by A. N. Wilson
Levin’s view of Russia as eighty million individuals, very few of whom were much interested in Serbs, remains central to Tolstoy’s common-sense spiritual quest. The highest manifestation of individualism was in artistic genius, and though he felt his own artistic career to be in ruins, he looked about hopefully at others.
He was jealously unable to see virtue in Turgenev, but in many of his other great artistic contemporaries, Tolstoy saw not only genius but hope: for the human race, for Russia. Reading Virgin Soil in March 1877, he was appalled. Paklin in that book says that it is Russia’s misfortune that all the healthy people are bad and all the good people are ill. ‘That is my own . . . opinion of the novel,’ said Tolstoy. ‘The author is unwell.’52
But even this suggests an appetite for artists who are ‘well’, wholesome, and powerful in their expression of individual distinctiveness and freedom. A few months before, there had been a happy musical evening in Moscow when Tolstoy had met his great admirer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – the beginning of something which could have been a friendship, had Tolstoy not spent the second of their meetings attacking Beethoven. Nevertheless, Nikolay Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky arranged a concert at the Moscow Conservatoire in Tolstoy’s honour which he was unable to remember without ‘trembling’. In Tchaikovsky’s music, he would have heard those pure, wholesome strains which seemed absent in Turgenev, a wordless vision which recognised life’s beauty and tragedy as inextricable.
Something of the same sort came to Tolstoy in his conversations with the poets; above all with the incomparable lyric poet Tyutchev. He described Tyutchev in these terms to Strakhov: ‘He is a childlike old man of genius and majesty. Among the living I do not know anyone except you and him with whom I could feel and think so identically. But at a certain spiritual height the unity of views on life does not unite, as is the case in the lower spheres of activity for earthly aims, but leaves each person independent and free. . . . We are more strange to one another than my children are to me or even to you. But it is joyful along this deserted road to meet these strange travelers.’53
Fyodor Tyutchev expresses his thoughts in perfectly made lyrics, which is perhaps why he is not better known among non-Russian readers. The critics have probably been right to discern in his ‘Schopenhauerian’ sentiments many of the concerns of the latter part of Anna Karenina. Certainly, Tolstoy was reading a lot of Tyutchev at this date.
Лишь жить в caмoм ceбe yмeй –
Ecть цeлый миp в дyшe твoeй
Taинcтвeнн-вoлшeбныx дyм . . .
[Know how to live within yourself. In your soul there is a whole world of mysterious-enchanted thoughts. . . .]54
The spiritual solipsism which Tyutchev celebrates is balanced by a fascination with love which has its quite recognizable parallels in Anna Karenina. His strange poem ‘Predestination’ seems to speak of the impossibility of love ever being happy in terms which directly match poor Anna’s wretched ravings.
И чeм oднo из ниx нeжнee
B бopьбe нepaвнoй двyx cepдeц
Teм нeизбeжнeй и вepнee,
Любя, cтpaдaя, rpycтнo млeя,
Oнo изнoeт нaкoнeц . . .
[And whichever is more tender in the unequal contest of two hearts, will more inescapably and surely – loving, suffering, languishing sadly, pine away at last.]55
‘In my opinion Tyutchev is the first poet,’ said Tolstoy, ‘then Lermontov, then Pushkin. . . . Tyutchev as a lyric poet is incomparably more profound than Pushkin.’
Tolstoy’s friend Afanasy Fet had, after an interval, started to write poems again, which Tolstoy spontaneously admired. Like a true Tolstoyan man, Fet in his poems is often alone with nature, above all alone beneath the stars, as in his lovely ‘Na stoge sena noch’yu yuzhnoi’. On a southern night, lying on a rick and facing the night sky, he asks the question:
Я ль нёccя к бeзднe пoлyнoчнoй,
Или coнмы звёзд кo мнe нecлиcь?
[Was I racing towards the midnight abyss, or were the hosts of stars racing towards me?]56
Stars were the theme of another poem which Fet sent to Tolstoy in the very weeks in which he finished Anna Karenina. The last stanza is singled out by Tolstoy for particular praise.
Boт пoчeмy, кorдa дышaть тaк тpyднo,
Teбe oтpaднo тaк пoднять чeлo
C лицa зeмли, rдe вcё тeмнo и cкyднo,
K нaм, в нaшy rлyбь, rдe пышнo и cвeтлo.
[That is why, when it is so hard to breathe, it is comforting to raise your brow from the face of the earth, where all is dark and bare, towards us, towards our infinity, where it is splendid and radiant.]57
Tolstoy particularly liked the fact that in this poem the speakers are not men, but the stars themselves. If he was repelled by a religion where a lot of little flies appeared to be worshipping one big fly of their own devising, Tolstoy had always recognised, in his life as well as in his art, the littleness of man, the mysteriousness of existence. In the questions which churned involuntarily and ceaselessly in his mind, it was inevitable that he should seek, and find, religious solutions.
‘Please,’ he wrote to Strakhov in April 1877, as the last words of Anna Karenina were sent to Russkii Vestnik, ‘let’s go as soon as possible to the Optina monastery. . . .’58
The Optina Pustyn monastery was one of the great spiritual power-houses of the Orthodox world. It is situated about two miles outside the town of Kozyolsk, not far from Moscow. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, it had almost dwindled out of existence, having only three monks, one of whom was blind. But during the central years of the nineteenth century, Optina had witnessed a tremendous revival, along the pattern of monasteries on Mount Athos. A skit, or monastic village, had been built, where religious solitaries lived a semi-eremitical life under the direction of an elder or starets.
These startsy, who revived traditions of piety which had been all but forgotten in Russia for three hundred years, were viewed with some suspicion by the Church hierarchy. There was a danger of their becoming an autonomous spiritual force. Certainly, their wholehearted approach to Christianity had little in common with the secularised, state-established religion of the Moscow Patriarchate. At Optina, it was once more discovered that the Gospel was a demanding spiritual adventure, asking from the believer not a nominal allegiance, but a complete self-sacrifice. ‘One can save oneself outside a monastery,’ said one of the most famous startsy, ‘but with great difficulty.’59
This saying occurs in a letter written by Starets Amvrosy (Father Ambrose) who, since the mid-sixties, had been chief starets at Optina. The door of the elder’s cell was constantly thronged with visitors. They ranged from high-born young women who had driven over from Moscow to mock, to dispossessed pilgrims who believed that there was benediction in the man’s very touch. Simple people consulted the starets as if he were the Delphic oracle. Should they marry? Should they sell a pig? Many came with more searching questions, and more complicated spiritual problems. The stories are legion of Starets Amvrosy turning the hearts of atheists, or shaming sinners into penitence. As a confessor and counsellor he was almost clairvoyant, with the gift recorded in other great spiritual masters (one thinks of the Curé d’Ars) of being able to see into people’s past before they unburdened their souls. The Dostoyevskys visited him in 1878 when they lost a child, and Amvrosy’s words to Anna Grigoryevna, which she found deeply consoling, were transcribed and used in her husband’s accounts of the Elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov.* The whole of the monastic part of The Brothers Karamazov is based closely upon Dostoyevsky’s profound and pious relations with Starets Amvrosy.
It was to this place, the year before Dostoyevsky visited it, that Tolstoy and his friend Strakhov set off in July 1878. Like Zosima in the novel, Amvrosy is recorded to have been ill much of the time, and exhausted by his stream of visitors. But witnesses
have reported that he was particularly fatigued by the visit of Tolstoy. Tolstoy was to visit him several times over the next twelve or thirteen years. On this first visit, he was ‘impressed by his wisdom’.60 We do not know exactly what passed between the two men, but from the surviving writings of Starets Amvrosy we know that the holy man would have been demanding and stern. Tolstoy was, emotionally, worn out, and he had no idea in what direction his life should now turn. Some such words as these, from the letters of the starets, were ringing in his ears as he left Optina: ‘I have offered you my opinion and advice, but I do not force or seek to convince. You yourself must select what you want. The Lord Himself does not force anyone to do anything but only proposes voluntary selection, saying in the Gospel: “If thou desirest to enter into life, if thou desirest to be perfect”, do such and such. However, know that these conditional commandments are so obligatory that if one does not fulfil them, one not only does not attain perfection, but one cannot inherit the blessed life of the age to come.’61
* Born in 1828, he was Tolstoy’s exact contemporary, whose most famous novel was to suggest the title of one of Tolstoy’s later books: What is to be Done?
* ‘Unfortunately the diary becomes silent during the very years when Tolstoy created his two main works.’12
* ‘. . . . alone in the world, we have given nothing to the world, we have learnt nothing from the world, we have poured not a single idea into the mass of human ideas. . . .’19
* The monks in the monastery, however, are reported not to have recognised the authenticity of the starets in the novel. (L. A. Zander, Dostoyevsky, p. 135, London, 1948.) See Linner, Chapter 4, for general discussion of differences between Starets Amvrosy and Starets Zosima.
Chapter Thirteen
The Holy Man
1877 – 1884
At death, you break up: the bits that were you Start speeding away from each other for ever With no one to see.
Philip Larkin, The Old Fools
After Anna Karenina, Tolstoy attempted to revive his novel about the Decembrists. ‘I am now deep in my reading about the 1820s,’ he wrote to Alexandrine in January 1878, ‘and I can’t tell you the satisfaction I get as I envisage those times to myself. It is extraordinary, and pleasant, to think that a period which I can remember, the 1830s, has already passed into history.’1
He went to St. Petersburg and interviewed surviving Decembrists. In March 1878, he went to the notorious fortress of Peter and Paul, the prison where so many victims of the system had languished since the days of Peter the Great. ‘They told me there that one of the criminals ate glass and then threw himself into the Neva. I can’t tell you the strange and powerful feeling that came over me at the thought of that person. It was like the feeling I had when they brought me the handcuffs and the leg irons of 1825.’2
Yet somehow or another, this great work, which had been gestating in Tolstoy’s mind longer since than War and Peace, was to be stillborn. His imagination was no longer fully engaged with the history of his own past or that of his country. Instead, it had become engaged with the eternally unanswerable questions which were aroused by his visit to the Optina monastery. The daemon which imagined the early drafts of 1805 and The Decembrists had happily clothed itself in Pierre the agonised liberal; but the finished novel, War and Peace, had ended with Pierre the aspirant holy man. The same thing had happened with Levin in Anna Karenina. Tolstoy was slow to catch up with the poses of his own inner imagination, but when he did so, it was with exaggerated force.
In the spring of 1878, Turgenev in Paris had been pleased, but warily surprised, by a penitent letter which he received from Tolstoy: ‘Forgive me if I have been at fault in any way with regard to you.’3 Tolstoy begged his fellow novelist to forget all their previous quarrels and to remember only the good things which they had enjoyed together. It was the sort of letter which a postulant nun might have written to a schoolfriend before going into the cloister.
When the opportunity arose, later that summer, Turgenev visited Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana. He found that a tremendous change had overtaken Tolstoy. Turgenev’s novels reveal the liberal humanist’s ability to recognise life’s mystery for what it is, and not to worry at it. He was no metaphysician. For Tolstoy, such questions as Why are we here? What is the point of living? Is there a God? What is the Good? were of consuming importance. He had, during this summer, become obsessed by them. Turgenev discovered that there was little meeting ground between the two of them. After this particular visit, he wrote to Tolstoy, ‘I am glad that your physical health is good and I trust that your intellectual malady . . . has passed.’4 He went on to say that he had often experienced such moods of depression himself. To others, he expressed the fear that Tolstoy was going mad. For Tolstoy’s part, Turgenev’s urbanity and good humour were, in such circumstances, intolerable. On a rather later visit, Turgenev, carried away with high spirits, demonstrated a can-can to the children at Yasnaya Polyana. ‘Turgenev, can-can. Sad,’5 was the priggish comment Tolstoy noted down afterwards.
More tragically, the born-again Tolstoy had no time any more for his beloved cousin Alexandrine. Deeply pious though she was, he suspected her worldliness, and her occupations at Court. Initially, as Tolstoy came to believe that he was undergoing a religious conversion, he and Alexandrine had become closer. But as he expressed himself with greater and greater distaste for the Orthodox Church, she felt a gulf widening between them. By 1880, he could pay a visit to the capital without so much as looking her up or saying goodbye. ‘There is a harshness, such lack of friendship, and I had rather not say it, such vindictiveness in your behaviour,’ she complained.6 He repented, and there was a reconciliation of a sort. But it was an extraordinary symptom of Tolstoy’s need and compulsion to wander out into a spiritual wilderness of his own making, a latter-day Simeon Stylites, that he tried to alienate even those whom he loved the best.
The outward and visible signs of his regeneration were to say the least of it bizarre. To the pleasures of lust, there were now added the more complex pleasures of religious guilt. Later, Tolstoy would claim that he had never committed adultery, but this seems an improbable boast when we notice how much he made of his new-found ability, with the dawn of religious belief, to resist the allurements of such beauties as Domna, the cook. (After his conversion, he would ask the family tutor to walk past the kitchen with him to guard him against temptation.) Inspired by the Gospel to believe that all true Christians must hate wives and children for the Lord’s sake, he announced that he would like to become a monk – news which Sofya Andreyevna, pregnant for the tenth time with their son Mikhail, viewed with a mixture of emotions. Tolstoy still allowed himself, at this early stage, alcohol, tobacco, and meat – all of which he would in the course of time eschew. But he took to wearing peasant costume all the time and undertaking menial tasks which might have been performed better by artisans. The most notorious example of this, perhaps, is his belief that a Christian should make his own shoes. Fet teased him by ordering a pair of shoes made by Tolstoy. Of course, he never made a pair which anyone beside himself would admit was wearable.
When Turgenev had visited him in summer 1878, he was still in the grip of nearly suicidal melancholia:
A rope round the neck, a knife to jab into the heart, or the trains on the railroads; and the number of those in our circle who act in this way becomes greater and greater. . . .7
he mused. But although with one part of himself, death was attractive – appallingly so – the deepest part of his artistic and spiritual hunger was for life. This had always been so in his books. It became so in his life. And it was this consciousness of life itself in all its vividness, as led by simple people, which led Tolstoy to a rediscovery of belief in God. ‘I lived only at those times when I believed in God. . . . I need only to be aware of God to live; I need only forget him or disbelieve him and I died. . . .’8 ‘Live seeking God,’ an inner voice told him, ‘and then you will not live without God.’9
It was the devout
peasants who seemed, suddenly, to have the secret of how to live. Tolstoy therefore decided that he must try and live as they did. He began to go to church, to keep the fasts, to confess his sins to the priests, and to be a good Orthodox. But no one of Tolstoy’s intellectual curiosity and spiritual restlessness could be satisfied with a purely passive acceptance of Church doctrine. He began to read the Gospels, deeply and attentively, and this reading had a revolutionary effect upon his life.
Who was it who was reading the Gospels? That is, for the biographer of Tolstoy, the interesting question. Was it the little boy whose brother had told him that the secret of all goodness and happiness was written on a green stick buried in the woods at Yasnaya Polyana? That is, was Tolstoy trying to become again a little child, and to revive the primitive faith not only of his own infancy but of his nation? If so, he might have remained an Orthodox, as Dostoyevsky did. Was it, rather, this reader of the Gospel, the beady-eyed novelist who had that extraordinary capacity to see old things as if for the first time? Here we are nearer the truth, and nearer, too, to Tolstoy, the Voltairean sceptic, the eighteenth-century rationalist. We also hear, from now on, persistent echoes of the man who asserted that bronchitis was a metal.
Tolstoy decided not merely that to seek God was to live. He also decided that the only way to live was the way advocated by Jesus in the Gospels: to sell all that he had and give to the poor, to take no thought for the morrow, to reject violence in all its forms, to banish revenge, to call no man Master but God alone.
The lives of those who have been transformed by the ethics of the Gospel are, for the most part, those of a profoundly mystical character – figures who believe in some way or another that they are encountering not just a set of extraordinary ethical commands, but the presence of Jesus himself. In lives as various as Francis of Assisi, John Wesley or General Booth of the Salvation Army, for example, this seems to be an inextricable part of the experience. Tolstoy never had an encounter with Jesus, nor, as far as is recorded, did he ever believe that he had met with Jesus in prayer or had any of the mystical experiences of others who have decided that they must live as Jesus taught. Tolstoy’s decision to live in this way seems to have been purely idiosyncratic and arbitrary.
