The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1910. TOLSTOY.

Southland Times, Issue 14577, 18 November 1910, Page 4

The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1910. TOLSTOY.

A cablegram recently informed us that the Nobel Peace Prize for 1910 had been awarded to Count Tolstoy—a tardy recognition of the consecration of great genius to the cause of peace and human brotherhood. When it was accorded the aged author was already stricken by his last illness, and now, after a characteristic renunciation of proffered wealth and honour, but, happily, not before he had had time for a last meeting with the wife who through all their married life had been to him such a real and loving helpmeet, he has passed away. In Count Tolstoy, the world loses one of the greatest, literary geniuses and most striking personalities of modern times—one of the few men whose works and influence pass tin* bounds' of class, nationality and time, ar.d become permanent portions of the spiritual inheritance of mankind. Most readers know something of the salient features of his history—-

that he belonged to the Russian nobility and was the proprietor of vast estates, that he entered the army and served in the Crimean War, (an experience of which he made good use in the grim realism of the war scenes of his novels), that he afterwards turned to literature, and then, at the height of his powers and fame, determined to renounce rank, wealth, and ambition, and to choose the life of poverty and manual labour,to whicn the masses of mankind are doomed by circumstances. Since this final turning point in his career Tolstoy has addressed the world not as a jnan of letters, but as an ethical teacher and idealist, pleading passionately for the putting in practice of the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount. Curious and more or less sympathetic visitors

from all parts of the world have sought him out ill - his retirement on his hereditary estate in the South of Russia, where, though his family

lived somewhat after the ■ ordinary fashion of Russian country gentry, he himself wore peasant garb, and worked many hourc a day at shoemaking or other manual toil.

% In an earlier age Tolstoy, at the crisis in his history when he realised the selfishness and hollowness of worldly aims, would have devoted himself to religion as the churches understand it, and would doubtless have been canonised as a saint. Bat while accepting whole-heartedly the >

moral teaching of the Founder of Christianity, he rejected Christian dogma. He did not even build on personal immortality, but seems rather to have believed in the community of the one eternal life existing behind the veil of appearance and animating transitory forms of existence. And this mysticism helped him to realise, as few have realised, the brotherhood of mankind. Why /hate or injure that which is in the deepest truth one with oneself? It was this profound sense of human unity that made him renounce privileges that all could not share. He saw the majority of mankind doomed to 'toil, often of .a hard and injurious kind, and to him it seemed not only flagrantly unchristian but opposed to common honesty to enjoy the labour of others without contributing to the common good; wrong, even, as a privileged worker, to enjoy reward above the lot of many. It' is the latter conviction that distinguishes Tolstoy from ordinary moralists. Nowadays all theoretically agree' that every man should be of use in the world. But they, say that the work of the writer, inventor, or business man is at least as necessary as that of the labourer; that the world js best served by eaca developing his gifts and receiving reward commensurate with society's demand for them; that for Tolstpy himself it was of genius to spend «u making shoes time Jhat might have been devoted to writings that none but he could give the world. But Tolstoy answers that when the thinker," artist, or other privileged vyorker, refuses to share common labour, he is arrogating special privilege to himself, and moreover, by his example, teaching the poor that labour is a thing hateful in itself. We preach, he says, industiw and contentment to the poor, and at the same time show them by our lives that ease and luxury are the things most to be desired. We should, on the contrary, teach the poor, not by precept but by conduct, that happiness lies in ourselves, not in our possessions, and can only be won by duty and selfdenial.

Tolstos - is equally uncompromising in his doctrine of non-resistence. He denies absolutely that there can be 'such a thing as a just war; he will scarcely allow that force should ever be used even to prevent the worst crime and outrage. All violence, he urges, begets counter-violence, and so the weary round of strife and hate goes on perpetually. Love is the onlything that can conquer evil. No governmental tyranny could persist if subjects merely passively refused to be made the agents of oppression. Tolstoy's principles, therefore, involve absolute anarchy in the sense of absence of rule—only an anarchy of absolute peace. To many it has seemed strange that Tolstoy has been Jeft unmolested by the Russian Government. But doubtless the authorities have shrunk from attacking a man of his world-wide fame; and moreover they could scarcely fail to see that Tolstoy's influence was distinctly unfavourable to aggressive revolutionism, while at the same time few Avould so come under its spell as to refuse military service and other civic obligations. Tolstoy, who sympathised passionately with the wrongs of his countrymen, by no means desired a forbearance not extended to others. Two or three years ago he issued a passionate protest against the "stupidity and cruelty" of the Russian Government, imiting, almost entreating, the authorities to imprison or hang him, so that his separation from the misdeeds of his own class might be manifest to the world.

Tolstoy's profound sense of human brotherhood impelled him to evolve a peculiar theory of art, which he expounds with much perseverance. He lays down the principle that art, like every good thing, must be the common possession of mankind or it cannot be good. The poem which is too poetical, the picture which is too artistic, to please an ordinary healthy natured man or woman, cannot be true poetry or art. Wordsworth, some readers will remember, had somewhat the same idea, though he did not carry it to such lengths as Tolstoy. Of course, the artist will reply that to make uneducated opinion the touchstone is destructive of any art. And intensely human as is the interest of Tolstoy's own novels, it is doubtful whether he anywhere would

win so many votes as many a writer not worthy to unloose his shoelatchet. A great literary artist Tolstoy was in spite of himself. Hut, as in the -case of Raskin,, the ethical instinct, while it inspired his artistic powers, warred with and iinally dominated them. His great fiction belongs io the period before ISBO. Since then his works have been professedly , didactical. But they are as character-

istic of his genius as his fiction, and glow with such "enthusiasm of humanity" as few other writings approach. Whatever opinion may be as to the practicability of Tolstoy's doctrines, there can—at least among the informed critics whom he despised—be no dispute as to his rank in literature. The quality which most impresses one in reading him is power power of conception, of psychological insight, and of execution. Of his two greatest novels. "Anna Karenina,** and "War and Peace," the former, which has a better defined plot, has been the favourite among foreign readers, though his own countrymen consider "War and Peace," his highest achievement. This is truly a Titanic production. It treats of the times of the Napoleonic invasion in Russia, and depicts all classes of society and all types of •waracter. Its very formlessness and complexity of interest add to its naturalism. It is like a section of Russia cut out a hundred years ago and set down bodily in our midst. Like probably all novelists to whom the world finally yields precedence, Tolstoy excels in character rather than in plot. His power of psychological insight is unrivalled. We feel that this is just how the man or woman before us must have felt or acted. Meredith, who himself has given us a gallery of most lifelike feminine portraits, considers "Anna Karenina."the erring wife who is finally driven to dispair and suicide, as the most perfect study of feminine character in fiction. Mr Howells, the American author, enthusiastically pronounces Tolstoy "incomparably the greatest writer of fiction who ever lived." His shorter stories show the same power of characterisation and psychological insight as his greater works. "The Death of Ivan Ilyitch" in particular may be cited as a masterpiece of realism. And the greatest of realists Tolstoy stands, not in the narrow sense of accurate description of outward detail with preference for the sordid and ugly aspects of life, but in the sense of portraying and interpreting the world as it actually exists. Naturally there is much that is Intensely painful In his books. They were not written with a view to the "young person" who, very unreasonably, has been made responsible for the triviality of popular English fiction. But it is hard to imagine that any human being could be the worse for reading anything of Tolstoy's. He teaches sympathy with the sinner, but never palters as to right and wrong. Both explicitly and impjicitly he inculcates the most absolute purity, truth and self-abnegation. Though after his "conversion" he spoke slightingly of his earlier works as false in art and teaching, they are animated by the same ideals, and perhaps furnish better guidance than the overstrained asceticism of his didactic books.

For with all his great qualities Tolstoy lacks soundness of judgment. Those, however, who arrogantly dismiss him as a visionary and a "crank" do not consider how great was his experience of life, his knowledge of men and things. Apart from his literary gifts-he was a. man of great intellectual power, and familiar with all the thought of his age. His condemnation of the standards accepted by the world is based on knowledge.

The world's greatest teachers have seldom been framers of logically :hought out schemes of philosophy. Tolstoy belongs to the order of prophets and seers rather than philosophers; and will inspire and move by the vital force of his ideals. Literally to carry out his precepts, were it possible to do so, would mean, the reversal of progress; to obey in spirit his and his Master's teaching will do more for the amelioration of the world than any mechanical transformation of society.