>>25277085
[...] Leo Tolstoy, consciously or unconsciously, gravitated towards the material. He did not see divinity in the union. Divinity, according to him, is found by following the path of blind nature or matter. In his work, one can feel the desire to overshadow spiritual matters and elevate the value of material and instinct. The spirit must so perish and become covered with a shell that it leaves no memory of it. Man must be content with a soul drawn to the body, or a soul of self-preservation - instinct. Traces of such a soul are clearly visible in the beast, which is why we sometimes say that both a horse and a dog have a soul. But beasts, nevertheless, with the help of instinct, always manage to be at the center of their destiny and do not disrupt the rhythm of the cosmos. This quality of the beast pleased Tolstoy very much, because he also encountered a considerable number of traces of the beast in man. Going even further, the writer also noticed common properties in plants that are found in beasts and humans.

>>25277087
[...] But if you don't look at the sky, if you haven't noticed the stuffy air yet, and you're in the middle of an endless ethos, you're amazed at how calm, simple and at the same time majestic everything is here. How true, uncomplicated, a realistic retelling without great spiritual effort. According to Tolstoy, the most necessary thing for a writer is not to lie! The village is depicted so accurately, everything is real, as if seen through a window. There is no stormy genius here, no rushing, attacks and takeoffs, calm and objective. But this is great art. Art knows how to deceive art, turn it into reality. Much is forged here, smoothed, hewn, planed, but everywhere it is well planed. Tolstoy, like Baudelaire, forged his poems, smoothed them, gnawed over the adjective, did not sleep. But you won't notice any care in his work, objectivity is maintained throughout. In his prose, everything is eternally unchanging, as if life itself had made it. "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", "Three Men", "How Much Land Does a Man Need" can be read now, they could have been read before Christ. Here is not the spirit of the era, but the primordial unchanging soul of humanity, drowning in eternity.

Life is boiling everywhere: whether in the church of "Resurrection" or in the natural scenes of "Cossacks". Tolstoy did not learn anything through his art. His works are like eternally solid rocks, in which not even his own personality is left, it is dissolved in them. You will not find invented things, so it is even amazing to call him a creator, because he does not arouse in us either fantasy, inspiration, desires, or superiority. He does not show anything superhuman, but is the embodiment of everything earthly. The writer seems not to be distinguished by any poetic gifts, he has the same human powers, only he can expand them to infinity. His work is a discourse on reality. And this argument is amazingly powerful. When Tolstoy's characters speak, we do not imagine them, but when he himself speaks about the characters, they emerge in all their fullness. We only see his brush, we catch only a few words.

Tolstoy knows only reality, only one tongue, that is, the truth. But with one tongue he speaks so accurately as no one has spoken before - from this flows all the greatness of Tolstoy. Art and reality for Tolstoy are one and the same thing.

>>25277085
Dostoevsky went in a completely different direction. He went the way of the spirit. He is the first analyst of that world that lives separately in us and has its own paths; after all, we all feel well that we have some kind of secret face of spiritual depths, which only appears in minutes of loneliness and disappears again. We are afraid to show it to our loved ones, lest they say we are strange, but nevertheless that secret voice of ours often speaks to us and makes strange decisions. Our spiritual "I", our intuition tells us wonderful things that we do not believe in, but which happen exactly as we had thought in our spirit. Whoever had to live in nature or in some other way alone in solitude, felt that a separate new world was created next to him, in which there are many more diverse phenomena than there are in everyday life. When we return to the crowd, to the hustle and bustle, and no longer have time to observe ourselves, to live ourselves and analyze ourselves, we feel the world we had disappearing, closing in. These and similar things concerned Dostoevsky, that great psychoanalyst who, thanks to his illness, had come to know the depths of the spirit. When we stand next to Dostoevsky and observe his manner of writing, we feel as if we have entered a dark room, where the writer - a chemist of the soul and spirit - produces light in his laboratory of chemical spirits, which illuminates the dark room. He is both a syntheticist and an analyzer, now weaving together the most diverse spiritual phenomena, now separating them and obtaining new aspects of human nature. In doing so, he treats his heroes, characters very mercilessly. He places them in the most diverse positions, invents endless confusions and surprises for them. This is the spiritual torture of a person, when he is oppressed, compressed, the air is rarefied around him, the temperature is raised, i.e. he is exposed to the most diverse conditions of spiritual life. We feel the lack of reality, because in life nothing ever happens so quickly and too fantastically. His – Dostoevsky’s – psychoanalysis is the operation of the best machines and the most cunning products of medieval alchemists, it is a real witches’ kitchen. Standing next to him, you finally feel fear and want to move away, so that something terrible does not happen while creating the compounds and an explosion does not occur. But, overcome by great curiosity, you stay and watch what the writer will get: a spark of light or black smoke. And in this confusion, you no longer understand where reality ends and where it begins.

Perhaps we will not find anything more opposite in both Russian and world literature than Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Both writers lived in the 19th century. Tolstoy was still in his twenties. They did not see each other during their lifetimes. Tolstoy, alive, is a prophet and a miracle, Dostoevsky is not so well known; Tolstoy, dead, is no longer commented on so vividly, and Dostoevsky turns into a prophet. Tolstoy is strong, physical, not so neatly cut as well sewn, Dostoevsky is sick, epileptic. Tolstoy is the author of stormy youth and pleasures, Dostoevsky is a scoundrel of prison, misery and the scum. At the end of the century, Tolstoy becomes an ascetic and thinks about how to distribute his wealth, Dostoevsky always thinks about money, but never has it. Tolstoy's dualism of personality encouraged him to create, but the same duality of personality destroyed him for creation. Dostoevsky was saved by illness and poverty awakened him to creativity.

Tolstoy's work goes in the direction of the body, Dostoevsky in the direction of the spirit. They go as far as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo had just reached. The only similarity between Dostoevsky's work and Tolstoy's work is that, going in opposite directions, they finally meet, like two travelers meeting, one going from east to west and the other from west to east. Their meeting is possible only in eternity, and the fruit of this meeting would be a new union of man as body and spirit.

Tolstoy's heroes are victims. Man does not go to his final completion, but drowns in the elements of nature. There are no tragedies here, only separate tragic knots, without a unifying end. No beginning, no middle, no end. Dostoevsky's man, a personality rising from darkness to spiritual heights. That man is of the third dimension, a measure to the depth, the end of which will never be reached. In Dostoevsky's novels, the struggle of heroic will with the spirit of moral duty, as Raskolnikov does, the struggle with the element of passions, which is expressed in Svidrigailov, is felt everywhere. Only in that struggle does the inner "I" of a person remain intact, and is even more highlighted. All of Dostoevsky's heroes, it seems, strain the last forces of their will and declare self-will.

Tolstoy is a true epic, calm, objective, straightforward, Dostoevsky is sensitive, impressive, the formulator of dialogues is tragic. You will feel art in Tolstoy's story, inaccuracy in the dialogues. Dostoevsky's story is uneven, tiring, but the dialogue is incomparable. Tolstoy is a genius when he speaks himself, Dostoevsky - when he lets others speak. You hear Tolstoy's hero when you see Tolstoy applying a brush, you see Dostoevsky's heroes when you hear them speaking.

Tolstoy's work is a boundless ocean, you can't swim anywhere, you can't stop anywhere, everywhere is the center, everywhere is equally important. Dostoevsky's work is a triangle. Everything is irresistibly approaching the final point from a wide base. There is nothing superfluous and nothing that would get in the way or be more important than our only center of attention.

Tolstoy's heroes are so corporeal, they simply smell like beasts, Dostoevsky's heroes are disembodied, of one spirit, their feet do not touch the ground.

In Tolstoy, there is neither good nor evil, everything is equally important, Dostoevsky's evil is always translated into good. The cloudy weather suddenly bursts into a rain of repentance, and after the storm a bright, refreshing sun of joy appears. Tolstoy's sky gradually becomes more and more gloomy. We wait for a storm, but there is still no storm. The weather is heavy, without mountains, without freedom.

Tolstoy's speed of action is always the same, neither rushing nor stopping. Dostoevsky's speed of action increases in the end and it seems that everything is irresistibly approaching destruction.

Tolstoy's people are rational, Dostoevsky's are already rational and carry out their actions.

Tolstoy's people feel the passions of the body, and Dostoevsky's people the passions of the mind, of thought. Tolstoy's man is drawn to his true path by passions, Dostoevsky's man by passion of thought encourages him to rebel.

Only here is where the paths of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy coincide. Both of them torture their heroes. Tolstoy allows nature to torture a person physically, Dostoevsky allows conscience to throw a person out for her bad deeds. In this they are similar.

Tolstoy is a painter, a tailor, a sculptor, Dostoevsky is a chemist, a laboratory technician, the head of a witch's kitchen. Tolstoy gropes the body - Dostoevsky the soul.

Tolstoy never lies, with him everything is true, real, with Dostoevsky you don't know: where reality begins and where it ends.

Both maintain ties with religion: one with the religion of the God-beast, the other with the Christian religion.

>>25277085
I don't read

Tolstoy is too earthly, having deified the body, Dostoevsky is too spiritual, having embodied the spirit. Tolstoy is static, Dostoevsky is dynamic; Tolstoy is epic, Dostoevsky is tragic; Tolstoy is a vertical line, Dostoevsky is a horizontal line. One went in the direction of the body and almost reached the spirit, the other went in the direction of the spirit and almost reached the body. If it were not for this almost, they would have discovered each other in infinity and, uniting these two opposites, would have formed the value of the zenith point - man. How far they were from their goal, only those who dare to follow their paths and continue the directions they began will be able to say.