A Tolstoyan Reading of David Copperfield

Abstract

CCI F YOU SIFT the world's prose literature, Tolstoj once remarked, will remain; sift Dickens and David Copperfield will remain (Tatyana Tolstoy 168). Over a period of more than fifty years his diaries and notebooks record similar praise of the novel, as does What is Art?, which uses David Copperfield as an example of universal art.' Along with the Sermon on the Mount and the writings of Gogol' and Rousseau, Tolstoj placed David Copperfield among the small number of works that had enormous influence on him (Gusev 1: 162). How was this influence expressed? Before one can consider the kinds of influence David Copperfield exerted on Tolstoj, we must ask: how did Tolstoj interpret David Copperfield, or, in other words, which David Copperfield did he read? The study of Dickens that Tolstoj had hoped to write was never begun, and we can only guess what further, analytical siftings Tolstoj performed on his favorite novel.2 Beyond his numerous notes and remarks bestowing generous praise, there are no specific comments revealing the nature of his appreciation of David Copperfield, much less his understanding or interpretation of it. We must read backward to Dickens from Tolstoj's works, studying in them his responses to David Copperfield.3 While the influence of David Copperfield, as Q.D. Leavis and Tom Cain have shown, can be detected in War and Peace (for Leavis notoriously -a reason to take David Copperfield seriously), its most striking use by Tolstoj is in his earliest work, the trilogy Childhood, Adolescence and Youth (Detstvo, Otrocestvo, Junost'), the most important single connection between him and Dickens.