This paper proposes to examine the evolution of Semen Frank's
(1877–1950) views on Tolstoj, from his earlier
Vexi
period to the last expansive essay he wrote on
Tolstoj in 1933. Such a tactic will be fruitful in bringing out the
reasons which made Frank consider Tolstoj an enduring moral model for
the twentieth century.
Why is this important? Frank approached Tolstoj's moral canon as an
interpretive task, one which the Russian intelligentsia was obliged to
fulfil. With a special angle on literary creativity taken early on in
his career, Frank reiterated that the way Russian intelligentsia, the
germ for wholesome organic socium, fulfills its interpretative task in
understanding Pu&shachek;kin (deconstructs
Tolstoj's teaching, a critical period
which I propose to call from adulation to valuation.
He
imputes to Tolstoj a narrow moral utilitarianism
and
simultaneously an infectious ineffectiveness
of his
religious teaching to the intelligentsia. In the later essays, he
reconfigures the tasks of intelligentsial self-identification for
which Tolstoj emerges, reinterpreted, as a new moral beacon in the
dark spaces of neposti&zhachek;imoe. This period may be called
from valuation to initiation
: the very way to approach
Tolstoj is a rite of passage, the inhalation of the life-saving
essence.
In the late 1900s–1910s, according to Frank, the incense
burnt to Tolstoj was a smoke screen that the intelligentsia erected to
hide from moral responsibility pressed upon it by Tolstoj's
teaching. Of most interest here is Frank's ethical thought
(èti&chachek;eskaja mysl&soft;), conscience to Frank is the
result of a highly developed [new] religious
consciousness.
Of what worth, asks Frank, is a moral prophet
of primitivist leanings (like Tolstoj) in modern society, torn between
political wars and individual anarchy. Frank is primarily intrigued by
why Tolstoj's teaching can be rejected but never efficiently refuted,
not even by strong critics like Vladimir Solov&soft;ev. Frank's goal
is to elicit glimpses of individual conscience in Tolstoj's readers by
exposing the complex meanderings of Tolstoj's
opro&shachek;&chachek;enija.
He explains that critics
of Solov&soft;ev's type fail to notice how Tolstoj's highly principled
method fulfills two of most impossible tasks: 1) the exposure of a
prevalent social ethical value (by exploiting it exhaustively as a
dogmatic premise) and 2) the pushing forward of an individual value
(by denying any compromise of premise with instance). Tolstoj's
absolute non-violence releases an instance to grow
under its own specific moral duress and thus encourages moral
individualism. Tolstoj's fruitful individualism
[plodotvornyj individualizm] is an instance of novoe
religioznoe soznanie,
and his preaching is the word of a new
type of religious thinker. chu&zhachek;d ljubvi
), who accomplished the
zara&zhachek;enie dobrom which he preached. ontologically-anchored goodness.
In him, the
tragic dichotomy of life
versus goodness
finds its most vivid representative, but his mighty leanings towards
goodness
are likewise most vivid representations of the
obi&zhachek;ennoe bytie &chachek;eloveka.
Tolstoj's
moral message, in Frank's analysis, is not a vehicle of choking
indoctrination. Critically assessed and applied, it can serve, Frank
insists, as a rescuing antidote to violent enforcements of one-sided
and detrimental truths.