What Is Art? by Leo Tolstoy (english readers .txt) 📕

angers those whom it does not convince;”⁠—people do not wish to understand these things. It seems, at first, as though Tolstoy were obliging us to sacrifice something valuable. We do not realise that we are being helped to select the best art, but we do feel that we are being deprived of our sense of satisfaction in Rudyard Kipling.

Both the magnitude and the difficulty of the task were therefore very great, but they have been surmounted in a marvellous manner. Of the effect this book has had on me personally, I can only say that “whereas I was blind, now I see.” Though sensitive to some forms of art, I was, when I took it up, much in the dark on questions of aesthetic philosophy; when I had done with it, I had grasped the main solution of the problem so clearly that⁠—though I waded through nearly all that the critics and reviewers had to say about the book⁠—I never again became perplexed upon the central issues.

Tolstoy was indeed peculiarly qualified for the task he has accomplished. It was after many years of work as a writer of fiction, and when he was already standing in the very foremost rank of European novelists, that he found himself compelled to face, in deadly earnest, the deepest problems of human life. He not only could not go on writing books, but he felt he could not live, unless he found clear guidance, so that he might walk sure-footedly and know the purpose and meaning of his life. Not as a mere question of speculative curiosity, but as a matter of vital necessity, he devoted years to rediscover the truths which underlie all religion.

To fit him for this task he possessed great knowledge of men and books, a wide experience of life, a knowledge of languages, and a freedom from bondage to any authority but that of reason and conscience. He was pinned to no Thirty-nine Articles, and was in receipt of no retaining fee which he was not prepared to sacrifice. Another gift, rare among men of his position, was his wonderful sincerity and (due, I think, to that sincerity) an amazing power of looking at the phenomena of our complex and artificial life with the eyes of a little child; going straight to the real, obvious facts of the case, and brushing aside the sophistries, the conventionalities, and the “authorities” by which they are obscured.

He commenced the task when he was about fifty years of age, and since then (i.e., during the last twenty years) he has produced nine philosophical or scientific works of first-rate importance, besides a great many stories and short articles. These works, in chronological order, are⁠—

My Confession.

A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology, which has never been translated.

The Four Gospels Harmonised and Translated, of which only two parts, out of three, have as yet appeared in English.

What I Believe, sometimes called My Religion.

The Gospel in Brief.

What Are We to Do Then? sometimes called in English What to Do?

On Life, which is not an easy work in the original, and has not been satisfactorily translated.1

The Kingdom of God Is Within You; and

The Christian Teaching, which appeared after What Is Art? though it was written before it.

To these scientific works I am inclined to add The Kreutzer Sonata, with the “Sequel” or “Postscript” explaining its purpose; for though The Kreutzer Sonata is a story, the understanding of sexual problems, dealt with explicitly in the “Sequel,” is an integral part of that comprehension of life which causes Tolstoy to admire Christ, Buddha, or Francis of Assisi.

These ten works treat of the meaning of our life; of the problems raised by the fact that we approve of some things and disapprove of others, and find ourselves deciding which of two courses to pursue.

Religion, Government, Property, Sex, War, and all the relations in which man stands to man, to his own consciousness, and to the ultimate source (which we call God) from whence that consciousness proceeds⁠—are examined with the utmost frankness.

And all this time the problems of Art: What is Art? What importance is due to it? How is it related to the rest of life?⁠—were working in his mind. He was a great artist, often upbraided for having abandoned his art. He, of all men, was bound to clear his thoughts on this perplexing subject, and to express them. His whole philosophy of life⁠—the “religious perception” to which, with such tremendous labour and effort, he had attained, forbade him to detach art from life, and place it in a watertight compartment where it should not act on life or be reacted upon by life.

Life to him is rational. It has a clear aim and purpose, discernible by the aid of reason and conscience. And no human activity can be fully understood or rightly appreciated until the central purpose of life is perceived.

You cannot piece together a puzzle-map as long as you keep one bit in a wrong place, but when the pieces all fit together, then you have a demonstration that they are all in their right places. Tolstoy used that simile years ago when explaining how the comprehension of the text, “resist not him that is evil,” enabled him to perceive the reasonableness of Christ’s teaching, which had long baffled him. So it is with the problem of Art. Wrongly understood, it will tend to confuse and perplex your whole comprehension of life. But given the clue supplied by true “religious perception,” and you can place art so that it shall fit in with a right understanding of politics, economics, sex-relationships, science, and all other phases of human activity.

The basis on which this work rests, is a perception of the meaning of human life. This has been quite lost sight of by some of the reviewers, who have merely misrepresented what Tolstoy says, and then demonstrated how very stupid he would have been had