Let’s spend some time understanding Olenin’s character since
it’s at the crux of the story. The novel
starts in Moscow with Olenin having made the dramatic decision to enter the
military and go off to the Caucuses. That
is like a New Yorker from the early 19th century deciding to enter
the cavalry and live among the Apache Indians.
It’s not only of another culture, another world, but it’s going from a
life of comfort and sophistication to one of living elementary. Here Olenin, referred to here as “the
traveler” is traveling with a few of his companions to a departure point.
'Now I can speak out fully,' said
the traveller. 'I don't want to defend myself, but I should like you at least
to understand me as I understand myself, and not look at the matter
superficially. You say I have treated her badly,' he continued, addressing the
man with the kindly eyes who was watching him.
'Yes, you are to blame,' said the
latter, and his look seemed to express still more kindliness and weariness.
'I know why you say that,' rejoined
the one who was leaving. 'To be loved is in your opinion as great a happiness
as to love, and if a man obtains it, it is enough for his whole life.'
'Yes, quite enough, my dear fellow,
more than enough!' confirmed the plain little man, opening and shutting his
eyes.
'But why shouldn't the man love
too?' said the traveller thoughtfully, looking at his friend with something
like pity. 'Why shouldn't one love? Because love doesn't come ... No, to be
beloved is a misfortune. It is a misfortune to feel guilty because you do not
give something you cannot give. O my God!' he added, with a gesture of his arm.
'If it all happened reasonably, and not all topsy-turvy--not in our way but in
a way of its own! Why, it's as if I had stolen that love! You think so too, don't
deny it. You must think so. But will you believe it, of all the horrid and
stupid things I have found time to do in my life--and there are many--this is
one I do not and cannot repent of. Neither at the beginning nor afterwards did
I lie to myself or to her. It seemed to me that I had at last fallen in love,
but then I saw that it was an involuntary falsehood, and that that was not the
way to love, and I could not go on, but she did. Am I to blame that I couldn't?
What was I to do?'
'Well, it's ended now!' said his
friend, lighting a cigar to master his sleepiness. 'The fact is that you have
not yet loved and do not know what love is.'
The man in the fur-lined coat was
going to speak again, and put his hands to his head, but could not express what
he wanted to say. [Chpt 1]
Excerpts taken from etext from Wikisource Library through
Classic Literature By Great Authors ;
translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude.
We see he has broken up with a woman, an affair that seems
to have ended badly. He thought he was
in love, but came to the awareness that he wasn’t. Well, that’s sort of adolescent. That he concludes love isn’t even important
reveals a sort of an overly intellectual childishness. His friend points out that Olenin doesn’t
even know what love is. What is also
striking on how Tolstoy ends that exchange is that Olinen, hands somewhat
flailing up, “could not express what he wanted to say.” On the surface that’s again suggestive of his
adolescence, but it’s also symbolic.
What we’ll see in the novel is that Olenin fails to complete goals,
fails to consummate actions, and remains a vicarious standby as the rugged men
live life.
Olenin was a youth who had never
completed his university course, never served anywhere (having only a nominal
post in some government office or other), who had squandered half his fortune
and had reached the age of twenty-four without having done anything or even
chosen a career. He was what in Moscow society is termed un jeune homme.
At the age of eighteen he was
free--as only rich young Russians in the 'forties who had lost their parents at
an early age could be. Neither physical nor moral fetters of any kind existed
for him; he could do as he liked, lacking nothing and bound by nothing. Neither
relatives, nor fatherland, nor religion, nor wants, existed for him. He
believed in nothing and admitted nothing. But although he believed in nothing
he was not a morose or blase young man, nor self-opinionated, but on the
contrary continually let himself be carried away. He had come to the conclusion
that there is no such thing as love, yet his heart always overflowed in the
presence of any young and attractive woman. He had long been aware that honours
and position were nonsense, yet involuntarily he felt pleased when at a ball
Prince Sergius came up and spoke to him affably. But he yielded to his impulses
only in so far as they did not limit his freedom. As soon as he had yielded to
any influence and became conscious of its leading on to labour and struggle, he
instinctively hastened to free himself from the feeling or activity into which
he was being drawn and to regain his freedom. In this way he experimented with
society-life, the civil service, farming, music--to which at one time he
intended to devote his life--and even with the love of women in which he did
not believe. He meditated on the use to which he should devote that power of
youth which is granted to man only once in a lifetime: that force which gives a
man the power of making himself, or even--as it seemed to him--of making the
universe, into anything he wishes: should it be to art, to science, to love of
woman, or to practical activities? It is true that some people are devoid of
this impulse, and on entering life at once place their necks under the first
yoke that offers itself and honestly labour under it for the rest of their
lives. But Olenin was too strongly conscious of the presence of that all-powerful
God of Youth--of that capacity to be entirely transformed into an aspiration or
idea--the capacity to wish and to do--to throw oneself headlong into a
bottomless abyss without knowing why or wherefore. He bore this consciousness
within himself, was proud of it and, without knowing it, was happy in that
consciousness. Up to that time he had loved only himself, and could not help
loving himself, for he expected nothing but good of himself and had not yet had
time to be disillusioned. On leaving Moscow he was in that happy state of mind
in which a young man, conscious of past mistakes, suddenly says to himself,
'That was not the real thing.' All that had gone before was accidental and
unimportant. Till then he had not really tried to live, but now with his departure
from Moscow a new life was beginning--a life in which there would be no
mistakes, no remorse, and certainly nothing but happiness. [Chpt 2]
What is clear in that expository passage is that Olenin has
lots of wishes, attempts many things, but never finishes anything, never
accomplishes anything. Every activity
will be a new beginning, every new endeavor will bring certain happiness. My goodness, he expects a life of no mistakes
or remorse.
Olenin’s journey to the Caucuses is important. An author makes many choices as he tells the
story, especially the framing of the story.
Tolstoy could have started the story with Olenin already immersed in the
Cossack culture. But Tolstoy shows Olenin
departing, breaking away from his friends, and physically being transferred into
a different world. This is a tale imbued
with values of the Romantic movement, the idealization of the primitive over
the civilized. Little by little Olenin
notices the increasing wildness of the places he passes by, so that he is
moving toward the heart of the elemental.
The farther Olenin travelled from
Central Russia the farther he left his memories behind, and the nearer he drew
to the Caucasus the lighter his heart became. "I'll stay away for good and
never return to show myself in society," was a thought that sometimes
occurred to him. "These people whom I see here are NOT people. None of them
know me and none of them can ever enter the Moscow society I was in or find out
about my past. And no one in that society will ever know what I am doing,
living among these people." And quite a new feeling of freedom from his
whole past came over him among the rough beings he met on the road whom he did
not consider to be PEOPLE in the sense that his Moscow acquaintances were. The
rougher the people and the fewer the signs of civilization the freer he felt.
Stavropol, through which he had to pass, irked him. The signboards, some of
them even in French, ladies in carriages, cabs in the marketplace, and a
gentleman wearing a fur cloak and tall hat who was walking along the boulevard
and staring at the passersby, quite upset him. "Perhaps these people know
some of my acquaintances," he thought; and the club, his tailor, cards,
society ... came back to his mind. But after Stavropol everything was
satisfactory--wild and also beautiful and warlike, and Olenin felt happier and
happier. All the Cossacks, post-boys, and post-station masters seemed to him
simple folk with whom he could jest and converse simply, without having to
consider to what class they belonged. They all belonged to the human race
which, without his thinking about it, all appeared dear to Olenin, and they all
treated him in a friendly way. [Chpt 3]
And finally Olenin reaches his destination, the very heart
of Cossackdom, where life is composed of farming, fishing, hunting, and war.
Novomlinsk village was considered
the very heart of Grebensk Cossackdom. In it more than elsewhere the customs of
the old Grebensk population have been preserved, and its women have from time
immemorial been renowned all over the Caucasus for their beauty. A Cossack's
livelihood is derived from vineyards, fruit- gardens, water melon and pumpkin
plantations, from fishing, hunting, maize and millet growing, and from war
plunder. Novomlinsk village lies about two and a half miles away from the
Terek, from which it is separated by a dense forest. On one side of the road
which runs through the village is the river; on the other, green vineyards and
orchards, beyond which are seen the driftsands of the Nogay Steppe. The village
is surrounded by earth-banks and prickly bramble hedges, and is entered by tall
gates hung between posts and covered with little reed-thatched roofs. Beside
them on a wooden gun-carriage stands an unwieldy cannon captured by the
Cossacks at some time or other, and which has not been fired for a hundred
years. A uniformed Cossack sentinel with dagger and gun sometimes stands, and
sometimes does not stand, on guard beside the gates, and sometimes presents
arms to a passing officer and sometimes does not. Below the roof of the gateway
is written in black letters on a white board: 'Houses 266: male inhabitants
897: female 1012.' The Cossacks' houses are all raised on pillars two and a
half feet from the ground. They are carefully thatched with reeds and have
large carved gables. If not new they are at least all straight and clean, with
high porches of different shapes; and they are not built close together but
have ample space around them, and are all picturesquely placed along broad
streets and lanes. In front of the large bright windows of many of the houses,
beyond the kitchen gardens, dark green poplars and acacias with their delicate
pale verdure and scented white blossoms overtop the houses, and beside them
grow flaunting yellow sunflowers, creepers, and grape vines. In the broad open
square are three shops where drapery, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, locust beans
and gingerbreads are sold; and surrounded by a tall fence, loftier and larger than
the other houses, stands the Regimental Commander's dwelling with its casement
windows, behind a row of tall poplars. Few people are to be seen in the streets
of the village on weekdays, especially in summer. The young men are on duty in
the cordons or on military expeditions; the old ones are fishing or helping the
women in the orchards and gardens. Only the very old, the sick, and the
children, remain at home. [Chpt 4]
The perspective in that passage, which is Olenin’s
perspective, is that of an anthropologist meeting the aborigines. Finally I want to present this wonderful
passage of one of Olenin’s first evenings situated in the Cossack village.
It was one of those wonderful
evenings that occur only in the Caucasus. The sun had sunk behind the mountains
but it was still light. The evening glow had spread over a third of the sky,
and against its brilliancy the dull white immensity of the mountains was
sharply defined. The air was rarefied, motionless, and full of sound. The
shadow of the mountains reached for several miles over the steppe. The steppe,
the opposite side of the river, and the roads, were all deserted. If very
occasionally mounted men appeared, the Cossacks in the cordon and the Chechens
in their aouls (villages) watched them with surprised curiosity and tried to
guess who those questionable men could be. At nightfall people from fear of one
another flock to their dwellings, and only birds and beasts fearless of man
prowl in those deserted spaces. Talking merrily, the women who have been tying
up the vines hurry away from the gardens before sunset. The vineyards, like all
the surrounding district, are deserted, but the villages become very animated
at that time of the evening. From all sides, walking, riding, or driving in
their creaking carts, people move towards the village. Girls with their smocks
tucked up and twigs in their hands run chatting merrily to the village gates to
meet the cattle that are crowding together in a cloud of dust and mosquitoes
which they bring with them from the steppe. The well-fed cows and buffaloes
disperse at a run all over the streets and Cossack women in coloured beshmets
go to and fro among them. You can hear their merry laughter and shrieks
mingling with the lowing of the cattle. There an armed and mounted Cossack, on
leave from the cordon, rides up to a hut and, leaning towards the window,
knocks. In answer to the knock the handsome head of a young woman appears at
the window and you can hear caressing, laughing voices. There a tattered Nogay
labourer, with prominent cheekbones, brings a load of reeds from the steppes,
turns his creaking cart into the Cossack captain's broad and clean courtyard,
and lifts the yoke off the oxen that stand tossing their heads while he and his
master shout to one another in Tartar. Past a puddle that reaches nearly across
the street, a barefooted Cossack woman with a bundle of firewood on her back
makes her laborious way by clinging to the fences, holding her smock high and
exposing her white legs. A Cossack returning from shooting calls out in jest:
'Lift it higher, shameless thing!' and points his gun at her. The woman lets
down her smock and drops the wood. An old Cossack, returning home from fishing
with his trousers tucked up and his hairy grey chest uncovered, has a net
across his shoulder containing silvery fish that are still struggling; and to
take a short cut climbs over his neighbour's broken fence and gives a tug to
his coat which has caught on the fence. There a woman is dragging a dry branch
along and from round the corner comes the sound of an axe. Cossack children,
spinning their tops wherever there is a smooth place in the street, are
shrieking; women are climbing over fences to avoid going round. From every
chimney rises the odorous kisyak smoke. From every homestead comes the sound of
increased bustle, precursor to the stillness of night. [Chpt 5]
That is Tolstoy’s prose at his best, simple, filled with rich, meaningful detail, and with a sense of movement.
Looks like the better half will be reading this book after checking out your review.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Manny.
Oh good. I project two more blogs on it. Stay tuned, it'll get more interesting.
DeleteLooking forward to it!
ReplyDelete