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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..455530d --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #55284 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55284) diff --git a/old/55284-8.txt b/old/55284-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 675a161..0000000 --- a/old/55284-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2391 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi, by -Maxim Gorky - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi - -Author: Maxim Gorky - -Translator: Samuel Solomonovitch Koteliansky - Leonard Woolf - -Release Date: August 7, 2017 [EBook #55284] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REMINISCENCES OF LEO TOLSTOI *** - - - - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon -in an extended version,also linking to free sources for -education worldwide ... MOOC's, educational materials,...) -Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.) - - - - - -REMINISCENCES OF - -LEO NICOLAYEVITCH TOLSTOI - -_By_ - -_MAXIM GORKY_ - - - -Authorized Translation from the Russian - -by - -S. S. KOTELIANSKY - -and - -LEONARD WOOLF - -_SECOND EDITION_ - -PUBLISHED BY LEONARD & VIRGINIA WOOLF AT -The HOGARTH PRESS, PARADISE ROAD, RICHMOND - -1920 - - - - -_TRANSLATORS' NOTE TO SECOND EDITION_ - -_Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi_, by Maxim Gorky, was -originally published in Russian in Petrograd in 1919. The first half of -the book, consisting of notes, had been written between 1900 and 1901, -when Tolstoi, Gorky, and Tchekhov were living in the Crimea. The second -half consists of a letter written by Gorky in 1910. - -A second edition of the book will shortly be published in Russia, and -will contain a few additional notes not included in the first edition. -We have included this additional matter in the present edition, -enclosing it in square brackets. - - - - -_PREFACE_ - -This little book is composed of fragmentary notes written by me during -the period when I lived in Oleise and Leo Nicolayevitch at Gaspra in -the Crimea. They cover the period of Tolstoi's serious illness and -of his subsequent recovery. The notes were carelessly jotted down on -scraps of paper, and I thought I had lost them, but recently I have -found some of them. Then I have also included here an unfinished -letter written by me under the influence of the "going away" of Leo -Nicolayevitch from Yassnaya Polyana, and of his death. I publish the -letter just as it was written at the time, and without correcting a -single word. And I do not finish it, for somehow or other this is not -possible. M. GORKY. - - - - -_NOTES_ - - -I - -The thought which beyond others most often and conspicuously gnaws at -him is the thought of God. At moments it seems, indeed, not to be a -thought, but a violent resistance to something which he feels above -him. He speaks of it less than he would like, but thinks of it always. -It can scarcely be said to be a sign of old age, a presentiment of -death--no, I think that it comes from his exquisite human pride, -and--a bit--from a sense of humiliation: for, being Leo Tolstoi, it is -humiliating to have to submit one's will to a streptococcus. If he were -a scientist, he would certainly evolve the most ingenious hypotheses, -make great discoveries. - - -II - -He has wonderful hands--not beautiful, but knotted with swollen -veins, and yet full of a singular expressiveness and the power of -creativeness. Probably Leonardo da Vinci had hands like that. With such -hands one can do anything. Sometimes, when talking, he will move his -fingers, gradually close them into a fist, and then, suddenly opening -them, utter a good, full-weight word. He is like a god, not a Sabaoth -or Olympian, but the kind of Russian god who "sits on a maple throne -under a golden lime tree," not very majestic, but perhaps more cunning -than all the other gods. - - -III - -He treats Sulerzhizky with the tenderness of a woman. For Tchekhov -his love is paternal--in this love is the feeling of the pride of a -creator--Suler rouses in him just tenderness, a perpetual interest -and rapture which never seems to weary the sorcerer. Perhaps there is -something a little ridiculous in this feeling, like the love of an old -maid for a parrot, a pug dog, or a tom-cat. Suler is a fascinatingly -wild bird from some strange unknown land. A hundred men like him -could change the face, as well as the soul, of a provincial town. Its -face they would smash and its soul they would fill with a passion for -riotous, brilliant, headstrong wildness. One loves Suler easily and -gaily, and when I see how carelessly women accept him, they surprise -and anger me. Yet under this carelessness is hidden, perhaps, caution. -Suler is not reliable. What will he do to-morrow? He may throw a bomb -or he may join a troupe of public-house minstrels. He has energy enough -for three life-times, and fire of life--so much that he seems to sweat -sparks like over-heated iron. - - -IIIA - -[But once he got thoroughly cross with Suler. Suler inclined to -anarchism, and often argued with bitterness about the freedom of the -individual. In such cases Leo Nicolayevitch always chaffed him. - -I remember that Suler once got hold of a thin little pamphlet by -Prince Kropotkin; he flamed up, and all day long explained to everyone -the wisdom of anarchism, overwhelming them with his philosophizing. - -"Oh, stop it, Liovushka," said Leo Nicolayevitch irritably, "you are -annoying. You hammer away like a parrot at one word, freedom, freedom; -but what is the sense of it? If you attained your freedom, what do you -imagine would happen? In the philosophic sense, a bottomless void, and -in actual life you would become an idler, a parasite. If you were free -in your sense, what would bind you to life or to people? Now, birds are -free, but still they build nests; you, however, wouldn't even build a -nest, but would gratify your sexual feeling anywhere, like a dog. You -think seriously, and you will come to see, you will come to feel, that -this freedom is ultimately emptiness, boundlessness." - -He frowned angrily, was silent for a while, and then added quietly, -"Christ was free and so was Buddha, and both took on themselves the -sins of the world and voluntarily entered the prison of earthly life. -Further than that nobody has gone, nobody. And you--we--well, what's -the good of talking--we are all looking for freedom from obligations -towards our fellow men, whereas it is just that feeling of our -obligations which has made us men, and, if those obligations were not -there, we should live like the beasts." - -He smiled. "And now here we are arguing how we ought to live. The -result isn't very great, but it is something. For instance, you are -arguing with me, and are getting so cross that you are going blue in -the nose, yet you don't hit me, you don't even swear at me. But if you -really felt free, you'd kill me on the spot, and there'd be an end of -it." After a silence, he added: "Freedom consists in all and everything -agreeing with me, but in that case I don't exist, because we are only -conscious of ourselves in conflicts and contradictions,"] - - -IV - -Goldenweiser played Chopin, which called forth these remarks from Leo -Nicolayevitch: "A certain German princeling said: 'Where you want to -have slaves, there you should have as much music as possible.' That's -a true thought, a true observation--music dulls the mind. Especially -do the Catholics realize that; our priests, of course, won't reconcile -themselves to Mendelssohn in church. A Tula priest assured me that -Christ was not a Jew, though the son of the Jewish God and his mother a -Jewess--he did admit that, but says he: 'It's impossible.' I asked him: -'But how then? 'He shrugged his shoulders and said: 'That's just the -mystery.'" - - -V - -"An intellectual is like the old Galician Prince Vladimirko, who, as -far back as the twelfth century, 'boldly' declared: 'There are no -miracles in our time.' Six hundred years have passed and all the -intellectuals hammer away at each other: 'There are no miracles, there -are no miracles.' And all the people believe in miracles, just as they -did in the twelfth century." - - -VI - -"The minority feel the need of God because they have got everything -else, the majority because they have nothing." - -I would put it differently: the majority believe in God from cowardice, -only the few believe in him from fullness of soul. - - - -VIa - -"You like Andersen's Tales?" he asked thoughtfully. "I couldn't make -them out when they first appeared in the translation of Marko Vovtchok, -but about ten years later I took up the book and read it, and suddenly -realized with great clearness that Andersen was very lonely--very. I -don't know about his life, but he seems to have lived loosely and to -have travelled a great deal, but that only confirms my feeling that -he was lonely. And because of that he addressed himself to the young, -although it's a mistake to imagine that children pity a man more than -grown-ups do. Children pity nothing; they do not know what pity is." - - -VII - -He advised me to read Buddhistic scriptures. Of Buddhism and Christ he -always speaks sentimentally. When he speaks about Christ, it is always -peculiarly poor, no enthusiasm, no feeling in his words, and no spark -of real fire. I think he regards Christ as simple and deserving of -pity, and, although at times he admires Him, he hardly loves Him. It -is as though he were uneasy: if Christ came to a Russian village, the -girls might laugh at Him. - - -VIII - -To-day the Grand Duke Nicolay Mikhailovitch was at Tolstoi's, evidently -a very clever man. His behaviour is very modest; he talks little. -He has sympathetic eyes and a fine figure, quiet gestures. Leo -Nicolayevitch smiled caressingly at him, and spoke now French, now -English. In Russian he said:-- - -"Karamzin wrote for the Tsar, Soloviov long and tediously, and -Klutchevsky for his own amusement. Cunning fellow Klutchevsky: at first -you get the impression that he is praising, but as you read on, you see -that he is blaming." - -Someone mentioned Zabielin. - -"He's nice. An amateur collector, he collects everything, whether it is -useful or not. He describes food as if he had never had a square meal; -but he is very, very amusing." - - -IX - -He reminds me of those pilgrims who all their life long, stick in -hand, walk the earth, travelling thousands of miles from one monastery -to another, from one saint's relics to another, terribly homeless -and alien to all men and things. The world is not for them, nor God -either. They pray to Him from habit, and in their secret soul they hate -Him--why does He drive them over the earth from one end to the other? -What for? People are stumps, roots, stones on the path; one stumbles -over them, and sometimes is hurt by them. One can do without them, but -it is pleasant sometimes to surprise a man with one's own unlikeness to -him, to show one's difference from him. - - -X - -"Friedrich of Prussia said very truly: 'Everyone must save himself in -his own way.' He also said: 'Argue as much as you like, but obey.' -But when dying he confessed: 'I have grown weary of ruling slaves.' -So-called great men are always terribly contradictory: that is -forgiven them with all their other follies. Though contradictoriness -is not folly: a fool is stubborn, but does not know how to contradict -himself. Yes, Friedrich was a strange man: among the Germans he won -the reputation of being the best king, yet he could not bear them; he -disliked even Goethe and Wieland." - - -XI - -"Romanticism comes from the fear of looking straight into the eyes -of truth," he said yesterday with regard to Balmont's poems. Suler -disagreed with him and, lisping with excitement, read very feelingly -some more poems. - -"These, Liovushka, are not poems; they are charlatanism, rubbish, as -people said in the Middle Ages, a nonsensical stringing together of -words. Poetry is art-less; when Fet wrote: - - 'I know not myself what I will sing, - But only my song is ripening,' - -he expressed a genuine, real, people's sense of poetry. The peasant, -too, doesn't know that he's a poet--oh, oi, ah, and aye--and there -comes off a real song, straight from the soul, like a bird's. These new -poets of yours are inventing. There are certain silly French things -called _articles de Paris_--well, that's what your stringers of verses -produce. Nekrassov's miserable verses, too, are invented from beginning -to end." - -"And Béranger?" Suler asked. - -"Béranger--that's quite different. What's there in common between the -French and us? They are sensualists; the life of the spirit is not as -important to them as the flesh. To a Frenchman woman is everything. -They are a worn-out, emasculated people. Doctors say that all -consumptives are sensualists." - -Suler began to argue with his peculiar directness, pouring out a random -flood of words. Leo Nicolayevitch looked at him and said with a broad -smile: - -"You are peevish to-day, like a girl who has reached the age when she -should marry but has no lover." - - -XII - -The illness dried him up still more, burnt something out of him. -Inwardly he seemed to become lighter, more transparent, more resigned. -His eyes are still keener, his glance piercing. He listens attentively -as though recalling something which he has forgotten or as though -waiting for something new and unknown. In Yassnaya Polyana he seemed to -me a man who knew everything and had nothing more to learn--a man who -had settled every question. - - -XIII - -If he were a fish, he would certainly swim only in the ocean, never -coming to the narrow seas, and particularly not to the flat waters -of earthly rivers. Around him here there rest or dart hither and -thither the little fishes: what he says does not interest them, is not -necessary to them, and his silence does not frighten or move them. Yet -his silence is impressive like that of a real hermit driven out from -this world. Though he speaks a great deal and as a duty upon certain -subjects, his silence is felt to be still greater. Certain things one -cannot tell to anyone. Surely he has some thoughts of which he is -afraid. - - -XIV - -Someone sent him an excellent version of the story of Christ's godson. -He read it aloud with pleasure to Suler, Tchekhov--he read amazingly -well. He was especially amused by the devils torturing the landowners. -There was something which I did not like in that. He cannot be -insincere, but, if this be sincere, then it makes it worse. Then he -said: - -"How well the peasants compose stories. Everything is simple, the words -few, and a great deal of feeling. Real wisdom uses few words; for -instance, 'God have mercy on us.'" - -Yet the story is a cruel one. - - -XV - -His interest in me is ethnological. In his eyes I belong to a species -not familiar to him--only that. - - -XVI - -I read my story "The Bull" to him. He laughed much, and praised my -knowledge of "the tricks of the language." - -"But your treatment of words is not skilful; all your peasants speak -cleverly. In actual life what they say is silly and incoherent, and at -first you cannot make out what a peasant wants to say. That is done -deliberately; under the silliness of their words is always concealed -a desire to allow the other person to show what is in his mind. A -good peasant will never show at once what is in his own mind: it is -not profitable. He knows that people approach a stupid man frankly -and directly, and that's the very thing he wants. You stand revealed -before him and he at once sees all your weak points. He is suspicious; -he is afraid to tell his inmost thoughts even to his wife. But with -your peasants in every story everything is revealed: it's a universal -council of wisdom. And they all speak in aphorisms; that's not true to -life, either; aphorisms are not natural to the Russian language." - -"What about sayings and proverbs?" - -"That's a different thing. They are not of to-day's manufacture." - -"But you yourself often speak in aphorisms." - -"Never. There again you touch everything up; people as well as -nature--especially people. So did Lieskov, an affected, finicking -writer whom nobody reads now. Don't let anyone influence you, fear no -one, and then you'll be all right." - - -XVII - -In his diary which he gave me to read, I was struck by a strange -aphorism: "God is my desire." - -To-day, on returning him the book, I asked him what it meant. - -"An unfinished thought," he said, glancing at the page and screwing up -his eyes. "I must have wanted to say: 'God is my desire to know Him.' -... No, not that ..." He began to laugh, and, rolling up the book into -a tube, he put it into the big pocket of his blouse. With God he has -very suspicious relations; they sometimes remind me of the relation of -"two bears in one den." - - -XVIII - -On science: - -"Science is a bar of gold made by a charlatan alchemist. You want to -simplify it, to make it accessible to all: you find that you have -coined a lot of false coins.. When the people realize the real value of -those coins, they won't thank you." - - -XIX - -We walked in the Yussopov Park. He spoke superbly about the customs of -the Moscow aristocracy. A big Russian peasant woman was working on the -flower-bed, bent at right angles, showing her ivory legs, shaking her -ten-pound breasts. He looked at her attentively. - -"It is those caryatids who have kept all that magnificence and -extravagance going. Not only by the labour of peasant men and women, -not only by the taxes they pay, but in the literal sense by their -blood. If the aristocracy had not from time to time mated with -such horse-women as she, they would have died out long ago. It is -impossible with impunity to waste one's strength, as the young men of -my time did. But after sowing their wild oats, many married serf-girls -and produced a good breed. In that way, too, the peasant's strength -saved them. That strength is everywhere in place. Half the aristocracy -always has to spend its strength on itself, and the other half to -dilute itself with peasant blood and thus diffuse the peasant blood a -little. It's useful." - - -XX - -OF women he talks readily and much, like a French novelist, but always -with the coarseness of a Russian peasant. Formerly it used to affect me -unpleasantly. To-day in the Almond Park he asked Anton Tchekhov: - -"You whored a great deal when you were young?" - -Anton Pavlovitch, with a confused smile, and pulling at his little -beard, muttered something inaudible, and Leo Nicolayevitch, looking at -the sea, confessed: - -"I was an indefatigable...." - -He said this penitently, using at the end of the sentence a salty -peasant word. And I noticed for the first time how simply he used the -word, as though he knew no more fitting one to use. All those kinds of -words, coming from his shaggy lips, sound simple and natural and lose -their soldierly coarseness and filth. I remember my first meeting with -him and his talk about "Varienka Oliessova" and "Twenty-six and One." -From the ordinary point of view what he said was a string of indecent -words. I was perplexed by it and even offended. I thought that he -considered me incapable of understanding any other kind of language. I -understand now: it was silly to have felt offended. - - -XXI - -He sat on the stone bench in the shade of the cypresses, looking very -lean, small and grey, and yet resembling Sabaoth, who is a little tired -and is amusing himself by trying to whistle in tune with a chaffinch. -The bird sang in the darkness of the thick foliage: he peered up at it, -screwing up his sharp little eyes, and, pursing his lips like a child, -he whistled incompetently. - -"What a furious little creature. It's in a rage. What bird is it?" - -I told him about the chaffinch and its characteristic jealousy. - -"All life long one song," he said, "and yet jealous. Man has a thousand -songs in his heart and is yet blamed for jealousy; is it fair?" He -spoke musingly, as though asking himself questions. "There are moments -when a man says to a woman more than she ought to know about him. He -speaks and forgets, but she remembers. Perhaps jealousy comes from the -fear of degrading one's soul, of being humiliated and ridiculous? Not -that a woman is dangerous who holds a man by his ... but she who holds -him by his soul...." - -When I pointed out the contradiction in this with his "Kreutzer -Sonata," the radiance of a sudden smile beamed through his beard, and -he said: - -"I am not a chaffinch." - -In the evening, while walking, he suddenly said: "Man survives -earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and all the agonies of -the soul, but for all time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, -and will be--the tragedy of the bedroom." - -Saying this, he smiled triumphantly: at times he has the broad, calm -smile of a man who has overcome something extremely difficult or from -whom some sharp, long-gnawing pain has lifted suddenly. Every thought -burrows into his soul like a tick; he either tears it out at once or -allows it to have its fill of his blood, and then, when full, it just -drops off of itself. - - * * * * * - -He read to Suler and me a variant of the scene of the fall of "Father -Sergius"--a merciless scene. Suler pouted and fidgeted uneasily. - -"What's the matter? Don't you like it?" Leo Nicolayevitch asked. - -"It's too brutal, as though from Dostoevsky. She is a filthy girl, -and her breasts like pancakes, and all that. Why didn't he sin with a -beautiful, healthy woman?" - -"That would be sin without justification; as it is, there is -justification in pity for the girl. Who could desire her as she is?" - -"I cannot make it out...." - -"There's a great deal, Liovushka, which you can't make out: you're not -shrewd...." - -There came in Andrey Lvovitch's wife, and the conversation was -interrupted. As she and Suler went out, Leo Nicolayevitch said to me: -"Leopold is the purest man I know. He is like that: if he did something -bad, it would be out of pity for someone." - - -XXII - -He talks most of God, of peasants, and of woman; of literature rarely -and little, as 'though literature were something alien to him. Woman, -in my opinion, he regards with implacable hostility and loves to punish -her, unless she be a Kittie or Natasha Rostov, _i.e.,_ a creature not -too narrow. It is the hostility of the male who has not succeeded in -getting all the pleasure he could, or it is the hostility of spirit -against "the degrading impulses of the flesh." But it is hostility, -and cold, as in _Anna Karenin._ Of "the degrading impulses of the -flesh" lie spoke well on Sunday in a conversation with Tchekhov and -Yelpatievsky about Rousseau's _Confession._ Suler wrote down what he -said, and later, while preparing coffee, burnt it in the spirit-lamp. -Once before he burnt Leo Nicolayevitch's opinions on Ibsen, and he also -lost the notes of the conversation in which Leo Nicolayevitch said very -pagan things on the symbolism of the marriage ritual, agreeing to a -certain extent with V. V. Rosanov. - - -XXIII - -In the morning some "stundists" came to Tolstoi from Feodosia, and -to-day all day long he spoke about peasants with rapture. - -At lunch: "They came both so strong and fleshy; says one: 'Well, we've -come uninvited,' and the other says: 'With God's help we shall leave -unbeaten,'" and he broke out into child-like laughter, shaking all over. - -After lunch, on the terrace: - -"We shall soon cease completely to understand the language of the -people. Now we say: 'The theory of progress,' 'the role of the -individual in history,' 'the evolution of science and a peasant says: -'You can't hide an awl in a sack,' and all theories, histories, -evolutions become pitiable and ridiculous, because they are -incomprehensible and unnecessary to the people.' But the peasant is -stronger than we; he is more tenacious of life, and there may happen to -us what happened to the tribe of Atzurs, of whom it was reported to a -scholar: - -'All the Atzurs have died out, but there is a parrot here who knows a -few words of their language.'" - - -XXIV - -"With her body woman is more sincere than man, but with her mind she -lies. And when she lies, she does not believe herself; but Rousseau -lied and believed his lies." - - -XXV - -"Dostoevsky described one of his mad characters as living and taking -vengeance on himself and others because he had served a cause in which -he did not believe. He wrote that about himself; that is, he could have -said the same of himself." - - -XXVI - -"Some of the words used in church are amazingly obscure: what meaning -is there, for instance, in the words: 'The earth is God's and the -fulness thereof'? That is not Holy Scripture, but a kind of popular -scientific materialism." - -"But you explained the words somewhere," said Suler. - -"Many things are explained.... 'An explanation does not go up to the -hilt.'" - -And he gave a cunning little smile. - - -XXVII - -He likes putting difficult and malicious questions: - -What do you think of yourself? - -Do you love your wife? - -Do you think my son, Leo, has talent? - -How do you like Sophie Andreyevna?[1] - -Once he asked: "Are you fond of me, Alexey Maximovitch?" - -This is the maliciousness of a "bogatyr"[2]: Vaska Buslayev played -such pranks in his youth, mischievous fellow. He is experimenting, -all the time testing something, as if he were going to fight. It is -interesting, but not much to my liking. He is the devil, and I am still -a babe, and he should leave me alone. - -[Footnote 1: Tolstoi's wife.] - -[Footnote 1: A hero in Russian legend, brave, but wild and self-willed -like a child.] - - -XXVIII - -Perhaps peasant to him means merely--bad smell. He always feels it, and -involuntarily has to talk of it. - -Last night I told him of my battle with General Kornet's wife; he -laughed until he cried, and he got a pain in his side and groaned and -kept on crying out in a thin scream: - -"With the shovel! On the bottom with the shovel, eh? Right on the -bottom! Was it a broad shovel?" - -Then, after a pause, he said seriously: "It was generous in you to -strike her like that; any other man would have struck her on the head -for that. Very generous! You understood that she wanted you?" - -"I don't remember. I hardly think that I can have understood." - -"Well now! But it's obvious. Of course she wanted you." - -"I did not live for that then." - -"Whatever you may live for, it's all the same. You are evidently not -much of a lady's man. Anyone else in your place would have made his -fortune out of the situation, would have become a landed proprietor and -have ended by making one of a pair of drunkards." - -After a silence: - -"You are funny--don't be offended--very funny. And it's very strange -that you should still be good-natured when you might well be spiteful -... Yes, you might well be spiteful ... You're strong ... that's -good...." - -And after another silence, he added thoughtfully: "Your mind I don't -understand--it's a very tangled mind--but your heart is sensible ... -yes, a sensible heart." - -NOTE.--When I lived in Kazan, I entered the service of General Kornet's -wife as doorkeeper and gardener. She was a Frenchwoman, a general's -widow, a young woman, fat, and with the tiny feet of a little girl. -Her eyes were amazingly beautiful, restless and always greedily alert. -Before her marriage she was, I think, a huckstress or a cook or, -possibly, even a woman of the town. She would get drunk early in the -morning and come out in the yard or garden dressed only in a chemise -with an orange-coloured gown over it, in Tartar slippers made of red -morocco, and on her head a mane of thick hair. Her hair, carelessly -done, hung about her red cheeks and shoulders. A young witch! She used -to walk about the garden, humming French songs and watching me work, -and every now and then she would go to the kitchen window and call: - -"Pauline, give me something." - -"Something" always meant the same thing--a glass of wine with ice in it. - -In the basement of her house there lived three young ladies, -the Princesses D. G., whose mother was dead and whose father, a -Commissariat-General, had gone off elsewhere. General Kornet's widow -took a dislike to the girls and tried to get rid of them by doing every -kind of offensive thing to them. She spoke Russian badly, but swore -superbly, like an expert drayman. I very much disliked her attitude -towards these harmless girls--they looked so sad, frightened, and -defenceless. One afternoon, two of them were walking in the garden -when suddenly the General's widow appeared, drunk as usual, and began -to shout at them to drive them out of the garden. They began walking -silently away, but the General's widow stood in the gateway, completely -blocking it with her body like a cork, and started swearing at them -and using Russian words like a regular drayman. I asked her to stop -swearing and let the girls go out, but she shouted: "You, I know you! -You get through their window at night." - -I was angry, and, taking her by the shoulders, pushed her away from -the gate; but she broke away and, facing me, quickly undid her dress, -lifted up her chemise, and shouted:-- - -"I'm nicer than those rats." - -Then I lost my temper. I took her by the neck, turned her round, and -struck her with my shovel below the back, so that she skipped out of -the gate and ran across the yard, crying out three times in great -surprise: "O! O! O!" - -After that, I got my passport from her confidant, Pauline--also a -drunken but very wily woman--took my bundle under my arm, and left the -place; and the General's widow, standing at the window with a red shawl -in her hand, shouted:-- - -"I won't call the police--it's all right--listen--come back--don't be -afraid." - - -XXIX - -I asked him: "Do you agree with Poznyshiev[1] when he says that doctors -have destroyed and are destroying thousands and hundreds of thousands -of people?" - -"Are you very interested to know?" - -"Very." - -"Then I shan't tell you." - -And he smiled, playing with his thumbs. - -I remember in one of his stories he makes a comparison between a quack -village vet. and a doctor of medicine:-- - -"The words 'giltchak,' 'potchetchny,' bloodletting,'[2] are they not -precisely the same as nerves, rheumatism, organisms, etc.?" - -And this was written after Jenner, Behring, Pasteur. It is perversity! - - -[Footnote 1: In _Kreutzer Sonata._] - -[Footnote 2: Words used by quack vets, for the diseases of horses.] - - -XXX - -How strange that he is so fond of playing cards. He plays seriously, -passionately. His hands become nervous when he takes the cards up, -exactly as if he were holding live birds instead of inanimate pieces of -cardboard. - - -XXXI - -"Dickens said a very clever thing: 'Life is given to us on the definite -understanding that we boldly defend it to the last.' On the whole, -he was a sentimental, loquacious, and not very clever writer, but he -knew how to construct a novel as no one else could, certainly better -than Balzac. Someone has said: 'Many are possessed by the passion for -writing books, but few are ashamed of them afterwards.' Balzac was not -ashamed, nor was Dickens, and both of them wrote quite a number of bad -books. Still, Balzac is a genius. Or at any rate the thing which you -can only call genius...." - - -XXXIA - -[Someone brought Leo Tikhomirov's book, _Why I Ceased to be a -Revolutionary_: Leo Nicolayevitch took the book from the table, waved -it in the air, and said: "What he says here about political murder -is good, that there is no clear idea in that method. The idea, says -a frenzied murderer, can only be anarchical sovereignty of the -individual and contempt for society and for mankind. That is true, but -'anarchical sovereignty 'is a slip of the pen, it should have been -'monarchical.' That is a good and true idea; all the terrorists will -trip up over it--I mean the honest ones. The man who naturally loves -killing won't trip up. There is nothing for him to trip up over. He's -just a plain murderer, and has only accidentally become a terrorist."] - - -XXXII - -Sometimes he seems to be conceited and intolerant, like a Volga -preacher, and this is terrible in a man who is the sounding bell of -this world. Yesterday he said to me: - -"I am more of a mouzhik than you and I feel better in a mouzhik way." - -God, he ought not to boast of it, he must not! - - -XXXIII - -I read him some scenes from my play, _The Lower Depths;_ he listened -attentively and then asked: - -"Why do you write that?" - -I explained as best I could. - -"One always notices that you jump like a cock on to everything. And -more--you always want to paint all the grooves and cracks over with -your own paint. You remember that Andersen says: 'The gilt will -come off and the pig-skin will remain'; just as our peasants say: -'Everything will pass away, the truth alone will remain.' You'd much -better not put the plaster on, for you yourself will suffer for -it later. Again, your language is very skilful, with all kinds of -tricks--that's no good. You ought to write more simply; people speak -simply, even incoherently, and that's good. A peasant doesn't ask: 'Why -is a third more than a fourth, if four is always more than three,' as -one learned young lady asked. No tricks, please." - -He spoke irritably; clearly he disliked very much what I had read to -him. And after a silence, looking over my head, he said gloomily: - -"Your old man is not sympathetic, one does not believe in his goodness. -The actor is all right, he's good. You know _Fruits of Enlightenment_? -My cook there is rather like your actor. Writing plays is difficult. -But your prostitute also came off well, they must be like that. Have -you known many of them?" - -"I used to." - -"Yes, one can see that. Truth always shows itself. Most of what you say -comes out of yourself, and therefore you have no characters, and all -your people have the same face. I should think you don't understand -women; they don't come off with you. One does not remember them...." - -At this moment A. L.'s wife came in and called us to come to tea, and -he got up and went out very quickly, as if he were glad to end the -conversation. - - -XXXIV - -"What is the most terrible dream you have ever had?" Tolstoi asked me. - -I rarely have dreams and remember them badly, but two have remained in -my memory and probably will for the rest of my life. - -I dreamt once that I saw the sky scrofulous, putrescent, -greenish-yellow, and the stars in it were round, flat, without rays, -without lustre, like scabs on the skin of a diseased person. And there -glided across this putrescent sky slowly reddish forked lightning, -rather like a snake, and when it touched a star the star swelled -up into a ball and burst noiselessly, leaving behind it a darkish -spot, like a little smoke; and then the spot vanished quickly in the -bleared and liquid sky. Thus all the stars one after another burst -and perished, and the sky, growing darker and more horrible, at last -whirled upwards, bubbled and bursting into fragments began to fall -on my head in a kind of cold jelly, and in the spaces between the -fragments there appeared a shiny blackness as though of iron. Leo -Nicolayevitch said: "Now that comes from a learned book; you must have -read something on astronomy; hence the nightmare. And the other dream?" - -The other dream: a snowy plain, smooth like a sheet of paper; no -hillock, no tree, no bush anywhere, only--barely visible--a few rods -poked out from under the snow. And across the snow of this dead desert -from horizon to horizon there stretched a yellow strip of a hardly -distinguishable road, and over the road there marched slowly a pair of -grey felt top boots--empty. - -He raised his shaggy, were-wolf eyebrows, looked at me intently and -thought for a while. - -"That's terrible. Did you really dream that, you didn't invent it? But -there's something bookish in it also." - -And suddenly he got angry, and said, irritably, sternly, rapping his -knee with his finger: "But you're not a drinking man? It's unlikely -that you ever drank much. And yet there's something drunken in these -dreams. There was a German writer, Hoffmann, who dreamt that card -tables ran about the street, and all that sort of thing, but then he -was a drunkard--a 'calaholic,' as our literate coachmen say. Empty -boots marching--that's really terrible. Even if you did invent it, it's -good. Terrible." - -Suddenly he gave a broad smile, so that even his cheek bones beamed. - -"And imagine this: suddenly, in the Tverskaya street, there runs a card -table with its curved legs, its boards clap, clap, raising a chalky -dust, and you can even still see the numbers on the green cloth--excise -clerks playing whist on it for three days and nights on end--the table -could not bear it any longer and ran away." - -He laughed, and then, probably noticing that I was a little hurt by his -distrust of me: - -"Are you hurt because I thought your dreams bookish? Don't be annoyed; -sometimes, I know, one invents something without being aware of it, -something which one cannot believe, which can't possibly be believed, -and then one imagines that one dreamt it and did not invent it at all. -There was a story which an old landowner told. He dreamt that he was -walking in a wood and came out of it on to a steppe. On the steppe -he saw two hills, which suddenly turned into a woman's breasts, and -between them rose up a black face which, instead of eyes, had two moons -like white spots. The old man dreamt that he was standing between the -woman's legs, in front of him a deep, dark ravine, which sucked him in. -After the dream his hair began to grow grey and his hands to tremble, -and he went abroad to Doctor Kneip to take a water cure. But, really, -he must have seen something of the kind--he was a dissolute fellow." - -He patted me on the shoulder. - -"But you are neither a drunkard nor dissolute--how do you come to have -such dreams?" - -"I don't know." - -"We know nothing about ourselves." - -He sighed, screwed up his eyes, thought for a bit, and then added in a -low voice: "We know nothing." - -This evening, during our walk, he took my arm and said: - -"The boots are marching--terrible, eh? Quite empty--tiop, tiop--and the -snow scrunching. Yes, it's good; but you are very bookish, very. Don't -be cross, but it's bad and will stand in your way." - -I am scarcely more bookish than he, and at the time I thought him a -cruel rationalist despite all his pleasant little phrases. - - -XXXV - -At times he gives one the impression of having just arrived from some -distant country, where people think and feel differently and their -relations and language are different. He sits in a corner tired and -grey, as though the dust of another earth were on him, and he looks -attentively at everything with the look of a foreigner or of a dumb man. - -Yesterday, before dinner, he came into the drawing-room, just like -that, his thoughts far away. He sat down on the sofa, and, after a -moment's silence, suddenly said, swaying his body a little, rubbing the -palm of his hand on his knee, and wrinkling up his face: - -"Still that is not all--not all." - -Someone, always stolidly stupid as a flat-iron, asked: "What do you -say?" - -He looked at him fixedly, and then, bending forward and looking on the -terrace where I was sitting with Doctor Nikitin and Yelpatievsky, he -said: "What are you talking about?" - -"Plehve." - -"Plehve ... Plehve ...," he repeated musingly after a pause, as though -he heard the name for the first time. Then he shook himself like a -bird, and said, with a faint smile: - -"To-day from early morning I have had a silly thing running in my -head; someone once told me that he saw the following epitaph in a -cemetery: - - 'Beneath this stone there rests Ivan Yegoriev; - A tanner by trade, he always wetted hides. - His work was honest, his heart good, but, behold, - He passed away, leaving his business to his wife. - He was not yet old and might still have done a lot of work. - But God took him away to the life of paradise on the night - Friday to Saturday in Passion week ...' - -and something like that...." He was silent, and then, nodding his -head and smiling faintly, added: "In human stupidity when it is not -malicious, there is something very touching, even beautiful.... There -always is." - -They called us to come to dinner. - - -XXXVI - -"I do not like people when they are drunk, but I know some who become -interesting when they are tipsy, who acquire what is not natural to -them in their sober state--wit, beauty of thought, alertness, and -richness of language. In such cases I am ready to bless wine." - -Suler tells how he was once walking with Leo Nicolayevitch in Tverskaya -Street when Tolstoi noticed in the distance two soldiers of the Guards. -The metal of their accoutrements shone in the sun; their spurs -jingled; they kept step like one man; their faces, too, shone with the -self-assurance of strength and youth. - -Tolstoi began to grumble at them: "What pompous stupidity! Like animals -trained by the whip...." - -But when the guardsmen came abreast with him, he stopped, followed them -caressingly with his eyes, and said enthusiastically: "How handsome! -Old Romans, eh, Liovushka? Their strength and beauty! O Lord! How -charming it is when man is handsome, how very charming!" - - - -_A LETTER_ - - -I have just posted a letter to you--telegrams have arrived telling of -"Tolstoi's flight," and now once more one with you in thought I write -again. - -Probably all I want to say about the news will seem to you confused, -perhaps even harsh and ill-tempered, but you will forgive me--I am -feeling as though I had been gripped by the throat and was being -strangled. - -I had many long conversations with him; when he was living at Gaspra -in the Crimea, I often went to him and he liked coming to me; I have -studied his books lovingly; it seems to me that I have the right to -say what I think of him, even if it be bold and differ widely from the -general opinion. I know as well as others that no man is more worthy -than he of the name of genius; more complicated, contradictory, and -great in everything--yes, yes, in everything. Great--in some curious -sense wide, indefinable by words--there is something in him which made -me desire to cry aloud to everyone: "Look what a wonderful man is -living on the earth." For he is, so to say, universally and above all a -man, a man of mankind. - -But what always repelled me in him was that stubborn despotic -inclination to turn the life of Count Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi into -"the saintly life of our blessed father, boyard Leo." As you know, -he has for long intended to suffer; he expressed his regret to E. -Soloviov, to Suler, that he had not succeeded, but he wanted to -suffer simply, not out of a natural desire to test the resistance of -his will, but with the obvious and, I repeat, the despotic intention -of increasing the influence of his religious ideas, the weight of -his teaching, in order to make his preaching irresistible, to make -it holy in the eyes of man through his suffering, to force them to -accept it; you understand, to force them. For he realizes that that -preaching is not sufficiently convincing; in his diary you will, some -day, read good instances of scepticism applied by him to his own -preaching and personality. He knows that "martyrs and sufferers, with -rare exceptions, are despots and tyrants"--he knows everything! And yet -he says to himself, "Were I to suffer for my ideas they would have a -greater influence." This in him always repelled me, for I cannot help -feeling that it is an attempt to use violence to me--a desire to get -hold of my conscience, to dazzle it with the glory of righteous blood, -to put on my neck the yoke of a dogma. - -He always greatly exalted immortality on the other side of life, but -he preferred it on this side. A writer, national in the truest and -most complete sense, he embodied in his great soul all the defects -of his nation, all the mutilations caused us by the ordeals of our -history; his misty preaching of "non-activity," of "non-resistance to -evil"--the doctrine of passivism--this is all the unhealthy ferment -of the old Russian blood, envenomed by Mongolian fatalism and almost -chemically hostile to the West with its untiring creative labour, -with its active and indomitable resistance to the evil of life. -What is called Tolstoi's "anarchism," essentially and fundamentally, -expresses our Slav anti-stateism, which, again, is really a national -characteristic and desire, ingrained in our flesh from old times, -to scatter nomadically. Up to now we have indulged that desire -passionately, as you and everyone else know. We Russians know it, -too, but we break away, always along the line of least resistance; we -see that this is pernicious, but still we crawl further and further -away from one another--and these mournful cockroach journeyings are -called "the history of Russia," of a State which has been established -almost incidentally, mechanically, to the surprise of the majority of -its honest-minded citizens, by the forces of the Variags, Tartars, -Baltic Germans, and petty constables. To their surprise, because all -the time "scattering," and only when we reached places beyond which -we could find nothing worse--for we could go no further--well, then -we stopped and settled down. This is the lot, the destiny to which we -are doomed--to settle in the snows and marshes by the side of the wild -Erza, Tchood, Merey, Vess, and Muroma. Yet men arose who realized that -light must come to us not from the East but from the West; and now he, -the crown of our ancient history, wishes, consciously or unconsciously, -to stretch himself like a vast mountain across our nation's path to -Europe, to the active life which sternly demands of man the supreme -effort of his spiritual forces. His attitude towards science is, too, -certainly national: one sees magnificently reflected in him the old -Russian village scepticism which comes from ignorance. Everything is -national in him, and all his preaching is a reaction from the past, an -atavism which we had already begun to shake off and overcome. - -Think of his letter "The Intelligenzia, the State, the People," written -in 1905--what a pernicious, malignant thing it is! You can hear in it -the sectarian's "I told you so." At the time I wrote an answer to him, -based on his own words to me that he had long since forfeited the right -to speak of and on behalf of the Russian people, for I am a witness of -his lack of desire to listen to and understand the people who came to -talk to him soul to soul. My letter was bitter, and in the end I did -not send it to him. - -Well, now he is probably making his last assault in order to give to -his ideas the highest possible significance. Like Vassily Buslayev, he -usually loved these assaults, but always so that he might assert his -holiness and obtain a halo. That is dictatorial, although his teaching -is justified by the ancient history of Russia and by his own sufferings -of genius. Holiness is attained by flirting with sin, by subduing the -will to live. People do desire to live, but he tries to persuade them: -"That's all nonsense, our earthly life." It is very easy to persuade a -Russian of this; he is a lazy creature who loves beyond anything else -to find an excuse for his own inactivity. On the whole, of course, a -Russian is not a Platon Karatayev, nor an Akim, nor a Bezonkhy, nor -a Neklyudov; all these men were created by history and nature, not -exactly on Tolstoi's pattern, he only improved on them in order more -thoroughly to support his teaching. But, undeniably, Russia as a whole -is--Tiulin above and Oblomov below. For the Tiulin above look at the -year 1905, and for the Oblomov below look at Count A. N. Tolstoi, I. -Bunin, look at everything round about you. Beasts and swindlers--we -can leave them out of consideration, though our beast is exceedingly -national--what a filthy coward he is for all his cruelty. Swindlers, of -course, are international. - -In Leo Nicolayevitch there is much which at times roused in me a -feeling very like hatred, and this hatred fell upon my soul with -crushing weight. His disproportionately overgrown individuality is -a monstrous phenomenon, almost ugly, and there is in him something -of Sviatogor, the bogatir, whom the earth can't hold. Yes, he _is_ -great. I am deeply convinced that, beyond all that he speaks of, there -is much which he is silent about, even in his diary--he is silent, -and, probably, will never tell it to anyone. That "something" only -occasionally and in hints slipped through into his conversation, and -hints of it are also to be found in the two note-books of his diary -which he gave me and L. A. Sulerzhizky to read; it seems to me a kind -of "negation of all affirmations," the deepest and most evil nihilism -which has sprung from the soil of an infinite and unrelieved despair, -from a loneliness which, probably, no one but he has experienced with -such terrifying clearness. I often thought him to be a man who in the -depths of his soul is stubbornly indifferent to people: he is so much -above and beyond them that they seem to him like midges and their -activities ridiculous and miserable. He has gone too far away from them -into some desert, and there solitary, with the highest effort of all -the force of his spirit, he closely examines into "the most essential," -into death. - -All his life he feared and hated death, all his life there throbbed in -his soul the "Arsamaxian terror" --must he die? The whole world, all -the earth looks toward him; from China, India, America, from everywhere -living, throbbing threads stretch out to him; his soul is for all and -for ever. Why should not Nature make an exception to her law, give to -one man physical immortality--why not? He is certainly too rational -and sensible to believe in miracles, but, on the other hand, he is a -bogatir, an explorer, and, like a young recruit, wild and headstrong -from fear and despair in face of the unknown barrack. I remember in -Gaspra he read Leo Shestov's book _Good and Evil in the Teaching of -Nietzsche and Tolstoi_, and, when Anton Tchekhov remarked that he did -not like the book, Tolstoi said: "I thought it amusing. It's written -swaggeringly, but it's all right and interesting. I'm sure I like -cynics when they are sincere. Now he says: 'Truth is not wanted'; quite -true, what should he want truth for? For he will die all the same." - -And, evidently seeing that his words had not been understood, he added -with a quick smile:-- - -"If a man has learned to think, no matter what he may think about;, he -is always thinking of his own death. All philosophers were like that. -And what truths can there be, if there is death?" - -He went on to say that truth is the same for all --love of God; but -on this subject he spoke coldly and wearily. After lunch on the -terrace, he took up the book again, and, finding the passage, "Tolstoi, -Dostoevsky, Nietzsche could not live without an answer to their -questions, and for them any answer was better than none," he laughed -and said: - -"What a daring coiffeur; he says straight that I deceived myself, -and that means that I deceived others too. That is the obvious -conclusion...." - -"Why coiffeur?" asked Suler. - -"Well," he answered thoughtfully, "it just came into my mind--he is -fashionable, chic, and I remembered the coiffeur from Moscow at a -wedding of his peasant uncle in the village. He has the finest manners -and he dances fashionably, and so he despises everyone." - -I repeat this conversation, I think, almost literally; it is most -memorable for me, and I even wrote it down, as I did many other things -which struck me. Sulerzhizky and I wrote down many things which -Tolstoi said, but Suler lost his notes when he came to me at Arsamas: -he was habitually careless, and although he loved Leo Nicolayevitch -like a woman, he behaved towards him rather strangely, almost like -a superior. I have also mislaid my notes somewhere, and cannot find -them; someone in Russia must have got them. I watched Tolstoi very -attentively, because I was looking for--I am still looking for, and -will until my death--a man with an active and a living faith. And -also because once Anton Tchekhov, speaking of our lack of culture, -complained: - -"Goethe's words were all recorded, but Tolstoi's thoughts are being -lost in the air. That, my dear fellow, is intolerably Russian. -After his death they will bestir themselves, will begin to write -reminiscences, and will lie." - -But to return to Shestov. "'It is impossible,' he says, 'to live -looking at horrible ghosts,' but how does _he_ know whether it's -horrible or not? If he knew, if he saw ghosts, he would not write this -nonsense, but would do something serious, what Buddha did all his life." - -Someone remarked that Shestov was a Jew. - -"Hardly," said Leo Nicolayevitch doubtfully. - -"No, he is not like a Jew; there are no disbelieving Jews, you can't -name one.... no." - -It seemed sometimes as though this old sorcerer were playing with -Death, coquetting with her, trying somehow to deceive her, saying: "I -am not afraid of thee, I love thee, I long for thee." - -And at the same time peering at Death with his keen little eyes: "What -art thou like? What follows thee hereafter? Wilt thou destroy me -altogether, or will something in me go on living?" - -A strange impression used to be produced by his words: "I am happy, I -am awfully happy, I am too happy." And then immediately afterwards: -"To suffer." To suffer--that, too, was true in him; I don't doubt for -a second that he, only half convalescent, would have been really glad -to be put into prison, to be banished--in a word, to embrace a martyr's -crown. Would not martyrdom probably in some measure justify death, -make her more understandable, acceptable from the external, from the -formal point of view? But he was never happy, never and nowhere; I am -certain of that: neither "in the books of wisdom," nor "on the back -of a horse," nor "in the arms of a woman" did he experience the full -delights of "earthly paradise." He is too rational for that and knows -life and people too well. Here are some more of his words: - -"The Kaliph Abdurahman had during his life fourteen happy days, but -I am sure I have not had so many. And this is because I have never -lived--I cannot live--for myself, for my own self; I live for show, for -people." - -When we left, Anton Tchekhov said to me: "I don't believe that he was -not happy." But I believe it. He was not. Though it is not true that he -lived for show. Yes, what he himself did not need, he gave to people -as though they were beggars; he liked to compel them, to compel them -to read, walk, be vegetarians, love the peasants, and believe in the -infallibility of the rational-religious reflections of Leo Tolstoi. -People must be given something which will either satisfy or amuse -them, and then let them be off. Let them leave a man in peace, to his -habitual, tormenting, and sometimes cosy loneliness in face of the -bottomless pit of the problem of "the essential." - -All Russian preachers, with the exception of Avvakum and, perhaps, -Tikhon Zadonsky, are cold men, for they did not possess an active and -living faith. When I was writing Luka in _The Lower Depths_, I wanted -to describe an old man like that: he is interested in "every solution," -but not in people; coming inevitably in contact with them, he consoles -them, but only in order that they may leave him in peace. And all -the philosophy, all the preaching of such men, is alms bestowed by -them with a veiled aversion, and there sounds behind their preaching -words which are beggarly and melancholy: "Get out! Love God or your -neighbour, but get out! Curse God, love the stranger, but leave me -alone! Leave me alone, for I am a man and I am doomed to death." - -Alas, so it is and so it will be. It could not and cannot be otherwise, -for men have become worn out, exhausted, terribly separated, and -they are all chained to a loneliness which dries up the soul. If Leo -Nicolayevitch had had a reconciliation with the Church, it would not -have at all surprised me. The thing would have had a logic of its own; -all men are equally insignificant, even Archbishops. In fact, it would -not have been a reconciliation, strictly speaking; for him personally -the act would have been only logical: "I forgive those who hate me." It -would have been a Christian act, and behind it there would have hidden -a quick, ironical, little smile, which would be understood as the way -in which a wise man retaliates on the fools. - -What I write is not what I want to say; I cannot express it properly. -There is a dog howling in my soul and I have a foreboding of some -misfortune. Yes, newspapers have just arrived and it is already -clear: you at home are beginning to "create a legend": idlers and -good-for-nothings have gone on living and have now produced a saint. -Only think how pernicious it is for the country just at this moment, -when the heads of disillusioned men are bowed down, the souls of the -majority empty, and the souls of the best full of sorrow. Lacerated and -starving, they long for a legend. They long so much for alleviation -of pain, for the soothing of torment. And they will create just what -he desires, but what is not wanted--the life of a holy man and saint; -but surely he is great and holy because he is a man, a madly and -tormentingly beautiful man; a man of the whole of mankind. I am somehow -contradicting myself in this, but it does not matter. He is a man -seeking God, not for himself, but for men, so that God may leave him, -the man, alone in the peace of the desert chosen by him. He gave us the -Gospels in order that we might forget the contradictions in Christ; he -simplified Christ's image, smoothing away the militant elements and -bringing into the foreground the humble "will of Him that sent Him." -No doubt Tolstoi's Gospel is the more easily accepted because it is -"soothing to the malady" of the Russian people. He had to give them -something, for they complain and trouble the earth with their groaning -and distract him from "the essential." But _War and Peace_ and all the -other things of the same kind will not soothe the sorrow and despair -of the grey Russian land. Of _War and Peace_ he himself said: "Without -false modesty, it is like the Iliad." M. Y. Tchaikovsky heard from his -lips exactly the same appreciation of _Childhood_, _Youth._ - -Journalists have just arrived from Naples; one even hurried from Rome. -They ask me to say what I think of Tolstoi's "flight"--"flight" is the -word they use. I would not talk to them. You, of course, understand -that inwardly I am terribly disturbed; I do not want to see Tolstoi a -saint; let him remain a sinner close to the heart of the all-sinful -world, even close to the heart of each one of us. Poushkin and -he--there is nothing more sublime or dearer to us. - -Leo Tolstoi is dead. - -A telegram came containing the commonest of words--is dead. - -It struck me to the heart; I cried with pain and anger, and now, half -crazy, I imagine him as I know and saw him--I am tormented by a desire -to speak with him. I imagine him in his coffin--he lies like a smooth -stone at the bottom of a stream, and in his grey beard, I am sure, is -quietly hidden that aloof, mysterious, little smile. And at last his -hands are folded peacefully--they have finished their hard task. - -I remember his keen eyes--they saw everything through and through--and -the movements of his fingers, as though they were perpetually modelling -something out of the air, his talk, his jokes, his favourite peasant -words, his elusive voice. And I see what a vast amount of life was -embodied in the man, how inhumanly clever he was, how terrifying. - -I once saw him as, perhaps, no one has ever seen him. I was walking -over to him at Gaspra along the coast, and behind Yussupov's estate, -on the shore among the stones I saw his smallish, angular figure in a -grey, crumpled, ragged suit and crumpled hat. He was sitting with his -head on his hands, the wind blowing the silvery hairs of his beard -through his fingers: he was looking into the distance out to sea, and -the little greenish waves rolled up obediently to his feet and fondled -them as though they were telling something about themselves to the old -magician. It was a day of sun and cloud, and the shadows of the clouds -glided over the stones, and with the stones the old man grew now bright -and now dark. The boulders were large, riven by cracks, and covered -with smelling sea-weed: there had been a high tide. He, too, seemed to -me like an old stone come to life, who knows all the beginnings and -the ends of things, who considers when and what will be the end of -the stones, the grasses of the earth, of the waters of the sea, and of -the whole universe from the pebble to the sun. And the sea is part of -his soul, and everything around him comes from him, out of him. In the -musing motionlessness of the old man I felt something fateful, magical, -something which went down into the darkness beneath him and stretched -up, like a searchlight, into the blue emptiness above the earth -as -though it were he, his concentrated will, which was drawing the waves -to him and repelling them, which was ruling the movements of cloud and -shadow, which was stirring the stones to life. Suddenly, in a moment -of madness, I felt it is possible, he will get up, wave his hand, and -the sea will become solid and glassy, the stones will begin to move and -cry out, everything around him will come to life, acquire a voice, and -speak in their different voices of themselves, of him, against him. I -cannot express in words what I felt rather than thought at that moment; -in my soul there was joy and fear, and then everything blended in one -happy thought: "I am not an orphan on the earth so long as this man -lives on it." - -Then I walked on tip-toe away in order that the pebbles might not -scrunch under my feet, not wishing to distract his thoughts. And now -I feel I am an orphan, I cry as I write--never before have I cried so -unconsolably and in such bitter despair. I do not know whether I loved -him; but does it matter, love of him or hatred? He always roused in -me sensations and agitations which were enormous, fantastic; even the -unpleasant and hostile feelings which he aroused were of a kind not to -oppress, but rather to explode the soul: they made it more sensitive -and capacious. He was grand when, with his boots scraping over the -ground, as though he were imperiously smoothing its unevenness, he -suddenly appeared from somewhere, from behind a door or out of some -corner, and came towards you with the short, light, quick step of a -man accustomed to walk a great deal on the earth. With his thumbs in -his belt he would stop for a second, looking round quickly with a -comprehensive glance, a glance which at once took in anything new and -instantly absorbed the meaning of everything. - -"How do you do?" - -I always translated these words into: "How do you do? There's pleasure -for me, and for you there's not much sense in it--but still, how do you -do?" - -He would come out looking rather small, and immediately everyone -round him would become smaller than he. A peasant's beard, rough but -extraordinary hands, simple clothes, all this external, comfortable -democratism deceived many people, and I often saw how Russians who -judge people by their clothes--an old slavish habit--began to pour out -a stream of their odious "frankness," which is more properly called -"the familiarity of the pig-sty." - -"Ah, you are one of us! That's what you are. At last, by God's grace, -I am face to face with the greatest son of our native land. Hail for -ever. I bow low to you." - -That is a sample of Muscovite Russian, simple and hearty, and here is -another, but "free-thinkerish": - -"Leo Nicolayevitch, though I disagree with your religious-philosophical -views, I deeply respect in your person the greatest of artists." - -And suddenly, under his peasant's beard, under his democratic crumpled -blouse, there would rise the old Russian _bariny_ the grand aristocrat: -then the noses of the simple-hearted visitor, educated and all the -rest, instantly became blue with intolerable cold. It was pleasant to -see this creature of the purest blood, to watch the noble grace of -his gestures, the proud reserve of his speech, to hear the exquisite -pointedness of his murderous words. He showed just as much of the -_barin_ as was needed for these serfs, and when they called out the -_barin_ in Tolstoi it appeared naturally and easily and crushed them so -that they shrivelled up and whined. - -One day I was returning from Yasnaya Polyana to Moscow with one of -these "simple-hearted" Russians, a Moscow man, and for a long time -he could not recover his breath, but kept on smiling woefully and -repeating in astonishment: "Well, well, that was a cold bath. He's -severe ... pooh!" - -And in the middle of it all he exclaimed, apparently with regret: -"And I thought he was really an anarchist. Everyone keeps on saying: -Anarchist, anarchist,' and I believe it...." - -The man was a large, rich manufacturer, with a great belly, and a face -the colour of raw meat--why did he want Tolstoi to be an anarchist? One -of the "profound mysteries" of the Russian soul! - -When Leo Nicolayevitch wished to please, he could do so more easily -than a clever and beautiful woman. Imagine a company of people of -all kinds sitting in his room: the Grand Duke Nicolay Mikhailovitch, -the house-painter Ilya, a social-democrat from Yalta, the stundist -Patzuk, a musician, a German, the manager of the estates of Countess -Kleinmichel, the poet Bulgakov, and all look at him with the same -enamoured eyes. He explains to them the teaching of Lao-Tse, and he -seems to me an extraordinary man-orchestra, possessing the faculty of -playing several instruments at the same time, a brass trumpet, a drum, -harmonium, and flute. I used to look at him just as the others did. And -now I long to see him once more--and I shall never see him again. - -Journalists have come asserting that a telegram has been received -in Rome "denying the rumour of Tolstoi's death." They bustled and -chattered, redundantly expressing their sympathy with Russia. The -Russian newspapers leave no room for doubt. - -To lie to him, even out of pity, was impossible; even when he was -seriously ill, one could not pity him. It would be banal to pity a man -like him. They ought to be taken care of, cherished, not loaded with -the wordy dust of worn-out, soulless words. - -He used to ask: "You don't like me?" and one had to answer: "No, I -don't." - -"You don't love me?"--"No, to-day I don't love you." - -In his questions he was merciless, in his answers reserved, as becomes -a wise man. - -He used to speak with amazing beauty of the past, and particularly of -Turgeniev; of Fet always with a good-natured smile and always something -amusing, of Nekrassov coldly and sceptically; but of all writers -exactly as if they were his children and he, the father, knew all their -faults, and--there you are! - -He would point out their faults before their merits, and every time he -blamed someone it seemed to me that he was giving alms to his listeners -because of their poverty; to listen to him then made one feel awkward, -one's eyes fell before his sharp little smile and--nothing remained in -one's memory. - -Once he argued fiercely that G. Y. Uspensky wrote in the Tula language, -and had no talent at all. And later I heard him say to Anton Pavlovitch -Tchekhov: "He (Uspensky) is a writer! In the power of his sincerity he -recalls Dostoevsky, only Dostoevsky went in for politics and coquetted, -while Uspensky is more simple and sincere. If he had believed in God, -he would have been a sectarian." - -"But you said he was a Tula writer and had no talent." - -He drew his shaggy brows down over his eyes and said: "He wrote badly. -What kind of language does he use? There are more punctuation marks -than words. Talent is love. One who loves is talented. Look at lovers, -they are all talented." - -Of Dostoevsky he spoke reluctantly, constrainedly, evading or -repressing something: "He ought to have made himself acquainted with -the teaching of Confucius or the Buddhists; that would have calmed -him down. That is the chief thing which everyone should know. He was -a man of rebellious flesh; when angry, bumps would suddenly rise on -his bald head; and his ears would move. He felt a great deal, but he -thought poorly; it is from the Fourierists, from Butashevitch and the -others, that he learnt to think. And afterwards all his life long he -hated them. There was something Jewish in his blood. He was suspicious -without reason, ambitious, heavy and unfortunate. It is curious that he -is so much read. I can't understand why. It is all painful and useless, -because all those Idiots, Adolescents, Raskolnikovs, and the rest of -them, they are not real; it is all much simpler, more understandable. -It's a pity people don't read Lieskov, he's a real writer--have you -read him?" - -"Yes, I like him very much, especially his language." - -"He knew the language marvellously, even the tricks. Strange that you -should like him; somehow you are not Russian, your thoughts are not -Russian -is it all right, you're not hurt at my saying that r I am an -old man, and, perhaps, I can no longer understand modern literature, -but it seems to me that it is all not Russian. They begin to write a -curious kind of verse; I don't know what these poems are or what they -mean. One has to learn to write poetry from Poushkin, Tiutchev, Fet. -Now you"--he turned to Tchekhov--"you are Russian. Yes, very, very -Russian." - -And smiling affectionately, he put his hand on Tchekhov's shoulder; -and the latter became uncomfortable and began in a low voice to mutter -something about his bungalow and the Tartars. - -He loved Tchekhov, and, when he looked at him, his eyes were tender -and seemed almost to stroke Anton Pavlovitch's face. Once, when Anton -Pavlovitch was walking on the lawn with Alexandra Lvovna, Tolstoi, who -at the time was still ill and was sitting in a chair on the terrace, -seemed to stretch towards them, saying in a whisper: "Ah, what a -beautiful, magnificent man: modest and quiet like a girl! And he walks -like a girl. He's simply wonderful." - -One evening, in the twilight, half closing his eyes and moving his -brows, he read a variant of the scene in _Father Sergius_, where the -woman goes to seduce the hermit: he read it through to the end, and -then, raising his head and shutting his eyes, he said distinctly: "The -old man wrote it well, well." - -It came out with such amazing simplicity, his pleasure in its beauty -was so sincere, that I shall never forget the delight which it gave me -at the time, a delight which I could not--did not know how to express, -but which I could only suppress by a tremendous effort. My heart -stopped beating for a moment, and then everything around me seemed to -become fresh and revivified. - -One must have heard him speak in order to understand the extraordinary, -indefinable beauty of his speech; it was, in a sense, incorrect, -abounding in repetitions of the same word, saturated with village -simplicity. The effect of his words did not come only from the -intonation and the expression of his face, but from the play and light -in his eyes, the most eloquent eyes I have ever seen. In his two eyes -Leo Nicolayevitch possessed a thousand eyes. - -Once Suler, Sergey Lvovitch, Tchekhov, and someone else, were sitting -in the park and talking about women; he listened in silence for a long -time, and then suddenly said: - -"And I will tell the truth about women, when I have one foot in the -grave--I shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me, and -say, 'Do what you like now.'" The look he gave us was so wild, so -terrifying that we all fell silent for a while. - -He had in him, I think, the inquisitive, mischievous wildness of a -Vaska Buslayev, and also something of the stubbornness of soul of the -Protopop Avvakum, while above or at his side lay hidden the scepticism -of a Tchaadayev. The Avvakumian element harried and tormented with its -preachings the artist in him; the Novgorod wildness upset Shakespeare -and Dante, while the Tchaadayevian element scoffed at his soul's -amusements and, by the way, at its agonies. And the old Russian man in -him dealt a blow at science and the State, the Russian driven to the -passivity of anarchism by the barrenness of all his efforts to build up -a more human life. - -Strange! This Buslayev characteristic in Tolstoi was perceived through -some mysterious intuition by Olaf Gulbranson, the caricaturist -of Simplicissimus: look closely at his drawing and you will see -how startlingly he has got the likeness of the real Tolstoi, what -intellectual daring there is in that face with its veiled and hidden -eyes, for which nothing is sacred and which believe "neither in a -sneeze, nor a dream, nor the cawing of a bird." - -The old magician stands before me, alien to all, a solitary traveller -through all the deserts of thought in search of an all-embracing truth -which he has not found--I look at him and, although I feel sorrow -for the loss, I feel pride at having seen the man, and that pride -alleviates my pain and grief. - -It was curious to see Leo Nicolayevitch among "Tolstoyans"; there -stands a noble belfry and its bell sounds untiringly over the whole -world, while round about run tiny, timorous dogs whining at the bell -and distrustfully looking askance at one another as though to say, "Who -howled best?" I always thought that these people infected the Yassnaya -Polyana house, as well as the great house of Countess Panin, with a -spirit of hypocrisy, cowardice, mercenary and self-seeking pettiness -and legacy-hunting. The "Tolstoyans" have something in common with -those friars who wander in all the dark corners of Russia, carrying -with them dogs' bones and passing them off as relics, selling "Egyptian -darkness" and the "little tears of Our Lady." One of these apostles, I -remember, at Yassnaya Polyana refused to eat eggs so as not to wrong -the hens, but at Tula railway-station he greedily devoured meat, -saying: "The old fellow does exaggerate." - -Nearly all of them like to moan and kiss one another; they all have -boneless perspiring hands and lying eyes. At the same time they are -practical fellows and manage their earthly affairs cleverly. - -Leo Nicolayevitch, of course, well understood the value of the -"Tolstoyans," and so did Sulerzhizky, whom Tolstoi loved tenderly and -whom he always spoke of with a kind of youthful ardour and fervour. -Once one of those "Tolstoyans" at Yassnaya Polyana explained eloquently -how happy his life had become and how pure his soul after he accepted -Tolstoy's teaching. Leo Nicolayevitch leant over and said to me in -a low voice: "He's lying all the time, the rogue, but he does it to -please me...." - -Many tried to please him, but I did not observe that they did it -well or with any skill. He rarely spoke to me on his usual subjects -of universal forgiveness, loving one's neighbour, the Gospels, and -Buddhism, evidently because he realized at once that all that would not -"go down" with me. I greatly appreciated this. - -When he liked he could be extraordinarily charming, sensitive, and -tactful; his talk was fascinatingly simple and elegant, but sometimes -it was painfully unpleasant to listen to him. I always disliked what -he said about women--it was unspeakably "vulgar," and there was in -his words something artificial, insincere, and at the same time very -personal. It seemed as if he had once been hurt, and could neither -forget nor forgive. The evening when I first got to know him, he -took me into his study--it was at Khamovniki in Moscow--and, making -me sit opposite to him, began to talk about _Varienka Oliessova_ and -of _Twenty-Six and One_. I was overwhelmed by his tone and lost my -head, he spoke so plainly and brutally, arguing that in a healthy -girl chastity is not natural. "If a girl who has turned fifteen is -healthy, she desires to be touched and embraced. Her mind is still -afraid of the unknown and of what she does not understand -that is what -they call chastity and purity. But her flesh is already aware that -the incomprehensible is right, lawful, and, in spite of the mind, it -demands fulfilment of the law. Now you describe Varienka Oliessova as -healthy, but her feelings are anaemic--that is not true to life." - -Then he began to speak about the girl in _Twenty-six and One_, using a -stream of indecent words with a simplicity which seemed to me cynical -and even offended me. Later I came to see that he used unmentionable -words only because he found them more precise and pointed, but at the -time it was unpleasant to me to listen to him. I made no reply, and -suddenly he became attentive and kindly and began asking me about my -life, what I was studying, and what I read. - -"I am told that you are very well read; is that true? Is Korolenko a -musician?" - -"I believe not; but I'm not sure." - -"You don't know? Do you like his stories?" - -"I do very much." - -"It is the contrast. He is lyrical and you haven't got that. Have you -read Weltmann?" - -"Yes." - -"Isn't he a good writer, clever, exact, and with no exaggeration? He -is sometimes better than Gogol. He knew Balzac. And Gogol imitated -Marlinsky." - -When I said that Gogol was probably influenced by Hoffmann, Stern, -and perhaps Dickens, he glanced at me and asked: "Have you read that -somewhere? No? It isn't true. Gogol hardly knew Dickens. But you must -clearly have read a great deal: now look here, it's dangerous. Kolzov -ruined himself by it." - -When he accompanied me to the door, he embraced and kissed me and said: -"You are a real mouzhik. You will find it difficult to live among -writers, but never mind, don't be afraid, always say what you feel even -if it be rude--it doesn't matter. Sensible people will understand." - -I had two impressions from this first meeting: I was glad and proud -to have seen Tolstoi, but his conversation reminded me a little of -an examination, and in a sense I did not see in him the author of -_Cossacks, Kholstomier, War and Peace_, but a _barin_ who, making -allowances for me, considered it necessary to speak to me in the common -language, the language of the street and market-place. That upset my -idea of him, an idea which was deeply rooted and had become dear to me. - -It was at Yassnaya Polyana that I saw him again. It was an overcast, -autumn day with a drizzle of rain, and he put on a heavy overcoat -and high leather boots and took me for a walk in the birch wood. He -jumped the ditches and pools like a boy, shook the rain-drops off -the branches, and gave me a superb account of how Fet had explained -Schopenhauer to him in this wood. He stroked the damp, satin trunks of -the birches lovingly with his hand and said: "Lately I read a poem-- - - The mushrooms are gone, but in the hollows - Is the heavy smell of mushroom dampness.... - -Very good, very true." - -Suddenly a hare got up under our feet. Leo Nicolayevitch started up -excited, his face lit up, and he whooped like a real old sportsman. -Then, looking at me with a curious little smile, he broke into a -sensible, human laugh. He was wonderfully charming at that moment. - -Another time he was looking at a hawk in the park: it was hovering over -the cattle-shed, making wide circles suspended in the air, moving its -wings very slightly as if undecided whether or not the moment to strike -had come. Leo Nicolayevitch stood up shading his eyes with his hand and -murmured with excitement: "The rogue is going for our chickens. Now, -now ... it's coming ... O, he's afraid. The groom is there, isn't he? -I'll call the groom...." - -And he shouted to the groom. When he shouted, the hawk was scared, -swept upwards, swung away, and disappeared. Leo Nicolayevitch sighed, -apparently reproaching himself, and said: "I should not have shouted; -he would have struck all the same...." - -Once in telling him about Tiflis, I mentioned the name of V. V. -Flerovsky-Bervi. "Did you know him?" Leo Nicolayevitch asked with -interest: "Tell me, what is he like?" - -I told him about Flerovsky: tall, long-bearded, thin, with very large -eyes; how he used to wear a long, sail-cloth blouse, and how, armed -with a bundle of rice, cooked in red wine, tied in his belt, and an -enormous linen umbrella, he wandered with me on the mountain paths -of Trans-Caucasia; how once on a narrow path we met a buffalo and -prudently retreated, threatening the brute with the open umbrella, and, -every time we stepped back, in danger of falling over the precipice. -Suddenly I noticed that there were tears in Tolstoi's eyes, and this -confused me and I stopped. - -"Never mind," he said, "go on, go on. It's pleasure at hearing about a -good man. I imagined him just like that, unique. Of all the radicals he -is the most mature and clever; in his _Alphabet_ he proves conclusively -that all our civilization is barbarian, that culture is the work of the -peaceful and weak, not the strong, nations, and that the struggle for -existence is a lying invention by which it is sought to justify evil. -You, of course, don't agree with this? But Daudet agrees, you know, you -remember his Paul Astier?" - -"But how would you reconcile Flerovsky's theory, say, with the part -played by the Normans in the history of Europe?" - -"The Normans? That's another thing." - -If he did not want to answer, he would always say "That's another -thing." - -It always seemed to me--and I do not think I was mistaken--that Leo -Nicolayevitch was not very fond of talking about literature, but was -vitally interested in the personality of an author. The questions: "Do -you know him? What is he like? Where was he born?" I often heard in his -mouth. And nearly all his opinions would throw some curious light upon -a man. - -Of V.K. he said thoughtfully: "He is not a Great Russian, and so he -must see our life better and more truly than we do." Of Anton Tchekhov, -whom he loved dearly: "His medicine gets in his way; if he were not -a doctor, he would be a still better writer." Of one of the younger -writers: "He pretends to be an Englishman, and in that character a -Moscow man has the least success." To me he once said: "You are an -inventor: all these Kuvaldas of yours are inventions." When I answered -that Kuvalda had been drawn from life, he said: "Tell me, where did you -see him?" - -He laughed heartily at the scene in the court of the Kazan magistrate, -Konovalov, where I had first seen the man whom I described under the -name of Kuvalda. "Blue blood," he said, wiping the tears from his eyes, -"that's it--blue blood. But how splendid, how amusing. You tell it -better than you write it. Yes, you are an inventor, a romantic, you -must confess." - -I said that probably all writers are to some extent inventors, -describing people as they would like to see them in life; I also said -that I liked active people who desire to resist the evil of life by -every means, even violence. - -"And violence is the chief evil," he exclaimed, taking me by the arm. -"How will you get out of that contradiction, inventor? Now your _My -Travelling Companion_ isn't invented--it's good just because it isn't -invented. But when you think, you beget knights, all Amadises and -Siegfrieds." - -I remarked that as long as we live in the narrow sphere of our -anthropomorphous and unavoidable "travelling companions," we build -everything on quicksands and in a hostile medium. - -He smiled and nudged me slightly with his elbow: "From that very, very -dangerous conclusions can be drawn. You are a questionable Socialist. -You are a romantic, and romantics must be monarchists--they always have -been." - -"And Hugo?" - -"Hugo? That's another thing. I don't like him, a noisy man." - -He often asked me what I was reading, and always reproached me if I had -chosen, in his opinion, a bad book. - -"Gibbon is worse than Kostomarov; one ought to read Mommsen, he's very -tedious, but it's all so solid." - -When he heard that the first book I ever read was _The Brothers -Semganno_, he even got angry: - -"Now, you see--a stupid novel. That's what has spoilt you. The French -have three writers, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert; and, well, perhaps -Maupassant, though Tchekhov is better than he. The Goncourts are mere -clowns, they only pretended to be serious. They had studied life from -books written by inventors like themselves, and they thought it a -serious business; but it was of no use to a soul." - -I disagreed with this opinion, and it irritated Leo Nicolayevitch a -little; he could barely stand contradiction, and sometimes his opinions -were strange and capricious. - -"There is no such thing as degeneration," he said once. "The Italian -Lombroso invented it, and after him comes the Jew Nordau, screaming -like a parrot. Italy is the land of charlatans and adventurers: only -Arentinos, Casanovas, Cagliostros, and the like are born there." - -"And Garibaldi?" - -"That's politics; that's another thing." - -To a whole series of facts, taken from the life of the merchant-class -families in Russia, he answered: "But it's untrue; it's only written in -clever books." - -I told him the actual history of three generations of a merchant family -which I had known, a history in which the law of degeneration had acted -with particular mercilessness. Then he began excitedly tugging at my -arm and encouraging me to write about it: "Now that's true. I know it; -there are two families like that in Tula. It ought to be written. A -long novel, written concisely, do you see? You must do it." His eyes -flashed. - -"But then there will be knights, Leo Nicolayevitch." - -"Don't. This is really serious. The one who is going to be a monk and -pray for the whole family --it's wonderful. That's real: you sin and -I will go and expiate your sin by prayer. And the other, the weary -one, the money-loving founder of the family--that's true too. And he's -a drunken, profligate beast, and loves everyone, and suddenly commits -murder--ah, it's good. It should be written, among thieves and beggars -you must not look for heroes, you really mustn't. Heroes--that's a lie -and invention; there are simply people, people, and nothing else." - -He often pointed out exaggerations in my stories, but once, speaking of -_Dead Souls_, he said, smiling good-naturedly: - -"We are all of us terrible inventors. I myself, when I write, suddenly -feel pity for some character, and then I give him some good quality or -take a good quality away from someone else, so that in comparison with -the others he may not appear too black." And then in the stern tones of -an inexorable judge: "That's why I say that art is a lie, an arbitrary -sham, harmful for people. One writes not what real life is, but simply -what one thinks of life oneself. What good is that to anyone, how I see -that tower or sea or Tartar--what interest or use is there in it?" - -[At times his thoughts and feelings seemed to me capriciously, even -deliberately, perverse, but what particularly struck and upset men -was just the stern directness of his thought, like Job, the fearless -questioner of the cruel God. He said: - -"I was walking one day on the road to Kiev, about the end of May; the -earth was a paradise; everything rejoiced; the birds sang; the bees -hummed; the sunshine and everything seemed so happy, humane, splendid. -I was moved to tears; I felt myself a bee to whom are given the best -flowers, and I felt God close to my soul. And suddenly I saw by the -roadside a man and woman, pilgrims; they were lying together, both -grey, dirty, and old --they writhed like worms, made noises, murmured, -and the sun pitilessly lighted up their naked blue legs and wizened -bodies. It struck such a blow to my soul. Lord, thou creator of beauty, -how art thou not ashamed? I felt utterly wretched---- - -"Yes, you see what things happen. Nature--the devout considered her the -work of the devil--cruelly and mockingly torments man; she takes away -the power and leaves the desire. All men with a living soul experience -that. Only man is made to experience the whole shame and horror of that -torment, given to him in his flesh. We carry it in ourselves as an -inevitable punishment--a punishment for what sin?" - -While he said this the look in his eyes changed strangely, now -childishly plaintive, now hard and stern and bright. His lips trembled, -his moustache bristled. When he had finished, he took a handkerchief -from the pocket of his blouse and wiped his face hard, though it was -dry. Then he smoothed his beard with the knotted fingers of his strong -peasant's hand, and repeated gently: "Yes, for what sin?"] - -Once I was walking with him on the lower road from Dyulbev to Ai-Todor -On; he was walking with the light step of a young man, when he said to -me more nervously than was usual with him: "The flesh should be the -obedient dog of the spirit, running to do its bidding; but we--how do -we live? The flesh rages and riots, and the spirit follows it helpless -and miserable." - -He rubbed his chest hard over the heart, raised his eyebrows, and then, -remembering something, went on: "One autumn in Moscow in an alley near -the Sukhariov Gate I once saw a drunken woman lying in the gutter. A -stream of filthy water flowed from the yard of a house right under -her neck and back. She lay in that cold liquid, muttering, shivering, -wriggling her body in the wet, but she could not get up." - -He shuddered, half closed his eyes, shook his head, and went on gently: -"Let's sit down here.... It's the most horrible and disgusting thing, a -drunken woman. I wanted to help her get up, but I couldn't; I felt such -a loathing; she was so slippery and slimy--I felt that if I'd touched -her, I could not have washed my hand clean for a month --horrible. And -on the curb sat a bright, grey-eyed boy, the tears running down his -cheeks: he was sobbing and repeating wearily and helplessly: 'Mu-um ... -mu-um-my ... do get up.' She would move her arms, grunt, lift her head, -and again--bang went her neck into the filth." - -He was silent, and then looking round, he repeated almost in a -whisper: "Yes, yes, horrible. You've seen many drunken women? Many--my -God! You, you must not write about that, you mustn't." - -"Why?" - -He looked straight into my eyes and smiling repeated: "Why?" Then -thoughtfully and slowly he said: "I don't know. It just slipped out ... -it's a shame to write about filth. But yet why not write about it? Yes, -it's necessary to write all about everything, everything." - -Tears came into his eyes. He wiped them away, and, smiling, he looked -at his handkerchief, while the tears again ran down his wrinkles. "I -am crying," he said. "I am an old man. It cuts me to the heart when I -remember something horrible." - -And very gently touching me with his elbow, he said: "You, too--you -will have lived your life, and everything will remain exactly as it -was, and then you, too, will cry worse than I, more streamingly,' -as the peasant women say. And everything must be written about, -everything; otherwise that bright little boy might be hurt, he might -reproach us--'it's untrue, it's not the whole truth,' he will say. He's -strict for the truth." - -Suddenly he gave himself a shake and said in a kind voice: "Now, tell -me a story; you tell them well. Something about a child, about your -childhood. It's not easy to believe that you were once a child. You are -a strange creature, exactly as if you were born grown-up. In your ideas -there is a good deal of the child-like and the immature, but you know -more than enough of life--and one cannot ask for more. Well, tell me a -story....' - -He lay down comfortably upon the bare roots of a pine tree and watched -the ants moving busily among the grey spines. - -In the South, which, with its self-asserting luxuriance and flaunting, -unbridled vegetation, seems so strangely incongruous to a man from the -North, he, Leo Tolstoi--even his name speaks of his inner power--seemed -a small man, but knitted and knotted out of very strong roots deep in -the earth --in the flaunting scenery of the Crimea, I say, he was at -once both out of place and in his place. He seemed a very ancient man, -master of all his surroundings--a master-builder who, after centuries -of absence, has arrived in the mansion built by him. He has forgotten a -great deal which it contains; much is new to him; everything is as it -should be, and yet not entirely so, and he has at once to find out what -is amiss and why it is amiss. - -He walked the roads and paths with a businesslike, quick step of the -skilled explorer of the earth, and with sharp eyes, from which neither -a single pebble nor a single thought could hide itself, he looked, -measured, tested, compared. And he scattered about him the living seeds -of indomitable thoughts. He said to Suler once: "You, Liovushka, read -nothing which is not good out of self-conceit, while Gorky reads a lot -which is not good, because he distrusts himself. I write much which is -not good, because of an old man's ambition, a desire that all should -think as I do. Of course, I think it is good, and Gorky thinks it is -not good, and you think nothing at all; you simply blink and watch what -you may clutch. One day you will clutch something which does not belong -to you--it has happened to you before. You will put your claws into -it, hold on for a bit, and when it begins to get loose, you won't try -to stop it. Tchekhov has a superb story, _The Darling_--you are rather -like her." - -"In what?" asked Suler, laughing. - -"You can love well, but to choose--no, you can't, and you will waste -yourself on trifles." - -"Is everyone like that?" - -"Everyone?" Leo Nicolayevitch repeated. - -"No, not everyone." - -And suddenly he asked me, exactly as if he were dealing me a blow: "Why -don't you believe in God?" - -"I have no faith, Leo Nicolayevitch." - -"It is not true. By nature you are a believer, and you cannot get on -without God. You will realize it one day. Your disbelief comes from -obstinacy, because you have been hurt: the world is not what you would -like it to be. There are also some people who do not believe out of -shyness; it happens with young people; they adore some woman, but don't -want to show it from fear that she won't understand, and also from lack -of courage. Faith, like love, requires courage and daring. One has to -say to oneself 'I believe,' and everything will come right, everything -will appear as you want it, it will explain itself to you and attract -you. Now, you love much, and faith is only a greater love: you must -love still more, and then your love will turn to faith. When one loves -a woman, she is, unfailingly, the best woman on earth, and each loves -the best woman, and that is faith. A nonbeliever cannot love: to-day he -falls in love with one woman, and next year with another. The souls of -such men are tramps living barren lives--that is not good. But you were -born a believer, and it is no use thwarting yourself. Well, you may say -beauty? And what is beauty? The highest and most perfect is God." - -He hardly ever spoke to me on this subject, and its seriousness and the -suddenness of it rather overwhelmed me. I was silent. - -He was sitting on the couch with his legs drawn up under him, and -breaking into a triumphant little smile and shaking his finger at me, -he said: "You won't get out of this by silence, no." - -And I, who do not believe in God, looked at him for some reason very -cautiously and a little timidly, I looked and thought: "The man is -godlike." - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch -Tolstoi, by Maxim Gorky - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REMINISCENCES OF LEO TOLSTOI *** - -***** This file should be named 55284-8.txt or 55284-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/5/2/8/55284/ - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon -in an extended version,also linking to free sources for -education worldwide ... 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi - -Author: Maxim Gorky - -Translator: Samuel Solomonovitch Koteliansky - Leonard Woolf - -Release Date: August 7, 2017 [EBook #55284] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REMINISCENCES OF LEO TOLSTOI *** - - - - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon -in an extended version,also linking to free sources for -education worldwide ... MOOC's, educational materials,...) -Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" /> -</div> -<h1>REMINISCENCES OF</h1> - -<h1>LEO NICOLAYEVITCH TOLSTOI</h1> - -<h3><i>By</i></h3> - -<h2><i>MAXIM GORKY</i></h2> - -<h4>Authorized Translation from the Russian</h4> - -<h4>by</h4> - -<h4>S. S. KOTELIANSKY</h4> - -<h4>and</h4> - -<h4>LEONARD WOOLF</h4> - -<h5><i>SECOND EDITION</i></h5> - -<h5>PUBLISHED BY LEONARD & VIRGINIA WOOLF AT<br /> -The HOGARTH PRESS, PARADISE ROAD, RICHMOND</h5> - -<h5>1920</h5> - - - -<hr class="full" /> -<h4><a name="TRANSLATORS_NOTE_TO_SECOND_EDITION" id="TRANSLATORS_NOTE_TO_SECOND_EDITION"><i>TRANSLATORS' NOTE TO SECOND EDITION</i></a></h4> - -<p><i>Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi</i>, by Maxim Gorky, was -originally published in Russian in Petrograd in 1919. The first half of -the book, consisting of notes, had been written between 1900 and 1901, -when Tolstoi, Gorky, and Tchekhov were living in the Crimea. The second -half consists of a letter written by Gorky in 1910.</p> - -<p>A second edition of the book will shortly be published in Russia, and -will contain a few additional notes not included in the first edition. -We have included this additional matter in the present edition, -enclosing it in square brackets.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"><i>PREFACE</i></a></h4> - -<p>This little book is composed of fragmentary notes written by me during -the period when I lived in Oleise and Leo Nicolayevitch at Gaspra in -the Crimea. They cover the period of Tolstoi's serious illness and -of his subsequent recovery. The notes were carelessly jotted down on -scraps of paper, and I thought I had lost them, but recently I have -found some of them. Then I have also included here an unfinished -letter written by me under the influence of the "going away" of Leo -Nicolayevitch from Yassnaya Polyana, and of his death. I publish the -letter just as it was written at the time, and without correcting a -single word. And I do not finish it, for somehow or other this is not -possible. M. GORKY.</p> - - - -<hr class="chap" /> -<h4><a name="NOTES" id="NOTES"><i>NOTES</i></a></h4> - - -<h4 class="p2">I</h4> - -<p>The thought which beyond others most often and conspicuously gnaws at -him is the thought of God. At moments it seems, indeed, not to be a -thought, but a violent resistance to something which he feels above -him. He speaks of it less than he would like, but thinks of it always. -It can scarcely be said to be a sign of old age, a presentiment of -death—no, I think that it comes from his exquisite human pride, -and—a bit—from a sense of humiliation: for, being Leo Tolstoi, it is -humiliating to have to submit one's will to a streptococcus. If he were -a scientist, he would certainly evolve the most ingenious hypotheses, -make great discoveries.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">II</h4> - -<p>H3e has wonderful hands—not beautiful, but knotted with swollen -veins, and yet full of a singular expressiveness and the power of -creativeness. Probably Leonardo da Vinci had hands like that. With such -hands one can do anything. Sometimes, when talking, he will move his -fingers, gradually close them into a fist, and then, suddenly opening -them, utter a good, full-weight word. He is like a god, not a Sabaoth -or Olympian, but the kind of Russian god who "sits on a maple throne -under a golden lime tree," not very majestic, but perhaps more cunning -than all the other gods.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">III</h4> - -<p>He treats Sulerzhizky with the tenderness of a woman. For Tchekhov -his love is paternal—in this love is the feeling of the pride of a -creator—Suler rouses in him just tenderness, a perpetual interest -and rapture which never seems to weary the sorcerer. Perhaps there is -something a little ridiculous in this feeling, like the love of an old -maid for a parrot, a pug dog, or a tom-cat. Suler is a fascinatingly -wild bird from some strange unknown land. A hundred men like him -could change the face, as well as the soul, of a provincial town. Its -face they would smash and its soul they would fill with a passion for -riotous, brilliant, headstrong wildness. One loves Suler easily and -gaily, and when I see how carelessly women accept him, they surprise -and anger me. Yet under this carelessness is hidden, perhaps, caution. -Suler is not reliable. What will he do to-morrow? He may throw a bomb -or he may join a troupe of public-house minstrels. He has energy enough -for three life-times, and fire of life—so much that he seems to sweat -sparks like over-heated iron.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">III<span class="smcap">a</span></h4> - -<p>[But once he got thoroughly cross with Suler. Suler inclined to -anarchism, and often argued with bitterness about the freedom of the -individual. In such cases Leo Nicolayevitch always chaffed him.</p> - -<p>I remember that Suler once got hold of a thin little pamphlet by -Prince Kropotkin; he flamed up, and all day long explained to everyone -the wisdom of anarchism, overwhelming them with his philosophizing.</p> - -<p>"Oh, stop it, Liovushka," said Leo Nicolayevitch irritably, "you are -annoying. You hammer away like a parrot at one word, freedom, freedom; -but what is the sense of it? If you attained your freedom, what do you -imagine would happen? In the philosophic sense, a bottomless void, and -in actual life you would become an idler, a parasite. If you were free -in your sense, what would bind you to life or to people? Now, birds are -free, but still they build nests; you, however, wouldn't even build a -nest, but would gratify your sexual feeling anywhere, like a dog. You -think seriously, and you will come to see, you will come to feel, that -this freedom is ultimately emptiness, boundlessness."</p> - -<p>He frowned angrily, was silent for a while, and then added quietly, -"Christ was free and so was Buddha, and both took on themselves the -sins of the world and voluntarily entered the prison of earthly life. -Further than that nobody has gone, nobody. And you—we—well, what's -the good of talking—we are all looking for freedom from obligations -towards our fellow men, whereas it is just that feeling of our -obligations which has made us men, and, if those obligations were not -there, we should live like the beasts."</p> - -<p>He smiled. "And now here we are arguing how we ought to live. The -result isn't very great, but it is something. For instance, you are -arguing with me, and are getting so cross that you are going blue in -the nose, yet you don't hit me, you don't even swear at me. But if you -really felt free, you'd kill me on the spot, and there'd be an end of -it." After a silence, he added: "Freedom consists in all and everything -agreeing with me, but in that case I don't exist, because we are only -conscious of ourselves in conflicts and contradictions,"]</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">IV</h4> - -<p>Goldenweiser played Chopin, which called forth these remarks from Leo -Nicolayevitch: "A certain German princeling said: 'Where you want to -have slaves, there you should have as much music as possible.' That's -a true thought, a true observation—music dulls the mind. Especially -do the Catholics realize that; our priests, of course, won't reconcile -themselves to Mendelssohn in church. A Tula priest assured me that -Christ was not a Jew, though the son of the Jewish God and his mother a -Jewess—he did admit that, but says he: 'It's impossible.' I asked him: -'But how then? 'He shrugged his shoulders and said: 'That's just the -mystery.'"</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">V</h4> - -<p>"An intellectual is like the old Galician Prince Vladimirko, who, as -far back as the twelfth century, 'boldly' declared: 'There are no -miracles in our time.' Six hundred years have passed and all the -intellectuals hammer away at each other: 'There are no miracles, there -are no miracles.' And all the people believe in miracles, just as they -did in the twelfth century."</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">VI</h4> - -<p>"The minority feel the need of God because they have got everything -else, the majority because they have nothing."</p> - -<p>I would put it differently: the majority believe in God from cowardice, -only the few believe in him from fullness of soul.</p> - - - -<h4 class="p2">VI<span class="smcap">a</span></h4> - -<p>"You like Andersen's Tales?" he asked thoughtfully. "I couldn't make -them out when they first appeared in the translation of Marko Vovtchok, -but about ten years later I took up the book and read it, and suddenly -realized with great clearness that Andersen was very lonely—very. I -don't know about his life, but he seems to have lived loosely and to -have travelled a great deal, but that only confirms my feeling that -he was lonely. And because of that he addressed himself to the young, -although it's a mistake to imagine that children pity a man more than -grown-ups do. Children pity nothing; they do not know what pity is."</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">VII</h4> - -<p>He advised me to read Buddhistic scriptures. Of Buddhism and Christ he -always speaks sentimentally. When he speaks about Christ, it is always -peculiarly poor, no enthusiasm, no feeling in his words, and no spark -of real fire. I think he regards Christ as simple and deserving of -pity, and, although at times he admires Him, he hardly loves Him. It -is as though he were uneasy: if Christ came to a Russian village, the -girls might laugh at Him.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">VIII</h4> - -<p>To-day the Grand Duke Nicolay Mikhailovitch was at Tolstoi's, evidently -a very clever man. His behaviour is very modest; he talks little. -He has sympathetic eyes and a fine figure, quiet gestures. Leo -Nicolayevitch smiled caressingly at him, and spoke now French, now -English. In Russian he said:—</p> - -<p>"Karamzin wrote for the Tsar, Soloviov long and tediously, and -Klutchevsky for his own amusement. Cunning fellow Klutchevsky: at first -you get the impression that he is praising, but as you read on, you see -that he is blaming."</p> - -<p>Someone mentioned Zabielin.</p> - -<p>"He's nice. An amateur collector, he collects everything, whether it is -useful or not. He describes food as if he had never had a square meal; -but he is very, very amusing."</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">IX</h4> - -<p>He reminds me of those pilgrims who all their life long, stick in -hand, walk the earth, travelling thousands of miles from one monastery -to another, from one saint's relics to another, terribly homeless -and alien to all men and things. The world is not for them, nor God -either. They pray to Him from habit, and in their secret soul they hate -Him—why does He drive them over the earth from one end to the other? -What for? People are stumps, roots, stones on the path; one stumbles -over them, and sometimes is hurt by them. One can do without them, but -it is pleasant sometimes to surprise a man with one's own unlikeness to -him, to show one's difference from him.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">X</h4> - -<p>"Friedrich of Prussia said very truly: 'Everyone must save himself in -his own way.' He also said: 'Argue as much as you like, but obey.' -But when dying he confessed: 'I have grown weary of ruling slaves.' -So-called great men are always terribly contradictory: that is -forgiven them with all their other follies. Though contradictoriness -is not folly: a fool is stubborn, but does not know how to contradict -himself. Yes, Friedrich was a strange man: among the Germans he won -the reputation of being the best king, yet he could not bear them; he -disliked even Goethe and Wieland."</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XI</h4> - -<p>"Romanticism comes from the fear of looking straight into the eyes -of truth," he said yesterday with regard to Balmont's poems. Suler -disagreed with him and, lisping with excitement, read very feelingly -some more poems.</p> - -<p>"These, Liovushka, are not poems; they are charlatanism, rubbish, as -people said in the Middle Ages, a nonsensical stringing together of -words. Poetry is art-less; when Fet wrote:</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 10%;"> -'I know not myself what I will sing,<br /> -But only my song is ripening,'<br /> -</p> - -<p>he expressed a genuine, real, people's sense of poetry. The peasant, -too, doesn't know that he's a poet—oh, oi, ah, and aye—and there -comes off a real song, straight from the soul, like a bird's. These new -poets of yours are inventing. There are certain silly French things -called <i>articles de Paris</i>—well, that's what your stringers of verses -produce. Nekrassov's miserable verses, too, are invented from beginning -to end."</p> - -<p>"And Béranger?" Suler asked.</p> - -<p>"Béranger—that's quite different. What's there in common between the -French and us? They are sensualists; the life of the spirit is not as -important to them as the flesh. To a Frenchman woman is everything. -They are a worn-out, emasculated people. Doctors say that all -consumptives are sensualists."</p> - -<p>Suler began to argue with his peculiar directness, pouring out a random -flood of words. Leo Nicolayevitch looked at him and said with a broad -smile:</p> - -<p>"You are peevish to-day, like a girl who has reached the age when she -should marry but has no lover."</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XII</h4> - -<p>The illness dried him up still more, burnt something out of him. -Inwardly he seemed to become lighter, more transparent, more resigned. -His eyes are still keener, his glance piercing. He listens attentively -as though recalling something which he has forgotten or as though -waiting for something new and unknown. In Yassnaya Polyana he seemed to -me a man who knew everything and had nothing more to learn—a man who -had settled every question.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XIII</h4> - -<p>If he were a fish, he would certainly swim only in the ocean, never -coming to the narrow seas, and particularly not to the flat waters -of earthly rivers. Around him here there rest or dart hither and -thither the little fishes: what he says does not interest them, is not -necessary to them, and his silence does not frighten or move them. Yet -his silence is impressive like that of a real hermit driven out from -this world. Though he speaks a great deal and as a duty upon certain -subjects, his silence is felt to be still greater. Certain things one -cannot tell to anyone. Surely he has some thoughts of which he is -afraid.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XIV</h4> - -<p>Someone sent him an excellent version of the story of Christ's godson. -He read it aloud with pleasure to Suler, Tchekhov—he read amazingly -well. He was especially amused by the devils torturing the landowners. -There was something which I did not like in that. He cannot be -insincere, but, if this be sincere, then it makes it worse. Then he -said:</p> - -<p>"How well the peasants compose stories. Everything is simple, the words -few, and a great deal of feeling. Real wisdom uses few words; for -instance, 'God have mercy on us.'"</p> - -<p>Yet the story is a cruel one.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XV</h4> - -<p>His interest in me is ethnological. In his eyes I belong to a species -not familiar to him—only that.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XVI</h4> - -<p>I read my story "The Bull" to him. He laughed much, and praised my -knowledge of "the tricks of the language."</p> - -<p>"But your treatment of words is not skilful; all your peasants speak -cleverly. In actual life what they say is silly and incoherent, and at -first you cannot make out what a peasant wants to say. That is done -deliberately; under the silliness of their words is always concealed -a desire to allow the other person to show what is in his mind. A -good peasant will never show at once what is in his own mind: it is -not profitable. He knows that people approach a stupid man frankly -and directly, and that's the very thing he wants. You stand revealed -before him and he at once sees all your weak points. He is suspicious; -he is afraid to tell his inmost thoughts even to his wife. But with -your peasants in every story everything is revealed: it's a universal -council of wisdom. And they all speak in aphorisms; that's not true to -life, either; aphorisms are not natural to the Russian language."</p> - -<p>"What about sayings and proverbs?"</p> - -<p>"That's a different thing. They are not of to-day's manufacture."</p> - -<p>"But you yourself often speak in aphorisms."</p> - -<p>"Never. There again you touch everything up; people as well as -nature—especially people. So did Lieskov, an affected, finicking -writer whom nobody reads now. Don't let anyone influence you, fear no -one, and then you'll be all right."</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XVII</h4> - -<p>In his diary which he gave me to read, I was struck by a strange -aphorism: "God is my desire."</p> - -<p>To-day, on returning him the book, I asked him what it meant.</p> - -<p>"An unfinished thought," he said, glancing at the page and screwing up -his eyes. "I must have wanted to say: 'God is my desire to know Him.' -... No, not that ..." He began to laugh, and, rolling up the book into -a tube, he put it into the big pocket of his blouse. With God he has -very suspicious relations; they sometimes remind me of the relation of -"two bears in one den."</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XVIII</h4> - -<p>On science:</p> - -<p>"Science is a bar of gold made by a charlatan alchemist. You want to -simplify it, to make it accessible to all: you find that you have -coined a lot of false coins.. When the people realize the real value of -those coins, they won't thank you."</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XIX</h4> - -<p>We walked in the Yussopov Park. He spoke superbly about the customs of -the Moscow aristocracy. A big Russian peasant woman was working on the -flower-bed, bent at right angles, showing her ivory legs, shaking her -ten-pound breasts. He looked at her attentively.</p> - -<p>"It is those caryatids who have kept all that magnificence and -extravagance going. Not only by the labour of peasant men and women, -not only by the taxes they pay, but in the literal sense by their -blood. If the aristocracy had not from time to time mated with -such horse-women as she, they would have died out long ago. It is -impossible with impunity to waste one's strength, as the young men of -my time did. But after sowing their wild oats, many married serf-girls -and produced a good breed. In that way, too, the peasant's strength -saved them. That strength is everywhere in place. Half the aristocracy -always has to spend its strength on itself, and the other half to -dilute itself with peasant blood and thus diffuse the peasant blood a -little. It's useful."</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XX</h4> - -<p>OF women he talks readily and much, like a French novelist, but always -with the coarseness of a Russian peasant. Formerly it used to affect me -unpleasantly. To-day in the Almond Park he asked Anton Tchekhov:</p> - -<p>"You whored a great deal when you were young?"</p> - -<p>Anton Pavlovitch, with a confused smile, and pulling at his little -beard, muttered something inaudible, and Leo Nicolayevitch, looking at -the sea, confessed:</p> - -<p>"I was an indefatigable...."</p> - -<p>He said this penitently, using at the end of the sentence a salty -peasant word. And I noticed for the first time how simply he used the -word, as though he knew no more fitting one to use. All those kinds of -words, coming from his shaggy lips, sound simple and natural and lose -their soldierly coarseness and filth. I remember my first meeting with -him and his talk about "Varienka Oliessova" and "Twenty-six and One." -From the ordinary point of view what he said was a string of indecent -words. I was perplexed by it and even offended. I thought that he -considered me incapable of understanding any other kind of language. I -understand now: it was silly to have felt offended.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XXI</h4> - - -<p>He sat on the stone bench in the shade of the cypresses, looking very -lean, small and grey, and yet resembling Sabaoth, who is a little tired -and is amusing himself by trying to whistle in tune with a chaffinch. -The bird sang in the darkness of the thick foliage: he peered up at it, -screwing up his sharp little eyes, and, pursing his lips like a child, -he whistled incompetently.</p> - -<p>"What a furious little creature. It's in a rage. What bird is it?"</p> - -<p>I told him about the chaffinch and its characteristic jealousy.</p> - -<p>"All life long one song," he said, "and yet jealous. Man has a thousand -songs in his heart and is yet blamed for jealousy; is it fair?" He -spoke musingly, as though asking himself questions. "There are moments -when a man says to a woman more than she ought to know about him. He -speaks and forgets, but she remembers. Perhaps jealousy comes from the -fear of degrading one's soul, of being humiliated and ridiculous? Not -that a woman is dangerous who holds a man by his ... but she who holds -him by his soul...."</p> - -<p>When I pointed out the contradiction in this with his "Kreutzer -Sonata," the radiance of a sudden smile beamed through his beard, and -he said:</p> - -<p>"I am not a chaffinch."</p> - -<p>In the evening, while walking, he suddenly said: "Man survives -earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and all the agonies of -the soul, but for all time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, -and will be—the tragedy of the bedroom."</p> - -<p>Saying this, he smiled triumphantly: at times he has the broad, calm -smile of a man who has overcome something extremely difficult or from -whom some sharp, long-gnawing pain has lifted suddenly. Every thought -burrows into his soul like a tick; he either tears it out at once or -allows it to have its fill of his blood, and then, when full, it just -drops off of itself.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He read to Suler and me a variant of the scene of the fall of "Father -Sergius"—a merciless scene. Suler pouted and fidgeted uneasily.</p> - -<p>"What's the matter? Don't you like it?" Leo Nicolayevitch asked.</p> - -<p>"It's too brutal, as though from Dostoevsky. She is a filthy girl, -and her breasts like pancakes, and all that. Why didn't he sin with a -beautiful, healthy woman?"</p> - -<p>"That would be sin without justification; as it is, there is -justification in pity for the girl. Who could desire her as she is?"</p> - -<p>"I cannot make it out...."</p> - -<p>"There's a great deal, Liovushka, which you can't make out: you're not -shrewd...."</p> - -<p>There came in Andrey Lvovitch's wife, and the conversation was -interrupted. As she and Suler went out, Leo Nicolayevitch said to me: -"Leopold is the purest man I know. He is like that: if he did something -bad, it would be out of pity for someone."</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XXII</h4> - -<p>He talks most of God, of peasants, and of woman; of literature rarely -and little, as 'though literature were something alien to him. Woman, -in my opinion, he regards with implacable hostility and loves to punish -her, unless she be a Kittie or Natasha Rostov, <i>i.e.,</i> a creature not -too narrow. It is the hostility of the male who has not succeeded in -getting all the pleasure he could, or it is the hostility of spirit -against "the degrading impulses of the flesh." But it is hostility, -and cold, as in <i>Anna Karenin.</i> Of "the degrading impulses of the -flesh" lie spoke well on Sunday in a conversation with Tchekhov and -Yelpatievsky about Rousseau's <i>Confession.</i> Suler wrote down what he -said, and later, while preparing coffee, burnt it in the spirit-lamp. -Once before he burnt Leo Nicolayevitch's opinions on Ibsen, and he also -lost the notes of the conversation in which Leo Nicolayevitch said very -pagan things on the symbolism of the marriage ritual, agreeing to a -certain extent with V. V. Rosanov.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XXIII</h4> - -<p>In the morning some "stundists" came to Tolstoi from Feodosia, and -to-day all day long he spoke about peasants with rapture.</p> - -<p>At lunch: "They came both so strong and fleshy; says one: 'Well, we've -come uninvited,' and the other says: 'With God's help we shall leave -unbeaten,'" and he broke out into child-like laughter, shaking all over.</p> - -<p>After lunch, on the terrace:</p> - -<p>"We shall soon cease completely to understand the language of the -people. Now we say: 'The theory of progress,' 'the role of the -individual in history,' 'the evolution of science and a peasant says: -'You can't hide an awl in a sack,' and all theories, histories, -evolutions become pitiable and ridiculous, because they are -incomprehensible and unnecessary to the people.' But the peasant is -stronger than we; he is more tenacious of life, and there may happen to -us what happened to the tribe of Atzurs, of whom it was reported to a -scholar:</p> - -<p>'All the Atzurs have died out, but there is a parrot here who knows a -few words of their language.'"</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XXIV</h4> - -<p>"With her body woman is more sincere than man, but with her mind she -lies. And when she lies, she does not believe herself; but Rousseau -lied and believed his lies."</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XXV</h4> - -<p>"Dostoevsky described one of his mad characters as living and taking -vengeance on himself and others because he had served a cause in which -he did not believe. He wrote that about himself; that is, he could have -said the same of himself."</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XXVI</h4> - -<p>"Some of the words used in church are amazingly obscure: what meaning -is there, for instance, in the words: 'The earth is God's and the -fulness thereof'? That is not Holy Scripture, but a kind of popular -scientific materialism."</p> - -<p>"But you explained the words somewhere," said Suler.</p> - -<p>"Many things are explained.... 'An explanation does not go up to the -hilt.'"</p> - -<p>And he gave a cunning little smile.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XXVII</h4> - -<p>He likes putting difficult and malicious questions:</p> - -<p>What do you think of yourself?</p> - -<p>Do you love your wife?</p> - -<p>Do you think my son, Leo, has talent?</p> - -<p>How do you like Sophie Andreyevna?<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> - -<p>Once he asked: "Are you fond of me, Alexey Maximovitch?"</p> - -<p>This is the maliciousness of a "bogatyr"<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_3" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>: Vaska Buslayev played -such pranks in his youth, mischievous fellow. He is experimenting, -all the time testing something, as if he were going to fight. It is -interesting, but not much to my liking. He is the devil, and I am still -a babe, and he should leave me alone.</p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Tolstoi's wife.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> A hero in Russian legend, brave, but wild and self-willed -like a child.</p></div> - -<h4 class="p2">XXVIII</h4> - -<p>Perhaps peasant to him means merely—bad smell. He always feels it, and -involuntarily has to talk of it.</p> - -<p>Last night I told him of my battle with General Kornet's wife; he -laughed until he cried, and he got a pain in his side and groaned and -kept on crying out in a thin scream:</p> - -<p>"With the shovel! On the bottom with the shovel, eh? Right on the -bottom! Was it a broad shovel?"</p> - -<p>Then, after a pause, he said seriously: "It was generous in you to -strike her like that; any other man would have struck her on the head -for that. Very generous! You understood that she wanted you?"</p> - -<p>"I don't remember. I hardly think that I can have understood."</p> - -<p>"Well now! But it's obvious. Of course she wanted you."</p> - -<p>"I did not live for that then."</p> - -<p>"Whatever you may live for, it's all the same. You are evidently not -much of a lady's man. Anyone else in your place would have made his -fortune out of the situation, would have become a landed proprietor and -have ended by making one of a pair of drunkards."</p> - -<p>After a silence:</p> - -<p>"You are funny—don't be offended—very funny. And it's very strange -that you should still be good-natured when you might well be spiteful -... Yes, you might well be spiteful ... You're strong ... that's -good...."</p> - -<p>And after another silence, he added thoughtfully: "Your mind I don't -understand—it's a very tangled mind—but your heart is sensible ... -yes, a sensible heart."</p> - -<p><span style="font-size: 0.8em;">NOTE</span>.—When I lived in Kazan, I entered the service of General Kornet's -wife as doorkeeper and gardener. She was a Frenchwoman, a general's -widow, a young woman, fat, and with the tiny feet of a little girl. -Her eyes were amazingly beautiful, restless and always greedily alert. -Before her marriage she was, I think, a huckstress or a cook or, -possibly, even a woman of the town. She would get drunk early in the -morning and come out in the yard or garden dressed only in a chemise -with an orange-coloured gown over it, in Tartar slippers made of red -morocco, and on her head a mane of thick hair. Her hair, carelessly -done, hung about her red cheeks and shoulders. A young witch! She used -to walk about the garden, humming French songs and watching me work, -and every now and then she would go to the kitchen window and call:</p> - -<p>"Pauline, give me something."</p> - -<p>"Something" always meant the same thing—a glass of wine with ice in it.</p> - -<p>In the basement of her house there lived three young ladies, -the Princesses D. G., whose mother was dead and whose father, a -Commissariat-General, had gone off elsewhere. General Kornet's widow -took a dislike to the girls and tried to get rid of them by doing every -kind of offensive thing to them. She spoke Russian badly, but swore -superbly, like an expert drayman. I very much disliked her attitude -towards these harmless girls—they looked so sad, frightened, and -defenceless. One afternoon, two of them were walking in the garden -when suddenly the General's widow appeared, drunk as usual, and began -to shout at them to drive them out of the garden. They began walking -silently away, but the General's widow stood in the gateway, completely -blocking it with her body like a cork, and started swearing at them -and using Russian words like a regular drayman. I asked her to stop -swearing and let the girls go out, but she shouted: "You, I know you! -You get through their window at night."</p> - -<p>I was angry, and, taking her by the shoulders, pushed her away from -the gate; but she broke away and, facing me, quickly undid her dress, -lifted up her chemise, and shouted:—</p> - -<p>"I'm nicer than those rats."</p> - -<p>Then I lost my temper. I took her by the neck, turned her round, and -struck her with my shovel below the back, so that she skipped out of -the gate and ran across the yard, crying out three times in great -surprise: "O! O! O!"</p> - -<p>After that, I got my passport from her confidant, Pauline—also a -drunken but very wily woman—took my bundle under my arm, and left the -place; and the General's widow, standing at the window with a red shawl -in her hand, shouted:—</p> - -<p>"I won't call the police—it's all right—listen—come back—don't be -afraid."</p> - - - - -<h4 class="p2">XXIX</h4> - -<p>I asked him: "Do you agree with Poznyshiev<a name="FNanchor_1_3" id="FNanchor_1_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_3" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> when he says that doctors -have destroyed and are destroying thousands and hundreds of thousands -of people?"</p> - -<p>"Are you very interested to know?"</p> - -<p>"Very."</p> - -<p>"Then I shan't tell you."</p> - -<p>And he smiled, playing with his thumbs.</p> - -<p>I remember in one of his stories he makes a comparison between a quack -village vet. and a doctor of medicine:—</p> - -<p>"The words 'giltchak,' 'potchetchny,' bloodletting,'<a name="FNanchor_2_4" id="FNanchor_2_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_4" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> are they not -precisely the same as nerves, rheumatism, organisms, etc.?"</p> - -<p>And this was written after Jenner, Behring, Pasteur. It is perversity!</p> - - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1_3" id="Footnote_1_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_3"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> In <i>Kreutzer Sonata.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2_4" id="Footnote_2_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_4"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Words used by quack vets, for the diseases of horses.</p></div> - - -<h4 class="p2">XXX</h4> - -<p>How strange that he is so fond of playing cards. He plays seriously, -passionately. His hands become nervous when he takes the cards up, -exactly as if he were holding live birds instead of inanimate pieces of -cardboard.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XXXI</h4> - -<p>"Dickens said a very clever thing: 'Life is given to us on the definite -understanding that we boldly defend it to the last.' On the whole, -he was a sentimental, loquacious, and not very clever writer, but he -knew how to construct a novel as no one else could, certainly better -than Balzac. Someone has said: 'Many are possessed by the passion for -writing books, but few are ashamed of them afterwards.' Balzac was not -ashamed, nor was Dickens, and both of them wrote quite a number of bad -books. Still, Balzac is a genius. Or at any rate the thing which you -can only call genius...."</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XXXI<span class="smcap">a</span></h4> - -<p>[Someone brought Leo Tikhomirov's book, <i>Why I Ceased to be a -Revolutionary</i>: Leo Nicolayevitch took the book from the table, waved -it in the air, and said: "What he says here about political murder -is good, that there is no clear idea in that method. The idea, says -a frenzied murderer, can only be anarchical sovereignty of the -individual and contempt for society and for mankind. That is true, but -'anarchical sovereignty 'is a slip of the pen, it should have been -'monarchical.' That is a good and true idea; all the terrorists will -trip up over it—I mean the honest ones. The man who naturally loves -killing won't trip up. There is nothing for him to trip up over. He's -just a plain murderer, and has only accidentally become a terrorist."]</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XXXII</h4> - -<p>Sometimes he seems to be conceited and intolerant, like a Volga -preacher, and this is terrible in a man who is the sounding bell of -this world. Yesterday he said to me:</p> - -<p>"I am more of a mouzhik than you and I feel better in a mouzhik way."</p> - -<p>God, he ought not to boast of it, he must not!</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XXXIII</h4> - -<p>I read him some scenes from my play, <i>The Lower Depths;</i> he listened -attentively and then asked:</p> - -<p>"Why do you write that?"</p> - -<p>I explained as best I could.</p> - -<p>"One always notices that you jump like a cock on to everything. And -more—you always want to paint all the grooves and cracks over with -your own paint. You remember that Andersen says: 'The gilt will -come off and the pig-skin will remain'; just as our peasants say: -'Everything will pass away, the truth alone will remain.' You'd much -better not put the plaster on, for you yourself will suffer for -it later. Again, your language is very skilful, with all kinds of -tricks—that's no good. You ought to write more simply; people speak -simply, even incoherently, and that's good. A peasant doesn't ask: 'Why -is a third more than a fourth, if four is always more than three,' as -one learned young lady asked. No tricks, please."</p> - -<p>He spoke irritably; clearly he disliked very much what I had read to -him. And after a silence, looking over my head, he said gloomily:</p> - -<p>"Your old man is not sympathetic, one does not believe in his goodness. -The actor is all right, he's good. You know <i>Fruits of Enlightenment</i>? -My cook there is rather like your actor. Writing plays is difficult. -But your prostitute also came off well, they must be like that. Have -you known many of them?"</p> - -<p>"I used to."</p> - -<p>"Yes, one can see that. Truth always shows itself. Most of what you say -comes out of yourself, and therefore you have no characters, and all -your people have the same face. I should think you don't understand -women; they don't come off with you. One does not remember them...."</p> - -<p>At this moment A. L.'s wife came in and called us to come to tea, and -he got up and went out very quickly, as if he were glad to end the -conversation.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XXXIV</h4> - -<p>"What is the most terrible dream you have ever had?" Tolstoi asked me.</p> - -<p>I rarely have dreams and remember them badly, but two have remained in -my memory and probably will for the rest of my life.</p> - -<p>I dreamt once that I saw the sky scrofulous, putrescent, -greenish-yellow, and the stars in it were round, flat, without rays, -without lustre, like scabs on the skin of a diseased person. And there -glided across this putrescent sky slowly reddish forked lightning, -rather like a snake, and when it touched a star the star swelled -up into a ball and burst noiselessly, leaving behind it a darkish -spot, like a little smoke; and then the spot vanished quickly in the -bleared and liquid sky. Thus all the stars one after another burst -and perished, and the sky, growing darker and more horrible, at last -whirled upwards, bubbled and bursting into fragments began to fall -on my head in a kind of cold jelly, and in the spaces between the -fragments there appeared a shiny blackness as though of iron. Leo -Nicolayevitch said: "Now that comes from a learned book; you must have -read something on astronomy; hence the nightmare. And the other dream?"</p> - -<p>The other dream: a snowy plain, smooth like a sheet of paper; no -hillock, no tree, no bush anywhere, only—barely visible—a few rods -poked out from under the snow. And across the snow of this dead desert -from horizon to horizon there stretched a yellow strip of a hardly -distinguishable road, and over the road there marched slowly a pair of -grey felt top boots—empty.</p> - -<p>He raised his shaggy, were-wolf eyebrows, looked at me intently and -thought for a while.</p> - -<p>"That's terrible. Did you really dream that, you didn't invent it? But -there's something bookish in it also."</p> - -<p>And suddenly he got angry, and said, irritably, sternly, rapping his -knee with his finger: "But you're not a drinking man? It's unlikely -that you ever drank much. And yet there's something drunken in these -dreams. There was a German writer, Hoffmann, who dreamt that card -tables ran about the street, and all that sort of thing, but then he -was a drunkard—a 'calaholic,' as our literate coachmen say. Empty -boots marching—that's really terrible. Even if you did invent it, it's -good. Terrible."</p> - -<p>Suddenly he gave a broad smile, so that even his cheek bones beamed.</p> - -<p>"And imagine this: suddenly, in the Tverskaya street, there runs a card -table with its curved legs, its boards clap, clap, raising a chalky -dust, and you can even still see the numbers on the green cloth—excise -clerks playing whist on it for three days and nights on end—the table -could not bear it any longer and ran away."</p> - -<p>He laughed, and then, probably noticing that I was a little hurt by his -distrust of me:</p> - -<p>"Are you hurt because I thought your dreams bookish? Don't be annoyed; -sometimes, I know, one invents something without being aware of it, -something which one cannot believe, which can't possibly be believed, -and then one imagines that one dreamt it and did not invent it at all. -There was a story which an old landowner told. He dreamt that he was -walking in a wood and came out of it on to a steppe. On the steppe -he saw two hills, which suddenly turned into a woman's breasts, and -between them rose up a black face which, instead of eyes, had two moons -like white spots. The old man dreamt that he was standing between the -woman's legs, in front of him a deep, dark ravine, which sucked him in. -After the dream his hair began to grow grey and his hands to tremble, -and he went abroad to Doctor Kneip to take a water cure. But, really, -he must have seen something of the kind—he was a dissolute fellow."</p> - -<p>He patted me on the shoulder.</p> - -<p>"But you are neither a drunkard nor dissolute—how do you come to have -such dreams?"</p> - -<p>"I don't know."</p> - -<p>"We know nothing about ourselves."</p> - -<p>He sighed, screwed up his eyes, thought for a bit, and then added in a -low voice: "We know nothing."</p> - -<p>This evening, during our walk, he took my arm and said:</p> - -<p>"The boots are marching—terrible, eh? Quite empty—tiop, tiop—and the -snow scrunching. Yes, it's good; but you are very bookish, very. Don't -be cross, but it's bad and will stand in your way."</p> - -<p>I am scarcely more bookish than he, and at the time I thought him a -cruel rationalist despite all his pleasant little phrases.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XXXV</h4> - -<p>At times he gives one the impression of having just arrived from some -distant country, where people think and feel differently and their -relations and language are different. He sits in a corner tired and -grey, as though the dust of another earth were on him, and he looks -attentively at everything with the look of a foreigner or of a dumb man.</p> - -<p>Yesterday, before dinner, he came into the drawing-room, just like -that, his thoughts far away. He sat down on the sofa, and, after a -moment's silence, suddenly said, swaying his body a little, rubbing the -palm of his hand on his knee, and wrinkling up his face:</p> - -<p>"Still that is not all—not all."</p> - -<p>Someone, always stolidly stupid as a flat-iron, asked: "What do you -say?"</p> - -<p>He looked at him fixedly, and then, bending forward and looking on the -terrace where I was sitting with Doctor Nikitin and Yelpatievsky, he -said: "What are you talking about?"</p> - -<p>"Plehve."</p> - -<p>"Plehve ... Plehve ...," he repeated musingly after a pause, as though -he heard the name for the first time. Then he shook himself like a -bird, and said, with a faint smile:</p> - -<p>"To-day from early morning I have had a silly thing running in my -head; someone once told me that he saw the following epitaph in a -cemetery:</p> - -<p> -'Beneath this stone there rests Ivan Yegoriev;<br /> -A tanner by trade, he always wetted hides.<br /> -His work was honest, his heart good, but, behold,<br /> -He passed away, leaving his business to his wife.<br /> -He was not yet old and might still have done a lot of work.<br /> -But God took him away to the life of paradise on the night<br /> -Friday to Saturday in Passion week ...'<br /> -</p> - -<p>and something like that...." He was silent, and then, nodding his -head and smiling faintly, added: "In human stupidity when it is not -malicious, there is something very touching, even beautiful.... There -always is."</p> - -<p>They called us to come to dinner.</p> - - -<h4 class="p2">XXXVI</h4> - -<p>"I do not like people when they are drunk, but I know some who become -interesting when they are tipsy, who acquire what is not natural to -them in their sober state—wit, beauty of thought, alertness, and -richness of language. In such cases I am ready to bless wine."</p> - -<p>Suler tells how he was once walking with Leo Nicolayevitch in Tverskaya -Street when Tolstoi noticed in the distance two soldiers of the Guards. -The metal of their accoutrements shone in the sun; their spurs -jingled; they kept step like one man; their faces, too, shone with the -self-assurance of strength and youth.</p> - -<p>Tolstoi began to grumble at them: "What pompous stupidity! Like animals -trained by the whip...."</p> - -<p>But when the guardsmen came abreast with him, he stopped, followed them -caressingly with his eyes, and said enthusiastically: "How handsome! -Old Romans, eh, Liovushka? Their strength and beauty! O Lord! How -charming it is when man is handsome, how very charming!"</p> - - - -<h4 class="p2"><i>A LETTER</i></h4> - - -<p>I have just posted a letter to you—telegrams have arrived telling of -"Tolstoi's flight," and now once more one with you in thought I write -again.</p> - -<p>Probably all I want to say about the news will seem to you confused, -perhaps even harsh and ill-tempered, but you will forgive me—I am -feeling as though I had been gripped by the throat and was being -strangled.</p> - -<p>I had many long conversations with him; when he was living at Gaspra -in the Crimea, I often went to him and he liked coming to me; I have -studied his books lovingly; it seems to me that I have the right to -say what I think of him, even if it be bold and differ widely from the -general opinion. I know as well as others that no man is more worthy -than he of the name of genius; more complicated, contradictory, and -great in everything—yes, yes, in everything. Great—in some curious -sense wide, indefinable by words—there is something in him which made -me desire to cry aloud to everyone: "Look what a wonderful man is -living on the earth." For he is, so to say, universally and above all a -man, a man of mankind.</p> - -<p>But what always repelled me in him was that stubborn despotic -inclination to turn the life of Count Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi into -"the saintly life of our blessed father, boyard Leo." As you know, -he has for long intended to suffer; he expressed his regret to E. -Soloviov, to Suler, that he had not succeeded, but he wanted to -suffer simply, not out of a natural desire to test the resistance of -his will, but with the obvious and, I repeat, the despotic intention -of increasing the influence of his religious ideas, the weight of -his teaching, in order to make his preaching irresistible, to make -it holy in the eyes of man through his suffering, to force them to -accept it; you understand, to force them. For he realizes that that -preaching is not sufficiently convincing; in his diary you will, some -day, read good instances of scepticism applied by him to his own -preaching and personality. He knows that "martyrs and sufferers, with -rare exceptions, are despots and tyrants"—he knows everything! And yet -he says to himself, "Were I to suffer for my ideas they would have a -greater influence." This in him always repelled me, for I cannot help -feeling that it is an attempt to use violence to me—a desire to get -hold of my conscience, to dazzle it with the glory of righteous blood, -to put on my neck the yoke of a dogma.</p> - -<p>He always greatly exalted immortality on the other side of life, but -he preferred it on this side. A writer, national in the truest and -most complete sense, he embodied in his great soul all the defects -of his nation, all the mutilations caused us by the ordeals of our -history; his misty preaching of "non-activity," of "non-resistance to -evil"—the doctrine of passivism—this is all the unhealthy ferment -of the old Russian blood, envenomed by Mongolian fatalism and almost -chemically hostile to the West with its untiring creative labour, -with its active and indomitable resistance to the evil of life. -What is called Tolstoi's "anarchism," essentially and fundamentally, -expresses our Slav anti-stateism, which, again, is really a national -characteristic and desire, ingrained in our flesh from old times, -to scatter nomadically. Up to now we have indulged that desire -passionately, as you and everyone else know. We Russians know it, -too, but we break away, always along the line of least resistance; we -see that this is pernicious, but still we crawl further and further -away from one another—and these mournful cockroach journeyings are -called "the history of Russia," of a State which has been established -almost incidentally, mechanically, to the surprise of the majority of -its honest-minded citizens, by the forces of the Variags, Tartars, -Baltic Germans, and petty constables. To their surprise, because all -the time "scattering," and only when we reached places beyond which -we could find nothing worse—for we could go no further—well, then -we stopped and settled down. This is the lot, the destiny to which we -are doomed—to settle in the snows and marshes by the side of the wild -Erza, Tchood, Merey, Vess, and Muroma. Yet men arose who realized that -light must come to us not from the East but from the West; and now he, -the crown of our ancient history, wishes, consciously or unconsciously, -to stretch himself like a vast mountain across our nation's path to -Europe, to the active life which sternly demands of man the supreme -effort of his spiritual forces. His attitude towards science is, too, -certainly national: one sees magnificently reflected in him the old -Russian village scepticism which comes from ignorance. Everything is -national in him, and all his preaching is a reaction from the past, an -atavism which we had already begun to shake off and overcome.</p> - -<p>Think of his letter "The Intelligenzia, the State, the People," written -in 1905—what a pernicious, malignant thing it is! You can hear in it -the sectarian's "I told you so." At the time I wrote an answer to him, -based on his own words to me that he had long since forfeited the right -to speak of and on behalf of the Russian people, for I am a witness of -his lack of desire to listen to and understand the people who came to -talk to him soul to soul. My letter was bitter, and in the end I did -not send it to him.</p> - -<p>Well, now he is probably making his last assault in order to give to -his ideas the highest possible significance. Like Vassily Buslayev, he -usually loved these assaults, but always so that he might assert his -holiness and obtain a halo. That is dictatorial, although his teaching -is justified by the ancient history of Russia and by his own sufferings -of genius. Holiness is attained by flirting with sin, by subduing the -will to live. People do desire to live, but he tries to persuade them: -"That's all nonsense, our earthly life." It is very easy to persuade a -Russian of this; he is a lazy creature who loves beyond anything else -to find an excuse for his own inactivity. On the whole, of course, a -Russian is not a Platon Karatayev, nor an Akim, nor a Bezonkhy, nor -a Neklyudov; all these men were created by history and nature, not -exactly on Tolstoi's pattern, he only improved on them in order more -thoroughly to support his teaching. But, undeniably, Russia as a whole -is—Tiulin above and Oblomov below. For the Tiulin above look at the -year 1905, and for the Oblomov below look at Count A. N. Tolstoi, I. -Bunin, look at everything round about you. Beasts and swindlers—we -can leave them out of consideration, though our beast is exceedingly -national—what a filthy coward he is for all his cruelty. Swindlers, of -course, are international.</p> - -<p>In Leo Nicolayevitch there is much which at times roused in me a -feeling very like hatred, and this hatred fell upon my soul with -crushing weight. His disproportionately overgrown individuality is -a monstrous phenomenon, almost ugly, and there is in him something -of Sviatogor, the bogatir, whom the earth can't hold. Yes, he <i>is</i> -great. I am deeply convinced that, beyond all that he speaks of, there -is much which he is silent about, even in his diary—he is silent, -and, probably, will never tell it to anyone. That "something" only -occasionally and in hints slipped through into his conversation, and -hints of it are also to be found in the two note-books of his diary -which he gave me and L. A. Sulerzhizky to read; it seems to me a kind -of "negation of all affirmations," the deepest and most evil nihilism -which has sprung from the soil of an infinite and unrelieved despair, -from a loneliness which, probably, no one but he has experienced with -such terrifying clearness. I often thought him to be a man who in the -depths of his soul is stubbornly indifferent to people: he is so much -above and beyond them that they seem to him like midges and their -activities ridiculous and miserable. He has gone too far away from them -into some desert, and there solitary, with the highest effort of all -the force of his spirit, he closely examines into "the most essential," -into death.</p> - -<p>All his life he feared and hated death, all his life there throbbed in -his soul the "Arsamaxian terror" —must he die? The whole world, all -the earth looks toward him; from China, India, America, from everywhere -living, throbbing threads stretch out to him; his soul is for all and -for ever. Why should not Nature make an exception to her law, give to -one man physical immortality—why not? He is certainly too rational -and sensible to believe in miracles, but, on the other hand, he is a -bogatir, an explorer, and, like a young recruit, wild and headstrong -from fear and despair in face of the unknown barrack. I remember in -Gaspra he read Leo Shestov's book <i>Good and Evil in the Teaching of -Nietzsche and Tolstoi</i>, and, when Anton Tchekhov remarked that he did -not like the book, Tolstoi said: "I thought it amusing. It's written -swaggeringly, but it's all right and interesting. I'm sure I like -cynics when they are sincere. Now he says: 'Truth is not wanted'; quite -true, what should he want truth for? For he will die all the same."</p> - -<p>And, evidently seeing that his words had not been understood, he added -with a quick smile:—</p> - -<p>"If a man has learned to think, no matter what he may think about;, he -is always thinking of his own death. All philosophers were like that. -And what truths can there be, if there is death?"</p> - -<p>He went on to say that truth is the same for all —love of God; but -on this subject he spoke coldly and wearily. After lunch on the -terrace, he took up the book again, and, finding the passage, "Tolstoi, -Dostoevsky, Nietzsche could not live without an answer to their -questions, and for them any answer was better than none," he laughed -and said:</p> - -<p>"What a daring coiffeur; he says straight that I deceived myself, -and that means that I deceived others too. That is the obvious -conclusion...."</p> - -<p>"Why coiffeur?" asked Suler.</p> - -<p>"Well," he answered thoughtfully, "it just came into my mind—he is -fashionable, chic, and I remembered the coiffeur from Moscow at a -wedding of his peasant uncle in the village. He has the finest manners -and he dances fashionably, and so he despises everyone."</p> - -<p>I repeat this conversation, I think, almost literally; it is most -memorable for me, and I even wrote it down, as I did many other things -which struck me. Sulerzhizky and I wrote down many things which -Tolstoi said, but Suler lost his notes when he came to me at Arsamas: -he was habitually careless, and although he loved Leo Nicolayevitch -like a woman, he behaved towards him rather strangely, almost like -a superior. I have also mislaid my notes somewhere, and cannot find -them; someone in Russia must have got them. I watched Tolstoi very -attentively, because I was looking for—I am still looking for, and -will until my death—a man with an active and a living faith. And -also because once Anton Tchekhov, speaking of our lack of culture, -complained:</p> - -<p>"Goethe's words were all recorded, but Tolstoi's thoughts are being -lost in the air. That, my dear fellow, is intolerably Russian. -After his death they will bestir themselves, will begin to write -reminiscences, and will lie."</p> - -<p>But to return to Shestov. "'It is impossible,' he says, 'to live -looking at horrible ghosts,' but how does <i>he</i> know whether it's -horrible or not? If he knew, if he saw ghosts, he would not write this -nonsense, but would do something serious, what Buddha did all his life."</p> - -<p>Someone remarked that Shestov was a Jew.</p> - -<p>"Hardly," said Leo Nicolayevitch doubtfully.</p> - -<p>"No, he is not like a Jew; there are no disbelieving Jews, you can't -name one.... no."</p> - -<p>It seemed sometimes as though this old sorcerer were playing with -Death, coquetting with her, trying somehow to deceive her, saying: "I -am not afraid of thee, I love thee, I long for thee."</p> - -<p>And at the same time peering at Death with his keen little eyes: "What -art thou like? What follows thee hereafter? Wilt thou destroy me -altogether, or will something in me go on living?"</p> - -<p>A strange impression used to be produced by his words: "I am happy, I -am awfully happy, I am too happy." And then immediately afterwards: -"To suffer." To suffer—that, too, was true in him; I don't doubt for -a second that he, only half convalescent, would have been really glad -to be put into prison, to be banished—in a word, to embrace a martyr's -crown. Would not martyrdom probably in some measure justify death, -make her more understandable, acceptable from the external, from the -formal point of view? But he was never happy, never and nowhere; I am -certain of that: neither "in the books of wisdom," nor "on the back -of a horse," nor "in the arms of a woman" did he experience the full -delights of "earthly paradise." He is too rational for that and knows -life and people too well. Here are some more of his words:</p> - -<p>"The Kaliph Abdurahman had during his life fourteen happy days, but -I am sure I have not had so many. And this is because I have never -lived—I cannot live—for myself, for my own self; I live for show, for -people."</p> - -<p>When we left, Anton Tchekhov said to me: "I don't believe that he was -not happy." But I believe it. He was not. Though it is not true that he -lived for show. Yes, what he himself did not need, he gave to people -as though they were beggars; he liked to compel them, to compel them -to read, walk, be vegetarians, love the peasants, and believe in the -infallibility of the rational-religious reflections of Leo Tolstoi. -People must be given something which will either satisfy or amuse -them, and then let them be off. Let them leave a man in peace, to his -habitual, tormenting, and sometimes cosy loneliness in face of the -bottomless pit of the problem of "the essential."</p> - -<p>All Russian preachers, with the exception of Avvakum and, perhaps, -Tikhon Zadonsky, are cold men, for they did not possess an active and -living faith. When I was writing Luka in <i>The Lower Depths</i>, I wanted -to describe an old man like that: he is interested in "every solution," -but not in people; coming inevitably in contact with them, he consoles -them, but only in order that they may leave him in peace. And all -the philosophy, all the preaching of such men, is alms bestowed by -them with a veiled aversion, and there sounds behind their preaching -words which are beggarly and melancholy: "Get out! Love God or your -neighbour, but get out! Curse God, love the stranger, but leave me -alone! Leave me alone, for I am a man and I am doomed to death."</p> - -<p>Alas, so it is and so it will be. It could not and cannot be otherwise, -for men have become worn out, exhausted, terribly separated, and -they are all chained to a loneliness which dries up the soul. If Leo -Nicolayevitch had had a reconciliation with the Church, it would not -have at all surprised me. The thing would have had a logic of its own; -all men are equally insignificant, even Archbishops. In fact, it would -not have been a reconciliation, strictly speaking; for him personally -the act would have been only logical: "I forgive those who hate me." It -would have been a Christian act, and behind it there would have hidden -a quick, ironical, little smile, which would be understood as the way -in which a wise man retaliates on the fools.</p> - -<p>What I write is not what I want to say; I cannot express it properly. -There is a dog howling in my soul and I have a foreboding of some -misfortune. Yes, newspapers have just arrived and it is already -clear: you at home are beginning to "create a legend": idlers and -good-for-nothings have gone on living and have now produced a saint. -Only think how pernicious it is for the country just at this moment, -when the heads of disillusioned men are bowed down, the souls of the -majority empty, and the souls of the best full of sorrow. Lacerated and -starving, they long for a legend. They long so much for alleviation -of pain, for the soothing of torment. And they will create just what -he desires, but what is not wanted—the life of a holy man and saint; -but surely he is great and holy because he is a man, a madly and -tormentingly beautiful man; a man of the whole of mankind. I am somehow -contradicting myself in this, but it does not matter. He is a man -seeking God, not for himself, but for men, so that God may leave him, -the man, alone in the peace of the desert chosen by him. He gave us the -Gospels in order that we might forget the contradictions in Christ; he -simplified Christ's image, smoothing away the militant elements and -bringing into the foreground the humble "will of Him that sent Him." -No doubt Tolstoi's Gospel is the more easily accepted because it is -"soothing to the malady" of the Russian people. He had to give them -something, for they complain and trouble the earth with their groaning -and distract him from "the essential." But <i>War and Peace</i> and all the -other things of the same kind will not soothe the sorrow and despair -of the grey Russian land. Of <i>War and Peace</i> he himself said: "Without -false modesty, it is like the Iliad." M. Y. Tchaikovsky heard from his -lips exactly the same appreciation of <i>Childhood</i>, <i>Youth.</i></p> - -<p>Journalists have just arrived from Naples; one even hurried from Rome. -They ask me to say what I think of Tolstoi's "flight"—"flight" is the -word they use. I would not talk to them. You, of course, understand -that inwardly I am terribly disturbed; I do not want to see Tolstoi a -saint; let him remain a sinner close to the heart of the all-sinful -world, even close to the heart of each one of us. Poushkin and -he—there is nothing more sublime or dearer to us.</p> - -<p>Leo Tolstoi is dead.</p> - -<p>A telegram came containing the commonest of words—is dead.</p> - -<p>It struck me to the heart; I cried with pain and anger, and now, half -crazy, I imagine him as I know and saw him—I am tormented by a desire -to speak with him. I imagine him in his coffin—he lies like a smooth -stone at the bottom of a stream, and in his grey beard, I am sure, is -quietly hidden that aloof, mysterious, little smile. And at last his -hands are folded peacefully—they have finished their hard task.</p> - -<p>I remember his keen eyes—they saw everything through and through—and -the movements of his fingers, as though they were perpetually modelling -something out of the air, his talk, his jokes, his favourite peasant -words, his elusive voice. And I see what a vast amount of life was -embodied in the man, how inhumanly clever he was, how terrifying.</p> - -<p>I once saw him as, perhaps, no one has ever seen him. I was walking -over to him at Gaspra along the coast, and behind Yussupov's estate, -on the shore among the stones I saw his smallish, angular figure in a -grey, crumpled, ragged suit and crumpled hat. He was sitting with his -head on his hands, the wind blowing the silvery hairs of his beard -through his fingers: he was looking into the distance out to sea, and -the little greenish waves rolled up obediently to his feet and fondled -them as though they were telling something about themselves to the old -magician. It was a day of sun and cloud, and the shadows of the clouds -glided over the stones, and with the stones the old man grew now bright -and now dark. The boulders were large, riven by cracks, and covered -with smelling sea-weed: there had been a high tide. He, too, seemed to -me like an old stone come to life, who knows all the beginnings and -the ends of things, who considers when and what will be the end of -the stones, the grasses of the earth, of the waters of the sea, and of -the whole universe from the pebble to the sun. And the sea is part of -his soul, and everything around him comes from him, out of him. In the -musing motionlessness of the old man I felt something fateful, magical, -something which went down into the darkness beneath him and stretched -up, like a searchlight, into the blue emptiness above the earth -as -though it were he, his concentrated will, which was drawing the waves -to him and repelling them, which was ruling the movements of cloud and -shadow, which was stirring the stones to life. Suddenly, in a moment -of madness, I felt it is possible, he will get up, wave his hand, and -the sea will become solid and glassy, the stones will begin to move and -cry out, everything around him will come to life, acquire a voice, and -speak in their different voices of themselves, of him, against him. I -cannot express in words what I felt rather than thought at that moment; -in my soul there was joy and fear, and then everything blended in one -happy thought: "I am not an orphan on the earth so long as this man -lives on it."</p> - -<p>Then I walked on tip-toe away in order that the pebbles might not -scrunch under my feet, not wishing to distract his thoughts. And now -I feel I am an orphan, I cry as I write—never before have I cried so -unconsolably and in such bitter despair. I do not know whether I loved -him; but does it matter, love of him or hatred? He always roused in -me sensations and agitations which were enormous, fantastic; even the -unpleasant and hostile feelings which he aroused were of a kind not to -oppress, but rather to explode the soul: they made it more sensitive -and capacious. He was grand when, with his boots scraping over the -ground, as though he were imperiously smoothing its unevenness, he -suddenly appeared from somewhere, from behind a door or out of some -corner, and came towards you with the short, light, quick step of a -man accustomed to walk a great deal on the earth. With his thumbs in -his belt he would stop for a second, looking round quickly with a -comprehensive glance, a glance which at once took in anything new and -instantly absorbed the meaning of everything.</p> - -<p>"How do you do?"</p> - -<p>I always translated these words into: "How do you do? There's pleasure -for me, and for you there's not much sense in it—but still, how do you -do?"</p> - -<p>He would come out looking rather small, and immediately everyone -round him would become smaller than he. A peasant's beard, rough but -extraordinary hands, simple clothes, all this external, comfortable -democratism deceived many people, and I often saw how Russians who -judge people by their clothes—an old slavish habit—began to pour out -a stream of their odious "frankness," which is more properly called -"the familiarity of the pig-sty."</p> - -<p>"Ah, you are one of us! That's what you are. At last, by God's grace, -I am face to face with the greatest son of our native land. Hail for -ever. I bow low to you."</p> - -<p>That is a sample of Muscovite Russian, simple and hearty, and here is -another, but "free-thinkerish":</p> - -<p>"Leo Nicolayevitch, though I disagree with your religious-philosophical -views, I deeply respect in your person the greatest of artists."</p> - -<p>And suddenly, under his peasant's beard, under his democratic crumpled -blouse, there would rise the old Russian <i>bariny</i> the grand aristocrat: -then the noses of the simple-hearted visitor, educated and all the -rest, instantly became blue with intolerable cold. It was pleasant to -see this creature of the purest blood, to watch the noble grace of -his gestures, the proud reserve of his speech, to hear the exquisite -pointedness of his murderous words. He showed just as much of the -<i>barin</i> as was needed for these serfs, and when they called out the -<i>barin</i> in Tolstoi it appeared naturally and easily and crushed them so -that they shrivelled up and whined.</p> - -<p>One day I was returning from Yasnaya Polyana to Moscow with one of -these "simple-hearted" Russians, a Moscow man, and for a long time -he could not recover his breath, but kept on smiling woefully and -repeating in astonishment: "Well, well, that was a cold bath. He's -severe ... pooh!"</p> - -<p>And in the middle of it all he exclaimed, apparently with regret: -"And I thought he was really an anarchist. Everyone keeps on saying: -Anarchist, anarchist,' and I believe it...."</p> - -<p>The man was a large, rich manufacturer, with a great belly, and a face -the colour of raw meat—why did he want Tolstoi to be an anarchist? One -of the "profound mysteries" of the Russian soul!</p> - -<p>When Leo Nicolayevitch wished to please, he could do so more easily -than a clever and beautiful woman. Imagine a company of people of -all kinds sitting in his room: the Grand Duke Nicolay Mikhailovitch, -the house-painter Ilya, a social-democrat from Yalta, the stundist -Patzuk, a musician, a German, the manager of the estates of Countess -Kleinmichel, the poet Bulgakov, and all look at him with the same -enamoured eyes. He explains to them the teaching of Lao-Tse, and he -seems to me an extraordinary man-orchestra, possessing the faculty of -playing several instruments at the same time, a brass trumpet, a drum, -harmonium, and flute. I used to look at him just as the others did. And -now I long to see him once more—and I shall never see him again.</p> - -<p>Journalists have come asserting that a telegram has been received -in Rome "denying the rumour of Tolstoi's death." They bustled and -chattered, redundantly expressing their sympathy with Russia. The -Russian newspapers leave no room for doubt.</p> - -<p>To lie to him, even out of pity, was impossible; even when he was -seriously ill, one could not pity him. It would be banal to pity a man -like him. They ought to be taken care of, cherished, not loaded with -the wordy dust of worn-out, soulless words.</p> - -<p>He used to ask: "You don't like me?" and one had to answer: "No, I -don't."</p> - -<p>"You don't love me?"—"No, to-day I don't love you."</p> - -<p>In his questions he was merciless, in his answers reserved, as becomes -a wise man.</p> - -<p>He used to speak with amazing beauty of the past, and particularly of -Turgeniev; of Fet always with a good-natured smile and always something -amusing, of Nekrassov coldly and sceptically; but of all writers -exactly as if they were his children and he, the father, knew all their -faults, and—there you are!</p> - -<p>He would point out their faults before their merits, and every time he -blamed someone it seemed to me that he was giving alms to his listeners -because of their poverty; to listen to him then made one feel awkward, -one's eyes fell before his sharp little smile and—nothing remained in -one's memory.</p> - -<p>Once he argued fiercely that G. Y. Uspensky wrote in the Tula language, -and had no talent at all. And later I heard him say to Anton Pavlovitch -Tchekhov: "He (Uspensky) is a writer! In the power of his sincerity he -recalls Dostoevsky, only Dostoevsky went in for politics and coquetted, -while Uspensky is more simple and sincere. If he had believed in God, -he would have been a sectarian."</p> - -<p>"But you said he was a Tula writer and had no talent."</p> - -<p>He drew his shaggy brows down over his eyes and said: "He wrote badly. -What kind of language does he use? There are more punctuation marks -than words. Talent is love. One who loves is talented. Look at lovers, -they are all talented."</p> - -<p>Of Dostoevsky he spoke reluctantly, constrainedly, evading or -repressing something: "He ought to have made himself acquainted with -the teaching of Confucius or the Buddhists; that would have calmed -him down. That is the chief thing which everyone should know. He was -a man of rebellious flesh; when angry, bumps would suddenly rise on -his bald head; and his ears would move. He felt a great deal, but he -thought poorly; it is from the Fourierists, from Butashevitch and the -others, that he learnt to think. And afterwards all his life long he -hated them. There was something Jewish in his blood. He was suspicious -without reason, ambitious, heavy and unfortunate. It is curious that he -is so much read. I can't understand why. It is all painful and useless, -because all those Idiots, Adolescents, Raskolnikovs, and the rest of -them, they are not real; it is all much simpler, more understandable. -It's a pity people don't read Lieskov, he's a real writer—have you -read him?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, I like him very much, especially his language."</p> - -<p>"He knew the language marvellously, even the tricks. Strange that you -should like him; somehow you are not Russian, your thoughts are not -Russian -is it all right, you're not hurt at my saying that r I am an -old man, and, perhaps, I can no longer understand modern literature, -but it seems to me that it is all not Russian. They begin to write a -curious kind of verse; I don't know what these poems are or what they -mean. One has to learn to write poetry from Poushkin, Tiutchev, Fet. -Now you"—he turned to Tchekhov—"you are Russian. Yes, very, very -Russian."</p> - -<p>And smiling affectionately, he put his hand on Tchekhov's shoulder; -and the latter became uncomfortable and began in a low voice to mutter -something about his bungalow and the Tartars.</p> - -<p>He loved Tchekhov, and, when he looked at him, his eyes were tender -and seemed almost to stroke Anton Pavlovitch's face. Once, when Anton -Pavlovitch was walking on the lawn with Alexandra Lvovna, Tolstoi, who -at the time was still ill and was sitting in a chair on the terrace, -seemed to stretch towards them, saying in a whisper: "Ah, what a -beautiful, magnificent man: modest and quiet like a girl! And he walks -like a girl. He's simply wonderful."</p> - -<p>One evening, in the twilight, half closing his eyes and moving his -brows, he read a variant of the scene in <i>Father Sergius</i>, where the -woman goes to seduce the hermit: he read it through to the end, and -then, raising his head and shutting his eyes, he said distinctly: "The -old man wrote it well, well."</p> - -<p>It came out with such amazing simplicity, his pleasure in its beauty -was so sincere, that I shall never forget the delight which it gave me -at the time, a delight which I could not—did not know how to express, -but which I could only suppress by a tremendous effort. My heart -stopped beating for a moment, and then everything around me seemed to -become fresh and revivified.</p> - -<p>One must have heard him speak in order to understand the extraordinary, -indefinable beauty of his speech; it was, in a sense, incorrect, -abounding in repetitions of the same word, saturated with village -simplicity. The effect of his words did not come only from the -intonation and the expression of his face, but from the play and light -in his eyes, the most eloquent eyes I have ever seen. In his two eyes -Leo Nicolayevitch possessed a thousand eyes.</p> - -<p>Once Suler, Sergey Lvovitch, Tchekhov, and someone else, were sitting -in the park and talking about women; he listened in silence for a long -time, and then suddenly said:</p> - -<p>"And I will tell the truth about women, when I have one foot in the -grave—I shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me, and -say, 'Do what you like now.'" The look he gave us was so wild, so -terrifying that we all fell silent for a while.</p> - -<p>He had in him, I think, the inquisitive, mischievous wildness of a -Vaska Buslayev, and also something of the stubbornness of soul of the -Protopop Avvakum, while above or at his side lay hidden the scepticism -of a Tchaadayev. The Avvakumian element harried and tormented with its -preachings the artist in him; the Novgorod wildness upset Shakespeare -and Dante, while the Tchaadayevian element scoffed at his soul's -amusements and, by the way, at its agonies. And the old Russian man in -him dealt a blow at science and the State, the Russian driven to the -passivity of anarchism by the barrenness of all his efforts to build up -a more human life.</p> - -<p>Strange! This Buslayev characteristic in Tolstoi was perceived through -some mysterious intuition by Olaf Gulbranson, the caricaturist -of Simplicissimus: look closely at his drawing and you will see -how startlingly he has got the likeness of the real Tolstoi, what -intellectual daring there is in that face with its veiled and hidden -eyes, for which nothing is sacred and which believe "neither in a -sneeze, nor a dream, nor the cawing of a bird."</p> - -<p>The old magician stands before me, alien to all, a solitary traveller -through all the deserts of thought in search of an all-embracing truth -which he has not found—I look at him and, although I feel sorrow -for the loss, I feel pride at having seen the man, and that pride -alleviates my pain and grief.</p> - -<p>It was curious to see Leo Nicolayevitch among "Tolstoyans"; there -stands a noble belfry and its bell sounds untiringly over the whole -world, while round about run tiny, timorous dogs whining at the bell -and distrustfully looking askance at one another as though to say, "Who -howled best?" I always thought that these people infected the Yassnaya -Polyana house, as well as the great house of Countess Panin, with a -spirit of hypocrisy, cowardice, mercenary and self-seeking pettiness -and legacy-hunting. The "Tolstoyans" have something in common with -those friars who wander in all the dark corners of Russia, carrying -with them dogs' bones and passing them off as relics, selling "Egyptian -darkness" and the "little tears of Our Lady." One of these apostles, I -remember, at Yassnaya Polyana refused to eat eggs so as not to wrong -the hens, but at Tula railway-station he greedily devoured meat, -saying: "The old fellow does exaggerate."</p> - -<p>Nearly all of them like to moan and kiss one another; they all have -boneless perspiring hands and lying eyes. At the same time they are -practical fellows and manage their earthly affairs cleverly.</p> - -<p>Leo Nicolayevitch, of course, well understood the value of the -"Tolstoyans," and so did Sulerzhizky, whom Tolstoi loved tenderly and -whom he always spoke of with a kind of youthful ardour and fervour. -Once one of those "Tolstoyans" at Yassnaya Polyana explained eloquently -how happy his life had become and how pure his soul after he accepted -Tolstoy's teaching. Leo Nicolayevitch leant over and said to me in -a low voice: "He's lying all the time, the rogue, but he does it to -please me...."</p> - -<p>Many tried to please him, but I did not observe that they did it -well or with any skill. He rarely spoke to me on his usual subjects -of universal forgiveness, loving one's neighbour, the Gospels, and -Buddhism, evidently because he realized at once that all that would not -"go down" with me. I greatly appreciated this.</p> - -<p>When he liked he could be extraordinarily charming, sensitive, and -tactful; his talk was fascinatingly simple and elegant, but sometimes -it was painfully unpleasant to listen to him. I always disliked what -he said about women—it was unspeakably "vulgar," and there was in -his words something artificial, insincere, and at the same time very -personal. It seemed as if he had once been hurt, and could neither -forget nor forgive. The evening when I first got to know him, he -took me into his study—it was at Khamovniki in Moscow—and, making -me sit opposite to him, began to talk about <i>Varienka Oliessova</i> and -of <i>Twenty-Six and One</i>. I was overwhelmed by his tone and lost my -head, he spoke so plainly and brutally, arguing that in a healthy -girl chastity is not natural. "If a girl who has turned fifteen is -healthy, she desires to be touched and embraced. Her mind is still -afraid of the unknown and of what she does not understand -that is what -they call chastity and purity. But her flesh is already aware that -the incomprehensible is right, lawful, and, in spite of the mind, it -demands fulfilment of the law. Now you describe Varienka Oliessova as -healthy, but her feelings are anaemic—that is not true to life."</p> - -<p>Then he began to speak about the girl in <i>Twenty-six and One</i>, using a -stream of indecent words with a simplicity which seemed to me cynical -and even offended me. Later I came to see that he used unmentionable -words only because he found them more precise and pointed, but at the -time it was unpleasant to me to listen to him. I made no reply, and -suddenly he became attentive and kindly and began asking me about my -life, what I was studying, and what I read.</p> - -<p>"I am told that you are very well read; is that true? Is Korolenko a -musician?"</p> - -<p>"I believe not; but I'm not sure."</p> - -<p>"You don't know? Do you like his stories?"</p> - -<p>"I do very much."</p> - -<p>"It is the contrast. He is lyrical and you haven't got that. Have you -read Weltmann?"</p> - -<p>"Yes."</p> - -<p>"Isn't he a good writer, clever, exact, and with no exaggeration? He -is sometimes better than Gogol. He knew Balzac. And Gogol imitated -Marlinsky."</p> - -<p>When I said that Gogol was probably influenced by Hoffmann, Stern, -and perhaps Dickens, he glanced at me and asked: "Have you read that -somewhere? No? It isn't true. Gogol hardly knew Dickens. But you must -clearly have read a great deal: now look here, it's dangerous. Kolzov -ruined himself by it."</p> - -<p>When he accompanied me to the door, he embraced and kissed me and said: -"You are a real mouzhik. You will find it difficult to live among -writers, but never mind, don't be afraid, always say what you feel even -if it be rude—it doesn't matter. Sensible people will understand."</p> - -<p>I had two impressions from this first meeting: I was glad and proud -to have seen Tolstoi, but his conversation reminded me a little of -an examination, and in a sense I did not see in him the author of -<i>Cossacks, Kholstomier, War and Peace</i>, but a <i>barin</i> who, making -allowances for me, considered it necessary to speak to me in the common -language, the language of the street and market-place. That upset my -idea of him, an idea which was deeply rooted and had become dear to me.</p> - -<p>It was at Yassnaya Polyana that I saw him again. It was an overcast, -autumn day with a drizzle of rain, and he put on a heavy overcoat -and high leather boots and took me for a walk in the birch wood. He -jumped the ditches and pools like a boy, shook the rain-drops off -the branches, and gave me a superb account of how Fet had explained -Schopenhauer to him in this wood. He stroked the damp, satin trunks of -the birches lovingly with his hand and said: "Lately I read a poem—</p> - -<p> -The mushrooms are gone, but in the hollows<br /> -Is the heavy smell of mushroom dampness....<br /> -</p> - -<p>Very good, very true."</p> - -<p>Suddenly a hare got up under our feet. Leo Nicolayevitch started up -excited, his face lit up, and he whooped like a real old sportsman. -Then, looking at me with a curious little smile, he broke into a -sensible, human laugh. He was wonderfully charming at that moment.</p> - -<p>Another time he was looking at a hawk in the park: it was hovering over -the cattle-shed, making wide circles suspended in the air, moving its -wings very slightly as if undecided whether or not the moment to strike -had come. Leo Nicolayevitch stood up shading his eyes with his hand and -murmured with excitement: "The rogue is going for our chickens. Now, -now ... it's coming ... O, he's afraid. The groom is there, isn't he? -I'll call the groom...."</p> - -<p>And he shouted to the groom. When he shouted, the hawk was scared, -swept upwards, swung away, and disappeared. Leo Nicolayevitch sighed, -apparently reproaching himself, and said: "I should not have shouted; -he would have struck all the same...."</p> - -<p>Once in telling him about Tiflis, I mentioned the name of V. V. -Flerovsky-Bervi. "Did you know him?" Leo Nicolayevitch asked with -interest: "Tell me, what is he like?"</p> - -<p>I told him about Flerovsky: tall, long-bearded, thin, with very large -eyes; how he used to wear a long, sail-cloth blouse, and how, armed -with a bundle of rice, cooked in red wine, tied in his belt, and an -enormous linen umbrella, he wandered with me on the mountain paths -of Trans-Caucasia; how once on a narrow path we met a buffalo and -prudently retreated, threatening the brute with the open umbrella, and, -every time we stepped back, in danger of falling over the precipice. -Suddenly I noticed that there were tears in Tolstoi's eyes, and this -confused me and I stopped.</p> - -<p>"Never mind," he said, "go on, go on. It's pleasure at hearing about a -good man. I imagined him just like that, unique. Of all the radicals he -is the most mature and clever; in his <i>Alphabet</i> he proves conclusively -that all our civilization is barbarian, that culture is the work of the -peaceful and weak, not the strong, nations, and that the struggle for -existence is a lying invention by which it is sought to justify evil. -You, of course, don't agree with this? But Daudet agrees, you know, you -remember his Paul Astier?"</p> - -<p>"But how would you reconcile Flerovsky's theory, say, with the part -played by the Normans in the history of Europe?"</p> - -<p>"The Normans? That's another thing."</p> - -<p>If he did not want to answer, he would always say "That's another -thing."</p> - -<p>It always seemed to me—and I do not think I was mistaken—that Leo -Nicolayevitch was not very fond of talking about literature, but was -vitally interested in the personality of an author. The questions: "Do -you know him? What is he like? Where was he born?" I often heard in his -mouth. And nearly all his opinions would throw some curious light upon -a man.</p> - -<p>Of V.K. he said thoughtfully: "He is not a Great Russian, and so he -must see our life better and more truly than we do." Of Anton Tchekhov, -whom he loved dearly: "His medicine gets in his way; if he were not -a doctor, he would be a still better writer." Of one of the younger -writers: "He pretends to be an Englishman, and in that character a -Moscow man has the least success." To me he once said: "You are an -inventor: all these Kuvaldas of yours are inventions." When I answered -that Kuvalda had been drawn from life, he said: "Tell me, where did you -see him?"</p> - -<p>He laughed heartily at the scene in the court of the Kazan magistrate, -Konovalov, where I had first seen the man whom I described under the -name of Kuvalda. "Blue blood," he said, wiping the tears from his eyes, -"that's it—blue blood. But how splendid, how amusing. You tell it -better than you write it. Yes, you are an inventor, a romantic, you -must confess."</p> - -<p>I said that probably all writers are to some extent inventors, -describing people as they would like to see them in life; I also said -that I liked active people who desire to resist the evil of life by -every means, even violence.</p> - -<p>"And violence is the chief evil," he exclaimed, taking me by the arm. -"How will you get out of that contradiction, inventor? Now your <i>My -Travelling Companion</i> isn't invented—it's good just because it isn't -invented. But when you think, you beget knights, all Amadises and -Siegfrieds."</p> - -<p>I remarked that as long as we live in the narrow sphere of our -anthropomorphous and unavoidable "travelling companions," we build -everything on quicksands and in a hostile medium.</p> - -<p>He smiled and nudged me slightly with his elbow: "From that very, very -dangerous conclusions can be drawn. You are a questionable Socialist. -You are a romantic, and romantics must be monarchists—they always have -been."</p> - -<p>"And Hugo?"</p> - -<p>"Hugo? That's another thing. I don't like him, a noisy man."</p> - -<p>He often asked me what I was reading, and always reproached me if I had -chosen, in his opinion, a bad book.</p> - -<p>"Gibbon is worse than Kostomarov; one ought to read Mommsen, he's very -tedious, but it's all so solid."</p> - -<p>When he heard that the first book I ever read was <i>The Brothers -Semganno</i>, he even got angry:</p> - -<p>"Now, you see—a stupid novel. That's what has spoilt you. The French -have three writers, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert; and, well, perhaps -Maupassant, though Tchekhov is better than he. The Goncourts are mere -clowns, they only pretended to be serious. They had studied life from -books written by inventors like themselves, and they thought it a -serious business; but it was of no use to a soul."</p> - -<p>I disagreed with this opinion, and it irritated Leo Nicolayevitch a -little; he could barely stand contradiction, and sometimes his opinions -were strange and capricious.</p> - -<p>"There is no such thing as degeneration," he said once. "The Italian -Lombroso invented it, and after him comes the Jew Nordau, screaming -like a parrot. Italy is the land of charlatans and adventurers: only -Arentinos, Casanovas, Cagliostros, and the like are born there."</p> - -<p>"And Garibaldi?"</p> - -<p>"That's politics; that's another thing."</p> - -<p>To a whole series of facts, taken from the life of the merchant-class -families in Russia, he answered: "But it's untrue; it's only written in -clever books."</p> - -<p>I told him the actual history of three generations of a merchant family -which I had known, a history in which the law of degeneration had acted -with particular mercilessness. Then he began excitedly tugging at my -arm and encouraging me to write about it: "Now that's true. I know it; -there are two families like that in Tula. It ought to be written. A -long novel, written concisely, do you see? You must do it." His eyes -flashed.</p> - -<p>"But then there will be knights, Leo Nicolayevitch."</p> - -<p>"Don't. This is really serious. The one who is going to be a monk and -pray for the whole family —it's wonderful. That's real: you sin and -I will go and expiate your sin by prayer. And the other, the weary -one, the money-loving founder of the family—that's true too. And he's -a drunken, profligate beast, and loves everyone, and suddenly commits -murder—ah, it's good. It should be written, among thieves and beggars -you must not look for heroes, you really mustn't. Heroes—that's a lie -and invention; there are simply people, people, and nothing else."</p> - -<p>He often pointed out exaggerations in my stories, but once, speaking of -<i>Dead Souls</i>, he said, smiling good-naturedly:</p> - -<p>"We are all of us terrible inventors. I myself, when I write, suddenly -feel pity for some character, and then I give him some good quality or -take a good quality away from someone else, so that in comparison with -the others he may not appear too black." And then in the stern tones of -an inexorable judge: "That's why I say that art is a lie, an arbitrary -sham, harmful for people. One writes not what real life is, but simply -what one thinks of life oneself. What good is that to anyone, how I see -that tower or sea or Tartar—what interest or use is there in it?"</p> - -<p>[At times his thoughts and feelings seemed to me capriciously, even -deliberately, perverse, but what particularly struck and upset men -was just the stern directness of his thought, like Job, the fearless -questioner of the cruel God. He said:</p> - -<p>"I was walking one day on the road to Kiev, about the end of May; the -earth was a paradise; everything rejoiced; the birds sang; the bees -hummed; the sunshine and everything seemed so happy, humane, splendid. -I was moved to tears; I felt myself a bee to whom are given the best -flowers, and I felt God close to my soul. And suddenly I saw by the -roadside a man and woman, pilgrims; they were lying together, both -grey, dirty, and old —they writhed like worms, made noises, murmured, -and the sun pitilessly lighted up their naked blue legs and wizened -bodies. It struck such a blow to my soul. Lord, thou creator of beauty, -how art thou not ashamed? I felt utterly wretched——</p> - -<p>"Yes, you see what things happen. Nature—the devout considered her the -work of the devil—cruelly and mockingly torments man; she takes away -the power and leaves the desire. All men with a living soul experience -that. Only man is made to experience the whole shame and horror of that -torment, given to him in his flesh. We carry it in ourselves as an -inevitable punishment—a punishment for what sin?"</p> - -<p>While he said this the look in his eyes changed strangely, now -childishly plaintive, now hard and stern and bright. His lips trembled, -his moustache bristled. When he had finished, he took a handkerchief -from the pocket of his blouse and wiped his face hard, though it was -dry. Then he smoothed his beard with the knotted fingers of his strong -peasant's hand, and repeated gently: "Yes, for what sin?"]</p> - -<p>Once I was walking with him on the lower road from Dyulbev to Ai-Todor -On; he was walking with the light step of a young man, when he said to -me more nervously than was usual with him: "The flesh should be the -obedient dog of the spirit, running to do its bidding; but we—how do -we live? The flesh rages and riots, and the spirit follows it helpless -and miserable."</p> - -<p>He rubbed his chest hard over the heart, raised his eyebrows, and then, -remembering something, went on: "One autumn in Moscow in an alley near -the Sukhariov Gate I once saw a drunken woman lying in the gutter. A -stream of filthy water flowed from the yard of a house right under -her neck and back. She lay in that cold liquid, muttering, shivering, -wriggling her body in the wet, but she could not get up."</p> - -<p>He shuddered, half closed his eyes, shook his head, and went on gently: -"Let's sit down here.... It's the most horrible and disgusting thing, a -drunken woman. I wanted to help her get up, but I couldn't; I felt such -a loathing; she was so slippery and slimy—I felt that if I'd touched -her, I could not have washed my hand clean for a month —horrible. And -on the curb sat a bright, grey-eyed boy, the tears running down his -cheeks: he was sobbing and repeating wearily and helplessly: 'Mu-um ... -mu-um-my ... do get up.' She would move her arms, grunt, lift her head, -and again—bang went her neck into the filth."</p> - -<p>He was silent, and then looking round, he repeated almost in a -whisper: "Yes, yes, horrible. You've seen many drunken women? Many—my -God! You, you must not write about that, you mustn't."</p> - -<p>"Why?"</p> - -<p>He looked straight into my eyes and smiling repeated: "Why?" Then -thoughtfully and slowly he said: "I don't know. It just slipped out ... -it's a shame to write about filth. But yet why not write about it? Yes, -it's necessary to write all about everything, everything."</p> - -<p>Tears came into his eyes. He wiped them away, and, smiling, he looked -at his handkerchief, while the tears again ran down his wrinkles. "I -am crying," he said. "I am an old man. It cuts me to the heart when I -remember something horrible."</p> - -<p>And very gently touching me with his elbow, he said: "You, too—you -will have lived your life, and everything will remain exactly as it -was, and then you, too, will cry worse than I, more streamingly,' -as the peasant women say. And everything must be written about, -everything; otherwise that bright little boy might be hurt, he might -reproach us—'it's untrue, it's not the whole truth,' he will say. He's -strict for the truth."</p> - -<p>Suddenly he gave himself a shake and said in a kind voice: "Now, tell -me a story; you tell them well. Something about a child, about your -childhood. It's not easy to believe that you were once a child. You are -a strange creature, exactly as if you were born grown-up. In your ideas -there is a good deal of the child-like and the immature, but you know -more than enough of life—and one cannot ask for more. Well, tell me a -story....'</p> - -<p>He lay down comfortably upon the bare roots of a pine tree and watched -the ants moving busily among the grey spines.</p> - -<p>In the South, which, with its self-asserting luxuriance and flaunting, -unbridled vegetation, seems so strangely incongruous to a man from the -North, he, Leo Tolstoi—even his name speaks of his inner power—seemed -a small man, but knitted and knotted out of very strong roots deep in -the earth —in the flaunting scenery of the Crimea, I say, he was at -once both out of place and in his place. He seemed a very ancient man, -master of all his surroundings—a master-builder who, after centuries -of absence, has arrived in the mansion built by him. He has forgotten a -great deal which it contains; much is new to him; everything is as it -should be, and yet not entirely so, and he has at once to find out what -is amiss and why it is amiss.</p> - -<p>He walked the roads and paths with a businesslike, quick step of the -skilled explorer of the earth, and with sharp eyes, from which neither -a single pebble nor a single thought could hide itself, he looked, -measured, tested, compared. And he scattered about him the living seeds -of indomitable thoughts. He said to Suler once: "You, Liovushka, read -nothing which is not good out of self-conceit, while Gorky reads a lot -which is not good, because he distrusts himself. I write much which is -not good, because of an old man's ambition, a desire that all should -think as I do. Of course, I think it is good, and Gorky thinks it is -not good, and you think nothing at all; you simply blink and watch what -you may clutch. One day you will clutch something which does not belong -to you—it has happened to you before. You will put your claws into -it, hold on for a bit, and when it begins to get loose, you won't try -to stop it. Tchekhov has a superb story, <i>The Darling</i>—you are rather -like her."</p> - -<p>"In what?" asked Suler, laughing.</p> - -<p>"You can love well, but to choose—no, you can't, and you will waste -yourself on trifles."</p> - -<p>"Is everyone like that?"</p> - -<p>"Everyone?" Leo Nicolayevitch repeated.</p> - -<p>"No, not everyone."</p> - -<p>And suddenly he asked me, exactly as if he were dealing me a blow: "Why -don't you believe in God?"</p> - -<p>"I have no faith, Leo Nicolayevitch."</p> - -<p>"It is not true. By nature you are a believer, and you cannot get on -without God. You will realize it one day. Your disbelief comes from -obstinacy, because you have been hurt: the world is not what you would -like it to be. There are also some people who do not believe out of -shyness; it happens with young people; they adore some woman, but don't -want to show it from fear that she won't understand, and also from lack -of courage. Faith, like love, requires courage and daring. One has to -say to oneself 'I believe,' and everything will come right, everything -will appear as you want it, it will explain itself to you and attract -you. Now, you love much, and faith is only a greater love: you must -love still more, and then your love will turn to faith. When one loves -a woman, she is, unfailingly, the best woman on earth, and each loves -the best woman, and that is faith. A nonbeliever cannot love: to-day he -falls in love with one woman, and next year with another. The souls of -such men are tramps living barren lives—that is not good. But you were -born a believer, and it is no use thwarting yourself. Well, you may say -beauty? And what is beauty? The highest and most perfect is God."</p> - -<p>He hardly ever spoke to me on this subject, and its seriousness and the -suddenness of it rather overwhelmed me. I was silent.</p> - -<p>He was sitting on the couch with his legs drawn up under him, and -breaking into a triumphant little smile and shaking his finger at me, -he said: "You won't get out of this by silence, no."</p> - -<p>And I, who do not believe in God, looked at him for some reason very -cautiously and a little timidly, I looked and thought: "The man is -godlike."</p> - - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch -Tolstoi, by Maxim Gorky - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REMINISCENCES OF LEO TOLSTOI *** - -***** This file should be named 55284-h.htm or 55284-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/5/2/8/55284/ - -Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon -in an extended version,also linking to free sources for -education worldwide ... 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