COUNT AND PEASANT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14530, 18 November 1910, Page 7

COUNT AND PEASANT.

RUSSIA'S GREATEST GENIUS

CHARACTER SKETCH OF TOLSTOI.

Count Leo Tolstoi, whose death is announced by cable to-day, was the greatest of Russian novelists, the prophet of renunciation, and absolute obedience to Christian precept. "Anna Karenina" placed him with the masters of fiction, and his later writings have shown that he was a most uncompromising opponent of coercive government. He lived with the austerity of an anchorite, working on his land.

The author of " War and Peace" and " Anna Karenina" was some years ago the novelist who was most|read and discussed. His readers belonged to all social classes, from the prince to the working man, from tho duchess to the peasant woman. His j volumes were sold by the hundred thousand copies, were translated into all languages. Gustav Flaubert said he was comparable to Shakespere alone; Matthew Arnold do-' clared that he was a novelist of the most healthy and robust mind. All at once, abandoning novel-writing and the literary career, converted, or rather restored, to evangelical doctrines, leading a life of manual labour, of ajwstleship and charity among the poorest classes, Tolstoi wrote a book to explain the origin and the progress of his conversion"My Confession" another to explain the essential characteristics of his neo-Clirietianity—"Myßeligion." Strange is it, that a society imbued with anti-religious ideas and positive science, accustomed to the treatises of Spencer and the novels of Zola, read the books of the converted author with the same curiosity

and ardour with which they road his

romances. In "My Confession," Tolstoi tells in live or six memorable lines the whole

story of his soul: " I have lived in this world 55 years ; for nearly 40 of those years I have been a Nihilist- in the true sense of that word: not socialist and revolutionary, according to the perverted meaning attached to it; but really Nihilist, that is, lacking in all faith, believing in nothing." Here is another passage of the "Confession:" "Early in my life I lost my faith; I have lived, like all other people, among the various varieties of life. I have done something in literature, undertaking to teach others things of which I knew nothing. Then the Sphynx began to persecute me, saying, as to (Edipus of old: ' Guess my riddle or I will devour thee.' Human science explained to me nothing. To my incessant questions, the only ones that concerned me : ' Why do I live? What am I?' science answered by teaching me a hundred other things which were of no consequence to me." The whole Tolstoinian doctrine can be summed up in these few words: The law of Christ and its practice is the sacrifice of one's own existence for the good of one's neighbour; the law of the world, on the other hand, is a cruel and murderous struggle for one's own existence. The fundamental points of the religion of Toh stoi are these: Regulate your own life by the evangelical precepts of the Sermon on the Mount. Shun ail violence. Resist not. evil. Divide the proceeds of your labour with the poor. Reverence the —have no divorce, no libertinage. For unorthodoxy he was excommunicated by the Russian Church in 1901. EVANGELICAL NIHILISM. In his volume, " Salvation Is in Yourselves," Tolstoi answers the criticisms of the doctrines he expounded in his preceding works, and accepts, confirms, and eloauently sustains the full consequence of his theories. The spirit of this book has been, with some reason, defined as evangelical Nihilism. In the opinion of revolutionary Nihilism, all governments, all political organisations, all laws, all administrations are evils—we should destroy the present social arrangement. So, for Tolstoi, every Government is oppressive and anti-Chris-tian, and our social order is essentially iniquitous. He, however, opposes violence, declares that non-resistance is the fundamental doctrine of Christ, and does not sanction armed resistance, even in the case of legitimate defence. ■ It is difficult for those not closely in sympathy with the Count to understand the feeling with which he was regarded in Russia, To the Russian peasant he stands as the man who will lead them to their Promised Land. "Love him?" said a peasant in the Tolstoi village to a visitor, "all the world loves him." Tolstoi learned his religion, it is said, from a man whose name the world has never heard. A thief had stolen a sack of corn, and the owner met him as ho came from the house with the sack on his back. "There is another behind the door," he said. No man has ever been more sincere than he against whom every powerful hand in Russia seems to be raised/ A man was stealing an oak from Tolstoi's woods, and the Count came up as the thief was trying in vain to carry the tree away. "What a fool you must be," he said, "to try to move that tree by yourself Let me help you." Somehow, through the overseer of the estates, the case reached the Courts, and Tolstoi saved the man by testifying that he helped him to carry the tree away.

TOLSTOI'S HOME LIFE. Tolstoi's family was an example of a house divided against itself, for only two members of his family agreed with his views of life. Mr. Tchertokoff, late secretary to Tolstoi, in explaining something of the family relations!'.'ps of the great Russian, said:—-"You nust bear in mind that Tolstoi was married before he formed his present opinions. His wife is rich, and she by no means shares his views in regard to landed property, and many other things. She has, in fact, not the slightest sympathy with them. " The Countess figures in the society of Moscow, and lives as ostentatiously as she pleases, quite regardless of what people may think. She has with her, too, nearly all the children— only two out of the eight, both daughters, having any sympathy o with their father. Soon after his marriage, Tolstoi made over to his wife the sole right of certain books, which were then; and still are, of considerable value. Since changing his views, however, Tolstoi has renounced some of his earlier works, with which he does not now fully agree; and he has, of course, refused to receive any payment for his literary work. Once his books are published, they are common property, and anybody can print them. After his conversion he applied this rule to all his old books over which he had control. His wife, however, declined, to relinquish the interest in the works which he had given her, and she still receives money from these books, though she . knows it is strongly against her husband's wishes. This is the kind of treatment Tolstoi endures in his own home. It can hardly be called a home, in fact; Tolstoi is simply a guest in his wife's house. But he is devotedly attached to his wife, and lie-is always so | perfectly contented that he forgets the little ironies of home life, and the petty persecution to which he is subjected, and is quite happy. • As wealth goes in Russia, the family are veiy well-to-do. They derive a large income from several estates in the possession of the Tolstoi family, and years ago Tolstoi made over his property to his wife and children, each child receiving £500 a year, save one daughter, who refused it. She shares'her father's views which forbid the holding of unnecessary property and indulgence in luxury. Tolstoi himself has neither money nor property." . EDUCATING THE SERFS. After Alexander the Second's manifesto emancipating the serfs, Tolstoi started an elementary school in Yanaya Polyana, and 10 more in the immediate neighbourhood. His aim was to introduce freedom into education. There was to be no compulsion and no punishment. The children came when they liked, sat where and how they liked, and learnt what they liked. Under other circumstances such a system, or want of system, might have failed, but under Tolstoi's inspiration it had considerable success as long as he was able to throw his time, strength and enthusiasm

into the work. In 1862 he started a monthly magazine, giving an account of his schools, and publishing articles on education, and simple stories for school use. Before long, however, the Russian Minister of the Interior began to look askance at these unorthodox educational methods, and though the Minister of Education, in a somewhat half-hearted fashion, threw his shield over Tolstoi, the gendarmes appeared one day at Yasnaya Polyana to search for revolutionary or other objectionable documents. Tolstoi, who was absent at the time, was furious when he heard of this outrage. Through a relation at Court he informed the Tsar that if any gendarmes came to search his house when lie was at home, he (Tolstoi) would certainly shoot, the gendarme. For a year and some months Tolstoi acted as a mediator of the peace, his duty being to adjust disputes that arose between proprietors and peasants under the emancipation law. This was his one and only attempt to hold public office, or tp have anything to do with the administration of the law. Twenty years later he came to the conclusion that all manmade law, enforced by the police, is a sinful abomination existing for no other purpose than to enable the rich to rob the poor of the fruits of their labour. PLAIN FOOD AND DRESS. When approaching the age of sixty, ten years after the completion of "Anna Ivarenina," and when the critics had long bewailed him as " lost to art," Tolstoi turned his attention to a fresh branch, and produced two admirable plays, which have been acted with great success all over Russia, as well as in other countries. The first to be written (1886) was "The Power of Darkness,'' but the performance was forbidden by the Censor for nearly ten years, and the first to be acted was "Fruits of Culture," written in 1889, and staged in 1891. 6 : The external effect on himself of the views Tolstoi definitely adopted and expressed at the end of the seventies and the commencement of the eighties, was that he felt it incumbent to consume as little and produce as much as possible. Step by step during the fifteen years from 1880 onwards he abandoned the use of any but the plainest' clothes, dressing in a plain blouso with a leather belt round his waist; he gave up the use of intoxicants, except under doctor's orders; became a vegetarian ; abandoned shooting, of which he was so fond; learnt to make boots; and frequently, in summer, engaged in field work, not merely for exercise and pleasure as he had done in former years, but as a moral duty, and a work of primary importance. For one whole summer he did sill the field work for a poor woman in the village who could not afford to hire a labourer. The us© of money became distasteful to him, and in 1888 ho divested himself of all property, handing his estates over to his wife and children, his wife acting as trustee. TOLSTOI'S LATER WORKS.

One of the most remarkable of Tolstoi's works at this period was "The Kreutzer Sonata" (1889), which dealt with the sex question in a startlingly frank manner, and led up to the monastic view that all sexual relations are necessarily impure.

In 1891-2 not. Tolstoi only but his whole family threw themselves into the work of organising relief for the famine-stricken peasants in the government of Toula; and he wrote a series of articles drawing attention to the subject.

His next considerable work was "The Kingdom of God is Within You " (1893), in which he urges non-resistant and antimilitary views. During the years from 1888 onwards ho never ceased to pour forth a series of powerful essays, letters, and appeals on all sorts of subjects: manual labour, temperance, food reform, war, government, and religion. English readers have a collection of many of these articles, especially of those dealing with religion, in the volume of "Essays and Lett-en;" (World's Classic Series), in tho preparation of which Tolstoi himself assisted.

Perhaps the best arranged of all Tolstoi's ! didactic works is "What is Art?" In spite l of certain exaggerations and questionable opinions, this value of this profound work is slowly gaining recognition. It appeared in 1898, and was followed next year by that astonishing novel, "Resurrection," by far the most mid in England of all Tolstoi's works. It deals with almost every burning subject of the modern world, and presents all phases of Russian life with extraordinary vividness. It is worth remarking also that Pasternak's fine drawings really illustrate the book and are a great help to non-Russian readers. THE DOUKHOBORS. For more than a quarter of a century Tolstoi courted danger by his scathing condemnations of Church and Government. . The publication of '"Resurrection" (only permitted in Russia in a sadly mutilated form) was an instance of this. Departing from his usual practice, Tolstoi accepted money from Marx for the serial publication of tho work in Russia, and devoted it to the aid of the Doukhobors, a sect which had refused military service, and was then migrating from the Caucasus to Canada, having received a pledge from the Dominion Government that they should not be called upon to serve even in time of war. But, more than this, Tolstoi gave in the book so striking a description of Pobedonostsef, the then head of the Holy Synod, that it was a matter of no great surprise when that worthy launched a decree of excommunication at his assailant. The weapon being somewhat out of date, , the bolt missed its aim, however. Except for certain throats of violence and scurrilous letters addressed to Tolstoi, "nobody seemed one penny the worse," but he nevertheless replied to the : Synod in' a powerful letter. , This he followed up by another to the " Tsar and his Assistants" (1901), which, in view of the events that followed four years later, now reads like a prophetio utterance.

"MOST' LOVED MAN IN THE

WORLD."

Many are the debts our generation owes to this great man, who, whatever his failings may have been, towered head and shoulders above all contemporary writers, but for nothing does he deserve more gratitude than for the mental and moral stimulus he gave to tens of thousands of readers of his own and other nations by the frank simplicity with which he treated the most important questions.

To demand that he should be always right in his conclusions would be to demand a superhuman wisdom and prescience that he certainly did not possess, but all that by courage, industry, and literary genius ho could do to aid his fellow-men to share, as equals, his own insight into the nature of human institutions arid beliefs he did. He stirred the conscience of hie generation as no other man has stirred it, and Kropotkin, a fellow-coun-tryman not of his own camp, wrote the simple truth when he said that " Tolstoi is the most loved manthe most . touchingly loved man — the world,"