“Woman, as a Christian, has a right to equality. Woman, as member
of the modern and perfectly pagan family, must not struggle for an
impossible equality. The modern family is like a tiny little boat
sailing in a storm on the vast ocean. It can keep afloat if it is ruled
by _one_ will. But when those in the boat begin struggling, the boat
is upset, and the result is what we see now in most families. The man,
however bad, is in the majority of cases the more sensible of the two.
Woman is nearly always in opposition to any progress. When man wants
to break with the old life and to go ahead, he nearly always meets
with energetic resistance from the woman. The wife catches hold of his
coat-tails and will not allow him. In woman a great evil is terribly
highly developed--family egotism. It is a dreadful egotism, for it
commits the greatest cruelties in the name of love; as if to say, let
the whole world perish so that my Serge may be happy!...”
Then L. N. recalled scenes which he had observed in Moscow:
“There issues from Minangua’s a gentleman in a beaver coat, with a sad
face, and after him his lady, and the porter carries boxes and helps
the lady into the sledge.
“I love at times to stand near the colonnade by the great theatre and
watch the ladies driving up to stop at Meriliz’s. I only know of two
similar sights: (1) when peasant women go to Zaseka to pick up nuts the
watchmen catch them, so that sometimes they give birth out of fright,
and yet they go on doing it; and (2) so it is with ladies shopping at
sales.
“And their coachmen wait in the bitter cold and talk among themselves:
‘My lady must have spent five thousand to-day!’
“I shall one day write about women. When I am quite old, and my
digestion is completely out of order, and I am still looking out into
the world through one eye, then I shall pop my head out and tell them:
That’s what you are! and disappear completely, or they would peck me to
death.” ...
Doctor E. N. Maliutin was in Yasnaya. L. N. said to him:
“I can’t understand the usual attitude that a doctor always serves a
good cause. There is no profession that is good in itself. One may be
a cobbler and be better and nicer than a doctor. Why is restoring some
one to health good? At times it is quite the opposite. Man’s deeds are
good, not in themselves, but because of the feelings which inspire
him. That’s why I do not understand the desire of women to be doctors,
trained nurses, midwives, as though by becoming a midwife everything is
settled for the best.”
On some occasion L. N. said:
“When you are told about a complicated and difficult affair, for the
most part about some one’s disgusting behaviour, reply to it: Did _you_
make the jam? or: Won’t you like to have tea?--and that’s all. Much
harm comes from the so-called attempt to understand circumstances and
relations.”
_October 1st._ I came to Yasnaya Polyana yesterday. It is very nice
here now the weather is mild, almost bright, but rather cold. There are
no strangers. I am copying _Resurrection_ again, on which L. N. is hard
at work. Now I am doing the first chapters of Part III.
There is little joy in the Tolstois’ family life, and to an intimate
friend this is extremely marked.
_Moscow, November 26th._ I am much distressed by L. N.’s serious
illness, which at the bottom of my mind I consider hopeless. I called
on Wednesday to inquire after his health, and the news was very
unfavourable.
_December 7th._ When Tolstoi was ill (he is much better now) and I was
for the first time in his room, he seemed glad to see me, which was a
great delight to me. On his table was the volume of Tyutchev’s poems.
In his hand he had an English book, _Empire and Freedom_ (I don’t
remember by whom). As is always his way, Tolstoi at once spoke of what
he was reading.
“Here is a remarkable book!” said Tolstoi. “He (the author) is
American, therefore an Anglo-Saxon; nevertheless, he denies the
so-called civilizing influence of the Anglo-Saxon race. I can’t
understand how people can stick to such superstitions! I understand a
Muhammad preaching his doctrine,--mediæval Christianity, the Crusades.
Whatever the convictions of those people may have been, they did it in
the belief that they knew the truth and were giving that knowledge to
others. But now there is nothing! Everything is done for the sake of
profit!”
Then Tolstoi began to talk about a French pamphlet on the workers’
co-operative societies which he had read.
“Why not introduce in the villages here such co-operative societies?
That is a vital thing! You, instead of doing nothing,” he turned to
Ilya Lvovich, who sat there, “ought to do it here in the village.
“Socialist ideas have become a truism. Who can now seriously dispute
the idea that every one should have the right to enjoy the result of
his labour?”
Then the conversation turned upon the _obschina_.
Tolstoi said:
“Everything is taken away from the peasants; they are overtaxed,
oppressed in all ways. The only good thing left is the _obschina_.
And then every one criticizes it and makes it responsible for all the
miseries of the peasants, in their wish to take away from the peasants
their last good thing. They make out that the mutual responsibility
of the members is one of the evils of the _obschina_. But mutual
responsibility is only one of the principles of the _obschina_ with
regard to fiscal purposes. If I use a good thing for an evil end, that
does not prove that the thing is in itself bad.”
Then the conversation turned upon Tyutchev. The other day Tolstoi saw
in the _Novoe Vremya_ his poem “Twilight.” He therefore took down all
Tyutchev’s poems and read them during his illness.
Tolstoi said to me:
“I am always saying that a work of art is either so good that there is
no standard by which to define its qualities--that is real art,--or
it is quite bad. Now, I am happy to have found a real work of art. I
cannot read it without tears. I know it by heart. Listen, I’ll read it
to you.”
Tolstoi began in a voice broken with tears:
“The dove-coloured shadows melted together....”
When I am on my death-bed I shall not forget the impression then
produced on me by Tolstoi. He lay on his back, convulsively twisting
the edge of his blanket with his fingers and trying in vain to restrain
the tears that choked him. He broke down several times and began again.
But at last, when he read the end of the stanza, “Everything is in me,
and I in everything,” his voice gave way. The entrance of A. N. Dunaev
stopped him. He grew calmer.
“What a pity that I spoilt the poem for you!” he said to me later.
Then I played the piano.
Tolstoi asked me not to play Chopin, saying: “I am afraid I might burst
into tears.”
Tolstoi asked for something by Mozart or Haydn.
He asked: “Why do pianists never play Haydn? You ought to. How good it
is--beside a modern complicated, artificial work--to play something of
Mozart or Haydn!”
1900
_Moscow, January 29th._ Tolstoi had a conversation with V. E. Den when
Chalyapin was here. Tolstoi is working now on the article on the labour
question, “New Slavery,” and the conversation turned upon labour.
Tolstoi said: “We are going through a new stage in the evolution of
slavery: the slavery of the working men suffering under the yoke of the
well-to-do classes.
“Slavery will never cease at the bottom first, exclusively from the
movement of the slaves themselves. We saw it in America, and here
during the serfdom of the peasants. So must it happen now again. It is
only when we realize that it is a shame to have slaves, that we shall
cease to be slave-drivers, and shall voluntarily give up exploiting the
working classes.
“Freedom cannot come from the slaves. Individual slaves who have rid
themselves of the yoke of slavery become in the majority of cases
particularly harsh oppressors and tyrants over their late brothers.
Nor can it be otherwise. How can you expect from them--harassed and
tortured--anything else? It is only when we voluntarily give up the
shameful use of the labour of the slaves, our brothers, that slavery
will come to an end.
“Science, in so far as it describes and clarifies the real state of
things, does a useful and necessary work. But as soon as it starts
laying down programmes for the future, it becomes useless. All these
ideas about an eight-hour working day, etc., only increase and legalize
the evil. Labour must be free, not slavish, and that is all.
“When a peasant gets up before sunrise and works all day long in the
field, he is not a slave. He has intercourse with nature, he does a
useful work. But when he stands by a piece of machinery in a Morosov’s
factory all his life long, manufacturing textiles which he will never
see, and neither himself nor any one of his people will ever use, then
he is a slave and perishes in slavery.
“Railways, telephones, and the other accessories of the civilized
world--all that is useful and good. But if one had to choose either
the whole of this civilization, for which not hundreds of thousands of
ruined lives are required, but only the certain destruction of one
single existence, or, on the other hand, no civilization at all, then
no thank you for this civilization with its railways and telephones, if
a necessary condition of them is the destruction of human life.”
_February 24th._ On the 18th and 20th I was at the Tolstois’. On
the 18th Tolstoi went to the “Pod Deviche” playhouse and afterwards
to a dirty public-house, where there is an extraordinary amount of
drunkenness and debauchery, to make observations.
Tolstoi said:
“Twenty years ago I saw at the ‘Pod Deviche,’ _Churkin_, a play
composed by a drunken tramp, and this time I saw _Stenka Rasin_--and it
is all the same thing. Murder and violence are represented as heroic
and are acclaimed by the crowd. And it is remarkable that whilst every
word in a book which may enlighten the minds of the people is carefully
struck out by the censorship, such performances are readily allowed,
under the police inspector’s censorship. During the last twenty years
probably over a million people have seen these _Churkins_ and _Rasins_.”
In telling this, Tolstoi recollected how he was once in a workhouse
where the priest explained the Gospels:
“The passage was read where Christ says: ‘It is said: thou shalt not
kill; but I say unto you, do not be angry without cause.’ The priest
began to explain that one must not be angry without cause, but, if
the authorities become angry, that is right and as it should be. ‘Do
not kill’ also does not mean that one should never kill. In war or
at an execution, killing is necessary and is not a sin. This is the
only chance that an illiterate person has to understand the meaning of
the Gospels, for in church all the chapters are either indistinctly
read by the sexton, or shouted so loud that they are perfectly
unintelligible--and this is the way in which the Gospels are explained
to the people!”
A long talk about the Boers and the English took place.
Tolstoi said:
“I always consider that moral motives are effective and decisive
historically. And now, when the universal dislike of the English is
so clearly pronounced--I shall not live to see it, but it seems to me
that the power of England will be much shaken. And I say this not out
of an unconscious Russian patriotism. If Poland or Finland rose against
Russia and success were on their side, my sympathy would be on their
side as the oppressed.
“The Russian people, speaking impartially, is perhaps the most
Christian of all in its moral character. It is partly to be explained
by the fact that the Gospels have been read by the Russian people for
nine hundred years; Catholics don’t know the Gospels even now, and
other races came to know the Gospel only after the Reformation.
“I was struck when I saw in the streets of London a criminal escorted
by the police, and the police had to protect him energetically from
the crowd, which threatened to tear him to pieces. With us it is just
the opposite: police have to drive away by force the people who try to
give the criminal money and bread. With us, criminals and prisoners are
‘little unhappy ones.’ But now, unfortunately, there is a change for
the worse, and our abominable Government tries with all its might and
main to rouse hatred against the condemned. In Siberia, even prizes are
given to any one who kills an escaped prisoner.”
_April 29th._ The conversation was on Shakespeare. Tolstoi is not very
fond of him. Tolstoi said:
“Three times in my life I have read through Shakespeare and Goethe from
end to end, and I could never make out in what their charm consisted.”
According to Tolstoi, Goethe is cold. Among his (Goethe’s) works he
likes many of the lyrics and _Hermann and Dorothea_. He does not like
Goethe’s dramatic works, and his novels he considers quite weak.
Tolstoi did not speak about _Faust_.
Tolstoi is very fond of Schiller, and said: “He is a genuine man!”
He loves almost all his works, particularly _The Robbers_ and _Don
Carlos_, also _Mary Stuart_, _William Tell_, and _Wallenstein_.
Then A. M. Sukhotin, a man over seventy, read aloud Turgenev’s _Old
Portraits_ superbly. Tolstoi did not remember the story, and was in
great delight over it. He said:
“It is only after reading all these moderns that one really appreciates
Turgenev.”
Tolstoi remembered Turgenev with great love. He said, in passing:
“When Turgenev died I wanted to read a paper about him. I wanted
especially, in view of the misunderstandings that there had been
between us, to remember and relate all the good that was so abundant
in him, and to tell what I loved in him. The lecture was not given.
Dolgorukov did not allow it.”
The conversation turned on Chekhov and Gorky. Tolstoi as usual praised
Chekhov’s artistic gift very highly. The lack of a definite world
conception grieves him in Chekhov; and in this respect Tolstoi prefers
Gorky. Of Gorky Tolstoi said:
“You know what he is from his works. Gorky’s great and very serious
essential defect is a poorly developed sense of proportion, and this
is extremely important. I pointed out this defect to Gorky himself,
and as an instance I drew his attention to his misuse of the method
of animating inanimate things. Then Gorky said that in his opinion it
was a good method, and gave an instance of it in his story _Malva_,
where it says: ‘the sea laughed.’ I replied to him that, if on certain
occasions the method might be very successful, nevertheless one ought
not to abuse it.”
Yesterday Ushakov asked Tolstoi about Gromeka. Tolstoi and Tatyana
Lvovna spoke a great deal about him.
Tolstoi said:
“He was a sympathetic, passionate, and gifted man. He shot himself when
still a young man, it was said because he was mentally deranged.”
Tatyana Lvovna says, by the way, that Gromeka was her first admirer
and proposed to her when she was sixteen.
Tolstoi values Gromeka’s criticism very much. He said:
“It was a pleasure to me that a man who sympathized with me could see
_even_ in _War and Peace_ and in _Anna Karenin_ a great deal of what I
was afterwards to say and write.”
Tolstoi also said:
“When I wrote the story _What Men Live by_, Fet said, ‘Well, what do
people live by? By money, of course.’”