What is the Animal I, according to Leo Tolstoy in Resurrection?

It’s a catchy three-word label. But what does “the animal I” mean?

For Tolstoy’s character, an aristocrat named Nekhlyudov, it  means to feed his horse. Which is to say, to live without a spiritual saddle on his back, thus free to be dissolute, decadent, and unburdened by moral principles.

The reign and reins of ‘the Animal I’ are certainly evident in our times. Coincidently, Everyman Press has re-issued Resurrection in hardcover for $34.00. Considering the novel is 552 pages, and Everyman uses cloth binding and acid-free paper, that’s a bargain.

I doubt anyone on the current CABINET or White House team will be reading this novel. With the image of ‘cabinet’ in my mind, I just thought of Abe Lincoln’s Team of Rivals. They were oak-like persons, not those made of plywood.  And I’m fairly certain that Christian Nationalists are re-reading the Left Behind series and not Tolstoy.

Leo, by the way, was excommunicated for his truth-telling about the Russian Orthodox church. Call this an ironic literary prize for Resurrection.

“Toward the Light” is a recent review of Resurrection by the WSJ’s reviewer, Sam Sacks. This, too, was timely. The RCC-RILL book club decided last December to make this novel one of the eight we read this year.  We’ll discuss Tolstoy’s last novel in early November, along with Bulgakov’s The White Guard set in Kiev in 1918.

Why am I so enjoying Tolstoy’s last novel, despite the small print in my Penguin edition?  Because Leo was writing when there were no movies, no television, no Internet.  He describes everything in detail. A reader deeply experiences what is seen, what is heard, and what is felt. This novel took Tolstoy a decade to write. It was not published until 1899, thirty years after War and Peace.

Next week:   Katerina Maslova in Resurrection