Tolstoy's personal diary. The diaries of Leo Tolstoy were published on the portal on the writer’s birthday
Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev was born on September 10 (21), 1760 in the village of Bogorodskoye, Kazan (later Simbirsk) province in the family of a landowner, died on October 3 (15), 1837 in Moscow.
In 1796-1814 he held the posts of Chief Prosecutor of the Senate, Minister of Justice, etc. He appeared in print in 1777.
Dmitriev's poetry - typical sample Russian noble sentimentalism.
As a satirist, Dmitriev developed secular and moralizing themes (humorous and satirical tales, 1792; “The Freaky Woman,” 1794).
It was a topical work in which Dmitriev, a poet of a new direction, attacked the dominant culture in Russian classical literature rhetorical ode. From that time on, in the minds of the reading public, odes became an archaic genre.
In a poem written in the same year, Dmitriev gives a description of Ermak’s exploits during the conquest of Siberia, no longer in the genre of an ode, but in the genre of a romantic ballad. Belinsky wrote about this poem:
“...This was a decisive innovation, and Dmitriev was not called a romantic because this word did not yet exist.” But "romanticism" further development in Dmitriev's work did not receive. Basically it followed the line of graceful, refined salon poetry. Dmitriev's sentimental songs, as well as his madrigals, epigrams, inscriptions in albums, portraits and other “poetic little things” enjoyed enormous success.
Dmitriev created many fables. They are written in correct verse and elegant literary language; but, like all of Dmitriev’s salon poetry, they are far from the people, and this gave Pushkin the right to declare that they are all "not worth one good fable Krylova».
In 1803-1805, an edition of Dmitriev’s “Works and Translations” was published. It was, in essence, the result of his poetic activity; in subsequent years he almost did not write.
Dmitriev died in the same year Pushkin, but he remained the poet of “Catherine of the Century.”
V. G. Belinsky defined it this way historical meaning Dmitrieva: “...His fables and fairy tales were excellent and truly poetic works for that time. Dmitriev's songs are tender to the point of cloying - but such was the general taste then... In general, in Dmitriev's poems, in their form and direction, Russian poetry took a significant step towards rapprochement with simplicity and naturalness, in a word - with life and reality: for in tender-sighing sentimentality yet more life and nature than in book pedantry.”
Vl. Muravyov
Lyres and trumpets. Russian poetry of the 18th century. M., Children's literature, 1973
DMITRIEV, Ivan Ivanovich - Russian poet. Born into a landowner's family. At the age of 14 he started military service a private, in 1796 he retired as a colonel. In 1796-1814 he held various posts - chief prosecutor of the Senate, minister of justice, etc. He appeared in print in 1777. The most intense period of creativity was 1794-1805, when Dmitriev published two collections (“And my trinkets”, 1795, “Pocket songbook, or Collection of the best secular and common songs”, 1796) and Works (parts 1-3, 1803-1805); Afterwards I almost didn’t write. Was friendly with G. R. Derzhavin and especially with N. M. Karamzin. Dmitriev's poetry is a typical example of Russian noble sentimentalism. Rejecting the hierarchy of genres and styles inherent in classicism, Dmitriev sought to develop a common literary language for various genres based on secular colloquial speech. However, Dmitriev’s language retained its conventionality and bookishness. Dmitriev is primarily a satirist who developed secular and moralizing themes ("The Freaky Woman"). His satire, which ridiculed the rhetorical ode, became one of the programmatic works of Karamzinism. Dmitriev's numerous fables are poetic and elegant, their style marked by salon smoothness. Dmitriev's songs, set to music, were very famous, in which folklore tradition reworked in the spirit of chamber sentimentality (etc.). Dramatic poem- the first experience in Russian poetry of a romantic interpretation of a national historical plot. Translations and adaptations occupy a significant place in Dmitriev’s work. French poets(Lafontaine, Florian, etc.) and poetic “little things” (madrigals, epigrams). Dmitriev influenced the poets of Arzamas, P. A. Vyazemsky, V. A. Zhukovsky, K. N. Batyushkova. His notes “A Look at My Life” (1866) contain valuable social and literary information. A. S. Pushkin had a negative attitude towards Dmitriev’s poetry; in letters of 1824 he polemicized with P. A. Vyazemsky, the author of an apologetic article about Dmitriev: “All his fables are not worth one good fable by Krylov...”, “...Dmitriev, despite all his old influence, does not, should not have more weight than Kheraskov...”. Noting the limitations of Dmitriev’s creativity, V. G. Belinsky also pointed to its historical significance, as a stage on “the path of rapprochement with simplicity and naturalness, in a word - with life and reality...”.
Works: Works, ed. and approx. A. A. Floridova, vol. 1-2, St. Petersburg, 1895; Letters from N. M. Karamzin to I. I. Dmitriev, with notes. and index by J. Grot and P. Pekarsky, St. Petersburg, 1866; Karamzin N. and Dmitriev I., Izbr. poems. Entry art., approx. A. Ya. Kucherova, L., 1953.
Lit.: Kupreyanova E. N., Dmitriev and the poets of the Karamzin school, in the book: History of Russian. literature, vol. 5, part 1, M. - L., 1941; Vinogradov V.V., From observations of the language and style of I.I. Dmitriev, in the book: Materials and research on the history of Russian. lit. language, vol. 1, M. - L., 1949; History of Russian 19th century literature Bibliographical index, ed. K. D. Muratova, M. - L., 1962.
I. M. Semenko
Brief Literary Encyclopedia: In 9 volumes - T. 2. - M.: Soviet encyclopedia, 1964
DMITRIEV Ivan Ivanovich - poet and fabulist. Served at court; under Paul I he was chief prosecutor of the Senate, under Alexander I he was minister of justice.
Dmitriev's literary activity has no special significance, although at one time it was very popular. Besides lyric poems and the usual court odes and messages for that time (, , etc.), Dmitriev wrote four books of fables (68 fables), with which he initially attracted attention. In them, he is one of the last representatives of that didactic stream in Russian noble literature, which was determined even under Sumarokov. In addition, he was one of the first to try to instill elements of folk poetry in literature and wrote a number of songs in the “folk spirit,” one of which was very popular (“he moans day and night; his dear little friend flew away for a long time,” etc. ). Finally, Dmitriev was known both as a satirist and humorist, extremely superficial. In addition to epigrams, his satire, directed against the pompous ode-writers of that time, was especially valued, the goal of which was: “... a reward with a ring, often a hundred rubles, or friendship with a prince” [which, however, did not prevent Dmitriev himself from writing the same odes, such as those written in the same year as the satire (1794) - “Poems on the victory of Count Suvorov-Rymniksky, won over the Polish troops, when he crossed seven hundred miles in three days”], and a fairy tale (about a “fashionista” deceiving her husband). Dmitriev's poetry is fueled by the psychological experiences of the middle-class nobility (motives of contemplation and melancholy, alienation from the world and craving for the patriarchal way of life). “So, in my life I still had the consolation of listening to the murmur of my home stream, tasting a peaceful sleep under the roof where I was born, and being in the arms of my parents” (). This mood, as well as Dmitriev’s participation in the reform of poetry and literary language, brings Dmitriev closer to the leader of local sentimentalism, Karamzin. However, intimate lyrics are often drowned out in Dmitriev’s work by rehashes of court odes () and aristocratic poetry (). The mixture of styles is explained by Dmitriev’s inability to resist these alien literary traditions. I followed this path much more confidently a decade later. Zhukovsky.
Bibliography: I. Best edition: Sochin. Iv. Iv. Dmitrieva, 2 vols., ed. and note. A. A. Floridova, St. Petersburg, 1893 (supplement to the magazine “North” for 1893). In addition to this ed., works. and Dmitriev’s translations went through 6 editions. Later, Dmitriev's letters to Vyazemsky(SPB., 1898) and others (“Russian Antiquity”, 1903, XII).
II. Pypin A. N., History of Russian literature, vol. IV, St. Petersburg, 1899; ed. 4th, St. Petersburg, 1913.
III. Mezier A.V., Russian literature from the 11th to the 19th centuries. inclusive, part 2, St. Petersburg, 1902.
L.T.
Literary encyclopedia: In 11 volumes - [M.], 1929-1939.
Publications in the Literature section
Be lazy like Leo Tolstoy
Do you cherish the dream of literary fame, but can’t start writing? Self-admiration gets in the way, bad habits and laziness? We re-read the diaries of Leo Tolstoy, remember how he struggled with procrastination, and begin to move towards a great goal.
Ivan Kramskoy. Portrait of L.N. Tolstoy (fragment). 1873. State Tretyakov Gallery
Keep yourself a diary
Leo Tolstoy kept diaries for most of his life. In them, he not only described events, but also talked about his own moral qualities, literature and the high purpose of a writer. If you decide to keep a diary like Leo Tolstoy, you will have to talk to yourself in it - first of all, set goals for the future:
Reproach yourself for doing nothing and immediately be inspired by other people’s examples:
March 21, 1855. Did not do anything. I received a delightful letter from Masha, in which she describes to me her acquaintance with Turgenev. Sweet, glorious letter, which elevated me to own opinion and stimulating activity.
Write down various obscenities and feel nostalgic for your early works:
June 4, 1856. I got up at 5, walked, I admit, with terribly erotic thoughts. I read Pushkin's first poems. Then I sorted out my old notebooks, incomprehensible, but cute game.
Be sure to write down in your diary the rules you intend to live by.
December 1853 - January 1854
“Is it bad or good to always work”, “Get up before sunrise”,
“Always write everything clearly and clearly”, “In the morning, determine the activities for the day and try to fulfill them”.
The rules may apply not only to work, but also to your moral character in general:
Just record them, even if you feel in your gut that you won’t always be able to follow the rules.
Confess to yourself your worst vices
Be honest with yourself: you need to know your own vices, like your enemies, by sight. Set your priorities and begin to eradicate character flaws:
September 6, 1854. The most important thing for me in life is correction from laziness, irritability and lack of character. Love for everyone and contempt for yourself!
At the same time, no one forbids you to later rethink your vices and accept yourself for who you are. Or at least separate relative disadvantages from absolute ones.
July 14, 1855. Perhaps I will not rework my character, but will do only one and important stupidity out of a desire to rework it. Is indecisiveness a major flaw—one that needs to be corrected?<...>There are absolute shortcomings, such as: laziness, lies, irritability, selfishness, which are always shortcomings.
Practice your vices constantly. Take a break from your main task
You sat down to work, but your friend Gorchakov came? Enjoy it! Do you like your mustache? Look at them in the mirror, and then write it all down in your diary.
July 11, 1854... Just before the evening I wrote very little. Why? Laziness, indecision and passion to look at your mustache and fistulas. For which I reproach myself twice.
Get up late, get irritated. Take it out on your loved ones. In winter you can afford to mope, especially critical situations- even tell fortunes. Break your own rules. And don’t forget to write about it in your diary - for yourself and your future biographers.
January 9, 1854. 1) Got up late. 2) Got excited, beat Alyoshka. 3) I was lazy. 4) Was disorderly. 5) Was sad.
January 10 and 11, 1854. I got up very late and couldn’t do anything because of the cold.<...>After dinner he went to Zhukevich and spent the entire evening and night carelessly.
<...>
1) Lying around. 2) Lost spirit. 3) I got angry - I hit the cat and 4) I completely forgot about the rules. 5) Fortune teller.
Lose your last money at cards. Always tell yourself what it is last time. Trust that God will save you from troubles. Although it is possible that by this moment you have already lost your house in Yasnaya Polyana.
January 28, 1855. I played Stoss for two days and two nights. The result is clear - the loss of everything - the Yasnaya Polyana house. It seems there is nothing to write - I am so disgusted with myself that I would like to forget about my existence.
February 6, 7, 8, 1855. I played cards again and lost another 200 rubles in silver. I can’t promise myself to stop, I want to get even, but together I can get terribly confused... Tomorrow I’ll invite Odakhovsky to play, and this will be the last time.
February 12, 1855. Again I lost 75 rubles. God still has mercy on me so that there will be no troubles; but what happens next? There is only one hope for him!
If you are too lazy to do something, be sure to write about it in your diary. Celebrate this fact as often as possible. Perhaps in the end you’ll just get tired of being lazy and you’ll get down to business.
July 12, 1855. I didn’t write anything all day, read Balzac, and only occupied myself with the new box. 1) Laziness, 2) Laziness, 3) Laziness...
Make Your Weaknesses Serve Your Purpose
Do you remember how you once lamented the fact that pride and vanity are one of your main vices? Look at them with different eyes. If your constant enemies are laziness and irritability, then vanity will help you overcome them.
Compare yourself with one of your colleagues. First of all, with someone who writes a lot and productively and, perhaps, has already bought himself old castle in France for royalties.
Constantly remind yourself of how much you want to become famous. If you have both a healthy writer's vanity and high goal- this is a huge plus.
September 17, 1855. Still, the only thing, the main thing and prevailing over all other inclinations and activities should be literature. My goal - literary fame. The good that I can do with my writings...
Quit your job and get married
Be more decisive. Resign to focus on your literary career.
September 17, 1855. ...Tomorrow I’m going to Koroles and asking to resign, and in the morning I’m writing “Youth”.
At some point, admit to yourself: you will be lost if you don’t start doing something. And start at least small.
Get married. Even if you think that it is not necessary at all, and you will be distracted even more. You will write about this in your diary later.
August 28, 1862. I am 34 years old. I got up with the habit of sadness... I worked, wrote in vain in letters to Sonya... Nasty face, don’t think about marriage, your calling is different, and you’ve been given a lot.
Love and marriage can help you get your life in order.
February 8, 1863. We are in Yasnaya... I feel so good, so good, I love her so much. The management and business of the magazine are good... How everything is clear to me now... All of it. She does not know and will not understand how she transforms me, without comparison, more than I transform her.
And when you start writing your most famous novel, your wife may even be helping you. For example, rewriting complete drafts while you write new chapters. Isn't this luck for a writer?
Bright genius - this is what the poet Alexander Blok called the writer Leo Tolstoy
THE DIARIES OF Lev Nikolaevich TOLSTOY- an integral part of his biography, his literary heritage. They capture the tireless work of the writer’s thoughts, deep thoughts about life, and social and moral quests.
Tolstoy kept Diaries with some interruptions throughout almost his entire life. He began them in 1847 as an 18-year-old student and finished them in 1910 as an 82-year-old famous writer. Not a single Russian writer left behind a Diary as extensive in time and rich in content as Leo Tolstoy.
L.N. Tolstoy in his office. Photo by V.G. Chertkova, 1909
Diaries, notes, confession as a genre were close to Tolstoy’s creative individuality. Many of the writer’s contemporaries and friends felt this and encouraged him to keep a Diary. V.G. Chertkov advised him: “You should definitely keep constant notes, like a diary of your thoughts and feelings. You have felt this yourself more than once: “Notes of a Christian”, “Notes of a Non-Madman” (from a letter dated August 8, 1886). Tolstoy himself believed that a diary helps a person concentrate in his thoughts about life, obliges him to sincerity, frankness, and honesty with himself, because, as he said, here “Every falsehood is immediately felt by you.”
Tolstoy in different time I imagined the purpose of my Diary differently. Starting it in 1847, while a student at Kazan University, he wrote on one of the first pages: “I never had a diary because I didn’t see any use from it. Now, when I am developing my abilities, from the diary I will be able to judge the progress of this development.”(entry dated April 7, 1847).
Following this goal, he initially wrote down on the pages of the Diary everything that, in his opinion, helped the development of abilities, and first of all, an analysis of the books he read. His first notebook, for example, is entirely devoted to a comparative analysis assigned at the university to the famous “Order” of Catherine II and the treatise of the French educator Montesquieu “The Spirit of Laws” - an analysis carried out with all possible care: with quotes, reasoning and conclusions. After some time, for the same purpose, Tolstoy created sections in his Diary: “Information” and “Observations”, where he wrote down the most Interesting Facts, drawn from books or from one’s own observations of life.
In addition, the Diary was supposed to serve both as a place to record “sensible thoughts” and as a means of promoting self-discipline. “You never know if there are thoughts in your head that seem quite wonderful; but when you look at it, it becomes a wasteland; others are definitely efficient - that’s what a diary is for. The diary is very convenient for judging yourself.
Then, since I find it necessary to determine all activities in advance, a diary is also needed for this.”(entry dated June 14, 1850). However, since 1851, the predominant place in the Diary has been occupied by the so-called “Franklin Journal”, that is, a set of moral rules, following which should help moral self-education. “I find a diary, in addition to determining future actions, a useful purpose - a report of each day from the point of view of those weaknesses from which you want to improve.”, he writes on March 7, 1851. Young Tolstoy starts an argument with himself on the pages of the Diary, strictly judges his way of life and exposes himself to numerous “sins.” At certain intervals, he re-reads his “journal”, as if summing up what he has experienced. And then cruel, self-critical monologues appear on the pages of his notebooks.
"What am I?"- he asks himself with passion in his Diary of 1854. And he answers: “I am stupid, awkward, unclean and socially uneducated. I am irritable, boring to others, indiscreet, intolerant and as bashful as a child. I'm almost ignorant. What I know, I learned somehow myself, in fits and starts, without communication, to no avail, and even so little. I am not temperate, indecisive, fickle, stupidly vain and ardent, like all spineless people. I'm not brave. I am careless in life and so lazy that idleness has become an almost irresistible habit for me. I am smart, but my mind has never been thoroughly tested on anything. I have neither a practical mind, nor a secular mind, nor a business mind...” etc. and so on. (entry dated July 7).
Such merciless self-accusations were mostly based not on real, but on the author’s exaggerated ideas about his shortcomings and sins. Nevertheless, these repentances played a big role in that tireless internal work which took place in the mind of the writer. The diary helped him with this. Using the mercilessly sincere and truthful entries in the Diary, like an infallible barometer, Tolstoy measured the level of his moral growth.
In addition to self-education and self-education, the Diary had another important goal for Tolstoy - literary. Fascinated by the works of Stern and Rousseau, in the center of which the hero analyzes his mental movements, Tolstoy decides to write his Diary in such a way that it represents for him « literary work, but for others it could be a pleasant read"(entry dated October 22, 1853). The words appear in this entry for the first time "literary work" “The last three years, which I have spent so dissolutely, sometimes seem to me very entertaining, poetic and partly useful; I’ll try to remember and write them more frankly and in more detail. Here’s another third purpose for the diary.”(entry dated June 14, 1850). From now on diary entries acquire a new character - events, various kinds of facts, meetings with certain people are not only noted in them, recorded in memory, but they are narrated, that is, told in detail, in detail, sometimes even picturesquely, which serves as the first attempts at the pen of the future writer.
After a few years, they begin to occupy a significant place in the Diaries “thoughts, information or notes relating to the proposed work”(entry dated January 2, 1854). Preparing himself for writing, the young Tolstoy consciously turns the Diary into a working notebook, where “blanks” for future essays are accumulated and stored. At the same time, he strictly follows the rule: “When starting each work, review the diary and write out everything related to it in a special notebook.” At the same time, he does not abandon his confessional Franklin Journal, strictly demanding from himself “memorize and write down in pencil every day all the crimes of the rules”(ibid.).
Thus, the purpose of the Diary of Young Tolstoy is varied. It serves as a daily “journal of activities”, a place of confession, and a laboratory for the first literary experiments. Its content is also varied. In it, in addition to notes about his own life, there are many interesting observations about the surrounding reality, about people, and many thoughts on socio-political, philosophical, ethical and aesthetic topics. However, Tolstoy's primary attention during this period was directed to himself. At the center of the Diary is the author himself, his thoughts and feelings, harsh introspection, memories of the past and plans for the future. His own life during this period was still, as it were, separated from the lives of other people; The external world interests him mainly insofar as it affects his personality. And although among the thoughts recorded in the Diary there are deep thoughts about the people, about “Russian slavery”, about Crimean War, about the fate of Sevastopol and Russia - these thoughts are still very closely connected with the plans and interests of Tolstoy himself.
In later years, as L.N.’s life and writing experience expanded. Tolstoy and especially after the ideological turning point he experienced at the turn of the 1880s, his Diary undergoes significant changes.
Everything narrowly business and practical, as well as having the nature of short-term notes for memory, is now recorded in special notebooks, which, since 1855, he always keeps with him - at home and on the road, day and night. In the Diary highest place They begin to take up notes that comprehend reality from the point of view of the author’s new worldview, substantiating his religious and moral teachings. These thoughts, previously - sometimes on the go - sketched out in notebooks, are pondered, sharpened and, in expanded form, entered into the Diary, from where they, in an even more processed and polished form, will go into articles, letters, and works of art. Thus, Tolstoy’s Diary gradually becomes a laboratory of his philosophical, religious and moral thought and begins to imply a reader. Personal, intimate elements, not intended for others, are intertwined in it with openly journalistic reasoning, designed for wide dissemination.
The change in the content and character of the Diary, which occurred at first unnoticed by its author, was later deliberately thought out and sanctioned by him. In recent decades, Tolstoy considered the thoughts recorded in the Diary to be the only important part of it and saw in them its main purpose, useful to people.
"All these papers,- he wrote to V.G. Chertkov on May 13, 1904, referring to his writings, - Apart from the diaries of recent years, I, frankly speaking, do not attribute any significance and consider any use of them completely indifferent. Diaries, if I do not have time to more accurately and clearly express what I write in them, may have some meaning, at least in those fragmentary thoughts that are stated there. And therefore, publishing them, if you remove everything random, unclear and unnecessary from them, can be useful to people.”
Following this instruction, the writer’s friend V.G. Chertkov, biographer P.I. Biryukov and other people selected individual thoughts from Tolstoy’s Diaries, mainly of religious and moral content, and published them in editions of Free Word, in the collections “Ripe Ears” and in biographical works.
Tolstoy decided in a new way in last period of his life and the question of the Diaries of Youth. Previously, due to the intimacy of their content, he did not let anyone read them and at one time was even close to destroying them.
“...I thought about my old diaries, about how disgusting I seem in them, and about how I don’t want them to be known, that is, I care about human glory even after death,”- he wrote on July 20, 1890. Sofya Andreevna, who was rewriting Tolstoy’s Youth Diary at that time, noted in her notebook: “Lyovochka is beginning to worry that I am rewriting his diaries. He would like to destroy the old diaries and appear in front of children and the public only in his patriarchal form.”
But soon Tolstoy decided to abandon “concern for human glory” and completely preserve these Diaries, since they, in his opinion, can serve people in their moral self-improvement.
"Diaries of my former single life,- he wrote in his will in 1895, - Having chosen from them what is worth it, I ask you to destroy... I ask you to destroy the diaries of my single life not because I would like to hide my bad life from people - my life was ordinary, trashy, from a worldly point of view, the life of unprincipled young people - but because these diaries, in which I wrote down only what tormented me with the consciousness of sin, produce a false, one-sided impression and represent... But by the way, let my diaries remain as they are. From them it is clear, at least, that, despite all the vulgarity and trashiness of my youth, I was still not abandoned by God and, even as I grew older, I began to understand and love him a little.”(entry dated March 27).
Tolstoy's diaries, like all his literary heritage, reflect the complexity of the writer’s spiritual world, the tragedy of his experiences, the inconsistency of his worldview.
The personality traits of Tolstoy are fully reflected in his Diaries. Nothing else in his legacy, neither the writer’s works nor his letters, reveals to us with such completeness his complex, multifaceted nature and especially his spiritual and family drama, as his own notes.
Tolstoy spent his youth without obvious serious conflicts and mental turmoil. The main content of his life at that time, in addition to the usual hobbies of his youth, was an intense search for the purpose and meaning of life, thinking about the problems of literature, philosophy and morality. The Diary reflects only to a small extent this activity of his mind and heart - in reality, the internal work taking place in him was gigantic. Subsequently, recalling this period of his life, he wrote to A.A. Tolstoy:
“...I was lonely and unhappy living in the Caucasus. I began to think in a way that only once in a lifetime people have the power to think. I have my notes from that time, and now, re-reading them, I could not understand that a person could reach such a degree of mental exaltation to which I reached then. It was both painful and good time. Never, neither before nor after, have I reached such a height of thought, never looked into it, as during this time, which lasted two years. And everything that I found then will forever remain my conviction.”(from a letter dated late April 1859).
Tolstoy speaks in this letter and repeatedly in his Diaries about his loneliness, and indeed, with a huge spiritual need for friendship, for communication with like-minded people, in his youth he was largely deprived of this. Endowed by nature with a bright individuality, always having his own view of things, making strict moral demands on himself and those around him, Tolstoy found it difficult to get along with people who were far from him in his spiritual and mental make-up, and having got together, he soon broke up with them. This was the case, for example, with colleagues in the Caucasus and Sevastopol. This was how it was later in his relations with the St. Petersburg writers Druzhinin, Botkin and Annenkov - at first he became close to them, called them “an invaluable triumvirate,” and then quickly lost interest in them. This was the case with Turgenev, whom he always loved, but relations with whom, after a heavy quarrel, were severed for a long time. This was the case with B.N. Chicherin. With some of his friends like A.A. Tolstaya, A.A. Fet, N.N. Fears, Tolstoy was close for many years, but then, due to differences in beliefs, he lost interest in them. Young Tolstoy was no happier in love. The pages of the Diary capture his desire for a harmonious patriarchal family life, his thirst to find a true, close friend in a loved one. The story of his affair with V. Arsenyeva shows how passionate, intense and at the same time vain were his hopes for happiness, how often the bitterness of disappointment fell to his lot.
Marriage in the fall of 1862 to the daughter of a doctor in the court department, Sofya Andreevna Bers, the first family joys created in Tolstoy a feeling of newfound peace and great happiness. The meager Diaries of this time depict to us a situation of almost complete and serene existence. Tolstoy loves his wife and joyfully surrenders to this feeling. “Family happiness consumes me completely...- recorded in the Diary of January 5, 1863, - ...this has not happened and will not happen to anyone, and I am aware of it.” But at the same time, on the same page he writes:
“I'm still the same. I am also often dissatisfied with myself and just as firmly believe in myself and expect from myself... I wish I hadn’t been happy! All the conditions for happiness coincided for me. One thing I often lack (all this time) is the consciousness that I have done everything, what should was , in order to fully enjoy what is given to me and give to others,everything , with their labor for what they gave me"(entry dated January 15, 1863).
Over the next two decades, with the publication of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy became famous not only in Russia, but also abroad.
Passionate about farming, he multiplies his estates, buys land in the Samara province, and plants forests. He is also pleased with his expanded family - he has a loving wife, children, and relatives next to him. And yet, behind the external success and serenity, behind the idyll of life in the Yasnaya Polyana house, there are hidden - the further, the more acute - anxiety, anxiety, dissatisfaction. Every year they deepen, intensify and gradually take on such dimensions that famous writer and the happy family man stops, as he told it in “Confession”, “to go hunting with a gun so as not to be tempted by the too easy way of ridding yourself of life.”
Dissatisfaction with life in this “happy” time, unabated confusion and anxiety are caused by an ever-growing awareness of the injustice of modern social order and a painful search for ways to eliminate it. Tolstoy cannot imagine personal happiness outside of general contentment and harmony. He is tormented by his own well-being at a time when lies and injustice reign around him. Five years before his marriage, in 1857, he wrote to A.A. Tolstoy: “Eternal anxiety, labor, struggle, deprivation - this is the necessary conditions, from which no person should dare to think of leaving even for a second... It makes me laugh to remember how I thought and how you seem to think that you can create a happy, honest little world for yourself, in which it is calm, without mistakes, without remorse, without confusion, live slowly and do slowly, carefully, only good things. Funny! It is forbidden , grandmother. It doesn't matter howit is forbidden without moving, without exercising, to be healthy. To live honestly, you have to struggle, get confused, struggle, make mistakes, start and quit, and start again and quit again, and always struggle and lose. And calmness is spiritual meanness.”. Tolstoy remained faithful to this conviction all his life, and the painful work of conscience did not stop in him for a moment.
At the turn of the 1880s, Tolstoy experienced a sharp ideological and spiritual turning point. Having truly suffered through his new understanding of the world, he finds in it support for his life, for further creativity. But it does not bring him peace of mind and satisfaction. From this time on, the second stage of his life began - a thirty-year period filled with enormous fruitful activity, but on a personal level even more complex and dramatic. Day by day, his discord with his family deepens, especially with his sons and wife, who do not accept his new worldview and resist putting it into practice. His sense of guilt and shame before the people for his lordly living conditions grows and becomes unbearable. Slowly, gradually, but with inevitable force, that spiritual and family drama is growing, which, ultimately, after hard thought and torment, will force the 82-year-old man to secretly leave on a dark autumn night Yasnaya Polyana.
What was Tolstoy's life drama? How do her own Writer's Diaries depict her?
The vast literature existing on this topic gives conflicting answers to this question. The center of gravity is shifted to the intra-family conflict - the contradictions between the writer, renouncing his “master’s” rights and privileges, and the family, striving to preserve them. Some authors attach exaggerated importance to the struggle that has arisen in recent years between the writer’s wife and his like-minded person V.G. Chertkov for his influence on Tolstoy.
Tolstoy's diaries convincingly show that in reality everything was much more complicated. As B. Meilakh rightly pointed out, who thoroughly analyzed the writer’s life in recent years, the causes of Tolstoy’s tragedy cannot be reduced only to family discord or to any other individual circumstances of his personal life, no matter how serious and important they may be in themselves. The origins of the growing every year spiritual Tolstoy's drama - in the tragic discord between the utopian ideal of the writer, his religious and moral teaching and real life - a discord that became more and more noticeable every year and at the end of Tolstoy's life, during the years of the first Russian revolution and after it, became especially obvious.
Tolstoy defended the idea of universal love and non-resistance to evil through violence as the only basis for the social reconstruction of society. According to his teachings, only the internal, moral self-improvement of a person can lead the world to "kingdom of god"- freedom, brotherhood and happiness. He could not admit that his teaching was wrong, because the sources of his contradictions lay not only in his personal thoughts, but also in the very conditions of Russian life, especially the life of the peasant masses, whose ideology he spoke as an exponent. At the same time, he was too “earthly” a thinker to turn a blind eye to the facts. real life. And in this - in the everyday, ever-increasing feeling of disharmony between the teaching in which Tolstoy deeply and passionately believed, and the incomprehensible "the fate of events", moving on their own, incomprehensible to him and seemed to him "wrong" laws - expressed the great spiritual tragedy of the writer.
Tolstoy, of course, did not realize it as clearly and specifically as we can see now, a century later. On a personal level, he first of all felt this discord as an unbearable contradiction between his ideal of a democratic patriarchal life and his forced stay in a lordly environment, and this is precisely what he wrote about more than once in his Diary.
“It’s very difficult in the family... My words do not captivate anyone. They seem to know - not the meaning of my words, but the fact that I have a bad habit of saying this... How can they not see that I am not only suffering, but have been deprived of my life for three years now?(entry dated April 4, 1884).
“More and more, I suffer almost physically from inequality: wealth, the excesses of our lives in the midst of poverty; and I cannot reduce this inequality. This is the secret tragedy of my life."(entry dated June 10, 1907).
“It’s painfully embarrassing, terrible. Yesterday I drove past those throwing stones, as if they had driven me through the gauntlet. Yes, poverty and envy and anger towards the rich are hard, painful, but I don’t know if the shame of my life is not more painful.”(dated April 12, 1910).
The motif of shame, melancholy, powerlessness in the face of the evil of the surrounding world, the feeling of a sharp contrast between the difficult existence of a hungry and powerless people and their existence in relatively “luxurious” conditions sounds on the pages of the Diary every year more clearly and sharply. Back in 1884, Tolstoy had a desire to leave Yasnaya Polyana and go to the big peasant world, where he would begin to live according to the laws of love and goodness. However, such a departure would have brought grief to the family, and he did not decide on it at that time.
The conflict in the family, which Tolstoy repeatedly complains about in his Diary, his ever-growing alienation from his wife and children, especially his sons, has its source in the same deep reasons as his entire tragedy of recent years. Thus, having come to the denial of property after the crisis of the 80s, Tolstoy sought to build both his life and the life of his family on new, more just foundations. He renounced ownership of real estate, estates, land, and literary royalties, but at the same time, not wanting to cause “evil” to his loved ones, he transferred to his family the rights to them and to income from works written before 1881. This decision, as it soon became clear, did not satisfy anyone. First of all, it did not satisfy the writer himself; he honestly and sincerely felt this as a compromise with his conscience, for which he was very painful and ashamed. It did not satisfy his friends and like-minded people, who perceived this step as an annoying discrepancy between word and deed, for which many of them cruelly reproached him. It gave enemies and spiteful critics a reason to accuse Tolstoy of insincerity, hypocrisy, and pharisaism. Finally, this decision did not satisfy the family, which was still deprived of a significant part of their income. Thus the ground was created for a conflict that from that time on never ceased in the family.
In more later years Tolstoy clearly saw the consequences of his wrong step: “What a great sin I committed by giving my fortune to my children. He hurt everyone, even his daughters. I see it clearly now."- we read in the Diary of 1910. But it was already too late to fix anything at that time.
At the end of his life, fearing that after his death his family would violate his will and lay claim to his entire literary heritage, Tolstoy drew up a secret will in the summer of 1910, according to which all his works should be published and distributed free of charge. This will, the existence of which Sofya Andreevna soon guessed and which she sought with painful persistence, served as that new spark from which Last year the long-smoldering flame of enmity and hatred flared up between her and Chertkov.
We find a true and very complete coverage of the events of that time in Tolstoy’s Diaries; they fully reproduce the dramatic history of his relationship with his wife. Dozens of places in them testify to his love for her, his respect as the mother of his children and as a devoted assistant and friend. Then, from the 1880s, complaints were increasingly heard about the alienation that had arisen between them, about their loneliness in the family. And yet, Tolstoy was quite sincere when in 1895, at the request of Sofia Andreevna, he removed from his Diaries a number of passages containing disrespectful reviews of her.
"Revising the diary,- we read in the entry dated October 13, 1895, - I found a place - there were several of them - in whichI renounce those evil words that I wrote about her. These words were written in moments of irritation. Now I repeat it again for everyone who comes across these diaries.” (emphasis by Tolstoy. - A. Sh.).
To V.G. Tolstoy, in addition to spiritual closeness, felt a deep sense of gratitude to Chertkov for his tireless work in publishing and distributing his works, which were banned in Russia. Their correspondence testifies to Tolstoy’s great trust in Chertkov, respect for his intelligence and experience, and personal disposition towards him as a person and figure.
At the same time, Chertkov, an active, ambitious nature, without noticing it and subsequently repenting, sometimes crossed the line of emotional tact and modesty to which his great proximity to Tolstoy obliged him. These character traits of Chertkov manifested themselves with particular force in 1910 in his conflict with Sofia Andreevna, caused by Tolstoy’s secret will. As the writer’s eldest son, S.L., writes in his memoirs. Tolstoy, Chertkov, who considered himself the successor of Leo Tolstoy’s work and the only competent editor and publisher of his works, was afraid that Sofya Andreevna would persuade Lev Nikolaevich to destroy the will, and took all measures to keep it secret. “The consequence of this was that his behavior in 1910 extremely strained the relationship between my parents and was one of the reasons for my father’s painful experiences in the last year of his life.”
Tolstoy fervently wished for peace in the family. He was clearly aware that S.A.’s behavior Tolstoy was caused by her serious painful condition, and was ready, without compromising his principles, to do everything to find an acceptable basis for life together. Even in the midst of the struggle between Sofia Andreevna and Chertkov, he tried to protect her in front of him, reminding her of her illness and special character. But reality, contrary to his will, led to ever new conflicts, which was facilitated by Sofia Andreevna’s increasing nervous illness. And in the end, the discord in the family became unbearable.
It is impossible to read without emotion the latter’s notes from 1910, in which the 82-year-old writer, in the decline of his life, appears as a deeply suffering man, deprived not only of mental, but also of the most necessary peace of life, turned into an object of a ruthless struggle between two warring “parties.” “Chertkov drew me into a struggle, and this struggle is very difficult and disgusting to me,”- Tolstoy writes bitterly in his “Diary for Oneself” (dated July 30, 1910). “They are tearing me apart. Sometimes I think: get away from everyone,”- we read in the entry dated September 24, 1910.
In addition to the will, Tolstoy's Diaries were also a subject of contention. Hating Chertkov, trying to remove him from publishing Tolstoy’s works, Sofya Andreevna demanded that the Diaries be returned to the family. “His diaries,” she wrote to Chertkov on September 18, 1910, “are the holy of holies of his life, therefore, mine with him, this is a reflection of his soul, which I am used to feeling and loving, and they should not be in the hands of a stranger.” For his part, V.G. Chertkov, whom Tolstoy entrusted in his will with the functions of editor and publisher of his works, sought to keep the Diaries for himself. This, along with all other circumstances, further heated the atmosphere, and all together accelerated the denouement. Thus, in all the complexity of life’s collisions, the life story of the great writer, his personal drama and tragic end appears before us on the pages of the Diary.
However, with all the complexity and sometimes tragedy of the life problems reflected in the Diaries, with the far from idyllic nature of the social and personal conflicts captured in them, one cannot find hopelessly pessimistic notes in them.
“I thought: Rejoice! Rejoice! The work of life, its purpose, is joy. Rejoice in the sky, in the sun, in the stars, in the grass, in the trees, in the animals, in the people. And make sure that this joy is not disturbed by anything. This joy is disrupted, which means you made a mistake somewhere - look for this mistake and correct it.”(dated September 15, 1889).
Alexander SHIFMAN,
compiler of the 22-volume
Collected works of L.N. Tolstoy
(given in abbreviation).
Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich
Diaries
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Diaries
Diary - 1847
Diary - 1850
Diary - 1851
Diary - 1852
Diary - 1853
Diary - 1854
Diary - 1855
Diary - 1856
Diary - 1857
Diary - 1857 (Travel notes in Switzerland)
Diary - 1858
Diary - 1859
Diary - 1860
Diary - 1861
Diary - 1862
Diary - 1863
Diary - 1864
Diary - 1865
Diary - 1870
Diary - 1871
Diary - 1873
Diary - 1878
Diary - 1879
Diary - 1881
Diary - 1882
Diary - 1883
Diary - 1884
Diary - 1885
Diary - 1886
Diary - 1887
Diary - 1888
Diary - 1889
Diary - 1890
Diary - 1891
Diary - 1892
Diary - 1893
Diary - 1894
Diary - 1895
Diary - 1896
Diary - 1897
Diary - 1898
Diary - Dialogue
Diary - 1899
Diary - 1900
Diary - 1901
Diary - 1902
Diary - 1903
Diary - 1904
Diary - 1905
Diary - 1906
Diary - 1907
Diary - 1908
"Secret" diary of 1908
Diary - 1909
Diary - 1910
"Diary for oneself"
Diary - 1847
March 17.[Kazan.] It’s been six days since I entered the clinic, and it’s been six days since I’m almost satisfied with myself. [...] Here I am completely alone, no one bothers me, here I have no service, no one helps me, therefore, nothing extraneous has an influence on my mind and memory, and my activity must necessarily develop. The main benefit is that I clearly saw that the disorderly life that most of secular people are mistaken for a consequence of youth, is nothing more than a consequence of early depravity of the soul.
Solitude is as useful for a person living in society as society is for a person not living in it. Separate a person from society, if he ascends into himself, and how soon the glasses that showed him everything in a wrong way will be thrown off his mind, and how his view of things will become clearer, so that it will not even be clear to him how he did not see all this before . Leave your reason to act, it will show you your purpose, it will give you rules with which you can boldly go into society. Everything that is consistent with the primary ability of man - reason, will be equally consistent with everything that exists; intelligence individual person there is a part of everything that exists, and a part cannot upset the order of the whole. The whole can kill the part. To do this, form your mind so that it is consistent with the whole, with the source of everything, and not with a part, with the society of people; then your mind will merge into one with this whole, and then society, as a part, will have no influence on you.
It is easier to write ten volumes of philosophy than to apply any one principle to practice.
18th of March. I read Catherine’s “Nakaz”, and since I generally gave myself the rule, when reading any serious work, to think about it and write out wonderful thoughts from it, I am writing here my opinion about the first six chapters of this wonderful work.
[...] The concepts of freedom under monarchical rule are the following: freedom, she says, is the ability of a person to do everything that he should do, and not be forced to do what he should not do. I would like to call out what she understands by the word should and should not; If by the word “what should be done” she means natural law, then it clearly follows that freedom can only exist in a state in whose legislation natural law does not differ in any way from positive law—a thought that is absolutely correct. [...]
March 19. A passion for science begins to emerge in me; Although this is the noblest of human passions, no less than that, I will never indulge in it one-sidedly, that is, completely killing the feeling and not engaging in application, solely striving to educate the mind and fill the memory. There is one-sidedness main reason human misfortunes. [...]
21 March. Chapter X sets out the basic rules and most dangerous mistakes related to criminal proceedings.
At the beginning of this chapter she asks herself a question. Where do punishments come from and where does the right to punish come from? She answers the first question: “Punishments arise from the need to protect the laws.” He also answers the second one quite wittily. She says: “The right to punish belongs to the laws alone, and only the monarch, as the representative of the entire state, can make laws.” In all this “Order” we constantly see two heterogeneous elements that Catherine constantly wanted to agree on: namely, the consciousness of the need for constitutional government and pride, that is, the desire to be the unlimited ruler of Russia. For example, saying that in a monarchical government only the monarch can have legislative power, she takes the existence of this power as an axiom, without mentioning its origin. The lower government cannot impose punishments, because it is part of the whole, and the monarch has this right, because he is the representative of all citizens, says Catherine. But is the sovereign’s representation of the people in unlimited monarchies an expression of the totality of private, free wills of citizens? No, the expression of the general will in unlimited monarchies is the following: I tolerate a lesser evil, because if I did not tolerate it, I would be subjected to a greater evil.
March 24. I have changed a lot; but I still have not reached the degree of perfection (in my studies) that I would like to achieve. I do not do what I prescribe to myself; What I do, I don’t do well, I don’t strain my memory. To do this, I am writing here some rules, which, it seems to me, will help me a lot if I follow them. 1) Whatever is assigned to be fulfilled, do it no matter what. 2) Whatever you do, do it well. 3) Never consult a book if you have forgotten something, but try to remember it yourself. 4) Force your mind to constantly act with all its possible strength. 5) Read and think always loudly. 6) Don’t be ashamed to tell people who bother you that they are bothering you; first let him feel it, and if he doesn’t understand, then apologize and tell him so. In accordance with the second rule, I definitely want to finish commenting on Catherine’s entire order.
[...] Chapter XIII talks about handicrafts and trade. Catherine rightly notes that agriculture is the beginning of all trade and that in a land where people do not have their own property, agriculture cannot flourish; for people usually care more about things that belong to them than about things that can always be taken away from them. This is the reason why agriculture and trade cannot flourish in our country as long as slavery continues; for a person, subject to another, not only cannot be sure of constantly owning his property, but cannot even be sure of his own fate. Then: “Skilled farmers and artisans should be given bonuses.” In my opinion, in a state it is equally necessary to punish evil as to reward good.
March 25. It is not enough to turn people away from evil; they must also be encouraged to do good. She further says that those peoples who are lazy due to climate must be accustomed to activity by taking away from them all means of subsistence, excluding labor; He also notes that these peoples are usually prone to pride, and that this very pride can serve as a weapon for the destruction of laziness. Peoples whose climate is lazy are always gifted with ardent feelings, and if they were active, the state would be more unhappy. Catherine would have done better if she had said: people, not nations. And in fact, applying her remarks to private individuals, we will find that they are extremely fair.
Then she says that in populous countries, machines that replace the hands of workers are often unnecessary and harmful, and that for exported handicrafts it is extremely necessary to use machines, because the peoples to whom we sell them can buy the same goods from neighboring peoples.
I think quite the opposite, machines for handicrafts that circulate within the state are infinitely more useful than machines for handicrafts of exported goods. For machines for generally useful handicrafts, by making these handicrafts much cheaper, would improve the condition of citizens in general; while the exported goods bring benefits only to one private individual. It seems to me that the reason for the poverty of the lower class in England is that: firstly, they have no land ownership, and, secondly, because all attention there is exclusively focused on foreign trade.
Catherine very rightly says that monopolies are a great evil for trade. In my opinion, monopoly is an evil and oppression to trade, merchants and the citizens themselves. For trade this is an evil because if the monopoly did not exist, then instead of one person or company engaged in this part of trade, they would be engaged in it larger number trading. For the merchants because they are deprived of participation in this part of trade. And for citizens because each monopoly gives its own laws to citizens. Unfortunately, this evil has taken deep roots in our fatherland.
Leo Tolstoy is an absolute classic. And, like any classic, it is not only often read, but too often not read. We have collected several non-trivial quotes from the diaries of the great writer. And after a hundred seconds extra years many of them remain relevant.
1. About life
Cleaned up. I was at the gym. Very refreshed. Let's go. Enjoyed it. I decided that I had to love and work, and that’s all. How many times! Dear loved.
Had arrived. Tired. He didn’t love and didn’t work.
2. About the ministry of the writer
I thought that if I serve people with Scripture, then the only thing I have the right to do, what I must do, is to expose the rich in their lies and reveal to the poor the deception in which they are being held.
3. About love
21st of June. 1910 We have been given one thing, but the inalienable benefit of love. Just love, and everything will be joy: the sky, the village, the people, and even yourself. And we look for good in everything, but not in love. And this search for him in wealth, power, fame, exclusive love - all this, not only does it not give him any benefit, but probably deprives him.
Today 17.97. Yasnaya Polyana
I was also thinking today, quite unexpectedly, about the charm—precisely the charm—of nascent love, when against the background of cheerful, pleasant, sweet relationships this little star suddenly begins to shine. It’s kind of like the sudden smell of linden or the shadow of the moon beginning to fall. Not yet full color, there is no clear shadow and light, but there is joy and fear of the new, charming. This is good, but only when it’s the first and last time.
The position of one who does not feel his unity with all individual beings is terribly lonely. When you think about all the people, the creatures living separately, it’s terrifying. They calm and make you happy even when you hug them with your mind and love.
4. About creativity
Life is constant creativity, that is, the formation of new higher forms.
When this formation, in our opinion, stops or even goes backwards, that is, it is destroyed existing forms, then this only means that a new form, invisible to us, is being formed. We see what is outside of us, but we do not see what is in us, we only feel it (if we have not lost consciousness and do not recognize the visible external throughout our entire life). The caterpillar sees itself drying up, but does not see the butterfly that will fly out of it.
5. About human nature
One of the greatest misconceptions when judging a person is that we call, define a person as smart, stupid, kind, evil, strong, weak, but a person is everything: all possibilities, is a fluid substance, etc.
It's there good topic for a work of art and very important and kind, because it destroys evil judgments - cancer - and suggests the possibility of all good things. The devil's workers, confident in the presence of evil in man, achieve great results: superstition, execution, war. God's workers would achieve greater results if they had more faith in the possibility of goodness in people. […]
How to write well piece of art, in which it would clearly express the fluidity of a person, that he is one and the same, now a villain, now an angel, now a sage, now an idiot, now a strong man, now a powerless being.
Each person, like everyone else, imperfect in everything, is still more perfect in one thing than in another, and these perfections are presented as demands on others and condemned.
6. About repression
From the famous article “I cannot be silent”
You say that you are fighting the revolution, that you want to establish calm and order, but if you don’t wild animals, but at least a little kind and reasonable people, you can't believe what you say. How! you will restore peace by destroying every last remnant of Christianity and morality in people, by doing - you, representatives of power, leaders, mentors - all the most greatest crimes: lies, betrayal, all kinds of torment and the last, eternally disgusting to every person who has not lost the last remnants of morality - not murder, but murder, endless murders, dressed in some kind of false clothes, in which murders would cease to be crimes.
(You) say that this is the only means of extinguishing the revolution, calming the people. Can you believe that, by not satisfying the demands, the specific demands of the entire Russian people and the demands of the most primitive justice, already recognized by the majority of people, the demands for the destruction of land property, not even satisfying the other demands of the youth, on the contrary, irritating the people and youth, you can you calm the country down with murders, prisons, exiles? You cannot help but know that by doing this, you not only do not cure the disease, but only strengthen it, driving it inside. It's all too clear. Children cannot help but see this.
You say that the revolutionaries began, that the atrocities of the revolutionaries can only be suppressed by the same measures. But no matter how terrible the deeds of the revolutionaries are: all these bombs, and Plehve, and Sergei Alexandrovich, and those unfortunate people unintentionally killed by the revolutionaries, their deeds, both in terms of the number of murders and their motives, are almost a hundred times less in number and, most importantly, less morally worse than your crimes. In most cases, in the deeds of revolutionaries there is, albeit often a childish, rash, desire to serve the people and self-sacrifice; most importantly, there is a risk, a danger that justifies in their eyes, the eyes of carried away youth, justifying their atrocities. It’s not the same with you: you, from the executioners to Pyotr Stolypin and Nikolai Romanov, are guided only by the most vile feelings: lust for power, vanity, self-interest, hatred, revenge.
7. About art
What I thought about art was that nothing hurts conservatism more than art.
Art is one of the manifestations of a person’s spiritual life, and therefore, just as if an animal is alive, it breathes and releases the product of respiration, so if humanity is alive, it exhibits the activity of art. And therefore every this moment it must be - modern - art of our time. You just need to know where it is. (Not in the decadents of music, poetry, novels.) But you need to look for it not in the past, but in the present. People who want to show themselves as connoisseurs of art and, for this purpose, praise past art - classical and scold modern art, only show that they are not at all sensitive to art.
I imagined it very vividly inner life every single person. How to describe what each individual self is? But it seems possible. Then I thought that this, in fact, is the whole interest, the whole meaning of art - poetry. […]
Music, like any art, but especially music, evokes the desire that everything as possible more people, participated in the pleasure experienced. Nothing shows this more clearly true meaning art: you are transported into others, you want to feel through them.
8. About your own laziness
How insignificantly the days pass!
Here is the current one. How, not a single memory, not a single one strong impression. I got up late with that unpleasant feeling when waking up that always affects me: I did something bad, I overslept. When I wake up, I experience what a cowardly dog feels in front of its owner when it is guilty. Then I thought about how fresh a person’s moral strength is upon awakening and why I cannot always keep them in this position. I will always say that consciousness is the greatest moral evil that can befall a person. It hurts, it hurts very much to know in advance that in an hour I will be the same person, the same images will be in my memory, but my view will change independently of me, and at the same time consciously. I read Horace. My brother said the truth that this person is similar to me. Main feature: nobility of character, loftiness of concepts, love of glory, - and complete inability to do any work. This inability comes from lack of habit, and lack of habit comes from upbringing and vanity.
9. About progress and civilization
People usually measure the progress of mankind by its technical and scientific successes, believing that civilization leads to good. This is not true. Both Rousseau and all those who admire the savage, patriarchal state are just as right or as wrong as those who admire civilization. The benefit of people living and enjoying the highest, most refined civilization, culture, and the most primitive, wild people are exactly the same. It is just as impossible to increase the benefit of people through science - civilization, culture - as it is to make sure that on a water plane the water in one place is higher than in others.
The increase in the good of people only comes from an increase in love, which by its nature equals all people; scientific and technical successes are a matter of age, and civilized people are as little superior to the uncivilized in their well-being as an adult man is superior to a non-adult in his well-being. The benefit comes only from increased love.
10. About the revolution
What the revolution did in our Russian people was that they suddenly saw the injustice of their situation. This is a fairy tale about a king in a new dress. The child who said what is, that the Tsar is naked, was a revolution.
The people have become aware of the untruth they are suffering, and the people have varied attitudes towards this untruth (most of them, unfortunately, with malice); but all the people already understand it. And it is no longer possible to eradicate this consciousness. And what our government is doing, trying to suppress the ineradicable consciousness of the untruth being endured, is increasing this untruth and causing an increasingly angry attitude towards this untruth.
11. About the purpose of Russia
Worldwide people's task Russia's goal is to introduce into the world the idea of a social system without land ownership.
"La propriété c'est le vol" will remain more true than the truth of the English constitution as long as the human race continues to exist. This is an absolute truth, but there are also relative truths that follow from it - applications.
The first of these relative truths is the view of the Russian people on property. The Russian people deny the most durable property, the most independent of labor, and the property that more than any other constrains the right of other people to acquire property, land property.
This truth is not a dream - it is a fact - expressed in peasant communities, in Cossack communities. This truth is understood equally by the learned Russian and the peasant who says: let them enroll us as Cossacks and the land will be free. This idea has a future. The Russian revolution can only be based on it. The Russian revolution will not be against the tsar and despotism, but against land ownership. She will say: from me, from a man, take and take whatever you want, and leave all the land to us. Autocracy does not interfere with, but promotes this order of things. -(I saw all this in a dream on August 13.)
12. About church and state
I read the newspaper about executions, and about the atrocities for which executions were executed, and so it became clear the corruption committed by the church - by hiding Christianity, by perverting conscience, and by the state - by legitimizing, not only justifying, but also exalting pride, ambition, greed, humiliation of people and, in particular, all violence, murder in war and executions.
It would seem that this is so undoubtedly clear, but no one sees, no one wants to see it. And they - both the church and the state, although they see the ever-increasing evil, continue to produce it. Something similar is happening to what people who only know how to plow and have only plowing tools and who can live only by their work, by plowing, would do if these people plowed fields on which shoots had already sprouted.
If the affairs of church and state might have been necessary in their time, they are clearly destructive in our time and continue to be done.
At night I thought about how it would be good to clearly define those villainous positions that not only a Christian, but simply honest man- not a villain who wants to feel like not a villain - cannot fulfill it.
I know that a merchant, manufacturer, landowner, banker, capitalist, harmless official, like a teacher, professor of painting, librarian, etc., lives as a thief, robbed, but we must make a distinction between the thief and robber himself and the one who lives as a thief. And these thieves and robbers themselves should be singled out from the rest, the sinfulness, cruelty, and shamefulness of their activities should be clearly shown.
And such people are legion. 1) Monarchs, ministers: a) internal affairs, with police violence, executions, pacifications, b) finance - taxes, c) justice - courts, d) military, e) confessions (deception of the people), and all employees, all the army, all the clergy. After all, these are millions. Just to make it clear to them what they are doing.
