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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
he doesn’t hate or blame or fingerpoint them— he sees and shows their humanity. he was a moralist, but he wasn’t a fucking puritan.
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I tend to divide Tolstoy into pre and post "Christian" conversion.
I mean, he came to renounce his earlier work and wrote stories with titles like "God Sees the Truth but Waits." I insist there are two Tolstoys, although I guess I never really thought through what the similarities might be.
Have you read War and Peace? He'll completely stop the action for twenty pages to give his theory on history. I have nothing against his essays, but it's annoying when they are crammed into a novel. That was my only criticism of his non-fiction.
I still read Anna and think, "Yeah, that's how the world works" rather than "What a good point" or "I see where he's coming from" or "Geez, he was tough on that character." Maybe I just ignored the moralism in favor of the realism.