Leo Tolstoy

“ 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! ”

“ The main duty of man is self-renunciation and absolute subjection to the will of the mass of humanity which makes up the nation. Kutuzov was a great man simply because he understood this, and had no independent will of his own. Such a system necessarily postulates the non-existence of separate human individuality, and, logically pursued, would make unconscious instinct the best, because the strongest force in nature. Even religion is discarded, because, as Tolstoi plainly perceived, religion strengthens the sense of individuality by making man self-conscious. ”

“ The character of Napoleon is of itself a revelation. A great critic has well said that after reading the description of Alexander’s interview with Bonaparte at Tilsit, one cannot rid oneself of the conviction that Tolstoi must have been concealed somewhere in the same room, for nowhere else do we seem to see “the little corporal” so vividly in the flesh as in the pages of “Voina i Mir.” The philosophy of the book, as already hinted, is not without a tinge of Schopenhauerism. Thus, man’s reason, coupled with his exacting egoism, is held to be the source of all human suffering. ”

“ We learn from his letter to Dembinsky in 1886, what moved Tolstoi thus to cater for the humblest of his readers: “These millions of poor Russians who just know their letters stand before us like so many hungry little daws with wide-open mouths crying to us: ‘Gospoda [9] native writers! throw into these mouths of ours spiritual food worthy of you and us, nourish us hungry ones with the living literary word!’—And the simple and honest Russian people deserves that we should respond to its call.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ I tried to believe in the endearing words with which Theodor Ivanovich enticed me to him; I tried not to perceive the contempt with which the other children received me, because I was smaller than they; I tried to think that it was a shame for a big boy to go on living with little girls, and there was no good at all in the life upstairs with my nurse ”

“ Tolstoi returned from his second visit to the West full of educational ideas, which he instantly proceeded to put into practice. He began to publish a pedagogic journal, entitled Yasnaya Polyana, from the name of his estate, and started a school for the children of his peasantry—the first free school that ever existed in Russia, which was absolutely unique of its kind. Tolstoi adopted the two-fold principle that “all constraint is dangerous and argues want of proper method,” and that “teachers ought to consult not their own convenience but the convenience of their pupils.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With the possible exception of Turgenev’s “Otsui i Dycti” (“Fathers and Sons”) five years earlier no other Russian book ever created such a sensation. Despite its obvious defects (defects far less discernible, however, in the original than the translations be they never so good) , prolixity, an almost total absence of humour and a disposition to philosophize á la Schopenhauer, under whose fascination Tolstoi lay at that particular time, [6] “Voina i Mir” must ever rank amongst the few supremely great masterpieces of the world’s literature. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some indefinable power drove me towards the idea of ridding myself of life somehow or other. Indeed, the thought of suicide became so attractive that I had to use artifice against it so as not immediately to put it into execution. ”

“ I began to feel for the first time that life was not a game, but a serious affair . . .” [3] Shortly before the death of Tolstoi’s father, the whole family, consisting of four boys and one little girl, removed to Moscow in order that the eldest son, Nicholas, might prepare for the University, but the sudden death of Count Tolstoi, almost immediately afterwards, left the family in such straitened circumstances that they were obliged to return at once to Yasnaya Polyana, where the children were taught German by a German governess and Russian language and literature by a poor native seminarist. ”

“ If Tolstoi’s mother had some of the characteristics of a saint, as much cannot be said of his aunt and guardian, Polina Yushkovaya. She appears, from all accounts, to have been a good-natured, worldly minded woman, very proud of her great connexions, and considering wealth and position as the sole means to happiness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nature till my fifth year did not exist for me. All that I recollect occurs in my little bed and in my bedroom. . . People must have let me play with flowers, with leaves; they must needs have shielded me from the sun; but till my fifth or sixth year I have not a single recollection of what we call nature. Possibly one has to get away from her in order to see her, and I was nature.
“The next thing after my trough that I recollect is the recollection of Eremeevna. ‘Eremeevna’ was the word with which they used to frighten us children. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ He never would believe in the regenerating influence of mere culture. This was the secret of his quarrel with his great contemporary, Turgenev, whose cosmopolitanism, Anglomania, and “gentlemanly way of regarding literature and progress generally,” absolutely revolted him. The Russian author, Fet’, who met Tolstoi one evening at Nekrasov’s, observed in him, at the very first instant, “an involuntary opposition to everything generally accepted in the department of criticism.” ”

“ First he turned to Science, only to receive an interminable quantity of dark answers to questions he had never asked, but as to the meaning of life he did not receive, and of course could not receive any answer, for Science does not and cannot occupy herself with such a question. ”

“ Yet Peter himself seems always to have stood on his guard against him. “Tolstoi,” he is reported to have said, “is an able and intelligent man; but it is just as well, when you have anything to do with him, to have a good big stone handy, that you may be able to break his teeth in case it should suddenly occur to him to bite you.” It was this sinister sleuth-hound who hunted down the unfortunate Tsarevich Alexis in his Neapolitan retreat, and thus drew down upon himself the well-merited hatred of the Russian people, who regarded the murdered Prince as a martyr for orthodoxy. ”

“ In the winter he generally resides at Moscow, frequenting, by preference, charitable institutions and working men’s concerts, despite his advanced age taking the liveliest interest in every question of the day, especially those relating to religion and morality, and delighting everyone by the alertness of his intelligence and the generous breadth of his sympathy. ”

“ He had always been of the opinion that “the only really honest labour worthy of a man was manual labour,” and from henceforth he adopted the life of a common peasant, and worked vigorously alongside his labourers in his own fields. ”

“ One of her favourite maxims was, nothing licks a young man into shape so much as a carefully contrived liaison with a woman comme il faut. Nor were matters made much better when, in the early forties, young Tolstoi went to Kazan to complete his education. It was usual in those days for the Russian youths to go direct to the University from their homes, where the teaching they got was, at best, very impecfect and perfunctory, instead of, as now, using the Gymnasium as a stepping-stone to the University. ”

“ Princely students kept whole streets in a state of siege for weeks together by incessantly discharging air-guns from their garret-windows at all passers-by, and most of the aristocratic students formed exclusive little coteries among themselves which were so engrossed with really important matters like balls, picnics, dramatic entertainments, and very often less reputable forms of amusement, that they had very little time left for mere study. ”

“ The higher classes, all more or less closely connected, gloried in a large patriarchal hospitality. A young bachelor student of good family in those days need never keep his own table. Twenty or thirty houses were open to him daily without special invitation, he had only to pick and choose. A student, when once in the full swing of the thing, could rarely get to bed till five o’clock in the morning, and rarely rose till after twelve o’clock at noon. Tolstoi, in the character of “Nikolinka Irtenev,” has given us a vivid piece of self-portraiture as he was at Kazan. ”

“ Tolstoi abruptly introduced himself as Eugen Bauman, one of Auerbach’s characters; but the author of the “Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten,” was more frightened than flattered by the unlooked-for inroad of the grim, bizarre-looking young Muscovite, and even Tolstoi’s compliment, “Your books have made me think seriously of many things,” did not immediately reassure him. At first Auerbach seems to have taken him for a peasant from some remote village who had come either to abuse or to blackmail him for defamation of character. ”

“ There can be little doubt that the rude but salutary lessons of active warfare, teaching as it does to those who will learn the lesson, the urgent necessity of complete self-restraint and self-surrender, had a purifying, ennobling influence on Tolstoi’s character. ”

“ On another occasion, however, he admits, without reserve, that he is perfectly happy in his married life. He has discovered that Fanny is not only a loving wife but an excellent mother, and a helper even in his literary work. ”

“ To this residence among the Bashkirs we are indebted for that piercingly vivid story: “How much land does a man want?” which will be found in my former volume of selections, entitled “Tales from Tolstoi.”
Tolstoi presently exchanged the rough hospitality of the nomadic Bashkirs for the comfort of a home of his own. On September 23rd, 1862, he married Sophia Behr, the second daughter of a Moscow physician. ”

“ A morbid sensitiveness, a pitiful lack of moral and mental equilibrium, a consuming pride, and a disgust at his own privileged position which points to a latent reserve of nobility, is legible in every line of this description. ”