“Anton Rubinstein told me that, if he is moved himself by what he is
playing, he ceases to move his audience. This shows that the creation
of a work of art is only possible when the emotion has settled in the
artist’s mind.”
I do not remember how the conversation now got upon writing, but
Tolstoi said:
“Usually when I begin a new book I am very pleased with it myself and
work with great interest. But as the book work goes on, I become more
and more bored, and often in rewriting it I omit things, substitute
others, not because the new idea is better, but because I get tired of
the old. Often I strike out what is vivid and replace it by something
dull.”
The conversation turned upon Hertzen. Tolstoi read aloud extracts from
his book (a collection of articles published in the _Kolokol_). Tolstoi
is extremely fond of Hertzen and values him very highly. He spoke of
Hertzen’s unhappy private life and of the suffering he went through
when the representatives (particularly the younger representatives) of
the party with whom he had worked throughout his life deserted him and
ceased to understand him.
Tolstoi saw Hertzen in London, when Hertzen lived with Mme.
Tuchkov-Ogarev.
Biryukov asked Tolstoi (for the biography of Tolstoi which he is
writing) about his conversation with Hertzen which Mme. Ogarev refers
to in her _Reminiscences_.
Tolstoi said that he remembered a great many of their talks, but not
that particular one. And he added:
“Perhaps she merely invented the conversation, as the authors of
memoirs and reminiscences so often do.”
On the whole, Tolstoi has not a high opinion of Mme. Ogarev, although
he says he knows her but little.
He said:
“I received a letter from her in which she, as though to justify
herself, gives an account of the affair with the peasants which had
lately taken place on her estate. There were some fields there which
the peasants had had the use of from time immemorial. The fields
belonged legally to the landowner. A bailiff was engaged, a Pole
called Stanislavski, and he drove the peasants’ cattle from the fields
on to the estate. The peasants collected with thick sticks in their
hands to free their cattle, determined not to give up the use of the
fields. They arrived at the Manor and began by demanding their cattle.
Finally, Stanislavski fired, and killed or wounded, I do not remember
which, some one in the crowd. The crowd became furious and threw
themselves on Stanislavski, who tried to save himself by flight, but
he was overtaken on a moor and was murdered in a most brutal way. As
a result of the affair, a military court was held and two or three
peasants were hanged.”
Tolstoi had known of this before he got her letter, and was horrified
at the incredible verdict.
Afterwards Tolstoi said:
“Lately I got a letter from a lady asking me why, strictly speaking,
it is a crime to kill. Anyhow man must die sooner or later--is it
not all the same? I replied that since every man represents a unique
type, which never occurs again, we have and can have no absolute
knowledge of why he is needed for the life of all. In life everything
is very carefully arranged, and we do not know the reason why just
this individual should be alive, and it is for this reason that the
destruction of this unique creature appears so terrible.”
Of being afraid in battle, Tolstoi said:
“It is impossible not to be afraid. Everyone is afraid, but tries to
conceal it. When wounded have to be carried off the battlefield, so
many men volunteer for the work that the officers have to use great
force to keep the soldiers back, since every one wants, even for a
time, to get out of fire.”
Of himself Tolstoi said that he was never so much afraid as upon the
night before the attack on Silistria, which after all did not take
place.
Then Tolstoi said:
“The Japanese are less afraid, for they evidently value life much less
than Europeans do. The absence of the fear of death goes to extreme
lengths with some people. For instance, if a Chukcha wants to spite his
enemy, he comes to his hut and kills himself near it, knowing that his
enemy will then have much trouble with legal proceedings.”
_July 8th._ Tolstoi said with regard to his article about war, “Bethink
Yourselves”:
“It is painful to feel that my words go unheeded. If one is dealing
with the so-called men of science who regard war, apart from its moral
significance, as one of the stages in the evolution of human relations,
then, at any rate, one knows where one is. But what is one to do and
how is one to speak to people who evidently cannot understand my point
of view? Whatever I say glides off them. They are, as it were, greased
with a sort of oil, so that everything runs off them, like water,
without wetting them.”
After this Tolstoi said that, when he wrote to Nicolas II. (from the
Crimea, in the winter of 1901-1902), he was told that Nicolas II. “read
his letter with pleasure.” He also recollected Hertzen’s letters to
Alexander II.
Tolstoi wrote to Nicolas II. about the land question.
With reference to the attitude in Government circles to that question
Tolstoi said:
“I can’t possibly put myself at their point of view. I remember when
I was young and an officer I was never bothered by these questions;
somehow they did not arise in me. But I cannot imagine that I should
pass by such a problem, if I happened to come across it. I remember two
such cases in my life. One, when Vasili Ivanovich Alexeev,[11] when I
was at the height of my career as a landlord, expressed to me for the
first time the idea that the ownership of land is evil. I remember how
much I was struck by the idea, and how at once perfectly new horizons
opened before me. So it also happened when some one, I don’t remember
who it was, I think a Frenchman, told me that prostitution was an
abnormal thing, and not only useless, but really harmful to mankind.
Schopenhauer, for instance, says that it is only owing to prostitution
that family relations are still preserved in the community. I had not
previously thought about it, but, on hearing the Frenchman speak, I at
once felt the truth of what he said and could no longer go back. I can
imagine that one’s thoughts may not tend in a certain direction; one
may be ignorant of some point of view. But I cannot understand that
incapacity and unwillingness to learn.”
_July 9th._ Speaking of Lichtenberg’s aphorisms Tolstoi said:
“Aphorisms are perhaps the best way of expounding philosophical
judgments. For instance, Schopenhauer’s aphorisms (_Parerga and
Paralipomena_) express his conception of the world much more clearly
than _The World as Will and Imagination_. A philosopher, in explaining
a whole complicated system, sometimes involuntarily ceases to be
honest. He becomes the slave of his system, for the symmetry of which
he is often prepared to sacrifice the truth.”
Speaking of Lichtenberg’s beautiful German style, Tolstoi said:
“Every literary language reaches its highest point and then begins
to decline. In the German language that time was at the end of the
eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century; it was the
same with the French language. Now both in Germany and France the
language has become utterly spoilt. In Russia we are now finding
ourselves on the border-line. The Russian language has quite lately
reached its apex and now it begins to decay.”
Tolstoi praised Chekhov’s language very highly for its simplicity,
compactness, and expressiveness. Gorky’s language he disapproves of,
thinking it artificial and rhetorical.
When Nicolas II. appeared in many places to bless the troops going to
the Japanese war with icons, Tolstoi said:
“If A, the ruler of a huge country, takes a board, B, in his hand and
kisses it in the presence of crowds of many thousands of kneeling
troops and then waves the board over the heads of those who stand in
front of him, and does this all over the country, what except trash
can come from such a country? This has never happened before. In your
own room you may do whatever you like. One man likes to wash himself
with wine or eau-de-Cologne, another kisses icons if he likes, but such
idolatry on a large scale in the face of all and such deception of the
crowd are simply incredible!” ...
During the war Tolstoi always said that in spite of his attitude to
war and to patriotism generally, he felt in the depth of his soul an
instinctive sorrow at Russian defeats.
I heard him say this in the presence of G., B., and some others. All of
them energetically denied in themselves any such instinctive “patriotic
bias.” It seems to me that they were simply afraid of admitting it even
to themselves.
_October 22nd._ Mechnikov sent Tolstoi his book (_Studies on the Nature
of Man_) in French. Tolstoi read it through.
To-day he said to me:
“I got much interesting information out of the book, for Mechnikov
is undoubtedly a great scientist. But the self-satisfied narrowness
with which he is convinced that he has solved almost all problems that
agitate man is surprising in him. He is so sure that man’s happiness
consists in a state of animal contentment that he calls old age an
evil (because of its limited capacity of physical enjoyment), and does
not even understand that there are men who think and feel precisely
the opposite. But I value my old age and would not exchange it for any
earthly blessings.”
The conversation turned on the tendency of women to crowd to
universities.
Tolstoi said smilingly:
“If I were a Minister of Education, I should issue a Ukase by which all
women were obliged to enter universities and would be deprived of the
right to marry and have children. For the infringement of this law the
guilty would be liable to a heavy fine. Then all of them would be sure
to marry!”
Tolstoi spoke on August 28th with exasperation about writing as a
profession. I have rarely seen him so agitated:
He said:
“One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one’s flesh in the
ink-pot each time one dips one’s pen.”