1901
Moscow, February 1st. Tolstoi began about a couple of months ago to learn Dutch, and now he reads quite easily, at the age of seventy-three!
He has an original way of learning languages: he gets the New Testament in the language he wants to know, and whilst reading it through he learns the language.
Tolstoi said to me recently about modern art:
“The sense of shame is lost. I cannot call it anything else—the sense of æsthetic shame. I wonder if you know the feeling? I feel it most strongly when I read something that is artistically false, and I can call it nothing else but shame.”
With regard to his play, The Corpse, Tolstoi said to me:
“The son of the wife of the man I described came to me, and then the man himself. The son on behalf of his mother asked me not to publish the play,[1] because it would be very painful to her, and also because she was afraid of the consequences. I of course promised.
“Their visit was very interesting and useful to me. Once more, as so many times before, I was convinced how much feebler and more unreal are the psychological motives which one invents oneself in order to explain actions. The actions of one’s imaginary characters are then the motives which guided those people in real life. After talking to these people I cooled to my work.”
On another occasion, in the dining-room downstairs, animated conversation was going on among the younger people. Tolstoi, who was resting in the next room in the dark, afterwards came into the dining-room and said to me:
“I lay there and listened to your talk. It interested me from two points of view: it was interesting simply to hear young people talking, and then it was also interesting from the dramatic point of view. I listened and said to myself: This is how one ought to write for the stage. It is not one speaking and the others listening. It is never like that. It is necessary that all should speak, and the art of the writer consists in making what he wants run through it like a beautiful thread.”
March 8th. Yesterday Tolstoi was in good form. At tea he laughed and joked. The conversation was about luxury.
Tolstoi said:
“How much more money people spend nowadays than they used! When Sophie Andreevna and I lived in Yasnaya, our income from the Nikolsky estate was about five thousand roubles and we lived superbly. I remember when Sophie Andreevna bought little mats to lay by the beds, it seemed to me a useless and incredible luxury. And now my sons—I seem to have about twenty of them—squander money right and left, buy dogs, horses, gramophones. I asked myself then, why buy carpets when we have slippers? Certainly we did not go barefoot, but, behold, Riepin painted me décolleté, barefooted, in a shirt! I have to thank him for not having taken off my nether garments! And he never asked me, if I liked it! But I have long since got used to being treated as if I were dead. There, in the Peredvizhni exhibition, you will see the Devil (Riepin’s ‘Temptation of Christ’), and you’ll also see the man possessed by the Devil!”
On February 25th Tolstoi’s excommunication was announced. That day Tolstoi and A. N. Dunaev went on some business to a doctor and came into the Lubiansky Square. In the square, by the fountain, the crowd recognized Tolstoi. At first, as Dunaev relates, an ironical voice was heard: “Here’s the Devil in the likeness of a man!” This served for a signal. The crowd threw themselves like one man on Tolstoi. All shouted and threw up their hats. Tolstoi was confused; he didn’t know what to do and walked away almost at a run. The crowd followed him. With great difficulty Tolstoi and Dunaev managed to get a sledge at the corner of Neglinny. The crowd wanted to stop the cabman and many held on to the sledge. At that moment a troop of mounted police appeared, let the cab through, and immediately made a ring and cut off the crowd.
On the occasion of his excommunication Tolstoi received, and is still receiving, a number of addresses, letters of sympathy, etc. One lady sent him a piece of holy bread and a letter in which she said that she had just received the Sacrament and took the Host for his benefit. She ends her letter: “Eat it in health and pay no heed to these stupid priests.”
August 9th. I was the other day in Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoi is hale and hearty. I have not seen him like that for a long time.
The conversation was about Russian writers.
Tolstoi said:
“I was fond of Turgenev as a man. As a writer, I do not attribute particular importance to him or to Goncharov. Their subjects, the number of ordinary characters and love scenes, have too ephemeral an importance. If I were asked which of the Russian writers I consider the most important, I would say: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Hertzen, whom our Liberals have forgotten, and Dostoevsky, whom they do not read at all. Well, and then: Griboedov, Ostrovsky, Tyutchev.”
Of Gogol’s works Tolstoi does not like Taras Bulba at all. He far prefers The Revisor (Inspector General), Dead Souls, Shinel, Koliaska (“it’s a masterpiece in miniature”), Nevsky Prospect. Of Pushkin’s works, he considers Boris Godunov a failure.
It is characteristic that in making his selection Tolstoi said:
“I do not speak of myself; it’s not for me, but for others, to judge of my importance.”
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.”
Gaspra, Crimea, September 12th. Chekhov was here yesterday. He does not look well; he looks old and coughs perpetually. He speaks little, in short sentences, but they are always to the point. He gave a touching account of his life with his mother in the winter at Yalta. Tolstoi was very glad to see him.
Gaspra, Crimea, September 16th. Life here goes on very quietly.
After dinner I or N. L. Obolensky, or both in turn, read Chekhov’s stories aloud, which Tolstoi greatly enjoys. The other day I read The Tedious Story. Tolstoi was in constant raptures over Chekhov’s understanding. He also liked, for the originality of the idea and the mastery of the writing, The Bet, and particularly The Steppe.
Of Chekhov Tolstoi said:
“He is a strange writer: he throws words about as if at random, and yet everything is alive. And what understanding! He never has any superfluous details; every one of them is either necessary or beautiful.”
September 20th. I told Tolstoi about the article in the Moscow Courier where Maeterlinck’s is quoted as saying that Power of Darkness is in his opinion almost the greatest play.
Tolstoi laughed and said:
“Why doesn’t he imitate it, then?”