Volume 17, Number 11 · December 30, 1971
Trouble in the Family
By John Bayley
The Last Year of Leo Tolstoy
by Valentin Bulgakov, translated by Ann Dunnigan, with an Introduction by George Steiner
Dial, 264 pp., $7.95
Tolstoy, My Father: Reminiscences
by Ilya Tolstoy, translated by Ann Dunnigan
Cowles, 322 pp., $7.95
But the Russian is self-assured, Tolstoy went on to say, 'just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known.' Self-assurance, the sense of his own existence, was immensely strong in Tolstoy, so strong that at moments it was bound to turn itself inside out into the negative state—that equally immense and terrifying loss of confidence in his own purpose and identity—that he suddenly experienced in middle age in a hotel room in the town of Arzamas. He wrote about this experience, which haunted him for the rest of his life, in 'The Diary of a Madman.' But it is self-assurance that gives its prodigious authority to his novels: where other authors invent, what Tolstoy says is true just because he says so.
Review, 2475 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |