All the main thoroughfares of nineteenth century thought crossed before the doorway of Tolstoy's house. He trafficked with all the passengers, but joined no special group. Even his own disciples he allowed to go their own way; he took no part in their organization and left them to make their own interpretation and their own application of his teachings. Loving all mankind, having sympathetic knowledge of all sorts and conditions of men, he was nevertheless strangely solitary. At the end of his life his devotion to his ideas alienated from his family this most tender, home-loving man.[ [1] The young idealists of the world left him behind, for they broke out new highways of thought which he could not travel; young Russia sees in him a splendid survival of an elder age of storm and struggle, calls him master but not leader.
He justified in his own life his theoretic individualism, because he was great and strong enough to stand alone. The spirit of irony can not but deal gently with the sincerest, bravest of men. Yet may she note under the gray garment of humility a mien incorrigibly aristocratic and domineering. The most powerful mind in the world proclaimed self-submersion as the perfect virtue, because it is the most difficult virtue for a daring and vigorous spirit to attain. The foe of privilege, preaching that all men are brothers in love and alike before the Lord as they should be before the law of man, enjoyed a unique privilege—he was almost the only man in Russia who could with impunity say what he thought. He won this right because he was an aristocrat with friends at court and because the Russian government dared not disregard the admiration of the world which had made Tolstoy an international hero. He warned the mighty to walk in the fear of God, but they walked in the fear of Leo Tolstoy.
To remind ourselves of the titles of some of his books and the order in which they appeared, we may divide his work into seven parts. The first part includes military tales and autobiographic sketches: "Sevastopol," "Two Hussars," "The Raid," "The Cossacks," "Childhood," "Boyhood," "Youth." The second part, beginning in 1861, embraces his experience as school teacher, his discourses on education, school books, and stories for children and peasants. The third part, from 1864 to 1878, comprises "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina." The fourth part begins with his religious conversion in 1878, and is devoted to theological, ethical and sociological essays: "My Confession," "Union and Translation of the Four Gospels," "My Religion," "What, Then, Must We Do?" The subjects treated in these books he expounds over and over for the rest of his life. Because it is salient from his other work we may say that the "Kreutzer Sonata" (1889) constitutes a fifth part. "What is Art?" and "Resurrection" may be thought of as a sixth part. Then follows the concluding decade of warfare in pamphlets, essays, letters, upon civil and ecclesiastical authority and other powers of darkness.
Any such partition of Tolstoy's work is untrue to its organic continuity, its massive unity. His books are embedded in his life. Though each novel stands alone in self-sustaining integrity, intelligible to all the world, yet each gains in clearness and power for being understood in relation to the mind that produced it. This colossus of solitary protest, rising rough and volcanic above the flats of modern thought, is vaster when seen close to his intellectual base. Viewed from a distance some sides of him, some contours, are blurred and deceptive. No part of his work can be wholly apprehended unless all parts are brought into the range of vision.
On the day of his death he was the most famous man of letters in the world. From the first report of his final illness bulletins flew over the cables in hourly succession. Yet for several weeks after his death, repeated inquiry among the dealers in English and foreign books in Boston (reputed center of culture and high thinking) showed that there never had been much demand for Tolstoy's books, except his novels, and that the momentary rise of interest caused by his death had not disturbed the dust on such books as "What, Then, Must We Do?" and "My Confession."
This seems to indicate that not all the articles and sermons which followed the ultimate news from Russia were grounded upon first-hand knowledge of Tolstoy. The truth is that his opinions have trickled through to us Westerners in diluted streams. He is already a tradition, and it is the habit of tradition to weaken as it spreads, to lose the effect which a drinker at the sources feels in their concentration, in their full and proportioned measure of ingredients. Tolstoy is abroad in the world; he has permeated the thought of the best minds and tinged the currents of our present beliefs. But few Westerners know him in his overwhelming entirety. This man who laid open his whole mind and heart with prodigal frankness is borne westward on the winds of rumor as a mythical prodigy. The outlines of his thought are misty and wavering to many of those who call him great. He spared no pains to clarify his beliefs; he expounded the same principle many times with undiminished force and ever new transparency; he gave sweeping permission to the world to translate and print his books. Yet there is no complete authorized edition of his works in any language, even in Russian, thanks to the censors and his own indifference to practical concerns.[ [2]
Thus for the moment a partial chaos has descended upon the work of Tolstoy, a coherent luminous body of work, which left his hand as free from ambiguity as his extraordinary skill and industry could make it, but which has been scattered in transmission. It will take some years for his loyal followers in England and America to give us a complete and adequate translation; and in spite of Matthew Arnold's naive confidence in the French, the most patient collator will have difficulty in finding Tolstoy's work or recognizing even the titles, in the books which the Parisian publishers have sent forth under his name. One who has assembled such of his books as are procurable in French and English would say with all emphasis possible:
"Withhold judgment about any particular belief expressed or supposed to have been expressed by Tolstoy until you have read as many of his books as you can get—and do not fail to read them." He is the one noble speaker who has happened in our time, "who may be named and stand as the mark and acme" of modern literature.
A little knowledge of Tolstoy is more than proverbially dangerous. He laid his vigorous hand upon every problem that vexes and strengthens the soul. His utterance on each problem is intense and aggressive. He boldly pursues an idea whither it leads, or drives it with passionate conviction to a foreseen conclusion, and stays not for the beliefs of any majority or minority of men. His magnitude overflows the accepted area of such an adjective as intolerant. Yet approached for the first time by a reader accustomed to the persuasive amenities of other saints and sages, he seems to bristle with outrageous denial; some of his opinions, isolated from the rest, stand as repellant outposts, forbidding many minds which, entering from another side, would go straight to the heart of him. For example, our traditional reverence for Shakespeare is wounded by his downright statement that Shakespeare was not an artist; the offended judgment retorts that thereby Tolstoy proves that he is himself no artist, or that in crotchety old age he outgrew the poetry of his virile years. It must be understood that the essay on Shakespeare is in the nature of an appendix to his essay, "What Is Art?" That in turn is closely related to his ethical and social teachings. Those again are inseparably bound with his tales and novels. And his fiction, finally, is rooted in Russian life, not only because, as is obvious, it deals with Russian people, but because during Tolstoy's prime, there was, as we shall presently see, an attitude toward the novel and all literary art which was peculiar to intellectual Russians.
Happily for English readers the foundation for complete understanding of Tolstoy has been laid by Mr. Aylmer Maude in his "Life," the second volume of which appeared a few days before his master's death. Mr. Maude has entire knowledge of his subject and perfect sympathy; he is a sane and independent thinker, and his work is admirable for its balance, its candor, its sturdy devotion, which, however, admits no surrender of the biographer's private beliefs. To the reader who cares merely for an interesting story Tolstoy's career offers more than that of most men of letters. It is laid amid the plots and counterplots of bloody Russia, the most melodramatic background of modern history. The man is spectacular, compelling, in all violation of his own doctrines of self-abasement. The peasant's smock, which he wore as symbol of his unity with common man, served only to make him the more picturesque. This ascetic religious philosopher was a master of thrilling war stories. He knew equally well the heart of a lady in the high life of Moscow, and the soul of a peasant woman. He was of athletic stature, and his huge hand was sensitive to the finger tips; with it he gripped a scythe, played the piano, wrote a tirade against modern music, and indited an exposition of the gospel of love which estranged some of his best friends! It is no wonder that his fiction bears the seal of reality, that it has the abundance, the variety, the jostling contrasts of life itself.