Did Leo Tolstoy Become Don Quixote? Half a Century of Dispute Between Two Geniuses

Abstract

This article for the first time examines Leo Tolstoy’s interpretation of two «Don Quixotes»: the greatest creation of M. de Cervantes Saavedra and the famous article by Ivan Turgenev «Hamlet and Don Quixote». On the basis of L. Tolstoy’s diaries and letters, the memoirs of his contemporaries, the article analizes the motives of Tolstoy’s contradictory assessments of Cervantes’ work and his immortal creation. These assessments offer a deeper understanding of both the character of L. Tolstoy and his aesthetic, ideological and moral priorities in different periods of his life. A detailed analysis of the writer’s dialogue-polemic with these two authors and with the texts themselves fits into the broad context of Russia’s spiritual life in the second half of the 19th century. L. Tolstoy had an important episode in his youth that became crucial for his work: the spiritual mentoring of another genius of Russian literature, Ivan Turgenev, during the meeting of two writers in 1857, the so-called «Dijon solitude», when Turgenev, proving the high social significance of the ideals of quixotism for the new era, attempted to turn a young Hamlet-type writer (L. Tolstoy) into a selfless Don Quixote type. The title of the novel «Don Quixote», as well the names of Cervantes and his characters are mentioned in Tolstoy’s diaries, articles and letters about 20 times. The novel seems to «test» him until the end of his life: the high assessments of his contemporaries, their perception of Don Quixote as a new Messiah capable of saving humanity, contradict Tolstoy’s understanding of serving good, therefore working on the most important treatise for him, which is the manifesto «What is art?», Tolstoy changes the estimates of «Don Quixote» several times. Firstly, he mentions among his favorite poets, composers and painters the only novel — «Don Quixote», then he indicates its «poor contents». In 1905, Tolstoy finally became convinced of the importance of the idea of self-sacrifice for the sake of high ideals and of the educational significance of the novel, and besides, he admitted that all his sons were «Don Quixotes». More than half a century of Tolstoy’s dialogue with Cervantes and his heroes invariably continued in his mind, and the knight errant will be most vividly reflected in one of the most autobiographical and close to Tolstoy characters — Levin from «Anna Karenina». The circumstances of Leo Tolstoy’s farewell to the Yasnaya Polyana estate and the last journey of the knight of the sad image, as well as the circumstances of their demise, tragically echo.