Aleksandr Borisovich Golʹdenveĭzer

“ Speaking of the province of criticism, Tolstoi said:
“The value of criticism consists in pointing out all the good that there is in this or that work of art, and in thus directing the opinion of the public, whose tastes are mostly crude and the majority of whom have no feeling for beauty. Just as it is difficult to be a really good critic, so it is easy for the most stupid and limited man to become a critic; and as good critics are needed, so bad critics are merely harmful. ”

“ That evening in his study Tolstoi said to me:
“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.” ”

“ Tolstoi said:
“In the first place, as to our state after death, it is impossible to say that it will be. Immortality neither will be, nor was, but is. It is outside the forms of time and space. People who keep on asking what is going to happen after death should be told: the very same thing that was before birth. We do not know, neither can we or must we know what existence outside of the body, fusion with God, is like, and, when people begin telling me about it—even if some one from the other world were to come to tell me about it—I would not believe and I should say that I do not need it. ”

“ It does not matter whether you are making a shirt or a move in chess. And if you do not think it out, you at once spoil it all—you won’t make the shirt, you’ll lose the game. It is only in writing that [Pg 139] one can do what one likes, and people never notice—indeed one can become a famous writer.”
Tolstoi went on to say:
“The whole business of the writer is to perfect himself. I have always tried and try now to make a question which interests me clear to the highest degree that I am capable of making it. The writer’s work consists in that. The most dangerous thing is to be a teacher. ”

“ It is only when we voluntarily give up the shameful use of the labour of the slaves, our brothers, that slavery will come to an end.
“Science, in so far as it describes and clarifies the real state of things, does a useful and necessary work. But as soon as it starts laying down programmes for the future, it becomes useless. All these ideas about an eight-hour working day, etc., only increase and legalize the evil. Labour must be free, not slavish, and that is all.
“When a peasant gets up before sunrise and works all day long in the field, he is not a slave. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ At that moment Tatyana Lvovna came up, and our conversation turned on other subjects.
Tolstoi talked about poetry.
“When a poem deals with love, flowers, etc., it is a comparatively innocent occupation until the age of sixteen. But to express in verse an important and serious idea without distorting the idea is almost impossible. How very difficult it is to express one’s thoughts by words only, so that every one understands just what you want to express! How much more difficult, then, it is when the writer is bound by metre and rhyme! ”

“ The best physiologists, like Krafft-Ebing or Claude Bernard, openly admit that, however carefully we investigate even a simple cell, there is always some x in its composition which we do not understand. Consequently the complex of organisms and the social conditions of life are an x raised to the x degree. And if we cannot investigate a cell completely, then how can we realize the laws which govern the life of human societies? Yet some blockhead like B. assures us that it is all very simple, and the science of history can deduce immutable laws by which human life is shaped. ”

“ Tolstoi mentioned Pushkin and said:
“The best writers are always strict with themselves. I re-write until I feel that I am beginning to spoil. And then, of course, I leave it alone. And one begins to spoil because at first, when you enjoy your work, whilst it is yours, you apply all your spiritual force to it. Later when the fundamental original idea ceases more and more to be new, and becomes, as it were, someone else’s, it bores you. You begin to try to say something new and you spoil and distort the first idea.”
A telegram arrived from Leonid Andreev asking to be allowed to come. ”

“ Tolstoi spoke again of his indifference to modern complicated music:
“I tried to accustom myself to modern dissonances, but these are all a perversion of taste. A modern composer takes a musical idea, now and then even a lovely one, and twists it round and round without end or measure, combines it with other themes, and, when at last he manages to express something simple, one is ready to heave a sigh of relief and say: Thank God!”
July 4th. Yesterday Tolstoi said to me:
“Buddha says that happiness consists in doing as much good as possible to others. ”

“ 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 [Pg 91] 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. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ The whole point is in the constant effort to approach the ideal. If I gave up everything now and went away, Sophie Andreevna would hate me, and the evil of that would perhaps be worse. You have your father ... and so it is with every one.”
Tolstoi said before this:
“I said to Sophie Andreevna to-day, and I believe she was hurt by it: the first concern in life must be for the things of the soul, and, if household duties interfere with that, then damn household duties.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is a large public library where many people work, and they have professors of various special subjects. Every one who works, if he has a question to ask, gives notice of it, and, when several such questions have accumulated, the professor issues a notice to say that he will lecture on such and such subjects, and those who wish may come and hear him. Such an arrangement is most in keeping with the true object of teaching—to answer the questions which arise in the minds of the students. ”

“ One ought to live so that one’s life should help on the happiness of other people.”
Marie Nikolaevna said that although she neither believes in nor admits the existence of paradise and hell with real suffering, nevertheless there is hell for the soul in the constant suffering which comes from realization of evil done or of good undone.
“I can’t admit,” she added, “that one who lives badly and has done no good will achieve the same fusion with God as the man who has lived justly.”
Tolstoi was about to say something, but Marie Nikolaevna interrupted him. ”

“ He has intercourse with nature, he does a useful work. But when he stands by a piece of machinery in a Morosov’s factory all his life long, manufacturing textiles which he will never see, and neither himself nor any one of his people will ever use, then he is a slave and perishes in slavery. ”

“ Tolstoi went on to say:
“It has suddenly become perfectly clear to me that the evil lies in regulations, i.e. the chief thing is not that people do wrong, but that some force others to do a wrong which is considered to be right. Hitherto not a single one even of the most extreme socialist doctrines has dispensed with compulsion. But slavery will only cease [Pg 47] when every one is free to choose his work and the time needed for it. ”

“ 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. ”