Leo Tolstoy

Translated by Leo Wiener

[1] It was, I think, in the year 1881 that Turgenev, during a visit at my house, took a French novel, under the name of Maison Tellier, out of his satchel and gave it to me.That’s it!

[2] “Read it, if you have a chance,” he said, apparently with indifference, just as the year before he had handed me a number of the Russian Wealth, in which there was an article by Garshin, who was making his debut.Evidently, as in the case of Garshin, so even now, he was afraid he might influence me in one way or another, and wished to know my uninfluenced opinion.

[3] “He is a young French author,” he said; “look at it, — it is not bad; he knows you and esteems you very much,” he added, as though to encourage me.“As a man he reminds me of Druzhinin.He is just as excellent a son and friend, un homme d’un commerce sur, as was Druzhinin, and, besides, he has relations with the labouring people, whom he guides and aids.Even in his relations to women he reminds me of Druzhinin.”

[4] And Turgenev told me something remarkable and incredible in regard to Maupassant’s relations in this respect.

[5] This time, the year 1881, was for me the most ardent time of the inner reconstruction of my whole world-conception, and in this reconstruction the activity which is called artistic, and to which I formerly used to devote all my strength, not only lost for me the significance formerly ascribed to it, but even became distinctly distasteful to me on account of the improper place which it had occupied in my life and which in general it occupies in the concepts of the men of the wealthy classes.

[6] For this reason I was at that time not in the least interested in such productions as the one which Turgenev recommended to me.But, to oblige him, I read the book which he gave me.

[7] Judging from the first story, Maison Tellier, I could not help but see, in spite of the indecent and insignificant subject of the story, that the author possessed what is called talent.

[8] The author was endowed with that particular gift, called talent, which consists in the author’s ability to direct, according to his tastes, his intensified, strained attention to this or that subject, in consequence of which the author who is endowed with this ability sees in those subjects upon which he directs his attention, something new, something which others did not see.Maupassant evidently possessed that gift of seeing in subjects something which others did not see.But, to judge from the small volume which I had read, he was devoid of the chief condition necessary, besides talent, for a truly artistic production.

[9] Of the three conditions:

1.a correct, that is, a moral relation of the author to the subject,

2.the clearness of exposition, or the beauty of form, which is the same, and

3.sincerity, that is, an undisguised feeling of love or hatred for what the artist describes.

[10] Maupassant possessed only the last two, and was entirely devoid of the first.He had no correct, that is, no moral relation to the subjects described.From what I had read, I was convinced that Maupassant possessed talent, that is, the gift of attention, which in the objects and phenomena of life revealed to him those qualities which are not visible to other men; he also possessed a beautiful form, that is, he expressed clearly, simply, and beautifully what he wished to say, and also possessed that condition of the worth of an artistic production, without which it does not produce any effect, — sincerity —, that is, he did not simulate love or hatred, but actually loved and hated what he described.But unfortunately, being devoid of the first, almost the most important condition of the worth of an artistic production, of the correct, moral relation to what he represented, that is, of the knowledge of the difference between good and evil, he loved and represented what it was not right to love and represent, and did not love and did not represent what he ought to have loved and represented.Thus the author in this little volume describes with much detail and love how women tempt men and men tempt women, and even some incomprehensible obscenities, which are represented in La Femme de Paul, and he describes the labouring country people, not only with indifference, but even with contempt, as so many animals.

[11] Particularly striking was that lack of distinction between bad and good in the story Une Partie de Campagne, in which, in the form of a most clever and amusing jest, he gives a detailed account of how two gentlemen with bared arms, rowing in a boat, simultaneously tempted, the one an old mother, and the other a young maiden, her daughter.

[12] The author’s sympathy is during the whole time obviously to such an extent on the side of the two rascals, that he ignores, or, rather, does not see what the tempted mother, the girl, the father, and the young man, evidently the fiancé of the daughter, must have suffered, and so we not only get a shocking description of a disgusting crime in the form of an amusing jest, but the event itself is described falsely, because only the most insignificant side of the subject, the pleasure afforded to the rascals, is described.

[13] In the same volume there is a story, “Histoire d’une Fille de Ferme”, which Turgenev recommended to me more particularly, and which more particularly displeased me on account of the author’s incorrect relation to the subject.The author apparently sees in all the working people whom he describes nothing but animals, who do not rise above sexual and maternal love, and so the description leaves us with an incomplete, artificial impression.

[14] The insufficient comprehension of the lives and interests of the working classes, and the representation of the men from those classes in the form of half-animals, which are moved only by sensuality, malice, and greed, forms one of the chief and most important defects of the majority of the modern French authors, among them Maupassant, not only in this story, but also in all the other stories, in which he touches on the people and always describes them as coarse, dull animals, whom one can only ridicule.Of course, the French authors must know the conditions of their people better than I know them; but, although I am a Russian and have not lived with the French people, I none the less assert that, in describing their masses, the French authors are wrong, and that the French masses cannot be as they are described.If there exists a France as we know it, with her truly great men and with those great contributions which these great men have made to science, art, civil polity, and the moral perfection of humanity, those labouring masses, which have held upon their shoulders this France and her great men, do not consist of animals, but of men with great spiritual qualities; and so I do not believe what I am told in novels like La Terre, and in Maupassant’s stories, just as I should not believe if I were told of the existence of a beautiful house standing on no foundation.It is very possible that the high qualities of the masses are not such as are described in La Petite Fadette and in La Mare au Diable, but these qualities exist, that I know for certain, and the writer who describes the masses, as Maupassant does, by telling sympathetically of the “hanches” and “gorges” of Breton domestics, and with contempt and ridicule the life of the labouring people, commits a great error in an artistic sense, because he describes the subject from only one, the most uninteresting, physical side, and completely overlooks the other, the most important, spiritual side, which forms the essence of the subject.

[15] In general, the reading of the volume which Turgenev gave me left me completely indifferent to the young writer.

[16] I was at that time so disgusted with the stories, Une Partie de Campagne, La Femme de Paul, and Histoire D’une Fille de Ferme, that I did not at that time notice the beautiful story, Le Papa de Simon, and the superb story, so far as the description of a night is concerned, Sur l’Eau.

[17] “There are in our time, when there are so many who are willing to write, a number of people with talent, who do not know to what to apply it, or who boldly apply it to what ought not and should not be described,” I thought.I told Turgenev so.And I entirely forgot about Maupassant.

[18] The first thing from Maupassant’s writings which after that fell into my hands was Une Vie, which somebody advised me to read.This book at once made me change my opinion concerning Maupassant, and after that I read with interest everything which was written over his name.Une Vie is an excellent novel, not only incomparably the best novel by Maupassant, but almost the best French novel since Hugo’s Les Miserables.Besides the remarkable power of his talent, that is, of that peculiar, strained attention, directed upon an object, in consequence of which the author sees entirely new features in the life which he is describing, this novel combines, almost to an equal degree, all three conditions of a true artistic production:

1.the correct, that is, the moral, relation of the author to the subject,

2.the beauty of form, and

3.sincerity, that is, love for what the author describes.

[19] Here the meaning of life no longer presents itself to the author in the experiences of all kinds of debauched persons, — here the contents, as the title says, are formed by the description of a ruined, innocent, sweet woman, who is prepared for anything beautiful, a woman who is ruined by that very gross, animal sensuality which in the former stories presented itself to the author as the central phenomenon of life, which dominates everything, and the author’s whole sympathy is on the side of the good.

[20] The form, which is beautiful even in the first stories, is here carried to a high degree of perfection, such as, in my opinion, has not been reached by any other French prose writer.And, besides, what is most important, the author here really loves, and loves strongly, the good family which he describes, and actually despises that coarse male who destroys the happiness and peace of this dear family and especially of the heroine of the novel.

[21] It is for that reason that all the events and persons of this novel are so vivid and impress themselves on our memory: the weak, good, slatternly mother; the noble, weak, dear father, and the daughter, who is still dearer in her simplicity, absence of exaggeration, and readiness for everything good; their mutual relations, their first journey, their servants, their neighbours, the calculating, coarsely sensuous, stingy, petty impudent fiancé, who, as always, deceives the innocent girl with the customary base idealization of the grossest of sentiments; the marriage; Corsica, with the charming descriptions of nature; then the life in the country; the coarse deception of the husband; the seizure of the power over the estate; his conflicts with his father-in-law; the yielding of the good people; the victory of impudence; the relation to the neighbours, — all that is life itself, with all its complexity and variety.But not only is all this described vividly and well, — there is over all a sincere, pathetic tone, which involuntarily affects the reader.One feels that the author loves this woman, and that he does not love her mainly for her external forms, but for her soul, for what there is good in it, and that he sympathizes with her and suffers for her, and this sensation is involuntarily transferred to the reader.And the questions as to why, for what purpose this fair creature was ruined, and why it should be so, naturally arise in the reader’s soul, and make him stop and reflect on the meaning and significance of human life.

[22] In spite of the false notes, which here and there occur in the novel, as, for example, the detailed account of the girl’s skin, or the impossible and unnecessary details about how the deserted wife, by the advice of the abbot, again becomes a mother, details which destroy all the charm of the heroine’s purity; in spite of the melodramatic and unnatural history of the revenge of the insulted husband, — in spite of these blemishes, the novel not only appears to me to be beautiful, but through it I no longer saw in the author the talented babbler and jester, who does not know and does not want to know what is good and what bad, such as he had appeared to me to be, judging him from the first book, but a serious man, who looks deeply into a man’s life and is beginning to make things out in it.

Notes

1.Text C is an abridged part of an article written by Leo Tolstoy in 1894, to serve as preface to a Russian edition of a selection of Guy de Maupassant’s stories.It was translated by Leo Wiener in 1905, and published in The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy, Volume ⅩⅩ, by J.M.Dent.

2. Leo Tolstoy: He, a Russian writer, is a master of realistic fiction and one of the world’s greatest novelists.Tolstoy is best known for his two long novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina which are commonly regarded as among the finest novels ever written.

3.Turgenev: He was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright.His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman’s Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of the 19th-century fiction.

4.Maison Tellier: It is a short story written by Maupassant.

5.Garshin (1855-1888): He was a Russian author of short stories.

6.Druzhinin (1932-2007): He was a Russian (Soviet) violist, composer and music teacher.

7. Une Partie de Campagne: A Day in the County

8. Histoire D’une Fille de Ferme: The Story of a Farm Girl

9. La Petite Fadette: It is an 1849 novel by French novelist George Sand.It tells a story of two identical twins.

10. La Mare au Diable: It is another novel of George Sand.It’s about a love story between a widowed farmer and a poor girl.

11. Le Papa de Simon: Simon’s Papa

12. Sur l’Eau: It is one of Maupassant’s travel writing.

13. Une Vie: The History of a Heart

14. Les Miserables: It is Hugo’s novel, The Miserable.

For Fun

Works to Read

1.Two Little Soldiers by Maupassant

Luc and Jean were two soldiers who habitually spent Sundays together away from barracks.They became very good friends.However, their friendship was threatened when a country cowgirl appeared.

2. Henry IV by Luigi Pirandello

It is a play which is regarded as the masterpiece of Pirandello.The protagonist goes mad after falling from a horse in a masquerade and imagining that he really is the character he was pretending to play, Henry IV.Twelve years later he wakes out of his delusion, but continues to feign insanity when he realizes that he prefers the stability of his world to the vagaries of the real world.The play ends with the death of her lover, and Henry IV continues with the pretense of madness in order to escape punishment.

3.War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

This epic historical novel gives a panoramic study of early 19th-century Russian society, noted for its mastery of realistic detail and variety of psychological analysis.War and Peace is primarily concerned with the histories of five aristocratic families —particularly the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, and the Rostovs — the members of which are portrayed against a vivid background of Russian social life during the war against Napoleon (1805-1814).

Movie to See

War and Peace (TV series)

It is a BBC television dramatization of the Leo Tolstoy’s novel of War and Peace, beginning on September 28, 1972.Anthony Hopkins heads the cast as the soul-searching Pierre Bezukhov.Scripted by Jack Pulman and directed by John Davies, David Conroy’s War and Peace had battle sequences which were filmed in Yugoslavia.The production designer Don Homfray won a BAFTA for his work on the series.