Refute the following criticisms of Tolstoy

Humor is for plebs

there is when it devolves into programmatic pamphleteering by dullards. luckily Tolstoy doesn't do that.

I was not serious i actually love russian people and language.

Did they get to you?

humour is a necessary prerequisite for literary genius

lmao comrade

Hugo is a fun case though, as during the writing of Les Miserables his main political philosophy changed at least 3 times, but he didn't go back to edit the book to reflect his new opinions, so the politics comes across as a bit flip floppy and disjointed with rants arguing radically different positions every 300 pages or so. I enjoyed it because of this, and not in spite of it.

I enjoyed it as well but that fucking waterloo scene

I liked Waterloo. Now the history of the nunnery and the history of the Paris sewer system on the other hand very nearly made me outright skip them.

I love Tolstoy but this is actually a pretty fair criticism. Same goes for Goethe, he's great but seriously un-funny.
no

тo caмoe чyвcтвo кoгдa гoвopишь пo-pyccки))0хддд

>hasn't read the death of ivan ilyich

This.

>Tolstoy, Leo. A favorite between the ages of 10 and 15, and thereafter. Read complete works between 14 and 15. Nobody takes his utilitarian moralism seriously. A genius.
fite me

>his major novels are too long

That's an irrelevant criticism. Whether the length of any work is too long or not depends on how it fits the writing of that particular author. For some authors their style of writing isn't suitable for very long novels. That Anna Karenina and W&P are regularly listed as some of the greatest novels of all time attests to the fact that their length is not too long. Tolstoy also demonstrated that he was capable of writing shorter stories that were good. If an author can satisfactorily write short, medium-length and long stories why should he limit himself to the first two catagories?

>all his work is moralizing

Every author's work is inherently moralizing in the sense that the author's moral values will be reflected in the work, even in cases where it's a work of fiction dealing with foreign cultures who hold different values. The author's values are inseparable from anything they write, no matter how hard they try to escape it. Leaving that aside though, there is nothing wrong with all of an author's works being overtly moralizing, it's just part of their style. It's as though one were complaining about Joyce by saying "all of his work is modernist".

>long digressions with little connection to the plot in which he shoves his shitty and ill-informed opinions down his reader's throat

That does not occur in most of his works. War and Peace is the only one where this occurs to a major extent. Maybe this would be a tenable criticism if this was common throughout his books but it's not.

>Nobody takes his utilitarian moralism seriously.

I would question whether it's accurate to call his moralism utilitarian but to answer your point, the reader's personal reaction to the moral views expressed in a work has no bearing upon the value of that work.

>might be worthwhile because of his prose but 90% of the people here who love him can't comment on that because they don't speak Russian

You don't need to speak Russian to appreciate his prose. Prose does not mean 'fanciful word choice' or anything along those lines. Prose literally just means ordinary writing that is not in metrical form. One can appreciate his prose in translation by appreciating his way of writing conversations or of describing scenery. Unless you maintain the ridiculous view that it's impossible for someone to form any perception of an author's style of writing in translation then that's a stupid criticism.

this

>his major novels are too long
That's a vague criticism. Do you just not like long novels, are merely find his too long? If the latter, why?
>all his work is moralizing
So what? Every good writer's is anyway, in one way or another. Tolstoy just wears his morals on his sleeve. You don't have to agree with him -- engage with what he's saying.
>long digressions with little connection to the plot in which he shoves his shitty and ill-informed opinions down his reader's throat
Little connection to plot, but important connection to theme, when he does this at all.
>Nobody takes his utilitarian moralism seriously.
You don't have to agree with a writer's philosophy to get something out of wrestling with it. If you need to agree with everyone you read, you're going to lose out on a lot.
>might be worthwhile because of his prose but 90% of the people here who love him can't comment on that because they don't speak russian
That can't be helped unless the reader learns Russian, and it's stupid not to try to get whatever you can out of a good writer.

You should read Les Travailleurs de la Mer. He goes into a solid hundred pages of background before the book starts on the island of Guernsey and how comfy life there is. I liked it but it got a bit ridiculous at points, I think there was a completely irrelevant chapter about their mail system thrown in that was never brought up again.

>the reader's personal reaction to the moral views expressed in a work has no bearing upon the value of that work.
lol

Whats funny about it

>moralizing is bad

>his major novels are too long
so what? it doesn't matter
>all his work is moralizing
lol, read Anna Karenina, please
>long digressions with little connection to the plot in which he shoves his shitty and ill-informed opinions down his reader's throat
accepted, sometimes it's annoying
>Nobody takes his utilitarian moralism seriously.
really?
>might be worthwhile because of his prose but 90% of the people here who love him can't comment on that because they don't speak russian
I speak Russian, but it's not important

you can also add that he was a heretic

History of the paris sewer system was actually the part of the book i wish had a film adaptation.

If by heretic you mean one of the few real Christians

>I say if a writer wants to go off on some random thing out of nowhere then let them so long as its interesting
Agreed. This criticism seems more a reflection of the reader's short attention span. In fact, most of the classics of ages past have a more or less rambling, digressive, discursive nature compared to, say, an average genre-fic book today and to what the average reader today expects of literature.

heresy

>the shorter the better
>morals are bad
>less ideas pls
>appeal to the plebs is a good way of evaluating a moral system

a lot of flawed assumptions there, opie

tolstoy is a writer who shares a small similiarity with Mann in that both he and Mann discuss things in slow detail not to make a more vivid world but to methodically answer questions regarding purpose and daily living. Anna Karenina is about the nature of forgiveness and how to forgive you must first love what you are forgiving and see the good in them. this message is displayed in a shorter fashion in father sergius in which it's titular character is incapable of being a holy forgiving man because he hates the world and only when he enters it can he love and therefore forgive it.

i have. legit don't remember anything really being funny about it.

War and Peace is a meme book
Dosto >

Fun fact: no one has ever actually read War and Peace

It is not a difficult book to read. Take your shitty reddit joke elsewhere.

Paint is also not difficult to watch dry

Ur just 2 dum

Come on, a character in War and Peace ties a policeman to a bear while drunk. I'm laffin just thinking about it

This
I read Anna Karenina and its fine and DANDY, DEFINITELY DANDY, but cmon foliks stop trying to act cultured we all want to murder an old lady

nabakov totally misunderstood Tolstoy on morality then

...

Tolstoy was an exceptional, genius writer and psychologist - but a poor, barren philosopher.

retard

Only good criticisms of Tolstoy is that his views on aesthetics and the role of art were retarded.