Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy - Legacy

Legacy

Tolstoy represented the later period of Romanticism in Russian literature; art for him was a mystic link between the human world and the higher spheres where "eternal ideas dwell." Along with Fet, his artistic and spiritual ally, he saw Art as a kind of higher science, man's only instrument for a true and comprehensive understanding of the world. Romantic tendencies were best realised in Tolstoy's poetry and in some of his dramas, notably Don Juan where the hero is on a quest for a romantic ideal, looking everywhere for love "that helps one penetrate into the wonderful universal laws, our world's hidden beginnings," as he put it. "Art can only be a 'means' - all of the 'ends'... it contains in itself," Tolstoy wrote in 1870, in the course of long dispute with those whom he labeled "utilitarianists in literature". Such views automatically made him a "conservative" in the eyes of the revolutionary democrats who formed a large majority in the Russian literary circles of the 1850s and 1860s. Unlike Fet, though, Tolstoy insisted on the artist's total independence from ideology and politics, and felt himself totally free to criticize and mock authorities, a trait that snubbed many people in high places.

Tolstoy's poetry had certain qualities that made it unusual and even unique, one being the "half-spoken" nature of the verse. "It's good for poetry when a thought is only half-fulfilled, so that readers can complete it - each in their own way," he explained in a letter to Sophia Miller in 1854. This view translated into a technique of writing. One of the things Tolstoy was criticised and even jeered for were "bad rhymes". He used them consciously, as part of his "poetic system". "Imperfect rhyming, if kept in bounds of course, can be seen as corresponding to the Venetian school in painting which with little imperfections, or should I say, carelessnesses, could achieve the kind of effects which Raphael wouldn't dream of for all of his precision," Tolstoy wrote in 1859. In fact, Tolstoy, as I. Yampolsky pointed out, was a master of versification. Consciously imposed "careless" rhyming gave his poems an improvisational tone (with "an impression of thoughts being put to paper exactly in the form they were born") but behind it there was hard work and much editing. "Tolstoy's verse is so simple it hardly rises above prose, yet the poetic impression it carries is perfectly full," critic Nikolay Strakhov wrote in 1867. Another unusual feature of Tolstoy's poems was the fact that, while rather salon-like and graceful both in nature and form, they were full of 'simplisticisms' borrowed freely from common talk and traditional Russian folklore. Kept in perfect balance, these tinged his verse with a peculiar, musical quality. More than half of Tolstoy's poems have been put to music by leading Russian composers like Tchaykovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Musorgsky, Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Anton Rubinstein, Sergey Rakhmaninov and others. "Tolstoy is the unfathomable well of poems crying for music. For me he is one of the most attractive poets," wrote Tchaykovsky.

Assessing Tolstoy's poetry as a whole, D.S.Mirsky wrote:

Tolstoy, like Maykov and Polonsky, was an eclectic, but his eclecticism was not the result of a compromise between inner impulse and outward influence (that of "new trends"), it came rather from inner poise and harmony. He represented the "golden middle", mediocritas in the best, classical sense of the word. Multifacetedness and an all-embracing placid clarity based on Plato's idealism are the basic features of Tolstoy's poetry. He is the least tragic, lest disharmonious of the Russian poets, but his harmony has nothing to do with complacency or self-righteousness. It is clean and noble. In poetry, as in life, Tolstoy is a gentleman from head to toe.

"Even if they suffer from sentimentality and are occasionally banal, his lyrics retain their freshness and even now taste like a delightful morning dew," the critic wrote.

Innokenty Annensky saw Tolstoy's poetry as being the perfect expression of "pure love", the "human soul's inner beauty" being the poet's ideal. "Tolstoy never wrote for children but his crystal clear idealism, tinged with mysticism, made his poetry resonate well with the period in adolescence when the human soul reaches out to something high and indescribable," Annensky wrote. Mentioning Nekrasov, who in his latter works created a strong image of the Russian mother, Annensky argued that what Tolstoy managed to create was an equally sublime portrait of the noble woman whose "serene placidity belies unspeakable sadness… of the one who's ashamed of her own happiness fearing that she, making the most of this world's beauty, somehow takes it away from those who have no opportunity to enjoy such riches in abundance."

Tolstoy's ballads and songs were close to traditional bylinas both in essence and form; in fact, the author himself made no distinction between the two genres. Critics argued that (unlike, say, Nekrasov) Tolstoy used folklorisms as a mere stylistic instrument, using stories from the history of the Russian Middle Ages as a means to convey his own ideas and theories (Zmei Tugarin), and to link historical utopias with relevant social comment (Boryvoi, Vasily Shibanov). Tolstoy tended to greatly idealise Russia's pre-Mongol past which made the traditional bylina characters almost superheroes. "It's hard to recognize Alyosha Popovich, eyes-a-jealous, hands-a-grabbin'- as a romantic youth, speaking of love and devotion to his beloved," Semyon Vengerov remarked. Likewise, the fearsome Ilya Muromets who came across as a rather violent, dangerous and often sacrilegious type in folk bylinas, was portrayed by Tolstoy as a "benign grandfather figure", rather gracious and well-spoken.

Critic Yuly Aykhenvald derided Tolstoy's insistence on continuing with his "nationalistic masquerade" and quoted Chekhov as commenting: " has put the opera costume on and forgotten to take it off before leaving the theater." According to Aykhenvald, Tolstoy "missed the point, in that national values, when taken to the extreme, become alien-looking". For Aykhenvald, though, it was Tolstoy's humour that prevented him from turning into an "archeology worshipper". The critic saw Tolstoy's romanticism as universal and in a certain way religious (resulting in the fact that his most memorable character, Tsar Fyodor was "an epitome of Christian meekness and grace"). Yet, " worshipped that kind of God who was devoid of stiffness... he was a free spirit and valued freedom most."

Tolstoy's sense of humour was best realised in Kozma Prutkov's extraordinary aphorisms, as well as in his own satirical poems. "Tolstoy... without any doubt, is Russia's greatest absurdist poet," wrote Mirsky. The Dream of Councillor Popov and History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev, his best known satires, were spread across Russia in manuscript, gaining huge popularity amongst all social strata. According to Mirsky, The Dream is "the acme of Russian humorous poetry, mixing sharp, poignant satire... and pure delight in cheerful absurdity". It's The Dream that can be seen as Aleksey Tolstoy's most solid claim for immortality," the critic argued, mentioning The Uproar in the Vatican as another of his humorous masterpieces.

Tolstoy's anti-leftist, pro-conservative sarcasm, on the other hand, received much stick from the 'democratic' press. His "Ballad with a Tendency" was bitterly criticised by Saltykov-Schedrin while Iskra magazine parodied it in 1872 with a verse entitled "A Ballad with a Pro-Police Tendency". Schedrin, describing the current state of Russian literature as a "kingdom of scoundrels", in a letter to Aleksey Zhemchuzhnikov wrote: "Add to all this the fun-and-games-seeking 'free artists' like Count A. K. Tolstoy who makes... our obscurantists's hearts beat faster with delight. I don't know about you, but I find it painful to see how people whom I though honest, even if not very far-seeing, fight on the side of obscurantism, employing pseudo-folklorism as a weapon."

Tolstoy was a master of prose; both his novella The Vampire (praised by Belinsky) and his novel Prince Serebrenni received a lot of good press. The latter, though, was criticised, mainly for being tendentious; many argued that both the main character and Yelena Morozova looked very much like people of the 19th, rather than 16th century. On the other hand, Ivan Grozny and the oprichnina horrors were depicted with great vividness and passion; the novel's masterfully built structure, its rich musical language made it a perfect Walter Scott-type of book for adolescents, according to S. Vengerov. "The novel is highly involving, is being read with great interest, and is well-built and well-written," Turgenev wrote, recommending it to a French publisher. For all that, as a prose writer Tolstoy made much less of an impact than as a poet. He's been credited with being the true classic of 19th century Russian historical drama. D. S. Mirsky regarded Tolstoy as a dramatist superior to Aleksander Ostrovsky, describing his plays as "full of intriguing ideas and brilliantly crafted characters. They impress us with intelligence and insight rather than with flights of imagination, but in Tsar Fyodor Tolstoy managed to create one of the most interesting characters in Russian literature: that of a kind and weak ruler who has a keen sense of justice but is unable to make his evil aids implement his good will."

Critics noted, though, that history as such was secondary to Tolstoy; he was driven mostly by his own personal views and feelings, tending to judge his 16th century characters using mid-19th century moral values. "The life of today seeps through everywhere," Tolstoy himself admitted, speaking of his ballads. According to the author, historical drama had to be "true" only in a "humanist way". "A poet... has just one responsibility: to his own poetic self... human truth is his one law. Historical truth is something he is not bound to. If it fits into the concept, very good, if not, he can easily do without it," he wrote. So on the one hand, Tolstoy's dramatic trilogy- The Death of Ivan the Terrible, Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich and Tsar Boris- was not historical in the strict sense of the word; on the other hand, it was far from being the brand of "patriotic drama" produced by Nestor Kukolnik or the imitation of the French tragedie des allusions which Pushkin ridiculed. In fact, Pushkin's attitude was the closest approximation to that of Tolstoy. The latter's plays had their "second levels", directly corresponding to contemporary political situations, but were driven mostly by the author's historical views and theories which involved the glorifying of Russian "noble men" (he associated them with the boyarstvo) and the vilification Ivan Grozny whom the boyarstvo had fallen victim to.

Pavel Annenkov considered Ioann and Fyodor as "loosely based upon" characters, being perfectly fine but only in representing their era, not their own historical selves. "They are as loose as King Lear or Hamlet were and, if they do belong more to Russian history than those two belong to English history, that is because no other reality than that of our Old Russia could have inspired in such a way, bringing him such colors, such an essence to freely draw from," the critic wrote. It was the generic closeness of Tolstoy's plays to the Russia of old, Annenkov argued, that made them historic in the truest sense of the word, for "their significance as living testimony to the spirit those people and their times is beyond doubt".

Common to the trilogy was a somewhat morbid look at the history of the Russian monarchy of the previous three centuries, where, as the author saw it, all the efficient rulers happened to be evil, and all the 'good' ones proved to be inefficient. The three stories of three different historical figures had similarly didactic finales: "God help you, Tsar Ivan, and God forgive us all! That's the fate autocracy deserved! Here's the result of our disintegration!" (Zakharyin's words over Ivan the Terrible's dead body), "I am to blame for all of this... Oh God, why did you make me Tzar?!" (Tsar Fyodor), "What Evil spawns is only more evil and nothing else." (Boris Godunov). All three parts of the trilogy, which, according to Nestor Kotlyarevsky, were "united by the idea of tragedy being intrinsic to Tzarist power in Russia," had serious problems with the censorship. In fact, the trilogy continued to divide opinion in Russia up until 1917. Not long before the Revolution, in Aleksandrinka the public reacted to Tsar Boris in an overtly political fashion. Monarchists applauded Boris Godunov's words, the left "supported" the boyarin Sitsky, seeing in him a fighter of despotism.

All three plays became part of the repertoire of the leading Russian and Soviet theaters, notably the Maly Theatre, with stars like Ivan Moskvin, P. Orlenev, C. Kuznetsov and N. Khmelyov in the leading roles. According to I. Yampolsky, Tolstoy the dramatist, even if not on par with Pushkin, was high above his contemporaries; he created complex, multi-dimensional historical figures. "In the arts, to be wary of showing weaknesses in your favourite characters is to pay them bad service... Thus one can only succeed in creating faceless dummies whom nobody would believe in", Tolstoy wrote.

In the mid-19th century Tolstoy was not taken very seriously, but his reputation started to grow after his death in 1875. Vladimir Korolenko, twenty years after the publication of the final part of the drama trilogy, wrote in a diary that he "re-read it and... despite the obvious note of romanticisation of the boyarshina" it made a "very strong and vivid impression" on him. It was Korolenko who called Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich "a gem of Russian drama", that's been shining especially bright next to "the totally dismal theater repertoire of the late 19th century".

Tolstoy was highly valued by Aleksander Blok and Valery Bryusov; Ivan Bunin, otherwise harsh in his comments on fellow writers, rated him very high; Velemir Khlebnikov mentioned him among his all-time favourites and, most surprisingly (according to Korney Chukovsky), Vladimir Mayakovsky knew his poetry by heart and often recited it in public. Both Tolstoy's poetry (the larger part of which has been transformed into classic romance) and his historical drama trilogy are regarded as an intrinsic part of the classic Russian literature of the 19th century.