What makes Tolstoy so good?

What makes Tolstoy so good?

His intense hatred toward shakespeare

deep characterization and an obsession with clarity

everything he writes is convincing

how he got that talent, no idea

He puts character above everything else, even above the explication of his themes.

Which is why it's strange that even W&P and AK Tolstoy has a reputation for being moralizing and didactic

In other character-driven novels, characters are used to represent the strife between ideas. You have an atheist character and a religious character etc. These characters, while they may be well-developed, are secondary to the ideas which have taken over them. But in Tolstoy, we see the strife of ideas played out internally. We see Andrei's disillusionment following his first war experience undergo changes. He becomes cynical, then regains some kind of idealism, then loses it again, and in each case the idealism or the nihilism he comes to in this second instance is not the same one as in the first; this is the element of change inherent in his technique of characterization.

As far as I can see, nobody but Tolstoy is capable of doing this. There's the pyrotechnics of his characterization; you'll have heard the "makes you feel like you know a character in two to three sentences" meme. And that is indeed impressive. But the thing that really marks his technique out as original, and to my mind makes him the single greatest novelist, is that, for a man whose ideas about life are so well documented and forceful in every other aspects, Tolstoy is alone amongst writers in allowing his characters to undergo true and authentic change, independent of what he wants us to glean from his work intellectually.

But if characterization doesn't interest you then there is literally no reason to read him beyond a level of basic familiarity. And that's a perfectly reasonable position to hold. Many people here dislike him immensely and accuse him of writing soap operas (the reason being the only exposure we get in the modern world to serious character-building is soap operas, which is pretty sad), and I do understand that position.

these posts are correct

this guy needs to go back to r/books

Turgenev is better.
>muh train
>muh filthy dwarf

laughable opinion. likely read 2 books by turgenev and a novella by Tolstoy. embarrassing tbqhwyf

>muh grumpy response to differing opinions
good job, you sure showed me what for!

The Kreutzer Sonata has to be a troll

even Turgenev knew Tolstoy was better.
Turgenev begged Tolstoy to go back to writing literature while on his deathbed.