In QUEST of TOLSTOY Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History
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In QUEST of TOLSTOY Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures and History Series Editor: Lazar Fleishman Academic Studies Press In QUEST of TOLSTOY Hugh McLean Boston 2008 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McLean, Hugh, 1925– In quest of Tolstoy / Hugh McLean. p. cm. — (Studies in Russian and Slavic literatures, cultures and history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-934843-02-4 (hardcover) 1. Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828–1910 — Criticism and interpretation. 2. Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828–1910 — Infl uence. I. Title. PG3410.M35 2008 891.73’3 — dc22 2008000960 Book design by Yuri Alexandrov Published by Academic Studies Press in 2008 145 Lake Shore Road Brighton, MA 02135, USA pressaacademicstudiespress.com www.academicstudiespress.com Effective December 12th, 2017, this book will be subject to a CC-BY-NC license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. Other than as provided by these licenses, no part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or displayed by any electronic or mechanical means without permission from the publisher or as permitted by law. The open access publication of this volume is made possible by: This open access publication is part of a project supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book initiative, which includes the open access release of several Academic Studies Press volumes. To view more titles available as free ebooks and to learn more about this project, please visit borderlinesfoundation.org/open. Published by Academic Studies Press 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com Contents Preface . vii I. Tolstoy the Artist “Buried as a Writer and as a Man”: The Puzzle of Family Happiness . 3 The Case of the Missing Mothers, or When Does a Beginning Begin? . 21 Truth in Dying . 30 Which English Anna? . 53 Love in Resurrection: Eros or Agape? . 71 Could the Master Err? A Note on “God Sees the Truth but Waits” . 87 Gary R. Jahn. Was the Master Well Served? Further Comment on “God Sees the Truth but Waits” . 95 II. Tolstoy the Thinker A Woman’s Place . The Young Tolstoy and the “Woman Question” 105 Tolstoy and Jesus . 117 Rousseau’s God and Tolstoy’s God . 143 Claws on the Behind: Tolstoy and Darwin . 159 A Clash of Utopias: Tolstoy and Gorky . 181 III. Tolstoy beyond Tolstoy Hemingway and Tolstoy. A Pugilistic Encounter . 197 Foxes into Hedgehogs. Berlin and Tolstoy . 214 Works Cited . 227 Index of Tolstoy’s Works . 237 Index of Names . 239 Preface Lev Tolstoy has fascinated me ever since my early youth, long before I knew any Russian or had any idea of a professional career that would engage me with him as a teacher and scholar. I was captivated by him, both the incomparable artist who created fi ctional worlds that seem to us as close and as real as our own lives, and the fearlessly independent thinker who from his splendid isolation at Yasnaya Polyana issued a powerful challenge to the religious, moral, and socio-political systems of the entire world. In later years I came to teach courses on Tolstoy and found that his effect on students was often as great as it had been on me. I was eventually impelled to study Tolstoy as a scholar, trying to isolate and investigate Tolstoy problems that seemed to require research and thought. The essays assembled here have all been written within the last twenty years, between 1989 and 2007. Regardless of their date of composition, they have been grouped here in three sections on other grounds. The fi rst deals with Tolstoy the artist. It includes essays on all three great novels as well as some of the short stories. The second section treats Tolstoy the thinker, with articles exploring his ideas on God, on Jesus, on the moral reform of the world, on what was then known as the “woman question,” and fi nally on evolution. The fi nal section I have called “Tolstoy beyond Tolstoy.” There I deal with Tolstoy’s effect on such diverse fi gures as Ernest Hemingway and Isaiah Berlin. I am especially gratifi ed to be able to include in this volume the discussion I carried on on the pages of Tolstoy Studies Journal with Gary R. Jahn concerning “God Sees the Truth but Waits.” Professor Jahn has kindly agreed to allow his side of the dispute to be reprinted along with mine in this volume. viii PREFACE Besides individuals thanked for helpful comments and criticisms of particular articles, I must express here my gratitude to my much esteemed colleague Lazar Fleishman of Stanford University, who provided impetus and encouragement to the project of collecting these essays in a book. I am also grateful to the various publishers who have permitted republication of texts to which they hold copyright. They are as follows: Gareth Perkins, of Berkeley Slavic Specialties, for “The Case of the Missing Mothers,” from For SK: In Celebration of the Life and Career of Simon Karlinsky, ed. Michael S. Flier and Robert P. Hughes (1994); “A Woman’s Place . The Young Tolstoy and the ‘Woman Question’,” from Word, Music, History: A Festschrift for Caryl Emerson, ed. Lazar Fleishman, Gabriella Safran and Michael Wachtel = Stanford Slavic Studies, 29 (2005); “Buried as a Writer and as a Man: The Puzzle of ‘Family Happiness’,” in A Century’s Perspective: Essays on Russian Literature in Honor of Olga Raevsky Hughes and Robert P. Hughes, ed. Lazar Fleishman and Hugh McLean = Stanford Slavic Studies, 32 (2006). Michael Denner, editor of Tolstoy Studies Journal, for the following essays: “Rousseau’s God and Tolstoy’s” (1997); “Hemingway and Tolstoy: A Pugilistic Encounter” (1999); “Which English Anna?” (2001); “A Clash of Utopias, Tolstoy and Gorky” (2002); “Could the Master Err? A Note on ‘God Sees the Truth but Waits’,” along with Gary R. Jahn, “Was the Master Well Served? Further Comments on ‘God Sees the Truth but Waits” (2004); and “Claws on the Behind: Tolstoy and Darwin” (2007). University of California Press, for “Truth in Dying,” from In the Shade of the Giant: Essays on Tolstoy, ed. Hugh McLean (1989); and for “Tolstoy and Jesus,” from Christianity and the Eastern Slavs, vol. 2, ed. Robert P. Hughes and Irina Paperno = California Slavic Studies, XVII (1994). Cambridge University Press, for “Resurrection,” from The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy, ed. Donna Tussing Orwin (2002). Rowman & Littlefi eld, for “Foxes into Hedgehogs: Berlin and Tolstoy,” in The Cultural Gradient: The Transmission of Ideas in Europe, 1789– 1991, ed. Catherine Evtuhov and Stephen Kotkin (2003). Hugh McLean I TOLSTOY the ARTIST 2 TOLSTOY THE ARTIST “BURIED AS A WRITER AND AS A MAN” 3 “Buried as a Writer and as a Man” The Puzzle of Family Happiness Tolstoy fi nished writing Family Happiness in the spring of 1859. On April 9 he wrote in his diary, the fi rst entry since February 19, “Worked, fi nished Anna. But not good.”1 Earlier, however, he had been quite enthusiastic about this offspring. The diary entry for February 19 reads, “All this time I worked on the novel and accomplished much, although not on paper. I changed everything. It is a poem. I am very pleased with what is in my head.”2 Tolstoy’s friend Vasily Botkin also testifi es to the author’s early affection for Family Happiness, an emotion Botkin did not then share.3 In March Tolstoy took the story with him to Petersburg and there read it aloud at least twice, once in Botkin’s circle of friends and later in the salon of his relative and close confi dante, Countess Aleksandra Andreevna Tolstaya. The Botkin group apparently thought the story “rather unsuccessful,”4 but the loyal “granny” (babushka) (Countess Tolstaya), as Tolstoy fondly called her, found it “charming,” “full of the highest comedy.”5 1 PSS 48:20. “Anna” was presumably one of the proposed names of the heroine/narrator, called Masha in the fi nal version, sometimes, as here, used as an appellative for the story itself. 2 PSS 48:20. 3 Botkin to Tolstoy, 3 May 1859. Переписка Л. Н. Толстого с В. П. Боткиным, 70. 4 Botkin to A. V. Druzhinin, 5 April 1859. Письма к А. В. Дружинину, 57. 5 From her unpublished diary, quoted in N. N. Gusev, Летопись 1818–1890, 199. G. Less- kis thinks Tolstoy read an early version of the story to “Granny” as early as the summer of 1857, in Switzerland, but there seems to be no documentary foundation for this claim. G. Lesskis, Лев Толстой (1852–1869), 261n. 4 TOLSTOY THE ARTIST Back at Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy revised the story again. He wrote to “Granny,” “I am absorbed in work eight hours a day. Anna is reworking her notes, and I hope that her grandmother will like them better than in their fi rst, ugly form.”6 Tolstoy gave the story one more thorough revision, seeming to feel at least hopeful of the outcome: “I keep thinking that something will come of it,” he wrote to his friend Aleksandr Druzhinin,7 and Botkin quotes him as say ing, “If my story is not appreciated now, it will receive its due in fi ve years’ time.”8 However, when Tolstoy read proofs for the second part, a startling emotional revolution occurred. He was overcome by shame. He now pro claimed that Family Happiness was a “disgraceful abomination” (по- стыдная мерзость).9 To Botkin he wrote on May 3, What have I done with my Family Happiness! Only now, here in the country, have I collected myself and read the proofs sent me of the second part, and I saw what shameful shit it is, a stain, not only authorial, but human.