Customer Reviews

Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism, Second Edition

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This book is not always an easy read. I'm familiar with most of the work of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and also with their biographies and the history of Russia during the period in which they wrote. But Steiner's amazing intellect covers such a grand sweep of the world's arts there were times when I felt I was in over my head.

Steiner uses all the arts in his analysis, and draws cultural comparisons across long spans of intellectual history with insights into philosophy, political theory, music, drama and of course, literature. This is a masterful work of great amplitude.

Steiner flatly states that Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are the two greatest writers of all time. I know I'm convinced. He sees Tolstoy as being in the tradition of Homer, an epic writer preoccupied with reason and fact. Dostoevsky he sees as a Shakespearian dramatist, plumbing the depths of the individual soul and always on the edge of the demonic, the darker side of the human experience.

I will not give away who Steiner believes to be the greater of the two. Naturally his choice then becomes in Steiner's estimation, the greatest writer of all time. You don't have to be acquainted with the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to read this book to find it illuminating - but it helps. This is a great book.

George Steiner defines this work as a work in the 'Old Criticism'. By this he means it is inspired by admiration for the works. And it has a sense of the works as contributing to one's overall political, historical and literary sense of the world. This as opposed to a New Criticism which would concentrate on a close reading of the text in and by itself.
Steiner's subjects here are the two giants of Russian literature, who Steiner considers in a way the greatest of novelists. The vast epical world of Tolstoy the master of depicting the great sweep of life, and the more tormented inner worlds of the master Dostoevsky are connected here with their great predecessors in world- literature.
This is an inspiring piece of Literary Criticism, the kind one reads as if it were a continuation of the work being criticized, a literary work of distinction in itself.

George Steiner's criticism is occasionally lofty and hierarchical, but this volume is essentially an excellent comparison of the great Russian masters. Steiner places Tolstoy in the tradition of the classical epics, drawing frequent comparisons between Tolstoy and the best of Homer's epic poems. Dostoevsky, in contrast, is a true dramatist. His novels are often arranged in 'scenes' that are both Shakespearean and immersed in his contemporary Russian culture. For Steiner, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky will remain eternally great artists because of the inherent fusion of artistic brilliance with their obsessive preoccupation with the question of faith. He writes:
"The novels of Dostoevsky mark successive stages of an inquiry into the existence of God. In them is elaborated a profound and radical philosophy of human action. Dostoevsky's heroes are intoxicated with ideas and consumed by the fires of language."
With Tolstoy, Steiner sees an "inversion" of Dante's ascension into the Kingdom of Heaven. Tolstoy was gripped by the notion of heaven on earth, and his novels are always portraying the divine quality of simple-peasant living. Unlike much contemporary criticism, Steiner sees the greatness of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky not as great artists who overcame their philosophical doctrines. Rather, they were great artists whose vision of life was always enfolded in a dialectical tension between reality and philosophical theory.

I have not read this book for a few years, but I realized how important it was to me when I recently picked it up and handed it to my 18-year-old son to consider reading. Better than any other work in literary criticism, it explains why I find myself returning every year or two to re-read one of Tolstoy's or Dostoyevsky's novels or shorter works. More deeply, the book captures better than any other the nature of the philosophical divide between the two authors--which reflects a divide separating all other people as well. In the end, one truly must choose between the two authors' perspectives on life and its meaning, even if one delights in reading both of them.

Opens many new vistas to those of us who are only familiar in a superficial sense with Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The discussions here stimulate a whole new way of appreciating the authors and their works. It has encouraged me to ask not "how good is this writer?" but "how good a reader am I?"

George Steiner's TOLSTOY OR DOSTOEVSKY almost fifty two years ago was published for the
first time and has remained a stalwart of comprehensive literary criticism ever since.

His wide reading experience as perceived by him and the undertaking literature in a rather
ingenious insightful verbal description: he explains alot of what a bibliophile of Russian
literature should want to know and then some.

Highly recommended!

Dag Stomberg