Chapter LV: Appendix: Darling (1)

_By Antón Chékhov_

Olenka, the daughter of a retired civil servant, Plemyánnikov, sat musing in her back porch. It was hot, the flies were pertinaciously teasing, and it was pleasant to reflect that it would soon be evening. Dark rain-clouds were coming up from the east and bringing with them an occasional whiff of moisture.

In the middle of the courtyard Kúkin, who lived in a small house in the same courtyard and was manager and proprietor of the Tivoli Gardens, stood looking at the sky.

“Again!” he exclaimed despairingly. “It’s going to rain again! Rain every day, every day, as though to spite me. One might as well hang oneself! It’s ruination! Fearful losses every day!”

He raised and clasped his hands in despair, and turning to Olenka continued:

“There, Olenka Semënovna, that’s the life we lead. It’s enough to make one cry. One works, tries hard, wears oneself out, gets no sleep at night, and racks one’s brains what to do for the best--and what’s the result? On the one hand there’s the ignorant boorish public! I give them the very best operetta, a fairy-like masque, splendid comic singers, but is that what they want? Do you suppose they understand anything of all that? What they want is what is given in a booth at a fair! Trash, is what they demand! On the other hand, look at the weather! Rain almost every evening. As it started on the 10th May, so it went on the whole of May and June. It’s simply awful! The public don’t come, but I have to pay the rent and the artistes!”

Next evening the clouds again began to gather, and Kúkin said with an hysterical laugh:

“Well, what of it? Rain away! Let it flood the whole garden with me in it! Let me have no luck in this world or the next! Let the artistes take proceedings against me! What is a trial? Even if I go as a convict to Siberia! Or to the scaffold! Ha, ha, ha!”

The next day it was the same again.

Olenka listened to Kúkin silently and seriously, and sometimes tears came into her eyes. In the end Kúkin’s misfortunes touched her and she came to love him. He was short and lean, with a sallow complexion, twists of hair were curled on his temples, he spoke in a thin tenor voice, and when he spoke his mouth twisted, and his face always expressed despair, but still he aroused in her a real and profound affection. She always loved someone and could not exist without it. Formerly she had loved her papa, who now sat in an armchair in a dark room, ill, and breathing with difficulty; she loved her aunt, who sometimes--once in two years--came from Byansk; and before that, when she was at the secondary school, she had loved her French master. She was a quiet, soft-hearted, compassionate young woman, with a mild tender look in her eyes and very good health. At the sight of her plump rosy cheeks, her soft white neck with a dark little mole on it, and the kind naïve smile which appeared on her face when she listened to anything pleasant, men thought, “Yes, she’s all right,” and smiled too, and lady-visitors could not refrain from suddenly seizing her hand in the middle of a conversation and exclaiming with a gush of delight: “You darling!”

The house in which she had lived since her birth and which had been left her in her father’s will, was on the outskirts of the town in the Gipsy Suburb, not far from the Tivoli Gardens. In the evenings and at night she could hear the band playing and rockets going off with a bang in the Gardens, and it seemed to her that Kúkin was fighting his fate and taking his chief foe, the indifferent public, by assault: her heart melted tenderly, she had no wish to sleep, and when he returned home towards morning she tapped softly at her bedroom window and, letting him see only her face and one shoulder through the curtains, gave him a friendly smile.

He proposed, and they were married. And when he had a good view of her neck and her plump healthy shoulders, he threw up and clasped his hands and said: “Darling!”

He was happy but, as it rained on their wedding day and the whole of the following night, the despairing expression never left his face.

After the wedding they lived happily together. She sat in his booking-office, saw that the Tivoli Gardens were in order, entered up the accounts and paid the salaries; and her rosy cheeks, her sweet naïve smile, shining like a halo, appeared now at the window of the booking-office, now behind the scenes, now at the refreshment-bar. And she began to tell her acquaintances that the theatre was the most remarkable, most important, and most necessary thing in the world--that only at the theatre could one obtain true pleasure and become cultivated and humane.

“But do you think the public understands that?” she said. “They want a common booth! Yesterday we put on ‘Faust Inside Out,’ and almost all the boxes were empty, but if Vánichka and I were to give some common trash, believe me the theatre would be packed. To-morrow Vánichka and I are giving ‘Orpheus in Hell’; mind you come!” And what Kúkin said about the theatre and the actors she repeated; she despised the public as he did, for their indifference to art and their ignorance; she took part in the rehearsals, corrected the actors, kept an eye on the behaviour of the musicians, and when the local paper criticised their theatre unfavourably she cried, and afterwards went to the newspaper office for explanations.

The actors were fond of her and called her “Vánichka and I,” and “the Darling.” She was sorry for them and used to lend them small sums, and if it happened that they did not pay her, she cried in secret, but made no complaint to her husband.

And in the winter they got on quite well. They took a theatre in the town for the whole winter and sub-let it for short periods, now to an Ukrainian troupe, now to a conjuror, now to a local dramatic company. Olenka grew plumper and was all beaming with pleasure, but Kúkin grew thinner and sallower and complained of terrible losses, though business had not been bad all winter. He used to cough at night, and she gave him raspberry or lime-blossom tea, rubbed him with eau-de-Cologne, and wrapped him up in her soft shawls.

“What a splendid dear you are!” she said, quite sincerely, smoothing his hair. “What a good-looking pet you are!”

In Lent he went to Moscow to gather a troupe, and without him she could not sleep, but sat by the window looking at the stars. She compared herself, at the time, to the hens who keep awake all night and are restless when the cock is not in the hen-house. Kúkin was detained in Moscow and wrote that he would return for Easter, and his letters already contained arrangements about the Tivoli Gardens. But on the Monday in Passion Week, late in the evening, an ominous knock was suddenly heard at the gate; someone was hammering at the gate as if on a barrel: boom, boom, boom! The sleepy cook, splashing with her bare feet through the puddles, ran to open the gate.

“Open for goodness’ sake!” said someone in a thick bass voice. “There’s a telegram for you!”

Olenka had received telegrams from her husband before, but this time for some reason she grew quite faint. She opened the telegram with trembling hands, and read as follows:

“Iván Kúkin passed away to-day suddenly pasway awaiting instructions fuferal Tuesday.”

It was typed “fuferal” in the telegram, and there was also the incomprehensible word ‘pasway.’ The signature was that of the manager of an operatic troupe.

“My precious!” sobbed Olenka. “Vánichka, my dearest, my precious. Why did I ever meet you? Why did I ever know and love you? Whom have I left? Why have you deserted your poor, unfortunate Olenka?”

Kúkin was buried on Tuesday in the Vagánkov cemetery in Moscow. Olenka returned home on Wednesday and as soon as she entered her house she fell on her bed and sobbed so loud that she could be heard in the street and in the neighbouring houses.

“The darling!” said the neighbours, as they crossed themselves. “Darling Olga Semënovna, how she does take on!”

Three months later Olenka was returning from Mass, melancholy and in deep mourning. It happened that a neighbour, Vasíli Andréich Pusloválov, who was also returning from church, walked beside her. He was manager of the merchant Babakáev’s timber-yard. He wore a straw hat, a white waistcoat and a gold watch-chain, and looked more like a squire than a tradesman.

“Everything has its own order, Olga Semënovna,” he said gravely, in a tone of sympathy, “and if any one of those near us dies, it must be that God willed it so, and so we must not forget ourselves but must bear it submissively.”

Having accompanied Olenka to the gate he took his leave of her and went on. All day after that she seemed to hear his dignified voice, and whenever she closed her eyes she saw his dark beard. He pleased her very much. And apparently she had also made an impression on him, for shortly afterwards an elderly lady with whom she was but slightly acquainted came to drink coffee with her, and as soon as she was seated at the table began to talk about Pustoválov and say what a good and reliable man he was, whom anyone would be glad to marry. Three days after that, Pustoválov himself came to call on her; he did not stay long, not more than ten minutes, and did not say much, but Olenka fell in love with him, so much in love that as if she were in a fever she did not sleep all night, and in the morning she sent for the elderly lady. The match was soon arranged, and then came the wedding.

Pustoválov and Olenka lived happily after their marriage. He was usually in the timber-yard till dinner and then went out on business, and Olenka took his place and sat in the office till the evening, writing out accounts and despatching goods.

“Now timber rises twenty per cent in price every year,” she said to customers and acquaintances. “Just think, we used to sell local timber, but now Vánichka has to go to Mogilév province every year to buy timber. And the freights!” she went on, covering both her cheeks with her hands in horror, “what freights!”

She felt as if she had dealt in timber quite a long time; that the most important and most necessary thing in life was timber; and there was something intimate and touching to her in the words: “balk, joist, pole, plank, scantling, batten, beam....”

At night when she slept, she dreamed of whole mountains of planks and boards, and long unending rows of carts conveying timber to distant places beyond the town. She dreamed of how a whole regiment of twenty-eight foot, nine-inch beams was marching on end to attack the timber-yard; joists, beams and boards knocked against one another with a resounding crash of dry wood, all falling down and rising again, piling themselves on one another. Olenka cried out in her sleep and Pustoválov said tenderly: “Olenka, what’s the matter, darling? Cross yourself!”

Her husband’s thoughts were hers too. If he thought the room too hot, or business slack, she thought so too. Her husband did not care for any entertainments and stayed at home on holidays, and so did she.

“You are always at home or in the office,” her acquaintances said to her. “You should go to the theatre, darling, or the circus.”

“Vánichka and I have no time to go to theatres,” she answered sedately. “We are hard-working people and have no time for trifling. What good are those theatres?”

On Saturdays Pustoválov and she went to evening service, on holidays to early service, and they returned from church side by side with a softened expression on their faces, both diffusing an agreeable perfume, and her silk dress rustling pleasantly. At home they had tea with fancy bread and different kinds of jam, and then cake. Every day at noon an appetising smell of beet-root soup and roast mutton or duck, or on fast days of fish, was noticeable in their yard and in the street outside, and one could not pass their gate without beginning to feel an appetite. In the office a samovar was always boiling, and customers were treated to tea and biscuits. Once a week the couple went to the baths and returned from there together, both red in the face.

“Yes, we get on all right,” Olenka used to say. “Thank heaven! God grant everyone a life such as Vánichka’s and mine.”

When Pustoválov went to the Mogilév province to buy timber she was much depressed and lay awake at night, crying. Sometimes in the evening the regimental veterinary surgeon, Smírnin, who rented their lodge, used to come to see her. He would tell her some news, or play cards with her, and that distracted her a little. She was specially interested in what he told her of his own family life: he was married and had a boy, but was separated from his wife because she had been unfaithful to him, and now he hated her but sent her forty roubles a month for his son’s maintenance. As she listened to this Olenka sighed, shook her head, and felt sorry for him.

“Well, God be with you,” she would say when he took his leave, and as she lighted him with a candle to the staircase. “Thank you for sharing my dullness. May the Queen of Heaven grant you good health!”

She always expressed herself thus sedately and sagaciously, imitating her husband, and when the veterinary surgeon was already disappearing beyond the door below, she would call after him:

“Do you know, Vladímir Platónych, you should make it up with your wife. Forgive her, if only for your son’s sake! The little boy no doubt understands.”

And when Pustoválov returned she told him in a low voice about the veterinary surgeon and his unhappy family life, and they both sighed, shook their heads, and spoke of the boy who no doubt pined for his father, and then, by some strange sequence of ideas, they went up to the icons, bowed to the ground, and prayed that God would send them children.

So the Pustoválovs lived quietly and peaceably in love and full accord for six years. But then one winter Pustoválov at the timber-yard went out without his cap, after drinking hot tea, to send off some timber, and caught cold and fell ill. He was treated by the best doctors, but got worse, and died after four months’ illness. And Olenka was again a widow.

“Whom have I now that you have forsaken me, my precious?” she sobbed, after she had buried her husband. “How am I to live without you, grief-stricken and wretched! Pity me, good people, utterly forlorn....”

She wore a black dress with weepers, gave up hats and gloves for good, and hardly ever went out except to go to church and to her husband’s grave, and at home she lived like a nun. It was only after six months had passed that she left off the weepers and opened the shutters of the windows. She was sometimes seen going to market with her cook to buy provisions, but how she now lived, and what went on in her house, could only be conjectured. People made conjectures, for instance, from seeing her drinking tea in her little garden with the veterinary surgeon, who read the newspaper aloud to her, and also from the fact that, meeting a lady she knew at the post-office, she had said to her:

“There is no regular veterinary inspection in our town, and therefore there is much illness. One is always hearing of people falling ill from the milk, and being infected by cows and horses. The health of domestic animals should really be looked after as carefully as the health of human beings.”

She repeated the veterinary’s thoughts and was now of his opinion about everything. It was clear that she could not live a year without some attachment and had found her new happiness in the lodge of her own house.

Another would have been censured for this, but no one could think ill of Olenka; everything she did was so natural. The veterinary surgeon and she never spoke to anybody about the change in their relations to one another, and they tried to conceal it, but did not succeed in this, for Olenka could have no secrets. When visitors, his comrades in the service, came to see him, she while pouring out the tea or serving supper would begin to speak about cattle-plague, or bovine tuberculosis and municipal slaughter-houses, while he would become dreadfully confused, and after the visitors had gone would seize her hand and hiss angrily:

“Didn’t I ask you not to speak of what you don’t understand? When we veterinaries talk among ourselves, please don’t join in. It’s really annoying!”

And she would look at him with amazement and agitation and would ask:

“Volódichka dear, what am I to speak about?”

And she would embrace him and with tears in her eyes entreat him not to be angry, and they would both be happy.

That happiness however did not last long. The veterinary left with his regiment and left for good, as the regiment was ordered to some very distant place, perhaps to Siberia. And Olenka was left alone.

She was entirely alone now. Her father had died long ago, and his armchair lay covered with dust and with a leg broken off, in the garret. She grew thinner and paler and people she met in the street no longer looked at her as they used to do; it was evident that her best years were over and left behind, and that a new unknown life was beginning about which it was better not to think. In the evenings she sat in her porch and could hear the music playing and the rockets bursting in the Tivoli Gardens, but they did not now awaken any thought in her. She looked indifferently at her empty yard, thought of nothing, wished for nothing, and afterwards when night came on she went to sleep, and saw in her dreams the empty yard. She ate and drank as if unwillingly.

But the principal thing and the worst of all was that she no longer had any opinions whatever. She saw the objects around her, and understood all that took place, but could form no opinions and did not know what to speak about. And how awful it is not to have any opinions! One sees, for instance, how a bottle is standing, or rain falling, or a peasant is driving his cart, but what the bottle, or rain, or peasant, is for, what sense there is in them, you can’t say--not even if someone gave you a thousand roubles to do so.

While she had Kúkin, Pustoválov, and afterwards the veterinary surgeon Olenka was able to explain everything and express her opinions about anything you liked; but now there was the same void in her mind and heart as in her yard. And it was harsh and bitter as wormwood in the mouth.

The town was gradually expanding on all sides; the Gipsy Suburb was now called a street, and where the Tivoli Gardens and the timber-yard had been, houses had sprung up, and several side streets had formed. How fast time flies! Olenka’s house had grown dingy, the roof had rusted, the outhouse had a slant to one side, and the whole yard was overgrown with docks and stinging nettles. Olenka herself had grown elderly and plain; in summer she sat in the porch, and her soul as before was empty, oppressed, and savoured of wormwood; in winter she sat at a window looking at the snow. When there was a scent of spring, or the wind brought the sound of the church bells, a flood of memories from the past would well up, her heart would contract with tender emotion and tears would flow freely from her eyes, but this was only for a moment, then again emptiness returned and she did not know why she lived. Brýska, her black cat, would rub against her softly and purr, but these feline caresses did not touch Olenka. Were they what she needed? She wanted a love that would absorb her whole being, her whole soul and reason, would give her ideas and a purpose in life, and would warm her ageing blood. And she brushed away black Brýska, and told her crossly:

“Get away ... you’ve no business here!”

And so she went on day after day, year after year, without a single joy, and without any opinions. Whatever Martha the cook said, that was right.

Towards the evening of a very hot July day, just as the town herd of cows was being driven through the streets and the whole yard was filled with clouds of dust, someone suddenly knocked at the gate. Olenka went herself to open it and was dumbfounded by what she saw: at the gate stood the veterinary Smírnin, now grey-haired and in civilian dress. She suddenly remembered everything, could not restrain herself, began crying, and let her head fall on his breast without saying a word, and in her great excitement did not notice how they both entered the house and sat down to tea.

“My dearest!” she muttered, trembling with joy. “Vladímir Platónych! From where has heaven sent you?”

“I want to settle here for good,” he told her. “I have left the army, and want to try my luck as a free man, and to live a settled life. Besides it is time to send my son to the high school. He’s a big boy. Do you know, I have made it up with my wife.”

“And where is she?” asked Olenka.

“She is at the hotel with our son, and I am hunting round looking for a lodging.”

“Oh goodness, my dear soul, take my house! What’s wrong with it? Oh, Lord, why, I won’t charge you anything,” said Olenka, excitedly, and again began to cry. “You live here, and the lodge will do well for me. What joy, oh, my goodness!”

Next day the roof of the house was already being painted and the wall whitewashed, and Olenka, her arms akimbo, went about the yard giving directions. The old smile beamed on her face and she was fresh and full of life again, as though she had waked up from a long sleep. The veterinary’s wife arrived--a thin, plain lady with short hair and a peevish face, and with her came the boy, Sásha, small for his age (he was going on for ten), plump, with clear blue eyes and dimples in his cheeks. Scarcely had the boy entered the yard before he rushed after the cat, and his merry joyous laughter immediately filled the air.

“Auntie, is this your cat?” he asked Olenka. “When she pups let me have a kitten. Mama is awfully afraid of mice.”

Olenka talked to him, gave him tea, and her heart suddenly grew warm and contracted tenderly, just as if he were her own son. And in the evening, when he sat down in her dining-room and prepared his lessons, she looked at him with emotion and pity and whispered:

“My pretty one, my precious ..., my little child! Fancy your being born so clever and so fair!”

“An island is a portion of dry land surrounded on all sides by water,” he read.

“An island is a portion of dry land ...” she repeated, and that was the first opinion she expressed with conviction after so many years of silence and absence of thought.

And she already had opinions of her own, and at supper she spoke to Sásha’s parents of how difficult it was for children nowadays to learn in the high-schools, but that a classical high-school education was, all the same, better than a commercial one, as after finishing at the high-school all careers were open to you, whether you wished to be a doctor or an engineer.

Sásha began going to the high-school. His mother went to stay with her sister in Khárkov, and did not return; his father went away somewhere every day to inspect herds of cattle, and would sometimes be away from home for three days at a time; it seemed to Olenka that they had quite abandoned Sásha, that he was not wanted at home, that he was being starved, and she took him to her lodge and arranged a little room there for him.

Half-a-year has already passed now since Sásha came to live in her lodge. Every morning Olenka comes into his room; he is fast asleep with his hand under his cheek, scarcely breathing. She is sorry to wake him.

“Sáshenka,” she would say sadly, “get up, dear! Time to go to school.”

He gets up, dresses, says his prayers, and then sits down to breakfast. He drinks three tumblers of tea and eats two big plain cakes and half a French roll with butter. He is not quite awake yet, and therefore not in a good temper.

“But, Sáshenka, you did not quite learn your fable,” Olenka says, gazing at him as if she was seeing him off on a long journey. “I am troubled about you. You must take pains to learn, dearest ... and obey your masters.”

“Oh, do leave me alone!” says Sásha.

When he goes along the street to school, himself small but wearing a big cap and with a satchel on his back, Olenka follows him noiselessly.

“Sáshenka!” she calls.

He turns round and she slips a date or a caramel into his hand. When they turn into the side street where the school stands he feels ashamed of being followed by a tall, stout woman; he looks round and says:

“You go home, auntie; I can go on alone now.”

She stops, and follows him with her eyes fixedly until he disappears into the school doorway. Oh, how she loves him! Not one of her former attachments had been so deep, never before had her soul surrendered itself so freely, so disinterestedly, and so joyously, as it did now when the maternal feelings grew more and more ardent within her. For this boy, who was not hers, for the dimples in his cheeks, for his peaked cap, she would have laid down her life, given it gladly and with tears of emotion. Why? Who can tell why?

Having seen Sásha to school she returns home quietly, so content, serene, and full of love. Her face, which has grown younger-looking during the last half-year, is smiling and radiant, those she meets look at her with pleasure, and say:

“Good morning, Olga Semënovna, darling! How are you, darling?”

“The work at the high-school is very difficult nowadays,” she relates when she goes marketing. “It’s no joke,--in the first class yesterday they had a fable to learn by heart, a Latin translation, and a sum as well.... How is a little fellow to do it all?”

And she begins talking about teachers, lessons, and the lesson-books, saying just what Sásha says about them.

After two o’clock they dine together, and in the evening they do Sásha’s home work and cry together. When tucking him up in bed, she spends a long time making the sign of the cross over him and whispering a prayer; then, when she goes to bed, she dreams of the dim and distant future when Sásha, having finished the course and become a doctor or an engineer, will have a big house of his own with a carriage and horses, and will marry, and children will be borne to him.... She falls asleep still thinking of the same thing, and the tears roll down her cheeks from under her closed eye-lids. The black cat lies at her side and purrs. “Prr ... prr ... prr....”

Suddenly there is a loud knock at the gate. Olenka wakes up breathless with fear, and her heart beats violently. Half-a-minute passes and the knocking is repeated.

“It’s a telegram from Khárkov,” she thinks, beginning to tremble all over. “His mother demands that Sásha should be sent to her in Khárkov.... Oh, God!”

She is in despair. Her head, her feet and hands, grow cold; there is nobody in the world more unhappy than she. But another minute passes, voices are heard: it is the veterinary surgeon returning from the club.

“Well, thank God!” she thinks.

The weight is gradually lifted from her heart, and it feels light again. She lies down and thinks about Sásha, who is fast asleep in the next room and sometimes mutters in his dream:

“I’ll give it you! Be off! Don’t fight!”

THE END

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Oxford University Press, “World’s Classics” series, London and New York.

[2] Oxford University Press, “World’s Classics” series, London and New York.

[3] In Russian the word ‘poet’ is used not only of writers of verse, but also of writers of fiction and poetic prose.

[4] Oxford University Press, “World’s Classics” series, London and New York.

[5] The _Viy_ is an Earth-Spirit, and Gógol’s tale is gruesome.

[6] A daring leader of the hill-tribes, who was prominent at the time Tolstoy was serving in the Caucasus.

[7] Some details of this crime are given in “Why do Men Stupefy Themselves?” in _Essays and Letters_, published in the _World’s Classics_.

[8] From _The Life of Tolstoy_ Vol II, by Aylmer Maude.

[9] That is, Márya Lvóvna, Tolstoy’s second daughter, who was devoted both to her father and to his teachings.

[10] A reliable man.

[11] By Zola.

[12] Stories by Georges Sand.

[13] Hips and throats.

[14] The old hag.

[15] Deceived and ridiculous.

[16] “Console me, amuse me, sadden me, touch my heart, make me dream, make me laugh, make me tremble, make me weep, make me think. Only a few chosen spirits bid the artist compose something beautiful, in the form that best suits his temperament.”

[17] The defect of Christianity is clearly seen in this. It is too exclusively moral; it quite sacrifices beauty. But in the eyes of a complete philosophy beauty, far from being a superficial advantage, a danger, an inconvenience, is a gift of God, like virtue. It is worth as much as virtue; the beautiful woman expresses an aspect of the divine purpose, one of God’s aims, as well as a man of genius does, or a virtuous woman. She feels this, and hence her pride. She is instinctively conscious of the infinite treasure she possesses in her body; she is well aware that without intellect, without talent, without great virtue, she counts among the chief manifestations of God. And why forbid her to make the most of the gift bestowed upon her, or to give the diamond allotted to her its due setting? By adorning herself woman accomplishes a duty; she practises an art, an exquisite art, in a sense the most charming of arts. Do not let us be misled by the smile which certain words provoke in the _frivolous_. We award the palm of genius to the Greek artist who succeeded in solving the most delicate of problems, that of adorning the human body, that is to say, adorning perfection itself, and yet some people wish to see nothing more than an affair of _chiffons_ in the attempt to collaborate with the finest work of God--woman’s beauty! Woman’s toilette with all its refinements is a great art in its own way. The epochs and countries which can succeed in this are the great epochs and great countries, and Christianity, by the embargo it laid on this kind of research, showed that the social ideal it had conceived would only become the framework of a complete society at a much later period, when the revolt of men of the world had broken the narrow yoke originally imposed on the sect by a fanatical pietism.

[18] The schools for training ballet-dancers, as well as the theatres where the chief ballets were performed, were State institutions in Russia.

[19] The most usual and widely diffused definition of art is that art is a particular activity not aiming at material utility, but affording pleasure to people; a pleasure, it is usually added, “ennobling and elevating to the soul.”

This definition corresponds to the conception of art held by the majority of people; but it is inexact and not quite clear, and admits of very arbitrary interpretation.

It is not clear, for it fuses in one conception art as a human activity producing objects of art, and also the feelings of the recipient; and it admits of arbitrary interpretation, because it does not define wherein lies the pleasure that “ennobles and elevates the soul.” So that one person may declare that he receives such pleasure from a certain production from which another does not receive it at all.

And therefore to define art it is necessary to define the peculiarity of that activity, both in its origin in the soul of the producer and in the peculiarity of its action on the souls of the recipients. This activity is distinguished from any other activity of craftsmanship, or trade, or even science (though it has great affinity with this last), in that it is not evoked by any material need, but supplies to both producer and recipient a special kind of so-called “artistic satisfaction.” To explain to oneself this characteristic we must understand what impels people to this activity--that is, how artistic production originates.

[20] The division of the results of man’s mental activity into scientific, philosophic, theological, hortatory, artistic, and other groups, is made for convenience of observation. But such divisions do not exist in reality; just as the divisions of the River Volga into the Tver, Nizhigorod, Simbirsk and Saratov sections, are not divisions of the river itself, but divisions we make for our own convenience.

[21] Half-a-century ago no explanation would have been needed of the words “important”, “good”, and “moral”, but in our time nine out of ten educated people, at these words, will ask with a triumphant air: “What _is_ important, good or moral?” assuming that these words express something conditional and not admitting of definition and therefore I must answer this anticipated objection.

That which unites people, not by violence but by love: that which serves to disclose the joy of the union of men with one another, is “important”, “good”, or “moral”. “Evil” and “immoral” is that which divides them, which leads men to the suffering that is produced by disunion. “Important” is that which causes people to understand and to love what they previously did not understand or love.

[22] Ireland’s _Vortigern_.

[23] I leave this as it stood in the first edition, but after it was written I heard from Tolstoy twice on the subject. First, my friend Paul Boulanger wrote from Yásnaya Polyána (24th June 1901, O.S.), during an illness of Tolstoy’s as follows:--

“You ask why Tolstoy did not mention Ruskin in _What is Art?_ He asks me to reply that he did not do so: first, because Ruskin attributes a special moral importance to beauty in art; and, secondly, because all his writings, rich as they are in depth of thought, are yet not bound together by any one ruling idea.”

After Tolstoy’s recovery, a letter (undated) reached me on 17th August 1901, in which he wrote:--

“I have forgotten what I wrote you about Ruskin, and fear it was not correct. I have lately read an excellent book about him, _Ruskin et la Bible_, I think by Brunhes. Ruskin’s chief limitation was that he could never quite free himself from the Church-Christian outlook upon life. At the time he commenced his work on social questions, when he wrote _Unto this Last_, he freed himself from the dogmatic tradition, but a cloudy Church-Christian understanding of the demands of life--which made it possible for him to unite ethical with esthetical ideals--remained with him to the end and weakened his message. It was also weakened by the artificiality, and consequent obscurity, of his poetic style. Do not imagine that I deny the work of this great man, who has quite rightly been called a prophet. I always was charmed and am charmed by him, but I point out spots which exist even on the sun. He is specially good when a wise writer, in accord with him, makes extracts from him, as is done in _Ruskin et la Bible_ (which read), but to read all Ruskin consecutively, as I did, greatly weakens his effect.”

[24] _Boyhood, Childhood and Youth_ were published in 1851–7. _Sevastopol_ 1855–6. _Family Happiness_ 1859. _The Cossacks_ and _Polikushka_ in 1863. _War and Peace_ 1864–9, and _Anna Karénina_ 1875–7.

[25] As the term “mystic” is used in more than one sense in English, I must explain that I use it to denote one who believes in a wisdom “sacredly obscure or secret” (_Chambers’s Dictionary_), or “not discriminated or tested by the reason” (_Century Dictionary_). This is the sense in which it would generally be used in Russian, and in which Tolstoy uses the word.

[26] Both of which were written in the interval between _War and Peace_ and _Anna Karénina_ (1869–1872) and are included in the volume of _Twenty-three Tales_.

[27] Indeed, in the earlier period of his literary activity he devoted much attention to style, and spent great pains upon it. About the period at which he wrote _Three Deaths_ (1859), it is said, the style of his great artistic contemporary, Turgénev, exercised much influence on his own.

[28] Tolstoy’s remarks on Church religion were re-worded so as to seem to relate only to the Western Church, and his disapproval of luxurious life was made to apply not, say, to Queen Victoria or Nicholas II, but to the Cæsars or the Pharaohs.

[29] The Russian peasant was usually a member of a village commune, and had therefore a right to share in the land belonging to the village. Tolstoy disapproved of the order of society which allows less land for the support of a whole village full of people than was sometimes owned by a single landed proprietor. The Censor did not allow disapproval of this state of things to be expressed, but was prepared to admit that the laws and customs, say, of England--where a yet more extreme form of landed property existed and the men who actually labour on the land usually possessed none of it--deserved criticism.--A. M.

[30] Only two, or at most three, senses are generally held worthy to supply matter for artistic treatment, but I think this opinion is only conditionally correct. I will not lay too much stress on the fact that our common speech recognises many other arts, as, for instance, the art of cookery.

[31] And yet it is certainly an esthetic achievement when the art of cooking succeeds in making of an animal’s corpse an object in all respects tasteful. The principle of the Art of Taste (which goes beyond the so-called Art of Cookery) is therefore this: All that is eatable should be treated as the symbol of some Idea, and always in harmony with the Idea to be expressed.

[32] If the sense of touch lacks colour, it gives us, on the other hand, a notion which the eye alone cannot afford, and one of considerable esthetic value, namely, that of _softness_, _silkiness_, _polish_. The beauty of velvet is characterised not less by its softness to the touch than by its lustre. In the idea we form of a woman’s beauty, the softness of her skin enters as an essential element.

Each of us probably, with a little attention, can recall pleasures of taste which have been real esthetic pleasures.

[33] M. Schasler, _Kritische Geschichte der Aesthetik_, 1872, Vol. I, p. 13.

[34] There is no science which more entirely than esthetics has been handed over to the dreams of the metaphysicians. From Plato down to the received doctrines of our day, people have made of art a strange amalgam of quintessential fancies and transcendental mysteries, which find their supreme expression in the conception of an absolute ideal Beauty, immutable and divine prototype of actual things.

[35] See on this matter Bernard’s admirable book, _L’esthétique d’Aristote_, also Walter’s _Geschichte der Aesthetik im Altertum_.

[36] Schasler, p. 361.

[37] Schasler, p. 369.

[38] Schasler, pp. 388–390.

[39] Knight, _Philosophy of the Beautiful_, Vol. I, pp. 165, 166.

[40] Schasler, p. 289. Knight, pp. 168, 169.

[41] R. Kralik, _Weltschönheit, Versuch einer allgemeinen Aesthetik_, pp. 304–306.

[42] Knight, p. 101.

[43] Schasler, p. 316.

[44] Knight, pp. 102–104.

[45] R. Kralik, p. 124.

[46] Schasler, p. 328.

[47] Schasler, pp. 331–333.

[48] Schasler, pp. 525–528.

[49] Knight, pp. 61–63.

[50] Schasler, pp. 740–743.

[51] Schasler, pp. 769–771.

[52] Schasler, pp. 786, 787.

[53] Kralik, p. 148.

[54] Kralik, p. 820.

[55] Schasler, pp. 828, 829, 834–841.

[56] Schasler, p. 891.

[57] Schasler, p. 917.

[58] Schasler, pp. 946, 1085, 984, 985, 990.

[59] Schasler, pp. 966, 655, 956.

[60] Schasler, p. 1017.

[61] Schasler, pp. 1065, 1066.

[62] Schasler, pp. 1097–1100.

[63] Schasler, pp. 1124, 1107.

[64] Knight, pp. 81, 82.

[65] Knight, p. 83.

[66] Schasler, p. 1121.

[67] Knight, pp. 85, 86.

[68] Knight, p. 88.

[69] Knight, p. 88.

[70] Knight, p. 112.

[71] Knight, p. 116.

[72] Knight, pp. 118, 119.

[73] Knight, pp. 123, 124.

[74] “The most divine and especially the most perfect beauty contains the secret of the world,” _La philosophie en France_, p. 232.

[75] “The whole world is the work of an absolute beauty, which is only the cause of things by the love it puts into them.”

[76] “Let us not fear to say that a truth which is not beautiful, is but a logical play of our intelligence, and that the only truth that is solid and worthy of the name is beauty.” _Du fondemont de l’induction._

[77] _Philosophie de l’art_, Vol. I, 1893, p. 47.

[78] Knight, pp. 139–141.

[79] Knight, p. 134.

[80] There is no other Reality than God, there is no other Truth than God, there is no other beauty than God.

[81] _L’esthétique_, p. 106.

[82] Knight, p. 238.

[83] Knight, pp. 239, 240.

[84] Knight, pp. 240–243.

[85] Knight, pp. 250–252.

[86] Knight, pp. 258, 259.

[87] Knight, p. 243.

[88] “The foundling of Nuremberg,” found in the market-place of that town on 23rd May 1828, apparently some sixteen years old. He spoke little, and was almost totally ignorant even of common objects. He subsequently explained that he had been brought up in confinement underground, and visited by only one man, whom he saw but seldom.

[89] Eastern sects well known in early Church history, who rejected the Church’s rendering of Christ’s teaching and were cruelly persecuted.--A. M.

[90] Peter of Chelczic, a Bohemian, was one of the successors of John Huss. In 1457 he was leader of the non-resistants called the United Brethren. He was the author of a remarkable book, _The Net of Faith_, directed against Church and State. It is mentioned in Tolstoy’s _The Kingdom of God is Within You_.--A. M.

[91] Anyone examining closely may see that the theory of beauty and that of art are quite separated in Aristotle as they are in Plato and in all their successors.

[92] Die Lücke von fünf Jahrhunderten welche zwischen den Kunst-philosophischen Betrachtungen des Plato und Aristoteles und die des Plotins fällt, kann zwar auffällig erscheinen; dennoch kann man eigentlich nicht sagen, dass in dieser Zwischenzeit überhaupt von ästhetischen Dingen nicht die Rede gewesen; oder dass gar ein völliger Mangel an Zusammenhang zwischen den Kunst-anschauungen des letztgenannten Philosophen und denen dei ersteren existire. Freilich wurde die von Aristotle begründete Wissenschaft in Nichts dadurch gefördert! immerhin aber zeigt sich in jener Zwischenzeit noch ein gewisses Interesse für ästhetische Fragen. Nach Plotin aber, die wenigen, ihm in der Zeit nahestehenden Philosophen, wie Longin, Augustin, u. s. f. kommen, wie wir gesehen, kaum in Betracht und schliessen sich übrigens in ihrer Anschauungsweise an ihn an,--vergehen nicht fünf, sondern _fünfzehen Jahrhunderte_, in denen von irgend einem wissenschaftlichen Interesse für die Welt des Schönen und der Kunst nichts zu spüren ist.

Diese anderthalbtausend Jahre, innerhalb deren der Weltgeist durch die mannigfachsten Kämpfe hindurch zu einer völlig neuen Gestaltung des Lebens sich durcharbeitete, sind für die Aesthetik, hinsichtlich des weiteren Ausbaus dieser Wissenschaft verloren.--Kritische Geschichte der Aesthetik, von Max Schasler. Berlin, 1872, p. 253, § 25.

* * * * *

The gap of five hundred years, which occurred between the artistic-philosophic observations of Plato and Aristotle and those of Plotinus, may indeed appear striking, but one cannot exactly say that in this interval of time there was absolutely no mention of esthetic matters; or even that a complete lack of correspondence exists between the art-views of the last-named philosopher and that of the former. It is true that the science founded by Aristotle was not in any way advanced thereby; but, for all that, during this interval a certain interest in esthetic questions still appears. But after Plotinus (the few philosophers near him in time, such as Longinus, Augustinus and so forth, hardly come into question as we have seen, and moreover they adhere to him in their views) there passed not five, but _fifteen_ centuries in which there is no indication of any sort of scientific interest for the world of the beautiful and of art.

These one-and-a-half-thousand years, within which the world-spirit worked out a completely new foundation of life, are lost for esthetics as regards any further construction of this science.

[93] The fate of books depends on the head of the reader.

[94] _What is Art?_ was translated by me from Tolstoy’s MSS., which he sent me chapter by chapter as he wrote it. He revised his work to such an extent that some chapters were re-written three times over after he first sent them to me for translation. The following passages belonging to an early version of this chapter, though he did not retain them in his final revision, seem worth preserving, so I give them here in a foot-note:

We only need escape for a moment from the habit of considering this trinity of Goodness, Beauty and Truth, presented to us by Baumgarten, to be as true as the Trinity of religion, and need only ask ourselves what we all have always understood by the words which make up this triad, in order to be convinced of the utterly fantastic nature of the union into one, of three absolutely different words and conceptions which are not even commensurable in meaning.

Goodness, Beauty, and Truth are put on one level, and all three conceptions are treated as though they were fundamental and metaphysical. Whereas in reality such is not at all the case.

Goodness is the eternal, the highest, aim of our life. However we may understand goodness, our life is nothing but a striving towards the good, that is, towards God.

Goodness is really the fundamental metaphysical perception which forms the essence of our consciousness: a perception not defined by reason.

Goodness is that which cannot be defined by anything else, but which defines everything else.

But Beauty--if we do not want mere words but speak about what we understand--beauty is nothing but what pleases us. The notion of beauty not only does not coincide with goodness, but rather is contrary to it; for the good most often coincides with victory over the passions, while beauty is at the root of all our passions.

The more utterly we surrender ourselves to beauty the farther we depart from goodness. I know that to this people always reply that there is a moral and spiritual beauty, but this is merely playing with words, for by spiritual and moral beauty nothing else is understood but goodness. For the most part, beauty of soul, or goodness not only does not coincide with what is ordinarily understood as beauty, but is contrary to it.

As to truth--still less can we attribute to this member of the trinity identity with goodness, or even any independent existence at all.

By truth we merely mean the correspondence of an expression, or of the definition of an object, with reality, or with an understanding of the object common to everyone, and therefore it is a means of arriving at the good. But what is there in common between the conceptions of beauty and truth on the one hand, and of goodness on the other? Truth spoken expressly to cause annoyance certainly does not harmonise with goodness.

Not only are beauty and truth not conceptions equivalent to goodness, and not only do they not form one entity with goodness, but they do not even coincide with it. For instance, Socrates and Pascal as well as many others, considered that learning the truth about unnecessary things does not accord with goodness. With beauty, truth has not even anything in common, but for the most part is in contradiction with it, for truth generally exposes the deception and destroys the illusion which is a chief condition of beauty.

And lo and behold! the arbitrary conjunction into one, of these three conceptions which are not commensurable but foreign to one another, has served as the basis for that amazing theory according to which the difference between good art, transmitting good feeling, and bad art, transmitting bad feeling, is completely obliterated, and one of the lowest manifestations of art, art merely for enjoyment--that art against which all the teachers of humanity have warned mankind--has come to be considered the highest art.

[95] The contrast made is between the classes and the masses: between those who do not and those who do earn their bread by productive manual labour; the middle classes being taken as an offshoot of the upper classes.--A. M.

[96] Duelling was still customary among the higher circles in Russia, as in other Continental countries when this was written.--A. M.

[97] ... it is weariness of life, contempt for the present epoch, regret for another age seen through the illusion of art, a taste for paradox, a desire to be singular, a sentimental aspiration towards simplicity, an infantile adoration of the marvellous, a sickly tendency towards reverie, a shattered condition of nerves,--and, above all, the exasperated demand of sensuality.

[98]
Music, music before all things!
The eccentric still prefer,
Vague in air, and nothing weighty,
Soluble. Yet do not err,

Choosing words; still do it lightly,
Do it with contemptuous mind:
Dearest are grey songs where mingle
The Defined and Undefined!

* * * * * * *

Music always, now and ever!
Be thy verse the thing that flies
From a soul that’s gone, escaping,
Gone to other loves and skies.

Gone to other loves and regions,
Following fortunes that allure,
Mint and thyme and morning crispness ...
All the rest’s mere literature.

[99] I think there should be nothing but allusions. The contemplation of objects, the flying image of reveries evoked by them, make the song. The Parnassians state the thing completely, and show it, and thereby lack mystery; they deprive the mind of that delicious joy of imagining that it creates. To _name an object is to take away three-fourths of the enjoyment of the poem, which consists in the happiness of guessing little by little: to suggest it, that is the dream_. It is the perfect use of this mystery that constitutes the symbol: little by little to evoke an object in order to show a state of the soul; or inversely, to choose an object, and from it to disengage a state of the soul by a series of decipherings.

... If a being of mediocre intelligence and insufficient literary preparation chances to open a book made in this way and pretends to enjoy it, there is a misunderstanding--things must be returned to their places. _There should always be an enigma in poetry_, and the aim of literature--it has no other--is to evoke objects.

[100] It were time also to have done with this famous “theory of obscurity,” which the new school has practically raised to the height of a dogma.

[101] For translation, see Appendix I.

[102] For translation, see Appendix I.

[103] For translation, see Appendix I.

[104] For translation, see Appendix I.

[105] For translation, see Appendix I.

[106] For translation, see Appendix I.

[107] For translation, see Appendix I.

[108]
I do not wish to think any more, except about my mother Mary,
Seat of wisdom and source of pardon,
Also Mother of France, _from whom we_
_Steadfastly expect the honour of our country_.

[109] This sonnet seems too unintelligible for translation.--Trans.

[110] For translation, see Appendix I.

[111] It was Tolstoy’s eldest daughter, Tatiana, Mme. Sukhotin; who was herself a talented art-student.--A. M.

[112] Ibsen’s _The Master-Builder_.--A. M.

[113] Ibsen’s _Little Eyolf_.--A. M.

[114] Maeterlinck’s _Les Aveugles_.--A. M.

[115] G. Hauptmann’s _Die versunkene Glocke_.--A. M.

[116] “The quicker it goes the longer it lasts.”

[117] All styles are good except the wearisome style.

[118] All styles are good except that which is not understood, _or_ which fails to produce its effect.

[119] By G. Hauptmann.