I remember so well the deep-set eyes and the long shaggy eyebrows of that all-knowing seer, as he sat on the veranda of his home in Yasnaya Polyana one May afternoon in 1906, and told us that he was a religious thinker and not a political one but that to his mind the revolution in Russia would take fifty years to develop. And with that fine scorn for parliamentarism which would have rejoiced the heart of any syndicalist, he added that that which we were witnessing now, the assembling of the first Duma, was only the first scene of the first act of a five act drama and it was high comedy!
The second scene followed soon and turned out to be bitter tragedy, and before it was quite over Tolstoi wandered off on that last pilgrimage which ended in the little railway station of Ostopova. He succumbed at last to that “temptation” he speaks of so freely in his Journal, to leave his home conditions, negate himself entirely, and find himself again, merged and at one with the Whole. And the Great Deliverer came and offered him even a greater fusion with all, giving him that “other post,” the “new appointment” he so ardently prayed for in life. When that happened he became at once clear and lucid even to those nearest him—who had criticised him the most. The Russian youth was disconsolate. Our spiritual guide is gone, they cried. Who will hold up the candle for us now? What black night is there in the world, and how to grope our way in it alone!
How lonely it was without that spiritual guide!
The first act of the March Revolution was to redecorate the grave of Tolstoi in the forest of Zakaz, to make the sacred pilgrimage to his resting place and tell the father of the good news—the will of God is being established, reason is awakened in man. Love toward neighbour; nay, the greatest of all, love toward enemies, is being accomplished.
It is with a feeling of reverence that I bring this gift of the inner soul of Tolstoi to the English-speaking public. The very formlessness of the phrases of this Journal helps toward a sincerity of thought which shows itself pure by its nakedness. Tolstoi himself knew the value of these documents, for one man was to him as another, and the sincere gropings of a man’s reason toward the understanding of the meaning of life was of value even if they were his own, and especially if they were of one who had lived much and thought much as he did. “It is especially disagreeable to me,” he writes, “when people who have lived little and thought little do not believe me, and, not understanding me, argue with me about moral problems. It would be the same for which a veterinary surgeon would be hurt if people who were not familiar with his art would argue with him.” And Tolstoi knew that he knew his art, he knew consciously, since the spiritual awakening that came to him in the Eighties, the great mission to which he dedicated his life—to find a moral justification of living—and it is therefore that he laid special stress in the disposal of these documents for the public after his death. The volume here printed is only four years of over sixty years of Journal which he kept since his early twenties. They are published first, because it is only with the Journal beginning 1890 that his editor and friend, V. G. Chertkov, has the copied manuscripts in their entirety—from that date up to Tolstoi’s death in 1910.
Over and over again in his life, Tolstoi attempted to make special and legal provision for his journals and notebooks, as he calls them, that they be given and spread free to the public, and he designated his friend and follower, who has edited and published this volume in Russian, as the practical inheritor and executor of these manuscripts. He was to publish them in their entirety, except for certain revisions so that there should be preserved, as Tolstoi expressed it, that which ought to be preserved and there should be thrown out that which ought to be thrown out.
“I know,” he wrote to Chertkov, February 8, 1900, “that no one bears such an esteem, respect and love for my spiritual life and its expression as you do. I always said it and now I write it in my notes which express my wishes after my death, asking you especially, and only you, to undertake the revision of my papers.”
This Chertkov has done exceedingly well in the original Russian edition, giving in double brackets the number of the words he left out, which seemed to him necessary on account of their too intimate character. These places I have merely indicated by three points. Unfortunately the Russian volume was printed under the old régime and deletions had to be made on account of the censor, which, because of the difficulty of communication during the war, it was impossible to fill in. These places are also designated in this volume by three points, but in the Russian edition they are given in double parenthesis, also enclosing the number of the words left out. So that a record of all omissions have been kept.
The problem of disposing of these documents after his death according to his principles against copyrights, occupied Tolstoi for many years. The Russian law nullified any such disposal of property, for legally the inheritor had to be a fixed person “and works to be disposed of free to all” meant nothing. He therefore wrote many wills, defining and modifying his position in all possible ways so that his ideas might be carried out, and in such a form that they could not be frustrated by any one.
His plans were threefold: