---
layer: reference
lastUpdated: 2026-05-27
tags: [research, biryukov, doukhobors]
lang: en
source: tolstoy-lit.ru
volume: 3
chapter: 9
---

# Volume III, Chapter 9. New Steps. The Voice of Denunciation. *The Kreutzer Sonata*

**Source:** https://tolstoy-lit.ru/tolstoy/bio/biryukov/biografiya-biryukov-3-9.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-09.md`](../ru/chapter-09.md).

---

L. N. begins the year 1889 with a heated protest against the traditional celebration in Moscow of St. Tatyana's Day. On 12 January, in a feuilleton of *Russkiye Vedomosti*, there appeared L. N.'s article "The Festival of Enlightenment, 12 January."

> "No, really, this is dreadful!" L. N. says in this article. "What is dreadful is that people who stand, in their own opinion, upon the highest rung of human education are unable to mark the festival of enlightenment by anything else than by spending several hours on end eating, drinking, smoking, and shouting all manner of nonsense…
>
> …Everyone knows that drunkenness is bad. Yet here are educated, enlightened people getting drunk, and they are fully assured that there is in this not only nothing shameful and bad, but that it is very charming, and with pleasure and laughter they retell amusing episodes of their past drunkenness…
>
> …Every peasant considers himself guilty if he is drunk, and asks everyone's forgiveness for his drunkenness. Notwithstanding his temporary fall, there lives vividly in him the consciousness of the good and the bad. In our society this is beginning to be lost.
>
> Well, very good — you have grown accustomed to doing this and cannot leave off; well, then, go on, if it really is in no way possible to restrain yourselves; but only know that both on the 12th, and on the 15th, and on the 17th of January and of February, and of all the months, this is shameful and vile, and, knowing this, give yourselves over to your vicious inclinations quietly, and not, as you now do, solemnly, confusing and corrupting the young and what you yourselves call your lesser brethren.
>
> It is time to understand," L. N. concludes his article, "that enlightenment is spread not by hazy and other pictures alone, not by the spoken and printed word alone, but by the infectious example of the whole life of men; and that enlightenment not founded upon a moral life never was and never will be enlightenment, but will always be only obscuration and corruption."

This appeal to the moral feeling of men, to abstinence, did not halt the traditional celebration. But its prestige was overthrown, and it could no longer be carried on with the same unabashed rapture.

By no means did everyone feel ashamed at this denunciation. The shamelessness of some of those celebrating went so far that they — already, probably, half drunk — sent L. N. telegrams from their carousals: "We drink to your health." Among the young there was an attempt at an even more riotous demonstration against the reasonable warning of the great old man. Here is what the late Marya Lvovna wrote me, among other things, speaking of her father's article:

> "Papá has received many letters on this account. Some grateful, others abusive. On the evening of the 12th a precinct officer came to us and told us that the secret detectives had overheard that the students were getting ready to come to Papá's to riot, drunk, in the middle of the night, and that the chief of police had posted policemen in our lane in case of anything. But none of this happened, and no students appeared."

At the end of January there took place in Moscow an event that touched L. N. only indirectly. This was the jubilee of his friend the poet Fet, over the arranging of which Sofya Andreyevna had busied herself with great zeal. As far back as December 1888 she had written to the Tolstoy family's common friend, N. N. Strakhov, asking his participation in the jubilee and in the preparing of it in the Petersburg literary circles.

Sofya Andreyevna was on very friendly terms with both of the Fets, and acted almost at their request. Old Fet frankly expressed his fears lest this jubilee should pass off unnoticed. And so two of his Moscow friends — Sofya Andreyevna and N. Y. Grot — took the matter up. L. N., of course, regarded all this quite passively, as he did every celebration.

Toward Fet himself he had always felt a sympathy. The closeness of these two men, so far apart in their inner qualities, perplexed a great many people. This closeness perplexed me too. And once I asked L. N. what it was that had drawn him close to Fet. He told me that, besides his genuine poetic gift, what attracted him in Fet was the sincerity of his character. He never feigned and never played the hypocrite; whatever was in his soul, that came out into the open. This quality L. N. always particularly prized in all men.

Thanks to the efforts of his friends, Fet's jubilee was indeed celebrated in such a way that the festivity exceeded his expectations, and the old man was touched and comforted. But one of the chief authors of this festivity, Sofya Andreyevna, was unable to be present at it. This was prevented by the illness of her youngest son, Vanechka. He very nearly died, and at the very height of the festivity lay in a fearful fever, between life and death, and Sofya Andreyevna and the whole family were inseparable from the sick boy, in anguish and dread awaiting one outcome or the other. L. N. too suffered and was tormented over the outcome of the illness, as always striving by his bond with God to ease the heavy hour for himself and to find a reasonable explanation of the mystery being enacted before him.

Awaiting the near end of the little life, he wrote in his diary:

> "The soul has dipped itself into the body" —

by this poetic comparison striving to explain the incomprehensibility of the child's short, breaking-off life.

But this time the dipped soul remained, though not for long, in the body, and Vanechka recovered, becoming, of course, a weak, but a still more beloved and touching child.

L. N. himself lived at this time an intense spiritual life. What occupied him most of all was his relations with people who, though close to him in the flesh, did not agree with him. Before him, as always, stood the question: how, with love, to struggle with them? And on 25 January he records in his diary:

> "…I thought, not only thought but felt, that I can love and do love the erring, the so-called wicked people. At first I thought thus: can one point out to people their error, their sin, their guilt, without giving them pain? There is chloroform and cocaine for bodily pain, but none for the soul. I thought thus, and at once it came into my head: untrue — there is such a chloroform for the soul. Just as in everything, the body has been thought out from every side, while as to the soul, men have not even begun to think. An operation on the leg, on the arm, they perform with chloroform; but the operation of correcting a man they perform with pain, drowning the correction in pain, calling forth a worse disease — that of malice. Yet the chloroform of the soul exists and has long been known — it is one and the same: love. And not only that: in a bodily matter one may do good by an operation without chloroform, but the soul is so sensitive a being that an operation performed upon it without the chloroform of love is always only destructive. Patients always know this, they demand the chloroform, and they know that it ought to be there. But the healers are often angry at this demand. 'What does he want!' they say — 'I have said it so many times — and he ought to be grateful that I steep, that I tear out, that I cut away his sore; and yet he demands that it be done without pain besides! Be content even with this, that I steep it.' But the sick man does not heed these arguments; he is in pain, and he cries out, hides the sore place, and says: 'You will not steep it, and I will not be cured; I would rather suffer worse, if you do not know how to cure without pain…' And he is right. For what is spiritual sickness? It is error, a departure from the law, from the one path, and an entangling upon false paths in the snares of temptation. And so the people who wish to help, or who simply go by a more direct path (and by the bond that exists among all people), drawing the erring out of their snares — how must they act? Evidently, a man who has only just turned aside can be drawn straight from the false path onto the right one — it will give him no pain. But a man already enmeshed in the net cannot be drawn straight — you will give him pain; one must first softly, gently disentangle him. This pause, this disentangling, is precisely the chloroform of love. For otherwise, what comes of it? A man is all wound about, by the legs, by the arms, by the neck, with the nets upon the false path, and now, in order to save him, I, gripping whatever comes to hand, drag him, strangling him and severing his limbs, and draw him tighter still. The further he is, the more entangled, the more love he needs. This, which I almost understood before, I now understand fully and begin to feel. Father! Help me."

On his side, this loving struggle he recommended also to his friends.

In the middle of February he wrote me from Moscow:

> "How are you living, dear friend? Masha has gone to Ilya's and will come back on Thursday. I write so that it may be more cheerful for you. With us all is well. May God help you never to cease rejoicing in that which no one, never, nowhere can hinder: the joy of fulfilling His will, if only one fulfils it in purity, humility, and love."

More fully in the same vein he writes to N. N. Ge on 20 February:

> "Your news is very good and joyful to me — I shall await the exhibition with great interest, and do you write me besides how your present work, 'The Last Conversation,' is getting on. I too should have liked to do something this winter in my own worked-out speciality, but evidently God does not permit it. I should have liked to; yet even without this I live joyfully. Often I say to myself: to live, never ceasing to rejoice in that which no one ever, anywhere, can hinder — the joy of fulfilling the will of God in purity, humility, and love. And it happens more and more often that I succeed in experiencing this joy. In the fulfilment of that work to which one feels oneself irresistibly and undoubtedly called, as you now do in your present work — this happens most often of all. Only let it be in purity — that is, pure of all lusts: of gluttony, of wine, of smoking, of sexual lust, and of human glory; in humility — that is, always ready for my labour to be abused and myself put to shame; and in love — that is, with all this without malice, without vexation, without the desire to keep apart from any human being whatsoever. Then it is very good. And so it often is with me; and it seems to me — that which my heart desires — that it is now so with you also."

In yet another form L. N. expressed this same thought, so dear to him, in a letter to Chertkov:

> "I was grieved, irritated, dissatisfied with what is, and I sought for the guilty. I felt that my whole cast of thoughts and feelings was bad, ungodly, unchristian, but I could in no way break out of this state. But I decided that it must not be so, that I was to blame, that I was bad, and I simply began to check myself, not to give myself rein in a certain direction. I had noticed that all our best feats are attained not by stormy outbursts, but, on the contrary, by restraint, by stilling oneself. All the doors into the good, holy chambers open inward. Outward, by main force, open only the doors to the devil. And so, having stilled myself, I began to seek — where is the error? How is one to act here in God's way? — I began to pray, but, I confess, the habitual prayer did not calm me, did not lead me out into the light. And I began to think: what is it I need? What is it, then, that I need? To live with God, by His will, with Him. What is needed for this? One thing is needed: to keep the talent given me, my soul, given me — not only to keep it, but to make it grow. How to make it grow? For myself I know what I need: to keep my animal nature in purity, my human nature in humility, and my divine nature in love. What is needed to keep purity? Privations, privations of every kind; for humility? — humiliations; for love? — the hostility of men. Where, then, and how, shall I keep my purity without privations, my humility without humiliations, and my love without hostility?"

This new form of expressing the essence of the Christian life — "in purity, humility, and love" — evidently occupied L. N. strongly: he brings under it a whole series of reflections from various domains of the moral life. Thus to Evg. Iv. Popov he writes in this same spirit about physical labour:

> "Physical labour as the solution of the question of life — of course this is an absurdity; of course it is not the kind of labour, not the labour itself even, but that in whose name one labours, that solves the question. You say: in the name of compassion, of love. But here too you contradict yourself and see the possibility of such a situation in which there is no one to pity, to love, no one to labour for; or there is someone to pity and to love, and yet one cannot labour. Consequently there may be a situation in which life is meaningless and is an aimless suffering, from which it is reasonable to deliver oneself, as the Stoics indeed said. All this is perfectly just, but only when one defines the meaning of life as labour in the name of love. But this is an incomplete and not the Christian definition. The Christian definition is the fulfilment of the will of the Father, the fulfilment of this will under the conditions of purity, humility, and love.

> Wherein lies the will? To this question there is sometimes, when a man clearly recognizes the part he plays in furthering the establishment of the Kingdom of God upon earth, a direct, undoubted answer in the soul; sometimes, when there is no such answer, one need only observe the condition of purity, humility, and love (that is, not to give oneself over to lusts of every kind, not to seek the approval of men, and to have no hostile feeling toward anyone), and life itself — the very carnal life, in labour or in enforced idleness — will be the fulfilment of the will of God. And for this very reason liberation from the carnal life is an act inconsistent with the teaching of truth. The labouring life is no trifle, but is one of the conditions of purity."

L. N.'s outward life in Moscow went on in its usual way; he divided his time among his writing, his family, and his visitors and correspondents.

Marya Lvovna wrote in January to her friend M. A. Schmidt:

> "At Papá's, as before, there are very many visitors. Dunayev comes often; he is, it seems, in a good, calm spirit; Brashnin, a little old man; Popov Yevgeny; Rakhmanov; two American women: Hapgood, who translated *On Life*; then others besides, new ones. Bronevsky writes strange, uneasy letters. He is embittered against Papá and disputes with him in writing and strains to prove something to him. He disagrees with him about something, but nothing can be made of it. We are afraid he will go out of his mind."

Such correspondents were, of course, especially trying for Lev Nikolaevich.

From other letters it is evident that at this time L. N. continued to take an interest in popular literature, and in particular he was occupied by the idea of a popular journal.

As far back as December 1888 L. N. had written me, among other things, from Yasnaya Polyana:

> "Just now I have read the splendid Epictetus, received from Chertkov. Sytin is here too; he has bought the journal *Sotrudnik* (The Collaborator) and has asked me to help and to direct it. And I feel that I am bound, that I cannot but help, and there are fairly definite plans, but there are no helpers, and I myself have little strength to work. Whether anything will come of this matter or not, the main thing is that one must try to help — that is, out of the bad to try to make the good. If you come, we shall talk; and if not, then I shall write you what I think."

In more detail about this same thing Marya Lvovna informs me:

> "Papá is now very much interested in a journal for the people. Sytin has bought Zalessky's journal, *Sotrudnik*, and has asked Papá's help in remaking this journal. Papá promised, and now thinks about it all the time. He wants to put into it: 1) articles about wine, 2) about tobacco, 3) about the dummy, 4) lives of the saints, 5) travels, 6) history, and so on. It seems to me that if this should succeed, it would be very good. Papá says he has no helpers for it. The two girls are good for nothing. Tanya and I have agreed with him."

Then, in January, Marya Lvovna writes me from Moscow, at Lev Nikolaevich's bidding:

> "…He told me to say that the journal is getting on. Alexandrov (*), out in the yard, is writing about 'Egypt'; Nikiforov has undertaken to write about 'Cook'; and he bids me say that I have translated my own piece, but I cannot say this, because I have not yet translated half of it, and now I cannot, until the children get better. They are seeking for this journal an editor not suspect in the government's eyes, with a remuneration of 100 roubles a month. They wanted to invite Zlatovratsky, but Sytin was frightened of him."

(* A lodger of the Tolstoys in the outbuilding in the courtyard of the Khamovniki house. *)

Unfortunately, this enterprise was not destined to be realized.

Among L. N.'s other occupations one may note the reading of the works of A. P. Chekhov and the first sketches of an article on art.

In the month of March, living in Petersburg and working at *Posrednik*, I translated from the French, out of the collection of Chinese tales *Les Avadanas*, the Buddhist parable "Of the Arrow," and sent it to L. N. He answered me to this letter thus:

> "…I have received your letter with the parable, and the hectograph copy. The conclusion of the parable — its meaning — I have always understood otherwise. The archer who sent the arrow is the Father, who sent me into this life. It is not for me to keep asking what arrow it is, what bow, even who the archer is, but to cure myself of this life, to suffer it through. It is a charming parable, but not a Christian one — it belongs to the period that preceded Christianity, to Buddhism, when life was represented only as suffering. It has indeed remained this suffering (this trial), but the moment it was recognized as suffering, it ceased to be such. And there you have the Buddhist moment of the consciousness of suffering and of an imaginary deliverance from it. But the Christian consciousness shows the deliverance from it now and eternally. We live as before."

And then he adds, concerning his occupations at *Posrednik*:

> "Yesterday I received a very good article from Zheltov, 'On Drunkenness' — an appeal to the brethren. Can Bunge's article be printed at Sytin's? These last two days I have most diligently been correcting Pokrovsky's article and have inserted there a passage about the dummy, out of which I hope to make a separate piece."

At this same time L. N. wrote to his friend G. A. Rusanov about his literary occupations:

> "I live very well; I say sincerely that the further on, the better, and the improvement — that is, the increase of the joy of life — proceeds after the manner of the law of falling bodies: in inverse proportion to the squares of the distance from death. I want very much to write, but I am not yet writing anything. There are no longer those former motives of vanity and of self-interest, which used to spur me on and therefore (I know how jealous you are on my behalf, but I cannot help saying what I think) produced unripe and feeble works. But why write, at all? If I were a lawgiver, I would make a law that a writer should not dare, during his lifetime, to publish his works. A strange thing: there are books which I always carry about with me and should wish always to have — these are the unwritten books. The Prophets, the Gospels, Buddha, Confucius, Mencius, Lao-tzu, Marcus Aurelius, Socrates, Epictetus, Pascal. Sometimes, all the same, one wants to write, and — picture it to yourself — most often precisely a novel, broad, free, after the manner of *Anna Karenina*, into which there should enter, without strain, all that seems to me understood by me from a new, unusual side, useful to people.

> The rumour about a tale has its foundation. Two years ago now I had already written in rough a tale, indeed on the theme of sexual love, but so carelessly and unsatisfactorily that I am not even correcting it, and were I to take up this idea, I should begin to write it anew. To no one do I so recount, and so write of, my literary works and dreams as I do now to you, because I know that there is no man who would take so heartfelt an interest in this side of my life as you do.

> Karamzin somewhere said that the point is not to write the *History of the Russian State*, but to live well. And this we writers cannot repeat to ourselves often enough. And I have become convinced by experience how good it is not to write. Turn it as you will, the business of each of us is one: to fulfil the will of Him who sent us. And the will of Him who sent us is that we should be perfect as our Father in heaven; and only by this path — that is, by our own drawing nearer to perfection — can we act upon others: the watering-can must be filled to the brim before it can pour out — and the action will be through our life and through the word, the spoken and the written, in so far as that word is a part and a consequence of life; in so far will the lips speak from the abundance of the heart."

In the second half of March I was passing through Moscow on my way home, to Kostroma Province.

L. N., wearied by the bustling Moscow life, was making ready to rest somewhere in seclusion. This time he chose the cosy estate of his friend and Sevastopol comrade, Prince Sergei Semenovich Urusov, situated near Troitsa, on the Yaroslavl railway. Our roads lay together, and I, of course, was glad to accompany L. N. on his journey. We set off on the afternoon of 22 March. To the station we were conveyed in her carriage by Sofya Alekseyevna Filosofova. I sat on the box and, notwithstanding the noise of the town, tried to listen to what L. N. and Sofya Alekseyevna were talking about. The chief theme was the so-called woman question, and L. N. was urging upon Sofya Alekseyevna the necessity of the subordination of woman to man, against which his interlocutress protested.

We travelled third class, as always in crowding and stuffiness. I remember that opposite us there sat a coarse-looking peasant — a prasol, a cattle-drover or a butcher; in a word, a cattle-dealer. L. N. exchanged a few words with him, and after his departure at one of the stations conveyed to me, with horror, his impression of this man as of an animal, sensual nature. We got out at the station of Khotkovo and, having hired horses, drove to the Prince's. We were, of course, received there with open arms. The Prince was occupied with complicated mathematical calculations, in which he thought to make some discovery, and wished to share it with me, but it was very hard for me to understand him: this was his hobby-horse. I spent the night with him and the next day continued my journey, while L. N. stayed there more than two weeks.

His solitude was disturbed there too, however — by visitors agreeable to him: two American Quakers, who had come to express their sympathy with his religious views.

The Americans had first called in Moscow at L. N.'s Khamovniki house and had been received by Sofya Andreyevna. They expressed their regret at not finding L. N. and asked her to indicate his address. S. A., having courteously received the foreigners, told them that it was not worth the trouble of going, that L. N. would soon return, and that, if they were not in a hurry, they would find much of interest in Moscow and could pass the time pleasantly and usefully. To this they answered: "We came only to see count Leo Tolstoy" (*) and set off to the address indicated.

(* We came only to see Count Leo Tolstoy. *)

Part of his time L. N. spent in daily walks, weather permitting, through the neighbouring villages, taking an interest, as always, in the life of the people. Urusov's estate lies on the border of Moscow and Vladimir Provinces, in what one might call a factory-and-monastery district. L. N.'s impression from his acquaintance with the local life was a heavy one; he so describes this life in a letter to Sofya Andreyevna:

> "The village life round about, as everywhere in Russia, is lamentable. A sham school at the priest's, with 4 boys; while the boys — more than 30 of them, from neighbouring villages half a verst away — are illiterate. And they do not attend, because the priest does not teach, but makes them work. Some peasants come along, 11 men, from somewhere. 'Whence?' — 'We were driven to the elder about the quit-rent; now they are driving us to the district officer.' I got into talk with an old woman: she told me that all the girls — from her house too — are at the factory, 8 versts off, where, as Urusov says, there is wholesale depravity. In the church the watchman has no nose. A pot-house and a tavern; a magnificent house with a fat fellow in it. Everywhere it is one and the same. A sad abandonment of people to themselves, without the least help from the strong, the rich, and the educated. On the contrary, there is a kind of hopelessness in this, as though it were assumed that everything is admirably arranged, and that to meddle in all this is impossible, that one ought not, that it is offensive to somebody, and is Quixotry. Everything is arranged: the church, and the school, and the state order, and industry, and amusements; and we, the higher classes, have only to take thought for ourselves. But you glance back, and our classes are in a still more lamentable condition — we grow torpid."

While staying with Urusov, L. N. drafted in rough the comedy *She Got Out of It*, which afterwards received the title *The Fruits of Enlightenment*. There too L. N. was writing his tale *The Kreutzer Sonata*.

At this same time, at Urusov's, L. N. fell ill of his usual malady, which was attended almost always by tormenting pains of the stomach. For L. N. this was a new occasion for struggle with himself, for the development of spiritual self-command. And he records about this in his diary on 24 March:

> "In the night a very strong pain woke me; the sweat dripped, and my shirt was soaked through. From 2 o'clock until 5. I tried to pray. I could. I got up late. Everything aches. Yesterday and the day before I still could not call up in myself that high, firm state, in God, in the spirit. As though a doubt had come over me. I could not pray. Not exactly a doubt — that is, not a refutation of the truth of the Christian life — but the absence of a living faith in it. It just shrouds it over. This is a physical state…"

On 11 April, having returned from Urusov's, L. N. wrote me:

> "Thank you for your letter, dear friend — most of all, for the impulse behind the letter. It was very joyful to me to receive it. I stayed with Urusov more than 2 weeks, and it was very good for me. I wrote a great deal — hardly well, but a great deal; and now, having returned to Moscow two days ago, I continue to be in the same writing mood."

In the same vein he writes also to S. S. Urusov himself:

> "…With us it is well, but so well, so spiritually well as it used to be with you, it will not be again. Rarely have I passed the time so well, so quietly, seriously, lovingly, as that which I passed with you, and I thank you very much. It is a joy, too, that we have drawn close again, and more closely, to my mind, than before. I hope it will be so now until the grave. Much have I understood of your thoughts that I did not understand before; and chiefly, I have understood that striving toward the good, toward God, by which you live, and it is this that draws me to you more than anything."

In April the travelling exhibition of pictures came to Moscow. Lev Nikolaevich very willingly visited it. This time he had been awaiting it, in order to see N. N. Ge's new picture. He had heard of it already before, and had written in March to N. N., whom he always tried to encourage in his work:

> "I await the whole series of Gospel pictures. I have heard of the one that is in Petersburg, from Pryan., according to Makovsky very good — so he said. So even they have understood it. And the plain folk all the more so. But the point is not, as you know, that NN should praise it, but that one should feel that we are saying something new, and important, and needful to people. And when one feels this and works in the name of this — as you, I hope, are working now — then it is too great a happiness on earth. It is even shameful before others."

But now he has seen this picture himself, and so expresses his impression of it in a letter to its author:

> "Your picture I awaited and have seen. A striking illustration of what art is, at the present exhibition: your picture and Repin's. With Repin there is represented the fact that a man, in the name of Christ, halts an execution — that is, does one of the most striking and important of deeds. With you there is represented (for me, and for one in a 1,000,000, the fact that within Christ's soul an inner work is going on, but for everyone) the fact that Christ with his disciples, besides being transfigured, entering into Jerusalem, being crucified, rising again, also lived, lived as we live, thought, felt, suffered, both by night and in the morning and by day. With Repin there is said that which he wished, so narrowly, so straitly, that in words it might have been said even more exactly. It is said, and nothing more. He hindered the execution — well, what of it? Well, he hindered it. And afterwards? But more than that: since the content is not artistic, not new, not dear to the author, even that is not said. The whole picture is without a focus, and all the figures crawl apart. But with you there is done what is needed. I knew the sketch, I had heard about the picture, but when I saw it, I was moved. The picture does what is needed: it discloses a whole world of that life of Christ's, outside the familiar elements, and shows it to us such as each of us may picture it to himself according to his own spiritual force. The one reproach is, why does John, searching for something in the dark, stand so close to Christ? The figure of Christ, set apart from the others, pleased me better. A real picture — that is, it gives that which art ought to give. And how joyful it is that it has gripped all the people most foreign to its meaning. I stayed 3 weeks at Urusov's. There is a certain general, my crony, a mathematician and a theologian, but a good man. In seclusion at his place I did a little writing. Here I have run dry again. I have begun, among other things, to write a little article on art, and I cannot finish it at all. But it is not that, not that, that I ought to write. There is something of a kind that I see, and no one but I sees. So at least it seems to me. You too have something of the kind. And to make it so that others should see this also — this one must do before death. To living honestly and cleanly — that is, not on another's neck — this will not only not be a hindrance, but the one thing encourages the other" (*).

(* The reference here is to Ge's picture "The Departure from the Last Supper," known to the Russian public chiefly by the sketch held in the Tretyakov gallery. The picture itself was acquired from the exhibition by a private person, von Dervis, and was in his house. It would be most desirable to make it public property. *)

Painting as an art interested Lev Nikolaevich very much, and he often visited exhibitions and galleries. But his judgments on painting were always strict and original. In his diary, on 14 March, he records:

> "I went to Tretyakov's. A good picture by Yaroshenko, 'The Doves.' Good; but both it, and especially all these 1,000 frames and canvases hung with such importance — why is it? It needs only a sincere man to walk through the halls in order to say for certain that there is here some gross error, and that this is not at all what is needed."

With this strictness toward works of art, his love for N. N. Ge's pictures is especially precious.

In this letter of L. N.'s to Ge we already remark that he is again weighed down by Moscow, in which his creative source had "run dry."

And so, on 2 May, he goes off on foot to Yasnaya Polyana in the company of Yevgeny Ivanovich Popov, and does not return to Moscow until the autumn.

L. N.'s inner work went on at this time with especial intensity. But the life round about remained the very same as before; and, like the merciful Buddha, L. N. came to feel pity for the people wandering in the dark, and there arose in him an irresistible need to share with people the truth he had come to know. In his notebook he records, on 25 May 1889:

> "In the night I heard a voice demanding the denunciation of the errors of the world. This past night a voice told me that the time had come to denounce the evil of the world. And indeed there is nothing to delay over, nothing to put off. There is nothing to fear, nothing to ponder over — how and what to say. Life does not wait. My life is already drawing to its close and may at any moment break off. And if I can serve people by anything, if I can by anything atone for all my sins, all my idle, lustful life, then it is only by this: by telling people, my brothers, that which it has been given me to understand more clearly than other people — that which for ten years now has tormented me and rent my heart.

> Not to me alone, but to all people, and not only to Christians, but to Mohammedans, Buddhists, Confucians, Brahmanists, to Russians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Germans, Americans, but to Turks too, to Tatars, Japanese, Chinese, Indians, it is clear and intelligible that human life goes not as it ought to go, that people torment themselves and others, and only because they live not as they ought, as they would wish, and as human wisdom points out to them — the teachers of mankind: the Indian, the Chinese, the Greek, the Jewish, and most clearly of all Christ, whom more than 400 million Christians in Europe and America acknowledge to be God. Every man knows that for his own good, for the good of all people, one must love one's neighbour no less than oneself, and, if one cannot do unto him what one wishes for oneself, then at least not do unto him what one does not wish for oneself; and the teachings of the faith of all peoples, and reason, and conscience, say the same to every man."

And, denouncing the false life of men, Lev Nikolaevich in conclusion appeals to them:

> "Bethink yourselves, bethink yourselves, bethink yourselves! — so still cried John the Baptist, so proclaimed Christ, so proclaimed the voice of God, the voice of conscience and of reason. First of all, let each man halt in his work and in his amusement, halt and think. Halt and think about what you are doing. Are you doing what you ought, are you doing the best, or are you so, for nothing, in vain, burning away that life which, between the two eternities of death, has been given you? I know that on every side they press upon you and give you not a minute's rest, and that it seems to you, as to a horse upon a treadwheel, that you can by no means stop, although the wheel that moves beneath you was set going by yourself; I know that hundreds of voices will cry out at you as soon as you try to stop in order to bethink yourself. 'There is no time to think and reason — one must act!' one voice will cry. 'One ought not to reason about oneself and one's own desires, when the cause you serve is a common cause, the cause of the family, of trade, of art, of science, of the state.' — 'You must serve the common good!' another voice will cry. 'All this has already been tried, this pondering, and no one has pondered anything out; live — that is all!' a third voice will cry. 'Think or do not think, it will all be one: you will live a little while and die, and therefore live for your own pleasure. Do not think. If you begin to think, you will see that this life is worse than no life, and you will kill yourself.' — 'Kill yourself, or live anyhow, but do not think!' a fourth voice will cry. As is told in the fairy-tale, when the thing the seeker sought was already in view, a 1,000 dreadful and seductive voices cried out around him, in order to hinder him from taking that which his quest held out to him — so do the voices of the servants of the world lead astray the seeker of truth, when it is already in his view. Do not listen to these voices. And in answer to all that they can say to you, say to yourself one thing:

> 'Behind my life I see an infinity of time, in which I was not. Before me is the same infinite darkness, into which death will presently come and plunge me. Now I am in life, and I can — I know that I can — close my eyes and, seeing nothing, fall into the most wicked and tormenting life; and I can not only open my eyes, look, I can see, can survey everything around me and choose the best and most joyful life. And therefore, whatever the voices may tell me, and however the life already begun by me may draw me on, and however the life flowing around me may urge me, I will stop, I will look about me, and I will bethink myself. And as soon as a man says this to himself, he will see that he is not the only one who bethinks himself, that both before him and in his own time many and many people, just as he, have bethought themselves and have chosen that better path of life which alone gives the good and leads to it.'"

Amid all this struggle, outward and inward, L. N. continued the work of writing proper to him. As we have already mentioned, L. N. was at this time occupied with three things: the article on art, the comedy *She Got Out of It*, and *The Kreutzer Sonata*. In his letters to me he often mentions these works:

> "I have been writing all the while about art. It keeps growing, and I see that again it will not succeed in being printed in *R. B.* The question is too important. Not art alone, but science too: in general, the whole spiritual activity and the spiritual wealth of mankind — what it is, whence it is, and what is the real, true spiritual wealth. I have now dropped it for a time and have begun to write *The Kreutzer Sonata*. This has gone easily."

The occasion for the writing of *The Kreutzer Sonata* was the following circumstance.

One day in the spring, in Moscow, at the Khamovniki house, there had gathered at L. N.'s a large company of both society guests and literary-aristocratic ones. Among the eminent people were Repin and Andreyev-Burlak. Present at this evening also was the violinist Lassota, the music-teacher of L. N.'s children. A connoisseur and lover of music, Serg. Lv. Tolstoy played, together with the violinist Lassota, *The Kreutzer Sonata*. L. N. had long known and loved this piece: it had been played even in the days of his youth, at musical evenings in Moscow. On this evening *The Kreutzer Sonata* produced upon L. N. an especially strong impression. And he translated this impression from the language of music into the language of literature and, turning to Repin and Andreyev-Burlak, said: "Let us depict *The Kreutzer Sonata* by the means of art accessible to us. I will write a story, Andreyev-Burlak will read it before the public, and you will paint on this theme a picture, which shall stand upon the stage while Andreyev-Burlak reads my tale."

Repin L. N. had known for a long time already, but Andreyev-Burlak on this visit of his struck L. N. by his declamation, and he wished to make use of the force of his talent, in order to produce by his own word, through Andreyev-Burlak's mediation, the greatest impression upon the public.

This proposal was accepted, but was by no means carried out in the form in which L. N. had proposed it. L. N. himself, indeed, set about the writing of *The Kreutzer Sonata*.

It fell to me to be present when L. N. read the beginning of it to Andreyev-Burlak. He, of course, was joyfully ready to give his powers to the discharge of the duty laid upon him by L. N., was in raptures over the beginning, and there and then began to try to render that nervous sound, like a sob, which Pozdnyshev often uttered in the course of his narration.

To this destination the tale owes also its form of a dialogue, turning into a long monologue with insignificant rejoinders from the interlocutor.

Andreyev-Burlak soon died, without living to see the completion of the tale, while L. N. became carried away by its content, and it took on such dimensions that it now departed from its former destination.

This tale was an epoch not only in Russian, but in world literature.

We shall yet return to it, when we come to speak of its appearance in print in its final redaction.

When the tale was taking on a more or less finished aspect, L. N. read it in the company of his friends and acquaintances. The first such reading was on 31 August 1889 at Yasnaya Polyana, in the presence of Prince S. S. Urusov and the Stakhovich family, who were then staying at Yasnaya.

In a letter to E. I. Popov, L. N. writes thus of his manner of life this year:

> "…I lead a fairly regular life: in the morning I write, I remake, supplement, alter all that I wrote while you were here; I said before too, and I feel the justice of it, that one ought to say, not 'soon is the tale told, but not soon is the deed done,' but the contrary: 'soon is the deed done, but not soon is the tale told.' I decided long ago that, since I have not long to live, and yet it seems there is still something to say which, in all likelihood, I shall not have time to say in the best manner, I ought to lay aside authorial coquetry and write as it writes itself; but I simply cannot. So in the mornings I write, and after dinner I work in the forest. The cobbler's work, which is even very necessary, I can in no way take up. Another occupation is correspondence, reading, and intercourse with people who come and arrive…"

Correspondence — that is, the written intercourse with people — at this time, indeed, constituted a serious matter for L. N. and took up no little of his time. There is no possibility, in this biographical work, of giving all that quantity of letters which L. N. wrote and received.

"Correspondence, reading, and intercourse with people who come and arrive," says L. N., indicating by this that at the end of the 80s he indeed represented a spiritual world centre. L. N.'s friend the philosopher N. N. Strakhov, who visited him that summer, felt upon himself the attraction toward this centre, and admirably conveys this impression in a letter to L. N.:

> "This time, after a long interval, I felt with especial clearness that Yasnaya Polyana is also a centre of spiritual activity — but what a wonderful one!

> Other centres, of which there is writing in Stead's little notebook, sometimes contain nothing in themselves, are empty points, important only because toward them are directed the thoughts and strivings of living people, so that, knowing these points, one can see the direction of these strivings. But at Yasnaya Polyana the centre itself is living, radiant — you yourself, with your never-wearying thought and heartfelt work. To see this means to see a spectacle of wonderful beauty and significance. Forgive me that, after my habit, I objectify you, try to stand farther off from you and to look at your activity from the side. Often it pains me to think that I, like others, do not know how to see the great thing being accomplished around me, and only therefore sometimes keep repeating: everything has become vile, everywhere is banality, a decline of mind and of taste. If, however, one compares the famous epoch of the forties, the remnants of which we see in Grigorovich, Fet, Polonsky, with the present time, then how can one not say that since then we have grown much and have grown wiser. Nihilism and anarchism — these, after all, are very serious phenomena in comparison with that chatter which constitutes the height of human dignity for the Grigoroviches and the Fets. And all this struggle, all the tormenting ferment of minds, has been resolved and is being consummated in your preaching, in your summons to spiritual and bodily amendment, to the true life, to that true good without which all other goods are worthless and which can never betray us. There has passed forth from you a kind of breath, there has sounded a sound, to which hearts involuntarily respond, which it is by nothing possible to stifle, to suppress. And I believe that the cause begun by you will now never die, that suffering, seeking, wavering people will constantly be coming to the way out which you have found and pointed out. God grant you health, God grant you strength and all that is needful for your cause!"

And in the following letter he speaks again, and still more strongly, in the same vein:

> "Toward you, from every side, is turned so much love that it is no wonder if, for me, there is not enough of your attention to spare. Meanwhile it seems to me that I understand the best that is in us — your incomparably high moral striving, your unwearying struggle, your suffering. Several such impressions from the last meeting touch and stir me. Now I see you in the forest with an axe, when there came over you for moments a perfect peace, a full, bright tranquillity of soul; now I hear your conversation, when you called yourself a holy fool, with agitation and suffering. My God! — sometimes I think: can it be that no one will understand this? Shall not even I succeed in writing about this, if only somehow, if only in my artificial and abstract language? And all about, after all, one constantly hears stupid and empty speeches about you. You know that I have no simple-heartedness whatever, no capacity for creating haloes and being dazzled by them. All that can be said against you I know and see well. But all this is insignificant in comparison with that which speaks for you and with which I sympathize with my whole soul, in so far as I am able at all to prize and to understand moral beauty. Oh, God grant you health and strength for your most beautiful and most difficult feat!"

One may find many causes that drew toward L. N. all this mass of people. But we shall not be mistaken if we say that one of the chief attractive forces which L. N. possessed was his spiritual freedom. Much has been and will be said about the "Tolstoyan faith." But there was none such and there will be none, because L. N.'s faith was life itself, movement, the striving toward truth. And he carefully deflected from himself every attempt to catechize his faith. This struggle of L. N.'s against the "setting forth of the faith" is admirably expressed in his letter to Chertkov, written at the beginning of this year:

> "What you write — that it would be such a good thing so clearly, briefly, to express all that in which we believe, so that it should become clear to everyone that one must live thus, and not otherwise — all this is perfectly just, and not only desirable, but it is the one thing that is needful. All this is so; but the thing is that to wish this, to strive toward it, to try to realize it, is the best and most lawful matter; but to think that this is easily realizable, and that it depends upon you, a single man, to realize or not to realize it — herein lies the error. We wish it so much that it seems easy. The error, however, is an old one: at the council in Nicaea people gather and say: come, let us decide and write down how one must believe and live; or in the French chamber, some 10 years ago, there was talk of how one must draw up the dogmas of faith and of morality, choose a commission, charge it to work them out, and behold, there will be dogmas of faith which shall serve people as a guide and a support. People can in no way believe, can in no way grow used to the thought, that it is not administrative considerations that produce the understanding of people, but that from the understanding of people there proceeds all the rest as well — both administrative and all manner of phenomena; and that to give orders to spread and to set forth is possible, but to produce understanding and the expression of it is impossible: it is itself born when it knows and when it wills, and in the form and in the man in whom it wills. You will write in a letter, Yemelyan will say in conversation, I, Khilkov, Posha, even people quite foreign to us, will feel, will think, will say, will do, and out of all this there is composed an understanding and there appears the native expression of it. To hurry this expression, to seek it, may do harm. You say — to write. Why, it would be an insane pride, which would inevitably be punished by impotence, were I to think of writing this. I see only one thing: that we all, at one and the same time, begin to feel the need of one and the same thing, think in one direction, as though we were lifting a foot onto the next following step. If this is God's work, then He will help us."

In October, while staying with the Chertkovs in Voronezh Province, I wrote to L. N., expressing to him certain thoughts that were then troubling my mind. The essence of these thoughts consisted in this: that I adduced a chain of reasonings about the boundlessness of perfecting in diverging concentric circles, mentally embracing the whole universe — that is, eternity. L. N. answered me to this with the following letter:

> "Dear friend Pavel Ivanovich, picture it to yourself — yesterday in my diary I was writing almost the same thing that you write, and therefore I need not tell you that this is near to my heart. I write, on my side, as an old man ought to write, and you, as a young man. I will ask Masha to copy this out for you, while I myself will write at least something more. First, about Ballou's book. I am very glad that it has produced upon you the same impression as upon me — of rapture, of a desire for communion with him, of an expression to him of my gratitude and love, which I have indeed carried out. And do you, please, not abandon your intention, and write to him. Another feeling that I experienced at this reading was a feeling of perplexity: how is it that these thoughts, the most important for people, thoughts which will inevitably triumph and become common — how is it that such thoughts, so strongly expressed, printed, published, are so hushed up, that neither Garrison the son, whom I asked, nor any of those Americans whom I saw (some 10 men, and all religious people), had even heard anything of this and did not know the name of Ballou? Exactly the same as in the first times of Christianity, 50 years after, and they had not heard. Only then it was one stage, and now another. And it seems to me that our part in the matter will consist in this: in already making the hushing-up impossible. God help us.

> I do not know whether I will send you the extract from the diary, although M. has copied it out. I will not send it, because it is too intimate, an unformed movement of the soul. Its course will be disturbed. But in connection with what you write, I will tell you something else, which had come into my head before: the concepts of the infinity of space and of time contain in themselves a contradiction and do not lodge in the human mind, yet they exist, and without them one cannot think. But this contradiction arises only from the fact that we think about that which we have no need whatever to think about, that we think for amusement. About space and time we have no need at all to think. We need to think only about our own life; and in life, to think only about how to be perfect, as the Father. What if we should picture to ourselves, not that we are happy, but that we are perfect, that we are perfectly content with ourselves — why, this would be something dreadful. For this one supposition annihilates every concept of the good. Consequently, however far forward we may go, perfecting ourselves, it is necessary that ahead of us there should open an infinite field of perfection. Without the infinity of perfecting there would be no life. Consequently infinity, when we think about that which we ought to think about, is not only not contradictory, but is necessary. Without it there is no concept of life. And we do live and think in space and time, and therefore it is necessary for us to think of space and time as infinite."

I do not know whether L. N. himself changed his intention, or whether the kind Marya Lvovna took pity on me; but only this extract from the diary, which L. N. had not wished to send, proved to be enclosed with the letter, copied out in Marya Lvovna's hand. Here is this remarkable entry (from the diary of 31 October 1889):

> "For this very reason — because I feel a lessening of interest, I will not say in my own personality, in my own joys (this, thank God, has been sung over and buried), but in the good of people: in the good of the people, that they should be educated, should not drink, should not be in want — a cooling even toward the universal good, toward the establishment of the Kingdom of God upon earth — by occasion of this lessening of interest, this cooling, I thought: a man passes through 3 phases, and of these I am now passing through the third. In the first phase a man lives only for his passions: eating, drinking, merriment, hunting, women, vanity, pride — and life is full. So it was with me up to about 34, until my hair turned grey (with many this is much earlier); then there began the interest in the good of people, of all people, of mankind (this began sharply with the activity of the schools, although this striving had shown itself here and there, woven into the personal life, before too). This interest had died down for a while in the first period of family life, but afterwards arose again with new and dreadful force, at the consciousness of the vanity of personal life. All my religious consciousness was concentrated in the striving toward the good of people, in activity for the realization of the Kingdom of God. And this striving was just as strong, just as passionate, just as filling of the whole life, as the striving toward personal good. But now I feel a weakening of this striving: it does not fill my life, it does not draw me directly; I have to reason that this is a good activity, an activity of material help to people, of struggle with drunkenness, with the superstitions of the government, of the church. Within me, I feel, there is growing up a new foundation of life — not growing up, but separating out, freeing itself from its coverings — a new foundation, which includes within itself the striving toward the good of people, just as the striving toward the good of people included within itself the striving toward personal good. This foundation is the service of God, the fulfilment of His will in relation to that essence of His which has been entrusted to me. Not self-perfecting — no. That was before, and in self-perfecting there is much love of personality. This is something else. This is the striving toward the divine purity (and not bodily purity; bodily impurity is repugnant, but is not opposed to this; what is opposed to this purity is, chiefly, falsehood before people and before oneself), the keeping in purity of the gift received from God, and the entrance into a life where there is no defiling of Him, into another life; the striving toward a better, higher life, and the keeping of oneself in readiness for it. This striving begins more and more to take hold of me, and I see how it will take hold of me entirely and will replace the former strivings, making life just as full. I have expressed myself unclearly, but I feel it clearly. The chief point is this: that when the interest in personal life vanished in me, and the religious interest had not yet grown up, I was horrified, feeling that I had nothing to live by; but afterwards, when the religious feeling of striving toward the good of mankind arose, I found in this striving the full satisfaction also of the striving toward the good of personality; in just the same way now, when the former passionate striving toward the good of mankind is vanishing in me, it is a little uncanny to me, as though it were empty, but the striving toward that life and the preparing of myself for it is already, little by little, replacing the former, is hatching out of the former, and, just as it was with the striving toward personal good, satisfies fully and better the striving toward the common good. Preparing myself only for that life, I more surely attain the service of the good of mankind than when I set this good as my aim. Just as, striving toward the common good, I attained my own personal good more surely than when I set personal good as my aim. Striving, as I do now, toward God, toward the purity of the divine essence within me, toward that life for which it is being purified here, I attain in passing, more surely, more exactly, the common good and my own personal good, somehow unhurriedly, undoubtedly, and joyfully. And God help me."

In September L. N. was visited at Yasnaya Polyana by the American Mrs. Stockham, accompanied by the Swedish spiritualist Beamish.

Stockham was the author of a remarkable book, *Tokology, or the Science of the Bearing of Children*. L. N. was in raptures over this book, since the scientific, physiological, and hygienic positions adduced in it were founded upon a deep religious-moral feeling, and therefore there were instilled into women the concepts of chastity, of abstinence, of vegetarianism, and so on. This book was translated into Russian, and L. N. wrote a preface to it, in which he says, among other things, that Stockham's book is "one of those rare books which treat not of that of which all are talking and which is needful to no one, but of that of which no one is talking, but which is important and needful to all."

In October *The Kreutzer Sonata* had progressed far enough for L. N. to permit it to be read in Petersburg. The first time it was read by A. F. Koni at the Kuzminskys' before a large and select company; and then this tale produced upon everyone, by the testimony of many persons, a shattering impression.

N. N. Strakhov, who was present at this reading, in a letter of his to L. N. conveys thus his impression from the tale he had heard:

> "Your tale, priceless Lev Nikolaevich, I heard on 28 October at the Kuzminskys', in a large company; Koni read it (*), very well. Forgive me that until now I have not written to you; affairs hindered me, and besides I hoped to think it well over, and waited for them to give me the manuscript, so that I should understand still better when I re-read it. But time goes on, and I want to write what I understood from the first impression.

> (* Recalling this reading, Anatoly Fyodorovich Koni writes that he "kept stopping from an inner agitation, which communicated itself also to the listeners of this wonderful work." *On the Path of Life*. St. Petersburg, 1912, vol. II, p. 8. *)

> Stronger than this you have written nothing, and indeed nothing gloomier either. There are many remarks and descriptions amazing in the depth to which they penetrate into the soul, and dreadful in their truth. And they are uttered and seized so simply and clearly! Your hero is an incomparable example of an egoist, and his egoism appears in all its repulsiveness. How good it is that he kills his wife not for a fault, but simply out of jealousy, for which there is in his soul nothing restraining, and which is perfectly justified with regard to his wife. What horror! What torments! He has killed, yet they still go on hating each other — here is the height of misfortune and of suffering!

> Whatever one may say, truth breathes in every line and every scene. Notwithstanding this, I noticed that the impression upon the listeners was confused, and that something hindered me too from fully entering into the separate thoughts and descriptions. You took the form of the narration from the lips of the hero himself, a form which constrained you greatly, while in the listeners there arose questions: who is the interlocutor? Why does the narrator for a long, long while not come to the matter, but conducts reasonings about general questions? Besides, there is, as it seemed to me, one chief unclearness: in what spirit is he narrating? By some passages one might think that egoism in him is broken, and that he already sees his actions in their true significance; by others, it seems that he is ready again, and endlessly, to kill his wife, and that there is in him not a shadow of repentance.

> Besides this, the dénouement comes about too quickly — that is, too little is told up to the minute when the musician appears. Therefore it seems that the hero is not an entirely normal man, immoderately jealous and nervous. Whereas he is an ordinary man and gradually came into such a state. The long reasonings which precede the narration, deep and important, lose their force through the expectation in which the listener finds himself. They ought to have been put into scenes, which, however, the murderer, occupied most of all with the last scene — the murder — could not have recounted at length.

> But what a richness of content! For example, the reasoning about doctors, about music, about children — one cannot enumerate them all! And the thought that people will at last cease to commit the sin that leads to childbearing! It greatly delighted me. In general, though much is taken one-sidedly, yet it is amazingly true, and the one-sidedness is understandable in a man who has been brought to murder by a life without concepts of duty, by a life of self-indulgence, accepted and preached by everyone nowadays.

> Probably, with each new reading I shall fall more and more in love with your tale — for so it always is with me."

L. N. answered him with meekness:

> "Thank you, Nikolai Nikolaevich (*), for your letter. I valued your opinion very much, and have received a judgment far more lenient than I expected. In the artistic respect I know that this writing is beneath all criticism: it came about by two attempts, and both attempts disagree with each other, and from this comes the ugliness which you heard. But all the same I leave it as it is and do not regret it — not from laziness, but I cannot mend it; nor do I regret it, because I know for certain that what is written there is not merely not useless, but, surely, very useful to people, and partly new. If I am to write artistically — which I do not forswear — then one must do it from the first and all at once."

(* I have got so entangled in the various epithets in addressing people that I have decided from now on to use none at all. (L. N. Tolstoy's note.) *)

This same autumn L. N.'s elder daughter and son, Tatyana Lvovna and Sergei Lvovich, went to Paris to the world exhibition then being held. They returned from there full of vital energy, which had to discharge itself in something out of the ordinary. Tatyana Lvovna got up a private theatrical at Yasnaya for Christmas and begged of L. N., for this theatrical, the comedy he had written. The choice, of course, was a very happy one, and success was assured beforehand.

Lev Nikolaevich was carried away by this affair almost against his own will. Here is how he informed his friends about it. He wrote to L. F. Annenkova:

> "My story *The Kreutzer Sonata* I have decided to print in a collection being published in Moscow, in memory of Yuryev and for the benefit of his family; but there is an order from the censorship, as Gaideburov wrote me, that it is not to be passed. I am writing something, and among other things have quite unexpectedly occupied myself with a comedy which I had long since sketched out. Tanya, my daughter, got up a theatrical and asked me for it; I agreed, and so I corrected it somehow, and now they are playing it at our place during the holidays."

And here is how L. N. writes to me, now after the theatrical:

> "With us all this time there has been a fearful bustle. They wished to play a theatrical and took my play, which I set to correcting and corrected a little. And they played it here yesterday. The bustle, the people, the expense — dreadful. With a quiet conscience we did the very thing that is mocked in the comedy. Masha played the cook uncommonly well, but this, it seems, did not prevent her from looking on clearly and directly. She and I are flooded at times by waves of bustle, but we try not to drown, holding on to one another. In a few days the Kuzminskys are leaving, the Sivertsovs' sons, Shenshin with his wife, and she is taking up the school, which is now ready. I am very much disposed to write and am writing something artistic. When it is written, I will let you know."

Here one already feels a note of repentance for his being carried away.

And with him, indeed, the being carried away was not seldom replaced by the consciousness of a departure from the path he had chosen. In the diary of that time there is an entry:

> "I am ashamed, ashamed of this expenditure amid destitution."

But during the rehearsal he was sincerely carried away and laughed till he was helpless.

A considerable part of the comedy was written during the very performance, in accordance with the successful execution of the parts.

In the reminiscences of P. A. Sergeyenko there is an interesting account of one of the characters of the comedy, which at first was called *They Got Out of It*, and afterwards came to be called *The Fruits of Enlightenment*.

Here is how Sergeyenko tells it:

> "But in proportion as the rehearsals went on, in which Lev Nikolaevich took part, he corrected and supplemented the play, adapting it to the cast of characters. During the performance some of the players gave him such great pleasure by their acting that certain scenes were imprinted forever in his memory. He was especially delighted by the examining magistrate L., who played the part of one of the peasants.

> 'He arrived,' L. N. relates, 'at Yasnaya Polyana and the whole day talked with almost no one, but kept walking about, his head bowed. But on the stage he surpassed everyone and created out of his little part something so fine that I could not even have foreseen it when I created this part.'"

The producer of the theatrical was L. N.'s friend N. V. Davydov, then president of the Tula circuit court.

The success of the theatrical surpassed all expectations. L. N. once more gave the public to understand that all forms of literary-artistic creation were accessible to him, and this comedy became a favourite play on all the Russian stages.

In his reminiscences of L. N., N. V. Davydov tells of a spiritualist séance held in Moscow in the apartment of N. A. Lvov, at which he was present together with L. N., and which served as the first canvas of the comedy. The well-known spiritualist-zoologist N. P. Wagner took offence, taking to his own account the humorous portrayal of the professor, and L. N. had to apologize and to prove that he had had no definite persons in view.

All these agitations of life did not hinder L. N. from continuing his constant inner work of drawing nearer to God; and in moments of penetration into the mysteries of being he records in his diary:

> "I believe that within me is Thy power, given for the fulfilment of Thy work. And Thy work is to magnify Thy power in myself and in all the world."

And, as though taking fright at the thought that this consciousness might exalt himself, he there and then adds, in confusion: "Not that, not that at all!"

And by this sincere acknowledgment he rises to a still greater height in the eyes of the people who sincerely love him.