"THE POWER OF DARKNESS"--"THE KREUTZER SONATA"--"RESURRECTION"
Tolstoy has written but few dramas; among these stands pre-eminent the
tragedy entitled _The Power of Darkness_. The scene is laid among
peasants, and the work is didactic; as is the case with _Resurrection_,
its aim is to show the possibility of redemption even for the most
fallen.
The drama opens with an exceedingly effective situation: Anisya, the
second wife of an invalid husband, is in love with the vigorous and
powerful young labourer Nikíta, and reproaches him jealously because
his father wishes him to marry.
Matrónya, Nikíta's mother, is a wonderful study in the evil side of
maternity--its colossal egoism and its willingness to sacrifice
everything to the welfare of a beloved child. Matrónya condones her
son's adultery, because she hopes that it may lead, when the invalid
husband is dead, to a good establishment.
The old father--Akím--represents the good genius of the piece: Nikíta
has got an innocent girl into trouble and his father wishes him to
atone by marrying her; he insists that moral welfare is the only real
welfare, and that, in comparison with it, nothing else matters, and the
whole terrible course of the play shows how right he is. Akím
represents in the drama the one element of real moral beauty, the one
light in the "inspissated gloom," and it is characteristic of Tolstoy
that he should ascribe this position to the man upon whom society has
thrust its filthiest and most repulsive task; Akím, able to find no
other honest work, has become a cleaner of {78} cesspools, and has
grown so repulsive outwardly that his own wife feels sick when she
approaches him. Nor is he a man of intelligence; his habit of
continuously repeating his words makes him appear almost half-witted,
and his wife terms him "an old mumbler."
_The Power of Darkness_ produces a terrible effect on the nerves, for
the gloom is as dreadful as in _Macbeth_, and it is not relieved by
heroic battle or the splendours of a crown; it is to the last degree
sordid--the concentrated essence of sin. Yet the chain of moral
causation is linked as firmly as in _Macbeth_, and we are shown, in the
same unflinching way, how crime haunts and sears the conscience, and
how the worst punishment of sin is that it leads on to ever more and
more sin.
The conflict between the evil genius and the good genius--Matrónya and
Akím--turns first on the girl whom Akím has seduced, and Matrónya wins,
persuading her son to repudiate the unfortunate orphan whom he has so
deeply wronged. Also, to hurry matters on, she persuades Anisya to
give her husband sleeping-powders which are really poisons.
The second act shows us the working out of this crime: with tragic
irony we are made to see that Anisya has no particular objection to
poisoning her husband; what she does mind is that he dies so slowly;
his horrible sufferings wring her heart, yet she hates him the more for
the grief he causes her.
Anisya could not maintain her cruelty were she not continually urged on
by Matrónya; she has not even the consolation of Nikíta's support, for
Matrónya will not permit him to be told; again with grim tragic irony
she declares that he is so kind-hearted that he could not kill a
chicken.
In the third act events have moved a stage further. Nikíta and Anisya
are married, but further than ever from happiness! Nikíta has learnt
of the crime; he regards his wife as a murderess, feels her hateful and
repulsive, and, with his usual soft-hearted sensuousness, has turned
for consolation to his wife's half-witted stepdaughter--Akoulina.
Anisya has to bear all alone {79} the dreadful consciousness of her
guilt; she has the bitterness of seeing Nikíta spend on another the
money for which she, as she feels, sold her soul; Nikíta beats her, and
her passion for him enslaves her so that she can make no real protest.
She is surprised herself at her own weakness: "I haven't a grain of
courage before him. I go about like a drowned hen."
Anisya's only hope is to get rid of Akoulina by marriage, but the
neighbours suspect something and hold aloof. Even Matrónya, always on
her son's side, has turned against the unhappy daughter-in-law; the one
person who pities her is old Akím, who warns his son that he is acting
against God and on the road to ruin.
Again Tolstoy reminds us of _Macbeth_; his peasant heroine has gained
all she desired, but it is hollow and worthless, and she envies her
victim in his very grave.
In the fourth act we have the punishment of Nikíta. Akoulina is to be
married, for the sake of her dowry only, but her confinement comes just
before the wedding should take place, and, if the child's existence is
once known, it will ruin all. Nikíta, as usual, wants to throw the
burden on his wife, but Anisya refuses absolutely.
Matrónya, callous as ever, urges her son to the murder of his infant;
with tragic irony in her speech she declares that it is such a little
thing, it can hardly be counted as human at all. Anisya too urges him
on, not with callousness but with a more terrible hate.
"Let him also be a murderer! Then he'll know how it feels.... I'll
make him strangle his dirty brat! I've worried myself to death all
alone with Peter's bones weighing on my soul. Let him feel it too."
Nikíta, always weak, gives way, and commits the murder, but it sickens
him to the very soul.
In the fifth act we see the long-delayed punishment of Matrónya. To
the end she remains callous; she cannot understand the moral sufferings
of Anisya and her son, but she can be reached through her son's worldly
ruin, and that is what occurs.
Nikíta cannot endure the hideous consciousness of his guilt. "When I
eat, it's there! When I drink, it's {80} there! When I sleep, it's
there! I am so sick of it, so sick! ... Even drink takes no hold on
me."
He ponders suicide, but reflects that this would only be a new crime,
and at length he nerves himself, before all the wedding guests, his old
father helping and assisting him, to make full confession.
There is no splendour in this drama, not even the splendour of crime,
but Tolstoy has good warrant in depicting evil as he does; he shows the
worst feature of evil as being its insufferable meanness and dirtiness,
and the same truth is driven home by _The Kreutzer Sonata_ and
_Resurrection_. But though this drama is so gloomy it is not
despairing; the one point of light glows and kindles till it overpowers
the whole; even in the heart of the darkness God has made manifest His
power.
_The Kreutzer Sonata_ probably ranks with _Anna Karénina_ as being the
best-known of Tolstoy's productions. It had in England and elsewhere
what might be termed a _succès de scandale_. The emphasis laid upon it
is, in some ways, unfortunate; it serves many people as an introduction
to Tolstoy; they read it, are repelled, and explore no further. The
truth is that it stands almost alone among Tolstoy's works; the same
elements are present, the same ideas are discussed else where, but they
are nowhere else brought to a focus of such intensity and concentrated
in such powerful expression.
The piece is almost pure Strindberg; it represents that woman-hatred,
that loathing of marriage, that helpless rage against physical passion,
of which the Swedish author has made himself the chief European
exponent. The situation is exactly the sort of situation Strindberg
delights in: husband and wife bound together by a purely sensual
passion which they both abominate but cannot, either of them, control;
the paroxysms of indulgence followed by paroxysms of mutual loathing;
the endless quarrels; the reciprocal jealousy; the miserable and
shallow infidelity; and, as a climax, the miserable, vanity-inspired
murder. But, {81} though the subject is almost pure Strindberg,
Tolstoy is infinitely more just to women than Strindberg could contrive
to be.
For Tolstoy's wretched and morbid hero, roused to insight by his own
cruel deed, can place the blame where it rightfully belongs; he can see
that the real fault does not lie in woman as woman, but in woman as man
has corrupted her. With an incisive truth that Strindberg cannot rival
he gets to the very root of the mischief and reveals it in man's own
sensuality. He makes a serious and passionate plea for purity in men;
he speaks with horror of the doctors who encourage vice and of the
pseudo-science which declares it necessary. The moral corruption which
ensues does not begin and end, as people falsely think, with women of
loose life; on the contrary, it pervades the whole of society. The man
who has "fallen" takes a wrong attitude towards all women; he regards
them, even the pure and innocent, as being created for his physical
pleasure. Tolstoy, like Meredith, finds in the demand for "innocence"
and "bloom" mainly the desire of the voluptuary to whet his own jaded
appetite. The result is the degradation of women; they are all, even
to most innocent young girls, turned into sexual lures, made to expose
their arms and bosoms in immodest ways, and to provoke the appetites of
men.
The hero goes on to analyse the miseries of his unhappy marriage; here
again they are traced to the root-cause--the excessive sensuality of
the husband, who degrades his wife and destroys her health and her
nerves, thus exciting in her incessant irritability, which, in its
turn, exasperates and annoys him.
The only remedy, Tolstoy insists, is to treat woman as a human being,
to give her full human rights, and not consider her simply as a
possession. At present woman is treated as an object of pleasure, and
becomes a degraded and demoralised serf. In her turn she enslaves man
by demanding endless luxuries which his labour must produce.
Once the exposition is complete the story advances {82} with Tolstoy's
usual masterly skill. The psychology of hate has never been drawn with
a more fearful accuracy. To the end the hero is self-rigorous; he
acknowledges that he killed his wife, not because she violated his love
(he had none), but simply because he regarded her as a property in
which he had an inalienable right. He feels, and makes us feel, that
this is the most horrible feature in the whole repulsive tale.
_Resurrection_, the last of Tolstoy's great novels, was written after
he had, as he thought, definitely resigned fiction. Wishing to help
the Doukhobors, he took up and completed the unfinished manuscript of
this book, which shows that his hand had in no way lost its cunning.
Less purely a work of art because far more didactic than _War and
Peace_ or _Anna Karénina_, it is in every way worthy of the author of
both. It tells a single story of the most wonderful and moving pathos.
We are introduced to the hero--Prince Dmitri Nekhlúdof--at the moment
when he is summoned to take his place on a jury. The first case is one
of murder; three people are accused, among them a prostitute named
Máslova, and in her Nekhlúdof recognises to his horror a certain
Katusha whom he had first known as a pure and innocent girl, and whom
he himself had seduced. He tries to stifle his conscience; he assures
himself that "everybody" does these things, and that he is not to blame
for Máslova's fate; but, notwithstanding his struggles, the conviction
is borne in upon him that he is morally responsible both for the
woman's hideous degradation and for her presence in the dock.
With the most consummate art Tolstoy introduces us first to the foetid
and wretched atmosphere of the law-court, with the story of the
poisoned merchant, and the horrible description of his half-putrefying
dead body, and then, by force of Nekhlúdof's recollections, shows us
the magical contrast of Katusha's pure and innocent girlhood.
There is no love story in literature rendered with a more poignant
charm. Katusha is the one woman whom Nekhlúdof had really and truly
and poetically {83} loved; he loved her when he was himself innocent,
and his love had the aroma of Paradise, never, in all his later life,
to be recalled again.
Katusha was a poor girl, the daughter of a gipsy tramp, whom his aunts
had educated, half as a servant and half as a companion. She is very
beautiful, refined in her manners, exquisitely tender; he loves her
with a love full of reserves and mysteries, incredibly sweet,
transfiguring the whole world. Nekhlúdof goes away; he returns, but,
in the meantime, he has tasted of vice, and he is no longer the same.
When he sees Katusha again the old innocent poetic charm revives once
more, but it has now to contend with what Tolstoy called "the dreadful,
animal man." For a moment the better nature conquers. No scene in all
Tolstoy's pages is more lovely than that of the Easter Mass, when
Nekhlúdof rides to the church early in the morning across the snow,
sees it brilliantly lighted, the priests in their gorgeous vestments,
hears the glorious Easter hymns, and feels as if all the joy, the
tenderness, and the beauty were for Katusha and for her alone.
"For her the gold glittered round the icons; for her all these candles
in candelabra and candlesticks were alight; for her were sung these
joyful hymns.... All ... all that was good in the world was for her."
But Nekhlúdof has been corrupted by his own evil life; he cannot for
long control his passions, and, in spite of the poor girl's piteous
fear, he takes advantage of the fascination he possesses over her to
ruin her.
It is a night of spring, with a white mist above the melting snow, the
ice tinkling and breaking in the river. Nekhlúdof twice summons
Katusha, and twice she evades him, but in the end it is done. Never
has the charm and romance of passion been more wonderfully rendered,
but Tolstoy makes us feel this seduction terrible as a murder.
And the worst detail of all, the one that Nekhlúdof remembers with
burning cheeks, is that, when he left, he paid Katusha by thrusting
into the pocket of her apron a hundred-rouble note.
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The trial proceeds. Máslova, though manifestly innocent, is condemned
by a technical error and sentenced to Siberia. Nekhlúdof determines to
appeal, and, moved by his remorse, he decides also to make himself
known to her and ask her forgiveness.
In the meanwhile we are introduced to the household of the Korchágins,
whose daughter Nekhlúdof is expected to marry. We see the contrast
between the wretched lives of the prisoners, who suffer and have always
suffered from every form of privation, and the debasing luxury of the
Korchágins, which produces, not happiness but only ennui and fatigue.
We see the contrast between the conventionality and tiresomeness of
Nekhlúdof's relations with the young princess and the pure poetry of
those earlier relations with Katusha. The _mariage de convenance_ is
evident in all its weariness.
These scenes are closely linked with the main purpose of the book: what
Tolstoy wishes is to make his reader feel that the whole penal system
is wrong and false, partly because the people who come under it are
mainly the victims of a cruel form of society, and partly because those
who condemn them are, in their own way of life, no better but probably
far worse. The Korchágins have to their credit a long series of evil
deeds, floggings and judicial murders, gluttony and sexual offences.
Nekhlúdof sees that, compared with these people, Máslova and the rest
are almost innocent, and grows more and more disgusted with the life of
his set. He makes himself known to Máslova.
Tolstoy has no sentimentality, and he cannot pretend that the horrible
life which his heroine has led has not made any essential difference;
on the contrary, it is her profound moral corruption which is, as
Nekhlúdof at once realises, the most hideous consequence of his sin.
When she first recognises his interest, she has no special feelings
towards him, but only wishes to make use of him in order to extract
from him money for drink. But, when he asks her forgiveness, she
overwhelms him with foul abuse. She cannot believe in his real
penitence, but thinks that, just as he once used her for {85} his
physical pleasure, so now he wishes to make use of her to save what she
calls his "dirty soul."
Tolstoy now tells us the story of the seduction as it appeared to her,
and adds details of a terrible and haunting pathos. The poor deserted
girl realised that she was about to become a mother; she was aware that
the train in which her lover travelled would pass through the station
at a certain hour, and determined to make an appeal to him, but she
lost her way in the darkness and arrived too late. She was not able to
speak though she saw him through the lighted carriage window; in the
night and storm, and darkness, injuring his child which she bore, she
rushed along by the train as far as she could go, and saw it carry him
away faster and faster. In that hour something vital--belief in God
and in man--snapped in Katusha. Unable to free herself, she sank lower
and lower into vice, until she arrived where Nekhlúdof found her. When
he implores her forgiveness she is roused to fury because he tortures
her by reminding her of her lost innocence, and forces her to realise
all the abominable degradation she has endured. Nekhlúdof is, however,
true to his repentance; he insists that he is willing to marry her if
she will consent, but, if not, he will follow her to Siberia, and do
all in his power to alleviate her lot.
As soon as she realises that this is being done genuinely, for her and
not for "other-worldliness," she is touched and moved.
From this point onwards she begins to return to her true self--not her
former self (Tolstoy's art is far too subtle for that), but a self
deepened and saddened by suffering. This gradual awakening is
wonderfully depicted; the daring title which Tolstoy gives his book is
truly merited; indeed the revival of a dead body seems almost a small
thing as compared with this amazing transformation of a human soul.
Never since the Magdalen has the story of a fallen woman been treated
with such a noble beauty.
We are accustomed to sentimentalising over the courtesan who at last
conceives a "pure" love, but {86} Tolstoy does not write in the spirit
of a Dumas or a Victor Hugo. Máslova is sick of passion; she and
Nekhlúdof redeem each other, but, in the ordinary sense, they do not
love. Máslova throughout the book is one of the most real women in
fiction; we see every detail of her appearance--the white skin, the
black curls over her forehead, the eyes black as sloes and slightly
squinting, the expression of willingness with which she turns to anyone
who addresses her. It is strange how Tolstoy insists on that detail of
the "slightly squinting" eyes; it haunts us as it must have haunted
Nekhlúdof. And her mind and heart are as real as her bodily
personality. Tolstoy, as we have seen, always did possess a marvellous
power of maintaining a consistent personality while permitting his
characters to change and develop, but nowhere else has he shown it in a
manner quite so magical. From the pure romantic young girl to the
prostitute, from the prostitute to the woman redeemed and sweetened and
saved--his heroine is still herself throughout.
It is in the hero that Tolstoy's talent for once fails him, since
Nekhlúdof is too obviously only a mouthpiece for Tolstoy's own
reflections.
We could understand him if the change in him were essentially a
spiritual one similar to that in Máslova, but what Tolstoy has
portrayed is rather a profound intellectual dissatisfaction, so deep
and so far-reaching that it could only have been experienced by a man
of the greatest intellectual and moral power, a man of genius, while
there is nothing in Nekhlúdof's previous life to suggest that he was in
any way out of the ordinary.
He is too slight to undergo the tremendous mental experiences of a
Tolstoy, and we cannot believe that he does; nevertheless, the
experiences remain, and tremendous they are. _Resurrection_ is an
indictment of the whole of society as we know it now, and it is
impossible to read it without the gravest searchings of the heart. It
is true that some of the most serious counts in the indictment apply
mainly to Russia. More than with the West, Russian society is divided
into two great {87} classes--the rich who have everything and are idle,
and the poor, who have nothing and labour; in England we have--in the
professional classes and the better artisans--numbers who possess a
very fair share of the amenities of life and also do valuable work.
Again, it is impossible to say of any large class in our prisons, what
Tolstoy says of the Russian political prisoners: that they get there
because they are the best members of the community, more intelligent,
more unselfish, and more courageous than their fellows.
Still, when all allowances are made, the greater part of Tolstoy's
indictment lies good against the whole of modern society: in all
countries there are classes ruined by idleness, leading lives which, as
Tolstoy says, are "a mania of selfishness," consuming in senseless
luxury the toil of thousands. Everywhere there are other classes,
degraded by poverty and misery, who spend their whole lives in labour,
and reap for themselves hardly any of the benefits of their toil.
Everywhere men permit many thousands of people to become criminals
simply because they are helpless and defective, and then, when they
have made them criminals, debase and torture them further by
imprisonment. Tolstoy is convinced from the bottom of his heart that
the whole penal system is cruel, savage, and unjust, and it is almost
impossible to read him without feeling the same.
He is certain that the majority of men are naturally good, and that the
so-called "wicked" are either the victims of our social system, or else
of a physical and mental weakness they cannot control.
It is easy to object to the "sordid realism" of _Resurrection_, and to
declaim against its morbidness and misery, but this morbidness and
misery are not Tolstoy's fault; they are inherent in the social system
which we, all of us, uphold and, in wishing to escape from them, we are
trying to escape from the consequences of our own acts and principles.
To use one of Tolstoy's own phrases, he "rubs our noses" into the mess
we have made of civilisation; he makes us realise the horrors in which
our depths {88} abound--the vice, the dirt, the foul obscenity, the
vermin--and people who think that great literature exists merely to
amuse and soothe object with furious vehemence.
The great heart of the writer is stung with anger and pity and shame
that men--our brothers--should be so debased and tortured. He is
goaded to madness by this outrage on our common humanity, this insult
to God.
Tolstoy is a realist because he has the courage to face facts as they
are, because he believes that the cause of true morality is never
served by evasions and concealment, because this concealment is, in
itself, one of the chief allies of vice.
Though a realist Tolstoy is not, in essence, a pessimist. There is
more real pessimism in one chapter of Thackeray than in the whole of
_Resurrection_, for Thackeray thinks men despicable, and despairs of
their being otherwise.
Tolstoy, like Rousseau before him, is convinced that human beings are
naturally good, and that, if human nature becomes base, it is only
because it has slipped from the divine ideal, the spark of God, which
exists in each one of us. Like his Master, Tolstoy is assured of the
redeeming power of penitence and tenderness.
Our redemption may come to us from within, through the struggles of our
own soul, or by the aid of another, but it is always accompanied by
sweetness and compassion; loving-kindness is the true centre of our
being; the supreme sin--the sin against the Holy Spirit--is to
transgress, no matter for what motive, the law of love in our dealings
with our fellows.
Our so-called "principles" and "ideals" do not excuse us; any ideal,
whether patriotism or justice or honour or religion, becomes
reprehensible when it makes man act inhumanly to man; the supreme test,
always and invariably, is the test of brotherhood.
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