The Unyielding Quest of Leo Tolstoy
from Modern Moralists and Their Discontents [edited]
[12] The philosophical and ethical struggle of which we have to speak in the present chapter emanates entirely from the final decades; or at the climax, of Leo Tolstoy’s prodigious life. Particular phases of this struggle have, of course, their special labels. What Is Art?, his polemical treatise on aesthetics, is a form of argument that played a very [13] divisive part in literary circles; hence the separate mention of his later writings in the heading of this chapter.
While there were many intellectual currents that helped to shape Tolstoy’s thought, the most profound of them all was his own moral anguish. Let us see what happens when such a consciousness as his turns its gaze upon the social conventions of its time, for example. If his critique flowed in a smooth, systematic stream, its logic might persuade but would not ignite revolution. Such systematic philosophy, due to the rational component of his genius, did, of course, inform his work, and its effects are strikingly visible in the structured narratives of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. [14] These novels clearly illustrate how a master novelist can embed philosophical inquiry within human drama. All thought near the heart of Tolstoy’s crisis was, however, full of contradictions and eddies, and in the 1880s, as he confronted the chasm between his privileged life and his professed faith, there arose a powerful spiritual updraft, sometimes extending to a radical rejection of his own prior art. All forms of property and institutional power became anathema to him, [15] yet, contrary to the expectations of his admirers, he never truly “abandoned” his literary stature. His critiques may have entered the public sphere at the highest levels, through the dissemination of his pamphlets, or they may have spouted up from his volcanic discontent, but his influence rose only because a cultural anxiety[16] was rising with it; and, in a complacent society, all moral dissent sinks more or less rapidly toward oblivion. The rate of its acceptance depends upon its rhetorical force, and upon the temperament and readiness of the audience. [17] Even though there are other factors to consider, the most radical of his propositions fell upon the most deaf ears. Exceedingly subtle critiques, even without a receptive cultural movement to support them, require decades or even centuries to find fertile ground in the broader consciousness.
The fervor of his later movement sufficed to carry his ideas [18] across continents every year, and the translations of his work carried the same moral challenge far and wide over the earth. The dissemination of his thought leads to some results of remarkable interest, practical as well as philosophical. [19] In the first place, far-reaching changes in literary criticism, are brought about, by this process.
[20] 1. Thus, in India a young Mohandas Gandhi was profoundly moved by Tolstoy’s treatise The Kingdom of God Is Within You. 2. It is believed to have been the catalyst for his philosophy of nonviolent resistance. 3. Less direct but equally significant echoes of his Christian anarchism are found in many other parts of the world, including the communes of early 20th-century Europe. 4. Another effect of his ideological transportation is the inevitable dilution of complex ideas. There is a constant simplification of doctrine as it passes between different cultures, so that the understanding of Tolstoyanism [21] in a particular community, [22] as a result, is not the same now that it was a century ago or that it will be a century hence. Lastly, the presence of his unresolved contradictions in the modern discourse, whether derived from his novels or his tracts, has various stimulating and frustrating effects upon the moral and aesthetic debates we inherit and modifies, in numerous ways, the conditions of intellectual life upon [23] our planet.
