New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1908-09-09
TOTSTOY AT EIGHTY.

The Russian government and the HusSlan
Church have displayed the characteristic IN
eptitude of unenlightened tyranny IN dealing
with the celebration of Count Tolstoys eightieth
birthday anniversary, which occurs to-day. 1t
is easy TO understand why they have regarded
the incident with displeasure. perhaps even with
trepidation. and it is not difficult to feel some
degree of sympathy with them in their obJec-
ton to the apotheosis of the aged recluse or
Yasnaya Poliana, but 1t is not possible, on
grounds either Of right or of expediency TO COM
mend the measures which they have adopted
concerning it. In forbidding university TO
bestow upon him an honorary degree, in pro-
hibiting public celebrations of his anniversary
and in declaring that the souls of alDWho honor
him will suffer damnation, the civil and ecclesl-
astical authorities have earned for themselves
the scathing rebuke of the 'Novoe Vremya-a
journal certainly not to be suspected of undue
leanings toward heterodoxy in either politics o"
religion-which says that their action breathe5
the spirit of the Dark Ages and casts upon
Russia the shadow of the Spanish 1nqulslt1on;
while there can be no doubt that they have con-
siderably increased popular interest in the occa-
sion and have aroused sympathy with Count
Tolstoy which he otherwise would not have
commanded, and thus have actually magnifed
and intensified the presumptiye evils which they
sought to avert,
II was lQeElJdDle ana IL WAS quIle HLtlLS IhtiI
this anniversary should be observed, but it was
an open question at first which Of the several
and distinct Tostoys should be honored-a
question which it lay within the power Of the
authorities to cause to be rightly answered, but
which. through their stupid intolerance, has
really been wrongly and mischievOusly answered
The Tolstoy of War and Peace" and Anna
Karenina" and even of "Polikoushka" might
well have been honored by official Russia, as he
undoubtedly is by the intellectual world. But III
refusing 10 honor him the civil and ecclesiasti-
cal bureaucracy made it that the other
TostOys would be exploited, the TolstOy Of the
.'Kreutzer Sonata" and MY Confession and
What Is Art:" and, worse STILL the Tolstoy Of
anarchism and the Tolstoy who rails at patriot
ism as the most detestabe of crimes. It is
these latter Tolstoys, and even some still less
commendabIe. who are to-day most in the minds
of pilgrims to Yasnaya Poliana the Tolstoys
who with their affected pOsings and mystified
rather than mystical babblings, have largely OBJ
scured to the general mind and silenced to the
general ear that earlier Tolstoy who while lie
was not the greatest of Russian authors and did
not mark an epoch ia literature. was yet a
writer of commanding authority and the creator
of works which have made Russia and the world
the richer for their existence.
Despite then, the well meant efforts of the
Thomas Hardy, Leroy Beaulieu, George Mere
dith the Marquis Melchior de Vogue, Sir Donald
Mackenzie Wallace and their associates, it is
not as great writer, but a social, political
and religious agtator, that Count Tolstoy is to-
day chiefly regarded, and II is as such that his
influence is Chiefly eXerted in Russia. That
influence is probably much overestimated
Though il Is considerable. and it is mschlevousy
expanded by, those who, for their own selfish
III, Iii.
and have sordidly traded upon bis name. His
own vagaries in recent years have been bad
enough to cause his judicious admirers profound
regret. but they are trifles by the side of the
crazy and pernicious fads which Il score of co
teries and cliques, not Only in Russia, but also
elsewhere, even i'll America, have sought TO ex-
plot Joy tagging them with his name. An APP
preciatiye world will to-day pay the reverence
of old days to the writer Of a few great ro-
mances, but ii viii leave, with distaste and re-
yulsion, to purblind bureaucrats and TO fanafi-
cal adulators the modifying and inept wrsngle