Leo Tolstoy: A Confession (1865)

Edition: Everyman
Review number: 536

In contrast to Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground, with which it is packaged in this Everyman edition, A Confession is a work of non-fictional autobiography. It followed Tolstoy's greatest work, rather than preceding it as Notes From Underground did that of the older writer. There are similarities, in that both authors use these short pieces of writing to set out something of their views on life, and as these philosophical ideas are vitally part of their great novels, the works bear similar roles in the authors' output as a whole.

The subject of A Confession - not a title Tolstoy liked, but imposed by publishers because of similarities to Rousseau's Confessions - is the move of the writer away from the religious certainties of his Orthodox childhood. This started with an excited discussion between Lev and his brothers after one of them had been told that there was no God. The line of thought taken by Tolstoy from that date parallels that of the writer of the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes, which is quoted at length. Basically, Ecclesiastes looks at the world from a purely materialistic point of view, and comes to the conclusion that it is meaningless; only God, the writer feels, can make sense of life. Tolstoy does not take the same final step, being put off by the vast differences between the professed values and the actions of those who called themselves believers in the nineteenth century Russia upper classes. He tried to copy the simple faith of the peasantry, by just glossing over the parts of Orthodox ritual he didn't 'understand' - the word he uses, though he really means 'identify with' in today's terms. When he realised that this amounted to most of the ritual, he left the church and effectively formulated his own personal religion, trying to follow the moral teachings of the New Testament while jettisoning every other part of Christianity.

Tolstoy's religious writings, of which this is the best known and (I think) the first, were fairly influential in the last years of the nineteenth century. He considered these works his most important and retired from novel writing to concentrate on them, before returning to fiction with Resurrection years later - and even then, the novel was written as a way to publicise his ideas.

Today, the religious work of Tolstoy is relatively obscure, and there are both historical and literary reasons for this. The Russian Revolution brought suspicion in the West on ideas from that country, even if they were not Communist in origin. Thus, Tolstoy ceased to be cited as an influence on atheistic humanism, even as this became one of the dominant philosophies of the twentieth century. From a literary point of view, Tolstoy tends to play to the gallery; in A Confession, the autobiography is smoothed out for public consumption, every action rationalised and justified (in a rhetorical way, the philosophical argument being of a poor standard). In the end, the reader is left wondering whether Tolstoy really believes what he says, and certainly is in doubt as to the way he actually reached these beliefs.

Leo Tolstoy: Resurrection (1899)

Translation: Rosemary Edmonds, 1966
Edition: Penguin, 1979
Review number: 323

Tolstoy wrote two of the best known novels of all literature in any language, War and Peace and Anna Karenin. His third most famous work, Resurrection, is comparatively obscure, despite being, at the time it was published, extremely eagerly anticipated all over the world.

The major reason for this is that Tolstoy wrote the novel principally as a mechanism to preach at the reader. This always causes problems, being (for example) the reason that Sartre is not as great a novelist as Gide. After Anna Karenin, Tolstoy had given up writing fiction, feeling that to do so was somewhat dishonest. Instead, he turned to a series of philosophical works, putting forward his personal viewpoint as to what life is and how it should be lived. (To some extent, this kind of writing is present in both War and Peace and Anna Karenin, but it is always kept subordinate to plot and character.) After twenty years, he returned to the novel form, but the purpose of Resurrection is to introduce a wider audience to Tolstoy's ideas about society.

The plot of Resurrection is simple enough, and is based on a story Tolstoy read in a newspaper. Prince Nekhlyudov is rich and idle. Called to serve on a jury, he recognises the accused woman as a girl he seduced some years earlier. The seduction ruined her; rejected by those who had brought her up, she was reduced to prostitution. Though innocent of the murder she is accused of, Maslova is nevertheless found guilty through a legal error (the jury omits to add the formula that she was innocent of the intention to kill as well as the actual act). Overcome with remorse, seeing himself as the cause of Maslova's degradation, Nekhlyudov vows to reform his life.

This reformation is, of course, the resurrection of the title. It is a rather dramatic term to use, and immediately gives notice that part of the function of the book is to set something up in opposition to the Orthodox Christian church. In fact, large portions of the book were censored as defamatory of the church, and the full Russian text was actually first published in London.

As Rosemary Edmonds points out in her introduction, Tolstoy is not using the term "resurrection" in the same sense as it is in Christian theology. (This difference is important, since the word would immediately suggest this connotation to the Russian reader of 1899.) Nekhlyudov's resurrection does not involve death, not even the 'death to self' enjoined by the Bible. It is more like the process known as regeneration to Christian theologians, but even that is not a close comparison. The changes in lifestyle and attitudes to the world which are supposed to accompany a Christian conversion in orthodox theology are motivated and empowered by an external spiritual being, the Holy Spirit. Tolstoy's attitude to the church made him unwilling to accept this - he felt strongly that a person's own purity and strength should be the equivalent motivating factor - and so there is no external spiritual influence on Nekhlyudov. In fact, this is one of the strongest aspects of the novel, in a way. It would have been easy to write a sentimental novel on the subject by making Maslova a pure angel to inspire Nekhlyudov, uncorrupted by her degrading experiences. The character given her by Tolstoy, marked, scarred and even coarsened by her experiences, is far more interesting.

A change of heart backed up only by one's own strength is always subject to the temptation of a return to old habits, and such a lapse is much more difficult to return from than if there is a belief in an external force to help sustain you. Tolstoy gives hints throughout that the regeneration of Nekhlyudov may only be a temporary phase, by pointing to other times when a fad has taken hold of him. It is also the case that the path he takes is only open to a man of wealth; no poor man entirely reliant on what he has can give it away without risking starvation, but Nekhlyudov can afford to give away most of his land to the peasants who work on it.

These flaws in Nekhlyudov are interesting, because he is one of the self-portraits which occur throughout Tolstoy's novels. The believable flawed characters are one of the best features of Resurrection (and Tolstoy's work in general). Nekhlyudov, who dominates the novel, is most impressive. It is a pity that there is so much preaching in the work, and much of it is perhaps better skipped. (This is particularly true of the rather childish passages in which the Russian Orthodox church is made ridiculous.)

Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenin (1876)

Translation: Rosemary Edmonds, 1954
Edition: Penguin, 1969
Review number: 142

This novel is one of those which is pointed out as the greatest novel every written. It is the quintessence of the Russian psychological novel, stripped of the melodrama of Dostoyevsky and having more to say than Turgenev (and not being heavy on extraneous military history like Tolstoy's other great novel, War and Peace.

It is essentially the story of the psychological development of two characters, Anna herself and Constantine Levin, in many ways a self-portrait of Tolstoy. They are connected through their various relationships with the Scherbatsky family. Levin's best friend, Oblinsky, is married to the middle of the three Scherbatsky sisters, Dolly, and he himself is in love with the youngest, Kitty. But Kitty prefers a younger, more dashing suitor, the soldier Vronsky.

Anna is also a friend of the Oblonskys, and she undertakes to reconcile the two of them following an estrangement which occurs when Dolly discovers that her husband is unfaithful. In the process of doing so, the encounters Vronsky, and the violence of their attraction to each other provides the focus of the novel. Anna abandons her husband and son to live with Vronsky and carry on a fatal affair, which ruins both of them in society and brings great unhappiness as well as a measure of fulfilment.

As has been mentioned, Tolstoy is principally interested in the psychological development of his characters, as he chronicles Anna's disintegration and Levin's parallel growth in maturity following his eventual marriage to the jilted Kitty. The structure of the novel highlights the parallel events in their development, even though they are headed in opposite directions. Levin's story also shares many episodes with Tolstoy's own, and we share something of his increasing understanding of the Russian character as Tolstoy saw it at this period of his life. The chapters dealing with Levin's attempts to modernise his estate are just as important in this as his relationship with his wife.

Tolstoy's genius is such that he keeps your interest for almost three hundred chapters; you are left with an intimate knowledge of a small group of people and the relationships between them.