#Scriptory is a series of whimsical essays that toys with the three following elements: Historical Oddities + Scriptwriting Format + Satire
Read the rest of the series here:
#Scriptory 1: Albert Einstein
#Scriptory 2: Winston Churchill
#Scriptory 3: Leo Tolstoy & Abe Lincoln
Here’s a criminally underrated parlour game: “What did famous historical person A think about famous historical person B?”
There are obviously contemporary versions of this game (eg. What does Lebron think of Jordan?), but the exercise is a lot more fun when you go ba(aaaaaaaaaaaa)ck in time.
Some personal favorite “famous person A” on “famous person B” quotes.
Julius Caesar on Alexander The Great:
“Do you think I have not just cause to weep, when I consider that Alexander at my age had conquered so many nations, and I have all this time done nothing that is memorable?”
Napoleon on King Louis XIV:
“The only King of France worth of the name.”
Churchill (in poor taste) on Ghandi:
“He’s a half-naked fakir.”
Mariah Carey (legendarily) on Jennifer Lopez:
Not bad.
The all-time cherry on the “famous person on famous person” cake, though, has to be Russian literary giant Leo Tolstoy’s feelings on Abraham Lincoln.
Leo Tolstoy on Abraham Lincoln
Tolstoy’s said feelings are found in an article written in 1909 and reprinted by the Daily Beast with the title (in all of its alliteration glory) “Leo Tolstoy’s Love Letter To Lincoln”. 1
The article – written by Tolstoy’s companion (Count Stakelberg) – recounts Tolstoy’s experience travelling in the Caucasus region (modern-day Southwestern Russia, Georgia, Armenia). During this one particular travel, Tolstoy is asked by a local Muslim Chieftain to explain the legend of Abraham Lincoln and the Russian writer is utterly incapable of holding back his mancrush while doing so.
Ever the storyteller, Tolstoy explains his Lincoln Love with … a story.
Select excerpts below.
“Once while travelling in the Caucasus I happened to be the guest of a Caucasian chief of the Circassians, who, living far away from civilized life in the mountains, had but a fragmentary and childish comprehension of the world and its history. The fingers of civilization had never reached him nor his tribe, and all life beyond his native valleys was a dark mystery.”
Since it was still the turn of the 20th century, Tolstoy clearly held some retrograde views about his audience. But we persist.
“Being a Mussulman he was naturally opposed to all ideas of progress and education.”
Whoa! Slow down Leo. That’s kinda just straight up racist…
“I was received with the usual Oriental hospitality and after our meal was asked by my host to tell him something of my life.”
“Oriental hospitality”? Ok, I guess when it rains it pours. This is absurd. He better start talking about Lincoln soon.
“He listened to everything with indifference, but when I began to tell about the great statesmen and the great generals of the world he seemed at once to become very much interested…He soon returned with a score of wild looking riders and asked me politely to continue. It was indeed a solemn moment when those sons of the wilderness sat around me on the floor and gazed at me as if hungering for knowledge…I spoke at first of our Czars and of their victories; then I spoke of the foreign rulers and of some of the greatest military leaders…”
Still waiting.
When I declared that I had finished my talk, my host, a gray- bearded, tall rider, rose, lifted his hand and said very gravely:
“‘But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know some- thing about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock and as sweet as the fragrance of roses. The angels appeared to his mother and predicted that the son whom she would conceive would become the greatest the stars had ever seen. He was so great that he even forgave the crimes of his greatest enemies and shook brotherly hands with those who had plotted against his life. His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.’
Yes, Leo! Tell us!
“‘Tell us, please, and we will present you with the best horse of our stock,’ shouted the others.
That’s kind of an unbeatable offer and, mercifully, Tolstoy takes it.
“Why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character. He had come through many hardships and much experience to the realization that the greatest human achievement is love. He was what Beethoven was in music, Dante in poetry, Raphael in painting, and Christ in the philosophy of life. He aspired to be divine—and he was.”
Tolstoy was truly awed by the virality of Lincoln’s story.
“If one would know the greatness of Lincoln one should lis- ten to the stories which are told about him in other parts of the world. I have been in wild places, where one hears the name of America uttered with such mystery as if it were some heaven or hell. I have heard various tribes of barbarians discussing the New World, but I heard this only in connection with the name of Lincoln. Lincoln as the wonderful hero of America is known by the most primitive nations of Asia.”
For the finale, activate Mancrush.
“Of all the great national heroes and statesmen of history Lincoln is the only real giant. Alexander, Frederick the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Gladstone and even Washington stand in greatness of character, in depth of feeling and in a certain moral power far behind Lincoln. Lincoln was a man of whom a nation has a right to be proud; he was a Christ in miniature, a saint of humanity, whose name will live thousands of years in the legends of future generations. We are still too near to his greatness, and so can hardly appreciate his divine power; but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”
Damn, that is a lot of bro love. Enough to make us wonder – did Leo Tolstoy ever get sick of crushing on Honest Abe and telling of his exploits?
This entry of #Scriptory posits a world where Leo Tolstoy is – indeed – tired of people asking him about Abe.
As former US Supreme Court Judge Louis Brandeis would say, Tolstoy has a “right to be let alone”!
Seriously, stop asking Leo Tolstoy about Abraham Lincoln!
