The Complete Plays of Leo Tolstoy (Annotated). Leo Tolstoy

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       “Count Tolstoi and the Public Censor”

       by Isabel Hapgood

       Table of Contents

      It is a well-known fact that the sympathy between Count Lyof Tolstoi and the censor of the Russian press is the reverse of profound. Nevertheless, the manner in which the two men are working together, unwittingly, for the confusion of the count's future literary executors and editors, furnishes a subject of interest, not unmixed with amusement, to spectators in a land which is not burdened with an official censor. The extent of the censorship exercised over the first eleven volumes of his works will probably never be known. But the twelfth volume is a literary curiosity, which can be appreciated only after a comparison of its contents as printed there with the manuscript copies of works prohibited in Russia, or with copies of such works printed out of Russia.

      The contents of the volume are of a very miscellaneous character, and consist of sixteen short moral tales for popular reading, some of which are cast in the form of legends, folk-tales, and explanatory texts to accompany cheap chap-book pictures; a fragment entitled In What Happiness Consists; and article on the Census of Moscow, written in 1882; one written two year later, called Thoughts Evoked by the Moscow Census; a psychological study of death, - The Death of Ivan Ilitch; and an article on Popular Education, which was originally printed in a journal in 1875, and accidentally omitted from the fourth volume of the collected works, where it properly belongs, in company with a large number of the stories of popular reading. This last article serves, in some measure, to explain why so highly talented an author has devoted himself, of late years, to the production of the peculiar stories begun in his pedagogical journal, entitled Yasnaya Polyana, after the name of his estate, and continued to the present time in various publications. As he has added no qualifying notes, the article may be taken as still presenting his views. They may be summed up as follows: that the German method of elementary instruction (evidently the Kindergarten) may be suited to the capacities of "Hottentots, negroes, and small German children," but that it certainly is not to the little Russian muzhik, who knows more at the age of two years than all the elaborate puerilities of the two chief Russian authorities on the subject can teach him from their books. He believes that the peasant himself is the best judge of what he should be taught, even though the latter does hold the Dogberrian theory that schools need not be permanent institutions, since, if the parents once learn, the following generations will inherit their wisdom. Count Tolstoi's personal experience in the peasant schools has shown him that Russian, Slavonic (the language of the church), and mathematics, "and nothing else" should constitute the course of study in schools for the people, since these branches of learning are at the foundation of all others. In order that the people may have proper reading matter for due progress, he has prepared the simple stories contained in the present volume, as well as those referred to as preceding them. They are written in the simplest, most concise peasant language, and in accordance with his theory that the people always speak good Russian, while the educated classes do not. They are all ingenious, though, at times, the moral truth which he seeks to convey is rendered difficult of perception by the involved allegories by which it is obscured. "Love one another, resist not evil, despise money:" such is the burden of his exhortation, and as a rule, it is beautifully and touchingly expressed. If the peasants are observing, however, they will not fail to note some discrepancies in his arguments on the subject of money. In one of the tales, for instance, he represents the subjects of Ivan the Fool - who are fools like their ruler, yet the only wise in truth - as refusing money altogether except for the purpose of necklaces for the women and playthings for the children, since it is nothing but an invention of "the real gentleman, the old Devil," to lead men astray. In another, a man who finds a heap of gold by the wayside, and devotes the whole of it to the founding of asylums for orphans and old people, and other works of charity, is rebuked by an angel of the Lord for having even touched the accursed thing. In still another, a poor peasant, who has with difficulty scraped together enough money to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the salvation of his soul, spends nearly the whole of it in restoring a starving family to prosperity, and is obliged to return home. Yet he or his wraith is seen at the Holy Sepulchre by his friend and traveling-companion, as a heavenly reward for the good accomplished with the gold, that lure of the Evil One. The giving of money in alms is directly commended in other tales. The author's opinions on this question, elsewhere expressed, show that he entertains strong doubts as to whether money is not an unmixed evil, and the old-fashioned system of barter the only true solution of the difficulty. These stories, as printed in this volume, do not correspond, in all respects, with the versions furnished the people in the separate penny copies, but it can hardly be a question of the censor, in this case.

      The fragment entitled In What Happiness Consists represents all of the work popularly known as My Religion which is allowed in a printed form, in Russia. It corresponds with a portion of chapter x., beginning with the sentence "Christ preaches the truth." (My Religion, Crowell, page 179; What I believe, Gottsberger, page 171.) Throughout, the "doctrine of the church" - where the phrase is permitted at all, - is replaced by the words, "the teaching of the world." The references to asceticism, voluntary torture in this life, and the scriptural quotation on which monasticism is founded are expunged. The remark that the circle of friends which emperors and kings have is very restricted also strikes the censor as objectionable. The outspoken passage on pages 191, 182 (respectively, as above), beginning with the comments on the servant in a bath-house, including observations on cabinet ministers perpetually engaged in signing documents of no importance, and men following a gaudy uniform to the wars, like a herd of cattle, and so on, is the next omission. The wickedness of oaths to authorities and the results of a refusal to perform military service follow, as well as the phrase about torture in Sevastopol and Plevna. (What I Believe, page 184.) The quotation and reference to poverty as one of the indispensable conditions of following Christ's doctrine is also omitted, possibly out of consideration for the feelings of wealthy ecclesiastics. The passage concerning the millions of men in Russia who do not practice the doctrine of Christ, and yet do not starve, the miracle of the loaves and fishes (pages 203-207; 191-194, as above), and one or two lesser omissions complete the list of the censor's cancellations. The cuts are significant and leave very little of even that one chapter to stand as the authorized version.

      The Death of Ivan Ilitch is the most important thing, in the line of strictly literary work, which Count Tolstoi has written since Anna Karenina, and consists mainly of a subtle psychological study of the cultivated man in general, during the hopeless illness preceding his death. There is enough ordinary description connected with this to admit us into the circumstances of Ivan Ilitch's life, before and during his illness, and the unfeeling conduct of his family, СКАЧАТЬ