The great masters of Russian literature in the nineteenth century

by Ernest Dupuy

Count L. N. Tolstoï was born on the 28th of August, 1828 (O.S.), at Yasnaya Polyana, a village near Tula, in the Government of Tula. He reckons among his direct ancestors one of the best servitors of the Tsar Peter the Great, Count Piotr Tolstoï. Early left an orphan, he studied at the University of Kazan, entered successively the departments of Oriental languages and of law, got tired of both, left the university, returned to his paternal estate, and one fine day set out for the Caucasus, where his eldest brother, Nikolaï Tolstoï, was serving with the rank of captain. He quickly became an officer, took part in the guerilla warfare in Circassia, returned to be shut up in Sevastópol, underwent the siege, was greatly distinguished by his bravery, and resigned at the conclusion of peace.

Count Lyof Tolstoï’s works have not been all published in the order in which they were written. “The Cossacks,” published after the “Military Scenes,” and after “Childhood and Youth,” it seems was written, in part, during his stay in the Caucasus. The romantic portion of the work may have been thought out towards the period when the book appeared, but the impressions which fill the book are the first which the writer took pains to note down. It is well to emphasize this fact from the very first moment: in the study of Tolstoï’s works, we can make it a starting-point in our investigation of the steps traced in the evolution accomplished by his mind.

The “Military Sketches,” collected into a volume in 1856, were produced in the form of articles in the Sovremennik (“The Contemporary”). These tales bear the following subtitles: “Sevastópol in December,” “Sevastópol in May,” “The Felling of the Forest,” “The Incursion.” They paint at once the energy with which the French invasion was resisted, and the monotony of the siege, more terrible than its dangers. The book narrowly escaped remaining in the censor’s hands: this suspicious and petty critic was offended by the most beautiful pages. There is, for example, an admirable passage where the soldiers, in order to escape the irksomeness whereby they have been overcome in the long days, listen with truly infantile excitement to the reading of fairy-stories. According to the censor’s opinion, it was a bad example. The author should have depicted the soldiers as engaged in reading some serious work, capable of exerting a good influence on their moral state, on their spirit of discipline. “The attention of the army should be called only to useful literature.” Fortunately the book escaped this rolling-mill, and roused the Russian public to enthusiasm.

As regards this album of impressions noted with incomparable vivacity of observation, vigor of tone, and energy of touch, Count Lyof Tolstoï gave another example, which is like a first confession, in his “Childhood and Youth.” The material of this biography is family life brought into the exact environment which the Russian nature, when very closely observed and very poetically described, can furnish. On one side external impressions, very accurately and very powerfully retained; on the other, profound reflections upon self, and a very keen view in regard to the most secret and the least explored regions of consciousness: these are the two sides of Tolstoï’s talent; these, from the very beginning of his literary career, are the two elements which will combine to form the great novels of the writer’s maturity, “War and Peace” and “Anna Karénina.”

These masterpieces having been once finished, Tolstoï turned aside from fiction to apply himself to pedagogy. The great painter of men becomes the instructor of children; the creator of heroes undertakes the mission of popularizing the alphabet.

At the present time we see him passing through a new transformation, and from pedagogue becoming preacher. He propagates a new dogma; or, rather, he is on his way to increase the number of Russian sectaries who seek in the Gospels a solution of the social problem.

Soldier, literarian, agriculturist, popular educator, and prophet of a new religion,—Count Lyof Tolstoï has been all these in succession. But the secret of these transformations is no longer far to seek: he has explained it to us in his latest work, entitled “My Confession,” the publication of which has been forbidden in Russia by the ecclesiastical censor. The work is read in spite of the interdiction, and it makes converts; copies are hawked about; it will not be slow in following the fortunes of “My Religion:” it will be printed abroad in some sheet edited by exiles, and will be translated, doubtless, in France.

Let us find in this “Confession” the commentary on the strange existence which we have sketched only in broad lines.

Every man has, so to speak, a moral physiognomy; and this physiognomy, like the face itself, is more or less characteristic. In Count Lyof Tolstoï, this characteristic is the need of a fixed principle, of a well-established rule of conduct. This principle has changed, and more than once changed, the formula which expresses the sum of his acts, and explains them, justifies them, which becomes enlarged, transformed, entirely reversed; but what remains immutable is his attachment to some formula, his absorption in the article of faith. Count Tolstoï’s soul is, before all things, the soul of a believer.

He begins by believing in the ego. He started with a sort of Darwinian conception of the world, of the struggle of individuals, with the conflict of egoisms. For Tolstoï, the ideal at this first period of his life was individual progress. The aim of existence was to get above other individuals, and to subjugate them in some degree by his own superiority. “I tried at first to cultivate the will in me; I laid down rules which I compelled myself to follow. Physically I strove towards perfection by developing, with all sorts of exercises, my strength and my skill, and by wonting myself by privations of every sort, to be neither wearied nor disheartened by any thing.” He pitilessly analyzes the feelings which he had at this time; after the fashion of La Rochefoucauld, he tells us to what a degree he was the dupe, the victim, of self-love. Under the pretext of discovering the progress made by the ego, and of advancing it towards perfection, “I gave in, above all, to the desire of finding that I was better not in my own eyes, not even in the eyes of God, but above all, but solely, in the eyes of others, in the judgment of the world.... And even this desire to seem better to other men quickly yielded to the single desire of being stronger than all others.” All these manifestations of individual force so much esteemed by men, and called “ambition, passion for power, cupidity, pleasure, pride, wrath, vengeance,”—Tolstoï also admired them, coveted them, and finally realized them to such a degree as to rouse admiration and envy. “Just as in my life I offered homage to strength and to the beauty of strength, so in my works I most often sang all the manifestations of individual force; and yet I pretended to love truth, and boasted of it! In reality I loved only force, and when I found it without alloy of folly, I took it for truth.” We shall see in studying “The Cossacks” to what a degree Tolstoï’s first ideal, followed and realized especially during his stay in the Caucacus, is reflected in this work, which is the actual product, if not the immediate outcome, of his residence there.