1897
Moscow, January 6th. To-day I spent the evening at the Tolstois’. L. N. was talkative. The conversation was on various topics, beginning with the peasants and ending with the latest “decadent” movement in art.
L. N. read aloud certain passages of Maeterlinck’s new play Aglavaine et Sélysette. His attitude to it is one of complete indifference.
L. N. reads aloud most wonderfully; very simply and at the same time with remarkable expression. Wonderful also is his capacity of telling in a few words the contents of a story. There is nothing superfluous, and a clear, definite picture is given.
April 22nd. At the Tolstois’.
Speaking of modern art, L. N. said:
“If an impressionist was asked to draw a hoop, he would draw a straight line ——; a child would draw a circle like this O” (L. N. made the circle with his finger on the table). “And the child is more in the right, because he naïvely represents what he sees, and the impressionist represents what may be a hoop or a stick or anything you like; in a word, he does not represent the characteristic properties of the thing, but only a symbol of it, a part, and that not always the most characteristic one.
“A really remarkable and powerful mind can look for a method of expressing his idea, and if the idea is strong he will find new methods of expressing it. But modern artists invent a technical method and then are on the look-out for an idea, which they arbitrarily squeeze into their method.
“The great mistake is that people have introduced into art the vague conception of ‘beauty,’ which obscures and confuses everything.... Art consists in this—when some one sees or feels something, and expresses it in such a form that he who listens, reads, or sees his work feels, sees, and hears the same thing in the same way as the artist. Therefore art can be of the highest quality, or indifferent, or, finally, simply hateful, but still it is art. The most immoral picture if it achieves its end is art, although it serves low ends.
“If I yawn, cry, or laugh, and infect another person by the same thing, that is not art, for I produce the impression by the fact itself; but, if a beggar, for instance, seeing that his tears affected you and you gave him money, should on the following day pretend to cry and should arouse pity in you, then that is art.”
August 2nd, 4 P.M. I have just had a long talk with L. N. on art. He was repeating the contents of his article on art which he is writing, and which he goes on working over and rewriting. In the course of it L. N. said:
“When art became the inheritance of a small circle of rich people, and left its main course, it entered the cul-de-sac in which we see it now.
“Art is the expression of feeling, and the higher it is the greater the public which it can draw to itself. Therefore the highest art must reflect those states of mind which are religious in the best sense of the word, as they are the most universal and typical of all human beings.
“The majority of so-called works of art consist in a more or less skilful combination of four elements: (1) borrowing—for instance, the working out of some legend in a poem, of a song in music, etc. Or unconscious borrowing—that is, an imitation now of one thing, now of another, not intended by the author. (2) Embellishments: pretty metaphors which cover up insignificant ideas, flourishes in music, ornament in architecture, etc. (3) Effects: violent colours in painting, accumulated dissonances, sharp crescendos in music, and so on. Finally, (4) the interest—that is, the desire to surprise by the novelty of the method, by the new combination of colours, etc. Modern works of art are usually distinguished by these four qualities.
“The following are the chief obstacles which hinder even very remarkable men from creating true works of art: first, professionalism—that is, a man ceases to be a man, but becomes a poet, a painter, and does nothing but write books, compose music, or paint pictures; wastes his gift on trifles and loses the power of judging his work critically. The second, also a very serious obstacle, is the school. You can’t teach art, as you cannot teach a man to be a saint. True art is always original and new, and has no need of preconceived models. The third obstacle, finally, is criticism, which, as some one has justly said, is made up of fools’ ideas about wise men.
“I know that my article will be received by most people as a series of paradoxes, but I am convinced that I am right.”
L. N. is evidently much carried away by his work.
August 9th. This evening I am going to leave Yasnaya Polyana, where I have spent nearly a fortnight. The whole time passed wonderfully well. The days were spent more or less in this way: After breakfast every one goes to his work. L. N. takes his barley-coffee in a little kettle, and with the kettle in one hand and a few little pieces of bread in the other he goes to his room to work there, and does not come out till lunch.
A Note without a Date. In the summer of 1897 the famous Lombroso came to Yasnaya. I was not at Yasnaya at the time, but from what L. N. and others told me I can say that Lombroso, whose writings L. N. regarded without enthusiasm, had made no particular impression personally. I will give one example to show how superficially and inaccurately Lombroso related what he saw in Yasnaya. There was a round patch on one of L. N.’s boots, which came off, and L. N., while waiting to send the boot to be repaired, wore it with the hole in it. At that time Sophie Andreevna, I believe, took a snapshot of L. N., and the little hole on the boot was clearly seen in the photograph. I have that snapshot. Lombroso, in describing his visit to Yasnaya in the Press and in numerous interviews, said that L. N. pretended the ‘simple life,’ and, wanting to show that he wore torn boots, had made a round hole in one of them, evidently cut on purpose.