He does not forget to do so, in his writings on art. The negative portion of this statement—brimming over with insults and sarcasms—is so vigorously expressed that it is the only part which has struck the artist. This method has so violently wounded the superstitions and susceptibilities of the brotherhood that they inevitably see, in the enemy of their own art, the enemy of all art whatsoever. But Tolstoy's criticism is never devoid of the reconstructive element. He never destroys for the sake of destruction, but only to rebuild. In his modesty he does not even profess to build anything new; he merely defends Art, which was and ever shall be, from the false artists who exploit it and dishonour it.
"True science and true art have always existed and will always exist; it is impossible and useless to attack them," he wrote to me in 1887, in a letter which anticipated by more than ten years his famous criticism of art (What is Art?).[4] "All the evil of the day comes from the fact that so-called civilised people, together with the scientists and artists, form a privileged caste, like so many priests; and this caste has all the faults of all castes. It degrades and lowers the principle in virtue of which it was organised. What we in our world call the sciences and the arts is merely a gigantic humbug, a gross superstition into which we commonly fall as soon as we free ourselves from the old superstition of the Church. To keep safely to the road we ought to follow we must begin at the beginning—we must raise the cowl which keeps us warm but obscures our sight. The temptation is great. We are born or we clamber upon the rungs of the ladder; and we find among the privileged the priests of civilisation, of Kultur, as the Germans have it. Like the Brahmin or Catholic priests, we must have a great deal of sincerity and a great love of the truth before we cast doubts upon the principles which assure us of our advantageous position. But a serious man who ponders the riddle of life cannot hesitate. To begin to see clearly he must free himself from his superstitions, however profitable they may be to him. This is a condition sine quâ non.... To have no superstition. To force oneself into the attitude of a child or a Descartes."
This superstition of modern art, in which the interested castes believe, "this gigantic humbug," is denounced in Tolstoy's What is Art? With a somewhat ungentle zest he holds it up to ridicule, and exposes its hypocrisy, its poverty, and its fundamental corruption. He makes a clean sweep of everything. He brings to this work of demolition the joy of a child breaking his toys. The whole of this critical portion is often full of humour, but sometimes of injustice: it is warfare. Tolstoy used all weapons that came to his hand, and struck at hazard, without noticing whom he struck. Often enough it happened—as in all battles—that he wounded those whom it should have been his duty to defend: Ibsen or Beethoven. This was the result of his enthusiasm, which left him no time to reflect before acting; of his passion, which often blinded him to the weakness of his reasons, and—let us say it—it was also the result of his incomplete artistic culture.
Setting aside his literary studies, what could he well know of contemporary art? When was he able to study painting, and what could he have heard of European music, this country gentleman who had passed three-fourths of his life in his Muscovite village, and who had not visited Europe since 1860; and what did he see when he was upon his travels, except the schools, which were all that interested him? He speaks of paintings from hearsay, citing pell-mell among the decadents such painters as Puvis de Chavannes, Manet, Monet, Böcklin, Stuck, and Klinger; confidently admiring Jules Breton and Lhermitte on account of their excellent sentiments; despising Michelangelo, and among the painters of the soul never once naming Rembrandt. In music he felt his way better,[5] but knew hardly anything of it; he could not get beyond the impressions of his childhood, swore by those who were already classics about 1840, and had not become familiar with any later composers (excepting Tchaikowsky, whose music made him weep); he throws Brahms and Richard Strauss into the bottom of the same bag, teaches Beethoven his business,[6] and, in order to judge Wagner, he thought it was sufficient to attend a single representation of Siegfried, at which he arrived after the rise of the curtain, while he left in the middle of the second act,[7] In the matter of literature he is, it goes without saying, rather better informed. But by what curious aberration did he evade the criticism of the Russian writers whom he knew so well, while he laid down the law to foreign poets, whose temperament was as far as possible removed from his own, and whose leaves he merely turned with contemptuous negligence![8]
His intrepid assurance increased with age. It finally impelled him to write a book for the purpose of proving that Shakespeare "was not an artist."
"He may have been—no matter what: but he was not an artist."[9]
His certitude is admirable. Tolstoy does not doubt. He does not discuss. The truth is his. He will tell you:
"The Ninth Symphony is a work which causes social disunion."
Again: