Yesterday was a terrible day.
[...] At night I hardly slept and was depressed. I just now found the prescriptions[141] in my diary, looked them over and began to feel better; to separate one’s true “self” from that which is offended and vexed, to remember that this is no hindrance, no accidental unpleasantness, but the very work predestined me, and above all to know that if I have a dislike for any one, then as long as there is that dislike in me—then I am the guilty one. And as soon as you know you are guilty, you feel better.
To-day, lying on the bed, I thought about love towards God ... I wish I could say, the love of God, i.e., divine love—that the first and principal commandment is divine love, but that the other resembling it and flowing from it, especially flowing from it, is the love for neighbour.
Yesterday I wrote 18 pages of introduction to Art.[142]
It is wrong to say of a work of art, “You don’t yet understand it.” If I don’t understand it, that means that the work of art is poor, because its task is in making understandable that which is not understandable.
November 6. Y. P. If I live.
November 6. Y. P.
Am alive. It is the third day that I continue to write on art. It seems to me it is good. At least I am writing willingly and easily.
... Have received a good letter from Vanderveer. Wrote another letter to the commander of the battalion in the Caucasus. Chertkov sent me his copy of a similar letter.
To-day I rode horseback to Tula. A marvellous day and night. I am just now going to take a walk to meet the girls.