CONCERNING TOLSTOY
425
the ordinary situations of life. Analysis is always at the center of the
Tolstoyan creation. It is the sort of analysis, however, which has little
in common with the analytical modes of such novelists as Dostoevsky
and Proust, for example, both characteristically modern though in
entirely different ways. While in their work analysis is precipitated
mainly by deviations from the norm, from the broad standard of
human conduct, in Tolstoy the analysis remains in line with that
standard, is in fact inconceivable apart from it. Dostoevsky's "under–
ground" man, who is a bundle of plebeian resentments, is unimagin–
able in a Tolstoyan novel. Even in Tolstoy's treatment·of death there is
nothing actually morbid- certainly not in the description of the death
of Prince Andrey in
War and Peace
and of Nikolay Levin in
Anna
Karenina.
As
for
The Death of I van Ilych,
that story would be utterly
pointless if we were to see Ivan Ilych as a special type and what hap–
pened to him as anything out of the ordinary. Ivan llych is Every–
man, and the state of absolute solitude into which he falls as his life
ebbs away is the existential norm, the inescapable realization of
mortality. Nothing could be more mistaken than the idea that Tol–
stoy's concern with death is an abnormal trait. On the contrary, if
anything it is a supernormal trait, for the intensity of his concern with
death is proportionate to the intensity of his concern with life. Of
Tolstoy it can be said that he truly lived his life, and for that very
reason he was so tormented by the thought of dying. It was a literal
thought, physical through and through, a vital manifestation of the
simplicity with which he grasped man's life in the world. This sim–
plicity is of a metaphysical nature, and in it, as one Russian critic has
remarked, you find the essence of Tolstoy's world-view, the energizing
and generalizing formula that served him as the means unifying the
diverse motives of his intellectual and literary experience. It is due to
this metaphysical simplicity that he was unable to come to terms with
any system of dogmatic theology and that in the end, despite all
his
efforts to retain it, he was compelled to exclude even the idea of God
from
his
own system of rationalized religion. Thus all notions of im–
mortality seemed absurd to Tolstoy, and his scheme of salvation was
entirely calculated to make men happy here and now. It is reported
of Thoreau that when he lay dying his answer to all talk of the here–
after was "one world at a time." That is the sort of answer with
which Tolstoy's mentality is wholly in accord.
The way in which his rationalism enttrs his art is shown in his
analysis of character, an analysis which leaves nothing undefined,
nothing unexplained. That systematization of ambiguity which marks
