The latest was an entry in my Myth TV's guide schedule listing a couple of programs about him. I don't know what to expect, but I set it to record them. I've also found some his work is free online.
If anyone reading this has any advice on where to begin...?
The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both helpless—one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan’s will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite’s will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is—well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads.
- G.K. Chesterton - Orthodoxy (1908)
The truth is that Tolstoy, with his immense genius, with his colossal faith, with his vast fearlessness and vast knowledge of life, is deficient in one faculty and one faculty alone. He is not a mystic; and therefore he has a tendency to go mad. Men talk of the extravagances and frenzies that have been produced by mysticism; they are a mere drop in the bucket. In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ...The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism— the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem.
G.K. Chesterton - Tolstoy (1903)
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2 comments:
Just found your site via Google. Since you asked for suggestions, I'll offer them.
I suggest that you start with Orthodoxy, in which he presents something of an autobiographical journal of his faith. His ability to visualize and describe ideas is amazing.
Second, I suggest that you read The Man Who Was Thursday. I warn you: it's a crazy book! Read it, then go back and think over it. (Consider Job in the Bible.) If you're like me, you won't get it immediately.
-Anonymous
manybooks.net actually has both of those. (and a few more)
Thanks for the advice. I might read "The Man Who Was Thursday" first simply on the logic that I've read the synopsis, and it seems more intriguing at the moment. However, knowing me, I'll probably just start reading his stuff in the next couple of weeks, and suddenly find myself visiting Half-Price books a lot...
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