The Library Annex

The Ant-Brotherhood was revealed to us but not the chief secret – the way for all men to cease suffering any misfortune, to leave off quarrelling and being angry, and become continuously happy – this secret he said he had written on a green stick buried by the road at the edge of a certain ravine, at which spot (since my body must be buried somewhere) I have asked to be buried in memory of Nikolenka.

And buried there he was. Maude’s Life of Tolstoy impeccably encompasses a life; not just the events, family tree, work or legacy, but the essence and evolution of a man. He loads his pages with diary entries and letters from Tolstoy himself as well as his counterparts. He memorializes Tolstoy and lauds him to the highest by actually disagreeing with him on certain points. He loves Tolstoy for the man he was not the ideas he purported. He loves him for all his genius and faults; his humanity. And what a human…

In truth, the book reads more like a doctoral dissertation than a biography. Maude carefully balances objective reporting, reasonable analysis and pages upon pages of source material to support his claims. The reader not only comes to know Tolstoy intimately but Maude as well.

The book naturally follows the chronology of Tolstoy’s life and one learns to appreciate his human imperfections as building blocks, not defects, to a great life. At the end, conflict embroiled his life as the forces of his dogmatic icon battled the vulnerable, imperfect beauty of his humanity. According to Maude, his greatness manifests itself in his pursuit of moral perfection rather than the achievement of it. This brings the reader closer to Tolstoy, removed from the pedestal and akin to our own spirits.

Tolstoy lived as a man caught between his person and his path toward moral perfection – the secret to meaning and happiness. From the beginning and up to the end we see those linear projections come closer to alignment but stray from each other based on varying circumstances natural in the procession of life. Tolstoyism seemed to stray from his own personal hemisphere testing not only his own resolve but the validity of his claims. Where some argue that Tolstoy had discovered principles that would guarantee moral perfection and happiness, the spirit of those principles dissipate as with all things rooted in absolutism. And in the end, it is the spirit of War and Peace, Anna Karenina, etc and the characters either journeying within that spirit or towards it which inspire people to live as Tolstoy lived. People must feel inspired to seek happiness of their own volition or the principles crumble.

I imagine his sons carrying his casket alongside peasants; not because Tolstoyism demands it but because a man had inspired them -perhaps even to pursue love and moral perfection as he had. To dilute this inspiration into law only exemplifies one’s lack of faith not only in humanity’s ability to be inspired but in the man they love to inspire them.