"'It is beautiful,' he murmurs.... Why am I not one of these?'"[17]
The entire Tolstoy is already contained in the hero of this first novel;[18] his piercing vision and his persistent illusions. He observes men and women with an impeccable realism; but no sooner does he close his eyes than his dreams resume their sway; his dreams and his love of mankind.
[1] From 1842 to 1847. Science was as yet unorganised; and its teachers, even in Western Europe, had not the courage of the facts they taught. Men still sought for an anchor in the philosophic systems of the ancients. The theory of evolution, put forward at the beginning of the century, had fallen into obscurity. Science was dry, dogmatic, uncoordinated, insignificant. Hence, perhaps, the contempt for science which distinguished Tolstoy throughout his life, and which made the later Tolstoy possible.—TRANS.
[2] Nikolas, five years older than Leo, had completed his studies in 1844.
[3] The English translation is entitled Childhood, Boyhood, Youth.
[4] Youth, six.
[5] Notably in his first volumes—in the Tales of Sebastopol.
[6] This was the time when he used to read Voltaire, and find pleasure in so doing.
[7] Confessions, vol. i.