Book Review: Tolstoy by A. N. Wilson; Part Two: The Spiritual Seeker
After writing Anna Karenina, Tolstoy went through profound spiritual changes. He did not abandon literature, but the tone of his writings changed, reflecting his inner metamorphosis. Scorning the Orthodox church, he adopted a personal faith that included extreme pacifism, renunciation of material possessions, and Christian anarchism based on his interpretation of the New Testament (which he learned to read in the original Greek). His fervent moral stand stirred up controversy in Russia and around the world. Eventually the Orthodox Church, which was integrally linked to the official Russian autocracy, excommunicated him, but this caused Tolstoy’s popularity in his homeland to increase, not decline.
Internationally, Tolstoy’s views, which he expressed in numerous works such as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, profoundly influenced Mahatma Gandhi and other political activists. Both Tolstoy and Gandhi drew inspiration from Henry David Thoreau’s essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.” As Wilson points out, “By the time his distinctive creed was formed, Tolstoy made no bones about believing that Christ advocated a consistent anarchism, a policy of civil disobedience.” These ideas would surface later, of course, in Dr. Martin Luther King’s civil rights campaigns.
As an aristocrat responsible for a large family, numerous servants, and, as his ideas became popular, a legion of disciples and other hangers-on, Tolstoy had difficulty in putting some of his more extreme convictions into practice. This led to discord in the household and, as mentioned, with the church and the government. In other words, he was imperfect in the application of the principles in which he believed. However, his sincerity is without question.
One of the weaknesses of Wilson’s approach to Tolstoy’s spiritual journey is his almost mocking attitude toward Tolstoy’s convictions. As a biographer, it would have been better for him to have stuck to the facts and let readers draw conclusions for themselves. Wilson’s shortsightedness in this lacks Tolstoy’s own clarity. At one point Wilson posits: “With no fiction to write, he was busy making a fictitious character out of himself,” as if Wilson cannot bring himself to believe that for Tolstoy this was a period of inner growth, not an artistic decline.
Wilson comes closer to reality when he writes: “The gap between Tolstoy’s ideals and his actual behavior has made those who do not want to understand him dub him a hypocrite. But a hypocrite is a man who pretends that such gaps do not exist. In Tolstoy there was no such pretence.” And I might add that at least Tolstoy tried to do the right thing. Most people do not try to follow their consciences, at least not to such extremes. Much later, just a few years before his death, when one of his acolytes was arrested and spent a few months in jail, Tolstoy commented: “How I wish they would put me in jail, into a real stinking one. Evidently I have not yet deserved this honor.” This echoes Thoreau, who describes his experience with jail in “Civil Disobedience,” and presages the future prison forays of Gandhi, King, Mandela, and others.
In conclusion, despite its flaws, this book is a thought-provoking read about a man who was not only a literary genius, but also a heroic example for other historical figures who attempted to improve the lives of their fellow humans through pacifism and nonviolent civil disobedience.
