juxtaposition of a very materialistic[1] character and a moral crisis which belongs to another man, and that man the aged Tolstoy.
The same impression—one of elemental duality—is again produced at the end of the book, where a third part, full of strictly realistic observation, is set beside an evangelical conclusion which is not in any way essential; it is an act of personal faith,[2] which does not logically issue from the life under observation. This is not the first time that Tolstoy’s religion has become involved with his realism; but in previous works the two elements have been better mingled. Here they are not amalgamated; they simply coexist; and the contrast is the more striking in that Tolstoy’s faith is always becoming less and less indifferent to proof, while his realism is daily becoming more finely whetted, more free from convention. Here is a sign, not of fatigue, but of age; a certain stiffness, so to speak, in the joints. The religious conclusion is not the organic development of the work. It is a Deus ex machina. I personally am convinced that right in the depth of
- ↑ Tolstoy has never drawn a character with so sure, so broad a touch as in the beginning of Resurrection. Witness the admirable description of Nekhludov’s toilet and his actions of the morning before the first session in the Palace of Justice.
- ↑ The word “act” to be found here and there in the text in such phrases as “act of faith,” “act of will,” is used in a sense peculiar to Catholic and Orthodox Christians. A penitent is told to perform an “act of faith” as penance; which is usually the repetition of certain prayers of the nature of a creed. The “act,” in short, is a repetition, a declamation, a meditation: anything but an action. [Trans.]
