Age of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

Age of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

Compare and contrast L.N. Tolstoy and F.M. Dostoevsky with respect to their writing style and their thought.

Nineteenth-century Russia was a time of profound political and social changes. The Russian Empire continued to expand into the south, while the reputation of the Romanov dynasty was at its all-time low. Frequent riots and political assassination attempts paralyzed the state affairs from time to time. Intellectuals and literary authors decried government corruption, hypocrisy of the clergy, and the oppressive system of serfdom, while others debated Russia's standing in Europe and the world. It was also the heyday of Russian cultural and artistic expression. It was the age of such literary titans as Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were two different authors but they were also very much alike because they both addressed deep philosophical and spiritual questions about human nature, God, Russian soul, civilization, modernity, and other issues of societal concern at the time.

As literary authors, neither Dostoevsky nor Tolstoy was a master of a superior writing-style. In their works, what mattered most was the content. They did not intend to impress other literary authors with their styles but wanted to reach the masses. It is likely that they wanted to write in a simple language which would be accessible to every literate person. Reading Dostoevsky, for instance, reveals that he does not use flowery language or detailed descriptions of visible items much. If he talks about a street, he just mentions the word "street" and goes to describing interactions and conversations that convey a meaning. He does not focus on how his characters dress or what kind of an outer look they have much either, concentrating more on the content of their words. He is also very repetitious although one might argue that it serves a special purpose as he wants to emphasis certain points.

In most of his writings, Dostoevsky addresses the question of God and soul and places his characters in extreme positions where it is hard to make the right choices. In these extreme positions, Dostoevsky's characters defy conventional wisdom and generally accepted ideas, questioning the morality of human nature. He also frequently addresses the question of free will and determinism. Both are major themes explored in Notes From Underground and Brothers Karamazov. In the Notes, the idea of self-evident truth is continuously questioned by the protagonist who rejects the common dictum "two times two makes four." Dostoevsky, like Tolstoy, also addresses his personal intellectual musings and spiritual crisis in his novels. It is clear that the death of his three-year-old son Alyosha was instrumental in developing a character with the same name in Brothers Karamazov. Alyosha in the novel is a novice and innocent, while his elder brother Ivan Karamazov, a rationalist thinker who can no longer endure the sight of so much suffering in the world and rejects God, reflects Dostoevsky's inner spiritual conflict. Here again, the brothers are placed in extreme conditions where it is hard to distinguish the "good" from the "bad" and that the outcome of human actions become ambivalent. For example, in the final scene of the dialogue between the Grand Inquisitor and the Christ, it is not clear whether Christ's kissing on the Inquisitor's lips suggests surrender on the Christ's part or the demonstration that for Christ love wins everything -- that love is the ultimate meaning of life.

Like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy also uses simple language. His sentences are relatively short and so are his chapters. Perhaps, because of his love for peasant life in Russia, he often uses language used by ordinary Russians, as, for him, the peasants were the ordinary people, not the city-dwellers. Tolstoy focuses on everyday life and activities but addresses deep philosophical and spiritual questions through the description of these interactions. Like Dostoevsky, he mostly uses an omniscient narrative style, i.e. The narrator knows all the inner thoughts and intentions of all characters. On surface, what he writes about seems to consist of uncomplicated stories but they all have deeper meanings. In contrast to Dostoevsky, Tolstoy often addresses the complicated nature of being and of the death. He also criticizes the absurdity of war and violence. As someone deeply influenced by the philosophy of selflessness, Tolstoy also addresses hypocrisy in human relations and how human beings, even close relatives and friends, do not really feel the suffering of the other.

Like Dostoevsky, or even more so than Dostoevsky, Tolstoy in his fiction builds characters that reflect his inner conflict. Alexander Boot, one of the harshest critics of Tolstoy the person but an admirer of his art, argues that "Tolstoy's virtues were his vices with the opposite sign; his characters were his vices externalized. Having created them, he would then take a step back and judge his protagonists, which is to say aspects of himself, pronouncing his verdicts, meting out either punishment or mercy" (Boot, 2009, pp. 10-11). As an example, Boot mentions the case of Anna Karenina. In the epigraph to his novel, Tolstoy quotes the Biblical verse "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." Boot argues that, unlike Christ, Tolstoy could not show mercy upon the woman taken to adultery. if, "in accordance with the legal principle in the Old Testament, a woman taken in adultery must be stoned to death," Boot writes, "Tolstoy develops this theme with the sublime power, only replacing the old-fashioned stones with the technologically advanced locomotive that takes Anna's life" (Boot, 2009, p. 11). Other critics offer a different interpretation. Rancour-Laferriere (2007) argues that through the characters of Konstantin Levin and Anna Karenina -- both preoccupied with suicide -- Tolstoy is simply expressing his own thoughts about killing his life. Rancour-Laferriere writes: "The person who says 'I' in these works is not some fictional character or invented narrator. Rather, that person is Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy himself, who is honestly trying to represent himself to the reader, or perhaps only to himself" (p. 5). The consensus among these two critics, however, is on Tolstoy's tendency to express his inner feelings through fictitious characters in his novels.

Tolstoy's exploration of the question of death is especially telling. In 1857, he went to witness an execution of a man in Paris. The whole spectacle made a tremendous impact on Tolstoy. He abhorred the law of the state and of the morality that justified such a gruesome act. He was also deeply moved by how the people witnessing it enjoyed the spectacle. After witnessing it, Tolstoy wrote in his notebook that the "guillotine long prevented my sleeping and obliged me to reflect"; hence his realization that there must be higher "laws of morality and religion" (qtd. In Jackson, 1993, pp. 58-59). The question of death and empathy by others are major themes in War and Peace and especially the Death of Ivan Ilych. Tolstoy's main argument in the latter seems to be that we need to directly feel the suffering and death of others. In the novel, the only person who expresses empathy for the plight of Ivan Ilych is Gerasim. Although just a servant, he takes care of Ivan Ilych and even empties his commode, hoping that "someone would do the same for him when his time came" (Tolstoy, 1960, p. 138). In stark contrast to Gerasim, Ivan Ilych's wife Praskovya Fedorovna and his friend Peter Ivanovich do not demonstrate empathy. Here is how Praskovya Fedorovna explains her own suffering at the sight of her husband's screaming: "He screamed unceasingly, not for minutes but for hours. For the last three days he screamed incessantly. It was unendurable. I cannot understand how I bore it; you could hear him three rooms off. Oh, what I have suffered!" (ibid, p. 101). It is clear that, though his wife, she does not feel the suffering of Ivan Ilych.

While certain similarities could be drawn from the simplicity of prose and the deepness of philosophical questions the two authors explored in their writings, they disagreed on many other questions. Dostoevsky was nostalgic for the era of Peter the Great and believed a truly Christian state would be best for the Russian nation. He was also more pronounced in expressing Russian nationalism, justifying Russian conquest of the Caucasus and Central Asia. In his Pushkin speech, Dostoevsky stated that the "mission of the Russian is unquestionably pan-European and universal" (Rosenblium, 2009, p. 73). For him, Europeans had a higher civilization than the rest of the world. Tolstoy, on the other hand, critiqued Russian wars in the Caucasian Captive and the Hadji Murad. Tolstoy also distrusted all states, inspiring anarchist movements of the future. Both criticized the West for its soulless materialism, but Tolstoy questioned the superiority of European cultures altogether. There is no question, however, that both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were extremely complex figures and geniuses whose writings force any reader to think far deeply than before. And characters of both are to some extent a mystery to the reader.

5. Both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky possessed a profound spirituality. Compare and contrast their approaches to the question of faith.

One of the features of the age of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky was the emergence of philosophical and religious thoughts that promoted spirituality without religion. The tendency to reject organized religion in favor of personal spirituality or a direct relationship with God gained prominence at this age in Russia because of widespread disillusionment with the state-supported religion, corruption and hypocrisy of the official clergy. None perhaps popularized such spirituality in Russia more than Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Both of these figures had a complicated relationship with the official Orthodox Christianity. Tolstoy was excommunicated by the Holy Synod of the Russian Patriarch in 1901. But while Dostoevsky's criticism of organized religion remained subtle and he emphasized the importance of faith, Tolstoy was scathing in his attacks on Russian Orthodox religion and at times he directly questioned the existence of God. Tolstoy was a strong rationalist. Nevertheless the question of God for him was of utmost importance and he, like Dostoevsky, possessed a profound spirituality.

As a rationalist, Tolstoy wanted to find reasonable answers to all the questions that bothered him. His criticism of the teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church rested on the incompatibility of those teachings with reason. Therefore he rejected them. Although he said many times that he believed in Christ, Tolstoy rejected Christ's divinity and the whole concept of Trinity, describing it as "based on nothing" and "useless" (Rancour-Lafarriere, 2007, p. 80). Dostoevsky, on the other hand, believed that the complexity of life could not be solved through reason. Only by having faith, one could make sense of all the suffering in the world and understand the meaning of life. This is one of the themes of the Brothers Karamazov. There is no rational way of understanding so much suffering in the world; only through faith one can make sense of them and achieve mental and spiritual freedom. When critically analyzed, neither Tolstoy nor Dostoevsky had a coherent religious philosophy. It should also be noted that their religious views and spirituality were dynamic, changing through time and reflecting their life experiences.

Comparing the religious views and spirituality of two authors, as reflected in Brothers Karamazov and War and Peace, Joshua Steele (2005) makes the following observation: "Tolstoy's Christian philosophy of daily living is admirable but cannot be supported by his reason-based religion. Dostoevsky's faith-based religion, on the other hand, is more theologically based in Christianity but the conclusions he draws from this faith and applies to everyday life, both in his fiction and his actual life, are suspect at best." This is an apt observation, as both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky expressed ambivalent feelings about the role of both faith and reason. Tolstoy argued for a Christian philosophy different from the one taught by the official clergy, but to what extent his philosophy then could be called "Christian"? Did Tolstoy profess Christianity as taught by the Christ or a "Christianity" he invented in his own mind? It is hard to give a definite answer to this question. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, argued for the supremacy of faith but he also subtly criticized Christianity and organized religion in general. One might therefore make an argument for the "closing" of the "distance" between the two literary titans (Rosenblium, 2009).

The Grand Inquisitor in the Brothers Karamazov was not accepted well by Dostoevsky's friends and religious clergy. Here, the true meanings of Dostoevsky's discussion of faith remain a mystery, making ambivalent suggestions. On the one hand, Dostoevsky affirms the supremacy of faith for understanding the meaning of life, but he also suggests that the teaching of Christ is impractical in this world. It is the ideal one can aspire but is literally unachievable. The freedom given to humanity by Christ leads to "slavery and confusion," unless human beings are ruled by a despot like the Grand Inquisitor. As Williams (2008) explains, "the Inquisitor can guarantee the prosaic happiness of the ordinary and weak, the humble who are left without hope by the impossible demands and promises of the gospel, a gospel that could only ever make sense to a tiny minority of spiritual athletes" (p. 27). It is clear that Dostoevsky here is challenging fundamental doctrines of Christianity. So, while he has faith and argues for its supremacy, his understanding of Christianity makes his adherence to the teachings of Christ suspect. And unlike Tolstoy, Dostoevsky critiques the Christian doctrine in a subtle, but no less powerful, manner.

Tolstoy had no bones about questioning the wisdom of organized religion. In his diary entry of March 5, 1855, he wrote: "Talking about divinity and faith has led me to a great, immense idea, one I feel I can devote my whole life to fulfilling -- founding a new religion in agreement with the history of mankind and Christ's religion, but cleansed of all faith and sacraments; a practical religion that, rather than promising future bliss, gives bliss on earth" (qtd. In Boots, 2009, p. 46). He reiterated such feelings later in his life, as well. These confessions are indeed telling. It is clear that faith means a lot to him. He also has an admiration for the life of Christ. But Tolstoy, as a rationalist, wants to possess his faith in a practical way, in a manner that helps him achieve inner peace with himself -- a kind of faith that brings heaven to the earth. He has no patience for listening of the clergy who promise the heavenly bliss, while sustaining a system that oppresses the masses. Tolstoy also abhors religious sacraments that make absolutely no sense to him rationally.