Last night I finally got through Isaiah Berlin's The Hedgehog and the Fox, the long essay on Tolstoy and the theory of history internal to his greatest works. Some of this is of course Berlin drawing on War and Peace (including the differences between early and late drafts) and constructing some themes on intellectual history that he wants to discuss, but Tolstoy was often reasonably clear about what he was up to as a writer and what he considered to be valid for a writer to be writing about. (Apparently, this philosophizing is what was always getting him in trouble with other writers. Turgenev had great craft but wrote about unserious people for example, as the bourgeoisie were not worthy of expending any ink upon. Leaving aside the fact that Tolstoy probably largely missed the point of Fathers and Sons, this is quite a priggish attitude.) I understand that others have a different take on Tolstoy and even Turgenev (I may be wrong, but I think Turgenev is Berlin's favourite Russian novelist, while Herzen is his favourite essay writer) and consider Berlin's literary criticism to be off somehow. However, what Berlin has extracted and commented upon is very interesting on its own terms. I definitely wouldn't go so far as Berlin does to consider Tolstoy this tragic, almost Lear-like figure (the ending of The Hedgehog and the Fox), but there are still some really deep and troubling themes that apply to my own mental processes, and which I am still processing. I'll have to return to these later (probably after I wrap up the review of Demons, whenever that happens).
Now when I started this detour through Russian literature back in August, The Hedgehog and the Fox was fairly close to the halfway mark at one point, but I added a few more novels and now it is more like the 1/3 marker. I guess that's neither good or bad, it's just what it is. I've learned to kind of go with the flow when it comes to my literary obsessions. Indeed, sometimes I find it is easier for me to remember books longer when I pair them up or group them together in various ways or according to some internal scheme I have devised. Anyway, I'll give a general overview of some of these works, though I won't really get into the Berlin essays at this point.
I have to admit, I just wasn't that interested in The Double. I have a longer discussion at the tail-end of this post, but I think the bottom line is that the main character seems a bit unhinged (and of very weak character) even at the beginning of the story, whereas it would have been far more effective for a very grounded character to have to face up to his doppelganger trying to replace him.
Dostoevsky's The Gambler is somewhat more interesting, though I really have trouble empathizing with characters who are willing to risk all on a single roll of the dice or particularly a spin of the roulette wheel. Compared to many, I do take fairly significant risks, uprooting my family even, but these are much more thought through decisions. And I simply never go into debt for a chance to gamble. Obviously some people do, but it's hard for me to find too much interest in them, since they seem so easy to figure out. Everything can be explained in terms of their addiction to gambling, and as casino gambling is of no interest to me, I grow very bored with the story. I was somewhat more interested in the overall impact on the general and his hangers-on when the grandmother turned up and had a bad couple of nights at the casino (perhaps this is an understatement). I thought the family might end up constantly on the road, sort of fleeing from creditors and trying to crash with other family members as a way of maintaining their respectability. This seems to be the pattern followed by all the family relations in William Alexander Gerhardie's Futility, which I touch on in the last half of this very long post on rootlessness. (As a total aside, I am so glad to come from a small family and to not have any deadbeat relatives, so then I read a book like Futility and think how differently and probably how coldly I would deal with people trying to put "the touch" on me.)
In some ways, the back story of The Gambler is more interesting than the novel itself. Dostoevsky desperately needed money and found a publisher who would advance him funds, but on the condition that he write a completely new novel within a few months. Otherwise, all the rights to several other novels would revert to this publisher. Being a sporting man, Dostoevsky took on the challenge. However, he was deeply obsessed over completing Crime and Punishment (it was being published in serial form and several parts had already come out), and the clock ticked away. Finally, a friend convinced him to hire a secretary, Anna Snitkina, to help with the task. Dostoevsky continued to work on Crime and Punishment during the day, but in the evenings would dictate The Gambler. With Anna's assistance, he just pulled off the task, completing it in under a month. Indeed, there is a scene where the publisher was out and his assistant would not accept the manuscript, and Dostoevsky had to leave it with the police or some official to prove that he had delivered it on the agreed date. It sounds like something out of Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, but apparently this is all true. Dostoevsky married Anna, but the incredible story doesn't stop there. He was still largely fleeing creditors and they went abroad and he lost all his money (and Anna's wedding ring) gambling in Baden. After hitting rock bottom, she basically took charge of his finances and within 3 or 4 years finally got him out of debt and convinced him to give up gambling for good. One can never know exactly what would have happened without her stabilizing influence on Fyodor, but I think it unlikely that he would have been able to write Demons to say nothing of The Brothers Karamazov had he still been deeply in debt or possibly even in debtors' prison.
Turning to Tolstoy's short novels, I thought Family Happiness had a few minor echoes of Anna Karenina, where this grotesque Italian count manages to kiss the wife, but the difference is she is not at all interested. (The wife had done a bit of harmless flirting with a more charming prince, however, which might have turned out differently had she not decided to go back to the country with her husband.) However, it strikes me that there are stronger parallels to Fontane's Irretrievable, which is about a very pleasant couple who find themselves drifting apart and then don't really know how to bridge the rift between them. This happens to be another NYRB book, so it sort of caught my attention, though I won't be able to read it for a while (a bit of an understatement).
It seems that Theodor Fontane is actually quite a significant German literary figure, though I had only vaguely heard of Effi Briest, which has some strong parallels with Madame Bovary and of course a few with Anna Karenina. I'm sure the biggest problem is that even today only about half of his works have been translated into English. I don't want to get too far afield here, but to tie this back to Tolstoy one more time, Fontane's Before the Storm is a historical novel that has been favourably compared (by those who have actually read it) to War and Peace. So possibly a pairing to consider far, far down the road.
I really, really, really didn't like The Kruetzer Sonata at all. This was almost certainly my first time reading it, certainly in this format which
was unbelievably annoying in having to switch back and forth between
versions (the printed one and then the lithograph variant).
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
It's a lot like reading Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho with all the oxygen in the
novel taken up by this crazed, misogynistic man who got away with murder
because of the backwards state of the law (it was quite legitimate to
kill an unfaithful wife at the time). The narrator who is being told this tale only very rarely pushes back to say something like -- hmm, how would humanity survive if none were allowed to get married. (The killer is perhaps even more obsessed about sex and purity than General Ripper in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.) I'm not saying that Tolstoy doesn't have the right to write about deranged characters or even that it is irresponsible to not have an effective counter-balance, but I'm not interested in reading a long rant by a pathetic character trying to justify his actions. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've read this, as I would
have had an even stronger reaction 10-15 years ago and probably
abandoned the tale in disgust.
I should get around to The Cossacks and The Death of Ivan Ilych a bit later in the week. At least I have read Ivan Ilych before and know what I am getting into. And with that, I am running quite late, so I had better jet off (or more accurately bike off) to work.
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