Some brief thoughts on Hadji Murad

Rereading Hadji Murad (translated by Aylmer and Louise Maude), I’m reminded of the joy of reading Anna Karenina and War and Peace. 

It also reminds me of why I have always thought, and still think, that Tolstoy is the greatest of novelists. 

See this quote by Italo Calvino: 

“It is not easy to understand how Tolstoy constructs his narratives. What other fiction writers make explicit – symmetrical patterns, supporting structures, counterbalances, link sequences — all remain hidden in Tolstoy. But hidden does not mean non-existent: the impression Tolstoy conveys of transferring ‘life’ just as it is on to the page (‘life’, that mysterious entity to define which we have to start from the written page) is actually merely the result of his artistry, that is to say an artifice that is more sophisticated and complex than many others.” (click here for full essay)

What sets Tolstoy apart from other realist novelists is that his novels and novellas seem more like life than works of art—they appear not written. Tolstoy moves so naturally from one scene, one group of characters to another that there seems to be no plot, that these characters exist as they are and do things as they are, rather than serving some plot. Hadji Murad is not only about Hadji Murad but also about his followers and the Chechens/ mountaineers and the Russian soldiers and the Vorontsovs and the Tsar Nicholas I and the people around him and so on and so forth. Hadji Murad has the richness and expansiveness of War and Peace, on a smaller scale, and like War and Peace, every single character, even the smallest and most insignificant character, seems to have a backstory, a life of their own. 

For example, when the news reaches Prince Vorontsov that Hadji Murad has surrendered to the Russians, he’s having guests, so Tolstoy writes about the people present, including “a broad, red-faced man, Poltoratsky, a company commander”, who is infatuated with his host’s wife, Princess Marya Vasilevna. The author enters his mind then follows him home—“in an ecstatic condition only to be understood by people like himself who, having grown up and been educated in society, meet a woman belonging to their own circle after months of isolated military life, and moreover a woman like Princess Vorontsov”. (Ch.3) 

When Poltoratsky comes home, the door is locked. He knocks, nobody answers. Only when he starts kicking and banging on the door does his serf Vovilo come out to open it. He is tipsy.  

Here comes a brief exchange between Poltoratsky and his serf, then the perspective moves to Vovilo:

“Vovilo was really tipsy. He had been drinking at the name-day party of the ordnance-sergeant, Ivan Petrovich. On returning home he began comparing his life with that of the latter. […] 

[Poltoratsky] was a good master, who seldom struck him, but what kind of a life was it? ‘He promised to free me when we return from the Caucasus, but where am I to go with my freedom?... It’s a dog’s life!’ thought Vovilo, and he felt so sleepy that, afraid lest someone should come in and steal something, he fastened the hook of the door and fell asleep.” (ibid.) 

Does this serve the plot? one might ask. But what plot? 

This doesn’t mean that Tolstoy’s works are loose or lack structure. There is structure, there is harmony in his works, but Tolstoy creates the illusion that the characters have a mind of their own, that everything happens naturally, as a matter of course, that there is no design, no plotting. Tolstoy, I still think, is unsurpassable. 

Hadji Murad is a great book. Why did I not feel much when I read it several years ago? What a wonderful, wonderful book.