“I console myself that he has his own, and I have mine”: Leo Tolstoy’s creative dialogue with Anthony Trollope

Leo Tolstoy’s diaries, letters and the materials of his private library contain extensive facts which confirm his interest in Antony Trollope’s works. The author of the paper tries to outline divergences and crosspoints in the writers’ method by analysing the main characters of their novels. In 1865 Tolstoy made several comments about Trollope’s novels. Along with positive responses he indicated features, not acceptable for him (“diffuseness”, “there is too much contingent”). Trollope brilliantly reproduces the inner motivations of acts which characters make, but they all remain static in whole. The method of choice of characters also differs: Trollope focuses mainly on the weak points of his characters. It is no coincidence that Trollope’s brightest characters have strongly pronounced demerits. Tolstoy brings other characters to the forefront: thirst of perfection is a condition of their moral victory over circumstances. But there are such characters in Trollope’s novels which help as if to balance this system of imperfect characters. One of them is Francis Arabin, a clergyman, a character of the four out of six novels of the Barchester Chronicles. Arabin is passive, unemotional, even shy. But he consciously finds his own way of life and goes through several serious moral crises. Unrepresentative for Trollope’s system of characters, Arabin was quite “peculiar” for Tolstoy; and, in our opinion, he is close with Levin’s character in Anna Karenina. We have no evidence that Tolstoy was acquainted with Barchester Towers, but we deem expedient to do a comparative-typological analysis of two characters, Levin and Arabin, using the matter of this novel. The characters of Tolstoy and Trollope are alike in their non-indifferent, even impassioned attitude to a common cause. The ordinary country clergyman saves Arabin at the time of a painful moral crisis. Just the same folk wisdom prevails over Levin’s pride and selfish despair in Tolstoy’s moral system. Dreams about family happiness also bring Arabin and Levin together. We can find crosspoints in the love plots of the two novels, too. Both characters undergo temptations on the path to happiness, fallen under the charms of Madeline Neroni and Anna Karenina. The scenes of “enslavement” of Arabin and Levin are similar even in some psychological details. The motive of temptation and seduction of the character by woman charms allows to compare the character of Arabin with one more Tolstoy’s character - Father Sergius. It is significant that they both are clergymen. The situation of an ordinary man helping each of them also makes the characters close. The research shows that Tolstoy’s attentive reading and analysis of Trollope’s novels do not only promote rethinking of his own creative method, but also finds reflection in Tolstoy’s works.

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