The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1908-04-16
Colstoy wersl1s Shakespeare.


demnation of Shakespeare's dramatic
writings as of no literary or dramatic
value at all, as simple rubbish without
charm or interest, devoid of moral and
noble ideals, fit only to be classed with
the yellow-covered dime novels and
eminently fitted to be forgotten by
our present generation and all the
coming ones. lays deeper than merely
a lack of knowledge of certain lam
guage.
Consider the early life of those two
men and you have the key according
to my opinion to the problem. Toll
stoy was born count, surrounded
from his earliest childhood with all the
luxuries and prerogatives of his ex-
elusive caste. He was born in cas-
tle-like mansion with spires and tow
ers and cOlonnades. The estate of his
fathers was and is today little king
dom in extent and incomes-mostly
created by the sweat and toll of peas
ants not whit better situated than
abject slaves. From early youth he
knew that he could do whatever he
pleased with this poor and suffering
class. This prerogative was, as it had
been his fathers from time immemo-
rial, to beat and kick, to slash and slay
those people according to his will, and
nobody would call him to account for
it. And he grew up not to be an an
gel. His youth and early manhood
was a continual dissipation, life of
immoral and reckless doings in COM
pany with other gilded youths of his
acquaintance. He emptied indeed the
dreadful cup of the lusts of the flesh to
the very dregs. He went from bad to
worse with every passing year. Con-
sequently the ideals of a noble life
never entered his brain, never even
shut across the empty expanse of his
mind as glittering, brilliant, beckon-
ing star, flashing it's enlightening and
divine light into his neglected soul un-
til he finally was forced to halt by an
event in his life whereby one of his
friends suddenly lost his life.
u From that time on he got morbidly
religious and condemnatory towards
everybody and everything. He started
religious-philosophic crusade of his
own, not only aimed at the Greek
| Catholic Church and its tangled ant
unscriptural creed and the priesthood
r of that church, but against all churches
and all kinds of denominations ant
3 creeds, and against Jesus Christ him
B self. He declared that the teaching
!, of Christ as to the resurrection of tn,
( body and the Immortality of the sou
/ was delusiOn and a snare. But h.
t wanted religion, nevertheless, and lot
8 of it. A religion of asceticism, and all
solute isolation from the every-da
t life of the children of men. In fact
d he wanted everybody to become monk
i and nuns and the habitations of me-
: converted into SO many cloisters an
o monasteries. Every man and woma
+ to cover or robe themselves in tn
g. coarsest and cheapest and unshapel
10 kind of clothes, and to eat the coarses
r kind of food, and partake even spa
d ingly of that. He teaches an abje(
Is surrender to the enemy to his disciple
h No nation, according to his teaching
y has a religious or moral right to d.
% fend the homes, the honor or the five
1t of its people against an enemy, eve
If If that enemy covers the land wit
re wreck and ruin, blood and carnag
b. murder and rape. No individual hs
le a religious or moral right to defend b
ii own life or the life and honor of h
in wife and daughters, or his sweethea
n- or his sisters against a drunken bru
er or mob of brutes bent on dark, ar
t. devilish deeds.
lgl Now these morbid notions of q sem
r. religious character are, according to Z
g. known psychological laws, the resu
be Of his previous lawless and filthy Ii
IT. and the kind of conversion or refor
to he went thru. The reaction came t,
o. sudden to create q healthy religio
ct life, noble and enlightened state
it. religious mind, Just because he start
too soon to play the role Of champi'
le- lreformer Of the world, the instruct