Part 4

“Alexander Borisovich, an image comes before me. Rays spread out from a centre. The centre is the spiritual essence; the rays are the perpetually growing needs of the body. A time comes when a spiritual life begins to exist inside these rays. They spread out at an ever diminishing angle, become parallel, and at last draw together and finally unite in the one infinitely small and entirely spiritual centre--death.”

_Gaspra, Crimea, September 12th._ Chekhov was here yesterday. He does not look well; he looks old and coughs perpetually. He speaks little, in short sentences, but they are always to the point. He gave a touching account of his life with his mother in the winter at Yalta. Tolstoi was very glad to see him.

_Gaspra, Crimea, September 16th._ Life here goes on very quietly.

After dinner I or N. L. Obolensky, or both in turn, read Chekhov’s stories aloud, which Tolstoi greatly enjoys. The other day I read _The Tedious Story_. Tolstoi was in constant raptures over Chekhov’s understanding. He also liked, for the originality of the idea and the mastery of the writing, _The Bet_, and particularly _The Steppe_.

Of Chekhov Tolstoi said:

“He is a strange writer: he throws words about as if at random, and yet everything is alive. And what understanding! He never has any superfluous details; every one of them is either necessary or beautiful.”

_September 20th._ I told Tolstoi about the article in the _Moscow Courier_ where Maeterlinck’s is quoted as saying that _Power of Darkness_ is in his opinion almost the greatest play.

Tolstoi laughed and said:

“Why doesn’t he imitate it, then?”

FOOTNOTE:

[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.