Adepts in Self-Portraiture

by Stefan Zweig

  One who thus reproduces the actual tenor of the Tolstoyan theological system is likely to be charged with exaggeration. Unfortunately, it is Tolstoy himself who, in his proselytizing zeal, exaggerates so heinously; it is Tolstoy himself, who, wishing to make up for the poverty of his arguments, has recourse to such preposterous metaphors. How admirable, how clear, how irrefutable, is his fundamental notion, his gospel of non-resistance. This is what he demands from us all; this, and spiritual humility. He warns us to avert the otherwise inevitable conflict which will issue from the increasing inequality between the different social strata; to avert the revolution from beneath by voluntarily beginning it from above, and to obviate the use of force by a primitive Christian renunciation of force. The rich man is to rid himself of his wealth; the intellectual is to free himself from arrogance; the artists are to quit their ivory towers and to mingle with the people. We are to tame our passions, our “animal” personality; and, instead of encouraging greed, we are to cultivate the capacity for giving. Beyond question, these are splendid precepts, whose reiteration is essential to the progress of mankind. But Tolstoy, in his impatience, is not content as most religious teachers have been content to demand such things as the supreme acquirements of choice individuals; he insists that all shall display these gentle qualities, without exception, instantly. In his desire to convert the world to his way of thinking, he lapses into hyperbole, insisting that we shall all of us, in a trice, renounce the objects towards which we are driven by imperious urges. The sexagenarian adjures young men to practice a sexual continence which was not characteristic of himself in youth; for artists and thinkers he prescribes, not merely indifference towards, but positive contempt for, art and thought, to which he has himself been hitherto devoted. In his eagerness to convince everyone that extant civilization has no foundations worthy of respect, he sets out to demolish with mighty strokes all the props of our intellectual world. In his eagerness to make unqualified asceticism more attractive, he calumniates our latter day culture, our artists, our imaginative writers, our technicians, and our men of science, passing beyond the realm of exaggeration into that of crude untruth. Nor does he hesitate to calumniate himself, since that helps him to clear the ground for attacks on others.

  Are we really to suppose that Leo Tolstoy, one of whose most faithful companions and advisers was a private physician, in actual fact regarded medical science and its practitioners as “unnecessary things,” life as a “sin,” and cleanliness as “superfluous luxury”? Is it true that Tolstoy, whose writings fill a bookshelf, lived the life of a “useless parasite,” was no better than a “plant louse”? Read his words: “I eat, chatter, listen, eat again, write and read, this meaning that I speak and listen once more, then I eat again, amuse myself, eat and talk once more, then I eat again, and go to bed,” and ask yourself whether that was actually the way in which War and Peace and Anna Karenina were created. Is it true that this man, to whose eyes the tears rise when he listens to one of Chopin’s sonatas, is like a Puritan, and regards music as nothing more than the devil’s bagpipes? Did he honestly believe that Beethoven was a “seducer to sensuality,” that Shakespeare’s plays were “meaningless twaddle,” that Nietzsche’s writings were “coarse, foolishly emphatic babble,” that Pushkin’s works were “only fit to use as cigarette paper for the people”? This man who served art so magnificently — can he in actual fact have looked upon art as nothing more than “the luxury of idlers”; and did he believe his own words when he said that the opinions of Grisha the tailor and Pyotr the shoemaker were of more moment to him than those of Turgenev or Dostoevsky? He who had been “an indefatigable whoremonger” in youth and who had subsequently procreated thirteen children in lawful wedlock — did he honestly believe that young men, moved by his appeals, would all become skoptsy, would all emasculate themselves? We see that Tolstoy is frenzied in his exaggerations, and we infer that he is driven to exaggerate by an uneasy conscience, in the hope that by exaggeration he will be able to hide the paucity of his arguments.

  Sometimes, indeed, he seems to have had an inkling that this nonsense is nullified by its own excess, as when he writes: “I have very little hope that my propositions will be accepted, or even seriously discussed.” How painfully true! When he was alive, it was impossible to argue with this champion of non-resistance. “Nobody can convince Leo Tolstoy,” sighs his wife. “He is so opinionated that he can never admit having made a mistake,” reports another woman, one of his most intimate friends. Now, when he is dead, it would be absurd to take up the cudgels against him on behalf of Beethoven or Shakespeare! Those who love Tolstoy follow the wisest course by ignoring him when he makes too obvious a display of illogicality. No one whose opinion is worth a rap has ever been led by Tolstoy’s theological outbursts to accept the view that it behooves us to abandon a struggle which has been going on for thousands of years, the struggle to guide life by reason; that it behooves us to scrap all the most notable acquisitions of the human spirit. This Europe of ours, in which such a master of thought as Nietzsche was so recently born, a region to whose cultivation of the powers of the mind we owe it that this difficult world has become habitable — this Europe of ours has certainly no inclination, in obedience to the ipse dixit of a fantastical moralist, to return to a peasant, a Mongolian, simplicity; to return to a life in skin tents; to adjure its intellectual past as “sinful” error. Europe has been and will remain respectful enough to draw a distinction between Tolstoy the champion of the individual conscience, and the Tolstoy who made desperate efforts to develop a nervous crisis into a philosophy, to transform a climacteric anxiety into a system of economics. We shall always distinguish between the fine moral impulses which were the outcome of what was best in the riper years of this artist’s life; and the attempt to exorcise civilization as an evil demon, which is the characteristic fruit of the theories of his old age. Tolstoy’s earnestness and realism have quickened the conscience of our generation; but the theories we are now considering are nothing more than an attack upon the joy of life, are the expression of an ascetic desire to lapse from civilization into an impossible primitive Christianity, as conceived by the imagination of a man who was no longer a Christian and had therefore transcended Christianity.

  Who believes that “abstinence is the very essence of life,” that we should burden ourselves with duties and regulate our conduct by Bible texts in a way that would drain all the blood from our veins? We live for this world, not for another, and we do not put our trust in an interpreter who knows nothing of the procreative and invigorating power of joy. We refuse to surrender the acquirements of our reasoning faculties and our technique; to abandon the heritage of western civilization; to make a bonfire of our books, our pictures, our cities, and our science. We will not part with a grain of palpable and visible reality at the bidding of any philosopher, and least of all at the bidding of one who preaches a reactionary and depressing doctrine, who counsels us to withdraw from the town into the steppe, to exchange a life of intellectual activity for one of spiritual dullness. No promise of heavenly bliss will induce us to barter away the bewildering plenitude of our earthly existence for a narrow simplicity. We would rather be “sinful” than primitive, would rather enjoy our passions than become stupid and biblically devout. That is why Europe has put away Tolstoy’s sociological theories in its literary deed-boxes, with due respect for the ethical will that inspires them, but determined to pay no further heed to them. For we are convinced that the retrograde and the reactionary can never be creative, even though they present themselves in the most religious of garbs, and even though they are advocated by a man of genius; and we are sure that the product of mental confusion can never tend to bring clarity of vision to the world. Finally, we will not listen to this gospel because Tolstoy, though he has driven the plowshare of his criticism more deeply than any other into the soil of our time, has not enriched that soil with a single grain of seed destined to bear fruit in our European future — being herein typically Ru
ssian, the embodiment of the spirit of his race and his generation.

  Beyond question, the meaning and the mission of the spirit of Russia during the last hundred years have found expression in the holy unrest and the relentless passion with which the depths of our moral nature have been explored, with which the roots of all social problems have been exposed; and perforce we bow in veneration before the collective genius of Russian artists. If today our feelings run in deeper channels than of yore, if our knowledge has become more resolute, if our outlooks on the problems of time and eternity are more steadfast and more tragic and more unflinching than of old, we have to thank Russia and Russian literature for this boon, as also for the creative unrest which leads us towards a new truth transcending the ancient verities. Russian thought is a ferment of the spirit, which endows that spirit with enhanced energies; but it does not promote lucidity like the thought of Spinoza, Montaigne, and some of the Germans. The Russians have given magnificent help towards the spiritual expansion of the world, and no artists of modern times have plowed and harrowed the soul more effectively than Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. But neither of them has helped us in building up a new order; and when they seek to convince us that the chaos which exists in the depths of their own minds must be accepted as the meaning of the world, we cannot but reject their teaching. Both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, seized with terror at the contemplation of the abysses of their own nihilism, and overwhelmed with a primal anxiety, seek refuge in religious reaction. That they may escape falling into the gulf their own imaginations have created, they cling to the Christian cross, and spread a cloud across the Russian world at the very time when Nietzsche’s clarifying lightnings are rending to tatters the old anxieties about heaven, and when Nietzsche has bestowed upon Europeans the gift of faith in their own power and freedom.

  How strange a spectacle! Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, the greatest Russians of their day, are suddenly smitten with apocalyptic terrors, lay aside their work, and uplift a Russian cross, both of them appealing to Christ (though to different Christs) as savior of a dying world. Like frenzied medieval monks, they stand in their pulpits, hostile each to the other in spirit as in their lives. Dostoevsky is an arch-reactionary, a defender of the autocracy, a preacher of war and terror, an admirer of excess of power, devotee of the tsar who had cast him into prison, worshipper of an imperialistic and world-conquering redeemer. Tolstoy no less fanatically scorns what Dostoevsky admires, is mystically anarchistic just as Dostoevsky is mystically servile, stigmatizing the tsar as an assassin, Church and State as robbers, and fulminating against war. He, likewise, has the name of Christ on his lips and holds the New Testament in his hand. Both of them are reactionaries who, urged onward by fears that well up from within, would like to push the world back into humility and mental lethargy. Surely both of them must have been prophetically inspired; they must have had premonitions of the destruction of the world; they must have foreseen that an earthquake was impending in Russia. Is not this the mission of the poet, that he shall see in advance the lightnings, shall hear in advance the crash of thunder; that he shall feel in advance the pangs which will accompany the birth of a new time? With their calls to repentance, these wrathful prophets, who had visions of the coming destruction and did nothing to avert the omen, seem like gigantic figures come down to us out of the Old Testament, unparalleled in the modern world.

  They have no power to do more than sense what is coming; they can do nothing to change the course of events. Dostoevsky execrates the revolution, but hardly is he in his tomb before the bomb which kills the tsar is thrown. Tolstoy rails against war and demands love on earth, but spring has not greened four times over his grave before the most horrible of fratricidal struggles desecrates the world. The characters in his books, offspring of an art which in later years he despised, outlive the ravages of time; but his doctrines have been overthrown by the first gusts. He did not live to see the collapse of his kingdom of God, the hopeless failure of his gospel of love; but he must have looked forward to what would happen. During the last year of his life, when he was seated among his friends, a letter was brought to him. Opening it, he read as follows:

  “No, Leo Nikolaevich, I cannot agree with you that human relations may be bettered by love alone. None but carefully brought up and well fed persons can say that. What message have you for those who have been hungry from earliest childhood, and who throughout life have groaned under the yoke of tyrants? They will fight; they will try to free themselves from slavery. On the eve of your death, Leo Nikolaevich, I tell you that the world will once again be drenched with blood; more than once the masters, without distinction of sex, they and their children, will be slaughtered and torn to pieces, that the earth may no longer have to look for evil at their hands. I am sorry that you will not live to see this day, on which the evidence of your own eyes would convince you that you have been wrong. I wish you a peaceful death.”

  No one knows who wrote this ominous letter. Was it penned by Trotsky or by Lenin, or by one of the nameless revolutionists moldering in Schlüsselburg? We shall never know. Likely enough, by the time he received it Tolstoy was already aware that his teaching was in hopeless conflict with the realities of life, that passion has more influence on men’s actions than brotherly love. We are told that his face became overshadowed as he read the letter, and that he looked thoughtful as he took it away with him into his room, his spirit troubled with forebodings.

  STRUGGLE FOR REALIZATION

  It is easier to write ten volumes of philosophy than to put one principle into practice.

  DIARY, 1847

  In his later years, Tolstoy spent much of his time over the Bible. With disquietude he must have pondered the text: “They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind,” for the prophecy was certainly fulfilled in his own life. A man who casts his spiritual unrest into the world will assuredly rue it, above all if he be a great man. Intensified a thousand fold, the trouble will return into his own breast. Today, when the topic has grown cold, it is hard to realize what extravagant expectations were aroused by Tolstoy’s message, in the Russian world first of all, and afterwards across the frontiers. This message produced a spiritual uproar, stirred the folk conscience to its depths. Vainly did the Russian autocracy, alarmed by the widespread response, hasten to suppress Tolstoy’s polemic writings. They passed from hand to hand in typewritten copies, and editions printed abroad were smuggled into Russia. The more virulently the author attacked the foundations of the existing order, and the more ardently he advocated the establishment of a new and better order, the louder was the echo in the hearts of his fellows. Men are ever ready to listen to a gospel of redemption. Today, railways and telegraphs and wireless notwithstanding, despite our microscopes and other technical marvels, the world of the moral life is athrill with messianic expectations, just as it was in the days of Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha. Now, as of old, man is eager for miracles; now, as of old, the soul of the masses thirsts for a teacher and a leader. Always, therefore, one who presents himself as a redeemer can look for the customary reaction on the part of the redemptionist nerves of his fellow mortals; and the prophet who is bold enough to say “I know the truth” can count upon a number of self-sacrificing disciples.

  Thus it was that towards the close of the nineteenth century, when Tolstoy announced his apostolic mission, millions upon millions of Russians were ready to heed his message. My Confession, which for us has long ceased to be anything more than a document of psychological interest, fired youthful believers like a new Book of Revelation. “At length,” they said, rejoicing, “a mighty man and a free spirit, known far and wide as the greatest Russian writer of the day, has voiced the demand which has hitherto been voiced by the disinherited, or whispered in secret by those who are still little better than serfs. He has declared that the extant order of the world is unjust, immoral, and therefore untenable; and he insists that a new and better form must be discovered. An unexpected impetus has been conveyed to all malcontents. Moreov
er, it has not come from one of those whose profession is to make phrases about progress, but from a man of independent and incorruptible personality, whose authority and sincerity no one will dream of challenging. This man, we are given to understand, wishes to set an example by the conduct of his own life, by every action he performs. A count, he refuses to avail himself of the privileges of nobility; a wealthy man, he would like to discard his proprietary rights; born and brought up among the great, he prefers to participate in the working community of the people, to the end that religious brotherhood shall replace the tyranny of the State, and that the divine kingdom of love shall be substituted for the tsardom of force.” Tidings of this new redeemer of the dispossessed soon filter down to the uncultured, to the peasants, to the illiterate; the first disciples come together; the Tolstoyans begin to follow their teacher’s injunctions word by word and letter by letter; and behind this small group of the faithful there waits and watches the huge mass of the oppressed, wondering whether for them, so often disappointed, hope has at length dawned. Millions of hearts are glowing, millions of eyes are centered on Tolstoy the revealer, eagerly watching his every action. “He has learned, and he will teach us.”

  Yet, strangely enough, Tolstoy does not at first seem to realize how great is his responsibility, now that, so unexpectedly, a vast multitude of adherents is scrutinizing his private life. Of course he is perspicacious enough to be aware that one who is to reveal a new doctrine of life must not be content with the writing of precepts, but must demonstrate the reality of his teaching by his own example. Yet in the early days of his mission he makes the mistake of thinking that he does enough when he symbolically indicates by his behavior his conviction that his social and moral demands are practicable, by giving, now and again, a sign of willingness to act on his own principles. Thus he dresses like a peasant, in order to obliterate the outward distinction between lord and underling; he works in the fields with scythe and plow, and has his portrait painted in this guise by Repin, that everyone may have ocular demonstration of what he thinks. “I do not regard manual labor in the fields, the honest toil by which bread is made, as shameful; and no one ought to be ashamed of it, seeing that I, Leo Tolstoy, who (as you all know) need not do such work, I, whose powers in the intellectual world might be supposed to excuse him from activities in the physical, am glad to undertake these latter.” To purge his soul of the “sin” of ownership, he assigns his property (which at that date already amounted to more than half a million rubles) to his wife and family, and refuses to receive any more money or money’s worth for his writings. To the poor and lowly, to anyone who asks, he gives alms and time; and he tenders brotherly help whenever injustice is done.