Produced by Clare Graham and Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org TOLSTOY BY ROMAIN ROLLAND AUTHOR OF "JEAN CHRISTOPHE" TRANSLATED BY BERNARD MIALL T. FISHER UNWIN LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20 1911 PREFACE To those of my own generation, the light that has but lately failed was the purest that illumined their youth. In the gloomy twilight of the later nineteenth century it shone as a star of consolation, whose radiance attracted and appeased our awakening spirits. As one of the many--for there are many in France--to whom Tolstoy was very much more than an admired artist: for whom he was a friend, the best of friends, the one true friend in the whole of European art--I wish to lay before this sacred memory my tribute of gratitude and of love. The days when I learned to know him are days that I shall never forget. It was in 1886. After some years of silent germination the marvellous flowers of Russian art began to blossom on the soil of France. Translations of Tolstoy and of Dostoyevsky were being issued in feverish haste by all the publishing houses of Paris. Between the years '85 and '87 came _War and Peace_, _Anna Karenin, Childhood and Youth, Polikushka, The Death of Ivan Ilyitch,_ the novels of the Caucasus, and the _Tales for the People_. In the space of a few months, almost of a few weeks, there was revealed to our eager eyes the presentment of a vast, unfamiliar life, in which was reflected a new people, a new world. I had but newly entered the Normal College. My fellow-scholars were of widely divergent opinions. In our little world were such realistic and ironical spirits as the philosopher Georges Dumas; poets, like Suarès, burning with love of the Italian Renaissance; faithful disciples of classic tradition; Stendhalians, Wagnerians, atheists and mystics. It was a world of plentiful discussion, plentiful disagreement; but for a period of some months we were nearly all united by a common love of Tolstoy. It is true that each loved him for different reasons, for each discovered in him himself; but this love was a love that opened the door to a revelation of life; to the wide world itself. On every side--in our families, in our country homes--this mighty voice, which spoke from the confines of Europe, awakened the same emotions, unexpected as they often were. I remember my amazement upon hearing some middle-class people of Nivernais, my native province--people who felt no interest whatever in art, people who read practically nothing--speak with the most intense feeling of _The Death of Ivan Ilyitch_. I have read, in the writings of distinguished critics, the theory that Tolstoy owed the best of his ideas to the French romantics: to George Sand, to Victor Hugo. We may ignore the absurdity of supposing that Tolstoy, who could not endure her, could ever have been subject to the influence of George Sand; but we cannot deny the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and of Stendhal; nevertheless, we belittle the greatness of Tolstoy, and the power of his fascination, if we attribute them to his ideas. The circle of ideas in which art moves and has its being is a narrow one. It is not in those ideas that his might resides, but in his expression of them; in the personal accent, the imprint of the artist, the colour and savour of his life. Whether Tolstoy's ideas were or were not borrowed--a matter to be presently considered--never yet had a voice like to his resounded throughout Europe. How else can we explain the thrill of emotion which we all of us felt upon hearing that psychic music, that harmony for which we had so long waited, and of which we felt the need? In our opinion the style counted for nothing. Most of us, myself included, made the acquaintance of Melchior de Vogüé's work on the subject of the Russian novel[1] after we had read the novels of Tolstoy; and his admiration of our hero seemed, after ours, a pallid thing. M. de Vogüé spoke essentially as a man of letters pure and simple. But for our part it was not enough to admire the presentation of life: we lived it; it was our own. Ours it was by its ardent love of life, by its quality of youth; ours by its irony, its disillusion, its pitiless discernment, and its haunting sense of mortality. Ours by its dreams of brotherly love, of peace among men; ours by its terrible accusation of the lies of civilisation; ours by its realism; by its mysticism ours; by its savour of nature, its sense of invisible forces, its vertigo in the face of the infinite. To many of us the novels of Tolstoy were what _Werther_ was to an earlier generation: the wonderful mirror of our passions, our strength, our weaknesses, of our hopes, our terrors, our discouragement. We were in no wise anxious to reconcile these many contradictions; still less did we concern ourselves to imprison this complex, multiple mind, full of echoes of the whole wide world, within the narrow limits of religious or political categories, as have the greater number of those who have written of Tolstoy in these latter years: incapable of extricating themselves from the conflict of parties, dragging him into the arena of their own passions, measuring him by the standards of their socialistic or clerical coteries. As if our coteries could be the measure of a genius? What is it to me if Tolstoy is or is not of my party? Shall I ask of what party Shakespeare was, or Dante, before I breathe the atmosphere of his magic or steep myself in its light? We did not say, as do the critics of to-day, that there were two Tolstoys: the Tolstoy of the period before the crisis and he of the period after the crisis; that the one was the great artist, while the other was not an artist at all. For us there was only one Tolstoy, and we loved the whole of him; for we felt, instinctively, that in such souls as his all things are bound together and each has its integral place. [1] _Le Roman russe._ CONTENTS PREFACE I. CHILDHOOD II. BOYHOOD AND YOUTH III. YOUTH: THE ARMY IV. EARLY WORK: TALES OF THE CAUCASUS V. SEBASTOPOL: WAR AND RELIGION VI. ST. PETERSBURG VII. "FAMILY HAPPINESS" VIII. MARRIAGE IX. "ANNA KARENIN" X. THE CRISIS XI. REALITY XII. ART AND CONSCIENCE XIII. SCIENCE AND ART XIV. THEORIES OF ART: MUSIC XV. "RESURRECTION" XVI. RELIGION AND POLITICS XVII. OLD AGE XVIII. CONCLUSION INDEX TOLSTOY CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD Our instinct was conscious then of that which reason must prove to-day. The task is possible now, for the long life has attained its term; revealing itself, unveiled, to the eyes of all, with unequalled candour, unexampled sincerity. To-day we are at once arrested by the degree in which that life has always remained the same, from the beginning to the end, in spite of all the barriers which critics have sought to erect here and there along its course; in spite of Tolstoy himself, who, like every impassioned mind, was inclined to the belief, when he loved, or conceived a faith, that he loved or believed for the first time; that the commencement of his true life dated from that moment. Commencement--recommencement!' How often his mind was the theatre of the same struggles, the same crises I We cannot speak of the unity of his ideas, for no such unity existed; we can only speak of the persistence among them of the same diverse elements; sometimes allied, sometimes inimical; more often enemies than allies. Unity is to be found neither in the spirit nor the mind of a Tolstoy; it exists only in the internal conflict of his passions, in the tragedy of his art and his life. In him life and art are one. Never was work more intimately mingled with the artist's life; it has, almost constantly, the value of autobiography; it enables us to follow the writer, step by step, from the time when he was twenty-five years of age, throughout all the contradictory experiences of his adventurous career. His _Journal_, which he commenced before the completion of his twentieth year, and continued until his death,[1] together with the notes furnished by M. Birukov,[2] completes this knowledge, and enable us not only to read almost day by day in the history of Tolstoy's conscience, but also to reconstitute the world in which his genius struck root, and the minds from which his own drew sustenance. His was a rich inheritance. The Tolstoys and the Volkonskys were very ancient families, of the greater nobility, claiming descent from Rurik; numbering among their ancestors companions of Peter the Great, generals of the Seven Years' War, heroes of the Napoleonic struggle, Decembrists, and political exiles. This inheritance included family traditions; old memories to which Tolstoy was indebted for some of the most original types in his _War and Peace;_ there was the old Prince Bolkonsky, his maternal grandfather, Voltairian, despotic, a belated representative of the aristocracy of the days of Catherine II.; Prince Nikolas Grigorovitch Volkonsky, a cousin of his mother, who was wounded at Austerlitz, and, like Prince Andrei, was carried off the field of battle under the eyes of Napoleon; his father, who had some of the characteristics of Nicolas Rostoff;[3] and his mother, the Princess Marie, the ugly, charming woman with the beautiful eyes, whose goodness illumines the pages of _War and Peace._ He scarcely knew his parents. Those delightful narratives, _Childhood_ and _Youth_, have, therefore, but little authenticity; for the writer's mother died when he was not yet two years of age. He, therefore, was unable to recall the beloved face which the little Nikolas Irtenieff evoked beyond a veil of tears: a face with a luminous smile, which radiated gladness.... "Ah! if in difficult moments I could only see that smile, I should not know what sorrow is."[4] Yet she doubtless endowed him with her own absolute candour, her indifference to opinion, and her wonderful gift of relating tales of her own invention. His father he did in some degree remember. His was a genial yet ironical spirit; a sad-eyed man who dwelt upon his estates, leading an independent, unambitious life. Tolstoy was nine years old when he lost him. His death caused him "for the first time to understand the bitter truth, and filled his soul with despair."[5] Here was the child's earliest encounter with the spectre of terror; and henceforth a portion of his life was to be devoted to fighting the phantom, and a portion to its celebration, its transfiguration. The traces of this agony are marked by a few unforgettable touches in the final chapters of his _Childhood_, where his memories are transposed in the narrative of the death and burial of his mother. Five children were left orphans in the old house at Yasnaya Polyana.[6] There Leo Nikolayevitch was born, on the 28th of August, 1828, and there, eighty-two years later, he was to die. The youngest of the five was a girl: that Marie who in later years became a religious; it was with her that Tolstoy took refuge in dying, when he fled from home and family. Of the four sons, Sergius was charming and selfish, "sincere to a degree that I have never known equalled"; Dmitri was passionate, selfcentred, introspective, and in later years, as a student, abandoned himself eagerly to the practices of religion; caring nothing for public opinion; fasting, seeking out the poor, sheltering the infirm; suddenly, with the same quality of violence, plunging into debauchery; then, tormented by remorse, ransoming a girl whom he had known in a public brothel, and receiving her into his home; finally dying of phthisis at the age of twenty-nine.[7] Nikolas, the eldest, the favourite brother, had inherited his mother's gift of imagination, her power of telling stories;[8] ironical, nervous, and refined; in later years an officer in the Caucasus, where he formed the habit of a drunkard; a man, like his brother, full of Christian kindness, living in hovels, and sharing with the poor all that he possessed. Tourgenev said of him "that he put into practice that humble attitude towards life which his brother Leo was content to develop in theory." The orphans were cared for by two great-hearted women, one was their Aunt Tatiana,[9] of whom Tolstoy said that "she had two virtues: serenity and love." Her whole life was love; a devotion that never failed. "She made me understand the moral pleasure of loving." The other was their Aunt Alexandra, who was for ever serving others, herself avoiding service, dispensing with the help of servants. Her favourite occupation was reading the lives of the Saints, or conversing with pilgrims or the feeble-minded. Of these "innocents" there were several, men and women, who lived in the house. One, an old woman, a pilgrim, was the godmother of Tolstoy's sister. Another, the idiot Gricha, knew only how to weep and pray.... "Gricha, notable Christian! So mighty was your faith that you felt the approach of God; so ardent was your love that words rushed from your lips, words that your reason could not control. And how you used to celebrate His splendour, when speech failed you, when, all tears, you lay prostrated on the ground!"[10] Who can fail to understand the influence, in the shaping of Tolstoy, of all these humble souls? In some of them we seem to see an outline, a prophecy, of the Tolstoy of later years. Their prayers and their affection must have sown the seeds of faith in the child's mind; seeds of which the aged man was to reap the harvest. With the exception of the idiot Gricha, Tolstoy does not speak, in his narrative of _Childhood_, of these humble helpers who assisted in the work of building up his mind. But then how clearly we see it through the medium of the book--this soul of a little child; "this pure, loving heart, a ray of clear light, which always discovered in others the best of their qualities"--this more than common tenderness! Being happy, he ponders on the only creature he knows to be unhappy; he cries at the thought, and longs to devote himself to his good. He hugs and kisses an ancient horse, begging his pardon, because he has hurt him. He is happy in loving, even if he is not loved. Already we can see the germs of his future genius; his imagination, so vivid that he cries over his own stories; his brain, always busy, always trying to discover of what other people think; his precocious powers of memory[11] and observation; the attentive eyes, which even in the midst of his sorrow scrutinise the faces about him, and the authenticity of their sorrow. He tells us that at five years of age he felt for the first time "that life is not a time of amusement, but a very heavy task."[12] Happily he forgot the discovery. In those days he used to soothe his mind with popular tales; those mythical and legendary dreams known in Russia as _bylines;_ stories from the Bible; above all the sublime _History of Joseph,_ which he cited in his old age as a model of narrative art: and, finally, the Arabian Nights, which at his grandmother's house were recited every evening, from the vantage of the window-seat, by a blind story-teller. [1] With the exception of a few interruptions: one especially of considerable length, between 1865 and 1878. [2] For his remarkable biography of _Léon Tolstoï, Vie et Oeuvre, Mémoires, Souvenirs, Lettres, Extraits du Journal intime, Notes et Documents biographiques, réunis, coordonnés et annotés par P. Birukov,_ revised by Leo Tolstoy, translated into French from the MS. by J. W. Bienstock. [3] He also fought in the Napoleonic campaigns, and was a prisoner in France during the years 1814-15. [4] _Childhood_, chap. ii. [5] _Childhood_, chap, xxvii. [6] Yasnaya Polyana, the name of which signifies "the open glade" (literally, the "light glade"), is a little village to the south of Moscow, at a distance of some leagues from Toula, in one of the most thoroughly Russian of the provinces. "Here the two great regions of Russia," says M. Leroy-Beaulieu, "the region of the forests and the agricultural region, meet and melt into each other. In the surrounding country we meet with no Finns, Tatars, Poles, Jews, or Little Russians. The district of Toula lies at the very heart of Russia." [7] Tolstoy has depicted him in _Anna Karenin,_ as the brother of Levine. [8] He wrote the _Diary of a Hunter._ [9] In reality she was a distant relative. She had loved Tolstoy's father, and was loved by him; but effaced herself, like Sonia in _War and Peace_. [10] _Childhood_, chap. xii. [11] He professes, in his autobiographical notes (dated 1878), to be able to recall the sensations of being swaddled as a baby, and of being bathed in a tub. See _First Memories._ [12] _First Memories._ CHAPTER II BOYHOOD AND YOUTH He studied at Kazan.[1] He was not a notable student. It used to be said of the three brothers[2]: "Sergius wants to, and can; Dmitri wants to, and can't; Leo can't, and doesn't want to." He passed through the period which he terms "the desert of adolescence"; a desert of sterile sands, blown upon by gales of the burning winds of folly. The pages of _Boyhood_, and in especial those of _Youth_[3] are rich in intimate confessions relating to these years. He was a solitary. His brain was in a condition of perpetual fever. For a year he was completely at sea; he roamed from one system of philosophy to another. As a Stoic, he indulged in self-inflicted physical tortures. As an Epicurean he debauched himself. Then came a faith in metempsychosis. Finally he fell into a condition of nihilism not far removed from insanity; he used to feel that if only he could turn round with sufficient rapidity he would find himself face to face with nothingness ... He analysed himself continually: "I no longer thought of a thing; I thought of what I thought of it."[4] This perpetual self-analysis, this mechanism of reason turning in the void, remained to him as a dangerous habit, which was "often," in his own words, "to be detrimental to me in life"; but by which his art has profited inexpressibly.[5] As another result of self-analysis, he had lost all his religious convictions; or such was his belief. At sixteen years of age ceased to pray; he went to church no longer;[6] but his faith was not extinguished; it was only smouldering. "Nevertheless, I did believe--in something. But in what? I could not say. I still believed in God; or rather I did not deny Him. But in what God? I did not know. Nor did I deny Christ and his teaching; but I could not have said precisely what that doctrine was."[7] From time to time he was obsessed by dreams of goodness. He wished to sell his carriage and give the money to the poor: to give them the tenth part of his fortune; to live without the help of servants, "for they were men like himself." During an illness[8] he wrote certain "Rules of Life." He naively assigned himself the duty of "studying everything, of mastering all subjects: law, medicine, languages, agriculture, history, geography, and mathematics; to attain the highest degree of perfection in music and painting," and so forth. I had "the conviction that the destiny of man was a process of incessant self-perfection." Insensibly, under the stress of a boy's passions, of a violent sensuality and a stupendous pride of self,[9] this faith in perfection went astray, losing its disinterested quality, becoming material and practical. If he still wished to perfect his will, his body, and his mind, it was in order to conquer the world and to enforce its love.[10] He wished to please. To please: it was not an easy ambition. He was then of a simian ugliness: the face was long, heavy, brutish; the hair was cropped close, growing low upon the forehead; the eyes were small, with a hard, forbidding glance, deeply sunken in shadowy orbits; the nose was large, the lips were thick and protruding, and the ears were enormous.[11] Unable to alter this ugliness, which even as a child had subjected him to fits of despair,[12] he pretended to a realisation of the ideal man of the world, _l'homme comme il faut._[13] This ideal led him to do as did other "men of the world": to gamble, run foolishly into debt, and to live a completely dissipated existence.[14] One quality always came to his salvation: his absolute sincerity. "Do you know why I like you better than the others?" says Nekhludov to his friend. "You have a precious and surprising quality: candour." "Yes, I am always saying things which I am ashamed to own even to myself."[15] In his wildest moments he judges himself with a pitiless insight. "I am living an utterly bestial life," he writes in his _Journal_. "I am as low as one can fall." Then, with his mania for analysis, he notes minutely the causes of his errors: "1. Indecision or lack of energy. 2. Self-deception. 3. Insolence. 4. False modesty. 5. Ill-temper. 6. Licentiousness. 7. Spirit of imitation. 8. Versatility. 9. Lack of reflection." While still a student he was applying this independence of judgment to the criticism of social conventions and intellectual superstitions. He scoffed at the official science of the University; denied the least importance to historical studies, and was put under arrest for his audacity of thought. At this period he discovered Rousseau, reading his _Confessions_ and _Émile_. The discovery affected him like a mental thunderbolt. "I made him an object of religious worship. I wore a medallion portrait of him hung round my neck, as though it were a holy image."[16] His first essays in philosophy took the form of commentaries on Rousseau (1846-47). In the end, however, disgusted with the University and with "smartness," he returned to Yasnaya Polyana, to bury himself in the country (1847-51); where he once more came into touch with the people. He professed to come to their assistance, as their benefactor and their teacher. His experiences of this period have been related in one of his earliest books, _A Russian Proprietor_ (_A Landlord's Morning_) (1852); a remarkable novel, whose hero, Prince Nekhludov, Nekhludov figures also in _Boyhood_ and _Youth_ (1854), in _A Brush with the Enemy_ (1856); the _Diary of a Sportsman_ (1856); _Lucerne_ (1857); and _Resurrection_ (1899). We must remember that different characters appear under this one name. Tolstoy has not always given Nekhludov the same physical aspect; and the latter commits suicide at the end of the _Diary of a Sportsman_. These different Nekhludovs are various aspects of Tolstoy, endowed with his worst and his best characteristics, is Tolstoy in disguise. Nekhludov is twenty years old. He has left the University to devote himself to his peasants. He has been labouring for a year to do them good. In the course of a visit to the village we see him striving against jeering indifference, rooted distrust, routine, apathy, vice, and ingratitude. All his efforts are in vain. He returns indoors discouraged, and muses on his dreams of a year ago; his generous enthusiasm, his "idea that love and goodness were one with happiness and truth: the only happiness and the only truth possible in this world." He feels himself defeated. He is weary and ashamed. "Seated before the piano, his hand unconsciously moved upon the keys. A chord sounded; then a second, then a third.... He began to play. The chords were not always perfect in rhythm; they were often obvious to the point of banality; they did not reveal any talent for music; but they gave him a melancholy, indefinable sense of pleasure. At each change of key he awaited, with a flutter of the heart, for what was about to follow; his imagination vaguely supplementing the deficiencies of the actual sound. He heard a choir, an orchestra ... and his keenest pleasure arose from the enforced activity of his imagination, which brought before him, without logical connection, but with astonishing clearness, the most varied scenes and images of the past and the future...." Once more he sees the moujiks--vicious, distrustful, lying, idle, obstinate, contrary, with whom he has lately been speaking; but this time he sees them with all their good qualities and without their vices; he sees into their hearts with the intuition of love; he sees therein their patience, their resignation to the fate which is crushing them; their forgiveness of wrongs, their family affection, and the causes of their pious, mechanical attachment to the past. He recalls their days of honest labour, healthy and fatiguing.... "'It is beautiful,' he murmurs.... Why am I not one of these?'"[17] The entire Tolstoy is already contained in the hero of this first novel;[18] his piercing vision and his persistent illusions. He observes men and women with an impeccable realism; but no sooner does he close his eyes than his dreams resume their sway; his dreams and his love of mankind. [1] From 1842 to 1847. Science was as yet unorganised; and its teachers, even in Western Europe, had not the courage of the facts they taught. Men still sought for an anchor in the philosophic systems of the ancients. The theory of evolution, put forward at the beginning of the century, had fallen into obscurity. Science was dry, dogmatic, uncoordinated, insignificant. Hence, perhaps, the contempt for science which distinguished Tolstoy throughout his life, and which made the later Tolstoy possible.--TRANS. [2] Nikolas, five years older than Leo, had completed his studies in 1844. [3] The English translation is entitled _ Childhood, Boyhood, Youth._ [4] _Youth_, six. [5] Notably in his first volumes--in the _Tales of Sebastopol_. [6] This was the time when he used to read Voltaire, and find pleasure in so doing. [7] _Confessions,_ vol. i. [8] In March and April, 1847. [9] "All that man does he does out of _amour-propre,_" says Nekhludov, in _Boyhood._ In 1853 Tolstoy writes, in his _Journal_: "My great failing: pride. A vast self-love, without justification.... I am so ambitious that if I had to choose between glory and virtue (which I love) I am sure I should choose the former." [10] "I wanted to be known by all, loved by all. I wanted every one, at the mere sound of my name, to be struck with admiration and gratitude." [11] According to a portrait dated 1848, in which year he attained his twentieth year. [12] "I thought there would be no happiness on earth for any one who had so large a nose, so thick lips, and such small eyes." [13] "I divided humanity into three classes: the 'correct,' or 'smart,' who alone were worthy of esteem; those who were not 'correct,' who deserved only contempt and hatred; and the people, the _plebs,_ who simply did not exist." (_Youth,_ xxxi.) [14] Especially during a period spent in St. Petersburg, 1847-48. [15] _Boyhood._ [16] Conversations with M. Paul Boyer _(Le Temps),_ August 28, 1901. [17] _A Russian Proprietor._ [18] Contemporary with _Childhood._ CHAPTER III YOUTH: THE ARMY Tolstoy, in the year 1850, was not as patient as Nekhludov. Yasnaya Polyana had disillusioned and disappointed him. He was as weary of the people as he was of the world of fashion; his attitude as benefactor wearied him; he could bear it no more. Moreover, he was harassed by creditors. In 1851 he escaped to the Caucasus; to the army in which his brother Nikolas was already an officer. He had hardly arrived, hardly tasted the quiet of the mountains, before he was once more master of himself; before he had recovered his God. "Last night[1] I hardly slept. I began to pray to God. I cannot possibly express the sweetness of the feeling that came to me when I prayed. I recited the customary prayers; but I went on praying for a long time. I felt the desire of something very great, very beautiful.... What? I cannot say what. I wanted to be one with the Infinite Being: to be dissolved, comprehended, in Him. I begged Him to forgive me my trespasses.... But no, I did not beg Him; I felt that He did pardon me, since He granted me that moment of wonderful joy. I was praying, yet at the same time I felt that I could not, dared not pray. I thanked Him, not in words, but in thought.... Scarcely an hour had passed, and I was listening to the voice of vice. I fell asleep dreaming of glory, of women: it was stronger than I. Never mind! I thank God for that moment of happiness: for showing me my pettiness and my greatness. I want to pray, but I do not know how; I want to understand, but I dare not. I abandon myself to Thy will!"[2] The flesh was not conquered; not then, nor ever; the struggle between God and the passions of man continued in the silence of his heart. Tolstoy speaks in his _Journal_ of the three demons which were devouring him: 1. _The passion for gambling._ Possible struggle. 2. _Sensuality_. Struggle very difficult. 3. _Vanity_. The most terrible of all. At the very moment when he was dreaming of living for others and of sacrificing himself, voluptuous or futile thoughts would assail him: the image of some Cossack woman, or "the despair he would feel if his moustache were higher on one side than the other."--"No matter!" God was there; He would not forsake him. Even the effervescence of the struggle was fruitful: all the forces of life were exalted thereby. "I think the idea of making a journey to the Caucasus, however frivolous at the time of conception, was inspired in me from above. God's hand has guided me. I never cease to thank Him. I feel that I have become better here; and I am firmly convinced that whatever happens to me can only be for my good, since it is God Himself who has wished it...."[3] It is the song of gratitude of the earth in spring. Earth covers herself with flowers; all is well, all is beautiful. In 1852 the genius of Tolstoy produces its earliest flowers: _Childhood, The Russian Proprietor, The Invasion, Boyhood;_ and he thanks the Spirit of life who has made him fruitful.[4] [1] The 11th of June, 1851, in the fortified camp of Starï-Iourt, in the Caucasus. [2] _Journal._ [3] Letter to his Aunt Tatiana, January, 1852. [4] A portrait dated 1851 already shows the change which is being accomplished in his mind. The head is raised; the expression is somewhat brighter; the cavities of the orbits are less in shadow; the eyes themselves still retain their fixed severity of look, and the open mouth, shadowed by a growing moustache, is gloomy and sullen; there is still a quality of defiant pride, but far more youth. CHAPTER IV EARLY WORK: TALES OF THE CAUCASUS _The Story of my Childhood_[1] was commenced in the autumn of 1851, at Tiflis; it was finished at Piatigorsk in the Caucasus, on the 2nd of July, 1852. It is curious to note that while in the midst of that nature by which he was so intoxicated, while leading a life absolutely novel, in the midst of the stirring risks of warfare, occupied in the discovery of a world of unfamiliar characters and passions, Tolstoy should have returned, in this his first work, to the memories of his past life. But _Childhood_ was written during a period of illness, when his military activity was suddenly arrested. During the long leisure of a convalescence, while alone and suffering, his state of mind inclined to the sentimental;[2] the past unrolled itself before his eyes at a time when he felt for it a certain tenderness. After the exhausting tension of the last few unprofitable years, it was comforting to live again in thought the "marvellous, innocent, joyous, poetic period" of early childhood; to reconstruct for himself "the heart of a child, good, sensitive, and capable of love." With the ardour of youth and its illimitable projects, with the cyclic character of his poetic imagination, which rarely conceived an isolated subject, and whose great romances are only the links in a long historic chain, the fragments of enormous conceptions which he was never able to execute,[3] Tolstoy at this moment regarded his narrative of _Childhood_ as merely the opening chapters of a _History of Four Periods_, which was to include his life in the Caucasus, and was in all probability to have terminated in the revelation of God by Nature. In later years Tolstoy spoke with great severity of his _Childhood_, to which he owed some part of his popularity. "It is so bad," he remarked to M. Birukov: "it is written with so little literary conscience!... There is nothing to be got from it." He was alone in this opinion. The manuscript was sent, without the author's name, to the great Russian review, the _Sovremennik_ (_Contemporary_); it was published immediately (September 6, 1852), and achieved a general success; a success confirmed by the public of every country in Europe. Yet in spite of its poetic charm, its delicacy of touch and emotion, we can understand that it may have displeased the Tolstoy of later years. It displeased him for the very reasons by which it pleased others. We must admit it frankly: except in the recording of certain provincial types, and in a restricted number of passages which are remarkable for their religious feeling or for the realistic treatment of emotion,[4] the personality of Tolstoy is barely in evidence. A tender, gentle sentimentality prevails from cover to cover; a quality which was always afterwards antipathetic to Tolstoy, and one which he sedulously excluded from his other romances. We recognise it; these tears, this sentimentality came from Dickens, who was one of Tolstoy's favourite authors between his fourteenth and his twenty-first year. Tolstoy notes in his _Journal_: "Dickens: _David Copperfield_. Influence considerable." He read the book again in the Caucasus. Two other influences, to which he himself confesses, were Sterne and Töppfer. "I was then," he says, "under their inspiration."[5] Who would have thought that the _Nouvelles Genevoises_ would be the first model of the author of _War and Peace?_ Yet knowing this to be a fact, we discern in Tolstoy's _Childhood_ the same bantering, affected geniality, transplanted to the soil of a more aristocratic nature. So we see that the readers of his earliest efforts found the writer's countenance familiar. It was not long, however, before his own personality found self-expression. His _Boyhood_ (_Adolescence_), though less pure and less perfect than _Childhood_, exhibits a more original power of psychology, a keen feeling for nature, and a mind full of distress and conflict, which Dickens or Töppfer would have been at a loss to express. In the _Russian Proprietor_ (October, 1852[6]) Tolstoy's character appeared sharply defined, marked by his fearless sincerity and his faith in love. Among the remarkable portraits of peasants which he has painted in this novel, we find an early sketch of one of the finest conceptions of his _Popular Tales:_ the old man with the beehives; a the little old man under the birch-tree, his hands outstretched, his eyes raised, his bald head shining in the sun, and all around him the bees, touched with gold, never stinging him, forming a halo.... But the truly typical works of this period are those which directly register his present emotions: namely, the novels of the Caucasus. The first, _The Invasion_ (finished in December, 1852), impresses the reader deeply by the magnificence of its landscapes: a sunrise amidst the mountains, on the bank of a river; a wonderful night-piece, with sounds and shadows noted with a striking intensity; and the return in the evening, while the distant snowy peaks disappear in the violet haze, and the clear voices of the regimental singers rise and fall in the transparent air. Many of the types of _War and Peace_ are here drawn to the life: Captain Khlopoff, the true hero, who by no means fights because he likes fighting, but because it is his duty; a man with "one of those truly Russian faces, placid and simple, and eyes into which it is easy and agreeable to gaze." Heavy, awkward, a trifle ridiculous, indifferent to his surroundings, he alone is unchanged in battle, where all the rest are changed; "he is exactly as we have seen him always: with the same quiet movements, the same level voice, the same expression of simplicity on his heavy, simple face." Next comes the lieutenant who imitates the heroes of Lermontov; a most kindly, affectionate boy, who professes the utmost ferocity. Then comes the poor little subaltern, delighted at the idea of his first action, brimming over with affection, ready to fall on his comrade's neck; a laughable, adorable boy, who, like Petia Rostoff, contrives to get stupidly killed. In the centre of the picture is the figure of Tolstoy, the observer, who is mentally aloof from his comrades, and _I_ already utters his cry of protest against warfare: "Is it impossible, then, for men to live in peace, in this world so full of beauty, under this immeasurable starry sky? How is it they are able, here, to retain their feelings of hostility and vengeance, and the lust of destroying their fellows? All there is of evil in the human heart ought to disappear at the touch of nature, that most immediate expression of the beautiful and the good."[7] Other tales of the Caucasus were to follow which were observed at this time, though not written until a later period. In 1854-55. _The Woodcutters_ was written; a book notable for its exact and rather frigid realism; full of curious records of Russian soldier-psychology--notes to be made use of in the future. In 1856 appeared _A Brush with the Enemy_, in which there is a man of the world, a degraded non-commissioned officer, a wreck, a coward, a drunkard and a liar, who cannot support the idea of being slaughtered like one of the common soldiers he despises, the least of whom is worth a hundred of himself. Above all these works, as the summit, so to speak, of this first mountain range, rises one of the most beautiful lyric romances that ever fell from Tolstoy's pen: the song of his youth, the poem of the Caucasus, _The Cossacks_.[8] The splendour of the snowy mountains displaying their noble lines against the luminous sky fills the whole work with its music. The book is unique, for it belongs to the flowering-time of genius, "the omnipotent god of youth," as Tolstoy says, "that rapture which never returns." What a spring-tide torrent! What an overflow of love! "'I love--I love so much!... How brave! How good!' he repeated: and he felt as though he must weep. Why? Who was brave, and whom did he love? That he did not precisely know."[9] This intoxication of the heart flows on, unchecked. Olenin, the hero, who has come to the Caucasus, as Tolstoy came, to steep himself in nature, in the life of adventure, becomes enamoured of a young Cossack girl, and abandons himself to the medley of his contradictory aspirations. At one moment he believes that "happiness is to live for others, to sacrifice oneself," at another, that "self-sacrifice is only stupidity"; finally he is inclined to believe, with Erochta, the old Cossack, that "everything is precious. God has made everything for the delight of man. Nothing is a sin. To amuse oneself with a handsome girl is not a sin: it is only health." But what need to think at all? It is enough to live. Life is all good, all happiness; life is all-powerful and universal; life is God. An ardent naturalism uplifts and consumes his soul. Lost in the forest, amidst "the wildness of the woods, the multitude of birds and animals, the clouds of midges in the dusky green, in the warm, fragrant air, amidst the little runlets of water which trickle everywhere beneath the boughs"; a few paces from the ambushes of the enemy, Olenin is "seized suddenly by such a sense of causeless happiness that in obedience to childish habit he crossed himself and began to give thanks to somebody." Like a Hindu fakir, he rejoices to tell himself that he is alone and lost in this maëlstrom of aspiring life: that myriads of invisible beings, hidden on every hand, are that moment hunting him to death; that these thousands of little insects humming around him are calling: "Here, brothers, here! Here is some one to bite!" And it became obvious to him that he was no longer a Russian gentleman, in Moscow society, but simply a creature like the midge, the pheasant, the stag: like those which were living and prowling about him at that moment. "Like them, I shall live, I shall die. And the grass will grow above me...." And his heart is full of happiness. Tolstoy lives through this hour of youth in a delirium of vitality and the love of life. He embraces Nature, and sinks himself in her being. To her he pours forth and exalts his griefs, his joys, and his loves; in her he lulls them to sleep. Yet this romantic intoxication never veils the lucidity of his perceptions. Nowhere has he painted landscape with a greater power than in this fervent poem; nowhere has he depicted the type with greater truth. The contrast of nature with the world of men, which forms the basis of the book; and which through all Tolstoy's life is to prove one of his favourite themes, and an article of his _Credo,_ has already inspired him, the better to castigate the world, with something of the bitterness to be heard in the _Kreutzer Sonata_.[10] But for those who love him he is no less truly himself; and the creatures of nature, the beautiful Cossack girl and her friends, are seen under a searching light, with their egoism, their cupidity, their venality, and all their vices. An exceptional occasion was about to offer itself for the exercise of this heroic veracity. [1] Published in English as part of _Childhood, Boyhood, Youth._ [2] His letters of this period to his Aunt Tatiana are full of tears and of sentimentality. He was, as he says, _Liovariova,_ "Leo the Sniveller" (January 6, 1852). [3] The _Russian Proprietor_ (_A Landlord's Morning_) is the fragment of a projected _Romance of a Russian Landowner. The Cossacks_ forms the first portion of a great romance of the Caucasus. In the author's eyes the huge _War and Peace_ was only a sort of preface to a contemporary epic, of which _The Decembrists_ was to have been the nucleus. [4] See the passage relating to the pilgrim Gricha, or to the death of his mother. [5] Letter to Birukov. [6] Completed only in 1855-56. _The Two Old Men_ (1885). [7] _The Invasion._ [8] Although completed much later--in 1860--and appearing only in 1863--the bulk of this volume was of this period. [9] _The Cossacks_. [10] For example, see Oleniln's letter to his friends in Russia. CHAPTER V SEBASTOPOL: WAR AND RELIGION In November, 1853, war was declared upon Turkey. Tolstoy obtained an appointment to the army of Roumania; he was transferred to the army of the Crimea, and on November 7, 1854, he arrived in Sebastopol. He was burning with enthusiasm and patriotic faith. He went about his duties courageously, and was often in danger, in especial throughout the April and May of 1855, when he served on every alternate day in the battery of of the 4th bastion. Living for months in a perpetual tremor and exaltation, face to face with death, his religious mysticism revived. He became familiar with God. In April, 1855, he noted in his diary a prayer to God, thanking Him for His protection in danger and beseeching Him to continue it, "so that I may achieve the glorious and eternal end of life, of which I am still ignorant, although I feel a presentiment of it." Already this object of his life was not art, but religion. On March 5, 1855, he wrote: "I have been led to conceive a great idea, to whose realisation I feel capable of devoting my whole life. This idea is the foundation of a new religion; the religion of the Christ, but purified of dogmas and mysteries.... To act with a clear conscience, in order to unite men by means of religion."[1] This was to be the programme of his old age. However, to distract himself from the spectacles which surrounded him, he began once more to write. How could he, amidst that hail of lead, find the necessary freedom of mind for the writing of the third part of his memories: _Youth?_ The book is chaotic; and we may attribute to the conditions of its production a quality of disorder, and at times a certain dryness of abstract analysis, which is increased by divisions and subdivisions after the manner of Stendhal.[2] Yet we admire his calm penetration of the mist of dreams and inchoate ideas which crowd a young brain. His work is extraordinarily true to itself, and at moments what poetic freshness!--as in the vivid picture of springtime in the city, or the tale of the confession, and the journey to the convent, on account of the forgotten sin! An impassioned pantheism lends to certain pages a lyric beauty, whose accents recall the tales of the Caucasus. For example, this description of an evening in the spring: "The calm splendour of the shining crescent; the gleaming fish-pond; the ancient birch-trees, whose long-tressed boughs were on one side silvered by the moonlight, while on the other they covered the path and the bushes with their black shadows; the cry of a quail beyond the pond; the barely perceptible sound of two ancient trees which grazed one another; the humming of the mosquitoes; the fall of an apple on the dry leaves; and the frogs leaping up to the steps of the terrace, their backs gleaming greenish under a ray of moonlight.... The moon is mounting; suspended in the limpid sky, she fills all space with her light; the splendour of the moonlit water grows yet more brilliant, the shadows grow blacker, the light more transparent.... And to me, an obscure and earthy creature, already soiled with every human passion, but endowed with all the stupendous power of love, it seemed at that moment that all nature, the moon, and I myself were one and the same."[3] But the present reality, potent and imperious, spoke more loudly than the dreams of the past. _Youth_ remained unfinished; and Captain Count Tolstoy, behind the plating of his bastion, amid the rumbling of the bombardment, or in the midst of his company, observed the dying and the living, and recorded their miseries and his own, in his unforgettable narratives of _Sebastopol._ These three narratives_--Sebastopol in December, 1854, Sebastopol in May, 1855, Sebastopol in August, 1855_--are generally confounded with one another; but in reality they present many points of difference. The second in particular, in point both of feeling and of art, is greatly superior to the others. The others are dominated by patriotism; the second is charged with implacable truth. It is said that after reading the first narrative[4] the Tsarina wept, and the Tsar, moved by admiration, commanded that the story should be translated into French, and the author sent out of danger. We can readily believe it. Nothing in these pages but exalts warfare and the fatherland. Tolstoy had just arrived; his enthusiasm was intact; he was afloat on a tide of heroism. As yet he could see in the defenders of Sebastopol neither ambition nor vanity, nor any unworthy feeling. For him the war was a sublime epic; its heroes were "worthy of Greece." On the other hand, these notes exhibit no effort of the imagination, no attempt at objective representation. The writer strolls through the city; he sees with the utmost lucidity, but relates what he sees in a form which is wanting in freedom: "You see ... you enter ... you notice...." This is first-class reporting; rich in admirable impressions. Very different is the second scene: _Sebastopol in May, 1855_. In the opening lines we read: "Here the self-love, the vanity of thousands of human beings is in conflict, or appeased in death...." And further on: "And as there were many men, so also were there many forms of vanity.... Vanity, vanity, everywhere vanity, even at the door of the tomb! It is the peculiar malady of our century.... Why do the Homers and Shakespeares speak of love, of glory, and of suffering, and why is the literature of our century nothing but the
{'title': 'Tolstoy by Romain Rolland', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}