The Journal of Leo Tolstoi First. Volume—1895-1899. Лев Толстой

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#n100" type="note">100

      The religion of the people is this: there is a God and there are gods and saints. (Christ came on earth, as a peasant told me to-day, to teach people how and to whom to pray.) The gods and the saints perform miracles, have power over the flesh and perform heroic deeds and good works, and the people have only to pray, to know how and to whom to pray. But people can not perform good works, they can only pray. Here is their whole faith.

      I bathed and don’t feel well.

      June 19, Y. P.

      Have been feeling weak all this time and sleep badly. Posha came yesterday. He spoke about the Khodinka accident well, but wrote it badly. Our very idle, luxurious life oppresses me. N. came. A stranger. He is young and he does not understand in the same way as I do, that which he understands, although he agrees with everything. Finished the first draft101 on the 13th of June. Now I am revising it, but am working very little.

      … Struggled with myself twice and successfully. Oh, if it were always so!

      Once I passed beyond Zakaz102 at night and wept for joy, being grateful for life. The pictures of life in Samara stand out very clearly before me; the steppes, the fight of the nomadic, patriarchic principle with the agricultural civilised one.103 It draws me very much. Konefsky was not born in me; that is why it moves so awkwardly.

      Have been thinking:

      1) Something very important about art: what is beauty? Beauty is that which we love. “He is not dear because he is good, but good because he is dear.” Here is the problem; why dear? Why do we love? And to say that we love, because a thing is beautiful, is just the same as saying that we breathe because the air is pleasant. We find the air pleasant, because we have to breathe; and in the same way we discover beauty, because we have to love. And he who hasn’t the power to see spiritual beauty, sees at least a bodily one and loves it.

      June 26, Y. P. Morning.

      All night I did not sleep. My heart aches without stopping. I continue to suffer and can not subject myself to God… I have not mastered pride and rebellion and the pain in my heart does not stop. One thing consoles me; I am not alone but with God, and therefore no matter how painful it is, yet I feel that something is taking place within me. Help me, Father.

      Yesterday I walked to Baburino104 and unwillingly (I rather would have avoided than sought it), I met the 80-year-old Akime ploughing, the woman Yaremichov who hasn’t a coat to her household and only one jacket, then Maria whose husband was frozen and who has no one to gather her rye and who is starving her child, and Trophime and Khaliavka, and the husband and wife were dying as well as the children. And we study Beethoven. And I pray that He release me from this life. And again I pray and cry from pain. I am entrapped, sinking, I cannot alone, only I hate myself and my life.

      June 30, Ysn. Pol.

      Continued to suffer and struggle much, and have conquered neither one nor the other. But it is better. Mme. Annenkov105 was here and put it very well …106 They have spoiled for me even my diary which I write with the point of view of the possibility of its being read by the living107 …

      Just now upstairs they began to speak about the New Testament and N. en ricanant proved that Christ advised castration. I became angry, – shameful.

      Two days ago I went to those who had been burned out; had not dined, was tired and felt well… Yesterday I visited the lawyer who wanted to snatch a hundred rubles from a beggar-woman to decorate his own house with. It is the same everywhere.

      During this time I have been in Pirogovo. My brother Serezha has entirely come over to us. The journey with Tania and Chertkov was joyous. To-day in Demenka108 I gave the last words for his journey to a dying peasant.

      I am advancing much on the work.109 I will try to write out now what I have jotted down in the book.

       To-day, July 19. 110

      I am in Pirogovo. I arrived the day before yesterday with Tania and Chertkov. In Serezha111 there has certainly taken place a spiritual change; he admits it himself saying that he was born several months ago. I am very happy with him.

      At home, during this time, I lived through much difficulty. Lord, Father, release me from my base body. Cleanse me and do not let your spirit perish in me and become overgrown. I prayed twice beseechingly; once that He let me be His tool; and second that He save me from my animal “self.”

      During this time I progressed on the Declaration of Faith. It is far from what has to be said and from what I want to say. It is entirely inaccessible to the plain man and the child, but, nevertheless I have said all that I know coherently and logically.

      In this time also I wrote the preface to the reading of the Gospels112 and annotated the Gospels. Had visitors. Englishmen, Americans – no one of importance.

      I will write out all that I jotted down:

      1) Yesterday I walked through a twice ploughed, black-earth fallow field. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but black earth – not one green blade of grass, and there on the edge of the dusty grey road there grew a bush of burdock. There were three off-shoots. One was broken and its white soiled flower hung; the other also broken, was bespattered with black dirt, its stem bent and soiled; the third shoot stuck out to the side, also black from dust, but still alive and red in the centre. It reminded me of Hadji-Murad.113 It makes me want to write. It asserts life to the end, and alone in the midst of the whole field, somehow or other has asserted it.

      2) He has a capacity for languages, for mathematics, is quick to comprehend and to answer, can sing, draw correctly, beautifully, and can write in the same way; but he has no moral or artistic feeling and therefore nothing of his own.

      3) Love towards enemies. It is difficult, seldom does it succeed – as with everything absolutely beautiful. But then what happiness when you attain it! There is an exquisite sweetness in this love, even in the foretaste of it. And this sweetness is just in the inverse ratio to the attractiveness of the object of love. Yes, the spiritual voluptuousness of love towards enemies.

      4) Some one makes me suffer. As soon as I think about myself, about my own suffering, the suffering continues to grow and grow and terror overcomes me at the thought to where it might lead. It suffices to think of the man on account of whom you are suffering, to think about his suffering – and instantly you are healed. Sometimes it is easy when you already love your torturer; but even when it is difficult, it is always possible.

      5) Yesterday in walking I thought what are those boundaries which separate us, one being from another? And it occurred to me. Are not space and time the conditions of these divisions, or rather, the consequences of these divisions? If I were not a separated part, there would be neither space nor time for me, as there is not for God. But since I am not the whole, I can understand myself and other beings through space and time only.

      (I feel that there is something СКАЧАТЬ