Tolstoi said of him:
“As was the case with Ambrosii of the Optino Monastery, he is becoming
the slave of his popularity. Generally speaking, fame, popularity, is
a dangerous thing. It is also harmful because it prevents one from
looking upon people simply, in a Christian way. Now, for instance, I
find Gorky very pleasant as a man, and yet I can’t behave to him with
perfect sincerity. His popularity prevents me from doing so. It is
as if he were not in his right place. To him, too, his popularity is
dangerous. His long novels are worse than his short stories, his plays
are worse than his novels, and his addresses to the public are simply
revolting.
“Yet as some one said: if my work is abused by every one, it means
that there is something in it. If all praise it, it means that it is
bad; but if some praise it very much, and others dislike it very much,
then it is first-rate. According to this theory Gorky’s works are
first-rate. Well, it may be so.” ...
A blind man came to Tolstoi, and Tolstoi was very much interested in
him. The blind man was trying to get into a school for the blind, so as
to complete his education, and Tolstoi wanted to help him. The blind
man intended to give an account of his life. After lunch we were going
for a walk. Tolstoi was talking to the blind man. Then he took him to
the kitchen to give him some food, and said good-bye to him.
The blind man said to him:
“I should like to go on talking to you.”
Tolstoi replied:
“Later, perhaps, I will talk to you again.”
We went for a walk. But before reaching the gate Tolstoi said that he
had changed his mind and would return home.
Sophie Andreevna observed:
“He probably regrets having left the blind man.”
And it was true. We walked for a long time, and when we got back
Tolstoi was still sitting with the blind man.
Tolstoi said to me later:
“The blind man told me many legends. One of them I never heard before:
“‘Once upon a time Christ and Peter the Apostle walked in the country
and saw an old peasant making a fence out of reeds. Christ asked him:
“Why, father, are you making such a weak fence of reeds?” and the
peasant replied: “I am old, it will last my lifetime.” After that God
saw to it that people should not know their age.’ He also told me
another legend, which I had heard before but in a different version:
“‘A just old man once lived in the woods. And people came to him and
said: “Why do you never go to church?” The old man listened to them and
went with them. But while they took a boat to cross the river, the old
man walked upon the water. They arrived and went into the church, but
inside the church the devils stretched a skin on the floor and wrote
down the names of the sinners on it. The old man looked and looked at
this, then called the devils bad names, and they wrote his name down.
On returning home he was unable to walk upon the water, but had to take
the boat.’”
Tolstoi said:
“It is time for me to die, and I have a whole mass of subjects, and
even a new one to-day. I have a whole long list of them.” ...
Tolstoi is going to expound in an artistic form Buddha’s teaching, “Ta
Twam Asi,” the meaning of which is that in every man and his actions
one can always recognize oneself.
Tolstoi recalled the following:
“When I was taken for the first time to a box in the Grand Theatre as a
young child I saw nothing: I did not know that it was necessary to look
at the stage sideways, and I looked straight in front of me at the
opposite boxes.”
_August 12th._ I spent the 7th and 8th in Yasnaya Polyana.