OPINION OF THE PRESS
St. Louis Globe-Democrat: "Count Tolstoy is a man so sure of his message and so clear about it that he always finds something worth while to say.... There is a quality in the little tales published under the title 'Esarhaddon' which is quickly suggestive of certain Biblical narratives. There is one called 'Three Questions,' which contains, in half a dozen pages, an entire philosophy of life, and it is presented in such apt pictures and ideas that its meaning is not to be overlooked. It would be hard to suggest anything that could be read in five minutes that would impart so much to think about. 'Esarhaddon,' the sketch from which the volume takes its name, is of the same character, and the third tale, 'Work, Death, and Sickness,' is full of very fine thought. There is, perhaps, no writer working to-day whose mind is centered on broader and better things than the Russian master, and the present offering shows him at his very best."
"Hour-Glass Stories." Dainty 12mo, Cloth, Frontispiece,
Ornamental Cover, 40 cents, Postpaid
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers
NEW YORK and LONDON
What Is Art?
Translated from the Original Manuscript, with
an Introduction by AYLMER MAUDE
Art is a human activity, declares Tolstoy. The object of this activity is to transmit to others feelings the artist has experienced. By certain external signs—movements, lines, colors, sounds or arrangements of words—an artist infects other people so that they share his feelings; thus, "art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feeling." Without adequate expression there is no art, for there is no infection, no transference to others of the author's feeling. The test of art is infection. If an author has moved you so that you feel as he felt, if you are so united to him in feeling that it seems to you that he has expressed just what you have long wished to express, the work that has so infected you is a work of art.
A POWERFUL WORK FULL OF
GENIUS AND ORIGINALITY
"The powerful personality of the author, the startling originality of his views, grip the reader and carry him, though his deepest convictions be outraged, protesting through the book."—Pall Mall Gazette.
"The discussion is bound to shake the whole world to its very center, and to result in a considerable readjustment of theories."—Pittsburg Times.
"It is the ablest and most scholarly writing of a great thinker."—Chicago Inter Ocean.
"No recent book on the subject is so novel, so readable, or so questionable."—New York Times Saturday Review.
Small 12mo, Cloth, 268 pp. 80 cts., post-paid
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers
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Transcriber's Notes
Page [7]: Double quotes inside double quotes in Hallam quotation replaced with single quotes.
Page [9]: Closing quotes moved from after "says Brandes" to follow "... at the sight."
Page [20]: strangset amended to strangest
Page [56]: insteading amended to instead
Page [72]: be amended to he ("he begins")
Page [80]: "... the then fashionable euphemism": There is a possibility that "euphuism" should have been used, rather than "euphemism."
Page [96]: Closing quotes added after "... an artistic impression."
Page [102]: Beaudelaire sic
Page [165]: Mirander amended to Miranda