How Much Land Does a Man Need?

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Reprinted from the Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 22, No. 4 (1978):442-53.

 

TOLSTOJ'S VISION OF THE POWER OF DEATH AND "HOW MUCH LAND DOES A MAN NEED?"

 

Gary R. Jahn, University of Minnesota

 

In an essay written in 1928 Stefan Zweig wrote of the Tolstoj of the 1870s: "Like Job before the testing, he had nothing left to wish for. In one of his letters we read the bold assertion: 'My happiness is without alloy.' Suddenly, betwixt night and morning all these things [that is, Tolstoj's fame, fortune, and family] became meaningless, worthless." [1] Zweig asked what had caused this sudden. change and answered:

 

. . . nothing had happened to him. Or, to be precise (and this answer was more terrible still, and truer), Nothing had happened. Tolstoy had glimpsed the Nothing that lies behind things. Something had given way in his soul, a crack had opened, a narrow black fissure; and he had no choice, in his panic fear, but to go on staring through it into this void, this unnameable Nothing, this nihil, this nullity, this not‑self that stretches alien and cold and dark and impalpable, as background to a life pulsing with warm blood; he had no choice but to contemplate the Nothing which is the eternal framework of our transitory existence .... For three decades from his middle twenties to his middle fifties, Tolstoy lived a carefree life immersed in creative work. For three decades more, down to the end, his thoughts and feelings were monopolized by the endeavour to wrest a meaning from life, to understand the incomprehensible, to reach the unattainable. (212-I5.)

 

Thus, powerfully, if somewhat rhetorically, Zweig isolated the consciousness and contemplation of death as the primary motif in Tolstoj's work during his last thirty years.

 

Tolstoj's vision of the power of death was not, however, as sudden and unexpected as Zweig believed. Tolstoj revealed his concern with death in his earliest works and returned to it repeatedly prior to the 1870s. In the development of Tolstoj's attitude toward death, the period of the 1870s is remarkable not for a sudden revelation but rather for Tolstoj's concerted effort at this time to exorcize death's power and to achieve a compromise with it. The attempt was only temporarily successful, and by the mid‑1880s signs of his ultimate failure to deal adequately with the vision of the power of death were becoming apparent. This is suggested in the first instance by biographical data, but it is also revealed in the short story "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" ("Mnogo li cheloveku zemli nuzhno?" 1886). This is surprising because the story belongs to the spiritually confident and often

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morally smug cycle of the Stories for the People which Tolstoj wrote to explain and extol his version of Christian teachings.

 

In asserting that the vision of the power of death overwhelmed an unprepared Tolstoj in the mid-1870s Zweig may have been misled by the emphasis placed upon it in such works as the autobiographical Confession (Ispoved', 1882). In fact, scholars have long recognized that the theme of death and the search for a compromise with its nullifying power is characteristic of Tolstoj at every stage of his career.[2] War and Peace (Vojna i mir, 1865-69) exemplifies Tolstoj's confrontation with the theme of death in the period prior to his crisis. The shock and confusion produced by death is suggested by the frequent recurrence of the question "what for?" (zachem?) in the novel.[3] The terror of death is represented most clearly in the reaction of Vasilij Kuragin to the death of Pierre's father. "'Ah, my friend!' said he, taking Pierre by the elbow; and there was in his voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre had never observed in it before. `How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I am near sixty, dear friend... All will end in death, all! Death is awful ....' And he burst into tears."[4] This is, in essence, the power of the vision of death for Tolstoj. It is not just that death exists, it is the thought, "I, too, will die." [5]

 

The power of death is challenged in various ways. "Uncle" welcomes the Rostov children to his house with the words: "This, you see, is how I am finishing my days .... Death will come. That's it, come on! Nothing will remain. Then why harm anyone?" (X, 265.)[6] A different attitude is expressed in the novel by Andrej Bolkonskij. Dying, he conceives of death as a blessing, an escape from the limitations of the life of the body. Listening to Natasha sing, Andrej had "felt happy and at the same time sad. He had absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was ready to weep. What about? His former love? The little princess? His disillusionments? . . . His hopes for the future? . . . Yes and no. The chief reason was a sudden, vivid sense of the terrible contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable within him and that limited and material something that he, and even she, was." (X, 212.) Death severs the bonds of the material, and Andrej, at first afraid, finally welcomes it: "`Yes, it was death! I died‑and woke up. Yes, death is an awakening!' And all at once it grew light in his soul and the veil that had till then concealed the unknown was lifted from his spiritual vision. He felt as if powers till then confined within him had been liberated, and that strange lightness did not again leave him." (XII, 64.)

 

While Vasilij Kuragin dreads death, "Uncle" courageously accepts it and Andrej regards it as a blessing. Platon Karataev, the peasant soldier whom Pierre meets in captivity, believes that no compromise with death is required because death does not exist. "His life, as he regarded it, had no meaning as a separate thing. It had meaning only as part of a whole of which he was always conscious." (XII, 51.) Since that "whole" does not come to

 

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an end with the death of the individual, death is a chimera--no more than the fact at the end of the narrow stage of man's earthly existence. Still another attitude is to be found in the idea that the power of death is mitigated by the advent of new life, as suggested in the scene of Liza's death in childbirth. "'I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have you done to me?'‑said her charming, pathetic, dead face. In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt and squealed in Mary Bogdanovna's trembling white hands." (X, 41.)[7]

 

The theme of the power of death is thus clearly present from the beginning of Tolstoj's career. In those who experience or observe death it produces a multiplicity of emotional responses, ranging from naked terror through indifference to relief or joy. These responses are accompanied by various attempts to mitigate the awfulness of death, including replacement of the dying or dead with the newly born, recognition of death as inevitable, acceptance of death as the end of the sad limitations of corporeal life, and the belief that death is simply an appearance and not a reality.

 

Judging by the pessimistic tone of Toistoi's private papers of the mid1870s, the problem of death was becoming ever more pressing and increasingly difficult to deal with. He began to understand death as the only alternative, however undesirable, to the wholly unacceptable continuance of a life which seemed entirely circumscribed by the physical. Life became so meaningless that at last he regarded it as a cruel joke played upon man by some evil power. The only recourse for a perceptive person was voluntary self‑removal from life‑suicide. Reflections of this attitude are found in Anna Karenina, which Tolstoj was completing at this time. Shortly before she kills herself Anna thinks: ". . . I cannot imagine a situation in which life would not be a torment . . . we all know this and try to invent means of deceiving, ourselves. But when you see the truth, what are you to do? . . . Yes, it troubles me very much, and reason was given us to enable us to escape; therefore I must escape! Why not put out the candle, if there is nothing more to look at'? If everything is repulsive to look at?" (XIX, 346-47.) Levin, too, at times seriously doubts the value of life. "Without knowing what I am, and why I am here, it is impossible to live. Yet, I cannot know that, and therefore I can't live .... In an infinity of time, matter, and space, a bubble organism separates itself, maintains itself awhile, and then bursts, and that bubble is‑I!" This view represents life as "the cruel mockery of some evil power," and Levin draws a seemingly inescapable conclusion: "The means of escape were in the hands of every man. An end had to be put to that dependence on an evil power; and there was one means‑‑‑‑death." (XIX, 370‑71.)

 

Tolstoj had reached the nadir of his effort to deal with death. The late 1870s brought his "conversion" and with it the elaboration of a satisfying compromise with the vision of the power of death.[8] The process of crisis arid

 

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conversion is reflected in the story "Notes of a Madman" ("Zapiski sumasshedshego"), begun in 1884 and substantially reworked but not completed in 1887 and 1888. (Although he returned to the story in 1896 and 1903, Tolstoj left it unfinished at his death.) The story is highly autobiographical and based, in part, on the well‑known experience which Tolstoj underwent in September, 1869, in the provincial town of Arzamas. (Letter of 4 September 1869 to S. A. Tolstaja; LXXXIII, 167.) The story is a reminiscence of the onset of the narrator's "madness," the cause of which is traced to an incomprehensible terror, gradually revealed to be the dread of death. "'I am running from something dreadful and am unable to escape .... What is it that troubles me, what am I afraid of?' 'Me,'‑‑inaudibly replied the voice of death." (XXVI, 469.) "My whole being felt a need for and a right to life and along with this the (inevitable) progress of death . . . . There is nothing in life but death .... Somehow life and death were blending into one." (XXVI, 469‑70.) Death has become the only reality, so powerful that life has been reduced to a fiction: all of life is simply a part of death. After other experiences of the same sort, one of which employs snow as the symbol of being lost, isolation, and death (familiar from Anna Karenina, "The Snowstorm" ["Metel'," 18561, and "Master and Man" ["Xozjain i rabotnik," 1895]), the narrator at last discovers a solution to the problem of death in love and communion with the people (narod). This solution is the "madness" (as it seems to others) which afflicts him. He believes that there is no death and, hence, no fear. The story ends with the affirmation, "I am no longer afraid of anything" (XXVI, 474).

 

A similar portrait of crisis and conversion is found in Confession. As in "Notes of a Madman," the power of death is represented as a stimulus which cannot be ignored and may be satisfied by only two responses: capitulation (suicide) or compromise. If we take Tolstoj's account of this period in his life seriously, he was perilously close to capitulation. In the end, however, he devised a compromise with the power of death, based on his study of the Gospels. The new view of life and death, which Tolstoj explained most completely in the lengthy treatise On Life (O zhizni, 1886‑87), recalls that presented through Karataev in War and Peace: death is a fiction because true life is not bound within time and space. Tolstoj's concept of life is decidedly dualistic.[9] The animal existence of the body is contrasted to the true life of the spirit. The former is transient and ultimately unimportant as compared to the latter, which cannot be endangered by any external force. Thus, within the logic of Tolstoj's reasonings at least, even the body's death is of no moment, since it affects only the animal existence.

 

In this compromise with the power of death Tolstoj found a new hold on life. It is well to emphasize that he did not renounce life at this time, but rather sought to retain it as completely as he could by deepening his understanding of it and transcending those of its aspects which he had found to

 

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be a hindrance rather than a help to his satisfaction with it. As if to unite the two means of his salvation‑the Christian teaching and communion with the common people‑he produced a series of stories extolling them.[10] The Stories for the People (Narodnye rasskazy) were written expressly for the popular audience and may best be described as exempla of the ethical precepts of Tolstoj's version of the Christian teaching.[11] Prominent in many of these stories is the theme that it is better to risk animal existence than to jeopardize the true life of the spirit through sin. In the story "The Candle" ("Svechka," 1885) two peasants argue the proper response to the cruelty of their overseer. The hero maintains that it is better to endure evil than to succumb to it by doing away with the overseer. In "The Tale of Ivan the Fool" "Skazka ob Ivane Durake . . ." 1885) the devil causes an army to invade Ivan's kingdom of "fools," destroy their crops, and kill them in the hope that they will respond in kind and so fall into sin. But the good folk stand fast in virtue, preferring to give up their earthly existence rather than endanger their spiritual well‑being.

 

The nullifying power of death (like its tormenting companion, the theme of sex) is notable by its absence in the Stories for the People. Death appears rarely, and only to be exposed as an unsuitable cause for grief or despair. Thus, in "What Men Live By" ("Chem ljudi zhivy," 1881) the angel Mixail learns that death can be neither foreseen nor prevented and that to attempt to do so is an invitation to increased suffering. In "Where Love Is, God Is" ("Gde ljubov', tam i Bog," 1885) the cobbler Martyn Avdeich discovers solace in the Gospels after the death of his wife and children.

 

Tolstoj's compromise afforded him a respite of several years in his struggle with the power of the vision of death. The victory was,‑however, not complete. In the mid‑1880s Tolstoj was deeply troubled by the unhappiness within his family which resulted from his active profession of the new beliefs, and he fell into a state of recurrent depression. He communicated this most candidly to his friend V. G. Chertkov, to whom he wrote in June, 1885: "1 do not fear death, I even desire it. But even that is bad; it means that I have lost hold of the thread which was given me by God for guidance in this life." (LXXXV, 223.) Again in December of that year he wrote (although he did not send the letter): "I am living through what are perhaps the final hours of my life, and living badly‑mournful and irritated with those around me. I am doing something that is not as God would have it; I try to find out what it is, but it eludes me. And always there is this constant anxiety, mournfulness, and, worst of all, irritation and the desire for death . . . . Of course, all this is the product of my own weakness, my distance from God." (LXXXV, 294.) We must remember that family unhappiness, not the contemplation of death, was the immediate cause of this state of mind. Yet, Tolsto i portrayed his condition as the result of an inability to retain a grasp on his new convictions and, consequently, upon the defense which they

 

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provided against the power of death. Furthermore, we note in both letters a desire for death, reminiscent of the idea of the mid‑1870s that the only responses to the vision of death were compromise or capitulation. Having lost hold of the compromise, Tolstoj seems to portray himself as once again attracted to capitulation, the desire to die. Finally, one might surmise that the pessimism of this period was due also to actual deaths which confronted Tolstoj. His long‑time friend and correspondent L. D. Urusov passed away in September, 1885, and in January, 1886, the youngest of the Tolstoj children, Aleksej L'vovich, died of suppurative tonsilitis.

 

Tolstoj's depression is especially visible in the short novel The Death of Ivan Il'ich (Smert' Ivana Il'icha, 1885), the work which inaugurated his return to fiction for the educated reader. It is true that the final pages of this work present the ultimate escape of the title character from the terror and loneliness of death, but it also contains one of the most powerful evocations of that terror to be found in world literature. "Whether it was morning or evening, Friday or Saturday, made no difference, it was all just the same: the gnawing, unmitigated, agonizing pain, never ceasing for an instant, the consciousness of life inexorably waning but not yet extinguished, the approach of that ever dreaded and hateful Death which was the only reality. . ." (XXVI, 99). The reader may well, in fact, be more moved by the power of death than by the hero's escape from that power.[12] A year later, in the autumn of 1886, Tolstoj wrote The Power of Darkness (Mast' t'my), the title and substance of which also indicate his growing concern with the pessimistic vision of life from which he had, seemingly, escaped in his religious conversion. Tolstoj's work on the play began immediately after his recovery from an injury which had kept him bedridden, in pain, and seriously ill for two months. It was accompanied by the first stages of his work on the treatise (fin Life, which was to set forth his thoughts on the meaning of life and death and in particular to explain (perhaps to reaffirm) that "true" life is impervious to the challenge of death.

 

It would seem, then, that in the mid‑1880s Tolstoj was once more, even if obliquely, experiencing the familiar anxiety of the vision of death. He had elaborated and was energetically expounding his compromise with death and the life of selfless love which it made possible. At the same time, it is clear from his personal papers and suggested by various works of fiction that the compromise with death was not fully satisfactory. The pressure of the power of death was so strong at this period that it invaded even the spiritually confident realm of the Stories for the People.

 

"How Much Land Does a Man Need?" was written and first published during this period of intermittent depression.[13] The story begins with a townswoman's arrival in the country to visit her peasant relations. Following a discussion of the relative merits of country and town life, the peasant Paxom (the story's main character) smugly reflects on the superiority of his

 

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lot, the only shortcoming of which is the small amount of land at his disposal. The devil, overhearing these reflections and taking Paxom's selfsatisfaction as a challenge, decides to put him to the test by arranging for him to become a large landholder. Paxom moves from one place to another, at each stage owning more land than before. He is, however, never quite satisfied. Finally he goes to Bashkiria to take advantage of the method of land purchase in use there: the purchaser, for a fixed sum, is granted title to as much land as he can walk around in a single day. Although warned by a dream of ill‑omen, Paxom insists on putting this plan into effect. His desire for land, however, proves to be greater than his endurance, and his attempted circumambulation of a very large area exhausts and, finally, kills him. Fie drops dead inches short of completing his circuit. The story ends with a terse account of his burial.

 

In the light of the joy and triumph of virtue which mark other Stories for the People, there is a natural inclination to interpret "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" as a negative exemplum (specifically, as a warning against avarice) designed to be understood in the context of the positive ideal of the other stories. No doubt this was Tolstoj's intention in writing the story. However, this interpretation relies too heavily on the apparent similarities to the other Stories for the People and pays insufficient heed to the details and structure of the individual text.

 

There is little evidence within the story itself that it is to be taken as a warning. For instance, Paxom follows the devil's way in the story, but it is not clear, from the story itself, that there is an alternative (God's way) which would have led him to a better fate. In the other Stories for the People God and Christ are mentioned frequently, and most of them also have a biblical overtone, represented by the various scriptural epigraphs, quotations, and language which they contain. In "How Much Land Does a Man Need'?" the biblical element is wholly lacking and the name of God appears only near the very end of the story. Straining to reach his goal, Paxom thinks: "Land in .plenty, but will God bring me to live upon it? Oh, I have done for myself, .I won't make it." (XXV, 78.) This passage may suggest that ultimate control over man's fate is in God's hands. Also, the clause "I have done for myself" may indicate that Paxom had a choice between the course he followed and some better course, and that by living as he did he brought his fate upon himself. Even so, it would seem that the passage is ambiguous as evidence that the story is a warning and, in Paxom's case, realization comes too late to serve as an effective deterrent to the proscribed form of conduct. Without the context of the other Stories for the People and their clear indication of that "other way," one might well read the story as other than a morally prescriptive negative exemplum.

 

An alternative reading is that the story is objectively descriptive of the human condition in general. Al'tman has suggested that the story trans-

 

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cends the moral didacticism which was essential to Tolstoj's intent. Not just a further chapter in his moral writings of the 1880s, the story became a stylization of an ancient legend about the Scythians which was recorded by Herodotus:

 

. . . through all the rationalist shrouds of Tolstoj's story. . . one feels the heat of the ancient "tale of the land." Although he changed the original title [from "Skazka o zemle"I Tolstoj was not able to change the basic essence. Tolstoj himself compared writers with the biblical Balaam (Numbers, xxi‑xxiv), who often wants to do one thing but does another. This happened to Tolstoj himself more than once. And in our case again. Without thinking to, without even wanting to, he created, no, re‑created, an ancient pagan myth instead of a pious and partially Christianized story. (319.)

 

In theorizing that the story is mythic, Al'tman maintains that it is descriptive rather than critical of the view of the human condition which it presents.

 

The story may be divided into two parts of unequal length. Chapters one through seven tell how Paxom is drawn gradually and unwittingly, by the lure of ever greater property, into the devil's hands. Chapters eight and nine present Paxom's attempted circumambulation, his death, and the final victory of the devil. The indications of a structural division at this point are the change of locale, which removes the action of the story from familiar Russia to exotic, Bashkiria and Paxom's dream (in chapter seven), which replaces the realistic and ordinary with an intimation of the fantastic and extraordinary.

 

In one sense the second part of the story functions simply as the final and climactic episode of the series developed in the first part. Viewed only in this way, however, the second part of the story may seem redundant, since the first part contains (in the form of Paxom's dream) a rather exact anticipation of the action of the last two chapters. One is quite certain even before the dawn of Paxom's last day that the hero's efforts will prove fatal. I would suggest that the second part of the story has a second function: to serve as a recapitulation of the whole of the first part and to suggest a broader frame of thematic reference.

 

Chapters eight and nine support the reading that the story is descriptive rather than didactic. The first seven chapters do not contradict a descriptive interpretation, but they do restrict its applicability to the case of the protagonist. The retelling of Paxom's story in symbolic form in the final two chapters suggests that it is applicable to the human condition in general. As an individual, Paxom is portrayed as chiefly concerned to gain more and more land for himself. A contrast is provided throughout the story by the words tesnota (narrowness, crampedness) and prostornost' (breadth, expansiveness). The feeling of being enclosed and limited drives Paxom to ever greater acquisitions of land. Thus, when he expresses the hope that his neighbors will move away and leave him to purchase their land he says, "A to vse tesnota" (XXV, 70). When they do not, Paxom decides to leave him

 

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self, saying, "Chto z tut v tesnote bedstvovat"' (XXV, 70) and later, "A zdes' v etoj tesnote‑grex odin" (XXV, 70). He moves from his native region and settles on much greater lands than before. Again he becomes dissatisfied: ". . . i na etoj zemle [Paxomu] tesno pokazalos"' (XXV, 71). Still later, in explaining his purpose to the Bashkirs, he says, "U nas v zemle tesnota" (XXV, 73).

 

The motivating force of Paxom's life is the need to escape the tesnota of which he is always conscious. The application of this in general terms is that man seeks to escape from limitation by broadening his field of free action. This situation is tragic because, ultimately, the limiting force against which man struggles is not external to but a part of his own nature and hence inescapable. This is the implication of Paxom's refusing the opportunity to free himself completely from tesnota when he first arrives among the Bashkirs. Paxom is offered the free use of any lands within the chief's gift. Able at last to have land without limit, Paxom nevertheless declines this offer, preferring land with definite boundaries‑that is, land which is inherently limited. Thus, the limitation is associated with man, rather than with the land. The final image of tesnota in the story is that of Paxom in his grave. The limitation which Paxom has been trying to overcome is here shown to be his death. Thus, at the deeper thematic level the story is representative of man making a symbolic and hopeless challenge to death, the limitation which he cannot overcome.

 

The world in which the bitter comedy [14] of man's struggle with death is played seems quite ordinary, except for the brief appearance of the devil in chapter one and the remark, in chapter two, that the peasants were unable to purchase the land of their mistress communally because "the devil divided them" (XXV, 68). In chapter seven Paxom dreams that those who inspired him to obtain more land, as well as the chief of the Bashkirs, were all the devil in different guises. This dream shows Paxom's world to be under the absolute control of the devil and Paxom merely a pawn in the devil's hands. His symbolic struggle against death is shown to be an unwitting, unavailing, and unequal battle with the devil. Paxom, however, ignores his dream, and it is only at the moment of his death that he recalls it and understands his true position.

 

The story suggests that man lives in a world controlled by evil, and the two final chapters summarize this life symbolically. Like the life of man, Paxom's last day on earth continues from darkness unto darkness, from sunrise until sunset. Although Paxom's task seems pleasant in the cool and beauty of the morning (as man's life is easier in childhood, at a relative distance from his ultimate fate),[15] as the day wears on his increasing physical exhaustion and the circular course which he pursues signify the weary hopelessness of a life that is essentially a frantic and useless effort leading nowhere; Paxom's last day begins and ends at the same spot. Throughout

 

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the last two chapters Paxom's constant companion is the sun, symbolizing his life and, in its inevitable descent toward the horizon, portending his certain death. Death is man's real foe and Paxom's efforts to reach his goal become more and more frenzied as sunset draws near. Only at the end, when the image of the blood‑red sun has made the reality of death clear to Paxom, does he remember his dream and realize its significance. He recognizes in himself the victim of a devil‑ruled world, but since he is also the victim of his own mortal nature he cannot stop; he even increases his pace until, just reaching the goal, he collapses. The flow of blood from his mouth in death is prefigured by the crimson of the sinking sun.

 

The view of man which emerges is thus in tension with that elaborated by Tolstoj in his religious writings of the early 1880s and in his other Stories for the People. To be sure, this story has much in common with the others: language, character types, the supernatural, a thematic concern with proper human conduct. But these familiar elements here combine to present an understanding of the human condition which is quite alien to hat with which the post‑conversion Tolstoj comforted himself. "How Much Land Does a Man Need'?" is indicative of the incompleteness of the triumph  of the moral and religious system which served Tolstoj as a refuge from the vision of the power of death; it suggests a return to the despair which preceded his "conversion." We see the major motif of his crisis of the 1870s re‑emerging: the horror of inevitable death and the conviction that life is either meaningless or a cruel joke played upon man by an evil power. Following Tolstoj's example, one might draw an analogy from the Gospels: it is as though he were trying to patch over death, an old tear in the fabric of his life, with the new cloth of his Christian teaching. By 1886 that new cloth had begun to shrink and the edges of the rent in his happiness were again becoming apparent.

 

It is possible to interpret this story in two ways ‑‑ as a moral proscription of a certain type of conduct[16] or, as has been shown, as a pessimistic description of the human condition in general. The present interpretation has the advantage of providing a logical context for the sympathy which readers commonly experience for the story's central character. If the story is simply morally prescriptive, then Paxom is a greedy fool whose premature death is the just and ironic recompense for his misspent life. Within this framework sympathy for Paxom and the pessimistic tone of the story (why should justice make us feel pessimistic?) seem to have no basis. But the evidence suggests the existence of a thematic undercurrent in the story which is in accord with the feelings of sympathy and pessimism which the story arouses. By the middle of the 1880s Tolstoj's hard‑won spiritual unity was beginning to show signs of fracture. On one hand we can see the self‑assured Christian teacher, on the other the reawakening seer of death and hopelessness. Between the two stands Tolstoj the artist, moved now by one, now by the other. In "How Much Land Does a Man Need'?," considered

 

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outside the explanatory context of the other Stories for the People and in the light of biographical facts, the artist was especially responsive to the seer of death.

 

NOTES

 

1         Stefan Zweig, Adepts in Self-Portraiture: Casanova, Stendhal, Tolstoy, tr. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York: Viking Press, 1928), 211‑12.

 

2         The theme "Tolstoj and Death" is a familiar one in the literature. Of special interest are Janko Lavrin, Tolstoy: An Approach (New York: Russell and Russell, 1948), 81-93; David Kvitko, Philosophic Study of Tolstoy (New York: n.p., 1927), esp. chap. 1, section 4; and G.W. Spence, Tolstoy the Ascetic (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1967). Many further comments may be found in B. Ejxenbaum, Lev Tolstoj: Kn. I, 50-ye gody (L.: Priboj, 1928) and Kn. II, 60-e gody (M.‑L.: GIXL, 1931).

 

3         This may be noted already in Tolstoj's first published work, Childhood (Detstvo, 1852), in the reaction of the child‑hero to the untimely death of his mother.

 

4        L. N. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenij (90 vols; M.‑L.: GIXL, 1928‑58), 1X, 104. The            feeling that the death of another implies the reality of one's own death is also keenly experienced by Levin in Anna Karenina (his meeting with his dying brother Nikolaj [XVIII, 367-681) and is suggested also in The Cossacks (Kazaki, begun in 1852 although not published until 1863) in the episode in which Lukashka kills a Chechen warrior (VI, 34).

 

5        This awareness of the power of death is most succinctly expressed, perhaps, in The Death of Ivan Il’ich  (chap. VI, the passage describing Ivan Il’ich’s  attitude toward the syllogism which he had learned from Kiesewetter's Logic: Caius is a man; all men are mortal; therefore, Caius is mortal).

 

6         This is essentially a repetition of the view taken by Eroshka in The Cossacks: "You die . . . the grass grows on your grave; that's all" (VI, 56).

 

7         The same note is sounded in Anna Karenina where Kitty's pregnancy is disclosed immediately following the death of Nikolaj Levin.

 

8         Nearly all biographies and studies of Tolstoj's life and works contain discussion of his crisis and conversion. Among the best are Aylmer Maude, The Life of Tolstoj, (2 vols.; New York: Dodd, Mead, 1911) [and many other editions]; G. R. Noyes, Tolstoy (New York: Duffield, 1918); E. J. Simmons, Leo Tolstoy (2 vols.; New York: Vintage, 1960) [reprint]; NON. Guest, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoj: Materialy k biografii c 1870 so 188! god (M.: AN SSR, 1963); R. F. Christian, Tolstoy: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969); B. Ejxenbaum, Lev Tolstoj: Semidesjatye gody (L.: GIXL, 1974); E. L. Greenwood, Tolstoy: The Comprehensive Vision (New York: St. Martin's, 1975).

 

9         The most complete treatment of Tolstoj's dualism is G. W. Spence, Tolstoy they Ascetic (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1967).

 

10       Among the most important studies of Tolstoj's Narodnye rasskazy are the following: R. R. Gel'gardt, "K izucheniju jazyka i stilja narodnyx rasskazov L. N. Tolstogo," Izvestija tverskogo pedagogicheskogo instituta, 5 (1929), 89-106; G. V. Krasnov, "Narodnye rasskazy 70-x godov," in L. N. Tolstoj: Stat'i i materialy Uchenye zapiski Gor'kovskogo universiteta, No. 77; Gor'kij, 1966), 201‑11; Z. S. Melkix, "Tolstoj i fol'klor (Narodnye rasskazy 70‑80‑x godov)," in Voprosy literatury (Minsk: Belgosuniversitet im. V. I. Lenina, 1960), 3-20; L. M. Myshkovskaja, "Narodnye rasskazy," Masterstvo L. N. Tolstogo (M.: Sov. pisatel', 1958), 369-89; A. I. Popovkin, Narodnye rasskazy L. N. Tolstogo (Tula: Muzej-usad'ba L. N. Tolstogo "Jasnaja poljana," 1957); Gary R. Jahn,

 

453

 

"L. N. Tolstoj's Narodnye rasskazy," Russian Language Journal, 31 (1977), 67-78. A great deal of additional information is to be found in the commentaries to L. N. Tolstoj, Polnoe sobranie xudozhestvennyx proizvedenij, ed. M. Xalabaev and B. Ejxenbaum (M.‑L.: Gosizdat, 1928-30), X, and Polnoe sobranie sochinenij, XXV, 665-737.

 

11     The exemplum, as it was developed in medieval times, was a brief story or parable which illustrated a point of religious doctrine. Compendia of such tales were prepared as a help to clergymen in search of illustrative material for their homilies on passages of Scripture.

 

12      Or even, perhaps, find the enormity of the suffering out of place and arbitrary in the context. This reaction has been described in E. Wasiolek, "Tolstoy's 'The Death of Ivan IIyich' and Jamesian Fictional Imperatives," Modern Fiction Studies, 6 (1960-61), 314.

 

13     Two studies of "Mnogo li cheloveku zemli nuzhno should be mentioned: Z. A. Kuzhchenko, "Idejno-xudozhestvennoe svoeobrazie rasskaza L. N. Tolstogo 'Mnogo li cheloveku zemli nuzhno Uchenye Zapiski Kirovskogo gos. ped. in-ta, 29, 1 (1967), 78-82, and M. Al'tman. “Tolstoj i Gerodot," Slavica, 7 (1928), 311-21.

 

14     Paxom's death evokes only laughter from the chief of the Bashkirs (really the devil in disguise).

 

15      A notion which is perfectly in accord with Tolstoj's lifelong belief in the innocence and beauty of childhood and the ineluctable decay and perversion of maturity.

 

16     For examples of morally prescriptive interpretations of the story see S. Bychkov, L. N. Tolstoj.­Ocherk tvorchestva (M.: GIXL, 1954), 319; H. Havelock Ellis, The New Spirit [with A. Stockham, Tolstoi: A Man of Peace] (Chicago: Alice B. Stockham, 1900), 118-19.