Aylmer Maude

“ Man dies and nothing is left of him. And that is stupid,' says Solomon.
'To live in the consciousness of the inevitability of suffering, of becoming enfeebled, of old age and of death, is impossible—we must free ourselves from life, from all possible life,' says Buddha.
And what these strong minds said, has been said and thought and felt by millions upon millions of people like them. And I have thought it and felt it.
One cannot deceive oneself. It is all—vanity! Happy is he who has not been born: death is better than life, and one must free oneself from life. ”

“ Truth—in such form as you have introduced it into our literature—is something completely new among us. I do not know another writer of to-day who so compels the reader to love him and sympathise heartily with him, as he to whom I now write; and I only fear lest time, the nastiness of life, and the deafness and dumbness that surround us, should do to you what it has done to most of us, and kill the energy without which there can be no writer—none, at least, such as Russia needs. ”

“ Where, in our day, can we get such faith in the indubitability of our knowledge as would give us a right to educate people compulsorily? Take any medieval school, before or after Luther, take the whole scholastic literature of the Middle Ages, what a strength of belief and what a firm, indubitable knowledge of what was true and what was false, we see in them! It was easy for them to know that a knowledge of Greek was the one essential condition of education; for Aristotle's works were in Greek, and no one doubted the truth of his propositions till centuries later. ”

“ You say the Iliad is the greatest of epic works; and the historic view replies that the Iliad is merely the expression of the historic consciousness of a people at a certain historic moment. On this basis, the historic view does not dispute with you as to whether man needs freedom, or whether there is or is not a God, or whether the Iliad is good or bad: it does nothing to establish the freedom you desire; to persuade or dissuade you of the existence of a God or of the beauty of the Iliad; it merely points out to you the place your inner need or your love of truth or beauty, occupy in history. ”

“ I knew I could find nothing along the path of reasonable knowledge, except a denial of life; and in faith I could find nothing but a denial of reason, still more impossible to me than a denial of life.
Finally I saw that my mistake lay in ever expecting an examination of finite things to supply a meaning to life. The finite has no ultimate meaning apart from the infinite. The two must be linked together before an answer to life's problems can be reached.
It had only appeared to me that knowledge gave a definite answer—Schopenhauer's answer: that life has no meaning, and is an evil. ”

“ No other writer of our day could have so seized and sketched the agitated and disorderly period of youth. To those who are developed, your Youth will furnish an immense pleasure; and if any one tells you it is inferior to Childhood and Boyhood you may spit in his physiognomy. There is a world of poetry in it—all the first chapters are admirable; only the introduction is dry till one reaches the description of spring.... In many chapters one scents the poetic charm of old Moscow, which no one has yet reproduced properly. ”

“ On all of us lies a responsibility rooted in the immense importance of literature to Russian society. An Englishman or an American may laugh at the fact that in Russia not merely men of thirty, but grey-haired owners of 2000 serfs sweat over stories of a hundred pages, which appear in the magazines, are devoured by everybody, and arouse discussion in society for a whole day. However much artistic quality may have to do with this result, you cannot explain it merely by Art. What in other lands is a matter of idle talk and careless dilettantism, with us is quite another affair. ”

“ The principal, joyous thought you have brought away is a conviction of the strength of the Russian people; and this conviction you gained, not by looking at all these traverses, breastworks, cunningly interlaced trenches, mines and cannon, one on top of another, of which you could make nothing; but from the eyes, words and actions—in short, from seeing what is called the 'spirit' of the defenders of Sevastopol.
To everything a man can do off his own bat and by his own effort, Tolstoy is keenly alive and sympathetic ”

“ On the other hand, on seeing Zagóskin's remarks, Tolstoy (in whom there is often observable a strong spirit of contradiction) replied:
I did not feel any repulsion, but was very glad to enjoy myself in Kazán society, which was then very good. I am on the contrary thankful to fate that I passed my first youth in an environment where a young man could be young without touching problems beyond his grasp, and that I lived a life which, though idle and luxurious, was yet not evil. ”

“ A conversation about Divinity and Faith has suggested to me a great, a stupendous idea, to the realisation of which I feel myself capable of devoting my life. This idea is the founding of a new religion corresponding to the present state of mankind: the religion of Christianity, but purged of dogmas and mysticism: a practical religion, not promising future bliss, but giving bliss on earth. I understand that to accomplish this the conscious labour of generations will be needed. One generation will bequeath the idea to the next, and some day fanaticism or reason will accomplish it. ”

“ And we began to speak of the fact that not everything exists for use, but that there is also beauty, and that Art is beauty; and we understood one another, and Fédka quite understood why the lime tree grows and what singing is for.
Prónka agreed with us, but he thought rather of moral beauty: goodness.
Syómka understood with his big brain, but did not acknowledge beauty apart from usefulness. He was in doubt (as often happens to men with great reasoning power) : feeling Art to be a force, but not feeling in his soul the need of that force. ”

“ It treats of life's deepest experiences from the cradle to the grave; and to read it with the care it deserves is to know life better and see it more sanely and seriously than one ever did before. Some foolish people think that reading novels is a waste of time; but there are hardly any books—at any rate hardly any big books—that are better worth reading than Tolstoy's novels. ”

“ As long as I was not living my own life, but was borne on the waves of some other life—as long as I believed that life had a meaning, though one I could not express—the reflection of life in poetry and art of all kinds, afforded me pleasure: it was pleasant to look at life in the mirror of art. But when I began to seek the meaning of life, and felt the necessity of living on my own account, that mirror became for me unnecessary, superfluous, ridiculous, or painful. ”

“ It is only a shift, a loophole, to escape from the hopeless position to which the false direction of our art, produced for one class alone, has led us. Why are the beauty of the sun and of the human face, and the beauty of the sounds of a folk-song, and of deeds of love and self-sacrifice, accessible to every one, and why do they demand no preparation?
For years I vainly strove to make my pupils feel the poetic beauties of Poúshkin and of our whole literature, and a similar attempt is being made by innumerable teachers not in Russia alone ”

“ And for this I specially loved Seryózha. The word loved is not correct. I loved Nikólenka; but for Seryózha I was filled with admiration as for something quite apart from and incomprehensible to me.
Of the third brother, Demetrius (or Dmítry: pet name, Mítenka) , only a year older than himself, Tolstoy tells us:
I hardly remember him as a boy. I only know by hearsay that as a child he was very capricious. He was nearest to me in age and I played with him oftenest, but did not love him as much as I loved Seryózha, nor as I loved and respected Nikólenka. He and I lived together amicably. ”

“ We may at any rate be sure that tiresome, petty administrative work, never quite satisfactory, but at best consisting of compromises and of decisions based on necessity rather than on such principles of abstract justice as are dear to Tolstoy's soul, could never be an occupation satisfactory to him. He has not the plodding patience and studious moderation that such work demands; nor could his impulsive genius find scope in it. It has never been easy for him to be checked by others, or to have to reckon with their opinions and wishes. ”

“ Of course Nekrásof's heart sank: he feared to lose either of these valuable contributors to the Contemporary. We were all agitated, and at our wits' end to know what to say. Tolstoy, in the middle room, lay sulking on the morocco sofa; while Tourgénef, spreading the tails of his short coat and with his hands in his pockets, strode to and fro through the three rooms. To avert a catastrophe, I went to the sofa and said, 'Tolstoy, old chap, don't get excited! You don't know how he esteems and loves you!'
'I won't allow him to do anything to spite me!' exclaimed Tolstoy with dilated nostrils. ”

“ In Tolstoy's next letter to Fet, dated 11th January, we get a glimpse of one of the reasons that led this strenuous worker to prefer a country life:
Dear Afanásy Afanásyevitch,—One does not strike or cut off the head that owns its fault! I confess that I am quite at fault towards you. But truly, in Moscow I am in a condition of irresponsibility; my nerves are out of order, the hours turn to minutes, and as though on purpose, the people I do not want turn up and prevent my seeing those whom I do want. ”

“ On this point Prince D. D. Obolénsky says: 'I have seen Count L. N. Tolstoy in all phases of his creative activity.... Whatever his occupation, he did it with conviction, firmly believing in the value of what he was doing, and always fully absorbed by it. I remember him as a man of the world, and have met him at balls, and I remember a remark he once made, "See what poetry there is in women's ball-dresses, what elegance, how much thought, how much charm even in the flowers pinned to the dresses!" I remember him as an ardent sportsman, as a beekeeper, as a gardener ”

“ I am speaking of a conception of the world which would make it unnecessary to be angry at the stupidity of mortals. Were you and I to be pounded together in a mortar and moulded into two people, we should make a capital pair. But at present you are so attached to the things of this life, that should they some day fail you, it will go hard with you; while I am so indifferent to them, that life becomes uninteresting, and I depress others by an eternal pouring 'from void into vacuum'! ”

“ The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting, thought he; but as long as it remains in its naked form we observe it from the height of our spiritual life and despise it; and, whether one has fallen or resisted, one remains what one was before. But when that same animalism hides under a cloak of poetry and esthetic feeling, and demands our worship—then we are swallowed up by it completely, and worship animalism, no longer distinguishing good from evil. Then it is awful!
Prominent Russian Writers, (1856) : Tourgénef, Sologoúb, Tolstoy, Nekrásof, Grigóryef, Panáef. ”

“ At any rate, continues Kropótkin, if the story of Anna Karénina had to end in tragedy, it was not in consequence of an act of supreme justice. The artistic genius of Tolstoy, honest here as everywhere, itself indicated the real cause, in the inconsistency of Vrónsky and Anna. After leaving her husband and defying public opinion—that is, as Tolstoy shows, the opinion of women not honest enough to have a right to a voice in the matter—neither she nor Vrónsky had the courage to break right away from that society, the futility of which Tolstoy describes so exquisitely. ”

“ For boarding-schools Tolstoy had scant respect:
At home all the comforts of life—water, fires, good food, a well-cooked dinner, the cleanliness and comfort of the rooms—all depended on the work and care of the mother and of the whole family. The more work and care, the greater the comfort; the less work and care, the less comfort. ”