THE DEATH OF TOLSTOI.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14530, 18 November 1910, Page 4

THE DEATH OF TOLSTOI.

Had the death of Leo Tolstoi been announced when he was in the zenith of his fame the Western world would have been profoundly moved by the , loss of one who was looked upon as a great regenerative influence in be--4 nighted Russia. But with the passing years it has been gradually realised that the Russian autocracy was wise in its generation when* it | left unmolested the dreamer of the steppes. - For although his strictures and criticisms could not be pleasant to courtiers and officials, his insistent preaching of the gospel of nonresistance weakened the morale and sapped the energies of the turbulent > spirits, who were bent upon revolu- : tion in Russia. Of the- group of famous writers who made known to the world the life, thoughts, customs, and aspirations of Russian prince • and Russian peasant, he is the last ■ to go, their place being occupied to-day by men who can never hope r to attain the same artistic eminence, t All the great Russians of the Nineteenth Century, the Tolstois, Tour- ! genieffs, Dostoieffskys, wrote with a purpose, and Tolstoi carried purpose L on his pen to the last stage of a ! very remarkable mental evolution. 1 As he aged the pleasures of renunciation and a sense of the emptiness of t worldy things gradually took com--1 plete possession of his mind, and as 1 he retained to the last his genius 1 for dramatic presentation he was enr abled to express himself in a way ! which caught the attention of the ! world. Which is but to say that he was an articulate philosopher of . the ' East, with a racial kinship to the ! ascetics, who are the product of ! Eastern conditions. With the power ' to express himself in the Western 1 mode he grew utterly out of all sym? 1 pathy with Western ways, and at ! the last contributed little or noth- ' ing of value to Western thought 1:'• ■ ' ' '