In his book on Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky he spends a long time in differentiating between the artistic intuition of these two great masters, who are, according to him, the most profound expression of the popular and higher element of Russian culture.
What strikes him first in Tolstoy is the insistence with which he describes "animal man." In a kind of "leitmotiv" Merezhkovsky has shown us the Tolstoyan characters individualized by very particular corporal signs. "Tolstoy," he says, "has, to the very highest degree, the gift of clairvoyance of the flesh; even when dead, the flesh has a tongue." He is the subtle painter of all sensations and he is a master in this domain. But his art diminishes singularly, and even disappears when he tries to analyze the soul within the flesh. Dostoyevsky, on the other hand, triumphs in his dialogue; one sees his characters because one shares all their sadness, their passions, their intelligence, and their sensibility. Dostoyevsky is the painter of the depths of the human soul, which he portrays with almost supernatural acuteness. And, as Tolstoy is "the seer of the flesh," so is Dostoyevsky "the seer of the soul."
Having established this difference in principle, Merezhkovsky, by constant deduction, concludes, in consonance with his favorite idea, that Tolstoy personifies "the pagan spirit" at its height, while Dostoyevsky represents "the Christian spirit." There is a great deal of fine drawn reasoning in all of this, some very original ideas, but a great many paradoxes. Even the very personality of Tolstoy, the analysis of which occupies a large part of the book, is belittled in the hands of Merezhkovsky. Instead of a noble character, one sees a very vain person, preoccupied only with himself. It is in this simple way that Merezhkovsky explains the moral evolution which led Tolstoy to make those long and sad studies of a kind of life compatible with the true good of humanity, and forced him to them by "the anguish of the black mystery of death" which, having got possession of the author of "Anna [Karenina]" in his sixtieth year, in the midst of a life of prosperity, made him hate his fortune and his comfort, which formerly had been so dear to him. In the refusal of Tolstoy to "bow to the great authorities of the literary world, such as Æschylus, Dante, and Shakespeare," a refusal which is only the logical consequence of his ideas on the principle and purpose of art, Merezhkovsky can only see a lack of general culture. Finally, the sort of life he led toward the end of his days came only "from the desire to know and taste the pleasure of simplicity in all its subtleties." "The admirable Epicurus," says Merezhkovsky, "that joyous sage, who, in the very center of Athens, cultivated with his own hands a tiny garden, and taught men not to believe in any human or divine chimeras, but to be contented with the simple happiness that can be given by a single sunbeam, a flower, a sup of water from an earthen cup, or the summer time, would recognize in Tolstoy his faithful disciple, the only one, perhaps, who survives in this barbaric silence, where American comfort, a mixture of effeminacy and indigence, has made one forget the real purpose of life...."
In writing these lines, Merezhkovsky must have forgotten that Tolstoy, in proclaiming his ideas on religion and humanity, prepared himself, not for Epicurean pleasures, but for seclusion in one of the terrible dungeons of a Russian monastery (now in disuse) under the persecutions of a temporal and secular authority, and it was not his fault that, by a sort of miracle, he escaped this fate.
Dostoyevsky's life is the exact opposite of Tolstoy's. The story of Dostoyevsky's terrible existence is probably known. Born in an alms-house, he never ceased to suffer, and to love.... It is hard to think of two people more absolutely different than Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. But Merezhkovsky loves violent contrasts; in the sharp difference between these two writers, he sees the permanent union of two controlling ideas of the Russian Renaissance and the imminence of a final sympathy, symbolic of a concluding harmony.
We have, by turns, studied Merezhkovsky as a poet, a novelist, and a critic. The greatest merit of his literary personality rests in the perfect art with which he calls up the past.
But Merezhkovsky is not only an artist. As we have noted, his novels have, as their end, one of the greatest contradictions of human life,—the synthesis of the voluptuous representations of the religion of classical antiquity and the moral principles of Christianity. It is, therefore, natural to ask whether he has in any way approached his goal and just where he sees the salvation of humanity, the present situation of which seems to him desperate. The answer to this question can be found in his book, "Ham Triumphant."[14] Our study of Merezhkovsky's literary character would be incomplete if the ideas of this book were not set forth.
According to Merezhkovsky, the present evil in the world consists entirely in the moral void which results from the disappearance of the Christian ideal from the soul. The loss of this ideal was inevitable, and even productive of good, because it had been so mutilated and deformed by the Church, that Christian religion became a symbol of the reaction, and its God synonymous with executioner. Humanity will rid itself of Christianity. But nothing will replace it, unless it be the philosophy of positivism, a sort of material religion of the appetites and the senses, which gives no answer to our anguish and our mystical instincts. This philosophy presided at the formation of a miserable society, an egotistical and mediocre bourgeoisie, who have no spiritual tendencies, and are incapable of sacrificing themselves to any ideal other than that of money.
John Stuart Mill said that the bourgeoisie would transform Europe into a China; the Russian publicist Hertzen, frightened by the victories of socialism, in 1848, foresaw the end of European civilization, drowned in a wave of blood. Merezhkovsky affirms that the Chinese and the Japanese, being the most complete and the most persevering representatives of this "terrestrial" religion, will without fail conquer Europe, where positivism still bears some traces of Christian romanticism. "The Chinese," he says, "are perfect positivists, while the Europeans are not yet perfect Chinese, and, in this respect, the Americans are perfect Europeans." Where is one to look for safety against this heavy load on the understanding and this future humiliation? In socialism, one says. But socialism, if it is not yet bourgeois, is almost so. "The starved proletariat and the rejected bourgeois have different economic opinions," says Merezhkovsky, "but their ideal is the same, the pursuit of happiness." As it is but a step from the prudence of the bourgeois to the exasperated state of the starved proletariat, this pursuit can lead to nothing else but international atrocities of militarism and chauvinism. Progress having become the sole ambition of the cultivated barbarians, satiety became their religion, and the only hope of escaping from this barbarism was to adopt the religion of love, founded by Jesus. Jesus said to those who were treated with violence, and who, in turn, had used violence in trying to free themselves: "Truth (love) will set you free." These words, which identify truth with love, contain in themselves the profoundest social and personal morality. They inspired the first martyrs of Christianity; but in time they were forgotten by the Church. Succumbing to the "diabolical seduction of power," religion itself became a power, an autocracy; people submitted to this power, and thus the Byzantine and Russian orthodoxy came into existence. In this manner, the morals of the government, antichristian in essence, became the doctrine of Christianity; and the particular morals of the latter became transformed into a mysterious gospel of life, relegating its aspirations to an existence beyond the tomb. Now there is nothing for Christianity to do but return to its first sources and develop the principles of universal religion found there. One should no longer be concerned with heavenly and personal advantage, but with earthly affairs and social conditions; instead of being conquered by the government one should conquer it, permeate it with one's spirit, and thus realize the prophecy in the Apocalypse of the millennium of the saints on earth, and destroy the forms of the power of the government, the laws, and the empire. Such a renewal of Christianity demands an energetic struggle, self-forgetfulness, and martyrs. But where is one to find the necessary forces? Merezhkovsky does not see them in the States of western Europe, because the "intellectuals" there are antichristians and are congealed in their bourgeois positivism. "Above these Christian states, above these old Gothic stores," says Merezhkovsky, "rises, here and there, a Protestant wooden cross, half rotted; or a Catholic one of iron, all rusted, and no one pays any attention to them." What purity and nobility remains can manifest itself only in certain scattered individuals, in such great hermits as Nietzsche, Ibsen, Flaubert, Goethe in his old age; they are like deep artesian wells which prove that, beneath the arid earth there is still some flowing water. There is nothing of this sort in Russia. Although backward from the point of view of progress and politics, this country produced the "intellectuals" who form something unique in our present civilization: in essence, they are anti-bourgeois. "The positivism which the Russian 'intellectuals' have adopted by way of imitation is rejected by their feelings, their conscience, and their will; it is an artificial monument that is set up in their minds only."