I place Tolstoy very high; like a lighthouse illuminating the sea. But, notice this, I am not especially gripped by what are commonly called his ideas. They are very simple, and quite obvious. I would say almost too simple, too obvious. There are cases of injustice wherever there are human beings; it is easy to see them, to work back to their causes, and to say that, if all human beings lived according to reason instead of following their passions, all would go well. The difficulty is to find some ill-thought-out combination that makes a small amount of virtue by means of a certain interlocking of vices; but that’s precisely what Tolstoy doesn’t concern himself with. This is why we can say that his renewed Gospel won’t change much on this earth. For everyone knows perfection; we can all form the idea of a human life that harms no one; we can all construct a Utopia. But we don’t live in Utopia; the difficulty is not to define perfection in theory, but to limit imperfection in fact. To conclude on this, let’s notice one thing, that all sages are old; wisdom comes after the passions, always too late.
For the true ideas of Tolstoy, I would find them outside his philosophy, in his novels, and even precisely in the novels where he didn’t want to put his ideas. Resurrection is a fine work, certainly, but which resembles a moral lesson a little too much. War and Peace, Anna Karenina, these are pure masterpieces. They are books that prove nothing. A true picture, without any wordy psychology. Nothing is explained, and we understand everything; we do better than understand, we see. It’s as if we lived with all these people, without being seen. One enters, another departs; we’ll encounter him again shortly. Analyse what they say; it’s not remarkable; it’s very ordinary; they are no more logical than you or me; what they do and what they say is still what we expected. We almost touch them, they are so alive. Now look for the thread; there is no thread. You’ll find no exposition, no sudden changes of fortune, no denouement; it all ravels and unravels at the same pace as life. At the end of the book, we leave them all with regret. When I read Tolstoy, I laugh at those Russian writers who concentrate at being very Russian, at painting the Russian soul, and who put caviar in everything. Tolstoy’s heroes are immediately our friends; they please us without seeking to please us, and often without revealing themselves. What is there in this imperious, lively, violent Anna? What lies deep in her black eyes? She dies without releasing her secret. There is another truth than the truth of ideas.
(28/9/08 PII)
Translation copyright Michel Petheram