Tolstoy: A Guide for the Perplexed by Jeff Love

Abstract

1204 Reviews followers, but also the atheism of Ivan and Smerdiakov, is contrasted with Zosima's erasure of the boundaries of thisworld and the next, in his characterization of hell as the absence of love. Ivan's references to tales of Christ's appearance among the people, before his own such story in the parable of theGrand Inquisitor, and Grushenka's tale of the onion, form the basis of an ideal faith of love and service to others. Although the study is full of interesting details and the interpretations it ad vances are often persuasive, particularly in the final three chapters, overall itseems to be founded on rather too little;much of the analysis depends on a handful of fleeting references, and indeed the fact that the chapter on The Idiot isbased largely on the absence of such references suggests a certain weakness in the underlying approach. At times, key elements of themake-up of the narod are sidelined?in particular, theirbrutality is all but forgotten in thefinal chapter?so that the aspects of popular belief foregrounded in the different texts appear so varied as to render it impossible to draw consistent conclusions. Ultimately, therefore, one does not feel that thisbook, whatever its strengths,has got to the bottom of either the origins of Dostoevskii's conception of the 'God-bearing narod or its role inhis fiction. University College London Sarah j. Young Tolstoy: A Guide for thePerplexed. By JeffLove. London and New York: Conti nuum. 2008. 178 pp. ?12.99. ISBN 978-0-8264-9379-8. This book is one of Continuum's 'Guides for the Perplexed', a series of introduc tions to especially challenging writers and topics. Previous 'related titles', claims the publisher, include Beckett, Deleuze, and Derrida. Tolstoy himself might have been puzzled at being included in this perplexing company since, as the opening page reminds us, he sought simplicity with zeal and conviction. For readers, Tolstoy's attraction is indeed his apparent plain speaking. Yet Tolstoy's pursuit of the simple truth foundered on his apprehension that there might not be such a thing as truth; thatultimately itsabsence was thevery truth.As an author, he revelled in thevivid truthof each small situation, act or gesture,word or inflection, yetwas aware that their summation lay in the infinite,nothingness, death. This paradox is theTolstoyan perplexity that Jeff Love exposes and elucidates in his exploration of Tolstoy's writings and later retreat from and renunciation of fictional artifice. Despite the clarity of thiswell-planned study,no definitive conclusion is reached. The essential elusiveness ofTolstoy's kaleidoscopic cast ofmind is conveyed in the question marks in each chapter-heading: 'Who Am I?', 'ANovelist?', 'AFabulist?', 'A Prophet?', 'A Philosopher?'. However, the essence of his understanding of life is captured in incisive readings of scenes inTolstoy's writing that form the book's backbone. A key episode for Love is that of the stag's lair in The Cossacks. Unlike many critics, Love does not see thismoment as one of ecstatic reconciliation for Olenin, but a paradox where thehighest consciousness of self merges with themost MLR, 104.4, 2009 1205 complete feeling of connectedness with all other beings. But this produces not the sense of a comfortable home in the universe, but an utter sense of a void. Coming to termswith this emptiness, the intimation of infinityand death iswhat provides the creative force of Tolstoy's subsequent works, the novelist's War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and Hadji Murat, and the fabulist's Death of Ivan IVich, The Kreutzer Sonata, How Much Land Does a Man Need?, and Master and Man. The tension is communicated in the opposition between vividly realized characters and the structural stresses of his narrative architecture. The nature of the polar opposi tion of such characters as the imposing Napoleon and accepting Kutuzov is deftly examined, as is theirmagnetism thatdraws other characters to theirworld outlook. Whereas the opposition of characters may be more easily demonstrated in the episodic treatment adopted, an examination of the anomalies' ingrained in the narrative structure is less amenable to such an approach. Love, however, probes deeply into Tolstoy's ambivalent attitude, 'his celebration of and hostility to the artifice of narrative' (p...