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Understanding Tolstoy Understanding Tolstoy NDERSTANDING TOLSTOY ANDREW D. KAUFMAN THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS / COLUMBUS Copyright © 2011 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kaufman, Andrew, 1969– Understanding Tolstoy / Andrew D. Kaufman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8142-1164-9 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8142-9263-1 (cd) 1. Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828–1910—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. PG3410.K376 2011 891.73'3—dc23 2011017303 Cover design by Juliet Williams Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Sabon Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Mom and Dad, who gave me the possibility Aida, who instilled the passion and Corinne, who showed me the path contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction Why Another Book about Tolstoy? 1 One The Little Green Stick and the Lost House: Tolstoy’s Journey as Man and Artist 7 Two “The Hero of My Tale Is Truth” 17 Three Seeking Authenticity in an Alienated Age: Olenin and The Cossacks 27 Four War and Peace: Life’s “Labyrinth of Linkages” 51 Five Andrei and Nikolai: Intersecting Spiritual Orbits 74 Six Patterns of Disillusionment and Discovery 92 Seven The Dog and the Globe: Pierre’s Journey to the Truth 113 Eight From Generation to Generation 138 Nine Levin: “To Err and to Dream” 148 Ten Two Lights: Anna and Levin 174 Eleven Stumbling through Life: The Death of Ivan Ilyich 191 Twelve Coming Alive: Dmitry Nekhliudov and Resurrection 210 Thirteen Hadji-Murat: The Stubborn Thistle 237 Epilogue The Little Green Stick Rediscovered 257 Notes 261 Bibliography 296 Index 304 illustrations Frontispiece Portrait of L. N. Tolstoy by B. V. Shcherbakova, 1960, drawn from a photograph of Tolstoy taken in 1892. Courtesy of L. N. Tolstoy State Museum, Moscow. Figure 1 L. N. Tolstoy in the study at his Yasnaya Polyana home, Novem- ber 3, 1909. Photograph by his wife, S. A. Tolstaya. Tolstoy liked the portrait: “The portrait is wonderful, because it was not posed. The hands are wonderful, the expression is natural.” Published in Tolstoi v zhizni (Tula, 1988), vol. 1, p. 145. Courtesy of L. N. Tolstoy State Museum, Moscow. 61 Figure 2 L. N. Tolstoy, A. L. Tolstaya, D. P. Dolgorukov, and P. I. Biri- ukov going to Yasnaya Polyana village to attend the inaugura- tion of a rural library. Yasnaya Polyana, 1910. Photo by V. G. Chertkov. Source: Lev Tolstoy in Photographs by Contempo- raries (Moscow: Publishing House of the USSR, 1960). Cour- tesy of Tolstoy Studies Journal, online Tolstoy Image Gallery. 116 Figure 3 L. N. Tolstoy with his granddaughter, T. M. Sukhotina. Yasnaya Polyana, 1909. Photo by V. G. Chertkov. Source: Lev Tolstoy in Photographs by Contemporaries (Moscow: Publishing House of the USSR, 1960). Courtesy of Tolstoy Studies Journal, online Tolstoy Image Gallery. 156 ix x ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 4 L. N. Tolstoy telling the story of the cucumber to his grandchil- dren, S. A. and I. A. Tolstoy. Kryokshino, Moscow province, 1909. Photo by V. G. Chertkov. Source: Lev Tolstoy in Photo- graphs by Contemporaries (Moscow: Publishing House of the USSR, 1960). Courtesy of Tolstoy Studies Journal, online Tolstoy Image Gallery. 204 Figure 5 L. N. Tolstoy on his way from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana, 1886 or 1888. Original photo appeared in the St. Petersburg maga- zine Kopecks, 1910. Courtesy of L. N. Tolstoy State Museum, Moscow. 215 acknowledgments Tolstoy liked to quote the words of Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov: “Everything, like an ocean, everything flows and comes into contact—you touch in one place, and at the other end of the world it reverberates.” During my twenty-year journey with Tolstoy, many people have touched me professionally and personally, and their influence can be felt in ways both subtle and profound on every page of this book. Understanding Tolstoy evolved in part out of my quest to relay Tol- stoy’s artistic genius in a way that my students would find compelling and personally relevant. I am grateful to the University of Virginia for the opportunity and financial assistance that have allowed me both to research and to write this book, as well as experiment with new methods of teach- ing Tolstoy and Russian literature. In particular, I am grateful to the Office of the Vice President and Provost for a Teaching and Research Fellowship as well as an Academic Community Engagement Faculty Fellow grant; the Youth-NEX Center in the Curry School of Education for a research grant; and the Teaching Resource Center for a Learning Assessment grant. The Slavic Department gave me the opportunity to teach talented, committed undergraduate and graduate students, whose provocative questions and insights pushed my thinking in new directions. xi xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Richard Gustafson for his professional generosity and thought- ful comments on earlier drafts of this book, as well as Donna Orwin for her scholarly counsel and support of my work. Hugh McClean and Irwin Weil offered thorough feedback after a careful reading of the manuscript, and their many insights helped me to sharpen my ideas and avoid mis- takes. My friend and mentor Pyotr Palievsky read and commented on the entire manuscript and arranged for my first professional visit to the Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow. Other colleagues at the Gorky Institute—Sergei Bocharov, Marina Shcherbakova, and Aleksandr Gulin— also lent me valuable support. I thank Galina Alekseeva of the Tolstoy Museum and Estate in Yas- naya Polyana for her scholarly counsel and for reading and commenting on the manuscript, and Vladimir Tolstoy for inviting me to present my scholarship in the place where his great grandfather lived and wrote. Joseph Frank and Lazar Fleishman at Stanford University offered invaluable feedback on earlier drafts of this book and taught me to stay true to the text and to trust my own critical instincts. Gregory Freidin, Monika Greenleaf, and Stephen Moeller-Sally offered encouragement and scholarly advice during the writing of my doctoral dissertation, out of which this book grew. I am indebted to Aida Borisovna Abuashvili-Lominadze of Moscow State University. I met Aida while I was an exchange student at Moscow State in 1990. Aida helped me to see, hear, and touch Tolstoy’s characters and ideas all around me. Her deep love of Tolstoy, her dedication to her students, and her spiritual courage in the face of adversity remain an inspi- ration to me. Dr. James Billington, author of the classic that first sparked my fascina- tion with all things Russian, took the time to read my work, meet with me, and share his encyclopedic knowledge. Dana Gioia gave me a platform in which to share my love of Tolstoy with a wider audience, and George Steiner took the time to read and comment on my work. I thank my agent, Rob McQuilkin, a consummate professional who has unfailingly steered me in all the right directions. I also thank Albert Small for his support of me and my career for many years, as well as Tom Friedman for kindly assisting my entrée in the book publishing world. I am indebted to my good friend Sharon Leiter, who read every word of the manuscript and with her sensitive poet’s ear helped me to trans- form a somewhat clunky doctoral dissertation into a book that even she would enjoy reading. John Gray, a gifted listener and a great friend, has ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii supported me for many years and helped me to connect more deeply with Tolstoy’s truth as well as my own. I thank Sandy Crooms, Maggie Diehl, Juliet Williams, and the other editorial staff at The Ohio State University Press for their detailed copy- editing as well as the care, creativity, and professionalism with which they transformed the manuscript into a beautiful book. My brothers Greg, Bob, and Mike have supported and encouraged me both personally and professionally. Mike, a fellow academic, has become one my closest colleagues, giving generously of himself intellectually and spiritually. I am deeply grateful to my parents, who first suggested that I start studying Russian almost twenty-five years ago and who, to my good for- tune, have been able to witness, in good health and with unfailing love, the many twists and turns of my long Tolstoyan journey that they helped to spark. Perhaps nobody has experienced the everyday significance of that jour- ney over the past several years more fully than my wife, Corinne. Through her eyes I have learned to see not only Tolstoy but myself more clearly and completely. Everyday Corinne teaches me by example the wisdom of Prince Andrei’s words in War and Peace: “Everything, everything I under- stand, I understand only because I love.” introduction W HY ANOTHER BOOK ABOUT TOLSTOY? For twenty years Tolstoy has stood at the center of my academic life—the compelling focus of my research, teaching, and public lecturing. Yet, it was only recently that I came to a startling realization: in all that has been writ- ten about the greatest Russian novelist, there is no one book that might help contemporary readers understand the writer’s insight into the timeless question “What is living for?”1 And yet the need for such a guide, in the twenty-first century, with all its moral complexities, terrors, and opportu- nities, has never been so compelling. This book introduces readers to the ways in which Tolstoy, through a series of questing, unforgettable characters, grapples with essential human questions in his art.
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