Adepts in Self-Portraiture

by Stefan Zweig

  Before long he has to recognize that more than this is demanded of him. The great mass of the faithful, the “people,” with which he seeks to become identified, is not content with these intellectualized symbols of humility, but asks that he should share, without qualification and without pause, the miseries and misfortunes of the folk. The crown of martyrdom — that is what the prophet must wear if he is to inspire perfect faith, to arouse unshakable conviction. The founder of a religion must not limit himself to an allusive attitude, to one which simply promises; he must demonstrate his own faith by absolute self-surrender. All that Tolstoy has hitherto done to strengthen his followers’ belief in the practicability of his doctrines has been to make humble gestures, to perform actions symbolic of humility, comparable to those demanded of the Pope and of the strictly orthodox among the emperors, who once a year, on Maundy Thursday, wash the feet of twelve old men. This ceremony is designed to show that even the most exalted of mortals cannot be debased by the meanest of occupations. Just as little as the Pope or the Emperor of Austria or the King of Spain really forfeited power, really became a servant, thanks to the performance of this annual ceremony, just so little did the distinguished author and great nobleman become a shoemaker because he worked for an hour with awl and waxed thread, become a peasant because he did a morning’s labor in the fields from time to time, become a mendicant because he assigned his property to his housemates. In these ways, he may have demonstrated the practicability of his doctrines, but he was not effectively practicing them. It was effective practice that the folk wanted of him. Under stress of a deep-rooted instinct, they demanded an unqualified sacrifice, and would not accept the will — the symbol — for the deed. The disciples took a more literal view of the teaching than did the teacher. They were disappointed, disillusioned, when, making pilgrimage to the abiding place of this advocate of voluntary poverty, they noted that, at Yasnaya Polyana, as in other manors, the peasants were still poverty stricken, whereas Leo Tolstoy was still a nobleman who welcomed his guests in the grand style, thereby writing himself down as a member of that “class of persons who, by all kinds of artifices, rob the people of the necessaries of life.” The loudly proclaimed assignment of property did not manifest itself as a genuine renunciation, as an acceptance of the poor man’s lot. The pilgrims found the author living as comfortably as ever, and the hours at the plow-tail or at the cobbler’s last did not suffice to stifle their doubts. “What sort of man is this, who preaches one thing and does another?” mutters an old peasant angrily. Revolutionary-minded students and declared communists are even harsher in their judgment of such wobbling between precept and practice. By degrees, even the most ardent of his followers are disconcerted by his half measures. Admonitory letters, fierce invectives, enjoin him, either to repudiate the doctrines he does not practice, or else to practice them to the full.

  Alarmed by these appeals, Tolstoy comes in the end to recognize how extensive are the demands he is making and to perceive that, if his mission is to be a live one, words must yield place to deeds, and advice to others must be backed up by a thoroughgoing transformation of his own existence. “One who wishes to be heard by men must confirm truth by suffering, and, better still, by death.” Thus Tolstoy is forced to shoulder obligations which he did not foresee when he began his mission. Perplexed, alarmed, uncertain of his own strength, harried with anxiety, he takes up his cross, determined that henceforward his actions shall be the embodiment of his convictions; resolved that, in a mocking and chattering world, he will be a saintly exponent of his religious faith.

  “Saintly”; the word has been uttered, despite the risk of mockery. There can be no doubt that in this sober age of ours, the figure of the saint looks absurd, not to say impossible — an anachronistic survival from the Middle Ages. In this case the feeling of anachronism relates only to the emblems of sainthood, and to its cult. These are unquestionably out of date. Nevertheless, the saintly type, having once appeared on earth, recurs ever and again in the eternal recurrence of the similar which we term history. In every epoch, certain persons are impelled to attempt a saintly existence, for the religious sentiment of mankind perpetually feels the need for this highest form of spiritual life, and perpetually recreates it, though with attributes which necessarily differ with the changing times. Our modern conception of the sanctification of existence by spiritual ardor has little in common with the woodcuts that illustrate the Golden Legend or with the petrified rigidity of the anchorites in the desert. We have long since given up connecting the idea of sainthood with the utterances of ecumenical councils and the decisions of papal conclaves. When we talk of a life as saintly, we mean that it is heroic in the sense of entire devotion to a religiously conceived ideal. The intellectual ecstasy, the ascetic loneliness, of the iconoclast of Sils-Maria, and the amazing abstinence of the lens polisher of Amsterdam, seems to us as impressive as the physical ecstasy of a flagellant. Even today, when miracles are out of fashion, when we write with a machine and read by electric light, in the modern cities whose wide streets divide them into perfectly rectangular blocks, there is still place for saints to bear witness to the power of conscience. Where we differ from our forefathers is that we no longer find it necessary to look upon these rare and remarkable beings as infallible, as uplifted out of all danger of lapsing into earthly peccadilloes. On the contrary, we love them in their crises and their struggles, and we sympathize with them most keenly, not despite their weaknesses, but because of these. Our generation does not look for saints who are to be regarded as messengers from a superhuman realm, but for saints whom it can honor as the most human among men.

  That is why, in Tolstoy’s strenuous endeavor to make his life a model one, we are especially touched by his vacillations, and are more moved by his failures than we should have been by an incredible sanctity. Even when we are unable to share his views, the suffering he endured in the attempt to realize them convinces us of the loftiness of his aims. Inasmuch as Tolstoy attempts to emerge from the conventional forms of life, and to act in accordance with those principles which are timeless and eternal, his life assumes the aspect of a tragedy greater than any we have witnessed since Nietzsche’s. Such a forcible cutting adrift from all the relations of family life, from the habits of the nobleman, the ties of wealth, the customs of his rank and his epoch, could not be effected without the painful laceration of a closely meshed nervous network, without inflicting grievous suffering upon himself and those near and dear to him. Tolstoy did not dread the pain. A true Russian, and therefore an extremist, he was not merely willing to be put to the test, but positively thirsted to give visible proof that his conviction was genuine. He had long been weary of the comforts of life; family happiness, fame, the outward tokens of veneration, had begun to disgust him; unconsciously, the creative elements in him were longing for a tenser and more diversified existence, for a more intimate communion with the primal energies of mankind, for poverty and suffering, whose formative influences he did not come to recognize until after the crisis. He wanted to live as the lowliest must live; without home or money or family; dirty, lousy, despised, persecuted by the State and rejected by the Church. To give plain demonstration that his humility was genuine, he wanted to experience in his own person the life which in his books he had described as best fitted to promote spiritual development; the life of one who is homeless, propertyless, driven onward by fate like a leaf by the autumn winds. In this matter, history, the supreme artist, has constructed another of her brilliantly ironical antitheses. Tolstoy spontaneously and urgently desired the fate which had been imposed from without upon his counterpart Dostoevsky. For Dostoevsky had suffered at the cruel hands of fate all that Tolstoy, eager for martyrdom, now sought on principle. To Dostoevsky poverty clung like the shirt of Nessus, which seared his flesh, and denied him every possibility of joy. He wandered, homeless, from country to country, tortured by illness. The tsar’s soldiers bound him to the post of execution, and then, when he was reprieved from death, hustl
ed him away to a Siberian prison. All these sufferings which Tolstoy needed (so he thought) for the demonstration of his doctrine, for the realization of his social ideal, were squandered on Dostoevsky; whereas Tolstoy, who yearned for martyrdom, was not vouchsafed this boon.

  Tolstoy is never able to achieve a demonstration of his will-to-passion. Fate bars his road to martyrdom. He wants to be poor, to give all his possessions to his fellow men, to refrain from making any more money out of his writings; but his family will not allow him to be poor, and the great property goes on growing in the hands of his housemates. He would like to lead a solitary life; but his fame increases, so that he is besieged by interviewers and other visitors. He would like to be despised; but the more he rails at himself, the more contemptuously he talks of his own work, and the more persistently he questions his own uprightness, the more do others regard him with veneration. He would be glad to lead the life of a peasant, to dwell in a smoke-grimed hut, unknown and untroubled, or to wander as pilgrim and mendicant; but his family takes the utmost care of him, and, to his great annoyance, surrounds him with the modern conveniences which he scorns. He yearns to be prosecuted, to be imprisoned and scourged, saying, “It is painful to me that I have to live in freedom”; but the authorities are long-suffering, refuse to treat him harshly, and are content to deal with his followers, some of whom are whipped and sent to Siberia. At length, therefore, as a last resort, he showers abuse on the tsar, hoping that after this public demonstration he will be allowed, publicly, to expiate his offense and thus prove the reality of his convictions; but Nicholas II, when one of his ministers lodges a complaint, says, “Take no steps against Leo Tolstoy, for I do not intend to make a martyr of him.” A shrewd decision, for martyrdom was what Tolstoy most ardently desired during the last years of his life, and this was the one thing fate would not grant him. Enraged, like a madman in a padded room, Tolstoy, prisoned by the intangible walls of his own fame, laid about him with blows that were void of effect, reviling himself, reviling State, Church, and all other constituted authorities. These authorities listened to him politely, hat in hand, treating him indulgently as a harmless lunatic. The demonstration for which he had hoped, the public martyrdom which he craved, were forever denied him.

  But why — the question came impatiently from his admirers, and mockingly from his adversaries — why did he not resolutely put an end to this distressing, this absurd contradiction? Why did he not make a clean sweep of photographers and reporters? Why did he allow the members of his family to go on receiving money for the sale of his books? Why did he allow those with whom he lived, those who would not accept his teaching, those who regarded wealth and comfort as the chief goods of life, to do as they pleased in these matters? Why did he not follow the call of his own conscience? Tolstoy was never able to answer these terrible questions, and never tried to excuse himself for his failure. None of the chatterers who were so ready to draw attention to the glaring contrast between precept and practice could judge him more harshly than he judged himself. In 1908, he wrote in his diary: “If I were to hear of a stranger that he lived in luxury, took all he could from the peasants, looked on inertly when they were arrested, while calling himself a Christian and preaching Christianity to others, while doling out halfpence as alms, while taking shelter behind his wife from the consequences of all his mean actions — I should not hesitate to call him a scoundrel! That is what must be said of me, since I profess to renounce the vanities of the world and to live only for the things of the spirit.” Leo Tolstoy did not need anyone else to inform him that there was a conflict between will and action. Questioning himself in his diary, he wrote: “Do you yourself live in accordance with the principles you teach?” And he answered despairingly: “No, I am utterly ashamed, am guilty, and contemptible.” He had no doubt whatever that there could be but one logical outcome to his profession of faith; that he ought to leave his home, to renounce his title of nobility, to abandon his art, and “to wander as a pilgrim upon the roads of Russia.” But he could never constrain himself to take the necessary step.

  So be it! For me, the mystery of this weakness, this incapacity for a ruthless carrying out of his own principles, is the crowning beauty of Tolstoy’s character. There is something inhuman about perfection. The saint, even if he be an apostle of gentleness, must be capable of hardness. He must be able to impose upon his disciples the inhuman task of leaving father and mother, of abandoning wife and children, in order to attain sanctity. A consistent, a perfectly rounded existence, is possible only to an individual cut adrift from his fellows, to one who lives in a vacuum; it is not possible to one who has ties and associations. That is why, in all ages, the path of the saint has led into the desert, as the only place where a saint can be at home. Tolstoy, likewise, in order to realize the ultimate consequences of his doctrine, would have had, not only to renounce Church and State, but also to quit the warm and intimate environment of the family. For thirty years he lacked the strength needed for this act of violence. Twice he fled, and twice he returned. The thought that his wife, in her despair, might kill herself, paralyzed his will, blunted the edge of its brutality. He could not make up his mind (you may censure him as illogical, but you cannot fail to admire him for his humanity) to sacrifice another to his own abstract idea. Rather than break with his children, rather than drive his wife to suicide, he reluctantly endured an association in which there was no spiritual community. Too humane to hurt those with whom he lived, in decisive matters (like that of his will, and that of the sale of his books) he bowed to the wishes of his family, and preferred to accept suffering for himself than cause suffering to others. Hard as the struggle was, he would rather be a frail human being than an obdurate saint.

  He accepts all the blame for his lukewarmness and lack of consistency. He knows that every guttersnipe can gibe at him, that every honest man can question his uprightness, that every one of his disciples can condemn him; but here Tolstoy displays magnificent endurance throughout these dark years, and bows to the accusation of duplicity without attempting to excuse himself. “In the eyes of men my position may well seem a false one; perhaps this is necessary,” he writes in 1898. He is beginning to understand the special character of his probation; to understand that an inglorious martyrdom such as his, that having to suffer unjust accusations without being able to put up a defense or offer an excuse, is a harder lot than that of one who is martyred publicly and dramatically. “I often wished to suffer, would gladly have endured persecution, but that was only an expression of slothfulness, of the wish that others should do the work for me, they tormenting me, while all I had to do was to suffer.” The most impatient of men, one who would gladly have dived over head and ears into torture, who would have been willing to go to the stake for his convictions, has come to recognize that for him has been reserved the far more dreadful fate of being roasted at a slow fire, of suffering at one and the same time from the contempt of the uninitiated and from the reproaches of his own conscience. Hour after hour he perceives his own inconsistency, must blame himself for his sins of omission, must censure himself for his own futility; yet at the same time he feels that his discontent is essential, for it humbles his pride and reveals to him his own weakness. Again and again it is forced upon him that he is incompetent to perform his supreme task, that of setting a good example; and that he is unable to fulfill his most intimate aspiration, that of leading a saintly life in which he will be true to himself. With infinite shame he admits that he cannot realize in his own practice the things he is demanding of all mankind. This secret cancer of the mind makes his closing years far more tragic than they would have been had he been able to play the part of consistent hero. It is for the very reason that he did not fulfill, could not fulfill, his own ethical demands, that the figure of this great moralist is so impressive.

  Tolstoy, with his genius for self-criticism, was harsher than all objective accusers in his suspicion as to the purity of his own motives. What his adversaries often whispered, t
heir accusation that in adopting the role of redeemer and in making public proclamation of humility he had been influenced by a desire to appear in the limelight, and not by straightforward motives at all — this terrible charge is inexorably pressed home by Tolstoy against himself. Those who want to know what torments of conscience he suffered in the attempt to attain clarity as to his own motives should read the posthumous story Father Sergius. St. Teresa, alarmed by her visions, anxiously asked her confessor whether these manifestations really came from God, and might not have been sent by the devil to test her pride. So Tolstoy, in this story, asks himself whether his sayings and doings before men can really be of divine origin, can really spring from a moral source, or whether they may not derive from the devil of vanity, be the outcome of vain gloriousness, of a delight in popular adulation. Thinly veiled in Father Sergius is an account of his own position at Yasnaya Polyana. To the saint in the story, the wonder-working monk, flock penitents and admirers, just as to Tolstoy flock the believers, the curious, and those hunting for a new sensation. Like Tolstoy, his double in the story, at the very time when his adherents are thronging around him, is asking himself whether he, whom they honor as a saint, is indeed saintly in his heart. He inquires: “To what extent are the things which I do, done for love of God, and to what extent are they done only for the approbation of man?” Tolstoy answers his own question through Father Sergius’s mouth. He feels in the depths of his soul that the devil has transformed his activities for the love of God into other activities, designed to secure the approbation of man. He is aware that, whereas in former days he would have been glad if visitors had not come to disturb his solitude, he would now find solitude an affliction. His visitors are a nuisance; they weary him: but, in his innermost heart, he enjoys their coming, delights in their adulation. He has less and less time for reflection and prayer. He sometimes feels that he is like a place out of which a spring had burst forth, “a gently flowing spring of living water, which streamed out of me and through me. Now the water can no longer collect in a pool, for so many thirsty folk press around the spring, jostling one another, and trampling the ground, that there is nothing left but a patch of mire.” There is no more love in him, no humility, no purity.