By K.C. Bhatt
After dwelling in on mundane married lives of characters after their courtship in length, the author surprises one by dealing with the issue or declining agricultural output in the then Russia in three or so paragraph. He blames the introduction of the means of communication, transport and stock exchange for it, apart from other industries, maintaining that the same could work successfully in more developed Western Europe than Russia, where agriculture is far less developed. This novel was first published in 1878.
The author lived a life of an aristocrat in which he fathered dozens of children, most of them from a dozen or so serf women he employed, being a landlord.
So the love he describes in his writing and the lives of the characters he talks about may look too lofty and far from the life of peasants of the Russia of the time, who were in a large majority but appear only as servants in his novel, who only greet and serve their masters who, well fed and secure, proceed to create all the scenes of drama in a family and the society.
In fact, this novel is comparable to modern-day soap opera on television, which remains far from the social and political reality but has a palliative effect on its audience, which is mostly middle or upper class and hence has unlimited time for indulgence.
The life described is grand and far away from the worries of a common man. This family drama with an aristocratic ambience throughout was produced almost simultaneously with The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky.
Comparing these two novels leaves one stunned about how little Tolstoy saw as compared to Dostoevsky, of the society from which he came. It may also leave a reader of Tolstoy deluded that all the Russian life was as happy as portrayed in his this novel and the only problems were those which arose in the relationship in a family.
So the Russian revolution must have greatly surprised Tolstoy, though he died only four years before it concluded. But not to Dostoevsky, who died thirty years before Tolstoy.
Dostoevsky once implied in his writing if Lev Tolstoy does not know how to write. Having nearly been executed for reading banned literature by Pushkin, Dostoevsky spent many years in incarceration in a notorious Siberian prison. Tolstoy was a landlord and an ex-military official who also took part in a war. But he retired to do his writing without having an idea of the larger society around him. It made him the writer he was.
Of the many writers not rewarded with a Nobel, Tolstoy was a worthy one, for not receiving this award, even though he was nominated multiple times. His work was not worthy of it. But he tenderly describes the relations in the family though, and the breaking families of the upper-class people, mainly due to the banality of their affluent lives.
However, a good writer has to have some profound political understanding of his time and display it in his work to remain relevant for all times. On that count, he fails miserably. Now think about the literature produced in Russia or elsewhere, which was inspired by Tolstoy, as he is regarded highly in many countries outside Russia as well.
In fact, his work was translated in many languages to distribute it among the people reading those languages even by the erstwhile USSR almost at no cast. For it makes the life look glorious enough in Russia, to serve the propaganda purpose of every system ruling the country. Today, even a century after the writer died, his work is good enough for that purpose.
Besides it also shows which side of the revolution he was on, at that point of time when it was brewing and he wrote this novel. It was to change Russia and the world once it concluded. So his work was useful in Russia when he lived and outside when he is no more, serving the common goal of creating an unreal impression of real life.
Possibly he is celebrated and regarded for that purpose all over the world, where the students of literature are repeatedly told that his work was the greatest by any writer in any language. Such praise bullies them to read his work to take exams based on it. But most of them have a lingering misgiving if his work was not that important like many others who are equally over-rated. But this is how things remain in the world of literature, where the endeavours are to keep the things obscure. Anything which might upset the apple-cart is not to be discussed much, even if it has seen the light of the day. People make a generous living out of this notorious business of obfuscation and deception serving vested interests.
It was the disintegration of the USSR by the end of the last century, which shocked the people in Russia and elsewhere, as it came apart like a house of cards. One never thought the things were as fragile there, reading its literature, especially like the one of Tolstoy. It could not only be true about all the totalitarian states, where civil liberties are always subdued by the powerful leaders but even in functioning democracies, where the deeply entrenched vested interests continue to corrupt the complying and craven academia.
The so-called great literature at times disappoints profoundly and leaves one feeling happy that it is only in one’s later age that one had a chance to taste it. One may wonder if it was the age he lived in which compelled a writer to produce such work or he chose to do so out of his immediate needs. Corrupt lives entail an output of literature which borders on indulgence, both for a reader and a writer.
It also signifies the treachery and deceit which marked everything of that age, including its art, both for the artist and his audience.
If one considers that Maupassant and Thomas Hardy too wrote about this same time elsewhere, one finds that a true art too was more abundant in Western Europe, besides the successful commercial agriculture: which Tolstoy despises in this novel, and possibly not the Russian conditions which are not conducive for the same.
The prevailing literary trend influenced the Indian writers like Prem Chand too, rather than the work of Tolstoy alone, who too produced equally competent stuff in Hindi and Urdu, which has no parallel even today.
The question comes if a good writer is always outside the mainstream like Dostoevsky and being a landlord or an aristocrat worked against this great Russian writer.
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