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Tolstoy

Name: Tolstoy
Author: Lilian Winstanley

by Lilian Winstanley

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Language: en1,044 downloads on Project Gutenberg

Subjects

Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910

In: Biographies·Russian Literature

Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #47353.

About this book

The work is a scholarly essay that situates Leo Tolstoy within the broader sweep of Russian literary development. It opens with a sweeping comparison between Russia’s cultural awakening in the nineteenth century and the Renaissance surge in Western Europe, arguing that Russian writers, unlike their English and French counterparts, are freed from the conventions that temper Western sincerity. The author proceeds to trace the evolution of the psychological novel, emphasizing the “exceeding truthfulness and candour” of Russian authors and contrasting the candid, child‑like naïveté of their moral vision with the self‑consciousness of their European peers. After a lengthy discussion of Tolstoy’s ethical convictions, the essay surveys his contemporaries, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, detailing their differing styles, influences, and gender perspectives before moving into a biographical sketch of Tolstoy’s aristocratic origins.

Written in a measured, academic tone characteristic of late‑nineteenth‑century literary criticism, the piece blends historical overview with close reading of thematic concerns such as truth, compassion, and the masculine‑feminine divide. Its dense, comparative style will appeal to readers who enjoy intellectual surveys of literary history, especially those interested in Russian culture, the psychology of the novel, and the interplay between national character and artistic expression.

Who appears in Tolstoy

Leo TolstoyMiddle‑aged Russian aristocrat, full beard, dark hair, high‑collared coat, solemn expression
Nikolai GogolThin early‑19th‑century Russian writer, moustache, dark hair, frock coat, thoughtful gaze
Fyodor DostoevskyMid‑19th‑century Russian author, thick beard, intense eyes, dark hair, somber suit

The opening · free to read

[1] Heroes and Hero Worship.

The truth is that we have seen in Russia a growth very similar to that which occurred in Western Europe at the time of the Renaissance. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Europe as a whole experienced the vivifying influence of two great literatures--Greek and Latin--and it had, at the same time, a mode of life {8} to depict and ideas of life to express which differed widely from those of the classical nations: the great models showed them the fascination of poetry and art, and stimulated them to production; the different conditions of life, the varying ideals, prevented their production from becoming a mere imitation, and made it new, significant, and vital. Something very similar has occurred hi modern Russia. Russia has had the stimulus of Western Europe--especially of England and France--but, at the same time, the conditions of its life are so powerfully individual, so exceedingly unlike those of England and France, that its authors are hardly even tempted to produce work which is a mere imitation; as soon as they observe at all, the result of their observations is bound to be different. Their production is thus distinctive and individual, and, in its own turn, reacts upon the literatures which first inspired it.

The chief literary form in the later nineteenth century has been the psychological novel, and it is this which the Russians have taken up, developed, and almost recreated.

In psychology Russian writers are greatly helped by their own exceeding truthfulness and candour. France and England are lands of complex civilisations, of many social grades and many conventions, and the mental attitude of their writers is, almost inevitably, conventional, and thus, to a certain extent, insincere. Russian life has far fewer social grades and far fewer conventions; Russian writers are, beyond comparison, more candid with themselves and with others; they speak the exact truth with a naïveté almost resembling the naïveté of children, but with the far-reaching intelligence of maturity. This invaluable quality of sincerity is found in all the greatest Russians; Tolstoy and Dostoïevsky, in especial, hide nothing, but reproduce all they know with an absence of self-consciousness that amazes even while it fascinates.

We all of us know in our hearts that this profound sincerity is essential to really great literature; but, none the less, we, in a variety of ways, discourage and {9} forbid it: in prudish England an author is always afraid of offending "moral" prejudices; in France writers, though in moral respects far freer, are most sensitively afraid of appearing ridiculous or absurd. To a Russian neither of these fears would seem to exist. Throughout his work Tolstoy insists with the most vehement intensity that absolute truthfulness in all respects is the essential foundation of morals, and nothing angers him more than concealment, which he declares to be, always and everywhere, the assistant and protector of vice, while the fear of being absurd he dismisses as one of the most ridiculous vanities of adolescence, unworthy of a sane man.

Another quality that greatly assists Russian writers is their unique gift of sympathy; there may be, probably there is, something in the very fibre of the race essentially feminine and sensitive, but the peculiar conditions of their government account for much. Russia is the nation which, above all other great nations in our days, has the most tragic destiny, suffers most deeply and undeservedly; it is probably this which helps to give her great writers so deep a compassion; they penetrate to the very foundation of human experience, they fathom the deepest abysses of human suffering, and they return with an unequalled tenderness, with a noble beauty of compassion, which has, in the modern world, no rival at all.

It is worthy of note that the ancient Greeks would appear to have gained in a similar way some of the greatest qualities in their national soul. They too had the experience of a deep suffering; they stood between East and West, they bore the brunt of long-lasting racial conflicts, and, when they finally emerged triumphant, they carried with them the beautiful fruit of that bitter experience, in their profound understanding of human suffering, and their knowledge of all the depths of tragedy. They too gain from their own anguish a unique tenderness and compassion; Priam kissing the hands of Achilles, "terrible man-slaying that had slain so many of his sons," is one of the world's supreme types {10} of pathos; this lovely tenderness illumines all the great Greek poetry from Homer to Euripides.

Latin literature, in comparison with the Greek, is wanting both in compassion and in depth, but the Romans had never in the same way suffered, and they knew less of the secrets of the human soul.

Tolstoy, we are told, read much in Homer, and was greatly influenced by him in writing his War and Peace. It is hardly surprising, for, notwithstanding all differences, there is a considerable similarity--the two are alike in their heroism, in their understanding of war, their vast and crowded canvas, their tragic view of human destiny, and their lovely compassion. It is characteristic of the Russian breadth of mind and elemental sincerity that Tolstoy really can take Homer as his model in writing a modern novel. It is hardly necessary to remark that he has not Homer's sense of beauty, but who in this modern world has?

The fecundity of Russian literature is very great; it is a great mistake to regard Tolstoy as if he stood alone; like Shakespeare, Tolstoy is only the highest peak, or perhaps we should say the greatest magnitude, among a number of writers only less distinguished than himself.

Among Tolstoy's predecessors the Russians themselves rank Gogol very high; he owes much to the influence of Dickens; his books show endless comic verve, are crowded with situations full of laughter, but at the same time he has, in general, a very serious purpose behind. Gogol, though humane and good-tempered, is a keen satirist; comparatively little known abroad, he is greatly loved by Russians themselves.

Among Tolstoy's leading contemporaries the man whom, above all others, he most whole-heartedly admired was Féodor Dostoïevsky. Dostoïevsky had a tragic history which is reflected in his works; he was involved in the plots of the Decembrists, condemned to execution, and only at the last moment reprieved; for the remainder of his life, possibly in consequence of the shock to his nervous system, he became an epileptic; he was exiled for a time to Siberia.

Dostoïevsky's books are largely studies in crime, but quite unlike those familiar to our modern press; the modern detective story with its police-court atmosphere and its vulgar shallowness of interest belongs to a world immeasurably beneath Dostoïevsky; even the world of tragic crime, depicted so forcibly by the Elizabethans, stands far apart from his; in Elizabethan dramas crime is observed for the sake of its passion, it is invested with a terrible though gloomy allurement, and its end is the ruin of the noblest or the tragic destruction of a human soul.

Dostoïevsky's novels of crime are really studies in redemption: in Crime and Punishment the hero is a murderer and the heroine a fallen woman, but both ultimately work out their salvation. To Dostoïevsky crime is a moral disease, a source of the most exquisite suffering to the soul; he studies the process by which the soul, sick to death and horribly distressed, purifies and cleanses itself. Dostoïevsky is not, like the Elizabethans, impressed by the tragic beauty of crime; on the contrary, he realises and makes us realise its loathsomeness, its sordid horror; but, notwithstanding its dark and gloomy setting, his work is in essence far from pessimistic; the expiatory power of suffering, the innate nobility of the human soul, the miserable meanness of sin, the beauty of compassion--these are the impressions which he prints most deeply in the mind.

The nearest western parallel is to be found, no doubt, in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, where the redemption of a human soul is, in somewhat similar method, described; but Victor Hugo does not penetrate to the foundations of human life in the same manner as Dostoïevsky; he--the petted idol of the French public--had not that first-hand acquaintance with the terrible realities of oppression; there is something theatrical and rhetorical, almost insincere, about Hugo if we compare him with the great Russian.

It is worthy of observation that Tolstoy greatly admired both Les Miserables and Dostoïevsky; the older he grew and the more powerfully the influence of {12} the latter became manifest, his sympathy with the oppressed, his interest in redemption, increased, until in the last of his great novels, Resurrection, we find that he writes in the very spirit of Dostoïevsky; his heroine goes down to the depths of shame and degradation, and yet is redeemed and restored. The pessimist may perhaps declare that both Tolstoy and Dostoïevsky are mistaken in thinking that a human being can sink so low and yet be redeemed; to which it can only be replied that the unflinching courage with which they face realities--all realities, however horrible and sordid--earns them their right to be believed when they assert the restorative power of purity and love.

Amid all Tolstoy's contemporaries the one most widely appreciated in Europe is, without doubt, Turgénief. He was understood earlier and more readily than his fellow-countrymen, this appreciation being no doubt due to the fact that there is more foreign influence in his work, and that he is less purely Russian. Turgénief owes much to French literature; the influence of its clarity of style, its artistic form, its sense of proportion, are evident throughout his writing; he is the most artistic and literary of Russian authors, but, strong as the French influence is in his work, no one could ever mistake him for a Frenchman; he has the depth and tenderness of the Slavonic temperament, its moral earnestness, its profound sincerity.

Turgénief and Tolstoy were exceedingly unlike in life and work; it is not surprising that, when they met, they were alternately fascinated and repelled. Turgénief complained that Tolstoy pursued him like a woman in love and yet, when they were together, was always quarrelling with him. At one time they were devoted friends, at another they came near to fighting a duel. Russia might well have been horrified by the spectacle of her two greatest men of genius destroying each other; their friends intervened and separated them, but the reconciliation was never quite complete. The same opposition of personality can be plainly perceived in their work. Tolstoy is by far the more masculine genius, {13} enormous in his vitality and power, immense in his canvases; he loves, in his early work especially, to study masculine and virile characters, to dwell on war and hunting, and all the vigorous activities of men; his heroines, charming as they often are, are rarely or never heroic; they are nearly always dominated by their own emotions, they yield only too thoroughly to the men who, with a cruel masculine egoism, at once love and destroy them. Again it is hardly until he reaches Resurrection that he shows a true sense of the value of women as individuals: in his earlier novels he consents to value them only in their maternal aspect, as the mothers of men. His conception of love is nearly always a masculine passion with, it must be acknowledged, a somewhat crude masculinity; it is a disturbance of the senses rather than an emotion of the soul (Plato would have classed it unquestioningly as born of the lower Aphrodite), and Tolstoy's finest heroes nearly always yield to it reluctantly and, as it were, churlishly.

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