Last week, while reading Tolstoy’s “The Cossacks,” I was amused to come across this unexpected putdown of J.S. Bach:

“One evening, the Nogai driver pointed with his whip to the mountains shrouded in clouds. Olenin looked eagerly, but it was dull, and the mountains were almost hidden by the clouds. Olenin made out something grey and white and fleecy, but, try as he would, he could find nothing beautiful in the mountains of which he had so often read and heard. The mountains and clouds appeared to him quite alike, and he thought the special beauty of the snow peaks, of which he had so often been told, was as much an invention as Bach’s music and the love for women, which he did not believe in.”

Early the next morning, under clear skies, Olenin changes his tune about the Caucasus. Some time later, he falls under the spell of Maryanka, a haughty Cossack beauty. But Tolstoy never does tell us if his protagonist ever softens in his assessment of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

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