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It is quite an irony that an author who produced titanic novels such as War and Peace and Anna Karenina could, in later years, write simple folk tales for young readers. On one hand Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) exposed humanity’s darkest motives and duplicities, while on the other hand he elevated the human capacity for living simply and peaceably in a better future. One way to make sense of this tension is to distinguish phases in his literary vocation. Much has been made of Tolstoy’s spiritual ‘turn’ in his later years which resulted in writings characterized by a moralistic and didactic tone. It appears at some point that he forsook his earlier, nuanced view of human nature to promote a more idealistic vision of what society could become.

A case for continuity, however, can be made, as Raymond Rosenthal did in his introduction to Leo Tolstoy: Fables and Fairy Tales (1962).9 He noted Tolstoy’s indebtedness to his eldest brother Nikolai who steeped the younger in a world of virtue-ladened fairy-tale. This fantasy world included a buried green stick near Tolstoy’s boyhood home. His brother would speak of a secret message written on the stick that would destroy all evils and make all people happy. Love would someday turn the world into a golden age. One sign of Tolstoy’s lifelong devotion to this ideal is that he requested to be buried by this green stick in the Zakaz Forest.

Whether or not the aging Tolstoy can be understood as a contradiction with his past selves is best left to the scholars. What is evident is that in the years following his completion of Anna Karenina (1886) he decidedly took on stronger commitments to a number of radical orientations, including asceticism, anarchism, pacifism, anti-institutionalism (of both religion and government), and the rejection of private land ownership. These themes increasingly found expression in his non-fictional writings. Nevertheless, Tolstoy did manage to infuse his growing radicalism into a set of tales geared for peasants and school children.

The tales in this volume hang on two social critiques aimed at militarism and materialism. Ivan the Fool (1886) combines both critiques as represented by the pursuits of Ivan’s two brothers. Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (1903) echoes the judgment on military power, and A Grain as Big as a Hen’s Egg (1866) does the same for unsustainable economies. Ivan the Fool is also significant in its connection to the older Russian tradition of the Holy Fool. The final story, Three Questions (1885; 1903), serves to enrich the role of the Holy Fool in this collection.

Rosenthal points out an interesting contrast between classic fairy tales and Tolstoy’s tales. In the former, main characters rely on their evolving inner virtues to overcome various obstacles and thereby receive the gold or happiness that they finally get in the end. “In Tolstoy’s tales, however, the hero’s humility and kindness are simply the preconditions for the achievement of a greater wisdom and self-awareness, and his reward is never wealth or personal success but rather his ability to conquer, both for himself and others, a new and deeper area of human value and responsibility.”10

Here we can see a strong connection with the Holy Fool. What makes this figure ‘holy’, in the Russian tradition, is precisely this element of precondition. Such a person is already, as Jesus said, “like a child” who lives and moves according to the moral order of the Kingdom of God. The fool, in an upside down sense, has already arrived and thus leads others into this kingdom of “human value and responsibility.” Not only does the fool have little use for gold, as we see at the end of the Ivan story, but the common folk who share in this holy foolery end up lampooning the value of gold itself. Similarly, we find the same uselessness regarding soldiers and weaponry.

Does this mean we either have or do not have an innate capacity to be care-free within ourselves or to freely care for the welfare of others? Not at all. Human choice to change within is still vital. Tolstoy wanted to stimulate the best within people so they could act out of love and courage for the good of those around them. And most often, acting according to higher principles takes a bit of risk. We typically restrain ourselves out of fear. It may even seem foolish to perform an act of random kindness or to live completely in the present. But that is precisely why we are confronted with the paradoxical wisdom of the Holy Fool.

One way to think about Tolstoy’s use of the folk-fairy tale to poke at institutionalized powers and mindsets is to see a parallel in Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler. There we find the same upsetting language about wealth and status while also experiencing humorous hyperbole. “It is easier for a camel to enter an eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom” (Mark 10:25). Something more than moralism is going on here. A playful yet probing genre that sticks in the mind is sometimes the only genre that can ‘needle’ human hearts to change. And such it is with tales that playfully push to the extremes.

Esarhaddon, King of Assyria strikes an important chord for us as themes of violence and victimization receive increasing attention in today’s world. Esarhaddon, reigning from 681 to 669 BC, comes at the end of a long line of Assyrian kings known for ruthless violence in treating rebels and displaced populations.11 Prior to the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of Judean Jews, the Assyrians were the dominant superpower of the day. Why then did Tolstoy choose this particular monarch? The best clue comes from Ernest Budge’s History of Esarhaddon,12 published in 1880, which records an episode of the vassal king Lailie asking Esarhaddon to restore his nation’s captured gods. Esarhaddon granted the request, saying, “I spoke to him of brotherhood, and entrusted to him the sovereignty of the districts of Bazu.” In this we see the seeds of a story which, for Tolstoy, could portray an awakening of empathy.

A Grain as Big as a Hen’s Egg integrates themes of bodily health, work ethics, and economic sustainability. Again, we face the impulse to dismiss the moral lessons of this tale due to the exaggerated idealism of peasant culture. One thinks of classic attempts to dismiss the practicality of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. Tolstoy, however, is helping us to see the vital weave between several interlocking areas of human life: health, nutrition, agriculture, labor, and social relations. By using health and aging as an outcome measure of this matrix, he prompts us to confront the tragic weave of comparable areas in modern life: poor health, poor nutrition, poor soil, along with industrial farming and money-based mega-economies. Undergirding the entire discussion, for Tolstoy, are the positive virtues of contentment and hard work.

The Three Questions pokes a bit at a society’s general inability to discern the most important things in life. The story highlights two top ideals for Tolstoy: living mindfully in the present and living in service to others. The wise hermit, like the Holy Fool, has a precedent in Russian history which owes something, in part, to the Desert Fathers and Mothers. (In fact, if you were to google “hermit in Russia” under online Images, you will see for yourself that this tradition is still alive and well.) Related to this is the poustinia, a Russian word meaning ‘desert’ or ‘wilderness’; more specifically, it designates a modest hut or cabin where a hermit lives and prays.13 One ultimately has to ask why the king is drawn to such a marginalized spot to find the wisdom he seeks, and thus we find ourselves likewise drawn to the margins.

Returning again to Ivan the Fool, we recognize how the respective elements in the three shorter tales can all be found in the story of Ivan. For that very reason they were chosen for this volume. In addition to the prevalence of violent and commercial mindsets in today’s modern world, it is worth recalling that Martin Luther King, Jr. named a third ‘ism’ among his critiques of militarism and materialism, namely racism. All three leave large segments of the human family living vulnerably on the margins of any mega-society, and it is precisely in those margins that voices can rise up and be heard. The reason such voices sound foolish is because they do not represent the interests of the status quo. But they often do represent a way of living peaceably.

Tolstoy saw how Russia’s imperial trends in the 19th century were eroding the agrarian peasant culture with which he had close association. In this context, local peasants provided Tolstoy with not only an audience but also a source of material for his tales. He understood how the worlds of fairy tale and peasantry were closely connected, not unlike the way tribal cultures make close association between spirit and nature. As mentioned above, Tolstoy clearly idealized peasant culture in his tales. But this should not prevent us from seeing how peasant cultures have a closer affinity to both the archetypal and moral richness reflected in these tales.

One of his students recounted the time Tolstoy read his newly finished “Ivan the Fool” story to a local group of peasants, asking one of them to repeat it back in his own words. This peasant modified the story a fair amount. Nevertheless, Tolstoy was delighted by the adaption, jotted down the changes, and then published the tale in the revised form. Later he told the student that this was a common practice, since for him it was “the only way to write stories for the people.”14 In this way, we can hear, though faintly, the marginalized voice of the peasant.

Ultimately these tales, like a good parable, entertain well and teach well simultaneously. In fact, parables, as suggested by the literal meaning of the word, ‘throw us beyond’ our normal ways of thinking. By juxtaposing our current conventions with new possibilities, Tolstoy’s tales snag and carry us into new places. In the end, peasants with callouses on their hands eat first and the intellectuals eat the leftovers. The real question we are all left with is whether we can allow ourselves to move beyond our heads, into our hearts, and finally through our hands.

Ted Lewis

April 2018

Duluth, MN

Editorial note: Throughout the translation of these tales by Louise and Aylmer Maude, I have taken the liberty to make slight modifications to improve the text for today’s readers. These changes include deleting unnecessary commas, replacing numerous semicolons with commas or periods, changing ‘till’ to ‘until’, removing the hyphen from ‘to-morrow’, removing the British ‘u’ from words like ‘labour’, and occasionally adding or changing a word to strengthen a sentence. Double-quotes have also been uniformly added.

9. Raymond Rosenthal, Introduction to Leo Tolstoy: Fables and Fairy Tales (Signet Classic, New American Library, 1962).

10. Rosenthal, Fables, p. xii.

11. In the Hebrew Bible, see 2 Kings 17:24; 19:28; 2 Chronicles 33:11; Isaiah 37:38; Ezra 4:2.

12. Earnest A. Budge, The History of Esarhaddon (London: Trubner, 1880).

13. Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Poustinia: Encountering God in Silence, Solitude and Prayer (Ogdensburg, NY: Madonna House Publications, 1975/2000).

14. Rosenthal, Fables, p. xv.