>read war and peace and love it >hear tolstoy went nutso

>>7999600

Did you read "What is Art?" I think that's where he begins to let theory and ideology take a too prominent position, using it in order to slander virtually everyone. As an artist, you can impose whatever limitations you like on yourself; and if you're a great artist, as Tolstoy was, you can create great works in spite of (because of?) the framework you've decided to work in. But applying this standard to others is more questionable. There is an undeniable oppressiveness about basing judgement of others on an ideology you have yourself prefabricated; and this is the unpleasant dimension of late Tolstoy, in which he judges the art of others not on their own merits, but by their coherence with a certain pre-existing ideology. Universalising this ideology and applying it dogmatically, as Tolstoy does, is in a sense analogous of another Russian sentiment towards art which would come later, namely socialist realism, in which art or beauty is in a very similar way subordinate to a predetermined theory or ideology. This overbearing didacticism is, I think, a big part of the reason people find late Tolstoy objectionable.

Tolstoy did nothig wrong

I went into nietzsche, camus, dostoevsky and proust expecting them to be good.

Got that badly wrong

>>7999706
I don't think tolstoy is as authoritarian as you're presenting him.

Like in What is Religion?:

"To speak of "Tolstoyism," to seek guidance, to inquire about my solution of questions, is a great and gross error. There has not been, nor is there any "teaching" of mine. There exists only the one eternal universal teaching of the Truth, which for me, for us, is especially clearly expressed in the Gospels. I advised this young lady to live not by my conscience, as she wished, but by her own."

In What Is Art? he defined what he thought as bad art, (art hopelessly wrapped in abstraction and art that's useless morally) but there's a big leap between that and the Soviet government's enforcement of Socialist Realism. He criticized comme il faut in all his novels, but, at the same time, he believed that meaningful change toward a moral good could only happen through self-discovery, not through authoritarian enforcement of dogma

>>7999723

Bad bait

>>7999727

I invoked socialist realism as an analogue only, they're obviously not as bad as each other in terms of degree. But there is something similar in nature, about how art only qualifies as art if it possesses certain predetermined desiderata of a clearly defined worldview. Tolstoy does indeed judge art based on his radically Christian worldview, and no matter how you flip it, this is an authoritarian perspective.

>>7999749
Nit bait, they're all shite. And would've been fine if their mothers cuddled them more. Maybe less for proust

>>7999775
that's not having an authoritarian perspective, that's having an opinion. Whether something is authoritarian or not is based on how you enforce your beliefs not the beliefs themselves

>>7999803

>Whether something is authoritarian or not is based on how you enforce your beliefs not the beliefs themselves

This is literature, not politics m8. You should be willing to be a little flexible with language when doing literary criticism. You know exactly what I mean anyway. Having an opinion on something is one thing, arguing that something necessarily *can't be art* if it doesn't abide by a certain worldview, especially a moral or religious one, regardless of its innate qualities -- this is prescriptive, overbearing, and most certainly authoritarian.