Chapter 9 seven

Coming out of this hell-in a year he touched the depths of lust, vanity and human pain-in November 1855, Tolstoy circled among the literati in St. Petersburg, for whom he felt A kind of hatred and contempt.Everything about them seemed base and deceitful to him.Seen from a distance, these people seem to be figures in the splendor of art—like Turgenev, whom he admired and recently gifted him with the title of "Felling Wood",—but close up makes him miserable. disappointed.A portrait from the time of 1856 shows him in this group: Turgenev, Goncharov, Ostrovsky, Grigorovich, Druzhnin.His ascetic, austere expression, his bony head, sunken cheeks, and stiffly folded arms stood out against the natural demeanor of others.Wearing military uniform, standing behind these writers, as Suarez wrote: "He does not seem to be involved in this group, but more like guarding these characters. It can be said that he is preparing to escort them to prison." Suarez His book: Tolstoy. (published in 1899) But everyone flattered this young fellow who had just arrived; he was a double honor: writer and hero of Sevastopol.Turgenev, who cried for Hourra while reading the scenes in Sevastopol, now held out his hand to him intimately, but the two could not forgive.Although they have the same clear eyes, they imbue them with two hostile soul colors: one is humorous, trembling, sentimental, disillusioned, and obsessed with beauty; Moral thinking and depressing, pregnant with a still hidden in the Shinto.

What Tolstoy could not forgive these writers in particular was that they believed themselves to be a superior class, the leaders of mankind.In his aversion to them, he seemed as proud as a nobleman or an officer is to the bohemian bourgeois and literati.In one conversation, Turgenev complained about "Tolstoy's vain pride and arrogance about noble origin".It was also a feature of his nature,--he himself admitted it,--that "instinctive rebellion against all admitted judgments." "It is one of my traits, for better or for worse, but what I have always had, is that I am always involuntarily opposed to contagious influences from outside: I am disgusted by general trends." (to Biru) Cove) was suspicious of crowds, and harbored a secret contempt for human reason, which made him everywhere aware of deceit and deceit in himself and others.

"He never believed in the sincerity of others. All moral leaps and bounds appeared to him hypocritical. He used to fix his very deep eyes on a person who he felt was not telling the truth..." Turgenev language. "How he listens! How he looks at his adversary with his gray eyes sunken in their sockets! What sarcasm he purses his lips!" said Grigorovitch. Turgenev said that he had never felt more embarrassing than this sharp look of his, coupled with two or three vicious words that would make people jump.Yuena Garshina: Memories of Turgenev. (1883) See Birukov's book: "Tolstoy - Life and Works".

When Tolstoy and Turgenev met for the first time, there was a fierce conflict.In 1861, the two had the most violent conflict, which led to a lifelong feud.Turgenev expressed his thoughts of universal love for the world, and talked about the charity work done by his daughter.But nothing irritated Tolstoy more than worldly pomp and sympathy:—“I think,” he said, “that a well-dressed girl with some dirty Torn clothes are nothing more than a comedy that lacks sincerity." The debate ensued.Turgenev was furious and threatened Tolstoy to criticize his cheek.Tolstoyer ordered a pistol duel at that time to pay for his honor.Turgenev regretted his recklessness and wrote to him to apologize.But Tolstoy never forgave.But twenty years later, in 1878, Tolstoy was still confessing his past.Abandoning his pride before God, begging Turgenev to forgive him.After walking away, they all calmed down and tried to do justice to each other.But time only separated Tolstoy and his literary community further.He could not forgive these artists for living depraved lives and preaching morality on the one hand.

"I believe almost all people are immoral, vicious, without character, much lower than the people I met in the army vagabond life. And they are so sure of themselves, happy, as if sane people. They annoy me.", Complete Works, vol. XIX. He was separated from them.But he still retained the same utilitarian concept of art as they did for a certain period of time. "Between us and the madhouse," he said, "there was no difference. Even then, I guessed vaguely, but like all madmen, I thought everyone was mad except me." (with the same ex) His pride was satisfied in it.It is a religion that pays well; it earns you "women, money, honors..." "I was one of the great men in this religion. I enjoyed a comfortable and very profitable position..." for Dedicating himself entirely to it, he resigned from the army (November, 1856).

But a man of his character cannot close his eyes for long.He believed and would believe in progress.He felt that "this term has some meaning".A trip to a foreign country—France, Switzerland, Germany, from the 29th of January to the 30th of July, 1857—shaken this conviction.See, at this period, his letters to his young aunt Alexandra Tolstoya, so lovely and full of youthful exuberance.On April 6, 1857, he saw the execution scene in Paris, indicating to him that "the superstition of progress is also empty..." "When I saw the head detached from the body and rolled into the basket At the time, with all the strength of my life, I understood that none of the existing theories of public order justified such conduct. If the whole world, on the basis of several theories, considered it necessary, I, I I always think this should not be, because what can determine good or evil is not what ordinary people say or do, but my heart.".

On July 7, 1857, in Lucerne, he saw that the British rich man who lived in Schweizerhof refused to give alms to a wandering singer. This scene made him write in "Diary of Prince Nekhludoff" Prince Khludorf's Diary (written in Lucerne), volume 5 of the complete works, expresses his contempt for all liberal fantasies and those "who sing fantasies in the realm of good and evil". "For them, civilization is good, barbarism is evil; freedom is good, slavery is evil. These fanciful perceptions destroy the instinctive, primitive and best needs. And who will tell me exactly what freedom is and what slavery is, What is civilization and what is barbarism? Where good and evil do not exist side by side? We have but one sure guide, the universal spirit who encourages us to be close to one another."

Back in Russia, to his native Yasnaya, he refocused on the peasant movement.Returning directly to Russia from Switzerland, he found "life in Russia a perpetual misery! Therefore, the object of his revelation is not the masses, but the individual consciousness of each person, but the consciousness of each child of the people.Because that's where the light is.He founded schools, but he didn't know what to teach.For the purpose of study, from July 3, 1860 to April 23, 1861, traveled to Europe for the second time.During this trip he made the acquaintance of Auerbach (in Dresden, Germany), who was the first to induce him to do public education; Froebel in Kissingen; Herzen in London, Getting acquainted with Proudhon in Bijing seems to have inspired him a lot.

He studies various educational theories.It is needless to say that he rejected all these theories.Two sojourns in Marseilles made him understand that real public education is done outside the school - the school seems ridiculous to him - newspapers, museums, libraries, streets, life, everything he calls "unconscious" or "Natural" schools.The school of compulsion was in his eyes ominous and foolish; so when he returned to Yasnaya Polyana, it was the school of nature that he was going to create and experiment with.Especially in 1861-62.Freedom is his principle.He does not agree to a special class in general, "a free society with privileges", and forces his knowledge and mistakes to be learned by people who he does not understand at all.He has no such right.This method of compulsory education has never produced in the university "the people needed by mankind, but those needed by a degenerate society: officials, professors like officials, writers like officials like officials, and a few without purpose. People who have been expelled from the old environment--have been used to pride in their youth, and now they can't find his place in society, and can only become a sick, arrogant liberal." "Education and Cultivation".See "Tolstoy - Life and Works" volume two.It is up to the people to speak out what they want!If they don't care about "the art of reading and writing that ordinary intellectuals force them to learn", they have their own reasons: he has a more urgent and reasonable spiritual need than this.Try to get to know them and help them meet those needs!

This is the theory of a revolutionary conservative, and Tolstoy tried to experiment in Yasnaya, where he was less a teacher to his pupils than a schoolmate.Tolstoy published his theories in the journal Yasnaya Polyana (1862), Collected Works, Vol. XIII.At the same time, he endeavored to introduce a more human spirit into farming.Appointed local arbitrator for the Krapivna district in 1861, he became the protector of the people under the abuse of landowners and government. But it should not be believed that this social activity satisfies him and takes up his whole being.He continues to be governed by hostile passions.As much as he tries to be close to the people, he still loves, always loves to be social, he has the need.At times he was infested by the desire for pleasure; at other times he was stimulated by an active disposition.He did not hesitate to risk his life to hunt bears.He gambled with large sums of money.He would even be influenced by the St. Petersburg literary scene which he despised.Coming out of these misguided paths, he fell into a frenzy of loathing.The works of this period unfortunately bear traces of artistic and spiritual hesitation. The fourth volume of the complete works of "Two Hussars" (1856) tends to be elegant, exaggerated, and flashy, which is out of proportion in Tolstoy's overall works.The fifth volume of the complete works of "Albert", written in Dijon, France in 1857, is weak and eccentric, lacking his usual profundity and certainty. "The Diary of a Counter" (1856) is more touching and precocious than before, and seems to express Tolstoy's hatred of himself.His incarnation, Prince Nekhludoff, committed suicide in a bawdy district: "He had everything: wealth, prestige, ideas, great telepathy; he had committed no crime, but he had done worse : He has poisoned his heart, his youth; he is lost, not because of some violent passion, but because of want of will."

The imminence of death cannot make him change: "The same strange contradiction, the same hesitation, the same frivolity in thought..." Death... In this era, it began to haunt Tolstoy's heart and soul.In The Three Dead (1858-59), Collected Works, vol.The gloomy analysis of death in "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", the loneliness of the dead, the resentment of the living, his desperate question: "Why?" "Three Dead"—— The rich woman, the consumptive old ruler, the severed birch—there is their greatness; the portraits are quite lifelike, and the image is quite moving, although the structure of this work is very loose, and the death of the birch lacks The exact poetry that adds to the beauty of Tolstoy's landscapes.In general, we do not know whether he is devoted to art for art's sake or to art with a moral purpose. Tolstoy himself did not know.On February 14, 1859, at the reception of the Association of Russian Literary Connoisseurs in Moscow, he gave a speech advocating art for art's sake; Temporary Thoughts".Rather, Khomyakov, the chairman of the association, after paying homage to "this representative of pure art literature", proposed social and moral art and his defense.He cited Tolstoy's own work "Three Dead" as a basis for defense. A year later, on September 19, 1860, his dear brother, Nicholas, died of consumption at Hyères, and Tolstoy's other brother, Dmitry, died in 185 He died of tuberculosis in six years, and in 1856, 1862, and 1871, Tolstoy thought he was also infected.He was, as he wrote on October 28, 1852, "a man of strong temperament and weak constitution," and he was always suffering from toothaches, sore throats, sore eyes, and pains in the joints.While in the Caucasus in 1852, he "had to remain indoors at least two days a week."In 1854 illness delayed him several times on the way from Silistra to Sevastopol.In 1856, he suffered from a serious lung disease in his hometown.In 1862, for fear of consumption, he went to Samara to recuperate.Since 1870 he has been there almost every year.His correspondence with Fett was full of these things about the disease.This scene of health being damaged from time to time makes people understand his longing for death.Later, he spoke of his illness as if it were his best friend: "When a man is ill, he seems to be walking down a level hill, and somewhere there is a very slight curtain: On one side of the curtain is life, on the other side death. In spiritual value, the sick state is far superior to the healthy state. Don't talk to me about people who have not been sick! They are terrible, especially It's a woman! A strong woman, a truly wild beast!" (Conversation with Boyer, Paris Le Times, August 27, 1901) This sad news made Thor Stadt was so shocked that he "shaken his faith in the good and everything" and made him spurn art: "Truth is cruel... There is no doubt that as long as there is a desire to know the truth and to speak the truth, people Trying to know and say it. It's the only thing left in my moral conception. It's the only thing I'll practice, not with your art. Art, it's a lie, and I can't love a beautiful lie .” To Fett, October 17, 1860. However, less than six months later, he returned to the "beautiful lie" repeatedly in "Polikushka", written in Birgin Brussels in 1861. This may be, except for his obsession with money and A work of the least moral interest except the curse of the evil power of money, a work written purely for the sake of art; and also a masterpiece, all we can reproach it for is that it is too richly observed for a novel Too rich material, and too strong, slightly cruel contrast between witty beginnings and too serious transitions.Another short story from the same period, a simple travelogue called "Snow's Anguish" (1856), which describes his personal recollections, has a beautifully poetic impression, almost musical. .Some of the background was transferred by Tolstoy in the book "Master and Servant" (1895).