Source: https://tolstoy-lit.ru/tolstoy/bio/biryukov/biografiya-biryukov-3-6.htm
Text: P. I. Biryukov (1860–1931), Biography of L. N. Tolstoy, Volume III. Public domain.
Translation: English translation for the tolstoy.life research platform (2026-05-27), from the continuous Russian capture in ../ru/chapter-06.md.
Having worked at peasant labour all summer long, L. N. fell dangerously ill in August.
While working at the haymaking, in climbing down from the cart, he bruised his leg on the shin against the rail of the cart; in the heat of the work he paid no attention to this bruise. Coming home in the evening, he felt a pain in the bruised place and, on examining the leg, noticed a small scab. L. N., supposing that this scab would heal over and fall off, paid no attention to it, and probably in the days that followed irritated it still more; an inflammation set in, and at the site of the scab an abscess. The feverish condition increased, and L. N. took to his bed. The doctor who was summoned diagnosed an inflammation of the periosteum and feared a general blood-poisoning. An operation had to be performed, the abscess lanced; all this caused L. N. no little suffering, and uneasiness and alarm to all the close people around him.
But L. N. did not lose heart. In the dangerous moments of his illness he would say to those who visited him: “Well, what of it — I am dying of a leg; in what way is this death worse than any other?”
Here is a letter of his of that time to A. A. Tolstaya:
“…You ask about me. However strange it may be to say it, I am very, very well. As regards the leg, they say there it is an inflammation of the periosteum, and erysipelas, and so forth; but I know very well that the main thing is that I am ‘dying of a leg,’ as the peasants say — that is, I find myself in a position a little nearer to death than we ordinarily are, and precisely on account of the leg, which calls attention to itself by pain. And this position — as you so admirably put it — to feel oneself in the hand of God, is very good, and I always wish to be in it, and now too I do not wish to come out of it. Indeed, very great and prolonged bodily sufferings, and after them bodily death, are so necessary and eternal and a condition common to all life, that for a man who has come out of childhood it is strange to forget about this even for a minute. The more so as the remembrance of it, the perpetual expectation of it, not only does not poison life (if there is any), but only lends it firmness and clarity. If I look upon my life as upon my own, given me for my own happiness, then no contrivances and deceptions will bring it about that I could live peacefully in view of death. Only then can one be wholly indifferent to bodily death, when life presents itself only as a duty — as the fulfilment of the Father’s will. Then the interest of life lies not in whether I am well or ill, but in whether I am fulfilling well that which has been bidden; and fulfil it I can to my last breath, and to my last breath be calm and joyful. I do not say that I am such — I wish to be such, and I wish it for you also. And I hope that you will not be out of agreement with such a posing of the question. And lest you should think that by the fulfilment of the will I mean something particular, I will say that the Father’s will is one and known to all — love toward all people and union with them, beginning with the very nearest and going on to the very farthest. Is it not true — you agree?” (*)
( The Tolstoy Museum. Correspondence of L. N. Tolstoy with Countess A. A. Tolstaya, vol. I, p. 344. )
And yet the enforced leisure of illness gave him the possibility of pondering the subjects of new works, which indeed came forth from his pen in the period of his convalescence.
Recovering from his illness, he wrote to his friend N. N. Strakhov:
“19 October. How are you living, dear Nikolai Nikolaevich? What of your book? Evidently it has not yet come off the press; otherwise you would have sent it. Are you warm — independently of your blanket — in your soul? I thank you for your letter to me. You guessed, in one of your letters, that illness gives me much. It has, it seems to me, given me much that is new. I have thought over and felt through a great deal. Even now I am still trying my hand at work and still cannot say that I have hit upon such a one as I need for my peace of mind, such a one as would absorb me wholly. If it is needful, then God will grant it. I thank you for the information about books.”
And further on, in the same letter:
“As always, books seem needful when they are not there, and useless when they are there. Nikolai Nikolaevich, help the Posrednik (The Intermediary) enterprise in the publishing of scientific books. You can help both directly and indirectly, by rousing your acquaintances to the work. How sorry I am that it is impossible to talk with you about this. It seems to me desirable and possible (by no means easy, and even very difficult) to compose books setting forth the foundations of science in a form accessible only to the literate man — textbooks, so to speak, for the self-instruction of the most gifted of the common people, those inclined toward a certain kind of knowledge; such books as would call forth a need for thinking upon a given subject and for further study. Such, it seems to me, are possible — arithmetic, algebra, geometry, chemistry, physics. It seems to me that the exposition ought to be of the most rigorous and serious. I will not express all that I think about this now, but I should be glad to learn your opinion. My health is very good. Sometimes I think that if my life had no other meaning than my own life and the pleasures from it, recovery would be still more dreadful than death. The condemned man already had the noose about his neck, he was quite ready, and suddenly the noose was taken off — not, however, in order to pardon him, but in order to execute him by some other form of execution. But with the Christian faith that life is not in me but in the service of God and of one’s neighbour, this reprieve is the most joyful of all: life will remain as it was, while the joy of serving the law of the world, of serving God, in my present form is increased. Farewell, dear Nikolai Nikolaevich. Write whenever you take the fancy.”
A similar letter he also wrote to me at this time.
“Thank you, dear friend, for writing to me. The present letter, with the enclosure of Dzhunkovsky’s letter, gave me great joy. One rejoices that behind the wall there goes on that same work which for you constitutes life. And, strange to say, one does not in the least wish to see them, to come into communion with them: it is useless, it will result in a waste of time. We are in our trench, they in theirs. It is joyful only to hear one another at work. Chertkov has just left, very cheerful. It was good for me to be with him. I know your correspondence and see nothing in it but the very best. From Zalyubovsky I have again received his brother’s letters. Very good letters.
I move about on crutches with pain, and I cannot lower the leg, on which account I sleep badly, and on which account I cannot well and connectedly express all that has gathered in such abundance in my head and heart. Kiss Simon for me. How is he? How is the scientific section? It would be good if you would take it in hand. L. T.
I thank Simon for his letter, which expresses his good spiritual state. We have all grown very fond of Liz. Fedorovna. Has he begun to work? His beginning of meteorology is good in feeling, in its attitude to the subject, but it seems to me that what is needed is something strictly scientific — that is, the exposition, in a condensed, comprehensible form, of all that each of us knows in his own subject, in a more correct exposition than that in which we received it, and therefore not a lowering of the tone, but a raising of it. In the natural sciences (chemistry, physics, botany, and others) it seems to me that the exposition falls into three parts: 1. The foundations of the science, the establishing of a view of phenomena from the standpoint of the given science. 2. Considerations, propositions, analogies, half-laws (in chemistry), which can be deduced from the fundamental laws; and 3. The application of the science to life. I express myself unclearly, but you will partly understand, and, God willing, the thing itself will show and make it clear. I know too that such demands are enormous. But surely it is not necessary at once to attain perfection or else to throw it all up? One must do, must attempt. It seems to me possible: arithmetic, algebra, geometry, chemistry, history both ancient and medieval and of the Russian church. But I am sure that all the sciences are possible, because a science is a science to just the extent that it can be set forth clearly and simply. L. T.”
It may be seen how the Posrednik enterprise occupied him, and this care of his doubled our energy.
At the beginning of this letter L. N. speaks of Dzhunkovsky’s letter. In this letter a young Guards uhlan officer, Nikolai Fedorovich Dzhunkovsky, informed L. N. that his cousin, Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich Khilkov, had, quite independently, come to the same conclusions about the necessity of applying the teaching of Christ in life as had L. N. Khilkov at that time, having received from his mother a large and valuable parcel of land, had handed it over to the peasants for communal use and had himself taken to farming on a small parcel of land. Someone among his relatives had brought Khilkov What I Believe in French. On reading this book, Khilkov felt a complete kinship with the ideas expressed in it, and, not knowing where to obtain the original, translated the whole book into Russian and circulated it in manuscript among his friends and acquaintances.
Soon there followed a personal acquaintance between Khilkov and L. N., and between them there was established a close, friendly communion; in the further course of our account we shall cite some extracts from their interesting correspondence.
At the end of October L. N. was visited by his old friend Alexander Alexandrovich Stakhovich, a great master at reading dramatic works aloud. A great admirer of Ostrovsky, Stakhovich read several plays to L. N. with enthusiasm.
L. N., who knew and valued Ostrovsky well, was especially struck by his power in Stakhovich’s reading, and it came into his mind to make use of the dramatic form for the creation of new artistic images, long since ready to take on real form.
And so L. N. sketches out the subject of The Power of Darkness.
The theme of this drama is taken from real life and was related to L. N. by Nik. Vas. Davydov, at that time the prosecutor of the Tula circuit court.
We borrow the particulars of the origin of this drama from the reminiscences of Countess Sofya Andreyevna Tolstaya, printed in the Tolstoy Yearbook for 1912.
The 1st act of the drama was written on 20 October. In November A. A. Stakhovich again called on him. L. N. was working in the hall and met him with the words: “How glad I am that you have come! By your reading you stirred me up. After you, I wrote a drama.” Between Stakhovich’s two visits about three weeks had passed. So that the drama was written in two weeks. L. N.’s work went, indeed, extraordinarily fast. Evidently the images were awaiting the moment of embodiment and themselves begged to be set on paper. The copyists scarcely managed to enter the corrections into the manuscript.
At the end of November L. N. moved with his family to Moscow, and there gave his work its final form and handed it over to the Posrednik publishing house.
“Even before it was printed,” recounts Sofya Andreyevna, “The Power of Darkness was read everywhere in manuscript. M. G. Savina came to Moscow to ask Lev Nikolaevich’s permission to put the drama on the Petersburg stage for her benefit performance. Lev Nikolaevich readily agreed, but on 2 April 1887 a telegram was received from Savina saying that the play had been banned by the censorship, and not only for the theatre but for printing as well. On this account I wrote a perplexed letter to Feoktistov, the head of press affairs, who answered me with a long letter, explaining that in The Power of Darkness there was a cynicism of expressions impossible for the nerves of the stage, and so forth. But as to why the drama was banned in print, he gave me no answer whatever. Anger seethed within me, I longed to go to Petersburg to do battle, but I could not leave the children in the absence of my daughter Tanya and her father, who were then staying with Count Olsufyev at his estate, near the Podsolnechnoye station.
“The Power of Darkness was admired everywhere,” says S. A., “and the censorship’s ban on printing it outraged all society. Probably this made Feoktistov think better of it, and he brought the permission to print The Power of Darkness to my sister, T. A. Kuzminskaya, for transmission to me, after which a good acquaintance of mine, M. A. S., writes to me:
“‘In my joy, having forgotten all that was stupid, vexatious, and incomprehensible in this unequal struggle of the greatest writer with unrecognized judges, of this self-knowing genius with fools who understand nothing of their obligations…’
“At last the drama safely passed the censorship and appeared in print (only the epigraph from the Gospel and two or three expressions sharp with respect to the church were struck out). It sold then, in three days, in a quantity of 250,000 copies. The effect produced by this work was unexpected, most of all to L. N. himself. I remember how modestly he told me that he had not at all expected this work to please the public so much. He had wished simply to write a drama for the popular theatre, and thought it would be given in the show-booths. ‘Had I known it would please so, I should have tried to write it better,’ L. N. said jokingly.
“Many vicissitudes did this drama undergo,” S. A. continues her reminiscences, “before all Russian society came to know it, notwithstanding the noise and the success it produced. On 24 January 1887 they wrote to me from Petersburg:
“‘Hurrah! The drama has been passed for the stage. Varlamov was distributing the roles and joking that Savina ought to have her legs cropped if she wished to play Anyutka… Then suddenly, in consequence of some misunderstandings, the benefit performance was taken away from Savina, and The Power of Darkness was banned.’
“On 3 February I was again informed that ‘it has been decided to rehearse the drama, and he himself will be at the dress rehearsal.’ A. Potekhin wrote to me on 12 March that rumours were going about of a ban on The Power of Darkness, and he very much urged me to come to the dress rehearsal, hoping that my presence would be of use in the matter of the censorship. I did not manage to go to Petersburg, and for some reason this drama was not, even then, put on at the imperial theatre. On 22 March A. Potekhin writes to me again:
”‘The Power of Darkness has been rehearsed — the scenery, the costumes are all ready, and suddenly it has been forbidden to be played, through the Ministry of the Court… All the actors are terribly distressed…’
“But before The Power of Darkness appeared at the imperial and private theatres, it was excellently performed in 1890 in Petersburg by amateurs from society. The initiative for the staging of this drama belonged to Madame Priselkova.”
Notwithstanding the enormous success of The Power of Darkness, it was put on at the imperial and private theatres only five years later. It was performed in Petersburg on 18 October 1895, for the benefit of the actress Vasilyeva.
A. A. Stakhovich tells of the strange impression produced by the reading of The Power of Darkness upon the Yasnaya Polyana peasants:
“The next day they somehow or other copied out the drama. In the evening there was a reading in the lower storey of the house. No fewer than forty peasants gathered. I made out poorly the copy written in various hands, so that the 5th act was read by Lev Nikolaevich himself. The peasants listened in silence. Only one — Mikh. Fom., the butler — noisily expressed his rapture in loud guffaws.
“The reading ended. L. N. turned to an elderly peasant, formerly a favourite pupil of his at the Yasnaya Polyana school, with the question how he had liked the work that had been read.
“He answered:
“‘How shall I put it to you, Lev Nikolaevich. Mikita managed the business cleverly at first… but then he muffed it…’
“Tolstoy asked nothing more of anyone…
“In the evening L. N. was out of spirits. ‘It is all the butler’s fault,’ he said. ‘To him you are a general, he respects you: you give him three roubles for a tip… and suddenly you yourself are shouting, acting the drunkard; how was he not to guffaw and thereby keep the peasants from rightly understanding the merit of the play, the more so since the majority of the listeners take him for an educated man.’”
Then A. A. Stakhovich, having received the proof-sheets in Petersburg, took to reading The Power of Darkness in the highest social circles of Petersburg. Soon he was invited to give a reading to the Emperor Alexander III.
In a letter to Sofya Andreyevna, A. A. Stakhovich describes this reading before the Sovereign on 27 January 1887 thus:
“There were present: the Sovereign, the Empress, the grand duchesses, the grand dukes, the circle of those close to the Sovereign and the Empress, and the intimates of Count Vorontsov.
“The Sovereign came up to the little table on which the play lay, took it, and said to me:
“‘It has lain a whole week on my table. I never managed to read it; please read everything, without any omissions whatever.’
“When I began to read out the dramatis personae, I noticed that the Sovereign was writing them down; I went up and asked permission to read them over again. His Majesty wrote down all the names.
“The reading began. However carried away I was by the drama and by the wish to read well, I tried, so far as I could, to follow the impression the play would produce upon His Majesty; he listened attentively; I noticed that the course and development of the action interested him; an inner feeling told me that success was possible… but — alas! — the actor once more overpowered the observer; I felt what Matryona, Nikita, and poor Marinka are living through in the play… And I forgot where I was reading and before whom…
“It was the Sovereign’s pleasure that, for the reader’s rest, the intervals should be prolonged; they dragged out of themselves. His Majesty would come to smoke and talked at length about the play. Of Mitrich’s role he expressed himself thus:
“‘The soldier in all of Tolstoy’s creations is astonishingly good.’
“After the scene of Mitrich with Anyutka, the Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich said to me:
“‘There are spots even on the sun; only on this ground do I permit myself to point out the falseness of this scene. All Mitrich’s reasonings about womenfolk are just, but it is not a Nicholas-era soldier who speaks them… it is Count Tolstoy himself. It is not the conversation of an old man with a peasant girl, but long philosophical monologues.’
“I began to object; the Grand Duke interrupted me:
“‘I will go and ask Her Majesty to permit this scene to be read again; all will be glad to hear you once more, and after the reading it will be easier for me to prove that I am right.’
“The Sovereign came up. The Grand Duke repeated to him his opinion of this scene. The Sovereign answered:
“‘You are not right. All Mitrich’s reasonings are not monologues put by the author into the mouth of the soldier, but a natural conversation; it was Annushka who, without intending it, led Mitrich onto this theme, and under the terrible impression of that night and of all that is going on behind the scene, Mitrich “thinks aloud,” as old men often do, conveying in words all his heavy thoughts about womenfolk and their sad lot… paying no attention whatever to his ten-year-old listener.’
“How rightly, in these few words, the spiritual state of Mitrich and all his reasonings are understood and expressed!” (*)
( I read The Power of Darkness at M. A. Solskaya’s for the Princess Eugenia Maximilianovna of Oldenburg, who ordered that her greeting be conveyed to Tolstoy, saying: “I was a little girl when Count Tolstoy was at my mother’s in Florence; tell him that, when I am in Moscow, I shall visit him. If he, like Mitrich, climbs up onto the stove to get away from me, then I, like Anyutka, shall find him even there.” )
“A strong impression was produced by the 4th act; it was plain that it gripped everyone, which was expressed in the intervals in varied but general praises. After the end of the 5th act all were silent for a long while, until the voice of the Sovereign rang out.
“‘A wonderful thing.’
“And these two words unsealed everyone’s lips. There began talk of Nikita’s heartfelt confession, of Akim’s holy joy, of the love of the deaf Akulina for Nikita, who, in order to save him, had wished to take his crime upon herself… Rapturous exclamations of ‘a marvel! a marvel!’ rang out on every side.”
L. N.’s attitude to all the noise raised about this work is expressed in a few lines in his letter of that time to N. N. Strakhov:
“Of myself I will say that of late I am decidedly tormented by the consequences of my drama. Had I known how much time this would take from me, I should never have printed it. A strange folk, the people of our circle! However much you think you know them, they astonish you every day by their idleness and by the unexpectedness of the use they make of the faculty of thought. Just so, like a painted feed-bag. They are afraid to put it to good use, and it dangles before their feet, beating both them and others. And there is nothing else for them, poor wretches, to do.”
The vital force of this drama, the ethnographically pure language, the depth of the idea expressed in it — that lingering force of sin and the brilliance of truth in the humble form of Akim; the novelty of the very form of the creation, not yet manifested in L. N. before — all this acted in a stunning manner upon the reading public, and it bowed down before the free creator who had shown so clearly that form is a matter of indifference to him who is full of the knowledge of the higher moral feelings.
And no sooner had L. N. managed to finish this work than he set about a new labour, which, like the first, was intended for the people.
He took to occupying himself, with enthusiasm, with the compilation of a popular calendar with proverbs.
The work was evidently in full swing, and the calendar was almost ready, but here too the dreadful censorship laid its cruel paw.
Disturbed about the fate of the calendar in the Moscow censorship, L. N. writes the following letter:
“Dear Pavel Ivanovich, the calendar has got stuck here in the censorship. Sytin assures me that in Petersburg it is better. I am afraid that he is shifting the matter off himself and loading it onto you. Well, you know about that. Petrov was told to copy out separately the saints and the texts for Sundays. I cannot believe that this should be necessary: it is so stupid. Perhaps what is forbidden for them is only the juxtaposition of texts with proverbs. If so, then submit it as it is, and then try to fill out from yourself or to replace the proverbs of those days which I am copying out. Some of them seem to me weak, some are poor without explanation. I too, for my part, will think something up; if I have time, I shall have it sent on. But in general act more boldly. Add, correct, throw out.
“If, however, as I also suppose, the texts are not passed in combination with the proverbs, then on Sundays place the texts alone, and with the proverbs left over from the texts fill in those days which are poor. If, however, the texts are not passed at all, then leave the proverbs alone, choosing the most serious, and replace the very poorest. I would very gladly do this myself if I were in Petersburg, but now it must be you — by our common efforts.
“The main thing is that with you, they say, the censorship are people — that is, one can talk with them — whereas here, they say, it is a wall and one cannot talk. As soon as one can talk, then one can say: texts with proverbs are not allowed — we shall place them separately; texts at all are not allowed — we shall not place them. Saints are not allowed without the designation ‘equal-to-the-apostles,’ and so forth — we shall place that too. It is not allowed without the imperial days — we shall place them. Besides, I have almost finished the notes for each month. Write to me as soon as possible, even telegraph, whether there is any hope of its passing the censorship within a week (well, ten days), and then I will drop my other affairs and finish this and send it to you. Thank you for your letter; I received it at Yasnaya. I embrace you. I am alive, well, in Moscow.”
I managed to do something in the Petersburg censorship — that is, to obtain permission to print the calendar, if not without cuts, then in a decent form. And L. N., encouraged by this, continues to work and sends me additions.
Here is his next guiding letter:
“This letter, and the manuscript of the article for each month of the calendar, will be handed to you by my brother-in-law Bers, Vyacheslav. It seems to me that these notes may be of use. They may call forth imitation, especially in the section of agricultural, and indeed of all other, advice. There is no need to ask you to take pains with the censorship: you yourself will do what is needful. The articles I did not receive. The astronomical article about the eclipse of the sun is excellent in idea. My own extract from a letter I cannot manage to look over. I need only a couple of hours to occupy myself with it. But up to now I cannot find the time. Thank God, I am very busy. I should also very much like to have, for the calendar, the rising of the sun and the moon for each day. This is simply a matter of copying out. And I should like the rising of certain constellations — the Stozhary (the Pleiades), the Cross, and Sirius. So that one might tell the time by night and have a little notion of the visible phenomena of the heavens. Here too one might place something about the direction of the Bear’s tail according to the seasons of the year and about the Pole Star.”
The least delay in the printing already disturbs him. Thus, a few days later he writes, giving new instructions:
“…Why do you not write to me how the calendar is being set up or printed? That you scold me is very good. And it is good that you correct. One mind is good, but two are better still. The chief thing is that it should not be so as to repel the reader, to undermine his confidence. Could not one add, to the place where it speaks of spells, the following: ‘People fall ill from a spell only if they believe in sorcery, in spells. They fall ill not from the sorcery, but from brooding. They begin to brood, to mope, and they really do fall ill. But whoever does not believe in these trifles falls ill from no sorcery whatever.’ Or something to that effect. I rejoice greatly, dear friend, that I shall see you by the New Year, if we are alive. How are you printing it? What of the censorship? How many copies are you printing? And are you not afraid that it will not sell, because it is not out in time? Have you corrected, have you replaced, the poor proverbs?”
In consequence of the fuss with the censorship, secular and ecclesiastical, in which one could always achieve anything only by roundabout ways, the calendar was indeed delayed. It came out only in January 1887. This was what made L. N. uneasy.
But when the calendar came out, L. N.’s uneasiness gave way to bitter disappointment: the calendar did not please him, especially the astronomical article appended to it, written specially for the calendar by the then-young Professor Kleber, who has since died.
In one of my letters I had expressed to L. N. my perplexity that in one of his articles about village life and labours he advised going to church on a holiday. L. N. corrected and softened the passage and thanked me for the indications. And now, recalling this remark of mine, he writes me a letter full of reproaches and regrets, but at the same time penetrated with such love that I felt not the slightest mortification in reading it, although I did have to regret strongly that I had not managed to please him with this calendar, for which he had waited with such impatience.
“You scolded me, dear friend, for advising going to church — that is an old, existing superstition, and therefore pardonable; but how can I help scolding you for the astronomical article in the calendar? It is a repulsive, dreadful, godless, savage, villainous article. In the first place — pride: see what we know, and what do you, you clodhoppers, know? In the second place — ignorance: to pass off as knowledge one’s own savage, godless superstitions — that a piece tore away from the sun, and that the sun will go out; in the third place — an ignorance of the people. No one will believe a single word, and they will only hold the gentry up to ridicule (and deservedly); in the fourth place, and chiefly — it is unloving: not to help a man, not to tell him how I came to know a thing, so that he too might come to know it, but a boasting of others’ labours, and labours not even made one’s own at that, and with untruth besides.
“This article is good only in this — that it clearly shows what sort of articles one ought not to write. All that, surely, will not do which is even a little like this article. Here, on twenty pages, is everything: the spectrum, analysis, and the formation of worlds. And nothing but blasphemy against God and against science. Instead of all this I would have taken up these pages with a description of the visible sky at different times, would have shown, in relation to the stars, the places of the sunrise and sunset, the stars visible to us at different seasons of the year and the place of these stars in the daytime — and even that would be a great deal. If you did not write this article (I am sure you did not), then do not show this letter to him who wrote it; but if he is such that one can speak to him, then tell him what I think, if it interests him. From popular little books in the field of science (as in the field of art) one can take nothing. One must, taking up the standpoint of one’s reader, work independently. And if this work has succeeded — convey this course of the work to the reader. The chief thing is to convey science scientifically — that is, the whole course of thought in the investigation of some object — and not in a fairy-tale manner, as in this dreadful article. — In general the calendar produced in me sadness, and I hid it away farther off, so as not to see it. The saints’ calendar is separate, and therefore the proverbs by dates no longer have any sense. Was it quite impossible without the saints’ calendar? There is no rising of the moon. And the villainous article, which has but one significance for the people — polemic with the Bible. And with the Bible the Gospel too is inseparably bound up for the people. It is well if the rotation of the earth, and still more the antiquity of the world beyond 6,000 years, follows from indubitable knowledge; but it is a misfortune if this is a new superstition in place of the old. The old is more moral and more sensible than the new. If this is knowledge, then with knowledge the critical faculty too is acquired, and therefore knowledge is not dangerous. But the bare results of knowledge — that is worse than the Iverskaya icon and the relics. Forgive me, dear friend, if this letter grieves you. You have been tormenting yourself, taking pains, and I am, as it were, reproaching you; but all that I write, I am sure that you know just as well as I. The censorship and the bustle of life caught you up in their whirl. In your place I should have got up to something even worse. If you do not agree with me — the more so since I write very muddledly — then we shall talk over everything at our meeting, which I can hardly wait for. I am going nowhere, awaiting this joy. What is Khilkov’s address? L. T.
“For God’s sake, if there is any feeling of vexation against me, destroy it within yourself, because I, while grieving over the calendar with all my might, did not for a single second carry over this grief onto you, but, it seems, love you still more, vexed though I am at the article.”
Notwithstanding this failure, the calendar had a great success, and the 1st edition quickly sold out. A repetition of it was already too late, but the proverbs chosen by L. N. and arranged by days were from that time forward reprinted many times by various firms under the title “Proverbs for Every Day.”
And this little collection of the people’s wise sayings served, in our opinion, as the foundation for the compilation, in the future, of The Circle of Reading.
At this same time — that is, in December 1886 — L. N. writes, among other things, to N. N. Ge:
“I am in Moscow, and yet, in spite of this, am happy and tranquil for the most part, because I desire nothing. There is so much work, probably needful to people, that one knows beforehand one will not finish it. And so it is with you too, I know. And once one knows one will not finish the work, the wish for a personal reward for it falls away, and there remains only the consciousness of service. I sometimes experience this, and then it is especially good; but no sooner do others begin to praise (as it is now with me over the drama) than at once there appears the wish for a personal reward for one’s labour, and a stupid self-satisfaction: what a fellow am I! what have I done! True, what saves one from this — you know this too — is that there is no time, one must set about something else… When I think nothing about your works, but when I do think, I terribly long to see them. Well, if we live, we shall see. Chertkov is in the country with his wife. The business of printing has died down because of the censorship. They smear everything over. I find that this is good. For it is no mere phrase, but the most obvious truth, that by violence nothing can be done. So how can it grieve me that against my cause they employ that instrument which can do nothing? If it does grieve me, then there is certainly in it my own personality — that very thing which ought not to be there for my cause…
“Epictetus is no hindrance to Christ, but does not replace Christ. Only through Christ will you understand Epictetus too. I read Epictetus and found nothing. But after Christ I understood all his — Epictetus’s — depth and force. I think it is the same with Confucius too.”
The bond of N. N. Ge with L. N. grew ever stronger. He read his way with enthusiasm into the religious-philosophical artistic works of the new period, and strove to imprint upon paper and canvas the wonderful images that arose in his head.
At about this time L. N. wrote the text for Ge’s well-known picture The Last Supper.
In this text L. N. expresses a thought that gives a new meaning to the whole account of the Last Supper. Christ washed the disciples’ feet, and consequently Judas’s too. And, having said to him: what thou doest, do quickly! — Christ, by prompting Judas to go out, saved him from the wrath of the disciples, who had already guessed who the betrayer was. Thus the whole farewell discourse is not only words, but a deed of the loftiest love, not only toward one’s neighbours, but toward one’s enemies.
In November of this year L. N. writes to N. N. Ge:
“With me all is well, God’s grace. God gives me all too many joys. In the family the good seed grows, though slowly, yet undoubtedly. Of men, brothers in the faith, there are ever more and more.”
From L. N.’s correspondence with his friends and acquaintances let us mention his letter to a certain revolutionary, L., who had visited him and had then written him a letter in which, while expressing sympathy, he made certain objections to L. N. The sincerity that L. N. noticed in this man, and his serious search for truth, prompted L. N. to answer him with a long letter, in which L. N. gives a clear definition of his point of view on revolutionary activity, pointing out the likeness and the difference between the two world-views. Speaking of the revolutionaries’ attitude to the government, L. N. sees their weakness in this — that they, like the government, admit the employment of violence, although directed to the opposite side.
“Your arguments come down to this,” L. N. continues, “that a man, in the name of love toward people, may and must kill people, because there are certain forces — mysterious to me — or the most incomprehensible reasonings, in the name of which people have always killed one another: those very same by which Caiaphas found that it was more profitable to kill the one Christ than to ruin a whole nation. But the aim of all the arguments is the justification of killing. You even seem to be indignant that there are people who maintain that one must not beat one’s wives and children.
“Mankind lives, the moral consciousness in it grows, and it lives down at first to the point where it recognizes the moral impossibility of eating one’s parents, then of killing superfluous children, then of killing captives, then of keeping slaves, then of bringing one’s household into accord by beating, and then — one of the chief acquisitions of mankind — the impossibility of attaining its collective welfare by killing and by violence in general. There are people who have lived down to this stage of moral consciousness; there are people who have not lived down to it.”
Then he defines the significance of the commandment of love, acknowledged by the revolutionary too, and says:
“You speak admirably of the fact that the fundamental commandment is the commandment of love, but you say incorrectly that any particular commandments whatever may violate it. You here incorrectly confound two different things: the commandment ‘eat not swine’s flesh’ and, say, the commandment ‘kill not.’ The first may be at variance with love, because it has no objects of love. But the second is only the expression of that degree of consciousness which mankind has attained in the definition of love. Love is a very dangerous word. You know that in the name of love within the family the most evil deeds are done, in the name of love for the fatherland still worse ones, and in the name of love for mankind the most terrible horrors. That love gives meaning to human life has long been known; but wherein is love? This question is unceasingly resolved by the wisdom of mankind, and is always resolved by a negative way: it is shown that that which was wrongly called and went under the firm of love is not love. To kill people is not love; to torment them, to beat them in the name of whatsoever it may be, to prefer some to others — that too is not love. And the commandment ‘resist not evil by violence’ is just such a commandment, indicating that limit at which the activity of love ceases. And in this matter one can go forward, but not backward, as you wish.”
Finally, he himself tries to enter into the position of the sincere revolutionary, acknowledging as lawful and reasonable the motives of his activity — that is, indignation at the evil and violence around him — and tries to show him the unreasonableness of the method which the revolutionaries employ and which destroys the moral force of their conduct, often self-sacrificing:
“Violence and killing outraged you, and you were carried away by a natural feeling: let us say, you began to counteract violence and killing by violence and killing. Such an activity, although close to the animal, unreasonable, has in itself nothing senseless and contradictory; but as soon as governments or revolutionaries wish to justify such an activity by reasonable grounds, then there appears a horrifying senselessness, and a heaping-up of sophisms becomes necessary in order that the senselessness of such an attempt should not be evident.”
It is interesting to set beside this letter a thought expressed by L. N. in a letter to Chertkov at about this same time:
“We are often deceived by the fact that, on meeting with revolutionaries, we think we stand close side by side. No state — no state; no property — no property; no inequality — no inequality, and much else. It seems all one and the same. But not only is there a great difference — there are no people more distant from us. For the Christian there is no state, while for them the state must be destroyed; for the Christian there is no property, while they destroy property. For the Christian all are equal, while they wish to destroy inequality. These are precisely the two ends of an unclosed ring. The ends are side by side, but they are more distant from one another than all the other parts of the ring. One must go round the whole ring in order to join that which is at the ends.”
Of a different character is a letter of the same time, which was circulated among L. N.’s friends under the name of the letter “to the dear youth,” so entitled, it seems, by L. N.’s friend Marya Alexandrovna Schmidt.
In this letter, amid the tender epithets with which L. N. addresses the youth, there are many profound thoughts. The youth is troubled by the ramifications of Christianity. He senses the truth in this teaching, he has a need of faith, but before him is the multiplicity of faiths, and he comes to a halt before a road that has broken up into a multitude of little paths, which have thrown him off the true way. And so L. N. directs him once more onto the main road. He posits two ways of resolving the question of true Christianity.
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Christ is a dogmatic person, the 2nd Person, the Son of God, come down from heaven for the salvation of people, for the sake of universal love.
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Christ is a wise teacher of life. In either case the outcome is one:
“If the teaching has been distorted and has fallen apart into many sects, then it is one of two things: either the teaching itself is insignificant, or I do not know the great teaching.
“And therefore, in the case of the second supposition — that Christ is a wise man — it is necessary to read, quite freely, the Gospel of the four evangelists, and to read this book without self-assurance and without false joy, as we read the books of the sages. And then at once the grandeur of the teaching will declare itself, the distortions will fall away of themselves, and it will become evident that the falling-apart into sects takes place not in the teaching itself, but in an artificial sphere lying outside it.
“The necessity of oneself reading, simply and naively, the four evangelists, singling out from them the words of Christ Himself, will be still more evident in the case of the first supposition.
“Christ-God came down to earth once in all the duration of the life of the world, in order to disclose to people their salvation. He came down out of love for people. He lived, and taught, and died, loving people.
“You and I are people. We suffer, we torment ourselves, seeking salvation, and do not find it. Why, then, did Christ come down into the world?
“Here something is amiss.
“Could God, having come down into the world for our sake, forget you and me?
“Or did He not know how to speak so as to be comprehensible to us?
“But He did speak, and we have before us His words. They are before us exactly the same as they were before those who listened to His sermon on the mount.
“Why, then, did those all understand, and did not say that it was unclear, did not require explanations of Him, but all understood, and said that they had never heard anything of the kind — that He teaches as eousian ecwn, having authority?
“Why, then, is it not comprehensible to us, and we are afraid that we shall fall apart into sects?
“Evidently because we are listening not to Him, but to those who have set themselves in His place.
“So that in the first supposition too there remains one thing — to heed His words with childlike simplicity, as a child listens to its mother, with full assurance that the mother, loving it, will be able to tell it everything clearly and comprehensibly, and that only the mother will tell it the true truth and all that is needful for its welfare.”
But L. N. had pupils also of quite another sort, to whom he gave advice in his own speciality, literature.
One of such pupils was the writer Fyodor Tishchenko, the correspondence with whom began in this same year. Tishchenko had sent L. N. a story he had written, “Semyon the Orphan and His Wife.” L. N. felt a talent in the author and seriously set about directing his work. He gives him both technical and literary advice on how to improve his work, makes clear to him for what readers his tale will be suitable and which he ought to keep in view. He encourages him to further work and tries to give a direction to his talent.
One letter he concludes thus:
“However, I write all this to you in vain. If, as I understand you, you have a talent, then you ought to feel all this yourself. But if not, then — a blunt thing badly forged you will not sharpen. I understand you thus: you have a fine artistic nature, but your view of life is wrong. You, for instance, look upon writing as a means to life. This is a dreadful mistake. It means subordinating the higher condition to the lower. You will think about what writing will give you, and it will give you nothing. Do not think about this, and it will give you far more than you can expect.
“Please, take all my sharp words with the same love with which I write them. I send you back your manuscript, hoping that you will follow my advice.”
Another letter to him he ends with these words:
“The general conclusion is that if you believe in the truth (the truth is one — the teaching of Christ), then you can write well, but only on the indispensable condition of keeping in view not the exclusive public of the educated class, but the whole enormous mass of working men and women. If you have not read those books which I send you, then read them and enter into both their tendency and their character, and try to write such a one yourself. It seems to me that you can. The tendency — the teaching of Christ, His five commandments, clearly expressed in artistic images; the character — such that the book might be read by an old man, by women, by a child, and that both the one and the other should grow interested, be moved, and feel themselves the kinder for it. Try to write in this vein. If you need money, then you will receive money too for this labour. But, for God’s sake, do not build your material life upon literary work. This is — depravity.”
The tale of which we are speaking, corrected in accordance with L. N.’s advice, was printed first in the Vestnik Evropy (The Herald of Europe), and afterwards in the Posrednik edition.