I disagreed with this opinion, and it irritated Leo Nicolayevitch a little; he could barely stand contradiction, and sometimes his opinions were strange and capricious.
"There is no such thing as degeneration," he said once. "The Italian Lombroso invented it, and after him comes the Jew Nordau, screaming like a parrot. Italy is the land of charlatans and adventurers: only Arentinos, Casanovas, Cagliostros, and the like are born there."
"And Garibaldi?"
"That's politics; that's another thing."
To a whole series of facts, taken from the life of the merchant-class families in Russia, he answered: "But it's untrue; it's only written in clever books."
I told him the actual history of three generations of a merchant family which I had known, a history in which the law of degeneration had acted with particular mercilessness. Then he began excitedly tugging at my arm and encouraging me to write about it: "Now that's true. I know it; there are two families like that in Tula. It ought to be written. A long novel, written concisely, do you see? You must do it." His eyes flashed.
"But then there will be knights, Leo Nicolayevitch."
"Don't. This is really serious. The one who is going to be a monk and pray for the whole family —it's wonderful. That's real: you sin and I will go and expiate your sin by prayer. And the other, the weary one, the money-loving founder of the family—that's true too. And he's a drunken, profligate beast, and loves everyone, and suddenly commits murder—ah, it's good. It should be written, among thieves and beggars you must not look for heroes, you really mustn't. Heroes—that's a lie and invention; there are simply people, people, and nothing else."
He often pointed out exaggerations in my stories, but once, speaking of Dead Souls, he said, smiling good-naturedly:
"We are all of us terrible inventors. I myself, when I write, suddenly feel pity for some character, and then I give him some good quality or take a good quality away from someone else, so that in comparison with the others he may not appear too black." And then in the stern tones of an inexorable judge: "That's why I say that art is a lie, an arbitrary sham, harmful for people. One writes not what real life is, but simply what one thinks of life oneself. What good is that to anyone, how I see that tower or sea or Tartar—what interest or use is there in it?"