Shakespearean Apologists Respond!

Or, Why Shakespeare? (Part Four), and a new feature for paid subscribers

Actual photo of Tolstoy’s pet Russian bear (left) fighting the bear from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (as in “exit, pursued by bear”). Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

Why Shakespeare? (Part Four)

On Wednesday, we considered Tolstoy’s attempted cancellation of Shakespeare (click here for that post), and I invited comments. It turns out that I received a number of insightful responses, which deserve to be quoted in full. Therefore, I will leave my own thoughts on Tolstoy (and the conclusion of this “Why Shakespeare?” series—for the moment at least) for the next post.

Phil Jackson

helpfully posted a link to Tolstoy’s essay, which you can find here.

david roberts

brought up Tolstoy’s ardent Christianity, which I admittedly underplayed in my initial post, and which intensified later in his life:

Tolstoy believed in taking the Sermon on the Mount literally. The ethic of turning the other cheek.

Shakespeare's plays are full of violence, sin, and bawdiness, i.e., human nature. So I think Tolstoy the critic, as opposed to Tolstoy the author, was offended by the Shakespearean "mirror" of what people are like.

There's not a lot of saintliness in Tolstoy's writing so maybe Tolstoy recognized in Shakespeare the same disconnect in his own writing: a disconnect between the ethic of turning the other cheek and what people really do.

Jared Langford

wrote:

An oversimplified explanation may be that Tolstoy had a bad case of “I-don’t-think-it-because-it’s-popular-itis”

It’s a disappointing trap for such a figure to fall for, but it is also very human. When we see something everyone loves, it’s the perfect opportunity to feel special. All you have to do is go the other way and turn your nose up at the generally liked.

Critique of popular work is fine and even good, and his point about the characters being a mouthpiece for Shakespeare himself is interesting. But the fact that Tolstoy won’t concede any goodness or skill or talent in Shakespeare makes his argument weaker. It makes him seem stubborn, not thoughtful.

There may be something to this; Tolstoy was certainly dismayed by Shakespeare’s popularity, but I think that he saw it as a sign of “fallenness.” (I’ll address this further in the next post.)

George Orwell

Michael Rushton

quoted Orwell’s essay “Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool,” which I have not read (but is high on my TBR list):

You’ve led me to re-read Orwell’s essay “Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool”:

“It is a mistake to write Tolstoy off as a moralist attacking an artist. He never said that art, as such, is wicked or meaningless, nor did he even say that technical virtuosity is unimportant. But his main aim, in his later years, was to narrow the range of human consciousness. One’s interests, one’s points of attachment to the physical world and the day-to-day struggle, must be as few and not as many as possible. Literature must consist of parables, stripped of detail and almost independent of language. The parables - this is where Tolstoy differs from the average vulgar puritan - must themselves be works of art, but pleasure and curiosity must be excluded from them.”

<Mary L. Tabor>

responded with Shakespeare’s magnificent 55th Sonnet, a poem which I love to teach:

My response lies in Shakespeare's Sonnet 55: They both (Tolstoy and Shakespeare) live on in words worth reading and discussing, despite the arrogance in Tolstoy's essay and the arrogance in this not oft-quoted sonnet.

Sonnet 55: Not marble nor the gilded monuments

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the Judgement that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.

Dr. Kathleen Waller

expressed surprise and confusion (both of which I shared as well when I first read Tolstoy’s essay):

I was going to guess maybe it was a translation issue, when a quick search tells me he had a library in 39 languages and was fluent in English. Definitely not the issue!

In terms of the speeches standing in separation from the characters -- to me, these speeches are also art in themselves (poems if you like). Although the context of the play and the character gives them more meaning, I don't think this unnatural quality takes away from the plays. It seems that Tolstoy doesn't like the whole genre of Renaissance drama. When I read Shakespeare, it's also a very different experience from watching it performed. Both enjoyable in different ways.

I don't have a conclusion. I'm just surprised!

Mills Baker

loves both writers, but makes a concession:

I adore Shakespeare and Tolstoy both. I’d have to concede one charge: that the “voice” of the characters in many plays is indeed a general one, Shakespeare’s, rather than a highly individuated one. But neither are Tolstoy’s characters wildly distinct in speech style, and Tolstoy literally intersperses his own voice throughout War and Peace in those (controversial) essays! Maybe he feels that being explicit about the distinction is virtuous.

To the specific point that Hamlet seems to love Ophelia, then tease her: lol. Maybe Tolstoy had forgotten how love works? (I shouldn’t even joke, he was a genius beyond measure, but really!).

And, finally,

A. Jay Adler

adds his perspective, much of which you will find echoed in my own response in my next post. (If you read both of our Substacks, it will not surprise you to find Jay and I in agreement.):

Some thoughts on Shakespeare's characters "all speak in the same style" and "Shakespeare’s characters are simply mouthpieces for Shakespeare himself." About the latter, if so, they are the mouthpieces of the broadest vision any writer ever offered of the range of human nature and experience, which would tend to nullify the contrary point of the criticism.

About the style, I think Tolstoy neglects consideration both of writerly and period style. Do all Beckett's characters sound alike? Pinter's? Mamet's? Tennesse Williams? Eugene O'Neill? Maybe a bit or much more. Four hundred years from now (I hope) when the American realist dramas of mid and late 20th century are read, will there seem a plain language common to all? I think maybe.

Thanks for all the comments! Feel free to continue the conversation below, and I will add my own two cents on Wednesday.

Canonical Matchmaking: A New Bonus Feature for Paid Subscribers

Photo by Lacie Slezak on Unsplash

This coming week I am going to launch “Canonical Matchmaking.” No, this will not be a dating service. Rather, it will be a chance to match you individually with a book or a record which might become part of your personal canon. This is another strike against the algorithm as taste maker, which I signaled in my first ever post here, which I reposted a week ago (click here for that). You will get a personalized recommendation from an actual human, with all of my biases and idiosyncrasies.

Here is how it will work: I will set up a chat for paid subscribers on the Substack app. You will comment there, describing the sort of recommendation that you would like, and I will respond with my suggestion. Of course, I won’t be able to guarantee that you will love my suggestion, but that’s part of the fun—the hits and misses.

So, for example, you might write something like this: “I really enjoyed the Ravel string quartet that you recommended a few weeks ago, and I would love to listen to some more quartets but don’t know where to start.” Or, you might write something like: “I love Jane Austen and would like to branch out into more nineteenth-century fiction by women.” And so forth.

I will even recommend a specific classical recording. For example, you could write: “I want to listen to Beethoven‘s Eroica, but there are ten million recordings, and I don’t know which to choose.” I will happily recommend a particular recording of Eroica.

What qualifies me to do this? Nothing really, except a lifetime of reading and listening, though I’m hardly unique in that. But if you have some trust in my taste based on what you have seen in this space, then perhaps that might be a qualification. And it’s more personal than an algorithm. The whole point is the conversation and the sharing.

I’ll send out a special announcement to paid subscribers when I have launched the chat threads (plural, because I’ll put one up for reading and one for listening).

This is an experiment, so we’ll see how it goes. I look forward to trying to act as matchmaker for you with the enthusiasm of Jane Austen’s Emma, but hopefully with more success.

Alas, this is getting to be long for a Sunday post, so I’m going to hold off on the Stack of the Week until next Sunday, but I’ll make up for it then with two stacks for your enjoyment. Meanwhile, I’ll be back on Wednesday for the final (for now) installment of the “Why Shakespeare?” series.

Thanks for reading, from my fancy internet typewriter to yours.

Photo by Joyce Hankins on Unsplash