Author Topic: A Question for Herr Hauser and Senor Raul  (Read 484872 times)

0 Members and 4 Guests are viewing this topic.

Holden

  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 5070
  • Hentrichian Philosophical Pessimist
Gogol( To Don Raul)
« Reply #1035 on: December 15, 2021, 01:55:20 pm »
Don Raul,
Thanks for the message and link-it is quite interesting.

Do you think there is a connection between mysticism and making babies, in Tolstoy´s case or similar cases of well-known figures?-Don Raul

As you might know this country has known more than its fair share of mystics. Gandhi corresponded with Tolstoy and named his first community centre ,while he was still a lawyer in South Africa,as Tolstoy Farm. So,yes, mysticism is fairly wide-spread here.I myself was attracted to it from time to time in the pre-2014-15 phase of my life. But then, I encountered Schopenhauer and ,I can tell you this, he writes with more precision than any analytic philosopher I have ever come across.

His Germanic precision cleared out all the mystical cobwebs from my mind.
Now we need to be careful here because mysticism is a broad term. There are certain aspects of it, say those related to the Platonic tradition that I do very much continue to admire,much like Schopenhauer himself.

However, when I used the term in the context of Tolstoy’s life what I meant was this-
Optimism is the natural and default state of the human mind.But a gifted writer and an intelligent man like Tolstoy would not have liked to use out and out optimistic themes in his works. If he would have ,we would not have been talking about him now-history would have forgotten him.

No, the trick that he pulled off, and there are others who have done the same, is this- he uses pessimism to beautify his work, to provide it gravity ,to make it appear earnest, but he desisted from  going the whole hog.

A writer like him would not make the protagonist turn into a conventional religious man/Christian ,he would make his travel through a very long and convoluted path, suffer a great deal ,but, inevitably he would have some kind of “spiritual” experience and would find” God”.

He was a very rich man. He had a very pretty wife. He had a passel of kids-these are the facts,no mysticism here.

Now, if one wanted to read a Russian writer  who is as far away from the kind of procreative mysticism that Tolstoy espoused, one needs to look no further than Gogol.

Take care.

P.S. For you:


Jacques Garcia Library at Champ de Bataille
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.