“No, it was his conviction. And, as often happens, what people try very
stubbornly to get, they do get. Fet all his life long wanted to become
rich, and he became rich. His brothers and sisters, it seems, went out
of their minds, and all their fortunes came to him.”
Fet wrote in Tatyana Lvovna’s album that the unhappiest day of his life
was the one when he saw that he was going to be ruined.
I talked a good deal with Tolstoi to-day. Tolstoi said about current
events:
“I am not so much horrified at these murders in the Transvaal, and now
in China, as by the open declaration of immoral motives. They used at
least to cloak themselves hypocritically in good motives, but now that
this is no longer possible they express all their immoral and cruel
intentions and claims openly.”
We spoke about the abolition of deportation. Tolstoi considers it worse
than the other method. He said:
“Instead of making it possible for a man to order his life in a new
place, he is put into prison. The Government has already voted six and
a half millions for the enlargement of prisons. And this money will
again be flayed off the peasants, for there is nowhere else to take it
from.”
Of our courts of justice Tolstoi said:
“How absurd our courts are can be seen at each stage. For example, take
the case of the Tula priest. How was it that the Tula court acquitted
him, and then after the acquittal the Oriol court sentenced him to hard
labour for twenty years? If such uncertainty is possible, what are
those verdicts worth? Indeed, it depends on a thousand accidents: the
temper of the jurymen, the behaviour of the prisoner at the bar--the
prisoner bursts into tears, and the impression produced secures his
acquittal. It is merely a game of heads and tails! It would be simpler
and easier to say: Heads or tails, and to give sentence accordingly.
It simply baffles me how decent people can be judges!”
Of the case of S. I. Mamontov, Tolstoi said:
“One is certainly very sorry for him: he is an old, unhappy man; but,
on the other hand, you have to remember that the man has squandered
twelve millions, or whatever it may be; he certainly spent between one
and two hundred thousand roubles per annum, and is then acquitted,
while another wretched man steals a trifle and is condemned for it. And
in his case, too, money was spent on expensive lawyers. This reminds
me of the anecdote I read in the papers. A cashier who embezzled
twenty-five thousand roubles came to a lawyer to ask him to undertake
his defence. The lawyer asked him: ‘Is there any more money left?’
The cashier said that there was another twenty-five thousand. Then
the lawyer said: ‘Take the rest and give it to me, and then I will
undertake your case.’
“And why should the jury be able to pardon? Only the plaintiff can
pardon; but the jury whom he has not hurt have nothing to pardon him
for.
“I once talked to N. V. Davidov, and said to him that all punishment
may be dispensed with, yet an enquiry ought to be made; and when the
crime is proved, they should go to the criminal and accuse him in the
presence of all of his crime, and should bring forward the proof of
his guilt. It is quite likely that the man will say: ‘Be damned to
you, it is none of your business!’ But still I think that this method
would more often give positive results than the existing system of
punishment.”
Speaking of the Government, Tolstoi said:
“I wonder why they have not put me into prison yet? Particularly now,
after my article on ‘Patriotism.’ Perhaps they have not read it yet? It
ought to be sent to them.”
Tolstoi spoke again of his indifference to modern complicated music:
“I tried to accustom myself to modern dissonances, but these are all a
perversion of taste. A modern composer takes a musical idea, now and
then even a lovely one, and twists it round and round without end or
measure, combines it with other themes, and, when at last he manages to
express something simple, one is ready to heave a sigh of relief and
say: Thank God!”
_July 4th._ Yesterday Tolstoi said to me:
“Buddha says that happiness consists in doing as much good as possible
to others. However strange this may seem on the face of it, yet it is
true without a doubt: happiness is only possible when the struggle for
personal happiness is renounced.”
Then Tolstoi smiled and said:
“And yet you play the piano! But certainly that is better than many
other things. At any rate you need not pass sentence on any one, or
commit murder.”
Tolstoi said of newspapers:
“At present the newspaper infection has reached its ultimate limits.
All the questions of the day are artificially puffed up by the
newspapers. The worst danger is that the newspapers present everything
ready made, without making people stop to think about anything. A
liberal Kuzminsky, or even a Koni, takes his fresh newspaper with his
morning coffee, reads it, goes to his court, where he meets others who
have just read the very same newspaper, and the contagion is spread!”
Tolstoi went on to say:
“It has suddenly become perfectly clear to me that the evil lies in
regulations, _i.e._ the chief thing is not that people do wrong, but
that some force others to do a wrong which is considered to be right.
Hitherto not a single one even of the most extreme socialist doctrines
has dispensed with compulsion. But slavery will only cease when every
one is free to choose his work and the time needed for it.
“People always put an end to things by asking: ‘Well; let us suppose
that we have liberated the slave, what will follow next? How is it
going to be done?’ I do not know how it is going to be done, but I do
know that the existing order is the greatest evil, and therefore I
must try to take as little part as possible in keeping it going. But
what will come in place of that evil--I do not and must not know. For
what reason did we, the well-to-do classes, take upon ourselves the
rôle of the controllers of life? Let the freed slaves arrange things
for themselves. I know only this, that it is bad to be a slave and
worse still to own slaves, and therefore I must rid myself of the evil.
That’s all.”
Tolstoi wanted to take for the motto of his new book, _The Slavery of
our Times_, Marx’s saying that since the capitalists made themselves
masters of the working classes the European governments lost all shame.
Tolstoi praised Elzbacher’s book on anarchy, in which the doctrines
of seven anarchists are expounded: of Godwin, Proudhon, Max Stirner,
Bakunin, Kropotkin, B. P. Tucker, and Tolstoi himself.
Tolstoi said:
“I myself can remember at the beginning of the socialist movement in
Russia that the word ‘socialist’ was only spoken in a whisper; but when
Professor Ivanyukov in the first years of the eighties openly wrote his
book on socialism, it was already a widely spread doctrine in Western
Europe. It is in the same way that the public now regard anarchism,
often crudely identifying this doctrine with the throwing of bombs.”
Of Elzbacher’s book Tolstoi said:
“At the end of the book is an alphabetical index of the words used by
the seven anarchists. It appears that the word _Zwang_, compulsion,
violence, is absent only in the exposition of my views.”
Sergeenko was telling Tolstoi about Volinsky’s book on Leonardo da
Vinci, and said it was a fine book.
Tolstoi remarked:
“Yes, it seems to be one of those books which are good in that it is
not necessary to read them.”
Tolstoi said yesterday about doctors and science generally:
“How trivial and unnecessary are all our sciences! It is true that
exact sciences--mathematics and chemistry, although quite unimportant
for the improvement of moral life, are at any rate exact and positive.
But, although medical science has a great deal of knowledge, that
amount is nothing in proportion to what is needed in order actually to
know anything. And what is the good of it?”
I replied to Tolstoi that, although in theory it may be so, yet in
practice, when some one is ill, one always wants to help them.
To this Tolstoi replied:
“It often happens that if some one is seriously ill, those around him,
at the bottom of their hearts, want him to die, in order to be rid of
him--he is in their way.”
Tolstoi said to Sophie Andreevna:
“It’s time for us to die,” and he quoted Pushkin’s lines:
“And then our heir in a lucky moment will crush us down with a heavy
monument.”
_July 5th._ Tolstoi went for a walk to-day with myself and P. A.
Sergeenko. We passed through the splendid young fir-tree forest on the
left of the road to Kozlovka.
Tolstoi said:
“I am trying to like and appreciate the modern writers, but it
is so difficult. Dostoevsky often wrote so badly, so weakly and
incompetently, from the point of view of technique; but what a lot he
always has to say! Taine said that for one page of Dostoevsky’s he
would give all French novels.
“And technique has now reached a wonderful perfection. A Mme. Lukhmanov
or Mme. D. writes quite wonderfully. What are Turgenev or myself
compared with her! She could give us forty points’ start of her!”
Tolstoi has recently re-read all Chekhov’s short stories. To-day he
said of Chekhov:
“His mastery is of the highest order. I have been re-reading his
stories with the greatest pleasure. Some, as, for instance, ‘Children,’
‘Sleepy,’ ‘In Court,’ are real masterpieces. I really read one story
after another with great pleasure. And yet it is all a mosaic; there is
no connecting inner link.
“The most important thing in a work of art is that it should have a
kind of focus, _i.e._ there should be some place where all the rays
meet or from which they issue. And this focus must not be able to be
completely explained in words. This indeed is one of the significant
facts about a true work of art--that its content in its entirety can be
expressed only by itself.”
Tolstoi finds a great likeness between the talents of Chekhov and
Maupassant. He prefers Maupassant for his greater joy in life. But, on
the other hand, Chekhov’s gift is a purer gift then Maupassant’s.
Sergeenko, I don’t remember in what connection, recalled a poem by
Lermontov.
Tolstoi said:
“He had indeed a permanent and powerful seeking after truth! Pushkin
has not that moral significance, but the sense of beauty is developed
in him more highly than in any one else. In Chekhov, and in modern
writers generally, there is an extraordinary development of the
technique of realism. In Chekhov everything is real to the verge of
illusion. His stories give the impression of a stereoscope. He throws
words about in apparent disorder, and, like an impressionist painter,
he achieves wonderful results by his touches.”
Tolstoi likes M. Gorky very much as a man. He begins, however, to be
disappointed with his work.
Tolstoi said of him:
“Gorky lacks a sense of proportion. He has a familiar style which is
unpleasant.”
Tolstoi wrote a short preface to Von Polenz’s novel _Der Büttnerbauer_.
On that occasion he said:
“As I read the novel, I kept saying to myself: ‘Why did not you, you
fool, write this novel?’--indeed, I know this world; and how very
important it is to point out the poetry of peasant life! Men with their
civilization will cut down this lime tree here, this forest; they will
lay pavements and make houses with tall chimneys, and they will destroy
the boundless beauty of natural life.”
On my asking him whether he had ever tried to write such a novel,
Tolstoi said that he had done so several times long ago.
Tolstoi said of Grigorovich:
“He is now old-fashioned and seems feeble, but he is an important and
remarkable writer, and God grant that Chekhov may be a tenth part as
important as Grigorovich was. He belonged to the number of the best
men who found an important movement. He has also many artistic merits.
For instance, in the beginning of his _Anton Goremika_, when the old
peasant comes home and gives his son or grandson a twig, it is a moving
incident which depicts the old peasant as well as the simplicity and
artlessness of his life.”
Of Turgenev, Tolstoi said:
“He was a typical representative of the men of the ’fifties--a radical
in the best sense of the word. His struggle against serfdom is
remarkable, and also his love for what he describes; for instance, the
way he describes the old man in _Old Portraits_. And then there is his
sensitiveness to the beauties of nature.”
Speaking of the province of criticism, Tolstoi said:
“The value of criticism consists in pointing out all the good that
there is in this or that work of art, and in thus directing the opinion
of the public, whose tastes are mostly crude and the majority of whom
have no feeling for beauty. Just as it is difficult to be a really good
critic, so it is easy for the most stupid and limited man to become
a critic; and as good critics are needed, so bad critics are merely
harmful. It is a particularly absurd and cheap habit of critics to
express, in talking of other people’s work, all sorts of personal ideas
which have nothing to do with the book they are criticizing. This is
the most useless gossip.”
_July 7th._ Tolstoi said that all human vices can be reduced to three
classes: (1) anger, malevolence; (2) vanity; and (3) lust--in the
widest sense of the word. The last is the most powerful.
In the morning, at coffee, Tolstoi sighed and said:
“Yes, it is hard, it is hard.... It is hard because falsehood and
arrogance prevail in the higher ranks of society, and because there
is much darkness among the people. The other day two sectarians of
the priestless sect came to me from Tula: one a young one, evidently
of little understanding, and the other an old man, who, while we
talked, kept putting on his spectacles. The old man turned out to be
understanding, wise, and said many things to the point, as though he
agreed with my religious views; and yet when I offered them tea they
refused because they had not brought their tea things with them.”
On the occasion of the Boxer rising Tolstoi said:
“It is terrible that it should happen in such an awful way. But,
although it is difficult to foresee, yet it is to be expected that
after the war a greater understanding will take place between Europeans
and the Chinese; and I think that the Chinese are bound to have a most
beneficial influence on us, if only because of their extraordinary
capacity for work and of their ability to grow more on a small plot
of land and obtain better results than we do on a space a dozen times
larger.”
Tolstoi compares the present state of Europe with the end of the Roman
Empire. The Chinese, in his opinion, play the part of the “barbarians.”
Tolstoi said to-day:
“All our actions are divided into those which have a value, and those
which have no value at all, in the face of death. If I were told that I
had to die to-morrow, I should not go out for a ride on horseback; but
if I were about to die this moment, and Levochka here” (Leo Lvovich’s
son, who passed across the terrace at that moment with his nurse) “fell
and burst into tears, I should run to him and pick him up. We are all
in the position of passengers from a ship which has reached an island.
We have gone on shore, we walk about and gather shells, but we must
always remember that, when the whistle sounds, all the little shells
will have to be thrown away and we must run to the boat.”
Sophie Andreevna, who was present during some of the talks, argued all
the time, and answered Tolstoi in a very feminine way. When Sophie
Andreevna on a walk said that a woman, while her husband writes novels
and philosophical articles, has to bear, to give birth to, and to rear
her children, and how difficult all this is, Tolstoi became indignant
and exclaimed with a bitterness that was rare in him:
“What terrible things you are saying, Sonechka! A woman who is annoyed
at having children and does not desire them is not a woman, but a
whore!”
In the evening we sat on the balcony: Tolstoi, Sergeenko, and myself.
Tolstoi wondered at the illogicality of women, and turning to me said:
“Peter Alexeevich and myself have a right to speak about women, but you
have none. One must have a wife and daughters to do this. Daughters are
perhaps the more important of the two. Daughters are the only women who
are not ‘women’ at all to a man, and who can be known fully from the
beginning. With sisters such a relation is impossible, for one grows up
side by side with them; a certain rivalry enters into the relation, and
one cannot know one’s sister, entirely, as a whole.”
Sergeenko asked Tolstoi’s advice as to how to educate his son sexually.
Tolstoi said to him:
“These questions are so dangerous that it is better that parents should
not speak of them at all to their children. It is only necessary to
watch the influence of surroundings. At times a vicious boy, or one who
is not vicious at all, but spoilt in this sense, can corrupt a whole
circle of boys. It is best of all that a growing boy should be as much
as possible among young girls. But there are among modern girls some
that are worse than young men. If a feeling of romance is felt for any
girl, this is the best protection against immorality....”
_July 12th._ Yesterday I returned home. On the day of my departure
during our walk Sophie Andreevna was talking about the sale of the
Samara estate, which she has completed for four hundred and fifty
thousand roubles (Tolstoi originally bought the estate cheap), and
by the sale of which Andrey, Michael, and Alexandra will get 150,000
roubles each. This money was the topic of conversation during the last
few days, and how the sons meant to buy this or some other estate. At
the end of the walk Tolstoi and myself found ourselves ahead of the
others. Suddenly he gave a heavy sigh.