Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi — Context and Discussion

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Authors: Gorky, Maksim, 1868-1936, Koteliansky, S. S. (Samuel Solomonovitch), 1880-1955 [Translator], Woolf, Leonard, 1880-1969 [Translator] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2017 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910; Gorky, Maksim, 1868-1936; Novelists, Russian -- 19th century -- Biography; Authors, Russian -- 20th century -- Biography Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Words 19,947

Reading time 87 min

Text sections 2

The catalog record for Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi — Context and Discussion provides practical reading context through 19,947 words, 1 hr 27 min estimated reading time, and 2 detected text sections.

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Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #55284

Gorky's fragmentary notes and a letter on Tolstoy's illness, death, and his relentless wrestling with God, human pride, and the urge to create a saint.

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The thought which beyond others most often and conspicuously gnaws at him is the thought of God. At moments it seems, indeed, not to be a thought, but a violent resistance to something which he feels above him. He speaks of it less than he would like, but thinks of it always. It can scarcely be said to be a sign of old age, a presentiment of death--no, I think that it comes from his exquisite human pride, and--a bit--from a sense of humiliation: for, being Leo Tolstoi, it is humiliating to have to submit one's will to a streptococcus. If he were a scientist, he would certainly evolve the most ingenious hypotheses, make great discoveries.

He has wonderful hands--not beautiful, but knotted with swollen veins, and yet full of a singular expressiveness and the power of creativeness. Probably Leonardo da Vinci had hands like that. With such hands one can do anything. Sometimes, when talking, he will move his fingers, gradually close them into a fist, and then, suddenly opening them, utter a good, full-weight word. He is like a god, not a Sabaoth or Olympian, but the kind of Russian god who "sits on a maple throne under a golden lime tree," not very majestic, but perhaps more cunning than all the other gods.

He treats Sulerzhizky with the tenderness of a woman. For Tchekhov his love is paternal--in this love is the feeling of the pride of a creator--Suler rouses in him just tenderness, a perpetual interest and rapture which never seems to weary the sorcerer. Perhaps there is something a little ridiculous in this feeling, like the love of an old maid for a parrot, a pug dog, or a tom-cat. Suler is a fascinatingly wild bird from some strange unknown land. A hundred men like him could change the face, as well as the soul, of a provincial town. Its face they would smash and its soul they would fill with a passion for riotous, brilliant, headstrong wildness. One loves Suler easily and gaily, and when I see how carelessly women accept him, they surprise and anger me. Yet under this carelessness is hidden, perhaps, caution. Suler is not reliable. What will he do to-morrow? He may throw a bomb or he may join a troupe of public-house minstrels. He has energy enough for three life-times, and fire of life--so much that he seems to sweat sparks like over-heated iron.

[But once he got thoroughly cross with Suler. Suler inclined to anarchism, and often argued with bitterness about the freedom of the individual. In such cases Leo Nicolayevitch always chaffed him.

I remember that Suler once got hold of a thin little pamphlet by Prince Kropotkin; he flamed up, and all day long explained to everyone the wisdom of anarchism, overwhelming them with his philosophizing.

"Oh, stop it, Liovushka," said Leo Nicolayevitch irritably, "you are annoying. You hammer away like a parrot at one word, freedom, freedom; but what is the sense of it? If you attained your freedom, what do you imagine would happen? In the philosophic sense, a bottomless void, and in actual life you would become an idler, a parasite. If you were free in your sense, what would bind you to life or to people? Now, birds are free, but still they build nests; you, however, wouldn't even build a nest, but would gratify your sexual feeling anywhere, like a dog. You think seriously, and you will come to see, you will come to feel, that this freedom is ultimately emptiness, boundlessness."

He frowned angrily, was silent for a while, and then added quietly, "Christ was free and so was Buddha, and both took on themselves the sins of the world and voluntarily entered the prison of earthly life. Further than that nobody has gone, nobody. And you--we--well, what's the good of talking--we are all looking for freedom from obligations towards our fellow men, whereas it is just that feeling of our obligations which has made us men, and, if those obligations were not there, we should live like the beasts."

He smiled. "And now here we are arguing how we ought to live. The result isn't very great, but it is something. For instance, you are arguing with me, and are getting so cross that you are going blue in the nose, yet you don't hit me, you don't even swear at me. But if you really felt free, you'd kill me on the spot, and there'd be an end of it." After a silence, he added: "Freedom consists in all and everything agreeing with me, but in that case I don't exist, because we are only conscious of ourselves in conflicts and contradictions,"]

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Gorky’s notes open with a striking image: Tolstoy’s thought of God is not a serene meditation but a “violent resistance” to something felt above him. The memoirist dwells on Tolstoy’s hands—knotted, swollen, yet “full of a singular expressiveness and the power of creativeness”—and compares them to Leonardo da Vinci’s. These physical details anchor the portrait in immediate, tactile observation.

The book is built from two distinct textual layers: jotted notes from 1900–1901, when Gorky lived near Tolstoy in the Crimea, and an unfinished letter written after Tolstoy’s “going away” from Yasnaya Polyana and his death. The preface warns that the notes were “carelessly jotted down on scraps of paper,” and the letter is printed without correction. This raw, unpolished structure shapes the reader’s encounter with Tolstoy as a man, not a monument.

A God Not on a Throne

Gorky repeatedly compares Tolstoy to a god, but not the Olympian or Sabaoth type. He imagines “the kind of Russian god who ‘sits on a maple throne under a golden lime tree,’ not very majestic, but perhaps more cunning.” This folkloric deity is intimate, sly, and rooted in the landscape—much like the Tolstoy Gorky portrays. The comparison recurs in the letter, where Gorky insists Tolstoy is “great and holy because he is a man, a madly and tormentingly beautiful man.” The divine is pulled back into the human.

The image of hands recurs as a motif of creation and control. Gorky watches Tolstoy move his fingers, close them into a fist, then open them to “utter a good, full-weight word.” The gesture becomes a metaphor for the writer’s craft: gathering force, then releasing meaning. These physical details ground the abstract struggle with God in the body’s expressiveness.

The Streptococcus and the Soul

Gorky identifies a central tension in Tolstoy: “it is humiliating to have to submit one’s will to a streptococcus.” The remark links Tolstoy’s obsession with God to his exquisite human pride. Gorky speculates that if Tolstoy were a scientist, he would “evolve the most ingenious hypotheses.” The note suggests that Tolstoy’s religious quest is partly a rebellion against mortality—a refusal to be defeated by a microbe.

This reading is supported by the letter’s anguished reaction to Tolstoy’s death. Gorky imagines him in his coffin, “like a smooth stone at the bottom of a stream.” The image is static, final, and contrasts sharply with the living, gesturing hands. The memoir thus moves between the vitality of the observed man and the stillness of the dead legend.

The Legend-Makers at Work

Gorky’s letter is a fierce protest against the creation of a saint. He writes that “idlers and good-for-nothings have gone on living and have now produced a saint,” and fears the country, “lacerated and starving,” will long for a legend that soothes pain. He wants Tolstoy to remain “a sinner close to the heart of the all-sinful world.” The note reveals Gorky’s own investment in a flawed, human Tolstoy.

The memoirist also criticizes Tolstoy’s simplification of Christ’s image, “smoothing away the militant elements.” He suggests that Tolstoy’s Gospel is “the more easily accepted because it is ‘soothing to the malady’ of the Russian people.” Yet Gorky acknowledges that War and Peace will not soothe “the sorrow and despair of the grey Russian land.” The tension between art and consolation runs through the text.

Movement Between Scenes

The book’s structure mirrors the restlessness of its subject. The notes jump from a discussion of God to a description of hands to a memory of Tchekhov. The letter shifts from anger at journalists to a vision of Tolstoy in his coffin. This fragmentary quality is deliberate: Gorky warns that he “cannot express it properly” and that “there is a dog howling in my soul.”

The movement between Oleise and Gaspra, between 1901 and 1910, creates a temporal layering. The reader sees Tolstoy during his serious illness and recovery, then hears of his flight and death. Gorky’s own emotional arc—from careful observation to raw grief—gives the book a dramatic shape. The final image of Tolstoy as a stone at the bottom of a stream brings the motion to a halt, leaving the reader with a sense of irreversible loss.

Gorky’s Reminiscences resists the hagiography it fears. The reader is asked to hold two images together: the living man with his expressive hands and the dead legend smoothed into stone. The notes and letter, incomplete and contradictory, preserve the friction. Approach this book not as a biography but as a series of impressions—sharp, partial, and fiercely personal.

It’s strange how Gorky’s jotted fragments on Tolstoy—that old man wrestling God like a stubborn bear—leave me quiet, not stirred. Campion, too, held his ground, but with such a different stillness. Both men chased something absolute, and I keep thinking how costly that honesty is. It lingers, like the ache after a hard, good sermon. Blessed Edmund Campion — Background and Themes rests beside it on my shelf now, a gentler echo.