Quest of the Spirit: From Suffering to Acceptance

106. Spiritual Growth from Loss!--Tolstoy's Resurrection!

                                   Tolstoy's Resurrection: Separation, Sacrifice, and Acceptance

         In Resurrection Tolstoy echoes the sadness of two people, who like Romeo and Juliet, strive to consummate their love, yet fail because of the prejudice of a society that victimizes women and promotes the view of male dominance. In essence, Tolstoy indicts his native Russia which through its drive for power, exploitation, and profit destroys the spirit of faith, love, and compassion inherent in the human heart. In the novel, the author traces the psychological and spiritual transformation of ill-fated couple who fall in love, yet fail to overcome these preconceived notions. In the text, Tolstoy uses irony, contrasts, nature imagery, and the coming-of-age theme to create a tone of tragic loss and betrayal.

             Tolstoy begins the narrative by using irony and contrasts to enhance the sense of loss and betrayal. Nekhludoff, a young military officer, visits the home of his two aunts, where he meets an attractive woman named Maslova. Having been taught in the service that conquests, whether military or sexual, are acceptable by society's standards, he pursues and takes advantage of the beautiful lady, and then callously abandons her. Ironically, only after the young officer experiences guilt over his selfishness and through his witnessing her suffering as result does his sense of shame transform into an overwhelming love for her. Similarly, only after Nekhludoff's betrayal of her does Maslova lose the intensity of the love that she earlier cherished for him, an affection which grows cold numerous similar occasions. In other words, Resurrection serves as a dual tragedy in which the rise and fall of each character occurs in an inversely proportionate manner. That is, like the rising and setting of the sun, as one character falls, the other ironically rises. As in Romeo and Juliet, timing is of the essence. Like Dostoyevsky's victims, through suffering, guilt, and self- awareness, Tolstoy's star-crossed lovers come of age. In their first meetings, Maslova loves him dearly, but he was too naive to know the true meaning of love; he only knew what he learned in the military and from society, that woman were merely objects of pleasure for men (54-57). His family and friends condescend to him whenever he speaks of life, God, riches, and poverty, but when he refers to the coarser, bawdier aspects of French theater, everyone admires him (56). Nekhludoff, like Maslova, serves as a victim of society's misplaced values, and sadly, does not realize the treasure he loses in Katusha until it is too late to make amends. Like Vronsky in Anna Karenina, he only desires the life of the pleasure and self-gratification, until he anguishes over the suffering he has caused the woman he loves most (68). Paradoxically, by the time that Nekhludoff realizes that Maslova truly loves him, he also realizes that it is too late for them. That day in prison, Maslova tells him she is unwilling to let him sacrifice his life for her, for her brutal existence in a penal system that has destroyed whatever dreams and joy that dwelled in her heart. Sadly, Nekhludoff cannot atone for his crime against her, and neither can Maslova justify a life based upon dreams that is crushed by prejudice and hypocrisy. Like Anna Karenina, the dreams of ideal love for both characters die within them, and in this sense, their coming of age denotes emotional death which leaves both characters in a state of stoic acceptance. This "moral nausea," a term Tolstoy uses, describes his native Russia, a country priding itself on the false values of progress, materialism, exploitation.

           Tolstoy also employs irony to contrast the joy of nature in the springtime with the cruelty of a society that betrays its fellow man and ignores the beauty of God's world. As the sun shines and the trees are bud, the singing birds fill are filled with happiness; but civilization determines only to torment and enslave one another through treachery and deceit. Tolstoy also contrasts the "grace and gladness "of the season with the "germs of typhoid, the smell of sewage" from the prison (12). He juxtaposes the harsh and insensitive demands of the jailor with the innocence of the young Maslova, whose white jacket and full bosom suggests purity, beauty, and youthfulness blossoming in the full feminine bloom. Tradesmen, citizens, and their children gape at Maslova hypocritically as they pass the long string of convicts and glare at them with a condescension typical of a prejudice that wrongly imprisons its victims by making them objects of scorn and depriving them of any opportunity to transcend the mundane affairs of their accusers. Ironically, these human failures pose a much greater threat to society than their innocent victims. Tolstoy similarly contrasts the young prisoner's spiritual affinity with the freedom of the unmolested pigeons strutting near her. Maslova smiles as she reaches to touch these unrestrained birds of gentleness and peace, but then sadly recalls the cruel inhumanity of her own company (14).