Lectures on Russian Literature: Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, TolstoyPanin, Ivan
History
Lectures on Russian Literature: Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy
Panin, Ivan
Russian literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
10. Tolstoy, then, is nothing but a preacher of Christ; and the first
articulate utterance in his message is therefore that of boundless
faith in the practicability of living according to Christ; that of
insistence upon the literal following of the words of Christ as a
_practical_ guide of life.
11. And out of this emphasis of the supremacy of Love comes the second
articulate utterance in the message of Tolstoy, which is the supremacy
of heart over head as a metaphysical guide of life. For God ever
revealeth himself unto men, but he speaketh unto them not through their
cold intellects, but through their warm hearts; not through logic, but
through love. The reasoner searches God without man and finds him not;
the lover finds God within man in his heart, and hath no need of
searching him. Hence the following significant utterance of Tolstoy in
his "Confession." In his search for the answer to the ever-recurring
question, "Wherefore shall I live?" he at last goes abroad to find
light:--
"My life abroad, and the intercourse with Europe's most advanced
scholars, still more confirmed my faith in perfection as such; for
the same faith I now found in them likewise. In me this faith took
the same form which it takes in most of the educated men of our
time. Its watchword was--progress. Then I thought that this word
meant something. Its utter meaninglessness I then could not yet
understand. Here I was tormented, like every living soul, with the
question, 'How can I better my life?' and I answer, 'Live in
accordance with progress.' But this is exactly the answer of a man
borne along by wind and tide in a boat. He puts the to him
all-important question, 'What direction must I steer for my safety?'
and he receives in answer, 'Oh, we are borne along somewhither!'
"All this I did not perceive at the time. Only rarely not my reason
but my feeling rebelled against this universal superstition with
which men shield themselves against their failure to comprehend the
meaning of life. Thus while in Paris the sight of capital punishment
revealed to me all the ghastliness of this superstition of progress.
When I beheld how the head was severed from the body, and how the
one and the other each in turn thumped in the box, I understood not
with my reason, but with my whole soul, that no theory of progress,
no theory of the reasonableness of our present mode of living, could
justify this one deed; that even if all men ever since creation, on
whatever theory, had found that _this_ must be, I know that this
need not be; that this is evil; that the judge of all this, what is
good and needful, is not what men say and do, is not the theory of
progress, but I with my heart."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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