1860
At this time Tolstoy worked at his story The Cossacks, the plan of which he had sketched out in 1852, but which he did not complete till 1862.
One comes across notes in his Diary which indicate his state of mind at this period with regard to religion. After reading a book on Materialism he notes:
I thought of prayer. To what can one pray? What is God, imagined so clearly that one can ask him to communicate with us? If I imagine such an one, he loses all grandeur for me. A God whom one can beseech and whom one can serve—is the expression of mental weakness. He is God, because I cannot grasp his being. Indeed, he is not a Being, but a Law and a Force.
He was a great puzzle to his friends and acquaintances—always ready to take his own line strenuously, yet sometimes far from sure what that line was. Tourgénef wrote to Fet:
Leo Tolstoy continues his eccentricities. Evidently it was so decreed at his birth. When will he turn his last somersault and stand on his feet?
The fact that Tolstoy, like his friend Fet, was neglecting literature did not fail to call forth many remonstrances, one of the most urgent of which came to him from Drouzhínin, who wrote:
Every writer has his moments of doubt and self-dissatisfaction, and however strong and legitimate this feeling may be, no one on that account has yet ceased his connection with literature; every one goes on writing to the end. But all tendencies, good or bad, cling to you with peculiar obstinacy; so that you, more than others, need to think of this and to consider the whole matter amicably.
First of all, remember that after poetry and mental labour all other work seems worthless. Qui a bu, boira; and at the age of thirty to tear oneself away from authorship means losing half the interest of life. But that is only half the matter; there is something still more important.
On all of us lies a responsibility rooted in the immense importance of literature to Russian society. An Englishman or an American may laugh at the fact that in Russia not merely men of thirty, but grey-haired owners of 2000 serfs sweat over stories of a hundred pages, which appear in the magazines, are devoured by everybody, and arouse discussion in society for a whole day. However much artistic quality may have to do with this result, you cannot explain it merely by Art. What in other lands is a matter of idle talk and careless dilettantism, with us is quite another affair. Among us things have taken such shape that a story—the most frivolous and insignificant form of literature—becomes one of two things: either it is rubbish, or else it is the voice of a leader sounding throughout the Empire. For instance, we all know Tourgénef's weakness, but a whole ocean divides the most insignificant of his stories from the very best of Mrs. Eugene Tour's, with her half-talent. By some strange instinct the Russian public has chosen from among the crowd of writers four or five bell-men whom it values as leaders, refusing to listen to any qualifications or deductions. You—partly by talent, partly by the practical qualities of your soul, and partly owing simply to a concurrence of fortunate circumstances—have stepped into this favourable relation with the public. On that account you must not go away and hide, but must work, even to the exhaustion of your strength and powers. That is one side of the matter; but here is another. You are a member of a literary circle that is honourable (as far as may be), independent, and influential; and which for ten years, amid persecutions and misfortunes, and notwithstanding its members' vices, has firmly upheld the banner of all that is Liberal and enlightened, and has borne all this weight of abuse without committing one mean action. In spite of the world's coldness and ignorance and its contempt for literature, this circle is rewarded with honour and moral influence. Of course, there are in it insignificant and even stupid homunculi; but even they play a part in the general union, and have not been useless. In that circle you again, though you arrived but recently, have a place and a voice such as Ostróvsky for instance does not possess, though he has immense talent and his moral tendency is as worthy as your own. Why this has happened it would take too long to analyse, nor is it to the point. If you tear yourself off from the circle of writers and become inactive, you will be dull, and will deprive yourself of an important rôle in society....