PROTEUS CUT IN TWO.
Tolstoy and Modern Consciousness. By Janko Lavrin. (Collins. 6s. net.) MODERN criticism is a game easy to play. Mr. Janko Lavrin plays very well : he keeps all the rules, he is very agile, and on his own ground he could go on playing till judgment day. Here is the theory of the game. Criticism is analytic ; analysis proves that everything is compounded of opposites—of spirit and matter, . for instance, subject and object, movement and inertia, God and the Devil. In literary criticism, therefore, when we have segregated one quality of an author's mind we shall find also, if we look round, the exact opposite. Keats was abnormally sensitive, he was abnormally callous ; he was passionate, he was marmoreal. This seems to be a deadlock. No ; the psycho- analyst comes to our aid. Every creative act is the result of a conflict : a great author has been raging in bewilderment between two opposite emotions or mental processes ; in writing he solves the conflict by a synthesis of the opposites ; but, of course, if we analyze his writing, we shall discover that quarrel of opposites which compelled him to write.
Mr. Lavrin distinguishes in Tolstoy a great number of these irreconcilables. Between his puritanism and his sensuousness, his asceticism and his licence, Tolstoy was in constant torment. His love for mankind was made ridiculous by his profound selfishness. He was eager for spiritual life, he was eager for spiritual death ; he swung backwards and forwards between self-affirmation and self-renunciation. He was hungry for religion, he was determined in his rationalism. Ile was individualistic, he took refuge in the herd-instinct. his life, in short, was a whirl of contradictions. And Mr. Lavrin quotes very appositely from Tolstoy's works to exhibit the dualism of his character.
Meanwhile, where is Tolstoy ? We are shown Ormuzd and Ahriman eternally wrestling ; we are given a long illustration of the problems :which Mr. Lavrin sees in the universe, and he has cleverly deified them in his subject. Meanwhile, Tolstoy has evaporated. There is no single being, no focus, no person left. We may be sure that if Tolstoy differed from his fellows, if he made a contribution of his own to the world, he must have had a character at once more complicated and more downright. He must have been a historically unique man, with definite, positive qualities of his own, with a consciousness of life which no one else has possessed. Of this man we have no sign in Mr. Lavrin's study. Then what is wrong with the method A dozen things. It is a method very useful for proving that all men are the same—a statement within its limita- tions quite true—and that is because it takes no account of proportions. Even for this purpose the analysis has to be carried much further, the opposites must be reconciled again. But valuations are based entirely upon these pro- portions, on differences, • in a word. As a preliminary, the analytic method may be used ; having seen the two impulses, we may then decide which is predominant. All the same, it is schematic and formal ; out of its limitations it is actually false. It must also be borne in mind that every man is unique and unified. The best criticism, indeed, is not analytic but intuitive : it demands an ability to see, through the Protean changes, the inconsistencies, the variety of a man's actions and expressions, what of him remains
the same, what is the impetus and essence which informs the whole man.
Mr. Lavrin lacks intuition and so blunders. He mis- construes Tolstoy's desire to live like a peasant : he takes it to have been a desire for relapse into collective consciousness, into a Group-Soul. It was an attempt to conquer and include the peasant ; an effort of self-creation, not of self- destruction. He similarly misconstrues Tolstoy's doctrine: of the renunciation of individuality : it is no doctrine of atavism or cowardice. He takes Nietzsche to be the com- plement and antithesis of Tolstoy ; they are hardly to be brought together at all ; but if they are, then it is by their similarities. He has abstracted all force, all positive qualities from Tolstoy and left him feeble and distracted. For one thing we must thank either Mr. Lavrin or the printer " terriffic " is a new and far more forcible spelling.
ALAN PORTER.
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