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

Автор: Лев Толстой

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СКАЧАТЬ land, that he is not a mortal animal, dependent on the conditions of the world, but like a bird which has understood that it has wings and has faith in them, he should understand that he himself was never born and never died and always is, and passes through this world in one of the innumerable forms of life to fulfil the will of Him who sent him into this life.

      Dec. 8. Moscow. If I live.

      Mascha33 is with Ilia,34 a loving letter from her to-day.

To-day December 23. Moscow.

      It is long since I have made an entry. On the 30th, the Chertkovs35 came. It is two days since Kenworthy arrived. He is very pleasant…

      Have continued to write the Declaration – am progressing. Off and on, I think out the drama,36 and yesterday I raved about it all night. I am not well; a bad cold in the head, influenza. Because of the letter to the Englishman, I began also a letter on the collision between England and America.37

      Have been thinking during this time:

      1) I have been thinking especially clearly of that which I have already said many times; that all the evil in the world comes only from this, that people look upon themselves, upon their own personality, as a worthy object of their conscious life – upon themselves or upon a group of personalities, it is all the same.

      As long as a man lives for himself unconsciously, he does no harm. If there is a struggle, then the struggle is an unconscious one which is ended at once when the struggle with surroundings is ended; man adjusts himself to it or he goes under, and this struggle is neither cruel nor is it an evil one. The struggle begins to be cruel only when man directs his consciousness upon it, prepares it, strengthens and multiplies its energy tenfold and hundredfold.

      As Pascal says: there are three kinds of people; one kind know nothing and sit quietly, and just as quiet are those who know; but there are a middle kind who don’t know but believe they do; from them comes all the evil in the world. They are the people in whom consciousness has awakened, but they don’t know how to use it.

      2) The whole thing lies in this – that you should always remember who you are. There is no situation so difficult, from which the way out would not immediately offer itself, if you only would remember that you are not a temporary, material manifestation, but an eternal omnipresent being. “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me shall never die, and though he were dead yet shall he live. Believest thou this?”

      I walked on the street. A wretched beggar approached me. I forgot who I was and passed by. And then suddenly I remembered, and just as naturally as the hungry begin to eat and the tired sit down, I turned back and handed him something. It is the same with the temptation to quarrel, to insult, to be vain.

      3) One can not voluntarily cease to remain awake, i. e. to fall asleep. Just as little can one voluntarily cease to live. Life is more important than the will, than desire. (Unclear.)

      4) Receive with thankfulness the enjoyments of the flesh – all that you meet on the way, if they are not sinful – in short, if they do not go against your consciousness, if they do not make it suffer. But use the efforts of your will, your liberty, only to serve God.

      I just wrote a letter to Crosby.38 He is working in America.

      Dec. 24. Moscow. If I live.

      Yesterday I received the “Open Letter” of Spielhagen, the Socialist, which appeared in the newspapers with regard to Drozhin.39

      1896

January 23. Moscow.

      Just a month that I made no entries. During this time I wrote a letter about patriotism40 and a letter to Crosby41 and here now for two weeks I have been writing the drama. I wrote three acts abominably. I thought to make an outline so as to form a charpente. I have little hope of success.

      Chertkov and Kenworthy went away the 7th. Sonya went to Tver to Andrusha.42 To-day Nagornov43 died. I am again a little indisposed.

      I jotted down during this time:

      1) A true work of art – a contagious one – is produced only when the artist seeks, strives. In poetry this passion for representing that which is, comes from the fact that the artist hopes that having seen clearly and having fixed that which is, he will understand the meaning of that which is.

      2) In every art there are two departures from the way, vulgarity and artificiality. Between them both there is only a narrow path. And this narrow path is outlined by impulse. If you have impulse and direction, you pass by both dangers. Of the two, the more terrible is artificiality.

      3) It is impossible to compel reason to examine and clarify that which the heart does not wish.

      4) It is bad when reason wishes to give the meaning of virtue to selfish efforts.

      Kudinenko44 was here. A remarkable man. N. took the oath and is serving.45 A letter from Makovitsky46 with an article on the Nazarenes.47

      Jan. 24. Moscow. If I live.

      Jan. 25. Moscow.

      During these two days the chief event was the death of Nagornov. Always new and full of meaning is death. It occurred to me: they represent death in the theatre. Does it produce 1/1,000,000 of that impression which the nearness of a real death produces?

      I continue writing the drama. I have written four acts. All bad. But it is beginning to resemble a real thing.

      Jan. 26. Mosc. If I live.

      January 26. Moscow.

      I am alive, but I don’t live. Strakhov – to-day I heard of his death.48 To-day they buried Nagornov – and that is news. I lay down to sleep, but could not sleep, and there appeared before me so clearly and brightly, an understanding of life whereby we would feel ourselves to be travellers. Before us lies a stage of the road with the same well-known conditions. How can one walk along that road otherwise than eagerly, gaily, friendly, and actively together, not grieving over the fact that you yourself are going away or that others are going ahead of you thither, where we shall again be still more together.

      To-day I wrote a postscript to the letter to Crosby. A good letter from Kenworthy. Unpleasantness with N. He is a journalist.

      Jan. 26 [27?]. Moscow. If I live.

      Almost a month that I have made no entries. To-day, Feb. 13, Moscow.

      I wanted to go to the Olsuphievs.49… There is much bustle here and it takes up much time. I sit down late to my work and therefore write little. I finished somehow the fifth act of the drama and took up Resurrection. СКАЧАТЬ

<p>33</p>

Maria Lvovna Tolstoi (1872–1906), second daughter of Tolstoi, afterwards married to Count N. L. Obolensky.

<p>34</p>

Count Ilya Lvovich Tolstoi (born 1866), second son of Tolstoi. Has written a book, My Recollections (Moscow, 1914).

<p>35</p>

Vladimir Grigorevich Chertkov and his wife, Anna Constantinovna (born Dieterichs). V. G. Chertkov made the acquaintance of Tolstoi in 1883. For biographical information about him see under “Biography of L. N. Tolstoy” by P. Biriukov (Volume II, 1913) and also in the pamphlet, Tolstoi and Chertkov, by P. A. Boulanger (Moscow, 1911) and in the essay of A. M. Khiriakov: “Who Is Chertkov?” (Kievski Mysl, 1910, No. 333, December 2nd).

<p>36</p>

Soon Tolstoi began this drama (see entry of January 23, 1896), which he called And Light Lights Up Darkness. This drama, having to a great extent a biographic character, portrays the torturing condition of a man who has gone through an inner religious crisis, and who lives with his family which, not understanding him, interferes with his attempts to change his life according to the truth revealed to him. This was first printed with a great many censor deletions in The Posthumous Literary Works of L. N. Tolstoi (edited by A. L. Tolstoi, 1911, Volume II).

<p>37</p>

The Englishman, John Manson, came to Tolstoi with a request for his opinion on the collision between the United States and England on account of the boundaries of Venezuela. Tolstoi answered by an extensive letter which was published under the title, “Patriotism or Peace?” and printed abroad (by Deibner in Berlin, and others.) It was not printed in Russia.

<p>38</p>

Ernest Crosby (1856–1907), an American social-worker, a poet and writer. When he was a representative of the United States in the International Court in Egypt, he read Tolstoi’s On Life, which caused an upheaval in his soul. As a result, he left the Government service and devoted his life to the propaganda of the social-religious views of Tolstoi and the social-economic views of Henry George. He founded The Social Reform League, the object of which was the discussing of the problems of reorganisation of contemporary life on the basis of justice and equality, and the furthering of the actual realisation of this reorganisation.

<p>39</p>

E. N. Drozhin, a district school teacher, in 1891, refused military service at the recruiting in the city of Sudzha in the Province of Kursk. He was sentenced to be sent to a disciplinary battalion and stayed fifteen months in the Voronezh disciplinary battalion. Here he fell ill of consumption and the doctors pronounced him unfit to continue military service, upon which he was transferred to the state’s prison to finish his sentence. He died in the Voronezh prison on January 27, 1894, from inflammation of the lungs which he contracted at the time of his transfer … from the disciplinary regiment to the prison. The story of his refusal from military service is described in detail in the book by E. I. Popov: Life and Death of E. N. Drozhin, 1866–1894, published by The Free Press, England, 1899. Tolstoi wrote an appendix to this book in which he expressed the opinion that such people like Drozhin “by their activity help…” In reference to this article the well-known German writer, Frederick Spielhagen, printed an open letter to Count Leo Tolstoi in the newspapers, in which he considered Tolstoi guilty of Drozhin’s death, a useless one, according to Spielhagen, for the abolition of war and the establishment of universal peace. This letter was translated into Russian in 1896 and appeared as a separate pamphlet.

<p>40</p>

See Note 36.

<p>41</p>

A voluminous letter devoted to the problem of non-resistance to evil by violence and the relation of contemporary American writers to it.

<p>42</p>

Count Andrei Lvovich Tolstoi, born 1877, fourth son of Tolstoi. In this year he served in the Tver military as a volunteer (before the prescribed age).

<p>43</p>

Nicholai Michailovich Nagornov, husband of Tolstoi’s niece, Varvara Valerianovna. In the letter to A. K. Chertkov of January 13, 1896, Tolstoi wrote: “We had a death lately. Nagornov died, the husband of my niece. She loved him passionately and they lived together remarkably happily … no one knows anything of him, but the good… My heart feels solemn and good because of this death.”

<p>44</p>

Fedior Kudinenko, a peasant, a co-thinker of Tolstoi, a former gendarme.

<p>45</p>

See note 29.

<p>46</p>

Dushan Petrovich Makovitsky (Dušan Makovický), a Slovak, who later became one of the closest friends and followers of Tolstoi, spent six years in Yasnaya Polyana from the end of 1904 to the day Tolstoi left, in the capacity of family doctor, and was near Tolstoi until the latter’s death. At this time he lived in his native land, in Hungary, taking part in the publication of translations into the Slavonian of Tolstoi’s books and of writers near to him in spirit. The article here mentioned is “Instances of Refusal from Military Service among the Sect of the Nazarenes, in Hungary.” Printed in Leaflets of the Free Press, England, 1898, No. I.

<p>47</p>

The Nazarenes, a sect spread in Hungary, Chorvatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Switzerland and the United States, whose members refuse military service.

<p>48</p>

Nicholai Nicholaievich Strakhov (1828–1896), a friend of the Tolstoi family, a noted writer and philosopher, highly valued by Tolstoi as a man and a literary critic. He had an extensive correspondence with Tolstoi, which was published by the Tolstoi Museum Society in Petrograd, 1914.

<p>49</p>

The family of the Counts Olsuphiev was very much liked by Tolstoi. This is what he wrote about them to V. G. Chertkov on February 9, 1896: “They are such very simple and good people, that the difference between their opinion and mine, and not the difference but the non-recognition of that by which I live, does not bother me. I know that they cannot, but that they want to be good and that they have gone as far as they could in that direction.”