“I am trying to like and appreciate the modern writers, but it is so difficult. Dostoevsky often wrote so badly, so weakly and incompetently, from the point of view of technique; but what a lot he always has to say! Taine said that for one page of Dostoevsky’s he would give all French novels.
“And technique has now reached a wonderful perfection. A Mme. Lukhmanov or Mme. D. writes quite wonderfully. What are Turgenev or myself compared with her! She could give us forty points’ start of her!”
Tolstoi has recently re-read all Chekhov’s short stories. To-day he said of Chekhov:
“His mastery is of the highest order. I have been re-reading his stories with the greatest pleasure. Some, as, for instance, ‘Children,’ ‘Sleepy,’ ‘In Court,’ are real masterpieces. I really read one story after another with great pleasure. And yet it is all a mosaic; there is no connecting inner link.
“The most important thing in a work of art is that it should have a kind of focus, i.e. there should be some place where all the rays meet or from which they issue. And this focus must not be able to be completely explained in words. This indeed is one of the significant facts about a true work of art—that its content in its entirety can be expressed only by itself.”
Tolstoi finds a great likeness between the talents of Chekhov and Maupassant. He prefers Maupassant for his greater joy in life. But, on the other hand, Chekhov’s gift is a purer gift then Maupassant’s.
Sergeenko, I don’t remember in what connection, recalled a poem by Lermontov.
Tolstoi said:
“He had indeed a permanent and powerful seeking after truth! Pushkin has not that moral significance, but the sense of beauty is developed in him more highly than in any one else. In Chekhov, and in modern writers generally, there is an extraordinary development of the technique of realism. In Chekhov everything is real to the verge of illusion. His stories give the impression of a stereoscope. He throws words about in apparent disorder, and, like an impressionist painter, he achieves wonderful results by his touches.”
Tolstoi likes M. Gorky very much as a man. He begins, however, to be disappointed with his work.