but only momentary.[1] Henceforth nothing can arrest this weak and undecided character. A wealthy prince, much respected, greatly enjoying the good things of the world, on the point of marrying a charming girl who loves him and is not distasteful to him, he suddenly decides to abandon everything—wealth, the world, and social position—and to marry a prostitute in order to atone for a remote offence; and his exaltation survives, without flinching, for months; it holds out against every trial, even the news that the woman he wishes to make his wife is continuing her life of debauchery.[2] Here we have a saintliness of which the psychology of a Dostoyevsky would have shown us the source, in the obscure depths of the conscience or even in the organism of his hero. Nekhludov, however, is by no means one of Dostoyevsky’s heroes. He is the type of the average man, commonplace, sane, who is Tolstoy’s usual hero. To be exact, we are conscious of the
- ↑ “Many times in his life he had proceeded to clean up his conscience. This was the term he used to denote those moral crises in which he decided to sweep out the moral refuse which littered his soul. At the conclusion of these crises he never failed to set himself certain rules, which he swore always to keep. He kept a diary; he began a new life. But each time it was not long before he fell once more to the same level, or lower still, than before the crisis.” (Resurrection.)
- ↑ Upon learning that Maslova is engaged in an intrigue with a hospital attendant, Nekhludov is more than ever decided to “sacrifice his liberty in order to redeem the sin of this woman.”
