CHAPTER XII_The Life of Tolstoy: First Fifty Years Fifth Edition

WORKS: 1852-1878

Tolstoy's first nineteen stories. Stands in a line of succession.

Quality as writer. _War and Peace._ 'Great' men. Napoleon. The battles

of Schöngraben and Borodinó. Tolstoy's influence on war-correspondence.

Serfdom. The organisation of society. Characters in _War and Peace_.

Its range. _Anna Karénina_: Matthew Arnold's essay. Translations. The

tendency of the book. Kropótkin's criticism. The volunteers. Tolstoy's

attitude towards Government. W. D. Howells's appreciation. Tolstoy's

Last Three Decades of work: the magnitude and nature of his effort.

TOLSTOY'S writings during the first twenty-five years of his literary

career divide up into six sections.

First came a series of seventeen stories and sketches, beginning with

_Childhood_ and ending with _Family Happiness_. Next came his series

of educational articles in the _Yásnaya Polyána_ magazine. Third came

_The Cossacks_ (the finest story he had yet written) and _Polikoúshka_.

Fourth, came _War and Peace_. Fifth, came the _ABC_ Book, the

_Readers_, and another article on Education; and sixth, came _Anna

Karénina_.

Leaving the educational works out of account, the list can be reduced

to nineteen stories and sketches, followed by two great novels.

The nineteen sketches and stories, 'trials of the pen,' as Tolstoy

called them, covered a wide range of subjects, from charmingly

realistic sketches of childhood to vigorous depictions of Cossack

life, and showed their writer to be an amazingly accurate observer of

physical facts and qualities, manners, tones and gestures, besides

being possessed of a yet more wonderful knowledge of the hearts and

minds of all sorts and conditions of men, from the shame-faced child

to the officer dying on the field of battle. He is so concerned with

the interest and importance of life, that he can hold his reader's

attention without having to tell his stories so that they must be

guessed like riddles, and he never makes use of elaborate plots. He

needs no tricks of that sort. Nor does he strive after effect by

the use of pornographic details, the introduction of extraordinary

events, or the piling up of many horrible details. His stories are as

straightforward as everyday life.

His great novels bear out all the promise of his short stories, with

the added power of maturity.

Though highly original and of strong individuality, he stands none

the less in the line of succession of great writers which began with

Poúshkin, whose genius for simple sincere and direct narrative gave

an invaluable direction to Russian literature, was continued by Gógol

whose biting irony and remorseless exposure of shams and hypocrisies

completed the emancipation from romanticism, and was carried on by

Tourgénef, whose art, conscious of and not indifferent to the trend

of thought and feeling in the society it describes, reached an

extraordinary pitch of artistic perfection.

Tolstoy's works have from the first interested Russia, and now interest

the world, because in greater measure than any of his predecessors he

possesses the capacity to feel intensely, note accurately, and think

deeply. The combination which makes Tolstoy the most interesting of

writers, is the scientific accuracy of his observation (which never

allows him to take liberties with his characters or events in order to

make out a case for the side he sympathises with) and the fact that

he is mightily in earnest. Life to him is important, and art is the

handmaid of life. He wants to know what is good and what is bad; to

help the former and to resist the latter. His work tends to evolve

order out of life's chaos; and as that is the most important thing a

man can do, his books are among the most interesting and important

books of our time. He makes no pretence of standing aloof, cutting off

his art from his life, or concealing his desire that kindness should

prevail over cruelty. Life interests him, and therefore the reflection

of life interests him, and the problems of art are the problems of

life: love and passion and death and the desire to do right.

The chief subject reappearing again and again throughout the stories

he wrote before _War and Peace_, is the mental striving of a young

Russian nobleman to free himself from the artificial futilities of

the society in which he was born, and to see and do what is right.

The search is only partially successful. The indictment of society is

often convincing, but the heroes' failures and perplexities are frankly

admitted. Sometimes there is no hero. In _Sevastopol_, for instance, he

exclaims: 'Where in this tale is the evil shown that should be avoided?

Where is the good that should be imitated? Who is the villain, who the

hero of the story? All are good and all are bad'; and in _Lucerne_ he

says: 'Who will define for me what is freedom, what despotism, what

civilisation and what barbarism? Or tell me where are the limits of the

one or the other? Who has in his soul so immovable a _standard of good

and evil_ that by it he can measure the passing facts of life?'

This searching for what is good and rejecting what is false--resulting

in a strong distrust and dislike of the predatory masterful domineering

types of humanity, and in general of what has usually been regarded

as the heroic type, and also in a friendly compassion for all that is

humble simple forbearing and sincere--is the keynote of Tolstoy's early

tales. They are studies of life, so truthful that the characters seem

to have an independent life of their own. They speak for themselves,

and at times, like Balaam, bless what they were apparently expected

to curse. For instance, when Prince Nehlúdof insists on bringing the

wandering musician into the Schweizerhof Hotel in _Lucerne_, we feel

how uncomfortable he thereby makes the poor singer, though that is

evidently not what Tolstoy originally set out to make us feel.

_War and Peace_, besides being maturer than the preceding tales, was

composed during the early years of Tolstoy's married life, when he

felt more content with himself and with life in general, and when his

attitude towards existing things was more tolerant and sympathetic than

it had been, or than it became in later years.

He told me that in _War and Peace_ and _Anna Karénina_ his aim was

simply to amuse his readers. I am bound to accept his statement; but

one has only to read either of those books to see that through them

Tolstoy's ardent nature found vent, with all its likes and dislikes,

strivings, yearnings, hopes and fears.

I asked Tolstoy why in _What is Art?_ he relegates these great novels

to the realm of 'bad art'; and his answer showed, as I expected it

would, that he does not really consider them at all bad, but condemns

them merely as being too long, and written in a way chiefly adapted

to please the leisured well-to-do classes, who have time for reading

novels in several volumes, because other people do their rough work for

them. Of _War and Peace_ he said, 'It is, one would think, harmless

enough, but one never knows how things will affect people,' and he went

on to mention, with regret, that one of Professor Zahárin's daughters

had told him that from his novels she had acquired a love of balls and

parties; things of which, at the time of our conversation, he heartily

disapproved.

In form, _War and Peace_ is unlike any English novel, but it resembles

Poúshkin's _The Captain's Daughter_ (though the latter is a much

shorter story) in that both works are chronicles of Russian families,

round whom the stories centre. In _War and Peace_ there are two

families, the Rostófs and the Bolkónskys.

The mighty drama of the Napoleonic advance from 1805 to 1812 comes into

the novel, in so far as it affects the members of those two families.

But Tolstoy is not content merely to tell us of historic events. He

introduces a whole philosophy of history, which is sound at bottom

though no doubt he somewhat overstates his case, as is his habit. The

theory is that the 'great' men of history count for very little. They

are the figureheads of forces that are beyond their control. They do

most good and least harm when, like Koutoúzof, they are aware of the

true direction of the great human forces and adapt themselves to them;

but then they are modest, and the world does not esteem them great.

The typical case of the impotent 'great' man is Napoleon in 1812, at

the time of his invasion of Russia. He posed before the world as a man

of destiny whose will and intellect decided the fate of empires. Yet

from first to last, during that campaign, he never in the least knew

what was about to happen. The result was decided by the spirit of the

Russian nation, and by its steadfast endurance. Every common Russian

soldier who understood that the Russian people dreaded and detested

the thought of a foreign yoke, and who therefore co-operated with the

natural course of events, did more to further the result than Napoleon,

that 'most insignificant tool of history,' as Tolstoy calls him, who

even in St. Helena was never able to understand what had caused his

overthrow.

The main theme of the novel, if it be permissible to select a main

theme out of the many latent in the story, is Tolstoy's favourite

thesis. He tacitly asks: What is good and what is bad? With what must

we sympathise and what must we reject? And the reply is that the

predatory, artificial and insincere types, exemplified historically by

the invading French, as well as by such characters among the Russians

as Ellen, Anatole and Dólohof, are repugnant to him, while he loves the

humble, the meek and the sincere: Marie and Platon Karatáef, Natásha

(so impulsive and charming in her youth, so absorbed in her family

later on), and Pierre (who is often humble and always sincere, and

loves ideas and ideals).

It is impossible to do justice to this wonderful book in any brief

summary. It is not a work to be summed up in a few pages. It has many

characters, all of them so distinctly drawn that we know them better

than we know our personal acquaintances. It treats of life's deepest

experiences from the cradle to the grave; and to read it with the care

it deserves is to know life better and see it more sanely and seriously

than one ever did before. Some foolish people think that reading novels

is a waste of time; but there are hardly any books--at any rate hardly

any big books--that are better worth reading than Tolstoy's novels.

He is probably justified in claiming that his history is truer than

the historians' history of the battles of Schöngraben, Austerlitz,

and Borodinó. The historians, from mendacious military reports drawn

up after the action, try to discover what the Commanders-in-Chief

meant to do; and to tell their story within moderate limits they have

to systematise what was really a huge disorder; thereby giving their

readers a completely wrong impression of what a battle is like.

N. N. Mouravyóf, a Commander-in-Chief who distinguished himself in

more than one war, declared he had never read a better description of

a battle than Tolstoy's account of Schöngraben; and added that he was

convinced from his own experience that during a battle it is impossible

to carry out a Commander-in-Chief's orders.

Tolstoy, when he wrote the book, was convinced that war is inevitable.

The idea that it is man's duty to resist war and to refuse to take part

in it, came to him later.

In an article entitled 'Some Words about _War and Peace_,' which he

wrote in 1868 for one of the periodicals, he says:

'Why did millions of people kill one another, when since the foundation

of the world it has been known that this is both physically and morally

bad?

'Because it was so inevitably necessary, that when doing it they

fulfilled the elemental zoological law bees fulfil when they kill one

another in autumn, and male animals fulfil when they destroy one

another. No other reply can be given to that dreadful question.'

Yet his inveterate truthfulness, and his personal knowledge of war,

caused him to describe it so exactly, that the result is tantamount

to a condemnation. As Kropótkin says, _War and Peace_ is a powerful

indictment of war. The effect which the great writer has exercised in

this direction upon his generation can be actually seen in Russia.

It was already apparent during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-8, when

it was impossible to find in Russia a correspondent who would have

described how '_we_ peppered the enemy with grape-shot,' or how 'we

knocked them down like ninepins.' If any one could have been found

to use in his letters such survivals of barbarism, no paper would

have dared to print them. The general character of the Russian

war-correspondent had totally changed; and during that war there

appeared Gárshin the novelist, and Verestchágin the painter, 'with whom

to combat war became a life work.'

It has been charged against _War and Peace_ that it neglects to show

the evil side of serfdom: the brutality, the cruelty, the immurement

of women, the flogging of grown-up sons, the torture of serf girls by

their mistresses, etc. But Tolstoy studied the period closely from

letters, diaries and traditions, especially from the records of his own

grandparents, the Tolstoys and the Volkónskys; and he says he did not

find horrors worse than are to be found now, or at any other period.

People then loved and envied, and sought for truth and virtue, and were

swayed by passions, as now. Their mental and moral life was just as

complex, and in the upper circles it was sometimes even more refined

than now.... No doubt the greater remoteness of the higher circle from

the other classes gave a special character to the period, but not the

character of brutal violence.

Tolstoy is in sympathy with that time, sees the poetry of it, and

knows how much of goodness, courage, kindliness and high aspiration

existed among those politically unenfranchised serf-owners. With our

modern, Western desire to _organise society efficiently_, he never has

sympathised. The state of a man's mind has always been to him more

important than the conditions of his life, and it seems to him as

though there were some antithesis between the two: as though, if you

organised your society, it would cease to think truly or feel deeply.

We in the West are beginning to believe the opposite, and to suspect

that to leave society unorganised or disorganised has an inevitable

tendency to blunt our minds and souls. But not the less is it valuable

to have so wonderful a picture of Russia as it was at the commencement

of the nineteenth century, painted by one who sees it as the best

Russians of that period saw it themselves.

Of the history part of the book, it should be noted that Tolstoy says:

'Wherever in my novel historic characters speak or act, I have not

invented, but have made use of materials which during my work have

accumulated till they form a whole library.'

He told me he considered the defect of the book, besides its size, to

be the intrusion of a long philosophic argument into the story. He

still holds the opinions he held when he wrote it, as to the influence

or impotence of 'great' men, as well as all that he then said about

destiny and free will; but he now realises that his novel would have

been a better novel without these abstract disquisitions.

The characters in the book are not strictly copied from life, but in

the main Tolstoy's father's family are represented by the Rostófs

and his mother's by the Bolkónskys. In the magazine article already

referred to, Tolstoy says that only two minor characters are taken from

life, and 'all the other characters are entirely invented, and I have

not even for them any definite prototypes in tradition or in reality.'

But when he said that, he was defending himself from the charge of

having copied actual people who had played a part in the society of the

time, and he clearly overstates his case, for to a considerable extent

the characters in the novel correspond to the people mentioned in the

following list:

CHARACTERS IN _War and_ MEMBERS OF THE TOLSTOY

_Peace_: OR VOLKÓNSKY FAMILIES:

The old Prince N. Bolkónsky = Tolstoy's grandfather, Prince

N. Volkónsky.

His daughter, Princess Marie = Tolstoy's mother, the Princess

N. Bolkónsky Marie N. Volkónsky.

The old Count Ilyá A. Rostóf = Tolstoy's grandfather, Count

Ilyá A. Tolstoy.

Count Nicholas I. Rostóf = Tolstoy's father. Count

Nicholas I. Tolstoy.

Countess Natálya Rostóf = Tatiána Behrs, Tolstoy's

youngest sister-in-law.

Sónya = Tatiána A. Érgolsky.

Dólohof is made up of a combination of Count Theodore Tolstoy, a

famous traveller, with R. I. Dórohof, a notorious dare-devil of

Alexander I.'s days.

Many even of the minor characters, such as Mlle. Bourienne, and

Ivánushka the woman pilgrim in man's clothes, are copied more or less

closely from people connected with the Volkónskys' home at Yásnaya

Polyána.

Tolstoy's sympathies and antipathies in this novel: his appreciation of

affection, kindliness, simplicity and truthfulness, and his dislike of

what is cruel, pompous, complicated or false, are the same as in his

earlier stories, but mellowed and wiser; they are also the same as in

his later didactic writings, though there they are formulated, dogmatic

and rigid.

The novel covers nearly the whole range of Tolstoy's experience of

life: in it we have the aristocracy and the peasants; town life and

country life; the Commanders, officers and privates of the army, in

action and out of action; the diplomatists and courtiers; flirtation,

love, balls, hunting, and a reform movement which is all talk. What

Tolstoy does not show, is what he did not know--the middle-class world:

the world of merchants, manufacturers, engineers and men of business.

Of course these in Russia a hundred years ago, played a comparatively

small part; and there was practically no political activity such as

that of our County Councils, Borough Councils and Parliament. But

that all this was absent from Tolstoy's mind, and that his outlook on

life was confined to the aristocracy which consumed and the peasantry

which produced, will, in the sequel, help us to understand the social

teaching to which he ultimately came. His brother-in-law tells us that

Leo Tolstoy 'has in my presence confessed to being both proud and vain.

He was a rampant aristocrat, and though he always loved the country

folk, he loved the aristocracy still more. To the middle class he was

antipathetic. When, after his failures in early life, he became widely

famous as a writer, he used to admit that it gave him great pleasure

and intense happiness. In his own words, he was pleased to feel that he

was both a writer and a noble.'

'When he heard of any of his former comrades or acquaintances receiving

important appointments, his comments reminded one of those of Souvórof

[a Field-Marshal of Catherine the Great's time], who always maintained

that at Court one receives promotion for cringing and flattery, but

never for good work. Sometimes he would ironically remark that, though

he had himself not earned a Generalship in the artillery, he had at any

rate won his Generalship in literature.'

A simple world of nobles and peasants, with little organisation, and

that of a poor kind: a world the evils of which were mitigated by much

kindliness and good intention, and in which, on the whole, the less

the Government interfered with anybody or anything, the better--was

old Russia as it existed under Alexander I and as it still existed

when Tolstoy was young. He has described it with extraordinary

vividness, and has made it possible for us to picture to ourselves a

country and an age not our own. What effect the limitation of his

outlook, referred to above, had on the subsequent development of his

opinions, need not here be considered. It does not spoil the novel,

for no novel can show us the whole of life; but it had a very serious

effect on the formulation of his later philosophy of life. Of certain

important types of humanity he has hardly any conception. Of the George

Stephenson type, for instance, which masters the brute forces of nature

and harnesses them to the service of man--doing this primarily from

love of efficient work--he knows nothing; nor does he know any thing

of the Sidney Webb type, which sets itself the yet more difficult

task of evolving social order out of the partial chaos of modern

civilisation; or of the best type of organisers in our great industrial

undertakings: the men whose hearts are set on getting much work well

done, with little friction and little waste, and to whom the successful

accomplishment of a difficult project gives more satisfaction than any

effortless acquisition of wealth would do. Tolstoy over-simplifies

life's problems. He makes a sharp contrast between the predatory and

the humble types; and there is a measure of truth in his presentation.

He is right that life is supported by the humble, and is rendered hard

by the predatory types; but he has omitted from his scheme of things

the man of organising mind: the man who knows how to get his way, and

generally gets it (or a good deal of it) but does this mainly from

worthy motives; the man who is not perfect, and may take more than is

good for him, and may have some of the tendencies of the predatory

type, but who still, on the whole, is worth, and more than worth, his

salt, and but for whom there would be more of chaos and less of order

in the world. Tolstoy has said in one of his later writings that the

cause of the Russian famines is the Greek Church; and he is right. All

that stupefies, all that impedes thought, tends to make men inefficient

even in their agricultural operations. But by parity of reasoning he

should see that the introduction of thought into methods of production,

distribution and exchange, which has, during the last hundred and

fifty years, so revolutionised our Western world, should not be

condemned as bad in itself, however ugly many of its manifestations may

be; and however often we may see the organising and the predatory types

exemplified in one and the same person.

Outside Russia, _Anna Karénina_ is perhaps more popular than _War and

Peace_. The former is a long novel, but not nearly as long as the

latter; and though it contains philosophic disquisitions, these fit

better into the story and are shorter and clearer than the philosophic

chapters in _War and Peace_. In arrangement, again, _Anna Karénina_ is

more like the novels we are accustomed to, though instead of one hero

and heroine it has two pairs of lovers, living quite different lives,

and not very closely connected.

It deals with the passionate love of a beautiful and attractive woman;

and it has a further interest in the fact that Lévin, to a greater

degree than any of the author's other characters, represents Tolstoy

himself; though Tolstoy made Lévin a very simple fellow in order to get

a more effective contrast between him and the representatives of high

life in Moscow and Petersburg.

_Anna Karénina_ had the advantage of being introduced to the English

reading public by Matthew Arnold in an essay which is one of the very

best any one has ever written about Tolstoy. It is so good, and still

carries so much weight, that I may be excused for mentioning three

points on which it seems to me misleading. First, Arnold's ground for

preferring _Anna Karénina_ to _War and Peace_ is ill chosen. He says:

'One prefers, I think, to have the novelist dealing with the life which

he knows from having lived it, rather than with the life which he knows

from books or hearsay. If one has to choose a representative work of

Thackeray, it is _Vanity Fair_ which one would take rather than _The

Virginians_.'

This surely is misleading. War in Russia in 1812 was very similar to

war in Russia in 1854, and the son who had fought in the latter war,

describing the war in which his father had fought, was not at all

in the position of Thackeray describing the life of the Virginians.

Tolstoy depicting the homes of his parents and grandparents, which

he in part remembered, and which he at any rate knew well from those

who had formed part of them, was as close to first-hand experience as

he was when describing the life of Karénin the pedantic Petersburg

statesman, who belonged to a world which was essentially foreign to

Tolstoy, though he had occasionally glanced at it.

But the sentence in Arnold's essay which has done most harm, is that in

which he speaks about translations: 'I use the French translation; in

general, as I long ago said, work of this kind is better done in France

than in England, and _Anna Karénina_ is perhaps also a novel which goes

better into French than into English.'

It is true enough that the first English translations of Tolstoy were

very poor, and it is also true that the French versions, so long as

Tourgénef attended to them, were really good. But Arnold was wrong in

supposing that _Anna Karénina_ would naturally go better into French

than into English. Had he been able to read the original, or had he

been acquainted with Russian life, he would have seen that in Tolstoy's

novels there are two sets of people: a Court, Petersburg set, who

continually speak French and are Frenchified; and a plain, homely,

straightforward Russian (I had almost said, English) set who do not

use French phrases, and who are sharply contrasted with the others.

This contrast can be made quite clear in an English version, but it is

difficult to make it clear in a version where even the most Russian

characters have to speak French. The case is worse than that, however:

Arnold did not say, as he fairly might have said, that up to his time

the French versions were better than the English; he speaks as though

it were in the nature of things that any translation into French must

be better than any possible translation into English. A prejudice of

that kind tends to divert attention from the fact that some French

translations are bad, and some English translations are good. As a

matter of fact, since Arnold's time the position has been largely

reversed. When staying at Yásnaya Polyána in 1902, I heard Tolstoy

express considerable dissatisfaction with the new collected French

edition of his works, the first volumes of which had then recently

appeared, while he commended some recent English versions, including

work done by Mrs. Garnett and by my wife.

A grave error, again, is made by Arnold in speaking of Tolstoy's later

life, where he says that he 'earns his bread by the labour of his own

hands.' Tolstoy never did that, and never claimed to have done it;

though it is extraordinary how often and how confidently the statement

has been repeated. It is a matter however which need not detain us, for

it does not relate to the period with which this volume deals.

Arnold's summary of the story of the novel is excellent, but I can

here only quote one more passage from his essay. 'We have,' he says,

'been in a world which misconducts itself nearly as much as the world

of a French novel all palpitating with "modernity." But there are

two things in which the Russian novel--Count Tolstoi's novel at any

rate--is very advantageously distinguished from the type of novel now

so much in request in France. In the first place, there is no fine

sentiment, at once tiresome and false. We are not told to believe, for

example, that Anna is wonderfully exalted and ennobled by her passion

for Vrónsky. The English reader is thus saved from many a groan of

impatience. The other thing is yet more important. Our Russian novelist

deals abundantly with criminal passion and with adultery, but he does

not seem to feel himself owing any service to the goddess Lubricity,

or bound to put in touches at this goddess's dictation. Much in _Anna

Karénina_ is painful, much is unpleasant, but nothing is of a nature to

trouble the senses, or to please those who wish their senses troubled.

This taint is wholly absent.'

W. D. Howells, who has stood sponsor for Tolstoy in America as Matthew

Arnold has done in England, similarly says: 'It is Tolstoy's humanity

which is the grace beyond the reach of art in his imaginative work. It

does not reach merely the poor and the suffering; it extends to the

prosperous and the proud, and does not deny itself to the guilty. There

had been many stories of adultery before _Anna Karénina_, nearly all

the great novels outside of English are framed upon that argument, but

in _Anna Karénina_, for the first time the whole truth was told about

it. Tolstoy has said of the fiction of Maupassant that the whole truth

can never be immoral; and in his own work I have felt that it could

never be anything but moral.'

Tolstoy never fears to deal with the real problems of life, and never

fears to call a spade a spade; but he also never panders to the animal

passions. In a letter relating to _Resurrection_ he remarked: 'When

I read a book, what chiefly interests me is the _Weltanschauung des

Autors_: what he likes and what he hates. And I hope that any one who

reads my book with that in view will find out what the author likes

and dislikes, and will be influenced by the author's feelings.' What

is important is not the subject treated of, but the feeling the author

imparts when dealing with it.

Arnold, it is true, is rather shocked that Anna should yield so quickly

and easily to the persuasions of Vrónsky. He is quite sure that she

ought to have resisted. But here we come to a matter on which many

Russians disapprove of Tolstoy on quite the opposite ground. Kropótkin

in his interesting work _Ideals and Realities in Russian Literature_,

has stated their case very clearly, and this is the substance of what

he says:

_Anna Karénina_ produced in Russia an impression which brought Tolstoy

congratulations from the reactionary camp and a very cool reception

from the advanced portion of society. The fact is that the question

of marriage and of the separation of husband and wife, had been most

earnestly debated in Russia by the best men and women, both in

literature and in life. Levity towards marriage such as is continually

unveiled in the Divorce Courts, was decidedly condemned, as also was

any form of deceit such as supplies the subject for countless French

novels and plays. But after levity and deceit had been condemned, the

right of a new love--appearing perhaps after years of happy married

life--was seriously considered, Tchernyshévsky's novel, _What Is To Be

Done?_ may be taken as the best expression of the opinions on marriage

which became current among the better portion of the young generation.

Once married, it was said, don't take lightly to love affairs or

flirtation. Not every fit of passion deserves the name of a new love;

and what is called love is often merely temporary desire. Even if it

be real, before it has grown deep there is generally time to reflect

on the consequences that would result were it allowed to grow. But

when all is said and done, there are cases when a new love does come,

and comes almost inevitably: as for instance when a girl has been

married almost against her will under the continued insistence of her

lover, or when the two have married without properly understanding one

another, or when one of the two has continued to progress towards an

ideal, while the other, after having worn the mask of idealism, falls

back into the Philistine happiness of warmed slippers. In such cases

separation not only becomes inevitable, but is often to the interest

of both. It would be better for both to live through the suffering a

separation involves (honest natures are improved by such suffering)

than to spoil the entire subsequent life of one--or both in most

cases--and to face the evil consequences which living together under

such circumstances would be sure to produce on the children. That at

any rate was the conclusion to which, both in literature and in life,

the best portion of Russian society came.

And into the society Kropótkin describes in the above statement, comes

Tolstoy with _Anna Karénina_. The epigraph of the book is 'Vengeance

is mine, I will repay,' and death by suicide is the fate of poor

Anna, who was married young to an old and unattractive man, and who

had never known love till she met Vrónsky. Deceit was not in her

nature. To maintain a conventional marriage would not have made her

husband or child happier. Separation and a new life with Vrónsky,

who seriously loved her, was the only possible outcome. At any rate,

continues Kropótkin, if the story of _Anna Karénina_ had to end in

tragedy, it was not in consequence of an act of supreme justice. The

artistic genius of Tolstoy, honest here as everywhere, itself indicated

the real cause, in the inconsistency of Vrónsky and Anna. After

leaving her husband and defying public opinion--that is, as Tolstoy

shows, the opinion of women not honest enough to have a right to a

voice in the matter--neither she nor Vrónsky had the courage to break

right away from that society, the futility of which Tolstoy describes

so exquisitely. Instead of that, when Anna returns with Vrónsky to

Petersburg, their chief preoccupation is, how Betsy and other such

women will receive her if she reappears among them? 'And it was the

opinion of the Betsies--surely not Superhuman Justice--which brought

Anna to suicide.'

Whether Matthew Arnold's view or Kropótkin's view be accepted, Tolstoy

at any rate does full justice to Anna's charm: 'her large, fresh,

rich, generous, delightful nature which keeps our sympathy' and even

our respect; there is no nonsense about her being a degraded or vile

person. And after all, Tolstoy's view of marriage sanctity is a very

old and a very widely held one; and it is surely good to have that

side of the case put so artistically, so persuasively, so well, as he

puts it. If ultimately the idea that two uncongenial people ought to

live out their lives together because they have married, has to be

abandoned, let it not be abandoned without the very best advocates

being heard on its behalf.

_Anna Karénina_ contains passages: the ball, the officers'

steeplechase, the mowing, the death of Lévin's brother, and others,

which for artistic beauty are unsurpassed and, one is tempted to add,

unsurpassable. It also, towards the end, contains in admirably concise

form much of what Tolstoy has told in his _Confession_, of his quest

after the meaning of life, his thoughts of suicide, and how he learnt

from a talk with a peasant that man should live for his soul and for

God.

His treatment in this novel of the Russian volunteers who went to

fight for Servia, was as bold a slap in the face to the Russian

jingoes, who were having things all their own way at that time, as

Campbell Bannerman's 'methods of barbarism' speech, or Sir E. Clarke's

declaration that the reassertion of England's claim to suzerainty

in the internal affairs of the Transvaal, was 'a breach of national

faith,' was to our jingoes at the time of the Boer war; but it is

curious to note the precise position that (speaking through the mouth

of Lévin) Tolstoy took up. He did not say that Russia ought not to

fight to free the Christian populations of Turkey; he merely said that

no individual Russian had any business to volunteer for the Servian or

Bulgarian army, or to take any action to urge the Russian Government

towards war.

Of Lévin we are told: 'He, like Miháylitch and the peasants, whose

feelings are expressed in the legendary story of the invitation sent

to the Varyági by the early inhabitants of Russia, said: "Come and be

princes and rule over us. _We gladly promise complete submission._ All

labour, all humiliations, all sacrifices we take on ourselves, but _we

do not judge or decide_."' And Lévin goes on to repudiate the idea that

the Russian people have 'now renounced this privilege [the privilege,

that is, of not taking any part in Government] bought at so costly a

price.'

The connection between the roots of Tolstoy's opinions--manifested in

these writings of his first fifty years--and his opinions in their

ultimate rigid and dogmatic form, as expressed during the last three

decades, is in general so close, the dogmas of the later period grew

so naturally out of the sympathies and experiences of the earlier

time, that this point--at which there is a clean line of cleavage (the

difference between obeying Government and disobeying it)--is worthy

of particular note. When finishing _Anna Karénina_ Tolstoy had not

yet reached the conclusion that all Governments employing force are

immoral; but his later teachings are dominated by that view.

Apart from the special points I have referred to, the general effect

and influence of Tolstoy's fiction can hardly be summed up better than

they have been summed up by W. D. Howells, who says:

'Up to his time fiction had been a part of the pride of life, and had

been governed by the criterions of the world which it amused. But

Tolstoy replaced the artistic conscience by the human conscience. Great

as my wonder was at the truth in his work, my wonder at the love in it

was greater yet. Here, for the first time, I found the most faithful

picture of life set in the light of that human conscience which I

had falsely taught myself was to be ignored in questions of art, as

something inadequate and inappropriate. In the august presence of the

masterpieces, I had been afraid and ashamed of the highest interests of

my nature as something philistine and provincial. But here I stood in

the presence of a master, who told me not to be ashamed of them, but to

judge his work by them, since he had himself wrought in honour of them.

I found the tests of conduct which I had used in secret with myself,

applied as the rules of universal justice, condemning and acquitting

in motive and action, and admitting none of those lawyer's pleas which

baffle our own consciousness of right and wrong. Often in Tolstoy's

ethics I feel a hardness, almost an arrogance (the word says too much);

but in his esthetics I have never felt this. He has transmuted the

atmosphere of a realm hitherto supposed unmoral into the very air of

heaven. I found nowhere in his work those base and cruel lies which

cheat us into the belief that wrong may sometimes be right through

passion, or genius, or heroism. There was everywhere the grave noble

face of the truth that had looked me in the eyes all my life, and that

I knew I must confront when I came to die. But there was something more

than this, infinitely more. There was that love which is before even

the truth, without which there is no truth, and which if there is any

last day, must appear the Divine justice....

'As I have already more than once said, his ethics and esthetics are

inseparably at one; and that is what gives a vital warmth to all his

art. It is never that heartless skill which exists for its own sake,

and is content to dazzle with the brilliancy of its triumphs. It seeks

always the truth, in the love to which alone the truth unveils itself.

If Tolstoy is the greatest imaginative writer who ever lived, it is

because, beyond all others, he has written in the spirit of kindness,

and not denied his own personal complicity with his art.

'As for the scope of his work, it would not be easy to measure it,

for it seems to include all motives and actions, in good and bad, in

high and low, and not to leave life untouched at any point as it shows

itself in his vast Russian world. Its chief themes are the old themes

of art always,--they are love, passion, death, but they are treated

with such a sincerity, such a simplicity, that they seem almost new to

art, and as effectively his as if they had not been touched before....

'Passion, we have to learn from the great master, who here as

everywhere humbles himself to the truth, has in it life and death; but

of itself it is something, only as a condition precedent to these;

without it neither can be; but it is lost in their importance, and is

strictly subordinate to their laws. It has never been more charmingly

and reverently studied in its beautiful and noble phases than it is in

Tolstoy's fiction; though he has always dealt with it so sincerely,

so seriously. As to its obscure and ugly and selfish phases, he is

so far above all others who have written of it, that he alone seems

truly to have divined it, or portrayed it as experience knows it. He

never tries to lift it out of nature in either case, but leaves it

more visibly and palpably a part of the lowest as well as the highest

humanity....

'He comes nearer unriddling life for us than any other writer. He

persuades us that it cannot possibly give us any personal happiness;

that there is no room for the selfish joy of any one except as it

displaces the joy of some other, but that for unselfish joy there is

infinite place and occasion. With the same key he unlocks the mystery

of death; and he imagines so strenuously that death is neither more nor

less than a transport of self-surrender that he convinces the reason

where there can be no proof. The reader will not have forgotten how in

those last moments of earth which he has depicted, it is this utter

giving up which is made to appear the first moment of heaven. Nothing

in his mastery is so wonderful as his power upon us in the scenes of

the borderland where his vision seems to pierce the confines of another

world.'

* * * * *

Tolstoy of the later phase, the last three decades, with which the

second volume of this work will deal, differed from the Tolstoy of the

first fifty years; but the later Tolstoy grew out of the earlier, as

the branches of a tree grow from its roots.

The difference lay chiefly in this: that from about the year 1878

Tolstoy became sure of himself, succeeded in formulating his outlook on

life, and proceeded to examine and pass judgment on all the main phases

of human thought and activity. His work was sometimes hasty and often

harsh; he painted in black and white, subjects really composed of many

shades of colours; but what other man has even attempted so to examine,

to portray, and to tell the frank truth about all the greatest problems

of life and death?

No one really concerned to leave the world better than he found it--be

his line of work what it may--can afford to ignore what Tolstoy has

said on his subject.

No such combination of intellectual and artistic force has in our

times provoked the attention of mankind. No one has so stimulated

thought, or so successfully challenged established opinions. Tolstoy

has altered the outlook on life of many men in many lands, and has

caused some to alter not their ideas merely, but the settled habits and

customs of their lives. Only those who neither know nor understand him

at all, ever question his sincerity.

Those who have spoken scornfully of him are those who have not taken

the trouble to understand him. On the other hand, the small minority

who swallow his opinions whole, do so under the hypnotic influence of

his force, fervour and genius. To analyse his opinions, and disentangle

what in them is true from what is false, is a task no one has yet

adequately performed, but for which the time is ripe, and which, bold

as the undertaking may be, I mean to attempt.

Tolstoy's marvellous artistic power, his sincerity, and the love that

is so strong a feature of his work, have often been dwelt upon; but

what really gives him his supreme importance as a literary force is the

_union_ of all these things: artistic capacity, sincerity and love,

with a quite extraordinary power of intellect.

It is not given to any man to solve all the problems of life; but no

one has made so bold and interesting an attempt to do so as Tolstoy, or

has striven so hard to make his solutions plain to every child of man.

CHIEF AUTHORITIES FOR CHAPTER XII

The literature that has grown up both in Russia and elsewhere round

Tolstoy's earlier writings is so voluminous, that I can merely indicate

a few of the best known works.

In English we have:

Matthew Arnold's essay: _Count Leo Tolstoi_ in _Essays in Criticism,

Second Series_: Macmillan and Co., London.

W. D. Howells has written several very readable and excellent essays on

Tolstoy. I have unfortunately mislaid my note of them. If any American

admirer of W. D. Howells will supply me with a list, I shall be glad to

include it in any future edition of this work.

P. Kropotkin's _Ideals and Realities in Russian Literature_ gives a

very good idea of Tolstoy's general influence and relation to Russian

life and literature generally.

In Russian:

Mihaylovsky's articles in his collected works are interesting.

N. Strahof's _Krititcheskiya Statyi o Tourgeneve i Tolstom_,

Petersburg, 1895, is excellent.

V. Zelinsky's _Rousskaya Krititcheskaya Literatoura o proizvedeniyakh

L. N. Tolstovo_ (7 vols.) reprints a large collection of Russian

criticisms on Tolstoy's works.

D. S. Merezhkovsky's _Zhizn i tvortchestvo L. N. Tolstovo i

Dostoyevskavo_ contains some acute literary criticism, but for all that

relates to Tolstoy as a man, it is worse than useless. Merezhkovsky did

not know Tolstoy personally when he wrote about him. He relied on the

works of Behrs and Anna Seuron, and even that scrappy information he

used unfairly. His talk about scents and fine linen, and in general his

whole characterisation of Tolstoy, is spiteful, and to those who know

the man attacked, it is merely ridiculous.

CHRONOLOGY

_As in the text, dates are given old style, except those relating to

the Crimean War and to Tolstoy's travels abroad._

1645 Peter Tolstoy born.

1725 Peter Tolstoy made a Count.

1727 Exiled.

1729 Died.

1814 Count Nicholas Tolstoy captured by French.

1822 Marriage of Tolstoy's parents.

1828 (28 Aug. o.s.) =Birth of Leo Tolstoy.=

1830 Death of Leo Tolstoy's mother.

1837 Death of father and grandmother. Return to

Yásnaya Polyána.

1840 Famine Year.

1841 Death of the Countess Osten-Sáken. Move to Kazán.

1844 =Matriculates at Kazán University.=

1847 Leaves the University.

1848 Passes two examinations at Petersburg University.

1849 Starts Peasant Children's School at Yásnaya.

1851 20 April =Leaves Yásnaya for Caucasus.=

" Aug. Goes on expedition from Starogládovsk.

" Nov. At Tiflis; writing _Childhood_.

" Dec. (end) =Appointed Junker.=

1852 Jan. Sádo's friendship.

" Feb. Goes on expedition.

" 2 July =Finishes _Childhood_.=

" 28 Aug. Receives letter from Nekrásof accepting _Childhood_.

1852 Nov. =_Childhood_ appears in _Contemporary_.=

" 24 Dec. _The Raid_ finished.

1853 Jan. Serves against Shámyl.

" 18 Feb. Nearly killed by grenade.

" March _The Raid_ appears in _Contemporary_.

" 13 June Chased by Tartars.

" July to Oct. Stays at Pyatigórsk.

" Oct. War between Russia and Turkey.

1854 Jan. =Receives his commission.=

" 2 Feb. Revisits Yásnaya Polyána.

" End of Feb. Starts for Bucharest.

" March War: England and France against Russia.

" " Tolstoy reaches Bucharest.

" June (end) Siege of Silistria abandoned.

" Aug. Tolstoy leaves Bucharest for Russia.

" 14 Sept. Allies land in Crimea.

" Oct. _Boyhood_ appears in _Contemporary_.

" 17 Oct. Bombardment of Sevastopol.

" Nov. (end) =Tolstoy reaches Sevastopol.=

" Dec. Stationed at Simferópol.

1855 Jan. _Memoirs of a Billiard Marker_ published.

" 13 April to 27 May =Serves in Sevastopol, in Fourth Bastion.=

" June _Sevastopol in December_ published.

" Aug. _Sevastopol in May_ published.

" 16 Aug. In Battle of Tchérnaya.

" Sept. _The Wood-Felling_ published.

" 8 Sept. Maláhof captured by French. Sevastopol abandoned by

Russians.

" Sept. Tolstoy returns to Petersburg.

1856 Jan. _Sevastopol in August_ published.

" Jan. (end) Death of Demetrius Tolstoy.

" March Russia concludes peace with England, France, and

Turkey.

1856 March _The Snow Storm_ published.

" May _Two Hussars_ published.

" Summer Engagement with V. V. A.

" Nov. Grand Duke Michael displeased about Soldiers' Song.

" 26 Nov. =Tolstoy leaves the army.=

" Dec. _Meeting a Moscow Acquaintance in the Detachment_

published.

" Dec. _A Squire's Morning_ published.

1857 Jan. _Youth_ published.

" 10 Feb. (N.S.) Leaves Moscow for Paris.

" April Visits Switzerland.

" July Stays at Lucerne.

" Aug. Returns to Yásnaya Polyána.

" Sept. _Lucerne_ published.

1858 Jan. Writes _Three Deaths_.

" March Visits Petersburg. Helps to found Moscow Musical

Society.

" Aug. _Albert_ published.

" Sept. Signs Resolution of Nobles concerning Emancipation.

" 22 Dec. Nearly killed by bear.

1859 Jan. _Three Deaths_ published.

" 4 Feb. Speaks on Art to Society of Lovers of Russian

Literature.

" April _Family Happiness_ published.

" Winter =Organises School at Yásnaya.=

1860 15 July Leaves Petersburg for Berlin.

" " Visits Auerbach in Dresden.

" July and Aug. At Kissingen for his health.

" 20 Sept. =Nicholas Tolstoy dies= at Hyères.

" Winter Visits Florence, Rome, Naples, Marseilles.

1861 Jan. Revisits Paris.

" Feb. Visits London.

" 5 May Re-enters Russia.

1861 26 May =Challenges Tourgénef.=

" Commences work as =Arbiter of the Peace=.

1861-2 Winter =Occupied with his school.=

1862 Feb. =_Yásnaya Polyána_ magazine appears.=

" May Discharged from office of Arbiter of the Peace 'on

ground of ill-health.'

" May and Takes koumýs cure in Samára Government.

June

" =Police raid on Yásnaya Polyána.=

" 17 Sept. Proposes to Miss S. A. Behrs.

" 23 " =Marries.=

" 3 Oct. Minister of Interior disapprove of _Yásnaya Polyána_

magazine.

" 15 " School abandoned.

1863 Jan. =_The Cossacks_ published.=

" Feb. _Polikoúshka_ published.

" 28 June Eldest son, Sergius, born.

1864 _War and Peace_ commenced.

" Sept. Dislocates arm while hunting.

" " Collected edition of Tolstoy's works published.

" 4 Oct. Birth of daughter, Tatiána.

1865 Jan. and Feb. =First part of _War and Peace_ published.=

" Autumn Visits battlefield of Borodinó.

1866 May Second son, Ilyá, born.

" June =Defends soldier at court-martial.=

1867 Summer Treated by Zahárin for indigestion.

1868 Publication of _War and Peace_ continued.

1869 20 May Third son Leo, born.

" Nov. =_War and Peace_ completed.=

1869-70 Studies the drama.

1870-1 Winter Studies Greek.

1871 Works at _ABC_ Book.

" 12 Feb. Birth of daughter, Mary.

" June-July Koumýs cure in Samára.

1872 Jan. Re-starts school.

=_A Prisoner in the Caucasus_ published.=

" Feb. _God Sees the Truth_ published.

" 13 June Son, Peter, born.

" Sept. Confined to Yásnaya by Investigating Magistrate.

" Nov. =_ABC_ Book published.=

1872-3 Winter Prepares to write novel of Peter the Great's time.

1873 May Goes with family to Samára.

" 17 Aug. =Samára Famine; Tolstoy's appeal.=

" Sept. Kramskóy paints his portrait.

" 9 Nov. Death of son, Peter.

1874 15 Jan. =Speaks on Learning to Read.=

" 22 April Son, Nicholas, born.

" 20 June Death of Aunt Tatiána.

" Sept. Publishes article, _On Popular Education_.

1875 20 Feb. Death of son, Nicholas.

" _New ABC_ Book published.

" Jan.-April =First Installment of _Anna Karénina_ published.=

" Summer Horse races at Samára.

" 1 Nov. Baby daughter, Varvára, born and died.

" Dec. Death of Pelagéya I. Úshkof.

1876 Jan.-April Further instalments of _Anna Karénina_.

and Dec.

" Observes Church rites and fasts.

" Sept. Visit to Samára and Orenbourg.

1877 Jan.-April =Final Installments of _Anna Karénina_ published.=

" Rupture with Katkóf.

1877 6 Dec. Son, Andrew, born.

1878 March Visits Petropávlof Fortress.

" Abandons _The Decembrists_.

" May =Reconciliation with Tourgénef.=

" 7 Aug. Tourgénef at Yásnaya Polyána.

INDEX

_ABC_ Book, 339, 341, 342, 344-348, 359, 360.

----Tourgénef's comment on, 347.

Active service, military, 86, 99, 110, 119.

Aim when writing novels, 430.

Aksákof, S. T., 175, 310.

_Albert_, 52, 166.

Alexander II, Tsar, 180, 287, 379.

Alexándra Fédorovna, Empress, 111.

Alexéyef, V. G., 395, 396.

Alexis, Tolstoy's servant, 32, 111, 284, 285.

----Tsarévitch, 2, 349.

Algebra, 355.

Ambrose, Father, 384.

Anarchism, peaceful, 58, 139.

Ancestry, 1-7, 14.

Animals, kindness to, 28, 307.

_Anna Karénina_, 289, 349, 357, 360, 361, 371, 372, 381, 438-445.

----characters in, 289, 349.

----impression produced in Russia by, 441.

----Matthew Arnold's comments on, 438-440.

----W. D. Howells' comments on, 440, 441, 445-447.

----Kropótkin's comments on, 441-443.

----Tourgénef's comments on, 361.

Ant Brotherhood, 18, 19.

Appearance, personal, 7, 26, 64.

Arbiter of the Peace, 211, 226-229, 283.

Arboúzof's _Recollections_, 370.

Arithmetic in _ABC_ Book, 341, 359.

Arm dislocated, 302, 303.

Army, enters the, 65, 76.

----leaves, 152.

----becomes an officer in, 91.

Arnold, Matthew: comments on _Anna Karénina_, 438-440.

Art, talk with peasant boys about, 257, 258.

----thoughts on, 186, 275-277, 296, 333, 377, 405.

----what is it? 260.

Artistic capacity of peasants, 275.

----element in Literature, speech on the, 185.

Artists, Tolstoy's criticism of, 163, 164.

Astronomy, studies, 341.

Auerbach, B., 194, 212.

Aunt Tatiána. See _Tatiána_.

Austria's pressure on Russia, 97.

Authors, Tolstoy's criticism of the, 162-165.

Autobiographical, 10, 14, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 26, 28, 31, 34, 39-50,

53, 54, 59-77, 81-84, 89, 90, 95-104, 106-111, 128, 130, 148, 150,

152, 153-155, 160, 161, 162, 167-173, 175, 177-180, 182, 189, 192,

198, 200, 202, 212, 214, 224, 228, 252, 254, 263, 269, 272, 282-284,

286, 288, 291, 293, 294, 296, 298, 300, 303, 304, 325-327, 333, 337,

359, 365, 383, _and whole of chap._ xi.

BÆDEKER, preacher, 413.

_Bárstchina_ explained, 225.

Baryatínsky, General, 65.

Bashkírs, Tolstoy and the, 335-337.

Bastion, the Fourth, 110, 113, 114, 117.

Bastions, clears Fifth and Sixth, 121.