Vladimir Nabokov elicits a cleared throat for us Lev Tolstoi specialists. The two Russian writers seem incompatible, the ultimate ends of an argument about literature. Nabokov is an aesthete par excellence, someone who smugly trumpeted that art is a pleasurable but tricky game for the select. Tolstoi's aesthetics, at least those of what Steve Hickey calls “the Second Tolstoy,” reject snobbery and proclaim that the boys from the village are better readers. Aestheticism is fit for the washed masses.
However, we quickly add after the expectoration, Nabokov considered Tolstoy “the greatest Russian writer.” In fact, at one point in his lectures on literature, Nabokov has a sadomasochistic break and fantasizes about shackling Tolstoi in a room and making him write, literally the plot of a horror novel. Tatyana Gershkovich's Art in Doubt offers a conciliatory explanation, a way to unite Tolstoi's aesthetics with Nabokov's: the two writers investigate the predicament of skepticism in order to formulate artistic strategies that might temporarily keep it at bay.
Our field, so goes her convincing argument, has won the battles but lost the war. We teach reading (“interpretation”) that exalts decoding “the secret meaning.” This approach to reading is simply Cartesian philosophical skepticism applied to “literature.” Doubting everything must lead to certainty.
Ironically, as countless critics of René Descartes have pointed out, this technique instead inevitably eventuates in solipsism. We are left lonely and sad, in Stanley Cavell's words unable to feel the other's pain, unable to overcome our experience of separation. Can we not get back to our prelapsarian experience of the text?
Gershkovitch is far from the first to point out the pitfalls of the suspicious mode. But she insightfully points out that we, as critics, naturally assume that we can fix the situation (this is a profoundly Tolstoian moment!) and overlook the possibility that two brilliant writers, the very ones we have been taught to distrust, might themselves be concerned with the problem; might themselves be alarmed at the wreck of solipsism; might themselves have some balm: “My aim will be to demonstrate that the temptation and torments of skepticism, and Tolstoy's and Nabokov's attempts to think and write their way out of it, shaped their fiction in fundamental ways” (4).
In Chap. 1, the author examines Tolstoi's Anna Karenina alongside Ludwig Wittgenstein and Cavell's ideas on solipsism and skepticism. She suggests that Tolstoi's novel is not only a tale of society but also a philosophical drama about the “uncertain artist,” someone who cannot be sure that their art has any significance beyond their own experience. Chap. 2 turns to Nabokov's The Gift, a novel that tells the story of an artist protagonist who yearns for a spectator who can fully understand and appreciate his perspective. Gershkovitch argues that beneath the surface of this tale of artistic triumph lies a deep anxiety about the unbridgeable gap between author and reader, and offers a new perspective on Nabokov's recurring theme of doubles.
In Chap. 3, the author presents a revisionary reading of Tolstoi's What Is Art? on aesthetic unresponsiveness. By placing Tolstoy's ideas in dialogue with David Hume's, Gershkovich reconstructs a broader discourse that views aesthetic receptivity as an achievement to be labored over rather than a given predisposition. The chapter suggests that Tolstoi diagnosed the atrophy of receptivity in himself and his peers, and offers insights into the nature of aesthetic experience. Chap. 4 centers on the works of Tolstoi and Nabokov—Kreutzer Sonata, Pale Fire , “Pozdynshev's Address”—that probe the limitations of the skeptical disposition and its impact on our ability to engage with the world beyond ourselves. The author argues that by reflecting on our own skepticism, we may actually deepen our engagement with it (for better or worse).
What sets this book apart is its clarity and accessibility. Gershkovich presents complex ideas in a way that is easy to follow and engaging. As a Tolstoi specialist, I wonder that Gershkovich did not explore Tolstoi's hermeneutics of translation for the Gospels, or his reaction to the peasant children reading in “Who Should Learn Writing from Whom . . .” Both these works address directly how to overcome “skeptical” reading. That said, the book is very well-researched and thoughtfully written, making it an excellent choice for both scholars and general readers interested in the intersection of art and philosophy.
