Each of these distinguished novels exhibits the same loosely-knit, diffuse, and digressive literary method, and the same marvellous perfection of character analysis and description. Each, also, advances a step toward that morbid idealism which was always seeking a new expression for a philosophy which was never finally set, but remained a shifting formulary to the last.
“War and Peace” is a huge study of the times of Napoleon and Alexander, brilliant and tedious by turns, and requiring leisure for its reading—in the last analysis, a really great novel. “Anna Karenina” treats with great frankness and high moral purpose contemporaneous Russian society. Both these remarkable books abound in striking comparisons, witty comments, well differentiated character work, and convincing pictures of their times.
Shortly after finishing these works, Tolstoi emerged from his groping, pessimistic, skeptical, nihilistic philosophy and “discovered” the Sermon on the Mount. Thenceforward he was the Preacher. It is true that, as his devoted wife playfully said, he changed his views every two years, yet his devotion to his altruistic creed—the creed of his youth, as we have seen—was so firm that neither the dying adjurations of his friend Turgenev nor the clamors of the forty-five peoples into whose separate languages his writings have been translated could induce him to return to fiction—he felt that the mantle of a new spiritual leadership was upon his shoulders, and thenceforward the story-teller’s art, when exercised at all, was to be merely a means to the ulterior end of teaching.
A great number of didactic essays wearing the transparent gauze of fiction came from Tolstoi’s pen in this period, as well as many religious and ethical treatises, besides one astounding, ideal-smashing discussion, “What is Art?” Radicalism is the native air of reform, and our author was fond of drastic measures in practice and in theory. The communism of his middle period found new emphasis in the later long essay, “What, Then, Must be Done?” Yet his was a directly contrary individualism of personal philosophy. Contradictory again was his abandonment of the city and adoption of the peasant life on his own estates. Indeed, one looks in vain for consistency in the working-out of his whole career; and yet, while the general course swerved startlingly time and again, no one could doubt the naïve sincerity of this sophisticated, simple mind, this nobleman peasant, this iconoclastic gentle man, this nihilistic Christian, this pessimistic idealist, this contradictory soul of single purpose, this incarnation of selfish unselfishness. For there can be no doubt that Tolstoi’s character was greater than his confused system of ethics, just as his intellect was greater than his philosophy. Think of the supreme selfless egoism that could permit a wife with whom he lived as with a sister for years—probably ever since he propounded his extreme marital theories in “The Kreutzer Sonata”—to copy as often as ten times the myriad pages of his works, all laboriously by hand! And yet, because his followers demanded that he should exemplify his doctrines, and partly also because this eighty-two-year-old father of ten children could not live peacefully under stress of the divided beliefs of the home, he broke the heart of this devoted woman by leaving home secretly by night, and died thus in retreat shortly after, November 20 (O. S. Nov. 7), 1910. For four days the Countess Sophia was beneath the roof where her husband lay ill, yet only at the last did she venture to come into his room, drop on her knees by his bedside, and kiss the hand that for conscience’ sake had smitten her! Strange contradiction of human life when this idealizer of family love, this apostle of gentleness, this generous soul who could withhold nothing from the needy, make over his estate to his family years before he died, refuse to receive royalties from his books, beg the public to forget his masterpieces of fiction and read only his tractates, labor in the fields and eat peasant bread—when this great soul could love-starve the aged helpmeet who had been his strength for three-score years!
In the midst of so many vague and divergent expressions throughout his whole literary career, and especially in “My Religion” and “Resurrection,” it is difficult to crystallize what Tolstoi taught. But this seems to me to be the gist:
We have two natures: the animal nature, which decays and dies, and the spiritual, which lives forever. Life consists in doing those things which gratify our desires, and thus bring happiness. But when we attempt to live and gain happiness by the gratification of our animal natures we meet only disappointment, for animal desires can never be really satisfied. Therefore we need to be regenerated, which is nothing more than the enthronement of our spiritual natures and the denying or casting-out of our animal natures. The gratification of our spiritual selves is found in Love, the only good, and the essence of love consists not in self-pleasing but in seeking our happiness in the happiness and well-being of others. Thus do we obey the law of God and become one with Him. In the exercise of our desires for the well-being of others we will not only deny ourselves all carnal desires, but never oppose force by force—love will be sufficient to overcome all enemies. We must not even flee from suffering, danger, or death, but accept each as good, whereupon it will cease to have power to harm us. This life of love is opposed to all selfish acquisition of property. To be truly happy, we must get back to the soil, abandon the artificialities of city life, labor for our food, and give to others.
Though Tolstoi turned so often, and finally without backsliding, to the peasant class, he did not so much champion their cause as he gemmed a crown for the obscure life as such. He could not pity those whose ways were laborious, because to him no other career than bodily toil could bring the highest good. The outbursting, fiercely passionate soul of all his later years was for the pitiable masses who still chose swords rather than plowshares, who preferred a lawsuit to a loss, who loved the city more than the country, who saw joy in the factory and none in the farm.
Those who have only a shivering admiration for the terrors of Russian fiction in general will find in Tolstoi’s short-stories much that is sweet and gentle; yet, being the most Russian of all Russian fiction-writers, he could but cry aloud with the pity of his people. But greater than his pity was his passion for preaching.
Sermons big and little lurk in every corner of his stories to fix you with their relentless eyes. Even when the tale is not clearly didactic, a swift vision of moral relations is sure to come to him who reads. For an instance, take “My Dream,” the story of a Russian prince whose daughter runs away with a married man and bears him a child. At length the sister-in-law of the prince pleads with him to forgive his daughter. Here is his severe reply: