Zweig
19 101October 28th10, maybe at 6 o'clock in the morning. It was still dark night in the Woods, and several figures crawled around Jasnayapolina's palace in a strange way. The key clicked, the door was secretly opened, and the coachman was very careful in the grass of the stable, hoping that there was no movement. He put the horse on the car, and there were uneasy shadows in the two rooms, groping for various packages with a shaded flashlight and opening the chest of drawers. Then they crept through the quietly opened door and whispered to each other on the muddy grass in the garden. Then a car gently avoided the road in front of the house and slowly drove back towards the garden door.
What happened there? Did the thief break into the palace? The czar's police finally surrounded the suspicious man's house to investigate? No, no one broke into the burglary, but Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, like a thief, only the doctor who accompanied him rushed out of the prison where he lived, calling him an irrefutable and decisive sign. He caught his wife red-handed again when she secretly went through his papers hysterically at night. At this time, he decided to suddenly ring in his heart as firmly and decisively as steel, leave her who "left his heart", escape, go anywhere, go to God, go to himself, enter his own, and go to the grave with himself. Suddenly, he put on his coat, work shirt, clumsy hat and rubber shoes. He didn't take anything from his property except diary, pencil and quill pen to express his spirit to mankind. At the railway station, he scribbled a letter to his wife and sent it home through the driver: "I did what old people of my age usually do, and I left this secular life to spend my last days in loneliness and peace." Then they got on the bus and sat on a greasy bench in the third-class carriage, wrapped in coats, accompanied only by his doctor lev tolstoy, who was a fugitive to God.
But lev tolstoy, he doesn't call himself that anymore. Tolstoy left his name, just like his money, house and honor. He now calls himself T. nikolayev, which is a fictional name. He wants to imagine a new life and a pure and correct death for himself. Finally, he got rid of all the fetters, and now he can be a pilgrim in a strange street and a servant of doctrine and honest words. At King Samak Monastery, he also bid farewell to his sister and the abbess: two elderly and frail people sat among generous monks, showing happy expressions because of peace and loneliness of mumbling. A few days later, my daughter arrived later-this is the child born on the first unsuccessful night of leaving. But even here, he can't enjoy peace. He is afraid of being recognized, chased, caught and dragged back to his ambiguous and illusory life again. So he was touched by invisible fingers again, and suddenly woke up his daughter at 4 am on1October 3 1 65438, urging him to leave, go anywhere, go to Bulgaria, go to the Caucasus, go to a foreign country, go to any place where honor and people can no longer touch him, as long as he finally enters loneliness, returns to himself and returns to God.
But his life, the terrible opponent of his theory-honor, his tormenting devil and tempter, still don't give up its victims. This world does not allow Tolstoy to belong to himself, to his own will of reflection. The hunted man hardly sat down in the train car, so he pressed his hat low on his forehead. Some travelers recognized the master, everyone on the train knew, the secret leaked, and men and women outside crowded to the door to meet him. The newspaper they carried with them published a long list of reports about the escape of this precious animal. He was betrayed and surrounded, and honor once again blocked Tolstoy's road to perfection for the last time. The telegraph line next to the roaring train is full of news, all the stations have been notified by the police, all the public officials have mobilized, and they have booked the express train at home. Journalists followed him from Moscow, Petersburg, Nisnia-Nogo Roth. Lev tolstoy should not and cannot be alone with himself. People don't allow him to belong to himself, and he is not allowed to realize his sanctification.
He's surrounded, he's surrounded, there's no bush he can dive into. When the train arrives at the border, a civil servant will politely take off his hat to welcome him and refuse him to cross the border; No matter where he wants to get out, the honor will be opposite him. It's everywhere, coming from all directions, and it's threatening: no, he can't escape, and his claws are holding him tightly. However, my daughter suddenly noticed that a terrible chill was shaking on her father's old body. Exhausted, he leaned back on the hard wooden stool. Sweat oozed from the trembling man's pores and dripped from his forehead. He has a fever in his blood. In order to save him, the disease attacked him. Death lifted his coat-dark coat, and covered him in front of the tracker.
In Astapova, a small station, they had to stop. The dying man can't go on. There is no hotel, no hotel, no luxurious place for him to hide. The stationmaster shyly gave up his office to a wooden house on the second floor of the railway station building (this is the holy land of Russia from now on). People led the shivering man in. Suddenly, everything he dreamed came true: this was the small room, low and moldy, full of stench and poverty, with the dim light of iron beds and kerosene lamps-far from the luxury and comfort he wanted to escape. When he died, at the last moment, everything became clear, just as he expected: as a solemn symbol, death was completely obeyed by his artist in a pure and flawless way. In a few days, this splendid death building will rise from the ground, which is a confirmation of his lofty theory. It can no longer be destroyed by people's jealousy, and its primitive and secular simplicity can no longer be disturbed and destroyed. Honor lurks nervously outside the closed door, and the upper lip squirms impatiently. Journalists and curious people, spies and policemen and gendarmes, priests sent by church meetings, and officials appointed by the czar are all crowded and waiting. Only his daughter guarded him, a friend and a doctor, and quiet and humble love surrounded him silently. There is a small diary on the bedside table-he calls God's microphone, but his feverish hand can't hold the pen. So he also dictated his last thoughts to his daughter in a gradually weak voice from the suffocating lungs, saying that God is "the kind of infinite things in which people feel that they are a limited part and his revelation in matter, time and space". And declared that the life combination between mortals and others can only happen through love. Two days before he died, he tightened all his senses to grasp the higher truth and the unattainable truth. Then darkness gradually cast a shadow over this shiny brain.
People outside are pushing curiously and impudently. He can't feel them anymore. His wife, Sophia andreyev, looked through the window through vague tears. She was ashamed of remorse. For 48 years, she has kept close contact with him, just to see his face again from a distance: he can't recognize her anymore. The things of life seem more and more strange to the sharpest eyes of all people, and the blood becomes more and more dim and solidified when it flows through the broken blood vessels. 165438+1On the evening of October 4th, he pulled himself together again and moaned, "How did the peasants die?" Extraordinary life is still resisting extraordinary death. 165438+1On October 7th, the god of death attacked the immortal. Pale head drooped into the pillow, and the eyes that could see the world better than anyone went out. The impatient explorer now finally understands the truth and meaning of all life.
Maxim Gorky once called lev tolstoy a person-this is an incisive remark. Because like all of us, he is made of the same cracked soil and has the same secular shortcomings, but he understands these shortcomings more deeply and endures them more painfully. Lev tolstoy has never been a different person, a taller person than his contemporaries, but he is more human, more moral, more acute in thinking, more sober and more enthusiastic than most people-as if he were the first and therefore the clearest intangible primitive model in the world artists' studio.
Tolstoy is a model of God's choice. Compared with him, the rest of us are so vague that we can't even recognize them. Tolstoy regards the portrait of eternal people as a fundamental lifelong career. In our mixed world, this is a career as perfect as possible-a career that can never be completed and can never be fully realized, so it is doubly heroic. In the extreme phenomenon, he used an unparalleled honesty of his own conscience to find people, and went down to the depth that people can only reach if they hurt themselves. This typical moral genius excavates his soul without reservation with a very serious and merciless ruthlessness, liberates this perfect model from its secular skin and shows all mankind its more noble and similar face to God. This fearless sculptor has never stopped, never calmed down, and never brought credulity pleasure to his art. He has been engaged in this brilliant cause of self-improvement for 80 years through self-description. Since Goethe, no writer has expressed himself in this way and expressed an eternal person at the same time.
However, this heroic will to moralize the world by testing and impressing one's own soul only stops on the surface with the breath of this incomparable man-his powerful natural impulse keeps shaping, continues to shape and continues to influence the living. There are still some people present, as witnesses of his worldly life, shivering and looking straight at the sharp eyes, but Tolstoy has long been a myth, his life has become a lofty legend of mankind, and his struggle has become an example for us and every generation to go against their will. Because everything that is regarded as sacrifice and heroic accomplishment is always done for everyone on our small earth, every greatness of one person has won a new and greater degree for all mankind. Only in the earnest confession of real people can the spirit of exploration foresee its boundaries and laws. Only with the help of the artist's self-shaping and the image of genius can the human soul be understood by the world.
Precautions:
Selected from Self-Portrait (Xiyuan Publishing House, 1998). Translated by Yuan Kexiu. Slightly abridged, the title was added by the editor. Zweig (1881-1942) is a famous Austrian writer. His masterpieces include Three Masters and Twenty-four Hours in a Woman's Life.
(2) 【 Jasnaya Boliana 】 lev tolstoy was born in the manor, and he has lived here almost all his life.
Tolstoy, the master of thought, is deeply admired and worshipped by people. His literature enlightens and educates naive learners, and encourages and saves many mentally lost people. Running away from home alone in his later years is puzzling. Is there any danger or disaster for him, or is it a whim and boredom, or is it seeking excitement and posturing? -Tolstoy, a great man, beyond ordinary people's understanding. Surrounded by great glory and lofty status, he has felt the suffocation of his heart and can no longer breathe the free air. This is unbearable for a man who became a hero because he was ambitious, so he abandoned everything and ran away, even at the cost of his life. He must have been happy when he died. Because of his courage, he pursues the eternal soul.
Do you agree with the author's explanation of Tolstoy's last unexpected behavior? Can you understand Tolstoy's mood when he finally left?