“Live with a steady superiority over life -- don’t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn’t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing”
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated with Russia and its people. It is a land of deep, sparkling snow and dark forests; crashing drums and whirling dances; bearskins and rushing sleighs; vodka and pickled herring; onion domes and golden icons; Tsars and glittering palaces. It is the one nation I must visit before I die. When pressed on why I hold such an interest in Russia it’s hard to explain. There is something so intangibly familiar about the country and its inhabitants, and yet so tantalizingly foreign. They are like us (in the West) but in the same instant nothing like us. But if I had to boil it down to one reason, it would be the Russian’s capacity to live. There are no peoples more adept to handle the vicissitudes of life than the Russians. They can endure privation and horrific suffering and yet laugh and celebrate to the fullest the joys that life offers. And this ability to take life as it comes is perfectly reflected in their national literature.
One can hardly hear the term Russian Literature without the two towering figures of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy instantly coming to mind. Lauded by many as the greatest novelists of all time, (War and Peace has often been cited as the best novel of all time), both of these men’s writings managed to capture and express the two distinct and unique aspects of the Russian character I mentioned earlier: Dostoevsky’s the intense, almost narrow-minded, capacity of the Russian people to suffer; Tolstoy’s the unbounded and seemingly limitless ability of the Russian to enjoy life. And it is by no accident that the style, tone, and form of the novels these men wrote mirror the characteristics they portray.
If anyone has even read just one of Dostoevsky’s books they will know what I mean when I say his writing feels cramped. His world is one of yellow peeling wallpaper, dirty snow, the crowded streets of St. Petersburg, the feverish consumptive with bright red cheeks and glistening eyes, prostitutes, thieves, rapists, impoverished families, the mentally insane or terminally ill. In a word, all the suffering that life can throw at humanity. And Dostoevsky highlights this suffering not only through the various settings of his novels, but also by the form itself: the psychological novel. Dostoevsky forces the reader into the intensely personal and narrow mental headspace of his characters and their world more than any other writer I have read. The feeling of limited space produced by the restricted settings and frenzied thoughts of his characters soon leaves one feeling trapped, hopeless, and sometimes even despairing.
Take for example the opening lines from the unnamed narrator in Notes from Underground, “I am a sick man… a spiteful man… an unattractive man”. The title itself already gives the reader the impression of being buried alive, away from light and fresh air. But these few words set the tenor for the entire book even more than the title, and straightway the reader is forced to accept the narrator’s view of himself for their own. As the novella continues and the frenzied ravings of the narrator rise to a feverish pitch, the reader is unable to escape. It is like watching a train wreck only to realize you are inside the train. The whole novella revolves around the writings of a bitter person railing against society, squashing any good or noble feelings in himself, and seeking to inflict injury on others purely out of spite. It leaves one feeling nauseous and trapped and it was with a sigh of relief that I finished it. But this isn’t the only instance of that cramped feeling in Dostoevsky’s works. One can’t forget Raskolnikov or his constricted garret apartment in Crime in Punishment, with its sagging sofa, loose floorboards, and dirty rags. The entirety of that novel is from the viewpoint of Raskolnikov as he spirals from detached philosophizing to obsessive thoughts to murder and eventually into paranoia. The reader is dragged unwillingly along, aided by Dostoevsky’s setting where the action takes place in tiny squalid apartments or crowded streets and only allowing for the story to be told from the crazed Raskolnikov’s point of view. Nor can one forget how in The Idiot, after the epileptic Prince Myshkin spends the night lying in a confined bed next to the body of his lover Nastasya and her murder Rogozhin, he succumbs to a seizure and becomes mad. And again, in Demons, there is the mono-minded Kirillov who spends the entire time in the novel pacing the floor of his small apartment, obsessively determined to proclaim the supremacy of his will by killing himself. And who can forget that suffocating nightmare of Ivan Karamazov when the Devil appears? I need not belabor the point. However, one thing all of Dostoevsky’s works have in common is a narrowness of setting and a fixation on the thoughts of the characters that serve to smother the reader. The action in many of his books take place within a single location. In a few streets of St. Petersburg, a small town in a remote province; characters are rarely seen traveling vast distances. In fact, the only instances where this does occur (The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov) the traveling happens off the page.
This fixedness of location coupled with its delivery as a psychological novel serves to intensify that stifling feeling so present in Dostoevsky. But even more so this very compressed and narrow style of Dostoevsky’s expresses that aspect of the Russians I alluded to earlier: their ability to bear up under intense sorrow. He is showing his readers, through his characters, the ever present nature of suffering in the lives of people and the utter impossiblity of escape from that suffering. The themes of his novels deal almost entirely with suffering and how it affects people as they respond to it: either it has a purging and expiatory effect and leads to moral righteousness or it overwhelms and destroys.
Compared to this Tolstoy’s work stands out in stark contrast. His two most famous novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are expansive in every sense of the word. They span dozens of years and thousands of miles. They encompass dozens of characters, and while psychological to some degree, they are more sociological in nature. Compare this passage from War and Peace with what I quoted earlier from Dostoevsky:
“"What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way," thought he, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the Frenchmen with the gunners ended, whether the red-haired gunner had been killed or not and whether the cannon had been captured or saved. But he saw nothing. Above him there was now nothing but the sky- the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds gliding slowly across it. "How quiet, peaceful, and solemn; not at all as I ran," thought Prince Andrew- "not as we ran, shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!..."”
The above quote is from the point of view of Andrew Bolkonsky, an aristocrat serving in Kutuzov’s army fighting against Napoleon’s invasion of 1812. Prior to his being wounded, Andrew, unhappily married, was a man of ambition who saw himself as superior to others and strove to distinguish himself in the upper echelons of the army staff. His interests were entirely focused on the importance of individual distinction and action. However, after the above epiphany, Andrew realizes there is much more to life than vain heroic individuals or societal accolades. His view shifts from the narrow to the expansive. An all encompassing revelation of the grandness of life.
There is another character in War and Peace who is worth mentioning. Pierre Bezhukov, in many regards the chief protagonist of the novel, is a wealthy, socially awkward man who is constantly seeking the meaning of life. Throughout the novel he feels that something is amiss with the trivial everyday affairs of the aristocracy, which they call living: soirees, fetes, paying social calls, dalliances, etc. He lives a life of dissipation, debauchery, and sensuality in an effort to forget the gnawing question of what is life about. He seeks meaning in the Freemasons, a world-wide organization with far-reaching goals for the transformation of humanity. But this proves a mirage too and Pierre eventually falls away. Ultimately, he finds an answer to his question while in captivity through the person of Platon Karataev, a Russian peasant. This meaning is revealed in a life on integrity without pretense and an exercise of free-will.
Similarly, in Tolstoy’s other great novel, Anna Karenina, another character is seen grappling with the question of the meaning of life. In part 8, chapter 8 of the book, Konstantin Levin has the epiphany that answers his questions. Incidentally, it also comes about from a peasant named Platon and ends with Levin taking in the view of nature: grass, trees, and sky. I cannot quote the entirety of that chapter, though it is well worth reading, and I would recommend Anna Karenina to be the book to read if you were only going to read one of Tolstoy’s novels. Below are brief excerpts of the question that tormented Levin and the answer he finds.
“Ever since, by his beloved brother's deathbed, Levin had first glanced into the questions of life and death in the light of these new convictions, as he called them, which had during the period from his twentieth to his thirty-fourth year imperceptibly replaced his childish and youthful beliefs--he had been stricken with horror, not so much of death, as of life, without any knowledge of whence, and why, and how, and what it was.”
“"Fyodor says that Kirillov lives for his belly. That's comprehensible and rational. All of us as rational beings can't do anything else but live for our belly. And all of a sudden the same Fyodor says that one mustn't live for one's belly, but must live for truth, for God, and at a hint I understand him! And I and millions of men, men who lived ages ago and men living now-- peasants, the poor in spirit and the learned, who have thought and written about it, in their obscure words saying the same thing--we are all agreed about this one thing: what we must live for and what is good. I and all men have only one firm, incontestable, clear knowledge, and that knowledge cannot be explained by the reason--it is outside it, and has no causes and can have no effects.”
For Tolstoy, though he often wrote about death, the chief theme of his writing was life and how best to live it. And to adequately answer such a lofty question he turned to the expansive format of the sociological novel. This style and form served perfectly both to express and reflect on the nature of a large capacity and desire for good (sometimes riotous) living inherent in the Russian people.
At its core life is a composite of joy and sorrow, and these two elements are ever in flux and never in equal parts. More often than not it is one chiefly of sorrow. Yet the Russian people as a whole have a capacity to take these varying fortunes in their stride. There are no people more ready to endure hardship and sorrow nor are there a people who seize the good times of life more fully and completely. And there are no better representatives for a people than Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in showcasing the dual nature of that people. Perhaps it is because they, like Solzhenitsyn, realized that happiness and sorrow comes and goes, and the best way to live is to take what each day brings.
Happy Reading,
Drew