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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AUGUST] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
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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AUGUST] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
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 that it was not very unpleasant to think that: I am receiving a new appointment; one which in any case, isn’t slipping past me.
St. John was here. 221
My work was interrupted also by the arrival of the Molokans from Samara in reference to their children which were taken away. 222 I wanted to write abroad and even wrote a very violent, and what seemed to me, strong letter, but
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SEPTEMBER] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
changed my mind. It was not to be done before God. I have to try again.
To-day I wrote letters: to the Emperor, 223 to Olsuphiev, 224 to Heath, 225 and to E. I. Chert-kov, 226 and saw the Molokans off.
I wanted to write from my notebooks, but it is late. I am going to bed. Sept. 20. Yasn. P. If I live.
Sept. 20. Y. P.
Let me write even a few words. The boil still bothers me very much. I have no full liberte d f esprit. I wrote the Swedish letter to-day, and in the evening translated it into Swedish 227 with the Swede.
I am not writing from the notebook, but I will note that which entered my head with special vividness.
Our life is so arranged that all our care for ourselves, the use of our reason (our spiritual forces) for the care of ourselves, brings only un-happiness. And yet this egotism is necessary in order to live a separate life. That is His mysteri-ous will. As soon as you live for yourself, you perish; when you live beyond yourself, there is peace and joy both for yourself and for others. Sept. 20. Y.P. If I live.
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To-day Sept. 22. Y. P.
. . . Yesterday I finished the translation with Langlet.
To-day I was busy with Art, but it didn’t go at all, and therefore the preceding did not please me.
S. arrived to-day.
At night I thought of the separation of lust from love, and that ether is a conception outside of the senses.
It is now past twelve in the morning. I am waiting for Ilya and Andrusha. I have just now written a letter to the editor of the Tagblatt Stockholm, and to Chertkov.
September 23. Y. P. If I live.
i
Oct. 2. Y. P.
I am working all
