certain eccentricities of his doctrine, and still more by his
picturesque efforts to conform his mode of life, by way of necessary
example, to his professed theory of social elevation. The personality of
Tolstoy, like the character of the Russian people, is many-sided, and
since its aspects are not marked off by convenient lines of division,
but are, rather, commingled in the great and varied mass of his literary
achievements, it is not easy to make a definitive forecast of his
historic position. Tentatively, however, the current critical estimate
may be summed up in this: as a creative writer, in particular of novels
and short stories, he stood matchless among the realists, and the
verdict pronounced at one time by William Dean Howells when he referred
to Tolstoy as "the only living writer of perfect fiction" is not likely
to be overruled by posterity. Nor will competent judges gainsay his
supreme importance as a critic and moral revivalist of society, even
though they may be seriously disposed to question whether his principles
of conduct constitute in their aggregate a canon of much practical worth
for the needs of the western world. As a philosopher or an original
thinker, however, he will hardly maintain the place accorded him by the
less discerning among his multitudinous followers, for in his persistent
attempt to find a new way of understanding life he must be said to have
signally failed. Wisdom in him was hampered by Utopian fancies; his
dogmas derive from idiosyncrasies and lead into absurdities. Then, too,
most of his tenets are easily traced to their sources: in his vagaries
as well as in his noblest and soundest aspirations he was merely
continuing work which others had prepared.
* * * * *
An objective survey of Tolstoy's work in realistic fiction, in which he
ranked supreme, should start with the admission that he was by no means
the first arrival among the Russians in that field. Nicholas Gogol,
Fedor Dostoievsky, and Ivan Turgenieff had the priority by a small
margin. Of these three powerful novelists, Dostoievsky (1821-1881) has
probably had an even stronger influence upon modern letters than has
Tolstoy himself. He was one of the earliest writers of romance to show
the younger generation how to found fiction upon deeper psychologic
knowledge. His greatest proficiency lay, as is apt to be the case with
writers of a realistic bent, in dealing with the darkest side of life.
The wretched and outcast portion of humanity yielded to his skill its
most congenial material. His novels--"Poor Folk," (1846), "Memoirs from
a Dead House," (1862), "Raskolnikoff," (1866), "The Idiot," (1868), "The
Karamasoffs," (1879)--take the reader into company such as had
heretofore not gained open entrance to polite literature: criminals,
defectives, paupers, and prostitutes. Yet he did not dwell upon the
wretchedness of that submerged section of humanity from any perverse
delight in what is hideous or for the satisfaction of readers afflicted
with morbid curiosity, but from a compelling sense of pity and brotherly
love. His works are an appeal to charity. In them, the imperdible grace
of the soul shines through the ugliest outward disguise to win a glance
from the habitual indifference of fortune's _enfants gâtés_. Dostoievsky
preceded Tolstoy in frankly enlisting his talents in the service of his
outcast brethren. With the same ideal of the writer's mission held in
steady view, Tolstoy turned his attention from the start, and then more
and more as his work advanced, to the pitiable condition of the lower
orders of society. It must not be forgotten in this connection that his
career was synchronous with the growth of a social revolution which,
having reached its full force in these days, is making Russia over for
better or for worse, and whose wellsprings Tolstoy helps us to fathom.
* * * * *
For the general grouping of his writings it is convenient to follow
Tolstoy's own division of his life. His dreamy poetical childhood was
succeeded by three clearly distinct stages: first, a score of years
filled up with self-indulgent worldliness; next, a nearly equal length
of time devoted to artistic ambition, earnest meditation, and helpful
social work; last, by a more gradual transition, the ascetic period,
covering a long stretch of years given up to religious illumination and
to the strenuous advocacy of the Simple Life.
The remarkable spiritual evolution of this great man was apparently
governed far more by inborn tendencies than by the workings of
experience. Of Tolstoy in his childhood, youth, middle age, and
senescence we gain trustworthy impressions from numerous
autobiographical documents, but here we shall have to forego anything
more than a passing reference to the essential facts of his career. He
was descended from an aristocratic family of German stock but domiciled
in Russia since the fourteenth century. The year of his birth was 1828,
the same as Ibsen's. In youth he was bashful, eccentric, and amazingly
ill-favored. The last-named of these handicaps he outgrew but late in
life, still later did he get over his bashfulness, and his eccentricity
never left him. His penchant for the infraction of custom nearly put a
premature stop to his career when in his urchin days he once threw
himself from a window in an improvised experiment in aerial navigation.
At the age of fourteen he was much taken up with subtile speculations
about the most ancient and vexing of human problems: the future life,
and the immortality of the soul. Entering the university at fifteen, he
devoted himself in the beginning to the study of oriental languages, but
later on his interest shifted to the law. At sixteen he was already
imbued with the doctrines of Jean Jacques Rousseau that were to play
such an important rôle in guiding his conduct. In 1846 he passed out of
the university without a degree, carrying away nothing but a lasting
regret over his wasted time. He went directly to his ancestral estates,
with the idealistic intention to make the most of the opportunity
afforded him by the patriarchal relationship that existed in Russia
between the landholder and the _adscripti glebae_ and to improve the
condition of his seven hundred dependents. His efforts, however, were
foredoomed to failure, partly through his lack of experience, partly
also through a certain want of sincerity or tenacity of purpose. The
experiment in social education having abruptly come to its end, the
disillusionized reformer threw himself headlong into the diversions and
dissipations of the capital city. In his "Confession" he refers to that
chapter of his existence as made up wholly of sensuality and
worldliness. He was inordinately proud of his noble birth,--at college
his inchoate apostleship of the universal brotherhood of man did not
shield him from a general dislike on account of his arrogance,--and he
cultivated the most exclusive social circles of Moscow. He freely
indulged the love of sports that was to cling through life and keep him
strong and supple even in very old age. (Up to a short time before his
death he still rode horseback and perhaps none of the renunciations
exacted by his principles came so hard as that of giving up his favorite
pastime of hunting.) But he also fell into the evil ways of gilded
youth, soon achieving notoriety as a toper, gambler, and _courreur des
femmes_. After a while his brother, who was a person of steadier habits
and who had great influence over him, persuaded him to quit his
profligate mode of living and to join him at his military post. Under
the bracing effect of the change, the young man's moral energies quickly
revived. In the wilds of the Caucasus he at once grew freer and cleaner;
his deep affection for the half-civilized land endeared him both to the
Cossack natives and the Russian soldiers. He entered the army at
twenty-three, and from November, 1853, up to the fall of Sebastopol in
the summer of 1855, served in the Crimean campaign. He entered the
famous fortress in November, 1854, and was among the last of its
defenders. The indelible impressions made upon his mind by the heroism
of his comrades, the awful scenes and the appalling suffering he had to
witness, were responsible then and later for descriptions as harrowing
and as stirring as any that the war literature of our own day has
produced.
In the Crimea he made his début as a writer. Among the tales of his
martial period the most popular and perhaps the most excellent is the
one called "The Cossacks." Turgenieff pronounced it the best short story
ever written in Russian, and it is surely no undue exaggeration to say
of Tolstoy's novelettes in general that in point of technical mastery
they are unsurpassed.
Sick at heart over the unending bloodshed in the Caucasus the young
officer made his way back to Petrograd, and here, lionized in the salons
doubly, fur his feats at arms and in letters, he seems to have returned,
within more temperate limits, to his former style of living. At any
rate, in his own judgment the ensuing three years were utterly wasted.
The mental inanity and moral corruption all about him swelled his sense
of superiority and self-righteousness. The glaring humbug and hypocrisy
that permeated his social environment was, however, more than he could
long endure.
Having resigned his officer's commission he went abroad in 1857, to
Switzerland, Germany, and France. The studies and observations made in
these travels sealed his resolution to settle down for good on his
domain and to consecrate his life to the welfare of his peasants. But a
survey of the situation found upon his return made him realize that
nothing could be done for the "muzhik" without systematic education:
therefore, in order to prepare himself for efficacious work as a
teacher, he spent some further time abroad for special study, in 1859.
After that, the educational labor was taken up in full earnest. The lord
of the land became the schoolmaster of his subjects, reenforcing the
effect of _viva voce_ teaching by means of a periodical published
expressly for their moral uplift. This work he continued for about three
years, his hopes of success now rising, now falling, when in a fit of
despondency he again abandoned his philanthropic efforts. About this
time, 1862, he married Sophia Andreyevna Behrs, the daughter of a Moscow
physician. With characteristic honesty he forced his private diary on
his fiancée, who was only eighteen, so that she might know the full
truth about his pre-conjugal course of living.
About the Countess Tolstoy much has been said in praise and blame. Let
her record speak for itself. Of her union with the great novelist
thirteen children were born, of whom nine reached an adult age. The
mother nursed and tended them all, with her own hands made their
clothes, and until they grew to the age of ten supplied to them the
place of a schoolmistress. It must not be inferred from this that her
horizon did not extend beyond nursery and kitchen, for during the
earlier years she acted also as her husband's invaluable amanuensis.
Before the days of the typewriter his voluminous manuscripts were all
copied by her hand, and recopied and revised--in the case of "War and
Peace" this happened no less than seven times, and the novel runs to
sixteen hundred close-printed pages!--and under her supervision his
numerous works were not only printed but also published and circulated.
Moreover, she managed his properties, landed, personal, and literary, to
the incalculable advantage of the family fortune. This end, to be sure,
she accomplished by conservative and reliable methods of business; for
while of his literary genius she was the greatest admirer, she never was
in full accord with his communistic notions. And the highest proof of
all her extraordinary _Tüchtigkeit_ and devotion is that by her common
sense and tact she was enabled to function for a lifetime as a sort of
buffer between her husband's world-removed dreamland existence and the
rigid and frigid reality of facts.
Thus Tolstoy's energies were left to go undivided into literary
production; its amount, as a result, was enormous. If all his writings
were to be collected, including the unpublished manuscripts now reposing
in the Rumyantzoff Museum, which are said to be about equal in quantity
to the published works, and if to this collection were added his
innumerable letters, most of which are of very great interest, the
complete set of Tolstoy's works would run to considerably more than one
hundred volumes. To discuss all of Tolstoy's writings, or even to
mention all, is here quite out of the question. All those, however, that
seem vital for the purpose of a just estimate and characterization will
be touched upon.
* * * * *
The literary fame of Tolstoy was abundantly secured already in the
earlier part of his life by his numerous short stories and sketches. The
three remarkable pen pictures of the siege of Sebastopol, and tales such
as "The Cossacks," "Two Hussars," "Polikushka," "The Snow-Storm," "The
Encounter," "The Invasion," "The Captive in the Caucasus," "Lucerne,"
"Albert," and many others, revealed together with an exceptional depth
of insight an extraordinary plastic ability and skill of motivation; in
fact they deserve to be set as permanent examples before the eyes of
every aspiring author. In their characters and their setting they
present true and racy pictures of a portentous epoch, intimate studies
of the human soul that are full of charm and fascination,
notwithstanding their tragic sadness of outlook. Manifestly this author
was a prose poet of such marvelous power that he could abstain
consistently from the use of sweeping color, overwrought sentiment, and
high rhetorical invective.
At this season Tolstoy, while he refrained from following any of the
approved literary models, was paying much attention to the artistic
refinement of his style. There was to be a time when he would abjure all
considerations of artistry on the ground that by them the ethical issue
in a narration is beclouded. But it would be truer to say conversely
that in his own later works, since "Anna Karenina," the clarity of the
artistic design was dimmed by the obtrusive didactic purpose.
Fortunately the artistic interest was not yet wholly subordinated to the
religious urge while the three great novels were in course of
composition: "War and Peace," (1864-69), "Anna Karenina," (first part,
1873; published complete in 1877), and "Resurrection," (1899). To the
first of these is usually accorded the highest place among all of
Tolstoy's works; it is by this work that he takes his position as the
chief epic poet of modern times. "War and Peace" is indeed an epic
rather than a novel in the ordinary meaning. Playing against the
background of tremendous historical transactions, the narrative sustains
the epic character not only in the hugeness of its dimensions, but
equally in the qualities of its technique. There is very little comment
by the author upon the events, and merely a touch of subjective irony
here and there. The story is straightforwardly told as it was lived out
by its characters. Tolstoy has not the self-complacency to thrust in the
odds and ends of his personal philosophy, as is done so annoyingly even
by a writer of George Meredith's consequence, nor does he ever treat his
readers with the almost simian impertinence so successfully affected by
a Bernard Shaw. If "War and Peace" has any faults, they are the faults
of its virtues, and spring mainly from an unmeasured prodigality of the
creative gift. As a result of Tolstoy's excessive range of vision, the
orderly progress of events in that great novel is broken up somewhat by
the profusion of shapes that monopolize the attention one at a time much
as individual spots in a landscape do under the sweeping glare of the
search-light. Yet although in the externalization of this crowding
multitude of figures no necessary detail is lacking, the grand movement
as a whole is not swamped by the details. The entire story is governed
by the conception of events as an emanation of the cosmic will, not
merely as the consequence of impulses proceeding from a few puissant
geniuses of the Napoleonic order.
It is quite in accord with such a view of history that the machinery of
this voluminous epopee is not set in motion by a single conspicuous
protagonist. As a matter of fact, it is somewhat baffling to try to name
the principals in the story, since in artistic importance all the
figures are on an equal footing before their maker; possibly the fact
that Tolstoy's ethical theory embodied the most persistent protest ever
raised against the inequality of social estates proved not insignificant
for his manner of characterization. Ethical justice, however, is carried
to an artistic fault, for the feelings and reactions of human nature in
so many diverse individuals lead to an intricacy and subtlety of
motivation which obscures the organic causes through overzeal in making
them patent. Anyway, Tolstoy authenticates himself in this novel as a
past master of realism, particularly in his utterly convincing
depictment of Russian soldier life. And as a painter of the battlefield
he ranks, allowing for the difference of the medium, with Vasili
Verestschagin at his best. It may be said in passing that these two
Russian pacifists, by their gruesome exposition of the horrors of war,
aroused more sentiment against warfare than did all the spectacular and
expensive peace conferences inaugurated by the crowned but hollow head
of their nation, and the splendid declamations of the possessors of, or
aspirants for, the late Mr. Nobel's forty-thousand dollar prize.
Like all true realists, Tolstoy took great pains to inform himself even
about the minutiæ of his subjects, but he never failed, as did in large
measure Zola in _La Débâcle_, to infuse emotional meaning into the
static monotony of facts and figures. In his strong attachment for his
own human creatures he is more nearly akin to the idealizing or
sentimentalizing type of realists, like Daudet, Kipling, Hauptmann, than
to the downright matter-of-fact naturalists such as Zola or Gorki. But
to classify him at all would be wrong and futile, since he was never
leagued with literary creeds and cliques and always stood aloof from the
heated theoretical controversies of his time even after he had hurled
his great inclusive challenge to art.
"War and Peace" was written in Tolstoy's happiest epoch, at a time,
comparatively speaking, of spiritual calm. He had now reached some
satisfying convictions in his religious speculations, and felt that his
personal life was moving up in the right direction. His moral change is
made plain in the contrast between two figures of the story, Prince
Andrey and Peter Bezukhoff: the ambitious worldling and the honest
seeker after the right way.
In his second great novel, "Anna Karenina," the undercurrent of the
author's own moral experience has a distinctly greater carrying power.
It is through the earnest idealist, Levine, that Tolstoy has recorded
his own aspirations. Characteristically, he does not make Levine the
central figure.
"Anna Karenina" is undoubtedly far from "pleasant" reading, since it is
the tragical recital of an adulterous love. But the situation, with its
appalling consequence of sorrow, is seized in its fullest psychological
depth and by this means saved from being in any way offensive. The
relation between the principals is viewed as by no means an ordinary
liaison. Anna and Vronsky are serious-minded, honorable persons, who
have struggled conscientiously against their mutual enchantment, but are
swept out of their own moral orbits by the resistless force of Fate.
This fatalistic element in the tragedy is variously emphasized; so at
the beginning of the story, where Anna, in her emotional confusion still
half-ignorant of her infatuation, suddenly realizes her love for
Vronsky; or in the scene at the horse races where he meets with an
accident. Throughout the narrative the psychological argumentation is
beyond criticism. Witness the description of Anna's husband, a sort of
cousin-in-kind of Ibsen's Thorvald Helmer, reflecting on his future
course after his wife's confession of her unfaithfulness. Or that other
episode, perhaps the greatest of them all, when Anna, at the point of
death, joins together the hands of her husband and her lover. Or,
finally, the picture of Anna as she deserts her home leaving her son
behind in voluntary expiation of her wrong-doing, an act, by the way,
that betrays a nicety of conscience far too subtle for the Rhadamantine
inquisitors who demand to know why, if Anna would atone to Karenin, does
she go with Vronsky? How perfectly true to life, subsequently, is the
rapid _dégringolade_ of this passion under the gnawing curse of the
homeless, workless, purposeless existence which little by little
disunites the lovers! Only the end may be somewhat open to doubt, with
its metastasis of the heroine's character,--unless indeed we consider
the sweeping change accounted for by the theory of duplex personality.
She herself believes that there are two quite different women alive in
her, the one steadfastly loyal to her obligations, the other blindly
driven into sin by the demon of her uncontrollable temperament.
In the power of analysis, "Anna Karenina" is beyond doubt Tolstoy's
masterpiece, and yet in its many discursive passages it already
foreshadows the disintegration of his art, or more precisely, its
ultimate capitulation to moral propagandism. For it was while at work
upon this great novel that the old perplexities returned to bewilder his
soul. In the tumultuous agitation of his conscience, the crucial and
fundamental questions, Why Do We Live? and How Should We Live? could
nevermore be silenced. Now a definitive attitude toward life is forming;
to it all the later works bear a vital relation. And so, in regard to
their moral outlook, Tolstoy's books may fitly be divided into those
written before and those written since his "conversion." "Anna Karenina"
happens to be on the dividing line.