Chapter 8 six

In November 1853, Russia declared war on Turkey.Tolstoy first served in the Romanian army, and later transferred to the Crimean army. On November 7, 1854, he went to Sevastopol.Passion and patriotism burned in his chest.He was dutiful and often in danger, especially during April and May 1855, when he served in the battery of the Fourth Bastion one day out of three. Living for years in an endless tension and trembling, facing death, the mysticism of his religion was revived.He talks to God.In April 1855, he wrote a prayer in his book, thanking God for protecting him in danger and asking him to continue to bless him "in order to achieve the eternal and glorious purpose of life, which I have not yet known. . . . "The purpose of his life is not art, but religion.On March 5, 1855, he wrote: "I have come down to a great idea, and in realizing it I feel that I can devote my whole life to it. This idea is the creation of a new Religion, the religion of Christ, but with clarified dogma and mysticism...acted with a clear consciousness in order to unite religion to mankind."

This will be a problem in his twilight years. However, in order to forget the scene in front of him, he started writing again.Under the fire of bullets, how could he have the necessary spiritual freedom to write the third part of his memoir, "Youth"?That book is extremely chaotic: its disorder, and its dry strands of abstract analysis, such as Stendhal's dissection, are probably caused by the environment in which the book was born.In the book "Logging" completed at the same time, there are also such methods.For example: "There are three kinds of love: 1. aesthetic love; 2. loyal love; 3. active love; etc." 2. Violent; 3. Hypocritical;—they can be further divided into: A. calm obedience;However, the vague dreams and thoughts that are unfolding in the mind of a young man, it is not surprising that he can explore calmly and profoundly.The work appears to be very candid about itself.And in the description of the scenery of the city in spring, the story of confession, and the narration of going to the monastery for the sins that have been forgotten, how much fresh poetry is there!A fervent pantheism lends a lyrical beauty to parts of his book, the tone of which recalls the Caucasus Chronicles.Take, for example, this description of a summer night: "The crescent moon casts its still light. The pond is shining. The thick branches and leaves of the old birch are silvery in the moonlight on one side, and on the other, their shadows hide the thornbushes and The main road. Quails are chirping behind the pond. The sound of two old trees touching each other is inaudible. Mosquitoes and flies are buzzing, an apple falls on a withered leaf, and a frog has been jumping up the stepping stones. Shining from below... The moon gradually rises and hangs in the sky, illuminating the universe; the brilliance of the pond becomes brighter, the shadows become darker, and the light becomes more transparent... And I, the humble worm, have been stained with all human passions, but Because of the great power of love, at this time, nature, the moon, and I seem to be completely integrated." Chapter 32 of "Age of Youth". (Complete Works, Vol. 2) But present reality had more power in his mind than past dream-scenes; it forced his attention. "Youth" was therefore not completed; and this Count Leo Tolstoy, the second lieutenant of the squadron, under the cover of the bastion, amidst the rumble of guns, among his companions, observed the living and the dying , writing their and his own pathos in his indelible Sevastopol Chronicle.

These three chronicles—"Sevastopol in December 1854", "Sevastopol in May 1855", "Sevastopol in August 1855" Topol"——is usually criticized in a general and unified way.But they are actually very different.Especially the second part is different from the other two in terms of sentiment and art.The first and third books are dominated by patriotism; the second contains unshakable truth. It is said that after reading the first chronicle and sending it to "Modern Man" magazine, it was immediately published, and she couldn't help crying, so that the Russian emperor ordered the original work to be translated into French and the author to be transposed. , leave the danger zone.This is something we can understand very well.There are only elements of advocating patriotism and war here.Tolstoy was not long in the army; his enthusiasm did not waver; he indulged in heroism.He had not seen ambition, nor conceit, nor any baseness of sentiment among the defenders of Sevastopol.For him, it was a sublime epic, in which the heroes were "as good as the Greeks."Moreover, in these accounts there is no trace of imaginative effort, no trial of objective representation; the author just walks about the town; he sees with clear eyes, but his manner of telling is too restrained: " You see...you enter...you notice..." This is the interlude of huge journalism records with impressions of the beauty of nature.

The scene of the second act is quite different: "Sevastopol in May, 1855."At the beginning of the article, we read: "Thousands of human prides collide with each other here, or die in death" and then say: "...Because there are so many people, there are so many vanities...Vanity, vanity , vanity everywhere, even at the gate of the tomb! This is the special foil of our century...Why the generation of Homer and Shakespeare talked about love, glory and pain, while the literature of our century is only vanity and fashion What about the endless stories of the disciples?"

Chronicle is no longer a simple narration by the author, but directly makes human beings compete with lust, exposing the backside of heroism.Tolstoy's penetrating gaze probed the hearts of his companions; in them as in his own he saw pride, fear, the ever-evolving comedy of the world at the brink of death.In particular, fear was definitely identified by him, and he unmasked it and exposed it naked.This infinite fear, this sentiment of fear of death, was dissected by him without scruple and mercy, and his sincerity went to the point of frightening.Many years later, Tolstoy repeated the horrors of this age.He and his friend Teneromo related a night of horrific sleep in a bedroom dug out of a trench.In Sevastopol, all Tolstoy's sentimentality is lost, which he contemptuously refers to as "this empty, feminine, tearful sympathy".His analytical genius, awakened in his youth, was sometimes morbid, and later Druzhinin kindly warned him of the danger: "You are inclined to an extremely careful analytical spirit; it can become a big Weakness. Sometimes you go so far as to say: Someone's ankle points to a desire to travel to India... You should curb this tendency, but don't block it completely for no reason." (1856. book) but never has this genius reached a sharper, more fanciful intensity than in the description of Pras Husin's death.There are two full pages describing what happened in the soul of the unfortunate during the second that the bomb fell before it exploded—the other page describes that after the bomb exploded, "all were bombarded and died at once. ", the thoughts in my chest at this moment.Complete Works Volume 4, pages 82-85.

Like an orchestra during a break in a play, the scene of battle unfolds bright nature, the clouds fade away, and the day's symphony, on the solemn battlefield where thousands groan and turn, And then Christian Tolstoy, forgetting the patriotism of his first account, cursed the unholy war: "And these men, these Christians, who proclaimed in the world the great law of love and sacrifice Men, seeing what they have done, do not kneel and repent before the God who has endowed every soul with the instinct of fear of death and love of the good and the beautiful! They do not embrace each other with tears of joy and happiness, as if Compatriots in general!"

At the end of this short story—with a tone of poignancy which has not been expressed in any other of his works—Tolstoy became suspicious.Maybe he shouldn't have spoken? "A terrible doubt oppresses me. Perhaps all this should not be said. What I have said may be one of the poisonous truths which lurk unconsciously in the soul of every man, and should not be spoken so that it becomes a harmful , as if the lees should not be stirred so as not to spoil the wine. Where is the sin to avoid confessing? Where is the beautiful confession to be imitated? Who is the villain and who is the hero? All is good and all is evil... ..." But he calmed down proudly: "The hero in my short story is the one whom I love with all my heart and soul, and who strives to show all his beauty for me. Whether he was, is, or will be beautiful forever, this That is truth itself."

After reading these pages, these pages were banned by the inspection office. Nekrasov, the editor-in-chief of Modern Man magazine, wrote to Tolstoy: "This is exactly what Russian society needs today: truth, truth, the very little that has survived in Russian literature since the death of Gogol . . . The truths you present in our art are entirely new to us. I fear only one thing: I am afraid that time, the cowardice of life, and all the deafness and deafness that surround us will take you away as they take us away Like most people in the world—in other words, I'm afraid they'll kill your energy." September 2, 1855.

But don't be afraid of these.Time wears away the energies of ordinary people, but for Tolstoy it increased his energies even more.But even then, serious difficulties, the fall of Sevastopol, made him regret his too solemn confession in bitter piety.In his third narrative, "Sevastopol in August, 1855," about two officers who quarrel over gambling, he abruptly breaks off the narrative, saying: "But in Let the curtain down before this scene. Tomorrow, perhaps today, these people will happily die. In every man's soul lurks a noble flame that will one day make him a hero."

Although this kind of concern does not weaken the realism of the story, the choice of characters can quite show the author's sympathy.The deeds of Malakoff's hero and his tragic fall are symbolized in two touching and proud figures: these are two brothers, the elder brother is named Colonel Kozeltsov, and he is quite close to Tolstoy. Similarity, "His pride merged with his life; he saw no other way to choose: to be proud of himself or to destroy himself . . . become a man of self-respect.” The other is Volodya the standard-bearer, timid, passionate, frantic monologues, all kinds of dreams, tender tears, tears that flow for no reason, timid tears, first entering the bastion (The poor little man was still afraid of the dark, and hid his head in his hat in his sleep,) tormented by solitude and the indifference of others, and then, when the time came, he rejoiced in danger.This one belongs to a group of poetic youngsters (such as Petya in the novel and the second lieutenant in "Aggression"), full of love, who go to war with joyful smiles, and suddenly die in front of death for no reason. mourned.On the same day—the last day of the defense—the brothers were wounded and died.The story ended with the sentence howling patriotic cries: "The army left the city. Every soldier, looking at the fallen Sevastopol, sighed with an indistinguishable misery in his heart. Fist pointed at the enemy." In 1889, Tolstoy recalled these scenes in his mind when he wrote the preface to Erdyov's Memoirs of an Artillery Officer in Sevastopol.All the heroic past has disappeared.He thought only of the horror of seven days and nights—a double terror: fear of death and shame—terrible mental anguish.All the meritorious deeds of defending the city are because he "has been used as the flesh and blood of guns and guns".