The 2nd thing that I have been thinking about art, is that nowhere is conservatism so harmful
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FEBRUARY] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
as in art. Art is one of the manifestations of the spiritual life of man, and therefore, as when an animal is alive, it breathes and discharges the prod-ucts of its breathing, so when humanity is alive, it manifests activity in art. And therefore, at every given moment it must be contemporaneous the art of our time. One ought only to know where it is (not in the decadence of music, poetry, or the novel); and one must seek it not in the past, but in the present. People who wish to show them-selves connoisseurs of art and who therefore praise the past classic art and insult the present, only show by this, that they have no feeling for art.
3) Rachinsky 57 says: “Notice that contem-poraneous with the spread of the use of narcotics, since the ryth century, the astounding progress of science began, and especially of the natural ones.” Is it not because of this, I say to him, that the false direction of science has come, the studying of that which is not necessary to man, but is only an object for idle curiosity, or when useful, is not the only thing really necessary? Is it not because of this that from that time on there was neglected the one thing that was necessary, i.e. the settling of moral questions and their application to life?
4) What is the good? I only know a word in Russian which defines this idea. The good is the real good, the good for all, le veritable bien, le bien de tous, what is good for everybody. 58
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The Journal of Leo Tolstoi [1896
5) Men, in struggling with untruth and super-stition, often console themselves with the quantity of superstition they have destroyed. This is not right. It is not right to calm oneself until all that is contradictory to reason and demands credulence is destroyed. Superstition is like a cancer. Everything must be cleaned out if one under-takes an operation. But if a little bit is left, every-thing will grow from it again.
6) The historic knowledge of how different myths and beliefs arose among peoples in differ-ent places and in different times ought to, it seems, destroy the faith that these myths and beliefs which have been inoculated in us from our infancy, con-stitute the absolute truth; but nevertheless, so-called educated people believe in them. How superficial then, is the education of so-called edu-cated people !
7) To-day at dinner there was talk about a boy with vicious inclinations who was expelled from school, and about how good it would be to give him over to a reformatory.
It is exactly what a man does who lives a bad life, harmful to his health, and who, when he be-comes ill, turns to the doctor so that the latter may cure him, but has no idea that the illness was given to him as a beneficial indicator that his whole life is bad and that he ought to change it. The
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same thing is true with the illnesses in our society; every ill member of society does not remind us that the whole life of our society is irregular and that we ought to change it. But we think that for every such ill member, there is or ought to be, an institution freeing us from this member or even bettering him.
Nothing hampers the progress of humanity so much as this false conviction. The more ill the society, the more institutions there are for the healing of symptoms and the less anxiety for changing the entire life.
It is now 10 o’clock in the evening. I am go-ing to supper. I want to work very much, but am without intellectual energy; a great weakness, yet I want to work terribly. If God would only give it to-morrow. Feb. 28. Nicholskoe. If I live.
To-day March 6. Nicholskoe.
All this time I have felt weakness and intel-lectual apathy. I am working on the drama very slowly. Much has become clear. But there isn’t one scene with which I am fully satisfied.
To-day I was about to plan something silly: to write out an outline of the Declaration of Faith. Of course it didn’t go. In the same way I began and dropped a letter to the Italians. 59
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During this time I jotted down:
1) Corneille writes in his Preface to Menteur on art, that its aim is a diversion, “divertir” but that it must not be harmful, and if possible, it ought to be educationally enlightening.
2) At supper there was a discussion on hered-ity: they say vicious people are born from an alcoholic . . . (I can’t clearly express my thought and will put it by.)
3) Something very important. I lay and was almost asleep, suddenly something seemed to tear in my heart. It occurred to me: that is the way death comes from heart failure; and I remained calm I felt neither grief nor joy, but blessedly calm whether here or there, I know that it is well with me, that things are as they ought to be, just like a child, tossed in the arms of its mother, does not stop smiling from joy for it knows that it is in her loving arms.
And the thought came to me : why is it so now and was not so before? Because before, I did not live the whole of life, but lived only an earthly life. In order to believe in immortality, one must live an immortal life here. One can walk with one’s feet and not see the precipice before one, over which it is impossible to cross, and one can rise on one’s wings. . . . 60
(It isn’t going and I don’t feel like thinking.) March 7, 1896. Nicholskoe. If I live.
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MAY] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
To-day May 2. Yasnaya Polyana.
It is almost two months since I have made an entry. All this time I lived in Moscow. Of im-portant events there were : a getting closer to the scribe Novikov 61 who changed his life on account of my books which his brother, a lackey, received from his mistress abroad. A hot-blooded youth. Also his brother, a working man, asked for u What is my Faith?” and Tania 62 sent him to Mme. Kholevinsky. 63 They took Mme. Kholevinsky to prison. The prosecuting attorney said that they ought to go after me. All this together made me write a letter to the ministers of Justice and the Interior in which I begged them to transfer their prosecution to me. 64
All this time I wrote on the Declaration of Faith. I made little progress. Chertkov, Posha Biriukov were here and went away. My rela-tions with people are good. I have stopped rid-ing the bicycle. I wonder how I could have been so infatuated.
I heard Wagner’s Siegfried. 65 I have many thoughts in connection with this and other things. In all I have jolted down 20 thoughts in my note-book.
Still another important event the work of African Spier. 66 I just read through what I wrote in the beginning of this notebook. At bottom, it is nothing else than a short summary of all of
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The Journal of Leo Tolstoi [1896
Spier’s philosophy which I not only had not read at that time, but about which I had not the slight-est idea. This work clarified my ideas on the meaning of life remarkably, and in some ways strengthened them. The essence of his doctrine is that things do not exist, but only our impressions which appear to us in our conception as objects. Conception (Vorstellung) has the quality of be-lieving in the existence of objects. This comes from the fact that the quality of thinking consists in attributing an objectivity to impressions, a sub-stance, and a projecting of them into space.
May 3. Y. P.
Let me write down anything. Am indisposed. Weakness and physical apathy. But think and feel keenly. Yesterday at least, I wrote a few letters: to Spier, 67 Shkarvan, Myasoyedov, 68 Perer, Sverbeev. 69
I am reading Spier all the time, and the reading provokes a mass of thoughts.
Let me write out something at least from my 2 1 notes.
To-day I worked on the Declaration of Faith.
i) Come and dwell in us and cleanse us of all evil” … On the contrary: Cleanse thy soul of evil thyself and He will come and dwell in thee. He only waits for this. Like water he flows into
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MAY] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
thee in the measure as room is freed. “ Dwell in us.” How agonisingly lonely it is without Thee this I experienced these days and how peaceful, firm and joyous, needing nothing and no one when with Thee. Do not leave me !
I can not pray. His tongue is different from that which I speak, but He will understand and translate it into His own when I say : “ Help me, come to me, do not leave me ! “
And here I have fallen into a contradiction. I say you have to cleanse yourself, then He will come. But I, not yet having cleansed myself, call upon Him. May 4. If I still live here, Y. P.
May 5. 7. P.
The same general despair. And I am sad. There is one cause; the higher moral requirement that I put forward. In its name I have rejected everything that is beneath it. But it was not fol-lowed. Fifteen years
