Tolstoy and the Function of Art

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Russian writer (1828-1910) Usually referred to in English as “Leo Tolstoy” Born to an aristocratic Russian family Best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877) Regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time

Tolstoy at age 20 (circa 1848) Tolstoy grew up in the aftermath of the 1812 invasion of Russia by French Emperor Napoleon (out of a population of 43 million, Russia lost 1.5 million) Tolstoy’s parents died when he was young. He and his siblings were raised by relatives. He left the university in the middle of his studies, then ended up joining the army & fighting in the Crimean War. The war helped stir his later pacifism.

Tolstoy’s evolving attitude toward war and the Russian aristocracy Tolstoy’s writing career started with the Sevastopol Sketches, written during his service in Crimea. The senselessness of war comes through clearly. In his subsequent writing he became steadily more critical of the aristocracy. He developed a Christian pacifist philosophy that eventually influenced Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas on nonviolent resistance.

This picture shows Count Tolstoy, talking to his grandchildren in 1909, the year before his death at the age of 82 – and 8 years before the Russian Revolutions of 1917. A member of the upper class, he had long since become disillusioned with the emptiness and ugliness of aristocratic "society" and sought happiness in writing, his family, and helping the peasants who lived on their country estate.

What is Art? Near the end of his career, Tolstoy wrote What is Art? – which may be seen as a preview of ideas that Vygotsky would later explore: “Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man’s emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.”

Do you remember feeling this way about a song, a book or a movie? “the receiver of a true artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if the work were his own and not someone else’s — As if what it expresses were just what he had long been wishing to express. A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist — not that alone, but also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and attractive force of art.”