2) What relief all would feel who are locked up in a concert-room listening to Beethoven’s last works, if a jig or a cherdash or something similar would be played for them.
3) N. was here and said that he recognised only sensation, that man himself, the “ self “ was only a sensation. Sensation receives sensation. He reached this nonsense because of the scientific method; the limiting of the field of research, the non-recognition of anything else than sensation, is very good and profitable for the practical ends of the science of experimental psychology, but it is good-for-nothing as far as a living universal point of view is concerned. And this error is often
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made by people; they transfer to life the method which is suitable to science.
4) Nothing so confuses the conception of art as the acceptance of authorities. Instead of de-termining by a clear concise conception of art whether the works of Sophocles, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Beethoven, Bach, Raphael, Michael-Angelo, come up to the conception of good art and exactly how they do so, they de-termine by the existing works of the recognised great artists, art itself and its laws. But, how-ever, there are many works of noted artists which are below every criticism and there are many false reputations, accidentally won fame; Dante, Shake-speare.
5) I am reading the history of music: 161 out of sixteen chapters on artificial music there is one short chapter on popular music. And they know almost nothing about it. So that the history of music is not the history of how real music was born and spread and developed; the music of mel-odies but the history of artificial music, i.e., how real melodious music was distorted.
6) Artificial, master-class music, the music of parasites, feeling its own impotence, its own hol-lowness, takes recourse, in order to replace real in-terest by artificiality, now to counterpoint, to the fugue, now to opera, to illustration.
7 ) Church music is good, therefore, because it is
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understood by the masses. The undeniably good is only that which is understood by all. And there-fore it is true, that the more understandable it is, the better.
8) The various characters expressed by art touch us only because in each one of us is the possi-bility of every possible character. (Forgot)
9) The history of music, like all history, is written on the plan to show how it has gradually reached that condition in which the thing is found about which the history is now being written. The present condition of music, or that about which the history is written, is supposed to be the highest. But what if it is not only a lower thing, but something entirely distorted, an accidental de-viation towards distortion.
10) Belief in authorities causes the errors of authorities to be accepted as models.
n) They say that music strengthens the im-pression of words in arias, songs. It isn’t true. Music gets ahead of impressions made by words, by heaven knows how far. An aria of Bach; what words can rival it at the time when it is being rendered? It is a different thing the words by themselves. To whatever music you would place the Sermon on the Mount, the music would remain far behind, once you penetrated the words. “ Crucifix “ by Faure, 162 the music is pitiable com-pared to the words. They are two entirely dif-
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ferent and incompatible feelings. In song they go along together only because the words give tone.
(Not exact. About this in another place.)
12) So vividly have I recalled Vasili Per-fileev 163 and others, whom I saw in Moscow, and so clear did it become that, although they are dead, they still are.
13) The Scylla and Charybdis of artists; either understandable, but shallow, vulgar; or pseudo-lofty, original and incomprehensible.
14) The poetry of the people always reflected and not only reflected, predicted, prepared, popu-lar movements; the Crusades, the Reformation. What could the poetry of our parasitical circle pre-dict and prepare? Love, debauchery; debauch-ery, love.
15) Popular poetry, music, art in general is ex-hausted, because all the talented have been won over by bribes to be buffoons to the rich and the titled; chamber music, opera, odes and 164 . . .
1 6) In all art, there exists the struggle between the Christian and the pagan. The Christian be-gins to conquer and the new wave of the I5th Cen-tury overflows, the Renaissance, and only now at the end of the I9th, the Christian rises again, and paganism in the shape of decadence having reached the highest degree of nonsense, is being destroyed.
17) Besides the fact that the most gifted of the
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people were won over by bribes into the camp of the parasites, the cause of the destruction of popu-lar poetry and music were: at first the serfdom of the people and later the most important one printing.
18) Chertkov said that around us there are four walls of the unknown; in front, the wall of the future, in back the wall of the past, to the right the wall of ignorance, of that which is tak-ing place there where we are not, and the fourth wall, he says, is the ignorance of that which is go-ing on in the soul of another. In my mind this is not so. The first three walls are as he says. One should not look through them. The less we look beyond them the better. But as to the fourth wall of the ignorance of that which is going on in the souls of other people, this wall we ought to break down with all our strength, striving for a fusion with the souls of other people. And the less we will look beyond those three other walls, the closer we will get to others in this respect.
19) After death in importance, and before death in time, there is nothing more important, more irrevocable, than marriage. And just as death is only good then when it is unavoidable, but every death on purpose is bad, so it is with marriage. Only then is marriage not evil, when it is not to be conquered.
20) Apostasy comes from a man professing
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what he professes not for himself, not for God, but for people. He betrays his professions, either because he has become convinced that more people, or better people according to his mind, do not profess the same thing as he, or because that which he did before, he did for human fame and now he wants to live for himself, before God.
21 ) If I believed in a personal God to whom one could turn to with questions, I would say, Why, for what has God made it so, that some, knowing the undoubted truth, burn wholly with its fire, while others do not want it, cannot under-stand or accept it, and even hate it.
It is now past one. The same weakness, but keen in spirit, when I remember the significance of the whole of life, and not only this one which I have lived through as Leo Nicholaievich (Tol-stoi). Help me, Lord, to do always, everywhere Thy will, to be with Thee. But not my will, but Thine, be done. December 21, Moscow, if I live.
I am still writing December the 20th, Moscow.
Still the same depression. Father, help me. Relieve me. Strengthen Thyself in me, vanquish, drive forth, destroy, the foul flesh and all that I feel through it.
. . . Father, help me. Moreover, I feel better already. What is especially calming is the task, the test of humility, of humiliation, an entirely
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unexpected, exceptional humiliation. In chains, in a prison, one can pride oneself on one’s humili-ation, but here it is only painful, unless one accepts it as a trial sent by God. Yes, learn to bear calmly, joyfully and to love.
December 21. Moscow.
I am learning badly. I continually suffer, help-lessly, weakly. Only in rare moments do I rise to the consciousness of the whole of my life (not only this one) and my duties in it.
I thought (and felt) : There are people lack-ing both in aesthetic feeling and in the ethical (es-pecially the ethical), to whom it is impossible to instil that which is good the less so when they do and love that which is bad, and think that the bad is good . . .
December 22, Moscow, if I live, which is get-ting to be very doubtful; my heart does not stop aching. Almost nothing gives me rest. To-day Posha alone refreshed me. It is so disgusting I want to cry over myself, over the remnant of my life which is being futilely ruined. But per-haps it must be so, yes, in fact, it must be so …
December 25, Moscow.
9 o’c. at night. Spiritually I feel better. But I have no intellectual, artistic work, and I am mel-ancholy. Just now I felt that particular Christ-
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mas softening and gentleness, and poetical im-pulse. My hands are cold, I want to cry and to love . . .
December 26, Moscow.
I am still not writing anything, but I feel my thoughts revive. The devil still does not leave me.
I thought to-day about The Diary of a Mad Man. 16 * The principal thing is that I have un-derstood my filial relation to God, brotherhood, and my attitude
