Desire, Death, and Imitation: Narrative Patterns in the Late Tolstoy by K�re Johan s> Mj�r (review)

Abstract

310 SEER, 8i, 2, 2003 however insignificant,is invaluable;he has taken upon himself the burden of the sinsof the whole world;did he know that he had recentlybeen proclaimed 'the only Christian in the world'? One would like to know more about the later Gusev than can be gleaned from Ivanova's brief biographical introduction . Did he remain unswervingly loyal to Tolstoi's ideals, a conscientious objector, a teetotaller,a vegetarian?Did he ever sufferfor his beliefsin Soviet times? Could he really have been the sanctimonious individual of limited cultural and intellectual interests as described by a woman acquaintance of his to the presentreviewer?A fullerbiographyof thisindefatigablebiographer would be welcome. The reminiscences of Tolstoi which follow Gusev'sletterstake up approximately i 00 pages. The seven contributors come from widely different educational backgrounds:three Iasnaia Poliana employees on the land or in the household; two teachers; one amateur photographer and one recent universitygraduate.Virtuallyall of their accounts referto the period of I889; some were written much later than the events described;at one extreme the peasant Morozov had known Tolstoi for most of his life, while the photographer only met him once. In contrast to Gusev's letters, the focus of attention in these memoirs is Tolstoi the man ratherthan Tolstoi the author. One is constantly made aware of Tolstoi's kindness,considerationfor others, and ability to put people of all classes at their ease. His good deeds ranged from an active role in famine relief to such trivialmatters as giving one of his shirts to a teacher soaked by rain. Inevitably many descriptions of Tolstoi himself repeat insignificantor well attested features.Many contributorswere well acquainted with, and sympathetictowards 'Tolstoian'ideas generally he is several times referredto as the Great Teacher, Thinker or Sage -and there is little, if anything, to reproach him with or to argue against in their accounts of their conversationswith him, or his answersto their questions on differentaspectsof his beliefs. Occasionally there is evidence of all too human vacillation on Tolstoi's part, as when he advises a woman teacher to put marriage before her profession, but changes his mind two days later. She married nevertheless! But in general, these memoirs reinforce existing knowledge ratherthan shed new light. The book is handsomely produced and faultlesslyedited and annotated. It is, however, too tightlybound for comfortablereading. StAndrews R. F. CHRISTIAN Mjor,K'are Johan. Desire, Death,andImitation. Narrative Patterns intheLateTolstoy. Slavica Bergensia, 4. Department of Russian Studies, University of Bergen, 2002. I50 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. NOK IOO: $13.50: k8.oo (paperback). THE stated intention of this study is to analyse the content and role of the themes of death and desire in three late storiesby Tolstoi T7he DeathofIvan Il'ich, TheKreutZer Sonata,and MasterandMan. Although these themes are present in earlier stories they do not, Kare Johan Mjor argues, predominate to the same extent as in the later ones. Using Peter Brooks's concept of REVIEWS 3 I I 'narrative desire', Mjor sets out to show that 'Tolstoy's texts are narrative representationsof death and desire and of the connection between them and the narrationis drivenby a strivingtowardsthe end (thedeath) and hence their fulfilment' (p. I9). The tendency of critics and commentators to treat these two themes of death and desire separately is, he claims, unsatisfactory since they are so closely interwoven. Mjor hopes, moreover, that 'a close reading of these Tolstoyan narrativeswill be able to illuminatefeatureswhich arelost when moralvalues are simplyabstractedfromthem' (p. 26). During the course of his analysis Mj0r frequently invokes the views of figuresas diverseas Heidegger, Freud,Bakhtin,Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson (not alwaysuncritically,especiallyin Bakhtin'scase).As if seekingto justify this approach he writes: 'I find several of the theoretical efforts of twentieth-century narratology inevitable for the study of narrative art, especially when dealing with nineteenth-century realism, which perhaps still appears to us to provide an unmarked manner of narrating' (p. 22). Or, perhaps, almost certainly not: the 'us' presumably refersto literaryscholars, none of whom would subscribeto any such notion. If such remarkspoint to a certain tentativeness in Mj0r's position, it has also to be said that he is not entirely successful in the achievement of his...