The Life of Tolstoy: First Fifty Years / Fifth Edition

by Aylmer Maude

(1) To offer as large and varied a choice of themes as possible; not inventing them specially for the children, but offering such as most interest the teacher and seem to him most important.

(2) To give children stories written by children to read, and to offer only children's compositions as models; because these are juster, finer and more moral than those written by adults.

(3) (Specially important.) Never, when looking through the compositions, make any remarks to the children about the neatness of the exercise-books, the handwriting, or the spelling; nor, above all, about the construction of the sentences, or about logic.

(4) Since the difficulty of composition lies not in size nor in subject, nor in correctness of language, but in the mechanism of the work, which consists: (a) in choosing one out of the large number of thoughts and images that offer themselves; (b) in choosing words wherewith to clothe it; (c) in remembering it and finding a fitting place for it; (d) in remembering what has already been written, so as not to repeat anything or omit anything, and in finding a way of joining up what has preceded to what succeeds; (e) and finally in so managing that while thinking and writing at one and the same time, the one operation shall not hamper the other,—I, having these things in view, proceeded as follows.

At first I took upon myself some of these sides of the work, transferring them gradually to the pupils. At first, out of the thoughts and images suggested, I chose for them those which seemed to me best, and I kept these in mind and indicated suitable places to insert them, and I looked over what had been written to avoid repetitions, and I did the writing myself, letting them merely clothe the thoughts and images in words. Afterwards I let them select, and then let them look over what had been written, and finally they took on themselves the actual writing....

One of the profoundest convictions impressed on Tolstoy's mind by his educational experiments was that the peasants and their children have a large share of artistic capacity, and that art is immensely important because of its humanising effect on them, and because it arouses and trains their faculties. Unfortunately the works: literary, poetic, dramatic, pictorial and plastic, now produced, are being produced expressly for people possessed of leisure, wealth, and a special, artificial training, and are therefore useless to the people. This deflection of art from the service of the masses of whom there are millions, to the delectation of the classes of whom there are but thousands, appears to him to be a very great evil.

He says with reference to two realms of art which he had loved passionately, and with which he was specially familiar: music and poetry, that he noticed that the demands of the masses were more legitimate than the demands of the classes.

Terrible to say, I came to the conviction that all that we have done in those two departments has been done along a false and exceptional path, which lacks importance, has no future, and is insignificant in comparison with the demands upon, and even with the samples of, those same arts which we find put forward by the people. I became convinced that such lyrical compositions as, for example, Poúshkin's 'I remember the marvellous moment,' and such musical productions as Beethoven's Last Symphony, are not so absolutely and universally good as the song of 'Willy the Steward' or the melody of 'Floating down the river, Mother Vólga'; and that Poúshkin and Beethoven please us, not because they are absolutely beautiful, but because we are as spoiled as they, and because they flatter our abnormal irritability and weakness. How common it is to hear the empty and stale paradox, that to understand the beautiful, a preparation is necessary! Who said so? Why? What proves it? It is only a shift, a loophole, to escape from the hopeless position to which the false direction of our art, produced for one class alone, has led us. Why are the beauty of the sun and of the human face, and the beauty of the sounds of a folk-song, and of deeds of love and self-sacrifice, accessible to every one, and why do they demand no preparation?

For years I vainly strove to make my pupils feel the poetic beauties of Poúshkin and of our whole literature, and a similar attempt is being made by innumerable teachers not in Russia alone; and if these teachers notice the results of their efforts, and will be frank about the matter, they will admit that the chief result of this attempt to develop poetic feeling, is to kill it; and that it is just those pupils whose natures are most poetic who show most aversion to such commentaries....

I will try to sum up all that I have said above. In reply to the question: Do people need the beaux arts? pedagogues usually grow timid and confused (only Plato decided the matter boldly in the negative). They say: 'Art is needed, but with certain limitations; and to make it possible for all to become artists would be bad for the social structure. Certain arts and certain degrees of art can only exist in a certain class of society. The arts must have their special servants, entirely devoted to them,' They say: 'It should be possible for those who are greatly gifted to escape from among the people and devote themselves completely to the service of art.' That is the greatest concession pedagogy makes to the right of each individual to become what he likes.