[1] The theme of _The Corpse_ became known to the newspapers through
Tolstoi’s copyist, Alexander Petrovich, who, in a drunken bout in the
Khitrovka, told a fellow drunkard, a reporter of the _Novosti Dnya_,
that Tolstoi was writing a play, and also told him the subject of the
play. The reporter made an article of it and published it in the paper.
This was the cause of the _dramatis personae_ coming to Tolstoi, and
it was also one of the reasons why Tolstoi left the play unfinished.
(Years afterwards the play, finished, was published and entitled _The
Living Corpse_.)
1902
_Moscow, January 13th._ Tolstoi once told me:
“When I went to see _Power of Darkness_ acted I sat in the gallery on
purpose so as not to be recognized. Yet I was recognized; they began to
tell me to go on the stage, and I hurried home at once. But there was
a moment when I could hardly restrain myself from stepping on to the
stage and beginning to speak, to say everything--whatever that may be.”
_January 15th._ Gorky read aloud to Tolstoi the end of Mazzini’s book
_On the Duties of Man_, which Tolstoi likes very much. While Gorky was
reading, Tolstoi, who had read the book more than once, was almost
moved to tears.
Madame N. N. Den told me the following story, which she had from her
sister. When Tolstoi was very ill he thought he was dying, and took
leave and said good-bye to all who were present. Leo Lvovich was the
only one of Tolstoi’s children who was absent, and Tolstoi dictated
a letter to him. Those who read it say that this farewell letter at
the point of death was deeply moving. The letter, however, was not
sent, for Leo Lvovich arrived at Gaspra in person. When he came into
Tolstoi’s room, Tolstoi said that it was difficult for him to speak,
but that he had expressed all his thoughts and feelings in the letter,
which he handed to his son. Leo Lvovich read the letter at once in
Tolstoi’s room, then came into the next room, and, in the presence
of all those who were there (Countess Sophie Nicolaevna included),
tore his dying father’s letter into little bits and threw it in the
wastepaper basket....
_Yasnaya Polyana, July 25th._ I have been here a few days. Tolstoi is
well physically.
To-day Tolstoi said to Doctor Butkevich:
“The only true way for a man to improve human life is by the way of
moral perfection in his personal life. Spiritual life is a constant
progress, a constant effort towards the realization of truth.”
The conversation turned upon literature. It began with my saying that
Sienkewicz’s novel, _The Sword Bearers_, was a boring book.
Tolstoi said:
“Yes, for some reason I began it, but I could not read it. Do you
remember how, when one is a child, one sometimes gets a piece of meat
which one chews and chews and chews, and one can’t deal with it, and at
last one quietly spits it out and throws it under the table.”
Then Tolstoi remembered B.’s story which he read recently:
“It begins with a superb description of nature--a little shower, which
is done as Turgenev even could not do it, let alone myself. And then
there is a girl. She dreams of him” (Tolstoi shortly told the plot
of the story), “and all this--the girl’s silly emotion, the little
shower--all this is needed, in order that B. may write a story. Just
as in ordinary life, when people have nothing to say they talk about
the weather, so writers, when they have nothing to write about, write
about the weather, and it is time to put an end to it. Yes, there was
a little shower; there might just as well have been no shower at all.
I think that all this must come to an end in literature. It is simply
impossible to read any longer.
“I once belonged to the guild of authors, and from habit I watch and am
interested in everything that goes on there.”
Tolstoi quoted a few instances of misstatements and inaccuracies in
writers like Uspensky and Korolenko, but said that these were only
slips. But when psychological mistakes are made, when the characters in
novels and stories do what, from their spiritual nature, they cannot
do, it is a terrible failing, and the works of the Andreevs, etc.,
are full of such mistakes. Even in Gorky it is always happening. For
instance, it is the case in his story about the silver clasps, or
in the opinions of the women in _Three_. His _Burghers_ is utterly
uninteresting. The surroundings are indefinite, untypical; nobody can
make anything of it at all.
“I am always afraid of falling into the old man’s habit of being unable
to appreciate or to understand the present. But I try my best and
genuinely can find no beauty in the modern tendencies of art. There
has recently appeared a very just article by E. Markov on Gorky. The
writer, rather timidly--for Gorky has become such an idol that people
dare not speak of him--has pointed out correctly that modern Russian
literature has completely turned away from those high moral problems
which it formerly pursued. And indeed what a complete denial of moral
principles there is! You may be vicious, you may rob or kill; there is
nothing to restrain the individual; all is allowed....
“But still I am impressed by the fact that Gorky is translated in
Europe and greatly read there. Undoubtedly there is something new
in him. His chief merit is that he was the first to draw the world
of outcasts and tramps from the life, which until then no one had
attempted. In this respect he did what Turgenev and Grigorovich did in
their day for the world of peasants.
“I love Chekhov very much and value his writings, but I could not
make myself read his play, _The Three Sisters_. What is it all for?
Generally speaking, modern writers have lost the conception of drama.
Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man’s life, must place
him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that, when it is untied,
the whole man is made visible. Now, I allowed myself to criticize
Shakespeare. But with him every character is alive; and it is always
clear why he acts as he does. In Shakespeare’s theatre there were
boards with inscriptions ‘moonlight,’ ‘a house,’ because (Heaven be
praised!) the whole attention was concentrated on the substance of the
drama. Now it is just the opposite.”
Tolstoi spoke with disgust of Andreev’s _Abyss_, and said:
“With regard to Leonid Andreev, I always remember a story by Ginzburg
about a boy who cannot pronounce the letter ‘r’ and says to his
friend: ‘I went for a walk and suddenly I see a wolf.... Are you
fwightened? Are you fwightened?’
“So Andreev also keeps on asking me: ‘Are you fwightened?’ and I am not
in the least frightened.”
Yesterday the conversation was about the Hertzen, Bakunin, and Belinsky
circle. Tolstoi said:
“The most characteristic thing about that circle was a kind of
epicureanism, or at least the denial of, the complete failure to
understand, a religious conception of the world. Doctor Nikitin, for
instance, was surprised that I did not think Gogol mad. They thought
him mad, because he believed in God. And they could not even understand
what was going on in his soul.”
Tolstoi spoke very disapprovingly of Belinsky’s famous letter to Gogol.
Doctor Butkevich asked Tolstoi if he had read Maeterlinck’s new play,
_Monna Vanna_.
Tolstoi replied:
“Why should I? Have I committed a crime?”
Some one observed that common people are very seldom interested by
_Power of Darkness_.
Tolstoi said:
“To interest the people one must write more simply and much more
shortly, as Sophie Andreevna paints; everything in profile and
everything on the plane, and yet no other pictures are enjoyed so much
by children. In the same way, form must be simple and primitive if it
is to be enjoyed by the people.”
Tolstoi went on to say:
“I have been thinking a great deal about it lately. There are two kinds
of art, and both are equally needed--one simply gives pleasure and
comfort to people, the other teaches them.”
Yesterday Tolstoi criticized the scientists (he mentioned Mechnikov)
for their denial and misunderstanding of a religious conception of the
world.
Some one mentioned the new Russian University in Paris.
Tolstoi is sceptical about it and said:
“Some seventy young women come and listen to the professors who teach
them.”
Mme. Stakhovich said something about the harm that is done to the girl
students, but Tolstoi said:
“Well, they are bad enough already without that.”
_July 28th._ The other day we walked in the woods. Tolstoi sat down on
his camp stool, which was given him by N. He sighed and said:
“Yes, poor fellow!”
Then he turned to Marie Lvovna and asked:
“Masha, who’s the poor fellow?”
“I do not know, papa.”
“Buddha. N. bespattered Socrates, and now he is going to do the same to
Buddha.”
Yesterday Tolstoi was showing us a portrait group of the Tolstoi
brothers, and, pointing to his brother Nicolay, said:
“He was my beloved brother. He was the man of whom Turgenev justly said
that he had not a single one of the faults which one must have in order
to be a writer. And I, although it is wrong of me, must say of my son
Leo, that he, on the contrary, has all these faults, but none of the
gifts, which are needed for a writer.”
Ilya Lvovich said to Mme. Stakhovich that a writer must himself
experience everything in order to tell it to others.
Tolstoi replied:
“Mere technique is sometimes enough to describe what he has
experienced. A real writer, as Goethe justly observed, must be able to
describe everything. And I must say that, although I am not very fond
of Goethe, he could do it.”
To-day Tolstoi was enthusiastic about Mozart’s operas, particularly
about _Don Juan_. Together with the extraordinary richness of its
melody, he rates very high its power to give in music the reflection
of characters and situations. Tolstoi recalled the statue of the
commander, the village scene, and especially the duel.
He said:
“I hear there a presentiment, as it were, of the tragic _dénouement_,
together with the excitement and even the romance of the duel.” ...
Then Tolstoi turned the conversation to the importance and province of
form in art:
“I think that every great artist necessarily creates his own form also.
If the content of works of art can be infinitely varied, so also can
their form. Once Turgenev and I came back from the theatre in Paris and
discussed this. He completely agreed with me. We recalled all that is
best in Russian literature and it seemed that in these works the form
was perfectly original. Omitting Pushkin, let us take Gogol’s _Dead
Souls_. What is it? Neither a novel nor a story. It is a something
perfectly original. Then there is the _Memoirs of a Sportsman_, the
best book Turgenev ever wrote; then Dostoevsky’s _House of the Dead_,
and then, sinner that I am, my _Childhood_; Hertzen’s _Past and
Thoughts_; Lermontov’s _Hero of our Time_....”
_August 1st._ Tolstoi talked with Marie Alexandrovna Schmidt in my
presence about a certain Khokhlov who went mad.
Tolstoi told me his story briefly, and then said:
“What a riddle insanity is! What is he--alive or dead?”
I said that insanity is not a greater riddle than sanity. The mystery
is how the personality which lives in me manifests itself through the
brain. But if I admit that the first cause is not in my brain, but
outside it, and the brain is only a means by which my personality is
shown, then it is for me no _fresh_ mystery that that personality of
mine cannot be manifested when the machine of the brain is disordered.
Tolstoi said:
“Yes, it is all a mystery! Let us take a child. When it is born, has
it conscious life? When does consciousness begin in a child? And what
is it when it moves in its mother’s womb? To me life is a ceaseless
liberation of the ‘I’ of the spirit. Recently N. N. came to me and
asked me whether I believe in a future life? But to me there is a
contradiction contained in the question. What does ‘future life’ mean?
One may believe in life, but for eternal life our conception ‘future’
is quite inapplicable.
“But if we speak of life as we can realize it, as life _after_ our
present life, then it seems to me that it can be conceived only in
two possible forms: either as a fusion with the eternal spiritual
principle, with God, or as a continuation, in a different form, of the
same process of liberation of the spiritual ‘I’ from what is called
matter.
“It may be accidental, but it is remarkable that Christ said to the
Pharisees: ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’”
I came into the dining-room while Tolstoi was talking with K. A.
Mikhailov about art:
“Among the sensations experienced by our senses of touch, sight,
hearing, etc., there are some which are unpleasant and painful--for
instance, a violent knock, a deafening noise, a bitter taste, etc. Now
modern art often works upon us not so much by means of its content, as
by irritating our organs of sensation, painfully. As regards taste,
an unhealthy taste needs mustard, whilst it produces an unpleasant
impression upon a pure taste. So it is in the arts. It is necessary to
draw a dividing line and to find where that artistic mustard begins,
and I think it is a problem of enormous importance. In painting, it
seems to me, it is particularly difficult to draw that line.”
Tolstoi said to Count Yashvil:
“I have been learning all my life and do not cease to learn, and this
is what I have noticed: learning is only fruitful when it corresponds
to one’s needs. Otherwise it is useless. I remember I was a Justice of
the Peace; I used to take the laws and tried to study them, but I could
not fix anything in my mind. But whenever for some particular case, I
needed certain legal knowledge, I always kept it in my mind and could
use it in practice.”
The conversation turned on our government. Count Yashvil began giving
instances to prove how bad it is in Europe.
To this Tolstoi replied even with some irritation:
“What right have we to condemn anything in the West, when we are still
so far behind them? Our government is so abominable that we have no
right at all to condemn any one. We are without the possibility of
satisfying the most elementary needs of every man: to read, write,
think what and how one wishes.”
Tolstoi was now writing _Hadji-Murat_, and he said:
“I remember how a long time ago some one gave me a travelling
candlestick for a present. When I showed the candlestick to our Yasnaya
Polyana carpenter, he looked at it, looked again, and then sighed and
said: ‘It is crude stuff!’ The same applies to my present work: it is
crude stuff!”
_Yasnaya Polyana, August 30th._ I have been here now for three days.
Tolstoi talked with Ilya Lvovich and some one else about farming and
about the new machine called “The Planet.”
Tolstoi said:
“It is surprising how few technical inventions and improvements have
been made in agriculture, compared with what has been done in industry.”
Afterwards Tolstoi said:
“Ruskin says how much more valuable human lives are than any
improvements and mechanical progress.”
Then Tolstoi added:
“It is difficult to argue with Ruskin: he by himself has more
understanding than the whole House of Commons.”
Tolstoi went for a walk, and I fetched him his overcoat. I met him on
the road. We walked home together and walked through the fields.
Tolstoi looked at the bad harvest and said:
“My farmer’s eye is exasperated: God alone knows how they sowed!”
When we reached the boundary of the Yasnaya Polyana forest, we heard
the loud voices of children, and soon we saw a motley crowd of village
boys discussing something. They noticed Tolstoi and began urging one
another to go up to him--then they felt shy and hid themselves. Tolstoi
became interested in them and beckoned to them. They began to approach,
at first timidly and one by one, but gradually all came together.
I particularly remember one of them dressed in grey calico striped
trousers, in a ragged cap and shirt, with huge heavy boots, probably
belonging to his father.
Tolstoi showed them his camp stool, which was a great success. He asked
them what they were doing there. It appeared they had been picking
pears and the watchman ran after them. Tolstoi walked with them. On the
way he enquired about their parents. One boy turned out to be the son
of Taras Fokanich.
Tolstoi said to me:
“He was one of my very best pupils. What a happy time that was! How
I loved that work! And, above all, there was nobody in my way. Now
my fame is always in my way: whatever I do, it is all talked about.
But at that time nobody knew or interfered, neither strangers nor my
family--though, there was no family then.”
When we reached the spot Tolstoi told the children to gather the pears.
They climbed the trees, some knocking down the pears, others shaking
them down, others again picking them up. There was a hubbub, a happy
noise of children; and the figure of the good old Tolstoi lovingly
protecting the children from the attack of the watchman moved one to
tears. Then two or three peasants came to ask his advice on some legal
point.
Tolstoi, Nikitin, and I talked of Dostoevsky.
Tolstoi said:
“Certain characters of his are, if you like, decadent, but how
significant it all is!”
Tolstoi mentioned Kirilov in _The Possessed_, and said:
“Dostoevsky was seeking for a belief, and, when he described profoundly
sceptical characters, he described his own unbelief.”
Of Dostoevsky’s attitude to “Liberalism” Tolstoi observed:
“Dostoevsky, who suffered in person from the Government, was revolted
by the banality of Liberalism.”
Tolstoi said:
“During the sixty years of my conscious life a great change has
come over us in Russia--I am speaking of the so-called educated
society--with regard to religious questions: religious convictions were
differentiated; it is a bad word, but I don’t know how to express it
differently. In my youth there were three, or rather four, categories
into which society in this respect could be divided. The first was a
very small group of very religious people, who had been freemasons
previously, or sometimes monks. The second, about 70 per cent of the
whole, consisted of people who from habit observed church rituals,
but in their souls were perfectly indifferent to religious problems.
The third group consisted of unbelievers who observed the conventions
in cases of necessity; and, finally, there were the Voltairians,
unbelievers who openly and courageously expressed their unbelief. The
latter were few in number--about 2 or 3 per cent. Now one has no idea
whom one is going to meet. One finds the most contrary convictions
existing side by side. Recently there have appeared the latest
decadents of orthodoxy, the orthodox churchmen like Merezhkovsky and
Rosanov.
“Many people were attracted to orthodoxy through Khomyakov’s definition
of the Orthodox Church, as a congregation of people united by love.
What could be better than that? But the point is that it is merely
the arbitrary substitution of one conception for another. Why is the
Orthodox Church such a congregation of love-united people? It is the
contrary rather.”
1903
_March 21st._ Last week I went for a day to Yasnaya Polyana. I found
Tolstoi well and cheerful.
Tolstoi is always much interested in the question of man’s spiritual
state during sleep.
He told me this time:
“In a dream one cries, or is happy or excited, and, when one wakes up
and remembers the dream, one does not understand what made one cry or
be happy or excited. I explain it to myself in this way: Apart from
the happiness, excitement, or bitterness which are caused by definite
events, there are also states of happiness, excitement, ecstasy, and
grief. In such states an insignificant event is often sufficient
to throw us into ecstasy, excitement, etc. In a dream, when one’s
consciousness does not act so consistently and logically, this state is
expressed by the corresponding sensation which has often no external
cause. For instance, in a dream one often feels utterly ashamed, and
when one wakes up and sees that one’s trousers are quietly hanging over
a chair, one feels an extraordinary joy. That is why I so much love
‘Popov’s Dream.’[2] It gives a wonderful account of that sensation of
shame in a dream, and, besides, all the characters are magnificently
described. In spite of its comic nature, it is a real work of art.”
_June 1st._ I returned from Yasnaya Polyana, where I spent a day.
Tolstoi is planning a work of a philosophical nature, which he is
greatly excited about at present. Speaking of it, Tolstoi said to me:
“Everything in the world is alive. Everything that seems to us dead
seems so only because it is either too large or, on the contrary, too
small. We do not see microbes, and heavenly bodies seem dead to us, for
the same reason that we seem dead to an ant. The earth is undoubtedly
alive, and a stone on the earth is the same as a nail on a finger. The
materialists make matter the basis of life. All these theories of the
origin of species, of protoplasm, of atoms, are all of value in so far
as they help us to know the laws governing the visible world. But it
must not be forgotten that all these, including ether, are working
hypotheses, and nothing else. Astronomers in their calculations assume
that the earth is a motionless body, and only afterwards correct the
mistake. Materialists too make false premises, but they do not observe
the fact that this is so, but let them pass as basic truths.
“True life exists where the living being is conscious of itself as an
indivisible ‘I,’ in whom all impressions, feelings, etc., become one.
So long as the ‘I’ struggles, as nearly the whole animal world does,
merely to crush the other creatures known to him, in order to attain
his own temporary advantage, true spiritual life which is without time
and space remains unexpressed and imprisoned. True spiritual life is
liberated when a man neither rejoices in his own happiness, nor suffers
from his own suffering, but suffers and rejoices with the worries and
pleasures of others and is fused with them into a common life.
“Of the life to come, although of course the words ‘to come’ are
inappropriate here, of life beyond our physical being, it is impossible
to have knowledge. We can imagine two forms only: either a new form of
the individual life, or a fusion of personal life in the life of the
whole. The former seems to us more comprehensible and more likely,
since we only know our individual life and we can more easily accept
the idea of the same life in a different form.”
_July 14th._ In the beginning of July my wife and I spent two days in
Yasnaya Polyana.
On the occasion of Mme. Kolokoltsev’s[3] suicide Tolstoi said to me:
“I can’t understand why people look upon suicide as a crime. It seems
to me to be man’s right. It gives a man the chance of dying when he no
longer wishes to live. The Stoics thought like that.”
As Mme. Kolokoltsev was insane, the conversation turned on insanity.
I said, as I had done previously, that the spiritual life of the
so-called insane remains unchanged. All that happens is that a mad
person cannot make his personality felt. Tolstoi agreed with me.
Next day he said to me:
“Yesterday’s conversation on insanity was of great interest to
me. I have been thinking a great deal about it. There are two
consciousnesses in us: one--the animal; the other--the spiritual. The
spiritual is not always shown in us, but it is this that makes our true
spiritual life, which is not subject to time. I do not know how it is
with you who are comparatively young, but with me there are times in
my long life which are clearly preserved in my memory, and other times
which have completely disappeared, they no longer exist. The moments
which remain are most frequently the moments when the spirit in me
awoke. It often happens at a time when one has done something wrong,
and suddenly one wakes up, realizes that it is bad, and feels the
spirit in one with special force. Spiritual life is a recollection.
A recollection is not the past, it is always the present. It is our
spirit, which shows itself more or less clearly, that contains the
progress of man’s temporary existence. There can be no progress for the
spirit, for it is not in time. What the life in time is for, we do not
know; it is only a transitory phenomenon. Speaking metaphorically, I
see this manifestation of the spirit in us as the breathing of God.
“There is a beautiful story about the unreality of time in _The Arabian
Nights_. Some one was put into a bath; he dipped his head in the water
and saw a long history with most complicated adventures; and then
when he raised his head from the water, it turned out that he had only
dipped his head in once!”
Tolstoi was talking about Fedorov and Peterson, particularly about
Fedorov:
“They belonged to the sect which believes in the resurrection of the
dead here on earth. Their idea is that people must try to resurrect
all those who have died in the past. They believe that by hard work
for centuries mankind will achieve it. For this purpose one must study
all things of antiquity and restore them. Fedorov was librarian to the
Rumyantsev Museum and was a passionate collector of all old things:
portraits, objects, etc. Mankind must cease to multiply and everything
will be resurrected. That is their ideal. It turns out that Vladimir
Solovev and Dostoevsky to some extent--there is a letter to this
effect--believed in this idea.
“Fedorov, I think, is still alive. He must be over eighty. All his
life he has lived as an ascetic. When I once visited him in the spring
and saw his thin overcoat, I asked him: ‘Do you wear a thin overcoat
already?’ and he replied: ‘Christ said, if you have two cloaks, give
them to him who has none, and I have two overcoats.’ And after that he
always wore only a thin coat. He received a very small salary, ate
very, very little, slept almost on the bare boards, helped the poor,
and denied himself everything. He wrote a great deal, but his works
remain in manuscript: his disciples have no money to publish them, and
no publisher can be found to publish them.”
There was a plague of poisonous flies at Yasnaya Polyana this summer
which made one’s face swell when they bit one.
Tolstoi said:
“Once, when I was younger, I wanted to write a story about a young
man who stayed in the summer at a friend’s house where there was a
young girl. The very first day they fell in love and raved about each
other. At night, when he was asleep, a fly bit his lip, and half his
face swelled up. His lip and cheek were swollen, and his face looked
idiotic. When the girl saw him in the morning their love at once came
to an end. There were no more illusions: she noticed a number of faults
in him which she had not noticed at all the day before.”