Yasnaya Polyana

“ This Princess Marie Volkonsky and Count Nicolas Tolstoy were the parents of Leo Tolstoy, who was born on August 28, 1828, at Yasnaya Polyana, where he spent the greater part of his life, thus in Leo Nicolaievitch Tolstoy the blood of two famous families was united—that of the princely family of Volkonsky and that of the Counts Tolstoy. ”

“ Fifteen versts to the south of Tula, on the old main road to Kieff, lies the village Yasnaya Polyana. Close to it, but separated by a hollow and a pond, is picturesquely situated the old Volkonsky manor house, which came into the Tolstoy family through the marriage of the Princess Marie Volkonsky to Nicolas the son of Count Eliah Tolstoy. ”

“ In early spring he was in the habit of returning to Yasnaya Polyana, often on foot with a knapsack on his back. There he shared in the peasants’ work: ploughing, manuring, sowing, haymaking, harvesting. ”

“ A thick, white, and healthy neck and chest; he kissed the New Testament, and then death. What nonsense! It made a strong impression which has not been in vain. I am not a political man. Morality and Art I know, I love... The guillotine prevented me a long time from sleeping, and made me start often.”
Tolstoy at work at Yasnaya Polyana.
In the beginning of May he left Paris for Switzerland, where he settled at Clarens on the Lake of Geneva. He rested here after the Paris bustle, and was delighted with the beauty of nature. ”

“ If, to a certain degree, the compulsion of family and religious education can be justified and explained, Tolstoy cannot find a reason for the compulsion of education by the State, and he arrives at the following conclusion:
“We do not pay attention to the voice of the people. We do not hear it even, because it does not speak in the Press or from the platform; nevertheless the people are against this education.”
Photo. Hertz.
Tolstoy on the road from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana.
From this point of view he severely and pitilessly examines the school system. ”

“ He tenderly looks down from His bright, immeasurable heights, and enjoys the endless harmony in which ye all in your contradictions are eternally moving. In your pride ye thought to evade the universal law. Nay, thou, with thy petty, vulgar contempt for the waiters, thou also respondest to the harmonious necessity of the eternal and endless.”
From Lucerne Tolstoy returned to Russia through Germany, and in August he reached Yasnaya Polyana. There he intended to occupy himself with the estate and to open a school, but for that winter the whole family went to Moscow. ”

“ In 1871 I received 400 roubles from the Sarya, and in June I went to stay with my people in Poltava. On my way back to Petersburg I stopped at Tula for the night, and in the morning took a cab and drove out to Yasnaya Polyana. After that we used to see each other every year, that is, I used to stay a month or six weeks with him every summer. ”

“ Among other things my father's will will be forgotten--that will which he himself looked upon as an "unnecessary outward means." And men will see more clearly that legacy of love and truth in which he believed deeply, and which, according to his own words, "cannot perish without a trace."
In conclusion I cannot refrain from quoting the opinion of one of my kinsmen, who, after my father's death, read the diaries kept both by my father and my mother during the autumn before Lyoff Nikolaievich left Yasnaya Polyana. ”

“ Page 23, Alexander Evstafevich Bers, born February 18, 1807, died September 6, 1871. See Peterburgskii Necropol, Vol. I. page 204; also V. Lukomskii and S. Troinizkii, page 14.
7. Page 24. In the Tula Province, 25 versts from Yasnaya Polyana.
8. Page 24. A. M. Islenev, born July 16, 1794, died April 23, 1882. ”

“ The majority of Polynesians are easy folk to get in touch with, frank, fond of notice, greedy of the least affection, like amiable, fawning dogs; and even with the Marquesans, so recently and so imperfectly redeemed from a blood-boltered barbarism, all were to become our intimates, and one, at least, was to mourn sincerely our departure. ”

“ Take my Polynesians, an Asiatic people probably from the neighbourhood of the Persian gulf. They range through any amount of shades, from the burnt hue of the Low Archipelago islander, which seems half negro, to the 'bleached' pretty women of the Marquesas (close by on the map) , who come out for a festival no darker than an Italian; their colour seems to vary directly with the degree of exposure to the sun. And, as with negroes, the babes are born white ”

“ We, on the other hand, harbour malice for a period of years: continuous shame attaches to the criminal; even when he is doing his best—even when he is submitting to the worst form of torture, regular work—he is to stand aside from life and from his family in dreadful isolation. These ideas most Polynesians have accepted in appearance, as they accept other ideas of the whites ”

“ Speaking of their beliefs touching the souls of the dead, the same writer says that the Polynesians “imagined they lived in a world of spirits, which surrounded them night and day, watching every action of their lives, and ready to avenge the slightest neglect or the least disobedience to their injunctions, as proclaimed by their priests. ”

“ There is no close chain of deduction to bind the whole, and nothing stands out from the confusion except the undoubted fact that the Polynesians are an offshoot from one of the ancient Asiatic races, and that they reached their present widely scattered abodes by way of the Malay Archipelago. ”

“ The new comer turned out to be a Portuguese deserter, who had abandoned his ship twenty years before, and had married the daughter of a chief of the island on which he now was. At the present moment, he filled the part of prime minister to the king, an office be could not have held in his own ungrateful country, since he could neither read nor write. These accomplishments, it appeared, were not, however, absolutely indispensable in Polynesia. It has been found that when a savage is transferred to Europe, he readily acquires the habits of civilized life. ”

“ Rupe's heart filled with the desire to find and protect the frenzied sister who had probably taken a canoe and floated away, out of the horizon, seen from New Zealand coasts, into new horizons. During the Viking age of the Pacific, when many chiefs sailed long distances, visiting the most remote islands of Polynesia, they frequently spoke of breaking through from the home land into new heavens—or of climbing up the path of the sun on the waters into a new heaven. ”

“ Even those who were careless as to the great truths which the Polynesians had to learn, must feel, upon reflection, that merely to unteach the brutal and defiling lesson of ages of darkness was to confer a priceless blessing. ”

“ In spite of their diffusion over a multitude of islands separated from each other by hundreds and even thousands of miles of ocean, the Polynesians are on the whole a remarkably homogeneous race in physical type, language, and forms of society and religion. ”

“ Know that I am Jason, the son of Æson from whom thou hast taken the throne and scepter that were rightfully his."
King Pelias looked to his guards. He would have given them a sign to destroy the youth's life with their spears, but behind his guards he saw a threatening multitude—the dwellers of the city of Iolcus; they gathered around, and Pelias knew that he had become more and more hated by them. And from the multitude a cry went up, "Æson, Æson! May Æson come back to us! Jason, son of Æson! May nothing evil befall thee, brave youth!" ”

“ They are handsomer, and lighter in color than those islanders we have left behind; and they are also more intelligent and ingenious. The women, especially, are more delicate, with good figures; some of them are really pretty. Then, in place of the gibberish of uncouth sounds spoken in most parts of Polynesia, these people have a musical language, full of soft liquids and ringing consonants, that seems more like Chinese than like anything we are accustomed to recognize as a 'Kanaka language.'"
"Are they safe people to deal with?" I asked.
"Well, no more so than the generality of savages. ”

“ The children of the sun are very easy-going; their standards are not our standards; they live for the moment, and love as lightly. It is often the white man who suffers, and not the maid with the sparkling eyes and radiant smile. He may take regrets away with him; perhaps one of those inner wounds that never heal, while she marries a native missionary and lives happily ever afterwards. Polynesians always live happily ever afterwards, no matter what happens. ”

“ And the things which civilisation has left behind or missed by the way are there, too, among the Polynesians: beauty and courtesy and mirth. I think there is no gift of mind or body that the wise value which these people lack. A man I met in some other islands, who had travelled much all over the world, said to me, "I have found no man, in or out of Europe, with the good manners and dignity of the Samoan, with the possible exception of the Irish peasant." ”

“ Æson would have lived content there were it not that he was fearful for Jason, his infant son. Jason, he knew, would grow into a strong and a bold youth, and Pelias, the king, would be made uneasy on his account. Pelias would slay the son, and perhaps would slay the father for the son’s sake when his memory would come to be less loved by the people. Æson thought of such things in his hidden house, and he pondered on ways to have his son reared away from Iolcus and the dread and the power of King Pelias. ”

“ But when we come to inquire into the causes which operated to inspire this migration, we get little information beyond the explanation commonly given as the root of all Polynesian movements, that "great wars prevailed." If this be the true reason why a whole nation should move en masse, then it is not unreasonable to suppose that the future Polynesians were the defeated people, and were forced by irresistible waves of invasion to abandon their home in India. Slowly they were pushed southward and eastward by the more warlike tribes who came down from the north ”

“ He ate and drank, and his eyes followed the fair maidens who went through the hall. He thought how glorious it was to be a king. He heard Pelias speak to Æson, his father, telling him that he was old and that he was weary of ruling; that he longed to make friends, and that he would let no enmity now be between him and his brother. And he heard the king say that he, Jason, was young and courageous, and that he would call upon him to help to rule the land, and that, in a while, Jason would bear full sway over the kingdom that Cretheus had founded. ”

“ When the heroes had left the maiden on the island of Artemis, according to the covenant, both sides ran their ships to land separately. And Jason went to the ambush to lie in wait for Apsyrtus and then for his comrades. But he, beguiled by these dire promises, swiftly crossed the swell of the sea in his ship, and in dark night set foot on the sacred island; and faring all alone to meet her he made trial in speech of his sister, as a tender child tries a wintry torrent which not even strong men can pass through, to see if she would devise some guile against the strangers. ”

“ The Spaniards shall be sacrificed, and Juan slain. Kiana and Pohaku must perish in the coming war. Olmedo and Beatriz shall believe that I have taken them away to save them. He shall die in attempting to escape, and she shall be rescued by me. It will then be time enough to use my opportunity, if she still resists my love. Alone! whom else can she look to? Chiefs and people all curse Pohaku, brute that he is. Many already hail me as their deliverer from his tyranny. Yes, love and revenge are both sweet to an Aztec. ”

“ The usurper knew that his days of power were over, and when Jason again demanded the kingdom in his father's name, Pelias was forced to resign his throne to the lawful king. Old Æson was then summoned from his place of banishment, and restored to his rightful place; but he was so weak and decrepit that power had no charm for him, and he accepted his throne very reluctantly.
So Jason begged his wife to use her magic in behalf of the old king; and Medea, anxious to please her lover, willingly promised to restore Æson to all the vigor of manhood. ”

“ Neither is it, in general, much easier to escape pursuit at the isles of Polynesia. Those of them which have felt a civilizing influence present the same difficulty to the runaway with the Peruvian ports, the advanced natives being quite as mercenary and keen of knife and scent as the retrograde Spaniards; while, owing to the bad odor in which all Europeans lie, in the minds of aboriginal savages who have chanced to hear aught of them, to desert the ship among primitive Polynesians, is, in most cases, a hope not unforlorn. ”

“ That they are of the same race that now inhabit the eastern and southern parts of Polynesia is beyond a doubt. That that race was settled in the Asiatic Archipelago centuries before the Christian era, I believe to be equally certain; but whether the emigration into Polynesia took place before the Christian era, or was occasioned by the invasion of the forefathers of the Malay family from India about the commencement of that era, there is nothing, that I am aware of, either in Polynesian, Malayan or Hindu traditions to throw any light upon. ”

“ Understand that well, it is the deep commandment, dimmer or clearer, of our whole being, to be free. Freedom is the one purpose, wisely aimed at or unwisely, of all man's struggles, toilings, and sufferings, in this earth.
I am persuaded that the Polynesians, from Hawaii to Tahiti, are dying because of the suppression of the play-instinct, an instinct that had its expression in most of their customs and occupations. Their dancing, their tattooing, their chanting, their religious rites, and even their warfare, had very visible elements of humor and joyousness. ”