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thing it is because it seems good to them. Such people are terrifying. And such people may be intelligent, stupid, good, wicked. When they are stupid and wicked it is terrible.
2) With a low moral standard, a firmness of judgment. The acts of all the best people are explained by what / would have done. Christ preached out of vanity, condemned the Pharisees from envy, etc.
3 ) The second condition of art is novelty. To a child everything is new and therefore it has many artistic impressions. The new for us, is a certain depth of feeling, that depth in which a man finds his separate individuality from all. That is for indifferent art. For the highest, novelty lies only in religion, as religion is the most advanced world point of view.
4) (For the drama.) They bring to the table a man in tatters and they laugh at the inconsistency of it and at his awkwardness. Revolt.
5) When it happens that you thought of some-thing and then forgot what you thought, but you remember and know the character of your thoughts: sad, dismal, oppressive, joyous, keen and even remember their order: first it was sad, and then it became calm, etc., when you remem-ber things that way, then it is exactly what music expresses.
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6) A theme: A passionate young man in love with a mentally diseased woman.
7) God gave us His spirit love, reason in order to serve Him; but we use His spirit to serve ourselves we use the axe to plane the handle.
I feel fully well and strong physically, but morally, weak. I feel like working and am able. I am going to make notes. 203 July 17. Yasn. Pol. If I live.
July 17. Y. P.
Got up late, worked badly. There is neither concentration nor capacity to embrace everything. Nevertheless I have advanced. Masha came with Kolia . . .
Yesterday I talked about love with N: that we madly kindle this passion and then we suffer from its exaggerations and excesses.
Went on my bicycle to Yasenki. I love this motion very much. But I am ashamed.
A letter from Chertkov; he is very ill. I value him very much. And how not value him.
It is now 10 o’clock. The Shenshins have left just now. I feel solemn and gloomy. July 18, 1897. Y. P. If I live.
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I skipped three days. To-day July 21. Y. P.
I am working well enough. I am even satis-fied with my work. Though I change much. Everything has come to a head and has gained much. I have been reviewing everything again from the beginning.
The life around me is very wretched. . . .
I do not know why : whether from the stomach or the heat or from excessive physical exercise but in the evenings I feel very weak.
A good speech by Crookes as to how a micro-scopic man would look upon the world. 204
Yesterday Novikov was here and he brought splendid notes by Michael Novikov. 205 Wrote letters: to Carus, 206 Ivan Michailovich. A let-ter from Evgenie Ivanovich. 207 July 22. Y. P. If I live.
July 28. Y. P.
Six days that I haven’t written. Three or four days ago at night, I had an attack of cholera morbus and the day after I was absolutely ill and for two days I have been very weak and have written very poorly. To-day I am a little better.
The children were here: Iliushin’s family. 208 They are sweet grandchildren, especially Andru-sha. Whatever notes I made, I will not write
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out to-day. Longinov 209 was here, a friend of
Mme. Annenkov’s and to-day Maude and Bou-
langer.
July 2g. Y. P. If I live.
To-day Aug. 7. Y. P.
During this time a pile of guests 21 . . . two Germans, decadents; a naive and a somewhat stupid one. . . . There were here: Novikov, the scribe, a very powerful man, and Bulakhov, 211 also a powerful one morally and intellectually. I live very badly, weakly. Very little goodness. To-day the Stakhoviches 212 and the Maklakovs 213 ar-rived also.
I continue to work on my essay on art and, strange to say, it pleases me. Yesterday and to-day I read it to Ginsburg, Sobolev, Kasatkin 214 and Goldenweiser. The impression it produces on them is exactly the same as it produces on me.
A letter from Crosby with a joyful letter from a Japanese. 215 From Chertkov good letters. The correspondence has been very neglected.
I am entirely alone and I weaken. I often say to myself that one must live serving, but when I enter life, though I do not exactly forget, yet I scatter myself.
I have written down much, but to-day I have no time to write it out.
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Father, help me. I weaken.
I am going to write absolutely every day. Aug. 8. Y. P. If I live.
A peasant was here who had his arm torn by a tree and amputated. He ploughs with a loop attached.
Aug. g.
Stakhovich arrived. Read the essay. The tenth chapter is bad. I worked pretty much. Have written poor letters. I must write to Posha and to Ivan Michailovich.
There is noted in the book:
1 ) A servant makes life false and corrupt. As soon as you have servants, then you increase your wants, complicate life and make it a burden. In-stead of joy when you do things yourself, you have vexation and the principal thing, you re-nounce the main duty of life : the fulfilment of the brotherhood of man.
2) The aesthetic and the ethical are two arms of one lever: to the extent that you lengthen and lighten one side, to that extent you shorten and make heavier the other side. As soon as a man loses his moral sense, he becomes particularly re-sponsive to the aesthetic.
3) People know two Gods: one whom they want to force to serve them, demanding from
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him by prayers the fulfilment of their desires, and another God, one whom we ought to serve, to the fulfilment of whose will, all our desires ought to be directed.
4) It is a common phenomenon that old people love to travel, to go far and to change places. Is it not a foreseeing and a readiness for the last journey?
Aug. 15. Y. P.
I am continuing to work. Am advancing.
Lombroso was here a limited, naive little old man. The Maklakovs. Leo arrived with his wife. 216 Boulanger a nice man. Wrote letters to everybody: Posha and Ivan Michailo-vich and Van-der-Veer. The oppressive Leon-tev 217 was here.
There was something I wanted to write very much, but have forgotten. . . .
A revolting report concerning the missionary congress in Kazan. 218
There is noted: “Woman’s character” and I remember that it was something very good. Now I have forgotten. It seems to me that it was that the peculiarity of woman’s character is that her feeling alone guides her life, and that reason only serves her feeling. She cannot even understand that feeling can be made subservient to reason.
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2) But there are not so many women as there are such men who do not hear, do not see, the unpleasant, do not see it just as if it didn’t exist
3) When people haven’t the power to get rid of superstition and they continue to pay tribute to it, and at the same time when they see that others have freed themselves, they grow angry at those who have freed themselves. “ But I suffer when I commit stupidities and he is free.”
4) Art, i.e., artists, instead of serving people, exploit them.
5 ) From the time I became old, I began to con-fuse people, . . . belonging or being marked in my mind as one type. So that I do not know N, N N, but I know a collective personality to which N, N N, belong.
6) We are so accustomed to the thought that everything is for us, that the earth is mine, that when we have to die, we are surprised that my earth, something belonging to me, will remain and I won’t. Here the principal mistake is in thinking the earth as something acquired and com-plementary to me, when it is I who am acquired by the earth, an appendage to it.
7 ) How good it would be if we could live with the same concentration, do the work of life principally; communion among people with
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that concentration with which we play chess, read
music, etc.
Aug. 16. Y, P. If I live.
To-day Sept. ig. Y. P.
More than a month I have made no entries. Things are the same and the work has been ad-vancing all the time. And it could advance still more as to form, but there is absolutely no time. Such an amount of work ! A typist is making the final copy on a Remington. I have reached the 1 9th chapter, inclusive.
During this time the important thing was the expulsion of Boulanger. 219
My work has been interrupted occasionally only by a letter to the Swedish papers about the Duk-hobors 22 on the occasion of the Nobel prize.
Also ill health interrupted: a terrible boil on the cheek. I thought it was a cancer, and I am happy
