1899
May 11th. The conversation turned upon Katkov. L. N. expressed the opinion that Katkov was not clever. Sophie Andreevna became annoyed and said:
“Any one who disagrees with us must be a fool.”
To which L. N. said:
“The mark of foolish people is: when you say anything to them they never answer your words, but keep on repeating their own. That was always Katkov’s way. That is why I say that Katkov was a stupid man. Now, there is something of the same sort in Chicherin, yet can they be put even approximately on the same level?
“Though,” L. N. added, “one has to respect every one. Among the virtues the Chinese place respect first. Simply, without any relation to anything definite. Respect for the individual and for the opinion of every man.”
The conversation turned upon ancient languages and classical education. L. N. said:
“When I studied and read a great deal of Greek, I could easily understand almost any Greek book. I used to be at the examinations in the Lyceum, and saw that nearly always the pupil only understood what he had learnt beforehand. He did not understand new passages. And, indeed, at school for every fifty words that were learnt at least sixty-five rules were taught. In such a way one can’t learn anything.
“I am always surprised how firmly all sorts of superstitions possess people. Superstitions, such as the Church, the Tsar, the army, etc., live for centuries, and people have got so accustomed to them that they are not now thought to be strange. But the superstition of classical education arose with us in Russia before my very eyes. Above all, not one of the most zealous partisans of classical education can give a single sensible argument in favour of the system.” Then L. N. added:
“There is also the superstition of the possibility of a ‘school’ in art. Hence all institutes and academies. The abnormal form which art takes now, however, is not the root of the evil, but one of its symptoms. When the religious conception of life changes, then art, too, will find its true methods.”
L. N. returned to the Chinese virtue of ‘respect,’ and said:
“Often remarkable men suffer from the lack of that Chinese ‘respect.’ For instance, in Henry George’s Progress and Poverty Marx’s name is not mentioned at all; and in his recently published posthumous work hardly eight lines refer to Marx, and those speak of the obscurity, complexity, and emptiness of Marx’s works.
“Apropos of obscurity and complexity, they are nearly always a proof of the absence of true meaning. But there is one great exception—Kant, who wrote horribly, and yet he makes an epoch in the development of mankind. In many respects he discovered perfectly new horizons.”
To-day after lunch L. N. went on horseback to Sokolniki and came back late in the evening. Nevertheless, when Mme. M. A. Maklakov and myself began to say good-bye, he said he would come with us. On the way Mme. Maklakov kept saying all the time how much she would like to live in the country. L. N. interrupted her:
“How it annoys me when people abuse the town with such exaggeration and say: To the country, to the country! All depends on the person,—in town, too, one can be with Nature. Don’t you remember,” L. N. asked her, “we had an old gatekeeper, Vasili? He lived all his life in town; in the summer he used to get up at 3 o’clock in the morning, and enjoyed his intercourse with Nature in our garden much more than country gentlemen do, who spend their evenings in the country playing cards. Besides, compared with the enormously important question of how to live one’s life in the best and most moral way, the question of town or country has no value at all.”
Before this L. N. said with a smile:
“I once said, but you must not talk about it, and I tell it you in secret: woman is generally so bad that the difference between a good and a bad woman scarcely exists.”
Yasnaya Polyana, July 31st. I am working with N. N. Ge on the proofs of Resurrection. The corrections are to be inserted in the proof-sheets from L. N.’s draft copy, and two copies of the same are made. The draft copy remains here, and the fair copies are sent, one to Marx for the weekly Niva, and the other to Chertkov in England for the English edition.
It is an interesting, but worrying and difficult work. Throughout, instead of the one printed proof-sheet, one has to copy out afresh three or four long pages. Often L. N.’s corrections are written so closely that a magnifying glass has to be used to read them. Unless one has seen L. N.’s incredible work, the numerous passages that are rewritten, the additions and alterations, the same incident being sometimes written dozens of times over, one can have not the remotest idea of this labour.
August 2nd. I have been here from July 27th (in Yasnaya Polyana).
A queer young man, K., came to L. N., and, on my asking him what he was doing, he said that “he was the free son of air.” K. told L. N. that he wanted to settle down in the country among the people.
L. N. in recounting it said:
“Of course, I did not advise him to do it. Usually nothing comes from such attempts. For instance, some very nice people, the N. N.’s, bought a small plot of land and settled like that in the country. A peasant cut down one of their trees; they did not want to take action in the court against him, and soon, when the peasants learnt about it, they cut down the whole woods. The peasant boys stole their peas; they were not beaten nor driven away, and then nearly the whole village came and stole all the peas, etc., etc.
“One should not, above all, look for new ways of life, for usually, in doing so, one’s whole energy is spent on the external arrangement of life. And when all the external arrangement is over, one begins to feel bored and does nothing. Let every one first do his own work, if only it does not clash sharply with his convictions, and let him try to become better and better in his own situation, and then he will find new ways of life into the bargain. For the most part, all the external side of life must be neglected; one should not bother about it. Do your own work.”
To-day L. N. said of some one:
“He is a Tolstoian—that is, a man with convictions utterly opposed to mine.”
Yesterday L. N. spoke of the process of creative work:
“I can’t understand how any one can write without rewriting everything over and over again. I scarcely ever re-read my published writings, but if by chance I come across a page, it always strikes me: All this must be rewritten; this is how I should have written it....
“I am always interested to trace the moment, which comes quite early, when the public is satisfied; and the artist thinks: They say it is good; but it is just at this point that the real work begins!”
To-day L. N. was not well. I went to him; he was lying on the little sofa in the drawing-room. He told me of S. G. Verus’s book on the Gospels.
“His final conclusion is the denial of Christ as a historical person. In the earliest written parts of the New Testament—in Paul’s messages—there is not a single biographical fact about Christ. All the Gospels that have come down to us were composed between the second and fourth century A.D. Of the writers who were Christ’s contemporaries (Tacitus, Suetonius, Philo, J. Flavius) not a single one of them mentions Christ; so that his personality is not historical, but legendary.
“All this is very interesting and even valuable, for it makes it unnecessary to quarrel any more over refuting the authenticity of the Gospel stories about the miracles; and it proves the teaching of the Gospels to be not the words of one superman, but the sum of the wisdom of all the best moral teaching expressed by many people and at different times.”
L. N. also said this to me:
“Perhaps it is because I am unwell, but at moments to-day I am simply driven to despair by everything that is going on in the world: the new form of oath, the revolting proclamation about enlisting university students in the army, the Dreyfus affair, the situation in Serbia, the horrors of the diseases and deaths in the Auerbach quicksilver works.... I can’t make out how mankind can go on living like this, with the sight of all this horror round them!
“It always strikes me how little man is valued, even in the simplest way as a valuable and useful animal. We value a horse which can carry, but man can also make boots, work in a factory, play the piano! And 50 per cent are dying! When I used to breed merino sheep and their death-rate reached 5 per cent, I was indignant and thought the shepherd very bad. And 50 per cent of the people are dying!”
I read L. N.’s most wonderful Father Sergius.
Moscow, August 9th. I returned from Yasnaya in the evening of the 6th. This is what I find I have written down.
The talk turned upon the woman question. The conversation was carried on in a half-jocular tone.
L. N. said:
“Woman, as a Christian, has a right to equality. Woman, as member of the modern and perfectly pagan family, must not struggle for an impossible equality. The modern family is like a tiny little boat sailing in a storm on the vast ocean. It can keep afloat if it is ruled by one will. But when those in the boat begin struggling, the boat is upset, and the result is what we see now in most families. The man, however bad, is in the majority of cases the more sensible of the two. Woman is nearly always in opposition to any progress. When man wants to break with the old life and to go ahead, he nearly always meets with energetic resistance from the woman. The wife catches hold of his coat-tails and will not allow him. In woman a great evil is terribly highly developed—family egotism. It is a dreadful egotism, for it commits the greatest cruelties in the name of love; as if to say, let the whole world perish so that my Serge may be happy!...”
Then L. N. recalled scenes which he had observed in Moscow:
“There issues from Minangua’s a gentleman in a beaver coat, with a sad face, and after him his lady, and the porter carries boxes and helps the lady into the sledge.
“I love at times to stand near the colonnade by the great theatre and watch the ladies driving up to stop at Meriliz’s. I only know of two similar sights: (1) when peasant women go to Zaseka to pick up nuts the watchmen catch them, so that sometimes they give birth out of fright, and yet they go on doing it; and (2) so it is with ladies shopping at sales.
“And their coachmen wait in the bitter cold and talk among themselves: ‘My lady must have spent five thousand to-day!’
“I shall one day write about women. When I am quite old, and my digestion is completely out of order, and I am still looking out into the world through one eye, then I shall pop my head out and tell them: That’s what you are! and disappear completely, or they would peck me to death.” ...
Doctor E. N. Maliutin was in Yasnaya. L. N. said to him:
“I can’t understand the usual attitude that a doctor always serves a good cause. There is no profession that is good in itself. One may be a cobbler and be better and nicer than a doctor. Why is restoring some one to health good? At times it is quite the opposite. Man’s deeds are good, not in themselves, but because of the feelings which inspire him. That’s why I do not understand the desire of women to be doctors, trained nurses, midwives, as though by becoming a midwife everything is settled for the best.”
On some occasion L. N. said:
“When you are told about a complicated and difficult affair, for the most part about some one’s disgusting behaviour, reply to it: Did you make the jam? or: Won’t you like to have tea?—and that’s all. Much harm comes from the so-called attempt to understand circumstances and relations.”
October 1st. I came to Yasnaya Polyana yesterday. It is very nice here now the weather is mild, almost bright, but rather cold. There are no strangers. I am copying Resurrection again, on which L. N. is hard at work. Now I am doing the first chapters of Part III.
There is little joy in the Tolstois’ family life, and to an intimate friend this is extremely marked.
Moscow, November 26th. I am much distressed by L. N.’s serious illness, which at the bottom of my mind I consider hopeless. I called on Wednesday to inquire after his health, and the news was very unfavourable.
December 7th. When Tolstoi was ill (he is much better now) and I was for the first time in his room, he seemed glad to see me, which was a great delight to me. On his table was the volume of Tyutchev’s poems. In his hand he had an English book, Empire and Freedom (I don’t remember by whom). As is always his way, Tolstoi at once spoke of what he was reading.
“Here is a remarkable book!” said Tolstoi. “He (the author) is American, therefore an Anglo-Saxon; nevertheless, he denies the so-called civilizing influence of the Anglo-Saxon race. I can’t understand how people can stick to such superstitions! I understand a Muhammad preaching his doctrine,—mediæval Christianity, the Crusades. Whatever the convictions of those people may have been, they did it in the belief that they knew the truth and were giving that knowledge to others. But now there is nothing! Everything is done for the sake of profit!”
Then Tolstoi began to talk about a French pamphlet on the workers’ co-operative societies which he had read.
“Why not introduce in the villages here such co-operative societies? That is a vital thing! You, instead of doing nothing,” he turned to Ilya Lvovich, who sat there, “ought to do it here in the village.
“Socialist ideas have become a truism. Who can now seriously dispute the idea that every one should have the right to enjoy the result of his labour?”
Then the conversation turned upon the obschina.
Tolstoi said:
“Everything is taken away from the peasants; they are overtaxed, oppressed in all ways. The only good thing left is the obschina. And then every one criticizes it and makes it responsible for all the miseries of the peasants, in their wish to take away from the peasants their last good thing. They make out that the mutual responsibility of the members is one of the evils of the obschina. But mutual responsibility is only one of the principles of the obschina with regard to fiscal purposes. If I use a good thing for an evil end, that does not prove that the thing is in itself bad.”
Then the conversation turned upon Tyutchev. The other day Tolstoi saw in the Novoe Vremya his poem “Twilight.” He therefore took down all Tyutchev’s poems and read them during his illness.
Tolstoi said to me:
“I am always saying that a work of art is either so good that there is no standard by which to define its qualities—that is real art,—or it is quite bad. Now, I am happy to have found a real work of art. I cannot read it without tears. I know it by heart. Listen, I’ll read it to you.”
Tolstoi began in a voice broken with tears:
“The dove-coloured shadows melted together....”
When I am on my death-bed I shall not forget the impression then produced on me by Tolstoi. He lay on his back, convulsively twisting the edge of his blanket with his fingers and trying in vain to restrain the tears that choked him. He broke down several times and began again. But at last, when he read the end of the stanza, “Everything is in me, and I in everything,” his voice gave way. The entrance of A. N. Dunaev stopped him. He grew calmer.
“What a pity that I spoilt the poem for you!” he said to me later.
Then I played the piano.
Tolstoi asked me not to play Chopin, saying: “I am afraid I might burst into tears.”
Tolstoi asked for something by Mozart or Haydn.
He asked: “Why do pianists never play Haydn? You ought to. How good it is—beside a modern complicated, artificial work—to play something of Mozart or Haydn!”