Tolstoy’s ‘Alyosha the Pot’
I came across this accidental masterpiece in ‘Lives and Deaths,’ a collection of Tolstoy’s shorter works translated by Boris Drayluk. It surprised me, hidden away at the end like an afterthought, its simplicity and brevity (only nine half-pages) proving more potent than the longer texts preceding it.
The story is an unpretentious, plain-spoken account of a young peasant’s life and death which, though quite unremarkable, has the texture and feel of something spiritual, or saintly, a mundane hagiography.
No drama
It’s an uneventful life, comprised almost entirely of work and abuse, and more work, the kind of exploitation authorised by a system which grants extensive power to the male head of the family (patria potestas). Yet the lad seems content with his position. He doesn’t complain. The synopsis provided with the text on wikisources picks out the main action:
“A young servant falls in love with the household cook, but they are forbidden to marry.”
From this, you might expect drama, either tragic or comic. But drama progresses through conflict and when faced with his father’s opposition to the match, Alyosha acquiesces without hesitation. Tears are shed quietly, in Alyosha’s case belatedly, and life goes on. Well, not for very long because, shortly after the cancelled engagement, the lad suffers a serious accident which leads to paralysis and death.
Tolstoy abandoned the work, dissatisfied. I suspect because he could not wring from it the meaning the radical christian anarchist intended and that the story eluded his sermonizing tendencies is probably a good thing. Nevertheless it retains both a deeply affecting piety and a disturbing, provocative passivity, disturbing at least for the modern reader.
Innocence and Obedience
Alyosha is an innocent; pure, you might say, being free of corrupting influences, and profoundly lacking in agency. He is bullied (for his big ears), but shrugs it off. He works and he obeys, accepting reprimands without protest. He embodies the truism that they key to happiness is being content with what you have. He seems not to want things.
As a result, we (the modern reader) want things on his behalf. We note his pleasure, his surprise at his pleasure, when he buys himself a red knitted jacket. And we are delighted when something more significant comes his way, when he learns “of a special sort of relationship between people, a relationship not based on material need” and he realizes the young cook cares for him. For him. For his own sake.
“But here was Ustinia, a perfect stranger, who felt sorry for him. Here she was, saving him porridge with butter in a pot and watching him eat, her chin propped on her bare arm. And if he looked up at her she’d laugh, and he’d laugh too.”
This must be one of the most tender revelations in literature. Not merely the budding of young love, gauche and naive, but the opening of a space for the self where before there was none, a flower about to bloom in a neglected corner of a harsh world. And then his master’s wife objects, his father blocks the marriage, and the lad closes the door without protest.
“Got to do as we’re told. No choice.”
There are two things to say about that. First, he is right. That is to say, he understands correctly there is no viable future for them without his father’s or his master’s permission. They will be cast out; they will lose their positions, be pulled apart. On the other hand: come on, boy, live your life. Put up a fight.
Alyosha seems on the cusp of selfhood. It tantalises us, seeing it briefly within grasp. (We assume success means fulfilment, though it would in fact bring more conflict.) But he prefers to accept things as they come, whether good or bad. And this is how he receives his death, with a beatific equanimity. His contentment muting our sense of loss.
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It is curious I should alight on this story so soon after writing about the spirit of Pinocchio. The two characters could not be more different. Indeed, I would call them opposites: Pinocchio full of wilfulness, defiant and anarchic; Alyosha obedient and hard-working, and entirely lacking in will. Neither strike me as a good example for living, but as protagonists, as innocents embodying a way of being, a principle, they are equally fascinating.
I can see both of them as boys in the park, though not at the same time.
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