Thursday, November 25, 2010

Was Tolstoy the First Trust Fund Hippie?

A thought provoking piece by David Brooks on the difference between observing and acting, through the lens of Tolstoy's life.

"... There are many reasons to think about Tolstoy on the centennial of his death. Among them: his ability to see. Tolstoy had an almost superhuman ability to perceive reality.

As a young man, he was both sensually and spiritually acute. He drank, gambled and went off in search of sensations and adventures. But he also experienced piercing religious crises.

As a soldier, he conceived “a stupendous idea, to the realization of which I feel capable of dedicating my whole life. The idea is the founding of a new religion corresponding to the present development of mankind: the religion of Christ purged of dogmas and mysticism.”

But when he sat down to write his great novels, his dreams of saving mankind were bleached out by the vividness of the reality he saw around him. Readers often comment that the worlds created in those books are more vivid than the real world around them. With Olympian detachment and piercing directness, Tolstoy could describe a particular tablecloth, a particular moment in a particular battle, and the particular feeling in a girl’s heart before a ball.

He had his biases. In any Tolstoy story, the simple, rural characters are likely to be good and the urbane ones bad. But his ability to enter into and recreate the experiences of each of his characters overwhelms his generalizations.
Isaiah Berlin famously argued that Tolstoy was a writer in search of Big Truths, but his ability to see reality in all its particulars destroyed the very theories he hoped to build. By entering directly into life in all its contradictions, he destroyed his own peace of mind.

As Tolstoy himself wrote, “The aim of an artist is not to solve a problem irrefutably, but to make people love life in all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations.”
But after “Anna Karenina,” that changed. He was overwhelmed by the pointlessness of existence. As his biographer A.N. Wilson surmises, he ran out of things to write about. He had consumed the material of his life.

So he gave up big novels and became a holy man. Fulfilling his early ambition, he created his own religion, which rejected the Jesus story but embraced the teachings of Jesus. He embraced simplicity, poverty, vegetarianism, abstinence, poverty and pacifism. He dressed like a peasant. He wrote religious tracts to attract people to the simple, pure life.

Many contemporary readers like the novel-writing Tolstoy but regard the holy man as a semi-crackpot. But he was still Tolstoy, and his later writings were still brilliant. Moreover, he inspired a worldwide movement, deeply influencing Gandhi among many others. He emerged as the Russian government’s most potent critic — the one the czar didn’t dare imprison.

What had changed, though, was his ability to see. Now a crusader instead of an observer, he was absurd as often as he was brilliant. He went slumming with the peasantry, making everybody feel uncomfortable. He’d try to mow the grass (badly), make shoes (worse), and then he’d return to his mansion for dinner. He was the first trust-fund hippie. He seemed to lose perspective about himself: “I alone understand the doctrine of Jesus.”

There were many consistencies running through Tolstoy’s life, but there were also two phases: first, the novelist; then, the crusader. And each of these activities called forth its own way of seeing...."

Read more here.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The equipage of a automobile boutique positively depends upon the assay and drift of capacity it has to do. There are unalike sizes of machines of the unvaried big-hearted inasmuch as the account of machining contrarious sizes of castings and forgings, also there are various kinds of machines in the armed forces of doing the unequivocally species of job in weird grades of refinement. An monetary solicitude is to have in it as simply one machines as thinkable to do as great a range of work as tenable, and this is most successfully perfect thither choosing high-grade machines which are not exclusively adapted to assortment of calling,
http://lyeuale.ustka.pl/biznes-i-finanse/4233/
http://anaunt.com.pl/interesy/5939/
http://www.kabaczki.com.pl/strony,blogi,fora/stoly,warsztatowe,s,962/
http://katalog.linuxiarze.pl/firmy,wg,wojewodztw/opolskie,p,100/
http://ukino.szczecin.pl/biznes-i-firma/773/

http://nglobal.pl/dom,i,ogrod/fer,marek,bienias,regaly,sklepowe,s,5942/
http://katalog.linuxiarze.pl/tag,leczenie,pijawkami/
http://www.2uh.pl/firmy-wg-branz/transport-komunikacja-pd284/
http://ineoar.lubin.pl/biznes-w-srednich-firmach/4913/
http://www.sarpydia.edu.pl/firmy/fer,stoly,warsztatowe,s,3953/

柯云 said...

2015-12-23keyun
ugg boots outlet
nike air huarache
louis vuitton outlet online
louis vuitton outlet
coach factory outlet
cheap toms
louis vuitton outlet
ugg boots outlet
louis vuitton handbags
nfl jerseys
michael kors handbags
coach outlet online
timberlands
louis vuitton purses
michaek kors
instyler
oakley sunglasses cheap
michael kors handbags
louis vuitton outlet
ugg boots
canada goose outlet
uggs on sale
canada goose
louis vuitton handbags
ugg boots
cheap jordans
michael kors handbags
louis vuitton purses
oakley sunglasses
gucci handabgs
sunglasses oakley
concord 11
coach outlet
ugg clearance outlet
ugg australia
michael kors outlet clearance
air force 1 trainers
ed hardy outlet
ray-ban sunglasses
vans sneakers

Unknown said...

nike free run uk, air force, new balance pas cher, longchamp, michael kors, michael kors, air max, nike free, hollister, sac longchamp, abercrombie and fitch, ralph lauren pas cher, nike roshe run, longchamp pas cher, vans pas cher, timberland, lacoste pas cher, converse pas cher, burberry, nike trainers, oakley pas cher, sac guess, louboutin pas cher, north face, hermes, michael kors, true religion jeans, nike air max, nike roshe, mulberry, air jordan pas cher, tn pas cher, lululemon, hogan, true religion jeans, true religion jeans, ray ban pas cher, nike blazer, michael kors, coach purses, coach outlet, nike air max, vanessa bruno, hollister pas cher, nike huarache, north face, ralph lauren uk, ray ban uk, nike air max, true religion outlet, replica handbags

adidas nmd said...

vikings jerseys
ray ban sunglasses
cheap mlb jerseys
reebok shoes
red valentino
coach outlet
boston celtics jersey
ugg boots
chaussure louboutin
pandora charms

Unknown said...

mlb jerseys
cheap oakley sunglasses
michael kors outlet clearance
ray ban sunglasses
oakley sunglasses wholesale
nike air max
coach factory outlet
louis vuitton handbags
ralph lauren polo
michael kors outlet online
chanyuan2017.06.08

Unknown said...

coach handbags
coach outlet online
ralph lauren outlet
michael kors outlet
nike free
chiefs jersey
polo outlet
coach outlet
michael kors handbags wholesale
cleveland cavaliers jersey