Dec. 26, ’97. Moscow.
The day before yesterday I fell ill and I am still not well.[274] I am reading much. My heart is heavy. Evening.
Dec. 27, ’97. Moscow. If I live.
To-day, Dec. 29, ’97. Moscow. Morning.
I thought of Hadji Murad. All day yesterday a comedy-drama, “The Corpse,”[275] took shape. I am still unwell. Yesterday I was at Behrs’.[276]
I have received letters with threats of killing. I regret that there are people who hate me, but it interests me little and it doesn’t disturb me at all.
Have jotted down something.
A conversation with N: what a pitiable youth: understanding everything and at the same time not having the capacity to put anything in the right place and therefore he is living in unimaginable confusion.
Have been thinking:
1) They say usually that Christ’s teaching, the real Christ’s teaching ... destroys all union, that it is a disuniting “individualism.” How false this is! Christianity only therefore preaches personal salvation, “individualism,” as they say, because this personal salvation is indispensable, accessible, joyous to all, and therefore inevitably unites people—not mechanically by the pressure of force from without or by stirring with “culture,” but chemically by an inner, indissoluble union.