“In every art—this I know from my own experience too—there are two extremes which it is difficult to avoid: emptiness and virtuosity. For instance, Mozart, whom I love so much, is at times empty, but after that he soars to an extraordinary height. Schumann’s defect is virtuosity. Of these two faults virtuosity is the worse, if only for this reason, that it is harder to get rid of it. Chopin’s greatness consists in the fact that, however simple he may be, he is never empty, and in his most complicated works he is never a mere virtuoso.”
I left the Tolstois’ house with a vague feeling of happiness that I had seen Tolstoi and spoken to him, and also with a bitter sense of my own unworthiness.
One evening as I approached the Tolstois’ house in Khamovniki I met Leo Nikolaevich, who was going for a walk. He asked me to come with him. We walked in the Prechistenka. The street was deserted and quiet. The few passers-by whom we met at intervals nearly all bowed to Leo Nikolaevich. By degrees Leo Nikolaevich brought me to talk about myself. At that time I was carried away by the philosophy of pessimism; I raved about Schopenhauer. Probably everything I said to Leo Nikolaevich was naïve and silly, but Leo Nikolaevich listened to me attentively and spoke to me seriously without making me feel my naïveté.
In passing, Leo Nikolaevich said to me:
“The most complete and profound philosophy is to be found in the Gospels.”
I remember that at that time it seemed to me strange. I was used to thinking the Gospels a book of moral teaching; and I did not understand that all the wisdom of the most profound philosophy was contained in its simplicity and lucidity.
Once I met Leo Nikolaevich in the street. He again asked me to walk with him. We were somewhere near the Novinsky Boulevard, and Leo Nikolaevich suggested we should take the tram. We sat down and took our tickets.
Leo Nikolaevich asked me:
“Can you make a Japanese cockerel?”
“No.”