NIHILISM AND MYSTICISM.―TOLSTOÏ.
In Turgenef’s artistic work, illustrative of the national
characteristics, we have witnessed the birth of the Russian romance,
and how it has naturally tended toward the psychological classification
of a few general types; or, perhaps, more justly, toward the
contemplation of them, when we consider with what serenity this
artist’s moral investigations were conducted. Dostoyevski has shown a
spirit quite contrary to this, uncultured and yet subtile, sympathetic,
tortured by tragic visions, morbidly preoccupied by exceptional
and perverted types. The first of these two writers was constantly
coquetting, so to speak, with liberal doctrines: the second was a
_Slavophile_ of the most extreme type.
In Tolstoï, other surprises are reserved for us. Younger by ten years
than his predecessors, he hardly felt the influences of 1848. Attached
to no particular school, totally indifferent to all political parties,
despising them in fact, this solitary, meditative nobleman acknowledges
no master and no sect; he is himself a spontaneous phenomenon. His
first great novel was contemporary with “Fathers and Sons”, but between
the two great novelists there is a deep abyss. The one still made use
of the traditions of the past, while he acknowledged the supremacy
of Western Europe, and appropriated to himself and his work what he
learned of us; the other broke off wholly with the past and with
foreign bondage; he is a personification of the New Russia, feeling
its way out of the darkness, impatient of any tendency toward the
adoption of our tastes and ideas, and often incomprehensible to us.
Let us not expect Russia to do what she is incapable of, to restrict
herself within certain limits, to concentrate her attention upon one
point, or bring her conception of life down to one doctrine. Her
literary productions must reflect the moral chaos which she is passing
through. Tolstoï comes to her aid. More truly than any other man, and
more completely than any other, he is the translator and propagator
of that condition of the Russian mind which is called Nihilism. To
seek to know how far he has accomplished this, would be to turn around
constantly in the same circle. This writer fills the double function of
the mirror which reflects the light and sends it back increased tenfold
in intensity, producing fire. In the religious confessions which he has
lately written, the novelist, changed into a theologian, gives us, in a
few lines, the whole history of his soul’s experience:―
“I have lived in this world fifty-five years; with the exception of
the fourteen or fifteen years of childhood, I have lived thirty-five
years a Nihilist in the true sense of the word,―not a socialist or a
revolutionist according to the perverted sense acquired by usage, but a
true Nihilist―that is, subject to no faith or creed whatever.”
This long delayed confession was quite unnecessary; the man’s entire
work published it, although the dreadful word is not once expressed
by him. Critics have called Turgenef the father of Nihilism because
he had given a name to the malady, and described a few cases of it.
One might as well affirm the cholera to have been introduced by the
first physician who gave the diagnosis of it, instead of by the first
person attacked by the scourge. Turgenef discovered the evil, and
studied it objectively; Tolstoï suffered from it from the first day of
its appearance, without having, at first, a very clear consciousness
of his condition; his tortured soul cries out on every page he has
written, to express the agony which weighs down so many other souls of
his own race. If the most interesting books are those which faithfully
picture the existence of a fraction of humanity at a given moment of
history, this age has produced nothing more remarkable, in regard to
its literary quality, than his work. I do not hesitate in giving my
opinion that this writer, when considered merely as a novelist, is
one of the greatest masters in literature our century has produced.
It may be asked how we can venture to express ourselves so strongly
of a still living contemporary, whose overcoat and beard are familiar
objects in every-day life, who dines, reads the papers, receives money
from his publishers and invests it, who does, in short, just what other
men do. How can we thus elevate a man before his body has turned to
ashes, and his name become transfigured by the accumulated respect of
several generations? As for me, I cannot help seeing this man as great
as he will appear after death, or subscribing voluntarily to Flaubert’s
exclamation, as he read Turgenef’s translation of Tolstoï, and cried in
a voice of thunder, while he stamped heavily upon the ground:―
“He is a second Shakespeare!”
Tolstoï’s troubled, vacillating mind, obscured by the mists of
Nihilism, is by a singular and not infrequent contradiction endowed
with an unparalleled lucidity and penetration for the scientific study
of the phenomena of life. He has a clear, analytical comprehension of
everything upon the earth’s surface, of man’s internal life as well
as of his exterior nature: first of tangible realities, then the play
of his passions, his most volatile motives to action, the slightest
disturbances of his conscience. This author might be said to possess
the skill of an English chemist with the soul of a Hindu Buddhist.
Whoever will undertake to account for that strange combination will be
capable of explaining Russia herself.
Tolstoï maintains a certain simplicity of nature in the society of
his fellow-beings which seems to be impossible to the writers of our
country; he observes, listens, takes in whatever he sees and hears, and
for all time, with an exactness which we cannot but admire. Not content
with describing the distinctive features of the general physiognomy
of society, he resolves them into their original elements with the
most assiduous care; always eager to know how and wherefore an act is
produced; pursuing the original thought behind the visible act, he
does not rest until he has laid it bare, tearing it from the heart
with all its secret roots and fibres. Unfortunately, his curiosity
will not let him stop here. Of those phenomena which offer him such
a free field when he studies them by themselves, he wishes to know
the origin, and to go back to the most remote and inaccessible causes
which produced them. Then his clear vision grows dim, the intrepid
explorer loses his foothold and falls into the abyss of philosophical
contradictions. Within himself, and all around him he feels nothing but
chaos and darkness; to fill this void and illuminate the darkness, the
characters through which he speaks have recourse to the unsatisfactory
explanations of metaphysics, and, finally, irritated by these pedantic
sophistries, they suddenly steal away, and escape from their own
explanations.
Gradually, as Tolstoï advances in life and in his work, he is more
and more engulfed in doubt; he lavishes his coldest irony upon those
children of his fancy who try to believe and to discover and apply a
consistent system of morality. But under this apparent coldness you
feel that his heart sobs out a longing for what he cannot find, and
thirsts for things eternal. Finally, weary of doubt and of search,
convinced that all the calculations of reason end only in mortifying
failure, fascinated by the mysticism which had long lain in wait for
his unsatisfied soul, the Nihilist suddenly throws himself at the feet
of a Deity,―and of what a Deity we shall see hereafter.
In finishing this chapter, I must speak of the singular phase into
which the writer’s mind has fallen of late. I hope to do this with all
the reserve due to a living man, and all due respect for a sincere
conviction. There is nothing to me more curious than his statement of
the actual condition of his own soul. It is a picture of the crisis
which the Russian conscience is now passing through, seen in full
sunlight, foreshortened, and upon a lofty height. This thinker is the
perfect type of a multitude of minds, as well as their guide; he tries
to say what these minds confusedly feel.
I.
Leo Nikolaievitch (Tolstoï) was born in the year 1828. The course of
his external life has offered nothing of interest to the lovers of
romance, being quite the same as that of Russian gentlemen in general.
In his father’s house in the country, and afterwards at the University
of Kazan, he received the usual education from foreign masters which
gives to the cultivated classes in Russia their cosmopolitan turn of
mind. He then entered the army and spent several years in the Caucasus
in a regiment of artillery, and was afterwards transferred at his
request to Sebastopol. He went through the famous siege in the Crimean
War, which he has illustrated by three striking sketches: “Sebastopol
in December, in May, and in August.” Resigning his position when peace
was declared, Count Tolstoï first travelled extensively, then settled
at St. Petersburg and Moscow, living in the society of his own class.
He studied society and the court as he had studied the war―with that
serious attention which tears away the masks from all faces and reads
the inmost heart. After a few winters of fashionable life, he left the
capital, partly, it is said, to escape from the different literary
circles which were anxious to claim him among their votaries. In 1860,
he married and retired to his ancestral estate, near Tula, where he
has remained almost constantly for twenty-five years. The whole history
of his own life is hardly disguised in the autobiography he wrote,
entitled, “Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth.” The evolution of his inward
experience is further carried out in the two great novels, “War and
Peace” and “Anna Karenina,” and ends, as might have been foreseen,
with the theological and moral essays which have for some years quite
absorbed his intellectual activity.
I believe the author’s first composition, while he was an officer in
the army of the Caucasus, must have been the novelette published later
under the title, “The Cossacks.” This is the least systematic of all
his works, and is perhaps the one which best betrays the precocious
originality of his mind, and his remarkable power of seeing and
representing truth. This book marks a date in literature: the definite
rupture of Russian poetry with Byronism and romanticism in the very
heart of their former reign. The influence of Byron was so strong that
the prejudiced eyes of the poets saw the Orient in which they lived
through their poetical fancy, which transfigured both scenery and men.
Attracted like so many other writers toward this region, Tolstoï, or,
rather, Olenin, the hero of the Cossacks (I believe them to be one
and the same), leaves Moscow one beautiful evening, after a farewell
supper with his young friends. Weary of civilization, he throws off
his habitual thoughts as he would a worn-out garment; his _troïka_
bears him away to a strange country; he longs for a primitive life, new
sensations, new interests.
Our traveller installs himself in one of the little Cossack settlements
on the river Terek; he adopts the life of his new friends, takes
part in their expeditions and hunts; an old mountaineer, who
somewhat recalls Fenimore Cooper’s “Leatherstocking,” undertakes to
be his guide. Olenin quite naturally falls in love with the lovely
Marianna, daughter of his host. Tolstoï will now show us the Orient
in a new light, in the mirror of truth. For the lyric visions of his
predecessors he substitutes a philosophical view of men and things.
From the very first this acute observer understood how puerile it is
to lend to these creatures of instinct our refinement of thought and
feeling, our theatrical way of representing passion. The dramatic
interest of his tale consists in the fatal want of mutual understanding
that must, perforce, exist between the heart of a civilized being and
that of a wild, savage creature, and the total impossibility of two
souls of such different calibre blending in a mutual passion. Olenin
tries in vain to cultivate simplicity of feeling. Because he dons a
Circassian cap, he cannot at the same time change his nature and become
primitive. His love cannot separate itself from all the intellectual
complications which our literary education lends to this passion. He
says:―
“What there is terrible and at the same time interesting in my
condition is that I feel that I understand Marianna and that she never
will be able to understand me. Not that she is inferior to me,―quite
the contrary; but it is impossible for her to understand me. She is
happy; she is natural; she is like Nature itself, equable, tranquil,
happy in herself.”
The character of this little Asiatic, strange and wild as a young doe,
is beautifully drawn. I appeal to those who are familiar with the
East and have proved the falsity of those Oriental types invented by
European literature. They will find in the “The Cossacks,” a surprising
exposure of the falsity of that other moral world. Tolstoï has brought
this country before us by his vivid and picturesque descriptions of its
natural features. The little idyl serves as a pretext for magnificent
descriptions of the Caucasus; steppe, forest, and mountain stand before
us as vividly as the characters which inhabit them. The grand voices of
Nature join in with and support the human voices, as an orchestra leads
and sustains a chorus. The author, absorbed as he was afterwards in the
study of the human soul, never again expressed such a profound sympathy
with nature as in this work. At this time Tolstoï was inclined to
be both pantheist and pessimist, vacillating between the two. “Trois
Morts,” a fragment of his, contains the substance of this philosophy:―
“The happiest man, and the best, is he who thinks the least and who
lives the simplest life and dies the simplest death. Accordingly, the
peasant is better than the lord, the tree is better than the peasant,
and the death of an oak-tree is a greater calamity to the world than
the death of an old princess.”
This is Rousseau’s doctrine exaggerated: the man who thinks is not
only a depraved animal but an inferior plant. But Pantheism is another
attempt at a rational explanation of the universe: Nihilism will
soon replace it. This monster has already devoured the inmost soul
of the man, without his even being conscious of it. It is easy to be
convinced of this when we read his “Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth.” It
is the journal of the gradual awakening of an intelligence to life; it
lays before us the whole secret of the formation of Tolstoï’s moral
character. The author subjects his own conscience to that penetrating,
inexorable analysis, which later he will use upon society; he tries
his hand upon himself first of all. It is a singular book, lengthy,
and sometimes trivial; Dickens is rapid and sketchy in comparison
with him. In relating the course of a most ordinary journey from the
country into Moscow, he counts every turn of the wheels, notes every
passing peasant, every guide-post. But this fastidious observance of
details, applied to trivial facts, becomes a wonderful instrument when
applied to human nature and to psychological researches. It throws
light upon the man’s own inner conscience, without regard to his
self-love; he sees himself as he is, and lays bare his soul with all
its petty vanities, and the ingratitude and mistrust of an ill-humored
child. We shall recognize this same child in the principal characters
of his great novels, with its nature quite unchanged. I will quote two
passages which show us the very foundation of Nihilism in the brain of
a lad of sixteen:―
“Of all philosophical doctrines, the one which attracted me most
strongly was skepticism; for a time it brought me to a condition
verging upon madness. I would imagine that nothing whatever existed
in the world except myself; that all objects were only illusions,
evoked by myself just at the moment I gave attention to them, and which
vanished the moment I ceased to think of them…. There were times when,
possessed by this idea, I was brought into such a bewildered state that
I would turn quickly around and look behind me, hoping to be able to
pierce through the chaos which lay beyond me. My enfeebled mind could
not penetrate through the impenetrable, and would lose by degrees in
this wearisome struggle the certainties which for the sake of my own
happiness, I ought never to have sought. I reaped nothing from all
this intellectual effort but an activity of mind which weakened my
will-power, and a habit of incessant moral analysis which robbed every
sensation of its freshness and warped my judgment on every subject….”
Such a cry might have been uttered by a disciple of Schelling. But
listen to what follows from the heart of a Russian, who speaks for his
countrymen as well as himself:―
“When I remember how young I was, and the state of mind I was in, I
realize perfectly how the most atrocious crimes might be committed
without reason or a desire to injure any one, but, so to speak, from
a sort of curiosity or an unconscious necessity of action. There are
times when the future appears to a man so dark that he fears to look
into it; and he totally suspends the exercise of his own reason within
himself, and tries to persuade himself that there is no future and
that there has been no past. At such moments, when the mind no longer
controls the will, when the material instincts are the only springs
of life left to us,―I can understand how an inexperienced child can,
without hesitation or fear, and with a smile of curiosity, set fire
to his own house, in which all those he loves best―father, mother,
and brothers―are sleeping. Under the influence of this temporary
eclipse of the mind, which I might call a moment of aberration or
distraction,―a young peasant lad of sixteen stands looking at the
shining blade of an axe just sharpened, which lies under the bench
upon which his old father has fallen asleep: suddenly he brandishes
the axe, and finds himself looking with stupid curiosity, upon the
stream of blood under the bench which is flowing from the aged head he
has just cleft. In this condition of mind, a man likes to lean over a
precipice and think: ‘What if I should throw myself over head first!’
or to put a loaded pistol to his forehead and think: ‘Suppose I should
pull the trigger!’ or when he sees a person of dignity and consequence
surrounded by the universal respect of all, and suddenly feels impelled
to go up to him and take him by the nose, saying: ‘Come along, old
fellow!’”
This is pure childishness, you will say! So it would be in our steadier
brains and more active lives, rarely disturbed by these attacks of
nightmare. Turgenef has touched upon this national malady of his
fellow-countrymen in his last tale, “Despair,” as well as Dostoyevski
in many of his. There are several cases in “Recollections of a Dead
House,” identical with those described by Tolstoï, although the two
authors’ treatment of this theme are so unlike. The word in their
language which expresses this condition is quite untranslatable.
_Despair_ approaches it nearest; but the condition is a mixture also
of fatalism, barbarism, asceticism, and other qualities, or want of
them. It may describe, perhaps, Hamlet’s mental malady or attack of
madness, at the moment he ran his sword through Polonius, father of his
Ophelia. It seems to be a sort of horrible fascination which belongs to
cold countries, to a climate of extremes, where they learn to endure
everything better than an ordinary fate, and prefer annihilation to
moderation.
Poor Russia! a tempest-tossed sea-gull, hovering over an abyss!
Nihilist and pessimist,―are not these synonymous words, and must
they not both exist in the same person? From this time, all Tolstoï’s
productions would argue this to be the fact. A few short tales are a
prelude to his two great novels, which we must now make a study of, as
to them he devoted his highest powers and concentrated upon them his
profoundest thought. His talent heretofore had produced but fragmentary
compositions and sketches.
II.
“War and Peace” is a picture of Russian society during the great
Napoleonic wars, from 1805 to 1815. We question whether this
complicated work can be properly called a novel. “War and Peace” is
a summary of the author’s observations of human life in general.
The interminable series of episodes, portraits, and reflections
which Tolstoï presents to us are introduced through a few fictitious
characters; but the real hero of this epic is Russia herself, passing
through her desperate struggle against the foreign invader. The real
characters, Alexander, Napoleon, Kutuzof, Speranski, occupy nearly as
much space as the imaginary ones; the simple and rather slack thread
of romance serves to bind together the various chapters on history,
politics, philosophy, heaped pell-mell into this polygraph of the
Russian world. Imagine Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables” being re-written
by Dickens in his untiring, exhaustless manner, then re-constructed
by the cold, searching pen of Stendhal, and you may possibly form an
idea of the general arrangement and execution of the work, and of that
curious union of epic grandeur and infinitesimal analytical detail. I
try to fancy M. Meissonier painting a panorama; I doubt if he could
do it, but if he could his twofold talent would illustrate the double
character of Tolstoï’s work.
The pleasure to be derived from it resembles that from mountain-climbing;
the way is often rough and wild, the path, as you ascend, difficult
to find, effort and fatigue are indispensable; but when you reach the
summit and look around you the reward is great. Magnificent vistas
stretch beneath you; he who has never accomplished the ascent will
never know the true face of the country, the course of its rivers
or the relative situation of its towns. A stranger, therefore, who
would understand Russia of the nineteenth century, must read Tolstoï;
and whoever would undertake to write a history of that country would
utterly fail in his task if he neglected to consult this exhaustless
repository of the national life. Those who have a passion for the
study of history will not, perhaps, grow impatient over this mass of
characters and succession of trivial incidents with which the work is
loaded down. Will it be the same with those who seek only amusement
in a work of fiction? For these, Tolstoï will break up all previous
habits. This incorrigible analyst is either ignorant of or disdains the
very first method of procedure employed by all our writers; we expect
our novelist to select out his character or event, and separate it from
the surrounding chaos of beings and objects, making a special study
of the object of his choice. The Russian, ruled by the sentiment of
universal dependence, is never willing to cut the thousand ties which
bind men, actions, thoughts, to the rest of the universe; he never
forgets the natural mutual dependence of all things. Imagine the Latin
and the Slav before a telescope. The first arranges it to suit himself;
that is, he voluntarily foreshortens his range of vision, to make
more distinct what he sees, and diminish the extent of it; the second
requires the full power of the instrument, enlarges his horizon, and
sees a confused picture, for the sake of seeing farther.
In a passage in “Anna Karenina,” Tolstoï well defines the contrast
between two such natures, and the mutual attraction they exert upon
each other. Levin, the dreamer, meets one of his friends, who is of a
methodical turn of mind.
“Levin imagined that Katavasof’s clearness of conception came from the
poverty and narrowness of his nature; Katavasof thought that Levin’s
incoherency of ideas arose from the want of a well disciplined mind;
but the clearness of Katavasof pleased Levin, and the natural richness
of an undisciplined mind in the latter was agreeable to the other.”
These lines sum up all the grounds of complaint that the Russians
have to reproach us with in our literature, and those we have against
theirs; which differences explain the pleasure the two races find in an
interchange of their literary productions.
It is easy to predict what impressions all readers of “War and
Peace” and “Anna Karenina” will receive. I have seen the same effect
invariably produced upon all who have read those books. At first,
for some time, the reader will hardly find his bearings; not knowing
whither he is being led, he will soon grow weary of the task that lies
before him. But little by little he will be drawn on, captivated by
the complex action of all these characters, among whom he will find
himself, as well as some of his friends, and will become most anxious
to unravel the secret of their destinies. On closing the book, he feels
a sense of regret, as if parting with a family with which he has been
for years on terms of familiar intercourse. He has passed through the
experience of the traveller thrown into the novelty of new society and
surroundings; he feels annoyance and fatigue at first, then curiosity,
and finally has formed deeply rooted attachments.
What seems to me the distinction between the classic author and a
conscientious painter of life as it is, like Tolstoï, is this: a book
is like a drawing-room filled with strangers; the first type of author
voluntarily presents you to this company at once, and unveils to you
the thousand intertwining combinations, incidents, and intrigues going
on there; with the second you must go forward and present yourself,
find out for yourself the persons of mark, the various relations and
sentiments of the entire circle, live, in fact, in the midst of this
fictitious company, just as you have lived in society, among real
people. To be able to judge of the respective merit of the two methods,
we must interrogate one of the fundamental laws of our being. Is there
any pleasure worth having which does not cost some little trouble? Do
we not prefer what we have acquired by an effort all our own? Let us
reflect upon this. Whatever may be our individual preferences in regard
to intellectual pleasure, I think we can agree on one point: in the
old, well worn paths of literature, mediocrity may be tolerated; but
when an author strikes out in a new path we cannot tolerate a partial
success; he must write dramas equal to Shakespeare, and romances as
good as Tolstoï’s, to give us a true picture of life as it is. This
we have in “War and Peace,” and the question of its success has been
decided in the author’s favor. When I visit with him the soldiers
in camp, the court, and court society, which has hardly changed in
the last half-century, and see how he lays bare the hearts of men, I
cry out at every page I read: “How true that is!” As we go on, our
curiosity changes into astonishment, astonishment into admiration,
before this inexorable judge, who brings every human action before his
tribunal, and forces from every heart its secrets. We feel as if drawn
on with the current of a tranquil, never-ending stream, the stream of
human life, carrying with it the hearts of men, with all their agitated
and complicated movements and emotions.
War is one of the social phenomena which has strongly attracted our
author and philosopher. He is present at the Council of Generals and
at the soldiers’ bivouac; he studies the moral condition of each; he
understands the orders, and why they should be obeyed. He presents
to us the whole physiognomy of the Russian army. A minute description
which he gives of a disorderly retreat is second only to Schiller’s
“Camp of Wallenstein.” He describes the first engagement, the first
cannon-shot, the fall of the first soldier, the agony of that
long-dreaded moment.
In the course of these volumes the imperial battles are portrayed;
Austerlitz, Friedland, Borodino. Tolstoï talks of war like a man who
has taken part in it; he knows that a battle is never witnessed by
the participants. The soldier, officer, or general which the writer
introduces never sees but a single point of the combat; but by the
way in which a few men fight, think, talk, and die on that spot, we
understand the entire action, and know on what side the victory will be.
When Tolstoï wishes to give us a general description of anything,
he ingeniously makes use of some artifice; as, for example, in the
engagement at Schöngraben he introduces an aide-de-camp who carries an
order the whole length of the line of battle. Then the corps commanders
bring in their reports, not of what has taken place, but of what
naturally ought to have taken place. How is this? “The colonel had so
strongly desired to execute this movement, he so regretted not having
been able to carry it out, that it seemed to him that all must have
taken place as he wished. Perhaps it really had! Is it ever possible in
such confusion to find out what has or has not occurred?”―How perfect
is this ironical explanation! I appeal to any soldier who has ever
taken part in any action in war, and heard an account given of it by
the other participants.
We do not demand of this realistic writer the conventional ideas of
the classic authors;―an entire army heroic as its leaders, living
only for the great causes it accomplishes, wholly absorbed in its
lofty aim. Tolstoï reveals human nature: the soldier’s life, careless,
occupied with trifling duties; the officers, with their pleasures or
schemes of promotion; the generals, with their ambitions and intrigues;
all these seeming quite accustomed and indifferent to what to us
appears extraordinary and imposing. However, the author, by dint of
sheer simplicity, sometimes draws tears of sympathy from us for those
unconscious heroes, such as, for example, the pathetic character of
Captain Touchino, which recalls Renault, in “Servitude et Grandeur
Militaires.”[L] Tolstoï is severe upon the leaders of the Russian
army; he reminds us of the councils of war after the late trials; he
satirizes the French and German strategists by whom Alexander was
surrounded; and, with his Nihilistic ideas, he thoroughly enjoys
describing this Babel of tongues and opinions. With one man alone
he secretly sympathizes―with the commander-in-chief, Kutuzof. And
why?―Because he gave no orders, and went to sleep during the council,
giving up everything to fate. All these descriptions of military life
converge toward this idea, which is developed in the philosophical
appendix to the novel; all action on the part of the commanders is
vain and useless; everything depends upon the fortuitous action of
small divisions, the only decisive factor being one of those unforeseen
impulses or inspirations which at certain times impels an army. As
regards battle array, who thinks of it on the spot when thousands of
possible combinations arise? The military genius in command sees only
the smoke; he invariably receives his information and issues his orders
too late. Can the commander carry out any general plan who is leading
on his troops, which number ten, fifty, or one hundred men out of one
hundred thousand, within a small radius? The rest of the account you
may find in the next day’s bulletins! Over the three hundred thousand
combatants fighting in the plains of Borodino blows the wind of chance,
bringing victory or defeat.
Here is the same mystic spirit of Nihilism which springs up before
every problem of life.
After war, the study which Tolstoï loves best, come the intrigues of
the higher classes of society and its centre of gravitation, the court.
As differences of race grow less distinct as we approach the higher
classes of society, the novelist creates no longer merely Russian
types, but general, human, universal ones. Since St. Simon, no one has
so curiously unveiled the secret mechanism of court life. We are very
apt to distrust writers of fiction when they attempt to depict these
hidden spheres; we suspect them of listening behind doors and peeping
through key-holes. But this Russian author is in his native element;
he has frequented and studied the court as he has the army; he talks
of his peers in their own language, and has had the same education and
culture; therefore his information is copious and correct, like what
you obtain from the comedian who divulges the secrets of the boards.
Go with the author into the salons of certain ladies of the court;
listen to the tirades of refugees, the opinions expressed upon
Buonaparte, the intrigues of the courtiers, and that peculiar accent
when they mention any member of the imperial family. Visit with him a
statesman’s home; sit down at Speranski’s table (the man who “laughs a
stage laugh”); mark the sovereign’s passage through a ball-room by the
light which is visible upon every face from the moment he enters the
apartment; above all, visit the death-bed of old Count Bezushof, and
witness the tragedy which is being acted under the mask of etiquette;
the struggle of base instincts around that speechless, expiring old
man, and the general agitation. Here a sinister element, as elsewhere
a lofty one, lends marvellous force to the simple sincerity of the
picture and to the restraint which propriety imposes upon faces and
tongues.
Every passage in which the Emperors Napoleon and Alexander appear
in action or speech should be read in order to understand the place
that Nihilism occupies in the Russian mind so far as regards the
denial of the grandeur and respect accorded by general consent to
such potentates. The writer speaks in a deferential tone, as if he
would in no wise curtail the majesty of power; but by bringing it
down to the most trivial exigencies of life he utterly destroys it.
Scattered through the tale we find ten or twelve little sketches of
Napoleon drawn with great care, without hostility or an approach to
caricature; but merely by withdrawing him from the legendary halo
surrounding him, the man’s greatness crumbles away. It is generally
some physical peculiarity or trivial act, skilfully introduced, which
seems quite incompatible with the sceptre and the imperial robes. With
Napoleon, Tolstoï evidently takes great liberties; but it is curious
to note these descriptive touches when applied to his own sovereign.
With infinite precautions and perfect propriety, the spell of majesty
is broken through the incongruity of the man’s actual habits and the
formidable rôle he plays. I will quote one of the many examples of this
kind (Alexander is at Moscow, in 1812; he receives the ovations of
his people at the Kremlin, at the solemn hour when war is proclaimed):
“When the Tzar had dined, the master of ceremonies said, looking out of
the window, ‘The people are hoping to see your Majesty.’ The emperor,
who was eating a biscuit, rose and went out on the balcony. The people
rushed towards the terrace. ‘Our emperor! Our father! Hurrah! Hurrah!’
cried the people. Many women and a few men actually wept for joy. Quite
a large piece of the biscuit the emperor held in his hand broke off and
fell upon the balustrade, and from that to the ground. The man nearest
to it was a cab-driver, in a blouse, who made a rush for the piece and
seized it. Others rushed upon the coachman; whereupon the emperor had a
plateful of biscuit brought, and began to throw them from the balcony
to the crowd. Pierre’s eyes became blood-shot; the danger of being
crushed only excited him the more, and he pressed forward through the
crowd. He could not have told why he felt that he positively must have
one of those biscuit thrown by the hand of the Tzar….”
Again, there is nothing more true to nature than the account of the
audience granted by the Emperor of Austria to Bolkonski, who had been
despatched as a courier to Brünn with the news of a victory of the
allies. The writer describes so well the gradual disenchantment of
the young officer, who sees his great battle vanish before his eyes
in the opinion of men. He quitted the scene of the exploit expecting
to astonish the world with the announcement he now brings; but on his
arrival at Brünn a bucket of cold water has been thrown over his dreams
by the “polite” aide-de-camp, the minister of war, the emperor himself,
who addresses a few words to him in an absent way―the ordinary
questions as to the time of day, the particular spot where the affair
took place, and the usual indispensable compliments. When he takes
his leave, after reflecting upon the subject from the point of view
of other men, according to their respective interests, poor Bolkonski
finds his battle much diminished in grandeur, and also a thing of the
past.
“Andé felt that his whole interest and joy over the victory was sinking
away from him into the indifferent hands of the minister of war and the
‘polite’ aide-de-camp. His whole train of thought had become modified;
there seemed to be nothing left to him but a dim, distant recollection
of the battle.”
This is one of the phenomena most closely analyzed by Tolstoï―this
variable influence exerted upon man by his surroundings. He likes to
plunge his characters successively into different atmospheres,―that
of the soldier’s life, the country, the fashionable world,―and then
to show us the corresponding moral changes in them. When a man, after
having for some time been under the empire of thoughts and passions
previously foreign to him, returns into his former sphere, his views on
all subjects change at once. Let us follow young Nikolai Rostof when
he returns from the army to his home, and back again to his cavalry
regiment. He is not the same person, but seems to be possessed of two
souls. On the journey back and forth to Moscow, he gradually lays aside
or resumes the one which his profession requires.
It is useless to multiply examples of Tolstoï’s psychological
curiosity, which is ever awake. It forms the principal feature of
his genius. He loves to analyze the human puppet in every part. A
stranger enters the room; the author studies his expression, voice, and
step; he shows us the depths of the man’s soul. He explains a glance
interchanged between two persons, in which he discovers friendship,
fear, a feeling of superiority in one of them; in fact, a perfect
knowledge of the mutual relations of these two men. This relentless
physician constantly feels the pulse of every one who crosses his path,
and coolly notes down the condition of his health, morally speaking.
He proceeds in an objective manner, never directly describing a person
except by making him act out his characteristics.
This fundamental precept of classic art has been adopted by this
realistic writer in his desire to imitate real life, in which we
learn to comprehend people by trivial indications and by points of
resemblance, without any information as to their position or qualities.
A good deal of art is required to discern clearly in this apparent
chaos, and you have a large choice in the formidable accumulation of
details. Observe how, in the course of a conversation or the narration
of some episode, Tolstoï makes the actors visibly present before us by
calling our attention to one of their gestures, or some little absurd,
peculiar habit, or by interrupting their conversation to show us the
direction of their glances. This occurs constantly.
There is also a good deal of wit in this serious style; not the
flashes and sallies of wit that we are familiar with, but of a fine,
penetrating quality, with subtle and singularly apt comparisons.
III.
Among the numerous characters in “War and Peace,” the action is
concentrated upon two only―Prince André Bolkonski and Pierre Bezushof.
These remarkable types of character are well worthy of attention. In
them the double aspect of the Russian soul, as well as of the author’s
own, is reflected with all its harassing thoughts and contradictions.
Prince André is a nobleman of high rank, looking down from his lofty
position upon the life he despises; proud, cold, sceptical, atheistic,
although at times his mind is tortured with anxiety concerning great
problems. Through him the author pronounces his verdicts upon the
historical characters of the time, and discourses of the various
statesmen and their intrigues.
André is received at Speranski’s. We know the wonderful influence
acquired by this man, who almost established a new constitution in
Russia. Speranski’s most striking trait, in Prince André’s opinion, was
his absolute, unshaken faith in the force and legitimacy of reason.
This trait was what particularly attracted André to him, and explains
the ascendency that Speranski acquired over his sovereign and his
country. André, having been seriously wounded at Austerlitz, lies on
the battle-field, his eyes raised to heaven. The dying man exclaims:―
“Oh, could I now but say, ‘Lord, have pity upon me!’ But who will hear
me? Shall I address an indefinite, unapproachable Power, which cannot
itself be expressed in words, the great All or Nothing, or that image
of God which is within the amulet that Marie gave me?… There is nothing
certain except the nothingness of everything that I have any conception
of, and the majesty of something beyond my conception!”
Pierre Bezushof is more human in character, but his intelligence is
of quite as mysterious a quality. He is a stout man, of lymphatic
temperament, absent-minded; a man who blushes and weeps easily,
susceptible to love, sympathetic with all suffering. He is a type
of the kind-hearted Russian noblemen, nervous, deficient in will, a
constant prey to the ideas and influence of others; but under his gross
exterior lives a soul so subtle, so mystic, that it might well be that
of a Hindu monk. One day, after Pierre had given his word of honor to
his friend André that he would not go to a midnight revel of some of
his young friends, he hesitated when the hour of meeting came.
“‘After all,’ he thought, ‘all pledges of words are purely
conventional, without definite meaning, when you reflect about it.
I may die to-morrow, or some extraordinary event take place, in
consequence of which the question of honor or dishonor will not even
arise.’
“Reflections of this sort―destructive of all resolve or method―often
occupied Pierre’s mind….” Tolstoï has skilfully made use of this weak
nature, which is as receptive of all impressions as a photographer’s
plate, to give us a clear conception of the chief currents of ideas in
Russia in the reign of Alexander I.; these successively influence this
docile adept with all their changes. We see the liberal movement of
the earlier years of that reign developed in the mind of Bezushof, as
afterwards the mystic and theosophic maze of its later years. Pierre
personifies the sentiments of the people in 1812, the national revolt
against foreign intervention, the gloomy madness of conquered Moscow,
the burning of which has never been explained, nor is it known by whose
hands it was kindled. This destruction of Moscow is the culminating
point of the book. The scenes of tragic grandeur, simple in outline,
sombre in color, are superior, I must acknowledge, to anything of the
kind in literature. He pictures the entrance of the French into the
Kremlin, the prisoners and lunatics roaming by night in freedom about
the burning city, the roads filled with long columns of fugitives
escaping from the flames, beside many other very striking episodes.
Count Pierre remains in the burning city. He leaves his palace in
plebeian guise, in a peasant’s costume, and wanders off like a
person in a trance; he walks on straight before him, with a vague
determination to kill Napoleon and be an expiatory victim and martyr
for the people. “He was actuated by two equally strong impulses.
The first was the desire to take his part of the self-sacrifice and
universal suffering―a feeling which, at Borodino, had impelled him to
throw himself into the thick of the battle, and which now drove him
out of the house, away from the luxury and habitual refinements of
his daily life, to sleep on the ground and eat the coarsest of food.
The second came from that indefinable, exclusively Russian sentiment
of contempt for everything conventional and artificial, for all that
the majority of mankind esteem most desirable in the world. Pierre
experienced this strange and intoxicating feeling on the day of his
flight, when it had suddenly been impressed upon him that wealth,
power, life itself, all that men seek to gain and preserve with such
great effort, were absolutely worthless, or, at least, only worth the
luxury of the voluntary sacrifice of these so-called blessings.” And
through page after page the author unfolds that condition of mind that
we discovered in his first writings, that hymn of the _Nirvâna_, just
as it must be sung in Ceylon or Thibet.
Pierre Bezushof is certainly the elder brother of those rich men
and scholars who will some day “go among the people,” and willingly
share their trials, carrying a dynamite bomb under their cloaks, as
Pierre carries a poniard under his, moved by a double impulse: to
share the common suffering, and enjoy the anticipated annihilation of
themselves and others. Taken prisoner by the French, Bezushof meets,
among his companions in misfortune, a poor soldier, a peasant, with
an uncultivated mind, one, indeed, rather beneath the average. This
man endures the hardships on the march, through these terrible days,
with the humble resignation of a beast of burden. He addresses Count
Pierre with a cheerful smile, a few ingenuous words, popular proverbs
with but a vague meaning, but expressing resignation, fraternity, and,
above all, fatalism. One evening, when he can keep up with the others
no longer, the soldiers shoot him under a pine-tree, on the snow, and
the man receives death with the same indifferent tranquillity that he
does everything else, like a wounded dog―in fact, like the brute. At
this time a moral revolution takes place in Pierre’s soul. Here I do
not expect to be intelligible to my fellow-countrymen; I only record
the truth. The noble, cultured, learned Bezushof takes this primitive
creature for his model; he has found at last his ideal of life in this
man, who is “poor in spirit,” as well as a rational explanation of the
moral world. The memory and name of Karatayef are a talisman to him;
thenceforward he has but to think of the humble _muzhik_, to feel at
peace, happy, ready to comprehend and to love the entire universe. The
intellectual development of our philosopher is accomplished; he has
reached the supreme avatar, mystic indifference.
When Tolstoï related this episode, he was twenty-five years of age. Had
he then a presentiment that he should ever find his Karatayef, that he
would pass through the same crisis, experience the same discipline, and
come out of it regenerated? We shall see later on how he had actually
prophesied his own experience, and that from this time he, together
with Dostoyevski, was destined to establish the ideal of nearly all
contemporaneous literature in Russia. Karatayef’s name is legion; under
different names and forms, this vegetative form of existence will be
presented for our admiration. The perfection of human wisdom is the
sanctification, deification of the brute element, which is kind and
fraternal in a certain vague way. The root of the idea is this:―
The cultured man finds his reasoning faculties a hindrance to him,
because useless, since they do not aid him to explain the object of his
life; therefore it is his duty to make an effort to reject them, and
descend from complications to simplicity, in life and thought. This is
the aim and aspiration, under various forms, of Tolstoï’s whole work.
He has written a series of articles on popular education. The leading
idea is this:―
“I would teach the children of the common people to think and to write;
but I ought rather to learn of them to write and to think. We seek our
ideal beyond us, when it is in reality behind us. The development of
man is not the means of realizing that idea of harmony which we bear
within us, but, on the contrary, it is an obstacle in the way of its
realization. A healthy child born into the world fully satisfies that
ideal of truth, beauty, and goodness, which, day by day, he will
constantly continue to lose; he is, at birth, nearer to the unthinking
beings, to the animal, plant, nature itself, which is the eternal type
of truth, beauty, and goodness.”
You can catch the thread of the idea, which is much like the
contemplative mistiness of the ancient oriental asceticism. The
Occident has not always been free from this evil; in its ascetic
errors and deviations, it has ennobled the brute, and falsified the
divine allegory of the “poor in spirit.” But the true source of this
contagious spirit of renunciation is in Asia, in the doctrines of
India, which spring up again, scarcely modified, in that frenzy which
is precipitating a part of Russia toward an intellectual and moral
abnegation, sometimes developing into a stupid quietism, and again to
sublime self-devotion, like the doctrine of Buddha. All extremes meet.
I will dwell no longer upon these scarcely intelligible abstractions,
but would say a word concerning the female characters created by
Tolstoï. They are very similar to Turgenef’s heroines, treated,
perhaps, with more depth but less of tender grace. Two characters call
for special attention. First, that of Marie Bolkonski, sister of André,
the faithful daughter, devoted to the work of cheering the latter years
of a morose old father; a pathetic figure, as pure in outline, under
the firm touch of this artist, are the works of the old painters. Of
quite another type is Natasha Rostof, the passionate, fascinating
young girl, beloved by all, enslaving many hearts, bearing with her an
exhalation of love through the whole thread of this severe work. She
is sweet-tempered, straightforward, sincere, but the victim of her own
extreme sensibility.
Racine might have created a Marie Bolkonski; the Abbé Prévost would
have preferred Natasha Rostof. Betrothed to Prince André, the only
man she truly loves, Natasha yields to a fatal fancy for a miserable
fellow. Disenchanted finally, she learns that André is wounded and
dying, and goes to nurse him in a mute agony of despair. This part
of the book presents the inexorableness of real life in its sudden
calamities. After André’s death, Natasha marries Pierre, who has
secretly loved her. French readers will be horror-stricken at these
convulsions in the realms of passion; but it is like life, and Tolstoï
sacrifices conventionality to the desire to paint it as it is. Do not
imagine he sought a romantic conclusion. The young girl’s fickleness
ends in conjugal felicity and the solid joys of home life. To these
the writer devotes many pages, too many, perhaps, for our taste. He
loves to dwell upon domestic life and joys; all other affections are
in his eyes unwholesome exceptions―exciting his curiosity but not
his sympathy. Thus he analyzes with a skilful pen, but with visible
disgust, the flirtations and coquetry carried on in the _salons_ of St.
Petersburg. Like Turgenef, Tolstoï does not hold the ladies of court
circles in high estimation.
He has added a long philosophical appendix to his romance, in which
he brings up again, in a doctrinal form, the metaphysical questions
which have tormented him the most, and once more repeats that he is a
fatalist. This appendix has not been translated in the French edition,
and this is well, for no reader would voluntarily undergo the useless
fatigue of wading through it. Tolstoï is unwise in pressing ideas by
abstract reasoning which he is so skilful in illustrating through his
characters; he does not realize how much more clearly his ideas are
expressed in their language and action than in any of his own arguments.
IV.
“Anna Karenina,” which appeared periodically in a Moscow review, was
the result of many years’ study. The work was not published in full
until 1877, and its appearance was a literary event in Russia. I
happened to be a witness of the curiosity and interest it excited there.
The author intended this book to be a picture of the society of the
present day, as “War and Peace” illustrated that of its time. The
task offered the author more difficulties, for many reasons. In the
first place, the present does not belong to us, as does the past; it
deceives us, not having become firmly established, so that we cannot
get in all the necessary lines and figures to emphasize it, as we
could a half-century later. Besides, the liberties that Tolstoï could
take with deceased potentates and statesmen, as well as with ideas of
the past, he could not allow himself with contemporary ideas and with
living men. This second book on Russian life is not as much in the
style of an epic, neither is it as strong or as complex, as the first;
on the other hand, it is more agreeable to us, as having more unity of
subject and more continuity of action; the principal character, too, is
more perfectly developed. Although there are two suicides and a case
of adultery, Tolstoï has in this work undertaken to write the most
strictly moral book in existence, and he has succeeded. The main idea
is duty accomplished uninfluenced by the passions. The author portrays
an existence wholly outside of conventional lines of conduct; and, as
a contrast, the history of a pure, legitimate affection, a happy home,
and wholesome labor. He is too much of a realist, however, to picture
an earthly paradise under any human conditions.
Karenina, a statesman in the highest circles of St. Petersburg society,
is a husband so greatly absorbed in the study of political economy
as to be easily blinded and deceived in other matters. Vronski, the
seducer of his wife’s affections, is a sincere character, devoted and
self-sacrificing. Anna is a very charming woman, tender and faithful
where her affections are enlisted. Tolstoï has recourse neither to
hysteria nor any nervous ailment whatever, to excuse her fall. He
is sagacious enough to know that every one’s feelings are regulated
by his or her peculiar organism; that conscience exerts contrary
influences, and that it really exists, because it speaks and commands.
Take, for example, the description of Anna’s first anxieties, during
the night-journey between Moscow and St. Petersburg, when she first
comprehends the state of her heart. These pages you can never forget.
She discovers Vronski in the train, knows that he is following her,
then listens to his avowal of love. The intoxicating poison steals into
every vein, her will is no longer her own, the dream has begun.
The writer takes advantage of every outward circumstance to illustrate
and color this dream in his inimitable manner, according to his usual
method. He describes the poor woman making an effort to fix her
thoughts upon an English novel, the snow and hail rattling against
the window-panes; then the sketches of fellow-travellers, the various
sounds and rushing of the train through the night,―all assume a new
and fantastic meaning, as accompaniments of the agony of love and
terror which are struggling within that woman’s soul. When, the next
morning, Anna leaves the train and steps upon the platform where her
husband is awaiting her, she says to herself: “Good heavens! how much
longer his ears have grown!” This exclamation reveals to us the change
that has taken place within her. How well the author knows how to
explain a whole situation with a single phrase!
From the first flutter of fear to the last contortions of despair,
which lead the unhappy woman to suicide, the novelist exposes her
inmost heart, and notes each palpitation. There is no necessity for
any tragic complication to bring about the catastrophe. Anna has given
up everything to follow her lover; she has placed herself in such a
fatal predicament that life becomes impossible, which is sufficient to
explain her resolve.
In contrast with this wrecked life, the innocent affection of Kitty and
Levin continues its smooth course. First, it is a sweet idyl, drawn
with infinite grace; then the home, the birth of children, bringing
additional joys and cares. This is the highly moral and dull theme of
the English novel, one may say. It is similar, and yet not the same.
The British tale-writer is almost always something of a preacher; you
feel that he judges human actions according to some preconceived rule,
from the point of view of the Established Church or of puritanic ideas.
But Tolstoï is entirely free from all prejudices. I might almost say
he has little anxiety as to questions of morality; he constructs his
edifices according to his own idea of the best method; the moral lesson
springs only from facts and results, both bitter and wholesome. This
is no book for the youth of twenty, nor for a lady’s boudoir,―a book
containing no charming illusions; but a man in full maturity relates
what experience has taught him, for the benefit of mankind.
These volumes present an exception in regard to what is thought to
guarantee the permanent success of a literary work. They will be read,
and then reflected upon; we shall apply the observations to our own
souls and to others’ (the most unimportant as well as the most general
ones); then we shall go back to his model, which will invariably verify
them. Years may pass after the first reading, notes accumulate on the
margins of the leaves, as in many masterpieces of the classics you find
at the bottom of the pages the explanatory remarks of generations of
commentators. In this case, they need merely to say: “_Confer vitam_.”
Tolstoï’s style is in this work the same as in “War and Peace.” He
is like a scientific engineer who visits some great establishment
where machines are manufactured. He studies the mechanism of every
engine, examines the most trifling parts, measures the degree of
steam-pressure, tries the balance-valves, studies the action of the
pistons and gearing; he seeks eagerly to discover the central motive
power, the invisible reservoir of force. While he is experimenting
with the machinery, we, outside spectators, see only the results of all
this labor, the manufactures of delicate fabrics with infinite variety
of designs―life itself.
Tolstoï shows the same qualities and defects as in “War and Peace,” and
gives the same tediously long descriptions. The parts devoted to the
pictures of country life and rural occupations will seem, in France,
a little dull. Unfortunately, in one sort of realistic description,
we must know the locality to appreciate the artist’s effort and the
resemblance of the picture. The description, for instance, of the
races at Tsarskoe-Selo, so appreciated by Russian readers, could not
have any more interest for us than the brilliant account of _le grand
prix de Paris_ in “Nana” would have for the Muscovites; on the other
hand, the portraits of Oblonski and Karenina will always retain their
power, because they express human sentiments common to all countries
and all times. I will carry the analysis of these novels no farther,
for they will hardly admit of it; we could scarcely choose a path in
this labyrinth for the reader; we must leave him the pleasure of losing
himself in it.
Tolstoï belongs to the “school of nature,” if extreme realism of
description entitles him to that honor. He carries this tendency
sometimes to great excess, even to coarseness. I might quote many
examples of this kind, but they would hardly bear translation,
and might, occasionally, be almost revolting to us. He is also an
_impressionist_, for his phrases often bring to us every material
sensation produced by a sight, object, or sound.
Finally, his being both pessimist and Nihilist gives him, as a
narrator, almost the impassibility of a stoic. Persuaded of the
vanity of all human action, he can maintain his own coolness in all
his delineations, his condition resembling that of a man awaking
from sleep at dawn, in the middle of a ball-room, who looks upon the
whirling dancers around him as lunatics; or the man who, having eaten
to repletion, enters a hall where people are dining, and upon whom
the mechanical movements of the mouths and forks make a grotesque
impression. In short, a writer who is a pessimist must assume the
superiority of an inexorable judge over the characters he has created.
Tolstoï employs all these methods, which he carries as far as any of
our novelists do. Why is it, then, that he produces such a different
impression upon the reader? The question as to how far he is both
realist and impressionist in comparison with our authors is the
important one. The whole secret is a question of degree. The truth
is that what others have sought he has found and adopted. He leaves
a large space for trifling details, because life is made up of them,
and life is his study; but as he never attacks subjects trifling in
themselves, he after all gives to trifles only the secondary place
which they hold in everything that demands our attention.
As an _impressionist_ he well knows how to produce certain rapid and
subtle sensations, while he is never obscene or unhealthy in tone.
“War and Peace” is put into the hands of all young girls in Russia.
“Anna Karenina,” which touches upon a perilous subject, is considered a
manual of morals.
As to Tolstoï’s impassibility, though his coldness almost approaches
irony, we feel, behind and within the man, the shadow of the Infinite,
and bow before his right to criticise his fellow-man. Moreover, unlike
our own authors, he is never preoccupied with himself or the effect
he wishes to produce. He is more logical; he sacrifices style that he
himself may be eclipsed, put aside entirely in his work. In his earlier
years he was more solicitous in regard to his style; but of late he has
quite renounced this seductive temptation. We need not expect of him
the beautiful, flowing language of Turgenef. An appropriate and clear
form of expression of his ideas is all we shall have. His phraseology
is diffuse, sometimes fatiguing from too much repetition; he makes
use of a great many adjectives, of all he needs to add the smallest
touches of color to a portrait; while incidents rapidly accumulate,
from the inexhaustible fund of thought in the farthest recesses of his
mind. From our point of view, this absence of style is an unpardonable
defect; but to me it appears a necessary consequence of realism which
does away with all conventionality. If style is a conventionality,
might it not warp our judgment of facts presented to us? We must
acknowledge that this contempt of style, if not to our taste,
contributes to the impression of sincerity that we receive. Tolstoï, in
Pascal’s way, “has not tried to show to us himself, but our own selves;
we find in ourselves the truths presented, which before were utterly
unknown to us, as in ourselves; this attracts us strongly to him who
has enlightened us.”
There is still another difference between Tolstoï’s realism and ours:
he applies his, by preference, to the study of characters difficult
to deal with, those made more inaccessible to the observer by the
refinements of education and the mask of social conventionalities. This
struggle between the painter and his model is deeply interesting to me
and to many others.
Count Tolstoï would no doubt commiserate us if he found us occupied
in discussing his works; for the future he wishes to be only a
philosopher and reformer. Let us, then, return to his philosophy. I
have said already that the composition of “Anna Karenina,” written at
long intervals, occupied many years of the author’s life, the moral
fluctuations of which are reflected in the character of Constantin
Levin, the child and confidant of his soul. This new incarnation of
Bezushof, in “War and Peace,” is the usual hero of modern romance in
Russia, the favorite type with Turgenef and with all the young girls.
He is a country gentleman, intelligent, educated, though not brilliant,
a speculative dreamer, fond of rural life, and interested in all the
social questions and difficulties arising from it. Levin studies these
questions, and takes his part in all the liberal emotions his country
has indulged in for the last twenty years. Of course, his illusions and
chimeras vanish, one after another, and his Nihilism triumphs bitterly
over their ruins. His Nihilism is not of so severe a kind as that of
Pierre Bezushof and Prince André. He drops the most cruel problems and
takes up questions of political economy. A calm and laborious country
life, with family joys and cares, has strangled the serpent. Years
pass, and the tale goes on toward its close.
But suddenly, through several moral shocks in his experience, Levin
awakes from his religious indifference, and is tormented by doubts. He
becomes overwhelmed with despair, when the _muzhik_ appears who proves
his saviour and instructor. His mind becomes clear through some of
the aphorisms uttered by this wise peasant. He declares that “every
evil comes from the folly, the wickedness of reason. We have only to
love and believe, and there is no further difficulty.” Thus ends the
long intellectual drama, in a ray of mystic happiness, a hymn of joy,
proclaiming the bankruptcy and the downfall of reason.
Reason has but a narrow sphere of its own, is only useful in a limited
horizon, as the rag-picker’s lantern is merely of use to light up the
few feet of space immediately around him, the heap of rubbish upon
which he depends for subsistence. What folly it would be for the poor
man to turn those feeble rays toward the starry heavens, seeking to
penetrate the inscrutable mysteries of those fathomless spaces!
V.
The consolation of the doctrines of Quietism, the final apotheosis of
Tolstoï’s entire literary work, was yet in reserve for him, revealed
through an humble apostle of these doctrines. He too was destined to
find his Karatayef.
After the appearance of “Anna Karenina,” a new production from this
author was impatiently anticipated. He undertook a sequel to “War
and Peace,” and published the first three chapters of the work,
which promised to be quite equal to his preceding novels; but he
soon abandoned the undertaking. Only a few stories for children now
appeared, some of which were exquisitely written. In them, however,
you could but feel that the soul of the author had already soared
above terrestrial aims. At last, the report spread that the novelist
had renounced his art, even wishing no allusion made to his former
works, as belonging to the vanities of the age, and had given himself
up to the care of his soul and the contemplation of religious themes.
Count Tolstoï had met with Sutayef, the sectary of Tver. I will not
here dwell upon this original character―a gentle idealist, one among
the many peasants who preached among the Russian people the gospel of
the Communists. The teachings and example of this man exerted a strong
influence upon Tolstoï, according to his own statement, and caused him
to decide what his true vocation was.
We could have no excuse for intruding upon the domain of conscience,
had not the author, now a theologian, invited us so to do, by
publishing his late works, “My Confession,” “My Religion,” and “A
Commentary on the Gospel.” Although, in reality, the press-censorship
has never authorized the publication of these books, there are several
hundred autographic copies of them in circulation, spread among
university students, women, and even among the common people, and
eagerly devoured by them. This shows how the Russian soul hungers for
spiritual food. As Tolstoï has expressed the desire that his work
should be translated into French, we have every right to criticise it.
But I will not abuse the privilege. The only books which can interest
us as an explanation of his mental state are the first two.
Even “My Confession” is nothing new to me. In his “Childhood, Boyhood,
and Youth” we have the same revelation in advance, as well as from
the lips of Bezushof and Levin. This is, however, a new and eloquent
variation in the same theme, the same wail of anguish from the depths
of a human soul. I will give a quotation:―
“I became sceptical quite early in life. For a time I was absorbed,
like every one else, in the vanities of life. I wrote books, teaching,
as others did, what I knew nothing of myself. Then I became thirsty
for more knowledge. The study of humanity furnished no response to
the constant, sole question of any importance to me―‘What is the
object of my existence?’ Science responded by teaching me other things
which I was not anxious to learn. I could but join in the cry of the
preacher, ‘All is vanity!’ I would gladly have taken my life. Finally
I determined to study the lives of the great majority of men who have
none of our anxieties―those classes which you might say are superior
to abstract speculations of the mind, but that labor and endure, and
yet live tranquil lives and seem to have no doubts as to the end and
aim of life. Then I understood that, to live as they did, we must go
back to our primitive faith. But the corrupt teachings which the church
distributed among the lowly could not satisfy my reason; then I made a
closer study of those teachings, in order to distinguish superstition
from truth.”
The result of this study is the doctrine brought forth under the title
of “My Religion.” This religion is precisely the same as that of
Sutayef, but explained with the aid of the theological and scientific
knowledge of a cultivated scholar. It is, however, none the clearer
for that. The gospel is subjected to the broadest rationalistic
interpretation. In fact, Tolstoï’s interpretation of Christ’s doctrine
of life is the same as the Sadducees’―that is, of life considered
in a collective sense. He denies that the gospel makes any allusion
to a resurrection of the body, or to an individual existence of the
soul. In this unconscious Pantheism, an attempt at a conciliation
between Christianity and Buddhism, life is considered as an indivisible
entirety, as one individual soul of the universe, of which we are
but ephemeral particles. One thing only is of consequence―morality;
which is all contained in the precepts of the gospel, “Be ye perfect….
Judge not…. Thou shalt not kill, …” etc. Therefore there must be no
tribunals, no armies, no prisons, no right of retaliation, either
public or private, no wars, no trials. The universal law of the world
is the struggle for existence; the law of Christ is the sacrifice of
one’s life for others. Neither Turkey nor Germany will attack us,
if we are true Christians, if we study their advantage. Happiness,
the supreme end of a life of morality, is possible only in the union
of all men in believing the doctrine of Jesus Christ―that is, in
Tolstoï’s version of it, not in that of the church; in the return to a
natural mode of life, to communism, giving up cities and all business,
as incompatible with these doctrines, and because of the difficulty
of their application in such a life. To support his statements, the
writer presents to us, with rare eloquence and prophetic vividness, a
picture of a life of worldliness from birth to death. This life is more
terrible in his eyes than that of the Christian martyrs.
The apostle of the new faith spares not the established church; but,
after relating his vain search for comfort in the so-called true
orthodoxy, violently attacks this church from Sutayef’s point of view.
He declares that she substitutes rites and formalities for the true
spirit of the gospel; that she issues catechisms filled with false
doctrines; that since the time of Constantine she has ruined herself
by deviating from the law of God to follow that of the age; that she
has now, in fact, become pagan. Finally, and this is the key-note and
the most delicate point of all, no attention should be paid to the
commands and prohibitions of any temporal power as long as it ignores
the truth. Here I will quote an incident illustrative of this idea:―
“Passing recently through the Borovitzki gate at Moscow, I saw an
aged beggar seated in the archway, who was a cripple and had his
head bound with a bandage. I drew out my purse to give him alms.
Just then a fine-looking young grenadier came running down towards
us from the Kremlin. At sight of him, the beggar rose terrified,
and ran limping away until he reached the foot of the hill into the
Alexander garden. The grenadier pursued him a short distance, calling
after him with abusive epithets, because he had been forbidden to
sit in the archway. I waited for the soldier, and then asked him if
he could read.―‘Yes,’ he replied: ‘why do you ask?’―‘Have you read
the Gospel?’―‘Yes.’―‘Have you read the passage in regard to giving
bread to the hungry?’―I quoted the whole passage. He knew it, and
listened attentively, seeming somewhat confused. Two persons, passing
by, stopped to listen. Evidently, the grenadier was ill at ease, as
he could not reconcile the having done a wrong act, while strictly
fulfilling his duty. He hesitated for a reply. Suddenly his eyes
lighted up intelligently, and, turning toward me, he said: ‘May I ask
you if you have read the military regulations?’ I acknowledged that
I had not.―‘Then you have nothing to say,’ replied the grenadier,
nodding his head triumphantly, as he walked slowly away.”
I have, perhaps, said enough respecting “My Religion”; but must
give a literal translation of a few lines which show the superb
self-confidence always latent in the heart of every reformer:―
“Everything confirmed the truth of the sense in which the doctrine of
Christ now appeared to me. But for a long time I could not take in
the strange thought that, after the Christian faith had been accepted
by so many thousands of men for eighteen centuries, and so many had
consecrated their lives to the study of that faith, it should be given
to me to discover the law of Christ, as an entirely new thing. But,
strange as it was, it was indeed a fact.”
We can now judge what his “Commentary on the Gospel” would be.
God forbid that I should disturb the new convert’s tranquillity!
Fortunately, that would be impossible, however. Tolstoï joyously
affirms, and with perfect sincerity, that his soul has at last found
repose, as well as the true object of his life and the rock of his
faith. He invites us to follow him, but I fear the hardened sceptics
of Western Europe will refuse to enter into any discussion with him
upon the new religion, which seems, moreover, almost daily to undergo
modifications, according to its founder’s new flights of thought.
It eliminates gradually, more and more, the doctrine of a Divine
Providence overruling all, and concentrates all duty, hope, and moral
activity upon a single object, the reform of all social evils through
Communism.
This idea exclusively inspires the last treatise of Tolstoï which
I read; it is entitled: “What, then, must be done?” This title is
significant enough, and has been used many times in Russia since the
famous novel by Tchernishevski was written. It expresses the anxious
longing of all these men, and there is something touchingly pathetic
in its ingenuousness. What, then, must be done? First of all, quit
the populous cities and towns, and disband the work-people in the
factories; return to country life and till the ground, each man
providing for his own personal necessities. The author first draws a
picture of wretchedness in a large capital, as he himself studied it
in Moscow. Here his admirable powers of description reappear, together
with the habit, peculiar to himself, of looking within his own soul,
to discover and expose the little weaknesses and base qualities common
to all of us; and he takes the same pleasure in the observation and
denunciation of his own as men generally do in criticising those of
others. He gives us all a side thrust when he says of himself:―
“I gave three roubles to that poor creature; and, beside the pleasure
of feeling that I had done a kind deed, I had the additional one of
knowing that other people saw me do it….”
The second part of the treatise is devoted to theory. We cannot
relieve the poor and unfortunate for many reasons; First, in cities
poverty must exist, because an overplus of workmen are attracted to
them; secondly, our class gives them the example of idleness and
of superfluous expenditure; thirdly, we do not live according to
the doctrine of Christ: charity is not what is wanted, but an equal
division of property in brotherly love. Let him who has two cloaks give
to him who has none. Sutayef carries out this theory.
Those who draw salaries are in a state of slavery, and an aggravated
form of it; and the effect of the modern system of credit continues
this slavery into their future. The alms we give are only an obligation
we owe to the peasants whom we have induced to come and work in our
cities to supply us with our luxuries. The author concludes by giving
as the only remedy, a return to rural life, which will guarantee to
every laborer all that is necessary to support life.
He does not see that this principle involves, necessarily and
logically, a return to an animal state of existence, a general struggle
for shelter and food, instead of a methodical system of labor; and that
in such a company there must be both wolves and lambs. He sees but
one side of the question, the side of justice; he loses sight of the
intellectual side, the necessity for mental development, which involves
a division of labor.
All this has no great attraction for us. We can obtain no original
ideas from this apostle’s revelation; only the first lispings of
rationalism in the religious portion, and in the social the doctrine
of Communism; only the old dream of the millennium, the old theme,
ever renewed since the Middle Ages, by the Vaudois, the Lollards and
Anabaptists. Happy Russia! to her these beautiful chimeras are still
new! Western Europe is astonished only, to meet them again in the
writings of such a great author and such an unusually keen observer of
human nature.
But would not the condition of this man’s soul be the result of
the natural evolution of his successive experiences? First, a
pantheist, then nihilist, pessimist, and mystic. I have heard that Leo
Nikolaievitch has defended himself energetically against being thought
to have assumed the title of a mystic; he feels its danger, and does
not think it applicable to one who believes that the heavenly kingdom
is transferred to earth. Our language furnishes us no other word to
express his condition; may he pardon us what seems to us the truth. I
know that he would prefer to have me praise his doctrines and decry his
novels. This I cannot do. I am so enraptured with the novels that I can
only feel that the doctrines but deprive me of masterpieces which might
have given me additional enjoyment in the future. I have been lavish
of praise, but only because of my thorough and sincere appreciation of
the books. Now, however, that the author has reached a state of perfect
happiness, he needs no more praise, and must be quite indifferent to
criticism.
We must, at least, recognize in Tolstoï one of those rare reformers
whose actions conform to their precepts. I am assured that he exerts
around him a most salutary influence, and has actually returned to
the life of the primitive Christians. He daily receives letters from
strangers, revenue officers, dishonest clerks, publicans of every
type, who put into his hands the sums they have dishonestly acquired;
young men asking his advice as well as fallen women who need counsel.
He is settled in the country, gives away his wealth, lives and labors
with his peasant neighbors. He draws water, works in the fields, and
sometimes makes his own boots. He does not wish his novels alluded to.
I have seen a picture of him in a peasant’s costume working with a
shoemaker’s awl in his hand. Should not this creator of masterpieces
feel that the pen is the only tool he should wield? If the inspiration
of great thoughts is a gift we have received from Heaven as a
consolation for our fellow-beings, it seems to me an act of impiety to
throw away this talent. The human soul is the author’s field of action,
which he is bound to cultivate and fertilize.
From Paris, where Tolstoï is so highly appreciated, comes back to him
again the touching, last request of his dying friend which to me was
inspired by a higher religious sentiment than that of Sutayef:―
“This gift comes to you from whence come all our gifts. Return to your
literary labors, great author of our beloved Russia!”
I shall not pretend to draw any definite or elaborate conclusions from
these initiatory explorations into Russian literature. To make them
complete, we should study the less prominent writers, who have a right
to bear their testimony as to the actual condition of the nation. If,
moreover, the writer of this book has succeeded in presenting his own
ideas clearly, the reader should draw his own conclusions from the
perusal of it; if the author has failed, any added defence of his ideas
would be superfluous, and have little interest or value for the reader.
We have witnessed the at first artificial growth of this literature,
for a long time subjected to foreign influence; a weak and servile type
of literature, giving us no enlightenment whatever as to the actual
interior condition of its own country, which it voluntarily ignored.
Again, when turning to its natal soil to seek its objects of study it
has become vigorous. Realism is the proper and perfect instrument which
it has employed, applied with equal success to material and spiritual
life. Although this realism may occasionally lack method and taste,
and is at the same time both diffuse and subtile, it is invariably
natural and sincere, ennobled by moral sentiments, aspirations toward
the Divine, and sympathy for humanity. Not one of these novelists aims
merely at literary fame, but all are governed by a love of truth as
well as of justice,―a combination of great importance, and well worth
our serious reflection, betraying and explaining to us, moreover, the
philosophical conceptions of this race.
The Russians seek religious truth because they find the formulas of
their doctrines insufficient for them, and the negative arguments which
satisfy us would be entirely opposed to all their instincts. Their
religious doubts govern, cause, and characterize all their social and
political questions and difficulties. The Slav race, under the guise
of its apparent orthodoxy, has not yet found its true path, but seeks
it still in every grade of society. The formula they are looking
forward to must comprise and answer to their double ideal of truth and
justice. Moreover, the people still feel the influence of the old Aryan
spirit; the cultivated classes also feel that of the teachings of the
contemporaneous sciences; hence the resurrection of Buddhism which we
now witness in Russia; for I cannot otherwise qualify these tendencies.
We see in them the condition of the ancient Hindus vacillating between
an extremely high morality and Nihilism, or a metaphysical Pantheism.
The spirit of Buddhism in its great efforts toward the extension
of evangelical charity has penetrated the Russian character, which
naturally has such intense sympathy for human nature, for the humblest
creatures, for the forsaken and unfortunate. This spirit decries
reason and elevates the brute, and inspires the deepest compassion in
the heart. Moreover, this simple love of the neighbor and infinite
tenderness for the suffering gives a peculiarly pathetic quality to
their literary works. The initiators of this movement, after having
written for the benefit of their peers and the cultivated classes, are
strongly drawn toward the people. Gogol with his bitter irony devoted
himself to the study of suffering humanity. Turgenef pictured it from
his own artistic standpoint rather than from that of an apostle.
Tolstoï, his sceptical investigations being over, has become the most
determined of the apostles of the unfortunate.
But beyond these mental tortures, beneath the extreme Nihilism of a
Tolstoï and the intellectual morbidness of a Dostoyevski, we feel that
there is a rich fund of vitality, a fountain of truth and justice,
which will surely triumph in the future.
FOOTNOTES:
[L] By Alfred de Vigny, author of “Cinque-Mars.”
INDEX.
Alexander I., 27, 42
_Anna Karenina_, 246
_Annals of a Sportsman_, 101
_Ascension of Christ, The_, 34
_Assia_, 119
Bielinski, 148
_Bohemians, The_, 49
_Book of the Dove_, 34
_Boris Godunof_, 49
_Buried Alive_, 162
Catherine II., 27, 38
_Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth_, 216
_Commentary on the Gospel, A_, 257
_Cossacks, The_, 216
_Crime and Punishment_, 176
_Dead Souls_, 74
_Degraded and Insulted, The_, 147
_Demon, The_, 52
Derzhavin, 38
_Despair_, 139
_Dimitri Roudine_, 109
_Domostroi_, 32
Dostoyevski, 141
_Evenings at a Farm Near Dikanka_, 63
_Fathers and Sons_, 115
Freemasonry, 41
French Revolution, The, 42
Gogol, 56
Gortchakof, 46
Gregory of Tours, 31
Griboyedof, 51
Grigorovitch, 147
_Idiot, The_, 163
Ivan the Terrible, 32
Ivan Federof, 32
Ivanof, 73
Ivan Sergievitch, 96
_Karamazof Brothers, The_, 185
Karamzin, 39
Kheraskof, 38
Kiev, 31
Krylof, 39
Kutuzof, 231
_Lear of the Steppe, A_, 131
Lermontof, 52
_Letters to My Friends_, 83
_Living Relics, The_, 102
Lomonosof, 37
Loris Melikof, 206
_Manteau, Le_, 62, 69
Maximus, 31
_Memoirs of a Nihilist_, 130
Muscovitism, 41
_My Confession_, 257
_My Religion_, 259
Nekrasof, 147
_Nest of Nobles_, 109
Nestor, 31
_Note-book of an Author_, 195
Novikof, 42
_On the Eve_, 113
_Onyegin_, 49
_Pauvre Lise, La_, 40
Peter the Great, 37
Petrachevski, 155
_Pétriade, La_, 38
Poltava, 49
_Poor People_, 149
_Possédés, Les_, 191
_Prisoner of the Caucasus, The_, 48
Pushkin, 44
_Revizor, The_, 70
Russian Drama, The, 70
Savonarola, 31
_Sebastopol in December, in May, and in August_, 215
Skobelef, 138
Slavophile, 90
Slavophilism, 41
_Smoke_, 122
Song of Igor, 35
“Souls,” 75
Speranski, 41
_Spring Floods_, 125
Sutayef, 257
_Taras Bulba_, 66
Tchadayef, 53
Tchinovnism, 32
_Tchitchikof_, 76
Tolstoï, 215
_Trois Morts_, 219
Tsarskoe-Selo, Lyceum of, 45
Turgenef, 96
Tutschef, 34
Ukraine, 57
_Virgin Soil_, 126
Von Vizin, 38
_War and Peace_, 223, 228
Zaporovian League, 59
Zhukovski, 44
A LIST OF ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS
FROM THE RUSSIAN.
DOSTOYEVSKI:―
Buried Alive; Ten Years Penal Servitude in Siberia. Trans. from the
Russian by Marie von Thilo; 8vo, London, 1881.
_Same_, 12mo, New York, 1881.
Crime and Punishment; a Russian Realistic Novel; 8vo, London, 1886.
_Same_, 12mo, New York, 1886.
Injury and Insult; trans. by F. Whishaw; 8vo, London, 1886.
GOGOL:―
Cossack Tales, trans. by Geo. Tolstoy; 8vo, London, 1860.
St. John’s Eve, and Other Stories; from the Russian, by Isabel F.
Hapgood; 12mo, New York, 1886. Selected from “Evenings at the
Farm” and “St. Petersburg Stories.”
_Contents_:―St. John’s Eve, related by the sacristan of
the Dikanka Church.―Old-Fashioned Farmers.―The Tale of How
Ivan Ivanovitch Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovitch.―The
Portrait.―The Cloak.
Taras Bulbá; a Tale of the Cossacks; from the Russian, by Isabel F.
Hapgood; 12mo, New York, 1886.
Tchitchikoff’s Journeys, or Dead Souls; from the Russian, by Isabel
F. Hapgood; 2 vols., 12mo, New York, 1886.
PUSHKIN:―
Captain’s Daughter; from the Russian; 4to, New York, 1884.
Eugene Onéguine, a romance of Russian life, in verse; trans, by
Lt.-Col. Spalding; 8vo, London and New York, 1881.
Marie, a Story of Russian Love; from the Russian, by Marie H. de
Zielinska; sq. 16mo, Chicago, 1876 (also 1880). (Same as the
“Captain’s Daughter.”)
Russian Romance; trans. by Mrs. J. B. Telfer; 8vo, London, 1875.
_Same_, 8vo, London, 1880.
_Contents_:―The Captain’s Daughter.―The Lady-Rustic.―The
Pistol-Shot.―The Snow-Storm.―The Undertaker.―The
Station-Master.―The Moor of Peter the Great.
TOLSTOÏ:―
Anna Karenina; from the Russian, by N. H. Dole; 12mo, New York,
1886.
_Same_, London, 1886.
Childhood, Boyhood, Youth: Reminiscences; from the Russian, by
Isabel F. Hapgood; 12mo, New York, 1886. (An earlier translation
seems to have been published in London, in 1862, under the title
“Childhood and Youth.”)
Christ’s Christianity; trans. from the Russian; 8vo, London, 1885.
_Contents_:―How I Came to Believe.―What I Believe.―The
Spirit of Christ’s Teaching.
The Cossacks; from the Russian, by Eugene Schuyler; 2 vols., 8vo,
London, 1878.
_Same_, 16mo, New York, 1878.
My Religion; trans. from the French by W. Huntington Smith; 12mo,
New York, 1885. (The same as his “What I Believe.”)
War and Peace; from the French, by Clara Bell; 3 vols., 8vo,
London, 1886.
_Same_, 6 vols., 16mo, New York, 1886.
What I Believe; from the Russian, by Constantine Popoff; 8vo,
London, 1885.
_Same_, 12mo, New York, 1886. (A translation from the French was
published under the title “My Religion.”)
What People Live By; trans. by Aline Delano; 8vo, Boston, 1887. (A
story of peasant life.)
TURGENEF:―
Annals of a Sportsman; from the authorized French translation, by
Franklin P. Abbott; 16mo, New York, 1885.
Annouchka: a Tale; from the French of the author’s own translation,
by Franklin P. Abbott; 16mo, Boston, 1884.
Daughter of Russia; trans. by G. W. Scott; 4to, New York, 1882.
Dimitri Roudine; trans. from the French and German versions for
“Every Saturday”; 16mo, New York, 1873.
_Same_, 12mo, London, 1883.
Fathers and Sons; from the Russian, by Eugene Schuyler; 16mo, New
York, 1867 and 1883.
_Same_, London, 1883.
First Love, and Punin and Baburin; trans. from the Russian, by W.
Ralston; 12mo, London, 1884.
Liza; trans. by W. R. S. Ralston; 2 vols., 8vo, London, 1869.
_Same_, New York, 1872.
_Same_, London, 1884.
(The title of the original and of the French translation is
“A Nest of Nobles.”)
Mumu, and The Diary of a Superfluous Man; from the Russian, by
Henry Gersoni; 12mo, New York, 1884.
On the Eve; from the Russian, by C. E. Turner; 12mo, London, 1871.
_Same_, American ed., with amendments; 16mo, New York, 1873.
Poems in Prose; trans. by Lilla C. Perry; 16mo, Boston, 1883.
Punin and Baburin; trans. by G. W. Scott; 4to, New York, 1882.
Russian Life in the Interior; 12mo, London, 1855.
Smoke, or Life at Baden; 2 vols., 8vo, London, 1868.
Smoke, or Life at Baden; from the author’s French version, by W. F.
West; 16mo, New York, 1872.
_Same_, 12mo, London, 1883.
Song of Triumphant Love; 4to, New York, 1883.
Spring Floods, trans. by Sophie Mitchell; also A Lear of the
Steppe, trans. by W. H. Browne; 16mo, New York, 1874.
An Unfortunate Woman; also Ass’ya; from the Russian, by H. Gersoni;
12mo, New York, 1886. (“Ass’ya” is the same as “Annouchka.”)
Virgin Soil; from the French, by T. S. Perry; 16mo, New York, 1877.
_Same_, 12mo, London, 1883.
Virgin Soil; trans. by A. W. Dilke; 8vo, London, 1878.
THE SCHOOL OF HOME.
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Now comes WIDE AWAKE, vigorous, hearty, not to say heavy. No, it isn’t
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is the play. $2.40 a year.
* * * * *
Specimen copies of all the Lothrop magazines for fifteen cents; any one
for five―in postage stamps.
Address D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
You little know what help there is in books for the average housewife.
Take _Domestic Problems_, for instance, beginning with this hard
question: “How may a woman enjoy the delights of culture and at the
same time fulfil her duties to family and household?” The second
chapter quotes from somebody else: “It can’t be done. I’ve tried it;
but, as things now are, it can’t be done.”
Mrs. Diaz looks below the surface. Want of preparation and culture, she
says, is at the bottom of a woman’s failure, just as it is of a man’s.
The proper training of children, for instance, can’t be done without
some comprehension of children themselves, of what they ought to grow
to, their stages, the means of their guidance, the laws of their
health, and manners. But mothers get no hint of most of these things
until they have to blunder through them. Why not? Isn’t the training of
children woman’s mission? Yes, in print, but not in practice. What is
her mission in practice? Cooking and sewing!
Woman’s worst failure then is due to the stupid blunder of putting
comparatively trivial things before the most important of all. The
result is bad children and waste of a generation or two―all for
putting cooking and sewing before the training of children.
Now will any one venture to say that any particular mother, you for
instance, has got to put cooking and sewing before the training of
children?
Any mother who really makes up her mind to put her children first can
find out how to grow tolerable children at least.
And that is what Mrs. Diaz means by preparation―a little knowledge
beforehand―the little that leads to more.
It _can_ be done; and _you_ can do it! Will you? It’s a matter of
choice; and you are the chooser.
Domestic Problems. By Mrs. A. M. Diaz. $1. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
We have touched on only one subject. The author treats of many.
* * * * *
Dr. Buckley the brilliant and versatile editor of the _Christian
Advocate_ says in the preface of his book on northern Europe “I hope
to impart to such as have never seen those countries as clear a view
as can be obtained from reading” and “My chief reason for traveling in
Russia was to study Nihilism and kindred subjects.”
This affords the best clue to his book to those who know the writer’s
quickness, freshness, independence, force, and penetration.
The Midnight Sun, the Tsar and the Nihilist. Adventures and
Observations in Norway, Sweden and Russia. By J. M. Buckley, LL. D.
72 illustrations, 376 pages. $3. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
Just short of the luxurious in paper, pictures and print.
* * * * *
The writer best equipped for such a task has put into one illustrated
book a brief account of every American voyage for polar exploration,
including one to the south almost forgotten.
American Explorations in the Ice Zones. By Professor J. E. Nourse,
U. S. N. 10 maps, 120 illustrations, 624 pages. Cloth, $3, gilt edges
$3.50, half-calf $6. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
Not written especially for boys; but they claim it.
The wife of a U. S. lighthouse inspector, Mary Bradford Crowninshield,
writes the story of a tour of inspection along the coast of Maine with
two boys on board―for other boys of course. A most instructive as well
as delightful excursion.
The boys go up the towers and study the lamps and lanterns and all the
devices by which a light in the night is made to tell the wary sailor
the coast he is on; and so does the reader. Stories of wrecks and
rescues beguile the waiting times. There are no waiting times in the
story.
All Among the Lighthouses, or Cruise of the Goldenrod. By Mary
Bradford Crowninshield. 32 illustrations, 392 pages. $2.50. D.
Lothrop Company, Boston.
There’s a vast amount of coast-lore besides.
* * * * *
Mr. Grant Allen, who knows almost as much as anybody, has been making
a book of twenty-eight separate parts, and says of it: “These little
essays are mostly endeavors to put some of the latest results of
science in simple, clear and intelligible language.”
Now that is exactly what nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand of
us want, if it isn’t dry. And it isn’t dry. Few of those who have the
wonderful knowledge of what is going on in the learned world have the
gift of popular explanation―the gift of telling of it. Mr. Allen has
that gift; the knowledge, the teaching grace, the popular faculty.
Common Sense Science. By Grant Allen. 318 pages. $1.50. D. Lothrop
Company, Boston.
By no means a list of new-found facts; but the bearings of them on
common subjects.
We don’t go on talking as if the earth were the centre of things, as if
Galileo never lived. Huxley and Spencer have got to be heard. Shall we
wait two hundred and fifty years?
The book is simply an easy means of intelligence.
* * * * *
There is nothing more dreary than chemistry taught as it used to be
taught to beginners. There is nothing brighter and fuller of keen
delight than chemistry taught as it can be taught to little children
even.
Real Fairy Folks. By Lucy Rider Meyer, A. M. 389 pages. $1.25. D.
Lothrop Company, Boston.
“I’ll be their teacher―give them private scientific lectures! Trust
me to manage the school part!” The book is alive with the secrets of
things.
* * * * *
It takes a learned man to write an easy book on almost any subject.
Arthur Gilman, of the College for Women, at Cambridge, known as the
“Harvard Annex,” has made a little book to help young people along in
the use of the dictionary. One can devour it in an hour or two; but the
reading multiplies knowledge and means of knowledge.
Short Stories from the Dictionary. By Arthur Gilman, M. A. 129 pages.
60 cents. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
An unconscious beginning of what may grow to be philology, if one’s
faculty lies that way. Such bits of education are of vastly more
importance than most of us know. They are the seeds of learning.
Elizabeth P. Peabody at the age of eighty-four years has made a book
of a number of essays, written during fifty years of a most productive
life, on subjects of lasting interest, published forgotten years ago in
_Emerson’s Magazine_, _The Dial_, Lowell’s _Pioneer_, etc.
Last Evening with Allston and Other Papers. 350 pages. $1.50. D.
Lothrop Company, Boston.
* * * * *
The wife of Frémont, the Pathfinder of forty years ago and almost
President thirty years ago, has written a bookful of reminiscences.
Souvenirs of My Time. By Jessie Benton Frémont. 393 pages. $1.50. D.
Lothrop Company, Boston.
Mrs. Frémont has long been known as a brilliant converser and
story-teller. Her later years have been given to making books; and the
books have the freshness and sparkle of youth.
* * * * *
The literary editor of the _Nation_ gathers together nearly a hundred
poems and parts of poems to read to children going to sleep.
Bedside Poetry, a Parents’ Assistant in Moral Discipline. 143 pages.
Two bindings, 75 cents and $1. D. Lothrop Company, Boston.
The poems have their various bearings on morals and graces; and there
is an index called a key to the moralities. The mother can turn, with
little search, to verses that put in a pleasant light the thoughts the
little one needs to harbor. Hence the sub-title.
Readers of poetry are almost as scarce as poetry―Have you noticed how
little there is in the world? how wide the desert, how few the little
oases?
Through the Year with the Poets. Edited by Oscar Fay Adams. 12 bijou
books of the months, of about 130 pages each. 75 cents each. D.
Lothrop Company, Boston.
Is it possible? Is there enough sweet singing ringing lustrous verse
between heaven and earth to make twelve such books? There is indeed;
and heaven and earth are in it!
* * * * *
Ginx’s Baby, a burlesque book of most serious purpose, made a stir
in England some years ago; and, what is of more account, went far to
accomplish the author’s object.
Evolution of Dodd. By William Hawley Smith. 153 pages. $1. D. Lothrop
Company, Boston.
Dodd is the terrible schoolboy. How he became so; who is responsible;
what is the remedy―such is the gist of the book.
As bright as Ginx’s Baby. A bookful of managing wisdom for parents as
well as teachers.
* * * * *
Questions such as practical boys and girls are asking their mothers all
the year round about things that come up. Not one in ten of the mothers
can answer one in ten of the questions.
Household Notes and Queries, A Family Reference-Book. By the Wise
Blackbird. 115 pages. 60 cents.
It is handy to have such a book on the shelf, and handier yet to have
the knowledge that’s in it in one’s head.
_Classified List.—Pansy._
THE PANSY BOOKS.
There are substantial reasons for the great popularity of the “Pansy
Books,” and foremost among these is their truth to nature and to life.
The genuineness of the types of character which they portray is indeed
remarkable.
“Her stories move alternately to laughter and tears.”…
“Brimful of the sweetness of evangelical religion.”…
“Girl life and character portrayed with rare power.”…
“Too much cannot be said of the insight given into the true way
of studying and using the word of God.”… These are a few
quotations from words of praise everywhere spoken. The “Pansy
Books” may be purchased by any Sunday-school without hesitation
as to their character or acceptability.
_Each volume 12mo, $1.50._
Chautauqua Girls at Home.
Christie’s Christmas.
Divers Women.
Echoing and Re-echoing.
Endless Chain (An).
Ester Ried.
Ester Ried Yet Speaking.
Four Girls at Chautauqua.
From different Standpoints.
Hall in the Grove (The).
Household Puzzles.
Interrupted.
Julia Ried.
King’s Daughter (The).
Links in Rebecca’s Life.
Mrs. Solomon Smith Looking On.
Modern Prophets.
Man of the House (The).
New Graft on the Family Tree (A).
One Commonplace Day.
Pocket Measure (The).
Ruth Erskine’s Crosses.
Randolphs (The).
Sidney Martin’s Christmas.
Those Boys.
Three People.
Tip Lewis and his Lamp.
Wise and Otherwise.
_Classified List.―Poetry._
=THROUGH THE YEAR WITH THE POETS.―December, January, February,
March, April, May.= Arranged and compiled by OSCAR FAY ADAMS.
Each 75 cents.
The cream of English literature, past and current, has been skimmed
with a judicious and appreciative hand.―_Boston Transcript._
=WAIFS AND THEIR AUTHORS.= By A. A. HOPKINS. A collection of poems
many of which are now for the first time published with the
names of the authors. Quarto, cloth, gilt, $2.00; quarto, full
gilt, gilt edges, $2.50.
=WHEN I WAS A CHILD.= By ERNEST W. SHURTLEFF. Illustrated, $1.00.
A simple, graceful poem, fresh with memories of school and vacation
days, of games and sports in the country.―_Chicago Advance._
=WHILE SHEPHERDS WATCHED THEIR FLOCKS BY NIGHT.= Illustrated, $2.50.
Nothing more exquisite in the way of a presentation book.―_B. B.
Bulletin._
=WOMAN IN SACRED SONG.= Compiled and edited by MRS. GEORGE CLINTON
SMITH. With an introduction by Frances E. Willard. Illustrated.
$3.50.
It gives a very full representation of the contributions of woman to
sacred song, though of course the main bulk of this has been in modern
times.―_Illustrated Weekly._
=YOUNG FOLKS’ POETRY.= By A. P. and M. T. FOLSOM. A choice
selection of poems. 16mo, $1.00.
=YOUNG FOLKS’ SPEAKER.= A collection of Prose and Poetry for
Declamations, Recitations and Elocutionary Exercises. Selected
and arranged by CARRIE ADELAIDE COOKE. 12mo, cloth, illustrated,
$1.00.
It deserves to become a standard in the schools of the country.―_B. B.
Bulletin._
_Classified List.―Standard Micellaneous._
=THE TRIPLE “E.”= By MRS. S. R. GRAHAM CLARK. 12mo, paper,
illustrated, 25 cts. Cloth, $1.50.
It cannot fail to make a strong impression on the minds of those who
read it.―_B. B. Bulletin._
=THUCYDIDES.= Translated into English with marginal analysis and
index. By B. JOWETT, M. A., Master of Balliol College, Professor
of Greek in the University of Oxford, Doctor of Theology in
the University of Leyden. Edited with introduction to American
edition by Andrew P. Peabody, D. D. LL. D. 8vo, $3.50. Half
calf, $6.00.
=WARLOCK O’ GLENWARLOCK.= By GEORGE MACDONALD. 12mo, fully
illustrated, $1.50.
At his best, there are few contemporary novelists so well worth reading
as MacDonald.―_Boston Journal._
=WEIGHED AND WANTING.= By GEORGE MACDONALD. 12mo, cloth, $1.50.
=WHAT’S MINE’S MINE.= By GEORGE MACDONALD. $1.50.
Let all who enjoy a book full of fire and life and purpose read this
capital story.―_Woman’s Journal._
=WILD FLOWERS, AND WHERE THEY GROW.= By AMANDA B. HARRIS. 8vo,
extra cloth, beautifully bound, gilt edges, $3.00.
It is a book in which all true lovers of nature will delight.―_B. B.
Bulletin,._
=WONDER STORIES OF SCIENCE.= Uniform with “Plucky Boys,” 12mo,
cloth, $1.50.
To improve as well as to amuse young people is the object of
these twenty-one sketches, and they fill this purpose wonderfully
well.―_Texas Siftings._
=WITHIN THE SHADOW.= By DOROTHY HOLROYD. 12mo, cloth, $1.25.
“The author has skill in invention with the purest sentiment and good
natural style.”―_Boston Globe._
=HOLD UP YOUR HEADS, GIRLS!= By ANNIE H. RYDER. $1.00.
It is a book for study, for companionship, and the girl who reads it
thoughtfully and with an intent to profit by it will get more real help
and good from it than from a term at the best boarding-school in the
country.―_Boston Transcript._
=HONOR BRIGHT= (the story of). By CHARLES R. TALBOT, author of
Royal Lowrie. 12mo, illustrated, $1.25.
A charming story full of intense life.
=HOW TO LEARN AND EARN.= Half Hours in some Helpful Schools. By
American authors. One hundred original illustrations, 12mo,
extra cloth, $1.50.
The book treats largely of public institutions, training schools,
etc., and shows what may be accomplished by patient concentrated
effort.―_Farm and Fireside._
=HOW WE ARE GOVERNED.= By ANNA LAURENS DAWES, 12mo, $1.50.
An explanation of the constitution and government of the United States,
national, State, and local.
A concise, systematic, and complete study of the great principles which
underlie the National existence.―_Chicago Inter-Ocean._
=IN LEISLER’S TIMES.= A story-study of Knickerbocker New York. By
E. S. Brooks. With twenty-four drawings by W. T. Smedley. $1.50.
Though designedly for young folks’ reading, this volume is a very
careful and minute study of a hitherto half-obscured and neglected
phase of American history, and will be given a permanent place in
historical literature.―_American Bookseller._
=JOSEPHUS FLAVIUS, (the Works of).= A new edition of William
Whiston’s Famous Translations. 8vo, cloth, gilt, 100
illustrations, $3.00. Household Edition. 12mo, cloth, gilt top,
illustrated, $2.00.
This edition is admirable and will make new friends for the easy and
conceited old chronicler.―_B. B. Bulletin._
Transcriber’s Note:
This book was written in a period when many words had not become
standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling
variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been
left unchanged. Obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged.
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Those in bold are surrounded by equal signs, =like this=.
Footnotes were lettered sequentially and were moved to the end of
the chapter. Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, upside
down, reversed order, or partially printed letters and punctuation,
were corrected. Final stops missing at the end of sentences and
abbreviations were added. Missing or duplicate letters at line endings
were added or removed, as appropriate. Extraneous punctuation was
removed.
The following were changed:
added omitted word,‘on,’ to text (line 1436)
‘wook’ to ‘work’ (line 2397)
‘axamples’ to ‘examples’ (line 2790)
‘discourged’ to ‘discouraged’ (line 2877)