Did Tolstoy read Mackay? Did Orwell?
Aug. 16th, 2021 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
come_to_thinkIn 1903 Leo Tolstoy wrote a pamphlet that furiously attacked the very notion that Shakespeare was a great writer or even a passably good one. It is now available (in translation) on the Web: https://archive.org/details/tolstoyonshakesp27726gut. Like most of Tolstoy's pamphlets, it remained obscure, but George Orwell happened on it and, in 1947, wrote a magazine article ("Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool", Polemic, No. 7; in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell,** Vol. IV) that described it and criticized it in detail.
I am not concerned here with that amusing clash of eminences, about which you can read plenty on the Web. But there is one oddity about it that no-one seems to have noticed, and that has aroused my vulgar curiosity for some years.
Tolstoy of course was well aware that almost no-one else in the world had noticed Shakespeare's obvious worthlessness. To make sure he wasn't missing something, he read and reread all of Shakespeare in the original and several translations, and challenged one and all to defend their hero. All in vain. He concluded that he was dealing with a quasi-religious mass delusion:
"Open Shakespeare," I used to say to these admirers, "wherever you like, or wherever it may chance, you will see that you will never find ten consecutive lines which are comprehensible, unartificial, natural to the character that says them, and which produce an artistic impression." (This experiment may be made by any one. And either at random, or according to their own choice.) Shakespeare's admirers opened pages in Shakespeare's dramas, and without paying any attention to my criticisms as to why the selected ten lines did not satisfy the most elementary demands of esthetic and common sense, they were enchanted with the very thing which to me appeared absurd, incomprehensible, and inartistic. So that, in general, when I endeavored to get from Shakespeare's worshipers an explanation of his greatness, I met in them exactly the same attitude which I have met, and which is usually met, in the defenders of any dogmas accepted not through reason, but through faith. It is this attitude of Shakespeare's admirers toward their object---an attitude which may be seen also in all the mistily indefinite essays and conversations about Shakespeare---which gave me the key to the understanding of the cause of Shakespeare's fame. There is but one explanation of this wonderful fame: it is one of those epidemic "suggestions" to which men constantly have been and are subject. Such "suggestion" always has existed and does exist in the most varied spheres of life. As glaring instances, considerable in scope and in deceitful influence, one may cite the medieval Crusades which afflicted, not only adults, but even children, and the individual "suggestions," startling in their senselessness, such as faith in witches, in the utility of torture for the discovery of the truth, the search for the elixir of life, the philosopher's stone, or the passion for tulips valued at several thousand guldens a bulb which took hold of Holland. Such irrational "suggestions" always have been existing, and still exist, in all spheres of human life---religious, philosophical, political, economical, scientific, artistic, and, in general, literary---and people clearly see the insanity of these suggestions only when they free themselves from them. But, as long as they are under their influence, the suggestions appear to them so certain, so true, that to argue about them is regarded as neither necessary nor possible. With the development of the printing press, these epidemics became especially striking.
Various feedback loops provided by printing, Tolstoy speculates, have enabled some delusions of that kind to be prolonged indefinitely.
Orwell comments:
Indeed his whole theory of "epidemic suggestions", in which he lumps together such things as the Crusades and the Dutch passion for tulip growing, shows a willingness to regard many human activities as mere ant-like rushings to and fro, inexplicable and uninteresting. Clearly he could have no patience with a chaotic, detailed, discursive writer like Shakespeare. His reactions is that of an irritable old man who is being pestered by a noisy child. "Why do you keep jumping up and down like that? Why can't you sit still like I do?" In a way the old man is in the right, but the trouble is that the child has a feeling in its limbs that the old man has lost....
When I read that, I was immediately reminded of a book in which all of Tolstoy's examples (up to the time of its publication) had already been lumped together: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (1841; 2nd ed. 1852). The Crusades, the tulipomania, and the witch mania each get a chapter, the judicial abuse of torture is mentioned in the witch chapter, and the elixir vitae and the philosopher's stone are mentioned in the chapter on alchemy.
Tolstoy might have read it. It was by no means a rare book. It was a popular success when it appeared, and has remained in print ever since. (It is referred to on the Web from time to time these days, in connection with financial bubbles, which it describes extensively.) Needless to say, Mackay did not assemble those topics---among many others---as "inexplicable and uninteresting"; he wrote the book, I dare say, because foolishness on all scales is fun to write about and fun to read about. As Orwell notes, Tolstoy, in his old age, declined to join in the fun.
However, the coincidence is weak evidence for Tolstoy's having read the book, in that he and Mackay were after all writing about the same topic and might have chosen the same examples independently.
Mackay's book also contains what one might take to be an adumbration of War and Peace. In his chapter on the Crusades, he says of one Peter the Hermit:
On his arrival at Constantinople, where he found Walter the Pennyless awaiting him, he was hospitably received by the Emperor Alexius. It might have been expected that the sad reverses they had undergone would have taught his followers common prudence; but, unhappily for them, their turbulence and love of plunder was not to be restrained. Although they were surrounded by friends, by whom all their wants were liberally supplied, they could not refrain from rapine. In vain the Hermit exhorted them to tranquillity; he possessed no more power over them, in subduing their passions, than the obscurest soldier of the host....
Later we read:
Walter the Pennyless and his multitude met as miserable a fate. On the news of the disasters of Exorogorgon, they demanded to be led instantly against the Turks. Walter, who only wanted good soldiers to have made a good general, was cooler of head, and saw all the dangers of such a step. His force was wholly insufficient to make any decisive movement in a country where the enemy was so much superior, and where, in case of defeat, he had no secure position to fall back upon; and he therefore expressed his opinion against advancing until the arrival of reinforcements. This prudent counsel found no favour: the army loudly expressed their dissatisfaction at their chief, and prepared to march forward without him. Upon this, the brave Walter put himself at their head, and rushed to destruction....
War and Peace expounds and defends an extreme skepticism of the notion of power: the higher up you are in a power structure, the less influence you have on how it actually behaves. Tolstoy says that if Napoleon had changed his mind about invading Russia, his soldiers would have killed him and forged ahead. In his narrative, Tolstoy gives plenty of examples of the impotence of power, and Mackay's anecdotes would have fitted right in. Once again, though, that doesn't prove any connection; a lot of people have said that the leader follows in front.
On the other hand, had Orwell read Mackay? One would expect him to have known and appreciated such a well-known classic of skepticism; he was bowled over, in his youth, by Winwood Reade's The Martyrdom of Man. But if he had, he kept quiet about it; Mackay is not in the index of Orwell's complete works, which I was able to peruse at Harvard. And he would surely have been reminded of it by Tolstoy, as I was. I am forced to suppose that the answer is no.
I am not concerned here with that amusing clash of eminences, about which you can read plenty on the Web. But there is one oddity about it that no-one seems to have noticed, and that has aroused my vulgar curiosity for some years.
Tolstoy of course was well aware that almost no-one else in the world had noticed Shakespeare's obvious worthlessness. To make sure he wasn't missing something, he read and reread all of Shakespeare in the original and several translations, and challenged one and all to defend their hero. All in vain. He concluded that he was dealing with a quasi-religious mass delusion:
"Open Shakespeare," I used to say to these admirers, "wherever you like, or wherever it may chance, you will see that you will never find ten consecutive lines which are comprehensible, unartificial, natural to the character that says them, and which produce an artistic impression." (This experiment may be made by any one. And either at random, or according to their own choice.) Shakespeare's admirers opened pages in Shakespeare's dramas, and without paying any attention to my criticisms as to why the selected ten lines did not satisfy the most elementary demands of esthetic and common sense, they were enchanted with the very thing which to me appeared absurd, incomprehensible, and inartistic. So that, in general, when I endeavored to get from Shakespeare's worshipers an explanation of his greatness, I met in them exactly the same attitude which I have met, and which is usually met, in the defenders of any dogmas accepted not through reason, but through faith. It is this attitude of Shakespeare's admirers toward their object---an attitude which may be seen also in all the mistily indefinite essays and conversations about Shakespeare---which gave me the key to the understanding of the cause of Shakespeare's fame. There is but one explanation of this wonderful fame: it is one of those epidemic "suggestions" to which men constantly have been and are subject. Such "suggestion" always has existed and does exist in the most varied spheres of life. As glaring instances, considerable in scope and in deceitful influence, one may cite the medieval Crusades which afflicted, not only adults, but even children, and the individual "suggestions," startling in their senselessness, such as faith in witches, in the utility of torture for the discovery of the truth, the search for the elixir of life, the philosopher's stone, or the passion for tulips valued at several thousand guldens a bulb which took hold of Holland. Such irrational "suggestions" always have been existing, and still exist, in all spheres of human life---religious, philosophical, political, economical, scientific, artistic, and, in general, literary---and people clearly see the insanity of these suggestions only when they free themselves from them. But, as long as they are under their influence, the suggestions appear to them so certain, so true, that to argue about them is regarded as neither necessary nor possible. With the development of the printing press, these epidemics became especially striking.
Various feedback loops provided by printing, Tolstoy speculates, have enabled some delusions of that kind to be prolonged indefinitely.
Orwell comments:
Indeed his whole theory of "epidemic suggestions", in which he lumps together such things as the Crusades and the Dutch passion for tulip growing, shows a willingness to regard many human activities as mere ant-like rushings to and fro, inexplicable and uninteresting. Clearly he could have no patience with a chaotic, detailed, discursive writer like Shakespeare. His reactions is that of an irritable old man who is being pestered by a noisy child. "Why do you keep jumping up and down like that? Why can't you sit still like I do?" In a way the old man is in the right, but the trouble is that the child has a feeling in its limbs that the old man has lost....
When I read that, I was immediately reminded of a book in which all of Tolstoy's examples (up to the time of its publication) had already been lumped together: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (1841; 2nd ed. 1852). The Crusades, the tulipomania, and the witch mania each get a chapter, the judicial abuse of torture is mentioned in the witch chapter, and the elixir vitae and the philosopher's stone are mentioned in the chapter on alchemy.
Tolstoy might have read it. It was by no means a rare book. It was a popular success when it appeared, and has remained in print ever since. (It is referred to on the Web from time to time these days, in connection with financial bubbles, which it describes extensively.) Needless to say, Mackay did not assemble those topics---among many others---as "inexplicable and uninteresting"; he wrote the book, I dare say, because foolishness on all scales is fun to write about and fun to read about. As Orwell notes, Tolstoy, in his old age, declined to join in the fun.
However, the coincidence is weak evidence for Tolstoy's having read the book, in that he and Mackay were after all writing about the same topic and might have chosen the same examples independently.
Mackay's book also contains what one might take to be an adumbration of War and Peace. In his chapter on the Crusades, he says of one Peter the Hermit:
On his arrival at Constantinople, where he found Walter the Pennyless awaiting him, he was hospitably received by the Emperor Alexius. It might have been expected that the sad reverses they had undergone would have taught his followers common prudence; but, unhappily for them, their turbulence and love of plunder was not to be restrained. Although they were surrounded by friends, by whom all their wants were liberally supplied, they could not refrain from rapine. In vain the Hermit exhorted them to tranquillity; he possessed no more power over them, in subduing their passions, than the obscurest soldier of the host....
Later we read:
Walter the Pennyless and his multitude met as miserable a fate. On the news of the disasters of Exorogorgon, they demanded to be led instantly against the Turks. Walter, who only wanted good soldiers to have made a good general, was cooler of head, and saw all the dangers of such a step. His force was wholly insufficient to make any decisive movement in a country where the enemy was so much superior, and where, in case of defeat, he had no secure position to fall back upon; and he therefore expressed his opinion against advancing until the arrival of reinforcements. This prudent counsel found no favour: the army loudly expressed their dissatisfaction at their chief, and prepared to march forward without him. Upon this, the brave Walter put himself at their head, and rushed to destruction....
War and Peace expounds and defends an extreme skepticism of the notion of power: the higher up you are in a power structure, the less influence you have on how it actually behaves. Tolstoy says that if Napoleon had changed his mind about invading Russia, his soldiers would have killed him and forged ahead. In his narrative, Tolstoy gives plenty of examples of the impotence of power, and Mackay's anecdotes would have fitted right in. Once again, though, that doesn't prove any connection; a lot of people have said that the leader follows in front.
On the other hand, had Orwell read Mackay? One would expect him to have known and appreciated such a well-known classic of skepticism; he was bowled over, in his youth, by Winwood Reade's The Martyrdom of Man. But if he had, he kept quiet about it; Mackay is not in the index of Orwell's complete works, which I was able to peruse at Harvard. And he would surely have been reminded of it by Tolstoy, as I was. I am forced to suppose that the answer is no.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-17 11:16 am (UTC)If I may talk about classical music rather than literature, since I know a lot more in that field: J. S. Bach was obscure for a century after his death. Real musicians knew about him, but not much of the public did. Mendelssohn and others worked to bring his work to the public, and he quickly became one of the top composers of all time, competing only with Beethoven for the top spot. Spohr gets little attention these days, but I think he stands well in the second rank of 19th-century composers. Reputations or their lack don't always reflect intrinsic quality.