Empathy and Mind-reading in the (Mostly) Late Tolstoy

• In Event: Tolstoy: Art, Mind, and Morbidity

Abstract

In nearly all of his fiction, Tolstoy extensively represents successful and failed efforts, as well as complete non-efforts, of one person to perceive the inner life of another. Sometimes this is simply mind-reading (as in the famous "proposal" scene between Kitty and Levin), and sometimes it rises to something like what we now think of as empathy. Against the background of some examples from Anna Karenina, this paper explores specific problems characters face in (mis)perceiving others' interiority in "After the Ball," "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," and "Alyosha the Pot." Repeatedly, Tolstoy represents the desirability yet elusiveness of reaching beyond the self into another's mental life.

Author

• Stephen Blackwell, U of Tennessee