Feb. 17. Nicholskoe.
I do not feel well. I tried to write on art....
... Received letters; an adaptation of On Life from the American.[178] Wrote two letters to Sonya yesterday and sent them to-day.[179]
Having been thinking even before Petersburg:
1) (For The Appeal): To describe the condition of the factory workers, the servants, soldiers, agricultural labourers in comparison with the rich, and show that it all comes from....
2) In the Middle Ages, in the XIth Century, poetry was general—the people and the masters, les courtois et les vilains; then they separated and les vilains began to mimic the masters’ and the masters the people’s. A union ought to take place again.
3) A hundred times I have said it to myself and have written it down: the real and only salvation from all sorrow is the knowledge of one’s mission, the anxiety whether you have done that for which you were sent.
4) Nearly every husband and wife reproach each other for things for which they do not consider themselves guilty. But on the one side there is no ceasing to accuse, nor on the other to vindicate.
5) They do not run after a poet or a painter so much, as after an actor, and especially after a musician. Music calls forth a direct physical effect, sometimes acute, sometimes chronic.
6) We absolutely falsely ascribe intelligence and goodness to talent, and the same to beauty. In this lies great self-delusion.