“It is only after reading all these moderns that one really appreciates Turgenev.”
Tolstoi remembered Turgenev with great love. He said, in passing:
“When Turgenev died I wanted to read a paper about him. I wanted especially, in view of the misunderstandings that there had been between us, to remember and relate all the good that was so abundant in him, and to tell what I loved in him. The lecture was not given. Dolgorukov did not allow it.”
The conversation turned on Chekhov and Gorky. Tolstoi as usual praised Chekhov’s artistic gift very highly. The lack of a definite world conception grieves him in Chekhov; and in this respect Tolstoi prefers Gorky. Of Gorky Tolstoi said:
“You know what he is from his works. Gorky’s great and very serious essential defect is a poorly developed sense of proportion, and this is extremely important. I pointed out this defect to Gorky himself, and as an instance I drew his attention to his misuse of the method of animating inanimate things. Then Gorky said that in his opinion it was a good method, and gave an instance of it in his story Malva, where it says: ‘the sea laughed.’ I replied to him that, if on certain occasions the method might be very successful, nevertheless one ought not to abuse it.”
Yesterday Ushakov asked Tolstoi about Gromeka. Tolstoi and Tatyana Lvovna spoke a great deal about him.
Tolstoi said:
“He was a sympathetic, passionate, and gifted man. He shot himself when still a young man, it was said because he was mentally deranged.”
Tatyana Lvovna says, by the way, that Gromeka was her first admirer and proposed to her when she was sixteen.