“His was a very interesting house where authors and the most
interesting men of their time used to meet. I remember that I read
there for the first time my _Two Hussars_. Bludov was once intimate
with the Decembrists and sympathized in his soul with every progressive
movement. And he kept on serving under Nicolas I.”
Mikhail Sergeevich Sukhotin asked whether Bludov was a Russian, and why
was he a Count?
Tolstoi said:
“The Bludovs were a purely Russian family, to whom the title of Count
was granted. I remember, when I gathered the peasants to read to them
the Ukase of their liberation, at the bottom were the names of the
signatories and it finished with the words: Countersigned by Count
Bludov. An elderly peasant, Eremey, shook his head all the while and
said: ‘That Blud, he must be a brainy fellow!’ Evidently he took it to
mean that Bludov was at the head of the whole affair.”
The conversation was about medicine. Tolstoi said:
“Medicine cannot possibly be called an ‘experimental’ science, for in
medicine experiment in the strict sense is impossible. With experiments
in chemistry a repetition of the more or less same conditions is
possible, and so there can be approximately an exact conclusion as to
the results. But in medicine there is no exact experiment nor can there
be, for it is never possible to repeat the conditions that existed
previously; if only because the individuality of the patient changes,
and nearly, if not quite, everything changes in sympathy with that.”
Tolstoi related this episode from his childhood:
“We had a distant relation--an old woman Yakovlev. She lived in her own
house in the Staro-Konyushenna Street in Moscow. She was a great miser,
and, when she went to the country in the summer, she sent her children
ahead in the luggage van. Once, when I was quite a small child, old
Yakovlev came to pay us a visit. She sat with the grown-up people, and
my brother Nikolenka got a box, put dolls into it, and began dragging
it across the rooms. When he dragged it into the room where old
Yakovlev sat, she asked him: ‘Nicolas, what have you got there?’ and he
replied, ‘It is old Yakovlev going into the country, and her children
are being sent ahead in the luggage van.’” ...
During the two days (the 6th and 7th August) of my stay in Yasnaya,
Tolstoi wrote a perfectly new and very powerful story called _Father
and Daughter_,[5] which, he said, “will stay as it is for the time
being.” Tolstoi himself seems to be very well pleased with the story,
and he thinks he may not have to alter it.
Tolstoi recalled the folk-story of “Vanka Kliushnik,” who asked before
his execution to be allowed to sing a song; and Tolstoi was in raptures
over the beauty of it.
Tolstoi is much amused because he is riding a young horse and training
it. He is a great connoisseur of horses; he loves them and is a perfect
horseman. He trains his horse to various paces. He showed me and Ilya
Vasilevich how the horse started to gallop with the right leg. At the
beginning of the ride I asked Tolstoi how to train a horse to start
with this or that leg. Tolstoi explained to me how it was done, and
then observed:
“Once a horse leads off with a certain leg, it wants to start with the
same leg next time. In a man’s life, too, custom plays an enormous
part. Once a certain habit is formed, a man unconsciously tries to act
in accordance with it. It is very seldom that people act in accordance
with reason, and only very remarkable people do so; usually people
live and act by habit. How otherwise could it be possible that moral
truths, announced so long ago by the great thinkers and admitted by
most people, so rarely guide their actions? Very few people overcome
the habits of animal life and oppose them by the convictions of reason.”
When later we drove past a beautiful wood Tolstoi said:
“Once upon a time this forest belonged to Dolin-Ivansky. He was about
to sell it and I wanted to buy it, but for some reason I bargained,
although the price was reasonable. We did not settle the business. When
I came home and thought it over, I saw that the price was reasonable
and the forest good, and I sent the steward to say that I was ready to
buy it. But when the steward arrived, the forest was already sold. For
a long time afterwards I could not remember without annoyance that I
had let that forest slip through my hands.”
Then we drove by the forest called “Limonov Woods.” It is a young
forest planted by Tolstoi. He had not been there for a long time and
was surprised to see how everything had flourished and grown up.
Tolstoi said:
“Yes, it is a queer sense, that of ownership: here, too, one finds
the same habit. When one analyses it in one’s own mind, the feeling
disappears; but instinctively one always sees in oneself a particular
interest in what was or is one’s property, although one considers
ownership harmful and unnecessary.”
Speaking later of the present political events Tolstoi said:
“The same is true also with regard to patriotism: unconsciously one’s
sympathies are on the side of Russia and her fortunes, and one catches
oneself at it. But it is clear that with these internal and foreign
troubles one fine day all of a sudden Russia may fall to pieces. As
the saying goes: _sic transit gloria mundi_. Now it is an enormous and
powerful state, and suddenly everything may go to pieces!”
Tolstoi drew my attention to the fact that the road was beautifully lit
up by the rays of the sun coming through the branches of the trees. He
recalled that Turgenev in _Virgin Soil_ has described how Sipyagin met
Mariana and Nezhdanov lit up by such rays. He asked me if I remembered
the passage. I did not remember it and said:
“How do you remember it, Tolstoi?”
Tolstoi laughed and said:
“But you remember in your music, and so we writers remember things in
our art.”
Tolstoi said about _Virgin Soil_ that he did not share the general
indifference towards that novel and considered it very successful.
Among other things, he thought the new type of Sipyagin successful and
observed at the right time.
On this occasion Tolstoi said:
“But for the most part I object to the trick of guessing at modern
types and phenomena. The other day the painter K. was here. I told him
a great deal about his work which must be unpleasant to him. He is
always occupied with these modern themes. I said to him that one ought
never to paint what is talked about in the newspapers. Besides, he
simply can’t make a picture intelligible, clear. In his works you can’t
make out what he wants to represent. How inferior he is to Orlov[6] in
this respect!”
I. V. Denisenko read aloud the chapters about Nicolas from
_Hadji-Murat_.
Tolstoi sat in his room, but he wanted to come where we were all
sitting.
He came in several times and said:
“It is not interesting; let it be!”
At last he even said with irritation:
“It is rubbish!”
Then M. S. Sukhotin asked him:
“Why did you write it, then, Leo Nickolaevich?”
Tolstoi replied:
“But it is not finished yet. You came into my kitchen, and no wonder it
stinks with the smell of cooking.”
Tolstoi explained why he had made up his mind never to write to the
papers to deny what was said about him.
“When I stayed with Turgenev in Petersburg, Mefodii Katkov[7] arrived
from Moscow, and, on behalf of his brother, asked Turgenev and myself
to let him have something for his _Russkii Vestnik_. I promised
nothing, but Turgenev with his characteristic kindness said, rather
vaguely, that he might perhaps let him have something.
“Soon after this a group of writers in Petersburg, Nekrasov, Turgenev,
myself, Panaev, Druzhinin, Grigorovich, formed ourselves into a group
and decided to publish only in the _Sovremennik_. When Katkov heard
this, he accused Turgenev in print of breaking his promise. Then I
wrote a letter to Katkov, and asked him to publish it, in which I, as
a witness, refuted Katkov’s statement and proved that Turgenev had not
promised Katkov anything.
“At first Katkov did not publish the letter; afterwards he published
it, but in such a mutilated form that it quite changed its character.
After that I made a vow to myself that I would never make any reply to
attacks in the Press.”
The talk turned on our Government.
Tolstoi said:
“Do you know, Peter Alexeevich, I want to found a society whose members
would bind themselves not to abuse the Government.”
Sergeenko and others replied that, although it was true that people
made too much of that subject, still, when the Government prevented
people from living freely or breathing freely, it was difficult not to
criticize it.
To this Tolstoi said:
“It is only necessary to remember that the Government, however strong
and cruel it may be, can never prevent the real, spiritual life of man,
which alone is of importance. And why wonder that the Government is
cruel and wicked? So it must be. Mosquitoes bite, worms devour leaves,
pigs grout in manure--all this suits them and it is not worth while
to be indignant about it. I remember many years ago--my sons are now
tall, bearded men, but they were then children--I once came into the
dining-room downstairs in the Khamovniki house and saw that a ray
of the sun fell across the whole room through the windows and made
a bright spot on the sideboard which stood by the wall opposite the
window. The ventilator was not tight shut and was moved by the wind,
and as it moved the bright spot slid over the sideboard. I went in,
showed the children the bright spot, and cried out: ‘Catch it!’ They
all threw themselves on to the bright spot to catch it, but it raced,
and it was difficult to catch it. But if one of the children succeeded
in putting his hand on it, the bright spot showed on the top of his
hand. That is like the spiritual nature of man: however you hide it,
however much you try to suppress it or extinguish it, it will always
remain the same and unchanged.”
About writing Tolstoi said:
“If you ask some one: ‘Can you play the violin?’ and he says: ‘I don’t
know, I have not tried, perhaps I can,’ you laugh at him. Whereas
about writing, people always say: ‘I don’t know, I have not tried,’ as
though one had only to try and one would become a writer.”
Tolstoi said about Jews:
“There are three kinds of Jews. Some are believers, religious,
respecting their religion and strictly following its teaching. Others
are cosmopolitan, standing on the highest step of consciousness; and
finally a third kind, the middle kind, almost the biggest class, at
any rate of educated Jews, are even ashamed of being Jews or hide the
fact, and at the same time they are hostile to other races; but it is
as if they hid their hostility behind the skirts of their overcoats.
As my sympathies are with the first two classes, so the third is
unsympathetic to me.”
The conversation was about religion. Tolstoi said:
“Rousseau expressed a perfectly true idea that the Jewish religion
admitted one revelation--the past; the Christian religion two--the
past and present; and the Muhammadan three--the past, the present, and
the future. Historically it is undoubtedly a progressive movement.
Christianity is higher than Judaism, which is no longer alive. It is
all in the past; and Muhammadanism is higher than Christianity: it has
not the superstitions, the idolatry. To me personally Christianity, to
be sure, is above all religions, but I speak about Christianity, not as
the highest religious moral teaching, but as a historical fact. And as
there is ever much in common between the opposite poles, so there is
here; both Judaism and Muhammadanism keep strictly to monotheism, and
there is no intoxication in either; but in the historical Christianity
of the churches there is polytheism, as well as all kinds of ignorance
and cruelty. Everything is justified and even encouraged.”