"A killing excellence": Anthony Trollope’s The Bertrams in Leo Tolstoy’s evaluation

Abstract

The article aims to explore Leo Tolstoy’s reader reactions to Anthony Trollope’s novel The Bertrams (1859) and to identify the probable “points of convergence” between the two masters of psychological realism. “Trollope kills me with his excellence”, – the writer noted in his diary on 2 October 1865. The essential basis for the comparison of the two writers’ works is their creative method: it has a considerable commonality, which consists in a shift of focus from the plot to the logic of the characters’ behaviour. The two scenes of an explanation between characters in love are analysed as an example. The author of the article notes that Trollope’s narrative style has a significant difference: the narrator is always present in his works, he “accompanies” the reader by commenting on the characters’ thoughts and behaviour. In Tolstoy’s works it is the characters themselves who reveal their psychological state: this is clearly visible in the epilogue of War and Peace in the scene of Nikolai Rostov’s visit to Princess Marya. The author of the article shows that the images of the main characters of The Bertrams could be also close to Tolstoy and notices their identical auto-psychological basis. Arthur Wilkinson embodies the type of an unsuccessful character, tormented by the awareness of his own mistakes. A similar image, as shown in the article, is portrayed by Tolstoy in Youth. Another character of Trollope’s novel, George Bertram, is presented as a young man in a situation of life choices. He is compared to Dmitry Olenin from The Cossacks. In this character Tolstoy reproduces the portrait of a young man in confusion who has no clear goals in life. The author indicates that both characters choose a common way out – “escape from civilization”: Olenin goes to the Caucasus and George Bertram to Jerusalem. Another reason for Tolstoy’s interest in The Bertrams may have been Trollope’s appeal to religious themes. In depicting the holy places of Jerusalem, the writer uses the same method of “defamiliarisation” as Tolstoy did in describing the church service in The Resurrection. What refers to Tolstoy’s future religious treatises is the fact that the protagonist of The Bertrams writes books reinterpreting the main statements of the Bible. The author also pays attention to the faults of Trollope’s novel, which Tolstoy mentions: “diffusness” is interpreted as a flaw in the writer’s style, conventionality as a reference to the novel’s plot. The author points out the artificiality of the happy ending, as well as the contradictory image of Bertram’s beloved Caroline Waddington. The article concludes that Tolstoy’s reviews of Trollope’s novel help clarify the question of the formation of his creative manner and artistic principles: Tolstoy often succeeded in understanding his place in literature through the knowledge of others’ works. The comparative typological analysis carried out may provide new material in the field of interaction and mutual influence of English and Russian cultures.