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REALISM
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WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY :. I'
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ALFRED KAZIN o•J
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The Universal Library · ~I

GROSSET & DUNLAP

NEW YORK
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liY ALFRED i>:AZlN INTRODUCTION
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CONGRESS CATALOG CARD by Alfred Kazin
NUM BER . 64-12570
G ISBN: 0-448·00166·7

1974 PRINTING
•

GEORG LUK ..\cs is probably the only Communist philosopher and

literary critic in East Europe who still has the power to interest
and to teach many readers in the \Ves t. This is due entirely to hi s
A UNIVERSAL LI

I'IR ST A ~fER
DR ARY 0 RlCIXAL f imellectual gif ts and to the systematically moral vision of
• lCAN C OITION, 1964
history that he has retained as a writer despite his many ser vi l-
I
ities to Stalin and the betrayals of his own intellectual standards
that he has in times past committed as a Communist leader.
Luk<ics owes his reputation entirely t.o the logical skill and
intellectual vision with which, as a thinker rather than as a

.,
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• •o
·,
l. "party intellectual," he has sought to illuminate the deepest
aspects of Marxism. H e gives the impression that no other
Communist philosopher has done for some time-that despite
official avowals and mechanical formulas, here is an individual
I'·.··

t,. lhinker who is fascinated by and thoroughly com mitted to

J\hrxism as a philosophy, and who uses it for the intellectual
pleasure and moral satisfaction that this gives him. Yet unlike
the really noble fi gures in the early days of Communist history
like R osa Luxembu rg, and brilliant writers like Leon Trotsky,
who were truly revolutionary intellectuals commiued to Marxism
as a b asic philosophy of human liberation, L ukacs is actually a
more "bourgeois" and academic humanist-who because of his
inner detachment can stimula te and provoke us by his insights
into a text and his formulations of a~ esthetic issue. The Luxem·,
burgs and Trotskys, far more impos.ing and admirable figures,
were as persons so much identified with their thought that they
}: have become rhe heroes and martyrs of an embattled Weltan-
schallllllg. Geo rg Luk;\cs remains simply useful and pertinent as
a cri tic.
I:.·. Al though Luk{tcs has been ca11ed "the fin es t .rvi arxist since
J\htrx,"• the brillian ce of his best work no more confirms the
PRINTED IN T}{£
UNITED S TAT .Es
truth of !\Iarxism as a total phil osophy of history than the
OF AMERICA vindictive auacks on him by the party bosses in Hungary after
r. •Gyula Dorbandi in East EurojJt' (November. 1962).
./.
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his. return from R~ssia in 1945 discredit Marxism as a serious civilization. Lukac5's old-fashioned admirations-the only novel-
plul~sophy.*. Marxism, which uniquely among modern philo- ists-lie· ~~ins to enjoy after the great masters are _Thomas Mann·
r·:;;
soplues ?,~ history. h~~ proved better at "changing" the world
1 l·' : ..
4· and Maxim Gorky-are a symbol of a t_aste which has refused ,'
t"i
·.
tha~l at ~~lerpretlng It, has become, intellectually, the victim to yield anything in'·artistic matters to the conte':lporary \\'O~ld, ;,~
of us .pohttcal succe~s, and .seems to need so many bayonets to whether communist or caprtalist. And in nothin~ ~s the essen~xa~­ {111
ly individual, ''if not always indepc~de~t, spmt . of. Lukacs s

I
hold It up for the Instruction of intellectuals and students in :."4t :

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Eastern Eur_ope that it is now_ often ~ejected as a serious philos· literary criticism so clearly revealed as .~n h~s ~nconv1~cm~ :ffor~ 1..'1
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op?Y· Cer~amly one cannot d1scuss h terary d octrine with Soviet to praise the mechanical products of Sociah_st Re~hsm, m h1s
wntcrs. .Wtthout. soon being made to feel tha t "'·' · · " lfl
1HalX1Sm ·
I

I obvious unconcern with working-class expenence Jtself. ,,

·m
j: Russ1a ts now JUSt a cover for bureaucratic slogans. But it is Lukacs like many Marxist intellectuals who speak mechan· q_~:~
~x~ctly because :VIarxism-Leninism has proved so useless to .i - ically of 'the proletariat and of its "mission" in history, knows .t,\
·-/ senous students of literature that Lu kacs· can still be read f' nothing at first hand abou t the working class. He was born
· a~d valued for his und_erstanding in this book of the great (in 1885) the son of a wealthy Hungarian ~anker e~nobled f?r ill.
mneteenth:cent~ry novehsts and for his genuine belief in the t. his financial services to the Austro-Hunganan Empne, ~nd m H~•
value o£ h1s ~h~l~_~_ophy_ of hi_story to imaginative force in litera- the many works of his _M arxis t period, which bega'? dunng the \.
t~re. I~ .~ussta today, s.~Y.~ th: ti.nknown Soviet writer who signs First World War, seems to be fulfilling what a parucularly dose i.

hlms?lt Abram Tertz, Soc1ahst Realism" has never . meant a student of Lukacs's career, Mr. Morris vVatnick,• has con.cl~­ <I
genu~ne .co.nc_e rn with realism itself, which by its very nature is sively shown to be the "elitist" point of view that marks Lukacs.s ...,.,.
~~-

not~mg 1f a. 1s 1~ot. critica~ realism, but has been only the bureau- first philosophically idealist wr itings on art. Indeed, Lukacs s l···
1~
~ratl: ?.oct~m.e with. wh1ch the Communist state protects its work is particular proof of the way in whi~h t~e supposed~y
i'.l
sacr ~d m1sston ag~ms_t the . dangers of criticism. By contrast, '
lhe tead~r .of St11dzes zn . European Realism quickly discovers
,l.,
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objective content of l'vlandsm lends 1tself to Jus kmd of estheuc
humanism. For the spell of Marxism to intelle~tu.als has always :.
·)1.

;,~
consisted in the belief that history has a m!ss1on, that<?.~e
I;
that. Lukacs s great enthusmsm as a critic is exactly for "critical''
. _ realrsm in the spirit of Balzac and T olstoy, the great novelists
\vho adhered to no school of realism, to whom realism in the
l " stage" of society must inevitably devel~p mto a~other m
accordance w ith laws of inevitable econ01mc an~ soc1al ~hange -~~
m~dcrn s:nse of systematic documentation would have been r that represent progress in m~n·s C?nquest o!.
h~s ~.~ten.al e_n' .,-~ -
unmteres~rng, for t? them the novel, like great epic and classical

.l~
vironment and his eventual ltberat ton from tlungs • this wtll
ch:a ma, st1~l represented the encounter of a stiperior individual permit him, for the_ "first" time ~n history, to _be wh~ll.Y a crea- i\
w_ah a soc1e ty uneq~al to his sense of possibility, hi s faith in a tive human being, mstead of betng the e~pl01~ed,. ~1v1ded and ·f.
· iugh~r. h~man_ des~my. And it is not surprising, in view of alienated man he is now. And to no one 1s th1s vxs1on of ~an ,.
Lub es s Ident1ficat10n of imaginative force in literature with 'i seeking his proper destiny, hi s true est~~e as. a human bex~g, ii
the profound criticisms of society' made by the great novelists :-, ·so likely to be symp::tthetic as to a sensi~lve _literary and _Phtlo- r:
~1e loves, that he should be antagonistic to Zola and to natural- ~ophic intellectual .who. like _Georg Lukacs, IS a.ble to dunk of
~sm ge nerally. and obviously uninterested in most Soviet novel-
tsts after 1\Iaxim Gorky. himself not a product of Soviet
r economic exploitatiOn as a hmdrance to a ma~ s fu~fillment of
his expected destiny on earth. The great Marx1~t thmkers have
'
r always been able to · interpre t comple~ 1~\atcnal problem~.· a.s
;;~~)Joseph_ Rcqi, l .vluics A~uf Socia/i~t Realism (London, Fore l'u blications, i metaphors of lhe necessary stages o n hfc s wa~. And Luka~~.
:J • Revat, ~ne ~ th~ ruhng group of the Hungarian Communist Party
I
i though not directly one of the great figures m the Iv!arx1st
before the._ 19:.~6 revoluoon, was its "literary commissar," and although by I

,~,
many accoun_ts he was a man of personal cultiva1ion and had been n student ' .
~f _Luk:\~s: Ius attempt co discredit Lukacs in the eyes of students and writers •In Soviet Suroey (London). nos. 23:2?, 19:\8-19:,9. This is the best <luc:u·
•s mtcrcs~u1g only because of the contrast chat its malice and ob,·ious intcl- ,.
'•
mcntcd study of Luk;\cs's life and wntmgs.
lectu_al chshoncsty make with Lnka~s own writings.
VII
VI ,.
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t1:a~1ition, nevertheless carries the reader along in his ~xciting cism, for they are seeking to create a new taste in accordance with
VJSton of the nineteenth-century novel as a drama of man's most l the originality of their own artistic demands, the most useful
majestic possibilities. H e makes the reader feel that Balzac
· Stcndhal and !olstoy, represent a great age not only in th~ ·+ criticism in any generation tends to come from those, like Van
Wyck Brooks or F. R. Leavis or Edmund Wilson, who identify
.novel but a~so m mans ~t~e-~pt to transcend society-that their
compre.hens.t~e _mastery o~ social ti:uih \vas ..orie '\villi their artistry,
I themselves with a literary tradition. In the deepest sense such
writers are the guardians or conscience of tradition. And where
for th~1r crmctsm of soctety sprang from their deepest instinct a specialist in one period·or another serves us by his specific and
,., as artJsts. technical knowledge, a critic like Lukacs shows that the literary
1·, T~e disti~ction of Lukacs's Studies in European R ealism- tradition of the nineteenth-century novel is not a continuum of
•J:~ despite certam pasages of obeisance to the Lenin-Stalin cult and writers and works and "schools," but a moral and philosophic
some mechanical flattery of the Russian literary tradition itself tradition with urgent consequences for our own generation.
(the b~o.k \~as writ.Len ~n Russia during the terrible purges of .I.-.
0
Luk;lcs's Studies in Eu?"Opean Realism is a work based on
L~~ 19.30 s)-•s that H bnngs an essentially philosophic and moral tradition and makes up a study in tradition. Its perspective
. .. VISJO~ of man's nccess~ry destiny to bear on the great age of the 1·. is different from that of a great creative writer, who probably
..
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novel, the book puts mto a new and dramatic focus the sources l would not admire Balzac and Tolstoy so absolutely, and from
;r
of_realism in the nineteenth century. Lukacs's sutdies in realism that of a professional literary scholar, who would value more
bnng _home to us ~ertain sources to the imaginative power of such for their o,,.n sake the details of literary history. Lukacs writes.
~owenng figures as ?alzac and Tolstoy. Lukacs is exceptional as a good European who venerates the highest achievements of
., :
.tmong studen ts of mneteemh-century realism because he is both his culture in great works of literature. As a l\Jarxist, Lukacs of
l'o a philosopher with great gifts of cri tical analysis and a critic who i course wants to show that the best promise of continuing this
.i, can mar~hal his poi~lts with logical rigor. He always writes in the i / tradition .is the international working-class movement. But
I
.. , ~~rspecuv~ ?f a phllosophic~} system. He is not, admittedly, the ·H· \'quite apart from the fact that Lukacs is obviously enthusiastic
.,
kmd o_f cnttc th~t ~reat _wn~ers become in discussing the work f about the great nineteenth-century novels and not interested
of their equals m tmagmatwn:-BaJzac greeting Stendhal's La \. in or even encouraging about twentieth-cenquy literature (one
Chartreuse de Parme or l_"olstoy pointing up the weaknesses of of whose· major problems, how the individual writer can be
. Dostoevsky are oft.en part.lsa_n and selective in their judgments,
(
creative in a collectivist society, Lukacs never considers), it must
but they have a kmd of mstght that professional and therefore be said that Lukacs's very distinction and even his stimulating
hopefully judicious critics do not share. Indeed, Lukacs is too powers as a critic depend on his profound involvement with
0
theoretical (and I would say even visionary) a writer to be able the literary tradition of the nineteenth century. A deep and
I t? _express !lis judgments with the blend of suppleness and plas· urgent sense of tradition is what makes the good critic. If. like
¥ t1c1ty and 1rony which ma kes novelists like Virginia 'Woolf and . Keats in his letters and Coleridge in his essays, he can put him-
•I Thomas l\Jann such delightful essayists in criticism. On the other self into this tradition, then he does what Eliot in his famous
.1 hand, Luk<lcs's whole strength as a critic is that he has carried out essay on "Tradition and the Individual Talent" said that the
to the limits, ~vith intelle:t~tal passion, the literary scholar's ability poet must d o-transform the past in the light of the present.
to speak for ltterary tradaton, for the tradition of a country, of a If, like Lukacs, he insists that "society," the socialism that·he
l_ang.uage, of a specifi.c national culture. For Lukacs European~ _Believes is its last and necessary stage, will carry out the realistic
'! t eahsm, the.t:nodcrn literature he loves most in the world is the traditions of Western literature, one can certainly question h is
highest expr~ssion of a con~inuing ambition of the huma~ spirit abstract argument. But though. Lukacs lacks the creative wit
that he finds_ m ~he_ great wnters of the past. The literary tradition and ease of the great critics, he does write as a humanist with
of Europe Is l11s Intellectual patrimony, his culture, his faith. their tradition "in his bones"; he embodies the spiritual and l
Ap_art from wri tet:s .like Coleridge, Keats and Eliot, who usualJy intellectual values of the literature he loves; he can make these r
wnte the most. ongmal and therefore the most influential criti- values necessary issues to ·us today.
VIII IX
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~~-~~.~~l:l:t:Y :w.~apo.ns .agai~~t s~c}ety. !.;>r..~~k~c~ it i~
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The great value of Lukacs's book-and this despite the sycp- the dynamic ...J ·,:
phancy that shows what it is like to write a book in the repressive opposition oftbe }:luman spmt to a gtven soct~~_ order, ~s show.n
atmosphere of Stalin's "S.ocialism"-is the way in which his deep by· the .. gigantic figures of Ba1zac, who desptse a soctcty they ~·~ .:
and earnest sense of literary tradition operates in relation to feel to be unworthy of their creative pow'er, that makes "true"./• • ,.~
realism. Though a century now separates us from the great realism so bracing and exciting. And although, as a good Com- ;) •
masterpieces of Balzac and Tolstoy, "realism" as a literary idea munist,' he evades the vital point in this book and in his writi~gs ··!··
is still associated with the materialism and vulgarity of our own on contemporary writers,~ it is obvious that Lukacs's admna- ·~~ 1
society. But Lukacs, who thinks that writers like Flaubcn and t ion t:or "t"ue" realism, by which he means the exampl. e of Bat-· ./ •l'.•
Zola did surrende r to capitalism (hence their esthetic weakness zac, i~ not likely to extend to the "positive" hero of "Socia~ist" 1)1 ··
of tryino- to reproduce society literally), values in Balzac and realism. In Soviet literature, not only is "realism" prescnbed ~ ,...
Tolstoy ~xactly their superiority to contemporary society, which for all writers as if it were an offense against one's neighbors ..::1
he thinks sprang from their positive and "older" ideals. Speaking to write in any other literary spirit, but the "positive" hero is
of the great passage in the Iliad where, as Lessing said, Homer usually a cipher, a slogan in human form, anc;l is valued as l,
describes the mal~ing of Achilles' weapons and not just their ap- "typical" only in the sense that he is average. For Lukacs the / ~·:•
pearance, Luk;lcs goes on to sa·y- in a passage that expre!ises better "typical" means the concentration of all the forces already mov- / :··
than any other in the book the creative and liberating meaning ing to social change; for Sovie~ lit.erature, it ~ean~ the co~1mon. • •.
he gives to realism-"The really great novelists are in this The essence of Lukacs's admirauon for realism 1s that 1t pro-
respect always true-born sons of Homer. True, the world of di.tced the heroes of Balzac and Tolstoy-men who are excep·
objects and the rdationship between them has changed, has tiona} not because th~y are isolated, like the heroes of romantic , ·
become more intricate, less spontaneously poetic. But the art literature, but because all that is seething in the social co.nflicts
of the great· novelists manifests itself precisely in the ability to of their time has come to dramatic consciousness. To Lukacs, ~~
· overcome the unpoetic nature of their world, through sharing indeed, the heroes of Balzac and Tolstoy are made heroic I

and experiencing the life and evolution of the society they lived through their more resolute and heroic cons c~ou sness; they are
in. It is by sending out their spontaneously typical heroes to
fulfdl their inherently necessary destinies that the great writers
l heroes in the grand authoritative style of the nmeteenth centUt:y.
Like Balzac a nd Tolstoy, and of course like i\Jarx above all,
have mastered v,·ith such sovereign power the changeful texture r these heroes make themselves forces equal to the force of the ..·".~
o( the external and internal, great and little moments that make society' they resist and seek to transform. For Lukacs, the ~era
up life." of a literary work must in some sense be equal to. the .aclue~e-
A "typical" hero to Lnk<ks is not a hero like others but one ment of a new society; the individual, though m Ius soctal
who concentrates in himself all the forces of change at a particu- character "determined" by society, must as an individual have
. Jar time;as a character he brings certai n influences to the point the conscious view and larger vision that lead to a new society:
of action and becomes himself a determining inAuence. This The creati.ve ·tension of this resolution and opposition is what
positive conception of realism as necessarily in conflict with makes literature dramatic to Luk;ics-and what makes realism
the acceptance of capita lism as "reality," this conception of the the favorable ground.of this drama is · the resolute marshalling
hero as one who brings to dramatic focus the social forces that of social .detail which is the modern version of what Hegel
are embodied in himself and thus opposes them, explains why valuea so mu.ch y~- c:Jassical epic~thc "totality of
objects" it
Luk;ics's book has meaning for those who, like himself, think brings into play. . ·
o( the novel as carrying on the epic and dramatic tradition of Yet even if we accept Luk;\cs's conception of realism as essen-
vVestern literature. Luk{tcs is always critical of naturalism, for tially a struggle between a superior individual and a socie~y
· he feels that with tile edipse of revolutionary faith · a mong intel- that he must master, not escape, it is hard to approve l11S
lectuals after 1818, pessimism and resignation became the order marginal treatment of Stendhal (who is disci.tssecl in the context
of the day :.nd deprived even the most gifted writers of the
•see The Meanir~g of ContemjJOTGT)' Relllism (London, 1962).
X
XI
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vl n~aac) and his relative indifference to Dostoevsky and Dick- Yet this sa id, it h as to be admitted that Luk;ics, like almost
ens. 0£ course the book is a collection of essays and not a I all J\Jarxist critics, h as not found the satisfying bnl~nce between
systematic smdy of realism; these stu<lies are certainly very ~· his admiration {or the achievement of certain writers and his
·selective. Balzac, whom Marx and Engels admired above all evaluation of what writers represent in society that one does
other modern writers, is a passion of Lukacs's, but he is also find in the comments on literature of 1'viarx and Trotsky-the
a· curiously safe subject for a Communist critic to write about, unly two writers in this tradition whose judgments of literature
since he was a royalist and Catholic who cannot be accused, seem to be entirely "free,'! and which are stimulating to writers
as liberal and radical writers are, of " be traying'' the cause that thetnselves. In !vfarx and Trotsky literature is a kingdom of
Co mmunists believe is in their ke~ping. Tolstoy in Russia as !;ower related to social power but no t identical with it. Lukacs
elsewhere is unambiguously a classic, and Lenin thought very I does not have their proud and easy capacity for judgment. By
highly of him and was able to "explain" the social source of his comparison with them he suffers, for brilliant as he is on his
magnificent creative power-which turns our to be the Russian L favorite, Ba h:ac, the system of values by which he operates never
peasantry. But Lukacs is not inspired to the same enthusiastic r gi\'eS space co autonomous estheti c achievement: Balzac is not .,..
llights of critical analysis by Stendhal, Dickens and Dostoevsky I. just the greatest modern novelist, but he is the greatest of a
... :
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t' certain type. And Lukacs, in the last analysis, will never take
I. -they are not comfqrtable subjects for a M arxist critic to handle.
Yet he has space in this book for a chapter on the Russian nine- a chance on a writer who is of the wrong type. or on a writer
\ teenth·century critics Chernysh evsky and Dobrolyubov, who were who st rays from being the right type. He does love the type
i tess complicatedly concerned with realism than were Stendhal more than he loves the individual-which does not mean· that
a1d Dickens, and for a chapter on Gorky, who in Stalinist days he is lacking in taste or in the capacity for making sustained
became (it was not entirely his fault), the figurehead of a "great" and valuable a nalyses of the great books he loves. It is simply
novelist. · that his approach to literature is finally not to the work but
This prizing of certain authors and books for their "tendency" to the scholar!)' and philosophical and perhaps ."rev<;>lutionary"
only, and the automatic disparagement of valuable books be· example that it serves.
cause they do not clearly show the "right" tendency, is the You can see this lack of directness in the very awkwardness
b~setting weakness of even the most intelligent l'vfarxist critics. of Lukacs's style, which can be associated with the fact that he
It follow s from the habit of thinking in social categories; one emphasizes formulations about the nature o£ a school or style .'
N
I',.
lices in the weaker chapters of Lukacs's book the fact that he, rather than insights into a particular style starting from a direct
who responds to the classics with so much e motion, is not always • i
concern with the text. But the kind of direct esthetic criticism
aware 'of having substituted "progress" for excellence as the I that , ...·e value is usually written only by a handful of people in
. ·'
prime categories in his inner consciousness as a cdtic. Of course
no critic is ever passive enough in his taste to be able to read
I, any generation-the primary figures in the creation of literature. I

a work of literature wholly for its workmanship. A book is a ,

.) :\·fuch of what passes for "esthetic" criticism today is derivative
and repetitive and has nothing of the esthetic in its spirit or
formal composition, but it is composed on the basis of certain I teaching. Criticism is interesting, after all, only to the extent
I
ideas, and inevilably it Iea,•es certain ideas in .the mind as the that it is valuable, and much of what is published today is
effect of the literary experience. And the strength of this book,
the chapters on Balzac and TolslOy, is so dearly related to what I Jess pertinent than literary scholarship or the historical con-
sciousness of those who guard a literary tradition. Luk;ics's book
these great writers represent of heroism and genius to Lukacs's
mind, that one can criticize the exaggerated emphasis he gives
to the work of Dobrolyubov and Chernyshcvsky, not his concern
with the social .setting or his belief in criticism as a social
Instrument.
1\~
is imperfect as a study of realism and obviously incomplete. Yet
it is a tribute to him and to what is creative and enduring in
;\·farxism as a philosophy that his book, with all its faults and
expediencies, should suggest so much of the vitality and endur-
.i

l
ing hope in the great novelists whom he loves.

Xll XITT
 CONTENTS

v
INTRODUCTION'.
1
PREFACE 1

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CHAPTER O N E Balzac: The Peasants. 21 ••fP.

'·~.
' , • '1

CHAPTER Two Balzac: Lost Illusions . 47

CHAPTER THREE Balzac and Stendltal . 65 ···\·

l ·~(I

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CHAPTER FouR The Zola Centenary . 85 ( i.
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CHAPTER FIVE The International Significance of
Russian Democratic Literary Criticism
( ·· ··
§1.~~: 0:., .

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CHAPTER SIX Tolstoy and the Development of R ealism 126

,. . ..

CHAPTER SEVEN The Human Comedy of :\

Pre-Revolutionary Russia 206 · r

CHAPTER E IGHT Leo Tolstoy and Western European

Literature 242
't
, ·t,·
I
I NDEX • 265
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·I I
Ia.,.

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PREFACE
'•

I') 'o
( ~· T HE A R T r c L E s contained in this book were written some ten
:~
'·'' I years ago. Author and reader may well ask why they should be
republished just now. At first sight they might seem to lack all
l l
I topicality. Subject and tone alike may appear remote to a con-
" l .
~~
siderable section of public opinion. I believe, however,. that they
' have some topicality in that, without entering upon any detailed
,.
r, r
I
polemics, they represent a point of view in opposition to certain
i.
it ( literary and philosophical trends still. very much to the fore today.
,,
~
Let us begin with the general atmosphere : the clouds of mystic-
~I ism which once surrounded the phenomen a of literature with a
'•
poetic colour and wannth and created an intimate and "interesting"
atmosphere around them, have been dispersed. Things now face
~ us in a clear, sharp light which to many may seem cold and hard;
a light shed on them by the teachings of Marx. Marxism searches
.,
for the material roots of each phenomenon, regards them in their
-'} historical connections and movement, ascertains the laws of such
I
movement and dem0nstrates their development from root to flower,
i, and in so doing lifts every phenomenon out of a merely emotional,
1'! irrational, mystic fog and brings it to the bright light of under-
standing. . .
Such a transition is at first a disillusionment to many people and
.. it is necessary that this should be so. For it is no easy matter to
look stark reality in the face and no one succeeds in achieving V1is~ ... ·• · '
l\ at the first attempt. What is required for this is not merely a
great deal of hard work, but also a serious moral effort. In the
first phase of such a change of heart most people will look back
regretfully to the fa lse but "poetic" dreams of reality which they
r'
! arc about to relinquish. Only later does it grow clear how much
I
j more genuine humanity-and hence genuine poetry-attache~ to
i the acceptance of truth with all its inexorable reality and to acting
! in <tccordance with it.
But there is far more than this involved in such a change of

-\- heart. I am thin king here of that philosophical pessimism which

was so deeply rooted in the social conditions of the period between
the two world wars. It was not by accident that everywhere there

1,
arose thinkers who deepened this pessimism and who built up their
1
,_ ,,
Weltanschauung on some philosophical generalization of despair. The question asked by the philosophy of history would be : does
The Germans, Spengler and Heidegger, and a considerable nu:mbeT the road of our present-day culture lead upwards or do':"'nwar~s?
of other influential thinkers of the last few decades embraced such There is no denying that our culture has passed and lS passmg
vtews. through dark periods. It is for the philosophy of history to decide
There is, of course, plenty of darkness around us now, just as whether that darkening of the horizon which was adequately
there was between the two wars. Those who wish to despair can expressed for the first time in Flaubert's Educa~ion Sentimentale.
find cause enough and more in our everyday life. Marxism does is a final, fatal eclipse or only a tunnel from wh1ch, however long '·'
not console anyone by playing down difficulties, or minimizing the it may be, there is a way out to the light once more.
...,,' '·
:.;{· ·
material and moral' darkness which surrounds us human beings Bourgeois restheticists and critics, the author of the present book
today. The difference is only-but in this "only" lies a whole I among them, saw no way out of this darkness. T~ey regarded •;.·.
!
world-that Marxism has a grasp of the main lines of human poetry merely as a revelation of the inner life, a clc:ar~s1ghted recog- .....
development and recognizes it laws. Those who have arrived at
!. nition of social hopelessness or at best a consolation, an outward-
such knowledge know, in spite of all temporary darkness, both reflected miracle. It followed with logical necessity from this I'

whence we have come and where we are going. And those who ,.· historico.philosophical conception that Flaubcrt's oeuvre, no~ably '·'·
know this find the world changed in their eyes : they see purpose·
I
his Education Sentimcntale, was regarded as the greatest achleve-
•1
ful development where formerly only a blind, senseless confusion ment of the modern novel. This conception naturally extends to
· iI
surrounded them. Where the philosophy of despair weeps for the every sphere of literature. I quote only one instance : . the real
collapse of a world and the destruction of culture, there Marxists great philosophical and psychologi~al content of the ep1l~gue to
watch the birth·pangs of a new world and assist in mitigating the War and Pe.ace is the process wh1ch after the Napoleomc wars
pains of labour. led the most advanced minority of the Russian aristocratic intelli· :i

One might answer to all this-I have met with such objections gentsia-a very small minority, of course-to the Dccembrist risi~g, ~
myself often enough-that all this is only philosophy and sociology. that tragically heroic prelude to the secular struggle of the Russ1an !:
What has all !this to do with the theory and history of the novel? people for its liberation. Of all this my own old philosophy of •' I

We believe that it has to do quite a lot. If we were to formulate history and resthetics saw nothing. For me the epilogue held only ~~
i'
the question in terms of literary history, it would read thus : which the subdued colours of Flaubertian hopelessness, the frustration of •:
of the two, Balzac or Flaubcrt, was the greatest novelist, the typical the purposeless searchings an~ imp~lses. of youth, their silti~g-up
classic of the 19th century? Such a judgment is not merely a in the grey prose of bourgeotS fam1ly hfe. The same apphes t~
..,,,.
:0

matter of taste-it involves all the ·central problems of the a::sthetics almost every detailed analysis of bourgeois a::sthetics. The oppost~ .
of the novel as an art form. 'rbe question ar.ises whether it is the tion of Marxism to the historical views of the last 50 years (the
unity of the external and internal worlds or the separation between essence of which was the denial that history i~ a branch of leru:ning ..,
them which is the social basis of the greatness of a novel; whether that deals with the unbroken upward evolution ·of mankind) implied I
'
the modem novel reached .its culminating point in Gide, Proust and at the same time a sharp objective disagreement in all problems of
Joyce or had already reached its peak much earlier, in the works Weltanschauung or resthetics. No one can expect me to give even
of Balzac and Tolstoy; so that today only individual great artists a skeleton outline of the Marxist philosophy of history within the
struggling against the current-as for instance Thomas Mann- limits of a preface. Bu1: we must nevertheless eliminate certain
can reach the heights already long attained. commonplace prejudices in order that author and reader may

,
These two resthetic conceptions conceal the application of two understand .one another, that readers approach without bias this ll
opposite philosophies of history to the nature and historical develop~ book with its application of Marxism to certain important problems
ment of the novel. And because the novel is the predominant art of literary history and resthetics and not pass judgment on it until
form of modem bourgeois culture, this contra~t between the two ...I ~
they have compared this application with the facts. The Marxist
resthetic conceptions of the novel refers us back to the develop~ philosophy of history is a comprehensive doctrine dealing with the f
ment of literature as a whole, or perhaps even culture as a whole. necessary progress made hy humanity from primitive communism ,
2 I 3
 ·--------~-----·----· --·-·
spheres. But they do not regard this classical heritage as a rever-
to our own time and the perspectives of our further advance
a long the same road as such it also gives us indications for the
historical future. But such indications-born of the recognition of
sion to the past; it is a necessary outcome of their philosophy of . "'.,.
history that they should regard the past as irretrievably gone and •
..
certain laws governing historical development-are n!)t a cookery not susceptible of renewal. Respect for the classical heritage of
?ook providing recipes for each phenomenon or pericxl; Marxism humanity in resthetics means that the great Marxists look for the
ts not a Baedeker of history, but a signpost pointing the direction true highroad of history, the true direction of its development, the
in which history moves forward. The final certainty it affords true course of the historical curve, the formula of which they
·consists in the assurance that the developzrint of mankind does not know ; and because they know the formula they do not fly off
and cannot finally lead to nothing and nowhere. at a tangent at every hump in the graph, as modern thinkers often
Of course, such generalizations do not do full justice to the do because of their theoretical rejection of the idea that there
guidance given by MancismJ a guidance extending to every topical l is any such thing as an unchanged general line of development.
problem of life. Marxism combines a consistent" following of an J... For the sphere of resthetics this classical heritage consists in the
unchanging direction with incessant theoretical and practical allow- i· great arts which depict man as a whole in the whole of society.
ances for the deviousness of the pa:th of evolution. Its well-defined
philosophy of history is based on a flexible and adaptable accept-
\. '
. Again it is the general philosophy, (here : proletarian human-
ism) which detennines the central problems posed in aesthetics.
ance and analysis of historical development. This apparent duality The Marxist philosophy of history analyses man as a whole, and
-which is in reality the d ialectic unity of the materialist world- contemplates the history of human evolution as a whole, together .
view-is also the guiding principle of Marxist a:sthetics and with the partial achievement) or non-achievement of completeness
literary !theory. in its various periods of development. It strives to unearth the ·.I
!hose who do not know Marxism at all or know it only super- hidden laws governing aU human relationships. Thus the object ·!i
ficially or at second-hand) may be surprised by the respect for the of proletarian humanism is to reconstruct the complete human I
.I

classical h~ritage of mankind which one finds in the really great personality and free it from the distortion. and dismemberment to ,..
~ i·

representatives of this doctrine and by their incessan t references which it has been subjected in class society. These theoretical and
to that classical herita·ge. Wi•thout wishing to enter into too much practical perspectives dctennine the criteria by means of which
detail,, ·we ~enti~n as an instance, in philosophy, the heritage of . ~
Marxist a:sthctics establish a bridge back to the classics and at the
Hcgcban dtalcctJcs, as opposed to the various trends in the latest same time discover new classics in the thick of the literary struggles
philosophies. "But all this is long out of date/' the modernists of our own time. The (tncient Greeks, Dante, Shakespeare,
cry. "Ali this is the undesirable, outworn legacy of the nineteenth Goethe, Balzac, Tolstoy all give adequate pictures of great periods
ce.ntury," say those. who--intcntionaily or unintentionally, con- of human development and at the same time serve as signposts
SCIOusly or unconsctously-support the Fascist ideology and its in the ideological battle fought for the restoration of the unbroken
pseudo-revolutionary rejection of the past, which is in reality a ·:.) human personality.
rej~ction of culture and humanism. Let us look without prejudice .j Such viewpoints enable us to see the cultural and literary
at the bankruptcy of the very latest philooophies; let us consider I
r evolution of the· nineteenth century in jts proper light. They show
how most philosophers of our day are compelled to pick up the us tha t the true heirs of the French novel) so gloriousLy begun early
broken and scattered fragments of dialectic (falsified a nd distorted in the last century, were not Flaubert and especially Zola, but
in this decomp?siti?n) whenever they want to say something even the Russian and Scandinavian writers of the se<:ond half of the

I
remotely touchmg 1ts essence about present-day life; let us look at century. The present volume contains my studies of French and
the modern attempts at a philosophical synthesis and we shall find Russia n realist writers seen in this perspective.
them miserable, pitiful caricatures of the old genuine dialectic l If we translate into the language of pure resthetics the conflict
now consigned to oblivion. t
- -~ , (conceived in the sense of the philooophy of history) between Balzac
It is not by chance •that the great Marxists were jealous O'Uardians and the later French novel. we arrive at the conflict between

l.
of our classical heritage in their resthetics as well as bin other realism an~ naturaUsm. Talking of a conflict here may sound a
4 5
.
 paradox to the ears of most writers and readers of our day. For and colour quite in the spirit of modern impressionism, leads to ·I
~ost• presen1:~day writers and readers are used to literary fashions complete chaos. Fraunhofer, the tragic hero, :paints a picture
··"'swinging to and fro between the pseudo-objectivism of the which is a tangled chaos of colours out of which a perfeotly
naturalist school and the mirage-subjectivism of the psychologist modelled female leg and foot protrude as an almost fortuitous
or abstract-formalist school. And inasmuch as they see any worth fragment. Today a considerable section of modern artists has
in realism at all, they regard their own false e>atreme as a new kind given up the Fraunhofer-like s~ggle and is content with finding,
of near-realism or realism. Realism, however, is not some sort of by means of new resthetic theories, a justification for the emotional
middle way between false objectivity and false subjectivity, but on chaos of. their works.
the contrary the true, solution-bringing third way, opposed to all The central resthetic problem of realism is the adequate
the pseudo-dilemmas engendered by the wrongly-posed questions presentatio~ of the complete. human personal~ty. But as. in every .
of those who wander without a chart in the labyrinth of our time. profound philosophy of art, here, too, the cons1stent followmg-up to
·: Realism is the recognition of the fact that a work of literature can
· rest neither on a lifeless average, as the naturalists suppose, nor on
the end of the a!Sthetic viewpoint leads us beyond pure aesthettcs :
for art, precisely if taken in its most perfect purity, is saturated .
an individual principle wh~ch dissolves its own self into nothing- l.' .
!
with social and moral· humanistic problems. The demand for a
. ..

ness. The central category and criterion of realist literature is the realistic creation of types is in opposition both to the trends in
type, a peculiar synthesis which organicalJy binds together the which the biological being of man, ihe physiological aspect of self-
general and the particular both in characters and situations. What preservation and procreation are dominant {Zola and his disciples)
makes a type a type is not its average quality, not its mere and to the trends which sublimate man into purely ~ental psycho-
individual being, however profoundly conceived; what makes it a logical processes. But such an attitude, if it remained within the
type is that in it all the humanly a nd socially essential determinants sphere of fonnal resthetic judgments, would doubtless be quite .. '
arc present on their highest level of development, in the ultimate arbitrary, for there is no reason why, regarded merely from the
·unfolding of the possibilities Latent in them, in extreme presentation point of view of good writing, erotic conflict with its a ttendant
of their extremes, rendering concrete the peaks and limits of men inoral and social conflicts should be rated higher than the elemental ., ,
' and epochs. spontaneity of pure sex. · Only if we accept the concept of the i,J.
";I
True great realism thus depicts man and society as <:omplete complete human personality as the social and historical task
entities, instead of showing merely one or the other of their aspects. humanity has to solve; only if we regard it as the vocation of art ..
~ :I

....,,.
Measured by this criterion, artistic trends determined by either
exclusive introspection or exclusive extraversion equally impoverish
and distort reality. Thus realism means a three-dimensionality,
I
I
to depict the most importa nt turning-points of this process with
all the wealth of the factors affecting it; only if ~sthetics assign
to art the role of explorer and guide, can the content of life be
·(•
·I.
.,
an all-roundness, tha t endows with independent life characters and I systematically divided up into spheres of greater a nd lesser import-
human relationships. I t by no means involves a rejection of the
emotional and intellectual dynamism which necessaril,y develops ~} ance ; into spheres that throw light on types and paths and spheres
that remain in darkness. Only then does it become evident 'that
together with the modern world. All it opposes is the destruction any description of mere biological processes-be these the sexual act
of the completeness of the human personality and of the objective or pain and sufferings, however detailed and from the literary point .
typicality of me.n a nd situa tions through an excessive cult of the of view perfect it may be-results in a levelling~down of the social,
momentary mood. The struggle against such tendencies acquired historical and moral being of men and is not a means but an
a decisive importance in the realist literature of the nineteenth obstacle to such essential artistic expression as illuminating
century. Long before such tendencies appeared in the practice of human conflicts in all their complexity and completen~ss. It is for
literature, Balzac had already propheticalLy foreseen and outlined this reason that the new contents and new media of expression
the entire problem in his tragi-comic story Le . Chef d'Oeuvre contributed by naturalism have led not to an enrichment but to
Inconnu. Here experiment on the part of a painter to create a an impoverishment and narrowing-down of literature.
new classic three-dimensionality by means of an ec$tasy of emotion Apparently sitnilar trains of thought were already put forward :'
I•
;:
~.

6 7
I
 'in ·early polemics directed against Zola and his school. But the know that this is the most difficult question of modern literature
psychologjsts, although they were more than once right in their today and has been so ever since modern bQurgeoir so:i~ty carne
concrete condemnation of Zola and the Zola school, opposed into being. On the surface the two seem to be sharply divided and
another no less false ex.trcme to the false extreme of naturalism. the appearance of the autonomous, independent existence of the
For the inner life of man, its essential traits and essential conflicts individual is all the more pronounced, the more completely modern
can be truly portrayed only in organic connection with social and bourgeois society is develope~. It seems. as if th.e inner hfc, genuine
historical factors. Separated from the latter and developing merely "private" Life, were proceedmg accord1~g to 1ts ow~ autonomous
its own immanent dialectic, the psychologist trend is no less abstract, laws and as if it!'. fulfilrnents and traged1es were growmg ever more
and distorts and impoverishes the portrayal of the complete human independent of the surrounding social environment. And corres-
personality no less than does the naturalist biologism which it pondingly, on the other side, it seems as if the con~cction with. the
opposes. community could manifest itself only in high-soun?mg abstrac~1ons,
1t is true that, especially regarded from the viewpoint of modern the adequate expression for which would be either rhetonc or
literary fashions, the · position in respect of the psychologist school satire.
is at the first glance less obvious than in the case of naturalism. An unbiassed investigation of life and the setting aside of these .,
i
Everyone will immediately see that a description in the Zola false traditions of modern literature leads easily enough to the
manner of, say, an act of copulation between Dido and Aenas or uncovering of the true circumstances to the discovery which h ad
Romeo and Juliet would resemble each other very much more long been made by the great realists of the beginning and middle
closely than the erotic conflicts depicted by Virgil and Shakespeare, of the nineteenth century and which Gottfried Keller expressed
which acquaint us with an inexhaustible wealth of cultural and thus: "Everything is politics.'' The great Swiss writer did not
human facts and types. Pure introspection is apparently the intend this to mean that everything was immediately tied up with
diametrical opposite of naturalist levelling-down, for what it !.i politics; on the contrary, in his vi:w-as in Balzac'~ an~ ~olstoy's
d~cribes are quite individual, non-recurring traits. But such ·' -every action, thought and emot10n of human bemgs 1s ~nsc~ar­
extremeLy individual traits are also extremely abstract, for this very ably bound up with the life and struggles of the comt;numty, 1.~., \·

reason of non-recurrence. Here, too, Chesterton's witty paradox with politics; whether the humans themselves are con~cto.us of tht~, ·'
holds good, that the inner light is the worst kind of lighting. It unconscious of it or even trying to escape from it, objectively thctr
is obvious to everyone that ~the coarse biologism of the naturalists actions, thoughts and emotions nevertheless spring from and run
and the rough outlines drawn by propagandist writers deform the into politics.
true picture of the complete human personality. Much fewer are The true gr eat realists not onl.y realized and depicted this
those who realize that the psychologists' punctilious probing into situation-they did more than that, they set it up as a demand to
the human soul and their transformation of human beings into a be made on men. They knew that this distortion of objective
chaotic flow of ideas destroy no less surely every possibility of reality (although, of course, due to social causes), this division of the
a literary presentaJtion of the complete human personality. A Joyce-- complete human personality into a public and a private sector was
like shoreLess torrent of associations can create living human beings a mutilation of the essence of man. Hence they protested not only
just as little as Upton Sinclair's coldly calculated aU-good and as painters of reality, but also as humanists, against this fiction of
all-bad stereotypes. capitalist society however unavoidable this spontaneously formed '•
Owing .to lack of space this problem cannot be developed here in superficial appearance. If as writers, they delved deeper in order
all its breadth. Only one important and, at present, often neglected to uncover the true types of man, they had inevitably to unearth
point is to qe str~ssed here because it demonstrates that the live and expose to the eyes of modern society the great tt9gedy of the
portrayal of the complete human personali.ty is possible only if the complete human personaLity. ·
writer attempts to create types. The point in question is the In the works of such great realists as Balzac we can again find a
· organic, indissoluble connection between man as a private indivi- third solution opposed to both false extremes of modern literature,
dual and man as a social being, as a member of a community. We expzy,;ing as an abstraction, as a vitiation of the true poesy of life,
8 9

..
 both the feeble commonplaces of the well-intentioned and honest Engels, in writing about Balzac, called it •'the triumph of reali<;m" ;.
propagandist novels and the spurious richness of a -preoccupation it is a problem ·that goes down to the very roots of realist artistic
with the details of private life. creation. It touches· the essence of true realism: the great writer's
This brings us face to face with the question of the topicality thirst for truth, his fanatic striving for reality-or expressed in
today of the great realist -writers. Every great historical period terms of ethics: the writer's sincerity and probity. A great realist
is a period of transition, a contradictory unity of crisis and renewal such as Balzac, if the intrinsic artistic development of situati~s ~
of destruction and rebirth; a new socia~ order and a new type of and characters he has created comes into conflict with his most .
man always come into being in the course of a unified though cherished prejudices or even his most sacred · convictions, will,,
contradictory process. In such critical, transitional periods the tasks without· an instant's hesitation, set aside these his own prejudices
and responsibility of literature are exceptionally great. Bu~ only and convictions and describe what he really sees, not what we would
truly great realism can cope with such responsibilities; the accus- prefer to see. This ruthlessness towards their own subjective world-
tomed, the fashionable media of expression, tend more and more picture is the hall-mark of al1 great realists, in sharp contrast to the
to hamper literature in fulfilling. the tasks imposed by history. It I second-raters, who nearly always succeed in bringing their own :
L,
should surprise no one if from this point of view we turn against Weltanschauung into "harmony" with reality, that is forcing a
the individualistic, psychologist trends in literature. It might more {' falsified or distorted picture of reality into the shape of their awn
legitimately surprise many that these studies express a sharp world-view. This difference in the ethical attitude of the greater
opposition to Zola and Zolaism. and J~sser writers is closely linked with the difference between
Such surprise may be due in the main to the fact that Zola was genuine and spurious creation. The characters created by the
a writer of the left and his literary methods were dominant chiefly, great realists, once conceived in the vision of their creator, live an
though by no means exclusively, in left-wing literature. It might independent life of ·their own; their comings and goings, their
appear, therefore, that we are involving ourselves in a serious development, their destiny is dictated by the inner dialectic of their ,
contradition, demanding on the one hand the politization of litera- social and individual existence. No writer is a true realist-or
ture and on the oth~r hand attacking insidiously the most vigorous eVen a truly gooci 'writer, if he can direct the evolution of his
and militant section of left-wing literature. But this contradiction .·') own characters at will.
is merely apparent. It is, however, well suited to throw light on All this is however merely a description of the phenomenon.
the true connection between literature and Weltanschauung. It answers the question as to the ethics of the writer: what will he
The problem was first raised (apart from the Russian democratic do if he sees reality in such and such a light? Bu1 this does not
literary critics) by Engels, when he drew a comparison between enlighten us at all regarding the other question : what does the
Ba~ac.and Zola. Engels showed that Balrzac, although his political writer see and how does he see it? And yet it is here that the most
.. creed was legitimist royalism, nevertheless inexorably exposed the important problems of the· .sociaL determinalllts of artistic creation
vices and weakness of royalist feudal France and described its ·.~
}
arise. In the course of these studies we shall point out in detail
death agony with magnificent poetic vigou~. This phenomenon, the basic clifferences which arise in the creative methods of writers
references rto which the reader will find mdrc than once in these according to the degree to which they are bound up with the life f .
,,,,'
.. :

pages, may at first glance again-and mistakenly-appear con-

tradictory. It might appear that the Weltanschauung and political
of :the community, take part in the struggles going on around them . :· ·d
,,
or are merely passive observers of events. Such differences deter-
attitude of serious great realists are a matter of no consequence. To mine creative processes which may be diametl'ical opposites; even
a certain extent this is true. For from the point of view of the the experience which gives rise to the work will be structurally
self-recognition of the present and from the point of view of history different, and in accordance with this the process of shaping the
and posterity, what matters is the picture conveyed by the work; work will be different. The question whether a writer lives within
the question to what extent this picture conforms to the views of the community or is a mere observer of it, is determined not by
the authors is a secondary consideration.
This. of course, brings u~ to a serious question of resthetics.
psychological, not even by typological factors; it is the evo1ution
of society that determines (not automatically. not fatalistically, of
: .
' ..,
.I
10 11 {~'
.' '
 ~·
•: - - - · - - 1, ....... uuc ...uc cvvJuuon oran author wiJl take. Many a a Catholic legitimism and tricked out with Utopian · conceptions
writer of a basically contemplative type has been driven to an of English Toryism. But thjs system was contradicted all the
~· intense participation in the life of the community by the social time by the social realities of his day and the Balzacian vision
illI. which mirrored them. This contradiction itself dearly expressed,
conditions of his time; Zola, on the contrary, was by nature a man
:~•, of action, but his epoch turned him into a mere observer and when however1 the real truth: Balzac's profound comprehension of the
at Last he ans..;.rered the call of life, it came too late to influence contradictorily progressive character of capitalist development.
,,
J:
.. his development as a writer. It is thus that great realism and popular humanism are merged .
.. But even this is as yet only the formal aspect of this problem, into an organic unity. For if we regard the classics of the social
3
~.

t'.I
although no longer the abstractly formal. The question grows
essential and decisive only when we examine concretely the position
!
I
'
I·
development that determined the essence of our age, from· Goethe
and Walter Scott to Gorki and Thomas Mann, we find mutatis
. • taken up by a writer. What does he love and what does he hate? ! mutandis the same structure of the basic problem. Of course every
It is thus that we arrive at a deeper interpretation of the writer's . .f ~ great realist found a different solution for the basic problem in
true Weltanschauung, at the problem of the artistic value and accordance with his time and his own artistic personality. But they
~~ fertility of the writer's world-view. The conflict which previously i,

l ' stood before us as the conflict between the writer's world-view and
the faithful portrayal of the world he sees, is now clarified as a
problem within the Weltanschau ung itsel.f, as a conflict between r
'
all have in common that they penetrate deeply into the great
universaL problems of their time and inexorably depict the true
esscnse of reality as they see it. From the French revolution
onwards the development of society moved in a direction which
.. a deeper and a more· superficial level of the writer's own
fY eltanschauung. ·
rendered inevitable a conflict between such aspirations of men of
letters and the literature and public of their time. In this whole
Realists such as Balzac or Tolstoy in their final posing of age a writer could achieve greatness only in the struggle against
questions always take the most important, burning problems of the current of everyday life. And since Balzac the resistance of
the community for their starting point; their pathos as writers is daily life to the deeper tendencies of literature, culture and art has
always stimulated by those sufferings of the people which are the
-.··most acute at the time; it is these sufferi ngs that determine the r
·~
grown ceaselessly stronger. Nevertheless there were always wrjters
who in their life-work, despite all the resistance of the da y, fulfilled
objects and direction of their love and hate and 'through these .··' the demand formulated by Hamlet: 'to hold the mirror up to
emotions determine also what they see in their poetic visions and nature,' and by means of such a reflected image aided the develop- ... .• . ,
how they see it. If, therefore, in the process of creation their ment of mankind and the triumph of humanist principles h1 ~
conscious world-view comes into conflict with the world seen in society so contradictory in its nature that it on the one hand gave
their vision, what really emerges is that their t;ue conception of birth to the ideal of the complete human personality and on the
the world is only superficially formulated in the consciously held other hand destroyed it in practice.
world-view and the real depth of their Weltanschauung) their deep T he great realists of France found worthy heirs only in Russia.
ties with the great issues of their time, their sympathy with the All the problems mentioned here in connection with Balzac apply
· ·. sufferings of the people can find adequate e""Pression only in the in an even greater measure to Russian literary developmen t and
being and fate of their characters. notably to its central figure Leo Tolstoy. It is not by chance that
No one experienced more deeply than Balzac the torments which Lenin (without having read Engels' remarks about Balzac) formu-
the transition to the capitalist system of production inflicted on lated the Marxist view of the principles of true realism in connec-
every section of the people, the profound moral and spiritual tion with Tolstoy. Hence there is no need for us to refer to these
degradation which necessarily accompanied this transformation on problems again here. There is all the more need, however, to call
every level of society. At the same time Balzac was also deeply a ttention to the erroneous concep tions current in respect of the
aware of the fact that this transformation was not only socially historical and social foundations of Russian realism, errors which
inevitable, but at 1he same time progressive. This contradiction in many cases arc due to deliberate distortion or concealment of
in hi~ experience Balzac attempted to force into a system based on facts. In Britain, as everywhere else in Europe, the newer Russian
12
1 13
 iterature is well known and popular among the intelligent reading deeply rooted were the connections between it and Russian classical
>ublic. But as everywhere else, the reactionaries have done all
hey could to p'revent this literature from becoming popular j they
1,, realism. (It will suffice to refer here to Sholokhov, the heir
to Tolstoy's realism.)
e1t instinctively that Russian realism, even if each single work ~ The r eactionary campaign of misrepresentation directed against
nay not have a definite social tendency, is an antidote to all the Soviet Unioo reached its culminating point before and ·during
·eactiooary infection. the late war, and then collapsed in the course. of the same war,
But however widespread familiarity with Russian literature may when the liberated peoples ,of the Soviet Union in .their struggle
1ave been in the West, the picture fonned in the m inds of readers against German Nazi imperialism demonstrated to the world such
was nevertheless incomplete and largely false. It was incomplete strength and such achievements · in the sphere of morel and
because the great champions of Russian revolutionary democracy, material culture that the old-style slanders and misrepresentations
Herzen and Bielinski, Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov were not ceased to be effective. On the contrary, a very large number of
translated and even their names were known to very few outside people began to ask : what was the source of the mighty popular
the reach of the Russian language. And it is only now that the iI. forces, the manifestations of which were witnessed by the whole
name of Saltykov.Shchcdrin is getting to be known, although in world during the war. Such dangerous thoughts required counter-
him the newer Russian literature had produced a satirist unrivalled
anywhere in the world since the days of Jonathan Swift.
yYhat is more, Jthe conception of Russian literature was not only
r· measures and now we see a fresh wave of slander and misrepresen-
tation breaking against the rock of Soviet civilization. Nevertheless
the history of the ~nternal and external evolution of the Russian
incomplete, it was also distorted. The great Russia n realist Tolstoy people still remains an exciting and interesting problem for the
was claimed by reactionary ideologies for their own and the attempt reading: public of every country.
was made to turn him into a mystic gazing into the past; into In examining the history of the liberation of the Russian people
an "aristocrat of the spirit" far removed from the struggles of the and of the consolidation of its achievements, we must not overlook
. present. This falsification of the image of Tolstoy served a second the important part played by literature in these historical events, ., o'
. ,·I'
purpose as well; iJt helped to give a false impression of the -a part greater than the usual influence exercised by literature
tendencies predominant in the life of the Russian people. The on the rising and falling fortunes of any civilized nation. On
result was the myth of a ''holy Russia" ·and Russian mysticism. the one hand no other literature is as public·spirited as the Russian
Later, when the Russian people in 1917 fought and wori the battle and on the other hand there has scarcely been any society in which
for liberation, a considerable section of the intelligentsia saw a literary works excited so much attention and provoked such crises
contradiction between the .new, free Russia and the older Russian as in Russian society in the classical realist period of Russian
literature. One of the weapons of counterMrevolutionary propaM literature. Hence, although a very wide public is acquainted with
ganda was the untrue allegation that the new Russian had effected Russian literature, it may not be superfluous ;to present this freshly
a complete volteMface in every sphere of culture and h ad rejected, arising problem in a new light. The new problems imperatively
in fact was perse{:uting, older Russian literature. demand that our analysis penetrate, both from the social and the
These counterMrevolutionary -allegations have long been r efuted <esthetic viewpoint, to the true roots of Russian social development.
by the facts. The literature of the White Russian emigres, which It is for this reason that our fifth study attempts to fill one of the
claimed to b the continuation of ·the allegedly mystical Russian greatest gaps in our knowledge of Russian literature by giving
litera ture, quickly showed its own sterility and futility, once it was a chara cterization of the little·known great Russian revolutionary·
cut off from the Russian soil and the real Russian problems. On democratic critics Bieljnski, Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov.
the other ha nd, it was impossible to conceal from the intelligent Closely linked with this question is a revaluation of the well-known
reading public that in the Soviet Union the vigorous treatment of classical realists, or rather a characterization and appreciation
the fresh 'issues thrown up by the rejuvenated life of the nation which is somewhat more in accordance with historical truth. In

I
was developing a rich and interesting new literature and the the past, western critics and readers in their approach to Tolstoy
disceming readers of this literature could see for themselves how and others took for their guide the views on society, philosophy,
14 15
I
 . ___ ,____ _.,.;_..Jir_,...__..'C·,-.·- .. _ _ , •.

religion, art, and so on, which these great men had themselves artis~ic significance of his infi~ence on w~rld literature. This paper,
expressed in articles, letters, diaries and the lake. They thought to too, 1s an attack on the reactionary conception of Russian realism
find_ a key to the understanding of the often .unfamliar great works but an attack which also marshals allies : it shows how the fines~
of.l~t~ratu:e in these conscious opinions. In other words reactionary Gc:man, Fr.ench: English and American writers opposed such re-
. cntlc1sm mterp!"eted the works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevski by actiOnary d1stort1ons, and fought for a correct understanding of
deriving the alleged spiritual and artistic content of these works Tolstoy and of Russian literature. The reader will see from this that
from certain reactionary views of the authors. the opi~ions put ~orward in .this book arc not the idle speculations
Th~ meth~ employed. in the present studies is the exact opposite of a sohtary and Jsolated wntcr but a world~wide trend of thought
of tillS. It 1s a very stmple method : it consists in first of all constantly gaining in strength.
examining carefully the real social foundations on which, say, In the remarks about method the social tendencies underlying
Tolstoy's existence rested and the real social forces under the the essays have been strongly stressed and their significance could
influence of which the human and the li.terary persona1ity of this scarcely. be exaggerated: Nevertheless the main emphasis in these
author developed. Secondly, in close connection with the first papers .1s on the -~st_h~ttc, not the social, an ~Jysis; investigation of
approach, the question is asked : what do Tolstoy's works represent the soc1al .foundations is only a means to the complete grasp of
what is their real spiritual and intellectual content and how doe~ d.1e a:sthet1c ch.aracte.r of Russian classical realism. This point of
the writer build up his resthetic forms in the struggle for the v1ew 1s not an mventlon of the author. Russian literature owed its
adeq~ate. expression of such contents. Only if, after an unbiassed
influence not onl~ to its new social and huma n content but chiefly ·~

cxammatlon, we have uncovered and understood these objective to the fact of bcmg a really great literature. For this reason it is
relationships, are we in a position to provide a correct interpretation ~ot ~no~gh ~o eradicate. the old firmly-rooted false notions rcgard-
of the conscious views expressed by the author and correctly mg tts illstoncal and socml foundations; it is also necessary to draw
evaluate his influence on litera turc. the literary and <esthetic conclusions from the correct evaluation of
The: reader will see· Ja~er that in applying this method a quite these social and historical foundations. Only then can it be under-
new p1cturc of Tolstoy will emerge. The revaluation will be new stood whv great Russian realism has played a leading part in world
?nly to the non~Russian reading public. In Russian literature literature for· three quarters of a century and has been a beacon
ttself the. ~ethod. of ~ppre~ia_tion. outlined in the preceding has an of progress ~nd an effective weapon in the struggle against open
old tradition behmd It : B1ehnsk1 and Herzen were the precursors ~nd co~ert hte:ary reaction and against the decadence masquerad-
of the method, the culminating points of which are marked by the mg as mnovat10n. ·
names of Lenin and Stalin. It is this method that the author of Only if we have a correct resthetic conception of the essenc(! of
Russian classical realism can we see clearly the social and even
the present book is attempting to apply to an analysis of the works
~olitical imp~rtance of its past and future fructifying influence on
of Tolstoy. That Tolstoy is followed by Gorki in this book will
l1terat.ure. W1th the collapse and eradication of Fascism a new life
surpr_ise no .one; the essa~ on Gorki is also a polemic against
has begun for every liberated people. Literature has a great part to
reactionary htera ry trends, JS also to same extent a revaluation· and
its ma.in theme ist?e clos~ lin~ between Gorki the great inno~ator play in solving the new tasks imposed by the new life in every
country. If literature is really to fulfil this role, a role dictated by
and Ius precursors 10 Rum an literature and an examination of the
his~o.ry, ther~ must be as a .natural prerequisite, a philosophical and
ques~ion to ~hat extent Gorki continued and developed classical
poht1cal reb1rth of the wnters who produce it. But although this
Russ1an reahsm . The uncovering of these connections is at the
is ?~ indispensible prerequisite, it is not enough. It is not only the
same time the answer to the question : where is the bridge between
op1mons that m ust change, but the whole emotional world of men;
oLd and new cul:ture, between the old and the new Russian
and the most effective propagandists of the new, liberating demo-
literature?
cratic feeling are the men of letters. The great lesson to b~ learnt
Finally the last paper gives a short outline of Tolstoy's influence
from the Russian development is precisely the extent to which a
on . Western literature, discusses how Tolstoy came to be a
great realist literature can fructifyingly educate the people and
figure of international stature and attempts to define the social a nd
16 17
 transform public opinion. But such results can be achieved only
by a truly great, profound and all-embracing realism. Hence, if
reason that we consider a revaluation of Tolstoy and Balzac so
important. Not. as if we wished to set them up as models to be ;,l
literature is to be a potent factor of national rebirth, it must it~elf imitated by the writers of our day. To set an example means only: ::1
,.. J\4.
r
~

b~ mborn in its purely literary, formal, resthetic aspects as well. It

... ""'must break with reactionary, conservative traditions which ham-
p er it and resist the seeping-in of decadent influences which lead
to help in correctly formulating the task and studying the condi-
tions of a successful solution. It was thus that Goethe aided Walter
Scott, and Walter Scott aided Balzac. But Walter Scott was no
.•:,.
·~

into a blind alley. more an imitator of Goethe than Balzac was of Scott. The prac~ ;'.,
:;~ji'
In these respects the Russian writers' attitude to life and litera·
ture is exemplary, and for this, if for no other reason, it is most
tical road to a solution for the writer lies in an ardent love of the
people, a deep hatred of the people,s enemies and the p eople's own
.. '11t,.
important to destroy the generally accepted reactionary evalua tion
of Tolstoy, and, together with the elimination of such false ideas,
errors, the inexorable uncovering of truth and reality, together
with an unshakable faith in the march of mankind and their
...i~·~':
to understand the human roots of his literary greatness. And what own people towards a better future. . 'iJ..
is most important of aU; to show how such greatness comes There is to-day in the world a general desire for a literature
from the human and artistic identification of the writer w.ith some
t. which could penetrate with its beam deep into the tangled jungle
.i
:~ ~ r
broad popular movement. It matters little in this connection what of our time. A great realist literature could play the leading part,
popular movement it is in which the writer finds this link between hitherto always denied to it, in the democratic rebirth of nations. "I
'II
' :t
If in this connection we evoke Balzac in opposition to Zola and ' il
himself and the masses; that Tolstoy sinks his roots into the mass
of the Russian peasantry, and Gorki of the industrial workers and his school, we believe that we are helping to combat the sociological ~\·'I:I .I
l.:mdless peasants. For both of . them were to the bottom of their and · resthetic prejudices which have prevented many gifted authors ~~~.'1
souls bound up with the movements seeking the liberation · of the from giving their best to mankind. We know the potent social ;
people a nd struggling for it. The result of such a close link in the forces which have held back the development of both writers and ' 'I
cultural and literary sphere was then and is to-day that the writer literature: a quarter~century of reactionary obscurantism which
can overcome his isolation, his relegation to the role of a m ere ob- finally twisted itself into the diabolical grimace of the Fascist ·.t
,.
. server, to which he would otherwise be driven by the present abomination .
state of capitalist society. He thus becomes able to take up a free, Political and social liberation from these forces is already an ac- I'
unbiassed, critical attitude towards thos.e tendencies of present-day complished fact, but the thinking of the great masses is still be- ·;•
•.:
culture which are unfavourable to art and literature. To fight devilled by the fog of reactionary ideas which prevents them from
against such tendencies by purely artistic methods, by the mere for~ seeing clearly. This difficult and dangerous situation puts a heavy •··
mal use of new forms, is a hopeless undertaking, as the tragic fate of responsibility on the men of letters. But it is not enough for a
the great writers of the West in the course of the last century writer to see clearly in matters political and social. To see clearly IJ
I

clearly shows. A close link with a mass movement struggling for in matters of literature is no less indispensable and it is to the solu- -~
the· ema ncipation of the common people does, on the other hand, tion of these problems that this book hopes to bring its
provide the writer with the broader viewpoint, with the fructify- contribution.
ing subject-matter from which a true artist can develop the effec-
tive artistic forms which are commensurate with the requirements Budapest, December 1948.
of the age, even if they go against the superficial artistic fashions
of the day. l Georg Lukacs.
These very sketchy. remarks were required before we could express
our fin al conclusion. N ever in all its history did mankind so ur-
gently require a realist literature as it does to-day. And perhaps
never before have the traditions of great realism been so deeply
(
~·
buried under a rubble of social and artistic prejudice. It is for this '

18 19

ll
 CHAPTER ONE
~ .

Balzac: The Peasants

JN T H J s novel, the most important of his maturity, Balzac wanted.
to write the tragedy of the doomed landed aristocracy of France. 1

J t was intended to be the keystone of the series in which Balzac

described the destruction of French aristocratic culture by the
growth of capitalism. The novel is indeed such a keystone, for it
goes into the economic causes which brought about the ruin of the
nobility. Earlier, Balzac had depicted the death-struggle of the
aristocracy as it appeared in the hinterland of Paris or of some
remote provincial towns, but in The Peasa11 ts he takes us to the
theatre of wa r it~elf, to the economic battlefield on which the
struggl~ between aristocratic landowner and peasant fanner is
fought out to the bitter end.
Balzac himself considered this novel to be his most important
work. H e says of it: " . . . in eight years I laid aside a hundred
times and then took to hand again this most important book I want
to \vrite, . ~ ."
Yet, for all his painstaking preparation and careful planning~ what
Balzac really did in this novel was the exact opposite of what he had
$et out to do ; what he depicted was not the tragedy of the aristo-
<:ratic estate but of the peasant !\mallholding. It is precisely this
discrepancy between intention and performance, between Balzac
the political thinker and Balzac the author of La ComMie Humaine
that constitutes Balzac's historical greatness.
The ideological roots of The Peasants strike back much
fa ;·tb cr and deeper than the immediate preparatory work Balzac
himself mentions as such. H e was still in his early youth when he
already wrote a pamphlet arguing against the dispersal of the large
estates and advocating the maintenance of the right of entail in
favour of the eldest son; and long before he completed The Pe asant.~
(in 1844) he had already put for-ward in the two Utopian novels
Thr. Com1try Doctor and The Village Priest his views on the social
function of the large estate and the social duties of the great land-
owrH:r. D11t having- written these two Utopias he crowned the \vork
21
 . ~· ··.
22 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM BALZAC : THE PEASANTS

by showing in The Peasants how social realities destroyed all such -~·
....
tel!igence of the English," and then proceeded to solve the ccenigma••
Utopias, how every Utopian dream evaporated at the touch of by pointing out the difference between the boW'geois revolutions in
}''
economic reality. England and in France. He wrote :
What makes Balzac a great man is the inexorable veracity with II " This class of large landowners was linked with the bour-
which he depicted reality even if that reality ran COWlter to his own geo!Sle . . . they were not, as the French feudal landowners
personal opinions, hopes and wishes. Had he succeeded in deceiv- had been in 1789, in conflict with the vital interests of the .
ing himself, had he been able to take his own Utopian fantasies for bourgeoisie, but in perfect harmony with them. Their tenure
facts, had he presented as reality what was merely his own wishful of land was in fact not feudal holding . at all, but bourgeois
thinking, he would now be of interest to none and would be as property. On the one hand they supplied the industrial bour-
deservedly forgotten as the innumerable legitimist pamphleteers and geoisie with the manpower their manufacturers required; on
glorifiers of feudalism who had been his contemporaries. the other hand they were able to develop agriculture in the
Of coW'se even as a political thinker Balzac had never been a direction the needs of industry and trade demanded. Hence
commonplace, empty-headed legitimist; nor is his Utopia the fruit the community of interest between them and the bourgeoisie,
of any wish to return to the feudalism of the Middle Ages. On hence the alliance with the bourgeoisie."
the contrary : what Balzac wanted was that French capitalist de- Balzac's English Utopia was based on the illusion that a tradi-
velopment should follow the English pattern, especially in the tional but nevertheless progressive leadership could mitigate the
sphere of agricultW'e. His social ideal was that compromise between evils of capitalism and the class antagonisms resulting from them.
aristocratic landowner and bourgeois capitalist which was achieved Such leadership could in his opinion be given by none save throne
in England by the "glorious revolution" of 1688 and which was and altar. The English land-owning nobility was the most impor- ·I..
to become the basis of social evolution in England and determine its tant intermediate link in such a system. Balzac saw with merciless '
specific form. When Balzac (in a paper dealing with the tasks clarity the class antagonisms engendered by capitalism in France.
facing the royalists after the July revolution and written in 1840, He saw that the period of revolutions had by no means come to an
just when he was about to begin The Peasants) severely censured end in July7 1830. His Utopia, his idealization of English con·
the attitude of the French aristocracy, he based his criticism on an ditions, his romantic conception of the supposed harmony existing
idealized conception of the English Tory nobility, between the great English landowners and their tenants, together .
Balzac blamed the French aristocrats for having in the past (in with other ideas of a similar nature, all had their origin in the fact
1789) "contrived petty intrigues against a great revolution," instead that Balzac despaired of the future of capitalist society because he
of saving the monarchy by wise reforms, and for having in the saw _with pitil.ess clarity the direction in which social evolution was
present, even after the bitter lessons of the revolution, failed to movmg.
1ransform themselves into Tories, introduce self-government on the It was this conviction-that a consistent development of capi·
•· ... English model and put themselves as leaders at the head of the ·'· talism and the concomitant consistent development of democracy
peasantry. It was to this that he ascribed the ill-will existihg be- would inevitably lead to revolutions which must sooner or later de-
tween the nobility and the mass of the peasants and believed that stroy bourgeois society itself-that induced hitp to extol every
the revolution had triumphed in Paris for similar reasons. He says : historical figure who attempted to halt this revolutionary process
"In order that men should rise in arms, as the workmen of Paris and deflect it into "orderly" channels. Thus Balzaes admiration • ,
have done, they must believe that their interests are at stake." for Napoleon Bonaparte is quite out of keeping with his English
This Utopia, this dream of transplanting English social relation- Utopia and yet, precisely in its contradictory quality, it is a neces·
ships to France was shared by many others besi~e Balzac. Guizot, sary complement of that Utopia in Balzac's historical conception
for instance, in a pamphlet published immediately after the revolu·
tion of 1848, followed similar lines of thought and was scathingly
of the world.
In the two Utopian novels that prec.eded The Peasants Balzac ..
critizcd by Karl Marx. Marx ridiculed the "great enigma" which intended above all to demonstrate the economic superiority of the
had baffled Guizot and "could be solved only by the superior in· large estate as compared with the pea5ant smallholding. He noted
.,
 24 SnJDlES JN ElJROPEr\N REALISM
BALZAC : THE PEASANTS 25
qui.tc c?rrcctly certain aspects of the economic advantages of which society could be saved, and he did so with part icular emphasis
~tlonahzed large-scale husbandry, such as a systematic policy of
in the two Utopian novels mentioned in the preceding. At
mvestment, large-scale stockbreeding, rational forest conservation the same time h e admitted, however, that the only economic
proper irrigation schemes, etc. What he did not see-and in th~ basis on which society could build was capitalism with all that it
two novels mentioned did not wish to see-was that mutatis involved. " Industry can be based only on competition " says Dr.
mutandis the limits imposed by capitalism applied just as much to Benassis, Utopian hero of The Country Doctor, and it is from this
large-scale agricu!turc as they did to the peasant smallholding. In acceptance of capitalism t11at he derives his ideological conclusions :
The Village Priest he had to resort to artificial, non-typical condi- "At present we have no other meai)s of supporting society except
egoism. The individual has faith only in himself, . . . The great

l
tions in order to prove by an apparently realistic experiment· the
f:asibi~ity ~nd excellenc~ o~ his Utopia. Balzac was rarely guilty of
man who will save us from the great shipwreck towards which we
d1stortmg mto non-typ1cabty the essential features of economic are being driven will doubtless make use of egoism to rebuild the
reality, and the fa ct that he had recourse to such distortion more nation."
'). .
than once in connection wit~ this particular point reveals that it was But no sooner has he laid this down, than he brings faith and
.. the crucial point, the point which caused him to despair about the interest into sharp conflict with each other :
fu~urc of bourgeois society and that ii: was this problem that he "But to-day we have no more faith, we now know on ly interest
regarded as decisive for the survival of " culture." alone. If everyone thinks only of himself, from where do you want
For in Balzac's eyes the question of large-scale land~ownership to derive civic virtue, particularly if such virtue can only be
was not merely a question of evolution or revolution; it was also the ach ieved by renouncing self? "
' ·question of culture or barbarism. H e feared the destructive effect This irreconcilable contradiction which Dr. Benassis (who voices
the revolutionary mass movement might have on culture; in this Balzac's own Utopian views) blurts out so uncouthly, is manifested
respect he saw eye to eye with H eine, although the latter held far in the whole structure of both novels. For who .are those who put
more radical political views; yet he never failed to stress also the Balzac's Utopia into practice? It would be quite in order for them
tleep-seated barbarism of the capitalist system whenever he de- to be exceptionally intelligent individuals, for Balzac lived in the ~ra~ .....
picted conditions in the France of his time. of Utopian socialism and we might concede a wise mmionaire to
Caught in the meshes of these contradictions Balzac was driven him as willingly as to his older contemporary Fourier. But there is
. ' a decisive difference between these two: Fourier's socialist Utopias
to idealize the disappearing culture of the aristocracy. Engels said
of him that " his great work was one long· elegy deploring the were conceived in a period when the working-class movement was
inevitable decline of "good society " ! as yet scarcely born, while Balzac laid down his Utopian way of sav-
· When in his quality of political th inkcr he nevertheless sou~ht a ing capitalism at a time when the working class was already vigor·
way out, he looked for it in the preservation of the large estates as ously surging {orward.
the basis of those aristocratic material resources and that undis- But apart from this Balzac was a poet and had to present his
turbed leisure which from the Middle Ages to the French revolution millionaires in literary form. The way he chose is most characteris-
had created the aristocratic culture of France. Iri the Ion!-{ intro- tic of the contradictions inherent in the Balzacian Utopia. The
ductory letter written by Emile Blondet,. the royalist writer ~in T Jze heroes of both novels, Dr. Benassis in The Country Doctor and
Peasants, this conception can be very clearly discerned. Veronique Glaslin in Th e Village Priest, are penitents. They have
. As we l~a ve seen by now, the theoretical basis of Balzac's Utopia each committed a great crime and thereby ruined their personal life
1s contradictory enough. But however greatly he may distort reality and individual happiness. They both regard their personal life as
in these novels by a propagandist, exhortatory, non-typical bias, C':1<.lcd and do their work as a religious penance-on no other basis
the great realist and incorruptibly faithful observer break~ through could the realist Balzac conceive people willing and able to turn his
c.ver'ywhere, rendering t::vcn sharper the already existing contradic- Utopia into reality.
tions. Balzac ~lw ay~ I?aintained that religion-and specifically the This conception of the principal characters is in itself an un-
Roman Cathohc rchg1on-was the o11ly ideological foundation on conscious but not the less cruel condemnation of its reality. O nly
 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM BALZAC: THE PEASANTS '1.7

those who give up everything, only those who renounce all thought
of individual happiness can serve the common good sincerely and ~ I.
commercial success of the· ventures is taken for granted and shown
only as an accomplished fact.
unselfishly in a capitalist society : such is the unspoken but implied That Balzac thus deviates from his usual methods shows how
lesson of Balzac's Utopian novels. With this mood of renunciation little inner confidence he felt in these Utopias, although he consis-
. Balzac does not stand alone among the great bourgeois writers of tently remained true to them throughout his life in every sphere
the first half of the nineteenth century. The aged Goethe also save in his work as a writer.
regarded renunciation as the great fundamental rule for all noble, It was in The Peasants that Balzac, after long preparation, de~
high-minded men who wished to serve the community. The sub- pictcd for the first time the actual impact on each other of the
title of his last great novel, Wilhelm Meister's Wanderings, is" The social classes of the countryside. Here the rural population is shown
R enouncers." But Balzac goes even further in the tacit condemna- realistically in a rich variety of types, now no longer as the abstract
tion of his own Utopian conceptions. In The Village Priest a and passive object of Utopian experiments but a!: the acting and .
young engineer employed by Veronique Graslin tells of his experi- ~· . suffering hero of the novel.
ences in the days 'of the July revolution. He says:
" Patriotism now survives only under a dirty shirt and that When Balzac, in the fulness of his creative powers, approached
spells the doom of France. The July revolution was the volun- this problem with his own most personal method, he provided in
tary defeat of those who, through their name, their wealth his quality of writer a devastating criticism of the opiniqns which ~e
and their talents, belong to the upper ten thousand. The self- in his quality of political thinker stubbornly held to the end of hlS
sacrificing masses defeated the rich and educated few who life. For even in this novel his own point of view is the defence of
disliked making sacrifices." the large estate. "Les Aigues," the Comte de Montcornet's aristo~
. Balzac here reveals his own despairing conviction that his Utopias cratic seat, is the focal point of an ancient traditional culture-
.,
run contrary to the economically determined instincts of the ruling which in Balzac's eyes is the only possibl~ culture. !'

classes and hence cannot become the typical norm governing their The struggle for the preservation of this cultural base occupies the
behaviour. central position in the story. It ends with the utter ?cfcat of . lh:e
That he himself did not really believe in the social feasibility of large · estate and its carving up into peasant smallholdmgs. Thts lS
'.t'
his dreams, is shown by the whole structure of these novels. Too a further stage of the revolution which was begun in 1789, and
much attention is focussed on the non-typical heroes and their non- which in Balzac's view was destined to end with the destruction of
typical behaviour, often obscuring the actual purpose of the novels, culture.
which is to depict the blessings of rationalized large-scale agricul-
ture. But even the passages relating to these blessings are sketched
in with a superficiality rarely encountered in Balzac's writings ; he
t This perspective determines the tragic, elegiac, pessimistic key~
note of the whole novel. What Balzac intended to write was the
tragedy of the aristocratic large estate and with it the tragedy of

r
skates over details and picks out isolated non-typical episodes as a culture. At the end of the novel he relates with d eep melancholy
means of throwing light on wide issues. that the old chateau has been demolished, that the park has 'disap-
In other words, what Balzac does in these novels is not to describe peared, and that only a small pavilion i~ left of all the former splen-
a social process, the mutual social impact on each other of large-scale dour. This small pavilion· dominates the landscape, or rather the ·
landowners, land-hungry peasants and agricultural labourers, but to
give an almost exclusively technical description of the great advan- l smallholdings that have taken the place of the landscape. After
the demolition of the r-eal castle, the pavilion seems a· castle, so
tages offered by his economic ideas. But these advantages-again miserable are the cottages scattered all round it, built " as peasants
quite unlike Balzac's usual practice--<>perate in a complete vacuum. are accustomed to build." But the probity of the realist Balzac as
He does not show the people at all. We know only by hearsay of a writer finds e:\-pression even in this mournful final chord. Although
the general poverty which h ad existed before the experiment and he says with aristocratic hatred that: "the land was like the sample
then, when the experiment has been carried out, we again only hear sheet of a tailor," he adds that "the land was taken by the peasants
that everyone is now better off and contented. In the same way the as victors and conquerors. It was by now divided into more than
 a thousand smallholdings and the population Jiving between connections which not only enable.<; them to get all they want from
Conches and B1angy had tripled." · the local authorities, but also to dominate the markets of the entire
Baiza~ painted ~is. tragedy of the aristocratic large estate with province.
'i all the nchness of ~1s hterary genius . Although he depicts the Iand- Montcornet, for instance, cannot sell the timber felled in his
h~ngry peasants w1th the greatest political hostility ('' a Robespierre forests if he wants to do so outc;ide the Rigou-Gaubertin clan. The
Wl th on~ head. and twenty million arms "), yet, as the great realist power of the clan is so great that when the Comte de Montcornet
that he 1s, he gtves a monumental and perfectly. balanced picture of discharges his bailiff Gaubertin for dishonesty, they can smuggle
the forces locked in struggle on both sides. another bailiff of their own choosing into his employment~ a bailiff
He himself says in the novel about the writer's duty : who is their agent and spy. The clan thrives on robbing the pea-
. ".A story-teller must never forget that it is his business to do sants by means of mortgages and !;mall usurious loans, by rigging
JUStice t~ every party; ~he unfortunate and the rich are equals the market, and by rendering trifling services, such as helping
b~fore hts pen; for htm the misery of the peasant has its young men to avoid military service, etc.
gra.ndeur a~d the meanness of the rich its ridicule; finally, The power of the Gaubertin-Rigou class is so great that they care
while the. nch. man has passions, the peasant has only needs, nothing for Montcornet's good connections in high but distant
hence he Js twtce poor and although his destructive tendencies places. Rigou !!ays : " . . . as for the Minister of Justice-ministers
,, must be mercilessly suppressed for reasons of state. he has a of justice come and go, but we will always be here.H Thus on the
i. human and divine right to our respect.'' · actual battlefield of the struggle between two sets of exploiters the
.rrom ~he outset Balzac presents the struggle raging aroHnd the group of provincial usurer!\ is the more powerful of the two. Balzac
anstocratJC large estate not merely as a duel betwet·n landowner was profoundly incensed at this, but nevertheless depicted the true
a?d peasa~t, but as .a three-cornered fight between three parties aU interplay of forces with the greatest accuracy, showing the real
plt.tcd agamst each other; the small-town and village usurper-capi- balance of power and every phase of the struggle for it with abso-
tah~t takes the field a?ainst both landowner and peasant. A great lute fide!ity.
vancty of type~ are mtroduced to represent each w~rring camp The third group, the peasants, fights against both other groups.
and they brm~ mto play every. economic, political, ideological and
other weapon m support of the1r cause. Montcornet the nobleman-
landowner has connection~ re~ching from the provincial prefecture
~o the upper ranks of the JUdicature and the ministries in Paris· he
l In his quality of political partisan, Balzac would have liked to sec
the great estate and the peasants join forces against the usurer~
capitalists; but what he could not avoid' showing here, concretely
and with realistic power, was that the peasants had to ally them-
IS naturally .supported by the military and ideologically assisted by
.the church m the person of Father Brossette and the Royalist press
m the person of Emile Blondet.
I
~~..
selves with . the usurers they hated and fight together with them
against the great estate. The struggle of the peasants against the
remnants of feudal exploitation, for a bit of land, for a smallholding
Even richer and more varied is the presentation of the U!;urer- .•
of their own, necessarily makes them accessories of the usurer-capi-
capitalist camp. talists on whom they are dependent. The tragedy of the dying
We sec the peasant usurer who skins the poorer peasants by means aristocratic e!;tate is transformed into the tragedy of the peasant
of. sm~ll l?an~ and makes tlu~m his dependents for life (Rigou); smallholding; the liberation of the peasants from feudal exploita-
wtth htm Js h1s ally. the small-town timber-dealer, formerly bailiff tion is tragically nullified by the advent of capitalist exploitation.
on the Montcornet estate (Gaubertin). Around these two charac- This triangle, in which each party fights the two others, fOfil:lS
t~rs ,Balzac's .brilliant imagination groups all the corruption of pro- the basis of Balzac's composition and the inevitability of this double-
vmcial nepot1sm and graft. fronted struggle of each of the three parties, in every phase of which
,·!
Gaubertin and Ri.~ou hold the whole world of the lower adminis- one aspect of the struggle necessarily predominates in accordance

'·
trative officials and of provincial finance in the hollow of their
hands. By shrewd marriages of their sons and daunhters by wcJl-
tim(.'(} financial aid to their follower~t they have cr~ated 'a web of
t1
I
with the immediate economic compulsions acting on each party,
gives the composition its richness and complexity. The action
!~Wings to and fro from the nobleman's ca!;tle to the peasant tavern,

I
.~
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 30 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM BALZAC: THE PEASANTS 31
the bourgeois apartment and the small-town cafe, and this restless of this defeat. The struggle is waged around the question whether
shifting of the scene and characters give Balzac the opportunity of Montcornet will be able to retain his land or the Gaubertin-Rigou
showing up the basic factors of the class struggle fought out in the speculation in real estate be successful. The latter are bound to
French countryside. win because the nobility is concerned only with retaining, increas·
Balzac's own personal sympathies are with the nobility, but as a ing, and enjoying in- peace its revenues, while the bourgeoisie is
. ,.w.rit(}r he gives a meticulously complete picture of all the partici- engaged in a stormy accumulation of capital. Needless to say, the
.. pants in the struggle. He shows in all its ramifications the depend~ basis of such accumulation is the usurious exploitation of the
cnce of the peasants on the Gaubcrtin-Rigou clique; he draws the peasantry. The ·increasing indebtedness of the already existing
usurer-capitalists, the deadly enemies of the nobility, with all the peasant smallholdings (Rigou invests 150,000 francs in such mort-
hatred of which his heart is capable, and although his hatred springs gages), the manceuvres directed towards the future exploitation of
from the wrong source and is rooted in a wrong political conception, the parcelled Montcornet estate, the inevitably inflated prices asked
he yet penetrates to the very core of the tragedy that overtook the for small holdings-aU this from the very beginning put the small-
peasant smallholding in the forties of the nineteenth century. holders Completely at the mercy of the Rigou-Gaubertin clique.
Balzac thought that the revolution of 1789 had caused all these Thus the peasants are caught between two fires. Balzac the poli·
evils, the dispersal of the great estates as well as the rapid growth tician would have liked to represent this struggle as though the.
of capitalism which he conceived mainly as usurious money~lending peasants had been seduced by the intrigues and demagogy of the
-a conception quite justified in the France of his time. For Gaubertin· Rigou group, as though the " bad elements" among the
Balzac the central problem of French social history was the·way in peasants themselves (Tonsard, Fourchon) had "incited u the
which, amidst the storms of the revolution, bourgeois wealth was peasants. But in fact the novel shows all the dialectic of the situa-
born out of the expropriation of the aristocratic estates, speculation tion: the peasants are necessarily dependent on the small-town or
with the depreciated currency, .exploitation of hunger and scarcities village usurers, and although the peasants hate these usurers, eco-
of all kinds and more or less fraudulent army contracting. We need nomic necessity nevertheless drives them to serve their ends. For
only recall the origins of the Goriot, Rotiget or Nucingen fortunes. instance, Balzac thus describes a peasant who has o~tained a small-
The central characters in The Peasants, Rigou the village usurer, holding with the " aid " of Rigou :
and Gaubcrtin, the small-town trader, have both acquired their " In fact, Courtecuisse, when he bought the Bachelcrie estate,
great fortunes by exploiting the opportunities that offered during had wanted to rise to be a hourgeois and had boasted as much.
the revolution and the Empire. In particular when he describes His wife went out to gather manure ! She and Courtecuisse got up
the origins of the Gaubertin fortune, Balzac shows with great before daybreak to hoe their abundantly manured garden, made it
subtlety how the old-fashioned frauds practised by the noble land- bear several crops one after the other, and yet never managed to
owner develop in the hands of the capitalist estate-bailiff into new r pay more than the interest due to Rigou on the balance of the pur~
forms of fraudulent and usurious speculation and how the noble- chase-money. . . . The good fellow had improved and fertilized
man's dishonest, abjectly servile lackey acquires a fortune, develops the three acres of land sold to him by Rigou and was yet living in
into an independent speculator and finally gets the better of his fear of being turned out! The garden adjoining the house was
former master. beginning to bear. . . . This gnawing work made the formerly
Balzac describes with bitter irony, and hence with all the more ;;o cheerful fat little man gloomy and dazed to such an extent that
lifelike accuracy, the corruption and pseudo-culture of the owners he seemed like a victim of poison or of some incurable disease."
of these new fortunes. But at the same time he also describes with This depenaence of the peasant on the usurer-the economic
perfect truthfulness the real economic and social factors which make basis of which is precisely the " independence " of the smallholding,
the victory of the bourgeois group over the Montcornet group the desire of the landless peasant to turn owner-manifests itself
inevitable. among other things in the compulsion for the peasant to work for
As in all other works of Balzac, what is described in The Pea.rants the usurer withQut being paid for it. Marx says about this : "At
is not merely the defeat of the nobility, but also the inevitability this point Balzac aptly shows how the small peasant, in order to
 BALZAC: THE PEASANTS :33
win favour with his usurer, does all sorts of work for him without bourgeois gobble it up, it will be much poorer and much dcarl!r
pay, because such work does not require any cash outlay. Th • when they bring it up again; and then you will have to work for the
u!lurer thus kills two birds with one stone : he saves paying wages bourgeois, just like those others who work for Rigou. Look at
and drives the pea~ant-who by working on another man's land Courtccuisse ! "
is thereby prevented from tilling his own-further along the road to The trarredy of these peasants was that a generation of Rigous and
•'
i
ruin and hence ev.er further in to the web of tht> ~urer-spider." Gaubertin~ had already issued from the revolutionary bourgeoisie
Naturally enough, the peasants harbour a savage hatred for their of 1789, at a time when the French working class was as yet in-
,, plunderers. But this hatred is impotent, not only because of the sufficiently developed to be able to stage a revolution in alliance
peasant's economic dependence, but also because of their land- with the peasants. This social isolation of the rebellious peasantry
hunger and because of the immediate pressure of exploitatio11 is reflected in their sectarian confusion and pseudo·radical tactics.
through the stranglehold kept on them by the great estate. Thus it The real play of economic forces in this period drives the
i.• in vain that the peasants hate the village usurers; they arc never- peasants, however unwilling they may be, to pull Rigou~ s chcs tnu ~s
theless forced to become their servants and allies in the struggle out of the fire. The various political consequences of th1s econom1c
against the great estate. Balzac gives the following interesting situation turn "Rigou, whom the peasants hated and cursed for his
dia1ogue on this subject : usurious machinations . . . into the champion of their political
:'I " So you think that Les Aigues will be sold in lots for the sake and financial interests. . . . For him, as for certain bankers in
,.i of your ugly mug?" replied Fourchon. "What, old Rigou has Paris, politics cloaked with the purple of popularity a series of in-
••.i
been sucking the marrow from your bones for the last thirty years famous frauds." Rigou is now the economic and political represen-
and you still don't see that the bourgeois will be worse than the tative of the land-hungry peasants, although not so long ago he
seigneur? ... A peasant will always be a peasant ! Can't you would not have ventured abroad after nightfall for fear of running
see {but of course you know nothing about politics) that the govern- into some ambush in which he would have met with ·a fatal
; ment has put such high taxes on the wine simply to get our money " accident." '
I out of our pockets and keep us poor? The bourgeois and the But a tra(J'edy is always the clash of two necessities, and for the
government are one and the same. What would become of them if peasants ·a ~mallholding obtained from Rigou, however heavily
we were all rich? Would they labour in the fields? Would they mortgaged, was better than no holding at all, and merely a
do the harvesting? They must have poor. folk for that. . . . labourer's job on the Montcornet estate.
" But we must hunt with them for all that," said Tonsard, "be- Just as Balzac persuaded him~eH that the peasants had been
cause they are out to break up the big estate.c;. We can turn against " incited " against the big estate, so he also attempted to persuade
the Rigou afterwards! 11 himself that a patriarchal, " beneficent" relationship between the
·In the given class position in France Tonsard is right, and in real grea't landowners and the peasants was possible. What the truth is
life it is his attitude that must prevail in respect of the first of these beliefs we have already shown. T he
Of course, there are a few peasants who think of a revolution, of l'Ccond illusion is dispelled by Balzac himself no less cruelly.
re-enacting, more radically, the partition of the land which was Althoug-h he mentions once that the Countess of Montcornet
carried out by the revolution in 1793. Tonsard's son expresses such
revolutionary views :
I was the " 'benefactress " of the whole district, he does not specify
in what these good works consisted, and with Balzac this is always
"You are playing the bourgeois game, I tell you. To frighten
the gentry at Les Aigues so as to maintain your rights, well and
good. But to drive them from the district and make them sell Les
Aigucs, as the bourgeoiS of the valley want to do, is against our
.interests. If you help to break up the big estates, where are the
1' an indication that he has a bad conscience and does not himself
rcallv believe what he is saying. In a conversation between Father
Bro;cttc and the Countess, when the priest calls the attention of
the Countess to the duties towards the poor which devolve on the
rich the Countess answered with that fatal "We shall see!" which

1
lands to come from for us to buy in the next revolution? Then you ' cnou~h of a promise for the rich to eva~c an appeal to their
is just
would get the land for a song, as old Rigou did; but if you let the purse and which permits them later to remam paSSive spcccators

..
 .;rr: STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM BALZAC: THE PEASANTS .35 r

..
I

in the face of every misfortune, on the plea that it was " no use Gaubertin, and he not only shows that Gaubertin and Montcornet ~r
crying over spilt milk." are merely two warring factions of the same capitalism, that the J!

. Father Brosse.tte, like the other priests in Balzac's Utopian novels, object of their struggle is merely the sharing-out of the surplus ::jl
1s a representauve of the " social Christianity " of the Lamennais value squeezed out of the peasantry-he also shows the capitalist
school, but with the difference that here, where Balzac instead of character of the Montcornet estate. It is a particularly deep irony
~
1
. creates characters, the priest himself ' is made to
merely preaching, on the part of the great realist Balzac that Father Brossette abso- 1

sense the hopelessness of this ideology : lutely approves of these measures of capitalist exploitation.
u' Is Belshazzar's feast to be the eternal symbol of the last days Montcornet wants to do away with all the traditional rights of ··,
of a doomed caste, oligarchy or power?' . . . he said to himself
when he was ten paces away. '0 God, if it be your holy will to
loose the poor like a torrent to transform the social order, then I can
the poor: the right to gather brushwood in the forest, the right to
glean in the fields after the harvest. The abolition of these. rights
js a necessary concomitant of the capitalist ·transformation of the
'
I

understand that you abandon the rich to their blindness.' " large estates. A few years before Balzac's novel was published, Karl
What the benefactions of the landowners really amount to is Marx, then a young man, put up a bitter fight in the columns of the
shown by Balzac in a few concrete instances. The former owner of R heinische Zeit;mg against the Wood Theft Bill which was
the Montcornet estate-who had been a famous actress in the before the Rhenish Diet and which proposed to abolish similar
golden age of the ancien regime so greatly praised by Balzac-on ancient rights.
one occasion granted the request of a peasant in this fashion : In this question Balzac definitely takes sides with Montcornet. In
"The worthy lady, accustomed to making others happy, presented order to defend Montcornet's attitude, he picks on cases in which
him with an acre of vineyard-in return for one hundred days of the brushwood-gatherers cut down or deliberately injured growing
labour." trees. But it is clear that Montcornet's action is directed not against
And Balzac, in his quality of politician, adds to thls : abuses of these rights, but against the ancient rights themselves.
"This generous action was not sufficiently appreciated." Montcornet gives orders that only those peasants be permitted to
But he also tells us what the peasant who received the " aift" glean who are provided with a certificate of indigence by the
thought of the lady's generosity : .;:, authorities; he afso sees to it that the results of the gleaning should .rf'
" Dammit, I've bought it and paid for it. Do the bourgeois be as' meagre as possible. This shows that Montcornet, well trained
ever give you anything for nothing? Are a hundred days of work in Pomerania, is quite determined to do away with these remnants
nothing? This has cost me three hundred francs and it is nothing of feudalism. The peasants on the Montcornet estate are in a
but stones ! " position in which " all the brutality of primitive fonns of society is ·
And Balzac adds : combined with all the torments and miseries of civilized countries."
" This point of view was generally shared." ·,. (Marx.)
But Montcornet is not just an ordinary old-fashioned aristocrat. The peasants are driven to despair, and this despair must lead to
Formerly a general in the army of Napoleon, he took part with the terrorist outbursts which in their turn contribute to the victory of
Imperial army in the looting of Europe. He is therefore an expert in Rigou's speculation in real estate.
··'~>squeezing the peasantry. Balzac stress~ this trait in him, when he Balzac here gives us a masterly picture of the tragedy of the
relates the quarrel between Montcornet and Gaubertin, which ends peasant smallholding. He presents in··literary fonn the same essen-
with the dismissal of the dishonest bailiff. tial development of the post-revolutionary smallholding that Marx
" After mature consideration the Emperor permitted Nfontcornet described in The Eighteenth Brumaire.
to play in Pomerania the same part that Gaubertin played on the " But in the course of the nineteenth century the urban usurer
Montcornet estate. H ence the general knew all about army con- takes. the place of the feudal lords, the mortgage the. place. of the
tracting." feudal obligations attached to the land, and bourgeots cap1tal the
It is not only in this passage that Balzac points out the deep- place of the aristocratic estate." .
and capitalist--community of interests between Montcornet and Later Engels stated more concretely ~e tragic part played by the
 BALZAC: THE PEASANTS '37

!I
peasantry in the establishment and development" of the capitalist
social order. He says: ' even increasing popularity with the peasants was due to the fact
that Napoleon had completed and defended the division of the

r
i~ ". • . The urban bourgeoisie set it in motion and the yeomanry ]and brought about by the French revolution.
I of the country districts carried it to victory. It is strange enough Father Brossette goes on :
that in each of the three great bourgeois revolutions the peasants "In the eyes of the people, Napoleon, united with his people
provided the army for the onslaught, although the peasants were the through a million of common soldiers, is still the king sprung from
class which, once the victory won, were the most certain to be the loins of the revolution, the man who guaranteed their possession
ruined by the economic consequences of this same victory. A of the confiscated lands of the aristocracy. This idea was the balm
hundred years after Cromwell the yeomanry of England had practi~ with which he was anointed at his coronation. . . ."
J • cally disappeared." Perhaps the only really live scene in the Utopian novel, The
Naturally Balzac, the pro~aristocrat roya!ist, could not have. had Country I)octor, is the one in which Balzac shows how closely the
a correct conception of this process. But several of hi's characters peasants, old soldiers of Napoleon, are still linked with their former
express a vague, confused uneasiness which reflects, however in dis~ leader. For Napoleon's political ideas-which were later so
tinctly, a similar evolution of the peasantry. scurrilously parodied by the Second Empire, " were the ideas of the
Old Fourchon says : undeveloped, virginal smallholding.>~ (Marx.)
• H I have seen the old times and I see the new, my dear learned sir. But the insiO'ht of Balzac the creative historian goes deeper than
True, the sign has changed but the wine is the same as ever. To- a mere under~anding of the Napoleonic era. For aU his Royalist
day is only younger brother to yesterday. There! Go and put that hostility to the French revolution, he never .loses sight of the human
in your paper! Liberated, are we? We arcstill in the same village and moral uplift which the revolution brought into French society.
and the seigneur is there just the same; I call him ' hard work.' . . The simple human greatness and magnificent heroism he attributes
The hoe, our only property, has not left our hands. Whether it is to the Republican officers and soldiers is quite striking already in his
the seig1zeur or the tax~collector who takes the best part of our sub~ early novel, Les Choua11s. Nor has Balzac in any of his other novels
stance, we still have to sweat our guts out. . . ." failed to show the Republicans a~ models of houesty and steadfast
We have already dealt with Balzac's idealized Tory Utopia, by courage (~.g.) Pillerault in Cbar Birotteau). .
means of which, as he imagined, the disastrous consequences of the In portraying such honest, heroic Re::publicam Balzac reached h1s
French revolution could be eliminated. But in depicting the evolu- highest level when he drew the picture of Michel C~restien, on~ ?f
tion of French society from 1789 to 1848, he penetrates very much the heroes who died on the steps of St. Merry. It IS charactenstlc
deeper. He repeatedly demonstrates not only the inevitability of that Balzac himself was not pleased with this figure- he found that
the French revolution, but also the inevitability of the general it was unsatisfactory, that it did less than justice to the great original ·
capitalist transformation of France as a result of that revolution. on which it was modelled. In reviewing Stendhal'!> Chartreuse de
Thus in Tlzc Peasants Father Brossette says : Parme, Balzac spoke warmly of the revolutionary republican
« Historically speaking, the peasants are still where they were the character Ferrante Palla; pointed out that Stcndhal had intended to
morning after the Jacquerie; that defeat has remained deeply en- draw the same type which he himself had attempted in Michel
graved on their minds. They no longer remember the facts-but Chresticn, and found that Stcndhal had surpassed him in depicting
the facts have now become an instinctive idea and this idea is in the the greatness of this figure. . .
very blood of the peasants just as the idea of superiority was once in In The Peasants this type appears m the person of old N1seron,
the blood of the nobles. The revolution of 1789 was the revenge of an honest and intrepid fighter in the revolution, who not only did
the vanquished. The peasants have taken possession of the soil not acquire any worldly goods, but stoically renounced even the
from which the feudal laws had barred them for twelve hundred privikgcs which were his duC', living in honourable and c_ourageous
years. Hence their love of the land, which they divide up among powrty. In this character Balzac sho,_v~ of ~ourse sol!let~I?g more :
themselves until even a single furrow is cut in half. . . ." the hopelcs~mcss of th(' Jacobean trad1t1on m a capttahstrcally de~
Balzac saw clearly enough that Napoleon'~ still unabated and wloping France. Ni~eron hatl:S the rich, and ther('fore the peasants
 38 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM ·r~· BALZAC: THE PEASANTS 39
loo~ upon him as one of themselves; but Niseron hates growing ... 1.~
..
, , and faithfully described them. It is true that he regarded them as
cap1tabsm and the ruthless chase after profits just as much, although destructive of " culture, and "civilization," as the prelude to thP
he can see no way out of the situation 1 which he regards as hopeless. extinction of his world; but ·he nevertheless saw and depicted them
It is interesting to observe how deeply and truly Balzac under- -and is so doing achieved a depth of vision reaching far into the
stood the human implications of capitalist development in France future. He revealed against his will the economic tragedy of the
from its basic trends down to its subtlest details, irrespective of h~ smallholding-and showed at the same time, incarnated in living
own politically reactionary attitude towards these tendencies characters, the social conditions which necessarily led, first to the
of development. Thus he can draw a correct picture of the miserable caricature of Jacobinism in 1848, and immediately after-
Jacobin republican in all that character's later incarnations, even wards to the Second Empire-that caricature of the Napoleonic era.
though he, Balzac, can sec no connection between the antique This vision of an imminent cataclysm, of the imminent destruc-
ideals of Jacobinism on the one hand and the free smallholding on tion of culture and of the world, is the idealistically inflated form
the other. which a presentiment of class extinction always takes. In this novel,
Marx, in his economic analysis of the smallholding, states that as in all his other novels, Balzac mourns the decline of the French
" the smallholding was the economic basis of society in the best aristocracy, and this elegiac form detennines the composition of the
periods of classical antiquity," i.e., in the epochs which Rousseau novel. It starts with a description, by the journalist Blondet, of
and the Jacobins had taken for their ideological model.
the aristocratic perfection of the Montcornet chateau.. It ends
Marx, of course, clearly saw the difference between the polis
with a melancholy picture of all this past beauty swept away by the
democracy of antiquity and the Jacobin dream of its revival - that
heroic self-deception of the Jacobins. In his historical w;itings parcelling of the estate into smallholdings. But the melancholy
dealing with the French revolution of 1848, and later in Capital, he end of the novel dips into even deeper melancholy. Blondet, the
brilliantly analysed from every aspect all the forces within capital- Royalist newspaperman who appears at the beginning of the novel
ism which drive the smallholder into slavery, into the clutches of as a guest at the chateau and lover of the Countess of Montcornet
the usurer, and the tax-collector, " which compel the peasant to be (the Countess, unlike her husband, is the scion of an ancient noble
both merchant and artisan, without the conditions which would house) suffers complete shipwreck in his career, is ruined materially
make it possible for him to turn his products into commodities. . ... and morally and is on the point of committing suicide when he is
The disadvantages of the capitalist system of production with its saved by the death of General Montcornet and by his marriage to
dependence of the producers on the money-price of their product, the general's wealthy widow.
coincide here with the disadvantages arising from the incomplete Blondet's catastrophe deserves special attention because he, as
' ..
. ::::.1 .~
development of the capitalist system of production." Marx shows the mouthpiece for Balzac's own views, plays a very important and
on this basis that the conditions of the peasantry in the revolutionary positive part in the whole Human Comedy-only Daniel d'Arthez,
processes of the first half of the nineteenth century are of necessity Balzac's poetic self-portrait, is more positive than he. The fact that . ·'
full of contradictions; he sttows how the social basis for the rule of Balzac makes Blondet meet disaster is an indication of how hopeless
:'.;i
Napoleon III emerged from the despair of the peasantry and the legitimist royalism appeared to a writer so meticulously careful of • I

inevitable illusions which it created. detail. And it is again characteristic of Balzac that he saw and :yj
Balzac did not see this dialectic of objective economic evolution depicted with merciless accuracy not only Blondet's catastrophe in ..,.
and, as the legitimist extoller of the aristocratic large estate that he itself, but also the wretched form which it took. While Michel
was, he could not possibly have seen it. But as the inexorable obser- Chrestien, the republican, heroically perishes .on the barricaqes,
ver of the social history of France he did see a great deal of the so- ...... Blondet, the royalist, escapes into the parasitic existence of a rich 'I ,.. I

cial movements and evolutionary trends produced by this. economic . wife's husband, rendered presentable by an appointment to a . ·'
dialectic of the smallholding. Balzac's greatness lies precisely in the
fact that in spite of all his political and ideological prejudices he yet
prefctship obtained by backstairs influence. This parasitism finds
ironical expression in the epilogue to the uovel, when Blondet, gaz-
,·,
observed with incorruptible eyes all contradictions as they arose, ing at the smallholdings which occupy the site of the vanished
 ; .J
I

chateau, utters a few royalist sentiments about how wrong Rousseau Balzac pursues this theme of the historical continuity of ca~ita­ d
was and about the fate of the monarchy. Jist development in his portrayal of every class of French society. ~·,, 1
"You love me, we are together. . . . I find the present very He traces not only the specific differences between the merchant'> ~; .
beautiful and care nothing about the distant future," his wife replies. and manufacturers of the pre-revolutionary period and of the
"Then hurrah for the present, together with you! To hell with period of growing capitalism under the restoration and the July ....'
the future ! " cries Blondet, very much in love. monarchy (Ragon, Birotteau, Popinot, C_revel, etc.) but does ~he
The greatness of Balzac's art rests, says Marx, "on a deep under- same in respect of all other classes of soClety, everywhere showmg
standing of real conditions," i.e., of the conditions governing the up the domination of life by the mechanics of capitalism) Hegel's
development of French capitalism. We have shown how faithfully "spiritual animal kingdom" of capitalisi_TI, the capitalist world .of
Balzac depicted the specific traits of the three warring factions and " dog eat dog." In this Balzac is as cymcal as Ricardo, but w1th
how wc1l he understood the peculiarities in the development of all him too, as Marx: said "the cynicism lies in the thing itself and
classes of society in France since the revolution of 1789. But such not in the words that express it."
a statement would be incomplete if it disregarded the other side of This overall conception of the process of capitalist evolution
the dialectic of class evolution, i.e., the continuity of the evolution- enabled Balzac to uncover the great social and economic forces
ary trends from the French revolution onwards, or rather from the which govern historical development, although he never does so
emergence of a bourgeois class in France and the beginning of the in direct fashion.
struggle between feudalism and absolute monarchy. The deep com· In Balzac's writings social forces never appear as romantic and
prehension of this continuity of development was the foundation on fantastic monsters, as superhuman symbols (as e.g. later in Zola).
which the great edifice of the Human Comedy was built. Revolu· On the contrary Balzac dissolves all social relationships into a net-
tion, Empire, restoration and July monarchy were in Balzac's eyes work of personal clashes of interests, objective c~nflicts betw~cn
merely stages in the great, continuous and contradictory process of individuals, webs of intrigue) etc. He never, for mstance, dep:ctc;
French evolution towards capitalism, a process in which the irresist· justice or the courts of Jaw as in~titutions indepe~dent of soc1e~y
ible and the atrocious are inseparably linked together. and standing above it. Only certam petty bourgeoiS char.acters m
The destruction of the nobility-Balzac's ideological and political his novels imagine the law courts to be that. A law court 1S always
starting-point-was only one aspect of this total process, and how- presented by Balzac as consisting of individual judg~ w~ose so-
ev:r biassed Balzac may have been in favour of the nobility, he saw cial origins, ambitions and prospects the author descnbes m gre?t
qUite clearly the inevitability of its extinction, nor did he fail to see detail. Every participant in the proceed_ings is shown. e~meshed_ m
the internal decadence, the moral deterioration of the nobility in the real conflicts of interest around whtch the lawsult m question
the course of this process. In several historical studies he uncovered is being fought; every position taken up by any member of the
th~ origins of this eclipse of the nobility. He rightly regarded the judiciary depends on the position he _occupies i~ t~i~ j~ng~e of
transformation of the feudal nobility into a court nobility, its conflicting interesto;; An instance of th1s are the JUdictal mtngue.s
transformation into a parasitic group with dwindling socially neces- in The Harlot's Progress or in the Cabinet of Antiques.
sary functions, as the basic cause of its extinction. The French It is against such a background that Balzac shows the workinfr-i
revolution and the capitalistic development it unleashed were merely of all the great social forces. Each participant in these _confEcts
!he final stage of this process. The more intelligent among the of interest is, inseparably from his own purely personal mterests,
nobility themselves knew well enough that their end was inevitable. the representative of a certain class, but it is in thes: purely per-
Thus in Balzac's Cabinet of Antiques the cynical and corrupt but son~} interests and indivisibly from them, that the soc1al cause, the
clever Duchesse de Maufrigneuse says to those who ·put forward class basis, of these interests finds expression. Thus, precisely by
the old conception of nobility: "Are you all crazy ? Do you want stripping the social institutions of their apparent objectivity and
to live to-day as your ancestors lived in the fifteenth century? But seemingly dissolving them into personal relationshjps, the author
we are in the nineteenth century now, my clears, and to-day there contrives to express what is truly objective in them. what is really
is no liberty, only an aristocracy ! " their social raison d'etre : their functions as bearer~ of class inter-
f I ., ,. •• • •
 :
43 ·.:·;
;:;TUU1t\S IN EUROPEAN REALISM BALZAC~ THE PEASANTS
.~. ! I•
rt
e~ ts and as the instruments of enforcing them. The essence of
Balzac's realism is that he always reveals social beings as the basis
used such words as these. And yet, the whole character and every-
thing Balzac puts into his mouth ar~ ~bsolutely true ~o life, P.rc- ; :1
"'H
of social consciousness, precisely through and in the contradic- cisely because they go beyond the hm1ts of a pcdc:'tnan copymg ·!.,.~I
tions between social being and social consciousness which must of reality. All that Balzac does is to express on xts potent~ally ~)
I
necessarily manifest themselves in every class of society. This is highest level what a peasant of the Fourchon type would d1mly : .•1·
....
why Balzac is right when he says in The Peasants: feel but would not be . able to express clearly. Balzac speaks for :J
"TcJl me what you possess and I will tell you what you think.'' those who are ·mute and who fight their battles in silence. He ful- tl
;I ;
This profound realism permeates Balzac's creative method down fils the vocation of the poet in the Goetheian sense of that /i
to tJ1e smallest detail. We can here indicate only a few main points .•t
voca tion:
• ,,. *'m· connectiOn
. wtt. h t I.liS. Und wenn der Mensch in seiner Qual vcrstummt
For one thing Balzac never confines himself to a trivial pho.
tographic naturalism, although on every essential point he is al-
Gab mir ein Gott zu sagen was ich leide ... ,
but he ~ives expression only to th~ th~n.gs which re~~ly strug~lc to •. )I·'.1.
.
ways absolutely true to life. Tn other words he never makes his manifest themselves as social and mdtv1dual necessxttes. Th1s ~­ ••!:
characters !:ay, think, feel or do anything that does not ncce'l- pression, transcending the limits of the trivial, but. ever tr~e m ;
sarily arise from their social being and is not in complete conform- social content is the hall-mark of the old great rcahsts, of Dtderot ;;,!
ity with both its abstract and its specific determinants. But in ex- and Balzac i~ contrast with the realism of their modern epigones .I
pressing some such intrinsically correct thought or feeling, he al- whose sta~e dwindles more and more as time goes by. If ·:,
:lji
..
ways refuses to keep within the limits of the average power of would have been impossible to give a complete picture bf French )"
expression of the average representative of a certain class. In capitalist society even by means of the innumerable characters .·It
order to express some socially correct and deeply conceived con- and human destinies which figure in The Human Comedy, had
·'':.,'
l
tent, he always seeks and finds the most clear-cut, the most trench- not Balzac always sought and found the essentially right expres-
ant expression, such as would be quite impossible within the sion. on the highest plane, for all their multiple interconnecti~ns. _.j[
limits set by naturalism. The realism of Balzac rests on a uniformly complete r endenng •'
In the course of this analysis we have already seen a few in- of the particul<l.r individual traits of ea~h of his characters on the , . . ,
stances of this method of expression. As a further instance of Bal- one hand and the traits which are typ1cal of them as representa-
zac's way of putting things we quote a few fragments of dialog ue tives of a class on the other. But Balzac goes even further than
between the peasant Fourchon and Father Brossette. The prie.~t this· he also throws light on the traits which different people be-
a sks the peasant whether he is bringing up his grandchild in the lon~ing to different groups within bourgeois so~iety have in com-
· fear of God. mon from the capitalist viewpoint. By stressmg the:>e co~mon
"Oh no, your reverence, I don't tell him to fe ar God, but to traits-which he does very sparingly and only on cructal ~omts­ I.

fear men .... I tell him : ' Mouche, beware of prison, it's from Balzac clearly demonstrates the intrinsic unity of the soc1al evo-
prison that you go to the gallows. Don't steal; get people to give you lutionary process, the objective social bond between apparently
things! Stealing leads to murder and murder brings you up against quite dissimilar types. We h~ve. already se~n how. B~lzac under- ~.
human justice. Beware of the razor of justice that protects the lines the common, only quantltatiVely diffcrmg, tratts m the. char-
sleep of the rich from the sleeplessness of the poor. Learn to read. acters of Montcornet and Gaubertin ; how he shows as bemg of
With educa tion you'll find a way to make money and still keep equal importance both -what they have in comr:no~ as pro~uc~ of
within the law, like that fine M. Gaubertin ... The thing to do post-Thermidorian French capita~ism and ~hat 1s quantttattvely
is to side with the rich, there arc crumbs under their tables. That different in them, the latter servUlg as a fml for the demonstra-
is what I call a sound education. So the young limb always keeps tion of their qualitative differences. For however much they ~ay
on the right side of the law ... He'll turn out all right and will have in common one of them is a gallant general of the Emptrc,
look after me some day.' " a nobleman and 'a great landowner while the ~ther is a little p~(\-'
It is obvious t.hat an old French peasant in 1844 would not have vincial ro~e. even though he is already on hts way up the soctal
 ladder. The concrete presentation of social interconnections is development: Rigou is in fact the product of the same strug?le
• rendered possible only by raising them to so high a level of ab- for liberty which overthrew feudalism and ~n the eve of whtc.h
straction that from it the concrete can be sought and found as a the great writers and thinkers of the Rerz~tssance created tl:c1r
" unity of diversity>" as Marx: says. The modern realists who as a immortal works as the ideological weapons m the struggle for JU'5t
result of the decline in bourgeois ideology have lost their deep this d evelopment. . . . .
., understandi?g of s~ cial interconnections and with it their capacity Balzac uses these forms of charactenzatwn to md1cate, con-
for abstractJOn, vamly attempt by concretizing details to render cretize and deepen, both on the p ersonal and on the social pla ne,
conc;ctc the social totali.ty and its r eal, objectively decisive dr.- the d iversities existing betv.reen individuals of the sa:nc so:tal
tennmants. type. In Rigou, for instance, Balzac creates a most I~terestmg
· It is this quality of Balzacian realism, the fact that it is solidly addition to the great gallery of misers and usurers to whtch Gob-
based on a correctly interpreted social existence, that makes Bal- seck, Grandet, Rouget and others belong; he is .the type. of the:
zac an unsurpassed master in depicting the great intellectual and Epicurean mi~er and us~rer,. who. is concerned with scrapmg and
spiritual forces which form all human ideologies. He does so by saving, hoardmg and swmdhng, hke those o~hers, b~t who at the
tracing them back to their social origins and making them func- same time creates an extremely comfortable hfe for himself. Thus
tion in the direction determined by these social origins. he marries an old wife for her money, the latter to enmesh the
T hrough this method of presentation ideologies Jose their seem~ whole village in a web of usurious debt and the f~rmer t~ prov!de
ing independence of the material life-processes of society and ap- himself with young and beautiful mistresses w1thout. mc~rn~g ., .... •
pear as part, as an element of that process. To quote an instance: a ny expense. Again and again he picks out the prettiest. ~rl m
Balzac brings up Bentham's name and hi5 theory of usury during the village, engages her as a servant, seduces h er by pronus.mg to
a business negotiation conducted by old Grandet, ·the provincial marry her as soon as his old wife is dead , and when he tires of
usurer and speculator. The greed with which the old usurer Gran- her discards her and gets himself another.
det swallows, as if it were a glass of good· wine, those parts of The basic rule which Balzac follows is to focus attention on the
Bentham's theory which happen to suit his book and the instanl principal factors of the social process in thei~ hist? rical develo~­
adv~ntage he derives from absorbing the ideological expression mcnt and to show them in the specific forms 111 wh1ch they mam-
(until then unknown to him) of his own social situation, suddenly fest themselves in different individuals. That is why he can dem·
put life into Bentham's theory, not as an abstract theory but as ) .
onstrate concretely, in any detached episode of the social pro~e.c;,.;,
a~ ideological. component of capitalist development in the begin- the great forces that govern its course. In The Peasa11ts ~e descnbcs
nmg of the mneteenth century. the struggle for the breaking-up of the great. estate w1thout ?ver
Of course this ideological effect is not always an adequate one. going beyond the narrow limits of the estate Itself and the nctgh·
But often it is precisely the ironical inadequacy of the effect that bouring small town.
mirrors the fa te which may overtake ideologies in the course of But 'when he shows the decisive social essence of the men and
historical development. Thus Balzac in The Peasants calls Rigou groups fighting· for and against the ~arcel~ing of the Montc.or~et
the provincial usurer a "The)emite" i.e. says of him that he is estate, wh en h e d raws a picture Of thlS, b aSIC feature of proVIOClai
(quite unconsciously, of couroe) an adherent of the bourgeois capitalism, then within this narrow framework, he manages to show
Utopia outlined by Rabelais with its monastry of TMleme, the u:; the whole development of French capitalism after the revolu -
gates of wh ich bear the inscription " Do as you please! " On the tion. the decline of the nobility, and above all the tragedy of a
one hand one could not show the decline of bourgeois ideology peasantry once liberated and then for a second time ~nslaved by
more vividly than by the fact that the great revolutionary slogan the revolution-the tragedy of the peasa nt smallholdmg.
proclaimed in the strugg·le for the liberation of humanity from Balzac did not see aU the implications of this development; we
the yoke of feudalism had become the guiding maxim of a village ''!'' have shown that he could not possibly have seen it, and why he
could not have done so.
Ul'urer. On the other hand the ironical emphasis on this decline

1;.
and deterioration express precisely the continuity of bourgeois Showing- the revolutionary working~class was quite beyond the

. :•
4·6 STUDIES JN EUROPEAN REALISM ·I

...,, )>~.
range of Balzac's vision. Hence he could depict the despair of
the peasantry but not the only possible way out of it. Balzac
l';~.

CHAPTER TWO
q.
;
..
.• ~::
'
.,
could not foresee the results arising from the disappointment of :';~
the peasant smallholder, i.e. ·that as a consequence of this di<>- ·>· ~
I ·•~ ~~
appointment " the whole edifice of the state, built up on these : )~
same sinallholdings, collapses and the chorus is taken up by the :1
proletarian revolution without which its solo part would turn f
into a :!tong of death in every peasant nation '' (Marx}. Balzac's Balzac: Lost Illusions s; 1.,,
genius showed itself in that he depicted this despair and dis~
illusionnJent realistically as an inevitable necessity. BALZAC WROTE this novel in the fullness of his maturity as a
writer; with it he created a new type of novel which was des- ..•'.
tined to influence decisively the literary development of the nine- .tl.:,l
teenth century. This new type of novel was the novel of dis- J:!
. ,;

illusionment, which shows how the conception of life of those ~ ;.i

living in a bourgeois society-a conception which although false,
is yet necessarily what it is-is shattered by the brute force.-. of
'll
~,.,.~
,1.1
capitalism.
,..
;r,ll
It was not, of course, in the works of Balzac that the shipwreck ol~~~
of illusions made its first appearance in the modern novel. '·H
.l,i:
'··
,11~
The first great novel, Cervantes' Don Quixote is also a story of
~·:
lost illusions. But in Don Quixote it is the nascent bourgeois worl~ 'o,
,.
which destroys the still lingering feudal illusions; in Balzac's novel :II!.
,..
it is the conceptions of mankind, human society, art, etc., neces-
sarily engendered by bourgeois development itself-i.e. the highest ··11!
I·
ideological products of the revolutionary develop~ent of the :
bourgeoisie-which are shown to be empty illusions when meas-
ured by·: the standards set by the realities of capitalist economy.
:[
The eighteenth-century novel also dealt with the destruction of I
certain illusions, but these illusions were feudal survivals still lin-
gering in the sphere of thoughts and emotions; or else certain II
',I'
groundless, pedestrian conceptions imperfectly anchored in reali- '
ty were dispelled by another more complete conception of the
same reality viewed from the same angle.
But it is in this novel of Balzac that the bitter laughter of de-
rision at the highest ideological products of bourgeois develop-
ment itself is heard for the first time-it is here that we see for ' ~
the first time, shown in its totality, the tragic self-dissolution of
;.. •J
bourgeois ideals by their own economic basis, by the forces of ...'
I capitalism. Diderot's immortal masterpiece The Nephew Of
i Rameau is the only work that can be regarded ac; the ideological
precursor of this Balzac novel.
Of course Balzac was by no means the only writer of the time
47
 who chose this theme. Stendhal's Scarlet And Black and Musset's excitement- but be that as it may, they demanded a place for
J • Co~lfess~ons. Of A. Child Of The Century even preceded Lost Jl. themselves and politics refused it to them ..."
l!WOIIS m ti~e. T he theme was in the air, not because of some It was the tragedy of a whole generation and the recognition of
~1ter~ry fashton but because it was thrown up by social evolution
m France, the country .t~at provided the pattern for the politi.cal
growth of the. bourgaowe everywhere. The heroic epochs of the
French· revolut10n and the First Empire had awa kened, mobilized
an~ dcvcl?ped all the dormant energies of the bourgeois class.
'Fills her?tc epoch g~ve the best clements of the bourgeoisie the
I this fact and the portrayal of it is common to Balzac ~ncl his con-
temporaries both great and small; but in spite ?f this com.mon
trait Lost Illusions in its portrayal of the time nses to a sohtary
height far above any other Fr~nch lite~ary work of t~~ period.
For Balzac did not content himself w1th the recogmt1on and
description of this tragic or tragi-comic social situation. He saw
;:1
.I

opp~rt~mty for the Immediate translation into reality of their farther and delved deeper. .
hero1c tdca1.s, the opportunity to live and to die heroically in ac. H e saw that the end of the heroic period of French bour.tZcOtl
cordance wlth those ideals. This heroic period came to an end evolution was at the same time the beginning of the rapid de-
with the fall of Napoleon, the return of the Bourbons and the velopment of French capitalism. In almost every. one of his .novels
J~ly revolution. The ideals became superfluous ornaments and :Balzac depicts this capitalist development,. th? transform~t1on of
fr~lls on the sober reality of everyday life and the path of capit- traditional handicrafts into modern cap1tahst production; he
~hsm, opened up by the revolutjon and by Napoleon, broadened shows how stormily accumulating money-capital usuriously . P.X·
mto a co~1ve~ient, universally. accessible highway of development. ploits town and countryside and how the old social formatiOnS
The heroic pwncers had to dtsappear and make way for the hn- and ideologies must yield before its triumphant onslaug.ht.. .
manly inferior exploiters of the new development, the specula- Lost Illusions is a tragi-comic epic showing how, wtthm t~ts
tors and racketeers. general process, the spirit of man is drawn into th: orbit ?£ captt·
. "Bourgeois society. in its sober reality had produced its true alism. The theme of the novel is the transformation of ht.crature
I~terpretcrs and SJ?Ok~smen in the Says, the Cousins, the Royer- (and with it of every ideology) into a co~modity an~ thts com-
Collards, the Be.npmm Constants, the Guizots; it<; real generals plete " capitalization" of every sphere of mtellectual, hterary ar:d .
sat at the countmg-house dcsh and their political head was the artistic activity fits the general tragedy of th.e post-~apolcomc
fat-head Louis XVIII." (Marx.) generation into a much more ~r?foundly conce1ved socia~ patter~
'!'he dri~e o~ i?eals, a necessary product of the previous neces- than can be found in the wntmgs even of Stcndhal, Balzac s
s~nly heroic penod w~s now no longer wanted ; its representa- greatest contemporary. . . . . .
twes, the young generatiOn schooled in the traditions of the heroic The transformation of hterature mto a commodity 1s pamted
period, was inevitably doomed to deteriorate. by Balzac in great detail. Fro~ the writ~r's ideas, emotions a nrl
This inevita?le degradation and frustration of the energie.c; born convictions to the paper on wh1ch he wntes .them down, every-
of the revolutton and the Napoleonic era was a theme common thing is turned into a commodity ~hat ~an be bought and .sold.
to all novels of disillusionment of the period, an indictment com- Nor is Balzac content merely to regtstcr m general terms the ideo-
mon to them all of the prosaic scurviness of the Bourbon restora- logical consequences of the rule of capitalism-he uncovers every
tion an~ .th~ J uly monarchy. Balzac, although politically a royali!>t stage in the concrete process of " capitalizat~o~ '' in e~ery sphere
and lcgtttmtst, yet saw this character of the restoration with mer- (the periodical press, the theatre, t?e pubhshmg busmess, etc.)
ciless clarity. He writes in L ost Illusions: together with all the factors g?vermng the. process. .
"No~hing is such a condemnation of the slavery to which the " What is fame?" asks Dl\unat, the pubhsher, a nd answers hun-
restoration has condemned our youth. The .young men who did
not know what to do with their strength, have harnessed onlv
to journalism, political conspiracies and the arts, but .in strang~
excesses as well: .. If they "':orked, they demanded power anu
pleasure; as arttsts, they de~tred treasures;· a~ idlers.• passionatt:!
(l' self : " Twelve thousand francs' worth of newspaper ar~icles and
three thousand francs' worth of dinners ... " Then he expounds:
"I haven't the slightest intention of risking two thousand fr~nc.-;
on a book merely in order to make the same ~mount ?Y tt. I.
spccu]ate in literature; I publish forty volumes· m a n edttton of

'.jL
;
 ·- ·- ----·-----~----------
[) STUDIES IN EUROPEAN' REALlS~[

!n. thousand copies each.-My power and the new~paper articles

1 BALZAC : LOST ILLUSIONS 51
Jay-out of the composition. The objective tens~ons inher7nt. i~ the
·•

•hich I get published thus. bring me in business to the value of theme are expressed through the human passtons and mdtvidual
u-cc hund:ed tho_usand francs, instead of a measly two thousand. aspirations of the characters: David Sechard, the inventor who
manuscnpt wh1ch I buy for a hundred thousand francs is discovers a cheaper method of making paper but is swindled by
h<'.aper than the manuscript of an unknown author which I can the capitalists, and Lucien de Rubempre, the poet who carries the
ct for a mere 600 franc<:., purest and most delicate lyrical poems to the capitalist market
The writers think as the p ublishers do. of Paris. On the other hand, the contrast between the two
" Do you really believe what you write?,, Vernon asks sarcas- characters demonstrates the extremely different ways in which
cally. " But surely we are word-merchants and are talking shop ... men can react to the abominations accompanying the transition
"he articles that the public reads today and has forgotten by to- to capitalism. David Sechard is a puritan stoic while Lucien de
torrow have no other meaning for us save that we get pa id for Rubempre incarnates perfectly the sensual love of pleasure ar.d
·1em., the rootless, over-refined epicureanism of the post~revolutionary
With all this, the writers and journalists are exploited, their generation. .
1le?t ~as become a commodity, an object of profiteering by the Balzac's composition is never pedantic; unlike his later succc~·
ap•tahs.t speculators who deal in literature. They are exploited sors he never affects a dry " scientific " attitude. In his writings
.ut they arc also prostitutes; their ambition is to become exploiters the unfolding of material problems is always indissolubly bound up
1cmselves ?r at least overseers over other exploited colleaguCli. with the consequences arising from the personal passions of his
-cfore Lucien de Rubempre turns jo!-lrnalist, his coHeag-ue and characters. This method of composition- although it seems to
1cntor Lousteau explains the situation to him in these terms : take the individual alone for its starting~point-contains a deeper
" Mark this, my boy : in literature the sc:cret of success is nor understanding of social interconnections and implications, a more

I,
10rk, but the exploitation of the work done by others. The news- correct evaluation of the trends of social development than doe'>
the pedanti~ " scientific" method of the later realists.
·aper-owncrs are the building contractors and we are the brick-
lycrs. The more mediocre a man is, the sooner he will reach his
' .
In Lost Illusions Balzac focuses his story on Lucten de Ru·
o.al, for he will a t need be willing to swallow a frog, and do any- bcmprC's fate and with it the transfonnation of literature into a
h mg else to flat ter the passions of the little literary sultans. Today commodity; the capitalization of the materi~l basis of literaturt:,
ou ~re still severe and have a conscience, but to-morrow your the capitalist exploitation of technical progress is only an episodic
onsc1ence will bow to the ground before those who can tear suc- final chord. This method of composition, which apparently re-
<.-. ss from your grasp and those who could give you life by a single verses the logical and objective connection between the material
,rord and yet refu se to speak that word, for believe me. a fashior J- basis and the superstructure, is extremely skilful both from the
ble author is haught~er and har~f?.er towards the new. generation artistic point of view and from the angle of social criticism. It is
:-~an the most leech-hkc of pubhshers. \\'here the publisher sees artistically skilful because the rich diversity of Lucien's changing
·nly a loss of money, the fas hionable author fears a rival: the destinies, unfolded before our eyes in the course of his struggle
•ublisher merely rejects the beginner> the fashionable author for fame, provides a much more colourful, lively and complete
.nnihilatcs him." picture than the pettily infamous intrigues of the provincial capi- ·
This breadth of the theme-the capitalization of literature em- talists out to swindle David Sechard. It is skilful from the point
•ra~in_A: everything from th~ manufacturing of paper to the l;rical

~~
of view of social criticism because Lucien's fate involves in its en-
cnst~Ihty ~f a poet, determmes the artistic form of the composition tirety the question of the destruction of culture by capitalism.
n this as m all other works of Balzac. The friendship between Sechard in resigning himself to his fate, quite correctly feels that
)avid Scchard and Lucien de Rubempre, the shattered illusions what is really essential is that his invention should be put to good
•f tl~eir enthusiastic youth and their mutually complementarr con-
_rastmr.; cha racters a re the clements that provide the general out- l
f
use· the fact that he has been swindled is merely his personal
bad' luck. But Lucien's catastrophe represents at the same timP.
me of the story. Balzac's genius manifests itself even in this basic ! the capitalist debasement and prostitution of literature itself.
·'
 ..... • ""'-... ~..., ·· ~ -'-'·~-· _,. ~, ·~n..., . ~J.•a.

The contrast between the two principal characters illustrates ing for a pure and honourable life with a boundless but erratic
most vividly the two main types of personal reaction to the trans- ambition, which make possible the brilliant rise of Lucien, his rapid
.formation of ideology into a commodity. Sechard's reaction is to prostitution and his final ignominious disaster. Balzac never serves
resign himself to the inevitable. up his heroes with a sauce of morality; he shows the objective
Resignation plays a very important part in the bourgeois litera- dialectic of their rise or fall, always motivating both by the total
ture of the nineteenth century. The aged Goethe was one of the sum of their own natures and the mutual interaction of this their
fir~t to strike this note of resignation. It was the symptom of a. nature with the total sum of objective circumstances, never by any
~cw period in the c:rolution of the bourgeoisie. Balzac in his utop- isolated value-judgment of their "good" and "bad" qualities.
Ian novels follows m Goethe's footsteps: only those who have Rastignac, the climber, is no worse than Lucien, but in him a
giv~n up or who must give up their personal happiness can pursue different mixture of talent and demoralization is at work, which
soc1al, non-~elfish aims. Sechard's resignation is, of course, of a <:nables him adroitly to turn to his own advantage the same reality
some\~hat d!l1erent nature. He gives up the struggle, abandons the 011 which Lucien, for all his naive Machiavellianism, is shipwrecked
purs~1t of any aim and .wants only to live for his personal happi- both materially and morally.
m;ss m peace and seclus10n. Those who wish to remain pure must Balzac's sour remark in M e/moth R econciled that men are either
cashiers or embezzlers, i.e. either honest fools or clever rogues, i5
.Withdraw
m
from all Capitalist business-it is in this not ironical not
the least Voltairean sense that David Sechard ' withdraws' to proved true in endless variety in this tragi-comic epic of the capi-
"cultivate his own garden." talization of the spirit.
Lucien for hi~ part plunges into life in Paris· he is determined Thus the ultimate integrating principle of this novel is the social
to win throug~1 and establish the rights and 'power of " pure process itself and its real subject is the advance and victory of
poetry." This struggle makes him one of those post-Napoleonic capitalism. Lucien's personal catastrophe i.e; the typical fate of
young ~en who either perished with polluted souls during the the poet and of true poetic talent in the world of fully developed
restora~10n or. a~aptcd themselves to the filth of an age turned capitalism.
.•
unh~ro1c and m 1t carved a career for themselves, like Julien Sorel, Nevertheless Balzac's composition is not abstractly objective
Ras~tgnac, de Marsay, Blondet and others of the same kidney. and this novel is not a novel with a theme, not a novel relating,
Lucten belongs to the latter group but occupies an entirely inde· in the manner of the later novelists, to one sphere of society alone,
pcn~:n~ position in this. company. With admirable daring and although Balzac by a most subtle weaving of his story introduces
.. .sensltlvJty Balzac created a new, specifically bourgeois type of poet: every feature of the capitalization of literature and brings onto
the poet as an Aeolian harp sounding to the veering winds and the scene none but these features of capitalism. But here as in all
tem~~ts of society, the poet as a rootless, aimlessly drifting, over- other works of Balzac the general social fabric is never directly
senstttve bundle of nerves,-a type of poet as yet very rare in thi:; shown on the surface. His characters are never mere Jay figure<~
period, but most characteristic for the subsequent evolution of expressing certain aspects of the social reality he wants to present.
bourgeots poetry from Verlaine to Rilke. T his type is diametrically The aggregate of social determinantc; is expressed in an uneven,
opposed to what Balzac himself wanted the poet to be· he intricate, confused and contradictory pattern, in a labyrinth of
portrayed his ideal poet in the person of Daniel D'Arth~z. a personal passions and chance happenings. The characters and sit-
character in this novel who is intended for a self-portrait. · . uations are always determined by the totality of the socially de.
Tl.le characterization of Lucien is not only true to type, it also cisive forces, but never simply and never directly. For this reaSOf\. ,. .. · •
prov1des the opportunity for unfolding all the contradictions en- thi~ so completely universa1 novel is at the same time the story of
gendered by the penetration of capitalism into literature. The one particular individual, an individual different from all others.

ll
intrinsic contradiction between Lucien's poetic talent and hi!. Lucien de Rubcmpre, on the stage, seems to react independently
hu~~n weakn~ss and rootlessness makes him a plaything of the tQ the internal and external forces which hamper his rise and
p~ht1cal and hterary trends exploited by the capitalists. It is this which help or hinder him as a result of apparently fortuitous per·
mixture of instability and ambition. the combination of a hanker· sonal circumstances or pa s.~ion s, but which ~ whatever form they
 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM

take, always spring from the same social environment which

···r
<J:,
BALZAC : LOST ILLUSIONS

cretized by the typical, and on the other hand the . rel~ti~nship

55
.•f

·~ . ,.;~
~f
'•

~~
between the individual and the social setting of ~h1ch 1t IS the
I

determines his aspirations and ambition.

duct and in which-or against which-it acts, 1s al~ays clear-
... 1:
This unity of the multifarious is a feature peculiar to Balzac;
it is the poetic form in which he expresses his conception of the r;o discernible, however intricate this relations~ip may be. .T~e i.'t . ::1
. .,
working of social forces. Unlike many other great novelists he Balzac characters, complete within themse~ves, hve. a~d act wtthm "'"'"'I •.;
. I

does not resort to any machinery such as, for instance, the tower a concrete, complexly stratified s~ia~ reahty. and 1t ts ~ways th~
-:J
totality of the social process that lS hnk~d ~th the .totali~ of ~e
:I
in Wil(zelm Meister's Appr-enticeship; every cog in the mechanism
of a BaJzacian plot is a complete, living human being with sp ecific character. The power of Balzac's ima.gmatiOn ~a~tfests ttsclf m
personal interests, passions, tragedies and comedies. The bond his ability to select and manipulate bts ch~racters m such a way
which links each character with the whole of the story is provided that the centre of the stage is always occupte~ by the figure whose
by some element in the make~up of the character itself, always in
·I· ersonal, individual qualities are the mo~t suttable for the dem~n­ ...
full accordance with the tendencies inherent to it. As this linl- ~ration, as extensively as possible and m transparent ~onncct10n ·•
always develops organically out of the interests, passions etc. of with the whole, of some important single asp ect ~f the s~c1al process. I: \t.:
The several parts of a Balzacian cycle have their own t~d~pendent \ ·'
the character, it appears necessary and vital. But it is the broader
inner urges and compulsions of the characters themselves which life because each of them deals with indi~id.ual dest1mcs. . But ...
give them fulness of life and render them non-mechanical, no mere these individual destinies are always a rad1at1on of the soc1ally
components of the plot. Such a conception of the characters typical of the socially universal, which can be separated from the
necessarily causes them to burst out of the story. Broad and spa- individual only by an analysis a posteriori. In the n~vels t~emselves
cious as Ba lzac's plots are: the stage is crowded by so many actors the individual and the general are inseparab~y umtcd, hke a fire
living such richly varied lives that only a few of them can be fully with the heat it radiates. Thus, in Lost Illuszons :he <.lcvelop.me~t
developed within one story. of Lucien's character i!; imcparably bound up w1th the capttaltst
This seems a deficiency of Balzac's method of composition; in penetration of literature. d
reality it is what gives his novels their full~blooded vitality and it Such a method of composition demands . an cxtrc~ely br.o a
is also what made the cyclic form a necessity for him. His r emark· basis for characterization and plot. Breadth t s also :equtre~ to C"<-
able and nevertheless typical characters cannot unfold their per- 1 de the element of chance from that accidental mtertwmeme~t
sonality fully within a single novel, but only certain features of it ~t pe~ons and events which Balza~, ~ike every other great epxc
and that only episodically ; they protrude b eyond the framework poet, uses with such sovereign supenon~y. Only a great ~ealth. of • r
of one novel and demand another, the plot and theme of which multiple interconnections affords suffict.ent clbow-z:oom 10 wht?h
perm it them to occupy the centre of the stage and develop to the chance can become artistically producttvc and ulttmatcly lose 1tS
full all their qualities and possibilities. The characters who re - fortuitom character. .
main in the background in Lost Illusions, Blondet, Rastignac: "In Paris only people who have many con~ect10ns can co~nt

l on chance to favour them ; the more connectto~s one ha~. .he

1
I
Nath an, Michel Chrcstien, play leading parts in other novels. The ., j
cyclical interdependence of Balzac's novels derives from his urge greater the prospect of success; for chance, too) 1s on the stdc of
t0 develop every one of his characters to the full and hence is I the bigger battalions." . ·u " ld
;c·
. '·
never dry and pedantic as cyclic novels of other, even very good
writers, so often arc. For the several parts of the cycle are never
I Balzac's method of sublima ting- chance 1s thus stl
fashioned " and differs in principle from the meth,od used by
0 •

determined by circumstances external to the characters, i.e. by

chronological or objective limits.
The general is thus always concrete and real because it is based
I
" l
modern authors. In his review of John Dos Passos Manhat~an
Transfe:r Sinclair Lewis criticizes the "old" method of _Plot:~u~ld·
in". Although he talks mostly of Dickens, the gist of ~ts cnttwm
.t.
ou a profound understanding of what is typical in each of the
characters fi guring in it-an understanding so deep that the par~
ticular is not eclipsed but on the contrary emphasized and con-
II
ap<=lplics to Balzac just as much. He says that the class1cal method
was clumsily contrived; by an unhappy c~anc.e Mr. Jones had to
travel in the same mail coach as Mr. Sm1th, 1n order that some-
 BALZAC ; LOST ILLUSIONS
57
- . --·-.., •n .c.uKV.t'~AN REALISM

· thi.ng very unpleasant and very entertaining might happen. He space within which hundreds of accidents may intl.'r~~ct each
pomts out that there is nothing of this in Manhattan Transfer~ other and yet in their aggregate .pro~uce fatcfu~ neccssJttes.. .
where the characters either do not meet at all, or do so in a per- The true necessity in Lost Illuswns 1s that Luc1en .must pe~1sh m
•, fectly natural way. Paris. Every step, every phase in t!te ~ise and dechnc o~ h1s !or-
What lies at the core of this modern conception is a non-dialec- tunes provide ever more profound s~1al and psychologtcal lu~ks
tic~! approach. to causality and chance, although of course most in this chain of necessity. The novel 1S so conceiVed tha~ every m- . ., ... ···:i.
wntcrs arc entirely unaware of this. They contrast chance with cidcnt is a step towards the same end, alt~ough eac~ s1?g~e ?ap·, I

causality and believe that chance ceases to be chance if its im- pening, while helping to reveal the underlymg nece.SSlty, IS ~~ ~tse!f
mcclia.te cause is revealed. But poetic motivation gains little, if accidental. The uncovering of such deep-seated soctal necess1t1es IS
anythmg, by such a device. Introduce an accident, however wc11- always effected by means of some action, by the forceful con~cntra.­
founded causal~y, into any tragic conflict and it is merely gro- tion of ev~nts aU moving towards the catastrophe. The extensiv_e and
tl.'squc; no cham of cause and effect could ever turn such an :lc- sometimes most circumstantial descriptions of a town, a dwelhng or
c~clent into a necessity. The most thorough and accurate descrip- an inn are never mere descriptions; by means of them Balzac creates
. t10n of the state of the ground which would cause Achilles to again and again the wide and varied spac~ req~ired for the cx-
sprain his ankle while pursuing Hector or the most brilliant medico- piosion of the catastrophe. The catastrophe 1tsel~ 1s m_ostly s~ddl.!r;-,
patholo.gical .exp1_anation why Antony lost his voice through " but its suddenn ess is only apparent, for the traits bnghtly Illumi-
I throat mfechon JUSt before he was due to make .his great speech nated by the catastrophe are the same traits w~ hav~ long been
\I over Caesar's body in the forum could ever make such things able to observe even though at a much lower mtens1ty.

~ appear as anything but grotesque accidents; on the other hand, in It is most characteristic of Balzac's methods that in Lost Illu·
the catastrophe of Romeo and Juliet the rough-hewn scarcely . )
sio 11 s two great turning-points in the story occur within a few days
motivated accidents do not appear as mere chance. ' or even within a few hours of each other. A few days suffice for
\'\'hy ? Lucien de Rubcmpre and Louise Bargeton to discover of each
F?r no other reason, of course, than that the necessity which other that they arc both provincials-a discovery that cause~ each
r.ulhfics chance consists of an intricate network of causal connec- of them to turn from the other. The catastrophe occurs dun.ng an
tions and because only the aggregate necessity of an entire trend evening spent together at the theatre. Ev_en more. sudden IS L~­
of clevelopmen~ constitutes a poetic necc~sity..Romeds and Juliet's cien's journalistic success. One afternoon, t.n ~espa~r, he r~ads h1s
l~ve mwt end m tragedy and only this necessity nullifies the ac- poem to the journalist Lou~teau; Louste~u mv1te~ h1m to l~ts offi.ce,
Cidental character of aU the happenings which are the immediate introduces him to his publisher, takes htm to the theatre, Luc1en
causes that bring about, stage by stage, this inevitable develop- writes his first review as a dramatic critic and awakes next morn·
ing to find himself a famous. jo~rn~list. The truth of sue~ catas
4

m e~t of the plot. It is ·or secondary importance whether such hap·

pemngs· taken by themselves, are motivated or not, and if the trophcs is of a social nature ; 1t hes m the truth of the social cate-
form er, to what extent. One happening is not more a matter of gories which in the final count determine such sudden turns _of
chance than another and the poet has a perfect right to choose, fortune. The catastrophe produces a concentration of es~cntml
among several equally accidental occurrences, the one he regards determinants and prevent~ the intrusion of inessential deta1ls.
as best suited to his purpose. Balzac makes sovereign use of this The problem of the essential and inessential _is another as~ect
freedom, and so did Shakespeare. of the problem of chance. From. the. point of. v1ew of the wnter
The poetic presentation of necessity by Balzac rests on his pr•)- every quality o f every human bemg IS a~ acci.dent ~~d ~very ob-
found grasp of the line of development concretely incarnated in jr.ct merely a piece of stage property, unttl the1r decistve Interc.on-
t~e theme in hand. By means of a broad and deep conception of ncctions are expressed in poetic form, by means of some _actwn.
his characters, a broad and deep portrayal of society and of the Hence there is no contradiction between the broad foundations on
subtle and multiple interconnections between his characters and which Balzac's novels are built up and their pointed, e.:'<plo!;ive
the social basis and setting of their actions, Balzac creates a wide action which moves from catastrophe to catastrophe. On the con~
 . - . ~:":''
.5R STUIHES IN EUROPEAN REALISM BALZAC : LOST ILLUSIONS

trary, the Balzacian plots require just such broad foundations be- the habits of thought and the experience of an age which i~ to an
,.,. :·1
•.
' .,
~ausc their intrica~y and tension, while revealing ever .new :rait~ increasing degree tuming away from objective reality and. lS con· ;

1
..... .,
m each ~haracte~,. never in~roduce anything radically new, but
m~r.ely gtve ~xph~Jt e>.:presston in action to things already im-
tent to regard either immediate experience, or expenence mflated
into a myth as the utmost that we can grasp of reality. .
..
phcttly contamed m the broad foundation. Hence Balzac's chara~;~ But it is, of course, not only in the breadth, depth and multi- f,,
ters never possess any traits which are in this sense accidental. For fariousness of his reproduct-ion of reality that Balzac transcen~s ~e . . I I

the charac.tt!rs hav~ not a single quality, not even a single ex- immediate. He goes beyond the bo~ndaries of av~rage reahty J1l i
1
:;l' .. ~~
t£'rnal a~tnb~te wh1ch does ~ot . acquire a decisive significance at his mode of expression as well. D Ar thez (who lS meant. for a
l o)
.,
· •
~ .I
s?me pomt m the plot. .Pre~tsely for this reason Balzac's descrip- portrait of Balzac himself) says in this novel: "A~d what 1s ~t? . ·•· ·.I
tions never create a settmg m the sense in which the word wac; Nothing more than concentrated nature. But this c~nce~trauo~ ,;:(:>~;1
.,..
later used in positivist sociology and it is for the same reason that is never formal; on the contrary, it is the greatest poss1bl~ mt.ens~: . .. ·~I ' {'

for instance Balzac's very detailed descriptions of people's houses fication of the content, the social and human essence of a sttua~ton ..
never appear as mere stage settings. Balzac is one of the wittiest writers who ever liv:d· B.ut h1s ~1t. ' ··j
. Con~ider f~r instance, the part played in Lucien's first disaster
m. Pan.s by h1s four suits of clothes. Two of these he has brought
wt~h ~1m fr~m Ang~ul.eme and even the better of the two proves
q\~1te 1mposs1ble durmg the very first walk Lucien takes in Paris.
I is not confined to brilliant and striking formulations; 1t consiSts
rather in his ability strikingly to present some essential point at t~e
maximum tension of il'> inner contradictions. At the outset of hlS
career as a journalist, Lucien de Rubempre must write a.n unfav·
..
•\', .
'~t .• :
\" .
..'~l
~ ·,1
.. I
: ·i·: j
H ts first Paris-made suit also turns out to be an armour with too ourable review of Nathads novel which he ~reatly a~mm:~· A ,. ..,,
I ;•
~·
~

many ch~nks in the firs~ battle with Parisian society which he has few days later he has to write a sec~nd .art1cle. ref~tmg h1s own ('',
....
tc ~~ht m. ~ada~e d Espard's box at the Opera. The second unfavourable review. Lucien, the nov1ce JOUrnalist, ts at first com· ·····''
Pam1an su1t IS dc~tvercd too la~e to play a part in this first phase pletely at a loss when faced with such a task. But first L~usteau : J.;
of t~c sto~y and ts put away m a cupboard during the ascetic,
poetiC penod-to emerge again later for a short time in connection
and then Blondet enlighten him. In both cases Balzac glVes us
a brilliant discourse, perfect in its reasoning. Lucien is ama~ed
··t.t '
J;li..:
with the. jo.urnalistic ei;>isode. All other objects described by Balzac and dismayed by Lousteau's arguments. "But what you are saymg
play a stmtlar dramatlc part and embody similar essential factors. now" he exclaims, "is perfectly correct and reasonable." "Well, ::~~;;
could you tear Nathan's book to pieces, if it ":'ere not ?" a~ks . t!j
Balzac builds his plots on broader foundations than any other
author before or aft~r him, but nevertheless there is nothing in Lousteau. Many writers after Balzac have descnbed the un~nn· .
.,' ,,''··
..•
thc.m not gcrrna~e to the story. The many-sided influence of multi- cipled nature of journalism and shown how men wrote articles '· ..
.·.··;;j
fanously determmed factors in them is in perfect conformity with against their own convictions and better kno':'l~dge; ?ut only ' ~!
the structure of objective reality whose wealth we can never· ade- Balzac penetrated to the very core of the. j~urnahsttc soph1sro when .. : ~! rt~
quately grasp and reflect with our ever all too abstract all too he made his journalists playfully and bnlhantly marsh~l the argu-
riP"icl, all too direct, all too unilateral thinking. ' ments for and against any issue according to the reqUirements ?f
Balzac's many-sided, many-tiered world approaches reality much those who paid them and turn th7 abil~ty to do th~s into a n:ade m ·t t
~lore closely than any other method of presentation. which they are highly skilled, qUtte without relat10n to the1r own
B~t the more c~ose~y the Balzacian method approaches objective '· i
r<~ahty, the ~ore ~~ d1verges from the accustomed, the average, the
d1rect and 1mmed1ate manner of reflecting this objective reality.
'I
convictions.
On this level of expression the Balzacian ''st~ck-excha~~e of the
spirit" is revealed as a prof?und ~ragi~com~dy of the spmt of the
.•

II
!I
B~lz~c's m:thod transcends the narrow, habitual, accepted limits of
th1!; tmmed1acy and because it thus runs counter to the comfortable
...I
;
bourgeois class. Later reahst wnters ~escn~ed the already c~m­
pleted capitalist c?rrup~io~. of bourgems ~th1~; but Balzac pamts 't
familiar, usual way of looking at things, it is regarded by many a.~
b;:ocra t cd" or " cum bersome. " I t 1s
"cx atrcr · t h c w1de
· sweep, the great·
ness itself of Balzac's realism which forms the sharpest contra.st to I it$ earlier stage, 1ts pnm1t1ve accumulation m all the som?~e
splendour of its atrocity. In Lost Illusions the ~act that the spmt
ha~ become a commodity to be bought and sold ts not yet accepted ~

I
 J • '"' • v.v•c.;:, •N .l!.U)'(U.t'I:!.AN REALISM BALZAC : LOST ILLUSIONS Ol

as a mattt-r of cour~e and the spirit is not yet reduced to the dreary Iy, is about to commit suicide. Va:utrin takes the stage with the
greyness of a machme-rnade article. The spirit turns into a com- same motivated-unmotivated suddenness as Mephistopheles in
modity here before our_very eyes; it is something just happening, Goethe's Faust or Lucifer in Byron's Cain. Vautrin's function in
a new event loaded with: dramatic tension. Lousteau and Blondet
we;e yesterday what Lucien turns into in the course of the novel :
Balzac's Human Comedy is the same as that of Mephistopheles
and Lucifer in Goethe's and Byron's mystery·plays. But the
...
wnters who have been forced to allow their gifts and convictions changed times have not only deprived the devil-the principle of
to bc~ome. a c~mmodit~. It is the cream of the post-war irztclli- negation--of his superhuman greatness and glory, have not only
gen~.sw wluch IS her~ d~lVen to take the best of their thoughts and sobered him and brought him down to earth- the nature and
feehngs. to market, off~nng for sale the finest, if belated, flowering method of his temptation have also changed. Although Goethe's
~f the Ideas and cmot10ns produced by the bourgeois intellectuals old age reached well into the post-revolutionary epoch and al-
smcc the days of the Renaissance. And this la:te flowering is not though he gave the most profound expression to its deepest prob-
merely an aftermath of cpigoncs. Balzac endows his characters lems,. he still regarded the great transformation of the world since
~ .
with an agility, scope and depth of mind, with a freedom from all
provincial narrmvmindedness, such as had never before been seen
in. Fra~ce in this fo.rm, e~cn though its dialectic is constantly
I the Renaissance as something positive and valuable and his Mephis
topheles was 'a part of the force that ever wills the evil but ever
creates the good.' In Balzac this 'good' no longer exists save in
4

twisted mto a soph1st1c toymg with the contradictions of existence. the shape of fantastic dreams. Vautrin's M ephistophelian criticism
It is because this fine flowering of the spirit is at the same time a of the world is only the brutal and cynical expression of what
!iwamp of self-prostitution, corruption and depravity that the tragi- everyone does in this world and o£ what everyone who wants to
comedy enacted before us in this novel achieves a depth never survive must do. Vautrin says to Lucien: "You have nothing.
before attained in bourgeois literature. You arc in the position in which the Medicis, Richelieu, Napoleon
· }
Thus it is the very depth of Balzac's realism which removes his were at the outset of their careers. They all bought their future
art .~o cor_nplctely beyond the photographic reproduction of "aver- with ingratitude, betrayals and sharp contradictions. H e who
age reahty. For the great concentration of the content lends the wants everything must risk all. Consider: when you sit down to
picture, even without the add~tion of any romantic ingredients, a the gaming-table, do you argue about the rules of the game? The
sombre, gruesome and fantastic quality. Only in this sense does rules are cut and dried. You accept them." In this conception of
Balzac at his best submit to some extent to romantic influences with- society it is not only the content that is cynical.. Such conceptions
out hirr.c;elf becoming a romanticist. The fantastic element in Balzac had already been put forward long before Balzac. But the point
derives n.erely fro.~ the fac~ that he radically thinks through to in the words of temptation spoken by Vautrin is that they express
the end t~e necessities of soc1al reality, beyond their normal limits .,
nakedly, without illusions and without spiritual frills, the wordly
beyond even thci.r fea~ibilit~. An instance of this is the sto~ 'I .
~~ wisdom which· is common to all intelligent men. The 'temptation'
M clmoth Reconczled, m which Balzac turns the soul's salvation lies in the fact that Vautrin's wisdom is identical with the wisdom
into a .commodit.y which is C]Uoted on the produce exchange and of the purest, saintliest characters of Balzac's world.
the. pnce of w~uch begins to fall rapidly from its initial height
.1
In the famous letter which the 'saintly • Mme. de Mortsauf
owmg to excessive supplies.
. The fig-ure o.f Vaut~in is the incarnation of this fantastic quality I writes to Felix de Vandenesse, she says about society:
" For me the existence of society is not in question. As soon as

J
1r1 Bab:ac. It 1s cc.:rtamly not by chance that this "Cromwell of you accept society instead of living outside it, you must accept as
the hulks" figures in those novels of Balzac in which the typical excellent its basic principles and to-morrow you will, in a manner
figures of the young post-war revolutionary generation tum from of speaking, sign a contract with it.''
ideals to reality. Thus Vautrin appears in the shabby little board- This is expressed in a rather vague and poetic form, but the
in.~~house in which Rastignac experiences his personal ideological .I naked meaning of the words is the same as what Vautrin tells Lu-
cns1.~: thus he turns up again at the end of Lost Illu sions when
Lucien de Rubempre, hopele~sly ruined both rnateriaJly and moral- j cien-just as Rastignac noted with amazement that Vautrin's
cyuical wisdom was identical in its content with the dazzlingly

:.L::.
 ....------
62 - --·- - .. -- ·-"-·-----~------
STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM

witty ap~or!sms of the Vicomtesse de Beauseant . . . This profound

co_nformity m the assessment of what is essential in capitalist reality
r .L.
"
BALZ.AC : LOST 1LLUS10NS

rc.:futation. by capitalist reality. By thus creatively expressing the

true nature of the capitalist world, these writers rose not only
. !

tlHS conformity of opinion between the escaped convict and th~ above the illusory opinions put forward in their writings by the
flower of t?e aristocratic intelligentsia takes the place of the theatri~ characters who are their mouthpieces, but also above the sophistic
c~lly ~yst.tc appear~nce of a Mephistopheles. Not for nothing is .: ~•...... ·:
cynicism of the genuine representatives of capitalism which they .. ,.. ·. ;,
.,<1,1
\ autnn mckn~med Cheat-Death' in the language of the hulks portray. To express ' that-which-is' is the highest level of c~g­
and o~ th~ police narks. Vautrin stands in truth in the graveyard
(
nizance which a bourgeois thinker or poet can attain before social '·;~'· '4
of all tllus10ns developed during several centuries on his face the evolution has reached the stage at which he can altogether jet·
satanic grin of the bitter Balzacian wisdom that ail men are either tison the bourgeois class basis. Naturally a core of idealist illusions
fools or knaves.
. But this sombre picture does not signify pessimism in the later-
.I. inevitably still persistc; even in such expressions of ' that-which-is.'
n:net?enth-century sense ~f the word. The great: poets and thinkers l Hegel, at the end of ~is analysis of Didcrot, !'urns up t~c:e illu:io~s
by saying that the clear recognition of these contrad1chons stgm-
o. thts ~hasc of b?ur~eo1S development fearlessly rejected the dull fies that the spirit has in reality already overcome them. . ~ •:

I
apologetics of capttahst progress, the myth of a contradictionkss. It is of course an obvious and typical idealist illusion when 'tI• · •
smooth~y evolutionary advance. It was precisely this d epth and Hegel believes that the perfect intellectual grasp of the contradic- ... I

ma?y-sidedness that forced them into a contradictory position: tions of reality is equivalent to overcoming them in fact; for even •.

t~eu proud, criti~al. recognition, . th~ir intellectual and poetic grasp this intellectual grasp of. contradictions which cannot as yet be ··· '
o. the contrad1cttons of capitalist development is necessarilv i
overcome in fact, will itself always prove illusory. The form is
coupled with groundless illusions. In Lost Illusions the circle around different but the essence 'of the illusion remains the same.
D~~ieJ D'Arthez is the poetic manifestation of these illw;ions, just Nevertheless these illusions contributed to the continuation of the
··t.ts m The Nephew of Rameau Diderot himself is the incarnation great struggle of mankind for freedom, however mistaken a motiva-
of these illusions. In all these cases the existence of another and a tion may have been Balzac's desperately earnest searching for truth
better. truth i.s poetically opposed t9 the squalid reality. In his and justice is an important and tragic phase in the history of human~
analys1s of Dtderot's masterpiece Hegel already pointed out the

I
ism. In the twilight of a traditional period when the sun of the
wea~ness ?f ~h~s poetic argumentation. Hegel saw clearly, in con- revolutionary humanism of the bourgeoisie had al~eady set ~n·'l
nectiOn With D1derot, that the voice of historical evolution is heard the light of the rising new democratic and proletanan humamsm
~ot in th~ isol_ated portrayal of what is good, but in the negative: was not yet visible over the horizon, such a criticism of capitalism
m w~.:tt 1s evtl and perverse. . According to Hegel, the perverse J a!= Balzac's was the surest way to preserve the great heritage of : !l,·
conS'cJOusness sees the. connec~10n-or. at least the contradictory
nature. of. th~ connectto~-whtle the tllusory good has to be con-
bou.r,~eois humanism and save what was best in it for the future
benefit of mankind.
·1st\: ..
tent wtth mctdental and Isolated details. ' The content of what the In Lost Illusions Balzac created a new type of novel of disillu- ..
• 0

~pirit says of and about itself is thus a complete inversion of all sionment, but his novel far outgrew th~ forms which this type of
'
concepts and realities, a general deception of itself and all others l "
i novel took later in the nineteenth century. The difference between
and hence the shamelessness with which the deception is pro~ )
I the latter and the former, which makes this novel and Balzac's
claimed is the greatest truth.' i
i whole oeuvre unique in the literature of the world, is a hi!'torical
But in spite of all illusions, the Diderot of the Rameau dialogue j difference. Balzac depicted the original accumulation of capital in
or the D' Arthez-Balzac of Lost Illusions should not of course be J the ideological sphere, while his successors, even Flaubcrt, the
rigidly set against the poetically represented negati~e world. The -1
I greatest of them, already acccpte~ as an accomplished fact that -.
basic contradiction lies precisely-in the fact that in spite of all the all human values were included m the commo<hty structur~ of ~
illusions of D'Arthez, Balzac did write Lost lllusio11s. Diderot's capitalism_ In Balzac we se.e the tumultuous tragedy ~f btrth;
and ~alzac's consciousness did embrace both the positive and thP. his successors give us the hfcless fact of consummation and
negative of the worlds they described, both the illusions and their lyrically or ironically mourn the dead. Balzac dtpicts the last
 great struggi: against the capitalist degradation of man while his
~~s~css~:~iJ1a 1Po~ ~~~:;~e~~ degraded [capitalist w.orld. 'Rornanti-
L
CHAPTER THREE

I
. . on1y one eature of his total conce
tiOn, a feature wh~ch he overcame and developed further-w~
~o~t:~r~ome ~.Y h1s ~ucc:ssors, but lyrically and ironicalJy trans.
force.s~~ ~v.~~~t~~ ':~~hp~~~~~~e;;l~l:~!~~:go:~~o~:~ :~~~~
and Impressions mstcad of an active and b. t" . ;~ '
things in themselves
h ·
Th .. ~ ~ec ~ve p~esentatton of
e m11ttant partJcipat10n m the eat
Balzac and Stendhal ··'

sl~~an struggle _for. liberation slackens into mourning overgrthe 1N s R PTE :\f BE R 1840, Balzac, then at the zenith of his glory
ery that. capltahsm has brought on mankind and th T published an enthusiastic and most profound review of The Monas-
ang:r a~ this degradation dies down to an impotent! e a~:olt:~! tery· of Parma by Stcndhal, an as yet quite unknown author. In
~aSSIVe Irony. Thus Balzac not only created the nover of disYHu- October Stendhal replied to this review in a long and detailed
~~n~c~. but also exhausted the highest possibilities of this type of
d ve · 1s successors who c~ntinued in his footsteps, moved on a
) letter, in which he listed the points on which he accepted Balzac's
criticism and those in reference to which he wished to defend his
.

'1
I

ownward slope,, however great their literary achievements rna own creative method in opposition to Balzac. This encounter, i
bavc ?een. Their artistic decline was socially and h' t • 11~
i
·I

unavo1dable. 1s onca ~ which brought the two greatest writers of the XIXth century face

I j
to face in the arena of literature, is of the greatest importance, al-
though-as we will show later--Stendhal's letter was more guarded
and less candid in expressing his objections than Balzac's· review.
Nevertheless it is clear from the review and the letter that the two
,.

i l
I
great men were essentially in agreement as to their view of the
central problems of realism and also of the diverging paths which
each of them pursued in search of realism.
j Balzac's .review is a model for the concrete analysis of a great
work of art. In the whole field of literary criticism there arc few
other examples of such a detailed, sympathetic and sensitive revela-
tion of the beauty of a work of art. It is a model of criticism by
a great and thinking artist who knows his own craft inside our.
The significance of this criticism is not in the least diminishcri
by the fact-which we propose to show in the course of our argt:.-
roent-that despite the admirable intuition with which Balzac un-
. derstood and interpreted Stendhal's intentions, he yet rcmaine4
blind to Stcndhal's chief aim and attempted to foist on the latier-t ...... ·'
his own creative method.
These limitations, however, are not limitations of Balzac's own
personality. The reason why the comments of great artists on their
own works and the works of others are so instructive is precisely
because such comments are always based on the inevitable and
productive single-mindedness. But we can really benefit by such
criticisms only if we do not regard them as abstract canons but
uncover the specific point of view from which they spring. For
65
~.
 66 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN R.EALIS~f f BALZAC AND STENDHAL 67 .. ,
the single-mindedncss of so great an artist as Balzac is as we have
~lready .said, bo~h. i~evitable and _productive; it is' precisely this
J Balzac works out the contrast between his own trend and the
" literature of ideas " · most pointedly and this is understandable .,. · .,.,!..
•L

~mglc-z:tundedncss wh1ch enables h1m to conjure up before us life enough because his opposition to Stendhal shows itself here more •: . ...
1n aU 1ts fullness. clearly than anywhere else. .Balzac says : " I don't believe that it
The urge to cl~rify his attitude to the only contemporary writer is possible to depict modern soci~ty by the met?ods ?f seven.teenth· :·.\.,.~
...
~

h.t r~garded . as h~s equal caused Balzac to define at the very be- century and eighteenth.century hterature. I thmk p1ctures, unagcs, . .' . . ~.
I
gmmng of lus review with more than his accustomed precision his

l
descriptions, the use of dramatic elements of dialogue are indis· :~:··· ·~
own position in reference to the development of the novel, i.e~ hi!) pensable to the modern writers. Let us admit frankly that the form '· · ,.'
own place in the history of literature. In the introduction to Th~ of Gil Blas is tiring and that there is something infertile in the piling ,: '.j,.
~uman Con:~dy _he con~ned himself in the main to establishing
Ius own pos1t1on m relat1on to Si~ Walter Scott, mentioning only
. ·1 · up of events and ideas." When immediately after this he extols
Stendhal's novel as a masterpiece of the "literat~rc of ideas," he
....
' •·.',: i'·.•.

the features he regarded as a contmuation uf Scott's li fe-work and

I j:
stresses at the same time that Stendhal has made certain con· ''
~
I

those which tr~nscendcd it . .But in his review of The Monastery cessions to the other two schools of literature. We shall see in the ' '
of Parn_w. he .gives a most profound analysis of all the trends of following that Balzac understood with exceptio?al s~nsitiv.i~ th:~.t ·~ .I
style e_.>astmg 111 tl_1e novel of his time. The concrete depth of thi.c; it was impossible for Stendhal to make conccsstons m arUstlc de· I
~ ' .,
analys1s of style wtll not be diminished in the eyes of the intelligent tail either to romanticism or to the trend represented by Balzac ·.·
rcade~ by th~ fac~ that Balzac's terminology is rather loose and himself; on the other hand we shall also see that when discussing ..,.
somct1mes m~sleadmg. .53 J.t J.( 7 CJ . . the final problems of composition, the problems which already al- .. ~
'· ~

The .essenttal c?n.tent. of th1s anal~sis. could be summed up a 3 most touch on basic problems of Weltanschauung, he censured ··~ '\
follows . Balzac d1stmgU1shes three prmc1pal trends of style in the Stendhal precisely for his failure to make concessions. L.:
novel. T~esc trend~ are : 'the " literature of ideas" by which he What is at issue here is the central problem of the nineteenth· 1·''
_~,·,

means ch1efly the hterature of the French enlightenment. Voltaire

and Le .sage am~ng t~e ~Id and Stendha1 and Merimce among the
century world·view and style : the attitude . to romantici s~. N:'
great writer living after the French revolution could avoid this
li..; ' •.

new wntcrs are m Ius VIew the greatest representatives of this issue. Its discussion began already in the Weimar period of Goethe
..
tr<'J.ld. Another trend is the "literature of images," represented and Schiller and reached its culminating point in Heine's critique l'f·
'· :~

mamly by the romantics Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Victor Hugo

and others. The third trend, to which he himself adheres strives
of romanticism. The basic problem in dealing. with this issue .was
that romanticism was by no means a purely literary trend; it was
·r:~
1, ··:
•''
for a synthesis of both the other trends. Balzac- rather ~nfortll­ the expression of a deep and spontaneous revolt against rapidly ..
nately-calls this trend "literary eclecticism." (The source of this developing capitalism, although, naturally in very contradictory ::!
ll llfortunate term is probably his ovcN:stirnation of the idealist forms. The extreme romanticists soon turned into feuclalist reac· ·F~.:: ~
p~1ilosophers of his time, such as Royer·Coliard). Balzac enumerates
'

tionaries and obscurantists. But the background of the whole ..

Sll· Walter Scott, Mme. de Stacl, Fennimore Cooper and George movement is nevertheless a spontaneous revolt against capitalism.
Sand as representing this trend. The list shows clearly how lonely All this provided a strange dilemm~ for .the great writers ?f the .age, ~·.
Balzac felt in his own time. What he has to say about these writers who, while they were unable to nse above the bourgeoiS honzon, ,. 1
..·'I
-for inst~nce his rn~st int.crcsting review of Fennimore Cooper'.<: yet strove to create a world~picture that woul~ _be ~oth comp:e· .ti
works wh1ch he pubhshed m the R evue Parisienne, shows that his hensive and real. They could not be romant1c1sts 10 the stnct i
agreement with them regarding the deeper problems of creative '!
sense of the word; had they been that, they could not have under-
methods did not go very far. But in the Stendhal review, when he stood a11d followed the forward movement of their age. On the i
l
~
·I
wanted. to justify his own creative method, as a great historical other hand they could not. disregard the criticism levelled by thP- '·:.~·
trend, m the eyes of the only contemporary writer whom he re- romanticists at capitalism and capitalist culture, without exposing !
garded as his ~qual, ~e.felt compdled t? point to a gaJaxy of pre- themselves to the danger of becomin~ blind extoller!' of bourgeois
cursors, of wnters stnvmg towards sim1Jar goals. !\Ocicty, and apologists of capitalism. They therefore had to at-
.r-• ,.) r ~~ r- •-..·}
[,/ "' . _.; (..., ' ~··) ".:!
 . th to pick any httle nowt;l ,
tempt to overcome romanticism (in the Hegelian sense}, i.e. to t tray from h IS pa h
thoughts, d oes no . s . eed." All along Balzac stresses t e
· ·fight against it, preserve it and raise it to a higher level all at the everything has a dtthyra:nbJc sp d frugality of Stcndhal's com-
same tim(!. (This was a general tendency of the time and by no absence of episode, the dnectn.ess, an n'lty of tendencies inherent
means required acquaintance with Hegel's philosophy, which Bal- · · · certam commu
position. In thts ?ratse a .f t Superficially it would be pre-
zac himself lacked.) We must add that this synthesis was not
achieved completely and without contradictions by any of the
in both writers 15 made mam cs.
. . h th t the contras 1
cisely m thts sp ere . a d B 1 's romantically many-co1ourec •
t ·n style between Stendhal's .
1 '·
.,
''··I.
. I

great writers of the age. Their greatest virtues as writers rested on "enlightemst seven
. , ty an
.
a dzach t' mode of compos1t10n .· ·
J')
contradictions in their social and intellectual position, contradic- . · bl ncb an c ao 1c . h'
tions which they boldly followed through to their logical conclusion,
and almost mcxtnca y 1
greatest. Yet this contrast concea s a ec;o pick a flower by the
d affinity as well; m ts .·•:•
but which they could not objectively solve. better novels Balzac also does not ~tolopnd nothing but the essen·
Balzac may also be counted among the writers who while ac· · he, too, dcptc · ts the essentm· a· ..hat Balzac and sten d-
roadside
·cepting romanticism, at the same time consciously and vigorously tial. The cl•ffcrence and the .contrast tst' m1 "' Balzac>s concept1on
· ' . . of
strove to overcome it. Stcndhal's attitude to romanticism is on the . t consider essen •a . .
hal, each for h ts par ' . . d far leo;s concentrated mto a
contrary a complete rejection. He is a true disciple of the philoso- ntl.al is far more mtncate an .
the esse Stenclhal's.
phers of the Enlightenment. This difference between the two f ew QTCat moments than t' tht's passionate contempt
writers is of course manifest in their creative meihods. Stendhal o • • f r the essen 1a1,
This passionate stnvmg o . . 1' k that unites these two great
for instance advises a novice author not to read modern authors; for all tnv1al . . realism lS · the art1st1c •
m . · and
f their phtlosophtes
if he wanted to learn to write good French he should study, if . . f t\1e polar dtvcrgence o S dh 1'5
writers m sp1te o . h B 1 ·n his analysis of ten a
possible, books written before 1700; if he wanted to learn to think
l creative methods. Th~t ts w y a ~c, 1 u on the deepest problems
correctly, he should read Helvetius' "De !'esprit,, and Jeremy novel, could not refran: ~rom t~~c ~~g to~ical to this clay. Balzac
Bentham. \ of form-problems whtc l are :tgd' I ble connection between a
· c1ea rly the m tsso {u 1 composition. He t h ere·

,Ii
Balzac on the contrary admired such outstanding romanticists the artist sees qmte
. f b' ect and success u
as Chenier and Chatcaubriand, although not uncritically. We shall felicitous chmcc o su .J ,ain in detail the consuro·
see later that it is this divergence of opinion that lies at the root . · t unportant to exp1 h' 1
fore considers tt mos dl 1 . tt'Jng the scene of ts nove
of the decisive controversy between them. . h by Sten ta m se h · t
mate art1stry s. own B lzac uite rightly, stresses t e pom
We must stress this divergence from the start, for unless we.are
clear on this point we cannot assess the true significance of the lI
in a little ltahan court.
that Stendhal's picture grows l.ar deyoh
a f ' 6. nd the framework of petty
What he shows in his
praise Balzac gave to· Stendhal's book. For the feeling, the wealth I . · · a small Ita 1an uc Y· · b
court mtngucs m odcrn autocracy. He brmgs e·
of thought and the perfect absence of envy with which Balzac novel is the typical structure o.£ t~c manifestation the eternal typc:.o;
championed his only real rival is admirable not cnly as a personal
attitude -although the history of bourgeois literature knows very
.1 fore us .m thclr · most charactens
1
. 1 1.
. f rm of soc1a eXlstence.
•
"fie has wntten the mo d•
. ld
few examples of a similar objective tribute. Balzac's review and his
l Produced •by· t usn o s Balzac " th e nove1 that Machiavelh 1 wou Tlte
ern Il Pnncrpe, say ~led to nineteenth-century Ita y.
enthusiasm are so admirable because by them he strove to ensure have written had he b~en eXl ical book in the best sense of . the
the success of a work which was in diametrical opposition to his own
most cherished aims. Again and again Balzac stresses the stream~
t
Monastery of .Par'?~ lS ~p b fore the reader all the suffermgs
word. Finally It bnlhant y ays e 'll of I ouis XIII."
lined, concentrated structure of Stendhal's novel. He describes · h 1· b the caman a ' · ·
inflicted on Ric. e lCU y ' vel achieves its comprehensive
this structure with some justification as dramatic, and claims that In Balzac's vtew Stcndha~ s no . 1 'd 'n Parma on a stage
in this incorporation of a dramatic element Stendhal's style is re. . 1 b e 1ts scene ts al 1 ' •
typ icality prectse Y ecaus . . For Balzac contmues ,
latcd to his own. Following this train of thought he praises . d petty mtngues. ' b'
ot trivial mterests a~ those which occupied the ca .mcts
Stendhal for not embellishing his novel with "hors d'oeuvres ", to present such vast mt~rcsts as ld necessarily require so wtde a
with insertions. "No, the persons act, reflect and feel and the of Louis XIV or ~apo eon ~~~tion as would ~eatly impede the
drama goes forward all the time. The poet, a dramatist in hie; stage, so much obJccttve exp ,
1

_,,J,
l
I
.. . . - -·. ---..,....----- ___ _.. _....__ ····--
 ll

1
BALZAC AND STENDHAL
70 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM
of the past century meet and join hands; they arc at one in their
can be taken in at a glance and St ~~tr~st, the stage of Parma
smooth continuity of the action In rejection of all attempts to drag reali~m down from thic; height of
yet demonstrates the character· t" _en al s Parma, small as it is, the essential.
In sa ~ IC l~ner structure of the court of Balzac admires in Stendhal's novel above all the remarkable
character~ which come to life in it. In this respect, too, the final ·
any autocratic ruler
structural quality of ·the ymg . t~ts, Balzac reveals an essential
, . . great rca11sttc bourgeo · 1 Th .
~ nove. e wnter. objectives of the two great realists are closely related. Both regard
t1lC Justonan of private life,
hidden fluctuations of societyas th:
F" ld'
_mg. p~t lt, must describe the
movements, its incipient trend; it . I?~msiC laws governing its
the portrayal of the great types of social evolution as their main
task~ but their conception of what is typical has nothing in com·
tion~ry upheavals. But great hi~to:i~~VIsible growth and its revolu- mon with that of the later Western realistc; who wrote after 1848
of history can very rarely b d events, and the great figures
development of society in t~ af aptedf to the demonstration of the
,\ and who confuse the typical with the average. Balzac and Stcndhal
regard as typical only figures of exceptional qualities, who mirror
accident that in Balzac's w~~i~n: ~ concrete types. It is not by I all the essential aspects of some definite stage of development, evolu-
and always only e isodicall g apoleon appears very rarely tionary tendency or social group. In Balzac's view· Vau~rin is the •
the intellectual co!ent of t~' ~tho~gh .the N~poleonic ideals and typical criminal and not some ordinary average citizen who by
part in many novels of Balz:c ;~o eomc ~mptre play a dominant chance gets drunk, and kills a man-a~ the later naturalists would
not know hi!; craft if he choos~s ; zac. consl~ers that a writer does iu this case have handled the problem of typicality. What Balzac
of great historical events instead o~fh~~ su~Ject the ;xternal glitter admires is precisely the energy with which Stendhal has kneaded
the two princes of Parma, their minister Count Mosca, the
the characteristic develo ment . e mternal nches found in
his reviews, (also publish~d b t~~ ~ctal ele~e~ts. In another uf Duchess of Sanscverina and the revolutionary Ferrante Palla into
Eugene Sue, Balzac quotes th eulue Par~zenne) dealing with such typical figures. Balzac's unbiassed enthusiasm for Ferrante
says: " The novel tolerate.~ e examp e of Sl.l' Walter Scott. He Palla is especially intere.c;ting and deeply characteristic of the ob-

~= o~l~ as sccon~ary ch!~t!.p~r':~~ell~fcf:~ ~"~:U

jectivity with which he sets aside his own interests and concerns
himself with nothing but the problems of the evolution of realism.
deML. o llcotsh, Louis XI, Eltzabeth of England. Richard'c ry He su·csses that in· creating the character of Michel Chrestien he
lon-a t esc great fi r t k th . reur-
only, when the dramatic ~ es a e e stage for short momentc; had himseli created something similar to Stendhal's Ferrante Palla;
form requires their prcse~ce :~v~ by the creator of this literary but adds most emphatically that in the shaping of such a type he
reader has already made th ~ scene, but not before the has been far surpa.c;sed by Stendhal.
character~ and has shared t~e~~~am~ance of a .host. of secondary Nevertheless, the deeper Balzac probes into the composition
ance of the great historical fi actiOn to the tmmment appearM problems of Stendhal's, the more evident the difference
the reader already sees such a gfiure. When the latter does appear between their mode.c; of composition must become. We have seet\
characters in the story. Scott gure t~rough the eyes of the minor with what reasoned enthusiasm Balzac followed, step by step, the
for his pen, but he always car~:;~~~ ~ os~ gre~ even ts as subjects
form and content of Stendhal's portrayal of the court at Parma.
to t~em, by depicting the spirit and ;~~~~so e causes which Jed
But it is this, his delighted admiration, that finally .leads Balzac to
his greatest and most important objection to the Stendhal novel.
scntmg a whole social milieu instead . f_ the. age, and pre·
atmosphere of great political · ts, of movmg m the rarified He says that this part is the real novel · and the story of Fabricc
tl. . even . del Dongo's youth that precedes it should have been only briefly
h a as ~n ally, as a comrade-
0 n us pomt Balzac regards Stendh 1 touched upon. The portrayal of the del Dongo family; the anta-
inMarms of equal rank as a · 't
trivially detailed pain~inrr ofwnl erl w lo despises petty realism, the gonism between the pro-Austrian aristocratic .family and the Napo-
,., oca co our or an empt h · t · l
n:onumcntality and who: just like Bal h" y .Is~nca leon-admirer Fabrice and hi!; aunt, the future Duchess of San·
severina; the description of Eugene Beauharnais' court at Milan
h · uncovering the true dr" . f zac tmsclf, by conscientious-
t~ present to the reader :~en~ o~c;s <?f ~he social pr~ccss, strive~ and many othei' things do not, in Balzac's view, belong in thi!l
every social phenomenon. In th~~ ypllc? thand essentsal tra its in novel at all, nor does the whole Stendhalian buildin~-up of the
. · ana YSJS c two greatest realist~
.~
 • ·· -- - · - · ... .._., .. ~ .. IO;IIl'l.

t~nd -the period following u on h

the Duchess of Sanseverina topp t e return of Count Mosca and great, noble-minded descendants of the heroic phase of bourgeois
F:abrice and Clclia and Fabric ~rm~ilit~c story of the love between history, the age of the revolution and Napoleon. All Stendhal heroes
H ere Balzac would like to im e s wh. rawal to the monastery. save their mental and moral integrity from the taint of their time
on Stendha1. Most of th .B I pose lS own method of composition by escaping from life. Stendhal deliberately represents the death of
. e a zac novels have h
and the1r predominant atmos h . a muc rounder plot Julien Sorel on the scaffold as a form of suicide and Fabrice and :'1

found in S~endhal or in the n~v:~: ~~ ~uch_ more of one piece than is Lucien withdraw from life in a similar way, if less dramatically
l.
mostly depicts some catastroph t tl e ezghteenth century. Balzac and with less pathos.
and space or else shows us ~ ~nse y concentrated both in time Balzac entirely failed to notice this d ecisive point in Stendhal's
~ . picture with the magic of a ~~o~~~h of .catastro~hes, a.nd tints the world-view when he suggested that Tlze Monastery of Parma ought
of tune. Thus does he seek t' . at IS never mconsistent or out
ar zst1c escape from h fl bb to be concentrated around and restricted to the struggles at the ..
I

ness of modern bourgeois Iif b . t e. a y shapeless. court of Parma. But' all that Balzac considered superfluous from
features of the Shakes e dy cmbodymg certam compositional the viewpoint of his own method of composition were for Stendhal
. pearean rama and 0 f th I . ·•
m the structure of his no 1 A e c ass1cal novella matters of primary importance. Thus, to begin with, the opening
composition is that man v;hs. ne~essary result of this mode of of The Monastery of Parma-the Napoleonic age, Eugene Bcau-
their destinies within its ~imi~racters m sue~ a noyel. cannot fulfil harnais' glittering, colourful viceregal court) as the decisive influence
structure rests on the assumpt: T~e Balzaczan prmciple of cyclic determining Fabrice's whole men tality and development, and in
plete characters wiH reappear 1~~ t~ at such 1unfinishccl and incom- contrast to it the vivid satirical description of the vile, contemptible ·
story in which the mood and c centra fig ures of some other Austrian tyranny and the portrayal of the Del Dongos, the rich
occupying a central position T~~osph:re arc appropriate to their Italian aristocrats demeaning themselves to act as spies of the hated
With later forms·of the C 1'. 2S rrmctp}e has nothing in Common Austrian enemy- all these things were absolute essentials to Stend-
Zola. One should thinky~/~ nov~ ' tuch as we find in the works of hal, and for the same reason the same applies to the end of the
Nucingcn, Maxime de T rat'Ilclsoaw d a zha c makes Vautrin, Rastignac, novel, Fabrice's final evolution.
· "Le Pcre Goriot" but fi d 1n . ot ers appea r as eptso
m · d'IC figures
True to his own principles of composition, Balzac suggests that
Balzac's world is, like H e el~ t l:Ir true f~l~lmeut in othe.r novels. Fabrice might be made the hero of a further novel under the title :
Stendhal's principle fg s, a ct.r~le c?nsistmg entirely of circles. " F a brice· or the Italian of the Nineteenth Century." " But if this
Balzac's. He too l'k oBaJcomposition
. ' 1 e zac,
a1ways tnes to crowd the csscnt'a]
.
stnves
1s c.J'
to
Jametnca
pres t
• ll y opposed to
ali
en a tot ty, but
·i you ng man is made the principal figure of the drama," says Balzac7
1 f " then the author is under the obligation to inspire him with some
the personal biography of so ~a~~r~ of a whole epoch into
of the Bourbon restoration .me
absolutism of the small It I'm
Ln lvt ual tYPe (the period
e Rouge et le Noir, the
, .: .
great idea, give him some quality which ensures his superiority
over the great figures surrounding him-and such a quality is lack-
·] ing here." Balzac failed to see that according to Stendhal's con-
Parma and the July monarcha Jan ltat;s in The Monastery o.f ception of the world and his method of composition, F abrice did
this biographical form Sten~a~n fol~czend L~~wen). In adopting I possess the quality which entitled him to be the principal hero of
endowed it with a different Cjuite o~e IS .Predecessors, but 1 the novel. Mosca and Ferrante Palla are far more characteristic
his career as a writer heal ; speci c rneanmg. Throughout representatives of the type Balzac wanted to see, i.e. of the nine-
all representatives of this ; ys pres:nted ~ certain type of man and
and the 'cl d' .YPe, ~esplte their clear·cut individuality I. tccnth~ccntury Italian, than is F abrice. The reason why Fabrice is
nevertheless the hero of Stendhal's novel is that, despite his constant
WI e tvergences m theu clas5
are at the core of their b .
.. .
. po~1t10n _and czrcumstances,
,
I adaptation of himself to realities in his external way of life, he

·r
whole epoch are vc emg and 10 thel.l' attitude to Stendhal's I' nevertheless represents that final refusal to accept a compromise, .
Fabrice del Dongo iuc~~~t relatedTto each other (Julien Sorel, to formulate which was Stendhal's essential poetic objective. (I
4ttended to rcflec: the vii euwe~. he f~te of these characters is mention only en passant Balzac's almost comic misunderstanding
whole epoch-an epoch . en~~' ht eh squ~hd loathsomeness of the of Fabrice's withdrawal to a monastery which h e, Balzac, would
m w IC t ere lS no longer room for the
ha\'c liked to see motivated on a religious, preferably Catholic
.I
· -"~ ..
 c
...
74 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM

basis. Such a possibility, quite feasible in the case of Balzac-we

need only to recall the conversion of Mlle. de Ia. Touche in Beatrix
I words he puts m
BALZAC ;\NO STENDHAL

· 1

thetr mouth~. e ye~

d et profoundly by the
characterizing ~is fig~res succm~t Y an ex yresse5 . considerable dis~
fre quotes a number of
satisfaction with the style of IS nov~~t his criticism goes further
-is quite foreign to the world created by Stendhal.) ...
style a;!:~: ~:~~:~dhal should subjec~ his novel to
'
Things being thus, one may well understand that Balzac's criti- lapses of ., II ~

cism roused very conflicting emotions in Stcndhal. As an artist than thts. He .. es that Chateaubnand and De I
unrecognised or misunderstood in his own time and hoping for very extensive edltmg, and argu. k He concludes with the
recognition and understanding only in a distant future, he was Maistre often rewrote som~ % thetr ~~~e~· " would be enriched by
{o

naturally deeply moved by the passionate enthusiasm with which

the greatest living writer had acclaimed his book. He realised, too,
hope that Stendbal's no~eh, :.s lre~~atca~briand
that ineffable beauty Wlt w IC 1
and De Maistre
i
that Balzac was the only man who had on many points recognized endowed their favourit~ ~oo.ks.'~ d conviction revolted against ,,
his own deepest creative aspirations and paid tribute to them in a Stendll al,s. every art1st1c mstmct an . 1 .'i
d.l dmitted slovenhncss of sty e.
brilliant analysis. He was especially gratified by the part of Balzac's this concept10n of style. He read_t ra:ed and sent to the publisher I :!
Many pages of the novel were h.;~ en sa . ' I wo~'t do it again',, "1I,.
.1 .
a nalysis which dealt with his choice of subject and the setting of the
scene in a little Italian court. But in spite of the sincere pleasure he without revisi.on. " I ~ay ~hat~. . r of ~; style i~ almost entirely
1 ·. •:'
'
felt at Balzac's review, he yet voiced objectively his very sharp But his acqu~escence ~~ t eHcnhtlcts~l , despises the models of style •:
opposition, although in a very polite and diplomatic form, especially . . d th s one pmnt e eartl \
1tmtte to 1 H · . . "N~vcr not even in 1802 · · ·
to Balzac's strictures on his style. Balzac, at the end of his review, q uoted by Balzac. e wntes . Cl ,b . d I find M.
es of 1ateau nan · · · ·
criticized Stendhal's style rather severely, although he again showed could I read even twenty pag h I write badly is probably
his deep appreciation of Stendhal's great literary qualities, especially De Maistre unbea::bl:-1 ~h~, re;~o~e~n~e of his style he adds the
his ability to characterize people and bring out their essential traits that I am too f~n" o -::r.gLc. Sand had translated the Monastery
by very few words. "Few words suffice M . Beyle; he characterizes further remark.. If me. reat success But in order to '
t •.
his figures by action and dialogue; he docs not fatigue the reader into French, it :'auld ~ave ~ee:;l: ~esent two v~lumes, she would
wjth .descriptions but hurries forward towards the dramatic climax express all that IS contamed 10 P 'd thl's , The style of
•· ...-a:nd achieve.'> it by a word, a single remark." In this sphere, d l
have neede t tree or ou . .
r r Please cons1 er ·
h characterizes in these terms :
therefore, Balzac accepted Stendhal as his equal, although-specifi- Chateaubriand and his compam~~s e l ·chit was quite superfluous
cally in respect of characterization-he often mercilessly criticized " V small pleasant tmngs w n h ,
1. ery many lll'lcS which arc pleasant to ear.
other authors, even those whom he regard~d as belonging to his own to say. . . · ·
2 Very many sma
, .. .
. .
f the romantJ.c style 1s very
trend of thought. Thus he frequently criticizes Sir Walter Scott's As we see, Stendhal s cntlc1Srn o 'd 11 that he thought
. 1 h h h by no means sa1 a
dialogue and, in the Revue Parisienne, deplored Cooper's prone- I. severe ~ndced, at o~g ~ 'tic of style. He seizes the oppor-
ness to characterize his personages by a few constantly recurring about Balzac as a styhst an as a en h olemical remarks that he
p hrases. He pointe4 out that examples of this can be found in tunity of hinting~ W~\en_ he ta;::~:~~Jtings of Balzac d·he LilY,
Scott's writings too, "but the great Scotsman never abused this
device which indicates an aridity, an infertility of the mind. Genius
has the greatest admtr~tton or ll this was not mere politeness.
in the Valley, Old Gonot): and natura. y 'lencc with understandable
' ..
consists in throwing light on every situation by words which reveal But at the same time he passes o~er Ill Sl m~ntic traits in Balzac's
the character of the figures, and not in muffling the personages in diplomacy, the fact th:t he ldesr~~e ~~~:nticists prop~r. Thus he
t
phrases which might apply to anything." (This remark. is still
most pertinent, for since the days of naturalism and through the
inA.uC'nce of Richard Wagner and others, the leitmotiv-like stereo-
typed characterization of figures is still in vogue. Balzac rightly
s trCSSC!' that this is merely a means of concealing the inability tO
.1. j
II
I
I
~
style ju~t as much a~ t 1e. s~y ~an quite believe that he writes his
once sa1d about Ba zac · .

. . d
.
novels tw1ce. . liS •
th
F' t he wntes em sens1
. •
decorates them in a mce neologt:<;tl~ sty eh 1
'bly and the second time he

ur ' and s1mllar c armmg .

with t pOtiments de l'ame,
. things,, Nor does
· .
... ,

•
l
j , tl netgc ans son ca: h d . himself for every concesslon he
.;
crc>atc lifelike characters in their movement and evolution.) he mention how dcei;>l;: e lesptsOes 1 wrote of Fabrice : " He
But although Balzac greatly appreciates Stcndhars cap acity for makes to the neologtsttc sty e. nee le
 went for a walk, listening to the silence." O n the margin of his Beylc" was described as a writer. And it is obvious ~ithout any
own copy he apologised for this phrase to "the reader of 1880" in special analysis that the style of the greater representatives of later
these terms : "In order that an author should find readers in 1838 French realism of Zola1 Daudet, the Goncourts, etc. was detl!r-
he had to write such things as ' listening to the silence.' , This mined by their ~cc:pt~nce of the rornanti~is~, ideals ~nd n,~t at all by
shows that Stendhal had no intention of concealing his dislikes he a Stendhal-like reJeCtton of the romantJ.c .neolog1sms. Z~la, of
merely refrained from expressing them and drawing conclusions course, thought his teacher Fla~bert's worship .of C?ateaubnand a
from them as radically and explicitly as be felt them. fad but this did not prevent h1m from modelhng lus own style on
. T o this ne~ative criticism he appends a positive admission: "Some- tha~ of another great romanticist, Victor Hugo.
tunes I comiclcr for a quarter of an hour whether I should put the The reason for the contrast in style between Balzac and Stendhal
adjective before or after the noun. I try to relate clearly and is at core one of world-view. We recapitulate: the attitude to
truthfully what is in my heart. I know only one rule : to express romanticism of the great realists of the period, ~he a~tempt to tum
mys:I~ clea;,Iy. If I ~annat speak clearly, my whole world is it into a sublimated element of a greater realtsm lS, as we have
,anmlulate~. From th1s point of view he condemns the greatest already said, no mere question of style.. Romanticis~'. in the more '11
French wntcrs, such as Voltaire, Racine and others for filling their general sense of the word, is no mere literary or artistiC trend, but I

lines with empty words for the sake of a rhyme. '" These verses " the ex-pression of the attitude taken up towards the post-revolu- .I

s~ys Stend~~l, "~11 ~~p all the spaces that rightly belong to the tru~ tionary development of bourgeois society.. The ~apitalist forces
httle facts. Th1s 1deal of style he finds realized in his positive liberated by the revolution and the Napoleomc emp1~e are ?cploycd
models. ." The memoirs of Gouvion-St.-Cyr are my Horner. on an ever widening scale and their deplo>:IDent g1ves b1~th to a
Montesqmeu and Fenelon's Dialogues of the Dead are I believe t working class of ever more decidedly developmg class-cons~1ousness.
very well written. . . . ! often read Ariosto, I like his narrative
style., .L .;
Balzac's and Stendhal's careers as writers extend to the penod of the
first great movements of the workin~ c~ass (e.g. th~ rising in Lyons).
· 'It is thus obvious that in matters of style Balzac and Stendhal This is also the time when the Soctabst world-view was born, the .,
represent two diametrically opposed trends, and this conflict mani- time of the first Socialist critics of bourgeois society, the time of the
fests itself ~harply on every individual issue. Balzac, in criti~izing great Utopians St, S~on a~d .Foru:i~r: It is als~ tl~e t~e when,
. ,Stendhal's. style, says of him: "His long sentences are ill-con- parallel with the U top1an-Soctalist cnt1.~1sm of cai:>ltal.tsm, 1~ rorna~-
structe~, his .short ,sentences arc not rounded off. He writes approxi- ticist criticism also reaches its theorettcal culmmattng pomt {Sts-
mately m D~~crot s manner, who was not a writer." (Here Balzac's mondi). This is the age of religious-feudalist Socialist .theories
sharp .opposttlon t.o Stcndhal's style drives him into an absurd para- (Lamennais). And it is this period which rev~ the pr~-history of
~ox; m other rcv1ews he judges Diderot with far more justice.) It i bourgeois society as a permanent class war (Thxers, GuiZot, etc.). . ~ .,.. .• . ,
Js true, however, that e.ve.n tl~is paradoxical utterance expresses a I "I The deepest disagreement between Balzac and Stendhal rests on
~[end of style rcaJly ex1stmg 1n Balzac. To it, Sten~hal replies : the fact that Balzac's world-view was essentially influenced by .all
As for the. be~uty, roundness, and rhythm of sentences (as in the d1csc newer trends, while Stendhal's world-~iew was at bottom an
funeral o.rat10n m Jaques the Fatalist) I often GOn~ider that a fault." I· interesting and consistent extension of the Ideology of pre-revolu-
What 1s revealed in .these problems is a conflict of style between l tionary Enlightenment. Thus Stendhal's ·world~vie~ ~s much clearer
.the t'"':'o ~reat trends m French realism. During the subsequent i and more progressive than that of Balzac, who w~s mflu~n~ed both
evolution of French realism the principles of Stendhal fall ever !
·!
by romantic, mystic ~atholicism and ~ feudal~s~ Soctabsm ~nd
more into disuse. j strove in vain to reconcile these trends w1th a polincal mona.rchtsm
based on English models and :with a poetic interpret~t10n of
. Flaubert, the greatest figure among the post-1848 French realists,
IS an even more enthusiastic admirer of Chateaubriancl's beauties of ~ lj . Geoffroy de Saint Hilaire's dialectic o~ sp~ntane~us ev~lutlon.
~tyle than was Balzac. And Flaubert no longer had any understand- This difference of world-view is qmte m keepmg With the fact
mg at all of Stendhal's greatness as a writer. The Goncourts relate that Balzac's last novels were full of a profound pessimism about
in their diary that Flaubcrt flew into fits of rage every time "M.

.• .
;.,.:
society and apocalyptic forebodings regarding culture, while Stend-
 l
78 STUDIES JN EUROPEAN REALIS M »ALZAC AND ST.ENDHAL

hal, :v~o was ve:r p essimistic regarding the present and criticized it prevented the July revolution. But matters stand. quite otherwise
p .;
·'><?wittily and w1!h such prof~und contempt, optimistically expected when we turn to the worlds created by the pens of the two great
his hope~ rcgardmg bourgeozs cu~ture to be realized around 1880. writers. Balzac the writer understands that the restoration is merely ..
Stendhal ~ hopes .were no mere Wistful dreams of a poet unappreci- a backdrop for the increasing capitalisation of France and that this
ated by hts o~n .time; they were pregnant with a definite conception process of capitalisation is carrying the nobility along with it with !:~
of the evol~tiOn of bourgeois society, although of course an illus- irresistible force. So he proceeds to put before us all th: grote.sq~e,
ory conceptiOn. In Stendhal's view, in pre~revolutionary times tragic, comic and tragi-comic types engendered by tlus cap1tahst ·~
there. had been a culture and a section of society able to appreciate development. He shows how the demoralising effect of this. process
and JUdge .cultural products. But after the revolution, the aristo- must of necessity involve the whole of society and corrupt 1t to the
cracy goes m eternal fear of another 1793 and has hence lost all its '(
core. Balzac the monarchist can find decent and sincere adherents
capacity for sound judgment. The new rich, on the other hand of the ancient regime only among borne and outdated provincials, f
are a mob of sclf~seeking and ignorant upstarts indifferent to cui~ such as oid d'Esgrignon in the Cabinet of Antiques and ~ld Du ··.·i
tural values. Not until 1880 did Stendhal expect bourgeois society ·.
Guenic in Beatrix. The ruling aristocrats, who keep up wtth the '
1~ .
to have reached the stoge again permitting a revival of culture--a times have only smiles for the honourably narrow-minded back- I•

cultur: conceived in the spirit of enlightenment, as a continuation of ward~css of these types. They themselves are concerned only w~th '
' II
the philosophy of enlightenment. making the best use of their rank and privileges in ord.er to ~en~e
It is a curious result of this strange dialectic of history and of the the greatest possible personal advantages from tim cap1tahst
unequal growth of ideologies, that Balzac-with his confused and development. Balzac the monarchist depicts his beloved nobles as
often quite reactionary world~view-mirrored the period between a gan~ of gifted or ungifted careerists and climbers, empty-headed I
..
1789 and 1848 mu~h :nore completely and profoundly than his nitwits, aristocratic harlots, etc. . ~
much more clear-thmkmg and progressive rival. True Balzac Stendhal's restoration novel, Le Rouge et lc Notr, exhales a fierce \
·.
.. ·.
criticized capitalism from the right, from the feudal, roman~ic view- hatred of this period. And yet Balzac has never created s? positive
point, an~ his clairvoyant hatred of the nascent capitalist world a type of romantic monarchist youth as Stendhal's Matlnld~ de Ia
order has tts source in that viewpoint. But nevertheless this hatred Mole. Mathilde de la Mole is a sincere convinced monarchtst who
itself b~comes the source of such eternal types of capitalist society is passionately devoted to romantic monarchist ideals an.d who d~s­
;I.;
,\.:f
as Nucmgcn a nd Crcvel. One need only contrast these characters pises her own class because it lacks the devoted and yassto~ate fa1th
with old Leuwen, the only capitalist ever portrayed by Stcndhal, in which burns in her own soul. She prefers the plcbetan J ulien Sorel,· '•
?r~er t~ sec how much less profound a nd comprehensive Stendhal the passionate Jacobin and Napolcon-admir~r,. to the men of her
1s .1~ th1s sphere: The figure. itself, the embodiment of a superior own station. In a passage, most characteriStiC of Stendhal, she ..
11
spmt an~ s~penor cult~~e, wtth an adventurous gift for -finance, is explains her enthusiasm for the romantic monarchist ideals. ' The '·
a v~ry hfchke ~ ransposltton of the ·pre-revolutionary traits of the time of Lcai'Tue wars was the most heroic period o r French history "
En~1ghtenment mto the world of the July monarchy. But however she said to him (Julien Sorel) one c.lay, her cyt:s flashing with passion
~ehcately portrayed. and lifelike the figure is, L euwcn is an excep- and enthusiasm. "In those days everyone fought for a cause they
tiOn among capitahsts and hence greatly inferior to Nucingen as chose for themselves. They fought to help their own party to win,
a type. not just in order to collect decorations, as in the c.l.ays of your yre-
We can observe the same contrast in the portrayal of the main cious Emperor. Admit· tha t there was lcs<. scH~seekmg and pettmess
t)'pes of the restoration period. Stendhal hates the restoration and then. I love the cinquecento."' This Mathilde c.le la Mole counters
regards it as the era of petty baseness, which has unworthily sup~ Julien's enthusiasm for the heroic Napoleonic. epoc~ with a .refer~
planted t~e heroic epoch of the revolution and Napoleon. Balzac in ence tu another in her eyes even more hcrotc, penod of h1story.
contrast, Js p ersonally an adherent of the restora tion, and althou"h The whole sto ry' of M athilde's and Julien's love is painted with .the
~lc Hays the policy _of the nobility, he does so only because he thinks ~reatcst po~iblc authenticity and accuracy. Nc~erthelcss Math1lde
t t was not the pohcy by means of which the nobility could have de la Mole as a ·representative of the young anstocrats of the res-
 toration period is by no means as truly typical as is Balzac's Diane by this participation in the " game." A pure and passion~tc ~r­
de Maufrigneuse. dour, an inexorable search for truth preserves from ~ontammat!On
.J-!~re we come back again to the central problem of Balzac's the souls of these men as they wade through the m1re, and ~1elJ?s
cnhcism of Stendhal : to the question of characterization and in them to shake off the dirt at the end of their career (bu~ sttll m
connection with it to the ultimate principles of composition applied the prime of their youth), although it is tr~e t~at by so do1.ng they
by the two great writers to their novels. Both Balzac and Stendhal cease to be participants in the life of the1r ume and w1thdraw
chose as central characters that generation of iifted young people from it in one way or another.
on whose thoughts and emotions the storms of the heroic period
~ave left deep traces and who at first felt out of place in the sordid
l.I This is the deeply romantic element in the world-view .o~ Stendhal
the enlightened atheist and bitter opponcn~ of rom~ntlctsm. (T he '· 'i :
baseness of the restoration world. term ' romanticism ' is of course used h ere 10 the wtdest, least dog-
-r:he quali~cation " at first" really applies only to Balzac. For he .i· matic scns~). It is in the last inst~nce due to Stcndl~~l's refusal to
accept the fact that the .heroic pe.r~od of the bourg~otste was ~ded
dep1cts precisely the catastrophe, the material, moral and intcllec- l' and that the 'antediluvian coloSSi . -to us a Marx1a~ phrase had
tual.cris~ in the course of which his young men do finally find their ' I<·
bearmgs m a French society rapidly evolving towards capitalism perished for ever. Every slightest trace of such her01~ trends as ~e 1 ..

and \~·ho then c~nquer or attempt to conquer a place for themselves .J can find in the present (although mostly only in h1s. own hero1c,
(Rasti?nac, Lucten de Rubempre, etc.). Balzac knew perfectly well uncompromising soul) he exaggerates into proud ~eahty and co~­
the pnc.e that ~ad to be paid for finding a niche in the society of the trasts it satirico-elegiacally with the wretched dishonesty of h1s
restoration penod. It lS not by accident that the almost super- time. · b · 11 f
human figure of Vautrin appears twice, like another Mephistopheles, Thus the Stcndhalian conception comes mto cmg; a ga cry o
to tempt the heroes strugghng in a desperate crisis onto the path of
"reaJ.ity( or, in oth~r words, ~~ path of capitalist corruption and
I heroes who idealistically and romantically exaggerate mere t~nden­
cies and dawnings into realities and hence can never attam the
unpnnc1pled careensm. Nor 1s 1t by accident that Vautrin succeeds ! social typicality which so superbly permeates The Human C:ome.dyi
It would be quite wrong, however, to overlook the g~eat h.1stonca
i~ this on b.otl~ occasions. What Balzac painted here is how the
me of capitalism to the undisputed economic domination of l typicality of Stendhal's heroes because of ~his roi?antlc tra1t. The
mourning for the disappearance of the hero1c age 1s pr~ent through-
society ~arries the hun~an and moral degradation and debasem~nt I
I
out the whole of French romanticism. .The romanti~ cult of pa~­
of men mto the innermost depths of their hearts.
Stendhal's composition is quite different. As a great realist, he of
course sees all the essential phenomena of his time no less clearly
Il sion the romantic worship of the Renaissance all spnng from thts
~ief from this desperate search for inspiring examples of great
tnan Balzac. It is certainly no accident and probably not due to passi~ns which could be opposed to the .paltry,, me.rcenary prcs~nt.
Balzac's influences that Count Mosca, in his advice to Fabrice, But the only true fulfiller of this romantiC longmg 1~ Stend?al hun-
says ~uch tl17 sa~e ab?ut the part played by ethics in society as self, precisely because he nevertheless always r~mamed fatth~ul to
Vautn~ doc~ 1Il his advice to Lucien de Rubempre when he com- realism. He translates into reality all that. Vt~tor H ugo tned to
pares hfe w~th a .card game, in which he who wants to play express in many of his plays and novels. But V1ctor Hugo gave ~s
ca~not firs t mveshgate the rules of the game as to their rightness, only abstract skeletons dressed in the purple mantl~ ~f rhetonc,
the1r ~oral ~nd other values. Stendhal saw all this very clearly, while Stendhal created flesh and blood, the destmtes of :cal
s~mctlmes wtth even greater contempt and cynicism (in the Ricar- men and women. What makes these men and women typi~al
dtan sense) than Balzac. And as the great realist that he is he al- .-although rc~arded superficially they are all extreme m-
lows his hero to take part in the game of corruption and ca;eerism, d.vidual cascs_:_is that these extreme cases incarnate the ~eep~st
to wade through all the filth of growing capitalism, to learn, and l~ngings of the best sons of the post-revol~t~onaiJ bourgcozs ~lass:
apply, sometimes even skilfully, the rules of the game as ex- Stendhal differs sharply from all romant1c1~ts m two respects·
pounded b.y M?sc~ and Vautrin. ~ut it is interesting to note that firstly in that he is quite aware of the exceptional, ext~eme. char~c­
none of his prmctpal characters 1s at heart sullied or corrupted tex of his personages and renders this very exceptlonahty w1th

.. - -------- ... .
 ~
82
. STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALl.SM

··" incompar~ble r cali!'m

BALZAC AND STENDHAL
....
by the aura of loneliness with which he sur- yet had its bourgeois revoluti~n, could onl_y dream. of developments,
rou~ds h1s ~era~; secondly, in that he depicts with admirable
"I'
the real motive forces of whtch necessanly remamed unknown to
reahsm. the mev1table catastrophe · of these types, their inevitable them. Hence Stendhal's satirical realism, hence the elegiac ~~~cality
~ef~at m the str~ggle against the dominating forces of the age, of the Germans. What nevertheless lends Stendhal's wntmgs a
tt1e1r necess~ry. withdrawal from life or more accurately their
necessary reJeCtlOn by the world of their time.
. ~hese chara~ters possess so great a historical typicality that a
wonderful depth and richness, is that despite all pessimism in
regard to·the present he never abandoned his humanist i~eals: The
hopes Stendhal harboured 'in co~jun~tion with bourg~ots soc1et~ as
·······J
·' I '
lj•
s1milar. conception of hu~a~ destinies was put forward in post~ it would be in 1880, was a pure Illusion, but because 1t was an n1s~ I,

r_evoluuon~ry Europe qmte mdependently by many writers who torically legitimate, basically progressive illusion, it could become ••
.. I '·
!.new not~mg of each other. We fincl this conception in Schiller's the source of his literary fertility. One shoutd not forget tha.t Stend~ ·'.' I·•'" ..
Walle~stem, when Max Piccolomini rides to his death. Hoelderlin's hal was also a contemporary of Blanqui's risings, by _whtch th~t
Hyp~non and Empcdocles abandon life in the same way. Such, heroic revolutionary attempted merely to renew a plebe1_an-j~cobm '· '\;:.

too, 1s the fate of more than one of Byron's heroes. It is therefore dictatorship. But Stendhal did not live . to see the distortion. of
not ~ chase after. liter~ry p aradoxes, but merely an intellectual ex- bourgeois Jacobinism into a travesty of 1ts.e!f, th~ transform~tion
pressiOn of the d1al_ect1~ of class evolution itself, if we here set Sten~ which turned the best revolutionaries from c1trzens mto proletarians.
dhal the_ great realist s1de by side with such writers as Schiller and His attitude to the working~cla~s unrest of his time (see Lucien .; : :;
Hocid:rhn. H?wever profound are the clifferences between them in Lcuwen) was democratic-revolutionary; he condemned th~ July
a~I pomts ~elatmg to creative method (the reason for which is the monarchy for its ruthless bludgeoning of the worker~; but dtd ?ot i··j
. d1~crcnce m .Fre~ch and Gennan social evolution) the affinity of and could not see the part the proletariat was to play m ~e ~reatton
bast~ c~ncepu?n ts no less profound. The accents of Schiller's of a new society, nor the perspectives opened up by ~oc1ahsm and
elegtac s~ch IS ~he fate of beauty upon earth' arc echoed in the by a new type of democracy. . . . . 'I

accents wtth wh1ch Stenclhal accompanies his Julien Sorel to the As we have already seen, Balzac's tllus10ns, hts tncorrect conce~-
scaffold an_d his Fabrice del Dongo to the monastery. Finally it tion of social evolution, were of a totally different nature. ~hat JS ; i

~ust ~e satd that not ~ll these accents were purely romantic, even why he docs not conjure up, and. oppose to the prc.scnt, the an~e­
m Schtllcr.. The a~mty of the conception of hero and destiny in diluvian ' monsters of a past berate age. What he dtd was to deptct
all these wrlt~rs denvcs. from the general affinity of their conception the typical characters of his own t~e, while e~lar?ing them to
of the evolut10n of thetr own class, from a humanism that despairs dimensions so gigantic as in the .rcahty of a cap_ttahst world can
o_f_.the present,_ f_rom a steadfast adherence to the great idea ls of the never pertain to single human bemgs, o~ly to soc1al force~. . :·:

nsmg ~our.«eolSle and from the hope that a time would come when Because of his attitude to life Balzac 1s the gre~ter reahst ~f th.e
•', ,

!"
these 1deals would be realized after aU (Stendhal's hopes of the two and, despite the wider acceptance of romannc elements_ m his
year 1880). world~view and style, he is in the final count the le~s ro~antt~ too.
?tcnd~al d.iffcrs from Schiller and Hol'ldtdin in that his dis- In their attitude to the development of bourgcots soc1ety· m the
satlsfact!on Wlth .the present does not manifest itself in lyrica l ele!!iac period between 1789 and 1848, Ba lzac a nd. Stcud~al represent two
~orms (hke Hoelderlin's) nor limit itself to an abstract-philosophical important extremes in the gamut of .poss1ble attJtucles. E.ach of •I
;.·
I

J~dgment _on the present (like Schiller's). but provides the founda~ them built a whole world of characters, an extensive and anunat:d . ~·'

t10n for hts portrayal of the present with a magnificent profound reflection of the whole. of social evolution, and each of them dtd
and sharply satirical realism. ' so from his own distinct angle. Where their point of ·con~a~t li~s is
~he reason fo~ this is that Stendhal's France had reccutly ex~ in their deep understanding and their contempt of. the tr1v1al tncks
pe~1enced revolutiOn and the Napoleonic empire and live revo- of mere naturalistic realism and of the mere rhctoncal treatment of
lutiOnar~ forces. had a.ctually taken the field in opposition to the man and destiny. A further point of contact i" that they both re-
RC'stor~tlon, wlnle Schtl~cr and Hoelderlin, living in a Germany as gard realism as transcending- the trivial and average. because ~or
yet ~ocJal!y and economJcaiiy unchanged. a Germany that had nut both of them realism is a search for that deeper es!'encc of reahty
 .tha.t is hidde~ under the surface. Where they diverge wid I ..
theu. conception of what this es~encc is. They represent t:~ ~i~~
:~tncally opposed, although historically equally legitimate, atti- CHAPTER FOUR
. es ;ward~ the ~ta~e of human development reached in their
~me. ence, m their hterary activities-with the one exception of
. e general Rroble'"? of the essence of reality-they must of neces-
Sity follow diametrically opposite paths.
t. h Thusb the profo~nd ~nderstandjng and appreciation of Stcndhal T he Zola Centenary
;i~:nof yfi~=l~ft~ m spit: .o~ all divergencie~, is more than a mere EM 1 L E z o LA the noveli!'t is the 'historian of private life' under
. . rary cnttclsm. The meetmg of these two reat
re.ahsts IS one o~ th~ outstanding events of literary histo g We the Second Empire in France in the same way as Balzac was the his-
might compare It wtth the meeting of Goethe and S hillry. torian of private life under the r estoration and the J uly monarchy.
though it d'd 1 d . · c er, even Zola himself never disclaimed this heritage. He a lways pro-
1 not e~ to so fruitfu l a co-operation as that of those
two ot h er great men. tested against the assumption that he had invented a new art form
and always regarded himself as the heir and follower of Balzac and
Stenc.lhal, the two great realists of the beginning of the nineteenth ·
century. Of the two, he regarded Stendhal as the connecting link
with the literature of the eighteenth century. Of course so remark-
able and original a writer as Zola could not regard his literary
predecessors as mere models to copy; he admired Balzac and Stend-
hal but vigorously criticized them none the less; he tried to eliminate
what he considered dead and antiquated in them and to work out
the principles of a creative method which couid have a fertilizing
influence on the further evolution of realism. (It should be said here
that Zola never speaks of realism, but always of naturalism.)
But the further development of realism in Zola's hands took a
far more intricate course than Zola himseJf imagined. Between
Balzac and Zola lies the year 1848 and the bloody days of June,
the first indepcudent action of the working class: which left so in-
delible an impression on the ideology of the French .bour,t;eoisie,
tha t after it bourgeois ideology ceased to play a progressive part in
France for a long time. Ideology grew adaptable and developed
into mere apologetics on behalf of the bourgeoisie.
Zola himself, however, never stooped to be an apologist of the
bourgeois social order. On the contrary, he fought a courageous
battle against the reactionary evolution of Fr~nch capitalism, first
in the literary sphere and later openly in the politicaJ. I n the
course of h is life he gradually came ever closer to socialism, al-
. -· though he n ever got beyond a paler version of Fourier's Utopianism,
a ver~ion lacking. however, Fourier's brilliantly dialectical social
criticism. But the ideology of his. own class was too deeply in-
grained in his thinking, his principles and his creative method,
although the conscious sharpness of his criticism of .society wa.<J
85
 THE ZOLA CENTKNAR\"
87
86 STUDIES IN' EUROPE.o\N REALISM i
'
). as the motive power of social movement and th~ prin~ipl~ of 'har- •'·I

never d~llcd; on the contrary, it was much more vigorous and

mony' as the essence of social being. ~hus .Zola s su~JeCttvcly m.o~t
sincere and courageous criticism of soc1ety ts locked mto th~ mag:c
progress1ve than .that of the Catholic Royalist Balzac.
. Balzac and S~endhal, who had described the ghastly transforma- circle of progressive bourgeois nar~o.w-mindL~ncss. On dus ,b~sts ~·~
tton of bourgeo1s France from the heroic period of the revolution of prinCiple> Zola carries on the tradttton cstabhsh~d by the cr:atwc
and N~p ol eon to the romantically hypocritical corruption of the methods of Balzac and Stendhal with great c?ns1stcncc. I~ IS not ~
restoratiOn and the no longer even hypocritical philistine filth of bv accident nor a result of some personal bias m favour. of lus oloer
the July monarchy, had lived in a society in which the antaoonism f;iend and comrade-in-arms Flaubert that Zola found m thc.la~ter :;
of bourgeoisie and working-class was not as yet the plainly"visible
hub around which social evolution moved forward. Hence Balzac
the true realization of aU that in Balzac was merely a begmnmg ...
.. .'<

and St~n~hal ~ould dig. down to .the very roots of the sharpest or an intent. h f
Zola wrote about Madame Bovary: ' It seems tllat t e ormu ~
1 1 ., I

contrad1ct10ns mhercnt m bourgems society while the writers who of the modern novel, scattered all over Balzac's. colossal ~eu~re, IS
lived after 1848 could not do so: such merciless candour such
sharp criticism would have necessarily driven them to break the
here clearly worked out in a book of 400 pages. And w1th 1t the ':

~
code of the modern novel has now been written.'
link with tf1eir own class. Zola stresses as the clements of Flaubert's gre~~ness: above all
Even the sincerely progressive Zola was incapable of such a the elimination of romantic traits. ' The compos1t10n of the novd
rupture. lies only in the way in which inciden~ arc chosen and. made to
It. is t?is ~ttit~dc .which is reflected in his methodologi<:;al con- follow each other in a certain harmomc order of evoluuon. The
ccpt•on, m h1s reJeCtiOn, as romantic and ' unscientific,' of Balzac':; incidents themselves arc ab~olutcly average. . . AU .out-of-the-
brcd-in-the-bo~e. dialectic a.nd. prophetic fervour in the exposure
ordinary inventions have been excluded. . . Th~ story 1s unfol?cd
of the contradtct1ons of cap1tahsm, for which he Zola substitutes a by relating all that happens from day to day wtthout ever s~rm~­
'scientific' method in which society is conceived as ~ harmoniolL~
ing any surprises.' . Accordin? to Zo!a, Ba~za.c, too, bad .m Ius
enti.ty and th7 criticism applie~ to society fonnulated as a struggle greatest works· sometmies aclueved tlm rcahsttc. presentation. of
agamst the d1seases attackmg 1ts organic unity, a struggle against everyday life. 'But before he could reach the pomt of concer~mg
the 'undesirable features' of capitalism. himself only with accurate description, he revelled for. a long time
•. ,. ~ . ~la say~ : ' The social cycle is identical with the life-cycle : in in inventions and lost himself in the !'earch for false thnlls and false ·.I
soct.cty as m the . human body, there is a solidarity linking the
vanous organs w1th each other in such a way that if one organ magnificence.' · · · 1 f
H e continues : ' The novelist, if he accepts the bas~c prm~'1p e o, .I
putrefies, the rot spreads to the other organs and results in a vcrv showing the ordinary course of averag~ lives, must k11l the her~.
complicated disease. ' By "hero" I mean inordinately magmfied characters, puppets m·
This 'scientific' conception led Zola to identify mechanically the f\atcd into giants. Inflated "heroes" of this sort drag down Balzac'3
human body and human society, and he is quite consistent wht!n
novels because he always believes that he has not made . them
he. criticizes Balz~c's great preface to The Human Comedy from
gigant,ic enough.' In the naturalist met~o? 'this exaggeratton. bY, .
th1s angle.. In th1s preface Balzac, as a true dialectician, raises the
the artist and this whimsicality of compos1t1on are done away wtth
..
s~me quest1on : he asks to what extent the dialectic of race evolu-
and 'all heads arc brought down to the ~ame level, for the .oppor-
tJo~ as developed by Geoffroy de Saint Hilaire applies to human
tunities permitting us to depict a truly superior human bcmg c..re
soc1ety; but at the same time he sharply stresses the new categories
created by the speci~c dialectic of society. Zola thinks that such very rare.' ' . . b · f
i Here we already see quite dearly the pnnc1ples on ~he as1s ~
a conception destroys the 'scientific unity' of the method and that
' I which Zola criticizes the heritage left by the great reahsts.. Zola
th~ conception itself is due to the 'romantic confusion' of Balzac's
repeatedly discusses the great realists, partic~la:Iy Balzac and
~m.nd... ~Vhat h7 then pu~ in ~he place of Balzac's ideas, as a
Stendhal and constantly reiterates the same bas1c tdca th<~:t iblzac.
sc1cntlfic result, ~~ the und•a!ec~tc ~onception of the organic unity
and Stendhal were great because, in many details and qnsodes of
ot nature and soctety; the elimmat10n of antagonisms is regarded
 their works, they described human passions faithfully and contri- According to Zola1 Balzac's greatness and his claim ~o immor·
tality lay in the fact that he wa~ one of ~e, first who . p~sse~sed
Jl buted very interesting documents to our knowledge of human
passions. But according to Zola both of them, and particularly a sense of reality.' But Zola arrived at thts sense of r~al~ty by
Stendhal, suffered from a mistaken romanticism. He writes, about first cutting out of Bah:ac's life-work the great c?ntradtctlOm of
the end of Le Rouge et le Noir and Julien Sorel : 'This goes abso~ capitalist society and accepting only the presentat10n of everyday
Jut~ly beyond everyday truth, the truth '1e strive for; the psycho- life which was for Balzac merely a means of throwing the ~ontr~­
logist Stendhal, no less than the story-teller Alexander Dumas, dictions into bolder relief anti giving a total picture of soctcty m
plunges us up to our necks in the unusual and extraordinary. Seen motion, complete with all its determinants and antag~misms.
from the viewpoint of exact truth, Julien Sorel provides me with It is most characteristic that Zola (and with him HippoLyte Taine)
as many surprises as d' Artagnan.' Zola applies the same critici~ m • l·· should speak with the greatest admiration of General Hulot,. a
tu Mathilde de Ia Mole, all the characters in The Monaster)! of II character in the novel La Cousine Bette. But both of them see m
I
Parma, Balzac's Vautrin and many other Balzac characters. him only a masterly portrait of an oversexed man. Neither Zola nor
Zola regards the whole relationship between Julien and Mathilde Taine say a word about the artistry with which Bal~ac traces Hu-
a!i mere brain-gymnastics and hair-splitting and both characters as let's passions to the conditi~ns of life in ~e Nap.oleomc era; and yet
unusual and artificial. He entirely fails to realize that Stendhal it would not have been d1fficult to nottce thts, for Balzac uses
could not raise to the highest level of typicality tbe g-reat conflict Cn!vcl-a character also painted with no less consummate ma.st.ery
which he wanted to depict unless he invented these two absolutelv -a-. a counterfoil to show up the difference between the eroticism
above-average and quite extraordinary characters; only thus could of the Napoleonic era ·and that of the reign of Louis . Philip~e.
he bring in his criticism of the hypocrisy, ~uplicity and baseness Neither Zola nor Taine mention the doubtful operatiOns w1th
of the restoration period, and show up the infamously greedy and
mean capitalist essence of its feudal-romantic ideology. Only by
crea~ing the figure of Mathilde, in whom the romantic ideology of
I which Hulot ' tries to make money, although in describing them.
Balzac gives an admirable picture of the infamies and horrors of
incipient French colonial policy.
r eaction ~rows into a genuine passion, even though in heroicaliy ·l In other words both Zola and Taine insulate Hulot's erotic
exaggerated form, could Stendhal raise the plot and the concrete I passion from its social basis and thus turn a socially pathol.ogical
•situations to a level on which the contrast between these idcologit:s figure into a psychopathological one. It is natu~al ~~t looking ~t
and their social basis on the one hand, and the plebeian Jacobinism
of the Napoelcon-admircr Julien Sorel on the other, could be fully
developed. Similarly, Zola failed to realize that Balzac could not
I
·I
it from this angle he could see only ·1 exaggeration (I.e. romanti-
cism) in the great, socially typical characters created by Balzac
possibly dispense with Vautrin's larger-than-life figure if he wanted
the otherwise merely personal and individual catastrophe of Lucien
i. and Stendhal.
' Life is simpler than that' Zola says at the end. ?f one of his
c.lc RubcmprC's ambitions to become the tragedy of the who!~ 1 criticisms of Stendhal. He thus completes the trans1t10n from ili.e
ruling class of the restora'tion period; it wa!' only by this device l
·j
old realism to the new, from realism proper to naturalism. The
decisive social basis of this change is to be found in the fact ~at
that Balzac was enabled to weave into this tragicomedy the entire
i the social evolution of the bourgeoisie has changed the way of hfe
tissue of the moribund society of the restoration. from the king
.r of writers. The writer no longer participates in the great s~uggles
meditating a coup d'etat to the bureaucrat carving a career for
of his time, but is reduced to a mere spectator and chromcler of
himself.
public life. Zola understood clearly enough ~hat Balzac. him~el~
· · . But Zola could not see thi<;. H e says of Balzac: 'His imaO'ina-
~ .j had to go bankrupt in order ~o be able to .dep1ct Cesar B1rotteau,
t10n, that unruly ima~ination which drove him to exaf.(geration
and with which he wanted to re-create the world in his own imag¢, ·' l that he had to know from h1s own experience the whole under·
world of Paris in order to create such characters a" Rastignac and
irritates me more than it attracts me. If the great novelist had \ old Goriot. · J'.. .•

l
had nothing but this his ima.gination. he would now be merelv a
pathological case. a curiosity of our literature.' · In contrast, Zola-and to an even greater e.xtent Flaubert, the"
 THE ZOLA CENTENARY
91
90 STUDIES IN EUROPE.~'If REALJS:\l

tr~~ founder of the new realism -were solitary observers and a mechanical average takes the place of th~ dialec~ic unity of tyr~~
cnttcal commcn~arors of the social life of their own day. (The and individual; de5criptiou and analysis JS substltuted for ep1c
courageous pubhc fight put up by Zola in conn ection with the situations and epic plots. The tension of the old-type story•. t~~
Dreyfus afl'air came too late and was too much a mere episode in co-operation and clashing of human beings who are both mdl-
Zola's life to effect any radical change in his creative method.) viduals and at the same time representatives of important class
.,
Zola's naturalist ' experimental' novels were therefore merely at- ( tendencies-all these arc eliminated and their place is taken by.
tempts to find· a method by which the writer' now reduced to a ' average' characters whose individual traits are acciden!'S. fr~m
. the artistic point of view (or in other words have no dectstve m-
mere spectator, could again realistically master reality. Naturally
fluence on what happens in the story) and these ' av.erage • chara~­
Zo~a ncv~r became conscious of this social degradation of the
wntcr; h1s theory and practice grew out of this social existence 1 ters act without a pattern, either merely side by s1~e or else m
I
-.yithout his ever ~cco.ming aware of it. On the cont rary, inasmuch
a'> ~e ~tad s~mc mklmg of the change in the writer's position in
·.r completely chaotic fashion.
It was only because he could not always consistently adhere to • ••
~ap1tahst soc1ety, he, as the liberal positivist that he was, regarded his own programme that Zola could ever come to be a great
.1t ru: a? adv~nt~gc, as ~ st~p fon~ard, and therefore praised Flau- writer. , · h
~ert s tmp ~rtt,ahty (wh1ch m reahty did not exist) as a new trait ·..,.;I But we must not a~sume that Zola represents the same tnump
m the wnter s make-up. Lafargue who in accordance with the of realism' of which Engels speaks in connection with Balzac. The
traditions of Marx and Engels, severely' criticized Zola's creative .. analogy is merely formal and the assumpt.io~ would therefore h;e
wrong. Balzac boldly exposed the contradtct10ns of nascent cap.-
method an.d contrasted it with that of Balzac, saw very clearly that
Zola was Isolated from the social life of his time. Lafargue de- talist society and hence hi.; observation of reality c?nstantly clashed
scribed Zola's a~ti~ude to reali~y as similar to that of a newspaper with his political prejudices. But as an honest art1st he always de-
.. reporter ~nd thts ts perfectly m accordance with Zola's own pro- picted only what he himself saw, lea.rned and. underw~nt? con- ·.
grammattc statements about the correct creative method in cerning himself not at all whether hts true-to-hfe descnptlon ~f
literature. the things he saw contradicted h~ ~et idea~. It was out of th!s
~~ these statements we quote only one, in which he gives his conflict that the ' triumph of reahty , was bor~, but then Balz~c s
opmton on the proper conception of a good novel: "A naturalist artistic objectives did not preclude the extcnstve and penetratm~
wr~ter ':ants to write a novel about the stage. Starting from this presentation of social reality. . . .
pomt without characters or data, his first concern will be to collect Zola's position was totally different. There IS no such. w1de. ~ap
material, to find out what he can about this world ·he wishes to between Zola's social and political views and the so:tal-cntlc~l
describe. He may hav~ known a few actors and seen a few pcr- tendencies of his work a~ there is in Balzac's. True, ~ts ?bscrva·
for~anccs : . Then he will talk to the people best informed on tht:: tion of facts and of historical evolution did slowly radtcah;z;e Zola
subject, w1ll collect statements, anecdotes, portraits. But this is not and bring him closer to Utopian socialism, b.ut this d.iu not amount
al!. H~. will also r?ad the written documents available. Finally he to a clash between the WTiter's prejudices and reahty. ,
w11l vlSlt the locattons, spend a few days in a theatre in order to The contrast in the sphere of art is all the sharper. Zob s
acquaint himself with the smallest details, pass an evening in an method, which hampered not only Zola himsel~ ~ut hi~ . whole
~ctress' dressing-rooi? and absorb the atmosphere as much as pos- generation because it was the result of the wnter s pos1t1on as
stble. When ~11 thts material has been gathered, the novel will solitary ob~crver, prevents any profoundly realistic representation ~{
take sha~e of tts. own accord. All the novelist has to do is to group life. Zola's ' scientific ' method always seeks the average, an.d .thls
the facts m a logtcal sequence ... Interest will no longer be fotussed grey statistical mean, the point at which all internal contradtctlon~
on the peculiarities of the story-on the contrary, the more gen- are blunted where the great and the petty, the noble and the base,
eral and commonplace the story is, the more typical it will be." the beautif~l and the ugly are all mediocre 'products' together,
Here we have the new realism, recte naturalism in concentrated spells the doom of great. lite:ature. . .
. '
essence and m sharp opposition to the traditions of the old realism; Zola was a far too na1ve hheral all hts hfe, far too ardent a be-
 ~ . human relationships and social objects as the vehicles of su~l~ re- . ..-
.1. li~ver in bourgeois progress, ·ever to harbour any doubts regarding 4Ci-r
lationships. Man and his surroundings are always sharply divided

..
his own very questionable, positivist ' scientific' method.
Nevertheless the artistic implementation of his method was not \ iu all Zola's works.
achieved without a struggle: Zola the writer was far too consciot~s
?f the greatness of modern life (even though the greatness was
II Hence, as soon as he departs from the monotony of naturalism,
he is immediately transmuted into a decorative picturesque roman·
mh~man) ~or him to resign himself without a struggle to the grey i ticist, who treads in the footsteps of Victor Hugo with his bombas-
'I
tcdtunt wluch would have been the result of a method such as his ! tic monumentalism.
if consistently carried through. Zola hated and despised far to~ ! There is a strange element of tragedy here.
·much the evil, base, reactionary forces which permeate capitalist i Zola, who as we have seen, criticized Balzac and Stendhal so
society, for him to remain a cold, unsympathetic ' experimenter' i vehemently for their alleged romanticism, was compell.cd to hav·~
, I'
such as the positivist-naturalist doctrine required him to be. i recourse to a romanticism of the Victor Hugo stamp m order t·"'J ,.
~·
As we have seen, the struggle resulting from this was fought escape, in part at least, from the counter-artistic consequt:nces of
out within the framework of Zola's own creative method. In Balzac 1 his own naturalism.
Sometimes Zola himself seemed to realise this discrepancy. The•
it was reality and political bias that were at war with each other, I
I romantic, rhetoric and picturesque artificiality of_ style pr~duced h,y
in Zola 1t was the creative method and the ' material'. presented.
Hence in Zola there is no such universal break-through as the I the triumph of French naturalism, was at vanance ~th Zola s
'triumph of realism • in Balzac, there are only isolated moments1 I
I
sincere love of truth. As a decent man and honest wnter he felt
details, m which the author breaks the chains of his own po~itivist, I that he himself was much to blame for this. " I am too much a
son of my time, I am too deeply immersed in. romanti~ism for ~\e
l

•·scientific ', naturalist dogmas in order to give free scope to his 1

temperament in truly realist fashion. I
'
II to dream of emancipating myseli from certam rhetoncal prcJU·
We can find such a break-through in almost every one of Zola's i
i
dices ... Less artificiality and more solidity- ! should like us to he
novels aud hence there arc admirably life-like single episodes in ( less brilliant and to have more real content ..."
every one of his major books. But they can not permeate the en- But he could find no way out of this dilemma in the sphere of
tire work, for the doctrine still triumphs in the general lay-out of art. On the contrary, the more vigorously he participated in the
each of them. Thus the strange situation is created that Zola, al- struggle of opinions, the more rhetorical his style became.
though his life-work is very extensive, has never created a single For there are only two roads leading out of the monotonou .~
character who grew to be a type, a by-word, almost a living being, commonplace of naturalism, which r~ults from. th~ direc.t, mech-
such as for instance the Bovary couple or Homais the apothecary anical mirroring of the humdrum reahty of capita~Ism..ELt~er thf:
in Flaubert, not to mention the immortal figures given us by sue~ writer succeeds in revealing the human and soc1al s1gmfic~n~e
creators of men as Balzac or Dickens. of the struggle for life and lifting it to a higher plane by artiStiC
But there was an urge in Zola, to go beyond the grey average ' means (as Balzac did)-or else he has t_? overstress the mer~ o~t­
of naturalism in his composition. Thus it is that he created many
extraordinarily effective pictures. No reader can fail to be deeply
impressed by his admirable descriptions of pits and markets, the
I ward scenery of life, rhetorically and p1cturcsquely, an~ qmtc ~n­
depcndently of the human import of the events depleted (hkc
Victor Hugo). .
stock exchange, a race.course, a · battlefield or a theatre. Perhaps
no one· has painted more colourfully and suggestively the outer
!I'
Such was the romantic dilemma which faced French naturalism.
Zola (as before him Flaubert) took the second road beca~se he
trappings of modern life. was in sincere opposition to the ideology .of the post-re~olut~onary
· But only the outer trappings.
They form a gigantic backdrop in front of which tiny, hav-
·I j; bourgeoisie; because he hated and desp1sed that glon~cahon ~t
false ideals and false 'great men • which was the fash10n of h1s
hazard people move to and fro and live their haphazard livcli. I time and because he was quite determined to expose all this with-

j
Zola cou]d never achieve what the truly great reali<;ts Balzac, out mercy. But the most honest and sincere det_er?Iin ati?n to fight
Tolstoy or Dicken!' accomplished : to present social institutions as for such things could not make up for the arbsttc fahaty of th<.·
 94 S'rtJoms IN EUROPEAN REALISM THE ZOLA CENTENARY 95
. ..,. ~.

method and the inorganic na ture of the presenta tion re.~u lting which was that he portrayed human beings independently of their ~ '• ;:
from it. social environment~and from the resulting puppet-like nature of:
G~ethe in. h~s ~ld age had already seen this parting of the ways,
•"I
his characters. The aged Goethe's judgment of Hugo is valid, with
the romantlc dilemma of ·the nascent new literature. In the last some mitigation, in respect of all Hugo's novels. Zola, who follow ed
'I
.. i,.,
years of his life he read almost simultaneously Balzac's The Asses' this tradition, is equally incapable of penetrating and convincing :
Skin and Victor Hugo's Notre Dame Of Paris. About Balzac's characterization.
nove~ he wrote in his diary: "I have continued reading ' The Zola depicts with naturalist fidelity the biological and 'psycho- I .
1.•
Asses' Skin' ... it is a n excellent work of the latest literary method logical' entity of the average human being and this preserves him
a nd excels among other things by moving to and fro between the from treating his characters as arbitrarily as Victor Hugo. But on i~ ;:~
impo.~sible and the intolerable with vigour and good taste and the one hand this method sets his characterization very narrow
succeeds in most consi~tently making use a.-; a med ium of the mira- limits and on the other hand the combination of two contradictory ..
~ ,-·:,
culous and of the strangest states of mind and events to the de- principles, i.e. of naturalism and romantically rhetorical monu- • !
tails of which one could give much more praise." ' mentality again produce a Hugoan discrepancy between characten> . !:·~··
In other words, Goethe saw quite clea rly that Balzac used the and environment which he cannot overcome. ':~.
romantic element, the grotesque, the fantastic, the bizarre, the Hence Zola's fate is one of the literary tragedies of the nint-
ugly, the ironically or sententiously exa.~gerated only in order to teenth century. Zola is one of those outstanding personalities whos~ :~

. show up essential human and social relationships. All this was for talents and human qualities destined them for the greatest things, ·l
: Balzac merely a means, if a roundabout one, to the creation of a but who have been prevented by capitalism from accomplishing :j,
re>alism which, while absorbing the new asp ects of life, would yet their destiny and find ing them.c:dves in a truly realistic art. I
preserve the qualities of the older great literature. This tragic conflict is obvious in Zola's life.work, all the more ...
',
~oethe's opinion of Victor Hugo wa-; the exact opposite of his as capitalism wao; unable to conquer Zola the man. He trod his
a ttitude to Balzac. He wrote to Zeiter: "Victor Hugo's 'Notre path to the end, honourably, indomitably, uncompromisingly. In •;,:
Dame ' captivates the reader by its diligent study of the old scenes, his youth he fought with courage for the new literature and art'
-~
customs and events, . but the characters show no trace of natural {he was a supporter of Manet and the impressionists) and in his ~
animation. They are lifeless lay figures pulled about by wires; 1:~
riper years he again played the man in the battle against the con-
•iJi.4
they are cleverly put together, but the wood and steel skeletons spiracy of the French clericals and the French general staff in the . · ~;

support mere stuffed puppets with whom the author deals mosc Dreyfu s affair. .I
cruelly, jerking them into the strangest poses~ contorting them, Zola's resolute struggle for the cause of progress will survive
tormentin~ a nd whipping them, cutting up their bodies and souls, li
\ . ma ny of his one-time fashionable novels, and will place his name
--but because they have no flesh and blood, all he can do is t<>ar in history side by side with that of Voltaire who defended Galas
;}.j
.r .
Hp the ra_gs out of wh ich they arc made : all this is done with con- as Zola defended Dreyfus. Surrounded by the fake democracy and
si~lcrable historical and rhetorical talent and a vivid im,agination; corruption of the Third Republic, by the false so-called demo- 1:
~
wtthout these qualities he could not have produced these crats who let no day pass withou t betraying the traditions of the .. .1
abominations . . . " great French revolution, Zola stands head a nd shoulders abo"e
O f -course Zola cannot simply be identified with Victor HuP.,o. them as the model of the courageous and high-principled bourgcoir :{1
although Hugo, too, had gone a little way in the direction of realism. who-even if he faileel to understand the essence of socialism
Lcs Miserables and "1793" doubtless show a higher level of '•
I --<lid not a bandon democracy even when behind it the Socialist
.~
characterization than Notre Damr. Of Pari.r although of Les Mis· demands of the working class were already being voiced.
erables Flaubert angrily remarked that such a characterization of ·I
We should remember this to-day when the Republic has become ;·
~ocial . conditions and human beings was impcrmi~siblc in an age a mere cover for a conquest-hungry colonial imperialism and a '
10 wh1ch Balzac had already written his works. brutal oppre$sion of the metropolitan working c]a<;c;.
But Hu~o wa~ never able to ~et away from his ba~ic mistake, The mere memory of Zola's coura~eous and upright figure is
 an indictment of the so-called "democracy" represented by the men CHAPTER FIVE
who rule France to-<lay.

J •
The International Significance of Russian
Democratic Literary Criticism
D 1E L 1 N s K 1, c HER NY sHE v s K r and Dobrolyubov, the
classics of Russian literary theory and criticism are still almost
unknown to the non-Russian public. Although many translations
of Russian literary works were published in mass editions in all
civilized countries, the more resolutely democratic section of
Russian 'literature and literary criticism was almost entirely ex-
duded from this spate of publication. While even second and third-
rate authors were translated and praised, the great sati:rist of the
Russian democratic movement, Saltykov-Schedrin, a contemporary
i . of equal rank to Tolstoy and Dostoyevski is still accessible only to
'
a very small circle of readers.
·! This is no accident. Although Russian literature was progrcssiv{',
~ I the policy of the bourgeois publishers who made use of it for their
own ends, was at bottom decidedly anti-democratic and oft(:n
.I <:ven reactionary. The world-widl'.! success of Tolstoy or Dostoyev-
1
.I
~ki, of Chekhov or Gorki wa'l so great that busines.~ interests pre~

·-'I vailed ov_er anti-democratic convictions. But wherever such massive .

i material considerations were lacking, the publishers freely in~
!
dulgcd their reactionary opinions. They pushed the sales of the
few reactionary Russian writers such as Merezhkovski and neglected
the representatives of the democratic trends in Russian literature.
Reactionary literary theorist~ have thoroughly exploited tb~
!'.ituation thus created. The histories of Russian literature, writteu
by non-Russians, are full of errors and misrepresentations regard-
ing the literary critics of Russian revolu~ionary democracy. It is
alleged that they mechanically subordinated the interests of litl'.!rn-
., ture to those of the political propaganda of the day, that they
despised all aesthetic cc;msiderations, that they knew nothing about
I
t art, etc.. etc. These allegations are based on nothing more than
that these great critics were sharply opposed to. many prejudices
still curr~:,nt in modern literary criticism, !;UCh as for instance the
icica of "art for art'~ sake" and also certain vulgar~propagandistic
tendencies.
The reactionary legends woven around Russian democratic
97
 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM RUSSIAN DEMOCRATIC LITERARY CRITICI~M

literary criticism have this much truth in them :· the great critics As the economic and political struggles in the Russia of that
were in fac t convinced and staunch democratic revolutionaries, day could not as yet have reached the sharpness of those in Cen-
who skilfully outwitted all the chicanery of the censorship of their tral and Western Europe, Russian thinkers could not as yet arrive
time ancl succeeded in spreading and popularising the principles at the ideas of scientific Socialism. Even in Central and Western
d r~volutionary democracy among the greatest possible number of Europe it was only a tiny section of the revolutionary intelligcntsia
people. Thus their successful ~truggle has gained them the mortal which understood the great transforznation produced in the think-
enmity of all reactionaries, and the calumnies spread about them ing of mankind by the work of Marx and Engels. Even the most
are mostly borrowed from the arsenal of reaction. versatile and progressive German writer of the period, H einrich
Heine, had contented himself with ' cleansing' of its openly con-
1. :! servative components, the dialectical philosophy of evolution put .
.,i.
The specific position occupied by Russian democratic criticism forward by Hegel, reconstructing it in a radical direction and bring~
in the development of resthetic thought in Europe can be under- r
ing the thus transformed Hegelian teaching into harmony with
stood only if we are clear on the changes produced everywhere Saint-Simon's Utopian Socialism.
'
outside Russia by the defeat of the 1848 revolutions. The forti<!!' Bielinski's development runs in many respects parallel to that of
were a period in which democratic ideas were still spreading and Heine. But the coincidences by no means rested on any psycho-
;:le\leloping. It might be sufficient in this connection to mention the logical kinship-one could scarcely imagine a greater contrast
..... critical essays of H einrich Heine. The defeat of the 1848 revolu- than that which existed between the human and literary characters ·,/
tion brought the collapse of all these trends. Much of the litera- of Heine and Bielinski-but rather on a relative similarity of the
ture and literary criticism of the time follows the rcaction.a ry lead
given by the leading European bourgeoisie,. which in its fear of a
historic ~onditions and tasks confronting them. Both ~reat ·thinkers
advanced as far as their social milieu permitted, but Bielinski is • •
I
revolution, betrayed its own formerly revolutionary convictior.s more tesolute and radical than Heine. Originally he was more
and in all countries made a compromise with reaction : in Ger- strongly influenced by orthodox Hegelianism than Heine, but over·
many with the Hohem:ollerm, in France with Napoleon III, in came it on the other hand more thoroughly and more profoundly.
England with the Victorians. The literature and literary criticism
of the leading European countries shows the distinct influence of
H ence, the materialist influence on him of Feuerbach was stronger
and his acceptance of the ideas of Utopjan Socialism, especially of
..
this sudden change. Some writers devoted themselves fanatically to its social criticism, clearer and more decided. He resembles Heine,
the new gospel; one need only compare Carlyles writings dating however, in that neither of them, although they accepted much
from before and after 1848. O thers, the really great writers of £he of the doctrines of philosophical materialism, ever repudiated the
period sank into a profound depression and hopelessness-like . '
Hegelian dialectic, like Feuerbach himself and especially his philo·
Flaubert and in his later years, Dickens. Others again-and these sophical followers and successors. Bielinski retained the great his~
are the majority--chose to enter into an ideological compromise torical per~pectives of the Hegelian dialectic and thereby .Stands in
with triumphant reaction. the· foremost rank of the most advance<rEuropean vanguard in ther
Bielinski, the founder of revolutionary democratic criticism in great world-view crisis that convulsed Europe in the period pre-
Russia was a contemporary and equal of the greatest European ceding 1848.
thinkers of the pre-1848 period. In Germany this was the period
of the disintegration of Hegelianism, in England. the period of the We repeat: the defeat of the revolutions of 1848 did not bring
crisis of classical political economy, in both France and England about the same swerve towards reaction in the ideological develop-
the period when Utopian SociaJism was spreading wid ely and at ment of Russia as in the rest of Europe. A certain, though quite
the same time already becoming problematical. In Germany th~c; short, period of depression was of course inevitable. But compar:1~
greatest anc.l most fruitful crisis of European thought led to the tively soon, in the middle of the fifties, a new upsurge of democratic
emergence of historical materialism. The Communist Manifnto ideas began in Russia. The economic, social and political evolution
wa!' written in the year in which Bielinski died. of the country squarely posed the issue of the inevitable abolition
 of serfdom and the general unrest bound up with this had forced
the government of the time to grant temporarily a somewhat ~. .
.-:
(

~
- ~as to. a large extent d.ctermined by the analysiS oz ouurg~:ul.) .,v-
Clety gtven by the classics of Utopian Socialism. Bielinski lived in
a period w~en J:Icgelian idealism was the accepted philosophy and 1
s:reater fr~edom of opinion. The classical leaders and representa-
tives of th1s new upsurge of democratic thought were the two great '' when. the h,1stoncal process was supp_Qs~d tp _demql,l~~r.,ate with in- \
heirs to Bielinski's life-work : Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov. crcasmg. clarity the gr?-dual triumph of re~.o~. Chernyshevski and'
. The ccn tral problem around which the thinking of Russian Dob.: olyubov too~ u~ a more realistic, angJ~s .ideological atti~ude
society revolved at the time of their activities was the issue of the: to h1story and lustoncal ..thought. They were also Witnesses of the
abolition of serfdom. Everyone knew that the last hour of serfdom decadence of Hegelian philosophy, its degradation into a philo-
had come. Differences of opinion in the progressive camp-and sophy of liberal compromises. Chernyshevski wrote a brmiant
very sharp ones at that--concerned only the method of liberation. criticism of F. Th. Vischer's Aesthetic from this viewpoint, a
· It was on this issue that liberalism and d emocracy first parted com- criticism which is not outdated to this day.
pany in Russia. The democrats wanted a radical change in the This position of Chemyshevski and Dobrolyubov is unique in
feudal agrarian structure of Russia, both on the economic and in the history of nineteenth-century thought. Ludwig Feucrbach, the
· the social sphere. These aspirations divided them sharply from the last great materialist thinker of the bourgeoisie, was unable to in·
timid liberals who were constantly making compromises with auto- fluence permanently the ideological evolution even of his own
cracy and although they, too, desired a progressive change in the country (not to mention the other western countries) and left no
agrarian structure of the country, were ever seeking to avoid any d eep impression behind. This fact holds no mysteries for the theo-
' conflict with the feudal landowners, the bureaucracy and the auto- rists who base themselves on historical materialism. Old-style ·
cracy. Throughout the fifties this political division was reflected materialist philosophy, that mechanistic materialism whose last
in every ideological sphere, from philosophy to literature. Cherny- great representative was Ludwig Feuerbach, always appeared ai
shevski and Dobrolyubov were the ideological leaders of the radical the i~eology of the democratic revolution. Hence in England it
·:,'\ , democrats in tqeir struggle against the flabby and submis~ive philo- was m the. sevcnteenth1 and in France in the eighteenth centuries
sophy of the liberals. .! that materialist doctrines flourished. In the second half of the
Thi.~ new upsurge of revolutionary democracy in Rw;sia thus .
' nineteenth century materiali!>m in the social science.c; had no ori-
took place in politically and socially more advanced conditions
than those in which Bielinski fought his ideological battle a decade
earlier. This higher level of the political struggle is apparent in
I I
ginal representatives or any deep · roots in either England or
France. At a time when a democratic ·revolution was hatching in
Germany, Feuerbach's materialist teaching had an inspiring elec-
'! trifying effect. Before 1848 the most advanced group of th; liter-
all the writings of Chcrnyshevski and Dobrolyubov. The most
·I
.. striking new feature of their literary activitie.~ was that they now
l .directed their criticism not only against the traditional enemies
ary vanf.{Uard in Germany (Richard Wagner, Gottfried K eller,
Georg H erwegh, etc.) were all under the influence of Feuerbach,
; of freedom but also against their own unreliable allies, the liberal and his activities gave the young Marx and the young Engels the
·! bourgeoisie and its ideological representatives. In Bielinski's eyes urge to put Hegelian dialectic on its feet, to tw'n it materialistically
the chief enemy was still the despotism of autocracy and feudal ,j
; upside down.
'! This extensive and inten$ive effect of materialistic philosophy
~
reaction. Chcrnyshevski and Dobrolyubov attacked these force.c; no
less resolutely than their master, but in their time another problem among the bourgeois intelligentsia of Germany in the forties of
the nineteenth century was, however, of very brief duration. The
I. . had already arisen : the differentiation in the camp of the oppon·
/·· ents of absolutism and feud alism, the incipient split between '
defeat of the 1848 revolution,· the betrayal by the German bour-
1 libcralir.m and democracy. .\ ! . geoisie of their own revolution, the compromise already being
negotiated with Bismarck and the Hohenzollerns, put an end to
; This new situation naturally affected the philosophical founda- .:

tions of the new critical school. Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov the further fruitful influence of materialist philosophy. Only amoJCg"·• · •
no longer, like Bielinski, based themselves on Hegel's philosophy, those engaged in the natural sciences did materiali.~m live on-
but on the m~~eriali s m of Ludwig Feuerbach. Their social criticism but even h ere it lost its revolutionary elan, the universality it had

•'·
- ·- -· •.1. .
_.......J _
 . .. .. ... . ··"""T-~·- · -

102 STUDIES 1N EIJROPEAN REALISM 1 RUSS1A.'l DEMOCRATIC J.tTERARV CRITICI:iM

possessed in the pre-revolutionary period and its application to the fact that whenever they examined social facts and historical
philosophical and social problems grew increasingly pedestrian and
vulgar. (Vogt, Ludwig BUchner, etc). In Germany those who were
disciples of Feuerbach in the years preceding 1848 all without ex-
ception turned their backs on their former teacher. Schopcnhauer,
the pessimist and irrationalist remained for several decades the
leading philosopher of reactionary Germany and the evolution of
t i
'
correlations and drew revolutionary conclusions from them, they
never allowed themselves to be hampered by their own conscious
philosophy, by the limits of mechanistic materi~lism.
In this respect their philosophical position is often reminiscent
of Diderot in the second half of the eighteenth century. Diderot,
too, was an old-style materialist, an adherent of mechanistic materi-
Richard Wagner is a good iJlustration of this process. Even those )

1 alism, but when faced with problems incapable of being solved on

German ideologues who never openly repudiated Fcuerbach's phi- i this basis, this revolutionary of genius relied on his instincts, on
losophy transformed his militant materialism to an increasing ex-
tent into a toothless positivism (an instiu.lce of this is the cvolu,tion
l his realistic faculty of observation sharpened by his materialist
view~ and.on his ability to interpret facts, and blithely over!>tepped
l
of Hermann Hettner, the famous historian of literature of this the limits of his own conscious philosophy. We need recall only
period). The great S\viss novelist Gottfried Keller alone remained his The Nephew of Rameau,that work of genius, in which Diderot
true to the materialist philosophy of his youth; but of course he the mechanistic materialist turned himself into a precursor of dia~
lived and wrote in democratic Switzerland and not in reactionary lectical materialism.
Germany. :: Making allowance for the difference in the historical situation,
If one is to understand the significance and historical place of. the same applies on a higher level to Chernyshevski and
Chernyshevski's and Dobrolyubov's militant materialism, one must Dobrolyubov.
take this general historical situation of philosophy into considera- 1 2.

l
tion. Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov are to this day the last great
thinke~ of revolutionary-democratic enlightenment in Europe. Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov were democrats. But there ar~ ,·
Their work is to this day the last great, inwardly unbroken offen- many varieties of democrats. For Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov ..'
sive thrust of the democratic philosophy of enlightenment. Both any democratic change meant in the first place the political and ../
were enthusiastic adherents of Feuerbach's materialism, but in I social liberation of the lower, plebeian section of the people, i.e. ·
their social philosophy, their social criticism and their conception first of all the complete emancipation of the poor peasantry;
of history they far outrun their teacher who was himself much materially and morally crushed by serfdom. Here they part com- ~1
more interested in natural science and the materialist solution of pany with the liberalism of their time. The Liberals also wanted ·
purely philosophical problems and who in the ideological sphere to abolish ser:fdorn, but their ideal was a solution which would .
haq subjected only religion to a concrete an alysis. This one- have brought about liberation without any real damage to the in·i
sidedness of Feuerbach, as compared with the great materialists of terests of the landowners. Hence they wanted the method of liber-'
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, mirrors the general ation to be quite free of any revolutionary measures. ·The Liberal~
weakness of the bourgeois-democratic movement in Gennany. were afraid of anything that might· bring them into conflict with
Thus Chcrnyshcvski and Dobrolyubov have done much more the autocracy or with the feudal landowners and on the other hand
than merely to apply the philosophy of Feuerbach to new spheres. they were no less afraid of the spontaneous movement of the
They, too, were naturally unable to carry their last principles, pt>asantry, of any attempt on their part to take their fate into theit,
their methodology, forward into a dialectical-materialist philoso- own hands. Caught between these two dangers, they manoeuvred·
phy. And because they went beyond Feuerbach in their practical apd prepared a compromise with absolutism.
philosophy without completely transcending his philosophical prin- The democrats Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov were genuine, .
ciples, their methodology had of necessity to contain many con- fearless and uncompromising revolutionaries, in the sense in which
tradictions. But even these contradictions were of a fru itful nature Marat or St. Just were revolutionaries in the days of the French
because they pointed towards the future. Chcrnyshcvski's and revolution. Qf course there are many contradictions and much
Dobrolyubov's revolutionary genius manifests itself precisely in lack of clarity in the views of all these great revolutionaries:

·I
,. none of them could foresee what the putting into practice of a they remained true disciples of Feuerbach and of the great thinkers
revolutionary democracy would lead to and they all harboured of the Enlightenment. Feuerbach's saying : "Our ideal should be 1"1
., all sorts of nebulous illusions as to its prospects. But Dobrolyubov not a castrated, disembodied, denuded creature, our ideal should
and. Chcrnysnevski lived sixty years later than the French revolu- be a whole, real, many-sided, complete, fully developed man,"
tionary democrats and they already knew Socialism, if only in its could serve as a motto for their own ideological battles.
Utopian, not its scientific, form. And they were true democrats The difference between them and the old thinkers of the En-
for they put the total liberation of the suffering people above all lightenment lies in the fact that Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov
.other considerations and for the sake of this liberation they did could historically and philosophically gain insight into and digest
not flinch from any unforeseen course the form of social evolution the p eriod following upon the great French revolution. H ence ..
might take. They thus deflected U topian Socialism in the direc- they were not confronted with a problemlcss "empire of reason"
tion of revolutionary activity at a time when its classic representa- like the thinkers of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth~century.
, tive still rejected on principle all participation in revolutionary I' They saw that the great French revolution had not swept away .
politics, even in any politics at all. It is this faith in the i
the contradictions of bourgeois society but had raised them to a · ot ... •• •
people, this devotion to the oppressed and exploited masses that l higher level and reproduced them in enhanced form. Thus they ·
constitutes the revolutionary-democratic greatness of Chcrnyshev- could look at the obstacle<; to the liberation of the popular masses
ski and Dobrolyubov. H ere they parted company with even the
best of their Liberal contemporaries and here lies the basis of the
j with. fewer illusions and much more concretely than their great
precursors, but for this reason their final outlook · is also more full
,j
ideological conflict between them and the Liberals. l; of contradictions than that of the earlier thinkers of the Enlighten-
The depth of this democratic-revolutionary feeling in Chcrny- '· ment. But these contradictions are the fruitful contradictions of
shcvski and Dobrolyubov is the foundation on which the greatness life itself, the fearless recognition and philosophical assimilation
of their literary criticism rests. These criticisms always served the i of which makes Chernyshevski's and Dobrolyubov's writings so
end of the liberation of the plebs, always point~d towards the ! exciting and interesting.
revolutionary way of emancipating the peasantry. Latter-day ac- 1 At the same time such a conception extends-of cour!\e without
ademic literary historians went so far as to say that Chern ysh evs~i's '
1
j clear consciousness of the fact-the application of Feuerbachian
and Dobrolyubov's literary criticism was merely a nu·ans of eludmg l materialism to the phenomena 6f social life. The basic principle
the vigilance of T sarist censorship and smuggling revolutionary of materialist thinking is that being take.c; priority over conscious-
ideas into the masses in this disguise. ness, that being determines consciousness and not the other way·
Such a conception is of course quite incorrect, mainly because round. The epistemological limit<; of the old mechanistic material-
it contains a narrow and one-sided conception of what revolution
is and of the tasks revolutionary ideologies have to fulfil. Cherny- ··]· i~m lay precisely in the fact that within this quite correctly rccog-
ltized priority of being the notion " being '' was rigidly and
shcvski and Dobrolyubov, like all truly great democratic revolu- .I
unilaterally conceived: on the one hand the old materialists were
j
tionaries before them) always conceived a social cataclysm, a revo~ i unable to achieve a correct understanding of the objectivity of
lution in the universalist sense, as a radical change in all human :I social being and on the other hand their concept of "being" was
relations and in all human manifestations of life, from the most '
I
undialectica], containing neither evolution nor movement nor inner
I
massive economic found ations to the highest forms of ideology. ·I
forward-drivin.~ contradictions. T hese limitations of mechanistic
Seen from this angle, literature can of course no more be an end .i
.• materialism can be very clearly discerned in Feuerbach.
·.in itself than philosophy or even politics. T hroughout th~ir life Chernyshevski's and Dobrolyubov's conception of society strives
Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov sought for ways of revolutionary to go beyond these limit<; of mechanistic materialism. That is why
change and in all manifestations of human activity they looked for we find in the concrete analysis of certain phenomena by them
the tendencies which would advance or hinder the great change- a striking and lively dialectic, although the epistemological prin-
over. What they longed for was ever the universal freedom of ciples of their philosophy derive from Feuerbach's mechanistic
men to develop their facultie~ in every direction. In this respt!Ct materialism. This contradiction which can often be observed in

. ______ __...._
 106
. ·- · ~· - -- ·· - ·-•· " ···--- .. -·-
STUDIES lN EUROPEAN REALISM
- - - - -- .. .,
...
- - --~-~_.,..,.,...
~ .. ...
RU.~SIAN DEMOCRATIC LIT£RAR\' CRITICISM 107
.., I

the history of philosophy, is very conspicuous in them, but is by ~ cipation, the ideological clarification, the internal discussion of moral"
no means the first . instance of such a contradiction. Friedrich \' and philosophical problems, plays a very important part. The con-
Engels mentions that eighteenth-century French materialism thinks txadictions and antagonisms thrown up by social being itself, the
mechanically and metaphysically, at least in its theory of know- ideological consequences of new forms of social being, do not all ~··~
., .
ledge. But outside the sphere of philosophy in the narrower sense, appear simultaneously in the sphere of human manifestations and J: I

we find-for instance in Diderot- masterpieces of dialectic. The cannot be clarified all at once, quickly, in a direct line. The more
l
social struftgles of Chernyshevski's and Dobrolyubov's day were intricate and manyMsided such problems are, the greater the part ..
more open and acute than those of the middle of the eighteenth- ·i literature can play in social evolution, in the ideological prepara-. • · ·
century. It is therefore easy to understand that this fruitful con-
·I I tions for some great crisis in social relations. It follows from this
. tradiction, this fonvard-driving element of human thought, was I:' that the great revolutionary ideologues of such preparatory periods .
stronger and more manifest in their work than in D,idcrot's. give the greatest attention to literary phenomena and that the V
: Such a widening and deepening of the notion of "being'' which critical analysis and appreciation of literature occupies a consider~ .'·.!\'':1:,-.
/ accordingly comprises-if not in the conscious theory of knowledge, able proportion if not the central position of their philosophical ;;~ \
but certainly in literary practice-the observation and recognition and publicistic work. Thus it was with Diderot and Lessing and ~·
. of the contradictory movement of society, its evolution by con- ,. thus with Bielinski, Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov.
tradiction, determines the nature of Chernyshevski's and Dobro- Histories of literature usually clac;s the work of the great demo-
lyubov's critical writings. Thi!l is of course much too general a cratic critics as "publicistic criticism.u This description is not in-
statement. It indicates merely why and how Chernyshevski and correct but requires closer definition if misunderstandings are to
Dobrolyubov concerned themselves with social problems, but not he avoided. Bielinski, Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov were all
why literary criticism occupied a central position in their literary engaged in a bitter struggle against the "aestheticist" critics of
I~
activities. -~
their time, against those who consciously or· i.mcc:insdously advo- j .
.d
cated "a.~tJo.~· aE(~--s~-~e./' who attempted to separate the conception
3. ot artistic perfection from the realistic reproduction of social
1 II
'·
Franz Mehring, in his analysis of Lessing, makes some very
l
phenomena, and who regarded art and literature as phenomena lj:
interesting remarks ·about the reason why literary criticism had independent of social strife and untouched by it. In contrast to 'I
played a dominant part in the struggle for freedom of the German such ideas, Bielinski, Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov laid the! I

bourgeoisie in the eighteenth centmy. He is quite right in pointing 1 greatest emphasis on the connection between literature and society.. • •I.,
out this fact, which applies with certain qualifications to eighteenth- For them life itself was the criterion for artistic beauty; art grew
century France as well. But Mehring attaches too much importance
to the circumstance that Lessing and the other champions of Ger- ·J
:1
out of life and creatively reproduced it; the fidelity and depth of
this reproduction was the true meao;ure of artistic perfection.
11
1
~·.,
man enlightenment were compelled by external political considera- Closely related to this conception is their basic idea that life
. tions to concentrate above all on literary problems. There is of J itt:elf, deeply conceived and faithfully ·reproduced in literature,
course some truth in this, but formulated too rigidly it results in
a half-truth. M ehring's observations require to be qualified in the
( is the most effective means of throwing light. on the problems of
social life and an excellent weapon in the ideological preparation :
sense that the cmancipatOl)' strivings of tlw classes develop only ::.,. of the democratic revolution they expected and desired. Inasmuch
very slowly and are full of contradictions. In various spheres of as the great Russian ~ritics concerned themselves with the origins,
life the deep-seated contradictions of the new level of social being the nature, the value and the effect of literature, inasmuch as they
become visible long before a class-for instance the German bour- strived to deepen, widen and accelerate by their positive and nega-
geoisie of the eighteenth century-bas economically and ideologic- tive criticism the practical, revolutionary influence of literature, .~
ally reached a point at which it can enter into a direct political their work can rightly be described as publicistic criticism.
struggle for emancipation. But such a description is immediately distorted into a falsifica-
In, the preparation qf social group~ for the struggle for eman- tion if it is interpreted to mean that the publicistic viewpoint
 takes precedence over artistic considerations or even excludes them. the new, realistic democratic literature by minimizing the import-
The exact opposite is the case. Wherever modern literature a nd ance of Goethe. In this Bielinski followed Heine: he opposed with
especially modern literary criticism is poor and infertile, it is cer- the greatest vigour Menzel's attack on Goethe. His conception 0f
tain that there has been some weakening of its most important Pushkin's artistic perfection is dialectic in the best sense of the
artistic basis, some loosening of the close ties that unite it with word. He regards it by no means as a mere formal impeccability,
life; that thus it no longer springs straight from life itseU and in but as a harmonic unity of the artistic principles with the faithful
return influences life. When this tie with life is broken, literature reproduction of all the phenomena of life. I t was not by chance
. and lit~rary criticism lose sight of the organic, essential unity of tha t in his analysis of Pushkin's Oncgin Bielinski described this
artistic form and life-content and of their living, dialectic mutual work as ''an encyclopaedia of Russian life"; he derived Pushkin's
.influence on each other. As a 'result, not only is content sub- artistic p erfection from this all-embracing universality of his repro-
ordinate to form, but the concept of fonn itself:now regard:!d duction of life.
as paramount both theoretically and practically-is given a narrow, In Bielinski's view, the emergence of the Gogolian__ pcriocl, the .
one-sided and superficial definition. struggle for the triumph of Gogo! ian realism, coincided with the ·
In contrast, Diderot and Lessing, Bielinski, Chernyshcvski and growing intensity of the democratic-revolutionary struggle against
Dobrolyubov concerned themselves with genuine great artistic absol~-~~!!1-. _<!nd_.Je.!.!~_alism . In similar fashion, Lessing's de-
values. The r eactionary detractors of the great Russian critics vastating criticism of the dramas of Corneille and Voltaire were
I. involved themselves in strange contradictions on this point. On linked in indivisible ideological unity with the preparations of the
the one hand they denied that these critics understood and loved morally arming democratic movements directed towards the cstabw
art and accused them of one-sided political partisanship and of lishmcnt of German unity a nd the destruction of that small-state
having subordinated the interests of art to political considerations. :' tyranny which perpetuated the division and slavery of the German
On the other hand they are compelled to admit that it was these people. According to Bielinski the great social and political import-
critics who established the scientific foundations of Russian literary ance of Gogol's realism lay in its merciless exposure of the social :
history, demarcated · its periods and gave valid appreciations of r<:alitics of its time and in its faithful mirroring of the harsh dis· :
its great figures. cm·dances of life. In Gogol's art this is not some alien tendency
Above all, we owe to Bielinski the really adequate appreciation gt afted on literature from outside. Absolutism, tyranny, feudalism --
ot Pushkin and of his central, leading position in modern Russian made everyone's life so terrible and inhuman that the fa ithf\IJ ··.r
literature; the recognition of the fact that new R ussian literature reproduction of daily life was in itself the most cO'cct ive
began with Pushkin and found in him its first classic, unsurpassed propaganda.
to this day in artistic perfection. And it was again Bielinski who Needless to say Gogel's realism is not a naturalist, photographic
won for Lermontov the place in Russian literary appreciation which reproduction of petty details of e-v:eryday life ; it is a concentrated .·
was his due. artistic presentation of the outstanding feaq.lrcs of social reality .
. But Bielinski also knew that even while Pushkin was still alive, If the reader or spectator who reads or watches 'the realistic pic- .
I a new period had begun in Russian literature, the period of modern tutes painted by Gogol notes with horror the revelation of the
·,J realism, the period of Gogol. His appreciation of Pushkin as artist hidden truths of his own life, its hidden meaning or hidden sense-
and poet was closely linked with this division of Russian literature lessness, then it is not the writer who uncovers these things by
into well-defined periods. Bielinski's conception of Russian litera- means of external devices, such a.o; tendentious additions or com-
ture closely r esembles Heine's conception of the evolution of Ger- mentaries-no, it is the dreadful truth which unmasks itself through
man literature. Both insist that the great central figures of the the artistic instrumentality of a A'reat realist. "What arc you laugh-
classic period, Goethe in Germany, Pushkin in Russia, stand higher ing at?" asks the police chief a t the end of Gogol's Tlze Govcm-._.
in artistic merit than the representatives of the realistic period. mcnt Inspector. "You are la ughing a t yourselves." In the sphere
When Heine speaks of "the end of the period of art" he sharply of aesthetics, the support given to such a literature of exposure by ,
differs from tho~ e critics (f.g. Borne) who thoitg-ht to advance c; critic is a struggle for realism, against hoth petty n.lturalism and "/

. . ·- · -- - ---------
 'll
RUSSIAN ))EMOCRATIC LITERARY CRITICISM 111
110 S"MJOJE.S lN EUROPEAN REALISM • r
correct appreciation of Tolstoy Chernyshevski's comments are still
the ivory tower of an academic theory of art and an acsthcticist a valuable guide today.
literature. Briefly, from Pushkin to Tolstoy the most outstanding figures
But it is not only in respt:ct of Gogol's art that B~elin~ki was ~e of Russian literature Jive in the memory of posterity essentially in
critical and historical interpreter of the new penod m Russ1an the form in which they were characterized by the three great critics
literature. Many of his contemporaries, critics as well as ~oets, at the time of the former's appearance on the literary scene. They
complained-as did later the contemporaries of Cher~yshevskt. and thus laid down once and for all the historical and aesthetical foun-
Dobrolyubov-that the critic Bielinski tore evcryth1~g. to _PJe~es
but created nothing "positive.'' It is quite true that B1elmsk1, w1t~
hi~ critical analyses, destroyed the literary caree~ of m~ny o! h1s
dations of Russian literary history. From all this it is clear that
the concept "publicistic criticism" can be applied to these great
writers only if carefully defined and qualified. In order to define
~I
contemporaries. But in these controversies poster~ty ha~ mvanably the concept more concretely, more should be said about their
endorsed Bielinski's judgment ; there i!' not a :•~gle mstan~e on critical method.
record in which an author whom the great cnt1c had subjec~ed 4
to one of his violent attacks had been late: pro~:c.l ~n.d~servmg As already stated in the preceding, Bielinski, Chernyshevski and
ot such treatment. The alleged cruelty of B1el~ns~1 s cnt.IC!S~ was Dobrolyubov always insisted that literature must never be detached
just as much a thu~derstorm that ~!eared the <:lf m Russian hte.ra- from the evolutionary process of life itself; that every work of art
ture as that of Lcssmg's had been m German ltteratu.re. And B~cl­
.I
must be regarded as a product of the social struggle and playing ..-
inski lived to see the first works of the new reahst generat~o.n a more or less important part in it. The methodological con-
appearing before the Russian public. H~re the inexora.blc: cn~tc sequence of this premise is that every work of art is considered
.......is transformed into a sensitive, undcrstandmg and enthusiasttc dts- .as a reflection of social life. The essence of Bielinski's, Chernyshev-
:4•'
coverer of new talent, who acclaimed the appearance of.T~rg~nyev, ski's and Dobrolyubov's critical method is therefore to juxtapose life II i :
Goncharov, Dostoyevski with great ·warmth. It wa~ Btehnskl who
.....
and literature, the original and the reflection. This conception \ : .I

helped these great realist writers to occupy the place!' due to them of art as a mirror of reality is a common trait of all aesthetic theory :
based on a materialist philosophy. ··!·
in Russian literature. I~ ~
But it is Chcrnyshevski and Dobrolyubov who are the theori~ts, But the old mechanistic materialism is unable to resolve theoreti- : I~

critics and historians of the Gogolian period of literature, the penod cally the dialectic intricacies of this process of reflection. It was ··I ·!

of the great Russian realists of the nineteenth century. I~ a gr~at these limits of the old materialism which Goethe criticized in dis~ · r:"
hi!=.torical monograph Chernyshevski summarized the mam soc1al,
ideological and artistic trends of this period. ~c and Do~rolyubov
cussing Diderot's aesthetical writings. We.have already seen that
as a result of their revolutionary democratic convictions, the three ..FJ
have given us a profound and comprehenstve analy~LS of the
arcatest repre!lentatives of Russian realism, who were thetr co~te.m­
~oraries. It is to their work ac; critic." that the correct apprec1att~n
of the personalities of Turgeny~v, Goncharov, Saltykov-Shcl~ednn,
great Russian critics' conception of society transcended the boun-
daries of their own epistemological and aesthetical theories.. The
life with which they compare the works of art produced by it and
for which it serves as a measure, is never static, never merely the
li..'
I.:.i,
.. ,.

'ij,
.I
~

immediate surface of existence. Bielinski, Chernyshevski and t;~ :

Ostrovski, Dostoyevski and of the works they produced m ~he :.
'fifties of the nineteenth century is chiefly due. They welcomed wtth Dobrolyubov brought to light the deepest, most hidden problems l.
of Russian social evolution and made them the subject of their
the same understanding and enthusiasm the first appearance of the
analyses. In comparing the ..originals" thus found with their '/ ~!
younger generation of realists, as Bielinski in his time welcomed
artistic counterparts, they obviously could not be satisfied with .

l
. the writers who in Chernyshevski's and Dobrolyubov's day were
a mere naturalist reproduction of the surface of life; on the con-
in their maturity. Chernyshevski wrote the finest ~~~d most ·•
trary they flayed any st,~ch attempt with the most biting irony. /
adequate analysis of the fir~t works of I...co.Tolstoy, r~cogn~1.mg cv~n They demanded. of the writers that in faithfully depicting the .·.
at that early stage the spcc1fic new tra.lts m Tolstoy s rc:a]Jsm, trru.ts
C'veryday destinic.c: of men they !'hould demonstrate the ~reat prob- ·.
which sharply divide him from all h1!l predecessors. For a TE:ally l
I
 .: 'lcms agitating · Russian society, and those decisive, fateful social the influence of the ideological depression, the more they arc prone
· forces which determine its evolution. to segregate themselves and withdraw from public life in order to
This way of posing the problem naturally determined the method preserve the integrity of their aesthetic ideal~-not to mention
of Bielinski's, Chernyshevski's and D obrolyubov's negative critic~ those who arc influenced by the apologetics of the reactionarie.<;
isms. Such comparisons of "original" and reflection as we have or l'ven actively assist them-the less capable they grow of penetra~
just described, are in themselves a devastating criticism of all ting to the very fountainheads of art, of sensing the connection
literature devoid of content. It would be a superficial criticism of between aesthetic form and social structure, at least instinctively
a bad writer to discuss only his formal d eficiencies. But if a trivia] if not conscious)y. For tho!ic who are liubject to such influences
and superficial reproduction of life is confronted with the genuine ~ut nevertheless retain their artistic feeling are left with only a •
human and social reality of which bad writers spontaneou!;}y give smgle. stable foothold : the soul of the artist himself) the world
only an involuntary caricature, then the formal' deficiencies appear of lm own experiences. But instead of regarding this a-; the neces-
merely as a negative form of the basic insubstantiality of the
writing in question; the confrontation with life itself automatically
l ~a ry bridge between objective reality and the objectivity of repro-
duction. they endow thi!; intcrm<!diatc: link with an absolute quality
exposes the emptiness of a feeble artistic reproduction of it. I· and !;Ce in it tht: sole. the sovereign source of artistic production.
.. - The question grows more complicated if we consider how the
greaf'critics interpret artistic value in the works of the outstanding
j. H ere · the road leads in a straight line from Sainte-Beuve to
Nietzsche and the present-day epigones-a road leading into the ·
realists. Here again the basic method is the comparison of the morass of arbitrary subjectivism.
original with the reflection. This comparison is founded on the The great Russian critic." never lost sight of this connection:--
: assumption that a work of art is a specific objective form of mir- On the contrary, the freshening and sharpening of the class
roring reali ty. The stress is laid on the term "objective." The .. : struggles in Russia in the 'fiftie.<> of the nineteenth century; the
·great Russian critics sharply reject all psychological quibbles, that .i important task of enlightening the popular masses imposed by
false and misleading expedient of the literary theory of decadent j the revolutionary unrest-a task which they undertook with pao;-
periods in which explanations for works of art are sought in the
mental peculiarities or biographical circumstances of their authors.
.I i
~ionatc devotion-all this not only preserved them from the dangers
of the ideological decline which had seized the West in the same
1
Such tendencies necessarily arise whenever the link-a link of period, but helped them to continue the line of social objectivity
which authors a nd critics arc mostly unaware-is broken between in their attitude to the problem.<; of art appreciation and to apply
artistic forms and the tn?tivc forces and structural principles of the methodology of the classic.<; of aesthetics in a consistently
I
social reality. This loss of the true basis of realist art and genuine ! democratic sense. In other words the Russian revolutionary_,,
aesthetics is always due to the social causes in which the intricately ) I- d emocratic critics emphatically refused to dive into the poets' soul
intertwined complex of the objective and subjective factors making I and to regard works of art from that viewpoint, as the product of~-­
up modern bourgeois society finds its expression. It is above all lI ,) myst~rious creative subjectivity. For them the starting-point is.
tht: anti-artistic nature of capitalist society (already pointed out the fimshed work of art and itr; relation to the reali ty which it.\
• • b)' M arx) that manifests ito;elf with increasing effect, and although iI mirrors, is for them the proper subject of criticism. D obrolyubov
it d oes not, of course, form an unsurmountable obstacle in the path •i says: ''What the author intended . to express is much less important
!
ot true art and aesthetics, it docs demand an exceptionally deep J
for us than what he •really did express, possibly unintentionally.
penetration into the essence of the motive forces, an indefatigable simply a~ a r esult of the correct reproduction of facts as he saw
and resolute swimming against the current of the ~upcrficial
phenomena of everyday life in a capitalist society. .i .
~. / -
them." I n another passage we read : "A work of art may be th~ ., ..... · •
:xp r~ssion o.f a certain idea, ~ot ~ecause the author had. this idea(
m mmd wh1lc he was producmg lt. but because he was 1mpressed
The social evolution of Central and Western Europe a fter the
defeat of th<.' 1848 revolution certainly opposed a formidable by certain features of reality from which this idea automatically!
! arises." .
obstacle to the emergence and development of such qualities in i
artist.; and their critics. The more the writers become~ ~ubjcct to
i It is precisely this objectivi!;m that many critic.., aud historiaus

.J
·- - .. · - -·· ----- ~ .. - -.-
114 STUOJES IN EUROPEAN REALISM ~ . - ·- · · ---~:.- --· RUSS1AN DEMOCRATIC LITERARY CRITICISM 11',
,., f
.,
of literature in the p eriod of the dcclinC:: -of the arts regard a:; an ~ ideas and aspirations which most of the contemporary philosopher. :
anti-acsthcticist trend. This entirely fa1se opinion is a result of with their strictly scientific approach could at best merely surmise;
the pseudo-aesthetic prejudices of a p eriod of decline. F or it is ,., Yes, writers of genius could bring to life and express in actions )·

v
precisely by means of this m ethod that Bielinski, Chernyshcv.ski the truths for which the philosophers only dimly groped." '
and Dobrolyubov were able to throw light on what the writer had
rea lly created, and why in happy moments of creative inspiration
. he had been able to raise what he had seen and formed high t~bove
the barrit~rs of his ovm .'iubjectivc opinions or prejudices. The true
~
f
1
Dobrolyubov is quite aware of the fact that the process is a
most intricate one and not merely a simple m a tter of the 'inAuenc-
ing' of a writer by the ideas current in science or philosophy. He
continues: 'Usually this does not happen in the simple form that
'~, I

'
' ;I
nature of artistic crc:ation was thus explained here for the. first •·1 a writer borrows the ideas of the philosophers and expn!sses them .I
time, in con trast to the psychologising mystifications of the subjec- .-. :{, in his works. No, both writer and philosopher work independently,
tivist school of aesthetics. 1 both take the same thing for their starting-point and this thing
T his method reaches its culminating point in Friedrich Engels' is real life. The difference lies only in their approach to life.' ;•

aualysis of Balzac's life-work. He shows tha t Balzac has cn·atcd The appeal to reality, the materialist theory of mirroring the
. ~
something different, somethiug much greater and <leeper than he objective world through the medium of human consciowmcss,
wnscion~ly intended a nd even than was compa tible with his con- through art, science and philosophy thus docs not by any means
scious world-view. Engels calls the extremely important. fuud a- lead the great Russian critics towartls an intellectualisation of art
mental aesthetic n:sult of this aualysis "thl! v.!c.~ory of__r_~alism." and even less towartls its mechanical politiza.tion-but on the con-
This Engelsian " victory of realism, shm.\;~· uot only a relative trary towards establishing the independence of a rt, not of course
indcpemlence of the work of art from the opinions (and ahow all in the sense of the subjectivistic-idealistically inflated spurious isola-
from the social prejudices) of even an author of genius hut some- 1· • tion found in the theories of the post-1848 period of decline, but
times finds them to he diametrical opposites. The gr<.>at R ussian
critics v.•en: no ll!ss distinctly aware of this dialectic, although they
in such a ma nner that in demonstrating the interdependence of
art and life a nd in showing the real function <:>f art in the process ,_,
'I ..'
lacked the methodological clarity of Engels. Dobrolyubov, for in- j of social evolution, they facilitate the philosophical understanding
' :t ~

stance, il!ustrated this position with the following simile.:: " It is : cf the true independence of art. .
like the case of Ba laam who wanted· to curse Israel, bu t in the Thus did the great Russian critics, in contra'it to the modern,
! ..
' ~~
solem n moment of elation , a bless in~ instead of a curse involuu- t · narrow, subjectivist, distortingly aestheticist overe.~timation of art,
tarily rose to h is lip~.'' establish the true and epoch-making part played hy art in the
' •••, ! r
.,. ,
We said that W<! can disccru this method iu the works of the 1 history of mankind.
great R ussian critic..~ even though sometimes only in rudimentary t·: If we go more closely into the application of this critical method
;
form . . The principle of the "victory of reali~m" emphasizes pre- we see that these critics-here ag~in treading the !iame paths as
cisely the important part pla yed hy a rt in the evolution of man- Engels---eentre their investiga tions around the power of a writer ·•
kind. It shows that in the forming of human consciousness, in the to create types. H ere again the road of revolutionary-democratic .
uncovering of social tasks and objectives and in the struggle for criticism leads away from the . modern p erverse overestimation of I
them, the great artist is no mere. second· rate camp-follower of art towards the recognition of its true greatness and its true rune- ...
'
l ~
philosophical thought and political activity, but a comra,h· ~i n- anns tion. Just as the p_ast lives in the memory of mankind in the shape :11
('
of equal value. itt which it was formed .by the great classics, so the self-knowledge '·
Great artists have ever b~cn piom:ers in the advallce of the of the present is based on the work of great artists. Hamlet, Don '
human race. By their creative work they uncover previously un- .} ~~ Quixote and Faust convey to us the innermost essence of past · :·
known interconnections between thing!\ -- interconnec tious which ~· epochs. It is because of the creation of such comprehensive types {
science and philosophy a rc able to put into exact form only that the greatest values of the past have remained immortal. Doh-
much latfr. Dobrolyubov says : "Such writers were blessed with .j rolyubov says: 'The value of a writer or of a book is determined
~o rich a nature that they could in~tiuctivdy assimilate thr genuine ; 1 by the degr.ee. to which th ~y express the true aspirations of an age
 or of a people.' Genuine., lasting types arc born out of the sen-
sitivity of the writer for the things about which the contmunity ~ \
for and found the live trends in which social evolution finds it~
true,. aesthetic reflection, its artistic fulfilment. The creation of
feels deeply, and out of his ability to incarnate them in concrete \. genume and lasting ty~es dcp en_d~ on the correct understanding
characters and human destinies. ~f permanent and dommant !\OCJal proce.~ses. and is at the same
It is the creation of such characters, such types, that the Russian tm:e the fulfilment of the fundamental requirements of art itself.

'
i
. • critics dema nd of their contemporaries. It is by no means acciden- It IS the great achievement of Ru!>sian realism that it has created
tal that in this the revolutionary demands of militant democracy many s.uc~ truly typical_ cha~act_ers. The discovery and revelation
coincide with the defence of the true interests of art. Their demand i of the s~c1al an~ l_w•toncal s1gmficance of such typical characters
for a comprehensive, type-creating realism organically follows from and typtcal destmtes are tht: mai.n task Bielinski, Chcrnyshev~ki
· \··. J
their political-propagandistic objectives. This programme culmin- ··.:,. ··-.. and ~obroly u bov set themselves in their work as critics. . ,i' ...

ates in the aesthetic imperative : 'Create a realistic literature equal ·-v ~h1s_ method docs not, of course, confine itself to asscssin~ fhe '~
to the classics of the past in the deep understanding and pla~tic
reproduction of the outside world; create out of the life of the ~ tyJ_:>lc~hty of the c~aracters .in works of literature, although the
pr_mc1ple of ~omparm.g the hterary work with the social r~al ity it
present typical characters as deep and true as Don Quixote, H am- I rnmors . apphes to th1s as wdl. The social concretization of the
!
let or Faust !' The essential aesthetic values of literature co uld method a~ the same time involves its aesthetic concretization. The
. not be more effectively defended than by 'publicistic criticism' of I p~ycholo~Jcal and moral analysis of the human types created at
the sa~lH~ time reveals the merits and validity of the method ~sed
I
this kind. I

Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov thus reject all probing into the l'. 111 the1r cr~ ation; t~e i~vestigation of their destinies develops into
so-called 'dep ths of the poet's soul.' In its place they put the basic a pc1~c tratm g exammat10n of the genuinely poetic-not formallv
question: how does the evolution of tll"e comnwnity itself create conceived-composition of the work. Questions such as whv i~
typical problems and typical characters, how are certain type.c; the Russian novels_ of this period, the female characters ar~ hum~nly
which mutually supplement each other and develop each other to and m~rally su~cnor to the men ; why Turgt~nyev, whe n he wished
a higher plane, spontaneously produced by the proce.~s of social to clep1ct ar_1 ~ct1ve hero, had to pick on a Bulgarian r ~volutionary;
evolution itself. In his analysis of Goncharov's novel Oblomov, why the smc1~e of the heroine in Ostrovsky's T hunderstorm has
Dobrolyubov gives a classical example of this new critical method, not_ ~ depressmg but a tragically inspiring dfect: why Stoltz. the
He shows the growing discontent and opposition of the Russian pos1t1~e _counterpart_ t.o Goncharov's Oblomov, had to be pai.nted
nobility and gentry in its evolution from Pushkin's Onegin to m ~r tJstJcally less Vivid colour!: than the slothful hero who is for-
Goncharov's Oblomov. He shows how the unity of the social cvc_r spra.,~l_mg on a sofa~all these th.ings show how intimately ,
process necessarily and spontaneously produces cognate problems socml, political ~nd aesthetlcal problems are intertwined and how ·
for all men actively participating in it and demonstrates how the latter, prccJscly as a result of such in tertwinement. find a
several great writers (in accord ance with their own social position, dc~perr' true and more a~tistic solution than those produced by
time, and personality) depicted difTerent stages in the development the :~ estc~n conte~poranc.~ of Chtrnyshcvski and Dohrolyubov.
of this type and· the . typical conflicts in which it was involved, I_t IS obvtous that.m a ll thts the two great Ru.c;sians deal with the
until at last the type found it<; historical a nd aesthetical completion

J
baste problems of hterature. They do on occao;ion refer to " the
. in Goncharov's Oblomov. laws of aesthetics," but it is with contemptuous irony and one
This Russian democratic-revolutionary criticism advanced to a should ~lways concretely examine in what connection and with
. point where the social genesis and the aesthetic value of a literary what ~b~ect t~ey were made and to what aesthetic conclusions the
I work linked up \vith ' each other. While' the aesthetes aild critics ~nalys1s m wh_ 1ch they occur finally leads. · (Bielinslti's terminology
of the West either overstressed the fonn al elementc; in art in sub~
jectivist-mystificatory fashion or adopted a rigidly exaggerated
objectivism concerned solely and directly with the superficial
phenomena of social life, Russian revolutionary criticism probed
T j
~~ som ewhat d1fferent on this point; he wanted a radical rcconstruc~
t1on of H~gc~'s aesthetic but with the preservation of its funda-
mental pnnctplcs). Dobrolyubov, for instance, violently attacked
th ~ so-called " laws of dramaturgy" in an analysis of one of Ostrov~
.\

~
•
I
philosophical opinions of the writers. 'What these critics Wl!re con- social struggle. A Rw;sian intellectual living abroad falls in love with
cerned with was what the great authors of their time were unco\- a young girl. But when the girl returns his feeling with a genuine
ering with the realistic pictures they brought up from the depths passion which breaks through the barriers of convention, he takeg
of Russian life. For this reason they were glad to accept ~s a fright and runs away. Chernyshevski's criticism of this story is
comrade-in-arms in the great work of liberation every serious a political and social criticism. What then is the connt:ction between
writer who depicted r·eality faithfully and with talent. In this they the criticism and its subject? D oes not Cherny!ihevski's political
more than once went b eyond not only the limits of Russian litera- criticism break up the organic, artistic structure of the story, does
ture but the narrow concep tion of realism as well. Chernyshevski, he not approach it from a viewpoint irrelevant to it?
for instance, hailed with enthusiasm the good Russian translations Here we can deal only very briefly with the basic methodological
of Schiller's poems and d eclared that Schiller was a precious and \ .
.·'.
problem. Gottfried Keller, the great Swiss democratic writer, said
imperishable part of Russian literature, a poet whom aU progreli- t~
once "Everything is politics." He did · not mean that everythinP
sive R ussia regarded as their own. . was politics in the direct sense, but only that the sam~ .~ocial force~
Such a n objective viewpoint ac4uired a decisive importance in which .at their most acute, at the culminating point of action, deter-
the specific conditions in which the two Ru~sian critics had to p~r.
sue their political activities. We have already noted that the 111-
j mine political decisions, arc a lso exercising their influence in all
i. phenomena of daily life, in work, in love1 in friendship. etc. In
cipient struggle between liberalism and democracy was one of the ev(:ry period of history these social forces produce cL-rtain types
central battlegrounds of this activity. Most of the great writer~
of the time inclined towards the Liberal philosophy; but inasmuch
. 2s they depicted Russiau reality faithfully. they involuntarily aid::?d
revolutionary democracy in many ways, among them in the ex-
posure of the policy .and philosophy of Liberalism itself. The sharp
J
~ -:

II
of men whose characteristic traits manifest themselves in the same
way iu every sphere of life and human activity, even though in
different directions, with different contents and with different in-
tensity. The greatness of tht great rt!ttlist writers consists precisely
in their ability to disccm a nd render visihle these typical humaa
criticisms which exprcsst!d this circumstance in polemic form, were traits iu every sphere of life.
not- as is often allc~cd-di rccted against the writers themsdv~s I
j
In his story Asya, the subject of Chcruyshcvski'.~ critical essay,
but on th e contrary were the fruit of a .~cnuinc respect for wl:at Turgenyev did this wry successfully. The human and philosophical
they had objectively created. i weakness of niuctecnth-century Russian Liberalism is .~hown in an
This a ttitude is expressed very dearly in Cherny:;ll<!vski's fa111ous i
.j artistically conceutrated form in tht! behaviour of the hero of the
cri ticism of Turgenyev: The Russian at the Re11d~<-uous. In

,~;
story towards the object of his love. Whether this is what Tur-
this essay Chernyshevski showed that Turgenyev, as a sincere and genyev himself wanted to express docs not matter at all, nor doe<;
gifted realist writer who portrayed life as it is, ha!' in his :-tory it matter whether he hat.l so m uch as thought· of such a connection
Asya quite unintentionally but quite inevitably produced a shatter- while he was writing the st02-y. What does matter"is that this con-
ing exposure of the type of the Liberal intellectual, a type psycho- nection is clearly before us in the story; that Chernyshevski recog-
logically and in outlook very close to Turgenyev and very d.ear
to his heart. Thus an analysis of the objective content aml obJeC- j nized and analysed this connection; and that the connection did
in rcC~lity exist in the form in which Turgenycv depicted and Cher.:
tive presentation of this story. writte.n by the Libera~ Tur~e.nyev nyshcvski analysed it. i.e. that the Liberals shirked the democratic.

1
served Chernyshevski as a startmg-pomt for a devastatmg cnt1r sm task.:,,arising from the liberation of the serfs in the same cowardly
of the Liberal outlook and of the Liberal intellectual as a human fashion and with the same 'high-minded' excuses as Tur.C{enyev·~·
• type. It was precisely because Turgenyev wa.s a g~nuine, se!i.ous hero. who "hamcfully ran away from his try~t.
. . realist, that his work could supply weapons agamst hts own pohtzcai :..-
· philosophy. . 5.
The same critical essay touches upon another very UDportant What Chcrnyshcvski uncovered h ere was the . connection be-
methodological problem. Turgenyev's nqvelette is a simple and tween political action and all other phenomena of social life. What
beautiful love-story and there is no mention in it of politics or the i11 new and epoch-making in this analysis is the acumen with which
 122 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM RUS SlAN DRMOCR:\TIC LITERARY CRlTICISi\t l~.J

. .
Chcrnyshcvski penetrates to the human-typical core of the love- Zola.) It produced on the o~her hand-as a necessary polar com- ~ ..
story and brings to light its political content and meaning. The plement to this unreal, psychologizing subjectivism- a no less mi;- · r
recognition of this unity of all manifestations of the human soul taken mechanical, p·seudo-objective sociologism. Instead of organ-
and spirit is the common property of all writers and critics who ically and artistically developing through the manipulation of living ,j .
'
understand the great, eternal and therefore always topical func- human ~haracters the real intrinsic totality of the decisive driving
tions of art. In this basic problem of art Goethe and Pushkin are forces which determine the social process, they resorted to purely ..
on the. side of Chernyshevski and not of modern aesthetics. When external, pseudo-universal descriptions of a superficially conc.eivcd
for instance Balzac, a political conservative, but a great realist, social totality, in the merely decorative or naturalistic setting of
analysed the historical novels of Walter Scott, he summed up their which human beings appeared as mere puppets. :l ·,.
~
artistic merit in this fashion : Walter Scott does not depict the Naturally the great Russian critics could not deal with these
great historical events themselves; what he is interested in is the tendencies which did not develop fully until considerably lat~.:r; :I

wherefore of those events; hence he gives no complete description but in their methodology, in their way of judging an author or
of a decisive battle, no analysis of the strategy and tactics employed a book, the foundations for the refutal of such false theory and
-what he gives us is a picture of the human, social and moral
atmosphere in both camps, presented in little everyday incidentg
such art-distorting practice are already laid down quite clearly.
(Thus in Saltykov.Shchedrin's appreciation of Zola one can di3-
.
which merge into more general action to demonstrate to the reader tinctly perceive the application of Chernyshevski'~ and Dobroly· .,
1

why it was inevitable that the victor should win the battle. This ubov's critical principles.) Zolaism and in general the aesthetic
aesthetic approach of Balzac is quite in line with Chernyshevski'! ideology of sh!iffi objectivi!>m and sociological vulgarisation ha~
critical principles. often been attacked in bourgeois literary theory. But these attacks
,. Such conceptions are by no means as self-evident as they may .. came almost exclusively from the right, from reactionary trends ...
··'appear once they have been correctly put. Important trends in in literature, from the point of view of subjectivist psychologisrn, .I

contemporary bourgeois literature take up a diametrically opposite which could not of course bring any real clarity into the discussion.
position. Zola, for instance, categorically rejected as unscientific Sham objectivism is still effective today; it occupie~ a very izn.
and inartistic, the introduction of casual motivation and demanded
'· that the writer should confine himself to the description of how,
j portant positi<?n iu literature and literary criticism even though
it sails under quite different colours; it diverts writers from their .. :II
,,

\~
l
not why, things happen. Zola backed up this polemic contrast by specific .and most important tasks and-in exactly the same way II
·allegedly 'scientific' arguments and by a reference to the methods as its opposite pole, i.e. subjectivism-it destroys in the sphere of
of modern natural science--as he understood them. On closer criticism all valid judgment of a work by the proper standard of ~
..:
examination it becomes obvious, of course, that his arguments the coincidence in it of· social significance and aesthetic values. · ..
were based uot on the real practice and method of natural science, It follows from this that the methodology of Russian rcvolu·
but on the epistemological agnosticism which in connection with tionary-dcmocratic criticism as conceived here, is of the greatest
the general crisis of the bourgeois ideology had spread also to tbe importance even today. It would be a grievous error to ccinsider ,.
conception of scientific method.
The rejection of casual motivation, which was as yet in its in-
Bielinski, Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov merely historically, as
prominent representatives of a past epoch, who have now ceasl!d
ii •
l.,
.I
cipient stage in Zola's work~, had fatal consequences both for the to be a live and effective force. The exact opposite is the case. '
author and the critic; on the one hand it tended to discourage If in the present profound crisis in the evolution of mankind we
the search for deeper motives which could reveal the essence of are to advance towards a genuine literary cultul'c, if we want •
social and human relationships, directed the attention of writers /.
literature and literary criticism to rise to the level of the great
and critics towards the superficial occurrences of everyday life problems of the epoch, then we can and must> today more than
· ; {Taine's milieu theory) and thereby made them d ependent on the ever before, learn a great deal from Bielinski, Cherny~hevski and
: theories in fashion for the momeht, which they then exaggerated Dobrolyubov.
in a mechanistic, anti-artistic manner. (Biologism and genetics in Here we can make only a few brief remarks regarding this great
 and comp1c:x problem. There is first of all the artistic presentation -~A~
· ··:~."
arsenal). We recall Tainc's description of . Balzac's heroes a:-;
oi politics itself. It is one of the main weaknesses of present-day .\ 'monomaniacs.'_
bour.ecoi.r literature that in this respect, as in so many other!;, it But these false extremes crop up on every issue of priuciplc 111
mostly moves between two false extremes. On the one hand is modern bourgeois criticism. On the one hand we find a so-called
pictured political action in a stark and abstract immediacy and 'purely acsthetical' criticism, a criticism approaching its subjccl
disjunction, without any serious a nd penetratingly realist portrayal from the viewpoint of 'art for art's sake,' and apportioniug praise
of the human essence of the politically active characters. On tbe or blame according to superficial formal characteristics without
other hand bourgeois literature often escapes into an abstract, so much as admitting even the existence of the really important
fabric ated, in reality non-existent private 'psychology' which in its problems of literature, and of the laws which govern artistic form
artificial isolation from social life comes into being on paper only \. " and which arise from the development of society a nd of its culture.
ancl ever remains without substance. In contrast to these two false ... On the other hand there i~ what is called 'publicistic criticism,' a .
'
cxtn~mcs. ever>' true lover of literature cannot repeat too often 'purely' social or political attitude to literature, which judges past ·
and too insistently Keller's saying that 'everything ;~ politics.' and present according to the superficial slogans of the day, without
Naturally this applies only to real, serious~ realist writers who in considering the real artistic content of the work iu question, or
sbowin~ life as it is, are able to dig down to those roots which in caring whether it is a great work of art or a piece of worthless
the last in~tance determine that this human type is viable and trash ; it is concerned solely with the slogan of the day, which may
that other fated to perish, that this one is valuable and th<lt one be completely forgotten tomorrow. If we arc to fight and ov~r­
usclc~~, c:tc. Today it i~ more important than ever to understand come these two wrong trends. in contemporary criticism-which
, that only in truly d eep realism can literary greatne~;, be organically can sometimes be observed simultaneously in one and the same
and imcparably united with a pervading political influence. author, so ·that we arc faced with an eclectic mixture of vulgar-
But not only the basic outlook. <.~ven the methodology o( the sociology and an irrational admiration of some sort of 'mastery';
Russian revolutionary critics is topical) even indispensable for lhc if we are to create a genuine critical style which is simultaneously
~olution of the literary problems of our own time. While Chern,·- and inseparably both political and aesthetical, then we cau and
~;hcvski and Dobrolyubov were still alive, another false dilemma should learn a great deal, more than ever before, from Bielinski,
had already ariY-en in modern bourgeois litera tun· and literarv Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov.
interpretation among their Wc.~;tern contemporarie~. On the one The history of criticism in the past centuries shows that its great
.. ~and there was th e limitation of literature to the portrayal of <t periods, its immortal figures were linked-and not by accident--
naturalist 'average.' and on the otbcr the escape into the hail - with the passionate advocacy of genuine democratic principles.
splitting of a subjc:ctivil':t psychologism. We find these fabc ex.tremes Thus did Diderot and Lessing act in the eighteenth century achiev-
in the entire Western literature after the defeat of tbe revolutions ing an influence extending far beyond the confines of their own
, • of 1848. True, some of the greatest writers of the age struggled countl)·; Bielinski, Cherny.shcvski and Dobrolyubov occupied a
inccs~::mtly-and ~o far a~ their own work.c; were conct>rned. ~uc­ similar position in the history of aesthctical thinkin~ in the nine-
ce~sfully-creatively to overcome the:;e false extremes. .But the teenth century, although they have not as yet made any impres-
leading li~ht s of Western criticism-Taine for one. a still \'erv sion outside Russia. But the social scene and the demand for it'>
influential critic-contributed by their analyses more to the per- reproduction in literature are .such that a universal rccognitiou, o"f ........ ·'
petuation of these false extremes than to their dimination. as did their international significance cau only b e a question of time and
the great Russian critic.~. In Tainc, for instance. we .find unorgan- tbat not long.
. · ically jumbled together a mechanistic theory, which makes man
;;;· a/ mere product of the so-called milieu (from which all naturaJi.;,"Tl
' ~erives its theoretical arguments) and a purely subjective, psycho-

/
logi~ing analysis of 'abstract passions quite detached from social
'.. reality (in which 'nbstract psychologism found its theoretical .'
 I. U&...O .LV I. ,.,..,.AJ .& .&&&.:. £..~~ • - - - • ..._.•-•• • - • •"--• · - · · • - ·
.· 1.
.J.f~-'· owner and peasant alike. Lenin also demonstrated ·most convinc-'
ingly that when Tolstoy so aptly and so venomously criticized the
CHAPTER SIX Russian society of his time, he did so almost entirely from the view-·
point of a naive "patriarchal" peasant. What Tolstoy expressed
was in Lenin's view the feeling of those millions of Russians who
had already re~ched the point of hating their mac;ters, but had
not yet reached the stage of entering on a conscious, consistent and·
Tolstoy and the Development of Realism merciless struggle against them.
This is why Lenin always regarded Tolstoy as a writer and I·
•
T H E o n J E c T of the present study is to define Tolstoy's place artist of universal) world-wide significance. Maxim Gorki in his • I f:
in world literature and outline his part in the development of real- memoirs quotes Lenin as saying about Tolstoy :
ism. It is based on Lenin's evaluation of Tolstoy's work. On " ' What a colossus, eh? What a gigantic figure ! Ah, there's
this point as on many others relating to problems of method and an artist for you, my boy ! . . . And do you know what is even
of the historical application of M arxism, the whole depth of -Lenin's more amazing? It's his peasant voice, his peasant way of thinking!
conception was not fully understood _for a long time. Because ?f A very peasant in the flesh! Until this noblemau came along,
Tolstoy's world~wide fame, and the unportant part he played m there was no real peasant in our literature '. . . Then he looked ••
the working-class movement during the period preceding and follow- at me with his little Asiatic slant~ eye, and asked : ' Who in Europe . :'

ing the revolution of 1905, nearly every litera:y criti~ within the could be put in the same class with him?·' and irnmediatdy
orbit of the Second International felt bound to discuss hun at-length. answered himself : 'No one!"'
Needless to say everything they wrote radically diverged from The leading social-democratic critics misinterpreted Tolstoy be-
Lenin's views. At that time the intricate social processes reflected cause they did not understand the revolutionary significance of
'I
in Tolstoy's works were understood little or not at all and faulty the revolt of the peasantry. Because they failed to grasp the core,.
interpretations of the social background _of Tolstoy's wri.tin.g.;; re- the basic meaning of Tolstoy's artistic work, they naturally clung
sulted in a superficial, and often quite mcorrect apprcctatiOn of to the immediately visible and superficial phenomena, Tolstoy's
the writings themselves. . . . , obvious choice of subjects. And because at the same time· they
Lenin called Tolstoy "the nmror of the Russ1an revolution, did not accept the sham universality which the Russian and Euro-
and adds that many have at first fou11d this description strange. pean · bourgeoisie had ac;cribcd to Tolstoy's entire activities, they
"How can something be called a mirror which gives so obviously were driven to deny the universality, even of Tolstoy's literary
incorrect a reflection of event~?" But here as everywhere else, production. When for instance Plckhanov asked "from what point
Lenin does not stop at the contradictions presented at first sight and up to what point" progressives could accept Tolstoy, he of
bv the phenomena of life· he probe!' deeper, down to the roots. He course put the emphasis on Tolstoy's social criticism. But his assess-
);l~ows that contradiction: precisely because of its contradictory ment of this social criticism is diametrically opposed to Lenin's,
nature. is the necessary and adequate form of expression for the and this is entirely in keeping with their basic difference of view-
richness and intricacy of the revolutionary process. In I ,enin's view point. Plekhanoy says: "The progressive representatives of the .
i
the contradictions in Tolstoy's views and images, the inseparable working class, respect Tolstoy above all as a writer who, even

~I
mixture of historical greatness with childish simplc-mindedness though he failed to understand the stntggle for the transformation
fcrm~ an or~nnic unity which is the philo!iophical and artistic re- of social conditions ana remained entirely indifferent to it, yet felt
ncction of both the ~rcatncss and weakness of the peasant move- that the present social order was undesirable. They admire in him .f
ment between the liberation of the serfs in 1861 and the revolution chiefly the writer who used his mighty literary gifts to show up this
of 1905. Lenin fully appreciated the supreme mastery with which undesirability, even though only episodically."
Tohtoy painted !'orne of the most importan t characteri~tics of thi:! We find a similar fals e estimate of Tol~toy's art in the writings of
pt'riod and tlH· c.on~ummate art with which he portrayed land- Franz Mehring and Rosa Luxcmbur~.
126
 · ·It was Plckhauov's opinion which provi~ed the centre .and the :. :"-.i ratic criticism can help us to reach a better understanamg 01 1 O!-
>;.,t,i;i•· stoy and we shall therefore repeatedly make use of Chernyshcvski's
left-wing of pre-1914 social democracy with the theoretical_ and ;
historical basis for their appreciation of Tolstoy. He greatly .mftu- appreciation of Tolstoy in the following pages.
, , enccd especially Rosa Luxemburg; .but e~~n M~hri~g, who ~ad ln developing realism a stage further, Tolstoy's oeuvre marks
z fine sensibility and was often ~utte ongmal m h~ acsthe~cal a step forward not only in Russian literature but in the literature
judgments, failed to emancipate hu~sclf. froi? these r~m~oncepttons of the world. This step forward was made, however, in rather
and achieve a depth of understandmg m h1s appreciation of Tol- peculiar circumstances. Although Tolstoy continued the great
stoy such as we owe to L~::~in. But Mch_ring showed at le~st some realistic traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the
glimmering of comprchenston. He reahzed ~at the. rca.,on why traditions of Fielding and Defoe, Balzac and Stcndhal, be did ~o
The Powrr of Dark11ess made such a strange I~prcsslOn was that at a time when realism had already fallen into decay and •th<! .....
it dcpict~d Russian life as it really was. Mehrmg also saw what literary trends which were to sweep away realism had triumphed
was truly of the people in War and J!eace . . He wrote: ·:- · . the throughout Europe. Hence Tolstoy, in his literary work, had to
a"e in wbich the Russian people constituted· 1tc;elf as a n~t10n. For swim against the current in world literature, and this current was
ti~e Ru~sian nation was not created by the Tsar, nor by h1s generals, the decline of realism.
11or by his ministers1 nor by the rulin!-!; clas7cs in general. All ~hese But Tolstoy's position in world literature was unique for more
arc rncrcl)' insignificant. indifferent, subordmate figures, who e1th~r reasons th an this. It would be quite misleading to stress this diver-
uo nothing at all or only cause trouble when they act on their gence unduly and define T olstoy's place in the literature of ltis age
initiative ~nd who can achieve great things only wh~n they are 'lS though he had rejected all the literary trends and all the writers
the instrunicnts of a mysteriously and irresistibly operatmg popular of his own time and had obstinately clung to the traditions of the
force." But such passages are rare even in Mchri~g and he, great realists.
too, judges Tolstoy on the whole alon~ the lines la1d down by In the first place: what Tolstoy carried on was not the artistic
Plckhanov. and stylistic tradition bequeathed by the great realists. We do
One cannot simply di~regard the misjudgment of Tolstoy ~y I not wish to quote here Tolstoy's own judgments on the older and
the social democrats, because the same misjud!:,'lllent crops up a~am newer realists; these judgments are often contradictory and-like
later in vulgar-sociology. Thus V. M. Fritsc~c, for a long ~1me the judgments of most great writers- they vary a great deal
an influential historian of Russian literature, m ~ pr~fa~e wnt~e~ 1 according to the concret~ requirements of each period of their
to Lenin's papers on _Tolstoy, ca~lcd !olstoy a subJeCtive .ar~1st
and (in agreement with bourgeozs cr~t1<7) put forw~rd the vu:w
that Tolstoy could clepict really convmcmg!y only hts o~ class,
the aristocracy, and that not only was he restncted to the anstocracy
.J work. What never varied, however, was Tolstoy's healthy-and
angry--contempt of the petty naturalism of his own contempor-
aries. In a conversation with Gorki he spoke of Balzac, Stendhal,
and Flaubcrt as the greatest writers in French literature (not quali-
in respect of subject, he also 'pat~ntly idealiz~d .the phenomena fying this judgment in the case of Flaubcrt as he did in the case
which he depicted. nor did he descnbe them obJectively from every of Maupassant) but described the Goncourt~ as clowns. In an
. '
angle, but with a bias.' If this had been '!olstoy's method, ~s earlier preface to Maupassant's works we find no criticism of cer-
Fritsche attempts to prove~ only vulgar-sociology could . explam tain decadent tendencies in Maupassant's realism.
how h~: was nevertheless one of the greatest realists of all t1me ~nd The older great realists had no demonstrable immediate influence
not merely a commonplace, if gifted, panegyrist of the _Russtan on Tolstoy's style. The principles he followed in his realism objec-
nobility. No ~uch explanation has. however, ever been g_1vcn. tively represent a continuation of the gr.eat realist school, but sub-
If then we wish to analyze the part played by Tolstoy m world jectively they grew out of the problems of his own time and out
literature. we must not only set aside the spurious myths spread ot his attitude to the great problem of his time, the relationship.
about hi; art. but also the views of vulgar-sociology and must base between exploiter and exploited in rural Russia. Of course the
our analysis ~n the only correct view, th~t of Leni~. In addition study of the old realists had a considerable influence on the develop-
to this. only thl' vil.'w put forward by Russ1an rcvoluhonary-democ- ment of Tolstoy's style, but it would be wrong to attempt to derive

,
~.
-- --- .. ~- ......._ ... ..... - .. - · ·· ··-· - . -·- -
i30 STUDJES IN EUROPEAN REALISM TOLSTOY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF REALISM 131

~
the. Tolstoyan style of realism in art and literature in a straight success. One should not underrate the enthusiasm with which his
line from the old great realists. works were recei.ved by the adherents of the naturalist school ai)d
Although Tolstoy continued and developed the traditions of the
older realism, he always did so in his own original way and in
accordance with the needs of the age, never as an epigone. He
was always in step with his time, not only in content, in the charac-
i
j
o1 other later literary trends. This world-wide success was not
of course, based exclusively or even in the first place on such en~
thusiasms. But on the other hand such enduring international
success (still unabated to this day) could not have been possible
J
ters and social problems he presented, but also in the artistic sense. ·I had not the adherents of the various literary trends found or
Hence there are many common traits in his literary method and :I thought they had found important points of affinity with them-
that of his European contemporaries. But it is interesting and selves in Tolstoy's works. The various naturalist "free stages" in
important to note in connection with this community of method l)J Germany, France and England first performed The Power of Dark-,
that artistic traits which in Europe were the syme.toms of the .,
J
ness imagining it to be a model naturalist play.· Not long after-
decline of realism and contributed to the dissolution of such literary wards Maeterlinck, In his theoretical motivation of his "new''
forms as the drama, the novel and the short story, regained their J dramatic style, cited as his witnesses Ibsen's experiments and the
vitality and originality in Tolsto/s hands and served as the ::;arne The Power of Darkness.
elements of a nascent new form which, continuing the traditions This same thing has been going on to this day. A study of this
cf the old great realism in a novel manner and in relation to riew incongruous effect of. Tolstoy's works will be found at the end
problems, rose to heights unsurpassed by the realist literature of of the present book.
any nation. . .. '
-,~

If we analyze Tolstoy's works from the angle of world literature,

we must take for our starting-point the peculiarities of Tolstoy's B 2.
However specific Tolstoy's influence on European literature may
style and his specific place in literature.
Without these peculiarities the world-wide success of Tolstoy's
..i have been, it was not an isolated phenomenon. Tolstoy's irruption
into world literature occurred simultaneously with the unpreceden-
works cannot be understood. For one must always keep in mind tedly rapid rise of Russian and Scandinavian literature to a leading
that Tolstoy achieved this success as an essentially modern writer, J position in Europe, where until then the great literary trends of
modern in form as well as in content. From the seventies of. the the nineteenth century had had their origins in the leading western
nineteenth century onwards his success was world-wide success in countries-Germany, England and France.
a literary world and with a reading public from whose memory Writers of other nations very rarely achieved world-wide signi-
the traditions of the pre-48 European literature were rapidly fading ficance, until the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century
and the greater part of which even went so far as to oppose quite brought a sudden change. True, Turgenyev had become known
sharply and definitely those very traditions. (Stendhal's vogue in in Germany and France before other Russian authors, but his in-
this period is based partly on misunderstanding, partly on falsifica- fluence cannot be compared with that of Tolstoy and Dostoyevski;
tion; it was an attempt to turn Stendhal into a precursor of sub- besides, Turgenyev had achieved his fame precisely by those of
jective psychologism.) Zola, for instance, in rejecting Balzac's and his traits which really had some affinity with the French realism
Stendhal's alleged romanticism, criticized in them that they went of the time. But in the case of Tolstoy and the Scandinavian
b<.>yond the workaday 'average' of life, i.e. precisely the trait which writers who rose to fame at the same time (Ibsen in the first place)
made them great realists. And in Flaubert and especially in it was unfamiliarity of their subject and method which also played
Madame Bovary he saw fulfilled all that he thought valuable in an important part. In a letter written by Engels to Paul Ernst
Balzac. The lesser representatives of naturalism, both writers and about Ibsen, the former emphasises : "In the last twenty years
critics (and the adherents of trends subsequent to naturalism) show Norway has experienced a literary upsurge like no other country
this devi ation from the great traditions of realism even more un- except Russia ... The performance of these fellows is far superior
mistakably than Zola. to that of others and they leave their mark on other literaturesJ
It is in this atmosphere that Tolstoy achieved his world-wide not least on the German."
J • Although we have mentioned the factor of unfamiliarity, the greater Russian and Scandinavian authors this topicality of subject
effect of this must not be mistaken for the ?ecad~n~ chase after stood in strange contrast with the almost classical form, which
e-xotic subjects which appeared in the later 1mpenahst age.. The did not, however, appear academic and antiquated; on the con-
cult of medieval mystery-plays, of negro sculpture, of the .chmese trary, it expressed contemporary problems in an entirely contem-
theatre' ·are symptoms of the complete dissolution of ~eahsm; the porary form. The purely epic character of Tolstoy's great novels-
bourge~is writers-with the exception of a few outstandmg hum~n­ which appeared so improbable to the European reader of the time
is~- are no longer able even to get near the real problems. of l~fe. -we shall discuss later. Here we are for the time being discussing
On the other hand the influence of Russian and Scandmav_1~n the effect on Europe of these works and not the works themselves,
literature begins when bourgeois realism . h.as reache? a crlSlS. and it will suffice here to point out the severe structW'e and com-
Althoucrh naturalism had destroyed the artiStiC foundatiOns of the position of Ibsen's plays.
greater-=> realism, the greatest of the destroyers, such as F~aubert, At a time when the drama was increasingly disintegrating into
Zola and Maupassant, still knew what great art w~s and m some mere milieu-painting, Ibsen built strictly concentrated dramatic
of their works or parts of them they themselves d1d reach up to plots, the qualities of which reminded the readers and audiences
~ . of the Greek and Roman dramatists (see the things written about
its level.
The same applies to their adherents and readers.. . . Ghosts at the time). In those days, when dialogue had lost most
· The impression made by Russian and Scandmav1an literature of its dramatic tension and had degenerated into a gramophone
is undoubtedly connected with the fact that the readers ~elt the record of everyday speech, Ibsen wrote a dialogue every sentence
decline of European realism and longed . for .a gre~t reahst conh ., ~ of which revealed new traits of the speaker's character and carried
temporary art. Even. Russian and S~andm~Vlan wnters of roue ·~
c~ .
l
the plot a step further, a dialogue which was in a much deeper
~·
less merit than Tolstoy still showed m thetr works. the tract;s, of
the "great art" which was already lost in Europe; their com.poSltlOn
and characters were forceful, the intellectual lc:vel of theJ.r pro~­
r sense true to life than any mere copy of everyday conversation .
could ever be. Thus wide circles of the western European radical
intelligentsia gained the impression that Russian and Scandinavian
lems and solutions high, their general conception bold and thell' .i literature were the 'classical' literature of their own time, or at
l ]east the artistic precursors of a coming classical literature.
attitude radical. . ' W d j To what extent the Ibsenian drama was problematic in the
Even so critical a spirit as Flaubert ha1led Tolstoy s . ar a_n
Peace with loud enthusiasm, criticising only the passages m wh1ch .j deeper sense, how imperfectly its formal perfection concealed the
Tolstoy's own philosophy of history is openly e~ressed. , inner instability of Ibsen's conception of society and hence of his
"Thank you," he wrote to Turgenyev, "for sendmg me Tolst~y ~ . 1,.) real dramatic fonn-to elucidate all this would require a special
novel. It is first-rate. What a painter and what a psychol~gt~t j ·i and longer analysis. Here it will be enough to say that the Ibsenian
. . . I feel that there are things of Sha~espearca~ greatness m 1t • drama, however intrinsically problematic it may be, was vastly
While I was reading it I cried out aloud m my dehght · . · although superior to the western European dramatic attempts of the time,
the novel is long." E both in dramatic concentration and in form. This superiority i.s
The same enthusiasm was evoked among the western uropean so great that even other Scandinavian writers who were far more
intelligentsia, and, at the same time, by Ibsen's plays. . . subj ect than Ibsen to the general European d ecay, were yet superior
Faithful to his world-view, Flaubert expressed his enthus1a_sm to the westerners in tension, concentration, and the avoidance of
exclusively from an artistic point of view. But the effect of R~ss1~n the banalities of naturalism and of the empty artifices of formal
a~d Scandinavian literature in Europe was, as we have a rea Y 'experimentation.' In Strindberg, for instance, there .are definite
mentioned, not limited to the artistic sph~re. The eff.ect was due naturalist tendencies, and he went much further than Ibsen in the
·n the first place to the fact that these wnters dealt w1t~ problc~ dissolution of dramatic form. His conflicts and characters grow
~imilar to those occupying the minds of the ·western rea~mg pu?llc, increasingly subjective and even pathological. But his first plays

1
but the problems were much more widely posed and thelt solut10ns, .show a simplicity of structure, an economy of means of expression
even though unfamiliar, much more radical. In the bands of the .
and a concentration of the dialogue which one would seck in vain

.. ..
 134 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM TOLSTOY AND THE DEVELOP~tENT 'OF 'REALISM ' 135
in qermany and in Italy these tasks were accomplished not by
The hope of the European literary vanguard that this Russian revolutionary, but· decidedly reactionary methods. The class struggle
and Scandinavian literature marked a new dawn of European between the bourgeoisie and the working class had visibly become
' I
literary development was of course based on an illusion; those the central issue in every social problem. The ideology of the
who harboured such hopes had no clear notion of the social causes I bourgeoisie evolved increasingly towards the protection of capital-
either of the decline of their own literatures or of the strange 1 ism against the claims of the workers as the economic conditions
flowering of literature in Russia and the Scandinavian countries. ! of the imperialist age matured at an accelerating pace, exercising
Engels saw quite clearly the specific quality of this literary devel- a rapidly growing influence on the ideological evolution of the
opment and pithily characterized the main traits of its social basis. bourgeoisie .
He wrote to Paul Ernst about Ibsen: "Whatever the faults of e.g. This of course does not mean that all western European writers
the Ibsen plays may be, they mirror for us a world small and of the time were conscious or unconscious defenders or panegyrists
petty-bourgeois, it is true, but nevertheless a world as far removed of capitalism. On the contrary, there is no prominent writer of
from the German as heaven from earth; a world in which people the time who did not oppose it, some with indignation, some with I
still have character and initiative and act on their own, even though irony. But the general scope of this opposition and,the opportuni-
often rather strangely from the outsider's point of view. I prefer ties of its literary expression were determined, limited and narrowed
to take a closer look at such things before I pass judgment." by the development of bourgeois ·society and the change in bour-.
Engels thus pointed out the essential reason for the success of geois ideology. All initiative, indeoendence and heroism dis-
Russian and Scandinavian literature in Europe: in an age·in which appeared for a long · time from the· western European bourgeois
force of character, initiative and independence were increasingly world. The _writers who attempted to depict the world in a spirit
disappearing from the everyday life of the ·hourgeois world and of opposition, could depict only the contemptible baseness of their
•. ,. .. in' which honest writers could depict only the difference between own social surroundings and thus the reality which they mirrored
the empty careerist and the stupid dupe (like Maupassant) the drove them into the narrow triviality of naturalism. If, spurred
Russians and Scandinavians showed a world in which men on by their thirst for better things, they wanted to go beyond this
struggled with fierce passion-even though with tragic or tragi- reality, they could not find the life-material which they could have
comic futility-against their degradation by capitalism. Thus the stepped up to greatness by true-to-life poetic concentration. If
heroes of the Russian and Scandinavian writers fought the same they attempted to depict greatness, the result was an increasingly·.
battles as the characters ·fu western literature and were defeated empty, abstractly Utopian, in the worst sense romantic, picture.
by essentially the same forces.-But their struggle and their defeat In Scandinavia and Russia, capitalist development began much
were incomparably greater and more heroic than that of similar later than in ·western Europe and in them. in the seventies and
characters in western literature. If we compare Nora or Mrs. At- eighties of the nineteenth century, bourgeois ideology had not ·as
wing with the heroines of the domestic tragedies depicted in wes- yet been driven to apologetics. The social conditions which fav- ..
tern European novels and plays, we can see the difference, and oured realism and which determined the development of European
this difference was the basis of the great Russian and Scandinavian literature from Swift to Stendhal were still in existence in these
success and influence. c?untries, even though in a different form and in greatly changed
It is not difficult to uncover the social roots of this success and c1rc umstances.
influence. In his analysis of · Ibsen's plays Engels sharply contrasted this
After the revolutions of 1848, the June rising and especially the trait of Norwegian social evolution with the German situation in
Paris Commune, the ideology of the European bourgeoisie entered the same period. ·
upon a period of apologetics. With the unification of Germany and The social basis of realism in Russia must not, however, be re-
of Italy, the decisive tasks of the boZfrgcois revolution had been garded as identical with that existing in Scandinavia. If we. were
accomplished for a time, so far as the great powers of western concerned with the effect on western Europe of Russian and Scan-
Europe were concerned. It is of course characteristic that both dinavian literature (and not with Tolstoy) we might confine our-
 selves to saying that both in Russia and in Scandinavia conditions it the difference between the influence on ·Europe of Tolstoy on
· were more favourable to realistic literature than in western Europe. the one hand and of the Scandinavians on the other. Any realistic
The development of capitalism had been delayed in both, the part and concrete analysis of Tolstoy's influence on world literature
played by the class struggle betv,reen bourgeoisie and pro~etar:~t must therefore be based on an analysis of that epoch. Lenin gave
in the total social process was smaller and m accordance w1th t.us us s~ch an analys~s w~ile the views on Tolstoy expressrd by the
the general ideology of the ruling class was not yet, or less, Russ1an vulgar-soc1ologtsts reveal only that the influence exercised
ij·. apologetic. by the great writer was as much a mystery to them as it was to
But the backwardness of capitalist development had a totally their contemporaries in Europe. ·
different character in Norway and in Russia. Engels carefully . Lenin defined very clearly the specific quality of this revolu-
pointed out the 'normal' traits of Norwegian. d~vclo~ment. ~e tionary epoch, comparing it with previous revolutions directed
.:·. wrote : "The country is backward because of 1ts 1solauon and Its against feudal or semi-feudal social orders. H e says: "Thus we
natural conditions, but its general condition was always appropriate see that the conception 'bourgeois revolution' is insufficient to
to its conditions of production and hence nonnal." Another point
i.'! that even the advance of capitalism was comparatively slow and
gradual in the specific circumstances existing in Norw.ay. "The
Norwegian peasant was never a serf . . . the Norwegian petty-
I define the forces which may win the victory in such a revolution.
There may be and there have beeo bourgeois revolutions in which
the commercial o~ c.ommerci~-and-industrial bourgeoisi(> played
the part of the prmc1pal motive force. A victory of such revolu-

·l'·.'~
bourgeois is the son of a free peasant and in these circumstances tiOns was p~s~ible as. the victory of the corresponding section of
.'
·:·
he is a man 'in comparison with the German philistine." .. the. ~ourgeome over 1ts opponents (for instance over the privileged
All these favourable w•itS of Norwegian capitalist backwardness nobility or the absolute monarchy). But in Russia rnatters are
brought about the strange flowering of Norwegian literature. The different. A :ic~ory of the. bourgeoisie in our country is impossible
favourable advance of capitalism rendered temporarily possible the
development of a vigorously realist, extensive and promising litera·
'j as a bourgeots VIctory. Tlus seems a paradox, but it is a fact. The
preponderance of our peasant population, its frightful oppression

..
ture. But with ·time Norway had to be aligned with the general
capitali~t evolution of Europe, in a way, of course, which preserved
a~ far as possible the· specific conditions governing the country's
' by the feudal landowners, half of whom own immense estates, the
streng.th a~d class-.co~sciousne.o;s of the working class, already
orgamzed 1n a Soc1ahst party-all these circumstanc<'s lend our
development. Norwegian literature distinctly rnir_rors this as~imila­ bourgeois revolution a specific character."
tion to the rest of Europe. The aged Ibsen htmsclf mamfcsted Tolstoy had of course no conception of the true nature of the
k a growing uncertainty in his opposition and as a result he. absorbed Russian r evolu.tion. B~t bein.g a writer of genius, he faithfully.
.: i more and more of the d ecadent traits of western European litera- recorded certam essential tra1t~ of reality and thus, without his ·

L··
~ ').
ture and modes of expression (symbolism). The· careers of the
younger oppositional and realist writers show them increasingly
succumbing to the general reactionary, anti-realist ideological and
knowledge, and contrary to his conscious intentions he became
the p~ctic mi.rror of certain aspects of the revolution~ry develop-
ment m Russ1a. The boldness and sweep of Tolstoy's realism rests
..
I ~
literary influences of western Europe. Even before the war the on the fact that it is carried by a movement of world-wide signifi- ... ,
~ ·'
··:\
~ career of Arne Garborg, a hiahly gifted realist writer ended in ca~cc, a movement revolutionary in its basic social tendency. • Tl'{e"' ·
religious obscuration and after the war Knut Hamsun c~pitulated
0
;,

.,.
~ .. to reactionary ideologies in literary tren~s and even fasc1s~ .
The capitalist backwardness of Russia was of a totally different
wnter.s of western Europe had at that time no such foundations
to ?u1ld on. Before 1848 the great writers of the west also had
!; ' their feet firmly pla?ted on such. soil. Tolstoy's affinity to them
~
\'
character. The irruption of capitalism into the semi-Asiatic serf- rests ~n the commumty of the pnmeval social foundations of art.
~·:~,. ' . dom of Tsarism brought about widespread social unrest which He d1ffers from them because his own social basis-the specific
:.·r lasted from the abolition of serfdom to the revolution of 1905. I cha.racter of the Russian revolutionary development-differs from
Lenin says that Tolstoy was the mirror of this epoch. Its spec~fic
development detennined the !'opecific traits of Tolstoy's art and With
I theJrS.
I

l
I
lt is a condition .1ine qua ron of great realism that the author
'li j
I
~!
 138 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM ···1r-··
.. : I
TOLSTOY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF REALISM 139 I I

must honestly record, without fear or favour, everything he sees ·-·~

( .,_:o an essential factor in the highest form of bourgeois revolution-
·. around him. This subjective condition of great realism may require a bourgeois r evolution in which the bourgeoisie could no longer
a more exact definition. For the merely-subjective candour of the be victorious-and in explaining this he explained at the same
realist writers survived the decline of realism it<;elf, but could not time why Tolstoy was able to develop realism one step further
avert the consequences brought about by this decline in the sphere than any of his predecessors.
of art a nd philosophy. The subjective honesty of the writer can We have said that reactionary traits in the world~view of great I
engender true realism only if it is the literary .expression . of so realist writers do not prevent them from depicting social reality { ..••
extensive a social movement that its problems dnve the wntcr to in a comprehensive1 correct and objective way. But here again
observe and describe its most important aspects and on the other we must be more specific. For this does not apply to any and
hand stiffen his backbone and give him enough strength and cour-
age to fertilize his sincerity. Such gr~~l,_historica~ movc~ents ar~
by no means simply covered by the (tnte):onceptlon of progress.
every world-view. Only illusions motivated by the social movement
depicted, i.e. illusions-often tragic illusions-which are historically .
necessary, do not prevent the writer from depicting social reality'
II
. I
V ulgar-sociology distorts the social conditions of poetic sub- with objective truth.
jectivity by banalizing the relationship between society and ~he Such were the illusions of Balzac1 of Shakespeare, and such too,
writer in a liberalistic-mechanistic direction. For instance, a wnter in the final count, were Tolstoy's illusions. Lenin said : "The con-
rnay be alleged to be absolutely 'progressive' (Balzac, for instance, tradictions in Tolstoy's views ... are a true mirror of those con-
is represented as a champion of industrial capitalism) and then t~c tradictory circumstances in which the historical activity of the .~
greatest opposite, precisely because he cannot be made to fit m peasantry in our revolution took place."
with the Liberal conception of 'progress.' All Tolstoy's illusions and reactionary Utopias - from Henry
An a uthor may be able to uncover and depict the essen tial George's world-liberating .theory to the theory of non-resistance to
. factor~ of some phase o'f social development even though he holds evil, were · all without exception rooted in the specific position of
view:; containing reactionary elements; this will not lessen ~he ~b­ the Russian peasantry. Recognition of their historical necessity
jectivc value of hi~ sincerity. In such case~ .the writer's. stnccrtty does not of course make them less Utopian or less reactionary. But.
will yet enable him to depict truly the reahttcs of a soctal move- the effect of the historical necessity of these illusiom is· that, far
ment, provided that social movement poses real problems and fi~ds from hampering Tolstoy's realism, they actually contribute to its
solutions for them. The sincerity of great writers must not, of greatnes~. depth and feeling, although nau,nally in a very con-
course, be judged by the statements of some 'average' representative tradictory fashion. .
of such a social movement, nor by the statements of such great .: O.bviously these illusion.<; and reactionary · traits often play an
'·
writers themselves. The scope of their sincerity depends on the important part in determining Tolstoy's influence on western Eur-
scope of the problems posed by such movements a nd their im- ope. Even though by this means a bridge was made between the
portance in the evolution of ma~kind. . western reader and the poet of the Russian peasantry,. Tolstoy
In his analysis of the cvoluttan of the revolutiOnary m.oveme~t nevertheless translated the reader into a quite different poetic world
in Russia up to 1905, Lenin clearly showed that the specrfic post- than the one his philosophy led the former to expect. The reader
tion of the Russian peasantrv and the part it played in the collapse was suddenly faced with the 'cruelty' and 'coldness' of a great
of the semi-feudal despotis~ of the Tsar was of essential import- realist, with an art which, although in its form and subject quite
ance in determining the character of the Russian revolution and appropriate to the time, yet in its innermost es.~ence seemed to
its place in the history of the world. Lenin quite ri?htly regarded come from an entirely different world.
Tolstoy as the poetic mirro r of this peasant revolutt~n and fou~d Only the greatest bourgeois humanists of the post-war period
iu this the explanation why Tolstoy could develop m~o a. re~hst began to understand that this entirely different world was nothing
writer as (Yrcat as th~ greatest ·realist classics, although m Ius ttmc but their own past, which had seemed lost to them-the world
realism inn Europe w~s already in its d.ecline. Lenin also .showed of the great .bourgeois revolution. It is characteristic that they
that this specific character of the RuSSlan peasant revolution was understood thts all the better: the nearer their bour,~eoiJ revolution-
 axy humanism approached the ~ew democracy, the human~sm of v.clopment of the G.crman and French petty-bourgeoisie respec-
the victoriom proletarian revolution. uv:Iy and. owe their ephemeral popularity to the 'warmth' of
the1r cxpcnencc. But they depicted a debased, narrow, trivial life
3. !ull of concealm~n~ and hypocrisy, and they did so by correspond-
The evolution of bourgeois society after 1848 destroyed the sub- tr:gly narrow~ tnvial, untruthful means. Only in very few cases
jective conditions which made a great realism yo~sible.. If ~e d1? an cxpencnce related to reactionary tendencies result in liter-
regard the problem of this decline from ~he s~bJcC~IVe v1ewp.omt aril~ valuable (even t?ough historically insignificant) products, as-t ~·"
of the writer, we see in the first place that tn thts penod the wnters ~or mstance the expenence of the problems of British imperialism
of Europe were increasingly turning into mere spec~a~ors and ob- m the works of Rudyard Kipling.
servers of the social process, in contrast to the. ~ld real~sts .who ha~ The really honest and gifted bourgeois writers who lived and
themselves experienced this process and participated m 1t. Their wrote in the period following upon the upheavals of 1848 natur-
conclusions were the results of their own life-struggle and con- a~y could not experience and share the development of their class
stituted only one part of the resources they had at their disposal w1th the same true devotion and intensity of feeling a'> their pre-
in depicting reality. . . decessors. They were far more likely to repudiate with hatred
The que~tion whether the wnter must expcnenc.e or need mer~ly and loathing the way of life now thrust on the world by that
observe wh.at he describes is by no means an Isolate-d question deve~oprnent. And because in the society of their time they found
.,"
limited to the sphere of art-it emb1:aces the write~·~ entir~ rela- nothmg they coul~ s~ppo~t ~hole-hcartedly (for the proletarian
!I j
tionship to social reality. The old wnters were parttc!pants tn the
social struggle and their activitie.s as w~iters wer~ c1ther par~ of
~lass struggle ~nd 1ts 1mphcattons were beyond their undcn;tand-
mg) they remamed mere spectators of the social process, until the
~.
this struggle or a reflection, an tdcological. and hter.ary sol~tlon, ·' - new humanist movement which began at the end of the nineteenth
~· of the great problems of the time. In readmg the bwgraphtes of century and to which the best of the now living writers belonged,

li the great realists of old, from Swift and Defoe to Goethe, Balzac
and Stendhal we see that none of them were writers throughout
posed t~e pro?Iem of ~ new democracy and thereby put the whole
matter m a different light; but there is no room here to deal with
this.
~I
their life and' writers only, and their multiple and combative ties
·'
~~
with society are richly reflected in their works. .
But this mode of life was not a consequence of the1r personal I The change in the writer's position in relation to reality led to
the. putti~g .fon~~rd of .v~~i~us theories, such as Flaubert's theory
~~

:j '
preferences. Zola was by instinct ~er~ainly a ~ore acti~e ~nd
combative type than Goethe. But 1.t JS • the. soc1al surroundt~gs
which determine the degree to whtch mtncate and combat1ve
a., ~f 1mparlla!1ty ( Impassibdne') and the pseudo-scientific theory of
Zola and hts school. But much more important than the theories
are ~e realities on .which they are based. If the writer merely
!
relationships can arise between . the writer and society, such as occup1es an observation post in relation to reality, that means that
' I those which resulted in a life so rich in experience as that of he regards bourgeois society critically, ironically and often turns
Il ~;
Goethe. It depends on whether the so~icty in .which .the writer away from it in hatred and disgust.
lives contains historically significant soc1al and 1deologlcal trends . The n~w type of realist turns into a specialist of literary expres-
('.·•
:~· f to which the writer can dedicate himself with all the fervour of ston, a VIrtuoso, an 'armchair scientist' who makes a 'speciality' of
describing the social life of the present. .
,~ .;
... ;
r~
his personality. . .
On capitalist society reaching its apologetic stag:, sue!• posstbl-
lities grew increasingly rare for the great bo~rgeozs wnters. ,Of
. This alienation has for its inevitable consequence that the writer
d1sposcs of a much narrower and more restricted life-material than
,1 .., course there were plenty of writers who expenenced the evolut1on the old school of realism. If the new realist wants to describe
11.
of the bourgeoiJie in the period following upon 1848 "?th a co.m- some phen~mcno~ of life, he has t<? go out of his way specially
~1·!.. plcte engagement of their personality. But w~at .was th1~ evo~utlon to observe 1t. It 1s clear that he will first take into acC"oum the
I'
like and what literary results could a ded1catton to 1t bnng a s~perficial tra_i~ which meet the eye. And if the writer is rerdly
i~ writer? Gustav Freytag and Georges Ohnet experienced the de- gtfted and ongmal, he will seek for originality in the observation

,.,
!II

...
'(II

.... •''
142 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISl\I TOLSTOY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF REALISM

of detail and will attempt to carry the literary expression of such only of Maupassant, but of newer literature as a whole. In this
J I
I~
originally observed detail to ever higher lew•Js. ?ook M~upassant _took his subject from the past. The novel begins r:
hi
Flaubert advised the young Maupassant who was his personal m the tune of th7 restoration of the Bourbons and ends shortly
disciple, that he should observe a tree until he discovered the traits bef?re the r~volutton of 1848. Thus it depicts m ainly the same
which distinguished it from all other trees and then seek for the penod of which Balzac was the great historian. But-to point out II ..
only one ~mportant fea ture-the reader, although the scene of
words which would adequately express this unique quality of that '• ,'

particular tree. the novel 1s set among the nobility, is never made aware of the ..
fac~ .that the July . :ev~Iution has come and gone and that the
·'ll
Both master and disciple often achieved this aim with great .....
...,.'·~~ .I
artistry. But the task itself was a narrowing of the purpose of art positlon of the nob1hty m French society is totally different at the
itself, and a blind alley so far as realism was concerned. For-to end of the novel from what it was at the beginning.
consider only this particular · example-the task set by Flaubert Let no one. say that what Maupassant wanted to depict was
isolated the tree from nature as a whole and from its relationship ~fter all, no~ this change but the disappointment. of his heroin~
with man. One may thus disc~ver in what the unique character m her marnage and in the child born of it. But the fact that ~.
J
of the tree consists, but this uniqueness amounts to nothing more ~aupassant p osed. the problem in this way shows that he con- "-..-- ·•
than the originality of a still-life. Sld~red love, n:arnage and mother-love separately from the his- .~:
But when Tolstoy in War and Peace describes the leafless gnarled t?ncal and. soc1al fou~dations on which alone they could be rea)is-
oak which the despondent Andrey Bolkonski contemplates and t•c~lly depicted. He Isolated the psychological problems from the:
which later' on his return from the Rostovs, he at first. cannot s~ci~l problems. For. Maupassa~t so~iety was no longer a complex; ..
find at all and afterwards discovers transformed and covered with
fresh leaves, then, although Tolstoy has given the tree no 'origin-
of VItal a nd contradictory relatJonsh1ps between human beings but'
only a lifeless setting. ' ' ·,,,f
ality' in the Flaubert-Maupassant still-life sense, he has thrown The so:ial being of the nobility, which in Balzac's works is a
light in a flash and with great poetic vigour on a very intricate great: ~an.ed, :process rich in tra,g·edies and comedies, is narrowed
p5ychological process. to a st11l-hfe m Ma.upassant. ~e describes the castles, parks, furni-
f.
~J
1•
We cannot give here a detailed theory and critique of the realist
literary development in Europe after 1848 and must confine our-
ture, etc., of the anstocracy With the most consummate skill but
all. this ~as no real, live connection with his subject proper. 'And
l.·!
selves to merely touching in principle on its basic features. t.lus subJect proper, too, is relatively meagre, shallow and uni-
We then see that the social evolution which forced the most
sincere, upright and gifted bourgeois writers into the posi-
hnear.
If then we wish to summarize the principal negative traits of
f
,..
II
tion of observers, .at the same time inevitably drove them to western. European realism after 1848 we come to the following
fill the place of the missing essentials with literary substitutes. conclusiOns : '·
Flaubcrt recognized this new position of the realist writer very F~rst, ~hat the rea l, ?rarnatic and epic movement of social ha:J-. ~
early and with tragic clarity. In 1850 he wrote to Bouilhct, a friend pemng dtsappears a~d rs?lated characters of purely private interest//
of his youth : ch~racters sketched m With only a few lines, stand still, surround j ~
"We have a many-voiced orchestra, a rich palette, varied sources by a dead scenery described with admirable skill. ~
~
of power. As for tricks and devices, we h ave more of those than Secondly, the real relationships of human beings to each other ) :\
'1
ever. But we lack inner life, the soul of things, the idea of the the. soci~l motives which, unkno.wn even to themselves, gover~
writer's subject." . the1r act1ons, tho~ghts and emo?ons, grow increasingly shallow; .
and th.c autho: either stresses t~Js shallowness of life with angry
i j
This bitter confession should not be regarded as the exprcsswn r'
o! a mood, of a transient fit of despair. Flaubert saw only too or sentimenta l Irony, .or else substitutes dead, rigid .. lyrically inflated;
clearly the true position of the new realism.
Let us consider so important a modern novel as Ivfaupassant's
Unc Vie, which Tolstoy regarded as one of the best works, not
1' symb~ls for the ~ussmg human and social relationships.
. Th1rdly (a~d m ~lose connection with the points already men- \
t•oned) : dcta1ls mettculously observed and depicted with consum- 1·

1 I
!
.~
 JUt-~TUY AND THE DEVELOP:'>lE~T OP REALI:>~t 1+.5
mate skill are substituted for the portrayal of the essential fe:atures
of social reality and the description of the changes effected :n the or ev~n less t?an ~ost of his western contemporaries ?
human personality by social influences. k It rs I on thrs d pomt that Lenin's. admirabl"... a na1ysJ.~
· provK · 1es a
This transformation· of the writer from a champion of social ey to t 1c un erstanding of Tolstoy. ·
progress and a participant in the social life of his time into a mere . The vulgar-sociologists compiled statistics of the characters de-
spectator and observer, was of course the result of a long develop~ p~cted by Tolstoy and on the basis of these figures they proclaimed
ment. The connection between the last great realists of the nine- t at Tolstoy had depicted mainly the life of the Russian land-
teenth century and the social life of their time was already para- ownc~. Sucl_1 a~ analysis can at best facilitate the understandin
doxical and fu ll of contradictions. W e need only think of Balzac ol CJ~lte unmspu·ed ?at~ralists, who, when they depict somethin g
and Stendhal and compare them with the English and French .dcscnbc only what hes Immediately in front of th .I g,
rei 1· em, Wit lout any
realist~ of the preceding century in order to st::e how contradictory ~ ~on t~ t.1te sum of social reality. When g-reat realist~ dcpictr
; . the former's experience of the social life of their time necessarily ~OCia .cvo utwn .and tl~e great social problems, they never do so
was. Their relation to society was not only critical-we find a m so srmp 1e and rmmedmtc a fashion.
critical attitude in the older realists as well, although their con- . In. tl.IC.! works of a great realist cverythiHg is linked up with·.
nection with the bourgeois class was far less problematic-but p ro- c\.ocr; tlung else. E.ach phenomenon shows the polyphony of man :
foundly pessimistic and replete with hatred and loathing. componct.lts: the mtertwinement of the individual and . l yf ·.
the phys 1ca( a 11d tl h. 1 . socta , o ..
Sometimes only very loose threads, very transparent illusions, IT . · lc psyc rca , of pnvate interest and public'
very fragile Utopias connect these writers with the bourgeois class a ~Irs. . And ~ccausc t.hc polyphony of their composition oes · -
of their day. With advancing age Balzac's foreboding of the col- bfieydond Immediacy, thetr dramatis personae are too numcrou~ tQ
lapse of both a ristocratic and bourgeois culture throws an ever n room on the playbill.
darker shadow on his outlook. But for all that Balzac and .Stendhal ~~~c great realists always regard societv from th v · · ......--f !·
a hvmg rrd · ' e IC\-vpomt o~
still gav¢ an extensive and profoundly conceived picture of the . . 'bl ~ movmg centre and this centre is present, visibly 0
bourgeois society of their time, and the reason for this is that they ;nvJsJ y,_ Ill every phenomenon. An instance is Balzac. Balzac shows-
both had a deep and extensive experience of every important lOw c_ap!tal, .wh1ch he--<:orrcctly at that time-saw incarnated i~
problem and stage in the development of bourgeois society between financJal capJtal, takes over power in France F G b k
N · 1 · rom o sec to
the first revolution and 1848. ucm.gen: 3alz~c create:t; a long procession of the immediate re re-
. I n Tol~toy this relationship is even more paradoxical and con- sentattves of tlus dcmomacal force But docs tl}' h t p
of fi · 1 · l . · · 1s ex aust t 1e power
tradictory. His development shows a growing aversion to the Rus- - nancia capita m Balzac's world? Does Gobseck 1
when he leaves th t ;> N B1 cease to ru e
sian ruling classes, an increasing loathing and hatred of all opprcs- t d .th G b e sage .. ~· a zac's world is permanently satur-
. sors and exploi~ers of the Russian people. At the end of his life ~~ Wl -~·seck a~d his. h ke. Wh~~her the immediate theme is
he sees them as a mere gang of scoundrels and parasites. T hus, e or :nmttage, fnendship or pohttcs, passion or self-sacrifice
at the terminal point of his career, Tolstoy comes very close to Gobseck Js. ~vcr present as an invisible protagonist nnd his invisibl~
the western realists of the second half of the nineteenth century. prc;ence VISibly colours every movement, every action of all B 1-
zac s characters. a
How is it then that in spite of this Tolstoy the writer never
turned into a Flaubert or a Maupassant? Or, if we want to extend Tolstoy is .th: poet of the peasant revolt that lasted from l86L .
the question to the earlier stage of Tolstoy's development, to the to 1905. In bts hfc-work the exploited peasant is this visible-· · 'bl
time when he still believed or wished to believe that the conflict ever-present protagonist. Let us look at the description oftnpvJ~I c
,. Nckhlyudov's · 1 J'f · · rmce
between landowner and peasant could be solved by patriarchal '. works : re.~tmcnta J e m RcsurrcctiouJ one of Tolstoy's late

I'
methods : how is it that not even in this earlier Tolstoy is there
any trace of the provincialism so evident in the later realists, even 1; ~~ h~d dnoth!ng else t~ do than to don a beautifuJI}' pressed
the most gifted ones? How is this to be explained, since Tolstoy an rus e umform, whtch not he but others had made and

l ·.
understood the socialist movement of the working classes as little brushed, put on a helmet and gird on weapons which were also
. !
made, cleaned and put into his hands by others, to mount a fi~c
,.
·-· .. ...
 ; 'tU STUDIES lN EUROPEAN REALISM TUL:)'l'UY AND THl?. DEYELOPWENT OF REAL!Sl\1 147

charger which had again bcen bred, trained and groomed by others, towar~s th~ moral and ~eligious ov<'rcoming of this rigid division
and ride to a parade or an inspection ... " oJ soctety mto two hosttle camps, in his li.terary production the
Such descriptions, which we find in great numbers in Tolstoy's reali.ty whic!t h~ ?epicted. with relentless fidelity constantly exposed
writings, of course also contain many details. But these details are the IIDpractlcabdtty of this the author's favourite dream. Tolstoy's
not meant to throw light on the specific qualities of the objects development followed very tortuous paths i he lost many illusions
. described but to stress the social implications which determine the and found new ones. But whatever Tolstoy w1·ote, as the. truly great
use of such objects. And the social implications point to exploita- poet that he is, he always depicted the inexorable division between··
tion, the exploitation of the peasants by the landowners. the 'two nations' in Russia, the peasants and the landowners.
But in Tolstoy's life-work the exploited peasant is visibly or In the works of his youth, for instance in Tlta Cossacks, this im-
invisibly present not only in every greater or lesser phenomenon placability manifested itself in as yet idyllic, elegiac form. In Resur-
of life- he is never absent from the consciousness of the characters rection Maslova gives this answer to Nekhlyudov's words of
.: themselves. Whatever their occupation, every implication of this remorse : "So you want to save your soul through me, eh? In this
occupation and everything human beings think of it, hinges con- world you used me for your pleasure and now you want to Hse ll
sciously or unconsciously on problems which are more or less me in the other world to save your soul!" f(
immediately linked with this central problem. In the course of the years Tolstoy changed all his internal and
It is true that Tolstoy's characters and Tolstoy himself raise external means of expression, he made use of and discarded all
these is~ues on an almost purely individual ethical basis : how can sorts of philosophies, but the portrayal of the 'two nations' re·
life be arranged in a way that men should not ruin themselves •· 4
mained the backbone of his life-work from start to finish.
'morally by exploiting the labour of others? In his own life and Only if we have ~iscovercd this central problem in Tolstoy's
out of the mouth of many of his characters, Tolstoy ha~ given art does the contrast in presentation between Tolstoy and the
p1enty of incorrect and r~actionary answers to .this question. .
( ... But what is important in Tolstoy is the puttmg of the question
J a~d not the answer given to it. Chekhov said quite rightly, in
J)
contemporary western realists become evident, in spite of . the
common affinity of subject. Like all honest and gifted writers of
the period, Tolstoy grew more and more estranged from the ruling
··' 1 connection with Tolstoy, that putting a question correctly is one class and found their life to an increasing degree sinful) meaning-
-thing and finding the answer to it something quite different: the less, empty and inhuman.
artist absolutely needs to do only the first. 0£ course the term But the writers of the capitalist \Vest, if they took this attitude
'putting the question correctly' should not be taken too literally toward~; the ruling class and took it seriously, were forced into , ,
in the case of Tolstoy. What is important a re not the muddled
and romantic ideas put forward by, say, the hero of one of his
r~··
the position of isolated observers, with all the artistic drawbacks
attenqant on such a position- for only an earnest understanding
early novels; what is essential are not his fantastic and Utopian of the struggle of the working classes for their freedom could have
plans for the salvation of the world, or at least not only these are shown them the way out of this isolation. Tolstoy, the Russian,
important and essential. They are organically linked with the reac- lived in a country in which the bourgeois revolution was still th~ ..
tion of the peasants to these plans of salvation, their hostile di~trust, order of the day and in depicting the revolt of the peasants arrainst
their instinctive fear that the squire's new plan cannot po~sibly their exploitation by both landowner and capjtalist, in dcpkting
· be anything but some new way of cheating them and the better the 'two nations' of the Russian scene he could become the last
it sounds the more cunning the deception must be-only in con- great bourgeois realist.of the age.
nection with these things can we speak, with Chekhov, of Tolstoy's
'correct putting of the question.' 4
Tolstoy's correct putting of the question consists among- other The true artistic totality of a literary work depe,nds on the com·,
thin~s in this: no one before him ever depicted the 'two nations' pleteness of the picture it presents of the essential social factors
as vividly and palpably as he. There is a paradoxical gTeatncss that determine the world depicted. H ence it can be based only on
in the fact that while his conscious striving was constantly directed the author'~ own intensive experience of the social process. Only
 '·:J y' aridity a~d emptiness of the prosaic nature of bourgeois life. The
such experience can uncover the essential social factors and make
the artistic presentation centre round them freely and natural~y. •. ' ·· fo~al .side of the s~uggJ.e ~gainst this banality and insipidity
The hallmark of the great realist masterpiece is precisely. that 1ts of life 1s. the dramatic pomtmg of plot and incident. In Balzac,
intensive totality of essential social factors does not. requue, does who ~ep1cts passio~s at their highest intensity, this is achieved by
not even tolerate a meticulously accurate or pedantically encyclo- ~once1vm~ the t~I)lCal as the, extreme expression of certain strands
paedic inclusion 'or all the threads ma~ing up the social tangle; In t?e skem of life. Onl.y by means of such mighty dramatic ex-
in such a masterpiece the most esscnt1al social factors can find plosrom can a dynamic world .of profound, rich and many-
total expre.~sion in the apparently accidental conjunction of a few hued P?Ctry emerge from the sord1d prose of bourgeois life. The
.Il human destinies. ~aturalrsts o~ercame this 'romanticism' and by so doing, lowered
In contrast to this, the exact copying of r~ality by. a mere onl?oker hterary cr~at10n to the le~cl of t~e ~average,' of the banality of
offers no principle of grouping inherent in the subject matter. Itself. everyday ltfe. In naturalism capitalist prose triumphed over the
If artistic presentation goes on further th.an the reproduction of poetry of life.
,, such superficial visible traits of everyday ~1fe as meet. the eye, t~e Tolst~y's life-work embraces several phases of this literary pro-
result is a 'bad infinity' (to use the Hegelian phrase) 1.e. a ~haotlc cess, wh1ch ~uns parallel to the stages of social evolution in Russia.
mass of observations the beginning, sequence and end of wh1ch are He began ht~ career as an author in a pre-Balzacian stage, in terms
f left entirely to 'the arbitrary choice of the author. Should the author, of west~rn literary .development, and the work of his old age ex-
on the other hand, introduce into the world of observed fact a tended mto. the penod of the decline of great realism.

l .~
·'
:?
· system originating in his own mind and in nothing else, he may
bring some order into the chaos, but the order would be an order
determined by abstract considerations, an orde~ external to ~he
material it marshals, an order foreign to real hfe. The r.es.ulh~g
!olstoy htmseU was well aware that his great novels were genuine
CJ?lcs. But it was not only he himself who compared War and Peace
wtth Homer-many ~nown and unknown readers of the book had
~he same f eeling. Of · course the comparison with Homer while
literary work would in~vitably be dry and unpoetic and tlus w1ll It sh?ws the profound i£?pr~ssion made by the truly epic ~uality
I

I~ be the more obvious the greater the efforts the author make~ to of th1s novel, IS more an. 1~d1cation o.f the general trend of its style
~~.. · counterfeit. by means of descriptions, lyrical passage;>, .symbo~1sm,
and the like, a mysticized link between the human desumes depicted
th~n an actual charactenst1c of the style itself. For in spite of its
ep1c sweep, War and Peace is still from first to last a true novel, al-
in the work and the social forces that rule them. The more super- ~ough of course, not a novel with the dramatic concentration found
Il,,.l '. ficial the author's observation, the more abstract must be the con-
nections which aim to conjure aposteriori some sort of order and p..
m. Balzac. Its ~oose,. spaciotJs composition, the cheerful, comfortable,
lei~urely relationships between the characters, the calm and yet
·I
J• composition into such a work. ap1mated abundance of the epic episodes indispensable to the
The inner truth of the works of the great r~al.ists rests or: t~e ~rue story-telle~-all these are related more to the great provincial
fact that they arise from life itself, that their ~rtls.tlc charactenst1.cs 1dylls of .the e1~h teen th-cen tu ry English novel than to B<llzac. . .1' • •

•
'··
I ·: are reflections of the social structure of the life bved by. t?e art1st But thts affimty ~presses an opposition to the general line' or"
·himself. The history of the structure of the great reahstlc novel devel~pment of the mneteenth-century European novel more than
-from Le Sage's loose sequence of adventures, .t hrough Walter any~h1~g else.. Th~ old ~ociety, only just beginning to submit to
Scott's attempts at dramatic concentration to B~~ac's p~rtly n~vel­ captt~llst dommahon, st1ll possessed in its daily life the variety
istic-dramatic, partly cyclically intricate cornpos~t!Ons-Is .the. hter- and mterest of t?e pre-~pitalist era. Tolstoy's great novels differ
ary reflection of a process in which the categories .o f c~p1tahsm as from t.hosc o~ h1s ~nghsh predecessors in the specific nature of
forms of human living gradually penetrate b~urgcO:S soc1ety. In ~he the soc1al ~eaht~ "':'hrc~ they mirror and are superior to their English
dramatic concentration which Balzac built mto h1s .~U-~mbrac~ng para.llcls m artistJc nchness and depth precisely because of this
cycle we can already discern the beginnings of the cnsiS. mto which specJfic cha~acter of the reality presented. The world depicted
triumphant capitalism plunges the arts. The .gr~at wnters of ?ur ~y Tolstoy JS a world much les.~ bourgeois than the world of the
age were all engaged in a heroic struggle agalOSt the banahty, E'Jghteenth-ccntury Engli~h novelists, but - especially in Anna

II
 ·-·· -- - - • • - ·- -----,-- · - · ---- ·- . - '7 - · -

STUDIES JN EtiROPEAN REALJ.';M TOLSTOY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF REALISM 1;.1 1

150
K arenina- it is a world in which the process of capitalist develop- In Anna Kare11ina these illusions were already shaken to a much 4 ••;
ment is more strongly apparent than in the English novels which greater extent than .in War and Peace. This manifests ito:;clf among
nearly always depict only one p articular phase of it. In addition, other things in the fact that the structure of An11a Karenina is
the great Eng\ish novelists of the eighteenth. century lived ~n a much more 'European,' much more closcly~knit and the unfolding.
post-revolutionar;• period, and this gave the1r works ( ~pec1ally of the story far less leisurely. The closer a<;similation of the theme
those of Goldsmith and Fielding) an atmosphere of sta b1hty and to those of the European novels of the nineteenth century is a
security and also a certain complacent shortsightedness. further, even though external, indication of the approaching crisis;
..
) .
In contrast to this Tolstoy's literary career began and ended
ir. a period of approaching revolutionary storms. Tolstoy lS a pre-
although the style of Anna Karcnina still has the characteristics of
Tolstoy's early period, certain traits of his later critical period are .,
I
'•

'•

revolutionary writer. And precisely . because the centra l problem already showing themselves. Anna Karenina is fa r more novel-like '
in his works was the Russian peasant problem, the decisive turning- than War and Peace.
. point in the history of western litera ture, i.e. th? defeat o_f th_e In Th e Kreut;:,er Sonata Tolstoy takes another long step in the I
1848 revolutions, left no traces on them. In thts connectwn ~t direction of the European novel. He creates for himself a great 'I'
·I
matters little how far Tolstoy himself, in the various phases of h1s form of novella which resembles the perfected' form produced by
development, was aware or unaware of this cardinal issue. What European realism and which is both broad a nd dramatically con-
is importa nt is that this issue is at the core of all h is works, that centrated. He inclines more and more towards presenting the great
everything he wrote revolves around this issue; it is only for this catastrophes, the tragically-ending turning-points in human des-
reason that he still remained a pre-revolutionary writer even after tinies by a detailed portrayal of all their manifold inner motives
.1.e., .
m the most profound sense of the word, epically.
'
the <.li!>astcr of the European revolutions of 1848. ' ~
13\lt the village idylls of Tolstoy's great novels are always Thu!i Tolstoy approaches to some extent the form of composition ,
thn·atcned idylls. In War aud Peace the fin ancial disaster of the used by Balzac. Not that Balzac had influenced his literary
R ostov fa mily is enacted before our eyes as the typical disaster style; but the reality which they both experienced a nd the manner iJ.
I·
of the old-fashioned provincial nobility; the spiritual crises of Bez~k­ ir. which they experienced it drove both of them by an inner
hov and Bolkonski are reflections of the great cur rent wluch necessity to crea te such forms. The Death of Ivan llyich marks (
broadened politically into the D ecembrist rising. In An na Karenina the culminating point of this later style of Tolstoy, but its effects 'I
even darker clouds menace the village idyll nnd the enemy has can also be traced in his last great novel Resurrection. It is no·
already openly shown its capitalist countenance. Now it is no accident that Tolstoy's dramatic work~ were also written in this h
•I

· longer a question of fina ncial disaster alone - here one can .• period. .
alreaclv fe el the undertow of capitalism, agaimt which Tolstoy But the thematic assimilation to European literature does not
makes so passionate a protest. mean artistic assimilation to the prevalent iiterary trends there,
Constantine Levin, who really takes up the prohlcms where the very trends which broke up the artistic forms of the epic and
Nikolai Rostov left them in War and Peace, can no longer solve ~he drama. <?n the contrary, to the end of his life T olstoy remained,
·;
them as simply and light-heartedly. He fights not only to recover tn all questions relating to art, a g;reat realist of the old school,
his material prosperity as a landowner (with out falling a victim and a great creator of epic form. ·!•'
1i
to ·the capi tali~ation of the land) but has to carry on a n incessant
inner struggle, a struggle moviug from crisis to crisis in trying to
convince him:-;elf that hi$ exi~tcnce as landowner is justified and
The epic presentation of the totality of life- unlike the dramatic
-mm t inevitably include the presentation of the externals of life,
the epic-poetic transformation of the most important objects making
i
.,.' th:.tt he has the right to exploit his peasan ts. The incomparable epicr- up some sphere of human life and most typical events necessarily
grcatnc~s of Tolstoy's novels is based on the illusions which caused occurring in such a sphere. Hegel calls this first postulate of epic
h im to b elic.·\·e that this was not a tragic conflict out of which there presentation 'the totality of objects.' This postulate is not a
was no way out fot· the honest rcpre~cntatives of the cJa<;s, but a theoretical invention. Every novelist instinctively feels that his work
•. cannot claim to be complete if it lacks this 'totality of ohjectc;;
problem capable of ~olution.
 • _,..,.,,.. v' ~L~u U1 t; U~.\' ELOPMENT OF REALIS M J53
j
that is, if it does not include every important object: event and .~ ~~ ~·. sons of H omer. T rue, the world of objects a nd the relationship
sphere of life belonging to the theme. The crucial d~erence ?e.- I b etween them a nd men has changed, has become more intricate,
less spontaneously poetic. But the art of the great novelists mani-
tween the genuine epics of the old realists and the d1s~ntegrat10n
of form in the declining newer litera ture is manifested m the way fests itself precisely in the ability to overcome the unpoetic natu~e" .......
iz: which this ' totality of objects' is linked with the indi\~dual of their world, through sharing and experiencing the life and evolu-
destinies of the characters. tion of the society they lived in . It is by sending out their span~
T he modern writer, the looker-on, can very well achieve sue~ an taneously typical heroes to fulfil their inherently necessary destinies
awarcnc~s of this totality of objects. And if he is a great wnter, that the great writers have mastered with such sovereign power
he mav conjure it up before us by the force, the sugge~tive power the changeful texture of the external and internal) great and little
.i of his d<'scriptions. Every reader will remember, for in:-tancc, Zola'~ moments tha t make up life: Their h eroes set out on their career and
markets. stock exchan~~es, umh:rworld haunts, theatres, racetracks, encounter quite naturally the sp(!cific objects and events of their
etc. So far a)\ the encyclopaedic character of his contents and the sphere of life. Precisely because the characters arc typical in the
artistic <JUa~ity of his descriptions is cou~erned, Zola, to?, poss~ssed most profound sense of the word, they must of necessity meet
this 'totality of objects/ But these objects have a bem~ entirely the most important objects of their sphere of life more than once
independent of the fa te of the charactc.rs: They form. a mighty but in the course of their typical career. The writer is free to introduce
indifferent background to human dest1mes w1th wh1ch they have these objects when and where they have become typical and
no real connection; at best they are the more or JesJ; acctdenta) necessary r equisites in the drama of life he is describing.
~Cl'ncry among which these human destinies are enacted. ,) There is perhaps no other modern author in whose works the
How different an· tlH~ cla!>sics! 'totality of objects' is so rich, so complete as in Tolstoy. We need
.: H omer tells us about the weapons of Achille!', weapons made not think only of War and Peace in which every detail of the war
by the gods. But he doe~ not do so .as soo!1 as Ach~llt:s takes the is shown, from the court and the general staff down to the guerilla
.,\ sta~e. Only when Achill<'~ has angnly rettred to his tent.' wh~n fi ghters and prisoners of war and every phase of peaceful private
> the Trojans have triumphed, when Patrocles. has ~een kt~led m life from birth to death. We can recall the dances, dubs, parties,
the borrowed armour of Achilles, when Adnlles hunself 1s pre- social calls, conferences, work in the fields, horse-races and ca rd
paring for the mortal combat wi.th Htctor- a comba~ mortal in games described in Anna Karenina and the court a nd prison scenes
every sense of the word, for Achi.lle~ k~ows that he h.1mse1f mu~t in R esurrection. But if we subject to a closer analysis any of these
die .soon after Hector's death-tt 1s JUSt before tlns dramat1c pictures- which T olstoy. paints with such pleasure, so broadly and
moment of the combat with Hector, when the weapons of the iu sud1 detail that each of. them becomes a separate picture within
two champions decide the fate of two nations and the better the framework of the whole-we cannot fail to see how different
' weapons of Achilles, apart from his god-like strength, become a they are from the pictures painted by modern realists and how
factor deciding the outcome of the duel--only then do.es Homer similar to those we find in the old epics.
describe how Hephaistos forged the.o;e weapons ~or ~chtHcs. . These pictures of T olstoy are never mere. scenery, never merely
a'
Thus the description of the weapons of Ach11les 1s truly ep1~, pictures and descriptions, never merely contributions to the 'totality ·
I. l
not only bt!cause the poet describes their making and not. th~r of object~ .' The Christmas fancy-dress procession in War and Peace
It
;,. appearance (Lessing points this out in the famous chaptc~ !n h1s marks a crisis in the love of Nikola i Rostov a nd Sonia: the vic-
.:•
Laokoon). but also from the point of view of the compo~at1o~ as torious cavalry charge signals a crisis in the life of Nikol~i Rostov;
~· a whole. for it occur~ exactly where these weapons of Ach1llcs the horse-race is a turnin~-point in the relations between Anna
q play a d.ecisive part in the story, in the characterization and fate of K aren ina and Vronski; the trial of K atyusha leads to the fateful
., the heroes. Thus these arms of Achilles are not objects independent meeting between her and Nekhlyudov and so on. Each such
i1 of the characters iri the stor~· but an integrating factor of the stat;.• separa tely presented section of the 'totality of objects' contains
.., some decisive point which makes it a necessary factor in the evolu-
it!'oc.'lf.
I
The really ~rc<tt no,·eli~ts are in this rt:!-p<:ct always true-born tion of one or more of the characters in the novel.

....
 154- STUDIES IN EUROPEA..~ REALISM

Iu reality the interconnections and relationships in Tolst?y's i~1 a work of art, their mutual relationships, the stories of their
novels are much more intricate and varied than merely such pomts lives, etc., cannot be shown in such a manner that the relation~
of contact between objective happenings and the subjective ex· ships between theni and their environment appear as the natural
periences of the characters, as have been referred to i~ the pre- results 6f the characterization; if the settings and instruments of
ceding; such points of intersection also mark more or less ~mportant t?e s~ory ~r~ from the viewpoint of the individual merely accidental
turning-points of the whole story. Every ph~e of such c.nses, e~ery ~~·~· 1~ artts~tcally they ma~c the impression of mere scenery), then.
thou~ht and emotion of the characters ts mseparably mtertwmed tt 1s 1mpos~tbl~ for the .arust to depict typical circumstances in a
with bthc turning-point, with the event which provid~ t~c oppor- really ~onvmcmg ma~ncr..~or it is one thing for the intelligence
tunity for the crisis in the story. For instance: when It 1s alre~dy to ad.m.rt that. a ccrtam mrlteuJ complete with all the phenomena
inevitable that a crisis in the relationship of Anna and Vronskt to pertammg to ~t,. has ~cen perfectly described, and quite another to
Karenin should arise the race and Vronski's accident is neverthe- become a partlctpant m the profoundly moving experience of seeing
. I
less not merely an dpportunity for the crisis to become manifest, ~tow. the destinies o~ individual men and women grow out of an ~·'iI
it also determines the nature of the crisis. It reveals traits in each mfimte wealth of ctrcumstances they have encountered and how
,,
,..,
of the three characters which in other circumstances would not the turniug-points in their lives are indissolubly linked with the ·I
have manifested themselves in the same way and with the same typical conditions prevailing in their sphere of life. '• j
.'>
typicality. Because of the internal thr~ds which li.nk the horse- . It is obvious that changes in the style of presentation are reA.ec~ 'i
j
race with the characters and the plot, the race enttrely ceases to ttons of the ~ha.nges. i~ soci~ reality itself, that they mirror the 'i
be a mere picture-it grows into the fateful culminating s~enc ~f a fact that cap1tahsm Is mcreasmgly becoming· the dominant factor . <
'
I

great drama, and the fact that riding in rae~ is a typica.I pastlme in every form of human existence. .I
of Vronski, that attending h orse-races at wh1ch royalty ts present Heg~l very clearly reco~iz~ the harmful effect of this changet
is a typical habit of the bureaucrat Karenin, renders the manifold on. art m general and on ep1c hterature in particular. He says about
relationships between individual destinies and .the 'tota~ity of objec.ts' thts : "h~hat man requires for his external life, house and home,
even more manifold and typical by the mtervcnt10n of soctal tent, c atr, bed: sword and spear, the ship with which he crosses
factors. the ~cean, the cha.riot which carries him into battle, boiling and :t
Such a presentation of the 'totality of objects' dispenses Tol~toy roastm~, slaughtermg, eating and drinking-nothing of all this
--like every tntly great epic poet-from giving d~y and t.edt?~s must have become merely a dead means to an end for him· he
mu~t f~el alive in all these with his whole sense and self in o~der
descriptions of a setting, the connection between whtch and tndtvt-
dual d estinies is always general and abstract and hence always ~a~ ~vhat is in itself merely external be given a humanly inspired
..
remains coincidental. The 'totality of objects' in Tolstoy always tndJvtdual character by such close connection with the human
~ expresses, in · immediate, spontaneous and palpable ~orm; the close individual. Our present-day machinery and factories together with
; bond betwc(!n individual destinies and the surroundmg world. the products they turn out and in general our means of satisfying
our c~ter_nal needs would in this respect-exactly like modern state ·~
orgamsatlOn-be out of tune with the background of life which
5. the original epic requires."
Such a manner of presenting the 'totality of objec ts' is a con- With this ~egel has accurately stated the ccntr~l problem of
dition si11e qua 11on of depicting truly typical cha racters. Engels style confrontmg the xn~dern bourgeois novel. The great novelists
stressed the importance of typical circumstances in c~~sc connec- have ever fought a hcrmc battle to overcome, in the sphere of art,
tion with the typicality of characters, as a p~erequlSlte of true ~at c?ldness and h.arshnes.~ in bourgeois existence and in the rda~
realism. But typical circumstances may be dcp1c.ted abstractly or ttonshtps .o~ men. w1th each oth~r and with n~ture, which opposes
concretely, even if they are correctly dcscnbed, so far . as such a ng1d. rests~ancc to poetic presentation. But the poet can
,, their social nature is concerned. In the works of the newer reahsts overcome t!us rcststanc~ on~y by seeki.ng ?ut the mrviving live
..'··' such descriptions increasingly tend to be abstract. If the characters elements of these rclat1onshtp~ m reahty 1tself, by culling from
.~.
 his own rich and real experience and expressing in concentrated
form the moments in which such still living tendencies manifest
: r·,
'.{ ·i
tal.ist re~lit}'· It is fut~l~ for a writer to adorn his descriptions with
tl:e choicest, most bnlhant, most adequate words, futile to make
themselves as relationships between individuals. For the mechanical I hts characte~s feel the deepest s~rrow and the greatest indignation
and 'finished' character of the capitalist world, described by Hegel at t.he em~tmess~ hop~lessness, mhumanity and 'petrification' of
I and so often repeated after him, is, it i~ true, an existing and
growing evolutionary tendency in capitalism, but it must never I rcaltty. I~ IS a.ll m va~, even if this sorrow is expressed with the
greatest smcent~ and m the most beautiful lyrical form. The.
I
•t

··:
be forgotten that it is still only a tendency, that society is objec- example of ~o~mson ~rusoe shows that the struggle against the .
tively 'Oevcr 'finished,' fulfilled, dead, petrified reality. prose ~f capitalist :eality can be successful only if the author in-
' J
·:

I
.,
Thus the decisive artistic problem of bourgeois realism was this:
is the writer to swim against the current or should he allow himsel!
... ,,,~

'.\• !~
vents SituatiOns whtch arc not in themselves impossible within the
framework ~f this ~ea~ity (altho~gh ~ey may never really occur)
• to be carried b'y the stream of capitalism?
In the first case he may create live images, which it is of course
1 and then, g1ven thts mvcnted Situation, allows his characters to
develop freely all the essential factors of their social existence
d extremely difficult to hew out of the refractory material but which . Tolst~y's UJ.1ique epic s:eatness rests on such a power of inven~

' ...
I

1
are nevertheless true and real, for they depict the ~till existing
spark of life, the struggle against the 'finished' world. Their truth
rests on the fact that what they depict, in an extremely exaggerated
form, is substantially correct in its social content.
In the second case-and this is the method followed by newer ·'. ·)
t 10n.. Hts ston~s roll on wtth apparent slowness, without vehement
turmng~, scem_mgly fol.lowing in a straight line along the track of
th~ ordm~ry hves o_f hts figu.res ..But al~~ys an? everywhere along
th1s t~ack Tolstoy mvents sttuatlons ansmg with internal poetic
neceSSity from the concrete stage of development reached by the

f
~. ,
realism since Flaubert-therc is less and less swimming against
the current. But it would be quite wrong and superficial to say
L
'i
c.hara:ters,, situations in which they are brought into a living rela-
t;on~hlp Wlth nature. War and Peace in particular is full of such
that this brought literature into closer contact with daily 1ife; that Slgmficant. and m~gnificently living pictures. ·Think for instance of
I
t~ .. it was the way of life that had changed and literature had merely
adapted itself to the change. For wri~e~s who, .in their o.wn literar y
~he ~plend1~ hun~mg party organized by the Rostov family and the
tdylhc .evenmg wt~h th~ old uncle with the sequel to it. In Anna

~- Karenzna ~he relattonslup to nature has already become much more

activity, yield to the undeniably e:x1stmg. soctal. evolutto~ar~ ten-
dency referred to in the preceding, must m their works mev1tably problcrnattc. All the .more admirable is the genius with which
Tolstoy create.-; such ptctures as Levin's mowing of a field Iettirt~ ... ... · '
J i·!
turn what is merely a tendency into a generalized, all-embracing
reality. Their writings, which cannot strike a spark of life from
capitalist reality, thus become even more petrified.. even more
; ~
th.ern ~row out of the ~roblet?atic nature of Levin's rela~ion~hip
With h1s peasants a~d hlS sentuncntal attitude to physical labour.

l
I•
f 'finished' than reality itself and are even more dull, hopeless and It. wou.ld b.e a m1stake, however, to limit this problem of the
::l commonplace than the world they purport to depict. . . . p~etlc ammahon of the world depicted by Tolstoy to the relation-
It is naturally impossible to preserve among the reahttes of capl- shtp between man and nature. The increasing division of ]abour
'fj·~ .talist society the Homeric intensity of the rela tions between men between town .and ~ountry~ide, the growing social weight of the
l~ and the outer world. It was a piece of good for tune quite excep- towns neccssanly shifts the action more and more to the urba n
~·y tional in the history of the modern novel that Defoe, in his Robill- ~ccne, ~nd to the modern great city and even in such cities no poetic

~
son Crusoe, succeeded in turning all the tools required for the satis- mventton can restore a Homeric relationship between man and
faction of elementary human needs into compopents of a thrilling nature, behvee~ man and the objects now turned into commodities.
story and by means of this vital connection with human destinies, That docs not Imply, of course, that the realist writer must surren-
~{.. , endow them with a significance poetic in the highest sense of the der witho~t a ba ttle to the 'finished' prose of this urban world. The
word. And although Robinson Crusoe is an isolated, unrepcatable ~rcat rea~1sts have ~eve~ capitulated, on this point least of aU. But
..'Ji
:r -
instance it is yet most instructive because it indicates the direction here agam the wnter 1s compelled to invent situations in which
,r.. in which the imagination of the writer should m.ove if it is to find the world of the great city is endowed with life and poetry. Such
'• an artistic solution to the problem of overcoming the pro!'e of capi- poetry can here be born only if the human figure~ themselves are
-~i
··1
·...
;
u,,·.
 J..J~

158
STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM: ~
~.
world of court sittings card-parties ..
nitur7, do':"n to the ~auseating fiit~Is~~c.. :~cthe ~heatre, ~gly f~r-·
'•
deeply imbued with life and their relationships with each other
are rendered profoundly dramatic. If the writer succeeds in invent- ~unctions, ts here integrated to a . 'd dymg .mans bod1ly
ing such situations, situations in which the struggles and mutual m which each object elo uentl ~ost vl:l . and ammated world
relationships between the characters widen into a great dramatic destroying emptiness and fut'ftan f p~ettcally .cxp~csses the soul-
society. 11Y 0 uman hfe m a capitalist
spectacle, then the objects in which these mutual human relation-
ships find expression and which are the vehicle for them, will-
affinities with the creative m th ~c war s of Tolstoy have strong
In this their poetic quality the la k • r
precisely as a result of this their function-be endowed with a
nineteenth century, although t~ ~ • ~f the gr.eat .realists of the
5
poetic magic. How conscious the great realists were of this, is
shown by a passage in Balzac's Splendeur et Miscrc des Courtisa1w>
j are very considerable Balzac a~d ~t;stl~ha~d htstoncal differences
when the duel between Vautrin <the Cromwell of the hulks' and
-,.'[(;
.. unpoetic nature of b~ur cois . en a g~t over the 'finished•
Corentin, the greatest police spy of his time, has reached its cul- ~truggle, an interplay mut:~tety ~y resol~mg~g~i-•~}. life into a
of
minating point. Corentin's assistant, Peyrade, feels that he is in mdiVidu~~s; thus society do~ t pasronate telattonshtps between
constant danger. "Thus the terror, which is spread in the depths in it as a 'finished' force no con rant. the human beings living
of the American forests by the ruses of hostile tribes and from and inalterable. Not ~nly ~: ~o~~:: ma~?m:, ~s something fateful
which Cooper has derived so much advantage, enveloped with picture given of it in these 't' y--o ~ccttv~ Y as well as in the
(the period in question is t:~ ~g:-unde;gomg constant change
1
itc; glamour the tiniest details of Parisian life. Passers-by, shops,
carriages, some man at a window-all this aroused in the human ch~racters depicted by Balzac a~~v~ct~ dlh89l and 1848) b~t the
numbers entrusted with protecting old Peyrade (for whom this thetr own history' In a Bal t.n a do actually make
. . · zac novel a court of la · ·
was a matter of life and death) the same engrossing interest which an mst1tution with certain social f . . w 1s not s1mply
the trunk of a tree, a beaver lodge, a pelt, a buffalo robe, a motion- after 1848. It is a battlefield ~r"ctto~s, as m. the books written
less boat or an overhanging tree at the water's edge possesses in every interrogation of ·a suspect cv va~Ious. soctal struggles, and
every court sentence is the re~ult cry . ra~mg-up ~f a document,
Cooper's novels."
Naturally this glamour is no longer the clear, hrip;ht, simple whose every phas~ we are invited to ;it~~~~Icate social tugs-of-war
magic of the infancy of the human race, such as we find in Homer. One of the prmcipal themes f T 1 '
formation of the social seen . ~ o .s~oy s oeuvre lS the trans-
.
•. ,. ~ .The strivin~ of the great realists to remain true to the realities
quotes these words of Levin~· "Hn wntmg ~bout Tolstoy Lenin,
of life has for its inevitable result that when they portray life under
capitalism and particularly life in the great cities, they must turn upside down with us · . ow everythmg has been turned
into poetry all the dark uncanniness, all the horrible inhumanity One could scarcely d:;~ib:n~h IS on~y ju~t getting settled again."
of it. But this poetry is real poetry: it comes poetically to life more strikingly. Eve one--or a~ pcuo ctween. 1861 and 1905
precisely because of its unrelieved horror. This discovery and was 'turned upside d~wn' th I least every Russtan-knows what • '
revelation of poetic beauty in the dreadful uglincs!> of capitalist !cgime tied up with it. But ~~·at ~!;"':as se~fdom a~d the whole old
life is worlds apart from those photographic copies of the surface IS quite unknown, strange and . . only JUSt ~ettmg settled again'
which use the hopelessness and desolation of the subject as the the people ! The extr d'. mco~preh~~st.ble to the masses of
. . . aor mary poet1c sens1t1VIty to 11 h h ·
medium of presentation. An instance of this is the masterpiece unp1lCatJons connected with this 't . .d a t e uman
sia. was one of the essential eh~m~~~~ng.fupst e d?wn' of old Rus-.
•n
;I~
.t of Tolstoy's late period The Death of Juan Ilyich. Superficially,
;•.. what is painted here is the everyday story of an average human wnter. However wrong or t' . o Tolstoy s greatness as a
?~ . . reac tonary his pol' t' 1 d
being, such as any modern realist might have painted. But Tolstoy's opmtons about this develo 1 tea an other
seen with extraordinary ciir~;n:hmah have been, he had certainly
~~·
!I
;.I~ p:ift of invention turns the inevitable isolation of the dying Ivan
:~~
Ilyich into an almost Robinson Crusoe-like desert island-an island strata of society by this transfere c/nge~ wrfdught i~ the various
them in motion in all their m b'~a lOn o o Russia and seen
i,
IL <'f horror) of a horrible death after a meaningless life--and inspires
with a terrible dark poetry all the figures and all the objects dition, as a stati~, rigid state. o 1 tty, never as an established con-
,,
'•· through which the human relationships are conveyed. The fading
·s·..
'
 :•.)
..... Let us consider the figure of Oblonski in Anna Kare1d1ta. Tol- . ,
Hence, needless to say it is obvious that Tolsto~·. who l'CJ..'Ur<.l'td
..
:', stoy shows him, not as a naturalist~cally conceiv~ _landowner- the worl~ ~rom the ar~gle of the Russian peasant, could not hut ·
' '
-~ .
bureaucrat who has reached a certam level of cap1tabst develop-
ment; what he shows is the increasing degree of capitalist trans-
h<1ve a su:mlar conceptton of liocicty and the state.
But tlus does not completely explain the attitude of Tolstov
,.
formation as it affects Oblonski's own personal life. As a human t<' all the~e problems. For even the members of the rulin;,
type, Oblonski is much more of an old-world country squire, w?o ~la$s take up a_ different attitude to state and social in~titutiot~:
... much prefers a comfortable, leisurely, broad foundat ton for a life tn Tolstoy and m Balzac. Tolstoy's characters, even if they belong
of ease and pleasure to a however brilliant caree~ at court, in th_e t? .the upper ~las~es, regard these institutions as a 'finished' objec-
I .

administrationI or in the anny. That is why h1s metamorphos1s tlV17.Cd world 111 tt'iclf. The reasons for this arc obvious enough.
··.f
!,,,
• •
into a half-capitalist, capitalistically-corrupte<;I type 1s so mterest- T~_c _first ~f tl~em :vas th~ c~a.racter _of Tsarist autocracy: which
~ ing. Oblonski's officialdom has purely matc~ial moti~c.~ : on the in- pc1 mt.tted mtet vcutwr~ h~ mdtvtduals m social anc.l political event~
I•'

l ~ comc·of his estates alone he can no longer hve the hfe he wants to
i):!.f live. The transition to closer tics with capitalism (a seat on a
only m the form of mtngue: corruption, backstairs influence--or
r<:'volt. No one. of any high intellectual and moral quality could
board of directors, etc.) is the natural consequence of his evo~uti?n, re.~ard the Tsamt state ~s something in which he had a part, not
I;' . the natural widening of the new parasitic foundations of h1s hfe. ev~:n to the c~tcnt to wluch the characters of Balzac and Stcndhal
On this basis the old pleasure-loving outlook of the landowner .co~ld d~ so. Ill respect. of the several states of their time. This
t'
;·
I!
I
...
evolves in Oblonski into a superficially good-natured, superficially
epicurean Liberalism. ~e tak~ ove~ fr.om a modern b.ourge~r.s
~m.~hed, tlus dead quahty of the Tsarist state and its social institu-
tions ass.umc~ e~er gre~ter rigidity in Tolstoy's writings, runnin~-:

r·l:T.L. parallel m tlus wtth the mcreasing estrangement between the fore~:;
world-view all that can tdeolog1cally JUSttfy and support hts undis-
~: '
turbed enjoyment of life. But h~ still remains the old coun.try o: thl' state and the life of Russian society. From the remote
gentleman when he instinctively despises the ruthlc~s place-se_ekmg dm~ncc of the historic past single figures still protrude into Tol-
~~t
;~ It~·
cf his colleagues-in-office and interprets and pr~cttses th~ _L1beral
'laissez-fain~' in his own good-humouredly egOIStic way as hve and
st?Y s world, fi~ures of whom he thinks that they might possiblr
stt·ll· have some mAuencc over the state. Such is old Pri.nce Bolkon-
~~ let live,' 'apres-moi le deluge,' and the like.
But what is decisive for the difference between Tolstoy's last
skJ ~~ War an~ Peace. But even he has retired. angry and dis-
appomt:d, to h1s csta~es and_ the c~recr of his son already consist~
principles of composition and ~he great :ealist~ o~ th~ early nine- o.f nothmg ~ut ~ cham of dtsappomtments, a progressive destruc-
·.:.l.1
r' teenth century is that the soctal forrnat10ns, mstttuhons a~d ~he
-. like are much more 'finished,' lifeless, inhuman and machmclike .J tiOn. ~f the. 1llus1on ~~~at a decen~ and gifted man m ight actively
,,~
:-~
I'• . par~ICtpate .~~ th~ mthtary or pohtical li(c of Tsari~t Russia. This
,'1r. · ~
in Tolstoy than they ever were in either Balzac or Stendhal. ~he ~h~n~ of dtslll~s1onment is shown by Tolstoy not merely as the
:,; ~I essential reason for this conception springs from the very fountam- md1V1dua! dcs.tmy of Andrcy Bolkonski or Pierre Bezukhov. On
!II ' head of Tolstoy's genius : that he regards society from the vie~­
fI ~he con.trary 1t. very clearl>· reflects the ideological repercussions
v,,.
I...·:.·;.:.
i:.tl-'
point of the exploited peasantry. In Balz~c's w~~ld, too, the .~oc1al
and political institutions arc transformed mto m1htant mutual rela-
m Tsanst
· d ·
Rus!'aa of the French revolution and of the Napo1.come
pcno · t.e. th<?sc huma!1 and psychological motives. those human
·

}"l't
~;~· t
tionships solely for the representatives of the classes im_mcdiatc:Iy and_ psychologlc.al confl1cts, which drove the flower of the Russian
participating in the struggle for power; for the plcbctan soct~l nob1hty of the time to the Decembrist insurrection. Whether Pierre
:,~l g-roups these instit~tions, too, ~re a 'fin~sh~' world, complete m
it~clf and confrontmg them wtth maclunchke apathy. Only the
Bezukho\1 ~ road would have led to such a consummation is a point
l~ft open by. Tolstoy. But the fact that for some length of time
'rl'!}:
:.'~ I
I· · .. ,
gigantic figure of Vautrin rises up to fight, with changi_ng. fortunes,
a battle against the powers of the state; the other cnmm.als lead
a miserable existence in the pores of society and the pollee con-
~--
1 ~Is toy c01mdered the plan of writing a novel about the Deccm-
bnsts shows that the perspective was at least not fore 1'rrn to 1 ...
concep t .ton o f sueh anstocratic
. rebels . . n ll-'
'·
···"·l fronts them as an impersonal and irresistible force. Naturally this 1 True, the political and social world, as Tolstoy saw it in his youtb
·~:
applies even more to the peasants and the lower middle etas~ .

l
. \t and early manhood. was a fairly loose structure. The semi-patriar-
'1, ~
~- ..l, .
bn:. . ..·
 162 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM TOLSTOY AND THE
DEVELOPMENT OF REALISM 163
chal form of bondage existing in the world of War and Peace gave ,,
,.;
superb types showing this 'capitalizati0 • d '·
elbow-room enough for free movement, for independence and cratization of the Russian bT ~ an .corresponding bureau-
autonomy in the. local and personal sphere. One need only think
or the life led by the independent country squires, the activities
Tolstoy has painted a wond~~f~l~ty.. here Js Oblonski, in whom
ture of the Liberal tendencies a/ ric a~ .subtlr mcx_Jelled pic-
of the partisans and the like. There can be no doubt that T olstoy here, also, we find the t e work WJt~m th1s social group;
observed and .reproduced these traits with complete historical of Vronski. Vronski c]'!n ~f ~e modern a~Jstocrat in the person ..·
fidelity. But the eyes with which he regarded them were them-
selves conditioned by the level of his own d evelopment, and by
passion for Anna. he
a
into
iv! ! z;
capitalist l~ndo!ner
u ~ .mod~. of life as a result of his
1

mt~tary career and develops

the stage reached in the evolution of Russian society at the time bandry of his estates into a ~a it o. rans o~s the traditional bus-
when he wrote these books. With the transformations brought ism and progress in the f.a1Jst entcrpme, champions Liberal-
about by historical development and hence with the change in attempts to revive the 'in!o JtJ~al counsels of the· nobility and
Tolstoy's views on the state and on society, his manner of presenta- on a capitalist basis. Thus t~~:r:ree~cr of the no~lcs' way of life
tion changes too. His The Cossacks a nd other early Caucasian of an accidental passion is to indu c '. ro~ the ~ocia] ~oint of view,
proper to his cla~s. To round ~ ~ r~nskl a typ1ca1. evolution
0
· stories show, in their central conception of society, traits very similar
to those found in W ar and Peace, while the late and unfinished character, the type of the a! d e PlCt~re, there 1s a third
Hadji Murat, although related to the previous in subject, has a tionary, obscurantist hypoc :t~a ly codmpletely bureaucratized, reac-
much firmer structure, with less opportunities for private human . ' n 1ca an empty ad · · .
m the person of Karenin C 't r c.I' . . mmtstrattve official
activities. permeates all human rel~tio~f~.a tst. IVIsJon of labour increasingly
The driving force in this transformation of reality was the growth decisive detenninant of tho~ ~~s, lt dbecome:c; the way of life, the·
of capitalism. But in order to understand Tolstoy's world it is very with an .increasingly bitter i;on s ~n ~motJ~ns; T olstoy depicts
important to see clearly that capitalism in the form in which it labour human beings are tr ~ y ow . m this world of divided
emerged in Russia, was-in Lenin's words-an Asiatic, a nd 'Octo- machine. This division of 1anbs orn:ed mto parts of an inhuman ••
brist' capitalism. z a our IS a most . bl .
!Or the oppression and exploitation of h suit~ e mstrument
This form of capita~ist development aggravated even further the Tolstoy hates it precisely becaus 't . t. e workmg masses and i.
social conditions unpropitious to art and literature and increased and exploitation. But as the r~:tl Is an ~nstrument.of oppression (
the deadness and rigidity of the resulting social formations. What Tolstoy presents this whole ~oces and ~mversal gemus that he is,
Marx had in his time said of German developments applied no population; he . reveals its l'npne d~ las ~t affects all classes of the
less to the Russia of Tolstoy's later years : "In all other spheres · I' . r 1a ecttc the wa ·
caplta 1st-bureaucratic division of 1 b ' Y m w h'1ch thJ.S,
.
we are tormented . .. not only by the development of capitalist transfonns into mere mar . t a our not only dehumanizes and
production but also by the lack of its development; side by side those of the ruling class) ~gi~~nit ~oa~olc; the human beings .(even
with modern troubles we are oppressed by many inherited troubles whole process turns against th enmtshed, but also how this
arising from the survival of ancient a nd antiquated methods of point in their lives whenever these same luman beings at every
I
I·
~~ attempt to defend their own
l
production with their accompaniment of out-of-date social and elementary vital in;erests or
political conditions. We suffer not only from the living but also . . . manhest a remnant of h . . '·
SUrvivmg wrthin themselves. umamty still
from the dead.''
An instance of this is the wonderful
Precisely because Tolstoy's immediate attention was directed and his doctor. Ivan Ilyich has beco scene between Ivan Ilyich
mainly towards describing the upper classes, he expressed in the a paragon of a judge who str' h. me the complete bureaucrat, .·
most vivid and plastic fashion this 'Asiatic' character of ~a~ccnt consummate bureaucr~tic skill l~~d IS hcas~s of all humanity with '(
Russian capitalism and its tendency not to destroy or ehmmate a perfectly functioning cog in the r ~; ~s turne~ himself into
t,
the worst aspects of -an autocracy already superseded by historical sian. In vain do the accused ca g e~ sanst machmery of opres~
development but merely to adapt them to the requirements of p lead the special the hum. a n' . ugl_ht I.n the wheels of this machine
: capitalist interests. In Anna K arenina T olstoy already created · • tmp tcattons of th · •
Judge calmly a nd politely shepherds th b kcJr case-the expert
. em ac to the path of the
 .iVL..S TOY AND Tire DEVELOPMENT OF REALISM 165

paragraphs on which they are crushed by the juggern~ut of the

law in accordance with the requirements o~ the T sarLc;t system.
But now Ivan Ilyich himself is dangerously ,n and ~ants to find
out from his doctor what his condition and expectat1ons ~re. The
doctor, however, is just such another superior bure~ucrat! JUSt such
+
I
with his own career, decides the fate of millions of human beings
al> if it were a mere piece of paper. (From the point of view of
Tolstoy's own development it is interesting to note that in some
passages of War and Peace, e.g. in the figure of Bilibin, he still
treal'i this i nhumanity which manifests itself in a formal~bureaucra­
another perfect piece of machinery ~s I van Ily1ch himself; he tit· attitude to all problems, with a certain good~natured irony.)
,. treats Ivan Uyich exactly as Ivan Ilytch treats the accused who But in Resurrection he already brings the whole inhuman
come before him. "All this was exactly the same as what Ivan machinery into relation with the sufferings of its victims and gives
llyich had himself so brilliantly. performed in front of the a.ccuscd ~ comprehensive, rnany~sided and accurate picture of the machinery
a thousand times. The summmg-up of the doctor was JUSt a.c; of oppression in the Tsarist form of capitalist state-a picture
briUiant and he looked as triumphantly, even chcerf~lly, at the nothing comparable with which can be found in the bourgeois
accused over his spcct~clcs . . . The d~ctor looke~ a~ htm s~vcrely literature of any country. Here the ruling class is already shown
II
1 with one eye, over his spectacles, ~s 1f to say: . Pnsoner, if you as a gang of vicious imbeciles who carry out their functions either
will not restrict yourself to answermg the quesuons put. to you, with unsuspecting stupidity or malicious careerism and who are
1 shall be constrained to order your removal from ~h1s .court- by now nothing but cogs in a horrible machine of oppression.
room.'" What is so horrible in the death ~~ ~va~ Ilytch lS pre- Perhaps never since Swift's Gulliver's Travels has capitalist society
cisely that ha is confronted with this sort of ng1d1ty m every human been depi~ted with such powerful irony. As Tolstoy grew older,
c~ntact, when in the face of approaching d~ath ~e fi~t becomes his pr~sentation of characters belonging to the upper classes in-
aware of an urge to establish human relatlons~Ip~ w1th human creasingly took this satirical, ironical form. The representatives of
beings and overcome the futile senselessness of h1s hfc. . tbe ruling dass show an increasing resemblance, for all their polite
. The development of Russian society d:e~e~s the .do~blc h!dcou~­ and polished exterior, to the stinking Yahoos of J onathan Swift.
ncss, an autocracy combined with As1at1c cap1tahsm. As t.h1s The fact that Tolstoy depicts the specific Tsarist form of capi-
objective development drives inexorably on towards the. revolution talist machinery detracts nothing from the universal validity of
of 1905 Tolstoy's hatred and contempt of the dehuma~uzed nature the picture-on the contrary the resultant concrete full~bloode d
of !\UCh 'a society grows rapidly. In Karen in's figure th1s deh.uman~ lifelike quality enhances this universal validity, for bo~h the hideou~
intion is already put before us in completed form. Karemn and tyranny of the oppressors and the utter helplessness of tl:le victims
~ hi~ wife arc at a party when Karenin becomes aware of ~he nasc~nt is deeply and universally true. The specific form in which this
·' love between Anna and Vronski. He prepares to have .1t o.ut Wlth tyranny manifests itself at the hands of the T sarist bureaucracy
her. " ... And everything that he would now say t~ h1s wife took ~s merely a concrete aggravation of its universal qualities. For
clear shape in Alexey Andreyevich's head. Thmkmg over what mstance, Tolstoy's Prince Nekhlyudov intervenes in the interest
hi! would say, he somewhat regretted that he should .have ~o use of an imprisoned woman revolutionary and for this purpose goes
. hi~ time and mental faculties for dome.c;tic consump~ton, Wlth so to see one of the Yahoos who wears the uniform of a general. Be~
~
I
I · little to show for it; but nevertheless the form and tram of .th:ought cause the general's wife would like to have an affaire with Nek-
hlyudov. the revolutionary is released. "As they were starting, a
~
of the speech he would make shaped itself clearly and d1stmctly,
footman met Nekhlyudov in the ante-room and handed him a
like an official report." . . .
In Tolstoy's later works, particularly m Resurrect~on, h1s ha.tre~ note from Mariette: •Pour tiOUS faire plaisirJ j'ai agi tout a fait
\ of this mhumanity has deepened. The main reason for thiS LS contre mes principes et j'ai intercede aupres de mon mari pour
t., that in his later years Tolstoy saw much more clearly .the connec~
tion between the dehumanization of the state machme and ~h.e
,·: votre protegee. Il se .trotwe que cette 'personne peut etre relachCe
immediatcm ent. Mon mari a ecrit au commandant. Venez do ne
i
~I oppression and exploitation of the common people. In .Kar~~m s disinterestedly. Je vous attends. M.' 'Think of that,' said Nekhlyu-
bureaucnstic careerism this tendency .was presept only unphcltly, dov to the lawyer. 'Why, this is dreadful. A woman has been kept
·''1, in the complete indifference with wh1ch Karemn, concerned only in solitary confinement for seven months and then turns out to
. (~
,.,
 --·-·-.. - - -- - .,'91 ... ....
STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM
,., ''1 ----------:------=~=-

167
6 . . . f't'X'I~

166 TOLSTOY AND THE DEVELOPMENT._OF REALIS?.l

,j·;
be quite innocent and a word suffices to get her .released.: 'That ~ draws must also approach ever closer to the material of life
is what always happens.' , This is of course no ~solated I~~tance the literary mirroring of which led to the naturalist disintegratio~
in Rcsurrcctio11. Tolstoy shows with an extraordmary fertll~ty of of the great school of realism in western Europe. There was of
imagination, how the fate of a great many people immcd1at~ly course, one objective possibility of action in the Russia dcpi~ted
depend entirely on such personal matters of chance, .on such arbit- by Tolstoy: but only for democratic and socialist revolutionaries
rary personal interests of some member of the ru~mg class.. But and to depict such action was precluded for Tolstoy by his phil~
the sum of all these arbitrary happenings and acuons consutut~ sophy. When together 'with the strong and hopeful features of the
a clear and coherent system; through all these chances and acci- approaching peasant revolt he also gives poetic expression to its
dents the main purpose of the dehumanized machinery emerges- half-heartedness, its backwardness, its hesitations and lack of cour-''
it is the protection, by any and every me~ns, even the most brutal, a?'e, he leaves ~is c?aracters no other possibility save the old
of the private property owned by the rulmg. classes; . ,
Thus Tolstoy in his later years created a h1deo~s fimshed w~rld
dtlemma of cap1tulat1on or flight. And we have seen that such
~ capitulation must of necessity take increasingly infamous and
l'f
of increasing horror. The pores of society in whrch human bemgs mh~an forms, and .we have also seen that even the possibilities l·
could act with some measure of independence have bee? gr.adually of fhg.ht are pr~gresstvely ~arrowed for Tolstoy by the objective
stopped up. Nekhlyudov can no longer harbour any IllusiOns re- evol~tlon. o~ soc~ety and h1s own deepening poetical and philo- .
garding life on the land, regarding a compromise between the soph1cal mstght mto the structure of the society thus born. :•
interests of the landowners and the interests of the peasants, such I~ is. t~ue that Tolst?~ al~o ~reached the need for good deeds, '•
as Konstantin Levin could still harbour, even though in a tonue~t­ fo~ mdt.vldual. non-pa:uctpatiOn m sin and the like and wrote many :I
ing, problematic form. Nor doc~ the private _safety-valve of fam1~y thm~s ~n wh17h reaht~, despite all the magnificent accuracy of 1,
. life the possibility of an escape like that of N1kola1 Rostov or Levm
... ,. ,. . txi;t any longer for Tolstoy in his later years. Fron; th_e K reut;:;er
Sonata onwards he sees love and marriage, t~o, m 1ts J?odern
form; he sees in them all the specific forms of lt~s, ~ypocnsy and
1'·J
detail, Is. ~~mpulated m such a way as to provide evidence for
the posstbrhty and efficacity of such good deeds (The Forged
Coup?n, etc.). ~ut t~e poetic greatness of the older Tolstoy mani-
fests ttself prectsely m the fact that when he writes he cannot ;~
.,
·)

dehumanization, which are brought about by cap~tahs':ll. He once

said to Gorki: "Men must suffer earthquakes, eptdcmtcs, dreadful
d 1seases and all the torments of the soul, but the worst tragedy
in life was at all times, is now and eyer will be the tragedy of the
bedroom." Here, as nearly everywhere else, Tolstoy expresses
his thoughts in a timeless form; but when he gives such ~hou~hts
j help presenting the true circumstances of real life with inexorable
fidelity, irrespective of whether they corroborate or refute his own ..
!avou.rite ideas. Fo~ instance, the impossibility of an active life
~1 thlS W?r.ld of whtch we have just spoken, is clearly expressed
m T~e ~wm~ Corpse by F~ia into whose mouth Tolstoy, without
'·:

)
:i
':l
·:
.

mentiomng h1s own favounte theory at all, even as a possibility, ·

artistic expression he is incomparably more concrete an?· htstoncal. puts these words : "A man born in the sphere in which I was born ~
i
..
His later descriptions of the 'trage~y of th_c be~room may ha-:e has only three possibilities to choose from. Either he can be an •,:
been conceived as documents of hts ascetiC ph1losophy, but h~s o~cial, earn money and increase the filth in which we live-that •
earlier artistic presentations of the problem b~t throug~ t~J.S drligusted me, or perhaps I didn't know how to do it but above
abstract-dogmatic frame and depict the spectficall~ c~p1tahst
hideousness of modern bourgeois love, marriage, prostttutlon and
all it disgusted me. Or else he can fight this filth, but for that
he must be a hero and I have never been that. Or finally and
··~·.
: I~
I;
"j
.l
two-fold exploitation of women. . thirdly he ~ries to forget, goes to the dogs, takes to drink and .)
Where is there in such a world any room for actton? T?e wo~ld song-that rs what I have done and this is to what it has brought • ~·
Tolstoy sees and depicts is to an increasing degre: a world 1~ whtcb me." '!
I. .'decent people can no longer find any ~pportun;ty_ fo.r .actton. As In. N7k~Iyudov's figure Tolstoy did of course attempt to present -~
capitalistically develo,Ping Russia, desp1tc the As1attc character the mcliVIdual good deed itself. But his inexorable truthfulness .~!,
of its capitalism, approaches ever cl~ser to ~e norro~l forms of produces a q~ite different, bitterly ironical result. Only because 1!
,. fully developed capitalism, the matenal of life on wh1ch Tolstoy Nekhlyudov himself belongs to the very ruling class he hates and
,:
t ' II;
 · · · --·- ···- .,,.. . "''-'-''.'".eN·! · Vi" RP.:\LlSM lb!:J

despi~cs on}v because in his own social sphere he is regarded as

a good~natu~C'd fool, as a harmless eccentric bitten by the bug
ot philanthropy, only bccaus<:> be ~an n:a~c use of ol? family and
,_,
'·

~}.'
.
l
than one direction and follow more than one trend of devclop-
me~t a~d tha.t ~s a result it can either surpass or fall short of
reality m dcpictmg the animated surface of social existence. We
I
other connections, can he accomplish Ius go~d ?eeds at. all. And have. also pointed out that the static presentation of average charac-
objectively all these good deeds are mere insi.gmfic.ant tnfl:s.; they .l t~rs m surroundings conceived as 'finished' must of necessity cause
are as nothing in comparison with the hornble mexorabil1o/. of J l1terature to fall short of reality.
the machine, and they fit easily into the' amo~ous or a~bl~tous T his has been the fate of the realist writers after 184·8. The Jack
intrio-ues of those who are parts of the machme. Subjectively of action, the mere description of milieu, the substitution of the
Nekhlyuc.lov himself is forced-<lften unwillingly, ofte? full of self" J averag~ for the typical, although essential symptoms of the decline
contempt, but sometimes a1so yielding to a temptat10 ~-to wear ~,. of realism, have their origins in real life and it is from there that
the mask of the courtier in order to be able to accomphsh at least they crept into literature. As writers grew more and more unable
t a few of his 'individllal good deeds.' And.whcr~ ~ekhly~do~ draws to participate in the life of capitalism as their own sort of life, they
the Tolstoyan conclusions from the earher cnt1cal v~c1llauons of ?rew less and less cap.able of producing real plots and action. It
,Konstantin Levio, he is faced with the hatred and dts~rust of the ~s no accident that the great writers of this period, who reproduced
peasants who regard every 'generous' proposal of the1r landlord m:portant feat~res of social evolution more or less correctly, almost
as a new cun ning attempt to deceive them and take advantage With out cxc~pt1?n wrote novels without plots, while most of the . ;
(If them. \· fh novels of tlus time which had intricate and colourful plots were
ToJstoy thus pictures a world in which the relationstups o uman full enough of sound and fury, but signified nothing so far as social
beings to each other and to society approach .very closely. t~e rela- r content was concerned. It is no accident that the few sianificant
tionships depicted by west.ern post-1 84~ real.Ism. H ow 1S 1t · t.hen
that Tolstoy, in spite of thts necessary hnk w1th .the newer rea~i~m,
.is. yet a great realist of the old type and a heir to the trad1tton
r characters produced by this literature were almost still~ife-like
static portraits of average people, while the figures pretending t~
above-the~avcragc stat~re in the literature of this period could not
C\f the old great realists? be anyt~mg but ~ancature-Jike pseudo-heroes, empty phrase- ......

mongers m a grandtloquent and hollow opposition to capitalism or

· j 6.
The crucial cliffel'ence of style bctwt:en the old an~ the new
· : realism lie~ in the characterization, i.e. in the conceptwn of !he
an even hoJiower hypocritical vindication of it.
~lau?ert r.ecogn~zed early and clearly the difficulties besetting the
wnter m ~h1s penod. During the writing of Madame Bovary,
typical. The older realism presented th~ typical by conc~ntratmg he complamed tha.t the book was not interesting enough : ' I have
the essential determinants of a great soc1al trend, embodymg them fi~lcd fifty pages Without recording a single event · it is a continuous
in the passionate strivings of indivi~uals, an? pla~ing these person- p1cture .of a bourgeois life and of a non-active l~ve, a love all the· ., .... .•: ·
1·. ages into extreme situations, situat10ns devtsed m such a way as m.ore d1~cult to depict as it is both timid and deep, but alas ! ·
\ t~ demonstrate the social trend in itc; extreme consequen~es and Without mternal crises, for my monsieur has a placid temperament.
[ implications. It is clear that such a method of presentation was I h ave. ha~ something similar in the first part: my husband
i possible only in conjunction with a plot f.ull. of movement a~d loves his WI~c s?~e..,~hat in the same manner as my lover-they
1 variety. Such a plot is not, however, an arb1trary formal prm- are two mediocnties m the same liurrounding-s who must neverthe-
/. ciple, a mere technical ve~icle .\~hich the write~ can h an?le acco~d­ less be distinguished from each other . . ·. '
! ing to his pleasure or Ius abthty. The plot ~s a poehc ~orm .of Flaubcrt, as a true artist.. consistently followed his road to the
;: reflecting reality, i.e. that essential patt.ern wh1ch the relatJOnshi:ps end. H e attempted to lend artistic colour and movement to his
\·of human beings to each other, to soct~ty and to nature fa~ m dreary, dull scene by descriptive differentiation and an even more
: real life. The poetic reflection of rea~Ity cannot be mec?amcal subtle milie~-painting and psychological analysis of his average
\ or photographic. We have already pomted. out. that poe~c con· people.. Th1s att~mpt was doomed to fail. For the average man
\centration, the poetic form of refiectmg reality can move xn more ts med10cre preCJScly because the social contradictions which
 AIV
._ __., ... ..,.. . ·-·- ··- --.---- ---....... -- ---~- .. ---
I ,,
objectively determine his existence are not given their supreme S. average is to create extreme situations in the midst of a humdrum
expression by him and in him, but on the contrary mutually blunt reality, situations which yet do not burst through the narrow
each other and seem to level each other out to a superficial equili- framework of this ·reality so far as social content is concerned, and
brium. This. produces an immobility, a monotony in the essential which, by their extreme character, sharpen rather than dull the
problems of artistlc presentation, which Flaubert admitted with edge of social contradictions.
severe self-criticism, but attempted to overcome by .mere technical I have already mentioned Goncharov•s Oblomov and con-
artifices. But the increased refinement of artistic technique only trasted its qualities with the mediocrity of the contemporary
created a new problem, which Flaubert also admitted at times : western realists. In this example it is obvious that· it is precisely
a contradiction between the subtly artistic presentation of the sub- the extreme exaggeration of a trait in Oblomov (which if treated
ject itself and the dreary tedium of the subject. The newer western naturalistically would result in the dreariest, most humdrum aver-
literature, Flaubert's much less gifted successors, trod the s <.~me path, age, i.e. his torpid inactivity) that provides the starting-point for
hanging ever more magnificent purple .mantles woven of words
around the shoulders of ever more lifeless, ever more mass-produced
this magnificently realistic presentation. By this ' exaggeration • all
the mental confhcts engendered by Oblomov's sloth are thrown into
I
I

lay-figures.
There can be no doubt that the development of Russian society
1 bold relief on the one hand and on the other hand it is thus made
.I
possible to show this trait in Oblomov against a background of wide
and of Tolstoy's philosophy, which we have just described very social implications.
briefly, drove Tolstoy in the same direction, i.e. towards making his In all concrete details of poetic presentation Tolstoy has nothing
characters somewhat more mediocre, more like the average. The in common with Goncharov's method, but he shares with him the
rigid, "finished" world in which they lived, the impossibility of liv- great historical principle of overcoming the unpoetic nature of a
ing full and purposeful lives in which their being could manifest society ever more strongly permeated by capitalism. Tolstoy very
itself in appropriate action, had to bring these characters to a cer- often tells stories which on the surface contain not a single trait
tain extent within the range of the average and deprive them of going beyond the everyday average. But he builds these stories
some of the typicality which the characters of Balzac or Stendhal on the foundation of situations, makes his events centre around
possessed through the colourful flurry of action in which they situations which expose with elemental force the lies and hypocrisy
could develop their qualities. of everyday life. I again refer to the admirable The Death of.
This problem of style faced not only Tolstoy but every prominent lvatt llyich. It is precisely because Tolstoy here presents the
Russian writer of the time. The Russian literature of the second life of a commonplace, average bureaucrat that he can, by sharply
half of the nineteenth century marks a new phase in realism as a contrasting this drearily meaningless life with. the stark fact of im-
whole, not only in Tolstoy's writings. The common problem of mjnent and inevitable death, put before us · all the features of
style facing all these writers was determined by a r eality most middle-class life in a bour~teois society. In its content the story
unfavourable to the portrayal of passionate characters and even never oversteps the limits of the commonplace and average and
more completely p ermeated by the social trends which in western yet gives a complete picture of life as a whole and is not common-
Europe had given rise to naturalism and the practice of portraying place or average in any of its moments.
the average instead of the typical. They did their best to find It is in this connection that the difference in the function of
artistic means enabling them to swim against the current; to find, detail in the works of Tolstoy and in those of the western realists
even in a world such as the one in which they lived, that extreme should be dealt with. Tolstoy always gives a dazzling mass of
expression of clearly revealed social determinants which makes brilliantly observed small detail; but his presentation never lapses
possible a true typicality, far beyond the merely average. into the empty triviality of his western contemporaries. Tolstoy
The great achievement of the Russian realists of this period wa3 devotes much attention to describing the physical appearance of
that they succeeded in finding such possibilities and giving their his _cha~acters anc;i the physical processes evoked in them by psycho-
characters a typicality mirroring all the social contradictions of log1cal ~nfluences, but yet never lapses into the psycho-physiological
· their time. The primary, essential means of transcending the pedestnanism so prevalent in the writings of his contemporaries.
 - - --·~· "'""" a.~ DE VELOPMENT OF REALISM 1/3
.: In Tolstoy details arc always elements of the plot. The neces- .\. . :
~omen do. But the ~verage society lady, like Vronski's mother,
'I·· sary result of this method of composition is that the plot is alway!'
dissected into sma11, apparently insignificant sections which follow
! · '· ;
lS ne':'ertheless scandahzed by her conduct : ( No, you can say what, .,. . •
you like, she was a bad woman. What sort of desperate passions
each other minute by minute and in which these details play a are these r Just. to. show that she was something special ! ' The
. decisive part ; they provide, in fact, the vehicles for the plot. If av.erage b_ourgeots sunp}y .cannot understand the tragedies which
the extreme situation is externally as well as intrinsically extreme, anse from the contrad1ctlons of bourgeois life itsell and , h · h
as in Balzac, then the plot can consist of a dramatic chain of great cannot become tragic for him personally because he is too cow~r~~y
and decisive crises which the writer can present with a dramatic and ba~e n~t to find a hwniliating compromise as a way out of
concentration sometimes bord ering on the drama. But Tolstoy's every SituatiOn.
extreme situations are extreme only intrinsically and intensively, '·:. Affi'lost exa~tly as Anna Karenina is judged by the women of
not externaJly. And this intensity can be conveyed only step by step, her sphere, lS Balzac's Viscomtesse de Beauseant judged by
minute by minute, in a ceaseless play of moods iJ?. which the drama- the. aver~g~ aristocr~ts of her circle. But the similarity of the
tic fluctuation of the contradictions of life ripple under the motion- bas1c art1st1c. conception of these two characters, the similarity of
less ~urface of the commonplace. The meticulous detail with which ~e. deep soc1.al truth :evealed in the portrayal of an extreme in-
the death of I van Ilyich is described, is not the naturalist descrip- dividua~ pass10n, yrov1des an opportunity to show up clearly the
tion of a proc~ss of physical decay-as in the suicide of Madame great difference m. the methods of B·alzac and Tolstoy, those
Bovary-but a great internal drama in which approaching death, gre~test r~presentatives of two different periods of realism. Balzac
precisely through all its horrible details, tears the veils one after depicts WJth !he greatest dramatic-novelistic concentration the two
the other from the meaningless life of Ivan Ilyich and exposes thi ~ cata~trophes m the loves of Madame de Beauseant (in Lc Perc
life in all its appalling bleakness. But bleak and devoid of all ~orzot and La Femme Abandonnee). But he concentrates h is
\ inner movement as this life is, the process of its exposure is most mterest on these great catastrophes. When Mme. de Beauseant's
exciting and vivid in its artistic presentation. first . roma~ce collapses, Balzac describes nothing but the tra ic
f Naturally this is not the only method T olstoy used in his writ- turm~g-~omt of the story. Although in the second case he d~es
ings. He created many characters and situations which arc ex- descnbe m som~ detail th~ birth of a new love, the rupture and
treme even by the standards of the old realists, i.e. externally. catastr~phe agam occur With dramatic (suddenness ' althouah as
Where his material permitted, Tolstoy was even inclined to favour J. ever Wlth . Bal~ac, with great inner truth. Tolsto;, on the0 don-

j
I such themes. His artistic temperament revolted against depicting trary, depicts m greatest detail every stage in the development of
.) the merely commonplace, as was so widely accepted in western the love. between Anna and. Vronski, from their first meeting to·
literature. Wherever Tolstoy found it possible to create extreme the ~agtc catastrophe. He 1s much more epic than Balzac, in the
situations of this kind, he did so quite in the manner of the old classic~J se~se .of the word. The great turning-points) the cata-
realists. The hero who acts extremely, is only consistently fo1low- strophlc cnse~ m the destiny of the lovers are always given a wide
. ing to its end the same path which the others tread hesitatingly, ~nd broad eptc background and only very rarely appear as drama-
half-heartedly or hypocritically. The character and fate of Anna tically ~oncent~~ted catastrophes. T olstoy stresses this epic char-
Karenina is an instance of this type of Tolstoyan creation. fl\n na acter, m add1t1on, by the even less dramatic and catastro hie
Karenina lives-with a husband whom she does not love and"Whom paraUcl.story of the desti~i~s ~f Levin and Kitty. p
she has married for conventional reasons, and with a lover whom I~ this novel, t~o, the Inimitably realistic treatment of detail is I
1
. ~he loves passionately-a life just like the life of other women of
her own sphere. The only difference is that she follows this road
an unporta.nt medmm of Tolstoy's creative method. He reproduces
the attractions and estrangements in this Jove as a continuous.
'
consistently to the end, ruthlessly drawing every conclusion and although clearly articulated p rocess, and the junctions at whicl;
not pennitting insoluble contradictions to blunt their edges in the th~ chang~ oc~ur are most distinctly underlined. But as these'
banality of everyday life. T olstoy stresses more than once that pomts of JUnctlOn can rarely be dramatic in the external sense
Ann a is no exceptional case, that she is doing the same as other of the word, as they might often pas'l unnoticed if regarded ex-
'·
i
~;
 174
ternally, and yet must be shown as real turning·points, they are i'~-.: :,~ position to make this pursuit t h d
typical fate of his heroes - o-~ ~-en of extreme possibilities the
given prominence by picking some detail out of the flow of mental shown hi h J precrse y because, as we have already
processes, some apparently small incident in the mental · and ' s eroes. were not as yet livin . 'fi . h '
world was one in h · h h g ill a nts ed world-their
physical life of · the characters, and accenting it so that it acquires great drama of ~ IC t ey could still play active parts in the
a pointed dramatic significance. Thus Anna K arenina, when after
·' possibility no lons;~e~t;~r r~!s~o:, as we have. also shown, this'
the ball in Moscow, she tries to escape from Vronski's love for her set against a background . . cause everythmg he wrote was
and her own budding love for him, looks out of the window r epresentmg an im t h .
history of mankind and por ant P ase m the
of the railway carriage at the St. Petersburg station after her nightly torical importance ~nd be;:s p~~ of a dra~a of world·wide his-
backdrop to the private fort~~:s ~; !~e~~ so~Jal drama formed the
conversation with Vronski, and suddenly becomes aware of the fact
that Karenint has unusually prominent ears. In the same way, to make the purestJ most extreme lS c ara~ters, he, too, h<j.d
at a later time, in the period of the dramatic climax to the dying the focal point of his prcsentati' ' form of soc1al contradictions
love benveen Anna and Vronski, after many bitter and angry B . ons.
quarrels which until then had always ended in a reconciliation, the of ~!s~~!rn ill the form of_ possibilities. This new and specific form
hopeless rupture between the lovers is revealed by an apparently fie pattitude go~~~:~tysotocial conltr~dictions follows f~om that sped-
ir1significant detail : 'She lifted her cup, with her little finger held . revo utJonary develo · R .
whrch Lenin analysed so brilliantly Lik th pments m ussla,
great realists, so Tolstoy's works mi~ r e e w~rks of the older
apart, and put it to her lips. After drinking a few sips she glanced
at him and by his expression she saw clearly that he was repelled change; but regarded from the . o. a great soCJal and historical
by her hand and her gesture and the sound made by her lips! they do so 'indirect! Th hVlewpomt of the characters depicted
. Y· e c aracters of th ld • '
Such details are ' dramatic' in the most profound sense of the drrect representatives of th . r e o cr rea11sts were
word : they are sensually visible and vehemently experienced ob- emotive {orces a d d · ·
contradictions of the bourgeois r I . ;h eclSlve trends and
jectivations of decisive emotional turning-points in the lives of trends in immediate form a d t~vo utJon . . cy represented these
people. That is why they have none of the triviality found in the vidual passions and the ~ro~l e ~o~necttOn be~een their indi-
ever-so·faithfully observed details in the writings of the newer an immediate one· ch et_ns 0 e bourgeors revolution was
writers-details which are merely well-observed but play no real Julien Sorel show ~erya~~~!~~; ~~~ ~oethe's Wert~er or Stendhal's
part in the story. But Tolstoy's specific manner of concentration vidual passion social necess't lSd trect connection between indi- . '
enables him to insert such internally dramatic scenes in the broad, nificance of j~st such indiv~J;a~n a t~e general repr~sentative sig-
calm flow of his narration, enlivening and a rticulating the flow so well analyzed by Lenin of thp ~s10ns. !he spec~fic ~haracter,
without hindering its broad, calm movement. and Tolstoy's own attitud~ t the ourgeo:s revolution m Russia,
This renewal of the original epic character of the novel, after question of that bourgeo:.- reo 1 t~ peasaaknt proble~, that central'
the dramatic-novelistic stage of its development in the early nine· · · "' vo u 1on m e such d t
tlon In the manner of the old b '. . . Irec presenta-
teenth century (as represented by Balzac), necessarily follows from We know with what rofoun ourgeors re~hsts Impossible for him.
the nature of the life-material which Tolstoy had to work on and J;toy has presented thepR . d understandmg and generosity Tolr
out of the essential traits of which he crystallized his principles of uss1an peasant B t h" ·.
r. tude to the whole easant · u ts own specific atti-
li form. We have already discussed the reasons which h ad compelled the central theme pof h;.. m?vcrnenkt had tpe necessary res4lt that
,
I·
.. T olstoy to keep, on the whole, within the outer framework of the the development of the easa
...~ mam wor s was al h fl .
~.ays t e ~e ect10n of,
i commonplace, but within this fram ework there is one more new ruling class, who were. thepown: m~vebment ~n _the hves of that'
f:. possibility open to Tolstoy in addition to those already described : rents. an eneficJartes of the ground-
It·
I
his specific method of extreme intensification, which brings out the
I'
extreme possibilities latent in his characters. Balzac presents the This choice of subject again f .
I,
' necessary link between Tol orms a soclally a.nd historically
;--·
·•I•'·
('.Xtreme as the actual pursuit of some course to its end, as a tragic end of bourgeois-revolution~oy =~e the ne~er reahsm. Mter the
!· '
:-
r ealisation of extreme possibilities which represent the contradic-
tions of capitalist society in the purest form. He was still in the
Europe, after the shifting of J:
mefnts ~n centr?l and western
e core o social conflict to the clash 'I
~.:
~ .
''I · '
 IVI.l-iTOY AND THE DEVELOP!\lENT OP REALISM 177

between bourgeoisie and working class, the bourgeois realists coul? ants and what problems did this social basis produce in their lives.
present only indirect echoes of this central problem of the bourgeors As a truly great poet and worthy successor to the greatest realists of
soci ety of their time. If they were writers of talent, they observed the past, Tols~oy saw _these interconn~ctions in all their intricacy and
and described the emotional reflexes, the human problems and was never satzsfied w1th the uncovcnng of the mere immediate link
realisations arising from social conditions. But . a." most of t~em ~ttween exp~oiter and exploited. His genius as a realist expresses
were unable to understand the social problem whtch was the ~bJec~ 1tself rather m the fact that he sees the whole intricate life of each
tive basis of the human conflicts they describe~, they .unc?nsclOu.sly character of the ruling class as an integral whole and reveals as
separated these human conflicts from the !'octal basis wtth wh1~h the foundation of this unity the character's social position as an
they were objectively connected. Hence they were for~e.d-ag~tn exploiter, as a parasite. In individual traits which on the surface
without knowing or wishing it-to leave the most dccmvc so:t.~l seem t? have nothing to do with exploitation-in what his charac-
determinants out of their plots and char~cters and pla~c ~hcsc, ters thtn~ of the most abstract problems, in the fashions in which
without any serious historical backgro~nd, mto a .merely. ~octolo~­ they make love and in many other such things, Tolstoy demon-
ically' or impre.~sionistically-psychologtcally conce1ved ~tlteu. Tht~ strates. with admirable. realist artistry-which instead of merely
separation from tht! historical background creat.ed a d1lemma foa an~lyz~ng and com_mentmg, renders palpably obvious the true exist-
the newer realists : they could either make thell' ~haracters co.m- ential mterconnechons-the link between such traits in his charac-
monplace; average men ~nd wome~ ~f bourgeo:s e~eryday. hfe, tns and the parasitic nature of their existence.
in whom the great objecttve contradtct10ns of so~tal _h_fe appeared This extraordinary concreteness of poetic vision enables Tol-
in blunted form and often paled into unrecogmzabihty; or else, stoy to avoid all stereotyped presentation of either the social foun·
if they wanted to transcend this h~md~um average, they c?uld dations of life or their reflections in men's souls. He carefully·
resort to a purely individual intens1ficat10n of. person_al passions, distinguishes benveen large and small landowners, between those
'thus making their characters hollow and ecce~tnc or-if a psycho· who cultivate their land themselves and the absentee landlords
logical explanation was attempted-~athologtcal figur~. , " living on their ground rents, between traditional and capitalist
In connection with the brief analysis of Anna Karemna s fio~re husbandry, between landowners and such bureaucrats or intellec-
wf; have already pointed out how Tolstoy's method of presentm_g tuals who are landowners by origin and still live wholly or in part
passions by their extreme poetic int~nsification ove~ca~ne thts on ground rents ?ut no lon_ger live on the land. Tolstoy sees very
dilemma. What is outside the average m Anna Karenm~ s .figur~ clearly that the same soctal causes can produce very different·
and {ate is not some individually pathological exagger~tton of a
personal passion, but the clear manifestation ~f the soctal contra-.
J human reactions and shape very different human destinies in dif-
ferent individuals, according to the difference~ in their natural
.. dictions inherent in bourgeois love and marnage. When Anna inclinations, education, and the like. ·'i
l Karenina breaks through the limits of the .com~onpl.ace, she merely The profound realism of Tolstoy's world thus rests on his
1. brings to the surface in tragically clear mtenstficatton the contra- ability to present an extremely intricate and differentiated
. dictions latently present (although their edges may be blunted) world and yet to make it quite clear, by poetical means,
· in every bourgeois love and marriage. . that underlying all this intricate diversity of manifestations
It is not too difficult to understand why Tolstoy's presen~atton there is a coherent, unified foundation to all human des-
of passion and personal fate could ~ot always take the form 1t has tinies. This connection between all the human traits and des-'
in Anna Karenina. The presentat10n of the me~ and :women of tinies of his characters and the great social and historical back-
the ruling classes and their destinies, w.as to an mcreasmg extent g:ound raises T olstoy's realism far above the level of the com-
_. and with incr~sing consciousness conce1v.ed ?Y Tolstoy as a func- monpla~ e.. H e h~.s the same richness and the same natural, organic,
tion of their connection with the explo1ta~ton of the peasantry. non-arttfic1al un1ty between man and fate which is found in the
The poetic starting-point in the presentation of ea~h ~haracter old real.ists and none of the meagreness smothered· in a spate of
by Tolstoy was the question: in what way w~s. ~hetr hfe based superfictal and unconnected detail that is characteristic of the new
~ 1 ; the receipt of ground-rent9 and on the explo1tatton of the peas- realist~.
.....
 Tolstoy devised a concrete, creative method of overcommg the ct!:)<Un? mat tne thorn of the conflict be , .
unpropitiousness of his essential life~material, the life lived by the consciOusness never ceases t . k B tween soctal eXJstence apd .
:! parasitic landowners in capitalistically developing Russia; this almost a continuous circle ~rp:~c b
t ut th~ movement is always·
!1 method w~s to create types based on the mere po~ibility of an dramatic upheaval .we see in th £ es a spiral, never the rapid
. extreme attitude, an extreme passion, an extreme. fate. The con- heroes. e ortunes of Balzac's and Stendhal's
: ~· .,. " . tradictions on which .the life of these groui:ICI~i-ent-owning parasites Every 'extreme possibility' 1
·• rested, could not, given such human material, find expression in between social being and a ~ays reveals some stark contradiction
. COllSClOUSOess and · a1
directly extreme action; and could do so the less, the closer their up With the great problems of R . ~s ways ~losely bound ,
connection was with exploitation as the decisive human relation- not always in a directly visib1 £usszan s~ctal e~oluuon, although
ship. But it is precisely this relationship between exploiter and searchings and gropings of the:c ~~m. 0
~ t.hzs r~~son the vain
•.. '
. exploited and its echoes in the lives of the exploiting class which abandonment of intentions scarcel roes, thetr mactLVlty or abrupt
is one of Tolstoy's main themes. In his essay on art T olstoy declares triviality and banality wh'ch . y born, never degenerate into the
western naturalism in thei: u:~tsca;.ably aw~i~ the heroes of
'dissatisfaction with life' to be the characteristic trait of the newer
art. This applies to his own work as much as to any other, but
in his writings this 'dissatisfaction with life' is always based on
Tolstoy conceives his proble~s s: ~ lvate destimes. It is because .
echQ.~s of soc.ial conflicts deep int ~~ad!y, because he follows the
the fact that the life of a parasite, of an exploiter can never permit sonai life that his world . . ho e mnermost recesses of per-
. ~ Is so nc and full f · ·
him to be in harmony with himself and with others, unless he is malt'eSll,s favourite heroes share his o . o mte.rest. Tolstoy
a complete fool or a complete scoundrel. can withdraw from pub!i n .wn. ~usconcept10n that a man
It is this 'di~;satisfaction with life' which Tolstoy translates into ticipation in its auiJt andc ~I e and lBndiVIdualiy escape from par-
. ~~ VI eness. ut the , T .
reality by the method of 'extreme possibilities.' In seeking to bring such a Withdrawal and its . vay o1stay deptcts
harmony into their lives, eliminate the conflict between their road and the deviations fro;,ai:Ious stages! the ;'acillations on the
opinions and their actual way of life, and find a satisfactory occu~ personal life become involved , ' t~~ way m which all problems bf
pation for themselves in the community, his Bezukhov and Bolkon- show precisely the ine~capably :~cial lS mf,vemfentl-a U this tends to' )
ski, Levin and Nekhlyudov and others strikingly expose the individual life. · qua 1ty 0 a 1 personal, private)
contradiction between the social basis of their lives and their desire Thus 'extreme possibilities' in Tol
for harmony and an adequate occupation. turning-points, but a sort of sto~ are not real and sudden
This contradiction drives them from one extreme to the around which the lives of in~~:~~:ltat~on, a centre of attraction
other. As Tolstoy, on the one hand, chooses subjectively honest theless, the posing of social rob! c ar~cters revolve. Nevcr-
representatives of this class a'> his heroes and, on the other hand, tradictory quality suffices t~ r . e~ ~n s~ htgh a level of their con-
cannot and does not \vlSh to bring them to the point of rupture of realistic presentation whichai~ o stay~;or1d to ~great height
with their own class, the vacillations due to the contradictions re- artistic methods from the grea' t oweliver,li . ers considerably in its
bne ·f · . rea st terature of th
' ferred to remain within the sphere of the ruling cl<iss. ' Extreme It nught be said that after the d • 11 . ~ past. 1n
possibilities• crop up and arc earnestly considered; serious steps are Balzac's time, Tolstoy restored to the rama:I~a y~n?vehstic phase of
taken towards their translation into reality; but before the decisive For if the characters move to an nove .Its, ong~nal epic quality.
step is taken, contrary tendencies appear, which are in part nothing socially strictly limited sphere of lif~ ~o Wlthm .a determined and
but the same contradictiom on a higher level, in part leanings that greater epic calm and stability can s th;y d~ 1~ Toi~toy, a much
b
drag the heroes down to a compromise with reality. This produces movement, than wa~ possible for B Ie ac leve ' m spite of all the
. W.
G oe th em a zac. .
a ceaseless. movement in which all the important determinants of
this life find ex·pr.ession in all their richness, but which very rarely r;
tl!zelm M · t d' · .
and the drama. 'In a no:~~ is IS~~;gut~hcs thus between the novel
events that are to be presented In them~nently mental attitudes and
leads to a really dramatic crisis, to a clean break with the previous
phase. The lifelike quality, the inner richness of the characters T~e novel should proceed slo~l an~ t~ama characre:s and deeds.
rests on the fact that !luch extreme possibilities arise again and prmcipal character iu it !:hould ~ h e mental attitudes of the
. y w atever means available, hold
 TOLSTOY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF REALISM 181

1 t f the whole The drama J' ·. supported by the dramatic weight of the events which provoke
~ · back the progress and deve opmen t~lc rota oni~t should urge them and which they raise to an abstract level-lead to a com-
should hurry and the character of d . p th"lSg The hero of the plete and irrevocable change in Rastignac's whole life.
· d be hampere m · The great and important dialogues and monologues in Tolstoy
matters to a chmax affn . t least not highly active; of the
novel should be a su erer, or ~ . d d d5 , can have no such function. They always illustrate, with great acu-
\ . d nds act1v1ty an ce •
dram~tlc her.o. one ema l which applied perfectly to Wilhe~m men and ·ruthlessness, the ' extreme possibilities ' around which the··
Tlus defi.mtton of .the nove 1 r d for the later BlectHJ8 development of the hero revolves. Such are for instance the con-
M cister, was in many respect~ no onfer ;~~e great French realists. versations of Konstantin Levin with his brother and later with
\\ Affinities and even less £o: t. e no;etl~eo Tolstoyan manner. One Oblonski about the justification of private property and the moral
But it is not a bad ~escnptlon o ethe's contrasting of mental atti- and spiritual justification of that compromise between the interestS·
should not, of course, lnterpret Gotl t hat he had in mind were of the landowners and peasants, of which Levin dreams. These
· the sense 1.a w d conversations cannot bring about any dra~atic crisis, because
tude and ch aracter m . tt"onally swayed by, an
· li 1 creatures emo
blurred, out ne ~ss T w·ihelm Meister himself shows clear1y neither a break with the system of private propetty nor a trans-·
merging with, therr mt te~. . 1 t all What Goethe meant by formation into a ruthless exploiter with a good conscience are
that this w~s n~t Goe~h~ s tdt:~, awere. differing degrees of density within the range of Levin's social and human possibilities. But
'mental attttude and c arac . t" 'Mental attitude' con- they show up with merciless sharpness the central problem, the
and concentration in the charactenza l~~ost unlimited breadth of decisive sore spot in Levin's whole way of life and world-view. They.
trasted with 'character' thus mltheansfasneiH'n;nO'ly incompatible traits, show the focal point around which all his thoughts and emotions
· · a great wea o '-U.U ;::. • d ceaselessly revolve, irrespective of whether he loves or is loved,
l)
charactenzat10n, ld d 0 ether-by some great soctal tren , r
which are nev~rth~ess we ~ t gral and spiritual self-development whether he devotes himself to science or escapes into public acti-·
by human asptratlOns, by t c mo. d mob.lle unity Dramatic vities. Thus they, too, are in a more general sense turning-points
. to an orgamc an . . f i..'1 a life, but on a very high level of abstraction, turning-points of
of the character-m h d means the concentration o
characterization, o~ the oth;r ~nl ' onflicts and contradictions in a very special kind, in which the ' extreme possibilities, of a human
the essential deter:nmant~ 0 soc;~de~ in one or more catastrophes life emerge ·most clearly, which unmistakably outline the specific •
a compressed passlo~ lwhlch ~xf f life must be condensed. After make-up of the man, but nevertheless remain mere possibilities and
into which all the. nc ~ ~atena e~ neccssar·y to explain at length arc not transformed into deeds, into realities. And yet they are not
what has been satd~ tt ~s scare y roach this Goethean ideal. abstract artificial possibilities, but rather the very concrete central ,.
how closely Tolstoy s eplc "~r~.~ a,p~nd the great realists of the . life-problems of a well-defined character.
This. difference between ~ ~so~ost clearly perhaps in the pre- In Tolstoy these intellectual utterances, these manifestations of
early mneteenth century e;e ~ "t 1 life the intellectual aspect of the moral and spiritual life of the characters acquire a novel and
·.'
scntation of the moral an spm ua ' hy Tolstoy is a worthy fateful significance which again constitutes a radical difference
0 e of the reasons w . f between Tolstoy and the newer realists. That the characters of
.their characters.· n 1. ts ·s that the presentation o
lier great rea 1S 1 • • • l
successor to t \1e e.a: "d la 5 a decisive part 1n h1s portiay~ these newer realists lack spiritual life and that their intellectual
this moral and spmtual hsL e p ye of presentation is again all his physiognomy is blurred and colourless, is known well enough. The
b · But t e mann r .
of human . emg5· . from that of the earlier realists. . reason for this is, above all, that the extinction or biunting of the
own and differs radica y 11 . St ndtlal great dialogues which great objective social contradictions in the portrayal of individuals
1
In Ba1zac~ and ·1n many caseskm e f the' characters, are at th e makes it impossible to portray them on a really high spiritual and
throw light on the mental rna e-,up o ·n which the quintes!'>ence intellectual level. Conversations or monologues raised to the level
same time great duels of Welta.nsc tauun;~~ and which re~;ult in of abstraction can be concrete and alive only if they express the .
o~ the great :'~ial prob~ems lSin:n~~;~ate of the characters. When specific abstraction of a specific social contradiction as it manifests ··
dramatic declslons that e_terro . 1 and mora1 problems,· a few itself in one particular person. Detached from this foundation ': "!
Vautrin and Rastignac. dltsc¥~1 so7ia~ each other-and naturally they remain abstract inventions. It is therefort~ "" '3,. .... : - - ' - - • ·'
;·
such conversations rapid y o owm
..
 the newer realists in the western countries increasingly avoid such
'· ..
.....
'.
time and ~lace in which they occur. Even the external features
.I
spiritual or intellectual manifestations or depress them to the level of ~he acc1dental Rlac~ and the accidental time constantly crqp
of the average and commonplace. up m the co~versat10n 1tself. One need think only of the dialogue
This is of course at the same time a reflection, in the sphere of between Levm and Oblonski in the barn after the hunt. Dut the
thought, of that "finis~ed" capitalist world w~ich t~1ese writers very con~rete ~nd .ever-present quality of place and time in these
depict. In such a "finished" world all marufes~ahons of. the conver~tl~ns IS With Tolstoy never a mere device to introduce
average human being are increasingly transformed mto a tedious, more lif? mto th~ scene. Precisely the stressing of such concrctl}
endlessly repeated routine. It goes without .saying th~t !ols~oy, and accidental cucumstances shows that what is discussed is a
having himself to devote considerable attentiOn _to. dep1~hng Just perman~nt proble;ffi in the life of Levin; for instance, it is so"'
such a world, could not himself dispense with dep1ctmg this ted~ous a~tual. m evelJ' mstant of his life that he may burst into a
routine. In War and Peace we already find many conversatiOns dis~ussiOn of zt at any moment. In the · instance quoted the
the sole object of which is to demonstrate the boring routine which subJect. happens to crop up in connection with the hunt. The
governs social life in the highest spheres. But firstly, for e~phasts. placed on the ~oncrete circumstances underlines precisely
Tolstoy this is only one side of the world he has to sho~ a~d he th1s .q~~hty at the same ttme necessary and accidental, this 'extreme
uses it as a foil to provide a satirical contr~st, and ?Y !romcally poss1b1bty' of a permanent crisis' which is always latently present
emphasizing the machine-like character. of 1ts. funct10mng-. (Tol- but nevertheless never brings about a real change.
stoy repeatedly compares such convers.attons w1th the c~ackm.g of The same pu~ose ~s served by the mostly abrupt breaking-off
a loom), to stress the more vital quabty of other mamfes.tattOns. of ~uch co.nversatiO~s m Tolstoy, a device which again underlines
th~rr seemmgly accidental, commonplace quality. Balzac's conver~
,r Secondly, Tolstoy often involves characters who a~c out!'tde. t~c s~ttons must be carried on to the end, for only thus can the drama-
routine (Bezukhov, Levin, etc.) in conversations of dus sort agam m
order that they may ~erve as a foil and by their 'clumsiness' damage he turn be bro~ght about and motivated. The conversations of
· the artfully woven threads of the machine. Thus it c~n ?e seen :vcn the ~odern reahsts mostly have neither beginning nor end. They
in the smallest details that Tolstoy, even where a samllar subject- a~e JUSt .chance fragments .of an, in the poetic sense, incoherent,
matter seems to bring him close to the newer realists, in fact rcprc- shce of h~e. But the breakmg-off of Tolstoy's conversations is not
1~• sents a diametrically opposed artistic method . really. acc1dental, only apparently so. The conversations -are carried
l. There is, however, a considerable external resembla nce between on With the greatest skill to a point at which the contradictions
~!' them which we must stress. The great dialogues in the works of a~d the i~possibi~ity of eliminating them are stated by the hero,~ ·
:( the older realists, although they have a background of .very .con- w1th merclless clanty and thoroughness. A conversation apparently
IJ. crete circumstances, yet rise so rapidly to great dramat1c .he1g~ts evoked by some chance occasion leads to such a culminatina point
~:: that the outer circumstances and environment have v~:<Y litt.le m- and then .breaks off or runs out, again apparently by chanc~. But
., fluence on the conversations themselves. The dramatically mtcn- by then 1t has already fulfilled its specific object; for its obj ect
;_ ··' " silled concrete situation, the dramatic concretization of the charac- was. merely to revolve around a specifically Tolstoyan. ·possible
. tcrs in and through the conversation, make such an intervention turmng-pomt. ·
of external circumstances almost completely unnecessary. In the Th~s the ~ppare.ntly accidental beginning and end of a con- •
•
modern realists the momentary, external, acCidental and imper- versa~on are mtent10nal devices in Tolstoy's method of epic pres~
manent circumstances and factors· nearly always blot out the entatl?n. '!hey ~cad out of the quiet flow of life and then lead
content of the conversations. The more trivial the latter are and· back mto lt ~gam after having thrown a bright light on what is'
the closer they approach the commonplace, the more they need constantly gomg on under the surface of this calm stream of life.
such interaction with the momer.tary setting in order to show some Here as elsewhere, Tolstoy with extraordinary inventiveness creat~
animation, at least on the surface. new el~ents of form, elements still capable of raising his unfavour- ..
Tolstoy's great dialogues arc always closely bound up with tho able subject-matter to the level of a great realist epic.

.,
 _ _ _...,c,_,,...,.....
,,_,-=-~~~lllf.r.- .... -':.
. , .. ..,_,. _ _ ••• --·~-• -~- .. ·~nv&~4J.& TOLSTOY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF REALISM 185

7. same in aU of them, but every river is narrow and rapid in some

Thus Tolstoy's continuation of the work of t?~ .great realists places and broa.der and slower in others, sometimes clear, sometimes
rested to a considerable extent on an increased flcxt?thty of charac- troubled, somettmes cold and sometimes warm. It is the same with
terization and .plot-unfolding; superficially seen, thts method often men: Every man. carri~ .in himself the germs of every human
' recalls the devices used by modern realists (thereby greatly quality, but sometimes 1t IS one quality that manifests itself and
facilitating Tolstoy's great success in western Europe) . but ~metunc~ ~nothcr; sometimes a man is quite unlike himself, while

1 its formal purpose is the exact opposite of that of the superfictally

similar features of the newer realism, which here are symptoms
of the disintegration of the great. realistic forms, .while in Tolstoy's
writings they arc elements of thetr furthe.r evolutton. .
stJ11 remammg the same man."
A similar opposition to the rigid conception of human character
to the allegedly rigid presentation of characters in older litera~
ture} c~n be very frequently found in the writings of modern
Tolstoy did not develop such tendenc1es of form ';lnder the m- naturahsts. But when two say the same (or similar) things, they
.. .fl.uence 'of the newer reaHsts, although he knew. t~e1r works ~ell ~re not the .sa~e. The modern naturalists' opposition to rigidity
and studied them carefully. As early as in the stxttes of the mne- m c~aractenzatton contained a tendency to do away with the
teenth century, immediately after the publication of Tolstoy's fi~t creatiOn of characters altogether. In literature a character cannot
writings, in which these tendencies v.:ere as yet only embryomc, b<: given a face, an outline save in motion, save in active conflict
the great Russian critic Chernyshevsk1 had already cle?rly recog· w~th the out~r world, s':-ve in action. As long as a character is dcs-
nized this feature in Tolstoy's art. He spoke of Tolst~y s preoccu- cnbed only m repose, m some milieu, its essential traits can only
pation with the way in which one thought or emot10n devel?ps be stat~d, ~u~ not c~eated. In other words there is no poetic means
out of another. He made a distinction between the psycholog1cal by. whtch 1t ts. posstble to distinguish creatively between esseQtial "··
analysis of Tolstoy and of nearly e~7ry other.w~iter. He says of .the tratts and fl?etm~ mood.s. Hence, if the naturalists protested against
latter as contrasted with Tolstoy: Usually 1t (1.e. the psychologtcal the supcrfic1al tncks Wlth which a writer attempted in these cir-
analy~is) has a descriptive ~harac.ter, s.o to speak-it seizes o~ s~me cumstances to stress permanent characteristics (e.g. by means of
static emotion and breaks 1t up mto 1ts component parts-tt g1ves con.stant~y recur:ing expressions or gestures) they were right from
us what may be called an anatomical table. The works of gr~at therr pmnt _of v1ew and at any rate consistent. But for this very
po'ets usually show the great dramatic changes from one emotion r~ason ~onsisten~ naturalists were forced to let their characters
and one thought to another. .But we are. m?stly given only the dJsso~ve mto an mcoherent, chaotic tangle of impermanent moods.
two extreme links of the cham, the begmmng and end of t?e W1th Tolstoy the case is different. His characters do not, any
psychological process . . . The peculiarity of Count Tolstoy:s gtft mar~ than th~ personage~ of the naturalists, develop dramatically,
consists in that he does not restrict himself to. the presentat10n of ~ dtd Balzac s; but therr movement through life, their conflicts
the results of a psychological process, but is interested in the pro- With. the external world nevertheless give them very well-defined
:c css itself . . ." . . outlm?s. T hese outlines, however, are by no means as strictly
How consciously Tolstoy later developed these tendenc1cs, wh:ch monolmear and clear-cut as those of the characters drawn by the
Chernyshevski had recognized so early, is shown by the foll~\~mg old realists. Tolstoy's pl~t~ :e.volve ~round the 'extreme possibilities'
passage in Resurrection : "One of the most wi?esprea~ ~uperst1t10ns of .the characters, posstblhtres wh1ch never become reality but
~ is that every man has his own spec.ific defimt~ quahttes : that he
~
' whtch come to the surfac~ .again and again, thus affording each
'
is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, eoergettc, apathetlc, and so o~ . But char~cter many opport~mt1es of expressing their thoughts and
t men are not like that at all. We may say of a man that hers more emotions. Tolstoy dcscnbes the fleetmg moods of his characters
~. often kind than cruel, more often wise tha~ stupid, more often at least a~ sensitively and accurately as the most gifted of the
n~wer realists, but nevertheless the figures never dissolve into mere
~
er.ergetic than apathetic, or the reverse; but 1t would not be tru.e
~·
to say of one man that he is kind and wise, of anoth:r th~t he J..S clo.uds of moods, for they are placed within a precisely circum-
...'· bad and stupid. And yet we always .class~fy people m th1s. way. scr~bed space, a field of force within which all their moods must
And that is quite · :wrong. Men are l1ke nvers : the water lS the OSCillate.

.\!.·.
·~
·' .
l ·.
 we; ,iJlc:>t:m<;&uuu u~ su(;u a 1auruae was necessaruy merely accessory;
wa~d ..;e;~;;~;;;;~··~o~s~e~~~ti;m,- while ~~;~th~~· ~i~~s he finvds the on the other hand, the whole life of the characters was enaCted
·arguments against private ownership of the land Irrcf~tablc. But within such a latitude. But their several movements and hesita-
as these two poles represent the extreme pendulum~sw.mg? of the tions are depicted.with dramatic vehemence, suddenness and direct-
thou(l'hts with which he approaches the problems of hts tune and ness. Remember for instance such a vacillating character as Lucien
as d~e solution of his life-problem, the compromise th~t he seeks, de Rubemprc and recall with what dramatic suddenness, without
lies in the middle between these two extremes, such. swmgs of the detailed pendulum-swings, he is converted by Vautrin or decides
pendulum do not turn him into ~ bundle of mo~s (m the manner to commit suicide after his examination by the magistrate.
of the newer realists) but mark w1th accuracy, vanc~y and ~wealth What is new in Tolstoy is that he made this method the centre
~t detail the socially inevitable zig-zag path men hke Lev1n must around which his characterization revolves. That he did so quite
necessarily follow. Tolstoy, as we have alrea?y 7een, .never presents deliberately and that his method was closely linked with his own
the various manifestations of his character.s m 1sola~10n from eac!l problems of world~view is shown among other things by the fact
other, and the relationships between Levm and ht~ brothe:s, h~s that the width and flexibility of the latitude .accorded each charac-
wife. his friends and other people are very close~y l.mked wtth hiS ter are closely connected with the importance of the part played
deci~ions on the most important problems of hts hfe. Thus ~e by the character in the whole composition. Episodic figures, par-
swings of the pendulum only enrich his image and far from blurnng ticularly those who serve Tolstoy to demonstrate the inhuman
its outlines. make t.hem all the more clear~cut. . rigidity of the society of his time, have comparatively few oscilla-
This pr~scntation by meam of a certain spread, a latitude for tions of mood. In order that a character may attract the central
the play of thoughts, moods and emotions,. enabled ~ols.toy to interest of the writer and reader, its latitude .of oscillation
give a very rich and P?etic-:-becausc contrad1ctory and mdtrcct- must be ~omparatively great and varied. This applies even to·/
pictllre of human relattonshtps. figures whose world-view Tolstoy rejects or criticizes, like Vronski,
This richne~s and animation arc increased even . more .by the Karen in or I van Ilyich.
fact that the latitude Tolstoy allows his characters IS ~ot unmut- The writer's own position is very clearly expressed in the way
able. He shows very carefully how through chan?es 1.n external in which he presents the primary starting-point.of these oscillations.
circumstances or in the internal growth or dctcn?rat10n of the Figures whom Tolstoy wants to represent as living human beings
characters themselves this latitude can decrease or mcrcase, some- are always made to experience a lively interaction between their
times even acquire new contents or completely sh~d ?ld ones. But internal evolution and the external circumstances into which they
as Tolstov always depicts these changes as a contmUlty, as we are are placed and with which they must deal. Tolstoy's conception
always i~vited to observe the cause and manner ?f such chan~e.c; of life has for its natural result that every figure for whom he feels
and as in spite of such changes many of the most !mportant soc1~l
hwnan sympathy, must necessarily take up a problematic attitude
; and individual determinants of the character t:emam the same, thts
to society. It can never accept without a struggle the way of life
device further increases the richness of Tolstoy s world and far from
blurring the outlines of the characters, traces them even more subtly into which it was born and the tasks imposed on it by Circum-
stances. On the other hand Tolstoy's deepest poetic sympathy is
and intricately. f d
This method of d1aracterization is an important step . orwar always with the characters who by the social and ideological seces-v··
in the development of realism. Natura~ly such tenden~1es were sion from their original way of life are involved in bitter internal
already present in rudimenta:y for_m. m the .old r~al~sts. Any struggles. From Oleni11 to Nekhlyudov Tolstoy drew a whole gal-
character without such oscillation w1thm prcscnbcd hm1ts .would lery of such portraits. The greater the tension arising within them,
... always lack flexibility to some extent. What mattc:s. here ts h.ow the more Tolstoy is interested in them, but at the same time· (and
important a part dlis method of presentation played m the crea~10n here Tolstoy reveals himself as the great poet of an important
,. of characters by various authors. In the writin?s of th~ ~ld realists, transitional period) he shows the more starkly and palpably, in
•',
particularly those who had adopted a draroahc-novcltstlc manner, the oscillations of such characters, the extent to which the Russia
'!
I
"
,.
·] \.
'~·.
 · ~ - ~ - :. "":Mr .... -·-=·
TOLSTOY AND THE DEVELOPlllENT OF REALIS~I 1B9

of his timt was 'turned upside down' even in respect of the smallest, be reflected in his style, for a great realist writer cannot close his
most intimate details of life. eyes to social truths, to real changes in the structure of society
When Tolstoy chooses as a central figure a personage to whom ~or can his presentation be concerned only with their content:
he gives a mainly negative characterization, he makes such figures lt must also r.e~ec.t them in form, even if they arc in their inner~
appear from the start as rigid, straight-lined, and bound ~y c~n­ most. esscn~e uu~ucal to art, even if they contain a threat of dcs-
vcntion even in their vacillations. Then he places them m situ- trucuon, dLssolutlon, or petrification to the forms of art themselves
ations which shake their apparently safe, conventional life-basis, The swimming-ag~inst-the-current of the great realists is alway~
force new problems on them and thus bring motion into the .figure. concrete. They S~Lve to. discover, in the concrete material before
This can be observed very clearly in the figure of Karemn. In th:m, the .tcnde.ncres wh1ch enable them artistical!y to master and
spite of his real-although naturally at bottom conventio~al-love bn~g to l~fe thrs same material together with all its anti-artistic
for Anna, her estrangement from him and her adultery w1th Vron- tr~tts. Wnters whom the ugliness of modern capitalist life inspires
ski produces in Karenin even more rigidity, an even m~re complete w1th a perfectly justified and understandable horror but a merely
transformation into a bureaucratic machme. Not until he stands a.bstrac~ horror, must ~all vi~tims to an empty for~alism if they
beside Anna's sick-bed and her profound suffering affects hitp with take this horror f~r therr. startmg-point. The forms of great realistic
physical directness, are the rigid, mechanized, automatically fun~ art alw.ays come II~to bemg as the reflections of the essential traits
tionino- elements of his personality loosened to some extent; m of .reah~y and th:rr ma.tcrial is the concrete fabric of a certain
his d;eply buried human core something like rea~ life begins to so.clef:J: m .a ~er~am P,e~1~, even though the main trend of social
stir. But as this stirring is much too weak to establish new human evo~utt?n m rt ~~ as. mJmtcal to art as is that of fully developed
·reiations b etween him and Anna, he soon sinks back into an in- cap1tah~m. R cahst literature reflects human beings irl action. The
creased rigidity; the 'human' traits of his later da~s ~re mere more ~rgor?usly ~he social and individual character of men finds
hypocrisy, a mere religious mask on the. f~ce of this m~ernally exp.ress10n m t~<m deeds, or rather in the mutual int<:raction of
petrified bureaucrat. The case of Vronsk1 lS somewh.at d1fferent. therr external Circumstances, their emotions and their deeds. the
He is often genuinely dissatisfied with his own ~ode of lif?, althou~b ?re.ater the sc?pe of realistic presentation. In classical aesd~etics
this dissatisfaction never opens new perspectives for h1m, and m tt ts o~te~ pomted_ out that powerful, vigorous, active evil-doers
him passion unleashes more vigorous human energies.. Tol.stoy shows ~n~ ~nmmals prov1de far more suitable subjects for literature than
with consummate artistry to what extent changes m hts external ms1ptd, pedestrian me~iocrit.ies, those average human beings whose
circumstances (retirement from the army, free life abroad) con· character always mamfests 1tself only in actions which are broken
tribute to the loosening-up of Vronski's rigidity. But even here ?ff as soon as J:>cgun. But the levelling power of 'finished' capital-
the dominant factors are the conventional barriers imposed by Ism pr~u~es JUst. such mediocrities in ever-increasing numbers.
his position in life. His liberated energies cannot carry him be~ond Thus hfe _1tsc~f bnngs forth an obstacle to the development of a
· a dilettantism which cannot satisfy him for any length of ttme. great reahst literature. But there is a considerable difference bc-
When he returns to Russia the inverse process begins at once : tv.,~~n writers who insistently stress this tendency of life in their
his reconversion into a pleasant average aristocrat with perfect wntmgs. (as most. western realists of this period did) and writers
manners in whom a great passion is something 'eccentric' and not who stnve t~ S\~Im ~gainst the current, who do not accept the
organically linked with the central interests of his li.fe. The ~on­
·'
r effects. of cap1tahsm stmply and directly as accomplished facts (or .
I ventional hardening that results does not go so far m Vronsk1 ~ what IS worse, go so far as to generalize them and represent them
I in Karenin, but it ~is sufficient to lead inevitably to Anna's trag1c as :laws of nature') but who depict the struggle the final result of
catastrophe. . . wh1ch (as a r.ule, b~t by .no me~ns always) is the comiog into bein~
This ori..,.inal and fruitful method of charactenzatton shows that of such prosaic, antt-poehc med10crity.
l, . despite all the profound connection with the old real~sts an.d Thus behind certain formal and technical similarities between
~I all the divergence from the new, Tolstoy yet has certam ba:u:
principles in common with the latter. This fact must necessarily
Tolstoy and the ncwe.r .r~alists we ?nd real social problems : the ;
problem of the posstbdttr of actton for the individual in a· 1
I
w
•
:& '
r~
 devdopcd bourgeois society, the problem of the inevitable dis- and dishonesty e?<press thernselve l 1 .
crepancy between ideology and reality for all who live in capitalist ease with which the thought. ds psyc_w ogicaUy above all in the
s an emotion~ of foo] d
society, except the class-conscious section of the working class. a d apt t h emselves to the vilen f . · . s an scoundrels
T he contrast between the imagined and the real is, of course, there, in certain eriods of css o ~oct~l reabty. Only here and
a very ancient problem in literature. It is the central problem, figures who altho~gh n~t '"{'o1stoy s lJfe, cau one find episodic
for instance, of such an immortal book as Don Quixote. But what in emotion~! and intellec~~~~ r?ed as fool~ or !'Co~mdrels, . yet Jive
we arc concerned with here is the specifically modern form in (e.g. old Prince Shcherbatski l·n ·1larmKony V.:Hh their social milieu
which this contrast m anifests itself-the form which, as disappoint- B d· . · nna arenma)
. ut Isappomtment, the fact that . 1' . .
ment with reality, as disillusionment, has increasingly grown to 1 Ideas men have about 't h te~ lty must dttfcr from the
~ be the central problem of the newer realism. True, Balzac had and in the newer .realis:s' a:~ a very. dtffer~nt flavour ill Tolstoy
..... ·already given one of his major works the title Lost Illusions, but l ~ a totally different m ar:ner b s~l\ dJsappomtrncnts are presen ted
iu his book" the illusions arc shattered by social realities in the nc school. In the first place yforo ~t? and h_y ~e modern rcalis-
form of a desperate struggle, a tragic, at times trag-i-comic, battle not always a purely n e ativc' th. o stoy this disappointment is
with the exigencies of social evolution. The typical novel of dis- appoiutment of his cha~act mg. He very often uses the dis- .
. . ers as a means of ex · h I
illusionment of the newer realism, Flauberes Education Srmtinwn- JeCtlVe narrowness and shallowness of l . p~smg t c sub·1 .
tale, no long-er contains a real struggle. In it an impotent sub- He show); that reality is in fact d'ff t l~lr ~onceptlon of reality.:
jectivity faces the meaningless objectivity of the external world. more multifarious and alive th I er~n.t, ut _mu~easurably richer, l
With concealed lyricism the poet takes sides with the impotent conception of it· that wh t ' 1' an t e~r subJective and romantic'
• a rea tty can giVe men · h' .
I
dreams of his characters and against the sordid but overwhelming
power of social reality. He can, of course, like Flauhert, cover up
ent f rom what they imagine bt t . £ I lS somet mg differ- l
~an their lame irnaginatio~ clot;:d o; ~~a~ very n:~sm~ much more 1
..
this attitude with a veil of ironical objectivism. Disappointment lS always presented by Tolsto as ' o lCeiV; .. Thts nchcr reality !
and disillusionment as the principal theme of literature is the poetic early story The Cossacks l y . natural llfe: Already in his \
reflection of the situation in which the best and most honest rep- Olenin about the Caucasus~~ c~use~ all romantic conceptions of
resentatives of the bourgeois class find themselves. Reality irresis· rich life of the Caucasian o e s attere~ ~y ~t~e reality of the
tibly _forces upon them the recognition of the senselessness of life this disappointment at th peasan~s. Ole~m lS ?tsappointed' hut ,;
.
in a capitalist society; they see through the falseness, the inner a higher level. In a simil:r s~~e ~m~ ~nn:hes h~m, ra}ses him to
unsubstantiality of bourgeois ideology, but are unable to find a marriage. Bezukhov's e 1 . y evm IS dJsappomtcd m Jove and •.
H ' . vo utton runs on the same lines
solution to this contradiction and remain entangled in the false ere already the social contrast b t T .
dilemma of impotent subjectivity and senseless objectivity. The realists is clearly vi.~;ible. The d e ween ?1stoy and the newer
lifelike quality of some such works of art-however problematic look and a·r t w1't!t the · . . eep connectiOn of Tolstoy's out-
InCipient rtvolt 0 f th R ·
they may be from the philosophical and artistic viewpoint-rests preserved him from seeing soc' 1 . c uss1an peasantry ./
h 1a rca11ty as a dreary d
o:·~ the fact that they express a real social and historical issue, even t e newer realists did. · For the lack . . esert, as
though by inadequate artistic means. · the Ia tt~r to identify the social reali f off s~ct~l . perspe_ctlve c~ used
For Tolstoy, too, the fact that reality is always different from ment Wtth reality in general and t !es 0 t etr 1mmed1ate envtron-
what human bdngs dream and hope, was a central problem. The Jife in a capitalist societ o regard_ the m eaninglessness of
Caucasian idyll contradicts the imaginings of Olcnin, politics and as such. It is thus thft ~~s~~e metap!l~.<Hcal scnsei:sst~ess of life ..·
war those of Bolkonski, love and marriage those of Levin. For degenerated into a despairi~,.,· mis dpcnttc!s~ of capaahst society
Tolstoy, too, it is an axiom that men and women of any value itself. '"" re re.~cntatton of objective reality
{ _must inevitably be disappointed by life, that for them the dis- But Tolstoy the writer never 'd 'fi d . .
! 1 crepancies between ideology and reality arc the deepest. The closer reality as such. He alwa s saw 1 e~t! ~· ca~ttaltst reality with
~ a T olstoyan character approaches stupidity or dishonesty, the distortion as a befouling Yof .h capaah~t society as a world of
' . it with
a l ways contrasted uman
th reahty proner· } h t
, lC t eretore "\ .
narrower is this discrepancy and that is only natural, for stupidity r
ano E'r, natural and hence humah
 l93'
····""-·-·· .... __..._.. -·-· ..-···-······
~
TOLSTOY AND THE DE\'ELOPMEI\'T OF REALISM

. ~- h. co nee tions of this natural, lm~an course it is part of Tolstoy's philosophy that the ruling class lack
reality. And although 15 • p . inary or utopian react10n- this sound conception of right and wrong and can at best acquire
I rcality may have been romal~ttlcally~Jmtoa~idc \.,ith the peasantry,- it only with great difficulty, after a bitter internal struggle, after
. . . d - w uc l was . d
I ary lus baste allttu c
' .
h
. · ·ght into t e rea
l'lt.leS of life a more JUSt an
~ ' · ·
hard lessons from life and many disappointments. (E.g. the mar-
gave lum a dc~p<:l msl
lI. . ff t between subjective conceptlOn r iage between Bezukhov and Helen.)
correct apprectattan of thlS con tc Tolstoy never loses sight of this principle even where the dis-
and objective r~~lity.. Tolstoy's characters is always an appointment is of a more fundamental nature and where more
Hence the dtstllustonment ofU . . and l'nconclusiveness of serious and intricate conflicts between ideology and reality come
. 1 t ness toptamsm
:~
exposure of the .m~omp c e d ' t clearly whenever Tolstoy con- to the surface. He harbours a deeply rooted peasant disbelief in
their ideas. T his lS .expr~e T~~aking the peasants happy' with the genuine sincerity and consistence of even the 'loftiest' feelings
trasts his own Utoplan P ~s .
0
f a Cowrtry Squire to Resur- and resolutions of members of the ruling class. . When he brings
reality i~self. From T~~ {[~~~lgS~ineth in the Darkness Tolstoy such 'loftiness' into contact and contrast with everyday life and
!-..I rc ction and the play te . g .ety of forms. But the mot1{ causes it to be shattered by its hard little facts, he seemingly
has presented this proble~ 10 ll; ";~ shattering of Utopian ideas comes very close to the disappointments found in the works of the
running through each of ~.em l~ deee and irreconcilable hatred newer realists. But here again the resemblance is superficial and
bv the realities of peasant hf~, t e. pd' exploiters and parasites. the basic character the exact opposite. For here again the 'lofty'
' f 11 ' ell-10tent10ne
of the peasants or a w h th t the disappointed have on1y emotion is every time exposed as futile, weak and not serious, and
H ere again Tolstoy alw~ys s ~~me ~or their disappointment, that the real cause of failure is in Tolstoy's eyes not its .'loftiness,' its
tl'emselves anti not reahty to. d' ts Utopian ideas and that humanly valuable moral content, but the insignificance of those
. 1' . . the right when lt contra lC who harbour it. The 'lofty' feelings harboured by K arcnin and
rea 1ty 1s 10 • . d richer truth.
reality expresses a hlgher an b . losest contact with the newer Anna in connection with the latter's illness cannot alter the fact
Where T olstoy appears to£ ~ ~-~ of the exploiters and of the
1
that the former is a shrivelled bureaucrat and the latter ~blindly
realists is in the por.trayal o t l~ l :rise among them. .But it is infatuated_..,society lacy. For all the 'loftiness' of their emotions
disappointment<; whtch ~ecessanl\en~een Tolstoy and the ne~er this tragic highlight must necessarily be followed by the real tragi-·
plecisely here that the dlf1ere~el t resents the life of the ruhng comedy, i.e. the continuation of their old life, the reversion to the ·
realists is the greate!'t. Becaus~ 0 s ~i p (although he sees exploita- rule of their former, not at all 'lofty,' but quite genuine feelings
class as that of exploiters an fparaslfesground rent) his exposure of and the return to their normal level of life.
. . · 1 in the orm o - This perspective, whictl follows from his acceptance of the
uon m the ma10 on y
the bestiality and senscles~=~s
found and correct than .
:l h a life is not only more pro-
:;:~ newer realists; it is· also free
l'ty inherent in the latter.
peasant point of view, enables Tolstoy to avoid, even in his
tragedies of love and marriage, both the trivial pathology and the
from the inflexible, metaphysic~1 ~t~ 1 miads and empty ironies !nftated sham fatality found in the newer realists. Behind every
In Tolstoy there is .none o~ the u:~ J:;ethis reality has its ori~ such tragedy of love and marriage- in Anna Karcnina as in
of the modern reahsts. Hls .expos. d. fon When his favounte Kreutzer Sonata or The Devil-the fact that this form of tragedy
in a healthy, vigo~ous a~d vlol~n~~nt~~~rld, Tolstoy represents has its origin in an idle parasitic life is always kept before our eyes.
heroes suffer a dlsappomtmen h were unable to see through Thus Tolstoy's hope of the moral regeneration of mankind raises '
them more or les.c; as silly dupes w o k With advancing age this rum above the petty narrowness of the newer realists' philosophy.
or tear ~\.vay even so threadba~~c~e:S~~giy violent. (An examp~e is And because he is never concerned primarily with art, but uses
·indignation of Tolstoy ~~7s d and Mariette in Resurrect10n.) art as a means of spreading a gospel for the regeneration of
the episode ?et~een ~e yu. ~: Tolstoy saw nothing fateful or humanity, he is preserved even in his quality of artist from the
But even 10 hls _earh~r pe~? • f the ruling class. He always formless unsu bstantiality of the moderns. It is a similar faith, a
tragic in these typlcal trage 1~ o ld be overcome with a little similar gospelling fervour that makes his contemporary Ibsen
thought of these conflicts th;t t eyepc~~n of right and wrong. Of superior, even from the artistic viewpoint, to so many other writers
common sense and a soun cone
 01 tnC Sarile pt:TlUU . .UUt.. Wit: lH1Yc;:; C::Ul C ·C lUY ..l\..-\..-11 .uvn 5 """w.'" ""'"'""' '""""'"'"•- • "'~ ........ cu .. vv<=.') aLways tnc · ·
di.fferenCC was between the gospels of Ibsen and Tolstoy. What 41nd the artistic form the mcansc~;nm.un~catlo-':1 of ~ertain contents
matters here is not whether the content of these gospels was true views. It was this trait in his at Wtmung over his readers to his
or false- Tolstoy preached at least as much r eactionary nonsense western aestheticists-which enabll-dcoh~ldcmned as tendentious by
ll~' Ibsen-what matters is the social movement of which this gospel, · of t h e art of narration F the
tlon un to save the ..great t rad'1·
for all the falseness of itc; content, was yet the ideological expression. originally plastic presentati~ns o~f h: great forz_n~ of narration were
Tolstoy's world-view is deeply permeated by reactionary pre- pose was to achieve social and moral ~:~ct~e~tuues.' ~nd their pur-
judices. But they are indivisibly bound up with that healthy, hope- clear and ordered gro · f s Y arttsttc means. The
ful and progressive popular movement of which· they represent theu. upmg o events the gradual ·
causes and origins are alwa ' uncovermg of
the weak points and defects. Tolstoy's case is not the only case intentions of the author wh' h ys very closely connected with the
in the literature of thf? world when a great artist creates immortal , IC transcend th t· · · h
lipecialized, craft sense of the word. e ar ISttc m t e modern,
masterpieces on the basis of an entirely false philosophy. But in . When the trend of social evolutio d h . .
spite of the intricate interaction between a possibly erroneous philo- mtentions impossible h . n rna e t e reahzat10n of such
sophy and a great realistic creative activity, it is not of course any ·> ' w en wnters were trans£ d .
observers of social rear h . orme mto mcr.e
and every erroneous philosophy which can serve as the foundation p osefully ma~shaHing ti~~' ~v=~t~et~e.ssardy lost this abili~y of pur-
for the creation of realistic masterpieces. The illusions and errors degree it came to be th h . ey narrat~. To an mcreasing
of great realist writers can be artistically fruitful only if they are which determined the :ccce~~~:t•i~~r~t ~tac.hmg to certain details
historically necessary illusions and errors bound up with a great than the social significance of th o t e. event nar:ated,. rather
social movement. Lenin, the only critic who discovered this con~ general intentions of the author. c event m connection wtth the
nection in Tolstoy, thereby provided the key to T olstoy's real great~· . By remaining 'old~fashioned' in th ·

I
I' .
1: ness as a writer. Tolstoy understood little of the nature of capital- Me, Tollitoy was able t IS r espect to the end of his
r· ism and nothing of the revolutionary movement of the working . h o preserve a style of narrat' f d
In t e very gr eatest of the old r I ton oun only
I
., class, but nevertheless he ~ave us admirably lifelike and true pic· often been said that after the :ea tist~ ... n. whc~tcrn Europe it has
·'' ' • • • :-.rea CriSIS m ts world . T 1
tures of Russian society. H e could do so because he looked at it '! st oy s artJshc creatiVeness had de r d I . . . -VIew, 0 -
1 from the viewpoint of the revolting peasantry, with a11 the faults change in his philosoph b he me . t Is qmte true that the
'
and limits of that movement; but these faults and limits were his style-that th . y ~oug t about an essential change in
htstorically determined and hence could in part become artistically e naiVe ep1c magnificence th
b rcadth and uninhibitedness 1m H
of W d p' e a ost omeric
ar ~n
fruitful and in part at least did not hamper the creation of
1
,1
lost. It would however b . eace could not but be
!
)''.
.,
a great artistic world. Lenin said of the peasants before the revolu-
tion of 1905 : "In their opposition to serfdom , to the feudal lords I lookmg at It merely from the for I 1
sple~did, ~ureiy artistic' quea~t~:e~} ~~:;~ey'to ~nderrakte the ne~,
. . s a e wor s. Even if
and to the state which serves their ends, the pea!'ants still remain .l European literature can boa t ~afart!Stic. angle, modern western
·I\
a class, but a cla!:s, not of capitalist society, but of a society based
on serfdom." T he reactionary limitations and illusions in Tolstoy's
(in the classical sense) as Tols:o ~
of modern western' literature th~re i
Aft;r;~or~c; so pcr~ect in fonn
!e . all. And m the whole
match Resurrection in all e b . s n~t a smgle novel that could
'~i.~; world~ view stem from this pre-capitalist character of its social basi~.
This complicated positive and negative interaction between and style of Tolstoy's pre- mt r~cmgheptc greatness. Tone, manner
~ll world-view and creative work in Tolstoy could be traced in every . h'Is completed writin ssenth atton c ano-ed
m ,.,
ve 'd b!
ry c~nsr era y; ·but
~f artistic feature throughout his whole oeuvre. We wjsh here only breath the incornparablyggreate tage~ T oflst?y rcmamed to his last
:~A tp point out one more feature in which Tolstoy differs sharply . es artt~t o h 1s epoch.
Jr.,. ~ · from his Eur?pean contemporaries and by which, in a time .of 8.
~~; t1 general dcchne of the arts, he not only preserved the great reahst
It is well known how little T olsto , 1'
;)r tradition but carried it worthily on. We are thinking in the first stood by his contem oraries Th y s lt.crary work was under-
[:t place of the fact that Tolstoy never practi~ed art for art'~ sake. stressed only his rea~tion . .e bourgeozs ?estheticists generally
ary traits, reprcsentmg them as the sole • •
[:1
! ;!

..:~·~
."
 •v.~,.;:,·.&·oy .\ND THE DEVELOPMENT OF REALISM 197

i · 1 f llowed in the foot- ~

}\-, the needs of an idle minority or when subjected to the ideological
. of llis a;t and vulgar-soclO ogy o influence of its paral'itic existence. Tolstoy believed that the great
.. £cunda t10n .
:i steps of reactionary. aes~hetlcs. even more thoroughly misunder- d<1ngcr threatening art was that it might lose its connection with
'I Tolstoy's aesthetiC VIews were t' ti'c prol..leros were generally the great problems of life. In his preface to the Russian translation
. H's1 essays on ar 1s 'IJ
of. Maupassant's works he established these postulates of a genuine
stood than h1s art. f ch as a condemnation of every
I' interpreted as a reJeC lO l
· t' n 0 art as su ,
h d ttered in his time. This m1S-
. · artistic attitude to reality:
·'· . · su ch as P ato a u oints in Tolstoy,s cnttc · · a1 "These are : first, a correct, i.e. a moral attitude of the author
1. l: artistic actlv1ty,
understandin? is no ~cci~ent~s Ta~~;'-~ere liable to lead to such to his theme; secondly, clarity of expression or beauty of form-
writings-whl~h wcBwi~l hdlsC':nisinterpretations have not prevented these two are identical; and thirdly, sincerity, i.e. a sincere love
misunderstandmgs. ut t ese . rofound effect-on the or hate of the thing the artist is presenting."
~·
~ :.
. Tolstoy's writings on art fro~ hav~~~ta:out For the progressive
contrary, they often actually rdoug ~talism .the increasing artifi-
·. f · t'c forms un er cap1 ' . .
1 This essential relation of the artist to his work, which is a result
of his relation to social reality, was, according to Tolstoy, increasing~
ly being lost in modern art. Even in Maupassant, of whose gifts as
l.,. dissolut1on o arus 1 . ti t'c trends and their mcreasmg re-- \
ciality of the rapidly changmg ar s bll of mankind produced in 'l a writer he had a very high opinion, Tolstoy found this false ten~
\; .. luctance to dea Wl: 1 · h the great pro ems · '
f h bourgeois intelligentsia a correspon . -
d dency of modern art, which he summed up thus : "it is not only
!f..\

~~~
the best representattves ? t ~
.mgly 1ncreasmg
· · d'ssatlsfactlon
1
'th art in general. Romantic
d Wld by the capitahst
opponents of the culture pro uc~ .:on of art as a useless toy, as
often ended up 1~ a
·
" futile occupation servlng only
complete reJeCu
.
. system very

for leasure but contnbutmg

p . s of mankind Such
· .·
j.I
unimportant for a work of art whether the artist had a clear con-
ception of what is rjght and what is wrong, but on the con~;· ·
an artist should completely disregard all moral considerations, for
such a disregarding is an artistic advantage. According to this
theory the artist can and should describe the truth, i.e. what is
.. t of the great a1m · ·i
nothing to the advancemlle~. k with certain aspects of Tolstoy's ..1 real, what is beautiful and hence pleases him, or even what may
tendencies could natura y ln up . ·.1 serve science as a useful material; but it is no business of the artist
to concern himself with what is moral or immoral, right or wrong."
criticism of art. . . misinterprets the true meaning of
Any such conception e~tlre1~ h' h as to oppose the decadent
Tolstoy's criticism, the obje~t o bw lC :eans art as such. On the
it Such an . erroneous conception of even very gifted artists Tolstoy
. attributed to the fact that art had ceased to be the concern of
pseudo-art of the present ut y ntod true genuine, great and the whole people. In modern times art had come to be a lu:"ury
cont rary,
Tolstoy always contras e
f his day
popular art wi~~ ~he sham a~t o directed agai~st modern bourgeois
'
t' of idle parasites; art had become a strongly specialized occupation
and its object was to satisfy this requirement. Tolstoy showed
Tolstoy's cn.tlCISID. was/ ~.s riticisro is of a magnificent, span- with great acumen how this specialization has an increasingly
art. The startm~-J?om~ o : .ls c olsto asks: for whom and by deteriorating effect on art : empty formal artistry, the prominence
taneously matenahst sunphc1ty.. T y . . for the idlers of the of superfluous detaHs that express nothing essential, photographic
. . d ced Hts anS\Yer 1s . reproduction of superficial phenomena, loss of understa nding of
whom IS thts art pro u . 'll'. of workers do not even know
ruling class. The t~eming ~~e:~; they did, it would be emoti~n­ the great problems of life. All the!;e lead to a great impoverishment
that such an art exists, but d 'bed more than once Wlth of art:
ally inaccessible to the~. :rolst~y es~~w the technical subtleties "The feelings which arise from the desire of amusement arc ..
a very dramatic and .lromc rea ld ced by men who are simply
and refinements of this art ~re plro u d for whom such activities
not only limited, but have been well known for a long time and
sufficiently exprc~sed . . . The feelings of the mighty and rich,
. ts f the ruhng c ass an . . f h
e,..-pl01ted servan ?. . . b f k than the satisfying o ot er who have had no experience of having to work for a living, are
are a no less humlhatmp JO o war much poorer, much more limited and much more iusignificant
needs of the ruling parasttes. merel stating this fact. He pro- than the feelings of the working people. The aesthetes and men
But Tolstoy does not stop at d Yritual deformations suffered ol our station in life usually assert the contrary. I remember that
cccds to investigate the mden.tal an s~~ts-when compelled to serve Goncharov. the author, who was a very shrewd and educated mao,
by artists-even gifted an stncere ar
 UU(. 4 i.VW.&J.,")1U411 au.u av.;,"'a.""'"'"' \.V ... u.v &.LA~" "'"..,. ' ..,_..,_ "- .......... - · · ·
~ ue roost Important problem is in our opiniqn the peasant artd
"
! ·· : publication of Turgenye~'s A Sportsman's Diary that there was plebeian humanism of T ohtoy's aesthetics. This term may at first
i ::;·
I. now nothing more left to write about the life.of the p~asa.nts; the seem paradoxical, for Tolstoy's judgments, to which we referred
f.r' ~· subject was exhausted. In contrast the conflicts and mtngues of above, are in sharp opposition to the best humanist traditions of the
' .
h' the upper. classes were an inexhaustible source of themes for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuri.e.'\. With these judp;ments Tolstoy
abjures, not only in superficial symptoms hut in the essential core
writer." d l · h
Tolstoy not only opposed such conceptions and stresse t .l~ n~ - the traditions of humanism. narrows down its concept and intrC:
ness of a life of work and the inner monoto~y o~ a paras1t1c hfe, duces reactionary elements into it, Nevertheless his own aesthetic
but maintained that modern art was much 1nf~nor ~o the really conceptions .are basically linked with the central problems of
great, really popular art of former days in _dea~mg w1th the great ... humanist aesthetics and he wac; one of the very few thinkers of
and decisive problems of life . He also mamtame~ that a wealth hi!' time who attempted to keep these traditions alive and develop
of detail was merely a d azzling camouflage of an mternal poverty them further, even though in his own particular way.
ant.l that the old poets (he adduces as an example the legc~d of What it all. amoun.ts to is the defence of human integrity against
Joseph in the Old Testament) needed no such mass of detatl be- ti;te.~ef~rmat1ons whtch are the n~c essary concomitants of capitalist
ca use they were magnificently simple and easy to understand. Clvihzation. The older bourgeozs humanists had already found
«Thus this story is accessible to all men, 1t has ~oved men .and .themc;clves in the p~radoxical. situati_on of approving the progressive
women of all nations and classes, young and old; 1t has remamcd mc:ease of produ~tt.v~ capac1ty whlle at the same time deploring
alive to our day and will remain alive for th.ousands of. years ~f_tcr as mhuman the dtvlSlon of labour inseparable from capitalism (as
U!'. But strip the best !'tory-tellers of our t~me of the1r details- Marx showed in the case of Ferguson).
and what remains? It is therefore impoSSible to ~am~ mod~rn This contradiction, which no bourgeois humanist -neither Fer-
works of literature which really satisfy the postulate of umversahty. guson nor Schiller-could resolve, is more and more intensified
These works are to a great extent spoilt by what is usually ,te~e.d as capitali~t economy develops and extends it<; rule to all pheno-
'realism,' but what one could much more correctly call arttsttc mena of life, and especially when bo urgeoi.r ideology enters its
apologetic phase and the ideals of humanism become completely
provincialism.' '' . . y'
Nothino- is easier than to discover weak pomts til Tolst? s estranged from the normal course of life under capitalism. · The
criticism ~f modern art. Because he considers t~at the only n~ht honest ~nd gifted among modern artists express this estrangement
basic attitude to life ic; the religious one, he attnbutes t~e ~c~lme ~~pr?pnatel~ by regarding art itself as a principle foreign and
of art to the fact that the ruling classes have .become 1~rehgrous. mumcal to life (e.g. Ibsen in his late works}. On the eve of the
This reactionary tendency is by no means an .tsolated. shp on th_e imperialist era this ideology degenerated into a dehumanization
part of T olstoy-it is on the contrary clos~ly hnke~ ~tth the po~1~ of art and philosophy, which vie with each other in extolling the
tivc aspects of his aesthetic theory. Tolstoy s appreciation of Shake new barbarism (Ni~tzschc). Imperialist philosophy, finding its
spearc, Goethe, Beethoven, etc.-his. conception th~t the decadence fullest developmen t m fascism, has for it<; central category a con-
of art began already with the R cnmssancc-all thts t? som~ extent c~pt paradoxi~al_ly call~d 'life' which is a compound of every prin-
fcrm s a~ intellectually coherent systematic whole m wluch the Clple antagomsttc to life. This concept of life is a declaration
·eactionary side of Tolstoy's world-view ~z~d~ clea: and trenchant of war on human life, on the human spirit, on every value produced
e.xpression. It is of course very easy to cnttc1ze thts aspect of Tol- by many thousands of years of human evolution.
stoy's aesthetic theories, but it would serve no useful purpose. to To1stO>' directs his polemic chiefly agaiw;t thi ~; dehumanization
do 50 a~ today they are more or less out-of-date and not very t.m- of life, but naturally does so in a manner full of contradictions:
portant. To dwell on them now would only dis~ract ~ttent10n In his thinking, Tolstoy was subject to agnosticist influences ten-
from what is important and fruitful in his aesthet1cal Vle\~S an~ dencies which throw doubt on the validity of human cog~ition
from the central problems bequeathed to us by Tolstoy tn tlus and on human ~nderstanding in general (Kant, Schopenhauer,
Buddha, etc.). H1s favourite heroes express such views in a n even
sphere.
 J J>EVEJ.OP~fP.NT -R:.~~.I~t- ..:... ·- ~~-1
I TO! .S'J·oy ANO THE 0;
more exaggerated fonn, e.g. Konstantin Levin when he .~peaks of
the' knavery' of reason, etc.
., l contribute immortal values t I
art hao; with historical .0
.
t le evolution of m aukind. Modern
l
I
But through all these blunderings there runs still, as the funda- . nece.~s lty receded from the . . I I
·. ol art and withdrawn from . ongma popu arity
mental line of T olstoy's aesthetic, the orientation of art towards people-Moliere's ma'd contact wtth a great section of the
. I servant can no lowre b'
popularity; towards the great problems of life which because of th1s art-but its greatest . -=> r act as ar ztcr for
their deepness and universality can be understood by all ; towards . lematic foundation, produ~:res:nt~tlve\have, wen ~n this prob-
the old lucidity of form which made Homer or the Bible com-
prehensible to all men. In his Utopian dreams of a future without
:.1;' remain unpopular fo Tf ea wor s of art, whJch need not
Moliere's maidservan~ J~:;·not ~~ u?~~fompctence in their case of
parasites, Tolstoy forecasts a future art capable of being learnt of Goethe and Sch 1'U B I· Jmmis I the grcatnc:~s of the works
by any worker and which for this reason would in. the essentials ~ er, a ~ac and Stendhal · · ·
J • .., contrary opinion of Tolstoy tl . . I . . ' nor, m spite of the
or form be superior to the intricate artistry, the irrelevant refine· l himself, even though here to 1~1 aest lCtiCist, of those of Tolstoy
ments of the moderns. Looking at art from this angle, 'I:'olstoy ·~ servant in respect 0 / c ' . ~~ lc competence of Moliere's maid-
regards it as a mere chaotic muddle in which there is no criterion ~ everywhere beyond qu~~~~~JtJOn and la n,rzua.~e is not always and
for what is right anq what is wrong. Sham works of art, because
of their technical excellence, often appear superior to artistically
better, more genuine works of art. No man of letters or aesthete
:. i In the era of the French revolution
Schiller could easily harbo
d I
'd I' . an t lc Napokonic wars
garding the future of '!;e tl~r I eaiJ~tJc and ('Xaggcrat('d hopes re-
·could find a criterion here, but a peasant with his uncorrupted
taste could easily distinguish the sham work of art from the J •1 • n 1menta
u1cre was a crencra1 declin ~ .
1
.
pol'try But at
·.
· }
a tune w 1en
tion in bou/g"eois art th el, Ol!Illa llllpovc:Jshnwnt ancl deteriora-

l have been apparent 'to Tolsto

genuine. Tolstoy has thus again made M oliere's servant~girl the e lope essne!>.; of Jts fut
· . I · . . · . ure. must a 1ready
understandable exaggeratio~-!~ltho~~~~-; ~~ c~~;:uatJon it hwas an
arbiter of art. This extreme exaggeration of his urge towards a 11
..·
really superior art once more reveals the deep contradiction under- ·~· erroneous....:for Tohtoy to extend h' . d . e none t e less
lying his whole conception of art. In the historical sense this con- menta l ' art from the present to t~s a verse Judgme?t on 'senti-
tradiction could not be solved in Tolstoy's time and therefore greatest, mo.'1 t genuine roduct~ c p~st ai~d t? reJect even its
necessarily remained insoluble for him personally, but at the same T olstoy sometimes penet;ates dee~c:~~ t~:~ thts h~s very partiality
time it contained tendencies soon to bear fruit in the future.
Schiller, in his most interesting essay on Naive and sentimental
l ?rt than many outstanding thinkers ·wh core o t~e problems of
·} Ju?gment was more equitable aud i o preceded hun and whose
poetry-the first profound philosophical analysis of the essence of Tolstov the popula ritv of t . . hmpartiaJ, such as Schiller. For
modern art, brings up this question of Moliere's maidservant. He !; I f. ' ar ts WJt out question th
em o aesthetics and with b ld . . . e central prob-
says: of great artistic forms or the'o I Sl~phctty he mal.:es the possibility
"Moliere, as a naive poet, could rely on his maidservant to tell
him what should remain in and what should be left out of his
j the time is linked with th rt
~~~\ €'pendent on \\·hcthcr the art of
the second half of the n'e It c o ht Je p eople or detached from it. In
comedies. But I would not like to sec the same test applied to .J . me cent century whe
t1vcs of popular art either t d ' . n most rcpresenta-
sank into a narrow and shor~~~e h/~ a re~cti?u~ry rom anticism or
·.1
· :

Klopstock's Odes, to the fin est passages in his Messiah, in Paradise

I
L ost, in Nathan the Wise and many other pieces." .
representative of a pea"<!nt · gl ~ p~ovtncta1Jsm, Tolstoy, as the I.
Schiller. here wittily expresses the basic contradiction arising .··! b' . revo ut10n m Russia 1 d I

I· com matJOn of a genuine u-reat a t d ' c amoure for a

from the problem of the popularity of art in the later bourgeois .. In this connecti~n Tolst; ' r an popular appeal.
literature, a contradiction which Tolstoy also saw and which, as on questions of art, a ear/ s pea~ant~ wh~ ha~ a ·corn~ct judgment
·we have seen, h e did his best to resolve. Schiller, too; thought that from Moliere's maid~~·vant a; a IhJs~o~tcallmk Ill the chain running
the simple great art of the 'naive' poets was superior to modern be able t.o run the governmt'nt~ ,enm s cook, who was required to
'sentimental' poetry. But he not only saw the historical necessity The h istorical significance of thi .
o~ the emergence of such a more subjective, more problematic,
'··
lessened by the fact that h' s attltllde of Tolstoy is not at ail
more complicated art! he al~o appreciated that this art could also ak 1s concept of popuJar·t t fl
we nes~t"s of the peasant revolution T J y, oo, rc ects. the
. hese weaknesses mamfest
 -·-_. ... _.. _.., _, ___ .... , -··
- - ~- ---- ---· - -----,
-- ··~- .~: · :--- -·""· ........, •.,a, ulUucumrs, ano 1t 1.s tor this reason that his protest
of great art and popular quality sometimes far too c~udely and L<: more desperate, more. elemental and inarticulate, and less subtly
literally reducing far too much the sp~w,re of art to wh1ch he con· ~odulat:d than was theU's. But at the same time it is more closely
cedes the quality of greatness. Lemn s cook~ cduc~ted by the bnked ~1th the real protest of the peasants against the inhumanity
~. ..
·'
cultural revolution of Socialism, can overlook a far w1der field ot o~ the hves they w~re compelled to lead. Tolstoy's aesthetic, like
the artistic past and see far further and deeper than Tolstoy':; h1s art, was a harbmgcr of the great revolt of the peasantc; in the
pl'a ~ aut. . revo1u ti ons of 1905 and 191 7.
But these weaknesses of Tolstoy's outlook-wh1ch were the weak-
nesses and deficiencies of a great, historically necessary popul~r 9.
movement---must not be allowed to dim the magnificence o~ hLS Tolstoy saved the traditions of the great realists and carried them
peasant-plebeian humanism. When in his c~medy The. Frw!s of on ~d d~velopc~ them further in concrete and topical form in an
Education he lets the primitive ruses of the s1mple and. ~ntclhgent age 1? w~1ch .reah~m had degenerated into naturalism or formalism.
young peasant woman Tanya get the better of her p arasttt.c.mastcrs Her;1~ h~ hts greatness ~s a writer. He saved the idea that great
·who by dint of too much education, have grown superstitious, we art 1~ !nd1Sso~ubly ~ootcd m the people and must perish if it is torn .
hea: a peal of healthy and triumphant plebeian laughter at the from 1ts natrve SOil, and that greatness of artistic form is indis-
internal hollowness of the ruling class, laughter such as came, on solub~y I.inked with the popularity of artistic form and content.
the eve of tht:' French revolution, {rom the plebeian m~uth of a Herem h es the undying merit of his aesthetics. ·'
F 1garo laughing at the hollowness o~ aristocrat!c pretens10ns. ·. Tolstoy died shortly after the bourgeoiJ revolution in Russia and
The co11ception of humanity m Tolstoy s peasant-p~cbetan -?ot very long before the great Socialist revolution of October. He
humanism may sometimes have been too .narro"": ar:td shorts1ght~d, lS the last great classic of bourgeois reali!'m the last worthy link
but it nevertheless contains very essenttal tra1ts of a g~nu.me in ti:e chain that stretches from Cervantes 'to Balzac. He ·is a ..
humanist struggle against the dehumanization of men by c~p1tali~m classtc of realism, remaining topical to this day, for his content
and by all class rule. Tolstoy's humanism demands. th~ mtegnty and form. can be understood through their own immediate experi·
of the human personality, its libe_rat~on ~r~~ explmtat10n, from ence of lif; b~ great masses of people living today, without the
oppression, from the slavery of cap1ta!1st d1V1Sl~n of labour: It pos- nee~ of htstoncal retrospection. This importance of Tolstoy's
tulates that only a life bound up w1th creative lab?u~ 1s really ~eahsm for the problems of our time, for Socialist realism his
consistent with reason. Only a Liberal or pseudo-Soctahst vulgar- ~fiuenc~ over which is still deci~ive and will remain so for a iong
sociologist, who is infatuated with. the capitalist for~ of pro¥~ess, tune, .m~rrors the .extrcm.cly raptd transition from a bourgeoif to
is capable of seeing onlY: the rcac~ton~ry aspects of tlus ?PPOSltlon, a Soctali~t rcvolutlon wh1ch has taken place in Russia.
however dcsperatt• or bhndly ragmg 1t may appear at times. V:ry lrttle o.ver thirty years ago a backward, enslaved Tsarist
Old H egel, for all that he was a Royal Prussian professo~, ha? Russ1a was facmg a bourgeois revolution. Today it is a Socialist
a far wider and deeper idea of this problem. ~e wrote m hLS cou~try. In every other country the great flowering of .bourgeois
Acsllwtic about the early works of Goethe and Schll.lcr :. . . art IS separat:d by decades or even centuries from the unfolding
"The interest in, and the need for, such a genume md1v1dual of the rev?l.utlonary movement of the working class and hence the
totality and live independence will and can never leave us, ho~vever great tradrt10ns o! art can be. restored only by laborious effort on
d esirable and reasonable we may find the nature and evo~utiOn of the part of Marxtsts ..In ~uss1a, on the contrary,this link has been
conditions in the developed civil and political life of our tlme . In fo~cd by the revolu_hon tlc;clf and hence the literature of Socialist
this sense wf? must admire the youthful spirit of Goethe a~d reahsm can regard as its great classic a writer like Maxim Gorki
Schiller in their attempt to regain the lost independence of poetic
1 who has c~eatc~ perf~ct examples of Socialist realism and is a:
figures within these existing circumstances of the newer ~ge." the .s~me ttme tmmedtately and vitally bound up with the great
Tolstoy the humanist raised his voice in ~~ot:st at a ttme of a ttad1t1ons of bourgeois realism, above all through the personality
much greater decline, a much deeper hum1hat10n of men, than and oeuvre of Tolstoy himself.
 • ·---~-~J~~~/~... · -~'-.,-::i~· ·~
I
I

TOLSTOY AND TI!R DEVELOPMENT OF nn . ~ .

. ~At. l>iM 205
The existence of this rich and many-sided living connection does
not of course imply that Socialist realism should simply take over
4.. gaozs to prolctariau revolution as ther .
~ w~ m Tolsto~··s l)~·'rt, w.e

I1
propose to discuss in anotl
the Tolstoyan heritage without critical siftin~ and without develop- ler essay of tlus scnes.
ing it further in the Socialist sense. It is precisely the nature of
Gorki's realism which shows very clearly how radical and thorough
this further evolution must be.
In Gorki's. manner of characterization we find many
devices for bringing his characters to life which we have
described in the preceding as new features in the realism of Tol-
stoy, as his way of carrying on the realist tradition. But the differ-
ences are perhaps even more significant than the similarities. Maxim
J ...
~

"!
I
Gorki, closely bound up with the proletarian revolution, saw
boundless possibilities of a further advance of. mankind-
a perspective necessarily closed to Tolstoy. Hence the inner life
I
t
I
of Gorki"s characters is not limited to so narrow a sphere as
cf Tolstoy's. It is quite possible for Gorki's characters to break out
rof the sphere of life into which they were born and shed their
. inherited and acquired thoughts and emotions without thereby J
. relinquishing their personality and their personal peculiarities; on
': the contrary, they do so in order to permit their personality to
~ develop more freely, more richly and on a higher level.
- In presenting the realizability and actual realization of this pos-
1
sibility, the human-and hence the artistic-significance of the
latitude in the inner development of human beings, of which we .:·1
•
spoke in connection with Tolstoy, undergoes a considerable· change .•

in Gorki. For Tolstoy's characters this latitude limits the circle ...
·of their manife!itations. But for those of Gorki's characters who
are unable to break out of this circle, the limit turns into a tor· J
menting prison wall. Thus in Gorki the basic principle of presenta·
tion both of the positive and negative characters is essentially,
qualitatively transformed. He has carried on the great realist
tradition on the qualitatively different level of Socialist realism.
I ··'

It cannot be the purpose of this paper to analyze, however

sketchily, the multiple threads which connect Tolstoy's realism with .J
· Socialist realism. We had perforce to limit ourselves to describe J .
'-'· I

the peculiar position occupied by Tolstoy in the history of nine-

teenth-century realism, of which he is the Jast great representative.
But in order to give at least an indication of the direction in which "ii
lies a fruitful absorpti<;>n and development of Tolstoy's realism for
us, we have pointed out one aspect of Maxim Gorki's immense
life-work. The question how Tolstoyan realism fertilized literature
in the countries in which there wa~ no rapid transition from bour~

·'
 >.
1. : ·
__..,.4 __ .,. --.
revolution.
..,.4 .. '""' ... ,,t' ..._..."'& .A~U.U&CA.J.4W VI. "O.}JlL<UJ.-..111 WUl\..".11 !\llrVJ\'(;U (llf!

(.~ CHAPTER SEVEN Thus it can he said that Gorki pot·tically . n :crl·atl'd the pre~
1.~
~ 'f '! conditions and the pre-history of the great nation -wide crisis of
Ru~sian society. It can also be said that very stroug historical and
social bonds uuite the many types and destinies which he describes,
and that in this s~nse (but only in this scn~c} his ocur.rrt: is a con-
The Human Cornedy of Pre-Revolutionary nected whok, a 'Human Comedy' of prc~n:volt~tinnary Rus~ia.
Gorki rarely linked up his writings with each other ;111d although
Russia they represent various aspect~ aud stag<.!s of one great process,
"It is only when the 'underdogs' no lo_nge~ w~nt the old order the characters figuring in the c.liffcrent sections know nothing of
and th(' • top dog • can no longer mamtnm. 1t, can ~ revolu· each other. This deviation from the Balzacian cycle is no accid('nt.
tion be victorious. One could ~XJ?rcss t.h1s tr';llh m ot~~r
words in this way: a revolution 1s lffiJ?OSSJblc w1thou~ a ~.r•m A substantial part of Gorki's work is dedicated to the portrayal of
tmbracing the whole nation, both explo1ters and explOited. life in the old Russian provinces, with all it.~ barbaric bleakness
a nd isolation. The external world, sometimes even the neighbou~­
' LENIN.

0 0 R K 1 .; 0 E u v R E straddles the whole period during. which ing little town , is only a speck on the horizon. A Balzacian linki ng·-
th(; Russia n revolutionary crisis wac; maturing, a proces.s whtch led . up of the various · sections by the re-emergence of the same :-harac-
to the ~ reat October revolution. Gorki is a great wnte~-:-and a ters in different stories, would be out of keeping with the purpose
great w~iter measured by the standards of the great ~cahsttc ~Ias­ of presenting this isolation. Only wht·n Gorki later depicts the
;ics-because he saw and depicted every aspect of th1s revo~ut10n­ shak~ng-up and mixing together of all classes of society by the
ary crisis. He showed not only the growth of the revolut10nary revolution, does the idea of a cycle become an a rtistic possibility.
movement among the industrial workers and pe.a~ants, but devoted (Thus l'egor Buliclzov and D ostigayeu, his last great plays, a rl!
much attention to the portrayal of the bourgeotste, the petty bour- interconnected).
geoisie, the inlelligerrtsia demonstrating in detail why long before In the completely closed orbit of a little country town Gorki
the revolution, th~y could not live in the old wa~ a~y. I}1ore .and demonstrates the futility of the first stirrings of the revolution,
how the insoluble conflicts without which a revolution JS 1mpomble, their isolation from the life of the masses (e.g. the a~sassination of
canw about in the lives of the ' top dogs.'. , Tsar Alexander II ) ; and then shows how thi.~ situation is trans.
Gorki's creative method is both many-sided an<.l profound. \V~lat formed with the birth and growth of the revolutionary working.
j

~
Marx said of Balzac could be equally applied to him. Accordmg class movement. In Klim Samgin Gorki can alrracly reproduce
t(l L afargue Marx said that Bal~ac not ~n ly portrayed the most the ideological echoes of the working-class movement among thr.
importan t types of his time, but prophetically cr:ated. .t!'Pcs who petty bourgeoisir. ·and the bour.f!co is intelligtntsia.
i
existed as yet only in embryonic form under Lou1s. Ph1hppe a~d The main theme of Gorki's life-work is that m•·n ra11 110 longt.'r
did 11ot develop fully until after the death of Lou1s Ph1hppc, .m Jive in the way in which they ha ve lived in the past. Gorki began
the rcicrn of Napoleon III.' Gorki i.~ regarded as a great soc1al his career as the spokesman of the down-and-outs, hut later he came ·
histori;~ of pre-revolutionary Rw:sia because he grasp.cd the. de- to be a poet of the general class reshuffle and class different iation
cisive evolutionary tendencies of every section of Russia~ ~oc1ety~ which took place in R ussia in the last decades prccrding the revo-
which still remain important in our own ep?ch of SocH) h ~ m tn lution. What h e depicted here in the first pl acl~ was how men
Ru~sia, although naturally considerably mo?tfied by the e~ ect of came to develop into members of a class.
a revolution which destroyed the old . Russ1a an~ gave b1rth to This posing of the problem separates Gorki very clearly from the
the new. Gorki's writings were prophettc not only m respect of t~c general run of modern bourgeois literature aJJd of the· vulgar-soci-
types of the various counter~re~·olutionary struggles~ but also m ology which is it~ ideological reAectiou, and which conceives hu-
man beings and the cla~s to which thcr br·long as a llll·chanical
206 ..
' .1
 i G
· RK.f'
--· ~~~z~~u~: ~~ ~-~~~'" .. . ": . ·-
-- - - .,-.. · ..._. -,,qr,-,· . .,.,.·.~
O S HUMAN COMEDY ..
unity. Membership in a class is conceived almost as a biological, ~- pr~cess by which life moulds men .into
209

t certainly as an unchangeable, necessity, a fate that must be ac-

cepted. Such writers aud vulgar-sociologists marked men with
" class brands, as in former times convicts were branded with a
hot iron when tliey were sent to th~ hulks.
Gorki who had a q~ite different, even a consciously opposite
j
I
w1uch the mutual interact' . b
·
mgs produces personality. h

class are developed. how th

.
members of a cJass i.e. by
JOn etween man d his
. an
· ' '
soc1aJ surround-
making, the traits which ~ak:~ I? ~h~s process of personality-
e mdlVlduai a r epresentative of a
turn into their oppC:Sites, etc.ey grow, weaken, intersect each other,
conception of the nature of class characteristics, said : .I Most modern writers regard th"
'It cannot be disputed that "class characteristics, are the chief, but as a fact accomplished once :n~r~cess not as a process at all,
the decisive factor in the development of the "psyche," that they
a lways determine, to a greater or lesser degree, the words and deeds
ol men, In the harsh tyranny of the capitalist state, men were
J
'1
j
th~ !csults of the process into a fatali or aU. Hence they degrade
ong~ns, race, etc., unlike Gorki w st acceptance of surroundings,
matlc character of the pro 'th ho constantly stresses the dra-
Lik cess e fact that · ·
forced to be the abjectly obedient ants of their ant-hill; doomed ·e.M~~' he sees that the.<;e c~nflicts
tL' play this part by the consistent pressure of the family, the .I
I the mdtvtdual becomes the b.
lt ts full of conflicts.
are sharpest where the life of
school, the church and the employers, their instinct of self-preserv- !
·I
....,·hen an individual is faced ~thJectdof. ~ clash of class interests
ation urging them to subm it to the existing laws and customs; aU c th · . WI a ec1s1on 1'n I · . '
tOr en It IS shown which class ch . . vo vmg a class tssu·e~ , ·•
this is true, but competition inside the ant-hill is so strong, the so- dominant ones in the course of th a:a~~e:disttcs have come to be. the
cial chaos in bourgeois society is growing so palpably, that the ment. · e 10 IV! ual's individu al develop-
same instinct of self-preservation which makes men the obedient This development accordin J
slaves of the capitalists, comes into dramatic conflict with the The ?utcome of each conflict~{ ;n~ves from. co~~ict to conflict
" class characteristics".' ·
In this theoretical summing-up of his own literary practice Gor-
expenence and the nature of
determined. but by no
t6
n s ~~ the mdiVIdual's previous
. c con Ict, and is to that extent
' means m a f t r ·
ki showed an incomparably deeper understanding of the Marxian all the time, because in a c t . a a t.stlc sense. Surprises occur
conception of the dialectical relationship bet\veen the individual " suddenly, to the surface ;;raam c~nfl~ct .c7rtain qualities come
and his class (especially in capitalist society) than all the so-called qualities. Thus for instanc certam mdlVIdual's most essential
Marxists of " literary science.'' This is what Marx himself said of Human Beings) has, throu;h ~ ~~~~nodhan,_ Luka Lunyev (Three
this relationship between class and the individual in the capitalist c~ant. He is very dissatisfied with . ~ ~cctdents, become a mer-
state : ' But in the course of historical d evelopment and precisely human beings , who could show h' his hfc, and searches for "real
as a result of the inevitable fact that within the division of labour last he finds such a human b . _tm the way to a worthier life At
~ocial rcla tionships take on an independent existence, there ap- whe~ she reproaches him wi~~?~i~~ the p erson of M edvedcva. But
pears a division within the life of each individual, in so far as it ~npatd labour of his workers , th n1,
as .aU .merchants do, on the
is personal and in so far as it is determined by some branch of suddenly "-so suddenly th, t . e c ass. mstmct of the merchant
labour and the conditions pertaining to it ... ' The division between • If m
ltse . Lunvev. We fi d a hIt surpnses even h tmself-asserts"
. ' n t e same " . . ,
the personal individual and the class individual, the accidental quaI tty-but with opposite results~· surp~tsmg dramatic
nature of the conditions of life for the individual, appears only with Artamonov and his father. Th 1m the co~fltct. between Ilya
the cmer~encc of class, which is itself a product of the bourgeoisie. doesn't want to take over th f e atent confhct (I.e., that Ilya
This accidental character is only engendered and developed by leads to a complete ruptur e h acto~) explodes dramatically and .. '

competition and the struggle of individuals among themselves. 'We have worked and youe ::anetn t ~ fath7r reproaches his son:
Thus, in imagination, individuals seem more free under the domi- want to play the saint at the to 1lve without working? You
nance of the bourgeoisie than before, because their conditions of Such jnstances are of expense of the labour of others? '
· life seem accidental'; in realit'y, of course, they are less free, because 1ong-latcnt dramatic 'tensioncourse, extreme ca
B
h .
s~s, t e explostons of
they are more subjected to the objective compulsion. plosive tension which appar~·ntl ut even confhcts. with · a lesser ex- ..
Gorki dcpictc; this accidentally, the intricate and contradictory ternal dramatic cha racter The y co~es .t~ nothmg, have this in- .·'t..
. y mar en heal" points in the nro,..,~a
 .1t ~~ 10r tms reason th.at Gorki devotes so much attention to the
. . I1ich men become consctous ox uL~Ju:::.~:av\:;)' u: ,~ .. '"'" ...., .. fik'v.>li- ',
:· J!. w cned up or such ex1stmg ones na Y moc\ern capitalist, this is why in many of his novels and stories, he
bilitics o~.d~v~o~~~~\::; ~~untcd as real possibiliftes of develop- portrays several successive generations of capitalists, tracing as accv.-
... closed wl 'c. t~e imaO'ination of the person concerned. ! hus m ratcly as possible the intricate and uneven path 'of their evo1ution.
. mMent on kln/ emyakin~in the course of discussions orgamze~ bv In Foma Gordeyeu he .had already introduced the reader to various
atvey oz 1 . M ts forward a muddled Ideo- types of the old~style Russian merchant, differing sharply from
1' the old exiled revolutionary, atvey pu t to an ideolocrical .. ec.-:h other, not only individually, but also as representatives of the
f'..; f mise which wou\d be tantamoun . . -=>
I logy o compro . '-r . vith the exploiters, cspectally Wlth the different stages of the development from Asiatic patriarchalism to
J.·
. amnesty and rec~ncl mtiO~ ' f . . ddcnly explains why modern capitalism. This wily Asiatic form of the synthesis of the
{
h t Th1s express10n o opm10n su h' old and the new exploitation is expressed most pregnantly in the
. mere an s. h' lf from being suffocated by IS ·l
!v1atvcy's own attempt .to save Ims:sful and would ever remain so. figure of old Mayakin. Gorki shows with the clairvoyance of a
cnvir~nment ~?g r~~~~~etnu~:r~~~s writings these conflicts so !re· genius how Mayakin's son-through the roundabout process of
It IS no a~CI en . h' between exploiter and explotted banishment to Siberia-develops into the same type in slightly

~~~~~~::;.,'~:1~0 ~; ~~~k~.~~~~~~l;;'~ it isd:~~;G~~~?~~~~,;;~~ :: ; modernized form. In Mayakov's son-in.}aw the same ruthless and
crafty merchant type appears again in an even more " civilized "
most importa.n: part,f· thh!s s. ows o;he merchants are the central incarnation.
specific cond1t1ons 0 15 ttme. d h d been The same process is shown in a yet more highly diff~rentiatcd
figures .m G ork''1 s world J·ust as the bankers an usurers . a form in The House of Artamonov. In the figure of Pyotr, Gorki
in Balzac's. . . 'dent that the. attitude of the charac- brings to life the sloth and conservatism of a part of the old mer·
In the !Same way It IS no ace! d · · 1 made .the core· of chant community; in Alexey, on the contrary, he shows the sharp,
. . . SO often and SO CCISIVC y
tcrs to cxplmtatton lS · · . kd 1 · g upon Gorki Slippery, Crafty adaptability Of anothPr section tO the requirements
their human conAicts. The great poetic. tals 1 evo ~m the Russia of
· r b' rth of modern SOCia C asses 1n . of modern capitalism. In the third generation, we find on the one
was to d ep1~t .t le ~ . . a world in which the residue of serf- hand the effect of the approaching revolution on the differentiation
incipient /~s1at1C capltahsm, Ill · l'fc and from the
of the social classes in Ilya Artamonov, who joins the revolution·
dom had not yet been eliminated from economic 1 . dealt
l ' hile his Western contemporanes aries; on the other hand, the mixture of old Russian in<.'rtia and
consciousness o f t h e peop e, ". . d its already completely
f ll d eveloped caplta1ISm an imperialist parasitism in Yakov Artamonov.
Wit
.h
a u Y ld .
' finished ' classes, a wothr m w Ifc l
. cl' 'd l was from
m IV ~ ua . .
e start ar m
. '
h' 1 the place and condition of cac
ore clearly defined than in
der oin a violent cataclysm.
h
l Gorki paintc; a broad picture of the social conditions during this
development; the chaos, savagery and barbarity of the original
accumulation on the eve of a revolution. It is not by accident that
Gorki's Rt'sla? ","~~~~~ '~~:t~~ical gtru~, Gorki describes a seething :·. all of Gorki's merchant novels contain a number of biographies in
.In c~n orr;:;t''J . which history is brewing the new cl~sses of :j
which the story of the making of the subject's fortune is told. And
w1tches cau ron m ld rotten feudal and sem1-fcudal .::·.,. .
capitalist society out of theh o h sp~cific q~ality of the world aU these biographies tell a tale of common theft, brutal robbery
t t
es a cs.
But this does not ex aust t c . . .
G k' The birth of modern Russian cap1tahsm IS at t c
h and blackmail, forgery and murder. The whole picture shows a . ~

prcscn~ed by ~~o~· of imperialist decay for capitalism ~lse"':'here ar:d close resemblance to the one painted of the original accumulation
of capital in England by the great realists of the eighteenth century.
same ume ~·~~in which the preconditions are matunng m Ru~sta I
also the p e 1 • h' h . later to grow into a prolctanan I Naturally Gorki laid more stress on portraying the victims than
for a bourgeois rcvolutlOn. wl ~~ tsti the victimizers. His original starting-point had after all been the
revolution .. In this his~onca Sl~~a o: the birth of modern capital-
process of disinte(Tration and
ism in Russla was ~t t e sam~-t ,me bled h'un to make oeach of his
portrayal of human beings uprooted and separated from their social
group by the development of capitalism. In describing the effects
f · Gorkt's great g11ts ena
putre action. t \.. th thrse aspects of the process in inseparah1(~ of such things in tenns of humau destinies, he gives a !:hocking
characters represen .ot..~O picture of the brutal, inhuman, Asiatic conditions in which the Rus·
connection.
 . - - ---· --- ·- · -~ .,..-.~ ,. -~ - ....
GORKI'S HUMAN COMEDY 213

1' h easants and artisans trans- different aspect. He grow.:; increasingly critical of the heroes of
sian working class was born an d t e p mere instinctive; rebellion and sees the senselessness of such out-
·n
h formed into proletarians.
. ·
.
that a wnter o
f Gorki's mfts did not
c· bursts with ever greater clarity. Later Gorki said about the
It goes w1thout saymg . der as a fatalist acceptance characters in his early writings: 'The Konovalovs are capable of
1
present this dissolution of the old ~~cla ~ t of his capitalists have . '
hero-worship but they themselves are no heroes and very rarely
of the loss o~ ~he old_ clas; stanh~~ble o~~ins. What Gorki shows
I
i even " knights-errant for an hour!
themselves ongmally nsen. rom f decency conscience or human
is that the slightest ad~I.Xturche o . His' Ilya Lunyev gets his
i i
Gorki's adherence to the revolutionary working-class movement
. t vent any su nse. . manifested itself directly in that the poet now began to depict the
fcehng mus pre . . d d being made a serru- ) revolutionary struggle of the industrial working class and the poor
J • " education, by Wltnessmg a mur e~ a~ttempts to "better him· ~~ peasantry. Bolshevism enabled Gorki to see in the right light
accessory to a t~eft. ~e t~~:eup~~ ~~ moneylender. The rise to
0

self , by murdenng an ro lng . . th murder remains un· ?

the aggregate movement of Russian society as a whole a_n?
to
assess at their proper value the multiple trends of the oppos1t1onal
capitalist . status begins most prohmellsmgbly~-~-~e down because he is i
I and revolutionary movements appearing on the scene and directed
L ·ev nevert ess r~ d I
discovered , b ut uny . t his schemes. be is not carve ·~ against Tsarism.
humanly incapable of carrylnghio~ a successful ~pitalist needs to l Gorki was well aware of the nameless heroism of the old repre-
out of the hard wood from w c sentatives of the Narodnik movement and their gallant, undismayed,
be carved. d' . ation and transformation tireless attempts to rouse the torpid masses 'of peasants and petty
Gorki presents this pro~e~ tf tlS::grthe dissolution of all the J
...\ bourgeois to a revolutionary struggle. But he also saw the con~ ·'
from every angl~. He r~g t y s~ ecia11 of religion. For neither -~ fusion in their ideas and their failure and inability to lead the · ·1
ideologies of old-tune Russta, an: p b yeois ideology were born l
masses in the right direction. He showed with consummate artistry
the revoluti?nary .nor the m~ ::;d~~{!tion of the ~ld ideologies. .J the isolation of these heroes among the great mass of the urban and
simply and tmmedtat~ly out o eriod of disintegration, the process rural lower middle class who are already desperate but have not yet
On the contrary; as m every P 't of the great masses con· awakened to full consciousness of their situation. For all the con~ ....
;~~
1
begins with an ev~n ~cater pt~p ~:lf~ttcr away their strength in fusion of their ideas they are yet head and shoulders above this
cerned; the weak smk mto apa y 1 while the heroes of the mass for intelligence and humanity. When Matvey Kozhcmyakin
short-lived outburs~s of senseless re~~ t, ct cunningly adapt their invites one of these revolutionaries to his house, the latter tells him
original accumulatton confusedly a Ind the old ideologies. This that he, the revolutionary, has been to Siberia and is under observa-
..
.··• 1
own dishonest intere~ts to bo~h. the ~e\; hets , and other swindlers
0
is why such a n~mbe~ ?f rehg10u~h p inpthe dialogues between his
.tion by the police, Matvey says : " I thought so . . . because
you are so clever." In Klim Samgin Gorki later depicted the dis-
appear in Gorkt s '~nun~ a~~e tr1th of the old religion, about ~e integration of the Narodniki movement and its ever closer assimila-
chara~ters th~ questlOD ~ ut th to righteousness plays such an un- tion to vulgar Liberalism.
meanmg of life, about e pa
portant part. h h anger and despair
j In this his last, and perhaps most important novel, Gorki paints
a comprehensive picture of the penetration of Marxism into the .'
~ ..
This ideologi~al confusion :ec~ o~i~es C:~~:npanying the social Russian intelligentsia, after having shown in The Mother the effect
felt by the '."'orkmg m~ses a~ a~ ~;e intertwinement and mingling
transformatl~n ~f Russla an0 ld Russia with those of the new. ~ut
of the abommat10ns of the • th same time the startmg
1 of Marxism on the working-class movement. It is in the nature of
things that the former should be the more intricate process. Gorki
l outlines with great delicacy of touch ~e social and personal origins
! ~· •.
... .
'• ':'

this horror, anger and. desparr .a:e llat th~ poet of the instinctive }
of 'legalist' Marxism, of the different varieties of Menshevism. He
. f lt Gorkl was cngma y "th th ·.~ _,
pomt o revo · . t h came into contact Wl e gives no abstract class analysis, but shows why and how one or the
rebellions of hopeless despatr. ~a ~e i~creasingly bound up with it, other form of pseudo-Marxism necessarily carne to be the form in
working-class movement, came o nd more the road and goal of · '.. which the personal development of various bourgeois and bourgeois-
:~h~~fs~ t~n:ns~e~::;~e:~~=ti~n of revolt began to take on a intellectual types found expression. Such personal evolutions are .i
 me sKy, so must the beac f 11 th
that blaze unquenchably o~l~ o a d ~ noble aspirations and hopes
of course not merely the pnvate ousmess or tne matv1uucu:> um-
cerned. In the end such private aspirations, be it. in business, love
in front of his eyes Of co rou~ . t de.ffiearth, ever remain clearly
or friendship, are always shown to be typical manifestations of the from Okurov.' · urse It Ill 1 cult to see these beacons
developing modern bourgeoisie and bourgeois intelligentsia of
Russia. Gorki also gives a rich and comprehensive picture of the ce:~ !~:~~no~e~~i~ fin:~~~~aits. of Gorki's geni~s that. he could dis-
spread of decadent ideologies among the developing bourgeois contradictory phen~~ena plHe m ap.pardenthly wtdely dtverging, even
intelligentsia. Maurice Maeterlinck and 'legalist' Marxism get . d. . · e notlce t at the brutall b · 1
mixed up in the minds of the young generation and provide a 1n tvtdualism of the old lowe 'ddl I . Y ram ess
that section of the r mt e c ass pemsted unchanged in
remarkable and characteristic parallel to the mixture of residual certain new educatio:ob~g~:leneration . w~ich had acquired a
the old degrading forms of life. ~eve~ active y set about c?anging .
.['~.
Asiatic barbarism with modern European decay which he had
.F • already shown us in the young generation of the capitalists them- gave a plastic image of this 't nbhls play Petty-Bourgeozs Gorki
selves. and with t't the e um y ctween the old and the young
All these trends and tendencies are shown by Gorki to be lurking ver·renewed and app tl · . .
the old Russian ' swamp ' Th . aren y trreststtble power of
under the surface of the torpid, apparently motionless swamp of between the old and . e mcessaut and monotonous quarrels
express this contradict~~n!ni~embers Iof ~he Bessemenov family
Russian everyday life. This swamp, stirred up for the first time by
• the revolution of 1905 and drained by the revolution of 1917 and its down from his university h y ;ery c ear y. The student sent
sequel, leaving only remnants against which Socialist construction
demonstration because he ~cw ~ .oes no~ wa~t ~o take part in a
is still having to wage a merciless war-this swamp, in Gorki, freedom " is at b tt · h gar 5 It as. a restnchon of his personal
threatens to engulf all those who are unable to win through to . , . o om t e same stuptd and coward! tt b • .
revolutionary truth. ~:~:a:~i~~se~~~s~r, whose sensele!\s life he will continr.ep~m~d ~~;:
Boredom, relieved only by brutal sex excesses and drinking-bouts
(which result in even more hopeless boredom) is the lot of the great
w~rld
masses of the urban and rural lower middle-class.
Most of these accept their aimless and senseless vegetable life-
Gorki looks at this Russian
sociologist, but as a fighting hu . not
Gorki takes sides, but also that ~:n~~~~
;:/l.
. . .
chrontcler, nor as a
IS ~eans not only that
or their comprehensive expulsion from it-as their ''fate." This
"fate'' is the ideology of the indifferent and the weak, with which psych~logical processes, tho.~e human tr:~:d1e~pt~: t~~ humdan, ~e
they seek to justify the stupid aimlessness of their senseless lives. comedies, which reflect, in the life ~ ., . ~e tes an tragt·
changes. that are taking place. of the mdtvidual, the social
Gorki ascribes the boredom, the explosions of brutality, the fatal-
Gorkt's humanism manifest. . Jf b .
ism of these people of the swamp to the fact that they imagine ·ci
apathy and indifference of s Itse a 1ove all, m a fierce hatred of
ism. In Konovalov ~
0 ev~ry e_o ogy ~f apathy, of all fataJ·
themselves to be living a completely isolated, self·sufficient, purely 1
individual life; they think that they are only victims or at worst tells the story in th~ fir~ ;~ hts ea~herd ston7s, the narrator, who
parasitic beneficiaries of the social forces at work, . but have no
room in their consciousness for the common interests of society. In vi~ce Konovalov of th~ irre~~t7bi: ;~w~r va~nl~ attempts to con-
this " knight·errant for an ho , o ctrcumstance; even
Matuey Ko~hemyakin Gorki painted a masterly picture of such a ·
determined by a fate from wh· hurth ref;tses to regard his life as
' swamp' in Okurov, a small Russian provincial town. He sa}'3 1C <:re ts no escape
I n most of his stories Gork · d · h ·
about life in Okurov : life. But they are all defeated t. epl~ts ~ ose who are defeated by
' In order to break the tough tentacles of the hopeless boredom in the result of which "is b m an mtncate and eventf~l struggle,
Okurov, which first rouses the beast in man and then, imperceptibly individual case. The lnt means a ~oregone conclusiOn for the
deadening his soul, turns him into a brainless clod-to resist all this complicated inter Ia na out~ome IS determined rather by a
a man must strain his mental forces to the utmost and have an un· dental meetings a~d ye:!n~rs~nahhty, education, environment, at;;ci·
shakable faith in human reason. But a man can win such a faith · n t e outcome of the strun'(J'l h
only by participation in the great life of the world; like the stars in ever, t h e class determinants of 1'nd'lVI'd ua1 d C!;tmtes
. . areoorendered
e, ow-
 STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM

II
GORKI's HUMAN COMEDY
, 2(7
clearly visibl~ and appear in deep and intricate interconnection with
the personal determinants of such individu<tl destinies. But this
.. " question is, .intelJigcnce to what end? Is it th b. . d ..
a renewer of society or th . e lam an VISion of
unity, the merging of social and individual necessities, is always the same way Gorki deals with ~hcu~~Ilng .of a clever ro~ue? In the
result of a struggle waged with fluctuating success and is never .] sian, etc. While vi orous1 e ta ~ctt~ of goodness, strength, pas.
pre-supposed or taken for granted.
!
the hard-hearted al~ofn . y ~h~mptonmg goodness in contrast to
This conception of human destinies, this presentation of human ~I slime of the petty-bour :~is~w!r: people drowning jn the sticky
beings enabled Gorki-unlikc the modern bourgeois realists-always P' he sees no less clearly that a
to show the human values, the human possibilities at first existing ·I certain type of g d g
oo ness coupled with certain t .11 .
also be one of the causes of an individ ·1' . na ura .camngs, l?ay
and then destroyed in each of his concrete individual cases But 1 up all outstanding human qualities w~t~ ~~um. Gork~ always lmks
this display of destroyed human values is never due to mere senti- ~ man's struggle for freedom with th 1 e .great social process of
~
mental pity; what Gorki intends is to show up in all their nakedness I
men by their own efforts g;ow to b c procehss In the course of which
the mighty social forces which decide the fate of the individual. i AI h . . . e more uman.
And with the same inexorable truthfulness he also shows these
negative traits in each character which are the immediate occasions
.,I
!
t ough Gork1 m h1s presentatio
bounds of bourgeois humanism hi I; f
o m~n. goes far beyond the
servation and further developrdents fl ~wor lS nevert~eless ~ con~
of its ruin. Hence GorkFs demonstration of shattered human possi- 0

j
above all he 1·s the le great humamst hentage ·
succes.~or to the gr t R · h . '
~hci~ rev?lution~ry-humanist clarion~cal~~o t~:s~~ f:u~:rl~s a.n~
bilities is always sharp, hard, polemic1 critical, militant. He
cmphazises especially that the main causes of such destruction of
e Is umted With the Russian lite a h . ussta, .f
fine and valuable human opportunities lie in a wrong attitude to Tolstoy and Chekhov, and w·th t~ ry entage _from . Pushkin to
work and in the self-isolation of such characters in a petty~bourgeois
individualism.
1 closest of ties. 1
e great Russian cntics by the
His works are a monument bearin . . .
But however sharply critical Gorki's attitude to his own charac- popularity and vitality of R . lg \~Itnes~ to the mdestructJble
ters may be-those who perish are nevertheless always fellow human again he shows the great st~s~~~i~ asslcai .literature. Again and
beings to him. Gorki never raises his accusations chiefly against
individuals (however negative the traits may be with which he
1.!
classics had on their peopl (A g, ~usmg effect the Russian
often presents literary intcree.ts mong t c educated classes Gorki
tndows them) but always against capitalism and particularly its old- 1 . f . . s as a mere hobby sn bb
m ectiOn with ideoloo-ies of th W . d ' o ery, or se1f-
Russian, barbaric, Asiatic variety. Gorki's main accusatory con- out of a great man; is the .e fl estern f Lecadents.) One instance,
tention is always that Russian capitalism is a mass grave of mur• .l the icon-painters des~ribed inmGuekn~e o be.rmontov's Demon on
dered humanity. ' or 1 s auto 1ography
But Gorki is not merely a fighting humanist, he is also a prole-
tarian humanist. However great the grief, hatred and indignation
of bourgeois humanists may be at the destruction of humanity by
l Suc h a presentation
with Gorki's h .
of th · ft
umamst conception of the g
and illustrates hi.~ belief that trul .
.
1 k
·
e I~ uence of htcrature is closely linked
.
1' enera ta.~ of literature :{'.
capitalism, such indignation must always be tinged either with J
.J
popular Jiterature. Truly great \ gre;t Iterature must always be a
that make men truly hum 1l era ure ~eveals to man the things ,..
o'~ I 1

fatalism or with an abstract morality detached from social circum- 'I

and faculties that s1umbera~, r~~eals t~ h~ the great possibilities
..
,.j
stance. Bourgt!ois humanists mostly suffer either from a romantic .! reality by his own actions. m lm an t at can be turned into ,,.....'•
,~
,
anti-capitalism or certain illusions about 'progress.' Gorki for his I .'....
i Truly great literature loosens the ton f h
part reveals to the reader all the social and jndividual factors which the eyes of the blind It mak guC: 0 t e dumb and opens ·~·:';
' ·go to the making of men. When he speaks of ' strength/ ' work,' l destinies. And Gorki the re ~~~.an consciOus of himse.lf and of his
:I
'passion,' 'goodness: etc., he always means socially concrete con- against the inarticulaJte iner~ u Jo7ary h~m~nist, fought above all , ..
tents. He never seeks a formal middle course between extremes manif('stations in his Russia 'Jur~ ~· msdtmchbve. nature of human ""'·" . •
and is even less willing to extol blindly one or the other extreme. really · f th · e e teve t at 1£ men once grow " ' ·
This question is always concrete. Yes: intelligence is naturally
preferable to th(• hr<:~inlessn.css of everyday Russian life. But the ) conscJOus o emselves their feet are al d
to th~ great emancipation of m'ankind- .
h
rea y on t e ro~d
each mdividuaJ case. This . h G k~Ittmately: of course, not m
1.' w Y or 1 presents th~> rt .. u "·-•~ , ..
., ·..,
..;. /
 and lack of consciousness even in private life as a dreadful conse- ' I
creator of human types, approached the Oblomov problem and its
quence of Tsarist oppression. It is a subtle touch in .The Mother generalization by Dobrolyubov in his own fashion, developing
when the old working-class woman from whose mind all memories the problem further and generalizing it even more in accordance
of her past were cras.ed by ill-treatment, is awakened by her con- with the circwnstances of his own time. In his tireless struggle
. tacts with the revolutionaries to a clear consciousness of all her past against the " Karamazov disease ,. he gave this analysis of I van
life. As a foil to her, Gorki depicts a number of others, who have Karamazov as a new incarnation of the Oblomov type :
completely lost all remembrance of their own- lives, who live from 'If the reader takes a good look at Ivan K aramazov's wordy
day to day in a grey daze and stagger from one drinking-bout to effusions, he will see: this is an Oblomov who has turned to nihilism
another. for the sake of bodily comforts and idleness; he will see that I van's
Thus the great mission of true literature is to awaken men to " rejection of the world, is merely the wordy revolt of a drone and
consciousness of themselves. In order to fulfil this mission it must his contention that "man is an evil, savage beast" only the futile
have popular appeal. But such popularity docs not mean the chatter of an evil-disposed fellow.'
blunting of problems or the transformation of literature into propa- Gorki thus puts a very wide interpretation on the "Oblornov
ganda. The popularity of truly great literature should rest on the disease." He shows this disease to be present everywhere where
fact that it expresses genuine problems on the highest possible level high-sounding words about "lofty'' emotions are used to cover up
and digs down to the deepest roots of human suffering, feeling, the lack of will or strength required to fight for the transformation
thought and action. It is not by accident that poets such as Push- of th~ unsatisfa~tory world. The line of these Oblomovs depicted by.
kin and Lermontov are represented as having a great influence on Gorki reaches nght down to Klim Samgin.
certain of Gorki,s characters. This influence is intended as evidence · But Gorki the creator does more than this; he carries the Oblo-
for the correctness of his humanist conception of the mission of mov line beyond its original limits. He shows a number of charac-
literature. ters who, like Goncharov's Oblomov, are ruined precisely by their
The possibility of such a function of literature is given because in soft and passive, but pleasing and not valueless humanity; but
reality the great objective problems of life do not appear suddenly, while in Goncharov,s novel these traits are closely linked with
like a bolt from the blue; they arc not inventions of some great Oblomov's parasitic existence as a landowner, Gorki extends the
genius, but exist in life itself as a chain, the links of which develop problem to other spheres and shows the dialectic of this passivity
out of each other and are interconnected among themselves. That and inevitable destruction as it manifests itseif in various classes of
the great characters in literature form a continuous series, that a
certain historical tradition can exist in the creation of great typical
.\
Russian society. His criticism of petty-bourgeois Russia often takes
the form of a plebeian version of the Oblomov problem. A clear
characters, is merely the reflr.ction of interconnections existing in .instance of this is the figure of Yakov in his novel Three Men.
the objective reality of life itself. This link with real life is mirrored Yakov says to Ilya Lunev, who wants to rouse him from his passi-
in the critical method of Dobrolyubov and Chernyshcvski; the for- :1 vity: "You are angry, but to no purpose. Just turn this over in
mer's review of Goncharov's novel Oblomou is a perfect example
of this close link with life. It shows the continuity and within this I1 your mind : man is made for work and work is made for man . . .
Like a wheel-it turns and turns and gets nowhere, and ·no one
knows what it is turning for?,
continuity the constant evolution of certain problems, in a long line
of characters, from Pushkin's Onegin to Goncharov's Oblomov.
It is certainly no accident that this both methodologically and
objectively exemplary critique was written about Oblomov and not
l
!
I
The Oblornov disease as presented by Gorki originates in the in-
dividualist isolation of men living in the petty-bourgeois swamp.
The better specimens among them may harbour fine and genuinely
some other character of fiction. Goncharov's novel shows, with a human feelings. They are deeply dissatisfied with life in the swamp
typicality rarely surpassed, certain decisively important features of and make desperate efforts to create a better life for themselves. But
R ussia's specific development, certain specific forms of Russian all such efforts are frustrated by their feebleness of will and their
b ackwardness. passivity which are in turn the consequence of their selfish intro-
• Nor is it an accident that Gorki, in his quality of critic and version. It wa~ in Matuey Ko<.hemayakin that Gorki gave the most
 .,
_. ~...,...,., u~ .cut<U.i"EAN REALISM GORKI's HUMAN COMEDY
221

l profound and comprehensive picture of the new.OblomovhMatvers

. el Oblomov.ian trait is that he would hke to exc ange t c
gcnum c yulsivc drunken " idyll" of his parasitic I~fc for a .truly
lution of October was the heir to the finest traditions of the past
struggles for freedom. It will be one of the most important tasks

~~%~~ ~nd b~autiful, ~ails.

of our literary history to uncover the numerous threads which link
g.enuine " idyll.'' He m l?ve wxth a Gorki with the Russian classical literature of the nineteenth century
woman revolutionary. "And he imagined a quxet life Wlthou~ need .I and to show what contribution his new conception of its p roblems
for other people, without a col~cealef ha,~red of them and Without :I has made towards the development of socialist realism. This would
fear just the two of them, sou m sou · · · · · . ac the same time be the Marxist reformulation of the great tradition
A~d when he dreams of their life together he always sees ~t as a as an illustration of which we have mentioned Dobrolyubov's review
monastery or a fortress. Needless to say, not only .do7s thJs. love J of Goncharov's O blomou.
.,
come
to nothinrr but Matvey Kozhemyakin's whole hfc JS a {aJiu:c.
o•
But his blood-relationship with Oblomov mant.'fcsts 1'tsc.lf 1'n the sm-'s
~ 3
In Gorki's life-work as in that of many other great modern ... .• ;
ccrity and delicacy of his feelings. A young gi.rl, r.e~?~gw~~~e~y ! J narrators-one need think only of Rousseau, Goethe or Tolsto)"- "
diaries when he is already an old man, exclaims., . o . '! ·I< the autobiographical element plays a very important part. Those
·:
Wh it's just like reading T urgenyev !'' The objeCtive contmulty ·'' great narrators who summed up the essential traits of their epoch in
t~~
.:
of problem reminds us of Chernyshevski's article Qn Turgenyev s mighty works of literature, had themselves experienced in their
A Russian at a Rendezuou.s. . own lives the emergence and maturing of the problems of the age.
This return to the Oblomov ~roblem is ..o~viously an exte;lSl~n
)
J T his p rocess of digesting the historical content of an epoch is itself
most characteristic for the epoch.
and encralization of a burning Issue. Th.Js IS show.n not on y . y
Gork~s Oblomov-like characters, but espect~lly
by his present~Lon ·J A great narrator regar~s not only the content of his creative
. of the ractical man who provides the fall for <?b.lom.ov. on- work but its basic manner and style as necessarily determined by the
charov'~ Stolz is merely a symbol for practical actlvJty .m ~en;al, historical realities of the time. How this style was born, why the
and Dobrolyubov saw clearly how feebly rooted ~e was m e ~s-
. '1 of the time how abstract and Utopian was the p resentatton
J:I
writer adopted this style and no other, is thus not the private busi- ....,'
... ,
l ness of the writer, not a mere subjective experience. On the other
of this character. In' pointing out the soc•a
stan sol · 1 causes of th'ts abstract j hand, tbe ' bad subjectivity' of many modern authors, who simply
quality Dobrolyubov says · . h' s 1 scatter their ego all over their works, is due to the fact that they
"Fo; this reason all we see in Goncharov's novel Is t~at t ts t.o z :j are unable to see their own development from the perspective of
is an active sort of fellow, who is always after s?methmg, runnmg I such a social and historical objectivity. Others (e.g., Flaubert) go
about, acquiring things, saying that life means dm~. som~ work,h:t~~
llut what he is doing and how he manages to get mgs one w
~~ so far as to sec their own subjectivity merely as a disturbing clement
interfering with the objectivity of their work. This sort of "aus-
all others fail-re mains a mystery for us." terity " does not, of course, prevent the intrusion of ' bad subjective'
In Gorki this abstract activity of the ty~es who. serve asdc?unter- elemen ts into their epic creations.
parts to the Oblomov passivity is clearly differentiated an ~~con· Gorki's own autobiographical writings follow the tradition of the . ' I:
crete dialectic is revealed. The types themselves rhang~ from ~y~ old cl<lssical <lutobiographies. One might even say that their dis-
kin and Miron Artamonov on the one hand to t e c ass-consclo tinctive characteristic, their leitmotiv, is precisely their extraordi- ~ :·.1
I

heroes of the revolutfonary working-class m~vement on the oth~r. nary objectivity. This objectivity does not mean that the tone of . .•'
tt·
.. I
~,· •
In these new circumstances their struggle ~ectdes the fate ~f Russtaf the narration is impartial. The tone of Goethe's autobiographical .: ..
Oblomov, while still an inter~sting ~nd .wJdcspread type, IS now o writings is far more objective than Gorki's. The objectivity consists
negli"'iblc importance in the w1dcr h1stoncal sense. . rather in the content of his autobiography, in the attitude to life
Go~ki's orininal treatment of the Oblomov proble~ .ts on1( .;_ne expressed in it; it contains very little subjective, personal material.
instance amo~rr many, all showing how the great traditl~,ns o . ~~; Gorki shows us his d evelopment indirectly, through the circum-
sian classical literature came to life. in h!s works. ~orkl s Socia lS. stances, events, and personal contacts which have influenced it.
realism was the heir to Russian classical hterature, JUSt as the revo Only at certain critical points does he sum up his subie~ti""' .... ~--:
 ·~
Gorki knew well enough that it is this objectivity which draws a
cnce of the world as raising his pers~n~1ty to a mgn~r 1eve1 n~L .A
,~ .. 0

even this is not always a directly subJeCtive summ~ry, the rcade~ lS demarcation line between great and minor literature between classi-
often made to sec for himself Gorki's own evol'!-t1~n under the~ calliterat~re and the sh~ subjectivity of his own ~ontempcraries.
. In an arttcle he wrote m 1908, Gorki liaid about thi~ difference
fluencc of objectively depicted events. Gork1 lum~elf gave ..
account of his autobiographical method : " In my chtldhood I .saw
._ between old and contemporary literature: . ·
m self as a hive in which many simple, ordinary people depostt~d, "Characteristic of the old writers is their breadth of conception,
liJe bees, the honey of their knowledge and thoughts ~bout life, ~e ha~ony of thei.r. world-view, the intensity of their feeling for
each generously enriching my life with what they ha~ to .gtve. Oft~n hfe; the1r field of VIsion encompassed the whole wide world . The
this honey was impure and bitter, but all knowledge ts still hon~y. 'personality • of a contemporary writer is merely his manner of
This objectivity is the most subjective,. most pcrso~al t~att of writ.ing, and the real personality, i.e., the complex of thoughts and
Gorki's autobiography, for it is here that h;s pro~o~nd ttes wtth ~~.e
feelmgs, grows ever more elusive, unsubstantial and to tell the truth
lif (! of the working masses, which is the basts of hts 1mplacab~e, m1 1- miserable. '!he wri~er is no lo~ger a mirr?r of the world, but onl~
tant humanism, finds expression. I.n the first pages of hts au~: a small sphnter of It, from wh1ch the soc1al backing has worn off
and having lain about in the mire of the city streets, it is no Ionge;
biography he already reveals these tte.s ve.ry pl~mly. He ~ays \ ,,
the stor of his childhood appears to hun hke a . sombre fatry-ta e. a~le to .reflect with its facets. the great life of the world; all it
which ~e must nevertheless truthfully tell, desptte all the horrors 1t m1rrors.~s fragm~nts of street hfe, little scraps of broken souls."
contains. ,, Truth takes precedence over pitf, .and after all I .am no~ Gorkt s autob10graphy shows how a true mirror of the world
speaking about myself, but about that stt.fhng, .narrow ctrclc o comes into being in our time. It raises afresh the question of the
re~eptivity an? sensiti~ity ?f the artist, which has been completely
agonizing experiences ~n ":'hich I liv~d ~nd m whtch ~ammon Rus~
twisted. from 1ts meanmg m the practice of most modern writers.
sian folk lived and stzll [we ." (My ttahcs. G.L.) . ..
Here the connection between Gorki's object~vi~y and h1s nuht~nt There 1s a false but deep-seated conviction about, that the essence
h umanism is dearly visible. T his is that " pa;ttal:ty of the. mater~al~ of r~c;.ptivity is a ~assive mirroring of things, that it excludes the
ist," about which· the young Lenin wrote m hts. p~le.mlC agamst posstbthty of an act1ve approach to life and its problems that it is
Struve's sham objectivism. This compound of ~bject1v1ty ~nd par~ the. opposite of activity and practice. This wrong ~onception
tiality (which is an essential elem ent of proletanan hu~ams~) and
denves from modern subjectivity and Gorki rightly saw in it the loss
't" connection with the actual great struggles for the hbcrauon of of the " social backing " of that mirror which every writer ought
l ·' · h b' h · " When I to be.
the workers, is clearly expressed m t e auto 10grap Y: '
recall these leaden abominations of our savage Russtan. bfe; ~ some· ·~ Such .writ~rs experi~nce o~ly themselves. For them receptivity
times ask myself ·' Is it worth while to speak of such thmgs · . And means bstemng to thetr own mner sensations, to the experiences of
1 answer myself with renewed conviction, 'Yes, it is wo~th whtle ~' ; their own ego. Their attention is directed, not towards the outer
for this is the tough, vile truth which ~s still ali~e to th1s day..It~~ a world, not towards life itself, but towards their own reactions to
truth which must be known down to tts roots, 1n order that 1t may the ou ter world and their so~ called" receptivity " is merely a pa!isive
be torn out with these its very roots from the memory and soul of contemplation of their own navel. This contrast between Gorki and
other c?ntempora~ writers is shown perhaps the most vividly in his
men, from our whole hard and shameful life. · ·. ·" . . .
Gorki wrote this in 1913 and added that what lS ~T?azm.g m t~ n;emones of L~omd Andreyev. Andreyev was a writer of great
life is not the toughness with which its beastly brutahttes clmg to 1t, g1fts and was fatrly candid in his conversations with Gorki. In one
but that" however thick this layer may be, bn?ht, healthy and crea- of these candid talks he complained to G orki that while he Gorki
tive things can neverthciess br~ak t~rough tt; fine, human. seeds was always mee?ng ~he most .interesting people, he, ~dreye~
!-(t'OW nevertheless, fostering an tmpensh.able. hop~ of. ~ur 7ebtrth to
never succeeded 1n domg anything of the sort. Andreyev did not
· brighter truly human life. " T hus it is th1s objecttvtty ttself that unde~stand th~t this was not a matter of good or bad luck, but
--~

;rovides ;he means· of the real struggle against the powers of that 1t was sxmply a result of the two writers' different basic
approach to life. Andreyev possessed a most vivid imagination and.
darkness.
 GORKI'S HUMAN COMEDY 225
\I with it a great gift of abstraction entirely. lac~n~ in ?ire~tio?· As sions veil reality and the lives of those who harbour illusions are
soon as he met with any manifestation of hf.e, h1s rmagmauon llll~~ not real lives, but only lives of iUusions or of lost illusions. And the
diately seized upon it, raised it to a very h1gh ~egrec of abst;actlOn ~pp~ent polar ~pposit~ of the man of illusions, the sceptic, the dis-
and with that done the phenomenon lost all mterest for hun. !le JlluslOned, expenences JUSt as one-sidedly only his own disappoint-
lacked the patience to listen carefu1ly and grasp the true mcarung ment and its subjective causes. Modern optimism and pessimism,
of the phenomenon, to observe it from every aspect and at ~very modern illusions .and disillusions both equally create mere formulas,
stage of development, compare it pain.stakin~ly and n:cthod.1cally even though, as m the case of Andrcyev, they may be fantastic and
with other phenomena and only then giVe a picture of It,, a ptc~re interesting formulas. IUusions and their loss are equally barriers to
a~ closely as possible approaching the richness of the sect10n ·of life
it depicted. : ., .
,J
~·
i
the acceptance and absorption of reality.
But a rich and eventful life is a prerequisite of great literature,
But however paradoxical it may sound, Gork1 s pat1ence was a ! not only in the material sense of a wide experience of life, but also
'
result'0 ( his activity, and Andreyev's impatience was a direct result 1 from the point of view of the depth of the problems presented. A
of the fact that he took no active, practical part in the struggles of ·~ writer must live a rich life in order to be able to present what is
'the time, that he lived a life dedicated to purel~ literary .activities. j really typical. It was Richard Hurd, an eighteenth-century English
For the essentials of reality lie deeper and requue a patlencc and j reshtheticist, who expressed this most clearly: In commenting on
receptivity such as Gorki possessed; such traits be~ome visible o~ly l t e remark made by Aristotle that Sophocles depicted men as they
in the course of practical activities and can be d1scerned only by l ought to be, but Euripides as they really were, Hurd wrote :
those whose life is focussed on the practical. ,..\ " . . . . The meaning of which is : Sophocles, from his more
The difference between essential and inessential, between what 1 extended commerce with mankind, had enlarged and widened the
is right and what is merely interesting (eve~ though it may be q~ite ! narrow, partial conception arising from the contemplation of the
superficial or false) is quite decisive, prec1~ely fr~m the p:acttcal .-,. particular 'character into a complete comprehension of the ·kind.
point of view. For those ~vho hav~ a pa~t.ve attitude to. life, the , Whereas the philosophic Euripides, having been mostly conversant
boundaries between cssenttal and messent1al, between nght and i in t~c Ac adem~, when he came to look into life, keeping his eyes
wrong, are vague and blurred. It is only. in .that mutual excha~ge ! too mtent on smgle, really existing personages, sank the kind in
between the individual and the world wh1ch lS born out of practice, ·.j the individual, and so painted his characters naturally indeed and
out of action, that ·the essential things in t.he worl~ ~nd. in o~her truly with regard to the objects in view, but sometimes without that
individuals can be discerned. Only practical parttcrpatzon g1ves .1 general and universally striking likeness which is demanded to the ·· :1

choice and helps to determine the basis of such choice. <?nly ~uc­ ') full exhibition of poetical truth."
1
cess or failure in social activity can reveal the truly essential thmgs
inli~ . J
One cannot, of course, compare modern writers with Euripides.
By the passage quott!d we only wished to touch upon the causes of -.. . .
But activity without receptivity is blind. Only a pass10na~e ·I the extraordinary poverty of modern literature. We have seen that . .l
acceptance of the world such as it is, with all its inexhaustlble mula- ! the withdrawal from life, which is characteristic of.modern writers, • ' •I

plicity and incessant change, only a passionate desire to learn froz::t j ~as. ~ecessarily produced a position in which they can 'create only
the world; only love of reality, even though there are ~any aborm- .i mdlVldual figures; when they are driven to go beyond the merely
nations in it against which one has to struggle and wh1c~ one hates ·~~ individual, they must lose themselves in empty, lifeless abstractions.
-a love which is not hopeless because in th: sa~e ~eahty on? ~n . Real types can be created only by writers who have an oppor- .'
sec a road leading to human goodness-faith m hf~, and m ~ts
~r.
'. tunity to make many well-founded comparisons between individuals,
movement through human endeavour towards somcthmg better, 1D. comparisons which are based on rich practical experience and which
spite of ali the stupidity and evil mani~ested every da~-only .P~ are such as to reveal the social and personal causes of affinities
sionatc r.eceptivity, provides a foundation for a vracucal actlVlty between individuals. The richer the life of the writer, the greater
of the right kind. . will be the depth from which he can bring up such affinities ; the ··~· ·,
This is optimism without illusioru and Gorki possessed 1t. Illu- wider the compass embracing the unity of the personal and sn,.i::ot
1
 ~·~·~~..... ... '"" 'Yt'" .P~=cu~cu, ~u~ Juun:: genu1nc ano tne more and strength, and told him that after all the things he had been
!nteresting will the character be. through he would have every right to be evil.
Gorki's autobiography shows us how a rich and eventful life
developed in the young Gorki this faculty of creating types by com- 4.
paring superficially quite different types. In this education of a Like most great story-tellers, Gorki began his career with the
great writer literature itself, of course, played a very important part. short story; that form which has for its theme a strange, out-of-the-
The young Gorki, still in his formation period, already saw that the common, surpr~sing event-an event so conceived that its surprising
great vocation of classical literature lay in teaching men to sec and aspect gives a both personally and socially characteristic picture of
express themselves. FrQm the outset Gorki always linked literature one or more persons. This nature of the short story makes it a
with life in his reading. As he read Balzac's Eu.~cni.e Grandet, he I; primeval and ever-popular form of art. Gifted story-tellers among
I
was not only delighted with the magnificent simplicity of .the pre- i the people, when they want to tell an audience the story of some
/.,. ,:
sentation-he immediately compared the old moneylender Grandet ! strange and characteristic happening, instinctively adopt a form
with his own grandfather. that approaches that of the short story. In the same way, young
But nevertheless literature is only an aid to reality, even though Gorki, writing admirable short stories at a very early stage in his
a very important one. What remains decisive is still the richness career, was not merely following a literary tradition, but obeying an
of life itself, the passionate desire to absorb and reproduce the inborn urge to tell these stories out of his own eventful life, an
phenomena of life in all their fullness. Gorki gives very interesting urge which literary tradition, the example of other earlier great
•instances of how he began to mould the living men he met into writers, merely disciplined and rendered conscious.
types. I quote only one characteristic example : On the other hand, all the problematic elements introduced into
" Osip, neat and trim, suddenly appeared to me .}ike the stoker the short-story form by the exigencies of contemporary life are also.
Jacob, who was always indifferent to everything. Sometimes again present already iri Gorki's early writings. The more intricate the
he reminded me of Peter Vasilyev the proof-reader, sometimes of conditions of life, the more difficult it is to give an exhaustive
Peter the cabby; sometimes I thought he had something in common chara'cterization of human beings through a single occurrence in
with my grandfather-in one way or another he is like other old their lives; all the more so as the accidental element (of which men-
men I have known. They were all amazingly interesting old fel- tion was made earlier) in the combination of individual tz:aits with
lows, but I felt somehow that one could not live with them, that it class traits is a considerable obstacle to the illustration of the socially
would be difficult and unpleasant. It was as though they ate away typical by the one striking incident on which the short story i~
your soul and their shrewd talk covered your heart with a layer of based. Such illustration was still easy in the first period of the
brown rust. Was Osip good ? No. Was he evil? Not that either. Renaissance; it provided the social basis for the neat perfection of
He was shrewd, that much I understood. But while it amazed me the short stories of Boccaccio and his contemporaries. In their
by its flexibility, this shrewdnc5s tormented me and in the end I beauty there was nothing of the artificial, formalistic, abstract
began to feel that he was on all points hostile to me." quality we find in the writings of the modern. imitators of the
Thus Gorki's autobiography shows us how a great poet of our· classical short story.
time was born, how a child developed into a mirror of the world. Owing to the greater intricacy of its material, the modern short
Gorki's objective style emphasizes this character of the book. It story is of necessity conceived on broader lines than the old : it
shows Maxim Gorki as an important participant in the human embraces a chain of events moving with increasing tension towards
comedy of pre-revolutionary Russia and it shows us life as the true a final event which corresponds to the stylistic point in the classical
teacher of every great poet. Gorki introduces us to this great J short story. Such a broadening of the short story is naturally not
teacher who formed him and shows us how it was done, how he,.
f, merely quantitative but involves important new problems of style.
Gorki, was taught by life itself to be a man, a fighter and a poet. But in spite of these inevitable changes the basic problems of form
relating to the old short story still remain valid fol' the new. For
And it was precisely the experience of its many horrors that turned
Gorki into a militant humanist. Tolstoy admired Gorki's goodnes~ 1 if the plot is not vigorously compressed and the characterization
;J
·~
''
.. '
i.
 .,. • v.vu:•.::~ "" .t:.U!<Vt'~i\N REALISM GORKI'S HUMAN COMEDY 229
p
.\ achieved by means of action, the short story dis_solves into a mili~u.~ developed the novel towards a greater concentration which for-
picture, into a reproduction of a mood or mto a psychol?g1cal merly ?eiongc~ only to the short story. The first of these move~
analysis; and this is exactly what happened to the s~ort story m the ments JS a umversal characteristic of nineteenth-century literature
hands of the greater part of modern short-story wn~ers. and only very few great. write:s have succeeded in preserving the
But since Balzac and Stendhal, the best newe: wnte~s have be.en short-story form from d1ssolut1on and destn..tction. The second
struggling to give their complicated stories-stones deahng not w1th trend, ~he evolution of the novel in the direction · of greater con-
one event but with a chain of events, the s~me sharp and self-suffi~ ccn~rat10n, marks the. struggle. ~f th~ best writers of the period
cient form as the old stories possessed. Th~s struggle put the crea- aga~nst_ the art-destroymg cond1t1ons mtroduced into literature by
tive imagination of the writer to an increasmgly exactmg ~est. For cap1tahsm.
the more intricate the contradictions, the revelation of wh1ch forms In bot~ respects Gorki follows in the footsteps of the best Eur-
the point . of the short story, the more difficult it .is .to find a plot opean wntcrs, but always in his original manner. In his autobio-
in which every aspect of such complicated contradrct10ns finds con- graphy, and also in a long letter written to Octave Mirbeau he
crete expression. . . . spea~s of the. d~cisive influence Balzac had on his developmcr;t as
The struggle for this form of the short st.ory rs a bas1c elem~nt 1~ a wnter. Th1~ mfluence of Balzac is due mainly to the fact that
Gorki's writings, not only in his short ston~s the.~selves but m hiS both great wnters were at bottom, if not on the surface, faced with
autobiography and his novels as well. Go~kt s wntmgs are crowded the san~c _task : t~ dep~ct, _as a w~ole, the multiple and intricate
with characters in numbers comparable w1th those of Balzac. Never- I contrad1C~1~ns wh1ch anse m a penod of great social change. It is ..
...
theless-or perhaps for this reason-his cop1position is based, ~ot .-'
I ch~ractenst1C ?f both autho~s that in their presentation of society,
on characters but on events. Only his last novels are an except10n 'l
I
whlle they stnve to .s~ow wrt? the greatest possible clarity a pro-
to this, but eiements of his style are still visible in the methods of I cess of decay and d1smtegrat10n, they at the same time as the
great artists they are, try to follow in the footsteps of th~ classics
characterization even here.
As a result of his eventful life, Gorki had such a sto~e of charac-
ters and events at his disposal that he could always ptck the most
•suitable to illustrate his point, and could intensify it to an extreme
II an~ depict this decay in an artistically perfect and complete form.
It 1s therefore no accident that in Gorki's first novels we find the
same short-story-like concentration as in many novels of Balzac.
without making it less true to life. He was never forced to adhere l · But despite this mutual assimilation to one another of the short
f' .

to the pattern of the humdrum and average in presenting men and

I! story and the novel, there still remains a wide gap between them
~· ~

' I
events. And because from the start his intention was to expose the a gap which all great writers consciously or instinctively respect: :i
inhuman atrocities of life in old Russia, he could choose ~h~ mo~t The sho7t s_eo_ry, even in it.s modern wider form, presents a single,
flagrant cases; the more flagrant the case,_ the mor~ V1v1dly .!t ~tressed mdivldual fate. The workings of social forces appear in it
dcrnonstratcd the horrors possible in the RuSSla. of the yme. <?orkl s
genius manifested itself quite early in the art_IStry wtth ~h1ch he
,
..
l

!
m extreme exaggeration. Convincing evidence of the bare fact
that such things are possible at all is sufficient to expose an almost
made these flagrant cases appear not.only poss1ble, ~ut t~1cal; th_e I
too horrible reality. Let us think of such stories as Gorki's A Man
inner evolution of his characters, wh1ch reveals the1r typ1cal quail- ir Born. When _Gor~i wants to show the emergence of humanly •i
~al~able forces m th1s swamp of abominations, he again chooses a
·I
ties seems to move towards such a flagrant outcome with fateful I

nec'essity. The opposite tendency in Gorki, wh~ch fori?s ~he s1mllar form of short story (Yemelyan Pilyat).
· ·counterpart to his exposure ~f the horrors ~f T?anst Russ1a-1.e., Of course this does not by any· means exhaust the thematic
the demonstration that in sp1te of all abommat10ns, truly h~~an r~1~gc of Gorki's short stories. The short story offers him the possiw ..
qualities develop and break through-naturally demands a s~ilar b1hty of presenting the dialectic of social necessity and individual · ., .... o.;;.:: •
presentation of sharply contrasted, flagrant and extraordmary dest1~y by mean_s of extreme, particularly interesting cases, and .:·.:
events. show1~g th~ dev10us, adventurous, sometimes quite fairy-tale-like
The nineteenth century has on the one hand to some extent as- ways m wh1ch the class realities prevail against a stubborn erring
similated the short story to the novel and on the other hand has or misguided conscience. Here, too, the short story offP.r/ nnt•• ~
 limited presentation of certain aspects of a type and not the whole scarcely ever describes any such function without some scandalous
picture of the type in its universal form. But the very possibility occurrence in which the stupidity and brutality cloaked by these
of such unusual individual fates illustrates the inevitability of typi- forms comes to · the surface. He often uses such occasions for the
cal situations and renders their understanding easier. We call at- final explosion of latent antagonisms. Thus in Foma Gordeyev,
tention, for instance, to the case of the idle young Oblomov·type where a banquet given to celebrate the launching of a new ship
dreamer in " Blue Life, who is " rescued " by his cla5s, only to serves as the occasion when Foma, driven beyond endurance, flings
develop into a calculating and surly merchant.
Finally, it is possible in a short story to show certain aspects ?f
~is hatred and c~ntempt into the face of the capitalists and pub-
hcly relates the hfe.story of each of thl' guests, with all murclns . '
great social trends, of vast social complexes, and to show them. m and forgeries and other crimes they have committed. This object-
a relatively isolated form, letting the movement as a whole prov1de lesson-like critical presentation of the dissolution of the old forms
:·· of life is a most important feature of Gorki's whole life-work.
a general background.

~:
'··
'The assimilation to the short·story technique in Gorki's early
novels is quite a different matter. Here the typical aspect of the
·j
In Matvey Kodzemyakin he shows, in the struggle between
tO\vn and suburb, how the harmless old custom of cheerful and
. ~

,,I exceptional case must emerge wholly from the chain of events friendly sparring degenerates into a fight of appalling brutality and
j(:. and form the basis for the presentation of an epic totality. Here ·:l cruelty; this tendency reaches its culminating point in Klim
l
.,'· the unpropitious effect of capitalist conditions hampers the writc:r I Samgm where Gorki describes the mass panic on the occasion of
.
I·
incomparably more than in the case of the short story. Th1s I
I
.
the coronation of Nicholas II.•when thousands of men , women and

'j
::
difficulty affected all novels of the nineteenth century. children were trampled to death.
But Gorki in his youth had to face even more serious obstacleS Gorki follows this socially int>vitable road boldly to its end. But
than the earlier great novelists of the nineteenth century. For to as a. result of the events, objects, natural meetings of people and
whatever extent a great writer aims to lay his emphasis, both the.bke, must disappear from his writings-that is, all the things, the
thematically and ideologically, on the portrayal of the disintegratio~
of a society,-as a narrator he needs a tangible fulcrum for Jus
j typ1cal appearance, typical sequence and typical role in life of
which lent the epic poems of the older type their palpable social
plot, needs stable connections between characters, who must have I meaning. Life loses its sensuously perceptible face.
common spheres and objectives of action, etc., all in a visible Life crumbles away. 'We have seen how the old Asiatic form of
world in which the plot can unfold in epic form. It is well known
that capitalism destroys to an increasing extent the " totality of ob-
i
~
capitalism turned people into surly and malevolent hermits and
individualists, into beings vegetating likr snails in their own
jects "-as Hegel called this postulate of epic poetry. Balzac and cramped shells. This animal-like individuali ~m of the petty-bour-
Stendhal could still make use of residues left behind by the heroic ge.ois masses was merely varnished over by the superficial moderniz-
epoch of bourgeois evolution and Tolstoy of remuants of the old ation due to developing capitalism. The same boredom, the same
i;
semi-feudal patriarchal country life, even though what they de- vague feeling of futility still ruled their lives. and their dull ve"e-
picted was the dissolution of these conditions of life. ij • ~ -

tatlvc existence was relieved only by bouts of bestial excesses.

t')

;
But Gorki was on the one hand faced with a far more advanced H ow is it possible in these circumstances to tell in its continuity
process of disinteO'ration and restratification, and on the other a s~ory that matters? How can complete,. rich, truly li vin.~ charac-
hand he stressed ;ith far greater accusatory and revolutionary ters be found in this world?
fervour the disintegration of the old form of life and of the old Every social crisis and reshuffle must increase the accidcmal
spheres of action. He maintained with passionate polemic force quality of individual destinies and especially the consciousness of
that these old forms of life had lost their living content and had •'· this accidentality. The more "accidental , the forms of life be-
been turned into mere empty shells, cloaks for the bestiality of the come, the more difficult it is to put them into poetic form and the
:~ old Russia of the Tsars. In order to visualize this contrast quite more difficult it is to endow them with epic significance. Dostoyevski
r~~
.. sharply, one need only compare the descriptions of births, mar: was already p.rofoundly aware of this problem. At the end of his
,.. riages,. deaths, etc., in Tolstoy and in Gorki's early works. Gork1 novel A Raw 'f'outh he complained at length of the literary
r,,,
u' ~ •
"if'.... .
 GORKI'S HUMAN COMEDY 233
uusuitability of such an "accidental" family as the one that served tJ: . Gorki developed this tendency far beyond the limit reached
as the subject of the novel. He remarked with an ironical dig at by Tolstoy and he was far more conscious of the social causes of
Tolsto)' (without naming him) that only the description of the old this "space" than Tolstoy could be. He also regarded the social
Russian nobility was a good subject for the novelist, for among barriers defining this ".space" far more consciously and critically
them one might " find at least a semblance" of a proper order. tha.n Tolstoy; he sees m them those same sinister powers against
And he lets the writer of the letter draw this conclusion after hav- whtch he had fought passionately aU through his life. For this
ing read the manuscript : " I must admit that I would not like to reason, the "space" has in Gorki a far more distinct social charac-
be a novelist depicting a hero coming from an accidental family. ter, a social history of its own and is at the same time-far more
It is a thankless task, without any beautiful forms." Gorki never- polemic~Ily than i.n Tolstoy-conceived as a dungeon of the human
theless undertook this " thankless task." Accidental people, acci- p ersonahty. ~~~ th~s way human loneliness is transformed by Gorki
dental environment, an accidental family-all these things acquire from a condHton ~nto a process? int? a dramatic happening. Go{ki ., .,. ·• ·
a realistic meaning, they all stress the disintegration of old Russia. sh?\~s how the pnson walls which, m spite of their common social
Like all great writers, Gorki takes this " defect" of his material, ongm, are y~t very personal walls of solitary confinement, are
its unsuitability for presentation, as the starting-poin~ of his creative gradually budt up for each individual out of the mutual inter-
task. Only eclectics or cpigones run away from the obstacles which action of personality and environment.
Hfe places in the path of art. Truly great artists have no illusions It is with this in view that Gorki always devoted much attention
about the difficulties arising out of the choice of such socially un- to the chi!dh~od of his heroes, (unlike Balzac who mostly allots a
merely cp1sod1~ role to the ~a:Iy history of his characters) and thus
I
suitable themes. The greatness of the writer's art consists in find- t
ing a way to present such unsuitable subjects in truly artistic form seems to contmue the tradtt.lon of the older novels of W ilhelm ; ,I
and turn tbe unfavourable circumstances into carriers and vehicles .M. cz.st<:r' s Ap~renticeship, Tom ]ones etc. But this ' similarity ·'
of a new, original form born out of this same unsuitable material. 1s merely seemmg. Goethe and Fielding described the childhood of
Gorki's starting-point is thus the brutal atomization of Russian thci~ ~eroes in order to. reveal the genesis of their positive personal ·. '
·!
life, its "zoological individualism" as he calls it, its hopeless bore- qualtttes, wher.eao; G?rk1 doe<; so in order to show in tangible vivid
dom and apparent immobility. But creator that he is, he directs this form the w~y m w?tch the particular prison waUs surrounding the ...
lazy immobility into a continuous series of movements, short bursts hero ~azne mto b.cmg, thus transforming the " space " (which he
I

of exertions, desperate explosions, alternating fits of elation and de- co~cctvcs as a pnson wall confining the personality) into a his-
pression. He cuts up the dreary, cloudy mass of boredom into
brief dramatic moments full of internal movement, full of tragedy
r
., toncal process. He r elates not only the history of the building of I .

th~ wall, b~t the un~u~ces.sfu1 attempts to escape and finally the .Y•
and comedy, and creates in his novels a long chain of such small,
1. po1~t at wluch the vtcttm m despair dashes his head to fragments
but dramatically animated scenes, in which he shows the revolt j on Its stones.
of men against their environment, their de.~pair, their relapse into .;
apathy; in brief, the internal and external destruction of the hu- Thus is in Gorki boredom made dramatic loneliness turned into
man personality by the social forces governing life in old Russia. di~Ioguc, ~ediocrity poetically animated. Unlike his contempor-
Even the loneliness of his characters is not a state qf mind (as it ancs, Gorkt does not ask : what is a mediocrity like- he asks :
always is in the works of the Western writers, whether they extol ?ow doe~ a .mediocrity develop, how is a human b eing distorted
or deplore the fact). In Gorki's world loneliness is a prison. Before t~to med10cnt~? I~. these his de.cisive creative problems the sig-
Gorki Tolstoy had already depicted the evolution of human beings mncance of hts mthtant humamsm is clearly revealed. Like all
not as a movement along a line, but as a movement w.ithin a defi- ·/. , h?nest realists of the capitalist era, Gorki shows how capitalism
nite, although not mechanically and permanently closed, space; in j • d~s~embers the. human l?ersonality; and i? ~onformi.ty with the con-
other words Tolstoy. had already regarded as characteristic of a ! dtttons of old-ttme Russ1a, he can show 1t m a far more atrocious
man the extreme pos$ibilities between which his development moved
to and fro.
I form than the Western realists. But as a militant proletarian hu-
manist he regards this dismemberment merely as a transitoiV hi!:.
 toncal necess1ty ot a certam period in human evolution _and not as The correct proportion in depicting the dialectic of social and
an immutable accomplished fact or as a fateful unavmdab.lc des~ individual factors is not a formal harmony, but a result of Gorki's
tiny. Therefore, while depicting this dismembermcn~, he IS co~~ correct understanding of the social process which necessarily leads
t ;.
-:- stantly and indignantly up in arms against it. He ~la1.ms that thJ.S through the abominations of capitalism to a proletarian revolution.
r-:.' dismemberment is the specific historical sin of capltahsm. By pre~ In contradistinction to all his contemporaries, Gorki's short
. '
scnting to our eyes the process of dismemberment, h~ ceaselessly scenes are without exception kept on a very high level. He follo-<vs
r.· .
t:.: ..' directs our attention to the image of the whole, the mtegral, the
non-dismembered human being, even though only in the shape of
the example of the classics in that he does not pcnnit any naturalist
barriers to limit the manner and capacity of expression .of hi~
lost possibilities. He is the only writer of his time who prese~ts. the Lt characters. But because of his unparalleled experience and con-
:r .. !· fcti shi;:ed world of capitalism in a manner totally free ?f .fetiShJSI:~. tact with the common people he is able nevertheless to give this
. -~ . This central problem of Gorki's art, these contradiCtions, thLS 'l
higher level of expression a natural form. In other words, the

l,
tension inherent in the life-material he proposes to present, deter- content of the thoughts expressed is on a much higher level than
mine his poetic technique. We can here illustrate only a few o~ ~he any naturalist "average" would permit; but the situation which
more important traits of this technique : above. all the stnk1~g gives rise to these thoughts is perfectly true to life and completely
brevity of the single scenes out. of which he b~1lds up t~e c~1c typical, and the language in which they are expressed is perfectly
totality of his novels-a result thts of the destruction of the totahty in keeping with the social condition and individual character of
of obj ects." . the person speaking. .
These scenes, however short, are yet full of sharply pointed mn~r J
Gorki oversteps the naturalist barriers "only" insofar as he
dramatic tension. Like other great realists, Gorki shows . hts .I presents men and situations on the highest concrete level that is
characters from every aspect, but never by description or analysis, still within the possible scope of the type in question. I mention
always by means of some action. It foll.ows fro~ the nature of only one instance of this: old Mayakin comes to see his daughter
the world depicted by Gorki that such actwn of his characters can
bt. of only shor t duration- they are always ~esperate bursts of II and finds a notebook and in it a sentence expressing the Hegelian
thought that everything that is, is reasonable. The old scoundrel
effort, follo\ved by a relapse into apathy or bcstlahty. . reacts to this sentence with the same passion as old Grandet to a
Thus, the "defect" of the material he works on compels h1m to I quotation from Bentham. He says: "Hm-everything in the world
put aside the broad composition of the older narrators: but as. a
true-born poet he nevertheless does not ~ive up p_rescnt~ng en t1~e I is reasonable-not badly put, that ! So somebody has found that
out ! Yes, very well said indeed . And if there were no
human beings in their process of ev?lut10n .and 111. act1on. I~ J! fools, it would even be quite true. . . . But one always finds fools
for this purpose that he developed hts peculiar style of modellmo in places where they don't belong, so one can't say that everything
complete characters by means of a m ultiplicity of . facets, as in the world is reasonable ! . '' In such passages Gorki
diamond-cutters display the water of a gem. In a raptd sequence demonstrates in statu nasccndi how ideologies come into being and
of short scenes he gradually illustrates every one of these !a.c~l<> how the men of the present day readily take over from the thoughts
of his characters. Thus translating into action cv~ry po~s1b1hty of the past what best suits their p ersonal, individual purposes--or,
latent in a character such a continuity of short p o1gnant scenes in other words, how ideologies become socially effective.
finally adds up to th~ sum of a human personality ~estroycd .by The raising of such little scenes to levels of this height represents
capitalism and at the same time demonstr~tcs the umty of the in- at the same time that general social cohesion which is almost com-
dividual and the social in such a personahty. . . pletely lacking in the consciousness of each single individual. The
Gorki's proletarian humanism ~nablcs. him .to ac~1eve an mfall~ characters in the story believe that they are suffering a merely
ibty true balance and proportion m dealmg with th1s probl~m. He personal fate and despair in their loneliness, but the reader is
accuses capitalism of having destroyed t~e huT?an p:rsonahty, _but brought face to face with all the economic and ideological factors
he by no means ide~lizes the blind revolt a~.ams~ th1s destruction, which objectively determine the fate of the individual, even though
as Dostoycvski so often does and Dostoyevsk1 s ep1gones always do. the latter, in his desperate loneliness, knows nothing of them.
 GORKI'S HUMAN COMEDY 237
This raising of the leve], this method of painting man in his
entirety in a world the essence o.f which is the dismemberment and
.. dullness o~ th:ir lives and tu:ning them into conscious fi ghters for
the cmanctpatton of all mankmd, transforms them into harmonious
the destruction of this entirety, was required to turn the stories of contented, happy human beings in spite of the hard fate whicl~
Foma Gordeyev and Three People-although their basic pre· they have to bear as individuals, in spite of torture imprisonment
scntation is that of the short story-into genuine novels, i.e. epic and exile. '
~
totalities. They are, of course, very peculiar, concentrated and Thus we find a paradox-surprising hannony in The Mother
poignant novels, novels pervaded by an angry despair, and a -a ha~~ony born of the material it deals with and hence real in
humanist protest. .1 the a:t1:t1c sense and convincing despite its paradoxicaltt}'· The
'
Gorki's increasingly close co-operation with the revolutionary
.k dcs~r.tptwn of ~he heroi~ bat.tle fought by the vanguard of the
working-class movement, his increasingly complete absorption of WOikmg-class nses to ep1~ hetghts, and the revolutionary breaking-
Bolshevik theory and last but not least his experience of the first up of. th~ old forms of l~fe, the revolutionary building-up of the
(1905) nivolution effected a radical change in his style. It would or~ams~t10ns of th.e workmg-class gives birth to a new "totality of
be difficult to find, within the life-work of a single author, a greater obJects. The stnke, the May-day demonstration the trial the
contrast in style that that between Foma Gordeyev and The e~cape from prison, the funeral of the revolutionar;, etc.-all 'these
Mother. This contrast is born from the soul of the material itself ptctures ar.e ~ainted with the richness and breadth of the true epic.
and not as a formalist result of Gorki's own intentions. We call Even the mc1dents of brutal repression at the demonstration and
the attention of the reader to the contrast as formulated by Lenin
f the funeral are here not a "disturbance," as it would be in the
which we have .used as an epigraph. In his first short stories and (,
\ p: escntation o~ the disintegration of the old form!; of life in novels
' novels Gorki showed that people could no longer live in the old ~Ith bo~rgeou themes, but a great epic struggle, the struggle of
way. In The Mother he showed how at least the vanguard of l1ght agatnst darkness. With this change in the sphere of action .,
the working-class and peasantry was no longer willing to live in the of the cha:acters, the presentation of their single actions also
t old way. chan~es. Smgle scenesJ for all the austerity of their presentation,
Accordingly, the nature of the human building~components of are giVen a breatlth not elsewhere found in Gorki's writinO's.
the novel also undergoes a radical change. Consciousness takes . The great turning~point which this novel marks in the ;hole of
the place of dull despair. · Preparations for a revolution and revolu- literature does not consist solely in the fact that Gorki succeeded
tionary action take the place of blind revolt or weary apathy. This in creating positive heroes and showing by his own original method
riew material produced a new style of presentation in The Mother. how men come to be such positive heroes, but also in tha,_t Gorki
We still see old-time Russia with all its hideous brutality- -the pic- .as t~e first classic of socialist realism, achieves for the first time i~ ..
ture of this is rendered even more intense by the bestial measures the li~erature of class society the positive pathos of epic presentation.
of repression directed by Tsarism against the revolutionary move· Th1s change of style which Bolshevism and the revolution brouO'ht
' · ment of the workers. But the decisive current which here deter- ~bout .in Gorki's writings, can still be observed in his later no,;'els
mines the nature and the fate of the characters runs in the opposite 1-r. whtch ?e retur~ed to bourgeois themes. Naturally Gorki could
direction ; Gorki shows the difficult but clear road along which n~t. and dtd not wtsh .to change the basic methods of presentation• ., ~· · ' . '
the working~class advances to conquer the dark misery of its life ansmg out_o! t?c soctal character of the material he worked on.
and build a bright, human future for itself. The ?our~eozs hfe. of ~}d.ti.me Russia and its disintegration did not . ~

This liberating influence of the proletarian revolution is presented pe.rm1t, V.:Hho.ut vJOlauon of the material, any such broadly con-
by Gorki not merely as a hope for the future, but as a present celved epic p1ctures as those found in The Moth er. The tense
reality which transforms men; proletarian humanism is not merely ~ dramatic brevity of single scenes, the facet~1ike presentation of th~
a distant goal of the revolutionary working-class movement--each ·~· chBaratcttehrs from elvery aspect must thus remain the method used.
· step forward in it is at the same time the attain~ent of this goal .u e genera. m.ovement of the later novels has grown broader,
in the personal lives of those who take part in the movement. !he qu1eter, more ep1c m character. A society is going to its death
working-class movement, in plucking men from the unconsciOus before our eyes and the author knows that this means a happier
 any or the writings of even his greatest contemporaries. Because

1
msn tne searcmng, me aramauc
tuture tor manK1na. 1 ne ang ' . 1 · k n by the Gorki always clearly saw the end of the road, his novel<;, in spite
despair of the early novels disappea:s andh ltS p actheetsp~thc of man· of the much greater austerity of style, attain a far more generalized
. 1 ofb th great humamst w o sees .
I s~verelqn cam
kmd lymg <;l~ar e :re ·
f e 't This epic calm does not, however, m
~
typicality and an incomparably greater epic monumentality, than

I
of his protest. On the contrary, was given to either Thomas Mann or John Galsworthy.
any way mltlgate t ~ s ~rpnes5 d ore convincing. But Gorki's last novel, Klim Stzmgin, which we have already men-
his indictment of soclety lS even fibercer anh ~ hl'm·self in the thick tioned in another connection, has for its theme the history of the
· t d"1 tr'be y one w o 1s \1
r. it is no longe~ ~ VlO1e~. a .
1
t pleading of a public prosecutor bourgeois intelligentsia up to the revolution. It is the story of how
of the ~ght; lt 1S the f ~~s~:O~l: against Capitalism. This atti· ideologies were born, transformed and as~irnilated by the repre-
presentmg t~e case o . hn f the style the high degree of sentatives of various sections of the bourgeoisie and bourgeois in·
tude determmes the eplc ca o ' telligentsia in accordance with the requirements of the clao;s
typ ifying generalization. .. f m the style of The struggle. Gorki here raises to the highest level his method of
. h ks the trans1t1on ro
The autob10grap Y mar It shows the contradictory presenting ideologies in lively interaction with the personal lives of
Moth er to the style of ~he la ter nove1sf. hl"ch Gorki the great pro· his characters as determined by the course of the class struggle.
il'i · · · m the course o w '
.·II.,. and optlmlstlc l?roc~ss h urface out of the hideous depths of A separate monograph would be required to do justice to the
',..'\1 letarian hum~m~t, n:es to t e s hole alle of splendid men and mastery with which Gorki shows the incursion of Marxian ideas
Russian provmclal hfe.£ I~ a w theg wo~erful figure of the old into the bourgeoisie and bourgeois intelligen~sia and the distortion
th people ( or mstance
women o f e . . the mi hty strength of the pcop1c, and misrepresentation of these idcac; by the representatives of
.grandmother) Gorkl dcplc~. . gby the workincr-class and its various bourgeois pseudo-Marxists.
requiring ~'nly the leadbers lp 11V:ed into truly p~sitive human In Klim Samgin Gorki not only gives a historical picture of
vanguard m o~de_r to e trans o the evolution of the pre-revolutionary bourgeois intelligentsia ; he' '
beings in a soclahst wo{ldf Gorki's later years, the plebeianiz~d also shows the tendencies which were decisive for the subsequent
The first great nove o k. we have already discussed tn development of the intelligentsia and their attitude to the dictator-
Oblomov, Matvey Ko<:hem~a t~werful epic painting of the growth ship oi the proletariat.
brief. It was follo,~ed by t. \f in the family chronicle of the Another problem to be discussed in connection with Klim ..
and decay of Ru~stan capt~~e~~'that the idea of such a novel, Samgin is the problem of the personality and individualism. In his
Artamonovs. It lS no ace . of capl'talists a novel telling earlier novels Gorki mostly depicted characters who had ori~inally
. eral generat10ns ' . f possessed a live core of personality and in whom this core was
stretchmg across sev . f 't l'sm through the med1um o
the story of the dcc.ad~nce o . cap~r~ 1 ec.l u at the same time in trampled upon and crushed by the realities of old-time Russia. In
the decline of a capltahst famMlly, ppte hl'spBuddenbrooks, Gals- Klim Samgin Gorki approaches the problem of personality from
. Thomas ann wro . .
many countnes. th reatest bourgeozs wnters a dtt1erent angle in depicting the inner emptiness of the modern
worthy ~is For~yte Sag~. B~~ er~~lle~u~l and moral decline of individualistic bourgeois intellcctua1. Although this point is natur- ,
dealt chlefly Wlth the ux:n a ' of ca italism was merely for them ally mentioned in other, earlier works of Gorkit it· is only in Klim
their characters and the dec Y p unc.l the process of de- Samgin that it is made the focal point of a comprehensive and
a backgro':n~. cl;
Th . . terest centres aro
1~1 and only the intrinsic truth of the
cadence ;-rtt~ln one aml '! tylistic devices give the whole a sym-
methodical exposition.
· The problem of modern individualism is a general one in the
charactenzaoon and certam s literature of the nineteenth century. It was Ibsen who gave what
bolic ulterior mea~ing. h al aspects of this decline and is perhaps the sharpest criticism of this modern individualism when
Gorki, too, depleted t e pers~n f on of the various directions in he makes the ageing Peer Gynt peel an onion and compare each
devoted much care to the P.resc;; a { ped But he shows their live successive layer that comes away with a phase in the evolution of
which hereditary family tralts l e~e o f so.c'lety in a period of revo- his own personality, until at last he arrives at the conclusion, which
. · h th whole evo utton o · greatly shocks him, that all his life and his whole personality is
connect10n w1t e d ·chly than can be found m
1
lutionary crisis far more c ear y an n 1

'
 GORKI'S HUMAN COMEDY 241
nothing but a heap of peel without any cor~ at ~11. And wha~ ~is Gorki was one of the great gravediggers of capitalism.
core-less onion means is shown by Ibsen agan~ w1th a fine s~uncal But the capitalist world did not die in the October revolution· it
touch in the person of the empty boaster HJalmar Ekdal m The mu~t be destroyed bit by bit; it is like the hydra of the leg~·nd
Wild Duck. . wluch grows a new head every time one of its heads is chopped
'' Gorki's Klim Samgin gives a fine picture of this empu- off. Thus Gorki's ' human comedy' is not only an immortal pic-
ness of modern individualism. Klim Samgin is a Peer Gynt with- "i ture of a world that is no more, but a powerful weapon in the
out imagination, a Hjalmar Ekdal with ~ far · m?re s~ccessful s?- J struggle ~gaiost its s_urvivi~g, ha rmful remnants. Not for noth,ing., ...._..
cial career than his lbsenian cousin. H1s emptmess 1s the m am ) ha·.;c Lenm a~d Stalm earned on an incessant struggle against the
problem of his life from the very ~utset; from his infancy he al- petty-bo~r~e01s world surroun~ing the working class. This petty-
ways wants to play the part of an m1po;tan~ perso~~ge and play- bourgcozs mfluence took a vanety of forms in the great country
acts himself in and out of a variety of s1tuatJ.ons w1th ~he smoot~­ of Socialism. But the brutal violence of the kulaks and the r efined
ness of a ·diplomat. With consummate artistry _Gork1 ~laces ~ts " culture" of the wreckers had their roots in the same soil of Asi-
hero in a great variety of situations and ~hows ':"'1th ad~mrable m- atic capitalism, the merciless exposure of which constituted the
~entiveness how this emptiness, this caut1ous, d1plom~ttc lack of grc~ter part of Gorki's life-work. Even today, when a Socialist
backbone manifests itself in exactly the same manner m every pos- soc1cty has become a reality, it would be a mistake to think that
sible situation in life, from love to poli.tics. an? bu~i~ess, ~nd _how we have nothing further to learn from Gorki. Stalin's warning
easily this lack of backbone !apses into vtlla1ny m c~1t1cal s:tuat10ns. a bout the need to overcome the residue of capitalism in the being
On the other hand G orki shows the whole soc1al environment and consciousness of men reminds us how up-to-date this aspect
·.
~ in which this type is produced and fostered; he also s~ows how of Gorki's life-work still is.
I the development of this type is linked with the sharpemng of the Gorki's 'human comedy' differs from that of Balzac in that it
class struggle between bourgeoisie and pr?letariat. What Ibsen and does not stop at a complete portrayal of the ' animal kingdom '
other Western writers could at best ach1eve was the correct por- of philistinism. In Balzac the figure of the heroic Michel Chrestien,
trayal of this type as an individual; Gorki makes us feel through- the true representative of the revolutionary masses, who fell on
out the novel the approach of the great decisive clash between the the steps of St.~Merry, could be merely an episodic figure in the
classes and shows in a most intricate form, free of all .stereotyp_ed distance. In Gorki, out of the dissolution of the dreadful darkness
or pedantic devices, the connections between the evolutlon of Khm of old Russia, there emerges a bright host of revolutionary heroes,
Samgin's character and this central p_ro?lcm of the epoch. On~ o~ who people his stories and who arc the true images of the living
the personages in the novel charactenstically says to yo_ung Kl.tm: heroes who really liberated mankind, the heroes of the great Oc-
" There are only two answers, San1gin, to ev.ery quesllol! : one 1s tober revolution.
yes and the other'no. You seem to want to mvent a th1~d. M_ost
people want that, but up to now no one has succeeded m domg
so." d · ·
. By an amazing stroke of genius Gorki here s~ccee s t.n lllcar-
nating in the completely individual, personal des_tmy of Khm S~m­
gin the desperate attempt of a considerable sect1on of the. Russ1an
'.intelligentzia to find a "third wa.Y." between re~olut1on and
counter-revolution, between bourgeozsze and pr.o~et.a~1at.
T he exposure of Klim Samgin's spinel~s Ph1hst1m~m completes
~
the picture given by Gorki of pre-revolu~10nary R~ss1a. and m,akes
it into a composition embracing everythmg esse~t1a~, m~o a hu-
I . ..
man comedy' in the Balzacian se~se. A~ the poet1c h1stonan of the
epoch, as the painter of the trag1-com1c death of the old order,
l
 .....,
which are a part of the continuous life-process of all literature.
~uch organic and healthy assimilation of foreign literatures) which
CHAPTER EIGHT 1s part of ~he de·velopm~nt of a~ t:ue writers (through whom great
-· w.orks of hterature manifest the1r mfluence in other countries than
,.
those of ~eir origin) indic.ates the. concrete peculiarity of our prob-
lem : a hterary work of 1nternat10nal effect is always both a na-
tive ~nd a. ~tran?er in a foreign culture. Chernyshevski, the great I!
Leo Tolstoy and W estern European Russ1an cnttc sa1d that the tendency of Schiller's poems had won
Literature ,;; rights of citizenship for him in Russia and that therefore Russians
\
regarded Schiller as their own poet, as a participant in their own
.;.t l. I
cultural ~volution from the moment his poems were published in
·:., w F. H A v E grown so accustomed to the conception of world

~
the Russ1an language. Nevertheless Schiller still remains a German
literature, to the existence of a ~elatively large number of 'WTiters · ~
!" poet. But ~is literary. sign~ficance undergoes a change in this new
-;: whose influence reaches far beyond the confines of their own coun- sphere of mfluence, m th1s new connection; his own national
:.i,. try that we are apt to forget the complicated problems connected character is sublimated in the union with a new culture in which
r
-~
with such international influences. The question whether an author it becomes effective. No wonder that in these circumstances widely
i-; of international stature or not cannot be decided either by specu- differing appreciations of such phenomena have been expressed.
lation or by questionnaires. Such international influences are al- Goethe says: "Wer den Dichter will verstehen, muss in Dichters
ways contradictory, the more so the more international the influ- Lande gehen," while Hebbel argues that cc Shakespeare was no
ence is. Only in the case of some short-lived fashion can one ob- more an Englishman than Jesus a Jew." The truth lies however
serve an unanimous, if temporary, enthusiasm ; but in the case not in the middle between these two extremes, but in a s~nthesis of
of great writers criticism and resistance are ~ecessary eleme~ts of the two. ·
a fecundating influence. One need only thmk of the pass1onate This synthesis takes a different form in each case, but neverthe-
criticisms of Shakespeare, from Voltaire to Shaw and Tolstoy. It less t~e story of such influences shows certain definite trends. In
i~ precisely when a writer has grown to be a living influence in the first plac~ these trends are negative: if the attempt is made to
• r
th e literature of a country not his own, that an intricate tangle of adapt a foreign poet completely to the recipient national culture
contradictions arise which are hard to unravel. and thus denationalize him completely, no fruitful influence is
The influence of a writer in a foreign literature and a foreign possible. An instan~e of this is the treatment of Shakespeare in
~ culture is in itself a problem. Although the existence of a litera- France from Voltaire to Ducis. No less fruitless is it, on the other
1.
.~ ture of international scope is an undisputed fact, it is a very com- h~nd, to attempt complete assimilation. Ever since the days of
plicated fact replete with contradictions. It is neither the sum nor Tu=~r.k ~e Ger~ans have ~ried to acclimatize in Germany the whole
the mean of all national cultures, literatures and great writers; but of ~nglish Ehzabethan literature; these attempts, while yielding
the living totality of the mutual interactions of their living totali~ considerable results in the field of literary history, have had no
tics. However accustomed we are to regard Dante or Cervantes, effect whatever on living German literature, in which Shakespeare
Walter Scott or Dostoyevski as international figures, it is never- alone was and remained a fruitful influence.
theless in each case a problem in itself how each of them could It is obvious that these problems cannot be solved either by
have conquered such a place for himself and especially how he historico-philosophical generalities, nor by detailed philological re-
could have maintained it. For the ceaseless rebirth of such influ- I ~~arch. The lat~er is of importance for bringing facts to light, but
ence is the essential hallmark of international stature in a writer. \
It would be quite useless to try and determine the influence of
. I
In this respect every national culture is organically and mag- Dickens on European literature by adding together his influence
nificently selfish. Moliere's je prent!s mon bien oil. je le trouve is on various authors, e.g. from Dostoyevski to Raabe. International
valid also for the assimilation and rejection of foreign literatures, influences come about by synthesis out of national tendencies and
jl 242
·''' .J
1
!I
 ~TUOJES JN EUROPEAN REALISM LEO TOLSTOY AND WESTERN EUROPEAN LITERATURE 245
~
l

a these, again synthetically, arise from the personal evolution of the its own only after the absorption in Gennany of Shakespeare and
writers themselves. And everywhere the transition from the par- O ssian, Dante and Calderon.
' t
ticular to the general is not a simple addition, but a jump. Sh.aw,s prot~st .thus throws. light on a very important problem,
Thus authors of :international significance have a twofold in- ~rov1ded t~at . It 1s tr~ated With the requisite methodological cau-
fluence : on the one. hand they carry their national culture into tiOn. For 1t IS certam that a really deep and serious impression
foreign lands, make them known and appreciated there, and turn cannot be made by any work of foreign literature unless there are
...,,
•.
them into an organic part of the culture which receives them. One ~ no similar tendencies in existence--latently at least-in the country
·, can therefore never speak of abstract internationalism, of world ) concerne~. Such la~ency increases ~he fertility of foreign influences,
literature in general, but only the concrete mutual influence of the for true mftuence IS always the hberation of latent forces. It is
v.
literatures of civilized nations on each other. Further, the national \ precisely this rousing of latent energies that can make truly great
1
character thus accepted in another country is never identical with _foreign writers function as factors of a national literary develop-
the real national character (one need only think of the entirely ment-unlike the superficial influence of passing fashions.
false ideas about "mysterious" Russia in the western countries)
I . nor with the factors which caused the writer to acquire influence in 2.
his own country. Sometimes the writer's social and literary back- Only if we realize this fact can we arrive at a concrete historical
ground pales or is completely obliterated in the recipient foreign posing of the problem. International literary phenomena come into
country and this always leads to the form ation of a distorted image being onl~ if their effect is constant and is reproduced again on
of him ; but at the ~arn e time certain essen tial traits may become an ever h1gher plane in each successive generation of writers and
more clearly visi bl~ in a foreign country than in the writer's own. re~~ers. It was a br~liant observation of Hegel that every newly
It should, however, be stressed once more that the primary de- ansmg phenomenon IS at first abstract; only as it unfolds does it·
terminants of such influences are the literary requirements of the reveal the concrete totality, the inexhaustible wealth of its inherent
rcctpten t cou ntry. All truly great literature, however much of p ossibilities. That this is specially clear in our case follows from
foreign elements it may absorb, keeps to its own organic line of the Molieria n principle of the assimilation of foreign literatures.
development, determined by the social and historical conditions Foreign writers exercise a real influence only when literary develop-
in the country which gave it birth. ments in the country in question require a stimulus, an impulse
Bern ard Shaw has made some very interesting methodological indicaung some new path, because literature finds itself in some
remarKs in connection with the history of international influences sort of crisis out of which it consciously or uncons.ciously seeks a
•'
in literature. He rightly protested against the assertion that his way out.
'works were derived from Ibsen, Nietzsche, etc., and pointed out The contacts between need and stimulus are of varying depth
that all the ideas for which the critics were trying to find foreign and breadth in each case-hence such contacts are sometimes
sources, were present in the writings of certain English authors, merely episodic, sometimes a lasting association. But the first con-
among others Samuel Butler. Shaw was undoubtedly right when tact nearly always takes place on a narrow line of acute require-
he stated this fact. On the other hand it is to be considered how ments and is therefore necessarily abstract in relation to the fully
the native sources of Shaw's art came to be effective. Would But- d eveloped rich personality of a great writer. The first impression
ler, who had remained quite unknown in his lifetime, ever have made by great writers in foreign countries is mostly a result of ex-
gained the influence he did gain, had not Scandinavian and Rus- ternal-and from the point of view of the writer himself often ac-
sian literature, had not Ibsen and Tolstoy, broken into English cidental-factors and his influence then grows gradually in width
culture? Such cases, in which misunderstood or disregarded great and depth until he gains his full stature.
authors are, in a manner of speaking, discovered in their own coun- T he international influence of Russian literature and above all
try through the effect of foreign influence, arc not as rare as is of Leo Tolstoy developed in the eighties and nineties of the nine-
generally assumed. Vico came to be a live influence in Italy teenth century. (Scandinavian literature and especially Ibsen, de-
through H egel and the Hegelians; old Gennan poetry came into veloped such ·international significance at the same time, but for
1)
reasons of space we cannot here deal with this). What. was. the away from life and had petrified'· into' tedious conventionalities.
general need which rendered the abso:ption ~f these _forctgn hter~ ~or this reason the things Zola, Ibsen and . Tolstoy seemed to have
atures possible? The needs naturally differed m the d1ffere?t west- m ~ammon made a great. i~pression : · t~eir adherepce to reality,
ern countries but behind these differences the same social and
historical for~es were at work and hence we can speak of traits
l thel.l" X:Uthle~s, un~ompromtsm~ reproductton of life as it really is,
yet netther II?paSSibly nor cynJcally, _but. with the pa.~sianate·striving
~ ,.J
common to them all, although we know th~t all. such generalisa-
tions involve a certain coarsening and simphficatwn.
The defeat of the 1848 uprisings in the most important west~rn
European countries and in England the collapse o~ Chartts~
IJ
r.
to hold a mirror up to the world m ordet to ~redeem 'it by the
power of truth.
Of course this view of Tolstoy is an abstraction too · if meas·ured.
against. his r:ai stature. In literature itself T olstoy's influence mani-
~
brought about a profound general ideol?gic~l depre~sto~. TillS fested 1tself m a somewhat more concr~te form than in the mere
turning-point in historical development ts mtrrored m l~tcratur~. theoretical manifestoes of literary schools. Gerhai.t Haitptmann's
This is the epoch of Napoleon III, the emergence of Btsmarck-; first. play Vor Sonnenaufgang has The Pow.er of Darkness
'' Bonapartist monarchy,, the Prussification of Ger~any, the gr~at for 1ts godfather, but o_f course only in respect 'of one aspect of
pause in the democratic evolution of Engla~d. A umv~rsal dcspat~~ Tolstoy, above all the mexorable ruthlcssnei!s df his critical ex-
ing pessimism descends on the greatest wnters and m the tr~gic posure ~f the il.ls of so.cie~. Hauptmann himself was already aware
figures of Flaubert and Baudelai:.-e d:is pessimism degenerates ~nto of ccrtam specific tratts m Tolstoy which separated. him from Ib~
nihilism. That is the one pole and here w~ fin~ the ~reatest w_r~ters sen and particularly f~om Zola. Hauptmann's stark descriptions• •
of the period. (The atmosphere of gloom m D1ck.ens later wntl~gs of the dark and revoltmg aspects of modern life have neither the
is also a product of this period). The other pole IS the compromiSe rhetor-ically dec~rative monu~entality of Zola himself nor do they
with this vile reality; it leads in Germany to an unprecedent~d lose themselves m the labyrmth of low sensual detail we find in
triteness of literature, in France to a stiffening ~f st,rle,. to a. techmc- ~ola's many imitators. Hauptmann's naturalist rendition of ;eality
ally perfect but lifeless routine; and the Enghsh Vtctona~ co.m- ts far fr~m. any vesti?e of impassivity-.it is overflowing with pity
promise " has now become the generally accepted charactenzat10n for .the vtcttm~ of society. Wherever the young Hauptmann rises to
of this whole period. . . a higher poet1c plane, he clearly approaches at 'least one facet of
Where decay is greatest, there the desire for regeneratl?n 1s the Tolstoy's world.
strongest. In Germany, once the e~hoes of the great vtct?ry .of . German naturalism ~as a rearguard action. The short explosion
1870-71 had ·died away, the naturahst moveme?t of the e1ghbes 11. representc~ was p~sstb~e only because German realism wao; lag·
(
made a vigorous attempt ·to escape fr~m the tnte atmosphere of gmg far behmd reahsm m France and England. For naturalism
compromise which poisoned Germ.an htera~ure after th~ founda- in the classical form it took on in the France of· 1850-80 was ~·
tion of the Bismarckian Reich. It JS no accident_ that this. attempt product of the stifling atmosphere of the second Napoleoni~ period
at regeneration which did not at first confine Itself t_o. htcr.ature m Eur~pean history. The dissatisfaction of the most gifted writers,
but strove, however unclearly, to create healthy _co~d1t10~s m all the wnters who looked towards a better future was therefore
ideological spheres, was at the same time the penod m. which Tol- directed not only against the narrow outlook and distortions of the
stoy first grew to be an influence in Germany. Tl~e attttude of ~e lite:ature of c~mpro~i~e but at the same time-often primarily-
German writers of the time to Tolstoy found po1gnant expressiOn a~amst the phi~osophtca! and artistic barriers opposed by natur-
in a poem by Arno Holz : alism to the wr1ter. (f'hJs feeling became general in Germany, too,
"Zola, Ibsen, Leo Tolstoy soon after the spread of naturalism there).
Eine Welt Iiegt in den Worten, In the •
beginning and on the surface' the movement aaainst n
Eine die noch nicht verfault naturalism is of a purely artistic nature; we see attempts to break
Eine die noch kerngesund ist !" . . . ~r~ugh or at le~st to widen the thematic, formal and ideological
In these lines the abstraction mentioned before IS qmte obVloUS. limtts of naturahsm; attempts to create a style better suited to
W e see a general reaction against a literature which had turned the needs of contemporary life. There is no opportunity here of
 .... ------ ... ---·-: -·-. --· ---···
~
L.~U TOI,STOY ANO WESTERN EUROPEAN LITEHATURE ~4Y

giving even the bar~st outline of these rapidly changing trends. All < : vitality, the vast wealth of reality in Tolstoy's writings, such as wa~
we can say here is that Russian literature and especially Tolst~y to be found nowhere else at the time; as all this was presented in
played an important part in the shaping of these tr~nds, ~ut still a form which had little in common with the forms accepted in th~.·
an abstract part, still only through those aspects which suited the western literature of the second half of the nineteenth century~ it
momentary requirements of the daily struggle between the various was inevitable that the juxtaposition of form and formlessne~s
schools. Nevertheless, it was a step forward in the recognition of should arise in this connection. This juxtaposition, which com-
Tolstoy's fuJI · personality, in that the naturalist misunderstanding pletely misses the essence of Tolstoy'.c; art, appears very freq uently
(' of Tolstoy (in the sense that his powerful realism has anything in / in both positive and negative form.
common with the slavish copying of reality) faded more and more ;,-,, In its negative form it is found mostly among writers who
out of the consciousness of the writers who admired him and the attempted to give the ideological and artistic crisis· of the time a
inoral a~d ideological content of his writings began to make itself reactionary twist; who pursued a traditional line not only in their
felt more and more. ideological but in their formal tendencies, and who wanted to re-
We mention only Maeterlinck among the numerous personalities solve the crisis-which reached its culminating point in FJaubert's
of this transitional epoch. He attempted to show that under the nihilism and his tragic and asct:tic struggle for pure form-by ideo-
surface of the most commonplace everyday reality great unknown logically surrendering to all the traditional powers (e.g. in France
and unfathomable forces were at work and that the real vocation the church and the monarchy). The adherents of ~uch tendencies
of the drama was to give expression to these forces. He regarded in world-view and literature naturally regarded ToJst'oy's world
r I
.' Ibsens's Ghosts and Tolstoy's Power of Darkness as proof that r .
as mere chaos and anarchy. Paul Bourget championed this point
~ such contents could be presented in a contemporary form.
li of view with great vigour, although he was a much too accom-
I Here too, it is clear that the essence of Tolstoy's philosophy and plished rn~n of letters not to realize that Tolstoy's ability to make
I; art was' by no means properly understood in any of these impres- things come alive was comparable only with that of Balzac, MoliPrc
I
sions made on foreign writers. The example of MaeterHnck illus- or Shakespeare. But his recognition of Tolstoy's qualities wa~
I; trates again what we have already said in connection with limitl!d to questions of detail .: for according to him, Tolstoy was
naturalism : that in the first stages of Tolstoy's impact on the world incapable of properly constructing his novels. War and Peac,!
t only a very few limited aspects of his multifarious art were perceived
and for that very reason, even these were abstract and distorted .
end Anna Kare11ina, said Bourget . were reports which could be
continued without end. in which events followed c:ach other with-
'= Tol~toy had, in practice, long been a powerful influence in the
~
~-
out gradation, without perspective and without plan , each scene
world when the true significance of his personality and his art <:qualling every other in significance.·
were still vety incompletely understood. This fantastically incorrect appreciation of Tolstoy. 1111 ju.f!cment
.( This applies to his friends no less than to his enemies, to his Jaugrt'1lU as the French say~ is reactionary not only in the aesthetic
'

,
adherents no less than to his opponents. About these latter we
I :'I'·
sense.!, a defence of the rigidly formalist tradition of the French
must make certain observations here, for the opposition to Tolstoy novel of thl! time, but rather the ae.~thc:tic expression of Bourget's
.. and to the influence of Russian literature in general is highly
characteristic for the first, transitional period. There was ·a general
generally rC'actionary mentality. According to him composition is
not a mere literary problem, but a virtue of the spirit. The
· desire to break with the tradition of mid-nineteenth century litera- individual is a function of society; this is for Bourget an axiom, of
ture which, especially in France1 had developed a deadeni_ng fo~­ which in his view Tolstoy was quite ignorant. NaturaUy enough
alistic routine. Tolstoy appeared here as the polar opposite of this I Bourget made no attempt to prove his thesis by a detailed
trend. We propose to deal presently in greater detail with the
concrete differences between Tolstoy and his western contem-
-~ analysis of Tolstoy's writings. The object of his most violent at-
tacks were Tolstoy's moral and religious writings, especially his
poraries, but before we do so the abstract differe?ce also requires l direct re1ationship to the Gospels. " There has never been a re-
some illustration. The readers of Tolstoy-and m the first place ligion without a church and there never will be." Christ had given
tho~e readers who were themselves writers-felt the tremendous the Gospels not to men but to the Church. Thus Bourget dall]n·._., .,. .• · •
'
•'
 .:.Ju ., ,.
•'
;~i~ I

Tolstoy in the name of Catholic bigotry as the Holy Synod in and more correct understanding of Tolstoy's art, but the tracing I
Russia had done in the name of the Greek orthodox church-the of the road leading to a regeneration of European literature. Such !~
only difference is that Bourget extends, by all sorts of sophisms, the voices were heard comparatively early, but only sporadically; ~
anathema on the heretic Tolstoy to the sphere of art as well as of nevertheless, the tendency of development was such as to make ,.
religion. The Bourget case is an exceptionally glaring example of these isolated voices gradually grow to be the expression of a con- .. :
.;

the coincidence of conservative tendencies in the sphere of aesthe- sensus of opinion in European literary circles. Here again we must "'
tics with reactionary political and philosophical views. confine ourselves to a few characteristic examples. ...
But another wrong conception, i.e. th~t Tolstoy's works were the Concretization was at first historical and aesthetic. On the one
m anifestation of an irresistible natural force which not only burst
i
;; hand the contrast between Tolstoy's art and the style of the Flau-
r.• '.
~

through all artistic form but ba<;ically rejected it, was for a long b ert-Zola period was beginning to be understood. Juxtaposition of · ....
time much more deeply embedd ed in the consciousness of Tol- these was tantamount to a criticism of the latter and uncovered at I

stoy's readers, than the openly reactionary interpretations of cer- the same time the links with the classical pa.St, which if not com- .. ;

tain literary groupings. This second conception is narrow and con- pletely severed, had at least been greatly loosened by the natura- y:I·I
servative--it raises barriers to the process of regeneration in western list school and its immediate successors. The enthusiastic pioneers 1:
literature to which the influence of T olstoy contributed so much,
although it is by no means necessarily conducive to conclusions
who proclaimed Tolstoy's greatness showed up not only the con-
trast bet\vccn him and the writers of the Flaubert-Zola period, but
..~-.,..... ,
such as Bour~et's, nor to the rejection of Tolstoy's overwhelming also his deep-seated link with Balzac and the other classics of rea- ....
I
:
impact. . lism. It is certainly not more a matter of chance that Bourget's I

' ;,.
In such circumstances sincere and honest writers cannot but rejection of Tolstoy's form is bound up with his monarchist and ~ .
fi nd themselves in an ambiguous position. This ambiguit y was ex- reactionary views, than that Matthew Arnold's essay on Tolstoy
pressed by Jules Lemaitrc with quite unusual candour. He wanted appeared in the same series as his essays on Spinoza, Byron, Heine,
above all to preserve French men of letters from overestimating and the like. Historical accuracy requires us to state, however, that

~'
the Russians. F rench writers could select their material better, Flaubert himself was perhaps the first to compare Tolstoy with
could construct better: their aversion to showing emotion was due Shakespeare. •:
only to delicacy or to the fear of transcending the formal limits The striving for · a correct appreciation of Tolstoy's historical :
,.''
of art. Nevertheless Lernaitre admitted that when h e read The significance necessarily ran p arallel not only with the recognition 'I···"
1
,r·
Power of Darkness he was not only impressed but overwhelmed, of his great artistic power and the specific nature of his literary ....
although he found the form of the play bizarre, the images dark form, but also with the search for a new, wider and deeper con- ~I

,,,.
'

and blurred and the work " lacking all p oetic beauty in the true {'

sense." And this strong impression, .as Lemaitre ungr udgi.ngly con-
ception of the novel as a literary form. It is obvious that, regarded
from the viewpoint of 'the traditional French or the Victorian
.
·,: ,·
fe~c:e!'. was made on a writer whose general approach to modern :(
English novel, rotstoy would of necessity appear forml ess. It was '
lit<>rature was one of a certain blase indifference. But in the case
....
necessary therefore to go beyond the narrowly conceived aesthetic 'i
of T olstoy he felt " as though he were rediscovering the human
sphere and pose the question of the human sources, the moral and ·f
··" .-ra~; and then one forgives literature, and regains confidence in
social foundations of this new art. The d eeper men probed into
it, the hope that it will not die in spite of everything . . All that is
this, the more inevitable was a change of approach.
.:t •:
needed is only to sec correctly, to feel d eeply, to be a genius ..."
Matthew Arnold's shrewd common sense raised certain basic .I
3. I problems correctly at a comparatively early date (1887). Accord- .. :j.
Such appreciations are a clear expression of the contrast between ·~ ing to him Tolstoy's greatness consisted in that he would have
'l
T olstoy and the western E uropean literature of his time, even nothing to do with sham " refined " feelings nor made the slightec;t l;t
though the expression, as we have seen in the preceding, remains concession to low sensuality; he showed the reader many un- .i:.
abstract. To render the contrast concrete means not only a de~pel;' pleasant things but · never anything that might confuse the senses· ..
..
 -~----- -· · ·---· -··.·- ;;.. - ..
LEO TOLSTOY AND WESTERN EUROPEAN LITBRA'fURE 253
~
: STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM
~
~ and even less anything that might satisfy those who seek such standing of Tolstoy's artistic conceptions not only revived the great
rI • confusion of th'e sen~;es. progressive traditions of Western literature, not only renewed and
) In this Arnold grasped an important aspect of T olstoy's art: freshened its link with the true Classical heritage but also aided
il): normality, its healthiness, the perfect moral equilibrium of an the correct understanding of the new and original phenomena
1 artist who has his heart in the right place and knows exactly what
is good and what is evil. But Arnold went eyen further than this
which so greatly enriched the literature of the post-Flaubertian
period.
in contrasting T olstoy with the literature of the time. He quotes Thibaudct is indefatigable in his attacks on Bourget's kind of
Burns' fine phrase about." petrified feelings" and comparing Em- Frenc!l traditionalism_~ on his narrow formalist conception of con-
i ma Bovary with Anna Karenina, quite correctly recognizes these ....
'I structiOn. H e sarcas~cally applies Bourget's standards to so pro-
.!
!'petrified feelings" in the cruelty with which Flaubert treats the fou ndly French a wnter as Anatole France and speaks of France's
r.haracters in his novels. " happy lack of construction " which enables us to Qpen his books
Havelock EJlis, too, tried to formulate the differences between at. any page and read and enjoy them as we read and enjoy Mon-
the old and the newer period in literature. He said that the novel taignc or La Bruyere. " Books with construction are read : books
'· • was the moral history of the day, but in a deeper sense than the without it are read again and p.gain."
Goncourts imagined. In Tolstoy he saw such a moral historian of The road back to Balzac, Goethe and Shakespeare is thus at the
our way of life; and thought that the scope, richness and truth of ~arne ti~e the .road into the future, the road leading to that re-.....
his art was such as to make him as significant for our time as Bal- JUvenatiOn of hterature which Anatole France, Romain RoHan<!,
7.ac or Shakespeare were for theirs. Thus, here again, the recogni- j Gerhart Hauptmann, Thomas Mann, Bernard Shaw, John Gals-
tion that Tolstoy was harking back to the classics, that his art wa'> worthy brought about at the end of the nineteenth century. Most
a new offshoot of the classics, was coupled with a criticism of the of these grea t writers were themselves aware that the assimilation
naturalists. Havelock Ellis violently attacked Zola's " documen- of Tolstoy's moral, social, human and artistic mc~sage was an im-
tary" style. He says : " What if a novelist has occasionaUy met me , portant factor of their own development.
has noted my appearance and manner of speaking, has studied In a letter written to Tolstoy, Shaw mentions the threads con-
the furniture of my house and collected a bit of gossip about me? necti~g Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness with his own The
What can he know on this basis about the real tragedies of my Show m g Up of Blanco Posnet. Here again we find the concrete
life? And it is just these essential tragedies that T olstoy depicts." probing penetration into the secrets of Tolstoy's artistic method of
This historical and aesthetic understa nding of Tolstoy's art is .. construction. Let us recall that Jules Lema!tre had still thought
naturally and constantly on the increase. The newer French criti- of The Power of Darkness as an elemental outburst of human-
cal literature recognizes more and more that the Tolstoyan form is ity conceived as force of nature; that M aeterlinck saw the virtue
a widening and enrichment of our conception of the novel. Thi- of ~he play in the figu re of old Akim, the prophet of T olstoyan
baudct, for instance, makes a well-reasoned attack on Bourget's cthtcs. The sharp eye of the playwright Shaw saw that all the ex-
conception of Tolstoy. He says about War and Peace that in :;t hortations of the· father made no impression whatsoever on the
Napoleon is rcpres<!nted as having imagined that his campaign son ; but wha t the god-fearing old father could not achieve, i~ easy
against Russia would be played out in the "traditional" five acts, for the old rascal of a soldier who speaks as convincingly a~ though
ju.c;t like all his previous campaigns : march against the capital, a God's own voice rolled off his tongue. In the scene which sho~s
great battle, entry into the capital, conclusion ·of a peace treaty, the two dru nken fellows lying side by side in the straw the elder
triumphal return to Paris. But everything happens quite ~iffer­ trring to lift the younger out of his egoism and cowardic~ by moral
cntly. Napoleon in Moscow· is scandalized at Alexander's silence ; ?rgument, Shaw sees a dra~atic force never achieved by any scene
" this attitude," Thibaudent remarks wittily, "is the same as that Ill any work of the romant1cs. Shaw says that he drew his Blanco
of the French novelist who demands that War and Peace should Posnet from these sources of dramatic material which Tolstoy was t
:~
follow our ideas of what is clas~ical." the first to reveal to novices in the art of the drama.
It is interesting and characteristic that the increasing under- ·:.. T hese remarks, apparently only relating to details of construe-
 O..JT

tion, are of the greatest importance. They e>..1Jress what has slowly critic an~ philos~pher, writ:s about this : 'Here there is no more good
~; .
grown to be generally recognized by prominent writers, serious or .b~d'. ·mterestmg or tedtous; everything is part of existence, just
critics and intelligent readers in the western countries: that what as 1t 1s m .the real world. No one asks why Karenin has prominent
in Tolstoy's works overflows the hitherto accepted narrow forms is ears. He Just ~as .them.: Alain gives a subtle analysis of Tolstoy's'
not some chaotic, elemental humanism but a different, wider,
deeper, more human conception of creative method.
l works from th1s v1ewpomt. Here again we must confine ourselves
to a single instance. Alain unconditionally approves the so-called
Thus what divides Tolstoy from the decadent trends in modern
literature is his opposition not only to a frozen traditional objectiv- ;
I " leng~~" in ~olstoy ~and Balzac)~ for these express the real period
of .wa1tmg dunng wluch events mature; this waiting therefore is
ism but also to the subjectivist anarchism of sentiment which is
its necessary complementary IT!anifestation. The philosophical and
artistic roots of the latter also lie in the inability of the writer to
/(. enJoyed by the reader and makes him feel that Tolstoy's and Bal-
zac's novels always end too soon. D escriptions in the Zola manner
on .the ~ontrary inter~upt the lapse of time and cause an impatience
I
present the phenomena of modern life with adequate artistry; the whtch IS out of keepmg with the nature of the novel. This :;cem-
only difference is that such authors no longer confine themselves ingly qui.te formal analy~is yet. throws light into those depths of
to a documenta1y chronicle of facts but juxtapose their own sub- construct.lonal method~ with wh1ch the all-embracing world-view. of
. jectivity directly and abstractly with such unilluminatcd facts. great wnters gathers m the totality of life in all its movement.
Compared with such tendencies, Tolstoy's writings appear merci- Alain then gives interesting pictures of Tolstoy's world demon-
lessly objective, just as they appeared to be the forml ess stuff of strating how the intricate dialectic of life is always com~letely cx-
life itself when· compared with the naturalists' lifeless cop ying of press?d. and how a~ the same time a perfect artistic ·equilibrium of
uncomprehend cd facts or the formal constructions of the tradition- confhctmg tendenc1es of life and a wj:;e and equitable social and
alists. It is easy to understand, therefore, that resistance to the moral evaluation of the divergent or conflicting passions of the
novelty of T olstoy's art should have come from the subjectivist side characters·arc produced. We must here unfortunately confine our-
as well. When we quote Stefan Zweig in this context, as a rep- selves to a mere mention of the sensitive analysis given by Alain
resentative of this school, we want to stress that Zweig · of course, of the connection between Kareni n's 'administrative' world and
had far more understanding of Tolstoy in detail than his polar the nature, the human authenticity and the limits of Anna's pas-
opposite Bourget. Nevertheless Stefan Zweig criticized the essence sion for Vronski.
of Tolstoy's art no less uncomprehendingly and conservatively than +.
Bourget. He found in Tolstoy a world without dreams, without . ·' T he scope of Tolstoy's influence on western culture and ·litera-
fancies. witho~t untruths-a terribly empty world, without other ture was by no means limited to the successful struggle for a better·
light than its inexorable truth, nothing but its clarity, this, too, in- understanding of his significance as an artist. It was evident from
exorable. From this he draws the conclusion that Tolstoy's art the beginning that Tolstoy's stature could not be adequately de-
makes us serious and thoughtful, as does science with its stony light fined by saying that he was a great writer or by any ever so correct
and its cutting objectivity, but never makes us happy. analy~:is of his writings. There is a growing conviction that nine-
It was necessary to mention this shade of opinion as well, in ~ecnth-century Russian .literatur~ and above all Tolstoy himself, as
describing the opposition to Tolstoy, for only thus can it become Jts greatest representative, were not only more realistic and pro-
clear that Tolstoy's liberating influence, in opening a new way faun? th~n the French literature of the Flaubert-Zola period or the
·out of the crisis of modern literature, affected all wrong trends Eng·hsh htcrature of the Victorian era in England (not to mention
existing in the latter and that both German naturalists and French tl~e German literature. of this time), but something qualitatively
symbolists were deceiving themselves when they looked upon Tol- dd1ercnt. The connecl!ou between literature and life wa!i for the
stoy as their own literary forerunner. Tolstoyan realism paints a Russians-and here again Tolstoy is the typical literary culminating
t.
'
comprehensive picture of life in all its complexity and movement, point- essentially different from that of the West.
-and in this it links up with the legacy left us by the greatest of !hon;as ~ann, in his famous story T onio Kroger expresses
all, by Shakespeare, by Goethe and by Balzac. Alain, the French tlus attitude m trenchant form. The h~ro of the story is an em-
 :STUDIES IN EUROPEAN REALISM Ll'.O TOLSTOY AND WESTERN E UROPEAN LITERATURE 257
bodimcnt of that tragic estran.gcment of literature from life which disre~arding or failing to understand one of the most profound
made its first poignant appearance in Flaubert's letters, and which (and 1f correctly understood) the most fruitful criticisms of the cul-
was the constantly recurring theme of the ageing Ibsen, reaching ture of our time.
it~ culminating point in his Epilogue. Tanio Kroger expounds It is. scarcely surprising that Western literature did not accept
his despairing, paradoxical conclusions about literature and life to these views. of Tolstoy without criticism or opposition, and the best
a Russian painter, Lizaveta Ivanovna, and brushes away her con- representatives of the West deserve every commendation for hav-
soling words when she warm: him not to look into thi ng~ too ing, in spite of their often quite correct rejection of some of Tol-
. :
closely. She replies : " The purifying, hallowing effect of literature,
I stoy's important single assertions, nevertheless penetrated to the
~ . the destruction of the paf-sions by knowled.!;e and by the word, fruitful core of his ideas. Where this did not happen, development
' literature as the means to understanding, to forgiveness and to always ended up in a blind alley-as for instance in the German
love. the redeem ing power of speech, literature as the noblest expressionism of the critical period of the first world war, which
manifL·statiou of the human spirit, the man of letters as the perfect accepted T olstoy's teaching of non-resistance to evil as a dogmatic
man, <IS the sain t-·-would regarding things in this way mean not truth.
looking into them closely enough?" Tonio Kroger's answer con- ~nly in_ ~ritical form was it possible to assimilate T olstoy's es-
tains Thomas Mann's admission that the Tolstoyan period of sential opm10ns and thus absorb his entire personality. Anyone
Russian literature has nothing in common with these tragic (but who thought that T olstoy's criticism of modern art denoted a hos-
often merely tragi-comic) conflicts of Western civilization. T his is tility to art as a whole or a desire to reduce art to the level of
what Tonio Kroger says: "You have the right to say this, Liza- / c~ildren or uneducated peasants (as for instance Upton Sinclair
r
I vcta I vanovna, because of the works of your poets, because of your dxd) has completely missed the essential point.
'
.·
adorable Russian literature, which really is that holy literature
of which you spoke."
The fruitful critical assimilation of T olstoy's world-view typic-
~lly fol~owcd the li~e ~aken by Shaw. Shaw agreed with Tolstoy
Thomas Mann here struck the chord which determined the m deny,mg ~h.e .supenonty of Shak~speare's world-view, but rejected
melody and rhythm of Tolstoy's powerful imp~ct on the West. Tolstoy s cntlclSm of Shakespeare s art and language. But what is
The dissatisfaction of the younger. generation of writers and read- important here is not the rightness or wrongness of these criticisms
ers with the literature of the Flaubertian type is at bottom a revolt and anticriticisms. What matters is that Shaw, like Tolstoy, is de-
against contemporary culture and the new literature is merely the fending art and culture most ardently precisely when he is attack-
most trenchant expression of this revolt. ing their modern distortions with the greatest vigour. The purely
Here the longings, searchings and enthusiasm of the new liter- academic question of direct influences plays a very subordinate
ature link up with Tolstoy's central problems, the problems to part in this. What is important is that the general atmosphere of
which we owe his masterpieces but which were also the cause of T olstoy's criticism of art is captured when for instance ·shaw writes
his temporary withdrawal from literary activiti<7. Tolstoy's .influ- that he likes good music and fine buildings just as Milton or Crom-
ence on this level is naturally even more contradtctory than m the
well or Bunyan did; but if he were to discover that they were being
sphere of pure aesthetic. For in Tolstoy's the~r~t ically and pro~a­
made the instruments of a systematic idolatry of the senses he
gandistically expressed W eltansch auung .the hm1ts and defictenctcs
of his desire to regenerate the world in a peasant-pleheian seme would consider it good statecraft to blow up eve.ry cathedr~l in
arc not counteracted by the perfection of a work of art hut arc the world with dynamite, organ and all, without paying the
rt:!vcaled nakedly as limits, barriers, deficiencies and contradictions. I
slightest attention to the protests of art critics and cultured ·
Nevertheless nothing could be cheaper and more vulgar than
I sensualists.
i(
to regard these st rivings of T olstoy merely from the angle of the But even such problems, important as they are, are merely a
imperfection 'of his thinking, its at times paradoxically pedestrian part of that Tolstoian atmosphere which we must attempt to
quality and it~ comcrvatism,-as so many "practical" Western grasp. For Tolstoy's whole personality, that of a model of men-
critics of Tolstoy have don e. If we did so, we should be );Uilty of naturally inseparable from Tolstoy as artist and thinker-is con-
 SnJDJES IN EUROPEAN REALISM
LEO TOLSTOY AND WESTERN EUROPEAN LlTE.RATIJRB 259
258
stantly growing in stature as a great educator of civilized men, as ~o:e. mature .than any previous attempts; a transcending of the
a mentor, an awakener and a liberator. md1V1dual which nevertheless does not m ean the abdication and
This influence of Tolstoy is by no means limited to the sphere dissolution of ~e personality. This is what Tolstoy helped the
of literature 'i n the narrower sense. In many forms, true or false, yo~g generation to understand with increasing clarity. Their
genuine or distorted, it permeated the mass of ~e people. :-vhen striVlJlg was, on the contrary, to avoid the loss and disintegration
Kipling makes his Tomlinson, the avcr?ge English bourgc~u, ap- ~f ~e personality and the means to this end was to serve the pub-
pear before the tr ibunal of heaven to gtve an account of h1s good lic 1!lter~t~ ' the good of the people ' with devotion in a truly demo-
cratic spmt. That Bloch represents the typical experience of a
and evil deeds, he writes :
'And T omlinson took up his tale and spoke of the good whole generation must be obvious to anyone who reads Romain
in his life, Rolland's Jean Christophe or Roger Martin du Gard's Thibauts
" T his 1 have read in ·a book " he said " and that was told with sufficient attention.
Herein lies one of the decisive aspects of the Tolstoyan influence.
to me,
"And this I have thought that another man thought of a Sh":w formulated his own conception of art in a polemic directed
prince in Muscovy."' . ag.amst the sham-modern school. Romain Rolland says the same
The 'prince in Muscovy' here already appear!' as figure m a thing from another angle (apart naturally from the difference in
temperament and culture) in his biography of Tolstoy when he
modern legend. . puts the main emphasis on these words of the master : !, True art
But this legend, which is merely a distorted vulga: catchword m
the mouth of Kipling's sorry hero, grows into a genume component is the expression of our .knowledge of the true goodness in all men.,
of the best contents of our lives if the seed sown by Tolstoy falls on Romam Rolland conceived the Blochian dilemma and its elimi-
the fertile soil of sincere hearts and genuine talent. Jean Rich~rd nation in more general terms than Bloch himself. He saw men
writers, all society facing the tragic choice : " either not to see o;
t o ha t e.II (( socxety
' IS• always confronted with the dilemma : truth
Bloch wrote a little essay in which he outlined the forces .wh1ch )
· competed for the de7isive influence in the d~velopment of lm gen-
eration. It was the t1mc of the Dreyfus affatr. M aurras1 rcprcscn~- or love. It usually decides to sacrifice both truth and love." In this
attitude to the problems of modern society and culture, Tolstoy
Gucsde and Pcguy, representing progress and democracy, pro- has shown the western intelligentsia the way they must follow.
Romain Rolland, too, in his attempt to clarify the nature of the ,.
I

claimed ''Le social d'abordJ'! In this passionate ideological battle,

which dem anded immediate internal and external action at that j
realism ·of Tolstoy, turned against the realism of Flaubert. But for I
him the aesthetical conflict is turned into a conflict of cultural
time Tolstoy's influence began to make itself felt among the most philosophy_ and p~licy. " The light of the sun is not enough, what · I. .
hon~urablc and most gifted representatives of French youth. The IS n£eded lS the light of the heart. Tolstoy's realism is incarnated I
slogan of this youth was : '' To serve means to serve the good of in each of his characters and because he regards them all with the
the people." Bloch tells us. " It was Jaurcs, Romain RoHan? and same eyes, he finds something lovable in every one of them, and

l
Pcguy who translated this slogan into French for us, but 1t was can ~ake us feel the ties which fraternally unite us with them. ~:

Tolstoy who first uttered it.'' . By his love he reaches down to the very roots of life." i
}
The substance of this influence, which Bloch dcscnbes To a.ttain a clear. vision of the truth by means of love, a love
~
in detail was twofold. Of his own generation who found
its spiritual leader in Tolstoy, Bloch says: "On the o~c h~nd
embracmg all mankind-such was the task Tolstoy set the writers
of Western Europe. It was in the struggle to overcome the con· . ·\
there was a wild revolt, a refusal to bow the knee, ex-plos1ve cn~es
I
tradictions formulated by Romain Rolland that the great writers of
~ the new literature were tempered to true greatness. Of course
of libertarianism and on the other hand, increasing together .w1th
this contradiction had arisen only in the conditions of mode~
t
the force of the personality, the feeling of a duty to one's envtr~n· I
ment and of being bound up with it." The " service" of whtch .~
bourgeois society, but because it was not a figment of the brain ~
Bloch speaks, is a tendency to overcome individualism, a temlt'!ncy no mere "inner experien~., but an objective contradiction inheren~
 . -- ~ · ~ · .,..._.. , ,.._.._ : ..... .. -- ··- ·-
.<.VV STUDffiS IN EUROPEAN REALISM
LEO TOLSTOY AND WESTERN EUROPEAN LITERA11JRE 261
in the present age, it had been the cause of the .frustration and
ultimate infertility of many, often very gifted, writers. centra! figures of the recipient nation's own culture. Thus, in Bloch
This contradiction and its Tolstoyan elimination naturally mani- and Rolland, Tolstoy appears as the successor to Rousseau; in
.Thomas Mann, as a companion to Goethe; and when Bernard
fest themselves in different ways in the works of different authors.
Gerhard Hauptmann once said about the critical attitude of nine- Sh~w comments on Tolstoy's aesthetic from the angle of his own
,
teenth-century poets : " Every. poet had become a critic. The philosophy of art, he mentions the name of Milton. .I
whole of German literature was all criticism. The same applies to
Russian and French literature. But what raised Tolstoy
Links thus established reach further, however, than merely the
sphere of culture. Let us remember that Shaw mentions Cromwell .·I
above all others and made him a saint of the past century, was his as well .as Mi~ton; th?t in Bloch's essay Montaigne's revolutionary .I
irresistible urge to help; this urge he expressed with a pathos which
shook the. world and silenced all opposition. This fact is para-
.
;; Republican fncnd Etienne de La Boetie is made to appear beside
Rousseau; and that Romain Rolland attempts to found a true I
mount . . . Tolstoy has become a symbol of reconciliation, an theatre of the people and begins his great cycle of plays about the
idea before which all opposition is route, although his single judg- French revolution at the time when Tolstoy's impact on him is
ments are mostly wrong . . . " the strongest.
Thomas ·Ma'nn, attempting to assimilate Tolstoy's entire per- These affinities are as little accidental as the links with Shake-
sonality, draws a profoundly thought-out parallel between him and speare and Balzac, of which mention was made in the preceding.
Goethe. Although well aware of Goethe's limitations, he regards They show tha~ the ~eeper the understanding of Tolstoy's oeuvre,
him as the central figure of all that is progressive in German culture I the closer the link w1th the great progressive traditions of the re-
and struggles passionately to clear him of the dross of reactionary cipient country and with those of the democratic revolution. (Go-
legends, and recognize and present him as the champion of the ethe, too, was not merely a contemporary of the French revolution
humanist pbcration of th!! Germans. An important element of this but a poetic mirror of it and his alleged total rejection of it wa~
.. parallcl-Pf the wealth of thought of which we cannot give even a myth propagated by the reactionaries.) Where there is such a
'the barest outline here-is that both Goethe and Tolstoy, despite deeper understanding, the retrograde traits in one or the other of
all their social, national and personal differences, were earthbound .To~to>:'s opinions melt away and as the passionate urge forward
like Antaeus, men of a primeval, earthly ability of palpable pre- w~ch 1s the essence of his being is revealed, he joins in fraternal
sentation of plasticity, in contrast to such classic representatives · U?!On the band of great progressive figures of each nation and
of the purely spiritual as Schiller and Dostoyevski. On the other a1ds the. peopl~ .to preserve, deepen and regenerate their own
hand, both of them had grown far beyond mere authorship. / progressive trad1t10ns. Only thus could T olstoy come to be the in-
Thomas Mann interestingly defines this tendency, common to tegral property of aU who Jove freedom.
them both, as teaching and self-portrayal, both these spheres being
closely connected with each other. The confession, the autobio- 5.
graphical story, does not mean for either of them a confinement The road from To]stoy's first appearance on the scene, as the
to their own ~go, but on the contrary a demonstration of the great godfather of Germ~n naturalism or French symbolism, to such a
universal streams of life, bound up with such phases of the writers' deeper .comprehensiOn was naturally long. Nevertheless it would
own lives as reflect them most vividly, thus 'Once more overcoming be a mistake-today more than ever-to regard as final the image
the contradictions attaching to modern individualism. of Tolstoy whic~ the west has evolved up to the present. As we i.
I
i.
This brief glance at Thomas Mann's important book brings us have already satd, a true cultural assimilation can never remain
back to the second crucial point in Jean Richard Bloch•s Tol- .J ~tatic-unless there is constant reproduction on a higher plane and
stoyan creed. It is significant-and we hope that after all that has m greater depth, the borrowed cultural asset must dwindle and
been said before, this will no longer appear paradoxical-that the J ~ade awa~. This applies, of course, to all fecundating influences
more correctly the true core of Tolstoy's oeuvre is recognised in m all. nat10nal cultures, be these influences foreign or home-bred. l
a Western country, the more closer he appears linked with the Th1s general truth is doubly valid in times of stress and crisis. ;.

The concrete character of the present world-cataclysm and Tol-

 stay's concrete nature make extremely probable a further, even is directed towards this question, a riddle which had greatly
deeper conception of his being, an even better understanding of puzzled all true interpreters of Tolstoy, the question why Russia
his essential' core. had remained .free of that ideological depression, which found its
For the present life-and-death struggle between freedom and most magnificent and typical artistic expression in Flaubert, ap-
slavery, betvteena humane civilization and a diabolic barbarism, pears in a new, concrete social and historical light. Then it be-
has widened '-the gull between progress and obscurantism in the comes manifest that while in the west the defeat of the movements
minds of very many people in the west and has shown the terrible of 1848 broke the back of the revolutionary movement for a very
dangers of any-~wen purely ideological---dallying with an ever- long time the Russian people had never ceased to fight for its liber-
alert, ever-militant reaction. On the other hand the heroic strug- ' ation from the rising of the Decembrists in 1825 to the final victory
gle of the Soviet peoples, their successful resistance to Hitler's '! in the great October revolution of 1917. It underwent many bitter
military might, their glorious counter-attack against the fascist periods of repression and oppression, but the fighters never laid
invaders, have directed the attention of the whole civilized world down their arms. Particularly the period in which Tolstoy's per-
more than ever before towards the regenerated, free Russian peo- sonality was basically formed- a period of deepest depression in
ple. Many more people than ever before are desirous of under- the West-was in Russia the period of a magnificent flowering of
standing more fully the moral and spiritual, social and historical progressive and revolutionary energies, the time not only of Tol-
sources of the now so powerfully manifested, irresistible strength stoy and D~stoyevski, but of Chernyshevski, Dobrolyubov, Salty- . ~
of the Soviet people. kov-Shchednn, to name only the greatest.
The inner dialectic of both tendencies will necessarily lead to a
more adequate and complete understanding of Tolstoy. Up to now
it was not easy for many people to break through the veil which
' This period and the last-named authors are as good as unknown
in ~e west. Yet only if Tolstoy is not regarded merely as a com·
pamon to Dostoyevski, only if his connection with the revolution-
reactionary prejudice and legend had woven around his image. ary democracy of his time, with Chernyshevslci, Dobrolyubov and
It is almost a miracle that in such conditions a conception even as Saltykov-Shchedrin is clearly understood, and the threads revealed
correct as the one outlined in the preceding, could have been which lead from here to Lenin, Stalin and Gorki, and if in the.
evolved. The best-known western interpreters of Russian culture light of these discoveries Pushkin and Lennontov, Gogo] and
and literature were often unequivocal reactionaries, who could not Bielinski are recognized as their precursors, can a truly adequate
and would not see the bonds which united Tolstoy with the great picture of the real Tolstoy be formed. · ·
l?rogressive and revolutionary movements of his coun~ry. It s~ffi~es ~ · • Such necessary corrections and adjustments by no means com-
to mention Mcrezhkovski who was for long the most mfluent1al m- pr6mise the results attained up to now in the assimilation of Tol-
terpreter of Tolstoy and Dostoyevski for much of the wester~ in- stoy; they merely raise them to a higher level. For we hope to have
I telligentsia. For this reason it often happens that those who wtshcd shown in t~e preceding pages that certain prominent interpreters
•'
~ to acquaint themselves with the national background of ~e gr7at of Tolstoy m the west had already advanced a long way on this
' writer through independent study, were confronted by an 1magm- road, even though they had often done so only instinctively and
tt ary, non-existent " mysterious Russia" or at best were. lured ~s~ray not consciously, in the historical sense of the word.
I by very unimportant phenomena, such as the Russian rehgtous Often not consciously, but not always. Romain Rolland, for in-
stance, clearly understood why Tolstoy had struggled so long with
i sects. That in such most unpropitious ideological conditions, at
least the leading western writers could yet develop in their minds his pl~n for a .novel dealing with the Decembrists 'and why the
·~ an essentially progressive image of Tolstoy bears witness not only evolution of Pterre Bezukhov, or the dreams of young Nikolai
'·,. to the high quality of their intellectual and artistic culture but also Bolkonski all tended towards the Decembrist idea. A better know-
•,.
to the strength of their democratic instincts. ledge of the true history of the Russian people will therefore merely
!; Lately, however, interest has been increasingly focussed on the have to transform these mostly latent tendencies into active and
l conscious ones. The Tolstoy-image of the west is on the eve of a
real Russia, the country of a liberated nation fighting heroically
! for its freedom, and on the history of this liberation. Once research further transfonnation, a deeper, better, more adequate under~
,.·;
,.
.. ~
 :::i'l<JDlES IN EUROPEAN REALISM

standing based on the knowledge of the history of the Russian

poople. Such an adequate understanding of Tolstoy will link his
figu.re even more closely with the trends and ideologies which had
ever been and ever shall be the eternal fountainheads of the
regeneration of the spirit of freedom.

INDEX
i
i(
\

I
~ ·

'
-···················~·~··••••z£1111•&•L[!IIII.!I'I!
. I
I
i
!
.
II!!'!!!ff!&!!!!!!!!!!!l'!!!lll!4.:~''"'"':;::;i·:·; -· .- • -

.4- INDEX ..
'1
.j
,. Alain, 254, 255
Alexander, 11, 2rYT
Andrcycv, L., 223, 224
Defoe, D., 129, 140, 156
Dickens. C., 55, 92, 98, 243, 246
Diderot, D., 43, 47, 62, 63, 76, 103,
Ariosto, 76 106, 107, 108, Ill, 125
Dobrolyubov, N. A., 14. 15, 97, 100·
ij.ii,,
Aristotle, 118, 225
Arnold, M., 251, 252 125. 218, 219. 226. 221, 263
Balzac, H., 2. 5, 9, 10, II, 12, 13, 19, Dos Passos, John. 55
21-46, 47-64, 65·84, 85, 86, 89, 92, Dostoyc:vski, F .. 16, 97, 131, 231, 234,
93, 94, ll4, 122, 125, 129, 139, 140. 242, 243. 260, 262, 263 .
143, 144, 145, 149, 151. 158, 159, Dreyfus. A., 95
160, 161, 173, 174, 179, 180, 183, Ekdal, H .. 240
185. 190, 201, 203, 206. 209, 226, Elizabeth, Queen o£ England, 70
228, 229, 233, 241, 249, 251. 253, Ellis, H., 252
254, 255, 261 Engels, F., 11, 13. 35, 90, 91, 99, 101.
Baudelaire, 246 114, 131. 134, 135,
Beethoven, L., 198 Ernst, P., 131, 134
Bentham, J.. 44, 68, 235 Euripides, 225
Bielinski, V. G., 14, 15, 16, 97, 99. Fenelon, 76
100, 101, 107, II0-114, 123, 125, Feucrbach, L., 99, 100, 101. 102. 105
263 Fielding. H .. 129, 150. 233
Bismarck, 101, 246 Flaubcrt. G., 2, 3, 5, 63, 76, 89, 92,
Blanqui, A., 83 93, 98. 129. 132. 141. 142, 144, 156,
Bloch, J. R., 258, 259, 260, 261 170. 190, 221, 246, 249, 251, 255,
Bourget, P .• 249, 250, 253, 254 256
Borne, L., 108 Fourier. C., 77, 85
Buddha, 199 France. A., 253
Buchner, L., 102 Freytag. G., 140
Burns, R .• 252 Fritsche, V. i\1., 128
Butler, S., 214 Galsworthy, j .. 238, 239, 253
Byron, G., 61, 82, 251 Garborg, A.. 136
Calas, 95 du Card, R. l\L, 2:>9
Calderon, 245 Cide, A .• 2
Carlyle, T., 98 Gil Bias. 67 .
Cervantes, M .• 47, 203, 242 Goethe. J. W .. 5, 13, 19, 26. 43, 52,
Charles II. 70 67, 84. 9·l. 95, 109, Ill, 122. 140,
Chatcaubriand. 66, 68, 75, 76. ii 175. 179, 180, 198, 201, 202, 221,
Chckhov, A., 97, 146, 217 233, 243. 253, 254, 260, 261
Chenier, 68 Gogol. N .. 108, 109, llO, 263
Chernyshevski, N. G., 14, 15, 97, 100- Goldsmith, 0 .. 150
125. 129, 184, 218, 220, 243. 263 Goncharov, A., 110. 116, 171. 218,
Chesterton, G. K., 8 220, 221 .
Constant, n.. 48 Con courts, i6, 77, 129, 252
Cooper, F., 66, 74, 158 Gorki. M., 13, 16, 18, 97, 12i. 129,
Cousin, V., 48 203. 204, 206·241. 263
Cromwell, 0 .. 35, 257 Ccusdc, J.. 258
Dante, .'\., 5, 242, 245 Cuizot. M .• 22. 48
Daudct, A.• ii Hamsun, Knut, 136
.~
265
 - J' ., : .\
H:mptmann, G., 2·17, 253, 260 Mcrimec, 66 lu~. E., 70 Vico, 244
H egel, 4 1, 62, 63, 68, 72, 99, 117, 119, Milton, J., 257, 261 .>wift, Jonathan, 14, 135, 140, 165 Virgil, 8
l!i!'i, 156, 202. 2-14. 245 Mirbcau, 0., 229 Tainc, H., 89, 124, 125 Vische r. F. T., 101
Hcidcggcr, M .• 2 Moliere, 200. 201. 2·12, 249 Th ibaudct. 2.52. 253 Vogt. 102
Heine. H., !H, 98, 99, 109. 25 1 Montaignc, 253, 261 T hic:rs, 77 Voltaire, 66, 76, 95, 242, 243
Hclvctius, 68 l\Iontesquicu, 76 Tolstoy, 2, 5, 12,. 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, Wagner, R. , i4, 101
'Hc rwcgh, G., 101 Mussct, 48 19, 92, 9i, llO, III, 126-205, 217, Zeller, 94
H crzcn, A .. 14. 16 Napoleon Bonaparte, 23, 36, 37, 48, 221, 226, 230. 232, 233, 242-263 lola, E .• 5. 7. 8, 10, 12, 19. 41 , i2.
Hl!llller. H., 102 6Y, 70, 252 Tu rgenyev, I.. 110, 117, 120, 121. 131 85 -95, 122, 123. 130, 132. 140. l
Hilaire, G. de S., 77, 86 Nietzsche, F.. 11 3, 199, 244 132, 198, 220 • 152. 246, 251, 252, 255
H oddcrlin, 82 O hnet, G. ,140 Vcrlainc, P., 52 Zweig, S., 254
H o lz, Arno. 246 Ossian, 245
Homer, 76. 152. 153 , 158. 200 Ostrovski, N., llO, 117, 118 ·
H ugo, Victor, 66, 77, 81, 93, 95 Pcguy, c.. 258
Hurd, R., 225 Plato, 196
~ . I bsen, H ., 131, 132, 133, 13·1, 135, 136, Plckhanov, G. V., 12i, 128
I 99, 240, 244. 246, 248, 256 Proust, M ., 2
Jaurcs, J., 258 Pushkin, A., 108, 109, 11 l, ll6, 122,
Joyce, J.. 2 217, 21~. 263
Kant, 1.. 199 Rabclais, 44,
Keller, Gottfried, 9, 101, 102, 121. 124 Racine, 76
Kipling, R .• 141 , 258 Ricardo, D., 41
Klopstock; 200 Rich ard Cocur·dc·Lion, 70
Lafargue, P. , 90, 206 Richclieu, 69
Lamartine, 66 Rilkc, R. M., 52
Lamcnna is, 77 Rolland, R., 253, 258, 259, 260, 261,
·Lcibnitz, G., 119 263
Lcmaitrc. J., 250, 253 Rousseau, J. j., 221 , 260, 261
Lenin, V. 1., 13, 16, 126-128, 136, 137, Royer-Collard, 48, 66
138, 139, 1-!5, 162, 175, 194, 201, St. n cuve, 113
202, 206, 2·11; 263 St. just, 103
Lermoruov, A., 108, 2 17, 218, 263 St. Simon , 77, 99
LeSage, 66, 148 Saltykov·Shchcd r in, 14. 97, llO. 123,
Lessing. G., 106, 107, 108, 110, liS, 263
119, 125. 152 Sand, George, 66, 75
~ewis, Sinclair, 55 Say, E., 48
Louis, XI. 70 Schiller, F., 67, 82, 84, 120, 199, 200,
Louis, XIII, 69 201, 243. 260
Louis, XIV, 69 Schopc11hauer, F .. 199
Lu xemburg, R., 127, 12S Scott , Wal ter, 13, 19, 66, 70, 74, 122.
!1-fachi avclli, :'\ .. 69 J.18, 242
MaelerlincJ.;,' M., 131, 2·1S, 253 Shakespeare, W., 5, 8, liS, 119, 139,
de Maime, J., 75 198. 242, 243, 2·!5 , 219, 25 1, 252,
Manet, 9!i 254, 257
Ma nn, T homas. 2, 13, 238, 239, 253, Shaw, G. B., 242, 244, 253, 257, 261
255, 256, 260, 261 Sholok ho v, M ., 15
Marat, j. P., 103 Sinclair, Upton, 8, 257
Marx. K., 1. 22, 31, 35, 37, 38, 40. ·H, Sismondi, 77
·13. -16, ·18, 90, 99, 10 I, ll2, 119, Sophocles, 118, 225
162, 199, 206, 208, 209 Spengler, 0 .. 2
Ma ry, Queen o f Scots, 70 Spinoza, l\ ., 251
;\{aupass:lnt, 129, 132, 134, 142, 143, de Stacl. ~!me., 66
144. 197 Stalin, J. V., 16, 241, 263
Ma urras, C., 258
Mel) ri ng. F .. 100, 127, 128
Menzel, 109
Stcnd hal, 37, 48, 49, 65·84, 85, 86, 87,
89, 93. 129, 130, 135, HO, 159, 175,
180, 201, 228
,J.
.'{f
~l crczhkovski , S., 97, 262 Strin<lbcrg. A., 133
;i''(i

266 I 267
I'
!
 AMERICAN HISTORY
BASLER, RoY P. (Ed.) Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches
and Writings . . ...... . .. ..... . . .. . ... , ... ......... .....••.. UL-134
BowEN, CATIIERINE DruNKER Jolm Adams and the
American Revolution ... ......... .. . . . ... .......... ...... .. UL-24
CATTON, BRUCE U. S. Grant and tlze American Military Tradition . ... UL-42
' DoBIE, J. FRANK The Longhorns . . , ............. . ............... UL-25
EISENSCHIML, OTTO AND NEWMAN, RALPH
Eyewitness: The Civil War as We Lived It . ..................... UL-71
FRANKFURTER, FELIX The Case of Sacco and Vanz.elli . .. .. . ...... . . UL-110
H~DLn•i, OSCAR The Uprooted ......... .. .... . . ..... ... ... ...... UL-23
--(Ed.) Children of the Uprooted ..... . . ......... . . ..•.... . UL-231
JAMES, MARQUIS Andrew ·Jackson: Portrait of a President •. . ...... .. UL-94
- -- Andrew Jackson: Border Captaiu . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . UL-47
LASKI, HAROLD J. The American Presidency ..... . .................. UL-40
LEWJNSON, PAUL Race, Class, and Party . ......................... UL-177
L EWIS, LLOYD Myths After Lincoln . . .' .' ..................... . .... UL-90
SHERWOOD, RoBERT E. Roo~evelt and Hop kins .. . ................. UL-79
VAUGHAN, ALDEN T . ( Ed.) Chronicles of the American Revolution
(Intra. by Henry S. Commagcr) ....... .... ................... UL-18 t
W EBB, WALTER PRESCOT!' The Great Plains . . .... •.•.....•. ....... . UL-29
W.ERTENDAKER, THOMAS J. The Puritan Oligarchy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . UL-9
~THROPOLOOY AND 1\RCHAEOLOGY

··""
,. ,.• CO'ITRE.LL, LEONARD Tlte Bull of Minos ........................ . . UL-143
. ' - - - Lost Cities ............................................ UL-1 51
' ---The Lost Pharaohs ..................................... . UL-157
L OWIE, RoBERT H. Primitive Religion ............ .... .... . ...... . UL-35
SMITH, HOMER Man and His Gods... ....... ........... ... . .... . UL-5
YADJN, YJGAEL The Message of the Scrolls ........ ..... .......... . UL-135
..
• I
FlCTION
. BALDWIN, JAMES Go Tell It on the Mountain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . UL-9 5
BARTH, JOHN The Sot-Weed Factor ........... ............... ... .UL-153
BROCH, HERMANN The DeaJh of Virgil (lntro. by Hannah Arendt) .... UL-184
- - T h e Sleepwalkers: A Trilogy ......................... .. . .. . UL-175
..
Dream of the Red Chamber . ........... .... .............. .... •. UL-226
FARRELL, lAMES T. The Short Stories of James T. Farrell . .......... UL-130
FLAUBERT, GusTAVE Madame Bovary . .. . ......... ... ... .. ....... UL-57
GoruCI, MAXIM The Artamonov Business . ..... , ... . ............... UL-217
GREEN, HENRY Back . ... .. .. .. .................... . ............ UL-204
JAMES, HENRY Four Selected Novels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . UL-39
--Ghostly Tales of Henry James (Leon Edel, Ed.), ........ .. . UL-161
---Lady Barberina and Other Tales ........ ...... ........... . UL-116
LAM P SOUSA, GIUSEPPE Dl Two Stories and a Memory . .. .... .' ... ... U L-227
MAlLER, NORMAN Barbary Shore (lntro. by Norman Podhoretz) ..... UL-163
MELVILLE, HERMAN Shorter Novels of H erman Melville . ........ ... UL-32
MONTHERLANT, HENRY DE Chaos and Night ...... .... .. .. .... . ,,. UL-218
.P AVESE, CESARE The House 011 the Hill . ............. . ............ UL-212
SENDER, RAMON The Kiflg and tlze Queen ....................... . UL-213
TANIZAKI, JUN1CHIRO The Makioka Sisters . ......... , ............. UL-190
WAUGH, EVELYN Decline and Fall ............................... UL-45

..
 CARR, E. H. Studies in RevolutiotJ ............................. •UL-171
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM H. Tire Russian Revolution
Vol. 1-1917-1918 .......................................•UL-188
Vol. II-1918-1921 .........................•.............. UL-189 ·•
COHEN, STEPHEN F. (Ed.) The Great Purge Trial
(Intro. by Robert C. Tucker) ................................ UL-180
FINER, HERMAN Mussolini's Italy ....•..................... : .... . UL-183 ·
FRIEDRICH, CARL J. (Ed.) Totalitarianism ......................... UL-167
JELLINEK, FRANK The Paris Comnume o/1871 .•.•.••..•••.••••.• •UL-185 ·:..
JOLL, JA!.fES The Anarchists . ••..•..••.••...•.•.••••••.••••.•••• UL-191 · ·
KISSINGER, HENRY A. A World Restored ............•......••.... . UL-170
KOEBNER, RICHARD Empire . ....................•..••............ UL-179
LIPPMANN, WALTER The Good Society . ........ ; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . UL-3 •
MALTA, lyfARTJN Alexander Herzen & the Birth of Russian Socialism . .. UL-176 ; ·
MATHIEZ, ALBERT The Fret~cll Revolution ........... <:-••••••••••• • UL-169'
- - . - After Robespierre . ...................••..•.....•....•.. UL-182 ; :
' MossE, GEORGE L. Tire Crisis. of German Ideology ... ............. UL-173 ·;
- - - Nazi Culture ..............•..•....................... . UL-187 :.
, .NICOLSON, HAROLD Peacemaking 1919 •.................•..••.•.. . UL-178;.
· O'BRIEN, CON OR CRUISE To Katarrga and Back: A UN Case History . . UL-196 : ··
TROTSKY, LEON Stalin .. .........................•••.....•..•.. UL-41
VENTURI, FRANCO Roots ol Rcvoflltion ....•.....•....•.......... . UL-192 · ..

' LITERARY CRITICISM, DRAMA, AND POETRY

CHEKOV, ANTON Nine Plays of Chekov . ............ , .• , • • . • • • • • . • UL-59 ; ..:
cur.iMJNGS, E. E. 50 Poelns ............................. ......... UL-66"·.
DEUTSCHE, BABETTE Poetry Handbook . ........................... UL-126' .

I
EoEL, LEON The Modern Piyclwlogical Novel. ....•....• ·•........ UL-174
EREEMAN, MARY D. H. La.wrence: A Basic Study of His Ideas ...... UL-82:
HAYCRAFT, HOWARD The Art of the Mystery Story ..... ·..........• UL-91 · ·
HY!>fAN, STANLEY EDGAR Tlze Tangled Bank:
Darwin, Marx, Frazer and Freud as Imaginative Writers ......... UL-193.
IBSEN, HENRIK Four Plays ................................•••••. UL-31 · ·
•• JAMES, HENRY French Poets and Novelists (lntro. by Leon Edel) .... UL-164
LUKACS, GEORG Studies in European Realism
(lntro. by A1fred Kazin) .................................... UL-166 .
---Essays 011 Thomas Mamz. ...........• , ................... UL-186 ··
Moss, HowARD Tire Magic Lantem of Marcel Proust ....••..•.... •UL-200
PETRARCH Sonnets and Songs (Italian, with translations by
A. M. Armi) ............................................. UL-225
RowsE, A. L. Christopher Marlowe: His Life and Work .....•...... UL-198
. . .,
• .,.. ... • t

VALENCY, MAURICE The Flower and the Castle .......... : .•••.... . UL-202
TITLES OF GENERAL INTEREST
BtANCOLLI, LoUis (Ed.) Tlze Mozart Hat1dbook •.......••.•••.... . UL-132
· · DAVIDSON, BASIL The African Past: CI1To11icles from A11tiquity
to Moderll Tinzes ........................•...............••• UL-208
DENNEY, REUEL The Astonished Muse (lntro. by David Riesman) ... UL-165 ·.
GROSS, GERALD (Ed.) Editors OtJ Editing •• . , ..............•..•... UL-147 ..
HAMILTON, EDITH Mythology ........................... , ........ UL-9J:!:-
KOESTLER, ARTIWR The Sleepwalkers .............. ; .......•..... UL-159.
PERRUCHOT, HENRI Cezanne . .............................. , ••... UL-149
PROTTER, ERIC (Ed.) Painters 011 Paitrting . .........•••..••....... UL-156
SELIG MANN, KURT Magic, Supernaturalism, and Religion . ..••••••••. UL-229 •
WAXMAN, CHAIM I. (Ed.) Poverty: Power and folitics •...•.•••••. •UL-230