Yesterday there was a letter from Ivan Mi-chailovich 148 and from the Dukhobors.
Amusement is all right, if the amusement is not corrupted, is honest, and if people do not suffer from that amusement. I have been thinking just
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now; the aesthetic is the expression of the ethical, i.e., in plain language; art expresses those feelings which the artist feels. If the feelings are good, lofty, then art will be good, lofty, and the re-verse. If the artist is a moral man, then his art will be moral, and the reverse. (Nothing has come of this.)
I thought last night :
We rejoice over our technical achievements steam, . . . phonographs. We are so pleased with these achievements that if any one were to tell us that these achievements are being attained by the loss of human lives we would shrug our shoulders and say, “ We must try not to have this so; an 8-hour day, labour insurance, and so forth; but because several people perish, is no reason to renounce those achievements which we have attained.” I. e., Fiat mirrors, phonographs, etc., pereat several people.
It is but sufficient to admit this principle and there will be no limit to cruelty, and it will be very easy to attain every kind of technical im-provement. I had an acquaintance in Kazan who used to ride to his estate in Viatka, 130 versts away, in this fashion: he would buy a pair of horses at the market for 20 roubles (horses were very cheap) and would hitch them up and drive 130 versts to the place. Sometimes they would reach the place, and he would have the horses
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plus the cost of the journey. Sometimes they would not cover a part of the road and he would hire. But nevertheless it used to cost him cheaper than hiring stage horses. Even Swift proposed eating children. And that would have been very convenient. In New York, the railroad compan-ies in the city crush several passers-by every year and do not change the crossings to make the dis-asters impossible, because the change would cost dearer than paying to the families of those crushed yearly. The same thing happens also in the technical improvements of our age. They are accomplished by human lives. But one has to value every human life not to value it, but to place it above any value and to make improve-ments in a way that lives should not be lost and spoilt, and to stop every improvement if it harms human life. November 18. If I live, then Moscow.
November 22. Moscow.
The fourth day in Moscow. Dissatisfied with myself. No work. Got tangled up in the article on art and have not moved forward.
. . . There were here; the Gorbunovs, 149 Boul-anger, 150 Dunaev. I called on Rusanov myself. 151 Received a very good impression.
Read Plato; embryos of idealism.
I recalled two subjects which were very good: 95
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1 ) A wife’s deception of her passionate, jealous husband; his suffering, his struggle and the en-joyment of forgiveness, and
2) A description of the oppression of the serfs and later the very same kind of oppression by land property, or rather by being deprived of it.
Just now Goldenweiser 152 played. One thing a fantasy fugue : 153 an artificiality; studied, cold, pretentious; another “ Bigarrure “ by Arensky; 154 sensual, artificial; and a third a ballad by Chopin; sickly, nervous, not one or the other or the third can be of any use to the people.
The devil who has been sent to me is still with me, and tortures me. November 23. Moscow. If I live.
To-day November 25. Moscow.
Am very weak. My stomach isn’t working. I am trying to write on art but it doesn’t go. One thing is good; have found myself, my heart. . . . A letter from Zanini with an offer of 31,500 francs. 155 Tischenko, a good novel on pov-erty. 166 It is now past two, am going for a walk.
To-day November 27. Moscow.
Very weak, poor in all respects. And feel as if I had only just now awakened. Have been thinking :
i ) We are all in this life workers placed at 96
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the work of saving our souls. It can be com-pared to keeping up the fire given from heaven and lighted on the hearth of my body. My work lies in this, to keep up and feed this fire in myself (not to spend the material of this fire as I have done lately, except in burning it) and not to think how and what gets lighted from this fire. It is not a difficult matter to thresh with several flails, but to keep in order, not to get confused (and not only to thresh, but not to interfere with the oth-ers), one has only to remember oneself, one’s own tempo while beating. But as soon as you have begun to think of others, to look at them, you get confused.
The same thing happens in life. Remember only yourself, your own work and this work is one : to love, to enlarge love in yourself not to think of others, of the consequences of your labour and the work of life will go on fruitfully, joyously. Just as soon as you begin to think of that which you are producing, about the results of your labour, just as soon as you begin to modify it in accordance with its results your work be-comes confused and ceases, and there comes the consciousness of the vanity of life. The master of life gave to each one of us separately such a labour, that the fulfilment of that labour is the most fruitful work. And He himself will use and guide this work, give it a place and a meaning.
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But as soon as I try to find and fix a place for it, and in accordance with this, to modify it then I become confused, see the vanity of labour and I despair. My task is to work and He already knows for what it is needed and will make use of it. “ Man walks, God leads.” And the work is one; to enlarge love in oneself.
I am a self-moving saw or a living spade and its life consists in this, to keep its edge clean and sharp. And it will work well enough, and its work will be useful. To keep it sharp, and to sharpen and sharpen it all the time, that is to make oneself always kinder and kinder.
2) Once more I wrote to N that she is wrong in thinking that it is possible for one to renounce oneself from the exploit of living. Life is an ex-ploit. And the principal thing is, that that very thing that pains us and seems to us to hinder us from fulfilling our work in life is our very work in life. There is some circumstance, a condi-tion in life which tortures you; poverty, illness, faithlessness of a husband, calumny, humiliation, it suffices only to pity yourself and you become the unhappiest among the unhappy. And it suf-fices only to understand that this is the very work of life which you are called to do; to live in pov-erty, in illness, to forgive faithlessness, calumny, humiliation and instead of depression and pain there is energy and joy.
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3) Art becoming all the time more and more exclusive, satisfying continually a smaller and smaller circle of people, becoming more and more selfish, has gone crazy, since insanity is only self-ishness reaching to its last degree. Art has reached the last degree of selfishness and has gone out of its mind.
I have felt very badly and depressed these days. Father, help me to live with Thee, not to wander from Thy will. November 28. Moscow. If I live.
To-day December 2. Moscow.
Five days have passed and very torturing ones. Everything is still the same.
. . . My feeling; I have discovered on myself a terrible putrefying sore. They had promised me to heal it and have bound it. The sore was so disgusting to me, it was so depressing for me to think that it was there, that I tried to forget it, to convince myself that it was not there. But some time has passed they unbound the sore and though it was healing, nevertheless it was there. And it was torturingly painful to me and I began to reproach the doctor and unjustly. That is my condition. The principal thing is the devil that has been sent me. Oh, this luxury, this richness, this absence of care about the material life 1 Like an over-fertilised soil. If they do not cultivate
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good plants on it, weeding it, cleaning everything around them, it will become overgrown with horrible ugliness and will become terrible. But it is difficult I am old and am almost unable to do it. Yesterday I walked, thought, suffered and prayed and it seems to me not in vain.
Yesterday I went to Princess Helen Ser-geievna. 157 It was very pleasant. I still cannot work. I shall try to in a minute. I have written nothing in the note book. Letters from Koni, 158 from Mme. Kudriavtsev. 159 Yesterday the fac-tory hands came and a new one, Medusov, I think.
Dec. 12. Moscow.
I have suffered much during these days and it seems I have advanced towards peace, towards the good towards God. Am reading much on art.
