“His outlook on the world agrees perfectly with Gorky’s so-called Nietzscheism and the cult of the personality. It is evidently the spirit of the time. Nietzsche did not say anything new—his is now a very popular world-conception.”
Then Tolstoi said:
“When I was a Justice of the Peace, there lived in Krapivna a merchant called Gurev, who used to say about young people of education: ‘Well, I look at your students—they are all scholars, they know everything, only they have no invention.’ Turgenev, I remember, liked this expression very much.”
Recently a party of gypsies camped on the road near Yasnaya Polyana. Gypsies often roam about Yasnaya Polyana. The party usually stay for two or three days, and in the evenings the Yasnaya Polyana household comes out to hear the gypsy songs and enjoy their dances.
Tolstoi, looking at the gypsies, became a changed man, and involuntarily began to dance to their tunes, and to cry out again and again approvingly.
“What a wonderful people!”
The old gypsies all know Tolstoi and always enter into conversation with him. Tolstoi from his youngest days loved and knew the gypsies and their peculiar life.
When we left the house, it was drizzling. Soon the rain got worse, and we returned.
Andrey Lvovich said:
“Now we have come to the house, the rain will stop.”