Adepts in Self-Portraiture

by Stefan Zweig

  One cannot but try to unclothe this hair-clad countenance in imagination, to clip away the outgrowths, to conjure up the nude face as index to the soul within — and the portraits of Tolstoy in youth, when he was clean-shaven, are a help here. Having done this, we shrink back in alarm. For, undeniably, this man of patrician birth is rough-featured, has a peasant physiognomy. Genius has chosen to inhabit a grimy, low-ceiled hut; the workroom of this brilliant mind is little better than a Kirghiz skin tent. The place has been fashioned by a bungling country carpenter rather than by a Grecian demiurge, a skilled craftsman. Rough-hewn like wood split for firing are the crossbeams of the forehead surmounting the little windows, the tiny eyes. The skin, like the outer surface of a wattle and daub cottage, is of clay, is greasy-looking and lusterless. In the middle of the full quadrangle of the face, we see a nose with gaping, bestial nostrils, a nose that is broad and pulpy as if flattened by a blow from a fist. Behind untidy wisps of hair project misshapen, flapping ears. Between the hollowed cheeks lies a thick-lipped, surly mouth. The general effect is inharmonious, rugged, ordinary, verging on the coarse.

  Shadow and gloom brood over all, dullness and weight oppress the melancholy face of this workingman; not a sign of upward inspiration, of spiritual radiance, of bold ascent — such as we see in the marble dome of Dostoevsky’s brow. The visage is unrelieved by a scintilla of light. He who denies this speaks falsely. There can be no question that the face is irremediably common, is shuttered and barred; that it is not a temple but a prison-house for thought; that it is dark, somber, cheerless, hideous. In youth, Tolstoy knew well enough that his countenance was unpleasing. Any allusion to his appearance was, he said, distasteful to him. “How can a man with so broad a nose, such thick lips, and little grey eyes like mine, ever find happiness on earth?” That was why he soon let the hair grow on his face, that his mouth might be hidden behind a sable mask — which only in old age grew silvered, and thereby venerable. Not until the closing decade of his life was the heavy pall of cloud lifted; not until towards the end of autumn did compensating rays of beauty fall across this tragic landscape.

  Genius, forever a wanderer, had here found house-room in a lowly habitation, in a Russian physiognomy of everyday type, within whose walls one might expect to discover anything in the world except the man who lived for the things of the spirit, except the poet and dreamer, except the creative worker. As boy, as youth, as grown man, and even in old age, Tolstoy could always, as far as appearance went, have been lost in a throng. For him, one coat, or one cap, was as appropriate as another. With such an anonymous all-Russian visage, a man could just as well preside over a council of ministers of State or over a rabble of drunken rascals in a pothouse; could just as well peddle bread in the marketplace, or, in the silken vestments of the metropolitan, hold the cross outstretched over the heads of a kneeling multitude. But nowhere, in any occupation, in any garb, or anywhere in Russia, would such a countenance stand out in contrast to those of the surrounding crowd. When he was a student, Tolstoy might have been the composite embodiment of the youths of his year; when he was an army officer, there was nothing to set him apart from other brethren of the sword; when he had returned to a country life, he would have been perfectly acceptable as the conventional stage figure of the squire. If you see a photograph of him out driving, with a white-bearded retainer seated beside him, you may puzzle your brains a good while before you can make up your mind that the man holding the reins is the coachman and that the passenger is the count. Look at another picture, where he is seen having a talk with some peasants. If you did not know, you would never guess that this Leo sitting among the village elders is a man of rank and wealth, a man of very different birth and station from Grigor and Ivan and Ilya and Pyotr and all the rest of them. His face is so completely anonymous, so perfectly all-Russian, that we must regard him as Everyman; must feel that, for this once, genius has not donned the semblance of any one man in particular, but is impersonating the people at large. That is why Tolstoy has no face of his own; he possesses the general face of the Russian folk, because in him the whole of Russia lives and breathes.

  Hence the disappointment that, to begin with, almost invariably overwhelmed those who saw him for the first time. They had traveled a great distance by train, had driven over from Tula, and were seated in the reception room, full of awe, awaiting the master. Their conception of him was preformed. They expected something mighty and majestic; a man with a flowing beard, like that of God the Father, dignified, imposing, giant and genius rolled into one. Anticipation, swelled to awe, as they humbly bowed their heads and lowered their eyes before this imaginary picture of a splendid patriarch, whom they were about to see in the flesh. At length the door opened. Entered a short, thickset fellow, whose movements were so agile that his beard wagged. As he came in he ran rather than walked; then, pulling himself up, he stood looking with a friendly smile at the startled guest. In a cheerful tone, speaking quickly and easily, he prattled a welcome, offering a ready hand. The visitor, as he took this hand, was nonplussed, was shaken to the soul. What? This genial manikin, this nimble little fellow — could it really be Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy? Somewhat disconcerted, the guest looked up into his host’s face.

  Suddenly, he held his breath in amazement. Like a panther, from beneath the bushy jungle of the eyebrows, a flash sprang forth from the grey eyes, that piercing gaze which no picture or photograph could represent, though everyone who saw Tolstoy has spoken of it. Like a knife thrust, hard as steel and sparkling, it plunged home, and held fast. You could not stir; you could not evade it. Hypnotized by its influence, you had passively to endure its probings. No veil could withstand it. Like a projectile it pierced the armor plate of pretense; like a diamond it cut the glass of every mirror. No one (as Turgenev, Gorky, and a hundred others have assured us), could continue to dissimulate under this penetrating scrutiny.

  Only for a second did the piercing gaze endure. Then, their weapons sheathed, the eyes softened in a gentle and kindly smile. Like shadows of clouds upon the water, all changes of feeling wrought changes of expression in these restless pupils. Anger made them cold, displeasure froze them to crystal, kindliness thawed them, passion made them burn like fire. They could smile with an inner light, these mysterious stars, though there was no change in the hard mouth; and, under the melting influence of music, they could stream with tears as abundant as those of a peasant woman. Clear and bright at one moment from spiritual satisfaction, they would cloud over at the next, grow dark and sad, overshadowed by melancholy, and would then seem aloof and impenetrable. They could be coldly and pitilessly observant; could cut like a surgeon’s knife and disclose hidden mysteries like Röntgen rays, to ripple an instant later with good-humored curiosity. They could speak all the tongues of feeling, these eyes, the most eloquent that ever shone in a human face. Gorky, as was to be expected, has found the most apt description for them: “In his eyes, Tolstoy had a hundred eyes.”

  In these eyes, and only thanks to them, Tolstoy’s face had genius. All the light-energy of the man so richly endowed with vision was concentrated in them; just as the beauty of Dostoevsky, the man so richly endowed with thought, was concentrated in the dome of his brow. Everything else in Tolstoy’s countenance, the beard, the bushiness, was wrapping, was armature or carapace to safeguard the sparkling jewels, magical and magnetic, which attracted the substance of a world into themselves and radiated it forth once more — the most accurate spectrum of the universe known to our age. A thing might be infinitely small, yet these lenses made it visible; stooping from an inconceivable height like the falcon upon a cowering mouse, they would pounce upon the most insignificant detail, and were equally competent to disclose in a well-rounded panorama the expanses of the universe. They could blaze in the topmost altitudes of the spiritual world, and could with equal success throw a searchlight into the darkest abysses of the soul. They had ardor and purity enough, these sparkling crystals, to contemplate God in an ecstasy; and they had courag
e enough to contemplate devastating nullity, the Nothing, the gorgon’s head that turns the beholder to stone. All things were possible to these eyes; except one, perhaps: to be inactive, to sink into reverie, to enjoy the purely quiescent pleasure of a gracious and happy dream. Inevitably these eyes, the instant their lids were lifted, had to quest for prey, pitilessly awake, inexorably free from illusion. They would tolerate no wraith of glamour; they stripped off every veil of falsehood; they tore facile belief to tatters. To them, everything was disclosed in the stark nakedness of truth. It is terrible when such steel-grey daggers are turned against their owner, for then their keen points thrust mercilessly home, and stab him to the very heart.

  He who has such piercing eyes, who can see truth, has at his disposal the whole world and all its wealth of knowledge. One thing he will certainly lack, he whose eyes are ever watchful, and pierce to the inmost heart of truth; he will not have happiness for his portion.

  VITALITY AND ITS COUNTERPART

  I should like to live long, very long; and the thought of death fills me with a childlike, poetic alarm.

  FROM A LETTER WRITTEN IN YOUTH

  Rude health. A body built stoutly enough to last a century. Big bones and muscles, giving their owner the strength of a bear. Lying on the ground, young Tolstoy can with one hand lift a heavy soldier. Sinewy and elastic, he can beat all comers at the standing jump; he swims like a fish, rides like a Cossack, uses scythe or sickle as well as any peasant. Physical fatigue is unknown to this man of iron frame. His every nerve is tense and vibrant, is at once supple and tough, like a sword of Toledo steel; his every sense rings true, is alert. No weak spot anywhere, no breach or cranny or lack in the defensive armor of vital energies; and never, therefore, does serious illness affect this man of stalwart constitution. Tolstoy has a bodily system endowed with almost incredible powers of resistance, barricaded against every weakness, fortified against the assaults of age.

  His vitality is unexampled. Beside this biblical elder, this peasant barbarian, equipped with such stupendous virility, all other modern artists and men of letters look like women or weaklings. Even those who resembled him in their power to maintain creative output when they had become patriarchs suffered in body because the flesh had grown weary, thanks to the unceasing activity of the spirit, because the sword was wearing out the scabbard. Look at Goethe (a man of kindred horoscope, having also been born on August 28th), whose mental powers were, like Tolstoy’s, unimpaired in his eighty-third year; Goethe at sixty had begun to grow stout, and, being nervously afraid of chills, was careful in winter time to exclude every breath of fresh air from his study. Old Voltaire, lean and bony, looks more like a plucked fowl than a human being, as he sits at his desk covering ream after ream of paper with his scribbling. Kant in old age, a mechanical mummy, hobbles stiffly and toilsomely along the Königsberger Allée. But Tolstoy as octogenarian breaks the ice for his daily tub, digs vigorously in the garden, prances over the tennis court. At the age of sixty-seven, he was fired by the ambition of learning to ride a bicycle; at seventy, he was still a redoubtable skater; at eighty, he continued the daily practice of vigorous gymnastic exercises; and at eighty-two, when death was already beckoning, he would make his riding-whip sing in the air over his mare’s ears when, after a twenty-verst gallop, she halted or stumbled.

  The topmost boughs of this giant Russian oak, which is turgid with sap flowing into its finest ramifications, have grown up into the sky of the patriarchal years, without as yet any withering at the roots. The old man’s sight remains unimpaired to the day of his death. When out riding in the forest he can see the tiniest beetle crawling over the bark of a tree, and can without a glass discern the falcon soaring on high. His hearing is acute as ever; and his wide nostrils dilate with an animal-like pleasure as he snuffs the breeze. When spring comes its round, the white-bearded pilgrim is overpowered by an intoxication of the senses, is inebriated by the sharp, ammonia odor of the manure that has lain beneath the snows, an odor which now rises into the air and mingles with the fresh smell of the thawing earth. He recalls eighty previous springs, remembers them clearly, each with its own individuality, its own peculiar contribution to the complex of odors, actual and revived in memory. So vivid are the impressions that his eyes fill with tears. Wearing the heavy hobnailed boots of a countryman, and with the vigorous swing of a pioneer, the old fellow strides across the wet soil, which squelches beneath his tread. His hand knows nothing of the tremor of senile decay, and his farewell letter is penned in a script as firm as that of his boyhood’s days. His mind shows the imprint of the years as little as his body. His conversation outsparkles that of all others; an alarmingly efficient memory enables him to reconstruct every detail of the past. Nothing is lost, nothing has been obliterated by the friction of time. Still, when he is thwarted, he knits his brows angrily; still he bursts into laughter as hearty as a youth’s; his speech is still full of picturesque imagery; his blood still courses swiftly through his veins. When he is seventy or more, during a discussion concerning The Kreutzer Sonata, someone remarks that at the author’s age it is easy to abjure the lusts of the flesh. The old man fires up, and says with mingled pride and anger: “You are mistaken; the flesh is still powerful, even now I have to wrestle with it.”

  Nothing but this irrepressible vitality can explain Tolstoy’s unflagging creative energy. During the sixty years of his authorship, there was not one that lay fallow. His mind never rested; his senses never slept, never even indulged in a comfortable doze. Right on into old age, he had no experience of grave illness; working ten hours a day, he laughed at fatigue; his energies never drooped, never needed whip or spur. He used no stimulants, drank neither wine nor coffee, never heated his blood with meat or strong waters. Without these artificial aids, thanks entirely to their own native vigor, his senses were so keen, so lively, so perpetually on the stretch, that the lightest touch would set them tingling, the merest drop would make their brim-full cup overflow. For, his magnificent health notwithstanding, Tolstoy was a “sensitive.” Indeed, he could not have been the supreme artist he was, unless he had been irritable in the physiological sense of the term, unless he had been “thin-skinned.” The keyboard of his nervous system needed to be touched lightly, for the vehemence of the healthy response made all emotion dangerous to him. That is why (like Goethe and like Plato) he was afraid of music, which stirred too readily the waves of feeling, aroused too forcibly the hot-blooded passions. “Music has a terribly powerful effect on me,” he declared. In very truth, when the family was assembled around the piano, quietly listening, suddenly Tolstoy’s nostrils would begin to twitch, his brows would draw together, he would become aware of “a strange sense of pressure in the throat” — and he would jump up and hasten from the room, not wishing to burst into tears before them all. “What does this music want of me?” he said once, alarmed at his own subjugation. He realized that it really did want something of him: that it threatened to wrest from him something which he, for his part, was determined never to yield up; something which he had hidden away in the lowest nooks of feeling, though it was now in a ferment, and on the verge of breaking forth. Something mighty, something whose strength and exuberance he dreaded, was stirring within him. In defiance of his will, the storm of sensuality was rising from the depths, was seeking an outlet. He, who hated and feared sensuality (perhaps because he, better than any, knew its might), regarded women, regarded Woman, with an aversion that was unnatural in a healthy man, was proper to none but an anchorite. “Woman,” he wrote, “is harmless only when she is wholly engrossed in the duties of motherhood, is a paragon of modesty and virtue, or has acquired the venerability of old age” — in a word, when she does not exert the lure of sex, which Tolstoy throughout life regarded as “the sin of the body.” For this anti-Hellene, this Christian extremist, this monkish zealot, woman and music were instinct with evil because, by awakening sensuality, they tended to turn men away “from the inborn qualities of courage, resolution, reasonableness
, justice”; because, as Father Tolstoy preached in later days, they provoked us “to the sin of fleshliness.” They too, “wanted something of him,” something which he could not give; they, too, tended to stir something which he did not wish to have awakened. What this was can be discovered without any elaborate search. It was his own excessive sensuality, which, after years of struggle, he had at length succeeded in subduing. For him it was like a crouching beast, whipped into submission, slunk into some out-of-the-way corner of his being, tremblingly ready to leap from its lair if the master’s watchfulness were for a moment relaxed. Music was a charm which lulled the master’s will, and the “beast” thereupon was ready to seize its opportunity. Let a woman appear, and the whole pack of the bloodthirsty passions began to bay, to rage against the iron bars of their prison. Tolstoy’s rabidly monkish anxiety concerning matters of sex, his fanatical detestation of even the most healthily cheerful, nakedly natural sensuality, warrant the inference that within him a fierce virility, a passion like that of a rutting stag, lay hid. We know that in youth, passion led him into the wildest excesses, so that he described himself to Chekhov as having been “an indefatigable whoremonger”; that thereafter, for fifty years, the beast was kept in the cellar, walled in there, but alive. His writings, characteristically puritanical, show in one thing only that the exuberant sensuality of youth remained exuberant throughout his prime and far on into old age. His acute anxiety concerning matters of sex betrays him; his attitude of the hermit who has fled into the wilderness to escape the promptings of the flesh, the ultra-Christian ascetic, quaking with terror as he forcibly turns away his eyes from “Woman”, from the temptress who is in very truth nothing more than the phantom form assumed by his own immeasurable lusts, reveal the story of his inward struggle.