Count, I am sincerely grateful to you for sending the songs. I must tell you candidly that they have been taken down by an unskilful hand, and bear only traces of their pristine beauty. The chief defect is that they have been artificially squeezed and forced into a regular, measured form. Only Russian dance music has a rhythm and a regular and equally accentuated beat; but folk-ballads have of course nothing in common with dance songs. Moreover, most of these songs are, arbitrarily it seems, written in a solemn D Major, which again does not suit a real Russian song, which almost always has an indefinite tonality approximating nearest of all to ancient Church music. In general, the songs you have sent me cannot be worked up in a regular and systematic way: that is to say, one cannot make a collection of them, because for that they would have to be taken down as nearly as possible in the way in which the people perform them. That is an extremely difficult matter, demanding fine musical feeling and great historico-musical erudition. Except Balakíref, and to some extent Prokoúnin, I do not know any one competent for the task. But as material for symphonic treatment, your songs can be of use, and are even very good material, which I certainly will avail myself of in one way or other.
It is rather disappointing to find that the intercourse between these two men, each so great in his own way, and each such an admirer of the other's genius, was not continued.
Tschaikóvsky's expectations had been pitched too high, and he felt a certain disappointment that his 'demigod' was, after all, but human. He had dreaded to meet the novelist lest the latter should penetrate the secret recesses of his soul; but, says Tschaikóvsky:
He who in his writings was the deepest of heart-seers, proved in personal contact to be a man of simple, whole, and frank nature, showing very little of the omniscience I had feared.... It was plain he did not at all regard me as a subject for his observation, but simply wanted to chat about music, in which he was then interested. He took a pleasure in denying Beethoven, and plainly expressed doubts of his genius. This was a trait not at all worthy of a great man. To pull down a universally acknowledged genius to the level of one's own intelligence, is characteristic of small people.
Feeling thus, Tschaikóvsky purposely avoided meeting Tolstoy again, and even took a temporary aversion to Anna Karénina, though eventually he returned to his former admiration of Tolstoy's novels.
Tschaikóvsky was not aware of the reasons Tolstoy had for the unorthodox position he held on art generally and music in particular: reasons which it will be more in place to deal with later on, and which I have in fact already treated of at some length in a previous work, Tolstoy and his Problems. Here let it suffice to say that there is plenty of evidence to show that Tolstoy can enjoy Beethoven, and enjoy even the works of Beethoven's last period, which are the ones he criticises. There is, for instance, the episode with Mlle. Oberlender, which will be recounted later on, and we have his own statement in What is Art?:
I should mention that whatever other people understand of the productions of Beethoven's later period, I, being very susceptible to music, equally understand. For a long time I used to attune myself so as to delight in those shapeless improvisations which form the subject-matter of the works of Beethoven's later period; but I had only to consider the question of art seriously, and to compare the impression I received from Beethoven's later works with those pleasant, clear, and strong musical impressions which are transmitted, for instance, by the melodies of Bach (his arias), Haydn, Mozart, Chopin (when his melodies are not overloaded with complications and ornamentation), and of Beethoven himself in his earlier period, and above all, with the impressions produced by folk-songs,—Italian, Norwegian, or Russian,—by the Hungarian tzardas, and other such simple, clear, and powerful music, and the obscure, almost unhealthy excitement from Beethoven's later pieces that I had artificially evoked in myself was destroyed.
His work among peasant children has convinced him that the normal human being possesses capacities for the enjoyment of art; and that in most unexpected places the capacity to produce admirable art is now lying latent. That is why he sets up Brevity, Simplicity, and Sincerity as the criterions of art, and why he believes that folk-tales and folk-songs and folk-dances, the Gospel parables, such Old Testament stories as the history of Joseph, the Arabian Nights and the Christmas Carol; and music such as the tzardas, the Swanee River, the Old Hundredth, and Bach's arias, are infinitely more important to the life and well-being of humanity than King Lear or the Ninth Symphony.
Tolstoy—who had boasted of not reading newspapers, and who had lived so detached from politics and the events of contemporary history—began at this time to feel keenly interested in a question closely connected with Russia's foreign policy.
Following the insurrection in Herzegovina, another had broken out in Bulgaria in May 1876, but had been quickly suppressed by the Turks, who burnt some sixty-five villages; the Bashi-Bazouks committing unspeakable atrocities on the defenceless inhabitants. At the commencement of July, Servia and Montenegro declared war against Turkey; but, in spite of help rendered by numerous Russian volunteers, they were soon crushed by the Turks, and would have been completely at their mercy had not Russia, on 31st October, issued an ultimatum demanding an armistice, which Turkey conceded. On 10th November Alexander II made a speech in the Moscow Krémlin, in which he declared that he would act independently of the other powers unless satisfactory guarantees of reform were obtained forthwith from the Sultan. These events gradually led to the war which broke out between Russia and Turkey in April 1877.