The Portable Tolstoy

by Leo Tolstoy, John Bayley (Editor)

The greatest of Russian novelists believed that "whatever the artist depicts - saints, robbers, kings, or lackeys - we seek and see only the artist's own soul". The soul that shines through the work of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910) is a vast and contradictory thing. It generates the narrative floodtides of War and Peace and Anna Karenina and short stories so intimate that we seem to inhabit their characters rather than just observe them. Tolstoy's soul is that of a consummate artist who despises artfulness and seeks to approximate the disorder of life, of a sensualist who aspires to sainthood, of an aristocrat who identifies fiercely with the small and humble.

All the aspects of Tolstoy's work and character are on display in this masterful anthology. The Portable Tolstoy includes a complete short novel, The Kreutzer Sonata; passages from the author's fictional memoirs of his childhood, youth and military life; excerpts from The Cossacks; The short stories "The Wood-Felling,""Master and Man," and "How Much Land Does a Man Need?"; the play "The Power of Darkness"; selections from such philosophic, social and critical writings as "A Confession" and "What Is Art?"; and a chronology, bibliography and critical introduction by the renowned scholar John Bayley. The result is a splendid and authoritative volume of work by a writer whose moral vision, narrative powers, and stylistic range all but defy containment.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Literature, Anthologies, Russia, Essays

888 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.

His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reviews

[Richard Epstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Bayley is a fine scholar and critic, but there are few sillier notions than that of a portable Tolstoy. I am reminded of Johnson's remark about "the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.”

[Hamish · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated the introduction, which said more or less exactly what I think about Tolstoy (that there’s an enormous gap between what he thought was good about his art and what was actually good about his art). The collection is arranged chronologically, so we can witness Tolstoy become gradually more and more didactic in his writing (and consequently less and less interesting), and a lot of the late-era stuff is almost completely insufferable. Tolstoy as a didactic critic is even more insufferable than Tolstoy as a didactic novelist. You enjoying art that he thinks is "compromised" = you must be pretending to like it. The early- and mid-era work is generally excellent, and makes me want to track down a more comprehensive collection of that stuff.

[Laura Wetsel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good Tolstovian sampler. But be warned, several portions are merely teasers from his great works.

[James Varney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best part is the "Fiction in the Years of 'War and Peace.'" The stories "Sevastopol," "The Raid," and "Two Hussars," all built off Tolstoy's real experience in the Caucasus are my favorite. In addition to digging deep into the concept of bravery and heroism, Tolstoy admits flat-out what engrossed him was the nitty-gritty of combat. The Maude translations here note that parts of these stories were omitted by censors in Tolstoy's time, including the start of "The Raid":

"War always interested me: not war in the sense of manoeuvres devised by great generals - my imagination refused to follow such immense movements, I did not understand them - but the reality of war, the actual killing. I was more interested to know in what way and under the influence of what feeling one soldier kills another than to know how the armies were arranged at Austerlitz or Borodino."

The latter, of course, is a battle Tolstoy did spend some time figuring the movements and arrangements when Pierre and Prince Andrew are at the Borodino battle along with Kutuzov and others. Here, in these shorter works, Tolstoy delves more deeply into the motivations of soldiers and finds the run the gamut. He is partly disgusted with what he learns, as he shows in "Sevastopol" where his characters display heroism or cowardice, self-aggrandize endlessly, or wind up wounded or dead.

With that bloody truth, Tolstoy sprinkles in some beautiful scenes, as when patrols are on the move in the Caucasus, or when the sun rises and sets on the Black Sea.

In an amazing comment, Tolstoy once said that "all false modesty aside, my early work is on a level with Homer." But while "Childhood" and "Youth," in particular, are rewarding I don't find myself dipping back into them as much as the later pieces. All in all, "The Portable Tolstoy" is a great companion to the big novels.

[Remy]

read A Confession