Midweek Review
The life and works of Leo Tolstoy
By Dr. SIRI
GALHENAGE
Retired Psychiatrist
[The following is an abbreviated and a modified version of a presentation to the History, Philosophy and Ethics Section of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists – WA Branch, on 15 June 2021]
“Tolstoy serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature”
– Anton Chekov [1860 -1904]
The Russian literary artist, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy [1828–1910], better known in the world over as Leo Tolstoy, is generally regarded as one of the most potent creative forces of world literature. He was primarily a novelist and a short-story writer, and was considered to be the master of realism – having written ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Ana Karenina’, the high peaks of realist fiction occupying the foreground of his rich literary landscape. Tolstoy was also a philosopher, social reformer and a religious activist who blended his ideology into prose fiction.
Through this essay, I wish to track the journey of self discovery of the great novelist that shaped his personal philosophy and in turn his literary artistry.
JOURNEY of SELF DISCOVERY
The story of the great story teller is as enthralling as the stories he wrote. It was so dramatic that a Tolstoy biographer, referred to his life as ‘more war than peace!’ As the drama of his life unfolded, he wore, consecutively, the mask of aristocrat, land owner, soldier, social reformer, religious activist, moral crusader, pacifist and wandering ascetic, against a backdrop of Imperial [Tsarist] Russia in transition from a feudal to an industrial society. His life is intricately linked to the evolving socio-cultural and political developments of his era.
Tolstoy was born in 1828 to an aristocratic family of landowners in the ancestral property of Yasnaya Polyana, hundred kilometres south west of Moscow.
Death was a regular visitor throughout his formative years. He lost his mother at the age of two years, followed by his father and his grandmother when he was nine. He was then taken away [along with his sister and his three brothers] to Kazan, a regional city to live with his aunt, who too died when he was fourteen. The emotional impact of the series of losses on young Leo is not clearly known.
What is known is that, due to a lack of structure and guidance, Leo entered a life of youthful debauchery during his adolescence and early adulthood. He was attracted to the brothels and gypsy cabarets of Moscow, and ‘sowed his wild oats on peasant and gypsy women’. He abused alcohol, gambled and fell into debt, and was forced to sell off some of his inherited property to pay his gambling debts.
But Leo’s intellectual potential was never in doubt. He joined the University of Kazan to study Law and Languages. He read Oriental as well as Arabo-Turkic languages and was also conversant with French, German and English. Unfortunately, his restlessness made him leave the University, before graduating.
Tolstoy was strongly influenced by the philosophical concepts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-78], the French-Swiss thinker and social reformer. Rousseau believed in an inherent goodness in man which is corrupted as he gathers power and wealth in a so-called sophisticated society, leading to unhappiness. Man’s salvation is to be found in returning to a primary culture and leading a life of simplicity and selflessness. Rousseau’s thoughts on greater social equality, rejection of organised religions in favour personal conscience, promotion of child-based education etc. had a particular impact on moulding Tolstoy’s personal philosophy and in turn his literary offerings.
In an attempt at reforming himself Tolstoy had a shot at being a model farmer and a scholar, at the same time, but failed miserably in his endeavour.
Perhaps needing external control, he headed off to the Caucasus to join his brother who was posted as an officer with the Russian army in a Cossack village, bordering Chechnya, fighting the local rebels. After a period of idling, gambling and sexual misdemeanours, he joined the army as a cadet and started writing! It was during this period, recuperating from Venereal Disease, that he wrote his first literary piece, ‘Childhood, Boyhood and Youth‘– semiautobiographical – gaining a reputation as a writer of promise.
Tolstoy then joined the Russian forces in Crimea defending the strategic Black Sea port of Sevastopol against an invasion of allied forces of the British, French and the Ottomans [1854-55]. Here he adopted a dual role as combatant and war reporter. In his latter role, accompanying the reader to the theatre of war, he portrayed a plethora of emotions in the faces and in the hearts of civilians and combatants alike – sadness, cowardice, terror, hatred and even an admiration for the enemy. He gained acclaim as the first war correspondent and was credited for his descriptive precision. ‘At Sevastopol…. there was a camera with intelligence called Tolstoy’. His dispatches to the Journal, ‘The Contemporary’, which came to be known as the ‘Sevastopol Sketches’ became part of his literary canon. He wrote, “The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the strength of my soul, whom I have tried to set forth in all his beauty, and who has been, is, and always will be most beautiful, is – The Truth”.
The experience of living through the horrors of the hostilities in Crimea made him change his attitude towards war, as reflected in his writing – from a patriotic fervour to futility, leading to a lifelong doctrine of ‘pacifism’.
On returning home from Crimea, Tolstoy identified himself with the peasants, developed an affinity for the rural landscape and felt deeply about the social inequity that existed between aristocracy and peasantry – attitudes strongly reflected in his later writing. He wore peasant clothes, grew a beard and ‘gave up the pen for the plough’. He fell in love with a peasant woman, Axinya, who bore him a son, Timofei, in 1858 – a matter that haunted him for the rest of his life.
At this stage there was increasing pressure from the family for him to get married and settle down. In 1862, having reached the age of 34, he married Sofia Behrs – half his age – the daughter of a respected doctor. Few days before the wedding, in an act which could be described as brutal, Tolstoy forced his fiancé, young and tender, to read his diaries with sordid details about his past – his drunken episodes, sexual encounters, gambling sessions, venereal disease and his relationship with the peasant woman who bore him a son. In return, he demanded the truth about her past. Nevertheless, the marriage went ahead with a grand ceremony at the Kremlin as he was seen as a promising young man – a wealthy, land-owning aristocrat with literary potential. A suitable boy!
There was relative harmony during the first decade of marriage. It was during this period that Tolstoy wrote his masterpiece ‘War and Peace”. But there was not much intimacy between husband and wife: they communicated their feelings through each other’s diaries! He believed that sexual intercourse was purely for procreation. Sofia bore 13 children in all; four of them died during childhood. He did not believe in the emancipation of women. This was in marked contrast to the sensitivity he has shown towards the female sex in his literary expression, exemplified in the characterisation of Marsha in the novella, ‘Family Happiness’ [in which he occupies the role of Marsha, the protagonist, and narrates the story in the first person] and in other great works such as ‘Anna Karenina’ and ‘Kreutzer Sonata’.
Despite the tenuous relationship, Sofia remained loyal to her husband. She was unable to pursue her own intellectual development she longed for. Instead she performed the thankless task of copying and recopying voluminous manuscripts in preparation for publication, in addition to attending to her husband’s needs, looking after the children, running the estate and keeping accounts.
But with the escalation of domestic unhappiness, Sofia became preoccupied with physical ailments and death, entertained thoughts of suicide, with a wish to join her dead children. She started abusing opium, at times was incoherent in her speech, became suspicious of her husband and harboured thoughts of killing Axinya, the peasant woman who bore him the illegitimate child. But she persevered!
There was a fundamental change in the life of Tolstoy in the final quarter of the 19th century with a spiritual awakening. He challenged what he thought was the hypocrisy of the Russian Orthodox Church for moving away from the central tenets of Christianity, aligning itself with the authoritative administrative machine. His religious activism resulted in his excommunication from the church. He was influenced by the eastern religions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism, and advocated a synthesis of all faiths, highlighting man’s desire for love as reflected in all religions.
Embarking on a spiritual quest, he campaigned for universal love and pacifism, gave up hunting and alcohol and stopped eating meat. He advocated celibacy, stating that he had no pity for the extinction of the human race. He depicted celibacy as the central theme in his novella, ‘Father Sergius’.
Tolstoy protested against the continuing gulf between the land-owning aristocracy and the peasantry, acting as a catalyst for the revolutionary change taking place – harbingers of the Russian Revolution [1917 – 23]. The Tsar imposed a ban on his writings. The Bolsheviks saw him as a guide.
At home, Sofia resented what she thought was the hypocrisy of her husband’s transformation – preaching universal brotherhood while showing no empathy towards her! In the meantime, Vladimir Chertkov, Tolstoy’s main proponent, confidant and secretary, in a sinister move, planned to alter Tolstoy’s will in his favour with the intention of gaining copyright of his literary wealth. He encouraged Tolstoy to leave Sofia at a time when his leader was considering moving on and letting go of his material and literary wealth and his family.
In an autobiographical essay, titled, ‘A Confession’, Tolstoy revealed his vulnerability – that he had undergone a ‘spiritual crisis’ and that he had entertained thoughts of suicide ‘by means of a noose or a bullet’. Rational thinking, he wrote, made him realise that life had no meaning, and that he had wanted to do away with his self, but faith provided the meaning of life and the possibility of living – in psycho-social terminology he was facing an ‘Existential Crisis’.
In 1910, aged 82, Tolstoy left home accompanied by his youngest daughter, Sasha, and his doctor, intending never to return. He was forced to break journey at a remote station – Astopovo – with a severe bout of pneumonia, and took refuge at the station master’s lodge. He died, few days later, on 7th November 1910, surrounded by some of his followers, few family members, government officials and the world’s press. Sofia rushed to her husband’s death bed but was prevented from seeing him by Chertkov, until the legendary author lapsed into a coma. This final episode has been brilliantly presented in the movie, ‘The Last Station’, featuring Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren.
LITERARY ARTISTRY
There are several distinctive features of Tolstoy’s literary artistry that have contributed to its potency.
Tolstoy, as stated above, was a master of Realism with an exceptional ability to incorporate real life into his imaginative construct. He presented reality in a lyrical art form. He incorporated real life figures of his era and representations of individuals in his community, and projected his own biographical experiences in his art of characterisation. He was skilful in depicting the evolving inner life of a character in its depth and paradox. Tolstoy’s powers of creativity were borne out of his intuitive grasp of human nature with a remarkable ability to investigate conscious and unconscious states and their behavioural correlates, ‘by creeping into the deep crevices of the human psyche’, unearthing psychological insights. To echo the words of the French novelist, Gustave Flaubert [1821-1880] about Tolstoy: “What an Artist and what a Psychologist!”
Tolstoy is renowned for his descriptive precision based on his deep penetrating powers of observation. He created ‘word pictures’ of characters, situations such as war, landscape and nature with clarity and exactitude, not to diminish his skill in aesthetics.
The aesthetic features of his work are not limited to a mere exposition of beauty but to the deployment of a wide array of literary devices that evoke a range of emotional and critical responses – imagery, irony, symbolism, metaphor, simile, satire, to mention a few.
Tolstoy was an inspiring moral thinker. In a monograph titled, ‘What is Art?’ [1898], he asserted that Art, including literary art, should carry a moral message, transcending any aesthetic value, for it to be of benefit to mankind. His moral wisdom was based on his deep social conscience and his spiritual awakening developed throughout the latter part of his life.
Tolstoy’s writing carries a historical critique of his era by targeting several aspects of society such as social inequity [between the aristocracy and the peasantry], depravity and falsity of the aristocracy and the ruling elite, the church’s complicity with the state and the ineptitude and corruption of the administrative machine.
Above all, as reflected in his clever manipulation of plot and the vitality of his narratives, Tolstoy was a gifted story-teller with extraordinary narrative skill.
His power of creativity, built out of the above ingredients along with his intuitive grasp of human nature, has appealed directly to the sensibilities of the reader, resulting in works of enduring value.
“When you read Tolstoy, you read because you cannot stop”….”He was the greatest artist in Russian prose”
—Vladimir Nabokov [1899-1977, renowned Russian literary critic.
LITERARY ENDOWMENT
With his creative activity spanning over half his lifetime, Tolstoy endowed the world with an abundance of literary wealth. It includes 3 novels – War and Peace, Anna Karenina and Resurrection, the least known and the last to be written by Tolstoy; half a dozen ‘provests’ [Russian equivalents of novellas], for example, The Death of Ivan Ilych, The Cossacks, Kreutzer Sonata etc; and a multitude of short stories.
NOVELS
‘War and Peace’, the magnum opus of Leo Tolstoy, written over a period of seven years, runs into 587,000 words. It is a novel that many people aspire to read but only a few get round to reading it due to its enormity and complexity. It is more than a novel: an embodiment of a socio-political landscape, historical critique, philosophical reflections, moral teaching and psychological insights, with different readers viewing it from their own vantage points. It is a powerful and complex narrative set against the broad canvas of the French Invasion of Russia at the dawn of the 19th century, depicting its impact on contemporary Russian life, with myriads of characters – real and fictional – entering and leaving the pages.
From my perspective, Tolstoy, by a clever manipulation of plot, takes five prominent families of the Moscow aristocracy through the ravages of war. He recounts the challenges they face, the coping strategies they adopt, resolve their crises and consolidate their psychological and spiritual gains – individually and collectively – in building inner peace. Those who survive the crises are brought together, symbolically, in a country residence, getting them to reflect on issues such as developing a moral relationship with their peasants, family unity, a simple way of life, generosity and love. Pardon me for my impertinence in offering a simple formulation to an extremely complex narrative!
‘Anna Karenina’, considered by many to be one of the best novels ever written, is an epitome of realistic fiction. Skilfully crafted with two parallel plots with pleating strands of narrative, it is set against a background of Tsarist Russia, tying up at the end with a moral message. It provides a contrast between aristocracy and peasantry, city and country life, and between happy and unhappy families with a memorable stating line, ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’.
The main plot represents decadence, decline and death, while the parallel plot illustrates stability, harmony and progress. The main plot depicts the inner struggle of a woman who takes up a challenge at her own peril against the prevailing social norms and succumbs to the forces within and outside her soul. Tolstoy demonstrates his deep understanding of the female psyche through the character of Anna Karenina. The parallel plot that grows out as an offshoot of the main narrative is the shoot that bears the blossoms of love, humanity and spirituality. Tolstoy’s philosophy of life is represented through the characters of Levin and Kitty in this plot.
NOVELLAS
I have chosen three of Tolstoy’s popular novellas for a brief overview.
‘The Death of Ivan Ilych’ depicts the ascent, descent and death of a fiercely ambitious lawyer preoccupied with climbing the social ladder. In a masterly display of character construction Tolstoy takes his protagonist to the top of the social ladder, and makes him fall off it, both literally and metaphorically. The crisis that leads to a terminal illness makes him re-evaluate his life: that he has lived a life of falsity [‘a huge deception that had hidden both life and death’]; that life is a series of escalating suffering with no escape. Realisation of that truth about life brings Ivan the freedom to face death. [‘In place of death there was light’].
In this popular novella, apart from its spiritual theme, Tolstoy raises interesting issues regarding ‘the doctor-patient relationship’ and the ‘illness behaviour’ of patients, which may be of interest to the medical profession.
The theme of ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ resonates with what the German Psychiatrist Ernst Kretschmer [1888-1964] postulated regarding the aetiology of paranoia: the cumulative influence of a noxious social environment, sensitivity of personality and an experience meaningful to the individual. The novella tracks the motivational path and the psychological processes leading to paranoia [morbid jealousy] with a disastrous consequence, reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Othello.
“Trukhachevski’s talent for music; the nearness that came of playing together; the impressionable nature of music, especially of the violin and his apparent lustful gaze towards his wife; tormented Pozdnychev and heightened his suspicion and jealousy. He began to suspect that the sound of the piano was purposely made to drown their voices and probably their kisses, as they practiced”.
Pozdnychev’s paranoia was brought to a head at a concert when Trukhachevski and his wife played Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata. During a surprise appearance at a subsequent practice session, Pozdnychev stabs his wife to death. The court decided that the accused was a wronged husband who killed his wife defending his outraged honour! Tolstoy raises awareness of a range of contemporary societal values and of the criminal justice system.
Depicting the ideology of Rousseau, that man’s salvation is to be found in returning to a primary culture and leading a life of simplicity and selflessness, and drawing heavily on his experience in the scenic Caucus Mountains and its inhabitants, Tolstoy wrote the novella, ‘The Cossacks’, which gained acclaim as his ‘mini-masterpiece’. Tolstoy re-lives his experience by sending his fictional representative, Olenin, a young nobleman of the Moscow elite, disillusioned by the falsity and depravity of his urban lifestyle, on a journey of self-discovery, seeking contentment among the Cossacks who inhabit the foothills of the scenic Caucasus. The Cossacks, renowned for their military prowess, sustain themselves by farming, fishing and hunting. Olenin befriends Eroshka, a stereotypical wise old man, who engages him on enthralling conversations; narrates folk tales and rhymes; introduces him to nature; and instils in him a sense of social conscience. The young aristocrat falls in love with a Cossack girl but his affection towards her is not reciprocated as she is betrothed to an injured Cossack warrior giving him an opportunity to re-evaluate love, in contrast to the carnal pleasures he indulged in Moscow. He returns home with a wealth of experience.
SHORT STORIES
The following is a sample of the many Tolstoyan short stories: ‘How Much Land Does a Man Need’ is about a man driven by greed that leads him to his downfall. ‘The Coffee House of Surat’ reflects the need for mankind to unite in one faith under a universal temple. ‘The Bear Hunt’: [semiautobiographical] the protagonist on a hunting expedition shoots a bear which falls at his feet resulting in a major emotional impact on him. He gives up hunting and becomes a vegetarian. ‘Little Girls Wiser than Men’ depicts the innocence of childhood: a children’s story that should be read by adults! ‘Three Deaths’ is a portrayal of our common humanity with a brilliant display of symbolism.
CONCLUSION
Leo Tolstoy, the Great Russian Novelist, has endowed us with an enormous literary wealth replete with philosophical concepts, moral wisdom, psychological insights and historical critique; and not without aesthetic value. With his extraordinary literary skill and descriptive precision he has turned real life into an art form with the development of characters in all their complexity, against a contemporary socio-political background. The life of one of the greatest storytellers of all time is an extraordinary story in itself that outshines the stories he wrote. His contribution to humanity has been made at a great cost to himself and his family, especially to his wife sofia, whose commitment towards his work has remained sadly unrecognised.
[sirigalhenage@gmail.com]