- Project Runeberg -  Impressions of Russia /
350

(1889) [MARC] Author: Georg Brandes Translator: Samuel Coffin Eastman - Tema: Russia
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It is against this “Power of Darkness” that Tolstoï
has directed the beams of light from the blaze of his
fantasy and his enthusiasm. It is with this that he, as
the educator of the people, has begun the fight. Behind
his Asgaard’s wall he kindles the bright fire into which
the Spirit of Darkness, the giant in the Eagle’s home, is
to fall in the future.[1]

In the Russian monograph “Count L. N. Tolstoï and
a Criticism of his Works,” we have collected all the
portraits extant of the great author. There is a group of
the year 1856, in which the young officer is painted with
Grigoróvitch, Gontcharóf, Turgenief, and Druzhínin, and
the keen author of comedies, Ostrovski, and another of
the year 1857, in which the group consists of Turgenief,
Sollogub, Tolstoï, Niekrásof, Grigoróvitch, and Panayef.
There is an admirable portrait by Kramskoï, and a great
many photographs from later years.

We can thus trace how this characteristic head has
been moulded and developed from within. There is the
officer, not yet thirty years old, with the military
mustache and the regularly cut, smooth hair, and the already
peculiar, discontented, penetrating look, the expressive
mouth, querying and uncertain, — a face which shows
uneasiness, betraying a shy and violent spirit. All the
others seem so tame, so mild by the side of him,
capricious as he seems, and naïf and defiant.

Years roll on, developments take place, and this head
becomes changed. A quality appears in it which
conquers all the others: commanding power. In the later
pictures this expression becomes very strong. There is
Kramskoï’s portrait, when Tolstoï was between forty
and fifty years of age, with the smooth, black hair



[1] Tolstoï’s works have been translated into Danish, German, French,
and English.

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