Blog #15; Tolstoy, the Undisputed Master

The “Count,” Leo Tolstoy, the champion author of the voluminous and unmatched, WAR AND PEACE.  That one book is so rich in its psychological realism, so textured in its various portrayals of the human species, that it puts all other serious fiction writers to shame.   Even the great Hemingway famously tried and failed to match the Master.  That is because, despite Tolstoy’s many other flaws as a man, he had a deep heart and a measure of humility seldom matched by other authors.  And that is Hemingway’s downfall: his enormous ego.  Only in “The Old Man and the Sea” do we see Hemingway right-sizing himself when beholding the majesty of the great sea, and the powerful forces that lie within it.  It is indeed humbling, and we as readers are awestruck and humbled by the might of the ocean.

Tolstoy achieved the unachievable.  He knew the nature of women, he knew the nature of men, and he knew the nature of humans in general.  And more than any other author, before or since, he knew how to render them realistically in prose that rings.  There is much to learn in WAR AND PEACE: how to love, how to conduct oneself with dignity and compassion, how to deal with difficult people, how to wage war and survive the most grueling of the sufferings that our Lord can throw at us.

I am not afraid here, as I have not been afraid in other Blogs, to identify as a Christian and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  I don’t think spiritual belief and a keen intellect are mutually exclusive, and I believe, as Tolstoy did, that we are to help the less fortunate, to seek to live good and simple lives and to be a servant of God.   Tolstoy spent much of his later years searching out a more spiritual way of life, founded schools, wrote mystical fiction, and lived as a peasant.   He was certainly a humble man in a way we could never imagine Ernest Hemingway being.