1890

Today, 3 January, Yasnaya Polyana    On the 1st I spent all day revising my comedy;1 not bad. The same day the Tula people came and danced. On the 2nd I wasn’t myself all day because I hadn’t slept the night before. […] Read Minsky’s splendidly written book with a terribly bad ending. […]

A prophet, a real prophet, or still better a poet 2 [a doer], is a person who thinks and understands in advance what people including himself will feel. I am this sort of prophet for myself. I always think what I don’t yet feel, for example the injustice of the lives of the rich, the need for hard work, etc. and then very soon begin to feel these things myself.

Read: Emerson was told that the world would soon end. He replied: ‘Well, I think I can get along without it.’3 Very important.

10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 January, Yasnaya Polyana    […] I’ve felt a strange indifference recently towards expressing the truth about life – it’s so hard to accept.13. The Rayevsky boys4 came and Tanya made me angry. I’ve been revising the comedy. The Rayevsky boys came on the 12th as well; I went to the school5 to light the stove. 11. The comedy and the school again.

Thought: (1) The sexual act is so attractive because it removes responsibility from oneself, it releases one, as it were, from fulfilling the law and transfers it, the responsibility, to others. It won’t be I who will attain the kingdom of God, but my children. That’s why women are so engrossed in their children. […]

I’m sexually disturbed. Thought about the attitude of certain people towards The Kreutzer Sonata: Samarin, Storozhenko and many others, Lopatin: it seems to them that it’s about a special person, whereas, they say, ‘there’s nothing like that about me’. Can’t they really find anything? There’s no remorse because there’s no progress, or else there’s no progress because there’s no remorse. Remorse is like the breaking open of an egg shell or a grain of corn, as a consequence of which the seed begins to grow and is exposed to the influence of air and light, or else it’s the consequence of growth, as a result of which the egg shell is broken. Yes, there’s also an important and very vital division of people: people with remorse and people without it.

18 January, Yasnaya Polyana    Slept badly. Yesterday I copied out the comedy, and today I’ve started revising it again. It’s bad. Work was interrupted by Butkevich,6  who arrived from the country. Had a talk with him. He told me that many people hated The Kreutzer Sonata, saying that it was a description of a sexual maniac. This distressed me at first, but then I was pleased that at least it had stirred up something that needed stirring up. Of course it could have been better, but I did the best I could. […]

21 January, Yasnaya Polyana    Revised the comedy and read. Sledged with the children on benches. Sonya still very agitated and restless.

A strange thing, this concern for perfection of form. It isn’t wasted. But only as long as the content is good. Had Gogol written his comedy crudely and feebly, it wouldn’t have been read by one millionth part of the people who have now read it. A work of art must be sharpened for it to penetrate. To sharpen it means to perfect it artistically – then it will break through indifference and make itself felt by repetition. […]

22 January, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early and revised the comedy all morning. Hope I’ve finished. Walked to the school. Masha is sick; she has written a good letter to Posha. Tanya is good, simple, cheerful and kind. Before that, I read another book of sayings of Indian wisdom. There’s much in it that is good and universal. Thanks to the comedy and the playing of The Power of Darkness in Petersburg and Berlin,7  I’ve begun to succumb to the pleasure of praise. […]

28 January, Yasnaya Polyana    Gay senior came, and brought a sketch of his picture8  – very good. All the time is spent in talks with Chertkov. He told me about his mental condition.9 How terrible.

29, 30 January, Yasnaya Polyana    […] All would be well were it not for the fear of Chertkov’s excited condition. Felt this morning that I don’t want to pass on my thoughts to him, precisely because he accepts them so greedily. I was frightened. That’s I who am weak. I need to feed on them myself. I’ve been vainly trying all these days to write an afterword to The Kreutzer Sonata. It’s gone 11 now – my stomach aches.

2 February, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Dolgov came about tokology; wrote a foreword.10 […]

3 February, Pirogovo    […] Slept for an hour. Got on with the afterword. Right thoughts, but no energy to write them down. Laughed with the good-natured Marya Mikhaylovna and told her the story of the saint’s life and the music teacher.11 It would be good to write it. A merchant’s sick daughter – her illness makes her seductive – also her crime – she is a murderer. Yel. Serg’s confessor is a coarse peasant. Our people are always coming to see you. She had always been meaning to. And however holy you are, she was holier than you. I’m still doing wrong […].

5 February, Yasnaya Polyana    Wanted to sleep badly; struggled all morning with the afterword. Began by chopping logs and went to Tanya’s school. Dozed off after coffee. I must try to write in the morning on an empty stomach. After dinner I read and thought; wanted to write, but had no energy. Thought about a drama on the subject of life:12 the despair of a man who has seen the light, and has brought this light into the darkness of life with hope, and the assurance of lightening this darkness; and suddenly the darkness becomes darker still. […]

11 February, Yasnaya Polyana    Strange – a voluptuous dream. I’m not sleeping much. Weakness. I want to write, but haven’t the strength. Thought today: about the letter I began to write to Kolechka;13 the main temptation in my situation is the fact that life in abnormal conditions of luxury, tolerated at first so as not to destroy love, later takes hold of one with its temptations, and you don’t know whether you live like that for fear of destroying love, or from having yielded to temptation. A sign of the fact that it’s the former – i.e. that you tolerate temptation only for fear of destroying love – is that not only are the earlier demands of one’s conscience not relaxed, but new ones appear.

I also thought that there’s no need to write an afterword to The Kreutzer Sonata. There’s no need to, because it’s impossible for people who think differently to be convinced by arguments. It’s necessary first of all to drive their feelings in a different direction while letting them argue that they are right. They will feel themselves wrong, but they will still argue that they are right. It’s not that people need to argue, but they can’t live without doing so. Reason is a lantern hung on each man’s chest. A man cannot walk or live except by the light of that lantern. The lantern always lights up the road ahead for him – the path he is walking along. And arguments about my lantern lighting up my path for me, when my path is different from his (although my path is right and his is wrong) cannot make him see anything different, or fail to see what he does see on the path he is walking along. He must be driven off the road. And that’s not the job of reason, but of feeling. Even when he has been driven off the wrong road and is walking in the right direction, he will go on seeing for a long time what is lit up by his lantern on the wrong path. On my walk, I thought a great deal about Koni’s story. Everything is clear and very good. (1) He didn’t want to possess her, but did so because that’s what one has to do – so he thought. In his imagination she is charming. He smiles, and he feels like crying. (2) A drive to church, darkness, a white dress, a kiss. (3) The old chambermaid takes the money, but looks on sadly. (4) The old chambermaid is a fatalist, Katyusha is lonely. (5) When she sees him passing through, she wants to throw herself under the train, but gets on and feels the child in her womb. (6) He asks his aunt where she is. A chambermaid at a landowner’s. She is leading a bad life, having a liaison with a man-servant. And she can’t help having the liaison, her sensuality has been aroused. (7) He is agitated and asks: did you drive her out? And did she cry very much? And am I to blame? etc. (8) He tried ambition14 – bad, not in keeping with his character – went abroad – Paris – dissipation – bad. Only left with reading, elegance, hunting, cards, first nights. Hair going grey – boredom.

16 February, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Got on with Koni’s story; not bad. Received a remarkable book, a little English magazine Rising Star. An article by Elder Evans on the hundredth anniversary of the American republic, a remarkable one.15

18 February, Yasnaya Polyana    Read about Kublinskaya in Warsaw. And wrote an indictment of the government, the Church and public opinion16 – not good. […]

19 February, Yasnaya Polyana    Slept badly. Ache all over. Went to the school, read The Historical Bulletin on the Decembrists.17 […]

27 February, Optina18    Arrived early. […] At Optina Mashenka would only talk about Amvrosy, and everything she said is awful. What I saw in Kiev was confirmed – the young novices are saints, God is with them, but the elders are not, the devil is with them. Went to see Amvrosy yesterday, talked about various faiths. I said: ‘where we live in God, that is the truth, we all live together; where we live in the devil, that is falsehood, we all live separately’. Boris19 moved me. Amvrosy, on the contrary, is pathetic, impossibly pathetic with his temptations. He hits people on the head, teaches that there’s no need for her to be distressed about the fact that she gets angry with the servants, and doesn’t see that she needs to. It’s obvious from what she says that the monastery is spiritual sybaritism. Boris said that the purpose of the world and of mankind is to increase the number of angels.

28 February, Optina    Dreamed that I was talking with a priest about drunkenness, tolerance and something else besides that I’ve forgotten. About tolerance: don’t despise Jew or Tatar, but love them. For me that means loving the Orthodox. I think I’ve achieved this on this, my third visit to Optina. Help me God. Their misfortune is that they live by other people’s work. They are saints, brought up on slavery. It’s now 10 o’clock, I’ll go and see Leontyev.20

Went to Leontyev’s. Had an excellent talk. He said: ‘You are without hope.’ I said to him: ‘And you are full of hope.’ That fully expresses our attitudes to faith. Then we set off. An enjoyable journey as far as Mishnevo, forty versts from Optina. Stayed the night in a peasant hut. […]

9 March, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Yesterday I read in New Christianity: Christ must be in social life, in politics, in business.21 Just fancy Christ in business! It’s the same as saying Christ in kicking or killing (war). Yes, these people must be made to understand that all positions in society from that of landowner to hangman are ranked according to their moral nature, and therefore it’s not enough to be good in the position you occupy; you must choose one position rather than another.

I’m still reading Leskov.22 It’s not good, because it’s not truthful. More thoughts during these days. 4 March. Seryozha said: ‘One must be occupied.’ That doesn’t mean anything. One must know what to be occupied with. […]

Read Tanya’s diary and loved her tenderly as I looked into her weak, restless soul. She writes: ‘I’m not a bad person really.’ She said that herself, and there was the chance to see it. But after all, Pobedonostsev, and Nikanor, and Skabichevsky23  and others all say just the same. One needs to establish if their view of themselves is right, and one can. […]

Yesterday, 8 March    Weakness, pain, jaundice. Read Leskov; letters. A lot about The Kreutzer Sonata. People ask: ‘What next?’ I must write an afterword, but can’t. […]

11 March, Yasnaya Polyana    A bit better. Received Yanzhul’s article,24 and read it. The main thing in their view is that there’s no need to make life different, to touch institutions, but only to make life better. I’d like to write about this in connection with ‘Christian business’. […]

17 March, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Two types: one takes a critical attitude not only towards his behaviour, but also towards his position – for example, he cannot accept a post as a civil servant, cannot accumulate and keep money, accept interest, etc. and as a result is always in need, in poverty, cannot feed his family or even himself, and through his own weakness gets into the position – humiliating for himself and depressing for others – of having to beg; the other only takes a critical attitude towards his behaviour, but accepts posts uncritically, and having once obtained for himself the position of a civil servant, a wealthy man, feeds himself and his family plentifully, helps others, and is a burden to no one (not noticeably, at least). Who is better? Neither. But certainly not the latter. […]

Gaston Boissier25 writes that Christians in the first century only took a stern and hostile attitude towards Rome, towards the state, to begin with, but then began to accommodate themselves to the state, and Christianity did no harm to it. He should have said that people appeared, calling themselves Christians and living in harmony with the state – bishops and churchmen. But Christians both were, and still are, not just enemies of the state, but advocates of a doctrine incompatible with it. One of the most terrible and pernicious delusions is that people baptised by Constantine, Charlemagne or Vladimir are themselves Christians. There never were and never are Christian peoples, only Christian people, and such people can be found among Turks, Chinese and Indians. […]

18 March, Yasnaya Polyana    Yesterday Ilya arrived. Begrimed, hardened, and grown older without having been employed. I’ve done nothing. Liver still painful. Probably a fatal illness. It’s neither frightening nor disagreeable to me. Only I haven’t got used to it. I still want to work as I used to. Went to Yasenki. Pains began on the way. Tried to write. No good. In the evening I read Sienkiewicz.26  Very brilliant. Sonya came and started talking about the sale of new works,27 and I got angry. I’m ashamed.

19 March, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early, went for a walk. Drank coffee, the pains began. Can’t write, although my thoughts seem clear while I’m thinking: no memory, no spark of life. An inspector came.28 I didn’t receive him, it was wrong of me. The inspector was a sort of policeman, carrying out a cross-examination. Masha had a narrow escape. They’ll close the school down, and I’m sorry for the girls. Ilya is here and I still can’t talk with him. I’d very much like to, but I haven’t been able to approach him, especially since he keeps aloof. Everything about him, his talk and his jokes, are seasoning for the essential thing which isn’t there. […]

Today is 25 March    In the morning I wrote a letter to Wagner who was distressed by The Fruits of Enlightenment,29 and then finished the Afterword. It’s weak, I think. Yesterday, the 24th, I received some letters: one from Wagner. In the morning I wrote little. In the evening I rode to Yasenki and Kozlovka. The day before yesterday, the 23rd, Sonya returned. I slept a lot. Did nothing. We read No Way Out‚30 and I read on my own. Felt worse. Lyova arrived. In a good mood. He wants to continue in the philological faculty. I had a talk with him. […]

27 March, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Had a walk and thought: […] (2) The displeasure of liberals and revolutionaries at the fact that people use their strength on Christian activities which seem to them so useless and even damaging to their aims, is like the displeasure a man might feel at ruining a fallow field by ploughing it up to grow corn. […]

28 March, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Went for a walk in the evening and prayed. Our Father, hallowed be Thy essence, love, that the kingdom of love may come; Thy will – that all should be ruled by love (by Thee) – be done here on earth as it is, I believe, in heaven. And give me life, i.e. a part in bringing this about here and now. And eliminate the consequences of my mistakes which could be a hindrance to me, just as I eliminate in my own consciousness the consequences of the mistakes of other people which are apparent to me, and which could hinder me from loving them. And lead me not into temptation – physical suffering, clouding of the mind, desire – which are obstacles to the realisation of love, and above all save me from the main obstacle within myself – from the evil in my own heart. Yes, only one thing is necessary for this life, and for all life, one thing – love – and its increase. […]

8 April, Yasnaya Polyana    Slept badly. Unwell. Couldn’t write. And so much needs doing. A letter from Chertkov. Wrote a few bad letters. While reading Lyova’s story,31 some thoughts occurred to me: the upbringing of children, i.e. the ruining of them, the egoism of parents, and hypocrisy. A story like Ivan Ilich.32 Yes, I thought: it’s not good to come and fill people’s rooms with smoke. But is it any better to come to joyful and happy people with a gloomy face and spoil their pleasure?

10 April, Yasnaya Polyana    Went for a walk, thought a lot yesterday and today, namely:

(1) One of the most audacious forms of disobedience to Christ is divine service, public prayers in churches, and calling the clergy ‘fathers’ – but see Matthew III, 5–15, John IV, 20, 21 and Matthew XXIII, 8.33

(2) To express in words what you understand so that another person will understand you as you do yourself is a very difficult thing: and you always feel that you are very, very far from having achieved what you can and should. And then to go and set yourself the further task of arranging the words in a definite order so far as metre and endings are concerned – surely that’s madness! But they are prepared to assure you that the words take shape of their own accord into ‘And love … stirs the blood’. A d’autres [Tell it to the marines]!

(3) The socialists say: ‘It’s not we, who enjoy the good things of civilisation and culture, who need to be deprived of these good things and reduced to the level of the vulgar crowd, but the people who have been deprived of their share of earthly goods need to be raised to our level and made to share the good things of civilisation and culture. The means for that is science. It teaches us to conquer nature, it can increase productivity endlessly, it can make Niagara falls, rivers and winds work for us by producing electricity. The sun will work for us. And there will be plenty of everything for everyone.’

Now only a small part of the people, the part which exercises authority, enjoys the good things of civilisation, while the great part is deprived of these good things. Increase the good things and then there will be enough for everyone. But the thing is that the people who exercise authority have for long been enjoying, not what they need but what they don’t need – everything that they can. And so however much the good things are increased, those who are at the top will use them all for themselves. One can’t use more than a certain quantity of what is necessary, but to luxury there are no limits. One can feed thousands of quarters of cereals to horses and dogs, convert millions of desyatins into parks, etc. And that’s what is happening. So no increase in productivity and wealth will increase the goods of the lower classes by one iota as long as the upper classes have both the power and the desire to use their surplus wealth on luxury. Quite the contrary, an increase in production, a greater and greater mastery of the forces of nature, gives more power to the upper classes, to those who are in authority – the power to hold on to all the good things and the authority they have over the lower, working classes. And every impulse on the part of the lower classes to force the rich to share things with them (revolutions, strikes) produces strife; and strife is a useless waste of wealth. ‘No one shall have anything if I can’t,’ say those engaged in strife.

The conquest of nature and the increase in the production of earthly goods in order to fill the world full of goods so that there should be enough for everyone, is just as senseless an act as increasing the quantity of logs and throwing them into a stove in order to increase the heat in a house in which the stoves are left open. However much you put in the stove, the cold air will be warmed and rise upwards, and fresh cold air will immediately take the place of the air that has risen, and there won’t be an even distribution of heat, or even any heat itself. As long as there is access for cold air, there will be an outlet for warm air which has the property of rising upwards. And it will be like that as long as there is a draught from below to above.

Up to now three remedies against this have been thought up, and it’s difficult to decide which of the three is more stupid: so stupid are all three. One remedy, that of the revolutionaries, consists in destroying the upper classes through whom all wealth escapes. This is like a man breaking a chimney pipe through which heat is escaping, thinking that if there is no chimney the heat won’t be able to escape. But the heat will escape through the hole, as it would through the chimney, if the draught is the same, just as wealth will escape back to the people who exercise authority, as long as their authority exists.

The second remedy consists in doing what Wilhelm II is now doing34 – taking a small part of the wealth away from the upper classes who have wealth and authority and throwing it into the bottomless pit of poverty, without changing the existing social order; fixing fans on top of the chimney which is drawing off the heat at the point where the heat is escaping, and waving these fans at the heat and forcing it back down to the cold layers. This is obviously an idle and useless occupation, because when the draught is coming upwards from below, however much you force the heat downwards (and you can’t force much of it), it will immediately escape again and all the work will be wasted.

And finally there is the third remedy, which is now being advocated with special force in America. This remedy consists in replacing the competitive, individual principle of economic life by a communal, artel, cooperative principle. The remedy, as it’s expressed in Dawn and Nationalist, is to advocate cooperation in word and deed – to suggest and explain to people that competition, individualism, and struggle waste much power and therefore much wealth, and that the cooperative principle is far more profitable, i.e. for each person to work for the common good, and then receive his own share of the common wealth. That way will be more profitable for everyone. That’s all very well, but the trouble is that in the first place nobody knows what portion each person will get, if everyone gets an equal share. But the main thing is that, whatever that portion might be, it will seem inadequate to people living as they do now for their own good. ‘Everyone will be all right, and you will be like everyone else.’ ‘But I don’t want to live like everyone else, I want to live better. I’ve always lived better than everyone else, and I’m used to it.’ ‘But I’ve lived worse than everyone else for a long time, and I want to live like the others lived.’ This remedy is the most stupid of all, because it presupposes that given the existing draught upwards from below, i.e. the motive for striving towards what is best, it is possible to induce particles of air not to rise higher as they get warmer.

There is only one remedy – to show people their true good, and the fact that wealth is not only not a good, but is a distraction which conceals from them what their true good is. Only one remedy exists – to block up the hole of worldly desires. Only that will give an even heat. And that is the very opposite of what the socialists say and do, by trying to increase productivity and therefore the general mass of wealth. […]

11, 12, 13 April, Yasnaya Polyana    The day before yesterday I wrote about narcotics again.35 Not bad. Yesterday: had some excellent thoughts in the morning and wrote them down in my notebook, but couldn’t write. Set off for Tula after dinner and went to the rehearsal.36 Very bored; the comedy is poor – trash. The day before yesterday, while talking with Stakhovich, I cursed the Tsar for having restored the death penalty. Got up late today, couldn’t write, stitched boots. Had a walk in the evening. Lyova is sad. Tanya is sweet. It’s now getting on for 1 o’clock. Thought: […]

(2) People say: thanks to the luxurious way of life of the upper classes, thanks to their leisure which is the result of the inequality of the classes, outstanding people appear on the scene, indifferent to the good things of the world, and with only spiritual interests. That’s just like saying that in a field trampled by cattle the surviving ears of corn are particularly good. It is the inevitable compensation which goes with every evil, and so cannot be used to justify the doing of evil.

(3) Orlov and many others say: ‘I believe, like a peasant.’ But the fact that he says this shows that he doesn’t believe like a peasant. A peasant says: ‘I believe, like the learned gentlemen, like the bishop.’

18 April    […] Thought for a future drama how peasants pretend that they believe, for their masters’ sake, and the masters pretend for the peasants’ sake. […]

25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 April, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought during this time: (1) For the story Friedrichs. Before the suicide – a split mind: do I want to or not? I don’t‚ I see all the horror of it, and suddenly she is there in a red skirt, and everything is forgotten. Who wants to, who doesn’t? Where am I? Suffering caused by the split mind, and as a result – despair and suicide. […]

For the Afterword. If a man or woman falls, they must know that there is no other atonement for their sin except (1) to free themselves jointly from the temptations of the flesh or (2) to bring up their children as servants of God. […]

9 May, Pirogovo    Still ill. Not getting better. Thought today:
(1) Many of the ideas which I’ve been expressing recently don’t belong to me, but to people who feel an affinity with me, and turn to me with their problems, quandaries, ideas and plans. Thus the basic idea, or better to say, feeling of The Kreutzer Sonata belongs to a certain woman, a Slav,37 who wrote me a letter, comical for its language but remarkable for its content, about the oppression of women through sexual demands. Later she came to see me and left a strong impression. The idea that the verse in Matthew: ‘If you look on a woman with lust, etc.’ refers not only to other people’s wives but also to your own, was handed on to me by an Englishman who wrote about it.38 And there are so many other examples.
(2) There is an astonishing contrast between the attitudes of people to the two branches of knowledge: the one called moral teaching, religion even, and the one people like to call science. People who are far advanced in the first category of knowledge – moral teaching – for the most part take as their models teachers of the past: Mencius – Confucius; Plato – Socrates; Buddha – the Brahmins; Christ – Isaiah. These teachers always consider they know nothing themselves (Socrates said so directly). They consider their wisdom to have been handed on to them by their ancestors; their own they consider insignificant. A completely opposite view is taken by people of so-called science: they always think that nobody before them knew anything – that only now is science in the possession of, if not all, then a part of the truth which their predecessors never dared to dream of. If a man of science recalls how previous men of science looked at the universe, the organisation of the human body, the origin of the world and what fills it, etc. he is so sure that all his predecessors were wrong, but not he, that he cannot help despising all scientific activity except his own, and that of his own time. […]

11 May, Pirogovo    If I’m alive, there was a time when I began to think: am I not dying?, and I felt no fear, thank God. Only the fear that I might die a bad death.

Everybody needs a strict diet. A book is needed about food.39

18 May, Yasnaya Polyana    […] I’ve been thinking all this time: […] (5) The anarchists are right about everything – the rejection of what exists and the assertion that anything worse than the oppression of authority, with its existing rights, would be impossible in the absence of that authority. They are only wrong in saying that anarchy can be established by revolution – that anarchy can be set up! Anarchy will be established; but only by there being more and more people who don’t need the protection of government authority, and more and more people who are ashamed to wield that authority. […] (10) We go on writing our novels, although not as crudely as before – when a villain was just a villain and Mr Dogood a do-gooder – but still terribly crudely and colourlessly. But people are all just the same as I am, i.e. skewbald – bad and good together – and not as good as I want people to consider me, or as bad as I think the people are whom I’m angry with or who have offended me. […]

20 May    A thought: we eat sauces, meat, sugar, sweets – we overeat and think nothing of it. It doesn’t even occur to us that it’s bad. And yet catarrh of the stomach is an epidemic of our way of life. Isn’t the same true of sweet aesthetic food – poems, novels, sonatas, operas, romances, pictures, statues? The same catarrh – of the brain. The inability to digest or even to take wholesome food, and the result – death. […]

[25 May.] […] 22 May    The same weakness. The foreword. Chistyakov came. All about the diaries. He, Chertkov, is afraid that I’ll die and the diaries will be lost. Nothing can be lost. But they can’t be sent – it would give offence. Masha has copied out the parts I marked.40 […]

1 June    […] Read M. Arnold. Method and secret.41 Secret is good. Wanted to read it to the girls.

2, 3‚ 4‚ 5, 6, 7, 8 June, Yasnaya Polyana    A whole week has passed. I’m in a very bad and gloomy frame of mind. […] Began Father Sergey and pondered over it. The whole interest is in the psychological stages which he goes through. […] An unpleasant talk today with Sonya apropos of a letter from Biryukov which Gay brought. (She was beside herself and gave herself full rein.)42 In The Newcomes43  Clive’s mother-in-law is good – she torments them both, only she is more tormented herself. Thought: (1) I avoid people, people are a nuisance to me. But surely you live only by people and only for them. If people are a nuisance to you there’s no point in living. To escape from people is suicide. […]

9, 10, 11‚ 12 June‚ Yasnaya Polyana    […] Masha wrote to Biryukov and approved of my letter to him.44 I was frightfully distressed by what Andryusha said today. I said to him that it was bad to drink strong coffee. He turned away with that familiar contempt the children have for me. Gay began to say it was for his own good. He said: ‘It’s not only about coffee, it’s about everything; surely one can’t do everything Papa says.’ He said just what all the children think. I’m terribly sorry for them. I dilute for them what their mother says. Their mother dilutes what I say. Whose fault is it? Mine. It’s now 11 in the morning, I want to get on with Koni’s story.

Tried to write, it was no good. Walked and drank kumys with Nikolay Nikolayevich the second. The cigarette-smoker Nikolay Nikolayevich45 is a burden. If he didn’t overeat and didn’t smoke, what a force he could be. Slept badly.

14 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Wrote a bit of Koni’s story. It doesn’t attract me. Corrected the proofs of the comedy. I’m well. Did some work, chopped wood and sawed.

17 June    Wrote a little bit. I need some material and must do some thinking. Drank an excessive amount of kumys. Talked with Strakhov. He’s almost always intoxicated.46 I’ve thought much and often in recent days, and prayed about something I’ve thought of hundreds and thousands of times, only differently – namely, that I would like to serve God by actually spreading his truth abroad, not in word but in deed, by sacrifice and the example of sacrifice; but nothing comes of it. He doesn’t let me. Instead of that, I live attached to my wife’s skirts, subservient to her, and I and all my children lead a squalid and ignoble life which I falsely justify on the grounds that I can’t destroy love. Instead of sacrifice and a triumphant example, a nasty, ignoble, pharisaical life which alienates me from Christ’s teaching. But Thou knowest what is in my heart and what I want. If that is not destined to be, if Thou dost not need me for Thy service, but only for dung, so be it according to Thy will. […]

Thought: (1) Strakhov and many others corrupted by spiritual onanism look at ethics from an aesthetic point of view: for him, morality is better than immorality only-or mainly-because it is more beautiful. […]

18 June    Thought while at work that I must begin Koni’s story with the court session; and the next day I added that I must express there and then the whole absurdity of the trial. […]

18 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Slept badly. Didn’t even try to write. Mowed. Mitya Olsufyev came. He’s very feeble mentally. A letter from Seryozha with a request for money. Sonya is overcome by requests for money from her sons. It will get even worse. Surely it would be better if she were to renounce her literary possessions at least. How restful for her, how morally good for her sons and how joyful for me, how useful to men and pleasing to God. Strakhov.

22 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Many days have passed, five, I think. I don’t think I’ve written anything during this time. I’ll try and remember. […]
18. Mowed again. Strakhov – and I find him a burden. I’m very dejected. It’s not dejection in a mental sense – that’s nothing – but it’s to do with the heart, with love. I’m in low spirits and am angry. I sit here and am angry with people, both present and absent. Every word or thought arouses, not genuine feeling and sympathy for the person expressing it, but a desire to state to him what I believe to be true. It’s bad. Very bad. […]

At work, while mowing, I envisaged to myself the outer form of Koni’s story. Must begin with the court session. And then the falsehood of the law, and his need for truthfulness. And further: – the state: the story of the colonists.47

Worked a lot, mowed. Received Wilson’s splendid letter to Chertkov48 and Chertkov’s letter. Some other less interesting letters too. In the evening the American Stevens arrived on horseback after going round the world on a bicycle and being in Africa looking for Stanley.49 I’ve remembered to observe the practice of love, and spent the day well.

24 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Worked. Did no writing. Bestuzhev came, then Sisserman.50 Visitors are the bane of our life. Exercised self-restraint with Strakhov. Less anger.

Yesterday I read Without Dogma. Love for a woman is very delicately described – tenderly and far more delicately than with the French where it’s sensual, or the English where it’s pharisaical, or the Germans where it’s pompous – and I thought: I must write a novel about a love that is chaste and affectionate, like my love for Sonechka Kaloshina, the sort of love in which there can be no transition to sensuality, which is the best defence against sensuality. Is it not indeed the only salvation from sensuality? Yes, yes, it certainly is. That is why human beings were created man and woman. Only with a woman can one lose one’s chastity, and only with her can one retain it. Loss of chastity begins with the transition to sensuality. It would be good to write about it.

25 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Another thought: I ought to write a book Gluttony.51  Belshazzar’s feast, bishops, tsars and taverns. Meetings, partings, jubilees. People think they are occupied with various important matters, but they are only occupied with gluttony. And what goes on behind the scenes? How do they prepare for it?

Yesterday Holzapfel52 left. The children jumped out of bed earlier than usual, and Andryusha was going to set off for the village. I asked him why. To buy eggs. Why? Mamma told me to. And I thought: who is looking after their upbringing? A woman without convictions, weak, good, but journalière [inconstant], fickle, and exhausted by the unnecessary cares taken upon herself. She torments herself, and the children are being ruined before my eyes, piling up sufferings for themselves which will be millstones round their necks. Am I right to allow it without waging a struggle? I pray, and I see that I can’t do otherwise. Not my will, but Thine. On the one hand the ruin of the children and vain sufferings, on the other – struggle and bitterness. Better let it be the first. The second is certain, the first isn’t. It’s not for my own family that I was born and must live, but for God. […]

1 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Another thought: Katerina is dying while the mowing is going on. An insignificant event from the mowers’ point of view. The hay has been gathered in safely. Of what importance is that event from the point of view of the dying and the dead Katerina?

Another thought: it would be good to write a story of a man who is kind, tender, gentle, amiable, educated, clever, but who lives like a master, i.e. who guzzles and s   ts, and so requires people to slaughter chickens for him, coachmen to do without sleep and workmen to clean out the lavatories. It’s impossible to be a good man when you live the wrong sort of life.

3 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Went downstairs to sleep. Got up late. Depressed and bored; idleness, luxurious living, useless talk. It’s as if cog wheels are swimming in grease, get clogged and won’t engage. Sometimes the wheels don’t go for lack of oil, sometimes because they are full of slush. Should one write for people like that? Why? I’ve a strange reluctance to write. Yesterday I thought vividly about women. A woman holiday-maker came to question me when I was mowing. The main feature about women is their lack of respect for thought, lack of trust in what it – thought – will lead to. Hence falsehood, distortion of the truth, making play with ideas and spiritual gifts generally. If men were not so bound to women by sexual feeling and the indulgence which results from it, they would see clearly that women (for the most part) don’t understand them, and they wouldn’t talk to them. Except for virgins. You begin to get to know women from you wife, and you get to know them completely from your daughters. These are the women whom you can look at quite freely.

Mowed a lot. Still the same melancholy.

4 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late. I’m drinking too much kumys. Wrote nothing. Mowed all day. It’s the one salvation. Articles and letters all about the Afterword and The Kreutzer Sonata. It’s astonishing what contempt there is for the word, what abuse of it! It’s the same with the women’s conversations that go on all round me. The lower the subject of these conversations the better. At least it’s sincere about eyes and paws. But the higher the subject, the less sincere. […] It’s very important for a woman that there should be more or less sugar or money, but that there should be more or less truth, she is sincerely convinced is of no importance at all.

I suffer from the fact that I’m surrounded by people with deformed brains, with such self-assured, ready-made theories that it’s folly to write anything for them; there’s no way of getting through to them at all. […]

5 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up in good spirits, although didn’t sleep much. Found Mme Helbig53 and Strakhov talking about whether one can purify everything by love, without changing one’s life. I joined in and spoke warmly, the more so since the young people had arrived. But of course I convinced nobody. The place I’m aiming at is too tender, and so they protect it carefully, promptly and opportunely, as the eyelid the eye.

Thought: I like Schiller’s Raüber so much because it’s profoundly true and accurate. A man such as a thief or a robber who takes away the fruits of another man’s labour knows he is doing wrong; but a man who takes them away by lawful means which are acknowledged by society, doesn’t acknowledge his life to be bad, and so this honest citizen is incomparably worse morally than the robber. […]

6 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Went to watch the harvesting of the rye. In the evening I’ll go and cut the rye. In the morning I argued again with Helbig about art. Cleared up one or two things for myself in this argument: (1) Art is one of the means of distinguishing good from evil – one of the means of recognising the good. (2) It is one of the spiritual functions of mankind, just as feeding, means of communicating, etc. are physical functions. (3) How is it that this function should have been sought 5,000 or 500 years ago, and yet not be found in our own time? (4) Obviously it is because of the stupidity of the critics, who cannot see a new phenomenon all round them, but only see corpses of the past.

Had a rest, walked through Masha’s room. Sonya had read in her diary there about Posha’s letter and was beside herself. I couldn’t console her. She’s ill all the time and afraid of being pregnant. And I think of it with fear and am ashamed of myself. This is where I need to face God, not people. Yes, just as illness is necessary to kill sexual desire, so are humiliation and shame necessary to kill vanity.

Harvested the hay. Then the Zinovyevs came. I feel depressed with dead people. And they are so consciously, deliberately dead. Slept badly in the evening.

10 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Still just as weak. Sonya is distressed by the fear of being pregnant. This is where the attempt must be made to transfer the case to the court of the one God.

Went for a bathe. Came back; the table was set for thirty people. The Ofrosimovs and Figners. Then music and singing. Terrible, pointless, it got on my nerves. Two pathetic machines and trumpets – people eating and making a nasty smell. Couldn’t sleep till 5. Very unwell. Sonya in distress and in low spirits.

11 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late. Offended Strakhov. […] In the evening an argument with Strakhov about the Russian question. ‘One of two things: Slavophilism or the Gospels.’ We are going through that terrible time that Herzen spoke about. Ghenghis Khan, no longer with telegraphs, but with telephones and smokeless powder. A constitution, certain forms of freedom of the press, assembly and religious beliefs are all brakes on the increase of power as a consequence of telephones, etc. Without them something terrible is happening, and something that is only true of Russia.

Slept better.

13 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Had a good night’s sleep. After coffee I got on with Father Sergey. Not bad. But it’s not right. I must begin with the loose woman’s journey. Then stitiched boots. Went for a walk and a bathe. In the evening more stitching. Proofs of the article from Goltsev.54 I must add something. […]

15 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late. After coffee I set to work at once on the boots; finished them and went for a bathe. After dinner I had a nap. Sonya came with the news that she wasn’t pregnant. I said we must sleep separately and that I didn’t like that. What will happen? Was cross with Seryozha, but things are better now. I’m not angry at all with Sonya. Nor should I be. Walked a lot in the evening. A cook came, whom a doctor had sent to me from Moscow to ask my advice about his wife’s unfaithfulness. He’s obviously on the verge of mental illness. Hears sounds behind the wall and thinks they are signs being made by her lover and her. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘I wanted to be a pure gentleman.’ He writes illiterate poetry and weeps at every word. Suffers from hallucinations. A strange and significant type. It’s now gone 10.

20 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Had a talk with Sonya. She said she’s glad. But she doesn’t want to sleep separately. […] The Sissermans were just about to arrive some time after 2. The conversation turned to Verochka Kuzminskaya grumbling at her father for not giving her her aunt’s money. Sonya began to talk about how her children demanded the same thing, how there were quarrels over money. I began to say that it was all to do with the need for money. If there’s a need, then by hook or by crook they will get the money, but it can’t be got otherwise than by sinning, because acquiring it is a sin. Nobody listened to me, and everyone was cross with me for talking such nonsense or uttering truisms. At which point the Sissermans arrived, and everyone was cross.

Today is the 24th. Löwenfeld came,55 he’s writing a biography of me. Unpleasant titillation. Walked about and thought and prayed.
21. […] Thought about my old diaries, about how disgusting I appear in them, and about how I don’t want people to know them – i.e. I’m concerned about worldly fame even after my death. How terribly difficult it is to renounce worldly fame, not to be concerned about it at all. And not to suffer at the thought of being taken for a scoundrel. Difficult, but how good! How joyful when you cast aside your concern for worldy fame, and fall at once into God’s hands, and how easy and secure you feel. It’s like the boy who fell into a well and hung on by his hands, suffering pain, when he had only got to stop holding on and he would have stood on the firm ground right beneath his feet, would have fallen into God’s hands. […]

25 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought again about the main difference between men and women: for men reason is a motive force, for women reason is the sequel to movement. Women and women’s minds play with reason, but are moved by inertia and the desires of the flesh; men – real men – control inertia and the desires of the flesh by reason.

I’m writing very badly. I’m not thinking clearly. I’m unwell. […]

27 July,    […] The people who have the most success are those who are not ashamed to do the most stupid things with solemn pretentiousness. Thought about this when recalling how Zakharin was saying that in their clinics they direct a stream of water on to people’s bellies to aid digestion. […]

28 July‚ Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late. Went for a bathe with Pastukhov.56 Corrected the translations of Garrison and Ballou and wrote a short foreword,57 so that they can be communicated to people in this form. […]

3 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought again: what a bad mistake I make in entering into conversations about Christianity with Orthodox believers, or talking about Christianity apropos of the activity of priests, monks, the Synod, etc. Orthodoxy and Christianity have only the name in common. If churchmen are Christians, then I’m not a Christian, and vice versa. […]

4 August, Yasnaya Polyana    If I’m alive.

Alive, Got up early, had a bathe. Prayed. Had some good thoughts about Father Sergey, noted them down and lost the notebook. Read Urusov’s article,58 did some translating with Tanya, repaired some boots and drove to a fire at Kolpna. […]

5 August In the morning I felt ill, stayed in bed and read a Danish novel Sin.59  Bad. Went for a bathe; over dinner we saw a fire in Yasnaya. Five houses burned down. […]

6 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Went for a bathe, and from there to the fire: people came from the mill. I began to console Andrian and went up to Morozov to console him, and felt depressed myself. Sonya was there with money. I was very glad. […] Found my notebook.

I’d made a note for Father Sergey. She explains her reason for coming, talks nonsense, and he believes it because she’s beautiful. She is full of desire.

He doesn’t see anything great about it, on the contrary he’s ashamed at having succumbed. Eventually she goes into a monastery. He’s not handsome, just an ordinary face, plucks at his beard, but his eyes … that’s what arouses her. […]

7 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought again: questions of a life after death. Why don’t we know what will happen to us? Even now, when we don’t know, we’re inclined to depise this life for the sake of the future one, so what would happen if we did know? It wouldn’t have been possible to reveal to us what would happen to us after death: if we knew something bad was in store for us, there would be additional suffering; if we knew something good was in store for us, we wouldn’t go on living here, but would try to die. Only if we knew there was nothing there would we live happily here. That’s almost the way it is. The most probable assumption is that there is no life of the sort we can express by means of our instruments of thought and speech. […]

There’s a splendid story in Vasily Ivanovich’s letter about a good peasant who, when asked by the priest at confession, ‘Do you believe in God?’ replied: ‘No, I don’t: I drink, and smoke and swear.’ Delightful. […]

10 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] For Father Sergey. I must describe the new state of happiness – the freedom, the security of a man who has lost everything, and can’t lean on anything but God. For the first time he gets to know how secure that support is.

11 August    Alive. Got up early. A depressing, painful feeling caused by the presence of guests. I had a talk with Rugin. They want to go off to Bulygin’s,60 and here they are sitting here, although it’s 11 o’clock. And instead of my telling them, I get angry. Went for a bathe, but didn’t bathe. Thought.

For Father Sergey. In the monastery he succumbed to the pride of holiness when with the general and the abbot – and fell. In his cell he repents and has recovered when the loose woman comes.

14 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] For Father Sergey. When he falls, he sees ugly faces. Ugly plump faces, and he thinks they’re devils. […]

15 August61    […] I got up very late. Went for a bathe. Prayed and thought. Drank coffee and talked frankly with Sonya for almost the first time for many years. She spoke about prayer sincerely and intelligently – namely that prayer ought to be expressed in deeds, and not by people saying: ‘Lord, Lord.’ And she remembered Rugin. I was very glad. In the morning during my walk I was even more glad when I felt able to forget myself to the extent of not thinking about my own future life, but only of doing God’s work, and taking part in it. […]

15 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Yes, some articles yesterday about The Kreutzer Sonata. Scandal in America and abuse from Nikanor.62 I didn’t find it unpleasant. […]

18 August    Alive. Morning as usual. Very sleepy.

For Father Sergey. A detail which should establish a level of reality. The lawyer inhales the drops from his running nose in the frosty weather. And he smells of perfume and tobacco, and bad breath.

This story gets a deeper and deeper hold on me. The temptation of worldy fame and celebrity – i.e. a delusion for the purpose of concealing one’s faith. […]

20 August, Pirogovo    Got up late, weak, read Ibsen’s Wilde Ente.63 Not good. Seryozha is very worried about his losses. I left on horseback at 6. A splendid ride. Prayed joyfully. I think it gives me strength. […]

21 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early, tidied my room, had a bathe, revised the conclusion. Read Ibsen’s Rosmersholm. Not bad so far. It’s now gone 2. I’ll go for a rest.

After dinner I chopped wood on my own. Very depressed about the absurdity of life.

22 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Early; everything as usual. Prayer comforts me. A good letter from Chertkov. Rugin came. Had a very good talk with him. Sonya was awake and received him with composure, but then Ilya upset her by saying that he couldn’t eat in his presence. Sonya behaved very well. She didn’t do what she should have done, but she endeavoured with love to do her best. And how I valued that. And how glad I was. I was feeling depressed. She told him so. He took it well, like a peasant and a Christian, and left. The egoism and dissoluteness of our life, of all our lives, the guests included, frighten me. It seems to me to be getting worse all the time. There must be an end to it soon. In the evening Stakhovich and the Zinovyevs came. […]

23 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Still the same oppressive heat. Still I don’t cease to pray. And that makes me so glad. Wrote three empty letters yesterday – to the Chertkovs, Gay and someone else. Still the same fuss and bother, the same cruelty of life, the same stupidity. Terrible, enormous temptations ensnare them. I thought there would be some solution. It can’t go on like this. A terrible surfeit and intensity of the life of the flesh. […]

27 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late. My first impression – some peasants from Kutma. A meeting of justices of the peace had upheld the decision of a judge to imprison two women for tearing up grass. It affected me terribly deeply. This gang of robbers – judges, ministers, tsars – destroy people in order to get money. And without any conscience. Then I received 20th Century, an anarchist journal – excellent. […]

All evening with the Stakhoviches. Not only bored but ashamed – they are so remote from me; but on the other hand, thank God, I didn’t once lose control of myself, despite the rubbish talked by M. Stakhovich and the others. Lyova came, and told me about the conflict brewing between Seryozha and Ilya. Materialism. Here we have the men of the 80s.

28 August, Yasnaya Polyana    It’s my sixty-third year. I felt ashamed that because 1890 ÷ 63 = 30 and because I’ve been married 28 years – that these figures seemed to me in some way significant and I had been looking forward to this year as an important one. Got up late. First impression a depressing one – that of a peasant woman who had come to fetch her horse, which had been taken from her again to get kumys. And yet I was unjust and angry. I was told yesterday that Bulygin’s house had burned down. I went over to see him. On the way I prayed, and partly resigned myself. Prayer fortifies me and continues to be of unabating importance. Bulygin’s house hadn’t burned down, but fourteen houses in Khatunka had. Came back. And I can’t get rid of my feeling of anger with the children. I’ve felt it the whole time. And it’s as if something has happened between me and them. Read Björnson64 – good, very tragic. Fell asleep. It’s now 5 o’clock, I’m going to have dinner.

Thought: Masha told me how Lyova and Stakhovich were saying that one shouldn’t mix philanthropy with estate management: ‘In estate management justice rules, but philanthropy is something quite different.’ People talk like that with the conviction that it’s clever and nice, but in fact it’s nothing else but marking out for yourself an arbitrary field in which you rid yourself in advance of all human feeling, and in which you allow yourself to be cruel. This is how people talk about military service, discipline, the state. What an excellent work of art could be written on this theme! And how necessary! And how I would like to do it.

Thought again: most good feelings and thoughts are not feelings and thoughts. On the contrary, something good excites you: compassion, or the awareness of being in the wrong and the wish to help to explain; and this good aspiration turns either into indignation, resentment and censure, or else into vain arguments paraded in front of people – idle chatter – and its force disappears without having achieved anything. One mustn’t let this feeling escape, one must lock it up like steam or water and release it only into a piston and on to a wheel.

Someone is coming. Help me, Father!

It was the mail coach from Tula. An abusive letter from America.65 Why did I write those rude things about doctors? I’m unhappy with the older children. Worries about money and organising their lives; and self-assurance and absolute self-satisfaction. I haven’t much love for them. And I can’t summon up more. Went for a walk to Kozlovka. Sonya complained about our sons.

3 September    […] Thought today: I’m angry at the moral obtuseness of the children except for Masha. But who are they? My children, my own creation from every aspect, carnal and spiritual. I made them what they are. They are my sins – always before me. And there’s nowhere for me to go to escape from them, it’s impossible. I must enlighten them, but I can’t do it, I’m bad myself. […]

6 September, Yasnaya Polyana    Everything as usual. A pain in the pit of my stomach – apathy. I sleep. And I have evil thoughts. But I stand firm and pray. Chopped wood, went for a walk late on and took a letter for Sonya66 to Kozlovka. It’s now gone 10, I’m going to have a drink of tea. Yesterday I read Rousseau’s Émile.67 Yes, I’ve managed my family life badly. And this sin lies upon me and all around me. In the morning I was summoned to the meeting. I went and tried to mediate. It seems it wasn’t in vain. […]

13 September, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early, went to saw and chop wood with Masha. Very tired. Sat down at home and was at once aware of my feebleness again. Was sad – and sad that I was sad. If I’d remembered – humility, obedience and love – I wouldn’t have been sad. A pain in the pit of my stomach all morning. Read Coleridge.68 A writer very sympathetic to me – precise, clear, but unfortunately timid – an Englishman – the Church of England and redemption. Impossible. […]

Thought yesterday about the fact that war (everyone is talking about sending troops to the Prussian frontier and about war) isn’t so dreadful in the sense that either bloodthirsty beasts or animals that roam in herds will be fighting, and that if they slaughter each other there will be fewer of them left – and I said so. How they attacked me! But it is so. To express it exactly, one should say: people, unfortunately, only learn from experience – and so they need the experience of the calamity of war. That’s one thing. But the other thing is that people who are on the level where they can kill each other at somebody’s command aren’t to be pitied, as reasonable people would be. That’s a consolation. […]

Thought yesterday: I walk through the village and see various peasants digging. Each one digs a potato trench for himself and each one roofs his own house, and much else of the same sort. How much unnecessary work! What if all this were done together and shared? It wouldn’t seem to be difficult: bees and ants and beavers do it. But it is very difficult. Man is very far from doing it precisely because he is a reasonable, conscious creature. Man has to do consciously what animals do unconsciously. Before man aims at the communal life of bees and ants, he must first consciously try to reach the level of cattle, from which he is still a long way away: not fight (wage war) over absurdities, not overeat, not fornicate, and then he can consciously aim at the life of the bees and ants as they are beginning to do in the communes. First the family, then the commune, then the state, then mankind, then all living creatures, then the whole world, like God. […]

14 September    Alive. Still the same mood of depression. Couldn’t work. Pavel Boriskin and Alexey were netting a bird-cherry tree. I helped them a bit. Read Coleridge. Much that is excellent. But he suffers from the English disease. It’s clear that he can think clearly, freely and powerfully; but as soon as he touches on anything that is respected in England, he becomes a sophist without noticing it. Read to the girls. […]

15 September, Yasnaya Polyana    Everything as usual. Didn’t try to write. Was told in the morning that Pavel had died. He lay down in Alexey’s shed on some rotten straw and died. Good. Patience. I’d like to write something with the epigraph: ‘I came to send fire on the earth, and what will I, if it be already kindled?’69 […]

19 September, Yasnaya Polyana    Unwell. Read. Chopped wood. Rugin came. I walked back with him. How inaccessible peasants are to the teaching of the truth. They are so full of their own interests and habits. But who is accessible? The one whom the Father leads to it – a secret. Read Pressensé.70 How insignificant! […]

It’s now 12 o’clock. I’d like to write a novel de longue haleine [on a big scale] in the evenings.

4 October, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Tanya’s birthday. In the meantime I’ve read Father Mamonov’s article on the Slavophiles71 – excellent. Then Broglie’s book on Constantine72 which Lyova brought, very useful – I’ll copy out some extracts from it now – then Ivantsov’s book on heresies and schisms.73 Scientific twaddle. Then Björnson’s book In God’s Way74 which was sent to me. Serious, with a purpose, very talented in places, but also ungainly, with much that is superfluous and disjointed. I don’t know how to put it. […]

6 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Woke up early and thought with gladness about the need to write down the whole sober truth about what is considered to be belief, the madness which is accepted and repeated: redemption, the creation, the sacraments, the Church, etc. I imagined it very clearly, but not the form of it. Of course something literary would be more powerful than anything.75 Read the Revue; wanted to write but couldn’t. I’m a bit better. […]

7 and 8 October, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought: (1) The usual argument to the effect that the working classes are free to work or not, to educate themselves and to move up into the higher strata of society, reminds me of the question by the young lady who asked why, if the peasants have no bread, they don’t eat pies? Such is the failure to understand not only reality, but even the subject under discussion. […]

14 October, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Got on yesterday with a conclusion to Ballou, and I’m continuing it today for the first time with enthusiasm. It looks as if it will get finished now. The day before yesterday Doctor Bogomolets came, and he and I translated Diana,76 a very good article on the sexual question. Yesterday I wrote it out and revised it today during a sitting with Gay.77 Yesterday a nice young girl came. She was aware of the emptiness of life, but didn’t know that one can’t live without faith. Masha is fixing her up here for a while, in the village. A good letter from Novosyolov. There are many letters to answer.

15 October, Yasnaya Polyana    If I’m alive. […] terrible to say – 23 October. Eight days. My only occupations during these days were writing out Diana, revising an article on hunting,78 and a story by Guy de Maupassant79 – a wonderful story which Alexey Mitrofanovich translated. Got on yesterday with Sergey. I’ve made some progress. My thoughts are sluggish. Today I only made notes to remind me. Gay is still sculpting. Sonya has gone away today to her sons. Morally I’m at a low ebb. […] Health just about holding up with great care. I’ll soon die. […]

24 October.    […] In the morning I revised and wrote down the stories by Guy de Maupassant80 while sitting for Gay. After that I couldn’t write. In the evening I read a history of the church with the girls. Don’t remember whether I noted down: We can’t know anything of what is, but we can know for sure what ought to be. There are many different sorts of knowledge, but the one which is the most important and reliable of all is the knowledge of how to live. But it’s just this knowledge which is despised and considered both unimportant and unreliable.

12 o’clock. I’m going to bed. I’m sad. The one joyful thing is that I feel the very best kind of love for Sonya. Her character is only now becoming clear to me.

26 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early. Revised Maupassant again and didn’t manage to write anything. I was wrong to praise him the day before yesterday. Such restlessness, agitation and fuss and bother, that I get depressed. Generally speaking I’m in low spirits. I’m glad to be with Lyova. He’s struggling against the desires of the flesh and seems about to succumb. In the evening read Pisemsky’s drama A Hard Lot.81 Not good.

Yes, it would be good to express the teaching of Christ’s life as I understand it now. […]

Haven’t written my diary for threee days. Today is 31 October, Yasnaya Polyana. Got up early today – before 7, as on all these days – and went for a walk. Prayer continues to fortify me and get me going. New thoughts arise, get more involved and then become clearer. Then I did some writing – since my notebooks are locked up with Masha, I got on at first with Sergey. Revised some bits, but mainly got things clearer in my own mind. I must relate everything that was in his soul: why and how he became a monk. Great pride (Kuzminsky and Urusov), ambition and the need to be beyond reproach. Had a sleep. Went for a walk, prayed again. Dictated a letter to Tanya, read Trinksitten,82 and now it’s 8 o’clock.

Yesterday, 30 October, Yasnaya Polyana. […] The Diana article has been published.83 I somehow fear for it. And that’s bad. It’s proof that I didn’t do it entirely for other people’s sake. […]

7 November, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early, had a walk. A keen frost. Continued writing just as badly.84 I sometimes think that I’ve lost the power and ability to express my thoughts as I expressed them before, and so I’m dissatisfied with their feeble expression now. I must give up. It’s not important. I’m not sorry. And things are very good as they are. (Prayer fortifies and purifies me, it makes me glad.) But doubts trouble me: perhaps I ought to write. And so I try, and will go on trying, to serve people in this way, since I don’t know any other way of serving them so usefully. […]

9 November    […] Tanya brought the letters, including one from Gaydeburov with abusive articles85 which had an effect on me. How far I still am from rejoicing, as the Gospel says, when men revile you. […]

16 November    […] Did some writing today to begin with. Started with my impressions following the publication of What I Believe. So far it’s going smoothly.

Yesterday, 15 November. […] I wrote some more about oppression. Thought: For my article on non-resistance. The lower working classes are always full of hate, and are only waiting for the opportunity to vent the anger boiling up inside them, but the ruling classes are now on top. They lie on the workers and can’t let them go: if they let them go, that will be the end of them. All the rest is a game and a comedy; the essence of the matter is a life and death struggle. Like robbers, they guard their prey and defend it from other people.

18 November    This was yesterday. Wrote about non-resistance to evil to begin with. I think I’ve now found the form. Although it’s not a very good one, it’s one into which I can fit much that is good. I’ll try not to change it and not to depart from it. Wrote quite well; had a headache. Slept very badly. And was terribly depressed. Walked to Kozlovka. A letter from Yemelyan. In the evening I read Homer to the girls. […]

Thought about the corruptness of the newspapers: read in The Week an account of my story in the Fortnightly Review,86 where it says that the young man went off with her and that was the end of it, and that the whole story is written on the theme of married life. Of course I know it’s all nonsense, but then 0.99 of news and information is the same sort of nonsense which nobody corrects – there’s no time: tomorrow there will be fresh news and one mustn’t miss the dead-line – the month’s, the week’s, or the day’s. One must think with the dead-line in view. It’s really surprising how strong the devil is, i.e this retrograde force. A thought is only a thought and fruitful when it isn’t bound by anything: that is its strength compared with other things of the flesh. But no. They’ve gone and shackled it in bonds of time, in order to emasculate it and deprive it of its individuality. And it’s just this emasculated form that is eager to devour everything. Philosophers and sages express their thoughts for the first of the month, and prophets too. […]

Thought for my article on non-resistance: the critics of my book87 attacked the metaphysics and said nothing about the moral teaching. It’s just the same with all opinions about heresies: people tell you in detail how the Montanists and others made such and such a wrong judgement about divinity (probably describing the teaching of the Montanists and others just as correctly as missionaries described the teaching of Buddhists), and then say in two words that they lived morally without resorting to violence.

19 November. Yasnaya Polyana    If I’m alive. For the 18th. I’m thinking very vividly about the article on non-resistance. It’s all becoming clear. I also want to write something free, something literary. But I won’t allow myself to until I’ve finished this.

Today, 21 November, Yasnaya Polyana. It’s getting on for 12 o’clock at night. Sonya has gone to Moscow. I read The Odyssey with the girls. […]

Before dinner I had a sleep, walked along the main road and wrote quite a lot about religious critics.88 Yesterday, the 20th. In the evening I read, soled some felt boots and was very tired. In the morning I walked to the office and wrote quite a lot about secular critics. […]

22 November, Yasnaya Polyana    If I’m alive.

Yes, for the article: secular critics are moral eunuchs whose moral nerve has been removed, the consciousness that they can create life by their own power.

And again – the Church is a curtain which conceals the door of salvation opened by Christ. People can’t see it, and rush about in desperation.

23 November, Yasnaya Polyana    Yesterday and today I lived and wrote and prayed like a clock that had been wound up. Wrote a lot. Switched over to the church theme89 and am making good progress. […]
Yesterday, the 27th, at Krapivna. Got up very early, went for a walk, went to the police station and then to the gaol. Tried again to persuade the accused to be unanimous; we drank coffee and then I went to court. Heat and a shameful comedy. But I noted down what I needed for a realistic scene.90 Then we travelled back by night. A snowstorm, it was frightening. Arrived safely.

Today, 15 December. Haven’t written my diary for eleven days. Lived roughly the same: walked and prayed just the same, and made the same slow progress in writing my article. Visitors: (1) Rusanov and Boulanger.91 Left behind a very joyous impression. Then Anatoly and Andrey Butkevich.92 News that a policeman was coming to see me about the dispatch of some hectographed articles by Butkevich. Then Anatoly Butkevich and his wife. Very good and joyous people. Before them too, an old man, Panov, a coachmaker from Samara, an Orthodox renegade, an original, free-thinking Christian. Too occupied with negation. Then Dillon.93 He only left today. I was depressed, partly because I felt I was material for him to write about. But intelligent, and apparently with newly-awakened interest in religion. I’ve just seen Bulygin off. I must help him spiritually, and I tried as best I could. Went out this morning and was met by Ilya Bolkhin begging for forgiveness: they’ve been sentenced to six weeks in gaol.94 I was very depressed and my heart ached all day. Prayed, and will pray and go on praying that God will help me not to destroy my feeling of love. I must go away. Forgot to make a note of a dear and wonderful visitor – Posha. He’s very good, serene, open, truthful and pure, and so is Masha, and I’m glad. Thought during this time: […] (2) Thanks to the censors all our literary activity is an idle occupation. The only thing that is necessary and that justifies this activity (literature) is cut out and thrown away by the censors. It’s as though a carpenter were only allowed to plane in such a way that there should be no shavings. And writers are wrong to think that they can deceive the government censors. It’s impossible to deceive them, just as it’s impossible to deceive a man on whom you want to put a mustard-plaster surreptitiously without his knowledge. As soon as it begins to take effect, he will tear it off. […]
(4) From various directions, both in my life and in my writings, I’m coming more and more often to the idea that people think for the most part – in as much as they are not saints – not in order to discover the truth, but only to justify and extol themselves. Only a saint can think altogether rightly, and only the thoughts of a saint are fruitful. […]

Did some writing today – not much, but I’m apparently making progress. Yesterday I began Koni’s story from the beginning.95 Enjoyed writing it very much.

16 December, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Yesterday I went to bed and couldn’t sleep. My heart ached, and above all I felt loathsome self-pity, and anger against her. An astonishing condition! And with it all, nervous excitement and clarity of thought. With these stresses and strains I could write something splendid. Got out of bed at 2 and went into the drawing-room to walk about. She came out and we talked till after 4. The same as usual. A bit gentler on my part. Spoke my mind about one or two things. I think I must declare to the government that I don’t recognise property and royalties, and let them do what they will. […]

Still can’t adopt a simple, kindly, affectionate tone, not just with her, but with any of them. That’s proof that I’m to blame. My last words yesterday were: ‘don’t judge me; I judge myself for not being affectionate enough – you try and find the same judgement in yourself.’ […]

21 December    Got up very early. Was woken by a telegram. Sonya96 has had a son. Did some writing. Still about the Church, and still making slow progress. […]

25 December    8 o’clock in the evening. They’ve just been doing the Christmas tree. I sat downstairs and read Renan. Remarkably clever. Before dinner I went for a walk, had a sleep and asked Lyova’s forgiveness for having offended him. During tea, with Dunayev present, a conversation began about our way of life and the times of repas; he blamed his mother, and I said that he was just the same as she was. He said that everyone said (and this was the astonishing thing) that there was no difference between Masha, Chertkov and himself, and I said that he didn’t even understand what it was all about, – said that he knew nothing about humility or love, and mistook hygienic concerns for moral ones. He got up with tears in his eyes and went out. I was very hurt and sorry for him, and ashamed. And I felt love for him. Spoke to him, but was sorry it had happened. And so did no writing. Slept badly all night. […]

These last days I’ve been receiving abusive letters. The Yasnaya Polyana Tartuffe. Was hurt at first and then felt good. Good letters from the Shakers. […]

26 December    Got up early. Asked Vasya to tidy my room. And when I came back after coffee and it wasn’t done, was shamefully offended and angry. Pride! Abomination. I’m still writing about the Church. Seem to have made progress. But not much.

In the morning I wrote down: the Church, by teaching people to know the truth and not do it, has atrophied their moral nerve.

Read S. Prudhomme’s article on Pascal’s wager.97 It’s now 12, I’m going to bed. I’d like to write something literary. […]

Today is the 31st. Evening. 11 o’clock. Got up early in the morning. Wrote a lot. Revised what I’d already done, three chapters are almost ready and it’s all taking shape.98 Went for a long walk. In the evening we read a splendid article by Leskov.99 A letter from Chertkov and the articles on art.100 Wrote letters to him and Leskov.

Well now. 1891, January 1, if I’m alive. I’ve kept waiting for something to happen while I’m still sixty-three – which goes thirty times into 1890. Nothing has happened.101 As if I didn’t know that anything that can happen from without is nothing compared with what can happen within.

Notes

1 The Fruits of Enlightenment.

2 I have corrected Tolstoy’s Greek.

3 Tolstoy gives the quotation from Emerson in English.

4 The three sons of I. I. Rayevsky, an old friend of Tolstoy’s with whom he later stayed at Begichevka while engaged on famine relief in 1891–2.

5 The school opened by Masha in a gardener’s cottage near the entrance to the Yasnaya Polyana estate for the education of the local children. Tolstoy sometimes taught there, as well as his other daughter Tatyana.

6 Andrey S. Butkevich, a medical student at Moscow University and later a doctor in Moscow who came under Tolstoy’s spell for a time and later wrote memoirs of an ‘ex-Tolstoyan’.

7 Privately in Petersburg and by the Freie Bühne society in Berlin.

8 What is Truth?, which Tolstoy advised Tretyakov to buy.

9 At the time Chertkov was in a highly excited and nervous state, which was the subject of correspondence between him and Tolstoy.

10 S. M. Dolgov translated Alice Bunker Stockham’s popular book on childbirth, Tokology. A Book for Every Woman. Tolstoy, at Dolgov’s request, wrote a foreword to it.

11 Tolstoy told M. M. Shishkina, his brother Sergey’s wife, his first thoughts about Father Sergey to which the following lines refer. The thoughts are so condensed that the meaning is difficult to follow in places, particularly since it is not always clear who is speaking. The final version of the story is substantially different.

12 Possibly The Light Shineth in Darkness, which he sometimes called ‘his own’ drama.

13 N. N. Gay junior. Part of the letter concerns Tolstoy’s admission that he sometimes acts against his conscience in order to avoid some unpleasantness in the family.

14 In French in the diary.

15 An article in the American (not English) journal Rising Star by F. W. Evans, Elder of the New York Shakers, using the occasion of the centenary celebrations in 1887 to advocate Shaker politics.

16 Tolstoy began an article Apropos of the Skublinskaya [not Kublinskaya] Case on reading of the murders of new-born babies perpetrated by a Warsaw midwife of that name.

17 An article on the Decembrist Y. P. Obolensky, with some unpublished letters.

18 Tolstoy visited the Optina Monastery with his sister (Mashenka) who was living temporarily in a nunnery nearby. Her decision to become a nun was apparently taken under the influence of the Optina Elder Amvrosy.

19 Boris Shidlovsky, a cousin of Sonya’s and a monk at the monastery.

20 K. N. Leontyev, novelist and critic, who was living at the monastery at the time and became a monk shortly before his death. His major work, On the Novels of L. N. Tolstoy, was written in 1890, but not published until 1911.

21 This sentence from the article (in the first issue of the American journal) as well as the words ‘Christ in business’ and ‘Christ in kicking or killing’ appear in English in the diary.

22 It is not known what he was reading.

23 Respectively the ultra-conservative Chief Procuractor of the Holy Synod; an archbishop who had frequently spoken against Tolstoy; and a literary historian who was highly critical of his work, especially Anna Karenina.

24 Practical Philanthropy in England, in the Herald of Europe.

25 The French classical historian’s article Études d’histoire réligieuse which Tolstoy read in the Revue des Deux Mondes and alluded to in the first draft of The Kingdom of God is Within You.

26 The Polish novelist’s Without Dogma (Letters, II, 670–1).

27 Sonya was planning to publish a supplementary thirteenth volume to the recent eighth edition of Tolstoy’s works, and this duly appeared in 1891.

28 To visit the school which Tolstoy’s daughters had opened without official permission.

29 Letters, II, 454. Professor Wagner had accused Tolstoy of modelling the spiritualist professor in his comedy on himself and another distinguished Petersburg professor.

30 The novel by Leskov.

31 One of two stories (Love and Monte Cristo) which his son had written (Letters, II, 479).

32 These ideas were to some extent expressed in Tolstoy’s unfinished story Mother.

33 Verse numbers differ slightly in English and Slavonic Bibles.

34 A reference to certain reforms by the German Emperor in the field of labour legislation.

35 The article eventually entitled Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?

36 Of The Fruits of Enlightenment.

37 Apparently a Czech woman who had written him an unsigned letter from a monastery.

38 Not an Englishman, but an American religious writer, Alonzo G. Hollister.

39 See the foreword Tolstoy wrote (The First Step) to Howard Williams’ The Ethics of Diet.

40 Tolstoy had originally agreed to send some of his diaries to Chertkov for him to make extracts from them. Chertkov had suggested that all the diaries should be handed over to him for safe keeping, and Chistyakov had come to collect them. However, Tolstoy changed his mind for fear of offending his wife (see Letters, II, 458).

41 Tolstoy was re-reading Literature and Dogma. In Chapter 7 Arnold writes about the method and the secret of Jesus Christ.

42 This sentence was erased, but can still be deciphered.

43 Thackeray’s novel.

44 Tolstoy, while not actually opposing Biryukov’s and Masha’s wish to get married as his wife did, nevertheless repeated his belief that marriage was ‘a fall’ for people wishing to lead a good Christian life. Biryukov had written to Masha, Tolstoy and Sofya Andreyevna (see also 6 July 1890) but none of the letters has survived.

45 The first Nikolay Nikolayevich is Gay, the second Strakhov.

46 Thought to be in a metaphorical sense!

47 See 1884, Note 97.

48 A letter from Gilbert Lewis Wilson, an American Unitarian pastor and friend of Adin Ballou’s, who was totally opposed to any form of violence.

49 Thomas Stevens, correspondent of the New York World. He planned to ride on to the Crimea.

50 V. N. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, a retired general, for many years head of a Tula arms factory; A. L. Sisserman, a military historian, some of whose writings on the Caucasus Tolstoy made use of when writing Hadji Murat.

51 See The First Step.

52 A Swiss citizen and member of the Salvation Army whom Sonya had engaged as a tutor to the young children.

53 N. D. Helbig (née Princess Shakhovskaya), a pianist and pupil of Liszt’s. She had come to Yasnaya Polyana in 1887 to meet Tolstoy and had returned as a guest on several occasions. She published her reminiscences of him in Tolstoy at Sixty, The Bookman, NY, 1911.

54 Of Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves? from Goltsev, the editor of Russian Thought.

55 R. V. Löwenfeld, a German Slavist and literary critic, translated Tolstoy and wrote a number of articles about him. He came to Yasnaya Polyana to collect material for a major book on Tolstoy’s life and works – Graf Leo N. Tolstoi. Sein Leben, seine Werke, seine Weltanschauung, Berlin, 1892 – which appeared in Russian translation in 1904.

56 A. A. Pastukhov, a former student at the Academy of Arts, who gave up his studies to come and work in the country near Yasnaya Polyana.

57 His own translation of William Lloyd Garrison senior’s Declaration of Sentiments adopted by the Peace Convention, Boston, 1838, and Strakhov’s translation of The Catechism of Non-resistance by Adin Ballou, an American pastor, opponent of slavery and advocate of non-resistance to evil. The foreword which Tolstoy wrote was later incorporated into The Kingdom of God is Within You.

58 A manuscript (not published) entitled Unknown Works of Count L. N. Tolstoy.

59 The Sin of Joost Avelingh: A Dutch story. It was written not by a Dane, but by a Dutchman, Maarten Maartens. Tolstoy read it in English.

60 M. V. Bulygin, a former guards officer and later a student at an agricultural academy, from which he was expelled for taking part in student disturbances. He owned a small farm in the Tula province and became a close friend of Tolstoy’s.

61 15 August should be 14 August, and the previous entry 13, not 14 August.

62 The scandal refers to the ban imposed by the American authorities on The Kreutzer Sonata; the abuse to an article on the same book by Archbishop Nikanor.

63 Löwenfeld sent Tolstoy several plays by Ibsen in German translation, of which he read The Wild Duck and Rosmersholm.

64 Björnson’s play En Hanske (A Gauntlet) which Tolstoy read in German. It was translated into Russian on Tolstoy’s recommendation.

65 From a Dr F. D. Brooks of Milwaukee.

66 Sonya was now in Moscow.

67 More exactly, he re-read it.

68 Coleridge’s philosophical treatise Aids to Reflection, a series of aphorisms and comments, which Strakhov had sent to Tolstoy.

69 This sentence from Luke’s Gospel was used as an epigraph to Chapter 9 of The Kingdom of God is Within You.

70 E. de Pressenśe’s Histoire des trois premiers siècles de l’Église Chrétienne, 5 volumes, Paris, 1858–69. Tolstoy’s copy at Yasnaya Polyana has many notes in his handwriting.

71 By E. A. Dmitriyey-Mamonov in Russian Archives, 1873.

72 A. de Broglie, L’Église et l’Empire romain au IV-e siècle, 6 volumes, Paris, 1856–69. Lev Tolstoy brought his father the first volume on the reign of Constantine.

73 A. M. Ivantsov-Platonov’s book Heresies and Schisms of the First Three Centuries of Christianity. Part one. A Survey of the Sources for a History of the Ancient Sects, Moscow, 1877.

74 His novel In God’s Way, 1890. (På Guds Veje, 1889).

75 He wrote about it in The Kingdom of God is Within You.

76 In 1890 Tolstoy received from New York a brochure entitled Diana. A psychophysiological essay on sexual relations for married men and women. With the aid of Dr Bogomolets he quickly produced a Russian version of it entitled On the Relations between the Sexes. Tolstoy availed himself of the medical knowledge of Dr Bogomolets, whom he had previously helped to obtain permission to visit his sick wife, a political prisoner in Siberia.

77 Gay was sculpting a bust of Tolstoy, now in the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow.

78 Chertkov’s article An Evil Sport, for which Tolstoy wrote a short foreword.

79 Maupassant’s Le port, translated at Tolstoy’s suggestion by Novikov and considerably revised by Tolstoy. It was eventually published under the title Françoise.

80 Le port (Françoise) and part of Sur l’eau (entitled Expensive in Tolstoy’s version).

81 He re-read the drama which he had first read in 1859.

82 Die Trinksitten …, a brochure by the Swiss scientist Dr A. Forel directed against habitual drinking, which was translated at Tolstoy’s suggestion and published by The Intermediary.

83 In The Week, 1890, No. 43.

84 The Kingdom of God is Within You, referred to below as his article on non-resistance.

85 P. A. Gaydeburov, editor of The Week, sent cuttings of articles ridiculing On the Relations between the Sexes.

86 The Week, in reporting the publication of E. J. Dillon’s translation in the English journal the Fortnightly Review of Tolstoy’s story Walk in the Light while there is Light, had distorted the content of the story.

87 What I Believe. The reference in the following sentence is to the followers of Montanus, a second-century prophet from Phrygia, who gave his name to the ‘heresy’ of Montanism.

88 A reference to Chapter 2 of The Kingdom of God is Within You which contains a review of critical responses to What I Believe.

89 Chapter 3 of The Kingdom of God is Within You with its criticism of official church Christianity.

90 His impressions of the murder trial he attended at Krapivna were later used in the court scene in Resurrection and also in the murder episode in The Forged Coupon.

91 G. A. Rusanov, a landowner and university graduate, who greatly admired Tolstoy’s fiction and whose friendship with him dated from a visit to Yasnaya Polyana in 1883 to discuss the problems raised by A Confession – he declared in his will that it was due to Tolstoy that he became a Christian (Letters, II, 442); P. A. Boulanger, a personal friend of Tolstoy’s who had been arrested in 1897 for his activities on behalf of the Dukhobors, emigrated to England where he lived at the Purleigh Colony, but was later allowed to return to Russia where he wrote extensively about Tolstoy and his ideas. (Letters, II, 562).

92 See Note 6. Anatoly was Andrey’s brother.

93 Emile Joseph (Mikhaylovich in Russian) Dillon, an English journalist and translator of Tolstoy and author of Count Leo Tolstoy; a new Portrait by his Contemporary and Critic Dr E. J. Dillon. After the 1917 revolutions he published The Eclipse of Russia, London, 1918.

94 Bolkhin and some other Yasnaya Polyana peasants had been charged, at Tolstoy’s wife’s instigation, with felling birch trees on the estate.

95 The title Resurrection was used for the first time in this version.

96 Ilya Tolstoy’s wife.

97 Le sens et la portée du pari de Pascal in the Revue des Deux Mondes apropos of Pascal’s question about belief in God.

98 The Kingdom of God is Within You.

99 Leskov’s story Offended Before Christmas, which Tolstoy considered the best thing Leskov had written, was essentially a Tolstoyan fable illustrating the words ‘judge not’.

100 The rough drafts of his article On Art.

101 In fact he would not be sixty-three until August 1891.