Monday, September 29, 2014

At War With Shakespeare

In reading War and Peace, I have become more and more interested in Tolstoy’s life as a writer. It is always exciting to analyze the influences on an author’s writing style, and it is evident that Shakespeare didn’t influence Tolstoy. My teacher from high school loves ‘War and Peace’, and when I told her that I was reading it, she sent me George Orwell’s essay entitled ‘Lear, Tolstoy and the fool’.[1]
In his essay, Orwell briefly summarizes Tolstoy’s pamphlet criticizing Shakespeare, and then goes on to discuss what he thinks of Tolstoy’s opinion that “Shakespeare might have been whatever you like, but he was not an artist.”

I think it is interesting to observe Tolstoy’s writing of ‘War and Peace’ in the context of his hatred of Shakespeare. Orwell argues in his essay that if Shakespeare is all that Tolstoy sees him to be, how did he become so widely admired?  Orwell suggests that Tolstoy’s argument must be based on the ‘epidemic suggestion’ or on the idea that certain political events or artists become popular at intervals of time, and gain fame like a sporadic uprising.

“Goethe pronounced Shakespeare a great poet, whereupon all the other critics flocked after him like a troop of parrots, and the general infatuation has lasted ever since. The result has been a further debasement of the drama — Tolstoy is careful to include his own plays when condemning the contemporary stage — and a further corruption of the prevailing moral outlook. It follows that ‘the false glorification of Shakespeare’ is an important evil which Tolstoy feels it his duty to combat.”

“However, Tolstoy is not simply trying to rob others of a pleasure he does not share. He is doing that, but his quarrel with Shakespeare goes further. It is the quarrel between the religious and the humanist attitudes towards life. Here one comes back to the central theme of King Lear, which Tolstoy does not mention, although he sets forth the plot in some detail.”

Orwell also points out the similarity between the lives of King Lear and Tolstoy. He especially points out the act of renunciation, which marked both their old ages. Orwell tells us that “Tolstoy, like Lear, acted on mistaken motives and failed to get the results he had hoped for.” Going into the rest of the novel with this perspective on Tolstoy’s opinions and lives should definitely make reading ‘War and Peace’ a more fulfilling experience.




[1] Orwell, George, Sonia Orwell, and Ian Angus. The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell. London: Secker & Warburg, 1968. Print.
The essay can also be found online here: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/lear/english/e_ltf

11 comments:

  1. I find it interesting that Tolstoy disliked Shakespeare. If he disliked him due to his humanist perspective then it makes sense as it goes against Tolstoy's religious beliefs and ideal of self-betterment.

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    1. Aminata, I really like that point of view! It's interesting to think that Tolstoy may have hated Shakespeare because of their differing beliefs, although I don't think he ever admitted that. I think his hatred of Shakespeare was strangely funny, to think that he actually went to the trouble of publishing a brochure that criticised Shakespeare's work!

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  3. I had no idea that Tolstoy so strongly disliked Shakespeare. I think this is very interesting since both of them have similar writing styles, in that they base their novels on historical facts and then build from there. (Although they had completely different writing styles).

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    1. Helena, I think that's a pretty good observation! Shakespeare did draw on historical events for a lot of his plays and Tolstoy's war and peace is also inspired by a historical event. Perhaps Tolstoy hated him but also unconsciously admired him? It's interesting to think about.

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  4. Wow! Like a few others here, I didn't know he didn't like Shakespeare. I wouldn't consider Tolstoy and Shakespeare rivals, but usually when two high caliber contributors to a specific field analyze each other, a certain amount of respect is found in their thoughts. By the sounds of it, this is not evident between Tolstoy and Shakespeare. Thanks so much!

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    1. You're right, it IS usually expected that writers will respect each others' work and not criticise it so openly! Orwell wrote some very good literary criticism, you should definitely try and read the essay that I'm talking about. He offers a much deeper analysis of this and I thought it was a very interesting thing to read about. Here's the link: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/lear/english/e_ltf

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  5. I find it hard to believe that Tolstoy finds fault in Shakespeare's raw talent, because Shakespeare's genius was undeniable. However, maybe Tolstoy was contemptuous of Shakespeare's use of his talent to advance his status. I don't know much about Shakespeare, but I believe he was "in" with the English aristocrats. It would make sense that Tolstoy would require an artist to be humble, to do his art for its own sake, and maybe even recluse.

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    1. I think you're right in saying that Shakespeare was part of a literary elite, but I think that he created this rather than became a part of it. Shakespeare was more of a trend leader, in my opinion. Although reading what Tolstoy thought of Shakespeare makes me wonder how disparaging his opinion would have been of someone like Oscar Wilde!

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  6. Shakespeare definitely got along with the English monarchy as his plays were sending out messages to the public that they approved of such as Macbeth and how usurpation and attempts at it lead to nothing but disaster. Tolstoy is very unique and he being very strong in his beliefs obviously would have a clash with Shakespeare relativist thinking at times as seen in As You Like It.

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    1. I think that's a great point about why Tolstoy's beliefs would differ from those of someone like Shakespeare, they catered to a very different audience and obviously looked for different kinds of reception.

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