Adepts in Self-Portraiture

by Stefan Zweig

  Thus does Tolstoy repudiate attempts to canonize him, esteeming himself as nothing more than a seeker, as nothing more than one who is laboriously and with faltering steps striving towards God. Through the mouth of his double, he asks himself: “Had you not an honest desire to serve God?” The answer threatens to slam all the doors leading to saintliness: “Yes, there was such a desire, but it has been befouled and overgrown by vain gloriousness. There is no God for such as I, no God for one who has lived to win man’s approbation.” Still, a ray of hope shines through the darkness: “Nonetheless, I will seek him.”

  “I will seek him.” Here we have the expression of Tolstoy’s truest will. His destiny, he thinks, is not to find God, but only to seek God. He will not be one of those who can solve riddles for mankind, but only one of those who help their fellows to ask new questions, and to ask them more sincerely and ruthlessly than before. He has not become a saint, a redeemer; has not even been able to reshape his own life unambiguously. He has remained a man among men, rising to greatness at one instant, to lapse into pettiness the next; a man full of weaknesses and inadequacies and equivocations, but quick to recognize his errors, and filled with eagerness to attain perfection. Not a saint, but a man inspired by a saintly will; not a believer, but endowed with a titanic longing for faith; not an image of the divine, tranquil in its perfection, but a symbol of the human, which can never rest content with its acquirements, but must, day by day and hour by hour, continue the struggle.

  A DAY IN TOLSTOY’S LIFE

  Family life is depressing to me because I am unable to share the sentiments of my associates. The things which please them — distinction in school examinations, worldly success, shopping and marketing — these things seem to me misfortunes, bad for them all, though I cannot tell them so. Or, indeed, I can and do tell them, but nobody understands what I say.

  DIARY

  From the descriptions of his friends and from his own words, I compile the following account of one day among thousands similarly spent by Leo Tolstoy.

  It is early morning. The old man awakens slowly, looks around. The light of dawn already shows through the window. Thought springs from its dark recess. His first feeling, one of happy astonishment, is: “I am still alive!” Last night, as was customary with him, he had lain down to sleep humbly prepared to accept his fate if there was to be no awakening. By the flickering light of the lamp, when writing in his diary next day’s date, he had added three letters, the initials of the Russian words meaning “if I live.” Now, wonderful to relate, the gift of existence has again been bestowed on him. He lives, breathes, is in good health. He draws deep breaths of the air which comes to him as a greeting from God, and with his grey eyes he eagerly scans the growing light. How wonderful to be alive and well! Thankfully the old man gets out of bed, and strips. His well-preserved body glows in vigorous reaction to the touch of ice-cold water. He exercises like a young gymnast. Then, having dressed, he opens the window and sweeps out the room, tosses billets of wood upon the crackling fire. He is his own servant.

  Now he goes to the breakfast room, to find Sofia Andreevna, his daughters, his secretary, and a few friends, already in their places, while the samovar is singing on the table. The secretary brings him a miscellaneous assortment of letters, newspapers, and books, adorned with postage stamps from every quarter of the world. Tolstoy looks gloomily at the pile. “Incense and annoyance,” he thinks. “Distraction, anyhow! I wish to be more alone with myself and with God, wish that I did not have to play the part of navel to the universe, that I could keep far away from me all these things that disturb and confuse, that tend to make me vain, arrogant, untruthful, a seeker after fame. The best thing would be to throw the whole lot into the fire, and thus avoid waste of time and escape being puffed up with pride.”

  Nevertheless, curiosity has its way with him. Swiftly he looks through the medley of requests, complaints, business proposals, messages announcing visits, idle chatter. A Brahmin writes from India to say that Tolstoy has misunderstood one of the sacred doctrines; a prisoner in a penitentiary tells the story of his life and asks advice; young men put their difficulties before him; beggars ask despairingly for help; one and all declare that he is the only person to whom they can look for succor, that he is the conscience of the world.

  The furrows on his brow deepen. “How can I help anyone?” he thinks. “I who do not know how to help myself. Day after day I stray from my course, trying to find a new reason for bearing this unfathomable life, while using big words about truth in order to deceive myself. How amazing that they should come to me crying: ‘Leo Nikolaevich, teach us how to live!’ All that I do is a lie, is inflated and pretentious. Really I must long since have been drained dry by squandering my energies upon thousands and thousands of persons, instead of collecting them within myself; because I talk and talk and talk, instead of holding my peace, and silently listening to the truth from within. But I must not disappoint the writers of these letters, I must answer them.”

  To one of the letters he attends longer than to the rest, reading it a second and a third time. It is from a student, who fiercely declares that Tolstoy “preaches water and drinks wine.” It is time for him to leave his house, to hand over his property to the peasants, and to take up his pilgrimage on God’s highways. “The man is right,” muses Tolstoy. “He says what my own conscience tells me. How can I explain to him what I cannot explain to myself? How can I defend myself, since he accuses me in my own name?” Taking this letter with him, he moves to go to his study, for he wishes to answer it instantly. The secretary follows him to the door and reminds him that the Times correspondent is coming to dinner and has asked for an interview.

  Tolstoy’s face darkens. “These importunate interviewers! What do they want of me? Only to pry into my life. They cannot come to learn my opinions, for these are set forth in my writings, where anyone who knows how to read can study them.” Still, in a moment of weakness, he gives way. “Well, well, I will see him; but only for half an hour.” Hardly has he crossed the threshold of his study, when he has pricks of conscience. “Why did I yield once more? A grey-headed man, nearing death, I have not yet been able to rid myself of vanity, and I deliver myself up to these chatterers. Always I am weak when they try to force themselves upon me. Shall I never learn to hide myself, to hold my tongue? God help me!”

  At length he is alone in his study. A scythe, a rake, and an axe are hanging on the bare wall. The room is uncarpeted, and scantily furnished. Tolstoy’s writing table and chair are plain, substantially but roughly made. The place looks like a cross between a monk’s cell and the interior of a peasant’s cottage. On the table lies the manuscript of a half-finished philosophical essay at which he had been working the day before. He reads it over, erasing, amending, and adding there and there, in a large and childish handwriting. Again and again his pen stops because his mind strays from the work. “I am too shallow, too impatient. How can I say anything about God when I am not yet clear in my own mind as to the idea of God, when I have no firm standing-ground of my own, and when my thoughts fluctuate from day to day? How can I write in plain terms that everyone will understand, since I am writing of God and of life, both incomprehensible? I have undertaken something which is beyond my powers. I was so sure of myself in the days when I wrote novels and tales describing life as God has made it, and not as I, a muddle-headed old seeker after truth, would like it to be. I am no saint, and I should not presume to teach others. I am only one to whom God has granted keener senses than to most, that he may see God’s world more clearly. Perhaps I was a sincerer and better man when I devoted myself to the service of art, than I am now when I revile art!”

  Looking around almost furtively, as if afraid that someone may be watching him, he goes to a hiding place and takes out the stories at which he is now secretly working — secretly, because he has publicly stigmatized art as “superfluous” and “sinful.” There they are, Hadji Murad, and The Forged Coupon; he turns the pages, and rea
ds here and there. His eyes beam. “Yes,” he says to himself, “it is well written, it is good. God sent me into his world that I might describe it, not that I might try to guess his thoughts. How lovely art is; how pure, creation; how full of anguish, thought! I was happy in the old days, though the tears streamed down my face when I was describing the spring morning in Family Happiness; when Sofia Andreevna still came to my room in the evening, her eyes bright with love, to embrace me. When she was copying it, she had to stop and thank me; we were happy all the night through, our whole life was happy. But I cannot turn back now, I must not disappoint people; I must persevere in the path, since they expect me to help them in their need. I must not pause, for my days are numbered.” He sighs, and reluctantly puts the stories back in their hiding place. Then, in the mood of a hack writer, he sets to work once more at his essay, knitting his brows, and hanging his head so low that his white beard brushes the paper on which he writes.

  Noon at last! He has written enough for today. Jumping up, he runs downstairs. The groom is at the door, holding Délire, his favorite mare. He swings himself into the saddle, and the figure which has been bowed over the writing table straightens. He looks big, strong, lively, much younger than in his study, as, with the easy seat of a Cossack, he canters off towards the forest. A sense of renewed life warms his old body voluptuously, and the blood tingles in his fingertips and ears. When he enters the grove of saplings, he draws rein to note how the sticky buds are thrusting upwards into the spring sunshine, and how, when he gazes heavenward, the delicate tracery of the twigs is tinted with green. He guides his mount to the birches, where, keen of vision, he watches the ants crawling along the bark, some of them laden with spoil, and others collecting pollen. The patriarch lingers for many minutes, musing upon the infinitely little and the immeasurably great. How wonderful it is, how wonderful it has seemed to him for more than seventy years, this nature which is the mirror of God, a mirror whose reflections are ever new, ever animated; this nature that is so much wiser in its quietude than the turmoil of human thought. His mare whinnies, and paws the ground impatiently, rousing Tolstoy from his reverie. Thereupon he sets off at full gallop, to feel and to hear the breeze, to enjoy the wildness and the passion of the senses. He rides on and on, happy to be freed from thought; rides forward for twenty versts, until his mount’s flanks are spotted with foam. Then he turns, and trots quietly homeward. His eyes shine, he is light-hearted, happy as when he had ridden along the same road in his boyhood’s days.

  When he nears the village, his face falls once more. He has been scanning the fields with the eyes of an expert. Here, in the middle of his own lands, is a region that is badly kept, neglected; the fences have been broken and probably the wood has been used for firing; the ground has not been plowed. Angrily, he rides up to the cabin to demand information. A dirty, slatternly woman, bare-footed, with tousled hair, comes submissively to the door, two or three half-naked children clinging timidly to her ragged skirt, while farther back in the untidy hut a fourth lies bawling. Frowning at her, he asks why everything has been allowed to run to seed like this. The woman answers in a flood of disconnected words. For six weeks her husband has been in jail, for stealing wood. How could she look after things in his absence? Her man is strong and industrious, and was driven to his offense by hunger. His Worship knows how things are with them; bad harvest, high taxes, the difficulty of paying rent. The children, seeing that their mother is tearful, mingle their howls with her sniffs. Tolstoy, wishing to cut her eloquence short, gives her some money, and takes to flight. He is gloomy; his joy has vanished. “So this is what happens on my land — no, not mine, but the land I have made over to my wife and my children. Why do I always hide like a coward behind my wife’s complicity, my wife’s fault? The assignment of my property to her was nothing but a farce played to deceive the world. After I have myself fed full upon what has been extorted from the peasants, my family goes on sucking wealth out of these poor wretches. I know perfectly well that in the rebuilt house where I live, every brick is made out of the sweat of these serfs; is their flesh, their labor, turned into stone. What right had I to give my wife and children something which did not belong to me, the earth which the peasants till? Shame upon you, Leo Tolstoy, who in God’s name preach righteousness day after day, while the wretchedness of your neighbors stares in at your windows!” Overcast with wrath and sorrow is his countenance, as he rides between the stone pillars of the gateway leading to My Lord’s mansion. The liveried footman and the groom rush forward, one to hold his horse, and the other to help him to alight. “My slaves,” he says to himself grimly.

  The table is set for dinner in the big dining room, a blue-and-white service, and silver utensils. There is a babble of lively conversation among the company assembled: the countess, sons and daughters, the secretary, the resident physician, the French governess and the English, one or two neighbors, a revolutionary student who has been installed as tutor, and the Times correspondent. As the master of the house enters, a respectful silence falls upon the gathering. Tolstoy bows with old-fashioned courtesy to the visitors, and sits down at the table without saying a word. When his vegetarian fare is set before him (asparagus, an imported delicacy, cooked with the utmost care), his thoughts turn involuntarily to the ragged woman whom he had solaced with a coin or two. “I wish I could make them understand that I cannot and will not live like this, waited on hand and foot, a four-course dinner, silver dishes, and other superfluities, while these poor neighbors of mine lack the first necessities. They know perfectly well that I want only one sacrifice from them, the abandonment of all this luxury, which is a shameful denial of the equality God wishes men to observe. But my wife, who ought to share my thoughts as well as my bed and my life, is at enmity with my thoughts. She is a millstone around my neck, a burden to my conscience, dragging me down into a life of falsehood. Long ago I should have cut the cords with which they have bound me. What more concern have I with them? They trouble my life, and I trouble theirs. I am unwanted here, a burden to myself and to them all.”

  He looks at his wife, Sofia Andreevna, and, though not of set purpose, he looks upon her as his enemy. He notes how old and grey she is. Her brow is furrowed like his own, and her withered lips are set in a woeful expression. The old man’s heart grows tender at the sight. “How unhappy she is! What a tragic figure, she whom I took into my life as a laughing, innocent maiden. Forty-five years ago, more than a generation, our life together began. She was a girl, whilst I was already worn by excesses; and she has borne me thirteen children. She helped me to produce my books, she suckled my children; what have I made of her? She is filled with despair, irritable to the verge of insanity; a woman so unhappy that her sleeping draughts have to be kept under lock and key lest she should end her life by an overdose. My sons, too, I know they dislike me; and then there are my daughters, whom I am robbing of the natural pleasures of youth; the secretaries, who make notes of everything I say, picking my words over like sparrows among horse droppings — they have balsam and incense ready in their boxes to preserve my mummy in a museum. Then there is the English puppy, waiting with his notebook to record what I am to tell him about our peasant land tenure. This dinner table, this house, are an offense against God and truth; and I sit here in hell, warm and comfortable, instead of taking my own way. It would be better for me, it would be better for her, if I were dead. I have tarried far too long, and have not lived up to my principles.”

  The servant offers him another course, fruit with whipped cream, cooled on ice. With an angry gesture, he pushes the silver dish away. “Is there anything wrong with it?” asks Sofia Andreevna solicitously. “Is it too rich for you?”

  He answers with bitter emphasis: “Yes, that is the trouble. It is too rich for me in more senses than one!”