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

Went to Mme. Shorin.190 I had a good talk with her. Perhaps even to some purpose. Just as Anna Michailovna191 said to-day, that I helped her. And thanks be.

I copied the letter to Posha.

Feb. 27. Nicholskoe.

Wrote this morning poorly, but cleared up something or other. Am well. Took a walk. Spoke with Tania. And that is all.

Yesterday was Feb. 28. Nicholskoe.

I have written nothing. In the morning I worked badly. Received a letter from Chertkov and Ivan Michailovich and wrote to both. Walked and went to Safonovo.192

This morning I thought of something which seemed to me important, namely:

1) I wiped away the dust in my room and walking around, came to the divan and could not remember whether I had dusted it or not. Just because these movements are customary and unconscious I could not remember them and I felt that it was impossible to. So that if I dusted and forgot it, i.e., if I did an act unconsciously; then it is just the same as if it never existed. If some one conscious saw it, then perhaps it could be restored. But if no one saw it, or saw it unconsciously; if the whole complex life of many people pass along unconsciously, then that life is as if it had never existed. So that life – life only exists then, when it is lit by consciousness.

What, then, is this consciousness? What are the acts which are lit by consciousness? The acts which are lit by consciousness are those acts which we fulfil freely, i.e., fulfilling them we know that we might have acted otherwise. Therefore, consciousness is freedom. Without consciousness there is no freedom and without freedom there can be no consciousness (if we are subjected to violence and we have no choice as to how we should bear that violence, we do not feel the violence).

Memory is nothing else than the consciousness of the past, of the past freedom. If I were unable to dust or not to dust, I would not be conscious of dusting, if I were not conscious of dusting, I would not have the choice of dusting or not dusting. If I did not have consciousness and freedom, I would not remember the past, I would not unite it into one. Therefore the very basis of life is freedom and consciousness – a freedom-consciousness.

(It seemed to me clearer when I was thinking.)

March 1, Nicholskoe.

… To-day I could not write anything in the morning at all – fell asleep. I took a walk both in the morning and in the evening. It was very pleasant.

I thought two things:

1) That death seems to me now just as a change: a discharge from a former post and an appointment to a new one. It seems that I am all worn out for the former post and I am no longer fit.

2) I thought about N as a good character for a drama; good-natured, clean, spoilt, loving pleasure but good, and incapable of conceiving a radical moral requirement.

I also thought:

3) There is only one means for steadfastness and peace: love, love towards enemies.

Yes, here this problem was presented to me from a special, unexpected angle and how badly I was able to solve it. I must try harder. Help me, Father.

March 2, Nicholskoe. If I live.

March 2, Nicholskoe.

I am alive. Entirely well. To-day I wrote pretty well. In the evening after dinner I went to Shelkovo. It was a very pleasant walk in the moonlight.

Wrote a letter to Posha. Received a letter from Tregubov. He is irritated because they intercept the letters. But I am not vexed. I have understood that one has to pity them, and I pity truly. To-morrow we go. We have been here a whole month.

Yesterday was March 3rd. Moscow.

In the morning I did almost nothing. I stumbled up against the historic course of art. I took a walk. After dinner I left. I arrived at 10.

March 4, Moscow.

Got up late. Handled my papers, wrote letters to Posha, Nakashidze. Went to the public library, took books. In the evening Dunaev and Boulanger were here. It is now late. I am going to bed. S. is at a concert.

March 5. Moscow. If I live.

Heavens, how many days I have skipped: To-day, March 9. Moscow.

Out of the four days, I wrote two days on art and to-day pretty much. I wanted to write Hadji Murad very much and thought out something pretty well – touching. A letter from Posha. Wrote to Chertkov and Koni about the terrible thing that happened to Miss Vietrov.193 I am not going to write out what I have noted.

I am still in the same peaceful, because loving, mood. As soon as I feel like being hurt or wearied I remember God and that my work is only one, to love, not to think of that which will be – and I feel better right away.

Tania is going to Yasnaya.

To-day, March 15, Moscow.

Lived not badly. I see the end of the essay on art. Still the same peace. I thank God. I have just now written letters. It is evening. I am going into the tedious drawing-room.

To-day, April 4, Moscow.

Almost a month I have not written (20 days), and I have lived the time badly, because I worked little. Wrote all the time on art, became confused these last days. And now for two days I haven’t written.

I have not lost my peace, but my soul is troubled, still I am master of it. Oh, Lord! If only I could remember my mission, that through oneself must be manifested (shine) divinity. But the difficulty is, that if you remember that alone you will not live; and you must live, live energetically, and yet remember. Help me, Father.

I have prayed much lately that my life be better. But as it is, the consciousness of the lawlessness of my life is shameful and depressing.

Yesterday I thought very well about Hadji Murad – that in it the principal thing was to express a deception of trust. How good it would have been, were it not for this deception. Also I am thinking more and more often of The Appeal.

I am afraid that the theme of art has occupied me lately for personal, selfish and bad reasons. Je m’entends.

During this time I made few notes and if I had been thinking about anything I have forgotten it.

1) The world which we know and represent for ourselves, is nothing else than laws of co-relation between our senses (sens), and therefore, a miracle is a violation of these laws of co-relation, it therefore destroys our conception of the world. In the crudest form, it is thus: I know that water (not frozen) is always liquid. And its specific gravity is less than that of my body. My eyes, hearing, touch, demonstrate to me liquid water; and suddenly a man walks on this water. If he walked on the water, then it proves nothing, but only destroys my conception of water.

2) A very common mistake: To place the aim of life in the service of people and not in the service of God. Only in serving God, i.e., in doing that which He wants, can you be certain that you are not doing something vain and it is not impossible to choose whom you are to serve.

3) Church Christians do not want to serve God, but want God to serve them.

4) Shakespeare began to be valued when the moral criterion was lost.

5) (For The Appeal.) We are so entangled that every one of our steps in life is a participation in evil: in violence, in oppression. We must not despair, but we must slowly disentangle ourselves from those nets in which we are caught; not to tear ourselves through, – that would entangle us worse – but to disentangle ourselves carefully.

6)194

I am in a very bad physical condition, almost fever, and the black gloom that comes before, but up to now the spiritual is the stronger. Escorted Maude’s colony.195 Ivan Michailovich is still free.196 Everything is all right.

Apr. 9. Moscow.

Have been ill. With calmness I thought that I would die. To-day I wrote well on Art. They have taken Ivan Michailovich. There was a search at Dunaev’s.197 It is all right with the exiles.198

Outwardly I am entirely calm, inwardly not entirely. It is enough to bear in mind that everything is for the good, and when I bear that in mind as I do now – it is good.

To-day May 3. Yasnaya Polyana.

Almost a month I have made no entries. A bad and sterile month.

I cut out and burned that which I wrote in heat.199

To-day July 16. Y. P.

It is not one month that I have made no entries, but two and a half. I have lived through much, both the difficult and the good.200 Have been ill. Very severe pains – I think in the beginning of July.201

I worked all this time on the essay on art, and the farther I get the better. I finished it and am correcting it from the beginning.

Masha married.202…

We do not quiet, moderate passion, the source of the greatest calamities, but kindle it with all our strength and then we complain that we suffer…

Good letters from Chertkov. A Kiev peasant was here, Shidlovsky.203

I feel that I am alone – that my life not only does not interest any one, but that they are bored and ashamed that I continue to occupy myself with such trifles.

I thought during this time:

1) A type of woman – there are men such also, but mostly it is women who are incapable of seeing themselves, as if their necks were stationary and they could not look back at themselves. It isn’t exactly that they don’t want to repent: but they can’t see themselves. They live as they do and not in another way, because this way seems good to them. And therefore if they do anything it is because it seems good to them. Such people are terrifying. And such people may be intelligent, stupid, good, wicked. When they are stupid and wicked it is terrible.

2) With a low moral standard, a firmness of judgment. The acts of all the best people are explained by what I would have done. Christ preached out of vanity, condemned the Pharisees from envy, etc.

3) The second condition of art is novelty. To a child everything is new and therefore it has many artistic impressions. The new for us, is a certain depth of feeling, that depth in which a man finds his separate individuality from all. That is for indifferent art. For the highest, novelty lies only in religion, as religion is the most advanced world point of view.

4) (For the drama.) They bring to the table a man in tatters and they laugh at the inconsistency of it and at his awkwardness. Revolt.

5) When it happens that you thought of something and then forgot what you thought, but you remember and know the character of your thoughts: sad, dismal, oppressive, joyous, keen – and even remember their order: first it was sad, and then it became calm, etc., – when you remember things that way, then it is exactly what music expresses.

6) A theme: A passionate young man in love with a mentally diseased woman.

7) God gave us His spirit – love, reason – in order to serve Him; but we use His spirit to serve ourselves – we use the axe to plane the handle.

I feel fully well and strong physically, but morally, weak. I feel like working and am able. I am going to make notes.204

July 17. Yasn. Pol. If I live.

July 17. Y. P.

Got up late, worked badly. There is neither concentration nor capacity to embrace everything. Nevertheless I have advanced. Masha came with Kolia …

Yesterday I talked about love with N: that we madly kindle this passion and then we suffer from its exaggerations and excesses.

Went on my bicycle to Yasenki. I love this motion very much. But I am ashamed.

A letter from Chertkov; he is very ill. I value him very much. And how not value him.

It is now 10 o’clock. The Shenshins have left just now. I feel solemn and gloomy.

July 18, 1897. Y. P. If I live.

I skipped three days. To-day July 21. Y. P.

I am working well enough. I am even satisfied with my work. Though I change much. Everything has come to a head and has gained much. I have been reviewing everything again from the beginning.

The life around me is very wretched…

I do not know why: whether from the stomach or the heat or from excessive physical exercise – but in the evenings I feel very weak.

A good speech by Crookes as to how a microscopic man would look upon the world.205

Yesterday Novikov was here and he brought splendid notes by Michael Novikov.206 Wrote letters: to Carus,207 Ivan Michailovich. A letter from Evgenie Ivanovich.208

July 22. Y. P. If I live.

July 28. Y. P.

Six days that I haven’t written. Three or four days ago at night, I had an attack of cholera morbus and the day after I was absolutely ill and for two days I have been very weak and have written very poorly. To-day I am a little better.

The children were here: Iliushin’s family.209 They are sweet grandchildren, especially Andrusha. Whatever notes I made, I will not write out to-day. Longinov210 was here, a friend of Mme. Annenkov’s and to-day Maude and Boulanger.

July 29. Y. P. If I live.

To-day Aug. 7. Y. P.

During this time a pile of guests211 … two Germans, decadents; a naïve and a somewhat stupid one… There were here: Novikov, the scribe, a very powerful man, and Bulakhov,212 also a powerful one morally and intellectually. I live very badly, weakly. Very little goodness. To-day the Stakhoviches213 and the Maklakovs214 arrived also.

I continue to work on my essay on art and, strange to say, it pleases me. Yesterday and to-day I read it to Ginsburg, Sobolev, Kasatkin215 and Goldenweiser. The impression it produces on them is exactly the same as it produces on me.

A letter from Crosby with a joyful letter from a Japanese.216 From Chertkov good letters. The correspondence has been very neglected.

I am entirely alone and I weaken. I often say to myself that one must live serving, but when I enter life, though I do not exactly forget, yet I scatter myself.

I have written down much, but to-day I have no time to write it out.

Father, help me. I weaken.

I am going to write absolutely every day.

Aug. 8. Y. P. If I live.

A peasant was here who had his arm torn by a tree and amputated. He ploughs with a loop attached.

Aug. 9.

Stakhovich arrived. Read the essay. The tenth chapter is bad. I worked pretty much. Have written poor letters. I must write to Posha and to Ivan Michailovich.

There is noted in the book:

1) A servant makes life false and corrupt. As soon as you have servants, then you increase your wants, complicate life and make it a burden. Instead of joy when you do things yourself, you have vexation and the principal thing, you renounce the main duty of life; the fulfilment of the brotherhood of man.

2) The æsthetic and the ethical are two arms of one lever: to the extent that you lengthen and lighten one side, to that extent you shorten and make heavier the other side. As soon as a man loses his moral sense, he becomes particularly responsive to the æsthetic.

3) People know two Gods: one whom they want to force to serve them, demanding from him by prayers the fulfilment of their desires, and another God, one whom we ought to serve, to the fulfilment of whose will, all our desires ought to be directed.

4) It is a common phenomenon that old people love to travel, to go far and to change places. Is it not a foreseeing and a readiness for the last journey?

Aug. 15. Y. P.

I am continuing to work. Am advancing.

Lombroso was here – a limited, naïve little old man. The Maklakovs. Leo arrived with his wife.217 Boulanger – a nice man. Wrote letters to everybody: Posha and Ivan Michailovich and Van-der-Veer. The oppressive Leontev218 was here.

There was something I wanted to write very much, but have forgotten…

A revolting report concerning the missionary congress in Kazan.219

There is noted: “Woman’s character” – and I remember that it was something very good. Now I have forgotten. It seems to me that it was that the peculiarity of woman’s character is that her feeling alone guides her life, and that reason only serves her feeling. She cannot even understand that feeling can be made subservient to reason.

2) But there are not so many women – as there are such men – who do not hear, do not see, the unpleasant, do not see it just as if it didn’t exist.

3) When people haven’t the power to get rid of superstition and they continue to pay tribute to it, and at the same time when they see that others have freed themselves, they grow angry at those who have freed themselves. “But I suffer when I commit stupidities and he is free.”

4) Art, i.e., artists, instead of serving people, exploit them.

5) From the time I became old, I began to confuse people, … belonging or being marked in my mind as one type. So that I do not know N, N N, but I know a collective personality to which N, N N, belong.

6) We are so accustomed to the thought that everything is for us, that the earth is mine, that when we have to die, we are surprised that my earth, something belonging to me, will remain and I won’t. Here the principal mistake is in thinking the earth as something acquired and complementary to me, when it is I who am acquired by the earth, an appendage to it.

7) How good it would be if we could live with the same concentration, do the work of life – principally; communion among people – with that concentration with which we play chess, read music, etc.

Aug. 16. Y. P. If I live.

To-day Sept. 19. Y. P.

More than a month I have made no entries. Things are the same and the work has been advancing all the time. And it could advance still more as to form, but there is absolutely no time. Such an amount of work! A typist is making the final copy on a Remington. I have reached the 19th chapter, inclusive.

During this time the important thing was the expulsion of Boulanger.220

My work has been interrupted occasionally only by a letter to the Swedish papers about the Dukhobors221 on the occasion of the Nobel prize.

Also ill health interrupted: a terrible boil on the cheek. I thought it was a cancer, and I am happy that it was not very unpleasant to think that: I am receiving a new appointment; one which in any case, isn’t slipping past me.

St. John was here.222

My work was interrupted also by the arrival of the Molokans from Samara – in reference to their children which were taken away.223 I wanted to write abroad and even wrote a very violent, and what seemed to me, strong letter, but changed my mind. It was not to be done before God. I have to try again.

To-day I wrote letters: to the Emperor,224 to Olsuphiev,225 to Heath,226 and to E. I. Chertkov,227 and saw the Molokans off.

I wanted to write from my notebooks, but it is late. I am going to bed.

Sept. 20. Yasn. P. If I live.

Sept. 20. Y. P.

Let me write even a few words. The boil still bothers me very much. I have no full liberté d’esprit. I wrote the Swedish letter to-day, and in the evening translated it into Swedish228 with the Swede.

I am not writing from the notebook, but I will note that which entered my head with special vividness.

Our life is so arranged that all our care for ourselves, the use of our reason (our spiritual forces) for the care of ourselves, brings only unhappiness. And yet this egotism is necessary in order to live a separate life. That is His mysterious will. As soon as you live for yourself, you perish; when you live beyond yourself, there is peace and joy both for yourself and for others.

Sept. 20. Y. P. If I live.

To-day Sept. 22. Y. P.

… Yesterday I finished the translation with Langlet.

To-day I was busy with Art, but it didn’t go at all, and therefore the preceding did not please me.

S. arrived to-day.

At night I thought of the separation of lust from love, and that ether is a conception outside of the senses.

It is now past twelve in the morning. I am waiting for Ilya and Andrusha. I have just now written a letter to the editor of the Tagblatt Stockholm, and to Chertkov.

September 23. Y. P. If I live.

Oct. 2. Y. P.

I am working all the time on Art. The abscess is going away. I should have liked more peace. Yes …

To-day Oct. 14. Y. P.

… I am still writing on art. To-day I corrected the 10th chapter. I cleared up the vague parts.

I must write out the notebooks; I am afraid I have forgotten much.

1) There is no greater prop for a selfish, peaceful life, than the occupation of art for art’s sake. The despot, the villain, must inevitably love art. (I have jotted down something on this order, but I can’t recall it now.)

2) I imagined clearly to myself how joyous, peaceful, and fully free a life could be, if one gave oneself entirely to God, i.e., in every instance in life to seek only one thing: to do that which He wants – to do that in sickness, in offence, in humiliation, in suffering, in all temptations and in death – which would then be only a change in appointment. Weakness, the non-fulfilment of that which God wants – what happens then? Nothing: There is a return to the consciousness that only in its fulfilment is life. The moments of weakness – they are the intervals between the letters of life, not life. Father, help me.

3) I saw in my sleep how I think, I say, that the whole matter lies in making an effort, that very effort which is spoken of in the Gospels: “The Kingdom of God is attained by effort.” Everything that is good, everything that is real, every true act of life is accomplished through efforts; make no effort, swim with the current and you do not live. But, however, the … doctrine preaches that effort is sin, it is pride, it is relying on one’s own strength: the lay doctrine says the same thing: effort by oneself is useless; organisation, surroundings do everything. What error! Effort is more important than anything. Every least little bit of effort: the conquering of laziness, greed, lust, wrath, depression – is the most important of important things; it is the manifestation of God in life; it is Karma; it is the broadening of one’s “self.” Whatever had been marked off is guess work.229

4) Details for Hadji Murad: 1) The shadow of an eagle over the slope of a mountain; 2) at the river, on the sands, are tracks of horses, animals, people; 3) riding into the forest, the horses snort keenly; 4) from behind a clump of trees a goat jumped out.

5) When people are enthusiastic about Shakespeare, Beethoven, they are enthusiastic about their own thoughts, dreams, which are called forth by Shakespeare, Beethoven, just as people in love do not love the object of their love, but what it calls forth in them. In this enthusiasm, there is no true reality of art, but absolute boundlessness.

6) Only then can one understand and feel God when one has understood clearly the unreality of everything material.

7) Not long ago, in the summer, I felt God clearly for the first time; that He existed and that I existed in Him; and that the only thing that existed was I in Him: in Him, like a limited thing in an unlimited thing, in Him also like a limited being in which He existed.

(Horribly bad, unclear. But I felt it clearly and especially keenly for the first time in my life.)

In general, I don’t know why, but I haven’t the same religious feeling which I had when I formerly wrote my Journal for no one. The fact that it was read and that it can be read, kills this feeling. But the feeling was precious and helped me in life. I am going to begin anew from the present date, the 14th, to write again as before – so that no one will read it during my life time. If there will be thoughts worth it, I can write them out and send them to Chertkov.230

8) A man incapable of repentance has no salvation from his sins. Even if his sins are pointed out to him, he only gets angry at those who point them out, and a new sin is added.

9) All attempts to live on the land and feed oneself by one’s own labour have been unsuccessful, and could not help being unsuccessful in Russia, because it is necessary for a man of our education feeding himself by his own labour, to compete with the peasant – who fixes the prices, beating them down by his offer. But he was brought up for generations in stern life and stubborn work, while we were brought up for generations in luxurious life and idle laziness. From this it does not follow that one ought not to try to feed one’s self by one’s own labour, but only that it is impossible to expect its realisation in the first generation.