An analysis of Tolstoy’s novella Kholstomer that features- but is not limited to- invisible carpets, the essayists cat, Adam Smith, Scrooge McDuck, sausages and The Best Deaths in Literature.
This is yet another dizzyingly good bit of writing from one of the STSC’s growing contingent of annoyingly talented literary Slavs. Why we attract them I don’t know, but I’m really really glad we do)
Enjoy.
TJB.
When I read fiction, one of my favorite things to do is find invisible threads. That’s what I call these little thoughts or ideas that prompted the author, consciously or subconsciously, to write something in a very specific way. They may be things from the author’s personal life that I learned before I read the book. They may be just something the author was occupied with. Tolstoy is a good example, and when you learn a little about his person, all of his books turn into invisible carpets. Just pick a thread and pull.
In his novella “Kholstomer” (sometimes translated as “Strider”), there is a notable example. “Kholstomer”, by the way, is wonderful and absolutely groundbreaking for its time. It is a story written from the perspective of an old piebald gelding, Kholstomer. If you just quickly googled “piebald gelding” (I certainly had to!), don’t worry; we’re not using these words a lot anymore. The horse tells his younger peers the story of his life: love, loss of manhood, and change of owners. A great illustration of the concept of “defamiliarization” (“остранение”), classical to Russian literature and Tolstoy specifically: taking a routine thing and looking at it at a weird angle to discover hidden depths.
So, among other things that Tolstoy is discussing through Kholstomer, there is the concept of ownership. This rather basic notion is quite alien to the horse, as described. There are several quotes below, but there are no blog posts that wouldn't be improved by Tolstoy’s quotes, so bear with me for a while. I am quoting from the translation by Maude and Maude.
What they said about flogging and Christianity I understood well enough, but I was quite in the dark as to what they meant by the words “his colt”, from which I perceived that people considered that there were some connection between me and the head groom. [...]
At that time I could not at all understand what they meant by speaking of me as being a man’s property. The words “my horse” applied to me, a live horse, seemed to me as strange as to say “my land”, “my air” or “my water”. [...].
Such words considered very important among them, are “my” and “mine”, which they apply to various things, creatures or objects: even to land, people and horses. They have agreed that of any given thing only one person may use the word “mine”, and he who in this game of theirs may use that conventional word about the greatest number of things is considered the happiest. Why it is so I do not know, but it is so. [...]
And men strive in life not to do what they think right, but to call as many things as possible their own. I am now convinced that in this lies the essential difference between men and us. Therefore, not to speak of other things in which we are superior to men, on this ground alone we may boldly say that in the scale of living creatures we stand higher than men. The activity of men, at any rate, of those I have had to do with, is guided by words, while ours is guided by deeds.
As we can see, Kholstomer, as described by Tolstoy, does not understand the basic concept of property. Horses do not distinguish between “mine” and “not mine”; moreover, the existence of these notions is considered by horses a sign of degradation in humans. In general, the notion of ownership is un-natural, as in “doesn’t occur in nature” and is conjured up by the evil of civilization. No wonder that when I was googling for a full text of “Kholstomer”, I found it not on one but on two separate Marxist websites (also on a horse club website, which is maybe even less appropriate).
That thought is not unique to Tolstoy. A lot of prominent contemporary thinkers shared this notion, such as Hobbes, Locke, and Marx (of course!). Even Adam Smith wrote: “Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that... But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only.” Smith has an emphasis on trade here and overall sees it not as a “degradation” but rather a very positive thing (of course!), but the idea is globally the same. An animal having possessions is preposterous. What fiddlesticks! Well, I never!
Although to me it is not, and this was exactly why I pulled on this tread. Admittedly, I never had horses, but I had dogs all my life. And I have to say, I fully disagree with Tolstoy and the gang here. I’ll start with a few anecdotal examples. My current dog is a striking one. He doesn’t simply love his rubber toys; he knows with absolute certainty that they belong to him and only to him. He knows all his things; he knows how many of them there are and where each of them is at any moment in time. He immediately understands when he’s given a present. This, in fact, is one of his biggest joys in life. He is even sure that the sofa in our living room is, in fact, his sofa, and we are just renting it. A classical consumerist. A Scrooge McDuck of his age. We pay the rent with sausages.
(case in point; image source: author’s archive)
A second anecdote is about my parents’ dog. When she was a puppy, she went to a dog park. It turned out that there were a lot of dogs there, and each one brought a toy, and all of them shared them in a wild doggy game. My parents’ dog didn’t bring a toy; she tried to join the rest but was very soon banished for the toyless deadbeat that she was. Both of these cases (and many more) very obviously show me that dogs do, in fact, have a notion of ownership. It may not be as developed as the human one, but it’s certainly there.
Why wasn’t it obvious to Tolstoy and his pals then? There may be several possible explanations. One might say that dogs are carnivores and horses are herbivores. It is not unreasonable to assume that the idea of ownership is weaker for the latter: grass is grass, and there is no point in splitting grass blades. It is much harder to catch a prey, however, and when you actually manage to do it, it might be beneficial to protect it rather than catch a new one. So I can imagine some sort of evolutionary pull here. But even then, a lot of herbivores are territorial, and that also boils down to “my” and “mine”.
A second line of reasoning is much more practical and maybe more likely. In the XVIII–XIX centuries, animals had much less freedom. Dogs lived mostly outside in kennels, and horses lived in the stables. (Nobody appropriated the whole sofa, like the swine that he is!) There were house animals (typically cats and smaller dogs), but they were also treated quite differently. There were no pet stores or pet toys then; there were very few things that the animal could cherish and play with but not immediately consume. In short, there was nothing for the animals to consider their own, except maybe for an odd bone they buried in the backyard. All of this is quite a recent thing.
What about wild animals, then? Maybe our pets are just poisoned by capitalist propaganda? Tolstoy doesn’t know, so maybe modern science does. I would now quote (a lot!) from “The Evolution of Private Property” by Herbert Gintis (J. of Economic Behavior & Org. 64 (2007) 1–16):
The dominant view in Western thought [...] is that private property is a human social construction that emerged with the rise of modern civilization (Schlatter, 1973). However, evidence from studies of animal behavior, gathered mostly in the past quarter century, has shown this view to be incorrect. Various territorial claims are recognized in non-human species, including butterflies (Davies, 1978), spiders (Riechert, 1978), wild horses (Stevens, 1988), finches (Senar et al., 1989), wasps (Eason et al., 1999), non-human primates (Ellis, 1985), lizards (Rand, 1967), and many others (Mesterton Gibbons and Adams, 2003). [...] Many developmental studies indicate that toddlers and small children use behavioral rules similar to those of animals in recognizing and defending property rights (Furby, 1980). [...]
Consider, for instance, the sparrows that built a nest in a vine in my garden. The location is choice, and the couple spent days preparing the structure. The nest is quite as valuable to another sparrow couple. Why does another couple not try to evict the first? If they are equally strong, and both value the territory equally, each has a 50% chance of winning the territorial battle. Why bother investing if one can simply steal (Hirshleifer, 1988)? Of course, if stealing were profitable, then there would be no nest building, and hence no sparrows, but that heightens rather than resolves the puzzle. [...]
Stevens found a similar pattern of behavior for the feral horses occupying the sandy islands of the Rachel Carson Estuarine Sanctuary near Beaufort, North Carolina. In this case, it is fresh water that is scarce. After heavy rains, fresh water accumulates in many small pools in lowlying wooded areas, and bands of horses frequently stop to drink. Stevens found that there were frequent encounters between bands of horses competing for water at these temporary pools. If a band approached a water hole occupied by another band, a conflict ensued. During 76 h of observation, Stevens observed 233 contests, of which the resident band won 178 (80%). In nearly all cases of usurpation, the intruding band was larger than the resident band. These examples, and many others like them, support the presence of an endowment effect and suggest that incumbents are willing to fight harder to maintain their position than intruders are to usurp the owner. [...]
Examples from non-human primates exhibit behavioral patterns in the respect for property rights much closer to that of humans. [...] In a study of hamadryas baboons (Papio hamadryas), for instance, Sigg and Falett (1985) hand a food-can to a subordinate who was allowed to manipulate and eat from it for 5 min before a dominant individual who had been watching from an adjacent cage was allowed to enter the subordinate’s cage. A “takeover” was defined as the rival taking possession of the can before 30 min had elapsed. They found that (a) males never took the food-can from other males; (b) dominant males took the can from subordinate females 2/3 of the time; (c) dominant females took the can from subordinate females 1/2 of the time. With females, closer inspection showed that when the difference in rank was one or two, females showed respect for the property of other females, but when the rank difference was three or greater, takeovers tended to occur. [...]
It is a fascinating read in its own right, although not in the same sense as “Kholstomer”. I am skipping quite a lot of formulas. In the “Conclusions” section, Gintis writes:
History is written as though private property is a product of modern civilization, a construction that exists only to the extent that it is defined and protected by judicial institutions operating according to legal notions of ownership. [However], it must be recognized that modern notions of property are built on human behavioral propensities that we share with many species of non-human animals. Doubtless, an alien species with a genetic organization akin to our ants or termites would find our notions of individuality and privacy curious at best, and probably incomprehensible.
So, what gives? Did Tolstoy actually describe a termite, or at least a termite-brained horse? I choose to think not. He was carefully observing the life around him, reflecting upon it, and then describing what he saw and understood. And what he saw was a “working animal”, a creature living in very specific and very harsh conditions. I am not sure we can know with certainty what the working horses are actually thinking regarding property rights. But let’s assume for a second that Tolstoy guessed right and that horses like Kholstomer did not, in fact, understand the whole “ownership” thing. After all, it was “the dominant view in Western thought” at the time, so Tolstoy is not solely to blame here. If we summarize all of the above, we see a certain “well”: a) wild animals know what “property” means; b) “working” animals do not; c) pets again understand the concept of “property”. So, the only ones who do not understand property are themselves someone else’s property.
Sometimes, when you pull on an invisible thread, you can find something ugly. This time, we stumbled upon a facet of slavery.
Kholstomer, of course, dies in the end. It’s not a big spoiler; it is inevitable almost from the very beginning. The death is described quietly and poignantly, and it can easily be considered one of the best deaths in literature.
And in fact he felt that something had been done to his throat. It hurt, and he shuddered and gave a kick with one foot, but restrained himself and waited for what would follow… Then he felt something liquid streaming down his neck and chest. He heaved a profound sigh and felt much better.
The whole burden of his life was eased.
He closed his eyes and began to droop his head. No one was holding it. Then his legs quivered and his whole body swayed. He was not so much frightened as surprised. Everything was so new to him. He was surprised and started forward and upward, but instead of this, in moving from the spot his legs got entangled, he began to fall sideways, and trying to take a step fell forward and down on his left side.
And I think that this is the point in a story where Tolstoy gives us, his readers, a choice. We can imagine for ourselves where “forward and upward” is. We can imagine a beautiful country, Kholstomerica, the land of the finally free, where the poor piebald gelding is headed. And in that country, horses and all the other animals, including us, are calm, and gratified, and content. And the only question for us now is: do they have ownership there? Do they own things? And I think that Tolstoy’s answer would be no, based on his writing and his life. But my answer here would be yes. A sense of property is an inherent characteristic of any living being with an agency of its own. We all get joy from owning things. In the wonderful Kholstomerica, everyone will own something. Just not each other.
So, let’s respect each other's property, even that of our pets. Even if they are lazy dogs. Or termites. Or even termite-brained horses.
Are we sure that our dogs don’t own us? I enjoyed reading this analysis. I had never heard of this story before. However, I do know what a piebald gelding is without looking it up.
This was so interesting, thank you. A very enjoyable read and much to consider. My dog sounds a lot like yours, too.