CHAPTER I

TOLSTOY ON ART

[Illustration: L. N. TOLSTOY and A. P. CHEKHOV

_At Gaspra, in the Crimea, during Tolstoy’s illness in 1902_]

TOLSTOY

ON

ART

BY

AYLMER MAUDE

HUMPHREY MILFORD

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW TORONTO

MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN BOMBAY CALCUTTA

_Printed in the United States of America_

_Press of Geo. H. Ellis Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A._

PREFACE

The title of this book calls for some explanation. What is of value

in it all belongs to, or derives from, Tolstoy. Why then is it not

issued simply as a translation of Tolstoy’s essays on art?

The case is this: When Tolstoy’s _What is Art?_ (his chief work

on the subject) appeared in 1898, it gave rise to extensive

controversy. Several critics maintained that his propositions were

incomprehensible or ridiculous.

It happened that I had translated the book into English in personal

consultation with Tolstoy, besides exchanging a score of letters

with him discussing every point in the book that was not perfectly

plain to me. When my translation was completed and he had read it

carefully, he wrote a preface for it, in which he appealed to “all

who are interested in my views on art only to judge of them by the

work in its present shape.” He also said, “This book of mine, _What

is Art?_ appears now for the first time in its true form. More than

one edition has already been issued in Russia, but in each case it

has been mutilated by the censor.”

I wrote a thirty-page Introduction to the book, in which I set out,

as clearly as I could, what I understood to be Tolstoy’s essential

meaning, and in reply to an attack on Tolstoy in the _Quarterly

Review_, I wrote another article--which appeared in the _Contemporary

Review_--recapitulating my understanding of the matter. Both

these essays received Tolstoy’s emphatic approval. Of the first

he wrote, “I have read your Introduction with great pleasure. You

have admirably and strongly expressed the fundamental thought of

the book,” and of the second he wrote, “Your article pleased me

exceedingly, so clearly and strongly is the fundamental thought

expressed.”

It therefore happens that, though I had contributed no original ideas

and had merely restated Tolstoy’s views, my articles serve as a

decisive reply to those who maintained that Tolstoy meant something

he did not mean.

As evidence of his intention, therefore, these essays are worth

reproducing. Had I let the book be published simply as a translation

of Tolstoy, while including in it so much matter of my own, I should

have been reproached for encumbering the translation with matter not

written by Tolstoy. The objections to that course seem stronger than

those to the course I have adopted; and no third way of dealing with

the matter suggested itself to me.

The book is intended less for those who specialise in some particular

sphere or art and are satisfied with the views held by their

coterie, than for readers interested in the relation of art to life

in general, and who wish to understand why art is of importance to

mankind.

The illustrations consist chiefly of copies of Russian pictures

mentioned by Tolstoy and which, since the Revolution, are not

readily procurable. It has not in all cases been possible to procure

first-rate reproductions but, such as they are, they show what

Tolstoy was talking about and, as he was directing attention to the

feelings they convey rather than to their technique, the quality of

the reproduction is not of primary importance.

It is inconvenient that the name of a great writer should be spelt

in more than one way; so I take this opportunity to mention that not

only did Tolstoy write his name with a y, as did his wife and his

literary executors, but that this is in accord with the plan laid

down by the British Academy, in its “Scheme for the Transliteration

into English of words and names belonging to Russian and other

Slavonic languages.” On the Committee that dealt with this matter

were Sir Paul Vinogradoff, Dr. Hagberg Wright, Dr. Seton Watson,

Mr. Nevill Forbes, Mr. Minns, and other eminent authorities. The

agreement of Tolstoy’s own practice with the conclusions arrived at

by such a Committee should suffice to set this vexed question finally

at rest. It is indeed seldom wise to attempt to improve on a great

modern writer’s way of spelling his own name.

This volume presents, for the first time in English, a complete

collection of Tolstoy’s essays on art, and contains some that had not

previously been translated.

_What is Art?_, which has appeared before, gives, I think, the

most lucid statement of the nature of artistic activity and of its

relation to the rest of life, that has ever been penned. The rest

of the essays are chiefly valuable for the light they throw on the

process by which Tolstoy--himself a great artist both in fiction

and in the drama--arrived at the solution of this problem, which

had occupied his mind from his youth upwards, but which he did not

succeed in solving to his satisfaction until he had reached the age

of three score years and ten.

AYLMER MAUDE.

Great Baddow

Chelmsford

England

26th September, 1924

CONTENTS

PART PAGE

I A SURVEY OF TOLSTOY’S ESSAYS ON ART (1924) 1

II SCHOOLBOYS AND ART (1861) 21

III THE LAST SUPPER (1885) 29

IV ON TRUTH IN ART (1887) 33

V “WHAT IS TRUTH?” (1890) 36

VI INTRODUCTION TO AMIEL’S JOURNAL (1893) 38

VII INTRODUCTION TO S. T. SEMËNOV’S PEASANT STORIES (1894) 43

VIII INTRODUCTION TO THE WORKS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT (1894) 46

IX FROM A LETTER TO PETER VERIGIN, THE DOUKHOBOR LEADER (1895) 72

X ON ART (_c._ 1895–7) 75

XI AN INTRODUCTION TO “WHAT IS ART?” (1899) 91

XII TOLSTOY’S PREFACE TO “WHAT IS ART?” (1898) 117

XIII WHAT IS ART? (1898) 121

APPENDICES 334

XIV TOLSTOY’S VIEW OF ART (1900 & 1924) 358

XV PREFACE TO POLENZ’S NOVEL _Der Büttnerbauer_ (1902) 378

XVI AN AFTERWORD, BY TOLSTOY, TO CHÉKHOV’S STORY,

_Darling_ (1905) 388

XVII SHAKESPEARE AND THE DRAMA (1906) 393

XVIII A TALK ON THE DRAMA (_c._ 1907) 464

XIX TWO KINDS OF MENTAL ACTIVITY (1908) 466

XX PREFACE TO N. ORLOV’S ALBUM OF _Russian Peasants_ (1909) 468

APPENDIX: _Darling_ BY ANTÓN CHÉKHOV 474

INDEX 491

ERRATA

P. 271. _For_ English Academy _read_ Royal Academy

P. 274. Illustration “Charity.” _For_ British Academy _read_ Royal

Academy

P. 465. Delete date at end.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

L. N. Tolstoy and A. P. Chékhov _Frontispiece_

_At Gaspra, in the Crimea, during Tolstoy’s

illness in 1902_

PAGE

“The Last Supper” 30

_After a painting by N. N. Gay, 1863_

“What is Truth?” 36

_After a painting by N. N. Gay, 1890_

“The Day of Judgment” 270

_A painting by V. M. Vasnetsov in Kiev Cathedral_

A Sketch illustrating Turgenev’s story, “The Quail” 272

_By V. M. Vasnetsov_

“Charity” 274

_By Walter Langley, British Academy, 1897_

“A Triumphal Procession” 288

_A drawing by I. N. Kramskoy_

“Der Salontiroler” 290

_By Franz Defregger_

“The Angels at the Tomb of Christ” 298

_By E. Manet_

“The Return from Work” 470

_By N. Orlov_

“The Monopoly” 472

_By N. Orlov_

TOLSTOY ON ART

TOLSTOY ON ART

PART I

A SURVEY OF TOLSTOY’S ESSAY ON ART

Tolstoy’s little volume _What is Art?_ being out of print in

England at present, it occurs to me that it may be well, instead

of republishing it separately, to do what has not before been done

and bring together into a single volume all Tolstoy’s writings on

art, especially as some of these which certainly deserve attention,

are not included in any of the editions of his works that have been

published in England or in America.

Tolstoy’s views on art are often referred to, but seldom correctly

presented. In the leading British literary organ, the _Times Literary

Supplement_, of 28th April 1921, for instance, two reviewers, dealing

with different works, referred to _What is Art?_ and both of them

attributed to Tolstoy views he had never either expressed or held. A

letter in reply appeared a fortnight later in the same paper, saying:

“Allow me to point out to the reviewer of Mr. Joad’s

_Common-Sense Ethics_ that Tolstoy never ‘came to the

conclusion that the word beauty means nothing and is useless.’

On the contrary, _What is Art?_ furnishes evidence--were

evidence needed--that Tolstoy knew the meaning of the word and

found it useful. For instance, he says: ‘I fear it will be

urged against me that having denied that _the conception of

beauty can supply a standard_ for works of art, I contradict

myself by acknowledging ornaments to be works of art. The

reproach is unjust, for the subject-matter of all kinds

of ornamentation consists not in the beauty, but in the

_feeling_ (of admiration of and delight in the combination

of lines and colours) which the artist has experienced and

with which he infects the spectator. Art remains what it was

and what it must be: nothing but the infection by one man of

another, or of others, with the _feelings_ experienced by the

infector. Among these feelings is the feeling of delight at

what pleases the sight’....

“Here and elsewhere in the same book he understands and

approves of beauty, and he uses the word, as in a passage in

which he denounces exclusive art produced for a select circle

as having ‘lost its beauty,’ but he is careful _not to base

his definition of art_ on the use of the word beauty, because

that would merely substitute one problem for another, since

there is as much vagueness in the use of the word ‘beauty’ as

in that of the word ‘art.’ ‘There is no objective definition

of beauty.’ Tolstoy required a clear workable definition, and

found one which meets the case.

“The reviewer of Mr. Hind’s _Art and I_ says: ‘Tolstoy

held that a Russian peasant, just because he was a Russian

peasant, was a born judge of art.’ This is again a flagrant

misrepresentation. What Tolstoy says is that the highest

art has been understood by simple _unperverted peasant

labourers_; there is no special claim made on behalf of

Russians. He instances the poems of Homer, admitted to be

very great art yet eagerly listened to by ‘men of those times

who were even less educated than our labourers.’ Tolstoy’s

argument is, that a perverted education may sterilize man’s

capacity to enjoy art, but that an unperverted man naturally

possesses ‘that simple feeling familiar to the plainest man

and even to a child, that sense of infection with another’s

feeling--compelling us to joy in another’s gladness, to sorrow

at another’s grief, and to mingle souls with another--which is

the very essence of art.’”

It would be easy to multiply instances both of the attention paid to

Tolstoy’s views and of the misrepresentation of them that is still

common, but the above will suffice for the present purpose.

Something happened at the time of the first appearance of _What

is Art?_ which hindered the due understanding of it. Among his

many reformist activities, Tolstoy wished to see the business of

publishing set on a new basis, and he assumed that it would be easy

to improve on the methods employed by the best existing publishers.

Desiring no profit from his works, he was inclined to encourage the

publishing experiments of people who professed agreement with his

social and religious views; and it happened that _What is Art?_ was

completed just at the time when a small and impecunious group calling

itself The Brotherhood Publishing Co. had started business in London,

to propagate Tolstoyan views. At his wish and at that of his friend

Tchertkoff this Brotherhood Publishing Co. was entrusted with the

first publication of the version of _What is Art?_ which I had made

from Tolstoy’s manuscript chapter by chapter in consultation with him

as he wrote. It thus happened that the manager of the Brotherhood

Publishing Co. received the work before anyone in France and, without

asking permission, supplied to a Paris periodical the chapters in

which French writers and painters of the day were drastically dealt

with. The publication of this detached portion of the book apart from

the chapters disclosing his general argument was much regretted by

Tolstoy. It had the appearance of a wilful and unprovoked attack on a

number of distinguished individuals and evoked great indignation; so

that when, shortly afterwards, the book itself appeared in France, it

was at once met by a storm of invective and denunciation.

Now in those days French criticism led the literary world of Europe

and America, especially in regard to Russian literature, and in face

of this storm only certain of the most independent English critics

ventured to trust their own judgment and to testify to the value and

importance of Tolstoy’s work.

During the quarter of a century that has passed since then his views

have so far penetrated the public mind that some of them are already

becoming commonplaces, but there are many indications that his

message is still far from being completely understood.

It may be of interest to see how Tolstoy’s opinions on art grew and

developed. At the age of thirty, in February, 1858, he joined the

Moscow Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, and delivered a

lecture on “The Supremacy of the Artistic Element in Literature.”

It was never published, and has now been lost. From the record that

remains, it would seem that he argued that art should treat of what

is always beautiful and of what is as unalterable as the fundamental

laws of the soul, and that he condemned the utilization of art for

the indictment of particular social evils in one’s own age and

country. Many literary men in Russia were then much concerned about

the emancipation of the serfs, and Tolstoy seems to have suggested

that they were making art a tool, and failing to employ it in the

loftiest way. He had evidently far to travel before reaching his

ultimate conclusions.

In the winter of 1861, when absorbed in the school he had started

for peasant children at Yásnaya Polyána, he went for a walk late one

evening with some lads of ten or twelve years of age. Their talk

turned on singing, drawing, and art in general. Tolstoy’s account

of this walk will be found in the next chapter. He says: “We began

to speak of the fact that not everything exists for use, but that

there is also beauty, and that art is beauty, and we understood one

another, and Fedka quite understood what singing is for. It feels

strange to repeat what we said then, but it seems to me that we said

all that can be said about utility, and plastic and moral beauty.”

In another article of that period he speaks of his amazement at

finding that these young peasant boys, when relieved of the technical

and mechanical difficulties of writing by having it done for them,

could compose stories showing high artistic feeling.

After many experiments he found that the most efficacious way of

stimulating these boys was to suggest to them interesting themes:

for instance, that they should write short stories to illustrate

popular proverbs. When they became interested in framing these

stories, it was not in the first instance they who had to do the

actual writing, but Tolstoy who wrote at their dictation. In this

way their eagerness and their creative faculty were not checked,

and it was possible quickly to point out to them wherein the real

difficulties of authorship lie. The real difficulty, to anyone

possessed of imagination and an active mind, is to select from all

the thoughts that suggest themselves those which are really most

essential to the story, to avoid repetition, and to maintain a due

proportion between the various parts. As soon as the boys found that

they really could compose stories which interested other people (and

a talented child is able to do this almost from the first if he is

judiciously advised and his exuberances checked) they naturally

became intensely eager to master the mechanical difficulties,

especially as Tolstoy was careful not to annoy them by injudicious

remarks about the tidiness of their copybooks, the quality of their

penmanship, or mere grammatical errors. A mastery of these things

can best be acquired through the boy’s desire to avoid absurdity and

to be intelligible. Tolstoy found that it merely annoys boys to be

told that a certain mistake infringes a rule of grammar. They care

nothing about grammar--they detest it. But if you put the thing

another way round, and point out to a child that what he has said is

unintelligible, or is open to misconstruction, or is not the best way

of saying the thing, he understands the common sense of that, and

learns his grammar or orthography in order to reach the result he

desires.

Similarly with all the sciences. Things that the schoolbooks and the

pedagogues often begin with, dry classifications and unknown words,

have the effect of repelling a boy and making him withdraw into

his shell as a tortoise does at the approach of danger. The proper

way, Tolstoy says, is to begin with things the child can verify

by his own observation, and in which he can be expected to take an

intelligent interest. When he already possesses an accumulation of

facts which to him are real and interesting, he may be glad enough to

accept classification and terminology, to enable him to sort out his

facts and deal with them more easily.

With music also this is true. Tolstoy achieved remarkable success by

avoiding the usual pedantry and compulsion, not obliging any boy to

work at it who did not like it, and helping the pupils to get quickly

at the real art of the thing in its simplest forms.

Convinced of the artistic capacity of these lads Tolstoy declared:

“I think the need to enjoy art and to serve art is inherent

in every human being whatever race or class he may belong to,

and that this need has its rights and should be satisfied.

Taking that position as an axiom, I say that, if the enjoyment

and production of art by every one presents inconveniences

and inconsistencies, the reason lies in the character and

direction art has taken: about which we must be on our guard

lest we foist anything false on the rising generation and lest

we prevent it from producing something new both in form and

matter.”

He was much troubled by the lack of good books for the people, and

wrote: “Let us print good books for the people.... How simple and

easy it seems, like all great thoughts! There is only one obstacle,

namely, that there exist no good books for the people either here or

in Europe. To print such books they must first be produced, and none

of our philanthropists think of undertaking _that_ line of work.”

This was in 1862. Twenty years later Tolstoy set himself to the

task he saw to be so necessary, and wrote that delightful series of

short and simple stories for the people, which are collected in the

volume of _Twenty-Three Tales_.[1] He also published a short play

called _The First Distiller_, adapted for performance at any country

fair or by any workers’ group, and among his posthumous plays there

is another of similar character, _The Cause of It All_. They are

both included in the volume of his _Plays_ issued in _The World’s

Classics_ series.

It is of course harder to produce work which shall really convey

a feeling to a wide audience than it is for a writer to restrict

himself to a circle who have undergone the same training, culture,

and social experience, as himself. To reach the wide mass of humanity

the artist, in addition to real sincerity, must have the qualities of

brevity and simplicity, as one sees them exemplified in the Gospel

parables, the Old Testament stories, popular folk tales, the old

ballads, and in a lesser degree in such modern works as Dickens’ _The

Christmas Carol_. But if the achievement be difficult, its social

importance is immensely great, and nothing in modern literature in

this direction has been more successful than Tolstoy’s stories in

_Twenty-Three Tales_. They have made their way into all languages and

have been welcomed everywhere by young and old, learned and simple

alike.

Curiously enough, the Oxford University Press edition of Tolstoy’s

works, the aim of which is to give English-speaking readers a

more readable, reliable, authoritative, and complete, rendering

of Tolstoy’s works than had previously been produced, originated

from Tolstoy’s efforts to provide good literature for the Russian

people. When the late W. T. Stead visited him at Yásnaya Polyána

they discussed the possibility of providing popular editions of the

best literature at a cheap price. Tolstoy spoke of what was being

done in that direction under his auspices in Moscow. And Stead after

his return to England issued a series of penny booklets containing

summaries of the best books. This plan aimed too high, and was not

permanently successful; but Grant Richards, who was one of Stead’s

assistants at the time, saw the possibilities in the idea and, after

starting his own business, brought out the _World’s Classics_ series,

well-printed and well-bound at a very moderate price. One of the

volumes he issued was _Essays and Letters_ by Tolstoy. The book met

with Tolstoy’s cordial approval, and of the rendering he wrote me:

“Your translations are very good because, besides having excellent

command of both languages, you also love the thoughts you transmit;

this gives me great pleasure.” Henry Frowde, who was the London

representative of the Oxford University Press, took over the series

when Grant Richards failed, and continued it. _Twenty-Three Tales_

was the next Tolstoy volume that was added, and others followed. What

distinguishes the _World Classics_ among other series of inexpensive

books is the care devoted to the editing and to the quality of the

versions produced. In this respect it claims to be far ahead of any

other edition of Tolstoy’s works.

Tolstoy’s marriage and the production of _War and Peace_,[2] _Anna

Karénina_[2] and the _First Russian Reading Books_ occupied him for

twenty years, during which he wrote little about the philosophy of

art, though references to art in his novels and stories indicate that

its influence on life always occupied his mind. He had previously in

_Lucern_ (1857) described an itinerant Swiss musician and expressed

indignation that the wealthy tourists who enjoyed that musician’s

art failed to contribute to his needs. A year later, in _Albert_,

he described a drunken but talented violinist he met in Petersburg.

In actual life he took Rudolph (the prototype of Albert) to Yásnaya

Polyána, and there studied music with him.

In _War and Peace_[2] there is a striking passage dealing with the

effect of Natasha’s singing on Nicholas, when he returns home in

despair after heavy losses at cards (ch. 15, Book IV, pp. 434–5).

Later, in 1879, in his very interesting _Confession_,[2] in the

course of a scathing denunciation of the life of the social circles

to which he belonged he says:

“During that time I began to write from vanity, covetousness,

and pride. In my writings I did the same as in my life. To

get fame and money, for the sake of which I wrote, it was

necessary to hide the good and to display the evil. And I did

so. How often in my writings I contrived to hide under the

guise of indifference, or even of banter, those strivings

towards goodness which gave meaning to my life! And I

succeeded in this and was praised.

“At twenty-six years of age I returned to Petersburg after the

war and met the writers. They received me as one of themselves

and flattered me. And before I had time to look round I had

adopted the views on life of the set of authors I had come

among, and these views completely obliterated all my former

strivings to improve. Those views furnished a theory which

justified the dissoluteness of my life.

“The view of life of these people, my comrades in authorship,

consisted in this: that life in general goes on developing,

and in this development we--men of thought--have the chief

part; and among men of thought it is we--artists and

poets[3]--who have the greatest influence. Our vocation is to

teach mankind. And lest the simple question should suggest

itself: what do I know and what can I teach? it was explained

in this theory that this need not be known, and that the

artist and poet teach unconsciously. I was considered an

admirable artist and poet, and therefore it was very natural

for me to adopt this theory. I, artist and poet, wrote and

taught, without myself knowing what. For this I was paid

money; I had excellent food, lodging, women, and society, and

I had fame; which showed that what I taught was very good.

“This faith in the meaning of poetry and in the development

of life was a religion, and I was one of its priests. To be

its priest was very pleasant and profitable. And I lived a

considerable time in this faith without doubting its validity.

But in the second, and especially in the third year of this

life, I began to doubt the infallibility of this religion

and to examine it. My first cause of doubt was that I began

to notice that the priests of this religion were not all in

accord among themselves. Some said: we are the best and most

useful teachers; we teach what is needed but the others teach

wrongly. Others said: No! we are the real teachers and _you_

teach wrongly. And they disputed, quarrelled, abused, cheated,

and tricked one another. There were also many among us who did

not care who was right and who was wrong, but were simply bent

on attaining their covetous aims by means of this activity of

ours. All this obliged me to doubt the validity of our creed.

“Moreover, having begun to doubt the truth of the authors’

creed itself, I also began to observe its priests more

attentively, and I became convinced that almost all the

priests of that religion, the writers, were immoral, and for

the most part men of bad worthless character, much inferior

to those whom I had met in my former dissipated and military

life; but they were self-confident and self-satisfied as

only those can be who are quite holy or who do not know what

holiness is. These people revolted me, and I realized that

that faith was a fraud.

“But strange to say, though I understood this fraud and

renounced it, yet I did not renounce the rank these people

gave me: the rank of artist, poet and teacher. I naïvely

imagined that I was a poet and artist and could teach

everybody without myself knowing what I was teaching, and I

acted accordingly.

“From my intimacy with these men I acquired a new vice:

abnormally developed pride, and an insane assurance that it

was my vocation to teach men, without knowing what.

“To remember that time and my own state of mind and that of

those men (though there are thousands like them to-day) is sad

and terrible and ludicrous, and arouses exactly the feeling

one experiences in a lunatic asylum.

“We were all then convinced that it was necessary for us to

speak, write, and print, as quickly as possible, and that it

was all wanted for the good of humanity. And thousands of

us, contradicting and abusing one another, all printed and

wrote--teaching others. And without remarking that we knew

nothing, and that to the simplest of life’s questions: What

is good and what is evil? we did not know how to reply, we

all, not listening to one another, talked at the same time,

sometimes backing and praising one another in order to be

backed and praised in turn, sometimes getting angry with one

another--just as in a lunatic asylum.

“Thousands of workmen laboured to the extreme limit of their

strength day and night, setting the type and printing millions

of words which the post carried all over Russia, and we still

went on teaching, and could in no way find time to teach

enough, and were always angry that sufficient attention was

not paid us.

“It was terribly strange, but it is now quite comprehensible.

Our real innermost concern was to get as much money and

praise as possible. To gain that end we could do nothing

except write books and papers. So we did that. But in order

to do such useless work and to feel assured that we were

very important people we required a theory justifying our

activity. And so among us this theory was devised: ‘All that

exists is reasonable. All that exists develops. And it all

develops by means of culture. And culture is measured by the

circulation of books and newspapers. And we are paid money

and are respected because we write books and newspapers, and

therefore we are the most useful and the best of men.’ This

theory would have been all very well if we had been unanimous,

but as every thought expressed by one of us was met by a

diametrically opposed thought expressed by another, we ought

to have been driven to reflection. But we ignored this; people

paid us money, and those on our side praised us; so each of us

considered himself justified.

“It is now clear to me that this was just as in a lunatic

asylum; but then I only dimly suspected this, and, like all

lunatics, simply called all men lunatics except myself.”

And further on he says:

“Art, poetry?... Under the influence of success and the praise

of men I had long assured myself that this was a thing one

could do though death was drawing near--death which destroys

all things, including my work and its remembrance; but soon

I saw that that too was a fraud. It was plain to me that art

was an adornment of life, an allurement to life. But life had

lost its attraction for me; so how could I attract others?

As long as I was not living my own life but was borne on the

waves of some other life--as long as I believed that life had

a meaning, though one I could not express--the reflection of

life in poetry and art of all kinds afforded me pleasure: it

was pleasant to look at life in the mirror of art. But when

I began to seek the meaning of life, and felt the necessity

of living my own life, that mirror became for me unnecessary,

superfluous, ridiculous, or painful. I could no longer soothe

myself with what I now saw in the mirror, namely, that my

position was stupid and desperate. It was all very well to

enjoy the sight when in the depth of my soul I believed that

my life had a meaning. Then the play of lights--comic, tragic,

touching, beautiful, and terrible--in life amused me. But when

I knew life to be meaningless and terrible, the play in the

mirror could no longer amuse me.”

But it is plain that in his _Confession_ Tolstoy is not primarily

concerned with the philosophy of art. He introduces it only as part

of his scathing indictment of the life of the well-to-do classes.

Similarly in _What Then Must We Do?_ (1884) his terrific indictment

of modern civilisation includes frequent reference to art and

science, but there is no separate discussion of art, and his main

point is that, if art is as necessary and beneficial to man as

is generally supposed, a civilization is morally indefensible

that practically excludes the mass of the people from its

enjoyment--including those who spend their whole lives in printing

books, building theatres, libraries, and picture galleries, making

paints and canvas for artists, or providing food, clothing, shelter,

fuel and conveyance, for all who devote themselves to art. If the

labourer produces material food that the artist consents to consume,

the artist should in common fairness produce mental and spiritual

food adapted for the labourer’s consumption. But we, says Tolstoy,

consume what the labourer produces for us and then write books,

sonnets, and sonatas, not for him but for one another, dishonestly

leaving his mental needs unsatisfied. That indictment, powerful as it

is, is a thing apart from Tolstoy’s elucidation of the philosophy of

art, and finds its place better in _What Then Must We Do?_ (which is

due to appear shortly in the _World’s Classics_ series) than in this

volume.

In 1889 appeared _The Kreutzer Sonata_,[4] containing some striking

references to music.

The opinions there expressed are put into the mouth of Pózdnyshev,

a man mentally unbalanced, who has killed his wife without any

convincing proof that his jealousy was well-grounded. Tolstoy makes

Pózdnyshev’s abnormality quite clear. He is described as terribly

nervous and excitable, “with unnaturally glittering eyes which kept

rapidly moving from one object to another.” Pózdnyshev says that he

was “on the very point of suicide”; remarks that “you can drive me to

madness. I cannot answer for myself.” We are told of “the mad animal

jealousy in him.” And he says, “I could not have said what it was I

wanted. It was downright madness!”

His whole way of expressing himself is extreme, and granting that

Tolstoy uses him to express in exaggerated form views he himself

arrived at while writing the book, we have no right to add anything

to such emphatic utterances.

What then does this Pózdnyshev say? He says:

“One of the most distressing conditions of life for a

jealous man (and every one is jealous in our world) are

certain society conventions which allow a man and woman the

greatest and most dangerous proximity. You would become a

laughing-stock to others if you tried to prevent such nearness

at balls, or the nearness of doctors to their women-patients,

or of people occupied with art, sculpture, or especially

music. A couple are occupied with the noblest of arts,

music; this demands a certain nearness, and there is nothing

reprehensible in that, and only a stupid jealous husband can

see anything undesirable in it. Yet everybody knows that it is

by means of those very pursuits, especially of music, that the

greater part of the adulteries in our society occur....”

In another passage he continues his narration:

“The dinner was, as dinners are, dull and pretentious. The

music began pretty early. Oh, how I remember every detail

of that evening! I remember how he brought in his violin,

unlocked the case, took off a cover a lady had embroidered

for him, drew out the violin, and began tuning it. I remember

how my wife sat down with pretended unconcern, under which I

saw that she was trying to conceal great timidity--chiefly

as to her own ability--sat down at the piano, and then the

usual a on the piano began, the pizzicato of the violin,

and the arrangement of the music. Then I remember how they

glanced at one another, turned to look at the audience who

were seating themselves, said something to one another and

began. He took the first chords. His face grew serious, stern,

and sympathetic, and listening to the sounds he produced, he

touched the strings with careful fingers. The piano answered

him. The music began....

“They played Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata. Do you know the

first presto? You do? Ugh! Ugh! It is a terrible thing, that

sonata. And especially that part. And in general music is a

dreadful thing! What is it? I don’t understand. What is music?

What does it do? And why does it do what it does? They say

music exalts the soul. Nonsense, it is not true! It has an

effect, an awful effect--I am speaking of myself--but not of

an exalting kind. _It has neither an exalting nor a debasing

effect, but it produces agitation._ How can I put it? Music

makes me forget myself, my real position; it transports me

to some other position, not my own. Under the influence of

music it seems to me that I feel what I do not really feel,

that I understand what I do not understand, that I can do what

I cannot do. I explain it by the fact that music acts like

yawning, like laughter: I am not sleepy, but I yawn when I see

some one yawning; there is nothing for me to laugh at, but I

laugh when I hear people laughing.

“Music carries me immediately and directly into the mental

condition in which the man was who composed it. My soul merges

with his and together with him I pass from one condition into

another; but why this happens, I don’t know. You see, he who

wrote, let us say, the Kreutzer Sonata--Beethoven--knew of

course why he was in that condition; that condition caused

him to do certain actions, and therefore that condition had a

meaning for him, but for me--none at all. That is why music

only agitates and doesn’t lead to a conclusion. Well, when

a military march is played, the soldiers step to the music

and the music has achieved its object. A dance is played, I

dance, and the music has achieved its object. Mass has been

sung, I receive Communion, and that music too has reached a

conclusion. Otherwise it is only agitating, and what ought

to be done in that agitation is lacking. That is why music

sometimes acts so dreadfully, so terribly. In China, music is

a State affair. And that is as it should be. How can one allow

anyone who pleases to hypnotize another, or many others, and

do what he likes with them. And especially that this hypnotist

should be the first immoral man who turns up?

“It is a terrible instrument in the hands of any chance user!

Take that Kreutzer Sonata, for instance, how can that first

presto be played in a drawing-room among ladies in low-necked

dresses? To hear that played, to clap a little, and then to

eat ices and talk of the latest scandal? Such things should

only be played on certain important significant occasions,

and then only when certain actions answering to such music are

wanted; play it then and do what the music has moved you to.

Otherwise an awakening of energy and feeling unsuited both to

the time and the place, to which no outlet is given, cannot

but act harmfully. At any rate on me that piece had an awful

effect; it was as if quite new feelings, new possibilities, of

which I had till then been unaware, had been revealed to me.

‘That’s how it is: not at all as I used to think and live, but

that way,’ something seemed to say within me. What this new

thing was that had been revealed to me, I could not explain

to myself, but the consciousness of this new condition was

very joyous. All those same people, including my wife and him,

appeared in a new light.

“After that allegro they played the beautiful, but common and

unoriginal, andante with trite variations, and the very weak

finale. Then, at the request of the visitors, they played

Ernst’s Elegy and a few small pieces. They were all good,

but they did not produce on me one-hundredth part of the

impression the first piece had. The effect of the first piece

formed the background for them all.

“I felt lighthearted and cheerful the whole evening. I had

never seen my wife as she was that evening. Those shining

eyes, that severe, significant expression while she played,

and her melting languor and feeble, pathetic, and blissful

smile after they had finished. I saw all that, but did not

attribute any meaning to it except that she was feeling what

I felt, and that to her as to me new feelings, never before

experienced, were revealed or, as it were, recalled. The

evening ended satisfactorily and the visitors departed.”

Subsequently Pózdnyshev says:

“Only then did I remember their faces that evening when, after

the Kreutzer Sonata, they played some impassioned little

piece, I don’t remember by whom impassioned to the point of

obscenity.”

These allusions of Pózdnyshev to music have frequently been

misrepresented, owing no doubt to the title of the story. But

anyone who reads it carefully will see that he does not attribute

any dissolute influence to the _Kreutzer Sonata_. He expressly says

that it was some little piece by a composer whose name he does not

remember which was “sensual to the point of obscenity.” Of the

_Kreutzer Sonata_, and of music generally, what he says is that it

can have a “terrible” influence, because it lifts a man out of his

ordinary condition and arouses emotions which upset his balance and

expose him to various influences, which, amid certain surroundings,

may be bad.

It is an instance of the thoughtlessness with which works of fiction

are often read, that these utterances attributed to Pózdnyshev have

been taken as an indication that Tolstoy himself regarded Beethoven’s

_Kreutzer Sonata_ as an immoral work! One should compare Pózdnyshev’s

utterances with what Tolstoy had said in _War and Peace_, when

Nicholas Rostov felt his whole mood altered by his sister’s singing,

and ceased to despair or for a time even to feel his losses. Music

in both cases lifted people out of their customary or accidental

mood, and released energies which might flow in different directions

according to circumstances.

“Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that

was best in Rostov’s soul! And this something was apart from

everything else in the world. What were losses and Dólokhov

and words of honour?... All nonsense! One might kill and rob

and yet be happy!”

To see more clearly what was Tolstoy’s considered opinions about

music, one must turn to _What is Art?_ p. 287:

“Sometimes people who are together, if not hostile to one

another, are at least estranged in mood and feeling, till

perhaps a story, a performance, a picture ... but oftenest of

all music, unites them all as by an electric flash, and in

place of their former isolation and even enmity, they are all

conscious of union and mutual love. Each is glad that another

feels what he feels; glad of the communion established not

only between him and all present, but also with all now living

who will yet share the same impression; and more than that, he

feels the mysterious gladness of a communion which, reaching

beyond the grave, unites us with all men of the past who have

been moved by the same feelings and with all men of the future

who will yet be touched by them.”

That passage effectually disposes of the suggestion that Tolstoy

regarded the normal effects of music as harmful.

Tolstoy felt that all art, by its power to sway man’s feelings,

contains much that is dangerous and terrible as well as much that is

necessary and ennobling, but one cannot read _What is Art?_ without

recognizing how strongly he felt the beneficial effect music may have.

Besides these references in his novels and stories before he had

fully cleared the matter up in his own mind and had expressed it in

_What is Art?_ Tolstoy dealt with various aspects of the matter,

more particularly from the ethical side, in a series of articles,

most of which aimed at drawing attention to stories or pictures of

which he specially approved. Among the earliest of these were a note

to accompany a reproduction of his friend Gay’s picture, _The Last

Supper_,--a very simple account of the incident depicted, and an

article _On Truth in Art_, which served as preface to a book intended

for children; these were followed by an important and discriminating

preface to Guy de Maupassant’s works which greatly interested

Tolstoy, and by an appreciative preface to Semënov’s Peasant Stories.

After these came an essay _On Art_, in which Tolstoy attempted

to deal with the general philosophy of the matter, but he was

dissatisfied with this attempt and withheld it from publication till

the matter had completely cleared itself up in his mind, and he had

expressed it in _What is Art?_ in a way that seemed to him adequate.

When _What is Art?_ appeared, Bernard Shaw wrote: “This book is a

most effective booby trap. It is written with so utter a contempt for

the objections which the routine critic is sure to allege against

it that many a dilettantist reviewer has already accepted it as a

butt set up by Providence.... Whoever is really conversant with art

recognizes in it the voice of the master.” And Mr. A. B. Walkley

said: “This calmly and cogently reasoned effort to put art on a new

basis is a literary event of the first importance.” Now the “booby

trap” of which Shaw speaks can be tried in this way. Induce some

friend--preferably one interested in art, or who has preconceived

opinions on the subject,--to read Tolstoy’s book, and if you find

that on reading it he concentrates on the dross he can find in it

and devotes himself to points and examples he can disagree with,

while remaining blind to the gold it contains, you have caught your

booby! For there is much gold to be found in it, and the gold is more

valuable than the dross.

Before that (in 1893) he had published a preface to a translation of

extracts from Amiel’s _Journal_. Later he wrote prefaces to a Russian

translation of W. von Polenz’s German novel, _Der Büttnerbauer_ (in

1902), and to Chékhov’s story, _Darling_ (in 1905), and notes to

reproductions of _Orlóv’s Pictures of Peasant Life_ (in 1909).

Besides these, in his last years, he wrote his highly controversial

article _On Shakespeare_, in 1906, of which one may say that, though

he read English with facility, Tolstoy was not so at home in our

language that he could be “enchanted by the mere word music that

makes Shakespeare so irresistible in English,” to borrow a phrase

from Bernard Shaw. But Tolstoy’s experience as a dramatist caused

him to acknowledge that “the movement of feeling, its increase,

alteration, and the combination of many contradictory feelings, are

often expressed truly and strongly in some of Shakespeare’s scenes.

And when performed by good actors this evokes, at least for a time,

sympathy with the characters presented. Shakespeare, himself an actor

and a clever man, knew how to express not by speech only but by

exclamations, gestures, and the repetition of words, the spiritual

conditions and variations of feeling that occur in the characters he

presents in his plays. So, for instance, in many places Shakespeare’s

characters, instead of uttering words, only exclaim or weep, or in

the middle of a monologue often show by a gesture the strain of their

position (as when Lear says ‘Pray you undo this button’), or in a

moment of strong emotion they repeat a question, and cause a word

that has struck them to be repeated, as is done by Othello, Macduff,

Cleopatra, and others. Similar clever methods of revealing the

movements of feeling, furnishing good actors with opportunities of

showing their powers, have often been mistaken, and are mistaken, by

many critics for the presentation of character.”

Apart from this practical mastery of stage-craft, which gives actors

and actresses such great opportunities, Tolstoy denies the claims

usually made on behalf of Shakespeare as a thinker or a faithful

presenter of characters true to life. He gives reasons, examples,

and instances, for his opinion, and if he is in error it should not

be difficult for Shakespeare-lovers to furnish as closely reasoned a

reply. All that need here be said is that, knowing what a strongly

established opinion he was challenging, he perhaps emphasised his

statement the more--for moderation was never a characteristic of his.

There is some indication that he was conscious of another side of the

case, for once, when his friend, A. P. Chékhov, came to see him when

he was ill in bed, he pressed the latter’s hand at parting and said,

“Good-bye, Anton Pávlovich. You know how fond I am of you, and how I

detest Shakespeare. Still, he did write plays better than you do.”

_A Talk on the Drama_ has been added, which is taken from I.

Tenerómo’s _Life and Talks of L. N. Tolstoy_ (St. Petersburg,

undated, but _c._ 1907). This bears many signs of authenticity,

corresponds with what one knows of Tolstoy’s views, and seems

sufficiently interesting to justify its inclusion.

In an Appendix is given a translation of Chékhov’s _Darling_, that

readers of Tolstoy’s preface to that work may see what he was writing

about.

PART II

SCHOOLBOYS AND ART

The following account of Tolstoy’s walk with boys from his

school at Yásnaya Polyána is taken from Chapter VIII, The

Schools, in Aylmer Maude’s _Life of Tolstoy_, Volume 1,

(Constable, London). It shows how Tolstoy, for the second

time, found himself faced by the question: What is Art? which

had arisen when he spoke to the Society of Lovers of Russian

Literature. This time it was put to him by a ten-year-old

peasant boy, and it then seemed to him that “we said all that

can be said about utility and plastic and moral beauty.”

The classes generally finish about eight or nine o’clock (unless

carpentering keeps the elder boys somewhat later), and the whole band

run shouting into the yard, and there, calling to one another, begin

to separate, making for different parts of the village. Occasionally

they arrange to coast down-hill to the village in a large sledge that

stands outside the gate. They tie up the shafts, throw themselves

into it, and squealing, disappear from sight in a cloud of snow,

leaving here and there on their path black patches of children

who have tumbled out. In the open air, out of school (for all its

freedom), new relations are formed between pupil and teacher: freer,

simpler and more trustful--those very relations which seem to us the

ideal which School should aim at.

Not long ago we read Gógol’s story _Viy_[5] in the highest class. The

final scenes affected them strongly, and excited their imagination.

Some of them played the witch, and kept alluding to the last

chapters....

Out of doors it was a moonless winter night, with clouds in the sky,

not cold. We stopped at the crossroads. The elder boys, in their

third year at school, stopped near me asking me to accompany them

further. The younger ones looked at us and rushed off down-hill. They

had begun to learn with a new master, and between them and me there

is not the same confidence as between the older boys and myself.

“Well, let us go to the wood” (a small wood about one hundred and

twenty yards from the house), said one of them. The most insistent

was Fédka, a boy of ten, with a tender, receptive, poetic yet daring

nature. Danger seems to form the chief condition of pleasure for him.

In summer it always frightened me to see how he, with two other boys,

would swim out into the very middle of the pond, which is nearly one

hundred and twenty yards wide, and would now and then disappear in

the hot reflection of the summer sun and swim under water; and how he

would then turn on his back, causing fountains of water to rise, and

calling with his high-pitched voice to his comrades on the bank to

see what a fine fellow he was.

He now knew there were wolves in the wood, and so he wanted to go

there. All agreed; and the four of us went to the wood. Another boy,

a lad of twelve, physically and morally strong, whom I will call

Sëmka, went on in front and kept calling and “ah-ou-ing” with his

ringing voice, to some one at a distance. Prónka, a sickly, mild, and

very gifted lad, from a poor family (sickly probably chiefly from

lack of food), walked by my side. Fédka walked between me and Sëmka,

talking all the time in a particularly gentle voice: now relating

how he had herded horses in summer, now saying there was nothing to

be afraid of, and now asking, “Suppose one should jump out?” and

insisting on my giving some reply. We did not go into the wood: that

would have been too dreadful; but even where we were, near the wood,

it was darker, the road was scarcely visible, and the lights of the

village were hidden from view. Sëmka stopped and listened: “Stop, you

fellows! What is this?” said he suddenly.

We were silent and, though we heard nothing, things seemed to grow

more gruesome.

“What shall we do if it leaps out ... and comes at us?” asked Fédka.

We began to talk about Caucasian robbers. They remembered a Caucasian

tale I had told them long ago, and I again told them of “braves,”

of Cossacks, and of Hadji Murad.[6] Sëmka went on in front,

treading boldly in his big boots, his broad back swaying regularly.

Prónka tried to walk by my side, but Fédka pushed him off the

path, and Prónka--who, probably on account of his poverty, always

submitted--only ran up alongside at the most interesting passages,

sinking in the snow up to his knees.

Everyone who knows anything of Russian peasant children knows

that they are not accustomed to, and cannot bear, any caresses,

affectionate words, kisses, hand-touchings, and so forth. I have

seen a lady in a peasant school, wishing to pet a boy, say: “Come,

I will give you a kiss, dear!” and actually kiss him; and the boy

was ashamed and offended, and could not understand why he had been

so treated. Boys of five are already above such caresses--they are

no longer babies. I was therefore particularly struck when Fédka,

walking beside me, at the most terrible part of the story suddenly

touched me lightly with his sleeve, and then clasped two of my

fingers in his hand, and kept hold of them. As soon as I stopped

speaking, Fédka demanded that I should go on, and did this in such a

beseeching and agitated voice that it was impossible not to comply

with his wish.

“Now then, don’t get in the way!” said he once angrily to Prónka,

who had run in front of us. He was so carried away as even to be

cruel; so agitated yet happy was he, holding on to my fingers, that

he could let no one dare to interrupt his pleasure.

“More! More! It is fine!” said he.

We had passed the wood and were approaching the village from the

other end.

“Let’s go on,” said all the boys when the lights became visible. “Let

us take another turn!”

We went on in silence, sinking here and there in the snow, not

hardened by much traffic. A white darkness seemed to sway before our

eyes; the clouds hung low, as though something had heaped them upon

us. There was no end to that whiteness, amid which we alone crunched

along the snow. The wind sounded through the bare tops of the aspens,

but where we were, behind the woods, it was calm.

I finished my story by telling how a “brave,” surrounded by his

enemies, sang his death-song and threw himself on his dagger. All

were silent.

“Why did he sing a song when he was surrounded?” asked Sëmka.

“Weren’t you told?--he was preparing for death!” replied Fédka,

aggrieved.

“I think he said a prayer,” added Prónka.

All agreed. Fédka suddenly stopped.

“How was it, you told us, your Aunt had her throat cut?” asked he.

(He had not yet had enough horrors.) “Tell us! Tell us!”

I again told them that terrible story of the murder of the Countess

Tolstoy,[7] and they stood silently about me watching my face.

“The fellow got caught!” said Sëmka.

“He was afraid to go away in the night, while she was lying with her

throat cut!” said Fédka; “I should have run away!” and he gathered my

two fingers yet more closely in his hand.

We stopped in the thicket beyond the threshing-floor at the very end

of the village. Sëmka picked up a dry stick from the snow and began

striking it against the frosty trunk of a lime tree. Hoar frost

fell from the branches on to our caps, and the noise of the blows

resounded in the stillness of the wood.

“Lëv Nikoláevich,” said Fédka to me (I thought he was again going

to speak about the Countess), “why does one learn singing? I often

think, why, really, does one?”

What made him jump from the terror of the murder to this question

heaven only knows; yet by the tone of his voice, the seriousness with

which he demanded an answer, and the attentive silence of the other

two, one felt that there was some vital and legitimate connection

between this question and our preceding talk. Whether the connection

lay in some response to my suggestion that crime might be explained

by lack of education (I had spoken of that), or whether he was

testing himself--transferring himself into the mind of the murderer

and remembering his own favourite occupation (he has a wonderful

voice and immense musical talent), or whether the connection lay in

the fact that he felt that now was the time for sincere conversation,

and all the problems demanding solution rose in his mind--at any rate

his question surprised none of us.

“And what is drawing for? And why write well?” said I, not knowing at

all how to explain to him what art is for.

“What is drawing for?” repeated he thoughtfully. He really was

asking, What is Art for? And I neither dared nor could explain.

“What is drawing for?” said Sëmka. “Why, you draw anything, and can

then make it from the drawing.”

“No, that is designing,” said Fédka. “But why draw figures?”

Sëmka’s matter-of-fact mind was not perplexed.

“What is a stick for, and what is a lime tree for?” said he, still

striking the tree.

“Yes, what is a lime tree for?” said I.

“To make rafters of,” replied Sëmka.

“But what is it for in summer, when not yet cut down?”

“It’s no use then.”

“No, really,” insisted Fédka; “why does a lime tree grow?”

And we began to speak of the fact that not everything exists for

use, but that there is also beauty, and that Art is beauty; and we

understood one another, and Fédka quite understood why the lime tree

grows and what singing is for.

Prónka agreed with us, but he thought rather of moral beauty:

goodness.

Sëmka understood with his big brain, but did not acknowledge beauty

apart from usefulness. He was in doubt (as often happens to men with

great reasoning power): feeling Art to be a force, but not feeling in

his soul the need of that force. He, like them, wished to get at Art

by his reason, and tried to kindle that fire in himself.

“We’ll sing _Who hath_ to-morrow. I remember my part,” said he. (He

has a correct ear, but no taste or refinement in singing.) Fédka,

however, fully understood that the lime tree is good when in leaf:

good to look at in summer; and that that is enough.

Prónka understood that it is a pity to cut it down, because it, too,

has life:

“Why, when we take the sap of a lime, it’s like taking blood.”

Sëmka, though he did not say so, evidently thought that there was

little use in a lime when it was sappy.

It feels strange to repeat what we then said, but it seems to me that

we said all that can be said about utility, and plastic and moral

beauty.

We went on to the village. Fédka still clung to my hand; now, it

seemed to me, from gratitude. We all were nearer one another that

night than we had been for a long time. Prónka walked beside us along

the broad village street.

“See, there is still a light in Masánov’s house,” said he. “As I was

going to school this morning, Gavrúka was coming from the pub, as

dru-u-nk as could be! His horse all in a lather and he beating it! I

am always sorry for such things. Really, why should it be beaten?”

“And the other day, coming from Túla, my daddy gave his horse the

reins,” said Sëmka; “and it took him into a snowdrift, and there he

slept--quite drunk.”

“And Gavrúka kept on beating his horse over the eyes, and I felt so

sorry,” repeated Prónka again. “Why should he beat it? He got down

and just flogged it.”

Sëmka suddenly stopped.

“Our folk are already asleep,” said he, looking in at the window of

his crooked, dirty hut. “Won’t you walk a little longer?”

“No.”

“Go-o-od-bye, Lëv Nikoláevich!” shouted he suddenly, and tearing

himself away from us as it were with an effort, he ran to the house,

lifted the latch and disappeared.

“So you will take each of us home? First one and then the other?”

said Fédka.

We went on. There was a light in Prónka’s hut, and we looked in at

the window. His mother, a tall and handsome but toil-worn woman, with

black eyebrows and eyes, sat at the table, peeling potatoes. In the

middle of the hut hung a cradle. Prónka’s brother, the mathematician

from our second class, was standing at the table, eating potatoes

with salt. It was a black, tiny, and dirty hut.

“What a plague you are!” shouted the mother at Prónka. “Where have

you been?”

Prónka glanced at the window with a meek, sickly smile. His mother

guessed that he had not come alone, and her face immediately assumed

a feigned expression that was unpleasant.

Only Fédka was left.

“The travelling tailors are at our house, that is why there’s a light

there,” said he in the softened voice that had come to him that

evening. “Good-bye, Lëv Nikoláevich!” added he, softly and tenderly,

and he began to knock with the ring attached to the closed door. “Let

me in!” his high-pitched voice rang out amid the winter stillness

of the village. It was long before they opened the door for him. I

looked in at the window. The hut was a large one. The father was

playing cards with a tailor, and some copper coins lay on the table.

The wife, Fédka’s stepmother, was sitting near the torch-stand,

looking eagerly at the money. The young tailor, a cunning drunkard,

was holding his cards on the table, bending them, and looking

triumphantly at his opponent. Fédka’s father, the collar of his shirt

unbuttoned, his brow wrinkled with mental exertion and vexation,

changed one card for another, and waved his horny hand in perplexity

above them.

“Let me in!”

The woman rose and went to the door.

“Good-bye!” repeated Fédka, once again. “Let us always have such

walks!”

PART III

THE LAST SUPPER

_Letter-press to accompany a Half-tone Reproduction of N. N. Gay’s

Picture, “The Last Supper.”_

John XIII, v. 1–35 inclusive.

Jesus said: “Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy

neighbor, and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your

enemies....”

At the last supper Jesus showed this by his acts.

Having washed the feet of his twelve disciples, he said: “I have

given you an example, that ye also should do as I have done to you.”

What had Jesus done, and what was the example he gave to his

disciples?

When after supper Jesus began to wash the feet of his disciples and

Simon Peter wished to oppose it, Jesus said to him: “What I do thou

knowest not now; but thou shalt understand hereafter. Ye are clean

but not all.”

Neither Simon Peter nor the other disciples then understood why he

said this. Only Judas Iscariot understood what Jesus was doing when,

kneeling before him, he washed his feet.

Having washed the feet of his betrayer, Jesus rose, put on his

garment, and having again sat down, said: “Know ye what I have done

to you? Ye call me Master, and ye say well; for so I am.”

But they, not knowing that Judas was a traitor, did not understand

what he had done and what he was teaching them.

Then, being troubled in spirit, Jesus said: “Verily, verily, I say

unto you, that one of you shall betray me.”

And again they did not understand what he was doing or what he was

saying to them. They only looked at one another seeking to discover

of whom he spoke.

Meanwhile the beloved disciple of Jesus was reclining on his bosom.

And Simon Peter, raising himself, beckoned to the beloved disciple

that he should ask the teacher of whom he spoke.

And the beloved disciple, leaning back on Jesus’ breast, asked him.

But Jesus did not give a direct reply, knowing that if he named his

enemy the disciples would be indignant and would want to punish the

traitor.

Wishing not to destroy but to save Judas, Jesus, instead of replying,

reached out his hand, took a piece of bread, and said softly: “He it

is for whom I shall dip the sop and give it him,” and when he had

given the sop to Judas he said: “What thou doest do quickly.”

The disciples, having heard this, thought that Jesus was sending

Judas into the town to buy what was needed for the feast.

But Judas understood that Jesus was saving him from the wrath of the

disciples, and immediately arose.

That is what is shown in the picture.

The beloved disciple, John, is the only one who knows who is the

traitor.

[Illustration: “THE LAST SUPPER”

_After a painting by N. N. Gay, 1863_]

He leaps up from his seat and stares at Judas. He does not

understand, does not believe that a living man can hate one who so

loves him. He is sorry for the unfortunate man and terrified for him.

Simon Peter guesses the truth from John’s look, and turns his eyes

now on John, now on Jesus, and now on the betrayer; and in his ardent

heart anger and desire to defend his beloved teacher flame up.

Judas has risen, gathered up his garment, thrown it around him, and

taken the first step, but his eyes cannot turn away from the saddened

face of the teacher. There is still time. He can still turn back and

fall at his feet confessing his sin, but the devil already possesses

his heart.

“Do not submit!” he says to him. “Do not yield to weakness, do not

subject yourself to reproaches from the proud disciples. They are

looking at you and only awaiting a chance to humiliate you. Go!”

Jesus lies leaning on his arm. He is not looking, but sees all, and

knows what is going on in Judas’ heart, and he waits and suffers on

his account. He pities the son of perdition. Jesus with his own hand

has fed his enemy, washed his feet, saved him from human punishment,

and until the end calls him to repentance and forgives him. Yet Judas

does not return to him.

And Jesus grieves for Judas, and for all who do not come to him.

Judas went out and hid himself in the darkness of the night.

Hardly had the door closed before the disciples all realized who the

betrayer was. They are agitated and indignant. Peter wants to run

after him. But Jesus raises his head and says: “Little children, yet

a little while I am with you. A new commandment I give unto you,

that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye love

one another. By this shall it be known that ye are my disciples,

if ye have love one to another.” And only then did Simon Peter and

the other ten understand what Jesus had done. Only then did they

understand that having all his life long shown them an example of

love of one’s neighbour, he has now given an example of love of one’s

enemy.

To the last moment he loved and pitied Judas, his enemy, called him

to himself and despite his unrepentance saved him from the anger of

the disciples.

PART IV

ON TRUTH IN ART

_Preface to a Miscellany, “The Flower Garden,” for Children._

“O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good

things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth

speaketh. The good man out of his good treasure bringeth

forth good things: and the evil man out of his evil treasure

bringeth forth evil things. And I say unto you, that every

idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account

thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be

justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” (Matt.

xii, 34–37.)

In this book besides stories in which true occurrences are narrated

there are also stories, traditions, proverbs, legends, fables, and

fairy tales, that have been composed and written for man’s benefit.

We have chosen such as we consider to be in accord with Christ’s

teaching, and therefore regard as good and truthful.

Many people, especially children, when reading a story, fairy-tale,

legend, or fable, ask first of all: “Is it true?” and if they see

that what is described could not have happened, they often say: “Oh,

this is mere fancy, it isn’t true.”

Those who judge so, judge amiss.

Truth will be known not by him who knows only what has been, is, and

really happens, but by him who recognizes what should be, according

to the will of God.

He does not write the truth who describes only what has happened, and

what this or that man has done, but he who shows what people do that

is right, that is, in accord with God’s will, and what people do

wrong, that is, contrary to God’s will.

Truth is a path. Christ said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

And so he will not know the truth who looks down at his feet, but he

who discerns by the sun which way to go.

All verbal compositions are good and necessary not when they describe

what has happened, but when they show what ought to be; not when they

tell what people have done, but when they set a value on what is good

and evil--when they show men the narrow path of God’s will, which

leads to life.

And in order to show that path one must not describe merely what

happens in the world. The world abides in evil and is full of

offence. If one is to describe the world as it is, one will describe

much evil and the truth will be lacking. In order that there may be

truth in what one describes, it is necessary to write not about what

is, but about what should be; to write not the truth of what is, but

of the kingdom of God which is drawing nigh unto us, but is not as

yet. That is why there are mountains of books in which we are told

what really has happened or might have happened, yet they are all

false if those who write them do not themselves know what is good

and what is evil, and do not know and do not show the one path which

leads to the kingdom of God. And there are fairy-tales, parables,

fables, legends in which marvellous things are described which never

happened, or ever could happen, and these legends, fairy-tales and

fables are true because they show wherein the will of God has always

been, and is, and will be: they show the truth of the kingdom of God.

There may be a book, and there are indeed many novels and stories,

that describe how a man lives for his passions, suffers, torments

others, endures danger and want, schemes, struggles with others,

escapes from his poverty, and at last is united with the object of

his love and becomes distinguished, rich, and happy. Such a book,

even if everything described in it really happened, and though there

were in it nothing improbable, would nevertheless be false and

untrue, because a man who lives for himself and his passions, however

beautiful his wife may be and however distinguished and rich he

becomes, cannot be happy.

And there may be a legend of how Christ and his apostles walked on

earth and went to a rich man, and the rich man would not receive him,

and they went to a poor widow, and she received him. And then he

commanded a barrel full of gold to roll to the rich man and sent a

wolf to the poor widow to eat up her last calf, and it might prove a

blessing for the widow, and be bad for the rich man.

Such a story is totally improbable, because nothing of what is

described ever happened or could happen; but it may all be true

because in it is shown what always should be--what is good and what

is evil, and what a man should strive after in order to do the will

of God.

No matter what wonders are described, or what animals may talk in

human language, what flying carpets may carry people from place to

place, the legends, parables, or fairy-tales will be true if there

is in them the truth of the kingdom of God. And if that truth is

lacking, then everything described, however well attested, will be

false, because it lacks the truth of the kingdom of God. Christ

himself spoke in parables, and his parables have remained eternally

true. He only added, “Take heed, how ye hear.”

PART V[8]

WHAT IS TRUTH?

It was in 1890 that N. N. Gay painted the well-known picture of

Tolstoy in his room at Yásnaya Polyána.

The picture which aroused most interest at Yásnaya that year,

however, was not a portrait of Tolstoy, but Gay’s “What is Truth?”

which had been exhibited in Petersburg early in the year and

prohibited. After being exhibited privately, Gay brought it to show

to Tolstoy, on whom it made a deep impression.

Already in January, when Gay had sent him a drawing of it, Tolstoy

had written to him:

“I am always thinking about you and your picture. I am longing

to hear how it is received. I am troubled over the figure of

Pilate which, with that arm, seems wrong somehow. I don’t say

it is, I only ask. If the connoisseurs say that that figure is

correct, I shall be satisfied. About the rest I know, and have

no need to ask anyone’s opinion.”

Though Tolstoy knew very well that Pilate’s arm was not well drawn,

he was immensely pleased with the treatment of the subject and the

thought and feeling expressed. Feinermann tells us:

“Leo Tolstoy, when he saw that painting, was so shaken and

agitated that for days after he could hardly speak of anything

else.

[Illustration: “WHAT IS TRUTH?”

_After a painting by N. N. Gay, 1890_]

“‘I am in raptures,’ he said. ‘That’s a master! I confess

that I myself only now understand the deep and true meaning

of that short passage which always appeared to me, as it has

to all the Bible commentators, unfinished and abrupt. Pilate

asked, “What is Truth?” and then went out to the crowd without

waiting for a reply. And everybody reads and understands it

that way. But this picture gives a different interpretation.

Pilate does not _ask_ what truth is, expecting a reply. No!

in the form of a question he contemptuously _replies_! When

Christ says that he has come into the world as a witness of

Truth, Pilate with a laugh and a contemptuous gesture throws

the words carelessly at him: “And what _is_ Truth? Truth

is a relative thing; everybody takes it his own way!” and,

evidently considering his retort decisive, he went out to

the crowd. That is the light in which the moment is seized.

It is new, it is profound, and how strongly and clearly the

picture expresses it! That fat shaven neck of the Roman

Governor, that half-turned, large, well-fed, sensual body,

that out-stretched arm with its gesture of contempt--are all

splendid--it is alive. It breathes and impresses itself on

the memory for ever. And the face.... Together with all the

dignity of that Roman figure there goes a slavish anxiety

about himself: the mean trepidation of a petty soul. He is

afraid he may be denounced at Rome.... And this smallness of

soul is wonderfully caught by Gay, and notwithstanding the

toga, and his height, and his majestic pose, Pilate appears so

petty before the wornout sufferer who has undergone during the

night arrest, judgment, and insults.... A wonderful picture!

That is the way to paint!’

“Gay, touched and deeply moved by Tolstoy’s delight, embraced

and kissed him, and said: ‘Do not praise it.... You will

praise me so that I shall become proud. I am afraid of

that.... I shan’t be able to paint!’”

PART VI

INTRODUCTION TO AMIEL’S “JOURNAL.”

About eighteen months ago I chanced for the first time to read

Amiel’s book, _Fragments d’un journal intime_. I was struck by

the importance and profundity of its contents, the beauty of its

presentation, and above all by the sincerity of this book.

While reading it I marked the passages which specially struck me. My

daughter[9] undertook to translate these passages and in this way

these extracts from _Fragments d’un journal intime_ were formed:

that is to say, they are extracts from the whole many-volumed diary

Amiel wrote day by day during thirty years, much of which remained

unprinted.

Henri Amiel was born at Geneva in 1821, and was soon left an orphan.

Having completed a course of higher education at Geneva, Amiel went

abroad and spent some years at the universities of Heidelberg and

Berlin. Returning in 1849 to his native land he, a young man of 28,

obtained a professorship at the Geneva Academy, first of Esthetics

and afterwards of Philosophy, which he held till his death.

Amiel’s whole life was passed at Geneva, where he died in 1881, in no

way distinguished from the large number of those ordinary professors

who, mechanically compiling their lectures from the latest books on

their specialities, pass them on in an equally mechanical way to

their hearers, and from the yet greater number of writers of verse

lacking in substance, who supply these wares, which though no one

needs them are still sold by tens of thousands in the periodicals

that are published.

Amiel had not the slightest success either in the academic or

literary field. When he was already approaching old age he wrote of

himself as follows:

“What have I been able to extract from the gifts bestowed upon

me, and from the special circumstances of my life of half-a-

century? What have I drawn from my soil? Is all my scribbling

collected together--my correspondence, _these thousands of

sincere pages_, my lectures, my articles, my verses, my various

memoranda--anything but a collection of dry leaves? To whom and

for what have I been of use? And will my name live for even a

day after me, and will it have any meaning for anyone? An

insignificant, empty life! _Vie nulle!_”

Two well-known French authors have written on Amiel and his _Journal_

since his death--his friend, the well-known critic, E. Scherer, and

the philosopher Caro. It is interesting to note the sympathetic but

rather patronizing tone in which both these writers refer to Amiel,

regretting that he lacked the qualities necessary for the production

of real works. Yet the real works of these two writers--the critical

works of Scherer and the philosophical works of Caro--will hardly

long outlive their authors, while the accidental, unreal work of

Amiel, his _Journal_, will always remain a living book, needed by men

and fruitfully affecting them.

For a writer is precious and necessary for us only to the extent to

which he reveals to us the inner labour of his soul--supposing, of

course, that his work is new and has not been done before. Whatever

he may write--a play, a learned work, a story, a philosophic

treatise, lyric verse, a criticism, a satire--what is precious to us

in an author’s work is only that inner labour of his soul, and not

the architectural structure in which usually, and I think always,

distorting it, he packs his thoughts and feelings.

All that Amiel poured into a ready mould: his lectures, treatises,

poems, are dead; but his _Journal_, where, without thinking of

the form, he only talked to himself, is full of life, wisdom,

instruction, consolation, and will ever remain one of those best of

all books which have been left to us accidentally by such men as

Marcus Aurelius, Pascal, and Epictetus.

Pascal says: “There are only three kinds of people: those who, having

found God, serve Him; those who, not having found Him, are engaged in

seeking Him, and those who, though they have not found Him, do not

seek Him.

“The first are sensible and happy; the last are senseless and

unhappy; the second are unhappy, but sensible.”

I think that the contrast Pascal makes between the first and the

second groups, between those who, as he says in another place, having

found God, serve Him with their whole heart, and those who, not

having found Him, seek Him with their whole heart, is not only not so

great as he thought, but does not exist at all. I think that those

who with their whole heart and with suffering (_en gémissant_, as

Pascal says) seek God, are already serving Him. They are serving Him

because by the suffering they endure in their search they are laying,

and revealing to others, the road to God, as Pascal himself did in

his _Pensées_, and as Amiel did all his life in his _Journal_.

Amiel’s whole life, as presented to us in this _Journal_, is

full of this suffering and whole-hearted search for God. And the

contemplation of this search is the more instructive because it never

ceases to be a search, never becomes settled, and never passes into

a consciousness of having attained the truth, or into a teaching.

Amiel is not saying either to himself or to others, “I now know the

truth--hear me!” On the contrary it seems to him, as is natural

to one who is sincerely seeking truth, that the more he knows the

more he needs to know, and he unceasingly does all he can to learn

more and more of truth, and is therefore constantly aware of his

ignorance. He is continually speculating on what Christianity and the

condition of a Christian should be, never for a moment pausing on the

thought that Christianity is the very thing that he is professing,

and that he is himself realizing the condition of a Christian. And

yet the whole _Journal_ is full of expressions of the most profound

Christian understanding and feeling. And these expressions act

on the reader with special force just by their unconsciousness

and sincerity. He is talking to himself, not thinking that he is

overheard, neither attempting to appear convinced of what he is not

convinced of, nor hiding his sufferings and his search.

It is as if one were present without a man’s knowledge at the most

secret, profound, impassioned inner working of his soul, usually

hidden from an outsider’s view.

And therefore while one may find many more shapely and elegant

expressions of religious feeling than Amiel’s, it is difficult to

find any more intimate or more heart-searching. Not long before his

death, knowing that his illness might any day end in strangulation,

he wrote:

“When you no longer dream that you have at your disposal tens of

years, a year, or a month, when you already reckon in tens of hours

and the coming night brings with it the menace of the unknown,

obviously one renounces art, science, politics, and is content to

talk with oneself, and that is possible up to the very end. This

inner conversation is the only thing left to him who is sentenced

to death but whose execution is delayed. He (this condemned man)

concentrates within himself. He no longer emits rays, but only talks

with his own soul. He no longer acts, but contemplates.... Like a

hare he returns to his lair, and that lair is his conscience, his

thought. As long as he can hold a pen and has a moment of solitude he

concentrates before that echo of himself, and holds converse with God.

“This is however not a moral investigation, not a repentance, not an

appeal; it is only an ‘Amen’ of submission.

“‘My child, give me thine heart.’

“Renunciation and agreement are less difficult for me than for

others, because I want nothing. I should only like not to suffer.

Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane prayed for that same thing. Let us

say with him: ‘Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done!’ and

let us wait.”

Such was he on the eve of his death. He is not less sincere and

serious throughout his _Journal_, in spite of the elegance, and (in

passages) apparent choiceness of his phrasing, which had become

a habit with him. In the course of the whole thirty years of his

_Journal_ he felt what we all so carefully forget--that we are all

sentenced to death and our execution is only deferred. And that is

why this book is so sincere, serious, and useful.

PART VII

INTRODUCTION TO S. T. SEMËNOV’S PEASANT STORIES

I long ago laid down for myself the rule of judging every artistic

production from three aspects, first from the side of its content; in

how far is that which the artist reveals from a new side important

and necessary for man; for any production is, I think, a work of

art only if it reveals a new side of life: secondly, in how far

is the form of the work good, beautiful, and in accord with its

contents: and thirdly, to what extent is the relation of the artist

to his subject sincere, that is, in how far does he believe in what

he presents to us. This last quality always seems to me the most

important in artistic work. It gives its force to a work of art, and

makes it infectious, that is, it evokes in the spectator, the hearer,

or the reader those feelings which the artist himself experiences.

And Semënov possesses that quality in the highest degree.

There is a well-known story of Flaubert’s which Turgenev has

translated, _La légende de Julien l’hospitalier_; the last episode,

intended to be the most touching in the story, is one in which

Julien lies down in the same bed with a leper and warms him with his

own body. This leper is Christ, who carries off Julien to heaven

with him. All this is told with great mastery, but I always remain

perfectly cold when I read that story. I feel that the author himself

would not have done and would not even have wished to do what his

hero does, and therefore I myself do not wish to do it and do not

experience any agitation at reading of this amazing exploit.

But Semënov describes the simplest story and it always touches

me. A village youth comes to Moscow to find a place and, helped

by a coachman from his part of the country who is living with a

rich merchant, he gets a job as the yard-porter’s assistant. This

place had previously been held by an old man. The merchant, by his

coachman’s advice, had discharged the old man and taken the lad in

his place. The lad comes in the evening to begin his service, and

standing in the yard he hears the old man complain in the porter’s

lodge that through no fault of his he has been dismissed, merely to

give place to a younger man. The lad suddenly feels pity for the old

man and is ashamed to have pushed him out. He considers the matter,

hesitates, and finally decides to give up the situation which he

needs so much and would have been so glad to take.

All this is told in such a way that every time I read it I feel that

the author would not only have wished to, but certainly would, have

acted in that way under similar circumstances; his feelings infect me

and I feel pleased, and it seems to me that I too should have done,

or have been ready to do, something good.

Sincerity is Semënov’s chief merit. But besides that, his content is

always important: important because it relates to the most important

class in Russia, the peasantry, whom Semënov knows as only a peasant

can know them who himself lives in the laborious village; and the

content of his stories is also important because, in them all, the

chief interest is not in external events or in the peculiarity of

the life, but in the way men approach or fall away from the ideal of

Christian truth, which is present clearly and firmly in the author’s

soul and supplies him with a safe standard and appraisement of the

quality and importance of human actions. The form of the stories

fully corresponds to their content: it is serious and simple,

the details are always correct, and there are no false notes.

What is particularly good is the language, often quite original

in its expressions, but always natural and strikingly strong and

picturesque, in which the characters of the story speak.

PART VIII

INTRODUCTION TO THE WORKS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT

(This article was written by Tolstoy in 1894, to serve

as preface to a Russian edition of a selection of Guy de

Maupassant’s stories.)

It was, I think, in 1881 that Turgénev while visiting me took out of

his portmanteau a small French book entitled _La Maison Tellier_, and

gave it to me.

“Read it some time,” said he in an off-hand way just as, a year

before, he had given me a number of _Russian Wealth_ that contained

an article by Gárshin, who was then only beginning to write.

Evidently on this occasion, as in Gárshin’s case, he was afraid

of influencing me one way or the other and wished to know my own

unbiassed opinion.

“It is by a young French writer,” said he. “Have a look at it. It

isn’t bad. He knows you and appreciates you highly,” he added as

if wishing to propitiate me. “As a man he reminds me of Druzhínin.

He is, like Druzhínin, an excellent son, an admirable friend, _un

homme d’un commerce sûr_,[10] and, besides that, he associates

with the working people, guides them, and helps them. Even in his

relations with women he reminds me of Druzhínin.” And Turgénev told

me something astonishing, incredible, of Maupassant’s conduct in that

respect.

That time (1881) was for me a period of most ardent inner

reconstruction of my whole outlook on life, and in this

reconstruction the activity called the fine arts, to which I had

formerly devoted all my powers, had not only lost the importance I

formerly attributed to it, but had become simply obnoxious to me on

account of the unnatural position it had hitherto occupied in my

life, as it does generally in the estimation of the people of the

well-to-do classes.

And therefore such works as the one Turgénev was recommending to me

did not then interest me in the least. But to please him I read the

book he had handed me.

From the first story, _La Maison Tellier_, despite the indecency

and insignificance of the subject of the story, I could not help

recognizing that the author had what is called talent.

He possessed that particular gift called talent, which consists in

the capacity to direct intense concentrated attention according to

the author’s tastes on this or that subject, in consequence of which

the man endowed with this capacity sees in the things to which he

directs his attention some new aspect which others have overlooked;

and this gift of seeing what others have not seen Maupassant

evidently possessed. But judging by the little volume I read, he

unfortunately lacked the chief of the three conditions, besides

talent, essential to a true work of art. These are: (1) a correct,

that is, a moral relation of the author to his subject; (2) clearness

of expression, or beauty of form,--the two are identical; and (3)

sincerity, that is, a sincere feeling of love or hatred of what the

artist depicts. Of these three, Maupassant possessed only the two

last and was quite lacking in the first. He had not a correct, that

is a moral, relation to the subjects depicted.

Judging by what I read I was convinced that Maupassant possessed

talent, that is to say, the gift of attention revealing in the

objects and facts of life with which he deals qualities others have

not perceived. He was also master of a beautiful style, expressing

what he wanted to say clearly, simply, and with charm. He was also

master of that condition of true artistic production without which

a work of art does not produce its effect, namely, sincerity; that

is, he did not pretend that he loved or hated, but really loved or

hated what he described. But unfortunately lacking the first and

perhaps the chief condition of worthy artistic production, a correct

moral relation to what he described--that is to say, a knowledge

of the difference between good and evil--he loved and described

things that should not have been loved and described. Thus, in this

little volume, the author described with great detail and fondness

how women seduce men, and men women; and in _La femme de Paul_ he

even describes certain obscenities difficult to understand. And he

presents the country labouring folk not merely with indifference but

even with contempt, as though they were animals.

This unconsciousness of the difference between good and evil is

particularly striking in the story, _Une partie de campagne_, in

which is given, as a very pleasant and amusing joke, a detailed

description of how two men rowing with bare arms in a boat tempt and

afterwards seduce at the same time, one of them an elderly mother and

the other a young girl, her daughter.

The sympathy of the author is evidently all the time so much on the

side of these two wretches that he not merely ignores, but simply

does not see, what must have been felt by the seduced mother and

the maid (her daughter), by the father, and by a young man who is

evidently engaged to the daughter; and therefore, not merely is an

objectionable description of a revolting crime presented in the

form of an amusing jest, but the occurrence itself is described

falsely, for what is given is only one side, and that the most

insignificant--namely, the pleasure received by the rascals.

In that same little volume there is a story, _Histoire d’une fille

de ferme_, which Turgénev particularly recommended to me and which

particularly displeased me, again by this incorrect relation of the

author to his subject. He evidently sees in all the working folk he

describes mere animals, who rise to nothing more than sexual and

maternal love, so that his descriptions give one an incomplete and

artificial impression.

Lack of understanding of the life and interests of working people and

the presentation of them as semi-brutes moved only by sensuality,

spite, and greed, is one of the chief and most important defects of

most recent French writers, including Maupassant, who not only in

this but in all his other stories where he refers to the people,

always describes them as coarse, dull animals at whom one can only

laugh. Of course the French writers should know the nature of their

own people better than I do; but despite the fact that I am a Russian

and have not lived among the French peasants, I nevertheless affirm

that in so representing their people the French authors are wrong,

and that the French labourers cannot be such as they represent them

to be. If France--such as we know her, with her truly great men and

the great contributions those great men have made to science, art,

citizenship, and the moral development of mankind--if this France

exists, then that working class which has maintained and maintains

on its shoulders this France with its great men, must consist not of

brutes but of people with great spiritual qualities, and I therefore

do not believe what I read in novels such as _La terre_[11] and in

Maupassant’s stories; just as I should not believe it if I were told

of the existence of a beautiful house standing without foundations.

It may very well be these high qualities of the people are not

such as are described to us in _La petite Fadette_ and _La mère

aux diables_,[12] but I am firmly convinced that these qualities

exist, and a writer who portrays the people only as Maupassant does,

describing with sympathy only the _hanches_ and _gorges_[13] of the

Breton servant girls and describing with detestation and ridicule

the life of the labouring men, commits a great artistic mistake,

because he describes his subject only from one, and that the least

interesting, physical, side and leaves quite out of sight another,

and the most important, spiritual, side wherein the essence of the

matter lies.

On the whole, the perusal of the little book handed me by Turgénev

left me quite indifferent to the young writer.

So repugnant to me were the stories, _Une partie de campagne_, _La

femme de Paul_, _L’historie d’une fille de ferme_, that I did not

then notice the beautiful story, _Le papa de Simon_, and the story,

excellent in its description of the night, _Sur l’eau_.

“Are there not in our time, when so many people want to write, plenty

of men of talent who do not know to what to apply this gift, or who

boldly apply it to what should not, and need not, be described?”

thought I. And so I said to Turgénev, and thereupon forgot about

Maupassant.

The first thing of his that fell into my hands after that was _Une

Vie_, which someone advised me to read. That book at once compelled

me to change my opinion of Maupassant, and since then I have read

with interest everything signed by him. _Une Vie_ is excellent,

not only incomparably the best of his novels, but perhaps the best

French novel since Hugo’s _Les Misérables_. Here, besides remarkable

talent--that special strenuous attention applied to the subject,

by which the author perceives quite new features in the life he

describes--are united in almost equal degree all three qualities of

a true, work of art, first, a correct, that is a moral, relation of

the author to his subject; secondly, beauty of form; and thirdly,

sincerity, that is, love of what the author describes. Here the

meaning of life no longer presents itself to the author as consisting

in the adventures of various male and female libertines; here the

subject, as the title indicates, is life--the life of a ruined,

innocent, amiable woman, predisposed to all that is good, but ruined

by precisely the same coarse animal sensuality which in his former

stories the author presented as if it were the central feature of

life, dominant over all else. And in this book the author’s whole

sympathy is on the side of what is good.

The form, which was beautiful in the first stories, is here brought

to such a pitch of perfection as, in my opinion, has been attained

by no other French writer of prose. And above all, the author here

really loves, and deeply loves, the good family he describes; and he

really hates that coarse debauchee, who destroys the happiness and

peace of that charming family and, in particular, ruins the life of

the heroine.

That is why all the events and characters of this novel are so

life-like and memorable. The weak, kindly, debilitated mother; the

upright, weak, attractive father; the daughter, still more attractive

in her simplicity, artlessness, and sympathy with all that is good;

their mutual relations, their first journey, their servants and

neighbours; the calculating, grossly sensual, mean, petty, insolent

suitor, who as usual deceives the innocent girl by the customary

empty idealization of the foulest instincts; the marriage, Corsica

with the beautiful descriptions of nature, and then village life,

the husband’s coarse faithlessness, his seizure of power over the

property, his quarrel with his father-in-law, the yielding of the

good people and the victory of insolence; the relations with the

neighbours--all this is life itself in its complexity and variety.

And not only is all this vividly and finely described, but the

sincere pathetic tone of it all involuntarily infects the reader. One

feels that the author loves this woman, and loves her not for her

external form but for her soul, for the goodness there is in her;

that he pities her and suffers on her account, and this feeling is

involuntarily communicated to the reader. And the questions: Why, for

what end, is this fine creature ruined? Ought it indeed to be so?

arise of themselves in the reader’s soul, and compel him to reflect

on the meaning of human life.

Despite the false notes which occur in the novel, such as the

minute description of the young girl’s skin, or the impossible and

unnecessary details of how, by the advice of an abbé, the forsaken

wife again became a mother--details which destroy all the charm of

the heroine’s purity--and despite the melodramatic and unnatural

story of the injured husband’s revenge; notwithstanding these

blemishes, the novel not only seemed to me excellent, but I saw

behind it no longer a talented chatterer and jester who neither knew

nor wished to know right from wrong--as from his first little book

Maupassant had appeared to me to be--but a serious man penetrating

deeply into life and already beginning to see his way in it.

The next novel of Maupassant’s that I read was _Bel-Ami_.

_Bel-Ami_ is a very dirty book. The author evidently gives himself

a free hand in describing what attracts him, and at times seems to

lose his main negative attitude towards his hero and to pass over

to his side: but on the whole _Bel-Ami_, like _Une Vie_, has at its

base a serious idea and sentiment. In _Une Vie_ the fundamental idea

is perplexity in face of the cruel meaninglessness of the suffering

life of an excellent woman ruined by a man’s coarse sensuality;

whereas here it is not only perplexity, but indignation, at the

prosperity and success of a coarse, sensual brute who by that very

sensuality makes his career and attains a high position in society;

and indignation also at the depravity of the whole sphere in which

the hero attains his success. In the former novel the author seems

to ask: “For what, and why, was a fine creature ruined? Why did it

happen?” Here in the latter novel he seems to answer: all that is

pure and good has perished and is perishing in our society, because

that society is depraved, senseless, and horrible.

The last scene in the novel--the marriage in a fashionable church of

the triumphant scoundrel, decorated with the Legion of Honour, to the

pure girl, the daughter of an elderly and formerly irreproachable

mother whom he had seduced; a wedding blessed by a bishop and

regarded as something good and proper by everybody--expresses this

idea with extraordinary force. In this novel, despite the fact that

it is encumbered with dirty details (in which it is to be regretted

that the author seems to find pleasure) the same serious demands are

presented to life.

Read the conversation of the old poet with Duroy when after dinner,

if I remember rightly, they are leaving the Walters. The old poet

bares life to his young companion, and shows it as it is, with its

eternal and inevitable concomitant and end--death.

“She has hold of me already, _la gueuse_,”[14] says he of death.

“She has already shaken out my teeth, torn out my hair, crippled my

limbs, and is now ready to swallow me. I am already in her power. She

is only playing with me, as a cat does with a mouse, knowing that

I cannot escape. Fame? Riches? What is the use of them, since they

cannot buy a woman’s love? For it is only a woman’s love that makes

life worth living, and that too death takes away. It takes that away,

and then one’s health, strength, and life itself. It is the same for

everyone, and there is nothing else.”

Such is the meaning of what the old poet says. But Duroy, the

successful lover of all the women who please him, is so full of

sensual energy and strength that he hears and does not hear,

understands and does not understand, the old poet’s words. He hears

and understands, but the source of sensual life throbs in him so

strongly that this unquestionable truth, foretelling the same end for

him, does not disturb him.

This inner contradiction, besides its satirical value, gives the

novel its chief significance. The same idea gleams in the fine scenes

of the death of the consumptive journalist. The author sets himself

the question: What is this life? How solve the contradiction between

the love of life, and the knowledge of inevitable death? He seems to

seek, pauses, and does not decide either one way or the other. And

therefore the moral relation to life in this novel continues to be

correct.

But in the novels that follow, this moral relation to life grows

confused. The appraisement of the phenomena of life begins to waver,

to grow obscure, and in the last novels it is quite perverted.

In _Mont-Oriol_ Maupassant seems to unite the motives of his two

previous novels and repeats himself to order. Despite the fine

descriptions of the fashionable watering-place and of the medical

activity in it, which is executed with delicate taste, we have

here the same bull-like Paul, just as empty and despicable as the

husband in _Une Vie_; and the same deceived, frank, meek, weak,

lonely--always lonely--good woman, and the same impassive triumph of

pettiness and triviality as in _Bel-Ami_.

The thought is the same, but the author’s moral relation to what

he describes is already much lower, lower especially than in _Une

Vie_. The author’s inner appraisement of right and wrong begins to

get confused. Notwithstanding his abstract wish to be impartially

objective, the scoundrel Paul evidently has all his sympathy, and

therefore the love story of this Paul and his attempts at and success

in seduction produce a discordant impression. The reader does not

know what the author intends: is it to show the whole emptiness and

vileness of Paul (who turns indifferently away from, and insults, a

woman merely because her waist has been spoilt by her pregnancy with

his child); or, on the contrary, is it to show how pleasant and easy

it is to live as this Paul lives?

In the next novels, _Pierre et Jean_, _Fort comme la mort_, and

_Notre cœur_, the author’s moral attitude towards his characters

becomes still more confused, and in the last-named is quite lost.

All these novels bear the stamp of indifference, haste, unreality,

and, above all, again that same absence of a correct moral relation

to life which was present in his first writings. This began from the

time when Maupassant’s reputation as a fashionable author had become

established and he became liable to the temptation, so terrible in

our day, to which every celebrated writer is subject, especially

one so attractive as Maupassant. In the first place the success

of his first novels, the praise of the press, and the flattery of

society, especially of women; in the second the ever increasing

amount of remuneration (never however keeping up with his continually

increasing wants); in the third the pertinacity of editors outbidding

one another, flattering, begging, and no longer judging the merits

of the works the author offers but enthusiastically accepting

everything signed by a name now established with the public. All

these temptations are so great that they evidently turn his head, and

he succumbs to them; and though he continues to elaborate the form of

his work as well as or sometimes even better than before, and even

though he is fond of what he describes, yet he no longer loves it

because it is good or moral and lovable to all, or hates it because

it is evil and hateful to all, but only because one thing pleases and

another thing happens to displease him.

On all Maupassant’s novels, beginning with _Bel-Ami_, there lies

this stamp of haste and still more of artificiality. From that time

Maupassant no longer did what he had done in his first two novels.

He did not take as his basis certain moral demands and on that

ground describe the actions of his characters, but wrote as all hack

novelists do, that is, he devised the most interesting and pathetic,

or most up-to-date persons and situations, and made a novel out of

them, adorning it with whatever observations he had opportunity to

make which fitted into the framework of the story, quite indifferent

as to how the incidents described were related to the demands of

morality. Such are _Pierre et Jean_, _Fort comme la mort_, and _Notre

cœur_.

Accustomed as we are to read in French novels of how families live

in threes, always with a lover known to everyone except the husband,

it still remains quite unintelligible to us how it happens that

all husbands are always fools, _cocus et ridicules_,[15] but all

lovers (who themselves in the end marry and become husbands) are

not only not _cocus et ridicules_, but are heroic! And still less

comprehensible is it how all women can be depraved, and yet all

mothers saintly.

And on these unnatural and unlikely, and above all profoundly

immoral, propositions _Pierre et Jean_ and _Fort comme la mort_ are

built, and therefore the sufferings of the characters so situated

affect us but little. The mother of Pierre and Jean, who can live her

whole life deceiving her husband, evokes little sympathy when she

is obliged to confess her sin to her son, and still less when she

justifies herself by asserting that she could not but avail herself

of the chance of happiness which presented itself. Still less can we

sympathize with the gentleman who, in _Fort comme la mort_, having

all his life deceived his friend and debauched his friend’s wife, now

only regrets that having grown old he cannot seduce his mistress’s

daughter. The last novel, _Notre cœur_, has even no kernel at all

beyond the description of various kinds of sex-love. The satiated

emotions of an idle debauchee are described, who does not know what

he wants, and who first lives with a woman yet more depraved than

himself--a mentally depraved woman, who lacks even the excuse of

sensuality--then leaves her and lives with a servant girl, and then

again rejoins the former, and, it seems, lives with them both. If

in _Pierre et Jean_ and _Fort comme la mort_ there are still some

touching scenes, this last novel excites only disgust.

The question in Maupassant’s first novel, _Une Vie_, consists in

this: here is a human being, good, wise, pleasing, ready for all

that is good, and this creature is for some reason offered up as

a sacrifice first to a coarse, small-minded, stupid animal of a

husband, without having given anything to the world. Why is this?

The author puts that question and as it were gives no answer, but

his whole novel, all his feeling of pity for her and abhorrence of

what has ruined her, serves as answer. If there is a man who has

understood her suffering and expressed it, then it is redeemed, as

Job put it to his friends when they said that no one would know of

his sufferings. When suffering is recognized and understood, it is

redeemed; and here the author has recognized and understood and shown

men this suffering, and the suffering is redeemed, for once it is

understood by men it will sooner or later be done away with.

In the next novel, _Bel-Ami_, the question no longer is, Why do good

persons suffer? but Why do wealth and fame go to the unworthy? What

are wealth and fame? How are they obtained? And as before, these

questions carry with them their own answers, which consist in the

repudiation of all that the crowd of men so highly prize. The subject

of this second novel is still serious, but the moral relation of the

author to the subject he describes already weakens considerably, and

whereas in the first novel blots and sensuality which spoil it only

appear here and there, in _Bel-Ami_ these blots have increased and

many chapters are filled with dirt alone, which seems to please the

author.

In the next book, _Mont-Oriol_, the questions: Why, and to what end,

does the amiable woman suffer and the savage male secure success and

happiness? are no longer put; but it seems tacitly admitted that it

should be so, and hardly any moral demands are felt. But without the

least necessity, uncalled for by any artistic consideration, dirty

sensual descriptions are presented. As an example of this violation

of artistic taste, resulting from the author’s incorrect relation

to his subject, the detailed description in this novel of the

heroine in her bath is specially striking. This description is quite

unnecessary, and is in no way connected either with the external or

the inner purpose of the novel: “Bubbles appear on her pink skin.”

“Well, what of that?” asks the reader.

“Nothing more,” replies the author. “I describe it because I like

such descriptions.”

In the next novels, _Pierre et Jean_ and _Fort comme la mort_,

no moral demand at all is perceptible. Both novels are built on

debauchery, deceit, and falsehood, which bring the actors to tragic

situations.

In the last novel, _Notre cœur_, the position of the actors is most

monstrous, wild, and immoral; they no longer struggle with anything,

but only seek satisfaction for their vanity, sensuality, and sexual

desires; and the author appears quite to sympathize with their aims.

The only deduction one can draw from this last novel is that the

greatest pleasure in life consists in sexual intercourse, and that

therefore one must secure that happiness in the pleasantest way.

Yet more striking is this immoral relation to life in the half-novel,

_Yvette_. The subject, which is horrible in its immorality, is as

follows: A charming girl, innocent in soul and depraved only in

the manners she has learned in her mother’s dissolute circle, leads

a libertine into error. He falls in love with her, but imagining

that this girl knowingly chatters the obscene nonsense she has

picked up in her mother’s society and repeats parrot-like without

understanding--imagining that she is already depraved--he coarsely

offers her an immoral union. This proposal horrifies and offends her

(for she loves him); it opens her eyes to her own position and to

that of her mother, and she suffers profoundly. This deeply touching

scene is admirably described: the collision between a beautiful

innocent soul and the depravity of the world. And with that it might

end; but the author, without either external or inner necessity,

continues to write and makes this man penetrate by night to the girl

and seduce her. Evidently in the first part of the story the author

was on the girl’s side, but in the later part he has suddenly gone

over to the debauchee, and the one impression destroys the other--the

whole novel crumbles and falls to pieces like ill-kneaded bread.

In all his novels after _Bel-Ami_ (I am not now speaking of the short

stories, which constitute his chief merit and glory--of them later)

Maupassant evidently submitted to the theory which ruled not only in

his circle in Paris, but which now rules everywhere among artists:

that for a work of art it is not only unnecessary to have any clear

conception of what is right and wrong, but that, on the contrary,

an artist should completely ignore all moral questions, there being

even a certain artistic merit in so doing. According to this theory

the artist may or should depict what is true to life, what really

is, what is beautiful and therefore pleases him, or even what may

be useful as material for “science”; but that to care about what is

moral or immoral, right or wrong, is not an artist’s business.

I remember a celebrated painter showing me one of his pictures

representing a religious procession. It was all excellently painted,

but no relation of the artist to his subject was perceptible.

“And do you regard these ceremonies as good and consider that they

should be performed, or not?” I asked him.

With some condescension to my naïveté, he told me that he did not

know about that and did not want to know it; his business was to

represent _life_.

“But at any rate you sympathize with this?”

“I cannot say so.”

“Well then do you dislike these ceremonies?”

“Neither the one thing nor the other,” replied, with a smile of

compassion at my silliness, this modern, highly cultured artist who

depicted life without understanding its purpose and neither loving

nor hating its phenomena.

And so unfortunately thought Maupassant.

In his preface to _Pierre et Jean_ he says that people say to a

writer, “_Consolez-moi, amusez-moi, attristez-moi, attendrissez-moi,

faites-moi rêver, faites-moi rire, faites-moi frémir, faites-moi

pleurer, faites-moi penser. Seuls quelques esprits d’élites demandent

à l’artiste: faites-moi quelque chose de beau dans la forme qui vous

conviendra le mieux d’après votre tempérament._”[16]

Responding to this demand of the _élite_ Maupassant wrote his novels,

naïvely imagining that what was considered beautiful in his circle

was that beauty which art should serve.

And in the circle in which Maupassant moved, the beauty which should

be served by art was, and is, chiefly woman--young, pretty, and for

the most part naked--and sexual connection with her. It was so

considered not only by all Maupassant’s comrades in art--painters,

sculptors, novelists, and poets--but also by philosophers, the

teachers of the rising generation. Thus the famous Renan, in his

work, _Marc Aurèle_, p. 555, when blaming Christianity for not

understanding feminine beauty, plainly says:

“_La défaut du christianisme apparaît bien ici. Il est trop

uniquement moral; la beauté, chez lui, est tout-à-fait sacrifiée.

Or, aux yeux d’une philosophie complète, la beauté, loin d’être un

avantage superficiel, un danger, un inconvénient, est un don de Dieu,

comme la vertu. Elle vaut la vertu; la femme belle exprime aussi bien

une face du but divin, une des fins de Dieu, que l’homme de génie

ou la femme vertueuse. Elle le sent et de là sa fierté. Elle sent

instinctivement le trésor infini qu’elle porte en son corps; elle

sait bien que, sans esprit, sans talent, sans grande vertu, elle

compte entre les premières manifestations de Dieu. Et pourquoi lui

interdire de mettre en valeur le don qui lui a été fait, de sertir

le diamant qui lui est échu? La femme, en se parant, accomplit un

devoir; elle pratique un art, art exquis, en un sens le plus charmant

des arts. Ne nous laissons pas égarer par le sourire que certain mots

provoquent chez_ LES GENS FRIVOLES. _On décerne le palme du génie à,

l’artiste grec qui a su résoudre le plus délicat des problèmes, orner

le corps humain, c’est à dire orner la perfection même, et l’on ne

veut voir qu’une affaire de chiffons dans l’essai de collaborer à la

plus belle œuvre de Dieu, à la beauté de la femme! La toilette de la

femme, avec tous ses raffinements est du grand art à sa manière. Les

siècles et les pays qui savent y réussir sont les grands siècles,

les grands pays, et le christianisme montra, par l’exclusion dont il

frappa ce genre de recherches, que l’idéal social qu’il concevait ne

deviendrait le cadre d’une société complète que bien plus tard, quand

la révolte des gens du monde aurait brisé le joug étroit imposé

primitivement à la secte par un piétisme exalté._”[17]

(So that in the opinion of this leader of the young generation

only now have Paris milliners and coiffeurs corrected the mistake

committed by Christianity, and re-established beauty in the true and

lofty position due to it.)

In order that there should be no doubt as to how one is to understand

beauty, the same celebrated writer, historian, and savant wrote

the drama, _L’Abbesse de Jouarre_, in which he showed that to have

sexual intercourse with a woman is a service of this beauty, that

is to say, is an elevated and good action. In that drama, which is

striking by its lack of talent and especially by the coarseness of

the conversations between d’Arcy and the abbesse, in which the first

words make it evident what sort of love that gentleman is discussing

with the supposedly innocent and highly moral maiden, who is not

in the least offended thereby--in that drama it is shown that the

most highly moral people, at the approach of death to which they

are condemned, a few hours before it arrives, can do nothing more

beautiful than yield to their animal passions.

So that in the circle in which Maupassant grew up and was educated,

the representation of feminine beauty and sex-love was and is

regarded quite seriously, as a matter long ago decided and recognized

by the wisest and most learned men, as the true object of the highest

art--_Le grand art_.

And it is this theory, dreadful in its folly, to which Maupassant

submitted when he became a fashionable writer; and, as was to be

expected, this false ideal led him in his novels into a series of

mistakes, and to ever weaker and weaker production.

In this the fundamental difference between the demands of the novel

and of the short story is seen. A novel has for its aim, even for

external aim, the description of a whole human life or of many

human lives, and therefore its writer should have a clear and firm

conception of what is good and bad in life, and this Maupassant

lacked; indeed according to the theory he held, that is just what

should be avoided. Had he been a novelist like some talentless

writers of sensual novels, he would, being without talent, have

quietly described what was evil as good, and his novels would have

had unity, and would have been interesting to people who shared his

view. But Maupassant had talent, that is to say, he saw things in

their essentials and therefore involuntarily discerned the truth.

He involuntarily saw the evil in what he wished to consider good.

That is why, in all his novels except the first, his sympathies

continually waver, now presenting the evil as good, and now admitting

that the evil is evil and the good good, but continually shifting

from the one standpoint to the other. And this destroys the very

basis of any artistic impression--the framework on which it is built.

People of little artistic sensibility often think that a work of art

possesses unity when the same people act in it throughout, or when

it is all constructed on one plot, or describes the life of one man.

That is a mistake. It only appears so to a superficial observer.

The cement which binds any artistic production into one whole and

therefore produces the illusion of being a reflection of life, is not

the unity of persons or situations, but the unity of the author’s

independent moral relation to his subject. In reality, when we read

or look at the artistic production of a new author the fundamental

question that arises in our soul is always of this kind: “Well, what

sort of a man are you? Wherein are you different from all the people

I know, and what can you tell me that is new, about how we must look

at this life of ours?” Whatever the artist depicts--saints, robbers,

kings, or lackeys--we seek and see only the artist’s own soul. If

he is an established writer with whom we are already familiar, the

question no longer is, “What sort of a man are you?” but, “Well, what

more can you tell me that is new?” or, “From what new side will you

now illumine life for me?” And therefore a writer who has not a clear

definite and just view of the universe, and especially a man who

considers that this isn’t even wanted, cannot produce a work of art.

He may write much and admirably, but a work of art will not result.

So it was with Maupassant in his novels. In his first two novels,

and especially in the first, _Une Vie_, there was a clear, definite,

and new relation to life, and it was an artistic production; but

as soon as, submitting to the fashionable theory, he decided that

this relation of the author to life was quite unnecessary and began

to write merely in order _faire quelque chose de beau_ (to produce

something beautiful), his novels ceased to be works of art. In _Une

Vie_ and _Bel-Ami_ the author knows whom he should love and whom

he should hate, and the reader agrees with him and believes in

him--believes in the people and events he describes. But in _Notre

cœur_ and _Yvette_ the author does not know whom he should love and

whom he should hate, and the reader does not know either. And not

knowing this, the reader does not believe in the events described and

is not interested in them. And therefore, except the two first or,

strictly speaking, excepting only the first novel, all Maupassant’s,

as novels, are weak; and if he had left us only his novels he would

have been merely a striking instance of the way in which brilliant

talents may perish as a result of the false environment in which he

developed and of these false theories of art that have been devised

by people who neither love nor understand it. But fortunately

Maupassant wrote short stories in which he did not subject himself

to the false theory he had accepted, and wrote not _quelque chose de

beau_, but what touched or revolted his moral feeling. And in these

short stories--not in all, but in the best of them--we see how that

moral feeling grew in the author.

And it is in this that the wonderful quality of every true artist

lies, if only he does not do violence to himself under the influence

of a false theory. His talent teaches its possessor and leads him

forward along the path of moral development, compelling him to

love what deserves love and to hate what deserves hate. An artist

is an artist because he sees things not as he wishes to see them

but as they really are. The possessor of a talent, the man, may

make mistakes, but his talent if only it is allowed free play,

as Maupassant gave it free play in his short stories, discloses,

undrapes the object, and compels love of it if it deserves love

and hatred of it if it deserves hatred. With every true artist,

when under the influence of his circle he begins to represent what

should not be represented, there happens what happened to Balaam,

who, wishing to bless, cursed what should be cursed, and wishing to

curse, blessed what should be blessed: involuntarily he does, not

what he wishes to do but what he should do. And this happened to

Maupassant.

There has hardly been another writer who so sincerely thought that

all the good, all the meaning of life, lies in woman--in love, and

who with such strength of passion described woman and her love from

all sides; and there has hardly ever been a writer who reached such

clearness and exactitude in showing all the awful phases of that very

thing which had seemed to him the highest and the greatest of life’s

blessings. The more he penetrated into the question the more it

revealed itself, and the more did the coverings fall from it and only

its horrible results and yet more horrible essence remain.

Read of the idiot son, of the night with a daughter (_L’ermite_),

of the sailor with his sister (_Le port_), _Le champ d’oliviers_,

_La petite Roque_, of the English girl (_Miss Harriet_), _Monsieur

Parent_, _L’armoire_ (the girl who fell asleep in the cupboard),

the wedding in _Sur l’eau_, and last expression of all, _Un cas de

divorce_. Just what was said by Marcus Aurelius when devising means

to destroy the attractiveness of this sin in his imagination, is what

Maupassant does in most vivid artistic forms, turning one’s soul

inside out. He wished to extol sex-love, but the better he came to

know it the more he cursed it. He cursed sex-love for the misfortunes

and sufferings it bears within it, and for the disillusionments and,

above all, for the falsification of real love, for the fraud which is

in it from which man suffers the more acutely the more trustingly he

has yielded to the deception.

The powerful moral growth of the author in the course of his literary

activity is recorded in indelible traits in these charming short

stories and in his best book, _Sur l’eau_.

And not alone in this involuntary and therefore all the more

powerful dethronement of sex-love is the moral growth of the author

seen, but also in the more and more exalted moral demands he makes

upon life.

Not alone in sex-love does he see the innate contradiction between

the demands of animal and rational man; he sees it in the whole

organization of the world.

He sees that the world as it is, the material world, is not

only not the best of worlds, but might on the contrary be quite

different--this thought is strikingly expressed in _Horla_--and that

it does not satisfy the demands of reason and life. He sees that

there is some other world, or at least the demand for such another

world, in the soul of man.

He is tormented not only by the irrationality of the material world

and its ugliness, but by its unlovingness, its discord. I do not know

a more heart-rending cry of horror from one who has lost his way and

is conscious of his loneliness, than the expression of this idea in

that most charming story, _Solitude_.

The thing that most tormented Maupassant and to which he returns many

times, is the painful state of isolation, spiritual isolation, of

man; the barrier standing between him and his fellows; a barrier, he

says, the more painfully felt the nearer one’s bodily connexion.

What is it torments him, and what would he have? What can destroy

this barrier? What end this isolation? Love--not feminine love, which

has become disgusting to him, but pure, spiritual, divine love. And

that is what Maupassant seeks. Towards it, towards this saviour of

life long since plainly disclosed to all men, he painfully strains

from those fetters in which he feels himself bound.

He does not yet know how to name what he seeks. He does not

wish to name it with his lips alone, lest he should profane his

holy-of-holies. But his unexpressed striving, shown in his dread of

loneliness, is so sincere that it infects and attracts one more

strongly than many and many sermons about love, uttered only by the

lips.

* * * * *

The tragedy of Maupassant’s life is that being in a most monstrous

and immoral circle, he by the strength of his talent, by that

extraordinary light which was in him, was escaping from the outlook

on life held by that circle, and was already near to deliverance,

was already breathing the air of freedom but, having exhausted his

last strength in the struggle and not being able to make a last

effort--perished without having attained freedom.

The tragedy of that ruin lies in what still afflicts the majority of

the so-called cultured men of our time.

Men in general never have lived without an expression of the

meaning of their life. Always and everywhere, highly-gifted men

going in advance of others have appeared--the prophets, as they are

called--who have explained to men the meaning and purport of their

life; and always the ordinary, average men, who had not the strength

to explain that meaning for themselves, have followed the explanation

of life their prophets have disclosed to them.

That meaning was explained eighteen hundred years ago by

Christianity, simply, clearly, indubitably, and joyfully, as is

proved by the lives of all who acknowledge it and follow the guidance

of life which results from that conception.

But then people appeared who misinterpreted that meaning so that

it became meaningless, and men are placed in the dilemma either of

acknowledging Christianity as interpreted by Orthodoxy, Lourdes,

the Pope, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and so forth, or

of going on with life according to the teachings of Renan and his

kind, that is, living without any direction or understanding of life,

following only their lusts as long as they are strong, and their

habits when their lusts become feeble.

And people, ordinary people, choose the one or the other, sometimes

both, first dissoluteness and then Orthodoxy; and thus whole

generations live, shielding themselves with various theories,

invented not to disclose the truth but to hide it. And ordinary, and

more especially dull, people are content.

But there are others--not many, they are rare--such as Maupassant,

who with their own eyes see things as they are, see their

significance, see the contradictions in life concealed from others,

and vividly realize to what these contradictions must inevitably lead

them--and seek to solve them in advance. They seek these solutions

everywhere except where they are to be found, namely in Christianity,

because Christianity appears to them outlived and discarded,

repelling them by its absurdity. And vainly trying to find these

solutions for themselves, they come to the conviction that there are

no solutions, and that it is inherent in life that one should always

bear in oneself these unsolved contradictions. And having come to

such a conclusion, if these people are feeble unenergetic natures,

they put up with such meaningless life and are even proud of their

position, accounting their ignorance a quality and a sign of culture.

But if they are energetic, truthful, and gifted natures, such as

Maupassant was, they do not endure this, but one way or other try to

get out of this senseless life.

It is as if men thirsting in a desert sought water everywhere

except near those people who, standing round a spring pollute it

and offer stinking mire instead of the water that unceasingly flows

beneath the mire. Maupassant was in this position; he could not

believe--evidently it never even entered his head--that the truth he

sought had long ago been found and was so near him; but neither could

he believe that man can live in such contradiction as that in which

he felt himself to be living.

Life, according to the theories in which he had been brought up,

which surrounded him and were corroborated by all the lusts of his

young, and mentally and physically strong, being--life consists

in pleasure, of which the chief is to be found in woman with her

love, and in the reproduction of this pleasure in its reflection,

in the presentation of this love, and in exciting it in others. All

this might be well; but on examining these pleasures quite other

things emerge, alien and hostile to this love and this beauty:

woman for some reason is disfigured, becomes unpleasantly pregnant

and repulsive, gives birth to children, unwanted children; then

come deceptions, cruelties, moral suffering, then mere old age, and

ultimately death.

Then is this beauty indeed beauty? And why is all this so? It would

be all very well if one could arrest life, but life goes on. And what

does that mean? “Life goes on” means that the hair falls out, turns

grey, the teeth decay, and there are wrinkles and offensive breath.

Even before all is finished, everything becomes dreadful, repulsive:

the rouge, the powder, the sweat, the smell, and the disgustingness,

are evident. Where then is that which I serve? Where is beauty? But

she is all! And if she is not, there is nothing left. There is no

life!

But not merely is there no life in what seemed to be life: one begins

to forsake it oneself, one becomes weaker, more stupid, one decays;

others before one’s eyes seize those delights in which all the good

of life lay. Nor is that all. Some other possibility of life begins

to glimmer on one’s mind; something else, some other kind of union

with men, with the whole world, one which does not admit of all these

deceptions, something which cannot by any means be infringed; which

is true and forever beautiful. But this cannot be. It is only the

tantalizing vision of an oasis when we know that it does not exist

and that there is nothing but sand everywhere.

Maupassant reached that tragic moment in life when the struggle

begins between the falseness of the life about him and the truth of

life of which he began to be conscious. Pangs of spiritual birth had

already begun in him.

And it is these pangs of this birth that are expressed in his best

work, especially in the short stories printed in this edition.

Had he not been fated to die while still suffering, but to fulfil

all his possibilities, he would have left us great and illuminating

works; but even what he gave us in the midst of his pain is much. Let

us then be thankful to this strong and truthful man for what he has

given us.

PART IX

FROM A LETTER TO PETER VERIGIN, THE DOUKHOBOR LEADER

The thoughts expressed in your letter about the advantage of living

intercourse over intercourse by means of dead books pleased me

greatly and I share them. I write books, and therefore know all the

evil they produce. I know how people who do not wish to receive the

truth can avoid reading books, or understanding what goes against

the grain and exposes them, and I know how they can misinterpret

and pervert--as they have done with the Gospels. All this I know,

but yet I consider books to be, in our time, inevitable. I say “in

our time” in contradistinction to the Gospel times, when there

were no printing-presses and books were not used and the means

of communication were vocal. Then it was possible to do without

books, for the enemies of truth had none. But now one cannot leave

this powerful engine entirely for the enemies of truth to use for

deception, but must also see that it is used on the side of truth.

To refuse to make use of a book or a letter to convey one’s thoughts,

or to get at the thoughts of others, would be like refusing to use

one’s strength of voice to convey to many people at once what one

has to say, or the use of one’s ears to understand what some one is

saying in a loud voice. It would be like refusing to acknowledge the

possibility of conveying thought except tête-à-tête or in a whisper.

Writing and printing have but multiplied a thousand, a hundred

thousand, times the number of people by whom the thoughts expressed

may be heard; but the relation between him who expresses and him

who receives the thoughts remains as before. As in conversation the

hearer may grasp and understand what is said or may let it go in at

one ear and out at the other, so it is with printed matter. As the

reader of a book may twist it this way or that, so also may he who

hears spoken words. As in books (and we constantly see this) much

may be written that is superfluous and empty, so it is with speech.

A difference exists, but it is a difference that is sometimes to the

advantage of vocal sometimes of printed communication. The advantage

of vocal communication is that the hearer feels the spirit of the

speaker, but the disadvantage is that very often empty talkers (for

instance lawyers), having a gift of words, sway men not by their

reasonableness but by their mastery of oratorical art, which is not

so with books. Another advantage of verbal communication is that a

hearer who has not understood a matter can ask questions, but there

is the accompanying disadvantage that those who have failed to

understand (often purposely failed) can put questions which are not

to the point and thus divert the stream of thought--which is not so

with books.

The disadvantages of books are: first, that paper can endure all

things, and people can have any nonsense printed causing enormous

labour to be wasted in paper-making and type-setting, which is not

so with vocal communication, for people can refuse to listen to

nonsense. Secondly, that books are multiplying enormously, so that

the good ones get lost in the sea of empty and harmful ones. But then

again the advantages of the press are very great, and consist chiefly

in the fact that the circle of hearers is extended a hundredfold or a

thousandfold as compared to the hearers of the spoken word. And this

increase in the circle of readers is important, not because there are

many readers, but because, among the millions of people of different

nations and stations to whom a book becomes accessible, those who

share similar thoughts discover one another, and while living

thousands of miles apart, not knowing one another, are yet united and

live by one spirit, having the spiritual joy and encouragement of

feeling that they are not alone. Such communication I now have with

you and with many, many, men of other nations--men who have never

seen me, but who yet are nearer to me than sons or brothers of my own

blood.

The chief consideration in favour of books is, that since men reached

a certain stage of development in the external conditions of life,

books and printing in general have become a means of communication

among men and therefore must not be neglected. So many harmful books

have been written and circulated that the evil can only be met by

other books. One wedge drives out another! Christ said: “What I tell

you in the ear proclaim upon the housetops.” Printing is just that

proclamation from the housetops. The printed word is a tongue--a

tongue that reaches very far; and for this reason all that is said of

the tongue relates also to the printed word: “Therewith bless we the

Lord; and therewith curse we men, made after the likeness of God.”

Therefore one cannot be too careful what one says and listens to, nor

what one prints and reads....

The above extract is from a letter written to Verigin while he

was in exile at Obdórsk, near the mouth of the Obi in Northern

Siberia. The whole letter is given in _Essays and Letters_ by

Tolstoy, in the “World’s Classics” series. Oxford University

Press.

1895.

PART X

The essay _On Art_ that follows was the last attempt Tolstoy

made, after many years’ reflection, to express his views on

art, before he wrote _What is Art?_ This essay (_On Art_) did

not satisfy him, but in several respects it drew very near to

what he was finally to say. What he had not arrived at when

he wrote it was (1) the clear-cut working definition of art

which he gives in his later work, and (2) the clear perception

of the importance and necessity of appraising separately the

_form_ of a work of art, which makes it infectious, and the

_subject-matter of feeling_ which connects it with the whole

of life, and which benefits or harms mankind.

One feels, in _On Art_, that Tolstoy is still treading warily

a path he has not fully explored; it was only later--in _What

is Art?_--that he let himself go, careless of the eggs he

broke and feelings he disturbed, and asserting his convictions

with emphasis and exuberance.

ON ART:

What is and What is not Art; And When is Art Important

and When is it Trivial?

I

In our life there are many insignificant or even harmful activities

which enjoy a respect they do not deserve, or are tolerated merely

because they are considered to be of importance. The copying of

flowers, horses and landscapes, such clumsy learning of musical

pieces as is carried on in most of our so-called educated families,

and the writing of feeble stories and bad verses, hundreds of which

appear in the newspapers and magazines, are obviously not artistic

activities; and the painting of indecent, pornographic pictures

stimulating sensuality, or the composition of songs and stories of

that nature, even if they have artistic qualities, is not a good

activity worthy of respect.

And therefore, taking all the productions which are considered among

us to be artistic, I think it would be useful, first, to separate

what really is art from what has no right to that name; and secondly,

taking what really is art, to distinguish what is important and good

from what is insignificant and bad.

The question of how and where to draw the line separating Art from

Not-art, and the good and important in art from the insignificant and

evil, is one of enormous importance to life.

A great many of the wrong-doings and mistakes in our life result from

our calling things art which are not art. We accord an unmerited

respect to things which not only do not deserve it, but deserve

condemnation and contempt. Apart from the enormous amount of human

labour spent on the preparation of articles needed for the production

of art: studios, paints, canvas, marble, musical instruments, and

the theatres with their scenery and appliances,--even the lives of

human beings are actually perverted by the one-sided labours demanded

in the preparation of those who train for the arts. Hundreds of

thousands if not millions of children are forced to one-sided toil,

practising the so-called arts of dancing and music. Not to speak of

the children of the educated classes who pay their tribute to art in

the form of tormenting lessons,--children devoted to the ballet and

musical professions are simply distorted in the name of art to which

they are dedicated. If it is possible to compel children of seven or

eight to play an instrument, and for ten or fifteen years to continue

to do so for seven or eight hours a day; if it is possible to place

girls in the schools for the ballet,[18] and then to make them cut

capers during the first months of their pregnancy, and if all this is

done in the name of art, then it is certainly necessary to define,

first of all, what really is art--lest under the guise of art a

counterfeit should be produced; and then also to prove that art is a

matter of importance for mankind.

Where then is the line dividing art, an important and necessary

matter valuable to humanity, from useless occupations, commercial

productions, and even from immorality? In what does the essence and

importance of true art lie?

II

One theory--which its opponents call “tendentious”--says that the

essence of true art lies in the importance of the subject treated of:

that for art to be art, it is necessary that its content should be

something important, necessary to man, good, moral, and instructive.

According to that theory the artist--that is to say the man who

possesses a certain skill--by taking the most important theme which

interests society at the time, can, by clothing it in what looks like

artistic form, produce a work of true art. According to that theory

religious, moral, social, and political truths clothed in what seems

like artistic form are artistic productions.

Another theory, which calls itself “esthetic,” or “art for art’s

sake,” says that the essence of true art lies in the beauty of its

form; that for art to be true, it is necessary that what it presents

should be beautiful.

According to that theory it is necessary for the production of art,

that an artist should possess technique, and should depict an object

which produces in the highest degree a pleasant impression; and

therefore a beautiful landscape, flowers, fruit, a nude figure, and

ballets, will be works of art.

A third theory--which calls itself “realistic”--says that the essence

of art consists in the truthful, exact presentation of reality:

that, for art to be true it is necessary that it should depict life

as it really is.

According to that theory, it follows that works of art may be

anything an artist sees or hears, all that he is able to make use of

in his function of reproduction, independently of the importance of

the subject or beauty of the form.

* * * * *

Such are the theories; and on the basis of each of them so-called

works of art appear which fit the first, the second, or the third.

But, apart from the fact that each of these theories contradicts

the others, not one of them satisfies the chief demand, namely,

to ascertain the boundary which divides art from commercial,

insignificant, or even harmful productions.

In accordance with each of these theories, works can be produced

unceasingly, as in any handicraft, and they may be insignificant or

harmful.

As to the first theory (“tendency”), important subjects--religious,

moral, social, or political--can always be found ready to hand,

and therefore one can continually produce works of so-called

art. Moreover, such subjects may be presented so obscurely and

insincerely that works treating of the most important of them will

prove insignificant and even harmful when the lofty content has been

degraded by insincere expression.

Similarly according to the second theory (“esthetic”), any man having

learned the technique of any branch of art can incessantly produce

something beautiful and pleasant, but again this beautiful and

pleasant thing may be insignificant and harmful.

Just in the same way according to the third theory (“realistic”),

everyone who wishes to be an artist can incessantly produce objects

of so-called art, because everybody is always interested in

something. If the author is interested in what is insignificant and

evil, then his work will be insignificant and evil.

The chief point is that, according to each of these three theories,

“works of art” can be produced incessantly, as in every handicraft,

and that they actually are being so produced. So that these three

dominant and discordant theories not merely fail to fix the line that

separates art from not-art, but, on the contrary, they serve more

than anything else to stretch the domain of art and to bring within

it all that is insignificant and harmful.

III

Where then is the boundary dividing art that is needful and important

and deserves respect from that which is unnecessary, unimportant, and

deserves not respect but contempt--such as productions which have a

plainly depraving effect? In what does true artistic activity consist?

To answer this question clearly we must first discriminate between

artistic activity and another activity (usually confused with it),

namely, that of handing on impressions and perceptions received from

preceding generations--separating such activity as that, from the

reception of new impressions--those namely which will thereafter be

handed on from generation to generation.

The handing on of what was known to former generations, in the sphere

of art, as in the sphere of science, is an activity of teaching and

learning. But the production of something _new_ is creation--the real

artistic activity.

The business of handing on knowledge--teaching--has not an

independent significance but depends entirely on the importance

people attach to that which has been created--what it is they

consider it necessary to hand on from generation to generation. And

therefore the definition of what a creation is will also define what

it is that should be handed on. Moreover, the teacher’s business is

not usually considered to be artistic; the importance of artistic

activity is properly attributed to creation--that is to artistic

production.[19]

What then is artistic (and scientific) creation?

Artistic (and also scientific) creation is such mental activity as

brings dimly-perceived feelings (or thoughts) to such a degree of

clearness that these feelings (or thoughts) are transmitted to other

people.

The process of “creation”--one common to all men and therefore known

to each of us by inner experience--occurs as follows: a man surmises

or dimly feels something that is perfectly new to him, which he has

never heard of from anybody. This something new impresses him, and

in ordinary conversation he points out to others what he perceives,

and to his surprise finds that what is apparent to him is quite

unseen by others. They do not see or do not feel what he tells them

of. This isolation, discord, disunion from others, at first disturbs

him, and verifying his own perception the man tries in different ways

to communicate to others what he has seen, felt, or understood;

but these others still do not understand what he communicates to

them, or do not understand it as he understands or feels it. And the

man begins to be troubled by a doubt as to whether he imagines and

dimly feels something that does not really exist, or whether others

do not see and do not feel something that does exist. And to solve

this doubt he directs his whole strength to the task of making his

discovery so clear that there cannot be the smallest doubt, either

for himself or for other people, as to the existence of that which

he perceives; and as soon as this elucidation is completed and the

man himself no longer doubts the existence of what he has seen,

understood, or felt, others at once see, understand, and feel as

he does, and it is this effort to make clear and indubitable to

himself and to others what both to others and to him had been dim and

obscure, that is the source from which flows the production of man’s

spiritual activity in general, or what we call works of art--which

widen man’s horizon and oblige him to see what had not been perceived

before.[20]

It is in this that the activity of an artist consists; and to this

activity is related the feeling of the recipient. This feeling has

its source in imitativeness, or rather in a capacity to be infected,

and in a certain hypnotism--that is to say in the fact that the

artist’s stress of spirit elucidating to himself the subject that

had been doubtful to him, communicates itself, through the artistic

production, to the recipients. A work of art is then finished when

it has been brought to such clearness that it communicates itself

to others and evokes in them the same feeling that the artist

experienced while creating it.

What was formerly unperceived, unfelt, and uncomprehended, by them

is by intensity of feeling brought to such a degree of clearness that

it becomes acceptable to all, and the production is a work of art.

The satisfaction of the intense feeling of the artist who has

achieved his aim gives pleasure to him. Participation in this same

stress of feeling and in its satisfaction, a yielding to this

feeling, the imitation of it and infection by it (as by a yawn), the

experiencing in brief moments of what the artist has lived through

while creating his work, is the enjoyment those who assimilate a work

of art obtain.

Such in my opinion is the peculiarity distinguishing art from any

other activity.

IV

According to this division, all that imparts to mankind something

new, achieved by an artist’s stress of feeling and thought, is a

work of art. But that this mental activity should really have the

importance people attach to it, it is necessary that it should

contribute what is good to humanity, for it is evident that to a

new evil, to a new temptation leading people into evil, we cannot

attribute the value given to art as to something that benefits

mankind. The importance, the value, of art consists in widening

man’s outlook, in increasing the spiritual wealth that is humanity’s

capital.

Therefore, though a work of art must always include something new,

yet the revelation of something new will not always be a work of art.

That it should be a work of art, it is necessary:

(1) That the new idea, the content of the work, should be of

importance to mankind.

(2) That this content should be expressed so clearly that

people may understand it.

(3) That what incites the author to work at his production

should be an inner need and not an external inducement.

And therefore that will not be a work of art in which no new thing is

disclosed; and that which has for its content what is insignificant

and therefore unimportant to man will not be a work of art, however

intelligibly it may be expressed and even if the author has worked at

it sincerely from an inner impulse. Nor will that be a work of art

which is so expressed as to be unintelligible however sincere may be

the author’s relation to it; nor that which has been produced by its

author not from an inner impulse but for an external aim, however

important may be its content and however intelligible its expression.

That is a work of art which discloses something new and at the same

time in some degree satisfies the three conditions: content, form,

and sincerity.

And here we come to the problem of how to define that lowest degree

of content, beauty, and sincerity, which a production must possess to

be a work of art.

To be a work of art it must, in the first place, be a thing which has

for its content something hitherto unknown but of which man has need;

secondly, it must show this so intelligibly that it becomes generally

accessible; and thirdly, it must result from the author’s need to

solve an inner doubt.

A work in which all three conditions are present even to a slight

degree, will be a work of art; but a production from which even one

of them is absent will not be a work of art.

But it will be said that every work contains something needed by

man, and every work will be to some extent intelligible, and that

an author’s relation to every work has some degree of sincerity.

Where is the limit of needful content, intelligible expression, and

sincerity of treatment? A reply to this question will be given us by

a clear perception of the highest limit to which art may attain: the

opposite of the highest limit will show the lowest limit, dividing

all that cannot be accounted art from what is art. The highest

limit of content is such as is always necessary to all men. That

which is always necessary to all men is what is good or moral.[21]

The lowest limit of content, consequently, will be such as is not

needed by men, and is a bad and immoral content. The highest limit

of expression will be such as is always intelligible to all men.

What is thus intelligible is that which has nothing in it obscure,

superfluous, or indefinite, but only what is clear, concise, and

definite,--what is called beautiful. Conversely, the lowest limit of

expression will be such as is obscure, diffuse, and indefinite,--that

is to say formless. The highest limit of the artist’s relation to his

subject will be such as evokes in the soul of all men an impression

of reality--the reality not so much of what exists, as of what goes

on in the soul of the artist. This impression of reality is produced

by truth only; and therefore the highest relation of an author to his

subject is _sincerity_. The lowest limit, conversely, will be that in

which the author’s relation to his subject is not genuine, but false.

All works of art lie between these two limits.

A perfect work of art will be one in which the content is important

and significant to all men, and therefore it will be _moral_. The

expression will be quite clear, intelligible to all, and therefore

_beautiful_; the author’s relation to his work will be altogether

sincere, and heartfelt, and therefore _true_. Imperfect works, but

still works of art, will be such productions as satisfy all three

conditions though it be but in unequal degree. That only will be no

work of art, in which either the content is quite insignificant and

unnecessary to man, or the expression quite unintelligible, or the

relation of the author to the work is quite insincere. In the degree

of perfection attained in each of these respects lies the difference

in quality between all true works of art. Sometimes the first

predominates, sometimes the second, and sometimes the third.

All the remaining imperfect productions fall naturally, according

to the three fundamental conditions of art, into three chief kinds:

1) those which stand out by the importance of their content, 2)

those which stand out by their beauty of form, and 3) those which

stand out by their heartfelt sincerity. These three kinds all yield

approximations to perfect art and are inevitably produced wherever

there is art.

Thus among young artists heartfelt sincerity chiefly prevails,

coupled with insignificance of content and more or less beauty of

form. Among older artists, on the contrary, the importance of the

content often predominates over beauty of form and sincerity. Among

laborious artists beauty of form predominates over content and

sincerity.

All works of art may be appraised by the prevalence in them of

the first, the second, or the third quality, and they may all be

subdivided into 1) those that have content and are beautiful, but

have little sincerity; 2) those that have content, but little beauty

and little sincerity; 3) those that have little content, but are

beautiful and sincere, and so on, in all possible combinations and

permutations.

All works of art, and in general all the mental activities of man,

can be appraised on the basis of these three fundamental qualities;

and they have been and are so appraised.

The differences in valuation have resulted, and do result, from the

extent of the demand presented to art by certain people at a certain

time in regard to these three conditions.

So for instance in classical times the demand for significance of

content was much higher, and the demand for clearness and sincerity

much lower than they subsequently became, especially in our time. The

demand for beauty became greater in the Middle Ages, but on the other

hand the demand for significance and sincerity became lower; and in

our time the demand for sincerity and truthfulness has become much

greater, but on the other hand the demand for beauty, and especially

for significance, has been lowered.

V

The valuation of works of art is necessarily correct when all three

conditions are taken into account; and inevitably incorrect when

works are valued not on the basis of all three conditions but only of

one or two of them.

And yet such valuation of works of art on the basis of only one of

the three conditions is a particularly prevalent error in our time,

lowering the general level of what is demanded from art to what can

be reached by a mere imitation of it, and confusing the minds of

critics, and of the public, and of artists themselves, as to what is

really art and as to where its boundary lies--the line that divides

it from craftsmanship and from mere amusement.

This confusion arises from the fact that people who lack the capacity

to understand true art judge of works of art from one side only, and

according to their own characters and training observe in them the

first, the second, or the third side only, imagining and assuming

that this one side perceptible to them--and the significance of art

based on this one condition--defines the whole of art. Some see only

the importance of the content, others only the beauty of form, and

others again only the artist’s sincerity and therefore truthfulness.

And according to what they see, they define the nature of art itself,

construct their theories, and praise and encourage those who, like

themselves, not understanding wherein a work of art consists, turn

them out like pancakes and inundate our world with foul floods of all

kinds of follies and abominations, which they call “works of art.”

Such are the majority of people and, as representatives of that

majority, such were the originators of the three esthetic theories

already alluded to, which meet the perceptions and demands of that

majority.

All these theories are based on a misunderstanding of the whole

importance of art, and on severing its three fundamental conditions;

and therefore these three false theories of art clash, as a result

of the fact that real art has three fundamental conditions, of which

each of those theories accepts but one.

The first theory, of so-called “tendencious” art, accepts as a work

of art one that has for its subject something which, though it be not

new, is important to all men by its moral content, independently of

its beauty and spiritual depth.

The second (“art for art’s sake”) recognizes as a work of art only

that which has beauty of form, independently of its novelty, the

importance of its content, or its sincerity.

The third theory, the “realistic,” recognizes as a work of art

only that in which the author is sincerely related to his subject

and which is therefore truthful. The last theory says that however

insignificant or even nasty may be the content, with a more or less

beautiful form, the work will be good if the author’s relation to

what he depicts is sincere and therefore truthful.

VI

All these theories forget one chief thing--that neither importance,

nor beauty, nor sincerity, provides the requisite for works of art,

but that the basic condition of the production of such works is that

the artist should be conscious of something new and important. And

that, therefore, as it always has been so it always will be necessary

for a true artist to be able to perceive something quite new and

important. For the artist to see what is new, it is necessary that he

should observe and think, and not occupy his life with trifles which

hinder his attentive penetration into, and meditation on, life’s

phenomena. In order that the new things he sees may be important

ones, the artist must be a morally enlightened man and he must not

live a selfish life, but must share the common life of humanity.

If only he sees what is new and important, he will be sure to find a

form which will express it, and the sincerity which is an essential

content of artistic production will be present. He must be able to

express the new subject so that all may understand it. For this he

must have such mastery of his craft that when working he will think

as little about the rules of that craft as a man when walking thinks

of the laws of motion. And in order to attain this, the artist must

not look round on his work and admire it, must not make technique

his aim, as one who is walking should not contemplate and admire his

gait, but should be concerned only to express his subject clearly and

in such a way as to be intelligible to all.

Finally, to work at his subject not for external aims but to satisfy

his inner need, the artist must rise superior to motives of avarice

and vanity. He must love with his own heart and not with another’s,

and not pretend that he loves what others love or consider worthy of

love.

And to attain all this the artist must do as Balaam did when the

messengers came to him, and he went apart awaiting God, so as to

say only what God commanded; and he must not do as that same Balaam

afterwards did when, tempted by gifts, he went to the king against

God’s command, as was evident even to the ass on which he rode,

though not perceived by him while blinded by avarice and vanity.

VII

In our time nothing of that kind is demanded. A man who wishes to

follow art need not wait for some important and new perception to

arise in his soul, which he can sincerely love and having loved can

clothe in suitable form. In our time a man who wishes to follow art

either takes a subject current at the time and one praised by people

who in his opinion are clever, and clothes it as best he can in what

is called “artistic form”; or he chooses a subject which gives him

most opportunity to display his technical skill, and with toil and

patience produces what he considers to be a work of art; or having

received some chance impression he takes what caused that impression

for his subject, imagining that it will yield a work of art since it

happened to produce an impression on him.

And so there appear an innumerable quantity of so-called works of

art; which, as in every mechanical craft, can be produced without

the least intermission. There always are current fashionable notions

in society, and with patience a technique can always be learnt, and

something or other will always seem interesting to someone. Having

separated the conditions that should be united in a true work of art,

people have produced so many works of pseudo-art that the public, the

critics, and the pseudo-artists themselves, are left quite without

any definition of what they themselves hold to be art.

The people of to-day have as it were said to themselves: “Works of

art are good and useful; so it is necessary to produce more of them.”

It would indeed be a very good thing if there were more; but the

trouble is that you can only produce to order works which are no

better than works of mere craftsmanship because of their lack of the

essential conditions of art.

A really artistic production cannot be made to order, for a true

work of art is the revelation (by laws beyond our grasp) of a

new conception of life arising in the artist’s soul, which, when

expressed, lights up the path along which humanity progresses.

PART XI

AN INTRODUCTION TO “WHAT IS ART?”

Tolstoy’s _What is Art?_ both in Russian and in my

translation, appeared in separate parts during the first half

of 1898. I wrote the following Introduction about a year

later, for an edition issued in April 1899.

An estimable and charming Russian lady I knew, felt so strongly the

charm of the music and ritual of the services of the Russo-Greek

Church that she wished the peasants, in whom she was interested, to

retain their blind faith though she herself disbelieved the Church

doctrines. “Their lives are so poor and bare, they have so little

art, so little poetry and colour in their lives--let them at least

enjoy what they have; it would be cruel to undeceive them,” said she.

Suppose a false and antiquated view of life is supported by means of

art and is inseparably linked to some manifestations of art which we

enjoy and prize; if the false view of life be destroyed this art will

cease to appear valuable. Is it better to screen the error for the

sake of preserving the art? Or should the art be sacrificed for the

sake of truth?

Again and again in history a dominant Church has utilized art to

maintain its sway over men. Reformers (early Christians, Mohammedans,

Puritans, and others) have perceived that art bound people to the old

faith and have been angry with art. They diligently chipped the noses

from statues and images, and were wroth with ceremonies, decorations,

stained-glass windows, and processions. They were even ready to

banish art altogether, for besides the superstitions it upheld, they

saw that it depraved and perverted men by dramas, drinking-songs,

novels, pictures, and dances, of a kind that awakened man’s lower

nature. Yet art always re-asserted her sway and to-day we are told

by many that art has nothing to do with morality--that art should be

followed for art’s sake.

I went one day with a woman artist to the Bodkin Art Gallery, in

Moscow. In one of the rooms, on a table, lay a book of coloured

pictures, issued in Paris and supplied, I believe, to private

subscribers only. The pictures were admirably executed, but

represented scenes in the private cabinets of a restaurant. A

particular crisis of sexual indulgence was the chief subject of each

picture: women extravagantly dressed and partly undressed; women

exposing their legs and breasts to men in evening dress; men and

women taking liberties with each other, or dancing the _can-can_,

etc., etc. My companion the artist, a maiden lady of irreproachable

conduct and reputation, began deliberately to look at these pictures.

I could not let my attention dwell on them without ill effects. Such

things had a certain attraction for me and tended to make me restless

and nervous. I ventured to suggest that the subjects of the pictures

were objectionable. But my companion (who prided herself on being an

artist) remarked with conscious superiority that from an artist’s

point of view the _subject_ was of no consequence. The pictures being

very well executed were artistic, and therefore worthy of attention

and study. Morality had nothing to do with art.

Here again is a problem. One remembers Plato’s advice not to let our

thoughts run upon women for if we do we shall not think clearly about

anything else, and one knows that to neglect this advice is to lose

tranquillity of mind; but then one does not wish to be considered

narrow, ascetic, or inartistic, or to lose artistic pleasures which

those around us esteem so highly.

Again, the newspapers not long ago printed proposals to construct a

Wagner Opera House, to cost, if I recollect rightly, £100,000--about

as much as a hundred labourers may earn by five or ten years’ hard

work. The writers thought it would be a good thing if such an Opera

House were erected and endowed. But I had a talk lately with a

man who, till his health failed him, had worked as a builder in

London. He told me that when he was younger he had been very fond of

theatre-going, but later, when he thought things over and considered

that in almost every number of his weekly paper he read of cases of

people whose death was hastened by lack of sufficient food, he felt

it was not right that so much labour should be spent on theatres.

In reply to this argument it is urged that food for the mind is as

important as food for the body. As the labouring classes work to

produce food and necessaries for themselves and for the cultured, so

some of the cultured class work to produce plays and operas. It is a

division of labour. But this again invites the rejoinder that, sure

enough, the labourers produce food for themselves and also food that

the cultured class accept and consume; but that the artists seem too

often to produce their spiritual food for the cultured only--at any

rate a singularly small share seems to reach the country labourers

who work to supply the bodily food! Even were the division of labour

shown to be a fair one, the division of products seems remarkably

one-sided.

Once again: How is it that often when a new work is produced,

neither the critics, the artists, the publishers, nor the public,

seem to know whether it is valuable or worthless? Some of the most

famous books in English literature could at first hardly find a

publisher, or were savagely derided by leading critics; while other

works once acclaimed as masterpieces are now laughed at or utterly

forgotten. A play[22] which nobody now reads was once passed off as a

newly-discovered masterpiece of Shakespeare’s, and was produced at a

leading London theatre. Are the critics playing blindman’s buff? Are

they relying on each other? Is each following his own whim and fancy?

Or do they possess a criterion never revealed to those outside the

profession?

Such are a few of the many problems relating to art which present

themselves to us all, and it is the purpose of Tolstoy’s _What is

Art?_ to enable us to reach such a comprehension of art, and of the

position art should occupy in our lives, as will enable us to answer

these questions.

The task is one of enormous difficulty. Under the cloak of “art” so

much selfish amusement and self-indulgence tries to justify itself,

and so many mercenary interests are concerned in preventing the

light from shining in upon the subject, that the clamour raised by

this book can only be compared to that raised by the silversmiths of

Ephesus when they shouted, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” for

about the space of two hours.

Elaborate theories block the path with subtle sophistries or

ponderous pseudo-erudition. Merely to master these and expose them

was by itself a great labour, necessary in order to clear the road

for any fresh view. To have accomplished this in a couple of chapters

is a remarkable achievement. To have done it without making the book

intolerably dry is more wonderful still. In Chapter III (where a

rapid summary of some sixty esthetic writers is given) even Tolstoy’s

powers fail to make the subject interesting, and he has to plead

with his readers “not to be overcome by dulness, but to read these

extracts through.”

Among the writers mentioned, English readers miss the names of John

Ruskin and William Morris, especially as much that Tolstoy says is in

accord with their views.

Of Ruskin, Tolstoy has a very high opinion. I once heard him say,

“I don’t know why you English make such a fuss about Gladstone--you

have a much greater man in Ruskin.” As a stylist, too, Tolstoy

spoke of him with high commendation. Ruskin, however, though he

wrote on art with profound insight and said many things with which

Tolstoy fully agrees, as well as some things he dissents from, has,

I think, nowhere so systematized and summarized his view that it can

be readily quoted in the concise way which has enabled Tolstoy to

indicate his points of essential agreement with Home (Lord Kames),

Véron, and Kant.[23]

As to William Morris, we are reminded of his dictum that art is the

workman’s expression of joy in his work, by Tolstoy’s “As soon as

the author is not producing art for his own satisfaction--does not

himself feel what he wishes to express--a resistance immediately

springs up” (p. 267); and again, “In such transmission to others of

the feelings that have arisen in him, he (the artist) will find his

happiness” (p. 316). Tolstoy sweeps over a far wider range of

thought, but he and Morris are not opposed. Morris was emphasizing

part of what Tolstoy is implying.

A difficulty not yet mentioned lurks in the hearts of most of us.

We have enjoyed works of “art.” We have been interested by the

psychology analysed in a novel, or we have been thrilled by an

unexpected “effect”; have admired the exactitude with which real

life has been reproduced, or have had our feelings touched by

allusions to, or imitations of, works--old German legends, Greek

myths, or Hebrew poetry--which moved us long ago, as they moved

generations before us. And we thought all this was “art.” Not clearly

understanding what art is and wherein its importance lies, we were

not only attached to these things, but attributed importance to them,

calling them “artistic” and “beautiful” without well knowing what we

meant by those words.

But here is a book that obliges us to clear our minds. It challenges

us to define “art” and “beauty,” and to say what grounds we have for

attaching _importance_ to these things that happen to please us.

As to beauty, we find that the definition given by esthetic writers

amounts merely to this, that “Beauty is a kind of pleasure received

by us, not having personal advantage for its object.” But it follows

from this, that “beauty” is a matter of taste, differing among

different people; and to attach special importance to what pleases

_me_ (and others who have had the same sort of training that I have

had) is merely to repeat the old, old mistake which so divides human

society: it is like declaring that my race is the best race, my

nation the best nation, my Church the best Church, and my family the

best family. It indicates ignorance and selfishness.

But “truth angers those whom it does not convince”; there are people

who do not wish to understand these things. It seems, at first, as

though Tolstoy were obliging us to sacrifice something valuable. We

do not realize that we are being helped to select the best art, but

we do feel that we are being deprived of our sense of satisfaction in

Baudelaire.

Both the magnitude and the difficulty of the task were therefore

very great, but they have been surmounted in a marvellous manner. In

its construction, in co-ordination, in concise presentation of many

converging thoughts, this is, probably, the most masterly of all

Tolstoy’s works.

He was indeed peculiarly qualified for the task he has accomplished.

It was after many years of work as a writer of fiction, and when

he was already standing in the very foremost rank of European

novelists,[24] that he found himself compelled to face, in deadly

earnest, the deepest problems of human life. He not only could

not go on writing books, but he felt he could not live, unless he

found clear guidance, so that he might walk with a sure foot and

know the purpose and meaning of his life. Not as a mere question of

speculative curiosity but as a matter of vital necessity, he devoted

years to re-discover the truths which underlie all religion.

To fit him for this task he possessed great knowledge of men and

books, a wide experience of life, a knowledge of languages, and

freedom from bondage to any authority but that of reason and

conscience. He was pinned to no Nicene Creed, nor was he in receipt

of any retaining fee he was not prepared to sacrifice. Another

rare gift was his wonderful sincerity, and (due, I think, to that

sincerity) an amazing power of looking at the phenomena of our

complex and artificial life with the eyes of a child; going straight

to the real, obvious facts of the case and brushing aside the

sophistries, conventionalities, and “authorities” by which they are

obscured.

He commenced the task when he was about fifty years of age, and

during the following twenty years produced a dozen philosophical

works of first-rate importance, besides many stories and short

articles.

And all this time the problems of Art--What is Art? What importance

should we attach to it? How is it related to the rest of life?--were

working in his mind. He was a great artist, often upbraided for

having abandoned his art. He, of all men, was bound to clear his

thoughts on this perplexing subject and to express them. His whole

philosophy of life--the “religious perception” to which, with such

tremendous labour and effort, he had attained--forbade him to detach

art from life, and place it in a water-tight compartment where it

should not act on life or be re-acted upon by life.

Life to him is rational. It has a clear aim and purpose, discernible

by the aid of reason and conscience. And no human activity can be

fully understood or rightly appreciated until the central purpose of

life is perceived.

You cannot piece together a puzzle-map as long as you keep one bit

in a wrong place, but when the pieces all fit together you have

a demonstration that they are all in their right places. Tolstoy

used that simile years ago when explaining how the comprehension of

the text, “resist not him that is evil,” enabled him to perceive

the coherence of Christ’s teaching, which had long baffled him.

So it is with the problem of Art. Wrongly understood, it tends to

confuse and perplex one’s whole comprehension of life. But the clue

supplied by true “religious perception” enables us to place art so

that it fits in with a right understanding of politics, economics,

sex-relationships, science, and all other phases of human activity.

The basis on which the work rests is a perception of the meaning

of human life. This was lost sight of by some reviewers, who when

the book first appeared misrepresented what Tolstoy said and then

demonstrated how stupid he would have been had he said what they

attributed to him. Leaving his premises and arguments untouched, they

dissented from various conclusions--as though it were all a question

of taste. But such criticism can lead to nothing. Discussions as to

why one man likes pears and another prefers meat do not help towards

finding a definition of what is essential in nourishment; and, just

so, “the solution of questions of taste in art does not help to make

clear what this particular human activity which we call art really

consists in.”

The object of the following summary of a few main points is to help

the reader to avoid pitfalls into which many reviewers fell. It aims

at being no more than a bare statement of the positions--for more

than that the reader must turn to the book itself.

Let it be granted at the outset that Tolstoy writes for those who

have ears to hear. He seldom pauses to safeguard himself against the

captious critic, and cares little for minute verbal accuracy. For

instance, on page 266, he mentions “Paris,” where an English writer

(even one who knew to what an extent Paris is the art centre of

France, and how many artists flock thither from Russia, America, and

all ends of the earth) would have been almost sure to say “France,”

for fear of being thought to exaggerate. One needs some alertness of

mind to follow Tolstoy in his task of compressing so large a subject

into so small a space. Moreover, he is an emphatic writer, who says

what he means and even sometimes overemphasises it. With this much

warning let us proceed to a brief summary of Tolstoy’s view of art.

“Art is a human activity,” and consequently does not exist for its

own sake, but is valuable or objectionable in proportion as it is

serviceable or harmful to mankind. The object of this activity is

to transmit to others feelings the artist has experienced. Such

feelings--intentionally re-evoked and successfully transmitted to

others--are the subject-matter of all art. By certain external

signs--movements, lines, colours, sounds, or arrangements of

words--an artist infects other people so that they share his

feelings. Thus “art is a means of union among men, joining them

together in the same emotions.”

In Chapters II to V of _What is Art?_ we have an examination of

various theories which have taken art to be something other than

this, and step by step we are brought to the conclusion that art is

precisely what this definition indicates.

Having got our definition of art, we first consider art independently

of its subject-matter, that is without asking whether the feelings

transmitted are good, bad, or indifferent. Without adequate

expression there is no art, for there is no “infection,” no

transference to others of the author’s feeling. The test of art is

infection. If an author has moved you so that you feel as he felt, if

you are so united to him in feeling that it seems to you that he has

expressed just what you have long wished to express, the work that

has so infected you is a work of art.

In this sense it is true that art has nothing to do with morality;

for the test lies in the infection and not in any consideration of

the goodness or badness of the emotions conveyed. Thus the test of

art is an _internal_ one. The activity of art is based on the fact

that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another

man’s expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion

that moved the man who expressed it. We all share the same common

human nature, and in this sense at least are sons of one Father. To

take the simplest example: a man laughs, and another, who hears,

becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another, who hears, feels sorrow.

But note in passing that it does not amount to art “if a man infects

others directly, immediately, at the very time he experiences the

feeling: if he causes another man to yawn when he himself cannot help

yawning, and so forth.” Art begins when someone, _with the object of

making others share his feeling_, expresses that feeling by certain

external indications.

This faculty of being infected by the expression of another man’s

emotions is possessed by all normal human beings. For a plain man

of unperverted taste, living in contact with nature, with animals,

and with his fellow-men, say, for “a country peasant of unperverted

taste, this is as easy as it is for an animal of unspoilt scent to

follow the trace he needs.” And he will know indubitably whether

a work presented to him does, or does not, unite him in feeling

with the author. But very many people “of our circle” (upper and

middle-class society) live such unnatural lives, in such conventional

relations to the people around them, and in such artificial

surroundings, that they have lost “that simple feeling ... that

sense of infection with another’s feeling--compelling us to joy in

another’s gladness, to sorrow in another’s grief, and to mingle souls

with another--which is the essence of art.” Such people, therefore,

have no _inner_ test by which to recognize a work of art; and they

will always be mistaking other things for art, and seeking for

external guides, such as the opinions of “recognized authorities.”

Or they will mistake for art something that produces a merely

physiological effect: lulling or exciting them; or some intellectual

puzzle that gives them something to think about.

But if most people of the “cultured crowd” are impervious to true

art, is it really possible that a common country peasant, for

instance, whose working-days are filled with labour, and whose

brief leisure is largely taken up by his family life and by his

participation in the affairs of his village--is it possible that

_he_ can recognize and be touched by works of art? Certainly it is!

Just as in ancient Greece crowds assembled to hear the poems of

Homer, so to-day in many countries, as has been the case in many

ages, the Gospel parables, and much else of the highest art, are

gladly heard by the common people. And this does not refer to any

religious use of the Bible, but to its use as literature.

Not only do normal labouring country people possess the capacity

to be infected by good art--“the epic of Genesis, folk-legends,

fairy-tales, folk-songs, etc.,”--but they themselves produce songs,

stories, dances, decorations, and so forth, which are works of true

art. Take as examples the works of Burns or Bunyan, and the peasant

women’s song mentioned in Chapter XIV of _What is Art?_; or some

of those melodies produced by the negro slaves on the southern

plantations, which have touched, and still touch, many of us with the

emotions felt by their unknown and unpaid composers.

The one great quality which makes a work of art truly contagious is

its _sincerity_. If an artist is really actuated by a feeling, and is

strongly impelled to communicate that feeling to other people--not

for money or fame or anything else, but because he feels he must

impart it--then he will not be satisfied till he has found a _clear_

way of expressing it. And the man who is not borrowing his feelings,

but has drawn what he expresses from the depths of his nature, is

sure to be _original_, for in the same way that no two people have

exactly similar faces or forms, no two people have exactly similar

minds or souls.

That, in brief outline, is what Tolstoy says about art considered

apart from its subject-matter. And this is how certain critics have

met it. They say that when Tolstoy says the test of art is internal,

he must mean that it is external. When he says that country peasants

have in the past appreciated, and do still appreciate, great works

of art, he means that the way to detect a work of art is to see what

is apparently most popular among the masses. Go into the streets

or music-halls of the cities in any particular country and year,

and observe what is most frequently sung, shouted, or played on the

barrel-organs. It may happen to be

“Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,”

or,

“We don’t want to fight,

But, by Jingo, if we do!”

But whatever it is, you may at once declare these songs to be the

highest musical art, without pausing to ask to what they owe their

vogue: what actress, or singer, or politician, or wave of patriotic

passion has conduced to their popularity! Nor need you consider

whether that popularity is merely temporary and local. Tolstoy has

said that works of the highest art are understood by unperverted

country peasants, and here are things which are popular with a town

mob--_ergo_, these things must be the highest art. The critics then

proceed to say that such a test is utterly absurd. And on this point

we may agree with the critics.

Some of these writers commence their articles by saying that Tolstoy

is a most profound thinker, a great prophet, an intellectual force,

etc. Yet when Tolstoy, in his emphatic way, makes the sweeping remark

that “good art always pleases everyone,” the critics do not read on

to find out what he means, but reply: “No! good art does not please

everyone; some people are colour-blind, and some are deaf, or have no

ear for music.”

It is as though a man strenuously arguing a point were to say,

“Everyone knows that two and two make four,” and a boy who did not

at all see what the speaker was driving at were to reply: “No,

our new-born baby doesn’t know it!” It would be true enough, and

would distract attention from the subject in hand, but it would not

elucidate matters.

There is, of course, a verbal contradiction between the statements

that “good art always pleases everyone” (p. 224), and the remark

concerning “people of our circle,” artists and public and critics

who, “with very few exceptions ... cannot distinguish true works

of art from counterfeits, but continually mistake for real art the

worst and most artificial” (p. 273). But I venture to think that no

unprejudiced and intelligent person, reading the book carefully,

should fail to reach the author’s meaning.

A point to be well noted is the distinction between science and

art. “Science investigates and brings to human perception such

truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society

consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region

of perception to the region of emotion.” Science is an “activity of

the understanding which demands preparation and a certain sequence

of knowledge, so that one cannot learn trigonometry before knowing

geometry.” “This business of art”, on the other hand, “lies just

in this: to make that understood and felt which in the form of an

argument might be incomprehensible and inaccessible” (p. 225). It

“infects any man, whatever his plane of development,” and “(as is

said in the Gospel) the hindrance to understanding the best and

highest _feelings_ does not at all lie in deficiency of development

or learning, but, on the contrary, in false development and false

learning” (p. 226). Science and art are frequently blended in one

work, _e. g._, in the Gospel elucidation of Christ’s comprehension of

life, or, to take a modern instance, in Henry George’s elucidation of

the land question in _Social Problems_.

The class distinction to which Tolstoy repeatedly alludes needs

some explanation. The position of the lower classes in England and

in Russia is different. In Russia a much larger number of people

live on the verge of starvation, the condition of the factory-hands

is much worse than in England, and there are many glaring cases

of brutal cruelty inflicted on the peasants by the officials, the

police, or the military; but in Russia a far greater proportion of

the population live in the country, and a peasant usually has his

own house and tills his share of the communal lands. Though Tolstoy

puts forward no claim that the Russian peasants are more susceptible

to art than men of other nationalities, yet he had them before his

eyes and in speaking of an “unperverted country peasant” he was no

doubt thinking of a man who perhaps suffered grievous want when

there was a bad harvest in his province but who was accustomed to

the experiences of a natural life, to the management of his own

affairs, and to a real voice in all the arrangements of the village

commune. The Government interfered from time to time to collect its

taxes by force, to take the young men for soldiers, or to maintain

the “rights” of the upper classes; but otherwise the peasant was free

to do what he saw to be necessary and reasonable. On the other hand,

English labourers are, for the most part, not so poor, they have more

legal rights and they have votes; but a far larger number of them

live in towns and are engaged in unnatural occupations, while even

those that do live in touch with nature are usually mere wage-earners

tilling other men’s land, and living often in abject submission to

the farmer, the parson, or the lady-bountiful. They are dependent on

an employer for daily bread, and the condition of a wage-labourer is

as unnatural as that of a landlord.

The tyranny of the Petersburg bureaucracy was more dramatic but

less omnipresent, and probably far less fatal to the capacity to

enjoy art, than the tyranny of our respectable, self-satisfied, and

property-loving middle-class. I am, therefore, afraid that we have

no great number of “unperverted” country labourers to compare with

those of whom Tolstoy spoke, some of whom I have known personally.

But the truth Tolstoy elucidates lies too deep in human nature to be

infringed by such differences of local circumstance. Whatever those

circumstances may be, the fact remains that in proportion as a man

approaches towards the condition not only of “earning his subsistence

by some kind of labour,” but of “living on all its sides the life

natural and proper to mankind,” his capacity to appreciate true art

tends to increase. On the other hand, when a class settles down into

an artificial way of life--loses touch with nature, becomes confused

in its perceptions of what is good and what is bad, and prefers

the condition of a parasite to that of a producer--its capacity to

appreciate true art must diminish. Losing all clear perception of

the meaning of life, such people are necessarily left without any

criterion which will enable them to distinguish good from bad art,

and they are sure to follow eagerly after beauty, that is to say

after “that which pleases them.”

The artists of our society can usually only reach people of the upper

and middle classes. But is the great artist he who delights a select

audience of his own day and class, or he whose works link generation

to generation and race to race in a common bond of feeling? Surely

art should fulfil its purpose as completely as possible. A work of

art that united every one with the author and with one another would

be perfect art. Tolstoy, in his emphatic way, speaks of works of

“universal” art, and (though the profound critics hasten to inform us

that no work of art ever reached everybody) certainly the more nearly

a work of art approaches to such expression of feeling that every

one may be infected by it, the nearer (apart from all question of

subject-matter) it approaches perfection.

But now as to subject-matter. The subject-matter of art consists of

feelings which can be spread from man to man, feelings which are

“contagious” or “infectious.” Is it of no importance _what_ feelings

increase and multiply among men?

One man feels that submission to the authority of _his_ Church, and

belief in all that it teaches him, is good; another is imbued by a

sense of each man’s duty to think with his own head: to use for his

guidance in life the reason and conscience given him. One man feels

that his nation _ought_ to wipe out in blood the shame of a defeat

inflicted on her; another feels that we are brothers, sons of one

spirit, and that the slaughter of man by man is always wrong. One

man feels that the most desirable thing in life is the satisfaction

obtainable by the love of women; another man feels that sex-love is

an entanglement and a snare, hindering his real work in life. And

each of these, if he possess an artist’s gift of expression and if

the feeling be really his own and sincere, may infect other men. But

some of these feelings will benefit and some will harm mankind, and

the more widely they are spread the greater will be their effect.

Art unites men. Surely it is desirable that the feelings in which it

unites them should be “the best and highest to which men have risen,”

or at least should not run contrary to our perception of what makes

for the well-being of ourselves and of others. And our perception

of what makes for the well-being of ourselves and of others is what

Tolstoy calls our “religious perception.”

Therefore the subject-matter of what we in our day can esteem as

being the best art, can be of two kinds only:--

1) Feelings flowing from the highest perception now attainable by man

of our right relation to our neighbour and to the Source from which

we come. Of such art, Dickens’s _Christmas Carol_, uniting us in a

more vivid sense of compassion and love, is a ready example.

2) The simple feelings of common life, accessible to every one,

provided that they are such as do not hinder progress towards

well-being. Art of this kind makes us realize to how great an extent

we already are members one of another, sharing the feelings of one

common human nature.

The success of a very primitive novel, the story of Joseph, which

made its way into the sacred books of the Jews, spread from land

to land and from age to age, and continues to be read to-day among

people quite free from bibliolatry--shows how nearly “universal” may

be the appeal of this kind of art. This branch includes all harmless

jokes, folk-stories, nursery rhymes, and even dolls, if only the

author or designer has expressed a feeling (tenderness, pleasure,

humour, or what not) so as to infect others.

But how are we to know what _are_ the “best” feelings? What is good?

and what is evil? This is decided by religious perception. Some such

perception exists in every human being; there is always something he

approves of, and something he disapproves of. Reason and conscience

are always present, active or latent, as long as man lives. Lady

Lugard tells us that the most degraded cannibal she ever met drew the

line at eating his own mother: nothing would induce him to entertain

the idea, his moral sense was revolted by the suggestion. In more

advanced societies the religious perception they have reached--the

foremost stage which has been discerned in mankind’s long march

towards perfection--has been clearly expressed by someone, and more

or less consciously accepted as an ideal by the many. But there are

transition periods in history when the worn-out formularies of a past

age have ceased to satisfy men, or have become so incrusted with

superstitions that their original brightness is lost. The religious

perception that is dawning may not yet have found such expression as

to be generally understood, but for all that it exists, and shows

itself by compelling men to repudiate beliefs that satisfied their

forefathers, the outward and visible signs of which are still endowed

and dominant long after their spirit has taken refuge in temples not

made with hands.

At such times it is difficult for men to understand each other, for

the very words needed to express the deepest experiences of men’s

consciousness mean different things to different men. So, among us

to-day, to many minds “faith” means “credulity,” and “God” suggests a

person of the male sex, father of one only-begotten son, and creator

of the universe.

This is why Tolstoy’s rational religious perception, expressed

in the books he wrote during the last thirty years of his life,

is frequently spoken of by people who have not grasped it, as

“mysticism.”[25]

The narrow materialist is shocked to find that Tolstoy will not

confine himself to the “objective” view of life. Encountering in

himself that “inward voice” which compels us all to choose between

good and evil, Tolstoy refuses to be diverted from a matter of

immediate and vital importance to him by discussions as to the

derivation of the external manifestations of conscience which

biologists are able to detect in remote forms of life. The mystic,

on the other hand, shrinks from Tolstoy’s desire to try all things

by the light of reason, to depend on nothing vague, and to accept

nothing on authority. The man who does not trust his own reason,

fears that life thus squarely faced will prove less worth having than

it is when clothed in mist.

In this work, however, Tolstoy does not recapitulate at length what

he has said before. He does not pause to re-explain why he condemns

patriotism, that is, each man’s preference for the predominance of

_his own_ country, which leads to the slaughter of man by man in war;

or Churches, which are sectarian, that is, which (striving to assert

that _your_ doxy is heterodoxy, but _our_ doxy is orthodoxy) make

external authorities (Popes, Bibles, Councils) supreme, and cling

to superstitions (_their own_ miracles, legends, and myths), thus

separating themselves from communion with the rest of mankind. He

merely summarizes it all in a few sentences, defining the “religious

perception” of to-day, which alone can decide for us “the degree

of importance both of the feelings transmitted by art and of the

information transmitted by science.”

“The religious perception of our time, in its widest and most

practical application, is the consciousness that our well-being,

both material and spiritual, individual and collective, temporal and

eternal, lies in the growth of brotherhood among men--in their loving

harmony with one another” (p. 281).

And again:--

“However differently in form people belonging to our Christian

world may define the destiny of man: whether they see it in human

progress in whatever sense of the words, in the union of all men in

a socialist realm, or in the establishment of a commune; whether

they look forward to the union of mankind under the guidance of one

universal Church, or to a federation of the world--however various in

form their definitions of the destination of human life may be, all

men in our times already admit that the highest well-being attainable

by men is to be reached by their union with one another” (p. 309).

This is the foundation on which the whole work is based. It follows

necessarily from this perception that we should consider as most

important in science “investigations into the results of good and

bad actions, considerations of the reasonableness or unreasonableness

of human institutions and beliefs, considerations of how human life

should be lived in order to obtain the greatest well-being for each;

as to what one may and should, and what one cannot and should not

believe; how to subdue one’s passions, and how to acquire the habit

of virtue.” This is the science that occupied the greatest sages of

the ancient world, and it is precisely to this kind of scientific

investigation that Tolstoy devoted most of the last thirty years of

his life, and for the sake of which the author of _Resurrection_ was

often said to have “abandoned art.”

Since science, like art, is “a human activity,” that science best

deserves our esteem, best deserves to be “chosen, tolerated,

approved, and diffused,” which treats of what is supremely important

to man; which deals with urgent, vital, inevitable problems of actual

life. Such science as this brings “to the consciousness of men the

truths that flow from the religious perception of our times,” and

“indicates the various methods of applying this consciousness to

life.” “Art should transform this perception into feeling.”

Experimental science studies questions of pure curiosity, or things

harmful to mankind (such as quick-firing cannon), or technical

improvements which in a better state of society would lighten the

workers’ burden. But, even at its best, such science “cannot serve as

a basis for art,” for it is occupied with subjects unrelated to human

conduct.

Naturally enough, the last chapter of the book deals with the

relation between science and art. And the conclusion is, that:

“The destiny of art in our time is to transmit from the realm of

reason to the realm of feeling, the truth that well-being for men

consists in being united together, and to set up, in place of

the existing reign of force, that kingdom of God--that is, of

love--which we all recognize to be the highest aim of human life” (p.

333).

And this art of the future will, in subject-matter, not be poorer,

but far richer, than the art of to-day. From the lullaby--that will

delight millions of people, generation after generation--to the

highest religious art, dealing with strong, rich, and varied emotions

flowing from a fresh outlook upon life and all its problems, the

field open for good art is enormous. With so much to say that is

urgently important to all, the art of the future will, in matter

of form, also, be far superior to our art in “clearness, beauty,

simplicity, and compression” (p. 315).

For beauty (which is “that which pleases”)--though it depends on

taste, and can furnish no _criterion_ for art--will be a natural

characteristic of work done, not for hire nor even for fame, but

because men, living a natural and healthy life, wish to share the

“highest spiritual strength which passes through them” with the

greatest possible number of others. The feelings such an artist

wishes to share he will transmit in a way that will please him and

will therefore please other men who share his nature.

In the subject-matter of art that really lives, morality is as

unavoidable as in life itself. It is in the nature of things and we

cannot escape it.

In a society where each man sets himself to obtain wealth, the

difficulty of obtaining an honest living tends to become greater

and greater. The more keenly a society pants to obtain “that which

pleases,” and puts this forward as the first and great consideration,

the more puerile and worthless will its art become. But in a society

which seeks primarily for right relations between its members, an

abundance will be obtainable for all; and when “religious perception”

guides a people’s art beauty inevitably results, as has always been

the case when men have seized a fresh perception of life and of its

purpose.

Tried by such tests the enormous majority of the things we have been

taught to consider great works of art are found wanting. Either they

fail to infect (and attract merely by being interesting, realistic,

dramatic, or by borrowing from others) and are therefore not works of

art at all; or they are works of “exclusive art,” poor in form and

capable of infecting only a select audience trained and habituated to

such inferior art; or they are bad in subject-matter, transmitting

feelings harmful to mankind.

But strive as we may to be clear and explicit, our approval and

disapproval is a matter of _degree_. The thought which underlay the

remark: “Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, even God,”

applies, not to man only but to all things human.

Tolstoy does not shrink from condemning his own artistic productions;

with the exception of two short stories,[26] he tells us, they are

works of bad art. Take, for instance, the novel _Resurrection_, of

which he has somewhere spoken disparagingly, as being “written in

my former style.” What does this mean? The book is a masterpiece

in its own line; it undoubtedly infects many people, and the

feelings transmitted are in the main such as Tolstoy approves of: in

fact, they are the feelings to which his religious perception has

brought him. If for a moment lust is shown, the reaction follows as

inevitably as in real life and is transmitted with great artistic

power. Tolstoy approved of treating all the problems of life,

including the sex-question, quite plainly and explicitly. To guide us

in life we need, not ignorance nor evasion of facts, but soundness of

religious perception, clearness of thought, and a right direction

and development of feeling. In subject-matter then _Resurrection_ is

as clearly a work of religious art as any novel mentioned by Tolstoy

in _What is Art?_ And with regard to the manner in which the matter

is presented, I think it may safely be said that in “clearness,”

as well as in “simplicity and compression,” it stands easily first

among Tolstoy’s novels. Of its “individuality and sincerity,” to say

that it equals his former works is to say that it is unsurpassed in

those qualities by any novel we possess. Why the work did not satisfy

Tolstoy is, I think, because it is a work of “exclusive art,” laden

with details of time and place. “Simplicity and compression” it

possesses, but not in the degree required in works of “universal”

art. It is a novel appealing mainly to the class that has leisure for

novel-reading because it neglects to produce its own food, make its

own clothes, or build its own houses. But if these considerations

apply to _Resurrection_, they apply with at least equal force to all

the best novels extant. If Tolstoy is sometimes severe on others, it

must be admitted that he is at least as severe on himself, and to

enable us to discern the _comparative_ merits of different works of

art we may use his principles without applying them as exactingly as

he does himself.

There is one defect in Tolstoy’s writings in general which needs to

be noted. It is observable in his novels, but it is more serious in

his essays and in his philosophical works. He does not write in a

style always easy to read. He expects more strenuous co-operation

from his readers than can safely be looked for from the ordinary

man. His sentences are often long, sometimes extremely involved, and

occasionally even faulty in structure. The strenuous labour he puts

into his work all goes to elucidate his perception of the matter,

and the sequence of the ideas. For the mere phraseology he trusted

to his great power of expression, and he had as little inclination

to polish it on a final revision as when writing the first rough

draft. He would re-shape an article again and again if the thoughts

expressed did not satisfy him. But he would sometimes leave

uncorrected a careless sentence which might baffle many an unwary

reader. This characteristic was not noticeable in his earlier works,

when the matter he wrote about was less absorbingly important.[27]

He certainly in his later years cared nothing at all for the elegant

phraseology so highly prized by writers who having nothing particular

to express attach supreme importance to their power of expression.

But his readers have occasionally to pay for his indifference.

_What is Art?_ itself is a philosophical work, though many passages,

and even some whole chapters, appeal to us as works of art, and we

feel the contagion of the author’s hope, his anxiety to serve the

cause of truth and love, his indignation (sometimes rather sharply

expressed) at whatever blocks the path of progress, and his contempt

for much that the “cultured crowd” in our erudite, perverted society

have persuaded themselves, and would fain persuade others, is the

highest art.

One result which follows inevitably from Tolstoy’s view (and which

illustrates how widely his views differ from the fashionable esthetic

mysticism), is that art is not stationary but progressive. It is

true that our highest religious perception found expression eighteen

hundred years ago, and then served as the basis of a literary art

which is still unmatched, and that similar cases can be instanced

from the farther East. But allowing for such great exceptions--to

which, not inaptly, the term “inspiration” has been specially

applied--the subject-matter of art improves, though long periods of

time may have to be viewed to make this obvious. Our power of verbal

expression may be no better now than it was in the days of David,

but we must no longer esteem as good in _subject-matter_ poems which

appeal to the Eternal to destroy a man’s private or national foes;

for we have reached a religious perception which bids us have no

foes, and the ultimate source (undefinable by us) from which this

consciousness has come, is what we mean when we speak of God.

PART XII

WHAT IS ART?

_Tolstoy’s Preface to the First English Edition, translated

by Aylmer Maude from the Original Mss._

This book of mine, “What is Art?” appears now for the first time

in its true form. More than one edition has already been issued in

Russia, but in each case it has been so mutilated by the Censor

that I request all who are interested in my views on art only to

judge of them by the work in its present shape. The causes which led

to the publication of the book--with my name attached to it--in a

mutilated form, were the following: In accordance with a decision I

arrived at long ago,--not to submit my writings to the Censorship

(which I consider to be an immoral and irrational institution),

but to print them only in the shape in which they were written,--I

intended not to attempt to print this work in Russia. However, my

good acquaintance Professor Grote, editor of a Moscow psychological

magazine, having heard of the contents of my work asked me to print

it in his magazine, and promised me that he would get the book

through the Censor’s office unmutilated if I would but agree to a few

very unimportant alterations, merely toning down certain expressions.

I was weak enough to agree to this, and it has resulted in a book

appearing under my name, from which not only have some essential

thoughts been excluded, but into which the thoughts of other

men--even thoughts utterly opposed to my own convictions--have been

introduced.

The thing occurred in this way. First Grote softened my expressions

and in some cases weakened them. For instance, he replaced the

words: _always_ by _sometimes_, _all_ by _some_, _Church_ religion

by _Roman Catholic_ religion, “_Mother of God_” by _Madonna_,

_patriotism_ by _pseudo-patriotism_, _palaces_ by _palatii_,[28]

etc., and I did not consider it necessary to protest. But when the

book was already in type, the Censor required that whole sentences

should be altered, and that instead of what I said about the evil of

landed property, a remark should be substituted on the evils of a

landless proletariat.[29] I agreed to this also and to some further

alterations. It seemed not worth while to upset the whole affair for

the sake of one sentence, and when one alteration had been agreed to

it seemed not worth while to protest against a second and a third.

Thus little by little expressions crept into the book which altered

the sense and attributed things to me that I could not have wished to

say. So that by the time the book was printed it had been deprived of

some part of its integrity and sincerity. But there was consolation

in the thought that the book, even in this form, if it contains

something good, would be of use to Russian readers whom it would

otherwise not have reached. Things however turned out otherwise.

_Nous comptions sans notre hôte._ After the legal term of four

days had already elapsed, the book was seized and, on instructions

received from Petersburg, it was handed over to the Spiritual Censor.

Then Grote declined all further participation in the affair, and

the Spiritual Censor proceeded to do what he liked with the book.

The Spiritual Censorship is one of the most ignorant, venal, stupid,

and despotic institutions in Russia. Books which disagree in any way

with the recognised State religion of Russia, if once it gets hold

of them, are almost always totally suppressed and burnt; which is

what happened to all my religious works when attempts were made to

print them in Russia. Probably a similar fate would have overtaken

this work also, had not the editors of the magazine employed all

means to save it. The result of their efforts was that the Spiritual

Censor, a priest who probably understands art and is interested in

art as much as I understand or am interested in church services,

but who gets a good salary for destroying whatever is likely to

displease his superiors, struck out all that seemed to him to

endanger his position, and substituted his thoughts for mine wherever

he considered it necessary to do so. For instance, where I speak of

Christ going to the Cross for the sake of the truth he professed, the

Censor substituted a statement that Christ died for mankind, that

is, he attributed to me an assertion of the dogma of the Redemption,

which I consider to be one of the most untruthful and harmful of

Church dogmas. After correcting the book in this way, the Spiritual

Censor allowed it to be printed.

To protest in Russia is impossible; no newspaper would publish such

a protest, and to withdraw my book from the magazine and place the

editor in an awkward position with the public was also impossible.

So the matter has remained. A book has appeared under my name

containing thoughts attributed to me which are not mine.

I was persuaded to give my article to a Russian magazine in order

that my thoughts, which may be useful, should become the possession

of Russian readers; and the result has been that my name is affixed

to a work from which it might be assumed that I quite arbitrarily

assert things contrary to the general opinion, without adducing my

reasons; that I only consider false patriotism bad, but patriotism

in general a very good feeling; that I merely deny the absurdities

of the Roman Catholic Church and disbelieve in the Madonna, but

that I believe in the Orthodox Eastern faith and in the “Mother of

God”; that I consider all the writings collected in the Bible to be

holy books, and see the chief importance of Christ’s life in the

Redemption of mankind by his death.

I have narrated all this in such detail because it strikingly

illustrates the indubitable truth, that all compromise with

institutions of which your conscience disapproves,--compromises

which are usually made for the sake of the general good,--instead

of producing the good you expect, inevitably lead you not only

to acknowledge the institution you disapprove of, but also to

participate in the evil that institution produces.

I am glad to be able by this statement at least to do something to

correct the error into which I was led by my compromise.

I have also to mention that besides reinstating the parts excluded by

the Censor from the Russian editions, other corrections and additions

of importance have been made in this edition.

LEO TOLSTOY.

_29th March 1898._

NOTE:

When a subscription edition of Tolstoy’s works edited by Professor

Leo Wiener, was published in 1904, by Dana Estes in U. S. A. and G.

M. Dent & Co. in London, this request of Tolstoy’s to “all who are

interested in my views on art only to judge of them by the work in

its present shape,” was disregarded, another version was substituted,

and incidentally this preface was omitted from that “complete

edition” of his works.

PART XIII

WHAT IS ART?

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

Time and labour spent on art--Lives stunted in its

service--Morality sacrificed to, and anger justified by,

art--The rehearsal of an opera described.