1896
My first visit to the house of Leo Nikolaevich was on January 20th,
1896. I was not then twenty-one years old. I was almost a boy. I was
taken to the Tolstois’ by a well-known Moscow lady singer who used to
visit the Tolstois. She took me there in my capacity as pianist, of
course. If one is so unlucky as to play some instrument, or to sing or
recite, one has a constant impediment in one’s relations with people.
People do not take to one, are not interested in one as in a person:
one is asked to play something, to sing, to recite.... Hence one feels
so embarrassed, so awkward, in other people’s society.
I felt awkward then, and painfully shy. I was introduced. I went into
the drawing-room, where, fortunately, two or three people I knew were
sitting. I did not yet see Tolstoi. Shortly afterwards he came in,
dressed in a blouse, with his hands in his belt. He greeted us all. I
do not remember whether he spoke to me then. Then I played, and played
badly. Of course, out of politeness I was thanked and complimented,
which made me inexpressibly ashamed. And then, when I stood in the
middle of the large room, at a loss, not knowing what to do with
myself, not daring to raise my eyes, Leo Nikolaevich came up to me,
and, speaking with a simplicity which was his alone, began to talk to
me.
Among other things, talking of the piece I had played, he asked me:
“Which composer do you like best?”
“Beethoven,” I replied.
Tolstoi looked straight into my eyes and said quietly as if doubting me:
“Is that so?”
It seemed as if I were repeating what every one says; but I spoke the
truth.
Leo Nikolaevich observed that he loved Chopin beyond almost all other
composers.
He said to me:
“In every art--this I know from my own experience too--there are two
extremes which it is difficult to avoid: emptiness and virtuosity.
For instance, Mozart, whom I love so much, is at times empty, but
after that he soars to an extraordinary height. Schumann’s defect is
virtuosity. Of these two faults virtuosity is the worse, if only for
this reason, that it is harder to get rid of it. Chopin’s greatness
consists in the fact that, however simple he may be, he is never empty,
and in his most complicated works he is never a mere virtuoso.”
I left the Tolstois’ house with a vague feeling of happiness that I had
seen Tolstoi and spoken to him, and also with a bitter sense of my own
unworthiness.
One evening as I approached the Tolstois’ house in Khamovniki I met
Leo Nikolaevich, who was going for a walk. He asked me to come with
him. We walked in the Prechistenka. The street was deserted and
quiet. The few passers-by whom we met at intervals nearly all bowed
to Leo Nikolaevich. By degrees Leo Nikolaevich brought me to talk
about myself. At that time I was carried away by the philosophy of
pessimism; I raved about Schopenhauer. Probably everything I said to
Leo Nikolaevich was naïve and silly, but Leo Nikolaevich listened to me
attentively and spoke to me seriously without making me feel my naïveté.
In passing, Leo Nikolaevich said to me:
“The most complete and profound philosophy is to be found in the
Gospels.”
I remember that at that time it seemed to me strange. I was used to
thinking the Gospels a book of moral teaching; and I did not understand
that all the wisdom of the most profound philosophy was contained in
its simplicity and lucidity.
Once I met Leo Nikolaevich in the street. He again asked me to walk
with him. We were somewhere near the Novinsky Boulevard, and Leo
Nikolaevich suggested we should take the tram. We sat down and took our
tickets.
Leo Nikolaevich asked me:
“Can you make a Japanese cockerel?”
“No.”
“Look.”
Tolstoi took his ticket and very skilfully made it into a rather
elaborate cockerel, which, when you pulled its tail, fluttered its
wings.
An inspector entered the car and began checking the tickets. L. N.,
with a smile, held out the cockerel to him and pulled its tail. The
cockerel fluttered its wings. But the inspector, with the stern
expression of a business man who has no time for trifling, took the
cockerel, unfolded it, looked at the number, and tore it up.