Tolstoi
Count Lyoff, a Russian novelist and reformer. He was born in the government of Lula, south of Moscow, September 9, 1828. He inherited a title and a large landed estate. He was educated in languages and for the law at the University of Kazan. During the term of military service expected of each Russian he served in Caucasia. During the Crimean War he took part in the defense of Sebastopol. He wrote a brilliant description of the military events that fell under his eye. One of his earliest literary works was an autobiography, entitled Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. At the conclusion of his military service he went to St. Petersburg, where he made the acquaintance of the Russian writer, Turgenieff, through whose influence he embarked definitely on a literary career.
In 1862 he chose for his wife the daughter of a Moscow physician. He then settled down on his estate. Tolstoi became much interested in the conduct of the Russian peasantry and the unequal distribution of wealth. He adopted the Sermon on the Mount word for word as a practical creed. Part of each day he was accustomed to dress himself in rough clothing and labor with his hands on some part of his estate. It is part of his theory that there is a certain amount of disagreeable work to be done in the world, and that each person should do some of the drudgery. If that idea were carried into effect he believed that it would be unnecessary for anyone to remain a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water. He took great pains to instruct the peasantry on his estate and to encourage habits of thrift and economy. In time of famine, he gave away his property with a free hand. He had a large family of thirteen children. His home is represented as ideal.
A sympathetic account of Tolstoi's retired life on the family estate was contributed by Henry George, Junior, to the World's Work for October, 1909. A few paragraphs are quoted:
The estate goes by an old name, which means, if I am correctly informed, "Clearing in the Woods." It is more than 2,000 acres in extent, and comprises agricultural lands, woods, and a small park set off for the household. The park is on the south side, and there the house stands, two or three hundred yards back from stately brick and stucco posterns that mark the main entrance. A huddle of straw-thatched farmers' huts are passed to the left as you enter.
The perfume of flowers came with a spray of raindrops from overhanging boughs as we passed up a winding driveway. The gray mirror of a small lake shone on one hand, and on the other a picturesque brook. Rounding between two huge clusters of white and purple lilacs, we came upon the house--white, ample, two-storied, solid, with a curious border of doll-babies and Noah's Ark animals outlined with a saw in a porch balustrade.
A couple of stone steps and a small platform were in front of the doorway where we drew up. The stairs and the floors generally were of unvarnished and unpolished wood, but spotless. There were few rugs. The walls were mostly white; in places, they carried a soft, unobtrusive color. Everywhere you caught the feeling of simplicity, utility, and strength. Everywhere you also caught the feeling of art and literature, although many of the pictures were only photographs, and portraits at that. But there were books, anywhere, everywhere; not for show, but obviously for use.
At the top of a winding stairway was a turn, and going through an anteroom, we entered Tolstoy's work-room and the presence of the seer himself. He was seated in a wheel-chair. His feet were on a level with his hips, and covered with a rug. He wore the long peasant's blouse of light yellow, coarse stuff, such as appears in some of his latterday pictures, and on his head was a skull-cap of the same material. The face was the one familiar the world over--gray eyes, sparkling through shaggy, overhanging brows; seamed forehead; thin, floating gray hair; thin, flowing moustache and beard around a restless mouth; and a nose that at times seemed sharp and at times flat.
Countess Tolstoy, at sixty-four, is a commanding woman. She married the Count when she was seventeen and he was thirty-four. She believed in him, molded herself to him, helped him at every turn, taught herself to be his confidant and counsellor, without losing her own independence of character and will to assert her diverging views, where such occasionally occurred. She gave to him the strength of her body, mind, and spirit; and he leaned on her--leaned a great part of his weight--drew from her, depended on her in a thousand ways. Suppose she had been another kind of woman--one who thought chiefly of herself, with another kind of ambition for him, and had tried to bend him to it: what then? The world would have had a different Tolstoy--perhaps one who would not have spoken so to the hearts and spirits of scores of millions of men.
The list of Tolstoi's works includes many titles. Characteristic writings are The Snowstorm, Two Hussars, Anna Karenina, What the People Live By, The Kreutzer Sonata, Politics and Religion, and The Resurrection. War and Peace is an account of Napoleon's invasion of Russia. He depicts Napoleon as a mere monster without genius. Inasmuch as Shakespeare's writings show very little interest in the conduct and welfare of the common people, Tolstoi regarded Shakespeare as a mere scribbler. In musical affairs Tolstoi is correspondingly radical. He holds that Handel, Mozart, Haydn, and Wagner are merely popular, not great.
In 1901 Tolstoi was excommunicated formally by the authorities of the Orthodox Greek church. His religious views were practically Unitarian. He believes in the abolition of governments. Although a soldier in early life, Tolstoi early adopted the Quaker doctrine of non-resistance to evil. On this account, although not regarded with favor by Russian authorities, he was never disturbed seriously by the press censor or by the police department.
Tolstoi's sincerity and devotion cannot be doubted. A man of genius, he was at the same time possessed of deep sympathy for his fellow creatures. Had he lived in any other country he might have been a power, mighty and permanent, in directing its policy. As it is, his thought will pass mainly as the incoherent cry of a giant struggling against heavy, adverse currents in the vast ocean of Russian life.
See Turgenieff
THOUGHTS FROM TOLSTOI.
No truth presents itself to two persons in the same light. There are no more hopelessly deaf than those who do not want to hear. All ideas that produce great results are always simple. The battle is always won by him who has firmly resolved to win it. Light remains light, even though the blind do not see it. The more you feel like speaking, the more danger there is that you will say something wrong. Only the increase of love in mankind can change the existing social system. The poor wheel always creaks loudest. The empty ear of corn is always the tallest. Conscience is the consciousness of one's purpose in the world. The transient guests make the inn filthy and ruin it, and then they blame the keeper of the inn who had permitted them to do with it what they pleased. Thus do the people blame God for the evil in the world.