ENGLISH TOLSTOISM (ANGLIISKOIE TOLSTOVSTVO): SERGEI BULGAKOV AS AN INTERPRETER OF THOMAS CARLYLE
Bulgakov’s reading of Thomas Carlyle was not as straightforward as it might appear. It consisted of several layers of analysis moving between an attempt to explain Carlyle to his Russian audience through the medium of Tolstoi’s ideas of labour, and a repurposing of Carlyle’s thought into a ‘sounding board’ as Bulgakov set out his own template for a religiously inspired political programme on the eve of Revolution. If Bulgakov was largely in line with mainstream Western interpretations of his day, he also produced some noteworthy distortions of Carlyle. Much of the “distortion” arises, it would seem, from the fact that Bulgalov’s repurposing, or ‘use’ of Carlyle was mediated through the very comparison he drew with Tolstoi who, in the literature discussed in this article at least, seemed to be more influenced by Carlyle’s disciple Ruskin than by Carlyle himself.