Tangents in a Telescope: Virginia Woolf’s Georgian Tolstoy

Abstract

This article offers a new slant on Virginia Woolf’s essays on Tolstoy, which evolved during her collaborative translation work with S. S. Koteliansky. First, a ‘Georgian’ vision of the great Russian novelist emerges, who, acclaimed as a great philosopher and philanthropist by the Victorians, and a master realist and character-artist by the Edwardians, figures now as an innovative, avant-garde writer, twisting perspectives and debunking eminent nineteenth-century mythologies. Second, Woolf’s insistence on Tolstoy’s craftsmanship brings a new, formalist concern with literary dynamics to the fore, that would profoundly alter her ownvision of aesthetics. Where Victorians hailed Tolstoy as an epic story-teller, Woolf and Forster celebrate his music, shifting the accent from plot to sounds, textures and method, just as the Russian Formalists were laying the foundations for an immense renewal of literary scholarship. Woolf’s collaborative work with Koteliansky brought her into contact not only with the great Russian classics, but also with provocative literary theories being propounded in the early years of the revolution.