[Frontispiece: Tolstoy]
TOLSTOY
BY L. WINSTANLEY, M.A.
LECTURER IN ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF WALES, ABERYSTWYTH
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
67 LONG ACRE, W.C., AND EDINBURGH
NEW YORK: DODGE PUBLISHING CO.
DEDICATED
TO MY BELOVED FRIEND
ANNA BRODSKY
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. TOLSTOY'S CONTEMPORARIES
II. LIFE OF TOLSTOY--"A LANDED PROPRIETOR"--"CHILDHOOD"--"THE
COSSACKS"--"TALES FROM SEBASTOPOL"
III. LIFE OF TOLSTOY (_continued_)--JOURNEY ABROAD--PEASANT
SCHOOLS--"TALES FOR CHILDREN"--MARRIED LIFE--RELIGIOUS
DIFFICULTIES--CONVERSION
IV. "WAR AND PEACE"
V. "ANNA KARÉNINA"
VI. "MY CONFESSION"--"MY RELIGION"--"WHAT IS ART?" ETC.
VII. "THE POWER OF DARKNESS"--"THE KREUTZER SONATA"--"RESURRECTION"
VIII. THE INFLUENCE OF TOLSTOY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
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TOLSTOY
CHAPTER I
TOLSTOY'S CONTEMPORARIES
The most striking literary phenomenon of the nineteenth century is,
undoubtedly, the rise into power and prominence of Russian authors.
Some fifty years ago Russian literature was practically unknown to
Western Europe; by the majority of people its very existence seems to
have been unsuspected; we find even so great an adventurer as Carlyle,
himself guiding his countrymen to many new tracts of literary
discovery, speaking of "the great silent Russians who are drilling a
whole continent into obedience, but who have produced 'nothing
articulate' as yet."[1] In less than thirty years from the time when
Carlyle penned that sentence Russian literature had become recognised
as one of the most powerful and vital in Europe; its influence, already
enormous, increases every day; it is great in France, in Germany, in
Scandinavia, even in conservative England; hardly since the Renaissance
has Europe beheld such a phenomenon--a literary advance at once so
rapid and so great.
[1] _Heroes and Hero Worship_.
The truth is that we have seen in Russia a growth very similar to that
which occurred in Western Europe at the time of the Renaissance. In
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Europe as a whole experienced the
vivifying influence of two great literatures--Greek and Latin--and it
had, at the same time, a mode of life {8} to depict and ideas of life
to express which differed widely from those of the classical nations:
the great models showed them the fascination of poetry and art, and
stimulated them to production; the different conditions of life, the
varying ideals, prevented their production from becoming a mere
imitation, and made it new, significant, and vital. Something very
similar has occurred hi modern Russia. Russia has had the stimulus of
Western Europe--especially of England and France--but, at the same
time, the conditions of its life are so powerfully individual, so
exceedingly unlike those of England and France, that its authors are
hardly even tempted to produce work which is a mere imitation; as soon
as they observe at all, the result of their observations is bound to be
different. Their production is thus distinctive and individual, and,
in its own turn, reacts upon the literatures which first inspired it.
The chief literary form in the later nineteenth century has been the
psychological novel, and it is this which the Russians have taken up,
developed, and almost recreated.
In psychology Russian writers are greatly helped by their own exceeding
truthfulness and candour. France and England are lands of complex
civilisations, of many social grades and many conventions, and the
mental attitude of their writers is, almost inevitably, conventional,
and thus, to a certain extent, insincere. Russian life has far fewer
social grades and far fewer conventions; Russian writers are, beyond
comparison, more candid with themselves and with others; they speak the
exact truth with a _naïveté_ almost resembling the _naïveté_ of
children, but with the far-reaching intelligence of maturity. This
invaluable quality of sincerity is found in all the greatest Russians;
Tolstoy and Dostoïevsky, in especial, hide nothing, but reproduce all
they know with an absence of self-consciousness that amazes even while
it fascinates.
We all of us know in our hearts that this profound sincerity is
essential to really great literature; but, none the less, we, in a
variety of ways, discourage and {9} forbid it: in prudish England an
author is always afraid of offending "moral" prejudices; in France
writers, though in moral respects far freer, are most sensitively
afraid of appearing ridiculous or absurd. To a Russian neither of
these fears would seem to exist. Throughout his work Tolstoy insists
with the most vehement intensity that absolute truthfulness in all
respects is the essential foundation of morals, and nothing angers him
more than concealment, which he declares to be, always and everywhere,
the assistant and protector of vice, while the fear of being absurd he
dismisses as one of the most ridiculous vanities of adolescence,
unworthy of a sane man.
Another quality that greatly assists Russian writers is their unique
gift of sympathy; there may be, probably there is, something in the
very fibre of the race essentially feminine and sensitive, but the
peculiar conditions of their government account for much. Russia is
the nation which, above all other great nations in our days, has the
most tragic destiny, suffers most deeply and undeservedly; it is
probably this which helps to give her great writers so deep a
compassion; they penetrate to the very foundation of human experience,
they fathom the deepest abysses of human suffering, and they return
with an unequalled tenderness, with a noble beauty of compassion, which
has, in the modern world, no rival at all.
It is worthy of note that the ancient Greeks would appear to have
gained in a similar way some of the greatest qualities in their
national soul. They too had the experience of a deep suffering; they
stood between East and West, they bore the brunt of long-lasting racial
conflicts, and, when they finally emerged triumphant, they carried with
them the beautiful fruit of that bitter experience, in their profound
understanding of human suffering, and their knowledge of all the depths
of tragedy. They too gain from their own anguish a unique tenderness
and compassion; Priam kissing the hands of Achilles, "terrible
man-slaying that had slain so many of his sons," is one of the world's
supreme types {10} of pathos; this lovely tenderness illumines all the
great Greek poetry from Homer to Euripides.
Latin literature, in comparison with the Greek, is wanting both in
compassion and in depth, but the Romans had never in the same way
suffered, and they knew less of the secrets of the human soul.
Tolstoy, we are told, read much in Homer, and was greatly influenced by
him in writing his _War and Peace_. It is hardly surprising, for,
notwithstanding all differences, there is a considerable
similarity--the two are alike in their heroism, in their understanding
of war, their vast and crowded canvas, their tragic view of human
destiny, and their lovely compassion. It is characteristic of the
Russian breadth of mind and elemental sincerity that Tolstoy really can
take Homer as his model in writing a modern novel. It is hardly
necessary to remark that he has not Homer's sense of beauty, but who in
this modern world has?
The fecundity of Russian literature is very great; it is a great
mistake to regard Tolstoy as if he stood alone; like Shakespeare,
Tolstoy is only the highest peak, or perhaps we should say the greatest
magnitude, among a number of writers only less distinguished than
himself.
Among Tolstoy's predecessors the Russians themselves rank Gogol very
high; he owes much to the influence of Dickens; his books show endless
comic verve, are crowded with situations full of laughter, but at the
same time he has, in general, a very serious purpose behind. Gogol,
though humane and good-tempered, is a keen satirist; comparatively
little known abroad, he is greatly loved by Russians themselves.
Among Tolstoy's leading contemporaries the man whom, above all others,
he most whole-heartedly admired was Féodor Dostoïevsky. Dostoïevsky
had a tragic history which is reflected in his works; he was involved
in the plots of the Decembrists, condemned to execution, and only at
the last moment reprieved; for the remainder of his life, possibly in
consequence of the shock to his nervous system, he became an epileptic;
he was exiled for a time to Siberia.
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Dostoïevsky's books are largely studies in crime, but quite unlike
those familiar to our modern press; the modern detective story with its
police-court atmosphere and its vulgar shallowness of interest belongs
to a world immeasurably beneath Dostoïevsky; even the world of tragic
crime, depicted so forcibly by the Elizabethans, stands far apart from
his; in Elizabethan dramas crime is observed for the sake of its
passion, it is invested with a terrible though gloomy allurement, and
its end is the ruin of the noblest or the tragic destruction of a human
soul.
Dostoïevsky's novels of crime are really studies in redemption: in
_Crime and Punishment_ the hero is a murderer and the heroine a fallen
woman, but both ultimately work out their salvation. To Dostoïevsky
crime is a moral disease, a source of the most exquisite suffering to
the soul; he studies the process by which the soul, sick to death and
horribly distressed, purifies and cleanses itself. Dostoïevsky is not,
like the Elizabethans, impressed by the tragic beauty of crime; on the
contrary, he realises and makes us realise its loathsomeness, its
sordid horror; but, notwithstanding its dark and gloomy setting, his
work is in essence far from pessimistic; the expiatory power of
suffering, the innate nobility of the human soul, the miserable
meanness of sin, the beauty of compassion--these are the impressions
which he prints most deeply in the mind.
The nearest western parallel is to be found, no doubt, in Victor Hugo's
_Les Miserables_, where the redemption of a human soul is, in somewhat
similar method, described; but Victor Hugo does not penetrate to the
foundations of human life in the same manner as Dostoïevsky; he--the
petted idol of the French public--had not that first-hand acquaintance
with the terrible realities of oppression; there is something
theatrical and rhetorical, almost insincere, about Hugo if we compare
him with the great Russian.
It is worthy of observation that Tolstoy greatly admired both _Les
Miserables_ and Dostoïevsky; the older he grew and the more powerfully
the influence of {12} the latter became manifest, his sympathy with the
oppressed, his interest in redemption, increased, until in the last of
his great novels, _Resurrection_, we find that he writes in the very
spirit of Dostoïevsky; his heroine goes down to the depths of shame and
degradation, and yet is redeemed and restored. The pessimist may
perhaps declare that both Tolstoy and Dostoïevsky are mistaken in
thinking that a human being can sink so low and yet be redeemed; to
which it can only be replied that the unflinching courage with which
they face realities--all realities, however horrible and sordid--earns
them their right to be believed when they assert the restorative power
of purity and love.
Amid all Tolstoy's contemporaries the one most widely appreciated in
Europe is, without doubt, Turgénief. He was understood earlier and
more readily than his fellow-countrymen, this appreciation being no
doubt due to the fact that there is more foreign influence in his work,
and that he is less purely Russian. Turgénief owes much to French
literature; the influence of its clarity of style, its artistic form,
its sense of proportion, are evident throughout his writing; he is the
most artistic and literary of Russian authors, but, strong as the
French influence is in his work, no one could ever mistake him for a
Frenchman; he has the depth and tenderness of the Slavonic temperament,
its moral earnestness, its profound sincerity.
Turgénief and Tolstoy were exceedingly unlike in life and work; it is
not surprising that, when they met, they were alternately fascinated
and repelled. Turgénief complained that Tolstoy pursued him like a
woman in love and yet, when they were together, was always quarrelling
with him. At one time they were devoted friends, at another they came
near to fighting a duel. Russia might well have been horrified by the
spectacle of her two greatest men of genius destroying each other;
their friends intervened and separated them, but the reconciliation was
never quite complete. The same opposition of personality can be
plainly perceived in their work. Tolstoy is by far the more masculine
genius, {13} enormous in his vitality and power, immense in his
canvases; he loves, in his early work especially, to study masculine
and virile characters, to dwell on war and hunting, and all the
vigorous activities of men; his heroines, charming as they often are,
are rarely or never heroic; they are nearly always dominated by their
own emotions, they yield only too thoroughly to the men who, with a
cruel masculine egoism, at once love and destroy them. Again it is
hardly until he reaches _Resurrection_ that he shows a true sense of
the value of women as individuals: in his earlier novels he consents to
value them only in their maternal aspect, as the mothers of men. His
conception of love is nearly always a masculine passion with, it must
be acknowledged, a somewhat crude masculinity; it is a disturbance of
the senses rather than an emotion of the soul (Plato would have classed
it unquestioningly as born of the lower Aphrodite), and Tolstoy's
finest heroes nearly always yield to it reluctantly and, as it were,
churlishly.
Like another great masculine genius--Milton--Tolstoy feels most
intimately, but shudders at the power that women possess over men. How
often in his works one meets with women who are like Milton's Dalila,
possessed of a charm that is mixed with loathing and disgust. Both
Milton and Tolstoy regard with horror, as one of the worst of snares,
the idealising power of love.
Turgénief is very different. He has not Tolstoy's enormous vitality
nor his immense scope; his novels are, in comparison, quite brief, and
some of his best work is done in a very small compass, though it is
always so deep in meaning that it never seems slight. He has achieved
nothing more perfect than the little story of _Faust_, which might, so
far as length goes, be only a French _feuilleton_. He is always and
essentially poetic; one of the keenest of all human observers, he
dislikes sordid realism; he avoids war and all other forms of extreme
violence; it is quite characteristic of him that when he does, for
once, choose a soldier hero--Insarov in {14} _On the Eve_--he does not
accompany him to war, but makes him die of consumption before the
conflict actually begins. Love plays a far larger part in his work
than in that of Tolstoy, and it is an altogether nobler kind of love.
As a lover, indeed, he belongs to the great poetic idealists, he is of
the same race as Dante, as Shakespeare, as Shelley. He understands,
quite as well as Tolstoy, the dreadful glamour of an evil passion; he
understands how it leads to atrophy of the heart, to desolation and to
ruin; but he understands also that nobler passion whose very existence
Tolstoy explicitly and vehemently denies--the love which belongs both
to the senses and to the soul. Passion in Tolstoy is always a
concession to the animal in man; in Turgénief it is often his
redemption. It follows from this that he understands women far better
than Tolstoy; indeed Turgénief lays his main stress on feminine rather
than on masculine character, and the most heroic and beautiful figures
in his pages are usually those of women. He draws them, indeed, with a
Shakespearean strength and delicacy; he does not regret the influence
they have over man's life--it is so often for good; even when he draws
the destructive siren who lures men to their doom, he draws her without
the Tolstoyan frenzy of hate; he gives her the same kind of charm that
Shakespeare gave Cleopatra, and permits her poetry to fascinate even
while he shows with the clearest irony all her sensuality and her
falseness. It is worthy of note that neither Tolstoy nor Turgénief
wholly escape from the influence of their rank. Widely democratic as
they are in sympathies they yet betray their aristocratic
birth--Tolstoy in the wrath and anger, the almost Satanic fury he turns
upon those with whom he happens to disagree, and Turgénief in the
fastidious delicacy with which he loves the beautiful, the
distinguished, and the rare.
It is Dostoïevsky who is truly the man of the people; he sees through
all the cheats of power, but he hates no one; he loves purity and
beauty, but he finds them even in the foulest prisons and the lowest
slums; of the three he is the truest democrat.
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