Daniel asked me today to read and evaluate a poem he had written, based somewhat on Ecclesiastes, but from the point of one committed to serving God no matter what, as opposed to the point of view of a dissoulute fantastically wealthy king.  While I have minor suggestions, the bulk of the poem is quite consistent with who Daniel is--a young man who has had a servant's heart from the beginning.  Most people could not write such a poem, because their attempts would be filled with ifs, ands, and buts. Which is to say, I'll serve God if He serves me first. Or "proves" Himself with bread, fishes, wine; and power.

Then there are those of us, including myself, who by nature want to be sure there's something in it for me. And me alone.

 I/we wear our skepticism as an armor against the very nature of God. I recall--with dismay--some of the idiot demands I made as one brought up in an aggresively secular mode.  Thus still when I write it is impure and reflects my learned and earned defense mechanisms, rationalization and intellectualization.

 Even Freud, who popularized and prized his catalog of "defense mechanisms, was aware of some of the pitfalls of these two because he-- as a physician to the elite-- saw people consstantly who tried to rationalize destructive behavior as somehow justified "because I can" do such a good verbal coverup of my primitive "adult" behaviors.I shudder when similar people come into my office and usually hope they go somewhere else--soon! But in terms of Freud's own philosophy, he was a terrible observer and, like his clientle, he thought of himself as the exception to his own rules and seemed to actually believe that he could act as judge and jury of the universe; just because he had approbation from various universities.

Reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky at the same time is quite the jolt, if one has read them separately in the past. "Count" Tolstoy waxes eloquently about the life of the peasant--but no one reads him for that, but for his stories of the upper crust. The peasants on Levin's farm never rise to the status of individuals--but Anna and Vronsky sure do!  Tolstoy's agrarian idealism is of course well known, often expressed by those in retreat from life in Moscow.  But so is his personal vindictiveness, rather on a par with Gandhi's maltreatment of his wife and family, all the while proclaiming without embarrassment his own righteousness.

Thus although I thought long ago that Tolstoy was a Christian writer, I now believe he was a deist, at best.    His great talent for telling stories became merely a striving for success and to be universally beloved--on his own terms. 

Dostoevsky on the other hand is rarely thought of as a Christian writer; perhaps that is because he is the better writer, and wrote according to his sufferings--which were quite real--as opposed to his successes, ambitions, and self-promotions. He let people come to their own conclusions, as O'Connor did.  In Dostoevsky ordinary people do become real, not just a representative of a class.  He could write quite compellingly of the elite of course--but usually more tellingly as Russian writers'  traditions dictated--he had a wealth of material to draw on. However that sort of life is alien to most of us, and in Shimer I identified with Raskalnikov best, as one equipped by the best ideas but the execution of which reminds us of Leopold and Loeb, and Hitchcock's first color film, "Rope."

As "War and Peace" amply shows, Tolstoy could not resist inserting his tedious views of history to the narrative.  He really was a theoritician  (and patrician) at heart.  His skills at rhetoric no longer buoy him up as well as he intended--hence he died utterly alone!  Wanting to universalize according to one's own dim bulb does diminish not only other people but leaves oneself bankrupt as well. 

FYI I am reading Dostoevsky's fictionalized report of his term in Siberia--quite a contrast to the "golden days" of  swirling wheatfields and giddy golden girls whose problems are the same as celebrities have today--can't even shop in peace, eh?  So increasingly isolated and turned  ever more inward--but finding very little there.  Nothing another divorce or affair can't remedy!