War and Peace--I Chickened Out

I brought War and Peace with me on my vacation, but I never worked up the nerve to start it. I have a thing about starting books and not finishing them, and I knew that was going to be a long road to go down. Maybe next year . . .

"Hadji Murad" by Leo Tolstoy

Well, I finished my first book by Tolstoy. The last short story in this collection is "Hadji Murad," set in the 19th Russian war with the Chechnyans. (I know nothing of Russian history, but still found the story enlightening.)

The story starts with the narrator describing the act of destroying a beautiful thistle as he tries to extract it from a plant. The act reminds him of how mankind destroys things when we try to harvest them for our own purposes. Case in point, the narrator remarks, the life of Hadji Murad. Madji Murad was a noble man, destroyed by the politics of the Russians and Chhechnyan Muslims. The story then moves to recount the life and death of this young Muslim "warlord" and his battles with the Russians and with rival Muslim "warlords."

The story is great and it makes some revealing parallels between the ancient Chechnyan Muslim culture (thought to be barbarous by the Russian aristocracy) and the Russian aristocracy itself. Hadji Murad is certainly the hero of the story--he is noble, loyal, proud, pious, and strong. However, he is not idealized. Tolstoy points out that he and his contemporaries are polygamists, they punish rebels by maiming or beheading them, and they maintain blood feuds between rival tribes for generations. At the same time, the Russian artistrocracy is lampooned in the story. Tolstoy exposes their petty jealousy and rivalries, debauchery, and greed.

Tolstoy includes just enough stereotypical ancient Muslim customs to make westerners shake their heads in disapproval, only to follow them up with parallels in Russian culture. (This is the same rhetorical technique many of the ancient Israelite prophets used.) For instance, a westerner might look down on Muslim polygamy, but when Hadji Murad is taken to a Russian ball, topless women are paraded around for the men the gawk at, and only Hadji Murad disaproves. Further, westerners might scoff at the Muslim blood feuds, but Hadji Murad is able to identify "tribalism" within the Russian society. When he surrenders to the Russians, he can tell by way of their mannerisms (he doesn't speak Russian) who is "really" in charge. Although Meller-Zakomelsky was the ranking officer in the camp, Vorontsov, being the son of an aristocrat, was viewed as "more important" by the soldiers. Hadji Murad picks up on this and refuses to talk to anyone except Vorontsov.

As usual, Tolstoy has amazing insight into human behavior. In this case, he is right to point out the similarity of most cultures. In 21st century America, we subconciously think that we are "more civilized" than say the native tribes high in the Andes mountains. In reality, our cultures are structured more or less the same. Further, America prides itself as being a "democracy," but you can see signs of an aristrocracy. If Hillary Clinton wins the presidential election, that means for at least 24 straight years this country will have been run by someone from either the Bush or the Clinton family. Statistically, would that happen in a true democracy? Now, granted, there are systems in place in America in which a "nobody" can rise to the top through innovation, but this is certainly the exception rather than the rule.

I have worked with the urban poor and the suburban rich, and I have to say that the two cultures are pretty similar. People sort themselves through power plays. Among the urban poor, those power plays might look like street fights or drive-bys; among the suburban rich they might look like "networking" with people from the same ivy-league league school or the same country club. (Among pastors it might be sorting based on the size of one's congregation or budget.) It's the same game, just a different context.

To this, Christ confronts us with the challenge to serve people--the last will be first and the first will be last. Application of that message might look slightly different to a gang member in Tacoma than it does to a businessman in Gig Harbor, but it's the same challenge to both groups. But, man, is that a hard message to preach to people.

I loved reading Tolstoy, but War and Peace and Anna Karenina are some big books.

"The Kreutzer Sonata" by Leo Tolstoy

I just finished the third short story in The Death of Ivan Illych and Other Short Stories, "The Kreutzer Sonata." Again, I am thoroughly impressed with Tolstoy's insights into why people do what they do.

The plot of "The Kreutzer Sonata" circles around a discussion between strangers sitting near each other on a train. When the discussion turns to the education of women, Pozdnyshev (one of the passengers) argues that current "developments" in Russian culture have been meaningless and that women were not better off with education. Pozdnyshev says that educated or not, men still treat women merely as sex objects. Therefore, he argues, the educated women of Russian society are simply more educated, more valuable sex objects. Until men and women learn to control their sexual passions, it doesn't matter if women are educated because they will be treated the same. He then recounts how and why he killed his wife--he married her for her looks and then was overcome by jealousy when another man caught her interest.

One thing to keep in mind in this story is that Pozdnyshev is a scoundrel and that his views aren't necessarily Tolstoy's. However, even the scoundrel's ideas can be profound (as in Raskolnikov in Doestoevksy's Crime and Punishment). Just as I felt "Family Happiness" accurately described the ways women are dissatisfied in relationships, "The Kreutzer Sonata" accurately portrayed a failed marriage from a male perspective. My favorite line of the whole story was Pozdnyshev's thoughts after he stabbed his wife in a fit of jealous rage. The wound was mortal, but it would take a while for her to bleed out. So, Pozdnyshev had some time to reflect on what he did before she died. He recounts to the narrator what he thought when he looked at his dying wife:

"And so petty seemed all that had offended me, all my jealousy, and so significant the deed that I had done, that I had the impulse to bow down to her hand and to say, 'Forgive me,' but I had not the courage."

Wow.

Pozdnyshev blames his lust and jealousy for driving him to kill his wife. He says that he never really loved his wife in a true way, only in a romantic way. He says that this is true of most men across the board. This got me to thinking, How much progress have we made as a culture when it comes to gender relationships? Do men see women as equals, or is Pozdnyshev right? As a way of measuring, Pozdnyshev offers the following question. Would a woman rather have a man see her: (A) doing an evil deed, or (B) looking ugly. Pozdnyshev says that most women know how men are and would rather be caught doing something wrong than looking bad.

(In case it's not clear, I am not advocating Pozdnyshev's position, it just got me thinking.)

"The Death of Ivan Ilych" by Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy is one of my new favorite authors.

Fyodor Dostoevsky has long been my favorite author. I have read all of his major novels (Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, The Possessed, and The Adolescent), and a good chunk of his short stories. People who see me reading Dostoevsky always ask me what I think about Tolstoy. Until recently, I had never read anything by him and was unable to give an answer. I've heard good things, so I decided to pick up a Tolstoy book. I thought it might be nice to start with something short instead of wading into War and Peace or Anna Karenina, so I picked up a copy of Barnes and Noble's The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Short Stories. I have to say--I am hooked.

Tolstoy is great. Every bit as great as Dostoevsky, but in a different way. They two seem nothing alike, and yet they both seem to have mastered the psychology of why people do what they do.

"The Death of Ivan Ilych" is about just that--the death of a guy named Ivan Ilych. What makes the book great is the responses to death by everyone in the story--especially Ivan's response.

The plot of the book is simple. Ivan falls and hurts his back, and the injury proves worse than he first thought. Doctors are baffled about why his pain isn't going away, and it isn't long before everyone realizes that he is going to die. However, no one wants to talk about it and they continue to act as if he is going to recover. Ivan is terrified by death, so his friends' and family's hypocrisy infuriates him. He starts to hate them for pretending he is okay. The sicker he gets, the angrier and more hurtful he gets.

When Ivan is about to die, he encounters Gerasim, a peasant who waits on him and who isn't afraid to talk about death and its inevitability. Ivan starts to envy Gerasim, both for his youth and vitality, and also for his simple life and his boldness in the face of death. All of this starts Ivan reflecting on his life and whether or not he had lived right.

At the end of the story, Ivan has kind of an epiphany that relieves him of his pain and suffering. I had to read this part over and over because it wasn't clear what he realized. I did some research, and it looks like there are several opinions about what happened to Ivan. Perhaps this is the genious of the story--the reader is left to decide for himself or herself what Ivan realized.

There are some clear allusions to the New Testament when Ivan dies, and this impacts the way I read the story. Ivan's cries, "What death? Where is it?" and "Death is over. It is no more" seem to me like clear allusions to 1 Corinthians 15:54–55. Also, the spectator's comment, "It is no more" seem like an allusion to Christ's words on the cross, "It is finished." (Tolstoy had converted to Christianity shortly before writing this story.)

I think that Ivan realized that the society in which he lived idolized the wrong things. Ivan's epiphany was that he "felt sorry" for his wife and his son. I think he felt sorry for them because they were locked into Russian high society's way of thinking. Ivan realized that Gerasim's life was the good life--the life he should have lived. Gerasim lived for others--he happily served Ivan in the last days of his life, and he responded kindly to abuse. I think that Ivan's epiphany was that he realized that the selflessness of the peasants was a better life than the hypocrisy of the aristocracy.

Tolstoy's story was a needed reminder to me that I need to live "the good life." It is so easy to get caught up in the American dream that just one more promotion, or one more award, or one more digit in my salary is going to make me happy. In the end, Ivan realized that it was in his youth when he enjoyed his family that he was the happiest. It's tempting to want to work myself into the grave, wanting to do something "great" for the kingdom of God. In the end, its the little things that we do for the people in our immediate community that are the most meaningful.