In 1899 Tolstoy published his third long novel, Voskreseniye (Resurrection); he used the royalties to pay for the transportation of a persecuted religious sect, the Dukhobors, to Canada. The novel's hero, the idle aristocrat Dmitry Nekhlyudov, finds himself on a jury where he recognizes the defendant, the prostitute Katyusha Maslova, as a woman whom he once had seduced, thus precipitating her life of crime. After she is condemned to imprisonment in Siberia, he decides to follow her and, if she will agree, to marry her. In the novel's most remarkable exchange, she reproaches him for his hypocrisy: once you got your pleasure from me, and now you want to get your salvation from me, she tells him. She refuses to marry him, but, as the novel ends, Nekhlyudov achieves spiritual awakening when he at last understands Tolstoyan truths, especially the futility of judging others. The novel's most celebrated sections satirize the church and the justice system, but the work is generally regarded as markedly inferior to War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
Tolstoy's conversion led him to write a treatise and several essays on art. Sometimes he expressed in more extreme form ideas he had always held (such as his dislike for imitation of fashionable schools), but at other times he endorsed ideas that were incompatible with his own earlier novels, which he rejected. In Chto takoye iskusstvo? (1898; What Is Art?) he argued that true art requires a sensitive appreciation of a particular experience, a highly specific feeling that is communicated to the reader not by propositions but by “infection.” In Tolstoy's view, most celebrated works of high art derive from no real experience but rather from clever imitation of existing art. They are therefore “counterfeit” works that are not really art at all. Tolstoy further divides true art into good and bad, depending on the moral sensibility with which a given work infects its audience. Condemning most acknowledged masterpieces, including Shakespeare's plays as well as his own great novels, as either counterfeit or bad, Tolstoy singled out for praise the biblical story of Joseph and, among Russian works, Dostoyevsky's The House of the Dead and some stories by his young friend Anton Chekhov (Chekhov, Anton). He was cool to Chekhov's drama, however, and, in a celebrated witticism, once told Chekhov that his plays were even worse than Shakespeare's.
Tolstoy's late works also include a satiric drama, Zhivoy trup (written 1900; The Living Corpse), and a harrowing play about peasant life, Vlast tmy (written 1886; The Power of Darkness). After his death, a number of unpublished works came to light, most notably the novella Khadji-Murat (1904; Hadji-Murad), a brilliant narrative about the Caucasus reminiscent of Tolstoy's earliest fiction.
Last years
With the notable exception of his daughter Aleksandra, whom he made his heir, Tolstoy's family remained aloof from or hostile to his teachings. His wife especially resented the constant presence of disciples, led by the dogmatic V.G. Chertkov, at Yasnaya Polyana. Their once happy life had turned into one of the most famous bad marriages in literary history. The story of his dogmatism and her penchant for scenes has excited numerous biographers to take one side or the other. Because both kept diaries, and indeed exchanged and commented on each other's diaries, their quarrels are almost too well documented.
Tormented by his domestic situation and by the contradiction between his life and his principles, in 1910 Tolstoy at last escaped incognito from Yasnaya Polyana, accompanied by Aleksandra and his doctor. In spite of his stealth and desire for privacy, the international press was soon able to report on his movements. Within a few days, he contracted pneumonia and died of heart failure at the railroad station of Astapovo.
Assessment
In contrast to other psychological writers, such as Dostoyevsky, who specialized in unconscious processes, Tolstoy described conscious mental life with unparalleled mastery. His name has become synonymous with an appreciation of contingency and of the value of everyday activity. Oscillating between skepticism and dogmatism, Tolstoy explored the most diverse approaches to human experience. Above all, his greatest works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, endure as the summit of realist fiction.
Gary Saul Morson
Additional Reading
Biographies and recollections of Tolstoy
The best portrait of Tolstoy the person is Maxim Gorky, Reminiscences of Leo Nicolaevich Tolstoy (1920, reprinted 1977; originally published in Russian, 1919). There are several biographies of Tolstoy. Aylmer Maude, The Life of Tolstoy, 2 vol. (1908–10, reissued 2 vol. in 1, 1987), is a highly detailed account, written by a friend sympathetic to Tolstoy's teachings. Ernest J. Simmons, Leo Tolstoy (1946, reissued in 2 vol., 1960), is useful for its generous selection of intriguing quotations concerning Tolstoy's life, though it is weak on Tolstoy's works. Henri Troyat, Tolstoy (1967, reprinted 1980; originally published in French, 1965), captures the drama of Tolstoy's life; it is marred, however, by the use of autobiographical fiction as if it were nonfictional documents. Because Troyat is skeptical of Tolstoy's religious teachings, his biography is a useful counterpoint to Maude's. A whimsical biography by a prominent Russian writer and critic is Victor Shklovsky (viktor Shklovskii), Lev Tolstoy (1978; originally published in Russian, 1963). Also of interest is A.N. Wilson, Tolstoy (1988). N.N. Gusev, Letopis' zhizni i tvorchestva L'va Nikolaevicha Tolstogo, 2 vol. (1958–60), is a chronology of facts.Informative works on Tolstoy's wife are The Diaries of Sophia Tolstoy, trans. by Cathy Porter (1985); and S.A. Tolstaia, Autobiography of Countess Tolstoy, trans. from Russian by S.S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf (also published as The Autobiography of Countess Sophie Tolstoi, 1922). Accounts of the Tolstoy's marriage are Cynthia Asquith, Married to Tolstoy (1960); Anne Edwards, Sonya: The Life of Countess Tolstoy (1981); and Louise Smoluchowski, Lev and Sonya: The Story of the Tolstoy Marriage (1987). Alexandra Tolstoy, Tolstoy: A Life of My Father (1953, reissued 1975; originally published in Russian, 2 vol., 1953), presents another view.
Criticism
A number of anthologies include Russian and Western criticism spanning the period from Tolstoy's time to the present. Especially useful are Henry Gifford (ed.), Leo Tolstoy: A Critical Anthology (1971); A.V. Knowles (ed.), Tolstoy: The Critical Heritage (1978); and Edward Wasiolek (ed.), Critical Essays on Tolstoy (1986). Other collections of historical criticism are Donald Davie (ed.), Russian Literature and Modern English Fiction: A Collection of Critical Essays (1965); Harold Bloom (ed.), Leo Tolstoy (1986); and Ralph E. Matlaw (ed.), Tolstoy: A Collection of Critical Essays (1967). Collections of recent criticism include Malcolm Jones (ed.), New Essays on Tolstoy (1978); and Hugh McLean (ed.), In the Shade of the Giant: Essays on Tolstoy (1989). A number of excellent works of Russian criticism are available in translation—e.g., Konstantin Leontiev, “The Novels of Count L.N. Tolstoy: Analysis, Style, and Atmosphere—A Critical Study,” in Spencer E. Roberts (ed. and trans.), Essays in Russian Literature: The Conservative View (1968), pp. 225–356; and Dmitri Merejkowski (Dmitry S. Merezhkovsky), Tolstoi As Man and Artist (1902, reprinted 1970; originally published in Russian, 1901). Boris Eikhenbaum, The Young Tolstoi (1972; originally published in Russian, 1922), Tolstoi in the Sixties (1982; originally published in Russian, 1931), and Tolstoi in the Seventies (1982; originally published in Russian, 1960), are three works by a writer who is, by common consent, the greatest Tolstoy critic, although many disagree with his preference for purely formal explanations.General overviews of Tolstoy's works may be found in George Steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism (1959, reprinted 1985), a lively study; Edward Wasiolek, Tolstoy's Major Fiction (1978); R.F. Christian, Tolstoy: A Critical Introduction (1969); and John Bayley, Tolstoy and the Novel (1966, reissued 1988). An influential view of Tolstoy as a lifelong religious thinker is Richard F. Gustafson, Leo Tolstoy: Resident and Stranger: A Study in Fiction and Theology (1986).Studies on War and Peace include Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History (1953, reprinted 1993); R.F. Christian, Tolstoy's “War and Peace” (1962); Gary Saul Morson, Hidden in Plain View: Narrative and Creative Potentials in “War and Peace” (1987); and the essays in the Norton critical edition of the novel cited above. On Anna Karenina, the essays in the Norton critical edition, also cited above, are helpful, especially the piece by Barbara Hardy, “Form and Freedom: Tolstoy's Anna Karenina,” pp. 877–899. Tolstoy's Short Fiction, ed. and trans. by Michael R. Katz (1991), a Norton critical edition, contains an excellent selection of criticism.Tolstoy's views of art are outlined in the brief work by George Gibian, Tolstoj and Shakespeare (1957, reprinted 1974); and Rimvydas Šilbajoris, Tolstoy's Aesthetics and His Art (1991). Tolstoy and sexuality are dealt with in Peter Ulf Møller, Postlude to The Kreutzer Sonata: Tolstoj and the Debate on Sexual Morality in Russian Literature in the 1890s (1988; originally published in Danish, 1983). Much fine material appears in Tolstoy Studies Journal (annual).Gary Saul Morson