In the meantime, I thought,
1) It is remarkable how many people see some insoluble problem in evil. I have never seen any problem in it. For me it is now altogether clear that that which we call evil is that good, the action of which we don’t yet see.
2) The poetry of Mallarme, 93 and others. We who don’t understand it, say boldly that it is humbug, that it is poetry striking an impasse. Why is it that when we hear music which we don’t understand and which is just as nonsensical, we don’t say that boldly, but say timidly : yes, perhaps one ought to understand it or prepare oneself for it, etc. That is silly. Every work of art is only a work of art when it is understandable, I do not say for all, but for people standing on a certain level of education, on the same level as the man who reads poetry and who judges it.
This reasoning leads me to an absolutely cer-tain conclusion that music before any other art (decadence in poetry and symbolism and other things in painting) has lost its way and struck an impasse. And he who has turned it from the road was that musical genius Beethoven. The principal factors are the authorities and people deprived of aesthetic feeling who judge art.
Goethe ? Shakespeare ? 94 Everything that goes under their names is supposed to be good and on se bat les flancs in order to find something
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beautiful in the stupid and the unsuccessful, and taste is entirely perverted. And all these great talents Goethe, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mich-ael-Angelo side by side with exquisite things, produced not only mediocre ones, but disgusting ones. The mediocre artists produce a medioc-rity as regards value and never anything very bad. But recognised geniuses create either really great works or absolute stuff and nonsense; Shakespeare, Goethe, Beethoven, Bach, and others.
3) To place before myself the most complex and confused thing which demands my partici-pation. On all sides it seems there exist insolu-ble dilemmas; it is bad one way and worse the other. And it is only necessary to carry over the problem from the outer realm into the inner, into one’s own life, to understand that this is only an arena for my inner perfection, that it is a test, a measure of my moral development, an experiment as to how much I can and want to do the work of God, the enlargement of love, and everything re-solves itself so easily, simply, joyously.
4) A mistake (sin) is the use of reason, given me to recognise my essence in the love for every-thing which exists, in acquiring the good for my separate being. As long as man lived without a reasoning consciousness, he fulfilled the will of God in acquiring the good for himself and in
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struggling for it and there was no sin; but as soon as reason had awakened, then there was sin.
5) The harness-maker, Mikhailo, says to me that he does not believe in a future life, that he thinks that when a man dies, his spirit will leave him and will go away. But I say to him: “ Well, go off then with this spirit; then you won’t die.” May 29, Ysn. Pol. If I live.
It seems to me, June 6, Ysn. Pol.
The principal thing is that during this time I have advanced in my work, 95 and am advancing. I write on sins and the whole work is clear to the end.
Finished Spier splendid.
The economic movement of humanity by three means: the destruction of ownership of land ac-cording to Henry George 98; the inheritance which would give over accumulated wealth to society, if not in the first generation, then in the second; and a similar tax on wealth on an excess of over 1000 rubles income for a family or 200 for each man.
To-day the Chertkovs arrived. Galia 97 is very good.
The day before yesterday a gendarme came, a 56 ‘
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spy, who confessed that he was sent after me. It was both pleasant and nasty. 98
During this time have thought principally the following :
1) When a man lives an animal life, he does not know that God lives through him. When reason awakens in him, then he knows it. And knowing it, he becomes united with God.
2) Man in his animal life has to be guided by instinct; reason directed to that which is not sub-ject to it, will spoil everything.
3) Is not luxury a preparing for something better, when there is already a sufficiency?
Yesterday was not the 6th, but the 8th. To-day, June 9, Y. P.
I have written little and not very well. It seems to me that it is getting clearer. In the morning I had a conversation with the working-men who came for books. I remembered the woman who asked to write to John of Kronstad.”
The religion of the people is this : there is a God and there are gods and saints. (Christ came on earth, as a peasant told me to-day, to teach people how and to whom to pray.) The gods and the saints perform miracles, have power over the flesh and perform heroic deeds and good works, and the people have only to pray, to know how
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and to whom to pray. But people can not per-form good works, they can only pray. Here is their whole faith.
I bathed and don’t feel well.
June 19, Y. P.
Have been feeling weak all this time and sleep badly. Posha came yesterday. He spoke about the Khodinka accident well, but wrote it badly. Our very idle, luxurious life oppresses me. N. came. A stranger. He is young and he does not understand in the same way as I do, that which he understands, although he agrees with every-thing. Finished the first draft 10 on the I3th of June. Now I am revising it, but am working very little.
. . . Struggled with myself twice and success-fully. Oh, if it were always so !
Once I passed beyond Zakaz 101 at night and wept for joy, being grateful for life. The pic-tures of life in Samara stand out very clearly be-fore me; the steppes, the fight of the nomadic, patriarchic principle with the agricultural civil-ised one. 102 It draws me very much. Konef-sky was not born in me; that is why it moves so awkwardly.
Have been thinking :
i) Something very important about art: what is beauty? Beauty is that which we love. “ He
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is not dear because he is good, but good because he is dear.” Here is the problem; why dear? Why do we love? And to say that we love, be-cause a thing is beautiful, is just the same as saying that we breathe because the air is pleasant. We find the air pleasant, because we have to breathe; and in the same way we discover beauty, because we have to love. And he who hasn’t the power to see spiritual beauty, sees at least a bodily one and loves it.
June 26, Y. P. Morning.
All night I did not sleep. My heart aches without stopping. I continue to suffer and can not subject myself to God. … I have not mas-tered pride and rebellion and the pain in my heart does not stop. One thing consoles me; I am not alone but with God, and therefore no matter how painful it is, yet I feel that something is taking place within me. Help me, Father.
Yesterday I walked to Baburino 103 and unwil-lingly (I rather would have avoided than sought it), I met the 8o-year-old Akime ploughing, the woman Yaremichov who hasn’t a coat to her household and only one jacket, then Maria whose husband was frozen and who has no one to gather her rye and who is starving her child, and Tro-phime and Khaliavka, and the husband and wife were dying as well as the children. And we study
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Beethoven. And I pray that He release me from this life. And again I pray and cry from pain. I am entrapped, sinking, I cannot alone, only I hate myself and my life.
June 30, Ysn. Pol.
Continued to suffer and struggle much, and have conquered neither one nor the other. But it is better. Mme. Annenkov 104 was here and put it very well . . , 105 They have spoiled for me even my diary which I write with the point of view of the possibility of its being read by the living 106
Just now upstairs they began to speak about the New Testament and N. en ricanant proved that Christ advised castration. I became angry, shameful.
Two days ago I went to those who had been burned out; had not dined, was tired and felt well. . . . Yesterday I visited the lawyer who wanted to snatch a hundred rubles from a beggar-woman to decorate his own house with. It is the same everywhere.
During this time I have been in Pirogovo. My brother Serezha has entirely come over to us. The journey with Tania and Chertkov was joy-ous. To-day in Demenka m I gave the last words for his journey to a dying peasant.
I am advancing much on the work. 108 I will 60
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try to write out now what I have jotted down in the book.
To-day, July /p, 109
I am in Pirogovo. I arrived the day before yesterday with Tania and Chertkov. In Serez-ha no there has certainly taken place a spiritual
