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.