In Mr. George Steiner's words, it is necessary in approaching [Tolstoy and Dostoevsky] to think "of literature as existing not in isolation but as central to the play of historical and political energies."

In the context of Russian literature this might almost be regarded as a truism. It is difficult to think of any serious and useful criticism of the Russian classics in recent years which does not take the principle for granted. Mr. Steiner nevertheless regards it as one of the characteristics which separate what he calls the "old" criticism from the "new." It seems that the new criticism, "the brilliant and prevailing school" which Mr. Steiner describes as "quizzical, captious, immensely aware of its philosophic ancestry and complex instruments," is concerned rather with form than with content; and it is Mr. Steiner's intention to re-establish the old, which is "philosophic in range and temper" and which has been unduly neglected by contemporary critics, "with the exception of the Marxists."…

[But Mr. Steiner's distinction of the two schools of criticisms] is hardly applicable in the Russian context. All fruitful criticism of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky must necessarily be of the kind which he distinguishes as the "old"; in other words, it must be concerned with the philosophical and ideological content of the novels, and even with their biographical and historical background. The task that Mr. Steiner has undertaken [in Tolstoy or Dostoevsky] is therefore not so novel nor even so re-actionary as he suggests. It is nevertheless unusually well done. The analysis of the two masters' novels in terms of their life and thought and historical surroundings is almost a commonplace of criticism, but Mr. Steiner brings to it a freshness and acuteness which are the marks of a profound critic….

He is concerned not with a catalogue of casual, incidental parallels between life and fiction but with the overmastering ideas which so preoccupied the two men that they could not help finding parallel expression in their lives and their works.

Sometimes they were ideas that sprang from incidents, but incidents of such psychological force that they affected the writer's thought for life: Dostoevsky's narrow escape from execution as a conspirator in 1849, for instance, which found expression in The Idiot; and Tolstoy's "symbolic departure," as Mr. Steiner calls it, from St. Petersburg in 1851, which was reproduced in The Cossacks. It is possible that Mr. Steiner rests on these parallels a weight greater than they will bear. Certainly he does so in arguing that they constitute parallels not only between the life and novels of each of the two masters but also between the experiences of the two men themselves. (p. 153)

There is also something forced to the point of absurdity in Mr. Steiner's juxtaposition of the two men's departures from St. Petersburg to a new life—Tolstoy as an aristocratic young officer to military service in the Caucasus, Dostoevsky as a condemned criminal to Siberia. The absurdity is underlined if one attempts to compare—which Mr. Steiner naturally does not—the two masterpieces which flowed directly from these "symbolic departures": The Cossacks and The House of the Dead.

The experiences of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky could in fact hardly have been more different from beginning to end of their lives. If Mr. Steiner is inclined to overlook and even to misrepresent this fact, it is no doubt in order to heighten the contrast which he rightly finds between the art and the thought of the two men. In both contexts he has original and perceptive ideas, which he elaborates with a brilliant command of language and an enthusiasm which only occasionally carries him into extravagance.

The crux of his analysis is twofold. As artists, he sees in Tolstoy an epic genius in the direct line of descent from Homer, and in Dostoevsky a dramatist in the line of Sophocles and Shakespeare. As philosophers, he sees in Tolstoy a rationalist and humanist, in Dostoevsky a passionate (if Nestorian) Christian. (pp. 153-54)

In both contexts the contrast is worked out with great subtlety, but perhaps with an exaggerated devotion to symmetry and antithesis. On the philosophical level it might rather be argued that Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were equally Christian in their outlook, but that each had a different conception of Christ. They belonged, as it were, to rival churches, the existence of which is itself evidence enough that different conceptions are permissible. Dostoevsky became increasingly orthodox and conservative in his later years, Tolstoy increasingly rebellious and anarchist….

It is in some ways a pity that Mr. Steiner's conception of the contrast between the old and the new criticism has led him to treat the art and the philosophy of the two novelists as inseparable. For in distinguishing the epic quality in Tolstoy from the dramatic quality in Dostoevsky he has an important and original point to make which is quite independent of their contrasting philosophies. The comparison of War and Peace with the Iliad is brilliantly contrived; so is the tracing of Sophoclean and Shakespearian elements in The Idiot and The Possessed. In general it may be said that the detailed analysis of the plots of the major novels has never been better done. To go over the plots in detail is a necessary labour for every critic, and usually a labour for the reader too; but in Mr. Steiner's deft hands it is a revelation. He is helped, it is true, by another principle of the "old" criticism, to the effect that the literary critic is concerned only with masterpieces, so that he and the reader are spared any detailed labour over the minor works. But it is not certain that he is helped by his dogma that artistic and philosophical analysis are inseparable.

It cannot be argued, after all, that the character of the novels, defined as epic in Tolstoy's case and dramatic in Dostoevsky's, is uniquely dictated by the nature of their respective philosophies. Far too much would have to be ignored to establish so exact a correlation. Tolstoy's three best-known masterpieces, War and Peace, Anna Karenina and The Cossacks, contain much less of his religious thought than do his lesser fiction and educational works. Much of Dostoevsky's thought is embedded in the vast tracts of The Diary of a Writer and other journalism rather than in his novels. There is in fact a latent contradiction between Mr. Steiner's first principle that the critic is concerned only with masterpieces and his second principle that artistic form and philosophic content are inseparable. If he had rigorously followed either principle, he would not have explored his two subjects half so successfully nor written nearly so stimulating a book. (p. 154)