On Tolstoy, memoirs, and the danger of reducing a human being to a performance.
Recently, I found myself arguing with the author of a Substack essay about Leo Tolstoy.
He wrote:
“That guy lived for drama.” And: “Tolstoy possessed what we might now call ‘main character energy,’ except his stage was moral history.”
The text was witty, ironic, and entertaining. But something about it bothered me.
For me, this perspective reduces Tolstoy to performance.
It translates the scale of his inner life into the language of social media, personality types, and public spectacle.
I see something different.
