.
Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy, The
Religious Anarchist |
[Reprinted from the book, Rebels of
Individualism, 1949]
|
Not a soul said, "We may have gone
astray," but they all flew into a rage, and pretended to be
deeply hurt, and hastened with loud outcry to drown my lone voice.
"We are weary and tired enough" they said, "and
here comet a man to preach inertia, idleness, non-action."
Some even added, "Inaction!" "Do not listen to him
-forward, follow us!" yelled both parties - those who
believed salvation was in going on in the same direction, no
matter which, as well as those who saw as salvation an aimless
progress in all directions. -- From THREE PARABLES
|
HE LAY dying in the filthy little station. In his delirium, he cried
out, "It's time to knock off ... all is over . . . This is the end,
and it doesn't matter. . . ."
No - it didn't matter any more. Nothing mattered any more. Time was
when everything did; when the most trivial occurrence excited his
exhaustless mind into endless probing and searching; when this spent
body was powerful and young; when as an officer and wealthy member of
the nobility, he had shocked the Army, the aristocracy, and the Church
by the violence of his attacks, with the result that he was
excommunicated; and when, finally, he had attracted international fame
as the greatest literary figure of the nineteenth century.
Time was, even, when he had even happy, and this hapless creature
weeping outside the door had been his beloved wife. But that was long
ago. The love and sympathy which he preached for the whole…
…vik Apostles. His name is brazenly associated with those whose
contributions to the world consisted in advocating one force in lieu of
another. His Russia still is the land of horrible tyranny and
oppression. Where, previously, the Cossack knout lashed the bowed head
of the peasant and the Jew, today the merciless dictatorship of the "proletariat"
crushes all people in a most amazing application of the principle of
equality and non-discrimination. Tolstoy's "little brothers"
cry out in their agony, and scan the horizon with blood-shot eyes.
Patiently, stolidly, they await the coming of the Messiah.
And wherever he may be, Lev Nikolayevitch must turn bitterly away, and
wonder hopelessly about the blind ignorance of the masses whose cause he
espoused. For how could they fail to understand the simple wisdom of his
true recipe for revolution:
"The position of the Christian world, with its
fortresses, cannon, dynamite, guns, torpedoes, prisons, gallows,
churches, factories, custom-houses, and palaces, is monstrous. But
neither fortresses nor cannon nor guns by themselves can make war, nor
can the prisons lock their gates, nor the gallows hang, nor the
churches themselves lead men astray, nor the custom-houses claim their
dues, nor palaces and factories build and support themselves; all
these operations are performed by men. And when men understand that
they need not make them, then these things will cease to be."
|
