Paradoxes of Power

...In his earlier books, and notably in The Von Richthofen Sisters, Green showed a predilection for dual biographies, particularly if the lives were in some sense exemplary The method is appropriate here, for it would be hard to find anywhere in the history of literature and politics men more exemplary than Tolstoy and Gandhi They took great moral stands in their private lives, yet their public careers necessarily hindered and sometimes contradicted the renunciatory spirit that was at the heart of their defiance of the imperial urge...

...For Green's pair, nay-saying flowed as if it were a strong, constant undertow, while on the surface the other current of their lives continued Tolstoy never completely shed the desire to write, and when he was producing jeremiads in his pared-down later style he still felt the excitement of literary creation Gandhi wove in and out of politics, and he never completely dissociated himself from the country he saw hardening into an all too familiar mold Most significantly, he kept silent despite his disapproval when Nehru sent armed forces into Kashmir, and the militaristic tenor of the state was established...

...It was not marriage that trapped Gandhi He was caught in a web of associations that his public life had created around him Some formidable spiders inhabited that web, and one of them, his long-term terrorist enemy Savarkar, was finally responsible for his death (to be sure, another hand wielded the gun) In the same way, Tolstoy's death, in the world's eye at Astapovo station, sprang out of the marriage he had once seen as a manifestation of life...

...Tolstoy and Gandhi had expansive natures, vast abilities and an undoubted zest for life Toward the end they nonetheless became unworldly, having reached the conclusion that existence can be made meaningful only through continual austerity This they practiced while rejecting orthodox religion and avoiding customary forms of asceticism Perhaps the historic-as opposed to the legendary-Buddha offers the truest parallel...

...In their innermost minds, both Tolstoy and Gandhi evidently saw themselves as failures They were glad of this impoverishment, believing it an ultimate shedding of pride and power Maybe their deaths were their personal triumphs Nevertheless, it was the reluctant yea-saying of their public lives that made them the giants they were If Tolstoy had not been the splendid novelist, if Gandhi had not been the liberator of a subcontinent, we would hardly be prepared to listen, as we do, to the still, small voice of their message of peace...

...Paradoxes of Power Tolstoy and Gandhi, Men of Peace By Martin Green Basic 319 pp $23 50 Reviewed by George Woodcock Author, "Anarchism," "Mohandas Gandhi" This is the final installment of Martin Green's notable trilogy, The Lust for Power, a biographical and cultural study of imperialism and its challengers The first volume was in fact entitled The Challenge of the Mahatmas, and in a more ideological way covered much the same ground as the present one Green's thesis is that the best response to colonial domination has always resided less in nationalism than in a willingness to abandon the material advantages that involve power and thus perpetuate the evil Dreams of Adventure, Deeds of Empire, in a somewhat different fashion, demonstrated how pervasive imperial attitudes were, how they reigned over entire literatures and how the deeds and the dreams reinforced each other...

...Intellectual filiation and philosophical affinity linked the two Indeed, anyone who calls himself a disciple of Tolstoy can also fairly be regarded as a Gandhian Consider the similarities of their pacifism, of their emphasis on basic religion and of their understated kind of anarchism They were aware of each other's views and concerns, and, during the later part of Tolstoy's life, were in contact Moreover, the Russian's controversial nonfiction writings came to inspire the tactics Gandhi adopted in his struggle for the freedom of India and his vision of small-scale rural society, with government dwindling away Gandhi proposed this arrangement in his last months as an alternative to the militarized and industrialized chauvinism that his beloved, unfaithful adherent Nehru eventually imposed on India in place of the British Raj...

...Yet Tolstoy turned his back on his magnificent literary achievements to develop his brand of Christianity, with its peaceful anarchism, its nonresistance, its attempt to return to the plainness of life close to the soil And Gandhi intermittently spurned his role as a strategist in favor of causes that many of his contemporaries, including some of his followers, deemed futile village regeneration, dietary experimentation, exercises in sexual abstinence, and-most potently symbolic-spinning Gandhi created a nation and then, at the moment of its emergence, disdained it for behaving like other nations He refused to attend the Independence celebrations and criticized the Indian republic's flag because, instead of a simple spinning wheel, it bore Ashoka's wheel, the Chakra, the emblem of universal kingship, of power unlimited...

...Unlike Buddha, though, they are not most celebrated for what they most valued about themselves The Tolstoy we remember with the greatest pleasure and gratitude is not the elderly pamphleteer, but the author of those supreme novels of "erotic marriage," as Green calls the theme-War and Peace and Anna Karenin The Gandhi who heartens millions is the able politician, the destroyer of the British Empire at its core...

...To the end Tolstoy remained trapped in the structure of erotic marriage that his great novels explored so fully, although his relationship with Soma had become a parody of a marriage He continued to fulfill his duties as a Russian nobleman at home as he simultaneously battled the Russian Empire with his pen And in the seclusion of his own room he tried to live like a peasant...