but with consummate hypocrisy he writes an edict at the bottom of a report on a Polish student accused of striking his professor: "Deserves death penalty. However, thank God, it does not exist here and I shall not be the one to reinstate it. Run him twelve times down the gauntlet between one thousand men." As he knows, twelve thousand strokes mean certain and hideous death. But appearances will be saved! As benefactor of his people, the tsar orders all the peasants who refuse baptism to be judged by court-martial. As model husband, he has an official mistress and various affairs with young ladies of good society. As a practicing Orthodox, his main belief is that he can get away with anything, from adultery to crime.
In his physical description of the emperor, Tolstoy emphasizes his "gigantic stature," his "big white hands," his "long white face" which is "exceptionally cold," his "dull eyes," his "lifeless" expression, meant to symbolize the destructive principle of despotism. And these outward signs of power are repeated in the autocrat opposing him. Like Nicholas I, Shamil is "tall in stature, straight and powerfully built," giving "an impression of strength"; like Nicholas I he has "a pale face," "carved out of stone, utterly immobile," and "eyes that look at no one"; like Nicholas I lie is vain of his "big white hands"; and both of them play their part of all-seeing, all-powerful master to perfection. "Chernyshev," we read, "knew that whenever Nicholas I had an important decision to make, he required only a few moments of reflection, and then it was as if inspiration suddenly visited him; the best solution presented itself unsought, some inner voicc dictated what he must do." Here is Shamiclass="underline" "He closed his eyes and was silent. His counselors knew that this meant he was listening to the voice of the Prophet within himself, dictating what he must do. After five minutes of triumphant silence, Shamil opened his eyes and said . . ."
In fact, Shamil is not a person and still less Nicholas I: they arc- both incarnations of a svstem. Their close associates are also con- taminated by power—witness Prince Vorontsov, governor general of the Caucasus, who will stoop to any compromise or commit any massacre to further the policies of the government. Or Chernyshev, the minister of war, whom the tsar himself accounts "a thoroughgoing scoundrel." Or Loris-Melikov, notorious intriguer ... All these gentlemen carry their toadying to the point of imitating the monarch's dress and manners: Nicholas I wears "a black dolman with shoulder straps but no epaulets," so we see Vorontsov "dressed in his usual black military coat with shoulder straps, but no epaulets." Prince Basil Dolgoruky, undersecretary of state at the war office, has "a bored and doltish facc adorned with side-whiskers, mustachc and curls on his temples, like Nicholas
I." At the next level below, the aides-de-camp copy the ministers, and have 'little mustachcs and locks of hair brushed toward their eyes, like the emperor Nicholas Pavlovich."
Even though he is a traitor, Hadji Murad continues to command respect, in contrast with all these crcaturcs who have lost sight of any meaningful form of life in their scramble to obtain power over the largest possible number of their fellow men. A refugee in the Russian camp, he dominates it by his physical chann, oriental courtesy and disdain for the flatter}' of the beribboned officials, young arriviste officers and coquettish and curious provincial ladies who would like to draw him into their nets. He is indifferent to the intrigues woven about him. He is surprised at nothing, even though this is his first contact with what it is customary to call civilization. Supported up by the memories of his former primitive, independent existence, he achieves moral strength by refusing to live like his conquerors. 'I'o be sure, he is wide-eyed as a child when Vorontsov gives him his watch, but displays no interest at all in the scantily-clad women he meets at the governor's ball. Tall and slender, with close-shaven head and black eyes "set too far apart" and a limping stride, he is like a superb beast of the forest who has strayed into an artificial garden and knows no law but self-preservation. Without the slightest scruple he betra>-s Shamil and surrenders to the tsar's troops, and later kills the brave Cossacks assigned to serve as his escort. Hemmed in on all sides, he defends himself to the death with irrational doggedness. He goes down sword in hand, as he had always hoped to do. And the author seeks no compassion for him.
But there is more to this book than just the story of Hadji Murad himself. Just as the candles in a chandelier light up one after the other at the touch of a flame running along a hidden wick, so in this book characters apparently very remote from each other receive and emit light because of a mysterious bond that unites them. Starting with a trivial incident of guerilla warfare, Tolstoy demonstrates its repercussions at every level of the social hierarchy. From the lowliest to the most high, hundreds of people are affected by the decision of a single one. Guided by the author, we move from Hadji Murad to the tsar's intimate advisers discussing his case, to Nicholas I himself, whose cruel, cold heart is swiftly unveiled to us, to Vorontsov, who has his own problems, to the unyielding Shamil, to Iladji Murad's son in captivity, to the Cossacks, attacking, pillaging and burning enemy aouls, to Avdcycv, a simple soldier killed in a raid, to Avdcycv's village where they are threshing oats on the barn floor, to Avdeyev's wife who bursts into tears when she hears of her husband's death but is glad at heart
bccause she is pregnant with the child of the clerk in whose house she is employed. . . .
The field of vision spreads beyond the Caucasus to envelop all Russia. In a few pages a whole vast panorama is presented to us. Who is the hero? Hadji Murad, Nicholas I or Avdeyev the soldier? Impossible to determine. Or to determine what the author was trying to prove. Setting all moral considerations aside, his creation remains a hymn to life, nature, the sap that rises in men and plants. Can one discuss the distinction between good and evil in relation to a beheaded thistle? Written in a language as spare and precise as that of Pushkin, without digression, without a trace of self-indulgence, compact, nervous, virile, this novel gives proof that Tolstoy's artistry had reached perfection. And yet Hadji Murad was not published during his lifetime.! The censor would never have passed this broadside against the autocracy, war and the treatment inflicted upon the Caucasian tribes by the Russians. After revising his manuscript for the last time in 1904, he put it away without regret. At his age, the opinion of generations to come mattered more than that of his contemporaries.
He also refused to publish his third play, The Living Corpse, in which he returned to a subject dear to his heart: the failure of marriage and release through flight. Observing that his wife does not understand him after ten years of marriage, and actually prefers a man of "the common mold" to himself, Protasov feigns suicide, flees his family, breaks all ties with society and sets up house with a gypsy, Masha. The warmth and simplicity of his relations with Masha are contrasted with the artificiality of love sanctificd by orthodox marriage. But his hideaway is discovered. Trapped in the machinery of the law, his only escape this time will be to make his suicide real. Once more Tolstoy sets out to demolish marriage, human justice and society. Protasov combines the features of the heroes of The Kreutzer Sonata (hatred of the legitimate couple) and of Resurrection (attraction of life with a woman of lower estate, need to reject the hypocrisy of socicty and vanish into the crowd).
'Ilie author experienced all of these feelings, one might say, on a permanent basis. But his pleasure in his work temporarily helped him to bear the guilt inspired by his comfortable surroundings. "I have utterly abandoned myself to the temptations of fate," lie wrote to Biryukov on September 2, 1903; "I am living in luxury and physical inactivity. And I therefore suffer continually from remorse. But I comfort myself with the thought that I am living 011 good terms with all my family and writing pages which I think arc important."