly along the sides; the livid, freshly shaven round head, with
the clotted wound on one side, was thrown back; the smooth sunburned
forehead made a sharp contrast with the shaven head; the glassy eyes
were still open, showing their pupils, and seemed to look up beyond
them all; a good-natured and shrewd smile seemed to hover on the thin
and half-open lips under the reddish, half-cut mustache. The small
bony hands were covered with hair; the fingers were clinched, and the
nails had a red tinge. Lukashka was not yet dressed; he was still wet;
his neck was redder, and his eyes were brighter, than usual; his broad
cheeks trembled; and from his white and healthy body there seemed to
rise into the cool morning air a visible vapor.”
As a reward for this expedition, the Kazaks who took part in it are
permitted to go and spend the day at the village. The victorious
Lukashka steps up to Marianka with the same feeling of faith in his
strength and in his skill as he had had the evening before while
lying in wait for the enemy. He asks her for some of the sunflower
seeds which she has; she offers him her apron. He comes close to her,
and whispers a request of her: she replies, “I shall not go! I have
said so.” He follows her by the house, and there he urges her to love
him. She laughs, and sends him off to his married mistress. He cries,
“Suppose I have a sweetheart, the Devil take her.” She does not reply,
but breaks the switch which she has in her hands. At last, “I will
marry certainly, but don’t expect me to commit any follies for you,
never!” He tenderly woos her. She leans against him, kisses him on the
lips, calls him a sweet name, and, after pressing him warmly to her,
suddenly tears herself from his arms and runs away. “You will marry,”
he says to himself, “but the only thing that I want is that you love
me!” He went off to find Nazarka at Yamka’s; “and, after drinking a
while with him, he went to Duniashka’s, where he spent the night.”
In this struggle for existence, and in this battle for the possession
of the beauty whom both love, why should not Olénin be worsted
by Lukashka? The principal obstacle to the triumph of the son of
civilization comes from I his intellectual advantages and from his
moral perfection. Do the best he can, he can never get rid of all
his prejudices. He will be able only to approach that barbaric ideal
which his rival without effort realizes by his natural gifts. In
Marianka’s eyes he could have only borrowed virtues, only the graces of
a plagiarist.
Olénin cannot change his nature by changing his habits; still more he
cannot succeed by formulating a theory of life, in conforming to it in
all respects the practical facts of existence. The contradictions which
result from this conflict between the past and the present, between
long-settled ideas and present convictions, is strongly brought out by
Tolstoï in many passages in the novel. Here is one example: The first
time that the young Russian goes alone pheasant-hunting, he gets tired,
and lies down on the ground in the midst of the forest. Myriads of
gnats settle down upon him. The torment of it nettles him, discourages
him. He is on the point of retracing his steps; an effort of the will
keeps him where he is. Finally the feeling of pain is diminished, and
at length it seems to him almost agreeable. “It even seemed to him that
if this atmosphere of gnats surrounding him on all sides, this paste
of gnats which rolled up under his hand when he wiped his sweaty face,
and this itching over his whole body were missing, the forest would
have lost for him its wild character and its charm.”
From this reflection he passes to others; and, lying “in the old stag’s
bed,” he thinks about his whole surrounding,--the trees, the wild vine,
the frightened pheasants, the complaining jackals, the gnats buzzing
and dancing amid the leaves. “About me, flying among the leaves, which
seem to them immense islands, the gnats are dancing in the air and
humming,--one, two, three, four, a hundred, a thousand, a million
gnats; and all these, for some reason or other, are buzzing around me,
and each one of them is just as much a separate existence from all
the rest as I am.” It began to seem clear to him what the gnats said
in their humming. “Here, here, children, here is some one to eat,”
they sing, and settle down upon him. And now this taught him that he
was not a Russian nobleman, a person in Moscow society, a friend or a
relative to this and that person. It came to him that he was just a
mere gnat, a mere pheasant, a mere stag, like those around him. The
conclusion which he draws from this is quite different from what would
be expected. Instead of saying, “Let us struggle like these beings, and
like them let us live to triumph, or let us triumph to live,” Olénin
throws himself down on his knees, and beseeches God to let him live
to accomplish some great deed of devotion; for “happiness,” he says,
“consists in living for others.”
What did Tolstoï mean to insinuate? That Olénin was illogical, or that
he lacked sincerity? It will be enough for him to find himself in
Marianka’s presence to forget his vow, and to sacrifice his morals to
his instincts.
How much happier the Kazak Lukashka is in having only instincts, and
in not entangling them, in not fastening them down in this bird-lime
of moral considerations! This is what Tolstoï seems to have wished to
be understood in a marvellous scene, an analysis of which cannot give
either the bold design or the sombre coloring or the proportions worthy
of an epos. It is the wholly Homeric parley about the ransom of the
corpse. The brother of the dead man and his murderer are face to face:
the former tall, stalwart, with reddish trimmed beard, with an air of
royalty under his ragged kaftan, honoring no one with a glance, not
even looking at the corpse, and sitting on his crossed legs, with a
short pipe in his mouth, doing nothing except occasionally giving an
order in a guttural voice to his companion the interpreter; the latter
with difficulty restraining the exultation into which he is thrown by
the promise which has just been made of giving him the cross, and,
in spite of his face reddened with pleasure, striving to preserve an
impassive attitude, and whittling a stick of wood, out of which he will
make a ramrod.
The Tchetchenets has merely asked, as he takes his departure, where
the murderer is; and the interpreter points out Lukashka. “The
Tchetchenets looked at him for a moment, and then, slowly turning away,
fixed his eyes on the other bank. His eyes expressed, not hatred, but
cold disdain.” They get into the boat; they rapidly push through the
stream. Horsemen are waiting for them; they put the dead body across
a saddle on a horse, which shies. Lukashka is told what a curt threat
the Tchetchenets made as he went away. “You have killed us, but we will
crush you.” Lukashka bursts out laughing. “Why do you laugh?” asked
Olénin. “If they had killed your brother, would you be glad?” The Kazak
looked at Olénin, and laughed. He seemed to have comprehended his idea,
but he was above all prejudice. “Well, now, mayn’t that happen? Isn’t
this necessary? Haven’t they sometimes killed some of our men?”
The time passes. Instead of drinking, of playing cards, of flirting
with the Kazak women, of all the time calculating his chances of
promotion, like the majority of the Russian _yunkers_ in the Caucasus,
Olénin plunges into the solitudes of the woods, and gathers indelible
impressions. His love for Marianka has imperceptibly developed until it
presents all the phenomena of a genuine passion. He has even blurted
out a few hints of his affection, which a strange timidity or a scruple
of candor keeps him from putting into more direct form; but at night
he comes to the door of the room where the young girl is sleeping, in
order to listen to her breathing.[51] What shall he do? To take her
for his mistress would be “horrible; it would be murder.” To marry her
would be worse.
“Ah! if I could become a Kazak like Lukashka, could steal horses, could
drink _tchikhir_ wine, could sing songs, shoot people, creep under her
window at night when drunk, without any thought of what I am, or why
I exist, that would be another matter. Then we might understand each
other; then I might be happy.... What is the most terrible and the
most delightful thing in my position is the feeling that I understand
her, and that she will never understand me. It is not because she is
below me that she does not understand me: no, she could not possibly
understand me. She is happy. She, like nature itself, is beautiful,
calm, and absolutely self-contained.” What is to be done, then? Give
her up? Sacrifice himself? What folly! Live for others? Why? It is the
fate of men to love only the _ego_; that is to say, in this case, to
conquer Marianka, “and live her life.” Olénin then makes himself drunk
like a Kazak; and, in the madness of intoxication, he offers to marry
the young girl. She perceives clearly that that is only the wine that
speaks: she drives the wooer away, and escapes him.
Yet she feels somewhat moved in consequence of this offer; and on the
day of the _stanitsa_ festival she is rude to Lukashka, though she has
already become his acknowledged “bride.” But a tragic event is about
to bring forth abundantly the feeling which fills this young soul to
overflowing. All Marianka’s deep love for Lukashka will suddenly gleam
out with unexpected brilliancy, like the gloomy sheet of the Terek in
the flashes of the storm.
The Kazaks have started out on an expedition against the Abreks.
Olénin follows the band which is directed, but not commanded, by
Lukashka. The engagement takes place. The Abreks are sitting in a swamp
at the foot of a hillock of sand. The Kazaks approach them behind a
cart loaded with hay. At first they do not reply to the enemy’s shots.
They wait till they are within five paces from the Abreks, then they
rush upon them. Olénin joins them. “Horror came over his eyes. He
did not see any thing distinctly, but perceived that all was over.
Lukashka, white as a sheet, had caught a wounded Tchetchenets, and was
crying, ‘Do not kill him. I will take him alive.’ The Tchetchenets
was the red-bearded Abrek, the brother of the one whom he had killed,
he who had come to ransom his body. Lukashka was twisting his arms.
Suddenly the Tchetchenets tore himself away, and his pistol went off.
Lukashka fell. Blood showed on his abdomen. He leaped to his feet,
but fell back again, swearing in Russian and Tatar. Still more blood
appeared on him and under him. The Kazaks hurried up to him, and
began to loosen his belt. One of them--it was Nazarka--for some time
before coming to him could not sheathe his _shashka_. The blade of the
_shashka_ was covered with blood.”
“When Olénin came back to Marianka, and wanted to speak of his love for
her, he found her grieving. She looked at him silently and defiantly.
“Olénin said, ‘Mariana, I have come.’...
“‘Stop,’ she said. Her face did not change in the least, but the tears
poured from her eyes.
“‘What is the matter? What are you crying for?’
“‘Why?’ she repeated in a hoarse, deep voice. ‘They have been killing
Kazaks, and that’s what the matter is!’
“‘Lukashka?’ asked Olénin.
“‘Go away. I don’t want to see you.’
“‘Mariana,’ said Olénin, coming nearer to her.
“‘You will never get any thing from me!”
“‘Mariana, don’t say so!’
“‘Go away, you hateful man!’ cried the young girl, stamping angrily,
and starting towards him with a threatening gesture. Such anger, scorn,
hatred, were expressed in her face that Olénin instantly saw that he
had nothing more to hope for.”
He therefore goes away. The scene of his farewell with the old uncle
Yeroshka has that exquisite pathos where smiles are mingled with
tears. As a friendly gift at this solemn moment of separation, the old
Kazak gives the young Russian some advice which will save his life in
battles. He casts ridicule on the customs of the orthodox soldiers.
“When you have to go into battle, or everywhere,--I am an old wolf,
you see, who has seen every thing,--when they fire at you, don’t go
into a crowd where there are many men. You see, when your fellows are a
bit afraid, they all crowd together; and though it’s more sociable in
a crowd, it is more dangerous, because a crowd gives a good mark....
I say sometimes, when I look at your soldiers, “I wonder at ’em. How
stupid! They go straight on, all in a mass; and, what is worse, they
wear red. How can they help getting killed?” And he breaks into tears
as he kisses this young, “ever-wandering fool;” but he manages to
extort from him a gun, to keep as a remembrance of him.
“Olénin looked round. Dyadya Yeroshka and Marianka were talking,
evidently about their own affairs; and neither the old Kazak nor the
young girl were looking at him.” (With these simple but pathetic words,
the story ends.)