The Scheherazade Chronicles

La Guerre et la Paix: Writers and Paywalls

Image: The Pond at Yasnaya Polyana

I thought I’d start with Tolstoy.  Leo Tolstoy, in his later life, came to believe that all children should be educated and that at least his literature should be made free to the reader.  He was negotiating to release his books without copyrights (and sought to renounce his inherited wealth).  Sofia, his wife and bearer of their 13 children, was, shall we say, miffed.  And, so, some believe that she sent henbane tea with him on his winter train trip causing him to die at a remote railway station, Astapovo, after having drunk the tea. In actuality, he left alone in the middle of the night in late October/early November 1910, wrote Sofia a note not to follow him, took his physician with him and died at Astapovo on November 20 of pneumonia. You can read accounts of Tolstoy’s last moments in a series of 1910 New York Times articles — if you are a paid subscriber.

I agree with Tolstoy that all writing should be available free to everyone, hence I am a supporter of our free library system.  So, when you ban books like Huckleberry Finn, is that not like serving up a fatal cup of henbane tea to Mark Twain, or any author whose works are banned?  I think individuals should be free to choose whatever they want to read.  We must be allowed and informed of different perspectives.  You don’t have to want to read what the other person is reading or writing or believe in his or her philosophy or polemics, but you might want to listen.  You might find a gem in there that sparks an enlightened thought, maybe a contrary thought, to action you can utilize to improve your own life and the lives of those around you — an evolutionary moment.  You never know:  the pearl within the oyster mantle.

When Anton Chekhov had a massive bleeding attack from his tuberculosis all over a white tablecloth while dining in a restaurant and wound up in the hospital, Leo Tolstoy came to sit at his bedside, attired in his big fur coat, the image of a Russian bear.  Or was it Chekhov’s “Black Monk”?  Tolstoy’s inculcations and mysticism came close to hypnotic, observed Chekhov.  Chekhov and Tolstoy had become friends, often spending moments in time together.  Chekhov, so he told the story to one student, on his first meeting with Tolstoy, had swum with Tolstoy in the pond at Tolstoy’s family estate, Yasnaya Polyana.  The name translates to Bright Glade.  Whether or not he indeed swam in the pond with Tolstoy, up to their necks, Tolstoy’s beard floating on the water, it makes a humorous image; and Chekhov was awed, both to visit Yasnaya Polyana for the first time in 1895 and by Tolstoy’s later hospital visit.  He was a great admirer of Tolstoy, Tolstoy being 32 years his senior and already well established as a great writer, world famous.  In turn, Tolstoy admired Chekhov’s work, especially the humor, and encouraged him.  At this hospital bedside meeting I would have loved to have been the fly on the wall, the one in the overcoat; alas I only can speculate on what Tolstoy and Chekhov discussed.  It is often repeated, though, that Tolstoy did advise Chekhov not to write any more plays.

Tolstoy didn’t think of War and Peace as a novel.  Rather he considered it to be a framework for the examination of 19th century social and political issues. He was inspired by the Decembrist revolt of 1825 and Napoleon and Alexander I and the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino.  After writing Anna Karenina, first published in serial form and then in 1878 in book form, Tolstoy concentrated his writing on Christian themes; he and Mahatma Gandhi corresponded wherein Gandhi sought Tolstoy’s advice.  Earlier, Tolstoy went to Europe in 1860-61 where he met Victor Hugo and read Hugo’s newly finished Les Misérables.  The battlefields are similar in both masterpieces, indicating Hugo’s influence on Tolstoy’s War and Peace.  Moreover, Tolstoy read French anarchist Joseph-Pierre Proudhon’s “La guerre et la paix,” (“War and Peace”) and took that title for his own book.  Tolstoy recognized Proudhon as “the only man who understood the significance of education and of the printing press in our time.”

Anton Chekhov said of Leo Tolstoy:  “When literature possesses a Tolstoy, it is easy and pleasant to be a writer; even when you know you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be, because Tolstoy achieves for everyone. What he does serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature.”

Anton Chekhov’s paternal grandfather, Egor Chekhov, bought his and his family’s way out of serfdom, from a nobleman.  The son of the nobleman was Vladimir Chertkov, the Tolstoyan and friend of Tolstoy.  Anton Chekhov paid his way through medical university by writing and selling short stories.  I, Samantha Mozart, must pay my way, too.  I don’t live on a family estate handed down by my ancestors; I have a mortgage to pay, and the electric bill — so I can sit at my computer and write this for you to read — and for the food I buy at the supermarket because I forgot to plant potatoes this year. I would like to make everything I write here free to you, dear reader, as Leo Tolstoy wanted for his work.  Leo Tolstoy was a count, a member of the Russian nobility.  I am not.  And I don’t have a benefactor.  That is one thing Doctor Chekhov and I have in common.  Oh —and that we’re both writers.  (I say ditto about Chekhov what Chekhov says about Tolstoy and being a writer.) Chekhov aside, I gave up my life as it was and with it the capacity to earn an income when I chose to become for a decade the unpaid, sole caregiver for my mother, who suffered from dementia.  I will tell you our story here, in a different publication, my Dementia Caregiving Journals.  I have a lot to say about that experience and I hope my sharing it will help others in similar situations.  Well, for now, the commons are a worthwhile idea, the common pond, worthy of consideration, albeit an ideal; in a capitalist world, impracticable; and in any world, people are human.  And I must pay my way.

So, at the same age Tolstoy was when he died at Astapovo railway station, called Lvo Tolstogo today, and as much as I dislike paywalls, I must build one to support my continued writing here, I think in the threads, and discussions; so it's not a big, high, impenetrable wall, but one that you can, with agility, climb over and around and slither under.  Think of your paid subscription as a Backstage Pass.  When I’ve settled in, reading a long-form, richly informative, entertaining piece, I hate that paywall popping up from behind a thicket of words and flinging itself at my face.  I’ve fought on my inner battlefield with how to make this paywall a win/win.  This is my own war and peace.  I hope the way I’ve invited paid subscribers will work — for you and for me — not be too much of a deterrent nor betray my beliefs, for the mission statement of The Scheherazade Chronicles is:

The Scheherazade Chronicles is dedicated to the development of storytelling and to raising awareness of and promoting access to the humanities for the edification and enlightenment of humankind, thus to save humankind from death by the cleaver of ignorance.