/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6623420]

>Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their movement, but a neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when the lever catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak and joins in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.

>Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human activities of 160,000 Russians and French—all their passions, desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and enthusiasm—was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the three Emperors—that is to say, a slow movement of the hand on the dial of human history.

How can one man be so based?

[Anonymous No.6623437]

>>6623420

Do love me a bit of Tolstoy - he's a great introduction to, errrr, beautiful, aesthetic and materialistically ethereally crafted sentences.

[Anonymous No.6623441]

>>6623420
Give me a fucking break. Christian Anarchism is the most hypocritical and self-serving doctrine of all time. Man was a flake, a manipulator, and a degenerate, all under the veil of shitty pseudo-Christianity. I'm not a huge fan of Lenin? But he hits it on the head here:
>The contradictions in Tolstoy’s works, views, doctrines, in his school, are indeed glaring. On the one hand, we have the great artist, the genius who has not only drawn incomparable pictures of Russian life but has made first-class contributions to world literature. On the other hand we have the landlord obsessed with Christ. On the one hand, the remark ably powerful, forthright and sincere protest against social falsehood and hypocrisy; and on the other, the “Tolstoyan”, i.e., the jaded, hysterical sniveller called the Russian intellectual, who publicly beats his breast and wails: “I am a bad wicked man, but I am practising moral self-perfection; I don’t eat meat any more, I now eat rice cutlets.” On the one hand, merciless criticism of capitalist exploitation, exposure of government outrages, the farcical courts and the state administration, and unmasking of the profound contradictions between the growth of wealth and achievements of civilisation and the growth of poverty, degradation and misery among the working masses. On the other, the crackpot preaching of submission, “resist not evil” with violence. On the one hand, the most sober realism, the tearing away of all and sundry masks; on the other, the preaching of one of the most odious things on earth, namely, religion, the striving to replace officially appointed priests by priests who will serve from moral conviction, i. e., to cultivate the most refined and, therefore, particularly disgusting clericalism.

[Anonymous No.6623476]

>>6623441

I don't really see any contradictions in this mans diatribe.

He just seems mad to me, more about Christianity than anything else. There is a conversation elsewhere on 4chan about people who get by on being false-nice, as a way of being snakey, and when these people - usually in positions of power - see somebody being genuinely caring, they'll know in their sly ways that they're farce, their facade will begin to shine through compared to the genuine caring person. And so out of pure self-drive to survive they will attack that person, usually by projecting their own flaws onto the person - 'you must be just like me, but better at it' they insist. Quite petty.

Anyway, it's good to see you're a well-adjusted, independent-thinking individual able to think for and articulate himself with such clarity. And how were the Russian balls exactly? I imagine them to be quite divine!

[Anonymous No.6623530]

>>6623441
I don't really like Tolstoy, the person, because of his crazy ideas. Tolstoy, the writer, though, he's fucking amazing.

[Anonymous No.6623603]

>>6623476

[Anonymous No.6623604]

>>6623530

>his crazy ideas.

Now, now, don't be a Lenin. Explain how his ideas are crazy so we can discuss how they might not be crazy - don't limit yourself bro!

[Anonymous No.6623607]

>>6623603

Concise response. I see /lit/ is on top form today. Really great people.

[Anonymous No.6623715]

I find it interesting that he renounced his status in the nobility and took to acting like a peasant but then all his children were considered as nobility themselves meaning he never really severed himself from the upper classes.

[Anonymous No.6623726]

>>6623715

What a prick, amirite?

[Anonymous No.6623816]

>>6623420
I thought that was James from Twin Peaks