Source: https://tolstoy-lit.ru/tolstoy/bio/biryukov/biografiya-biryukov-3-20.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 (2026-05-26), from the continuous Russian capture in ../ru/chapter-20.md.
Having taken leave of us, L. N. returned from Petersburg once more to the Olsufyevs at Nikolskoye, and stayed there until the beginning of March.
Our banishment had, of course, produced a sensation in society, and it greatly agitated L. N. In many letters to friends, and even to people but slightly acquainted with him, he speaks of this banishment with humility and with self-reproach, accounting himself unworthy to suffer any persecution.
Together with this, one of his chief concerns was somehow to comfort and to hearten us, his banished friends; to render us some service, to express in some way his love for us, which, it seemed to us, we so little deserved. And his letters to us are full of expressions of the tenderest, most touching feelings. I will give extracts from the most characteristic of them.
Already on 18 February, a week after my departure, in reply to my first letter, L. N. wrote to me as follows:
“I have just received your little letter, dear friend. There has befallen you the very thing I feared for you — the consciousness of solitude immediately upon arriving at the place — and I wished by a letter to ease this feeling for you. Did you receive my No. 1? I know, and you know, that there is no solitude for our true self. But it is sometimes so inseparably fused with the animal, weak, and suffering self that it is hard to separate it. I think of you with greater love than ever, but I cannot pity you and do not pity you; I know that even these sufferings and this solitude will only develop in you all that is best…
…We did not tell you, but of course it goes without saying, that any commissions, if you should need anything, you are to give to no one but us. Both my little girls love you, though somewhat differently, but no less than I. I am still at the Olsufyevs’ with Tanya. Masha wishes to come. I am not in banishment, yet all this while I have probably been more downcast than you. Farewell, my dear; I embrace you.”
My banishment was, properly speaking, a privileged one; the administrative authorities had been instructed to treat me with civility, and this they did. But the administrative machine, against their own will, compelled them to commit offences that sometimes painfully wounded my self-respect. I, of course, found a means of bringing everything that happened to the notice of L. N., and he was sincerely indignant at these facts. Indignation of this kind found expression in the following letter to me, written a week after the first:
“I have not yet received a single letter from you, except the first, on the day of your arrival, my dear, beloved friend P. Ah, how sorry I am, how it pains me, how ashamed I am for all those people who carried you about, hauled you here and there, made out their reports, opened your letters! For it is terrible that all these people, beginning with the minister and going down to the village constable, are least of all capable of caring for anything but themselves, and yet they are placed under the necessity of caring for others, for an imaginary common good — for the prevention of Biryukov’s infecting with Christian feeling and with his kindness the people about him. For all these people begin by giving themselves up to every kind of indulgence — of eating, drinking, hunting, finery, dancing, often debauchery — and, having no means for this, they stretch out their hands toward the state budget, gathered from the people, and to that end submit to all the demands of the government — lying, hypocrisy, violence, murder, the reading of other people’s letters, and every kind of baseness. And when they have submitted to all this, the government gives them a post, advances them, and it ends with this: that all up the whole ladder of administration, from the minister, through the governor, down to the district police captain — managing everything, religion and morality and education and order and property and husbandry — there sit, predominantly, indeed exclusively, the most egoistical voluptuaries, placed under the necessity of governing a people with whom they have nothing to do.
Forgive me for writing to you, dear friend, of what is of little interest to you, but it so lit up and struck me.
I am still at the Olsufyevs’, where I am very comfortable. Little by little I am writing about art, and it grows more and more interesting. Though it is but a particular question, and there are other questions more needful and important, I cannot tear myself away from the work begun. And I sometimes comfort myself with the thought that the illumination, from the Christian point of view, of what art is may be of essential use.”
This letter was not sent off, for fear of the censorship, and was replaced by a shorter and less sharp one. The unsent letter was preserved in the archive of Tatyana Lvovna Sukhotina and was handed to me only after my return to Russia.
At this same time he wrote to Chertkov in England:
“…I have just written to P. through Sverbeyev (the governor). His son relates that P., when at his house, wrote a letter and wished to drop it into the box, but Sverbeyev, who had been very courteous to him, said that he could not permit this and must read the letter; whereupon P. tore the letter up. What baseness. I thought this had already ceased to happen to me, but there happens again in this case what has happened many times: a thought comes that seems an exaggeration, a paradox, but afterwards, when one has grown more accustomed to the thought, one sees that what seemed a paradox is only the very simplest and most indubitable truth. So now there presents itself to me the thought that the state and its agents are the greatest and most widespread criminals, in comparison with whom those who are called criminals are innocent persons: blasphemy, sacrilege, idolatry, murder, preparation for it, perjury, every kind of violence, torment, torture, flogging, slander, lying, prostitution, the corruption of children and of youths (the reading of other people’s letters among them), pillage, theft — all these are necessary conditions of state life.
I have many plans of work, but what has happened to you and to Posha (of Ivan Mikhailovich I as yet know nothing), and, chiefly, what has happened to me — the fact that I am not molested — demands of me that I should utter, before I die, all that I have to say. And I have very definite things to say, and if I live, I shall say them. Just now I am all taken up with the article on art, and I keep advancing, and it will, I think, be interesting and useful.”
In the next letter to Chertkov L. N. already gives an interesting estimate of Russian and foreign life from the point of view of the religious man.
He writes, among other things, thus:
“Life abroad, among religious people, ought to widen the demands one makes upon oneself. With us — for me, at least — it is so clear wherein lies the application to life of the Christian world-view: to destroy the gulf that divides us, the rich, the gentry, from the poor, the people; to this end everything ought to be directed — the bringing of oneself nearer to the poor, and the deliverance of the poor from their poverty and from the causes of poverty: ignorance and deceptions. But with you yonder, in England, it is otherwise: there the people are not only deceived and crushed, but are struggling out of their deception and their crushed state by a peculiar means, in my opinion a false one, and therefore there a struggle is needed there too against this false means. And the wealthy classes with us are guilty only of voluptuousness and ignorance, whereas with you yonder they are guilty besides of a false means of justifying the unbrotherly life.”
These few extracts alone are enough to give one a conception of how L. N. watched over and cared for his friends, removed though they were from him. But near him too there was no little care. His correspondence had by this time attained extraordinary dimensions. He corresponds literally with the whole world. The Norwegian writer Bjørnson sends him his works through a certain Mme Brümer. And he answers her in French:
“Highly esteemed Madame Brümer, I am much obliged to you for affording me the opportunity of letting Bjørnson know that I have received his book The King, which I greatly admired (I say this in all sincerity, and not out of politeness; I read it aloud to many of my friends, calling their attention to the beauties that most struck me), and that I thank him cordially for having remembered me. He is one of the contemporary authors whom I most esteem, and the reading of each of his works affords me not only pleasure but opens up new horizons to me. If you, Madame, should write to him, tell him this. Expressing to you once more my gratitude for your having written to me, I beg you to accept the assurance of my perfect respect.”
Of quite another opinion was L. N. concerning the works of another, no less famous Norwegian writer, Ibsen. He held his productions to be artificial and over-cerebral, and confessed that some of them — as, for example, The Wild Duck — he simply did not understand.
He corresponds with Germans, Hungarians, Dutchmen, Siberian sectarians, Japanese, Americans. His friends demand of him an account of his actions and reproach him with inconsistency. He humbly justifies himself, confessing his own weakness.
Thus, one of his friends and like-minded companions, P. N. Gastev, having learned that L. N. was occupied with helping the Doukhobors and had begun to collect money for this purpose, wrote him a letter reproaching him with inconsistency and reminding him of how L. N. himself had suffered from the famine relief, which had unexpectedly grown into a great public undertaking. To this L. N. wrote to him:
“All that you write to me, dear Pyotr Nikolayevich, is the perfect truth, and I myself have always not only thought, and think, so, but have always felt, and feel, so. I feel directly that to ask material help for people who are suffering for the truth is not good and is shameful. You will ask, then, why I joined in the appeal signed by Ch., B., and T.? I was against it, just as I was even against the famine relief in the form in which we carried it out; but when one is told: there are children, old men, the weak, pregnant women, nursing mothers, who are suffering from want, and you can help that want by your word or your deed — speak that word or do that deed. To consent means to stand in contradiction with one’s own conviction, expressed to the effect that the true help, the help always effectual for all, consists in cleansing one’s own life of sin and living not for oneself but for God, and that all help by means of the labour of others, taken from others, is a deception, Pharisaism, and an encouragement of Pharisaism; not to consent means to refuse the word and the act which may at this moment ease the suffering of want. I, through the weakness of my character, always choose the second course, and it has always been agonizing to me. So it was here. When Ch., B., and T. asked me, as it were, to attest their truthfulness and sincerity, I wrote my addition, in which I tried to direct the chief attention to the significance of what the Doukhobors were doing. There is my confession on this question. I am very glad that you wrote to me, gave me the occasion to answer you, and yourself expressed yourself so well and truly.”
In Russia at this time disturbances were beginning in all strata of society. Accounts of these disturbances reached L. N. and found in him a heartfelt response and a serious appraisal. And the acts of the administration most conspicuous for their cruelty called forth in him a just and sincere indignation. But, in expressing his indignation and responding to current events, L. N. always remained true to himself, illuminating them with that understanding of the meaning of life which was proper to him.
Such was the tragic case of Vetrova in February of that year. L. N. himself, in a letter to Chertkov, relates this as follows:
“In Petersburg on 12 February the following took place: Vetrova, Marya Fedoseyevna, whom you knew and I knew, a woman student, who had been placed in the house of preliminary detention in connection with the affair of the strikes, and who was but little implicated, was transferred to the Peter-and-Paul Fortress. There, as is said and surmised, after an interrogation and an insult (this is not yet known), she poured kerosene over herself, set fire to herself, and on the third day died. Her companions, who used to visit her, brought her things, which were accepted, and only two weeks later were they told that she had burnt herself. The young people, all the students, up to 3,000 persons (there were some from the theological academy too), gathered in the Kazan Cathedral to hold a requiem; they were not permitted, but they themselves began to sing ‘eternal memory,’ and with wreaths wished to go along the Nevsky, but they were not let through, and they went along the Kazanskaya. Their names were taken down and they were released. All are indignant. I receive letters and people come and tell me of it. It is terribly pitiful for all who take part in these affairs, and more and more one longs to make clear to people how they themselves bring themselves to ruin only because they have scorned, or do not know, that law which was given by Christ and which delivers from such affairs and from participation in them.”
And so he writes to A. F. Koni, begging him to find out about this affair and to communicate the most accurate particulars:
“Yesterday evening my son told me of the dreadful occurrence that took place in the Peter-and-Paul Fortress, and of the demonstration in the Kazan Cathedral. I did not quite believe the story, especially because I had heard that in the Peter-and-Paul Fortress prisoners are no longer kept. But this morning a professor whom I met confirmed the whole story for me, and told me that they, the professors, having assembled yesterday for a meeting, could discuss nothing, since they were all shaken by this terrible event. I came home with the intention of writing to you and asking you to inform me what in this affair is true, since often much is added and even invented. I had not yet had time to take up the pen when there came a lady, who had arrived from Petersburg, a friend of the dead woman, and told me the whole affair and the fact that the girl who had taken her own life, Vetrova, was known to me and had been at my house at Yasnaya Polyana. Is it really impossible to ascertain positively the cause of the suicide, what happened to her at the interrogation, and to calm the terribly excited public opinion — to calm it by such a measure of the government as would show that what happened was an exception, the fault of private persons and not of general regulations, and that the same thing does not threaten, under that silent seizing and locking-up which is practised, all those near to us? You will ask, what then do I want of you? In the first place, if it be possible, a description of what is reliably known about this affair; and, in the second, advice as to what to do in order to counteract these dreadful villainies, committed in the name of the good of the state. If you have no time, and do not wish to answer — do not answer; but if you do answer, I shall be very grateful.”
Soon a new abuse on the part of the administration — not the police this time, but that which, by some strange irony, is called “spiritual” — summoned Lev Nikolaevich to active labour. These were the last years of Pobedonostsev’s rule, and he, observing the tottering of the foundations, was endeavouring — and the people subordinate to him were endeavouring still more — to establish Orthodoxy by every means accessible to them, being very little restrained in the choice of these means. One of such cruel means, rarely practised, but from time to time set in motion, was the taking of children from parents detected in deviation from Orthodoxy, and the handing-over of these children into “reliable hands.”
And so, at the end of the nineteenth century, Pobedonostsev sets this means in action. Parents stricken with grief come to L. N., believing in the power of his standing for the truth. And they were not mistaken. L. N.’s struggle for this freeing of the children presents various characteristic phases, which we shall try to relate, making use of the documents in our hands.
In May L. N. wrote, among other things, to Chertkov:
“Now about the affair that is occupying me. I wrote to you about the Molokans whose children were taken away. At that time I wrote, with them, a letter to the Sovereign, charging them to give it to Olsufyev; or, if Olsufyev was not there, then to Heath; if he was not there, then to T—v; and if he too was not there, then to A. A. Tolstaya. Besides this, Lyova gave them a letter to Georgy Mikhailovich. One of the Molokans had served in his company and, during the famine year, had been with him on Lyova’s behalf. The Molokans went to Georgy Mikhailovich’s servants. There they were told that all these letters, and chiefly the letter to the Sovereign, were dangerous, and that it must be destroyed at once. This they did, and, having received from Georgy Mikhailovich a promise that he would intercede (a promise that, evidently, promised nothing), they came back to me. I was sorry, for this case seemed to me a good one for declaring all that is done in this spirit.
On the day of the Molokans’ return to me, Boulanger also arrived. On his advice I wrote the letter out afresh, and he himself took it. I also gave him a letter to the same persons, with the arrangement that, if Olsufyev should undertake to deliver it, he should telegraph to me: the first undertook to deliver. And such a telegram I received some ten days ago, and since then I know nothing. When it shall be possible, I shall let you know the consequences.
We all know that God is love, and therefore love will conquer all; but when we apply love to a matter and see that it does not conquer, but that evil remains evil, we say to ourselves: love in this case is ineffectual (as though God could be ineffectual), and, not believing in love, we do not do the work of love — as though a telegraphist should cease telegraphing because he does not see the tape coming out at the other station.”
Thus did Lev Nikolaevich strive to convince himself that one must, without ceasing, repay with deeds of love the evil that men do to us.
It was, beyond doubt, this feeling of sincere love for men, without distinction of their outward station — from the Tsar down to the peasant — that animated L. N. when he wrote to the Sovereign about these dreadful persecutions of the sectarians. Here is that remarkable letter:
“Sovereign!
In reading this letter, I would earnestly beg you to forget what you may, perhaps, have heard about me, and, laying aside all prejudice, to see in this letter only one expression of the desire of good for innocently suffering people, and a still stronger desire of good for you, the man whom it is so natural to accuse of these sufferings.
A month ago, in the village of Zemlyanka, in the Buzuluk district, there came at two o’clock in the night to the peasant Chipelev, a Molokan by faith, a village constable with policemen, and bade him wake the children, in order to take them away from their parents. The frightened boys, understanding nothing — one thirteen years old, the other eleven — were dressed and led out into the yard; but when the constable wished to take the two-year-old little girl, the mother seized her daughter and would not give her up. Then the police officer said that he would order the mother to be bound if she would not let the daughter go. The father persuaded his wife to give up the child, and demanded of the officer a receipt in which it should be explained by whose order the children were taken.
Here is that receipt:
‘On the 6th day of April of the year 1897, in execution of the order of his high well-born the district police captain of Buzuluk, of the 3rd of this April, No. 2312, the police servant of the Buzuluk command, Zakhar Petrov, has this day taken from the peasant of the village of Bobrovka, Vsevolod Chipelev, residing in the village of Alekseyevka, three children — Ivan, Vasily, and Marya — for presentation to the district police captain.
Police constable of the 5th district, P.
Policeman P.’
A few days after this, in another village, Antonovka, of the same district, likewise by night, into the house of the peasant Bolotin, also a Molokan, there came in like manner a village constable with a policeman, and bade them make ready for the road two little girls, one twelve years old, the other ten.
Although Bolotin had heard from the priest and the police officer threats to the effect that, if he did not return to Orthodoxy — which he had abandoned thirteen years before — his children would be taken from him, he still could not believe that so dreadful a measure could be applied against him by order of the higher authorities, and he would not give up the children.
But on the next day the police officer came with the constable and the policemen, and the little girls were taken and carried off.
The very same thing, and on that very same night, took place also in the family of a peasant of the same village, Samoshkin. From Samoshkin they took away his only son, a child of five. The taking of this child is especially striking in its cruelty. This boy was the joy and the hope of the family, since, after many years, he was the only son remaining alive. When this child was taken, he was ill and in a fever. Out of doors it was chilly. The mother entreated that he be left for a time. But the police officer would not consent, and, in accordance with the opinion of the doctor, who had decided that there was no danger to the child’s life in the journey, ordered the constable to take the child and carry him off; but the mother prevailed upon the officer to allow her herself to ride with her son as far as the town of Buzuluk. In the town, however, the boy was taken from the mother, and she has not seen him since. To all the petitions which these peasants presented they have received no answer, and they do not know where their children are.
This is dreadful. Such things were done only in the times of the Inquisition. Nowhere — not even in Turkey — is anything of the kind possible, and no one in Europe will believe that this could be done in a Christian country in the year 1897. And yet all this is the perfect truth, and one of those fathers from whom the children have now been taken is in Petersburg, has brought this letter, and can attest the truth of it.
All this is dreadful; but most dreadful of all is the fact that this is not an isolated case, but only one of a thousand such deeds committed in Russia — and I could adduce the most convincing of them, were not the papers gathered by Chertkov for presentation to you in the form of a memorandum on the persecutions for the faith taken from him this winter by the police.
But, in order to be convinced whether this is true — whether it is true that thousands upon thousands of Russian people are not only ruined, driven from their homeland, and exiled to distant lands, and parted from their children, and pining in prisons, monasteries, and madhouses, but are often, in the most dreadful manner, directly tortured by the coarse rural authorities, who account everything permissible to themselves in regard to the enemies of Orthodoxy — you have only to send an impartial, truthful man to the place of exile of those persecuted for the faith — to Siberia, to the Caucasus, to the Olonets region — and to the places of confinement, and from the report of this man you would yourself see those dreadful deeds which are committed in your name.
It is said that this is done for the support of Orthodoxy; but the greatest enemy of Orthodoxy could not have devised a surer means for turning men away from it than these banishments, prisons, partings of children from parents.
I know that there are people who have the boldness to assert that in Russia there exists religious toleration, and even greater than in other countries; that these banishments, ruinations, prisons, partings of children from parents are only measures of counteraction against perversion, and not persecutions. But this is the most palpable and barefaced lie. In Russia there is not only no religious toleration, but there exists the most dreadful, coarse persecution for the faith, the like of which there is in no country, not only Christian, but even Mohammedan.
Sovereign, the people who endeavour to hold you upon the false path of persecution for the faith are old men, who cannot change their once-rooted views, who cannot free themselves from the fetters they have laid upon themselves of former errors, persisting in which they think to justify themselves. But these men are coming to the end of life, and their place in the memory of men is already firmly determined by their deeds; whereas you have all your life before you, you have yet to take the place in the memory of men corresponding to your deeds, you are bound by nothing, you not only recognize the necessity of religious toleration, but in all your affairs are animated by the kindliest feelings.
Make then an effort, Sovereign, and put away from yourself, if only for a time, those — I will not say evil, but erring — men who lead you into deception about the necessity of persecuting people for the faith, and yourself, with your own kind heart and straightforward mind, decide how one ought to profess the faith one holds to be true, and how one ought to bear oneself toward people who profess another faith.
Sovereign, for God’s sake, make this effort, and, not putting it off and not handing it over to commissions and committees, yourself, not submitting to the advice of other men, but guiding them, insist that the persecutions for the faith be in very deed brought to an end — that is, that the banished be released, the imprisoned set free, the children returned to the parents, and, chiefly, that those tangled and arbitrarily interpreted laws and administrative rules be abolished, on the strength of which these lawless acts are committed.
Take the occasion to do that good deed which you alone can do, and which, evidently, is appointed for you.
Occasions do not always present themselves, and do not return when the possibility of taking advantage of them has been let slip. In doing this deed, you would not only do one of those good deeds which it is given to sovereigns alone to do, and take a high place in the history and the memory of the people, but — what is most important of all — you would receive the inner satisfaction of the consciousness of the will of God fulfilled, and of the work appointed for you by God.
Forgive me if I have in anything acted upon you disagreeably in this letter. I repeat that what prompted me to write was only the desire of good for suffering people, and a still stronger desire of good for you, in whose name these sufferings are laid upon innocent people.
L. T.”
11 May 1897. Yasnaya Polyana.
In a letter to Chertkov, L. N. says that he had written several letters to various dignitaries, asking one or other of them to deliver this letter. In the letter given below, addressed to one of these dignitaries, L. N. expresses his attitude to this letter, and therefore we give it here in full:
“Dear and respected Alexander Vasilyevich, in so far as I have come to know and understand you, I am sure that you will not be vexed with me for turning to you with the request to deliver to the Sovereign the enclosed letter, describing the outrageous deeds that are being done to the sectarians. This letter will be delivered to you by one of those who have suffered: he can communicate the particulars of the affair to those who may need them. I know that it less befits me than any other to trouble myself about the sectarians, since I am myself accounted a harmful sectarian; but what am I to do, when people come to me and ask for help?
The letter is not sealed, so that you may read it. I have thought much over this letter, and all that I have written I have written from the heart and truthfully. Official phrases and courtly formalities I cannot write.
Yet if formalities are absent, truthfulness is present. All that I have written I think and feel. I hope that for the sake of this the Sovereign will forgive the departure from form. I wrote with sincere respect and love for him as a man.
If for any reason it should be disagreeable, inconvenient, or simply impossible for you to deliver this letter yourself, then forward it, please, to Alexandra Andreyevna Tolstaya, with the letter enclosed for her. But if she is not there, or if it be impossible for her, then drop the letter into the box. Let it go by the ordinary course, by which, it seems, the letters themselves do not reach the Sovereign.
I wished to write: forgive me for troubling you; but I think this excuse would be disagreeable to you. I am sure that you will be glad to help this affair.
In friendship I press your hand. Sincerely respecting and loving you, Lev Tolstoy.”
10 May. Yasnaya Polyana. Tula. 1897.
From a letter to Chertkov it appears that this person carried out L. N.’s commission and delivered the letter to the Sovereign. This letter had no visible, immediate consequences. But who knows what seeds it cast into the soul of the young monarch, and what fruits the tree that grew from these seeds bore?
The children continued to be parted from their parents. In the autumn, in September, the Molokans again came to L. N., entreating him to intercede for the return of their children.
L. N. could only repeat the efforts he had undertaken in the spring. We see this from his letter to Chertkov, to whom he wrote, among other things:
“In the affair of the Molokans I have resolved to direct them again to Petersburg with a letter to the Sovereign, again through Olsufyev and Heath, and I have written to Lizaveta Ivanovna. But the Sovereign is not there, and Liz. Iv. is probably not there either, since I have received no answer to my telegram. They left four days ago. I know nothing of what will be. And it is a pity. The occasion for declaring oneself was a good one. I shall send a copy of the letter, if God so wills.”
In the archive of L. N.’s late daughter, by marriage Princess Obolenskaya, there were preserved several variants of this second letter of L. N.’s to the Sovereign, never sent to him, about the children taken from the Molokans. We have chosen the fullest variant. Here it is:
“Your Imperial Majesty. Forgive me if my letter shall be disagreeable to you, but I am constrained to write to you, and upon the same affair on which I already wrote in May. Since then four months have passed, and to all the petitions of the parents whose children were taken away, as well as to my letter to Your Majesty, there has followed no answer whatever, nor any order rescinding the taking of the children from the parents. And now one of these parents, on behalf of his other comrades, has come to me again, tearfully entreating me to help his grief.
Recently the editor of the most conservative and Orthodox newspaper, Grazhdanin (The Citizen), wrote with condemnation and indignation about the measures against the sectarians discussed at the missionary congress, when among these measures the taking of children from parents had been proposed. The editor reproached the members of the congress with having been able — contrary to the will and the indications of the Sovereign — to propose and to consider so cruel and unchristian a measure. From this article in Grazhdanin one would seem bound to conclude that, although measures against the sectarians may be employed, so dreadful and inhuman a measure as the taking of small children from their parents not only cannot be approved by the Russian government, but is even unthinkable. And yet, as I wrote to Your Majesty, as far back as the month of April small children were carried off from the parents of Molokans, placed in monasteries, and the fathers of these children go in vain through all the departments, seeking means of getting the children back, or even any explanation of why precisely their children have been carried off from them, and have now come to me again, begging me to help their grief. That the children have been taken from the parents there is no doubt whatever; and that the children have been taken altogether arbitrarily and unlawfully — since dozens and hundreds of children not taken from other Molokans are in the very same conditions. (There are baptized children who have not been taken, while among those taken there are also some unbaptized.) There is no doubt, too, that such a measure as the taking of children from sectarians is accounted in government circles a measure cruel, inhuman, and not in accord with your view of the matter, as the editorial staff of Grazhdanin expressed it in the article concerning the missionary congress; while at the end it is printed that such measures, in our time and in our state, are unthinkable. That the fact of the children’s having been taken from the Molokans is known to Your Majesty is beyond doubt; and yet the affair goes on. What, then, does this mean? There is but one explanation of it: that Your Majesty is cruelly deceived, that what is being done in your name is concealed from you. And therefore I again entreat Your Majesty to make an effort to destroy the deception with which you are surrounded, and yourself to investigate this outrageous affair, which serves as a striking specimen of those deeds, disgracing the Russian government, which are committed for the supposed support of Orthodoxy. And for the investigation of this affair there is the very simplest and easiest means. One of the parents of the children taken away is now in Petersburg. He will relate everything in detail and circumstantially; while the officials who directed the taking of the children and carried it out will confirm his testimony.
Once more I beg Your Majesty to forgive me if my letter shall be disagreeable to you, and to believe me that I could not have acted otherwise, and that the chief cause that has constrained me to turn to you lies in respect for the person of Your Majesty and in a sincere wish of good to you.
With perfect respect and devotion, I have the honour to be Your Majesty’s obedient servant, Lev Tolstoy.”
19 September 1897.
Having met with failure in this direction, L. N. resolved to try yet one more means. At this time L. N.’s eldest daughter, Tatyana Lvovna, not then yet married, was staying in Petersburg with her friends. L. N. resolved to take advantage of her sojourn in Petersburg in order to undertake fresh efforts.
Tatyana Lvovna, of course, gladly undertook to carry out her father’s commission, and brought this affair to a swift and happy end. We borrow the account of her efforts in this matter from her diary; the description presents a very characteristic picture of the manners of that bygone epoch which we have already lived through.
In her diary, in October 1897, Tatyana Lvovna recorded, among other things, the following:
“I had lived in Petersburg a week and was preparing to go home, when I received from Papa a telegram of the following content: ‘Molokans are coming to Petersburg, stay, help them.’ It was a little awkward for me to abuse the hospitality of my hosts, but my help was more important than my scrupule, and I stayed. The day before the arrival of the Molokans I wished to employ in finding ways of rendering them help, and I began to consider where to direct myself. I knew that the Sovereign had received Papa’s letter, in which he wrote in detail about the taking of children from three Molokans; I knew that Koni had done what he could for them in the Senate, that Ukhtomsky in his newspaper had printed Papa’s letter about this affair, and I knew that no one had responded to it from anywhere; consequently, other ways had to be sought.
Since the affair, evidently, depended upon Pobedonostsev, I resolved to go straight to him. I resolved to telephone and ask when I could find Pobedonostsev in. He appointed me a meeting between eleven and twelve o’clock the following morning; the next day I rose, dressed, and was already making ready to go out, without waiting for the Molokans, when I received a letter from Papa, brought by them. Papa wrote that I should act through Meyendorff, Koni, and Ukhtomsky, and sent a letter to the two latter, and this threw me off. When I had been at the Olsufyevs’, there had been talk to the effect that, if it were necessary to give this affair publicity, then Ukhtomsky could be employed, but that it was doubtful whether publicity would help in the given affair, or rather whether it would not do harm. Then I resolved to act independently of Papa’s letter, and only to leave the letter with Koni, telling him what I had resolved to undertake. Koni told me that, had I asked his advice as to what to do, he would not have given me that advice, but that my visit could not harm the affair. He showed me the law, by which all parents baptized in the Orthodox faith and bringing up their children in another faith are imprisoned, and the children are taken from them. Then he gave me advice as to through whom to act, should I wish to present a petition to the highest name, and dismissed me, with no hope of success. From him I drove straight to the house of the ecclesiastical department on the Liteinaya. Entering the hall, I told the doorkeeper to announce to Konstantin Petrovich that Countess Tolstaya wished to see him. The doorkeeper asked: ‘Tatyana Lvovna?’ I said: ‘Yes.’ ‘Pray come in, they are expecting you.’ I passed into the study, into which Pobedonostsev immediately came too. He is taller than I expected, brisk and nimble. He stretched out his hand to me, pushed forward a chair, and asked how he could be of service to me. I thanked him for having received me, and said that my father had sent me the Molokans with the commission to help them. I related to him their affair and where they came from. ‘Ah yes, yes, I know,’ said Pobedonostsev, ‘it is the Samara bishop who has been over-zealous. I will write at once to the governor about it… I know, I know… Only tell me their names, and I will write at once.’ And he sprang up and went with hurried step to the writing-table. I was so dumbfounded by the swiftness with which he agreed to fulfil my request that I was quite at a loss, the more so as I had with me a rough draft of the Molokans’ petition, but their names were not on it. I told him this, adding that I had in no wise expected so swift a result of my request, but had hoped only that he would advise me what might be undertaken. Here I told him that the peasants wished to present a petition to the highest name, read it to him, and asked whether he advised that it be presented after all. Having heard the petition through, Pobedonostsev said that there was no need to present it, that about this affair enough had been said and written, and that in any case this affair would come to him, and the decision of it would depend upon him. Then he said that he had heard that the children were so well off in the monastery that they did not even wish to go home. I said that this might be, but that for the parents the loss of their children was a great grief. ‘Yes, yes, I understand; it is all that Samara bishop being over-zealous: from sixteen parents children have been taken. We have not even such a law.’ And I had only just seen this law at Koni’s, and could not refrain from saying: ‘I beg your pardon, this law, it seems, does exist, but, happily, has not been applied.’ ‘Yes, yes; so you will send me the names of these Molokans, and I will write to Samara.’ I considered whether I ought not to ask something more, and, as nothing further came into my head, I rose and took my leave. Pobedonostsev saw me to the stairs, asked whether I should be long in Petersburg, and at the top of the stairs took leave of me. Suddenly, when I had already gone down and begun to put on my fur coat, he came out again and called after me: ‘Is your name Tatyana? By patronymic Lvovna? Then you are the daughter of Lev Tolstoy? Then you are the famous Tatyana?’ I burst out laughing and said that I had not known this until now. ‘Well, good-bye.’ I went away and all the way home laughed and tried to think why he had pretended not to know with whom he had been speaking. When the doorkeeper named me by name, I said that my father had sent the Molokans, and he himself said that so much had been said and written about them. Koni, who came to me the next morning, explained this by saying that, had Pobedonostsev acknowledged me as Tolstoy’s daughter, it would have been awkward for him to say nothing to me about him, and then he would have had to speak of what he knew of Papa’s letter to the Tsar, and of the fact that this affair had long been in the Senate, and would have had to give an explanation of why up to now there was no answer from anyone. Whereas thus, by a conversation with an unknown young lady, it was more convenient for him to finish the affair off at once. Perhaps he was even glad that I had turned to him directly and given him the possibility of putting an end to the affair at once. On reaching home, I wrote out the Molokans and sent with them a letter to Pobedonostsev, in which I beg him to answer me from whom and when the Molokans may receive an answer, and who will give them the authority to take the children back. He received the Molokans, spoke with them mildly, chatted, as one of them put it, and sent me the following letter:
‘Gracious Madam Tatyana Lvovna. I would advise the Molokans not to stay on here in waiting, but to go back and inquire about the affair perhaps in Samara, of the governor, to whom I have written about them this very day, and I think that, in all probability, the children will be returned to them. Your obedient servant, K. Pobedonostsev.’”
The children were indeed returned.
Only the complete authenticity of these documents, known to us personally, does not permit us to doubt the possibility of such things being done in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century. And how many like cases have not had the good fortune to float to the surface!
We have run on a little ahead, in order to finish the story of the Molokan children and of L. N.’s part in this affair; and now we return once more to the beginning of summer, to relate several facts from L. N.’s life at this time.
In June there came about an important event in the family life of L. N.: the second daughter of L. N., Marya Lvovna, married her kinsman, Prince Nikolai Leonidovich Obolensky. They lived their short married life together in concord, until the death of Marya Lvovna at the end of 1906, and in this respect one may call this marriage a happy one; but Marya Lvovna’s sickly condition prevented them from ordering their life as she would have wished. She was deprived of the happiness of having children; a part of the time she had to live abroad at various sanatoriums; and the first serious illness, in the tenth year of her marriage, carried her off.
L. N. strove, as far as he could, to adorn her life with his tenderness; but still, from the tone of his letters, one may conclude that this marriage was hard for him. He was losing the best friend and helper in his spiritual and material affairs; but, accounting this feeling of loss egoistical, he always concealed it, so as not to let it be felt by the friend who had gone from him, and for whom the time had come to build her own nest.
In July of that year L. N. was visited again by the sculptor I. Ya. Ginzburg, who modelled a new statuette of him. We make use of his account as a testimony concerning L. N.’s life in that epoch. Here is what he relates in his reminiscences:
“The second statuette (standing, with a stick in one hand and a notebook in the other) I modelled in 1897. I was then alone at Yasnaya Polyana. L. N. was very busy, and I was ashamed to ask him to pose; but Tatyana Lvovna (L. N.’s daughter), who was very fond of art (she herself painted very talentedly in colours), begged her father for me. First I modelled, from photographs which S. A. took for me on purpose from various sides, a statuette, and when I showed it to L. N., he began to pose for me. We worked in the studio of Tatyana Lvovna, which was situated in the wing, near the stables. Often Tatyana Lvovna read aloud the things that L. N. needed (he was then writing What Is Art?). Besides Tatyana Lvovna, almost no one came into the studio, and it was very convenient to work; only once were we disturbed, and that was a particularly characteristic case.
Once, during the work, a servant came and announced to L. N. that some young ladies had come from Tula and wished to see him.
‘For what purpose?’ asks L. N.
‘Just so — to look at you,’ answers the servant, probably not for the first time announcing such cases. ‘They have come on purpose from Tula — village schoolmistresses,’ adds the servant melancholically.
‘Oh, how tiresome this is,’ said L. N. with sadness; ‘there is no help for it — ask them in. Now you will see the curious ones; it is dreadful how they trouble me! They want nothing but to look at me,’ L. N. turned to me.
And I felt a certain awkwardness on his account.
Four young ladies came in and stopped at the door.
‘Good day,’ said L. N. ‘Where are you from?’
‘From Tula,’ they answered softly and abashed.
‘And what is it you wish — perhaps you want to ask me something?’
The girls are silent.
‘And have you read my things?’ asks L. N.
‘Some of them we have read,’ answers one girl under her breath.
‘And these stories of mine?’
He named some of them.
‘No,’ they answered, as though in fright.
‘Well then, I will give you some stories…’
The girls still stand, not stirring, their eyes fixed upon L. N. I felt awkward both on L. N.’s account, and on my own, and on account of these discomfited guests, and, instead of going on with my work, I began to fuss with my instruments, making as if I were preparing for work. For a long time we were all in such a state; I was even afraid to look at L. N. At last L. N. said:
‘There, my servant will give you a few of my little books; go and tell him to choose what you like, and for now, farewell.’
The girls went away in silence.
‘There, you see what curious ones; such often come to me,’ said L. N., breathing freely.
Later on L. N. told me of an incident so curious and characteristic that I think it not amiss to relate it. With the simplicity and vividness proper to L. N., he told the following:
‘Once I receive a long telegram from some stranger in Moscow; he names my friends who know him, and asks permission to come to me, in order to see me, since all the sights he has already seen. I was very busy, and answered that I could not receive him. A few months later we moved to Khamovniki. Suddenly I see from the window a smart troika drive up, and a foppishly dressed gentleman spring out. He announces himself, and I recall that this is the same gentleman who in summer had sent me the telegram; I felt ashamed that I had not received him then, and I bade them ask him up. Before me there appeared a dandy in a frock coat and a white cravat; he scraped a bow and said that he had travelled all over the world and, having seen everything remarkable, wished to see me.
‘And who are you?’ I ask.
‘A representative of the firm “Odol.” My chief speciality is advertising. The business is enormous: for Russia alone I spend 2,000 roubles a year on advertising.’
‘And what do you want of me?’ I asked.
‘Only to see you; otherwise it is a shame that I have seen all the world and have not seen Tolstoy.’
I said that I was extremely pressed for time and must work. At parting he suddenly offers me two flacons of ‘Odol’ in two luxurious cases.
‘This I beg you to accept as a gift to you and your wife.’
‘What do I want with this,’ I said; ‘why, I have no teeth, and there is nothing to clean,’ and I gave him back this gift. Afterwards it turned out that he had, nevertheless, left them in the hall.
The winter passed; we are again at Yasnaya, and I hear once the bells, I see a rich troika. I had quite forgotten about him; but, going out into the garden after my work, I see: again this dandy is sitting in the garden and talking with Sonya. This so astonished me that I went straight up to him and asked what he wanted. Again he began to pay me compliments, and this time as an old acquaintance. This so revolted me that I said to him:
‘You know, you come to us in vain; you trouble me.’
He bowed courteously and drove away.
‘Yes,’ said Sofya Andreyevna, who was present at the telling, ‘Lyovochka was too sharp. Your sharpness so astonished me. You are never like that,’ she turned to him.
The statuette pleased S. A. very much, and she ordered for herself one copy in bronze.”
Side by side with these outward relations toward the people who visited him, there went on in L. N. another, and for him more important, inner labour. The consequence of this inner labour was an ever clearer consciousness in him of the discrepancy between the surroundings of life about him and the religious-moral foundations which he professed. Having come to the conclusion that it was impossible to change these surroundings, he resolved to forsake them. This resolve, which had arisen in L. N. more than once since the time his view of the world had changed — a resolve which he succeeded in carrying out only just before his death — had, in the epoch we are describing, so far ripened that he wrote his wife, Sofya Andreyevna, a letter in which he clearly and calmly explains the reasons for the departure he had resolved upon. This departure was not then carried out, and the letter was not delivered to its destination: Sofya Andreyevna, in accordance with L. N.’s wish, received it only after the death of her husband. Nevertheless this document, which reveals to us the state of L. N.’s soul at this time, is exceedingly important and explains much to us, and therefore we give it here in full:
“Dear Sonya!
For a long while now the discrepancy of my life with my beliefs has tormented me. To make you change your life, your habits — to which I myself accustomed you — I could not; to go away from you I likewise could not until now, thinking that I should deprive the children, while they were small, even of the little influence I might have upon them, and should grieve you; and to go on living as I have lived these sixteen years, now struggling and irritating you, now myself falling under those temptations to which I have grown accustomed and by which I am surrounded — this I also can no longer do; and I have resolved now to do what I have long wished to do — to go away: first, because, with my increasing years, this life grows ever harder and harder for me, and more and more I long for solitude; and second, because the children have grown up, my influence in the house is no longer needed, and you have all of you more living interests, which will make my absence little noticeable to you. But the chief thing is that, just as the Hindus, toward sixty years of age, go away into the forests, just as every old religious man wishes to devote the last years of his life to God and not to jests, puns, gossip, lawn-tennis, so I too, entering upon my seventieth year, long with all the powers of my soul for this tranquillity, this solitude, and, if not full accord, then at least not a screaming discord of my life with my beliefs, with my conscience. Were I to do this openly, there would be entreaties, censures, disputes, complaints, and I should weaken, perhaps, and might not carry out my resolve — and it must be carried out. And therefore, please, forgive me if my act shall pain you; and in your soul, above all, do you, Sonya, let me go freely, and do not seek for me, nor murmur against me, nor condemn me.
That I have gone away from you does not prove that I was discontented with you. I know that you could not — literally could not, and cannot — see and feel as I do, and therefore could not, and cannot, change your life and make sacrifices for the sake of that which you do not recognize. And therefore I do not condemn you, but, on the contrary, with love and gratitude recall the long thirty-five years of our life, especially the first half of this time, when you, with the maternal self-sacrifice proper to your nature, so energetically and firmly bore that to which you considered yourself called. You gave to me and to the world what you could give: you gave much maternal love and self-sacrifice, and one cannot but value you for this. But in the last period of our life — the last fifteen years — we have grown apart. I cannot think that I am to blame, because I know that I changed not for myself, not for others, but because I could not do otherwise. Nor can I blame you for not having followed me, but I thank you and with love recall, and shall recall, what you gave me.
Farewell, dear Sonya. Loving you, Lev Tolstoy.”
8 July 1897.
On the envelope was the inscription: “If there shall be no special decision from me concerning this letter, then to deliver it after my death to S. A.”
This commission was given to Prince Nik. Leon. Obolensky, the husband of Marya Lvovna. At first this letter was kept under the upholstery of an old armchair, and this place was known only to L. N. and to Nik. Leon-ch; afterwards, when L. N. learned that the chair was to be re-upholstered, he gave it for safekeeping to Nik. Leon-ch, and the latter gave it to S. A. when L. N. was no more.
One may think that the Doukhobor affair was one of the chief causes that constrained L. N. to put off his departure, since the condition of the resettled Doukhobors was growing ever harder and harder, and there began to flow in to L. N. information that left no doubt that immediate help was necessary. And those of L. N.’s friends who had not been banished occupied themselves with this help under his direction.
But around L. N. himself there went on still the same seething life. In August he wrote to Chertkov:
“What you wish — that I should write for the edition of the short Gospel and of The Christian Teaching — I will try to write as soon as possible and send to you; but just now I am so weak that I can do nothing except the work on the article about art, which I am all but finishing. I have already given it to Tanya to copy on the Remington, and these last days I have been reading it aloud to those gathered at my house: Ginzburg (the sculptor), Kasatkin, Goldenweiser (the musician), and Sobolev, a chemist, a teacher for Misha living with us; there too were Seryozha my son, and the Misses Stakhovich. I think I shall finish the reading today. And in reading it I see that, notwithstanding all its defects, it has significance. To speak plainly, my attitude to this article is this: its content seems to me insignificant in comparison, and yet I cannot tear myself away from it, and the thoughts which I express in it strongly occupy me and please me.
And I am weak besides because we have an abyss of visitors, incessantly arriving: just now we have received a telegram from Moscow from Lombroso, who wishes to come. All this wastes time and strength and is needed for nothing. I terribly thirst for quiet and tranquillity. How happy I should be if I could end my days in solitude and, chiefly, in conditions not repugnant and tormenting to the conscience. But evidently it must be so. At least I do not see the way out.”
In the last lines of this letter one saw a clear hint that his resolve about departure had ripened within him, and that he was preparing to carry it into execution; the obstacle to the execution of this resolve he accepted as the command of a higher will, and humbly submitted to it.
Soon after this letter L. N. wrote to me at Bausk:
“Dear and beloved friend P. I think of you incessantly, and a fear comes over me that that constraint — the thought that you will not be let out of the place where you live — oppresses you, and that you painfully feel your unfreedom. Write whether this is true. It seemed so to me from your last letter. If it is so, then struggle. This is unjust; we are all constrained and unfree, if not in one sense, then in another. But in your case the matter is not in the constraint of freedom, but in this — that one should bear no malice toward those who seem to be the cause of this constraint.
About the Doukhobors, B.’s article no newspaper would print, and then the Birzhevye Vedomosti printed it, but prefacing the article with one by Yasinsky, which slanders them. I think this is worse than nothing.
Let us try not to forget, and to feel, their sufferings, and therefore to try to help them. With what, I do not yet know, but I hope that life will show.
I receive, almost every day, joyful tidings: now it is a visit from peasants seeking the truth, now a letter from Crosby with a letter from a Japanese, a young man, who, having lived in New York and having read the Gospel there, came to the conviction that the truth is in the Christian teaching, that one ought to, and can, fulfil it, and went to Japan with the intention of founding there a colony in which to live according to the teaching of Christ. Today I have received a letter from Škarvan in Holland about Van der Veer and Domela, with a description of the movement that is taking place there.
At home things are tense with us: Masha has typhus. She has been lying ill four days, her temperature is 40, but they say it is a mild form. Visitors overwhelm us. Today Lombroso* arrived from the Moscow congress of physicians, an indecent congress. He is a limited and uninteresting, sickly little old man. My article on art I have finished, and I wish to take up that work of which I spoke to you; both needful, and longed for passionately.”
* Lombroso, an Italian scholar, the founder of the new school of criminology.
This uninteresting little old man, the famous Lombroso, has left us a not uninteresting account of how he visited L. N. at Yasnaya Polyana. Here is the episode that preceded Lombroso’s journey to Yasnaya Polyana from Moscow:
“In connection with my wish to visit Tolstoy,” says Lombroso, “the following incident occurred.
Scarcely had I had time to send a telegram from the Kremlin to the famous writer about my wish to visit him, when General Kutuzov, the chief of police, gave me to understand that this visit would be very disagreeable to the government. I objected that I was drawn solely by a literary interest. But — vain words: the general, in answer to me, began energetically to circle his hand in the air and at last said:
‘Why, do you not know that with him there, in his head, things are not quite in order?’
I hastened to turn this remark to my own advantage:
‘But that is precisely why I wish to see him: for I am a psychiatrist.’
The general’s face instantly brightened:
‘That is another matter,’ he said; ‘if so, then you do well.’”
Their relations and conversations were friendly, but Lombroso noticed from the very first words that he could not convince L. N. of his theories, and, to his good fortune, ceased to try to convince him. L. N. received him as a kindly guest-comrade, took him bathing with him, and even proposed to Lombroso that they swim a race. Lombroso fell behind and all but choked, so that L. N. had to support him in the water and bring him to the bathing-house.
“Before my departure,” Lombroso concludes his account, “I did not fail to ask his opinion of the Franco-Russian alliance; he said that it was the greatest misfortune that could have befallen the Russian people, since hitherto the fear of European public opinion, the centre of which is in France, had somewhat restrained the tyrannies of the government, whereas now this fear no longer exists. And it seems that the facts, and especially the sad fact of the violence done to Finland, justify this view.
On my return to the Kremlin the gallant general asked me how I had found Tolstoy.
‘It seems to me,’ I answered, ‘that he is a madman who is far more intelligent than many fools who possess power. But how does the police regard him?’ I asked the general in my turn.
‘Very simply,’ he answered. ‘We examine his works, and on those of them which are dangerous to the state we lay a prohibition, while him himself we leave in peace. But if any of his friends should prove dangerous to the state, then such a one we dispatch to Siberia.’
This last phrase may to some degree justify the fears I felt on my own account during my sojourn in Russia,” Lombroso concludes his account.
At last, in October, L. N. finished the article On Art and resolved to print it in the journal Voprosy Filosofii i Psikhologii (Questions of Philosophy and Psychology), edited by his friend, Professor N. Ya. Grot. Negotiations about this were carried on through S. A. and Grot’s wife, who were at this time in Petersburg, while L. N. was at Yasnaya Polyana. In the same letter to S. A. in which L. N. expresses his decision about printing the article On Art, he writes of the impression made upon him by two deaths: that of Henry George and that of Alexandre Dumas. He expresses this thus:
“Seryozha told me yesterday that Henry George is dead; strange as it is to say it, this death struck me as the death of a very close friend. Such an impression was made upon me by the death of Alexandre Dumas. One feels the loss of a real comrade and friend. Today, in the Peterburgskiye Vedomosti, they write of his — George’s — death, and do not even mention his chief and remarkable works. He died of nervous exhaustion from speech-making. There is what one must fear, worse than the bicycle.”
Soon afterwards he heard of a new death, that of his friend Prince Sergei Semyonovich Urusov, his former comrade in the service back at Sevastopol, who had loved him greatly, though he often reproached him with his unorthodoxy. We have already mentioned this friendship in relating L. N.’s visit to S. S. Urusov at his estate near Troitsa.
In November L. N. is already taking up a new literary-artistic work, begun by him a year before — the Caucasian tale Hadji Murat. Thus his preceding article, On Art, had now departed from his soul in a finished form. We shall try here in brief words to express the new view of art which L. N. laid at the foundation of his work.
In this remarkable work L. N. gives a survey of the various definitions and conceptions of art and of beauty held by ancient and modern philosophers, and, having subjected them to a strict criticism, as not satisfying the contemporary consciousness of mankind, he gives his own objective definition of art:
“To call up in oneself a feeling once experienced and, having called it up, by means of movements, lines, colours, sounds, images expressed in words, to convey this feeling so that others may experience the same feeling — in this consists the activity of art. Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by certain outward signs, conveys to others the feelings he experiences, and other men are infected by these feelings and live them over again.”
In this definition there is indicated, as the fundamental characteristic of art, its infectiousness. Analysing further the conditions under which the rise of this infectiousness is possible, L. N. comes to the conviction that the chief condition is the sincerity of the artist.
For the better explanation of his definition L. N. gives several sharp examples of true and false art; we take here the most interesting; here is an example from the realm of the musical art:
“The other day,” writes L. N., “I was walking home from a walk in a depressed state of spirits. As I approached the house, I heard the loud singing of a large chorus of peasant women. They were greeting and acclaiming my daughter, who had married and arrived. In this singing, with its shouting and beating on the scythe, there was expressed so definite a feeling of joy, of vigour, of energy, that I myself did not notice how I was infected by this feeling, and went on more cheerfully toward the house, and came up to it quite cheerful and merry. And in just such an excited state I found all the household, who had been listening to this singing. That same evening a fine musician, famous for his rendering of classical things, especially those of Beethoven, who had called on us, played us ‘Beethoven’s sonata, opus 101.’
The peasant women’s song was real art, conveying a definite and strong feeling; whereas Beethoven’s 101st sonata was only an unsuccessful attempt at art, containing no definite feeling whatever, and therefore infecting one with nothing.”
Further on he gives a like example from the realm of the drama.
“I remember I saw a performance of Rossi’s Hamlet; and both the tragedy itself and the actor who played the chief part are accounted by our critics the last word of dramatic art; yet all the time I experienced, both from the very content of the drama and from the performance, that peculiar suffering which is produced by false counterfeits of works of art. And lately I read an account of a theatre among the savage people of the Voguls. By one of those present there is described such a performance: one large Vogul and another small one, both clad in reindeer skins, represent — the one a doe reindeer, the other its young. A third Vogul represents a hunter with a bow and on snowshoes; a fourth, with his voice, represents a little bird warning the reindeer of danger. The drama is this: that the hunter runs along the track of the reindeer, the mother with her young. The reindeer run off the stage and run on again. Such a performance takes place in a little yurt. The hunter comes nearer and nearer to the pursued. The young reindeer is worn out and presses close to its mother. The doe stops to take breath. The hunter overtakes them and takes aim. At this moment the little bird squeaks, giving the reindeer notice of the danger. The reindeer run off. Again the pursuit, and again the hunter draws near, overtakes them, and lets fly an arrow. The arrow strikes the young one. The young one cannot run, presses close to its mother; the mother licks its wound. The hunter draws another arrow. The spectators, as the one present describes, are spellbound, and in the audience are heard heavy sighs and even weeping. And I, from the description alone, felt that this was a true work of art.”
The definition given earlier, of the outward characteristic of true art and of the chief condition of its rise, says nothing about the very content of the subject-matter of true art.
To this L. N. answers thus. “The content of art has, in all ages, been given by religion. And that unbelief which corrodes contemporary civilized mankind is the very chief cause of the decline of contemporary art. Mankind has not yet entered consciously upon the new stage of Christian religious consciousness and wanders in the dark. And meanwhile the Christian consciousness demands new foundations, new paths for every activity of man, and so too for art.
The Christian consciousness gave a different, a new direction to all the feelings of men, and therefore wholly changed both the content and the significance of art. The Christian ideal changed, turned everything upside down, so that, as it is said in the Gospel: ‘What was great before men became an abomination before God.’ The ideal became not the grandeur of the Pharaoh and the Roman emperor, not the beauty of the Greek or the wealth of Phoenicia, but humility, chastity, compassion, love. The hero became not the rich man, but the beggar Lazarus; Mary of Egypt not in the time of her beauty, but in the time of her repentance; not the amassers of wealth, but those who cast it away; those who live not in palaces, but in catacombs and hovels; not those who lord it over others, but men who recognize over themselves the power of one God alone. And the highest work of art became not the temple of victory with statues of the victors, but the representation of the human soul so transformed by love that the man, tormented and slain, pities his tormentors.”
This new Christian ideal it is, then, that must give a new content to art, must regenerate it. And Lev Nikolaevich thus concludes his article:
“The destination of art in our time is to transfer, from the realm of the intellect into the realm of feeling, the truth that the good of men lies in their union among themselves, and to establish, in place of the now reigning violence, that Kingdom of God — that is, of love — which presents itself to us all as the highest aim of the life of mankind.
It may be that in the future science will disclose to art yet new, higher ideals, and art will realize them; but in our time the destination of art is clear and definite. The task of Christian art is the realization of the brotherly union of men.”
At the end of November L. N. records in his diary such a thought:
“You toss and struggle — all because you wish to swim in your own direction. And beside you, without ceasing and near to every one, there flows the divine, infinite stream of love, ever in one and the same eternal direction. When you are thoroughly worn out in your attempts to do something for yourself — to save yourself, to secure yourself — abandon all your directions, throw yourself into this stream, and it will bear you along, and you will feel that there are no barriers, that you are tranquil for ever and free and blessed.”
In December L. N. was visited by his friend Dušan Petrovich Makovický. In his diary L. N. records his impression of the conversation with him:
“I talked with Dušan. He said that, since he had involuntarily become my representative in Hungary, how was he to act? I was glad of the occasion to say to him, and to make clear to myself, that to speak of Tolstoyism, to seek my guidance, to ask my decision of questions, is a great and gross error. There has not been, and there is not, any Tolstoyism or teaching of mine; there is one eternal, universal, world-wide teaching of the truth, which, for me, for us, is especially clearly expressed in the Gospels. This teaching summons man to the recognition of his sonship to God, and therefore of his freedom or his bondage (call it as you will): freedom from the influence of the world, and bondage to God, to His will. And as soon as a man has understood this teaching, he enters freely into direct communion with God, and he has nothing more to ask and no one to ask.
This is like the swimming of a man down a river in a great flood. So long as the man is not in the central stream, but in the flood, he must himself swim, must row, and here he may be guided by the direction of the swimming of other people. Here I too could guide people, myself swimming toward the stream. But as soon as we have entered the stream, there is not, and cannot be, any guide. We are all borne along by the force of the current, all in one direction, and those who were behind may be in front. If a man asks where he is to swim, this only proves that he has not yet entered the stream, and that he of whom he asks is a poor guide, if he has not known how to bring him to that stream — that is, to that state in which it is already impossible, because senseless, to ask. How ask where to swim, when the stream draws me with irresistible force in a direction joyful to me?
People who submit to one guide, believe him and obey him, undoubtedly wander in the dark together with their guide.”
At last, in December, L. N. moved to Moscow.
Notwithstanding the hardship of town life for him, L. N. felt himself at this time vigorous, and saved himself from the bustle of the town by his customary means, performing about the Khamovniki house certain labours of a yard-keeper. He carried water upon himself and watered the garden, in order to make a skating-rink. When the rink was ready, he with joy skated upon it with his children.