by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910)

translation of Kazaki into English by Peter Constantine (Modern Library, 2006)

Third roll: 989 – lands me on “Tolstoy: Short Novels,” from whence I bounce back to the first unread Tolstoy on the list, which turns out to be the first Tolstoy on the list, I not having read anything by Tolstoy other than, I think, a short story or two long ago. The first Tolstoy on the list is The Cossacks. A new translation had just come out last year so I was immediately able to pick up a copy of it, again at the Strand Annex, for $6 or something like that. See above for visual aid.

This Modern Library edition dates it to 1862 but the internet consensus seems to be 1863. In any case it was in the works for 10 years or so, presumably started around the time in Tolstoy’s life that it surely represents. It’s a young man’s work about being a young man. A certain type of young man’s work about being a certain type of young man, in fact. To jump directly to my opinion: the book is clearly an effort to have a broader perspective on the foibles of this certain type of young man – the author wants to write as though he is able to look in from the outside and observe truths that just happen to be about who he is, or was. But I don’t think the author was as much more mature than his past-self protagonist as he must have thought. The perspective is lacking.

The book started with a brisk portrait of this kid, Olenin – philosophically curious and reasonably self-aware about how privileged and pampered his life is, but all the same, blindingly self-centered – and I was immediately excited at the prospect that it would have something to say to my generation. Possibly something chastening. Presumably something sturdier than whatever Indecision was saying (with its mouth full). But in the end – skipping to the end – it’s not clear that it was saying anything much. It’s not clear to me what Olenin should have or could have learned. It definitely comes across that Tolstoy, in living among the Cossacks as described in the book, felt that their spiritually and psychologically uncomplicated existences were a humiliating counter-example to his own personality, and that that felt like a significant life experience to him. But isn’t that itself a pretty self-centered way of seeing the world? Yes, and Tolstoy tries to acknowledge that by making the romantic significance that Olenin imparts to the Cossacks seem slightly ridiculous. Yet the book itself clearly believes that their straightforward rurality is indeed a thing of great and significant beauty – he saves his most attentive writing for descriptions of the dirt and the cows and the smells and sounds. In any case, making Olenin’s various philosophical passions out to be “naive” seemed to be the full extent of the higher authorial wisdom. The real intention here was, I believe, to record a setting and a frame of mind that were memorable and intense in the living. It was all right as a fictionalized memoir, limited but still interesting as a character study (and a cultural study), and frustrating as a novel (or novella, really – it’s quite short).

It could be argued that this is a book about a life-changing experience that intentionally leaves the life-changing for after the curtain has fallen. That wouldn’t be a bad idea for a book, and I could be convinced that this was that book. Whatever the intention, though, it doesn’t change the fact that I finished it feeling that it hadn’t given me enough thoughts to chew on about the action. Olenin’s plentiful thoughts don’t count – they are the action. And don’t try telling me that the book was an impartial rendering of events, offered up to us to interpret or not as we like. Please. If it was that, it was only that by default.

Despite its being, as stated, quite short, it still took me a long time to get through this because I was reading it aloud, which always slows things down drastically. We ended up doing this a chapter at a time, and it’s made up of many short little chapters. Peter Constantine did a perfectly fine job making the English readable, but I wouldn’t recommend giving this one that kind of slow and careful attention – the form is something less than taut and it would probably best be read quickly in one or two long gulps. The old Louise and Aylmer Maude translation, which I think was the only English version available prior to last year, seems, on skimming, perfectly acceptable. Yes, it’s a little 19th-century-cated, but so is Tolstoy.

I did come away with a more specific interest than previously in reading Tolstoy’s more mature, more famous works. There were a few ambitious scenes of philosophical revelation in The Cossacks that were intriguing and admirable when taken in isolation, and I got excited about the prospect of seeing the same sort of thing done with greater control. Next Tolstoy will be War and Peace. Whenever that comes up.

Oops, finished, but then I thought of this to say – one section of the book portrays Olenin going, nervously, in the throes of a wicked crush, to a party with a bunch of giggling girls, and then, after the evening plays out, returning home to muse on the fantastic, near-universal significance of everything that has happened. This scene, and others, I thought, were very successful at evoking high school. My dismay, then, was that nowhere in the book did we get to hear from the Daniel Stern voice, so to speak. Without that guy putting it in perspective, high school is just a big mess; we need that guide to help us differentiate our attitude toward high school gossip from the attitude of high school kids. If we don’t think Olenin’s love is as real as Olenin does, what do we think? It depends what happens to him when he grows up. I guess he grows up to be Tolstoy. That would have been an interesting book.

That is, in fact, what all of Proust’s big-ass book is – high school nonsense dissected endlessly from stratospherically high above it all. I loved that. This, by contrast, either had nothing to say yet or didn’t want to let us in on it, and what fun is that?