Poor Russia! a tempest-tossed sea-gull, hovering over an abyss!
Nihilist and pessimist,—are not these synonymous words, and must they not both exist in the same person? From this time, all Tolstoï’s productions would argue this to be the fact. A few short tales are a prelude to his two great novels, which we must now make a study of, as to them he devoted his highest powers and concentrated upon them his profoundest thought. His talent heretofore had produced but fragmentary compositions and sketches.
II.
“War and Peace” is a picture of Russian society during the great Napoleonic wars, from 1805 to 1815. We question whether this complicated work can be properly called a novel. “War and Peace” is a summary of the author’s observations of human life in general. The interminable series of episodes, portraits, and reflections which Tolstoï presents to us are introduced through a few fictitious characters; but the real hero of this epic is Russia herself, passing through her desperate struggle against the foreign invader. The real characters, Alexander, Napoleon, Kutuzof, Speranski, occupy nearly as much space as the imaginary ones; the simple and rather slack thread of romance serves to bind together the various chapters on history, politics, philosophy, heaped pell-mell into this polygraph of the Russian world. Imagine Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables” being re-written by Dickens in his untiring, exhaustless manner, then re-constructed by the cold, searching pen of Stendhal, and you may possibly form an idea of the general arrangement and execution of the work, and of that curious union of epic grandeur and infinitesimal analytical detail. I try to fancy M. Meissonier painting a panorama; I doubt if he could do it, but if he could his twofold talent would illustrate the double character of Tolstoï’s work.
The pleasure to be derived from it resembles that from mountain-climbing; the way is often rough and wild, the path, as you ascend, difficult to find, effort and fatigue are indispensable; but when you reach the summit and look around you the reward is great. Magnificent vistas stretch beneath you; he who has never accomplished the ascent will never know the true face of the country, the course of its rivers or the relative situation of its towns. A stranger, therefore, who would understand Russia of the nineteenth century, must read Tolstoï; and whoever would undertake to write a history of that country would utterly fail in his task if he neglected to consult this exhaustless repository of the national life. Those who have a passion for the study of history will not, perhaps, grow impatient over this mass of characters and succession of trivial incidents with which the work is loaded down. Will it be the same with those who seek only amusement in a work of fiction? For these, Tolstoï will break up all previous habits. This incorrigible analyst is either ignorant of or disdains the very first method of procedure employed by all our writers; we expect our novelist to select out his character or event, and separate it from the surrounding chaos of beings and objects, making a special study of the object of his choice. The Russian, ruled by the sentiment of universal dependence, is never willing to cut the thousand ties which bind men, actions, thoughts, to the rest of the universe; he never forgets the natural mutual dependence of all things. Imagine the Latin and the Slav before a telescope. The first arranges it to suit himself; that is, he voluntarily foreshortens his range of vision, to make more distinct what he sees, and diminish the extent of it; the second requires the full power of the instrument, enlarges his horizon, and sees a confused picture, for the sake of seeing farther.
In a passage in “Anna Karenina,” Tolstoï well defines the contrast between two such natures, and the mutual attraction they exert upon each other. Levin, the dreamer, meets one of his friends, who is of a methodical turn of mind.
“Levin imagined that Katavasof’s clearness of conception came from the poverty and narrowness of his nature; Katavasof thought that Levin’s incoherency of ideas arose from the want of a well disciplined mind; but the clearness of Katavasof pleased Levin, and the natural richness of an undisciplined mind in the latter was agreeable to the other.”
These lines sum up all the grounds of complaint that the Russians have to reproach us with in our literature, and those we have against theirs; which differences explain the pleasure the two races find in an interchange of their literary productions.
It is easy to predict what impressions all readers of “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina” will receive. I have seen the same effect invariably produced upon all who have read those books. At first, for some time, the reader will hardly find his bearings; not knowing whither he is being led, he will soon grow weary of the task that lies before him. But little by little he will be drawn on, captivated by the complex action of all these characters, among whom he will find himself, as well as some of his friends, and will become most anxious to unravel the secret of their destinies. On closing the book, he feels a sense of regret, as if parting with a family with which he has been for years on terms of familiar intercourse. He has passed through the experience of the traveller thrown into the novelty of new society and surroundings; he feels annoyance and fatigue at first, then curiosity, and finally has formed deeply rooted attachments.
What seems to me the distinction between the classic author and a conscientious painter of life as it is, like Tolstoï, is this: a book is like a drawing-room filled with strangers; the first type of author voluntarily presents you to this company at once, and unveils to you the thousand intertwining combinations, incidents, and intrigues going on there; with the second you must go forward and present yourself, find out for yourself the persons of mark, the various relations and sentiments of the entire circle, live, in fact, in the midst of this fictitious company, just as you have lived in society, among real people. To be able to judge of the respective merit of the two methods, we must interrogate one of the fundamental laws of our being. Is there any pleasure worth having which does not cost some little trouble? Do we not prefer what we have acquired by an effort all our own? Let us reflect upon this. Whatever may be our individual preferences in regard to intellectual pleasure, I think we can agree on one point: in the old, well worn paths of literature, mediocrity may be tolerated; but when an author strikes out in a new path we cannot tolerate a partial success; he must write dramas equal to Shakespeare, and romances as good as Tolstoï’s, to give us a true picture of life as it is. This we have in “War and Peace,” and the question of its success has been decided in the author’s favor. When I visit with him the soldiers in camp, the court, and court society, which has hardly changed in the last half-century, and see how he lays bare the hearts of men, I cry out at every page I read: “How true that is!” As we go on, our curiosity changes into astonishment, astonishment into admiration, before this inexorable judge, who brings every human action before his tribunal, and forces from every heart its secrets. We feel as if drawn on with the current of a tranquil, never-ending stream, the stream of human life, carrying with it the hearts of men, with all their agitated and complicated movements and emotions.