Author: Terence Barnett Magness

Publisher: Triple-Gem.net publications

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 479

ISBN-13: 064651394X

What would two literary geniuses have in common especially when they come from entirely different social backgrounds and societies and a different point in time? Many, as this unique analysis of Shakespeare and Tolstoy shows. The book has two parts; the first is on Leo Tolstoy and the second, on William Shakespeare and runs to a total of 470 pages. The author analyses these literary figures through their personalities and their respective works: through their internal turmoil and torment, as moral beings wrestling with the vicissitudes and inequities of life. These literary giants¿ consciences and actions are examined in minute detail from the perspective of the Law of Kamma as it is understood in Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism to be precise. The stories that these writers told bespeak of their own trials and tribulations, foibles and insecurities of life, as well as their struggle with social issues of the day. Whereas Tolstoy, being an aristocrat, was prepared to speak his mind loud and clear about the injustices of his society and be ridiculed for his views and his own actions, in contrast Shakespeare wasn¿t prepared to do so largely because of his relatively low social status which obliged him to suck up to the aristocratic and royal classes. It was a matter of earning a living for Shakespeare at the pleasure of the powers-that-were otherwise he won¿t have survived and prospered financially. There are interesting instances where the author highlights similarities between the two historical literary figures and explained why, Tolstoy disdained Shakespeare, for example, for his inability to speak his mind and the hypocrisy of his works¿ characters! Also, surprisingly to many, Tolstoy even disdained his early works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, in the twilight of his life... Why? The analyses present such an interesting insight into the lives of these two great literary giants as to keep one not only entertained but intrigued as to how kamma had wrought their lives and how kamma molded them so; how kamma has made Tolstoy so different from his antecedent self, Shakespeare (if one accepts that Tolstoy was a chip of the old English block) but that the genius of his pen remained as finely tuned and accomplished as he was in his previous life as the celebrated English Bard!