Global Warning
17 May 2008
Theodore Dalrymple delivers a Global Warning
Tchertkoff was that most terrible of creatures, a disciple of a writer, who also happened to be a supremely gifted publicist, Tolstoy’s Alastair Campbell. He created and propagated the myth of Tolstoy the self-abnegating ascetic and pacifist saint, instead of the sadistic, violent egotist and sensualist (as well, of course, as the literary genius) that he so obviously was.
Tolstoy’s declared love of humanity appals me, not because I wish humanity any harm, but because it comes as near to genuine feeling as a tin whistle comes to a Bach partita. It is indeed odd that the great dissector of the human soul should have had, or at any rate expressed, such little self-knowledge. After what Tchertkoff calls his spiritual awakening, he taught the world how to self-dramatise, a lesson that it was desperate to learn.
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