Leo Tolstoi

“ Stretching out the folds of the pelisse with his hands between the sides of the sledge and Nikita, and pressing it down at the sides with his knees, Vasily Andreich lay there right across the sledge, as low as he could, leaning his head against the front part of it; and now he heard neither the movements of the horse nor the whistling of the storm—Nikita's breathing was all he could hear. For a long time Nikita lay there motionless—presently he sighed deeply and began to move, evidently growing warmer.
"Why, there you are, getting on nicely! and yet just now you said you were dying. ”

“ His prominent vulture-like eyes were frozen hard, his mouth beneath his well-clipped moustaches was full of snow. Nikita was still alive, though all frost-bitten. When they awoke Nikita he was persuaded that now indeed he was dead, and the things they were doing to him were going on not in this but in the other world. But when he heard the cries of the muzhiks digging him out, and saw them dragging from off him the stone-cold Vasily Andreich—he was at first astonished that even in that other world the muzhiks should make such a racket. ”

“ Brownie also involuntarily pressed down his ears and shook his head. No sooner had the gale abated somewhat, than Nikita, taking off his gauntlets and sticking them into his girdle, and blowing upon his hands to warm them, began to unfasten the harness from the shafts of the sledge.
"What are you about there?" asked Vasily Andreich.
"I am taking out the horse, what else is there to be done? I have no more strength left in me," answered Nikita, as if by way of apology.
"And you are not going anywhere out of this?"
"Going anywhere? No! We are only torturing the horse uselessly. ”

“ The beauty and variety of the Caucasian scenery, where, in a few hours, one passes from the realm of eagles and snow-storms to emerald-green valleys where the dense oak forests are thick with azaleas and laurels, where myrtles and cypresses grow in the open air, and mountain ranges, dominated by the snowy caps of Elbrus and Kazbek, form an impressive background, powerfully affected young Tolstoi. ”

“ The thought that he might, and in all probability would die that very night, had occurred to him when he had sat down behind the sledge. Although still warm from the tea he had drunk, and from moving about so much among the snow-drifts, he knew that this warmth would not last long, and that he would not be able to warm himself any more by mere locomotion, for he felt himself growing very weary; he felt himself in the condition a horse feels himself to be when he stops short, and has to be fed in order that he may go on working. ”

“ You have well earned your crust. Tell me," said he, "how did you make this drink? I suppose you first of all mixed some fox's blood to make the muzhiks fox-like; after that some wolf's blood to make them wolf-like; and, last of all, it is quite plain that you added swine's blood to make them like veritable swine."
"No," replied the little demon, "it was not so. All I did was to give the miuzhik more corn than he knew what to do with. Bestial blood is present in every man, but so long as the man has barely enough bread to nourish him, it has no outlet. ”

“ The happiness of a well-assorted match and a tranquil family life drew him quite away from all seeking after a general theory of life, and, as Tolstoi himself characteristically puts it, "although I considered all writing to be rubbish, I went on writing, nevertheless, for I had tasted of the seduction of writing, the seduction of the enormous literary renown of work which was really worthless." ”

“ The wind was still whistling through the shafts, and the snow was still sweeping down; but with this difference, that it was no longer smiting against them, but was noiselessly enveloping the sledge and the horse, rising ever higher and higher, and the movements and breathing of the horse were no longer audible. "He too must have frozen to death," thought Nikita of Brownie. And indeed those hoof-kicks against the sledge which had awakened Nikita had been the last dying efforts of the already half-frozen Brownie to keep his legs. ”

“ When he's like that, he does not even grieve over his last crust. But let him only have food over and above his needs, and he will at once begin thinking of enjoying himself. Now I taught him an enjoyment — drunkenness. And whenever he turns the gift of God into spirits for his enjoyment, the fox-blood, the wolf-blood, and the swine-blood within him rise at once to the surface. Henceforth a beast will he become every time he touches spirit."
And the chief of the devils commended the little demon, granted him his crust of bread, and raised him high in his service. ”

“ So long as I fancied life had some meaning in it, although I knew not how to express it, the reflection of life in art gave me pleasure, and it was pleasant to me to look upon life in this mirror called art. ”

“ Look at him, poor old fellow! he is not himself," said Nikita, pointing at the horse standing patiently there, ready for anything, but well-nigh spent and with his flanks all wet and strained. "We must pass the night here," continued he, as if making up his mind to fix his night-quarters at some regular place of call, and he set about unloosening the strings of the horse-collar.
"But surely we shall be frozen?" cried Vasily Andreich. ”

“ Why, then, there will be nothing more for us to live for! We cannot let the matter rest where it is. Be off, and earn the muzhik's crust. If you don't get the upper hand of this muzhik in three years, I'll douch you in holy water."
Terrified at the holy water, the little demon fell to thinking how he should earn his crust. He thought and thought, and thought again. At last he assumed the form of a good Christian man, and took service with the poor muzhik as a labourer. And he taught the muzhik in the dry season to sow grain in the marshes. ”

“ Even religion is discarded, because, as Tolstoi plainly perceived, religion strengthens the sense of individuality by making man self-conscious. This after all is "Die Welt in Wille und Vorstellung" in a nutshell. No wonder, then, if Tolstoi's great contemporary, Dostoevsky, after reading "Voina i Mir," put the book down with the simple remark: "The fool hath said in his heart there is no God." Yet Tolstoi himself at a later day was to reject Schopenhauer's philosophy as inadequate. Tolstoi himself, at least, while actually engaged upon the work, was not a little proud of "Voina i Mir." ”

“ Some people think that making money is a mere joke. Not a bit of it, one has to take a little trouble, and rack one's brains about it. They think it's all a matter of luck. Look at the Mironovs, they are millionaires, and why? because they took trouble! God gives His help, too, no doubt; and ah! if He would but give the health and strength!" And the bare thought that he, too, like Mironov, who began the world with nothing—that he, too, might become just such another millionaire, so inspired Vasily Andreich that he felt the necessity of talking to someone else. ”

“ I suspect myself that Tolstoi's real quarrel with Peter was due to the fact that the great Tsar was an unanswerable confutation of the novelist's pet theory of the uselessness of independent individuality, for if ever a man was superior to his age and his environment, and moulded them both to his will, it was Peter the Great. And yet there is a moral grandeur in Tolstoi's refusal to admire the exploits of the great national regenerator who owed so much of his success to the unflinching application of mere brute force. ”

“ The horse indeed kept on turning to the right, whilst he himself for that very reason twisted him round to the left.
Again something black appeared in front of him. He rejoiced, for now, he fancied, this was really the village. But it was again the boundary ridge overgrown with the weeds of the steppes. Again the steppe-grass shivered tremulously, thereby inspiring Vasily Andreich with terror. Nor was this all. Not only was this the selfsame steppe-grass that he had seen before, but close beside him was a horse's track, partly obliterated by the wind. ”

“ My wife is no doll. She is of real help to me." His happiness is so great that it strikes him as being unnatural, but he consoles himself with the reflection that love becomes purer and stronger beneath the threats of despair! ”

“ He strained his hearing, and could hear the faint breathing of Nikita. "Nikita is alive, and that is the same as my being alive!" he said to himself triumphantly. And a feeling quite new to him, a feeling he had never felt all his life long before, now came over him.
And he bethought him of his money, and his shop, and of his buying and selling, and of the millions of the Mironovs, and it was hard for him to understand why that man whom they called Vasily Brekhunov [9] had occupied himself with all those things which he had occupied himself with. ”

“ Next he applied to Philosophy, but Philosophy could but tell him that the only way out of life was through death. Finally, he arrived at the conclusion that Faith was the one mainstay of life — but where was Faith to be found? To acquire knowledge is easy, but to acquire faith when you have none within you seemed well-nigh impossible. In this dilemma Tolstoi began by consorting with monks and pilgrims, by frequenting the Optinsky monastery, by shutting himself in his own room for private prayer, studying the Scriptures, and consulting Catholics, Protestants, and Raskolniks indiscriminately. ”

“ There ought to be a wood and a keeper's hut hereabouts. We ought to be hearing a dog too. Why can't the cussed things bark when they are wanted to bark?" He opened his collar a little and began to listen and look about him. The only thing visible in the darkness was the blackening head of Brownie, and his back, on which the large sack was flapping; and the only thing to be heard was the whistling of the wind, the fluttering and shivering of the piece of cloth on the upright sledge-shaft, and the pattering of the snow on the back of the sledge. ”

“ Twelve months later Tolstoi went abroad again, but between his first and second foreign tour occurred what he always regarded as the tragedy of his life — the death of his elder brother Nicholas, to whom he was devotedly attached, and who is said to have been the one really intimate friend, except his wife, he ever possessed. Turgenev describes the elder Tolstoi as "a talented talker and story-teller, who always lived by himself either in the country or in quite impossible quarters at Moscow, sharing everything with the poor." ”

“ Nikita, from the time when he had sat him down wrapped up in the sacking at the back of the sledge, had sat immovable. Like all people who live naturally, and know something of want, he had grown to be long-suffering, and could wait calmly for hours, and even days, without experiencing either disquietude or irritation. ”

“ During the terrible winter of 1891-92, when whole provinces of the Russian Empire presented the terrible and pathetic spectacle of an entire agricultural population, overwhelmed by snow, dying in thousands, without a word of complaint, though absolutely deprived of food, clothes, or firewood, Tolstoi hastened to the afflicted districts, and fed thousands, daily at his own expense at improvised ordinaries, never quitting his post for a single instant till all danger was at an end. ”

“ Science and Philosophy tell us that we must go on living as we are, in the firm belief that, according to the law of historical progress, after living for a long time badly, our life will right itself and suddenly become good of its own accord." We all know how the crisis ended. We all know how Tolstoi found peace at last by resolutely devoting his whole life to labouring for the people in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. ”

“ At the moment when Nikita entered the room she was pouring out of a thick glass bottle a little glass of vodka for Vasily Andreich.
"Nay, but you must, Vasily Andreich. One must keep well, you know, this weather," the old man of the house was saying.
The sight and smell of the vodka, especially now, when he was half frozen and half dead with hunger, profoundly affected Nikita. He frowned, and, shaking his cap and kaftan free of snow, he planted himself in front of the holy images, and just as if he perceived nothing else, crossed himself thrice and made obeisance ”

“ And, indeed, after forcing their way through the snow-drift they got upon the road again. On a rope in the furthermost courtyard some stiff-frozen clothes were fluttering desperately in the wind in every direction: two shirts, one red and one white; hose, socks, and a petticoat. The white shirt was turning about with particular desperation, and waving its sleeves.
"Look, there lives a lazy old woman, or else she is dead, for she has not taken down her washing against the feast," said Nikita, looking at the fluttering shirts. ”

“ He could quite understand, he tells us, the commission of the greatest crimes, not from any desire to injure but from sheer curiosity to see what would happen, from the sheer necessity of doing something. "There are moments," he says, "when the future presents itself to our mind's eye in such dark colours that we fear to face it with the eye of reason, and try to persuade ourselves that there will be no Future and that there has been no Past. ”

“ From henceforth the shadow of death falls across his finest pages, and he is possessed by a constantly deepening feeling of the futility of life and the emptiness of the best that it can offer. Even art lost its charm for him." Art is a lie, and I cannot love a lie however beautiful," is his summing up of the whole matter. It was in this morbidly gloomy frame of mind that he wrote "Lucerne" and "Albert," surely the most pessimistic productions of modern fiction.
Tolstoi's second Continental tour was a voyage of instruction. ”

“ With her head and her shoulders enveloped in woollen wraps, so that only her eyes were visible, the thin and pale-faced wife of Vasily Andreich accompanied him, standing behind him in the vestibule.
"Nay, indeed, you should take Nikita with you," said she, boldly emerging from the door. Vasily Andreich said nothing; he only spat on the ground. "You have got money with you," she continued in a lamentable sort of voice. "Yes, and the weather shows no signs of lifting. You ought indeed, God knows." ”

“ At such moments I can well understand a youth lighting a fire beneath the very house where his parents, his brothers and sisters, whom he tenderly loves are sleeping, aye, and doing it without the least fear or hesitation and even with a smile upon his face. ”

“ Vasily Andreich obeyed, and let the horse go on again as Nikita had commanded. They went on thus for a pretty long time. Sometimes they drove along over bare fields of vegetables, whose ridges and bounds peering above the snow were strewn with the dust of the earth. Sometimes they got among stubble fields, or among fields sown with winter corn, or fields sown with summer corn, in which appeared at intervals from underneath the snow, shaking in the wind, patches of straw or wormwood; sometimes they drove into deep white plains of snow, everywhere uniform, above which notching was visible. ”

“ In 1876 he wrote to a friend, "I continue under the delusion that what I am writing is very important, although I know that within a month the remembrance of it will be on my conscience. Sometimes I feel myself to be as a God from whom nothing is concealed, and at other times I am as stupid as a brute beast." ”

“ Meanwhile Nikita put on the horse-collar, fastened on the saddle, which was well studded with brass nails, and holding in one hand a light-coloured shaft-bow and leading the horse by the other, went on to the two sledges standing beneath the shed.
"So it is to be the little one, is it — the little one?" he kept on repeating to himself as he led between the shafts the shrewd young horse, which was pretending it wanted to bite him all the time, and began attaching him thereto with the assistance of the man-cook. ”

“ The place is full of holes, and if we fall into one we should never get out again. I stuck so fast yonder that only with difficulty did I struggle out again."
"Well, don't stand there doing nothing. We must go somewhere, I suppose," cried Vasily Andreich.
Nikita made no answer. He sat him down on the sledge with his back to the wind, pulled off his boots and shook the snow out of them, and, gathering a handful of straw, proceeded carefully to stuff it into a hole inside his left boot. ”

“ Nikita slipped softly out of the sledge, and holding fast his khalat, which now clung tightly to him from the impact of the wind, and now was wrenched away from him and fluttered behind him, began picking his way through the snow, going first in one direction and then in another. Three times he was quite hidden from view. At last he returned, and took the reins out of the hands of Vasily Andreich.
"We must go to the right," said he, sternly and decidedly, turning the horse round. ”

“ In the place of honour at table sat Vasily Andreich, in a black half-pelisse, smoothing out his frozen moustaches, and blinking at all the people in the room with his prominent, hawk-like eyes. Besides Vasily Andreich, there were sitting at table a white-bearded, bald-headed old man, the master of the house, in a white shirt of home make; alongside of him, in a shirt of fine texture, with sturdy back and shoulders, his son who had come from Moscow for the feast ”