SMALL STORIES—THE COSSACKS
Several of Tolstóy’s novels and stories appeared in the years 1857-1862 (The Snow-Storm, The Two Hussars, Three Deaths, The Cossacks) and each one of them won new admiration for his talent. The first is a mere trifle, and yet it is a gem of art; it concerns the wanderings of a traveller during a snow-storm, in the plains of Central Russia. The same remark is true of the Two Hussars, in which two generations are sketched on a few pages with striking accuracy. As to the deeply pantheistic Three Deaths, in which the death of a rich lady, a poor horse-driver, and a birch-tree are contrasted, it is a piece of poetry in prose that deserves a place beside Goethe’s best pieces of pantheistic poetry, while for its social significance it is already a forerunner of the Tolstóy of the later epoch.
The Cossacks is an autobiographical novel, and relates to the time, already mentioned on a previous page, when Tolstóy at twenty-four, running away from the meaningless life he was living, went to Pyatigórsk, and then to a lonely Cossack village on the Térek, hunted there in company with the old Cossack Yeróshka and the young Lukáshka, and found in the poetical enjoyment of a beautiful nature, in the plain life of these squatters, and in the mute adoration of a Cossack girl, the awakening of his wonderful literary genius.
The appearance of this novel, in which one feels a most genuine touch of genius, provoked violent discussions. It was begun in 1852, but was not published till 1860, when all Russia was awaiting with anxiety the results of the work of the Abolition of Serfdom Committees, foreseeing that when serfdom should be done away with a complete destruction of all other rotten, obsolete, and barbarous institutions of past ages would have to begin. For this great work of reform Russia looked to Western civilisation for inspiration and for teachings. And there came a young writer who, following in the steps of Rousseau, revolted against that civilisation and preached a return to nature and the throwing off of the artificialities we call civilised life, which are in reality a poor substitute for the happiness of free work amidst a free nature. Everyone knows by this time the dominant idea of The Cossacks. It is the contrast between the natural life of these sons of the prairies and the artificial life of the young officer thrown in their midst. He tells of strong men who are similar to the American squatters, and have been developed in the Steppes at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains, by a perilous life, in which force, endurance, and calm courage are a first necessity. Into their midst comes one of the sickly products of our semi-intellectual town life, and at every step he feels himself the inferior of the Cossack Lukáshka. He wishes to do something on a grand scale, but has neither the intellectual nor the physical force to accomplish it. Even his love is not the strong healthy love of the prairie man, but a sort of slight excitement of the nerves, which evidently will not last, and which only produces a similar restlessness in the Cossack girl, but cannot carry her away. And when he talks to her of love, in the force of which he himself does not believe, she sends him off with the words: “Go away, you weakling!”
Some saw in that powerful novel such glorification of the semi-savage state as that in which writers of the eighteenth century, and especially Rousseau, are supposed to have indulged. There is in Tolstóy nothing of the sort, as there was nothing of the sort in Rousseau. But Tolstóy saw that in the life of the Cossacks there is more vitality, more vigour, more power, than in his well-born hero’s life—and he told it in a beautiful and impressive form. His hero—like whom there are thousands upon thousands—has none of the powers that come from manual work and struggle with nature; and neither has he those powers which knowledge and true civilisation might have given him. A real intellectual power is not asking itself at every moment, “Am I right, or am I wrong?” It feels that there are principles in which it is not wrong. The same is true of a moral force: it knows that to such an extent it can trust to itself. But, like so many thousands of men in the so-called educated classes, Neklúdoff has neither of these powers. He is a weakling, and Tolstóy brought out his intellectual and moral frailty with a distinctness that was bound to produce a deep impression.