Orwell on Tolstoy vs. Shakespeare: the theme and variations vs. the symphony
[NOTE: I’m not becoming Tolstoy-obsessed, although I’ve written two days in a row on him. However, I think that the topic of both posts is not really Tolstoy per se, but larger philosophical questions about the good life, politics, and art.]
Yesterday, commenter “chuck” linked to a great essay by Orwell on Tolstoy and his virulent criticism of Shakespeare. I’d never before read this work of Orwell’s, and it was a pleasure. I agree with it nearly 100%.
I had vaguely remembered that, back in his curmudgeonly old age when Tolstoy had turned into an esthetic bully, he had put down a lot of writers for being insufficiently didactic (among them, his former writing self). Just as Tolstoy denied himself pleasure for moral and spiritual reasons in his later life, and hoped that others would follow suit, he advocated denial of pleasure in writing—literature now had to be didactic or he hated and despised it.
Shakespeare’s protean nature, his creation of teeming worlds with every manner of being and person in them, was anathema to the moralizing elderly Tolstoy. What’s hard to understand, though, is why Tolstoy says he had always hated Shakespeare (Orwell’s essay discusses this at some length). Perhaps this statement of Tolstoy’s was a form of revisionist history, but I’m going to take him at his word and assume he had in fact always hated Shakespeare. A curious thing in a writer.
In the last half of his life Tolstoy didn’t just renounce his own earlier literary works by turning over the copyrights to his wife (at the same time he was writing fiction that excoriated both her and the institution of marriage). He renounced them by also repudiating them aesthetically. The world continued to love them, though, and continues to this day.
But when I think of Tolstoy’s earlier sprawling novels such as War and Peace, even though it’s fiction, it occurs to me that most of the fictional characters are based very strongly on people he actually knew, such as himself, his wife, and his wife’s family. It occurs to me that it is possible that (unlike Shakespeare) Tolstoy was not really the sort of writer, even when young, who could write well about things extremely “other” than himself and those around him. And in fact the first literary works for which Tolstoy became famous had been an autobiographical trilogy couched as novels, called Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth.
Perhaps his main focus was always himself, a topic on which he worked almost endless variations.
I have long thought that in general fiction writers can be roughly divided into two camps: those who create worlds and those who explore the world they know (or write riffs on it). It’s a form of something I’ve written about before, the theme and variations vs. the symphony:
I’ll let author Milan Kundera take over on the subject now, since he was actually my inspiration in the first place (from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting). Here he is describing his musicologist father who, during the last ten years of his life, had lost the ability to speak:
Throughout the ten years of his illness, Papa worked on a big book about Beethoven’s sonatas. He probably wrote a little better than he spoke, but even while writing he had more and more trouble finding words, and finally his text had become incomprehensible, consisting of nonexistent words.
He called me into his room one day. Open on the piano was the variations movement of the Opus 111 sonata. “Look,” he said, pointing to the music (he could no longer play the piano). And again, “Look,” and then, after a prolonged effort, he succeeded in saying, “Now I know!” and kept trying to explain something important to me, but his entire message consisted of unintelligible words, and seeing that I did not understand him, he looked at me in surprise and said, “That’s strange.”
I know of course what he wanted to talk about, because it was a question he had been asking himself for a long time. Variation form was Beethoven’s favorite toward the end of his life. At first glance, it seems the most superficial of forms, a simple showcase of musical technique, work better suited to a lacemaker than to a Beethoven. But Beethoven made it a sovereign form (for the first time in the history of music), inscribing in it his most beautiful meditations.
Yes, all that is well known. But Papa wanted to know how it should be understood. Why exactly choose variations? What meaning is hidden behind it?
That is why he called me into his room, pointed to the music, and said, “Now I know!”
And, somehow, Kundera the son finally understood (or thought he understood; the father wasn’t telling) what his father meant:
I am going to try to explain it with a comparison. A symphony is a musical epic. We might say that it is like a voyage leading from one thing to another, farther and farther away through the infinitude of the exterior world. Variations are like a voyage. But that voyage does not lead through the infinitude of the exterior world. In one of his pensées, Pascal says that man lives between the abyss of the infinitely large and the abyss of the infinitely small. The voyage of variations leads into the other infinitude, into the infinite diversity of the interior world hidden in all things.
…Variation form is the form in which the concentration is brought to its maximum; it enables the composer to speak only of essentials, to go straight to the core of the matter. A theme for variations often consists of no more than sixteen measures. Beethoven goes inside those sixteen measures as if down a shaft leading into the interior of the earth.
The voyage into that other infinitude is no less adventurous than the voyage of the epic. It is how the physicist penetrates into the marvelous depths of the atom. With every variation Beethoven moves further and further away from the initial theme, which resembles the last variation as little as a flower its image under a microscope.
Man knows he cannot embrace the universe with its suns and stars. Much more unbearable is for him to be condemned to lack that other infinitude, that infinitude near at hand, within reach….
It is not surprising that in his later years variations become the favorite form for Beethoven, who knew all too well…that there is nothing more unbearable than lacking the being we loved, those sixteen measures and the interior world of their infinitude of possibilities.
The wide-ranging Shakespeare is the symphony, the narrow elderly Tolstoy the theme and variations. And although in his younger writing years Tolstoy appeared for a while to be symphonic (certainly War and Peace appears that way), that was either a short-lived experiment or it was in fact an illusion, and his scope was probably always more narrow and focused and self-referential than it had seemed.
Music lovers—and literature lovers—usually make room for both in their hearts, the theme and variations and the symphony, even if writers themselves tend to specialize in one or the other when they work. In his later years Tolstoy wanted to write universally, but because he wrote didactically he ended up narrowing himself still further. You might say his theme and variations became less varied and less tuneful. But every now and then a melody still broke through.
A man in unrelenting war with the reality within which he exists will have increasingly less of value to share with others.
I was a book reviewer for the L.A. Times for a long time, appearing also in the Washington Post and many other papers, though I doubt any of that carries here or anywhere else these days. Who cares, right?
In any case, I’ve always vastly preferred Dostoyevsky to Tolstoy, the former’s psychological acuity and insight into is own human, all-too-human condition resonating far beyond the scope of the privileged count — although yes, the latter does have a few nice moments on the battlefield.
Even Resurrection, a late novel of Tolstoy’s often neglected because it was written when he was obsessed with hatred of the flesh and shame over all the hot sex he’d once had, is still worth reading, better than you might think.
Both writers are far better than Turgenev, who has not worn well. The writer to revisit, whose work is sometimes underestimated, is Anton Chekhov. The middle to late period stories are incredibly good. “The Duel,” for instance, long enough to be classed as a novella, goes deeper than just about any piece of fiction you’ll ever read.
I haven’t read as much Orwell – or Tolstoy – or Shakespeare – as I’d like to. All three are quirky. A lot of what Orwell says in this essay feels correct.
It’s at moments like this that I have to love the internet.
Miklos, I like Turgenev. Sure, he wrote a lot of stories about a guy being hopelessly and chastely in love with his best friend’s wife (a theme and variation guy), but his work is interesting. I never got Chekhov though. It might be that plays don’t really resonate for me as text.
miklos and Nick:
Here’s a previous post of mine about—of all things—Tolstoy’s opinion of Chekhov. It’s pretty funny, actually.
It’s also about MY opinion of Chekhov.
And I see it mentions Tolstoy on Shakespeare, although not the Orwell essay.
Please forgive what I’m about to say—but Chekhov’s plays remind me of Seinfeld—Russian-style, of course!
Although with that recommendation of The Duel, I just might have to read that.
I always liked Dostoevsky the best of them all. However, I have a sneaking suspicion he wasn’t exactly easy to live with, either.
As for Turgenev, he and Tolstoy were close friends off and on; they kept having major falling outs. Tolstoy didn’t think all that much of Turgenev’s writing when Turgenev was alive, but after his death he came to think he was excellent.
I had to read Fathers and Sons in college, and at the time I was very impressed with the parallels with people in the 1960s (that’s when I was reading it).
I’m under the impression that few Russians are easy to live with… perhaps that explains the national obsession with vodka? 😉
Geoffrey Britain:
You might have a point there.
Interesting that Beethoven should be mentioned. IIRC, Beethoven thought it was immoral for Mozart to write a wonderful opera starring that beastly man, Don Giovanni. And not only that, the Don got some of the best songs…
Here is an interesting passage from Orwell’s essay, relevant to the current political and social situation – which is true of so much of his very prescient work.
“A sort of doubt has always hung around the character of Tolstoy, as round the character of Gandhi. He was not a vulgar hypocrite, as some people declared him to be, and he would probably have imposed even greater sacrifices on himself than he did, if he had not been interfered with at every step by the people surrounding him, especially his wife. But on the other hand it is dangerous to take such men as Tolstoy at their disciples’ valuation. There is always the possibility – the probability, indeed – that they have done no more than exchange one form of egoism for another. Tolstoy renounced wealth, fame and privilege; he abjured violence in all its forms and was ready to suffer for doing so; but it is not easy to believe that he abjured the principle of coercion, or at least the desire to coerce others. There are families in which the father will say to his child, ‘You’ll get a thick car if you do that again’, while the mother, her eyes brimming over with tears, will take the child in her arms and murmur lovingly, ‘Now, darling, is it kind to Mummy to do that?’ And who would maintain that the second method is less tyrannous than the first? The distinction that really matters is not between violence and non-violence, but between having and not having the appetite for power. There are people who are convinced of the wickedness both of armies and of police forces, but who are nevertheless much more intolerant and inquisitorial in outlook than the normal person who believes that it is necessary to use violence in certain circumstances. They will not say to somebody else, ‘Do this, that and the other or you will go to prison’, but they will, if they can, get inside his brain and dictate his thoughts for him in the minutest particulars. Creeds like pacifism and anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind. For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics – a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage – surely that proves that you are in the right? And the more you are in the right, the more natural that everyone else should be bullied into thinking likewise.”
Tolstoy: the first Social Justice Warrior?
Not to divert the conversation, but since the discussion is about Russian novelists and their opinions of each other, here is Ayn Rand on Tolstoy:
The subtler details of the psychological relationships, such as who says what at which moment, are very skillfully presented; Tolstoy’s characterizations are full of the kind of minute details one would observe if one watched a family tragedy through a transparent wall. But such details merely give one the first layer of motivation in the persons involved–which is all that Tolstoy presents. The deeper meaning of the motives is never given.
Rand also connected Tolstoy to Shakespeare!
http://objectivistanswers.com/questions/12078/what-did-ayn-rand-think-about-the-novel-war-and-peace/
The bard wrote for the ages and was universal in scope. Tolstoy was provincial. Russia is neither European or Asian; it is instead Russian, a strange hybrid. As WC noted, “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
in his curmudgeonly old age when Tolstoy had turned into an esthetic bully, he had put down a lot of writers for being insufficiently didactic (among them, his former writing self).
Lots of writers have second thoughts later in life when they wake up and learn what they didnt know when they wrote.
one of the classics in this was langston huges..
its very hard to find given the lefts games, but he wanted his early great works destroyed as he changed from communist… though if you read, he is celebrated so much you can hardly find this CHANGE
similar is true of richard wright..
who wrote a book you cant find called too smart to be a communist (or simething similar, hard to remember as i got to read it once, and now its gone, all down the memory hole and impossible to find though i have tried)
its his story of how he wanted to be part of the communist movement, and went to those bookstores in the back rooms and such… but turned out the communists didnt want him because he was too smart and would reveal the game, and not be manipulable.. (for the record some are voluntariliy manipulable – sell outs)
they even appeared a they did for me on his property to intimidate him and then disappear…
goes deeper than just about any piece of fiction you’ll ever read…..
try a Mote in Gods eye… thought thats science fiction
(ie. fiction set in the future or another reality, while regular fiction is past to present)
The Mote in God’s Eye is a science fiction novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, first published in 1974. The story is set in the distant future of Pournelle’s CoDominium universe, and charts the first contact between humanity and an alien species. The title of the novel is a wordplay on the Biblical “The Mote and the Beam” parable and is the nickname of a star. The Mote in God’s Eye was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards in 1975. Robert A. Heinlein, who gave the authors extensive advice on the novel, described the story as “possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read.”
Theodore Sturgeon, describing Mote as “one of the most engrossing tales I have encountered in years,” reported that “the overall pace of the book [and] the sheer solid story of it” excuse whatever flaws might remain, particularly an unexplained key feature in the imagined alien society
Portsmouth Times reviewer Terry McLaughlin found the novel “a superior tale, told without the pseudo-psychology background that seems to mar many a new science fiction novel.”
and thanks to looking i have something to read
Pournelle and Niven followed up with the sequel The Gripping Hand and in 2010 Pournelle’s daughter, Jennifer, published an authorized sequel entitled “Outies.”
I’ve never read King Lear. But it interests me that Orwell says that Tolstoy says that the play should be a comedy or a melodrama rather than a tragedy. A friend of mine believes that Romeo and Juliet is written as a farce comedy but with everyone dying at the end. I’ve noticed that Othello opens with a comic misunderstanding, a sequence that ends with everyone being happy and recognized for their virtue. It’s only after that that the story turns into something horrible. Where I’m going with this: I think Shakespeare played with expectations more than we realize, and more than we pick up on when we label things “tragedy” or “comedy”.
Geoffrey Britain Says: August 31st, 2016 at 7:08 pm I’m under the impression that few Russians are easy to live with… perhaps that explains the national obsession with vodka?
not true… they can be great to be with, but like the girl with the curl on her forehead, when they are bad they are horrid..
the drinking is not about that, the drinking, which even all the sattelites have has to do with no opportunity or abilty to change your life or get more or do more (if your male)
for instance in my own life now as we are more soviet – in the old days, you had an idea and showed it worked, people would want to have it and it was easier to get investors and so on. but today, its turning into much like the soviet union in that the only people who can invent are those who are authorized to invent. so if not authorized and you invent, they dont want what you have from you.. but would have gladly taken it from the approved.
this is how you prevent people from growing or changing their class through effort… so for the men, there is nothing to do with your time much after work. you cant socailise and so on, as you dont know which of your friends or neighbors or even family members are on KGB payroll… as americans we take the norm of social trust and commisseration for granted.
but you can see how this is all changing in the colleges, as microagressions, microracism or what not, is causing people to not trust people of color to be with… oh, the people of color are told this will end the discrimination and so on, but it wont, it makes more of it. would you hire someone that if you said something wrong would put your family on the street financially in lawsuits and fines and social ostracization…
its the same wiht not picking up blacks with your cab, its not the 80% (made up number) that do nothing, work hard or such.. but the 2% that will kill you… rob you… jack you up… etc…
why chance it when you have years ahead of yourself and a family that requires you be ok to support them so they are not destitute or deported?
Women in the soviet era though had a different set of rules and could get more by having sex because gifts were allowed… so you could not work to gain more, but women could lay on their backs to have more, and you want a clue why abortion was on demand and free there? (so elites could have all the sex they wanted with desperate pretty young things sexed up wanting a better life, and have no issues)
now you know why western feminism which is not from the origins, but soviet, sexes up the ladies and had always wanted a return to the – lets use the underclass as a sex source for fun.. which when marraige was man and woman and so on, became a no no for the elite. [weiner would have loved and fit into the french court cause there would be no issue as to his games… however our society has not changed enough yet, and so he gets in an issue – but how much issue did clinton and the sex plane get?]
So the men sit around, dont talk, drink to extreme extremes, and wait to die… (i am very familiar with this)… and many of the women hope to hook up with a gangster, siloviki, politburo, etc.. and get gifts and perks…
in my area in ny you can usually tell the russian women.. how so? well, they are so sexed up its not funny… if from the baltics they are usually tall, but others are as well.. you often see them with a man who could break trees.. they are fragile and wear clothes daily that women might only wear out on a night out on holiday when no one can see them
we have a nice girl here learning to be a doctor, and her kick is thigh high boots with 5 inch heels and mini skirts.. (while there is a whole other class of russian women who are VERY classy, very nice, home focused family focused, etc… and another group that is like dating sociopaths who will destroy you… (even a recent movie of that type came out))
of course these are generalities and focused on the negative… but there are lots of positives too, which i want to remind those who read and want to think that i think there isnt…
[edited for length by n-n]
so the sexed up anti sex of feminism is just preparing the ladies for the kind of life that soviet living makes norm… in such a place, miley cirrus would do ok twerking.. and if she had a brother, he would do poorly, as there is nothing he can do to improve anything… so he will drink.
Russian men losing years to vodka
How Alcohol Conquered Russia – The Atlantic
Vodka blamed for high death rates in Russia – BBC News
Why Russian Men Don’t Live as Long – The New York Times
Russians literally ‘dying for a drink,’ study says – USA Today
Industrial alcohol ‘is killing Russian men’ – Telegraph
their population has collapsed due to no children under feminism and equality policy (which is why they shared it with us.. they found a social bomb that eradicates populations just as sure as a neutron bomb would but without a response from the enemy and without any damage!!!!! and with the victims HAPPY they are victims who defend their exturpation by self)
Drinking deaths are only part of the reason that the Russian demographic picture looks so dire. Birth rates are another. In recent years, the working-age population has also begun to decline quickly, weighing on the productive capacity of the economy. Putin’s state has taken action to stabilize Russia’s demographics, including instituting payments for child-bearing.
of course i have tried to warn of the same outcome from the same reason here.. but even neo pish toshes as she doesnt understand that there is a 20 year lag before you see the effect.. and that we ignore that the reason to import people from the outside borders is to replace the people who were not born thanks to feminism and go grrrrl promotions by the left socialist/communistgs… now, since they love this all you can be sure they know the outcome of what they are doing…
[edited for length by n-n]
You make a lot of excellent points, but as perhaps you realize, you’ve diluted your focus a great deal.
As for the Russian writers far above: neo, Chekhov’s plays are a completely separate issue. It’s really too bad so many people think of them first, as they enter not at all — not at all — into my consideration of his work. The three collected volumes of his short adds up to an oeuvre that puts him at least on the same shelf with Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and far above Turgenev, who is better tan Andrey Biiely, Maxim Gorky or Ivan Bunin — and “First Love” is a minor classic, not to be missed.
It’s hard to revist “Dead Souls” after one’s read “Gogol’s Wife,” the long story or novella on which Tommaso Landolfi founded his career, but “Dead Souls” still has its charms.
As for comparing Chekhov’s “The Duel” to anything in the world of S-F, I’m reminded of when someone said no one had lived unless they’d read Harry Potter. Just… leave the room, okay?
As far as Soviet-era fiction is concerned, life is too short for Vassily Grossman’s massive “Life and Fate,” Platnov is not quite there, and Solchenitskyn (I can’t spell it correctly without checking, and life is too short yet again) is very good but overly fixated on his one essential point — the reader looking for something with the flavor of the best 19th-century Russian fiction might want to read “The Old Man,” by Yuri Trifonov. Really. Trifonov is seriously worth checking out.
Tatyana Tolstoya’s not that great. I’ll say no more.
Artfldgr:
The drinking vodka problem in Russia long long predates both Communism and feminism. Those things are also sources of reasons to drink, but the problem was already there, big time.
Even the article to which you yourself linked states that history:
Having read “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin really messed me up with regard to Orwell. I know that Orwell was a genius…but Animal Farm is just an extended analogy with one real insight, and 1984 is just “We” with the same insight, and Orwell’s great insight about government coercion seems less impressive when you realize he was still a socialist, and is that one insight enough to make an author a genius?
Nick:
I haven’t read We, but in my opinion Nineteen Eighty-Four is a masterpiece for three reasons: the treatise on Newspeak contained within it, the concept of Room 101, and some of the other images and statements and characters that are quite haunting (the Two Minutes’ Hate, “do it to Julia,” O’Brien and the interrogation of Winston, the telescreen, the men under the chestnut tree, “I sold you and you sold me”).
In other words, some of the genius is politics, and some is art. I prefer it to Animal Farm, by far.
I wrote about Orwell’s socialism here.
Chekhov’s plays are a completely separate issue. It’s really too bad so many people think of them first, as they enter not at all – not at all – into my consideration of his work.
I think Chekhov would have loved reading that — an excerpt from Janet Malcolm’s Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey:
Orwell’s description of Tolstoy reminded me of what he said about Newspeak: writing with the purpose of limiting the reader’s intellectual choices.
ann; miklos:
I hope you both followed the link I gave to this previous post, and read what Tolstoy had to say about Chekhov’s plays, and Chekhov’s reaction to it:
Funny stuff, I think.
Loved that “to the couch in the living-room and back,” Neo.
You mentioned Seinfeld earlier, and that reminded me of Elaine’s talking with a famous Russian author and telling him that she’d heard Tolstoy really wanted to call War and Peace, War: What Is It Good For”.
People forget about how influential Hegel was on European thinking, not just on Marx. Turgenev definitely used the thesis/antithesis thinking in his works. You can even see it in the names of some Russian works: War and Peace, Fathers and Sons, Crime and Punishment.
The Chinese have a Newspeak. They call it Simplified Chinese.
Russian literature can be fully understood only in context of Russian everyday life and politics, because it never was seen by its creators as purely entertainment or aesthetic exercise. All the authors has their agenda, ideological, political or religious, they all considered themselves as agents of change or counteraction to changes they were seeing as destructive, they reacted by their writings to bitter discussions already taken place in society.
Chase began, several weeks ago, to invoke “the late Tolstoy” as a model for his behavior. He would bring it up at dinners or with anyone, with people high in the U.S. government, with entertainment people, movie people, or with the Japanese. He would say, “When I want to see which way to go, what to do, I try to imagine what the late Tolstoy would have to say.” Or: “When I’m faced with a difficult problem, I try to think of the late Tolstoy.” Or, when told about someone’s situation, maybe how that person had screwed up, Chase would put on a suitably serious expression, shake his head, and say, “It might have helped him if he’d stopped for a moment and considered: What would the late Tolstoy have done?”
Chase would admit, if questioned, that he had never read much Tolstoy. He would explain that this did not disqualify him from having an impression, which he trusted, as to what was contained in Tolstoy’s work and thought. Just to say “the late Tolstoy” conjured up an image, did it not? You didn’t necessarily have to read the books. The few remembered biographical details, and the aura surrounding the closed books — a great deal could be transmitted in this way.
The explanation never failed to please. And the rare bibliophile who was intimately familiar with “the late Tolstoy” seemed to find the reference — just bringing up the concept — sort of inspirational, or thought-provoking, and Chase knew when to keep his mouth shut, when it was better to simply raise an eyebrow, or nod, or say, “That’s true.”
Now, however, the late Tolstoy seemed to have run his course. These sheep in the folk art painting remind Sarah of the old man, how he dressed like a peasant, raging about what he saw as various refusals to look at or tell the truth. If peasants and children did not appreciate Chopin, for instance, then there was something wrong with Chopin. Simplicity was all that mattered. Simplicity meant unmediated truth.
She looked at the painting, which she took to be set in rural western Pennsylvania, someplace where she’s never actually been. There’s something sort of ominous about these black-faced merino sheep. This isn’t really a very friendly landscape. The acid yellow sun looks poisonous, with a bit of a halo, the tallow sun itself outlined in black. The sky is absolutely blue, light blue, but the day seems dark. Unmoving. These asymmetric trees look unnatural, created rather than grown. The only inhabitants are these two cream-colored big sheep, with thick coats, black faces and feet. Tolstoy could be one of these silent, possibly malevolent, immovable sheep, staring out into this room balefully, not a thought anywhere near the history of its head.
Chase would put on a suitably serious expression, shake his head, and say, “It might have helped him if he’d stopped for a moment and considered: What would the late Tolstoy have done?”
That’s like Westboro Baptists and Leftists saying “What would Jesus do”, as if they actually were disciples of Jesus Christ.