He used to ask: "You don't like me?" and one had to answer: "No, I don't."
"You don't love me?"—"No, to-day I don't love you."
In his questions he was merciless, in his answers reserved, as becomes a wise man.
He used to speak with amazing beauty of the past, and particularly of Turgeniev; of Fet always with a good-natured smile and always something amusing, of Nekrassov coldly and sceptically; but of all writers exactly as if they were his children and he, the father, knew all their faults, and—there you are!
He would point out their faults before their merits, and every time he blamed someone it seemed to me that he was giving alms to his listeners because of their poverty; to listen to him then made one feel awkward, one's eyes fell before his sharp little smile and—nothing remained in one's memory.
Once he argued fiercely that G. Y. Uspensky wrote in the Tula language, and had no talent at all. And later I heard him say to Anton Pavlovitch Tchekhov: "He (Uspensky) is a writer! In the power of his sincerity he recalls Dostoevsky, only Dostoevsky went in for politics and coquetted, while Uspensky is more simple and sincere. If he had believed in God, he would have been a sectarian."
"But you said he was a Tula writer and had no talent."
He drew his shaggy brows down over his eyes and said: "He wrote badly. What kind of language does he use? There are more punctuation marks than words. Talent is love. One who loves is talented. Look at lovers, they are all talented."
Of Dostoevsky he spoke reluctantly, constrainedly, evading or repressing something: "He ought to have made himself acquainted with the teaching of Confucius or the Buddhists; that would have calmed him down. That is the chief thing which everyone should know. He was a man of rebellious flesh; when angry, bumps would suddenly rise on his bald head; and his ears would move. He felt a great deal, but he thought poorly; it is from the Fourierists, from Butashevitch and the others, that he learnt to think. And afterwards all his life long he hated them. There was something Jewish in his blood. He was suspicious without reason, ambitious, heavy and unfortunate. It is curious that he is so much read. I can't understand why. It is all painful and useless, because all those Idiots, Adolescents, Raskolnikovs, and the rest of them, they are not real; it is all much simpler, more understandable. It's a pity people don't read Lieskov, he's a real writer—have you read him?"
"Yes, I like him very much, especially his language."
"He knew the language marvellously, even the tricks. Strange that you should like him; somehow you are not Russian, your thoughts are not Russian -is it all right, you're not hurt at my saying that r I am an old man, and, perhaps, I can no longer understand modern literature, but it seems to me that it is all not Russian. They begin to write a curious kind of verse; I don't know what these poems are or what they mean. One has to learn to write poetry from Poushkin, Tiutchev, Fet. Now you"—he turned to Tchekhov—"you are Russian. Yes, very, very Russian."
And smiling affectionately, he put his hand on Tchekhov's shoulder; and the latter became uncomfortable and began in a low voice to mutter something about his bungalow and the Tartars.
He loved Tchekhov, and, when he looked at him, his eyes were tender and seemed almost to stroke Anton Pavlovitch's face. Once, when Anton Pavlovitch was walking on the lawn with Alexandra Lvovna, Tolstoi, who at the time was still ill and was sitting in a chair on the terrace, seemed to stretch towards them, saying in a whisper: "Ah, what a beautiful, magnificent man: modest and quiet like a girl! And he walks like a girl. He's simply wonderful."
One evening, in the twilight, half closing his eyes and moving his brows, he read a variant of the scene inFather Sergius, where the woman goes to seduce the hermit: he read it through to the end, and then, raising his head and shutting his eyes, he said distinctly: "The old man wrote it well, well."
It came out with such amazing simplicity, his pleasure in its beauty was so sincere, that I shall never forget the delight which it gave me at the time, a delight which I could not—did not know how to express, but which I could only suppress by a tremendous effort. My heart stopped beating for a moment, and then everything around me seemed to become fresh and revivified.
One must have heard him speak in order to understand the extraordinary, indefinable beauty of his speech; it was, in a sense, incorrect, abounding in repetitions of the same word, saturated with village simplicity. The effect of his words did not come only from the intonation and the expression of his face, but from the play and light in his eyes, the most eloquent eyes I have ever seen. In his two eyes Leo Nicolayevitch possessed a thousand eyes.
Once Suler, Sergey Lvovitch, Tchekhov, and someone else, were sitting in the park and talking about women; he listened in silence for a long time, and then suddenly said:
"And I will tell the truth about women, when I have one foot in the grave—I shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me, and say, 'Do what you like now.'" The look he gave us was so wild, so terrifying that we all fell silent for a while.
He had in him, I think, the inquisitive, mischievous wildness of a Vaska Buslayev, and also something of the stubbornness of soul of the Protopop Avvakum, while above or at his side lay hidden the scepticism of a Tchaadayev. The Avvakumian element harried and tormented with its preachings the artist in him; the Novgorod wildness upset Shakespeare and Dante, while the Tchaadayevian element scoffed at his soul's amusements and, by the way, at its agonies. And the old Russian man in him dealt a blow at science and the State, the Russian driven to the passivity of anarchism by the barrenness of all his efforts to build up a more human life.
Strange! This Buslayev characteristic in Tolstoi was perceived through some mysterious intuition by Olaf Gulbranson, the caricaturist of Simplicissimus: look closely at his drawing and you will see how startlingly he has got the likeness of the real Tolstoi, what intellectual daring there is in that face with its veiled and hidden eyes, for which nothing is sacred and which believe "neither in a sneeze, nor a dream, nor the cawing of a bird."
The old magician stands before me, alien to all, a solitary traveller through all the deserts of thought in search of an all-embracing truth which he has not found—I look at him and, although I feel sorrow for the loss, I feel pride at having seen the man, and that pride alleviates my pain and grief.
It was curious to see Leo Nicolayevitch among "Tolstoyans"; there stands a noble belfry and its bell sounds untiringly over the whole world, while round about run tiny, timorous dogs whining at the bell and distrustfully looking askance at one another as though to say, "Who howled best?" I always thought that these people infected the Yassnaya Polyana house, as well as the great house of Countess Panin, with a spirit of hypocrisy, cowardice, mercenary and self-seeking pettiness and legacy-hunting. The "Tolstoyans" have something in common with those friars who wander in all the dark corners of Russia, carrying with them dogs' bones and passing them off as relics, selling "Egyptian darkness" and the "little tears of Our Lady." One of these apostles, I remember, at Yassnaya Polyana refused to eat eggs so as not to wrong the hens, but at Tula railway-station he greedily devoured meat, saying: "The old fellow does exaggerate."
Nearly all of them like to moan and kiss one another; they all have boneless perspiring hands and lying eyes. At the same time they are practical fellows and manage their earthly affairs cleverly.
Leo Nicolayevitch, of course, well understood the value of the "Tolstoyans," and so did Sulerzhizky, whom Tolstoi loved tenderly and whom he always spoke of with a kind of youthful ardour and fervour. Once one of those "Tolstoyans" at Yassnaya Polyana explained eloquently how happy his life had become and how pure his soul after he accepted Tolstoy's teaching. Leo Nicolayevitch leant over and said to me in a low voice: "He's lying all the time, the rogue, but he does it to please me...."
Many tried to please him, but I did not observe that they did it well or with any skill. He rarely spoke to me on his usual subjects of universal forgiveness, loving one's neighbour, the Gospels, and Buddhism, evidently because he realized at once that all that would not "go down" with me. I greatly appreciated this.
When he liked he could be extraordinarily charming, sensitive, and tactful; his talk was fascinatingly simple and elegant, but sometimes it was painfully unpleasant to listen to him. I always disliked what he said about women—it was unspeakably "vulgar," and there was in his words something artificial, insincere, and at the same time very personal. It seemed as if he had once been hurt, and could neither forget nor forgive. The evening when I first got to know him, he took me into his study—it was at Khamovniki in Moscow—and, making me sit opposite to him, began to talk aboutVarienka Oliessovaand ofTwenty-Six and One. I was overwhelmed by his tone and lost my head, he spoke so plainly and brutally, arguing that in a healthy girl chastity is not natural. "If a girl who has turned fifteen is healthy, she desires to be touched and embraced. Her mind is still afraid of the unknown and of what she does not understand -that is what they call chastity and purity. But her flesh is already aware that the incomprehensible is right, lawful, and, in spite of the mind, it demands fulfilment of the law. Now you describe Varienka Oliessova as healthy, but her feelings are anaemic—that is not true to life."
Then he began to speak about the girl inTwenty-six and One, using a stream of indecent words with a simplicity which seemed to me cynical and even offended me. Later I came to see that he used unmentionable words only because he found them more precise and pointed, but at the time it was unpleasant to me to listen to him. I made no reply, and suddenly he became attentive and kindly and began asking me about my life, what I was studying, and what I read.
"I am told that you are very well read; is that true? Is Korolenko a musician?"
"I believe not; but I'm not sure."
"You don't know? Do you like his stories?"
"I do very much."
"It is the contrast. He is lyrical and you haven't got that. Have you read Weltmann?"
"Yes."
"Isn't he a good writer, clever, exact, and with no exaggeration? He is sometimes better than Gogol. He knew Balzac. And Gogol imitated Marlinsky."
When I said that Gogol was probably influenced by Hoffmann, Stern, and perhaps Dickens, he glanced at me and asked: "Have you read that somewhere? No? It isn't true. Gogol hardly knew Dickens. But you must clearly have read a great deal: now look here, it's dangerous. Kolzov ruined himself by it."
When he accompanied me to the door, he embraced and kissed me and said: "You are a real mouzhik. You will find it difficult to live among writers, but never mind, don't be afraid, always say what you feel even if it be rude—it doesn't matter. Sensible people will understand."
I had two impressions from this first meeting: I was glad and proud to have seen Tolstoi, but his conversation reminded me a little of an examination, and in a sense I did not see in him the author ofCossacks, Kholstomier, War and Peace, but abarinwho, making allowances for me, considered it necessary to speak to me in the common language, the language of the street and market-place. That upset my idea of him, an idea which was deeply rooted and had become dear to me.
It was at Yassnaya Polyana that I saw him again. It was an overcast, autumn day with a drizzle of rain, and he put on a heavy overcoat and high leather boots and took me for a walk in the birch wood. He jumped the ditches and pools like a boy, shook the rain-drops off the branches, and gave me a superb account of how Fet had explained Schopenhauer to him in this wood. He stroked the damp, satin trunks of the birches lovingly with his hand and said: "Lately I read a poem—
The mushrooms are gone, but in the hollowsIs the heavy smell of mushroom dampness....
Very good, very true."
Suddenly a hare got up under our feet. Leo Nicolayevitch started up excited, his face lit up, and he whooped like a real old sportsman. Then, looking at me with a curious little smile, he broke into a sensible, human laugh. He was wonderfully charming at that moment.
Another time he was looking at a hawk in the park: it was hovering over the cattle-shed, making wide circles suspended in the air, moving its wings very slightly as if undecided whether or not the moment to strike had come. Leo Nicolayevitch stood up shading his eyes with his hand and murmured with excitement: "The rogue is going for our chickens. Now, now ... it's coming ... O, he's afraid. The groom is there, isn't he? I'll call the groom...."
And he shouted to the groom. When he shouted, the hawk was scared, swept upwards, swung away, and disappeared. Leo Nicolayevitch sighed, apparently reproaching himself, and said: "I should not have shouted; he would have struck all the same...."
Once in telling him about Tiflis, I mentioned the name of V. V. Flerovsky-Bervi. "Did you know him?" Leo Nicolayevitch asked with interest: "Tell me, what is he like?"
I told him about Flerovsky: tall, long-bearded, thin, with very large eyes; how he used to wear a long, sail-cloth blouse, and how, armed with a bundle of rice, cooked in red wine, tied in his belt, and an enormous linen umbrella, he wandered with me on the mountain paths of Trans-Caucasia; how once on a narrow path we met a buffalo and prudently retreated, threatening the brute with the open umbrella, and, every time we stepped back, in danger of falling over the precipice. Suddenly I noticed that there were tears in Tolstoi's eyes, and this confused me and I stopped.
"Never mind," he said, "go on, go on. It's pleasure at hearing about a good man. I imagined him just like that, unique. Of all the radicals he is the most mature and clever; in hisAlphabethe proves conclusively that all our civilization is barbarian, that culture is the work of the peaceful and weak, not the strong, nations, and that the struggle for existence is a lying invention by which it is sought to justify evil. You, of course, don't agree with this? But Daudet agrees, you know, you remember his Paul Astier?"
"But how would you reconcile Flerovsky's theory, say, with the part played by the Normans in the history of Europe?"
"The Normans? That's another thing."
If he did not want to answer, he would always say "That's another thing."
It always seemed to me—and I do not think I was mistaken—that Leo Nicolayevitch was not very fond of talking about literature, but was vitally interested in the personality of an author. The questions: "Do you know him? What is he like? Where was he born?" I often heard in his mouth. And nearly all his opinions would throw some curious light upon a man.
Of V.K. he said thoughtfully: "He is not a Great Russian, and so he must see our life better and more truly than we do." Of Anton Tchekhov, whom he loved dearly: "His medicine gets in his way; if he were not a doctor, he would be a still better writer." Of one of the younger writers: "He pretends to be an Englishman, and in that character a Moscow man has the least success." To me he once said: "You are an inventor: all these Kuvaldas of yours are inventions." When I answered that Kuvalda had been drawn from life, he said: "Tell me, where did you see him?"
He laughed heartily at the scene in the court of the Kazan magistrate, Konovalov, where I had first seen the man whom I described under the name of Kuvalda. "Blue blood," he said, wiping the tears from his eyes, "that's it—blue blood. But how splendid, how amusing. You tell it better than you write it. Yes, you are an inventor, a romantic, you must confess."
I said that probably all writers are to some extent inventors, describing people as they would like to see them in life; I also said that I liked active people who desire to resist the evil of life by every means, even violence.
"And violence is the chief evil," he exclaimed, taking me by the arm. "How will you get out of that contradiction, inventor? Now yourMy Travelling Companionisn't invented—it's good just because it isn't invented. But when you think, you beget knights, all Amadises and Siegfrieds."
I remarked that as long as we live in the narrow sphere of our anthropomorphous and unavoidable "travelling companions," we build everything on quicksands and in a hostile medium.
He smiled and nudged me slightly with his elbow: "From that very, very dangerous conclusions can be drawn. You are a questionable Socialist. You are a romantic, and romantics must be monarchists—they always have been."
"And Hugo?"
"Hugo? That's another thing. I don't like him, a noisy man."
He often asked me what I was reading, and always reproached me if I had chosen, in his opinion, a bad book.
"Gibbon is worse than Kostomarov; one ought to read Mommsen, he's very tedious, but it's all so solid."
When he heard that the first book I ever read wasThe Brothers Semganno, he even got angry:
"Now, you see—a stupid novel. That's what has spoilt you. The French have three writers, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert; and, well, perhaps Maupassant, though Tchekhov is better than he. The Goncourts are mere clowns, they only pretended to be serious. They had studied life from books written by inventors like themselves, and they thought it a serious business; but it was of no use to a soul."
I disagreed with this opinion, and it irritated Leo Nicolayevitch a little; he could barely stand contradiction, and sometimes his opinions were strange and capricious.
"There is no such thing as degeneration," he said once. "The Italian Lombroso invented it, and after him comes the Jew Nordau, screaming like a parrot. Italy is the land of charlatans and adventurers: only Arentinos, Casanovas, Cagliostros, and the like are born there."
"And Garibaldi?"
"That's politics; that's another thing."
To a whole series of facts, taken from the life of the merchant-class families in Russia, he answered: "But it's untrue; it's only written in clever books."
I told him the actual history of three generations of a merchant family which I had known, a history in which the law of degeneration had acted with particular mercilessness. Then he began excitedly tugging at my arm and encouraging me to write about it: "Now that's true. I know it; there are two families like that in Tula. It ought to be written. A long novel, written concisely, do you see? You must do it." His eyes flashed.
"But then there will be knights, Leo Nicolayevitch."
"Don't. This is really serious. The one who is going to be a monk and pray for the whole family —it's wonderful. That's real: you sin and I will go and expiate your sin by prayer. And the other, the weary one, the money-loving founder of the family—that's true too. And he's a drunken, profligate beast, and loves everyone, and suddenly commits murder—ah, it's good. It should be written, among thieves and beggars you must not look for heroes, you really mustn't. Heroes—that's a lie and invention; there are simply people, people, and nothing else."
He often pointed out exaggerations in my stories, but once, speaking ofDead Souls, he said, smiling good-naturedly:
"We are all of us terrible inventors. I myself, when I write, suddenly feel pity for some character, and then I give him some good quality or take a good quality away from someone else, so that in comparison with the others he may not appear too black." And then in the stern tones of an inexorable judge: "That's why I say that art is a lie, an arbitrary sham, harmful for people. One writes not what real life is, but simply what one thinks of life oneself. What good is that to anyone, how I see that tower or sea or Tartar—what interest or use is there in it?"
[At times his thoughts and feelings seemed to me capriciously, even deliberately, perverse, but what particularly struck and upset men was just the stern directness of his thought, like Job, the fearless questioner of the cruel God. He said:
"I was walking one day on the road to Kiev, about the end of May; the earth was a paradise; everything rejoiced; the birds sang; the bees hummed; the sunshine and everything seemed so happy, humane, splendid. I was moved to tears; I felt myself a bee to whom are given the best flowers, and I felt God close to my soul. And suddenly I saw by the roadside a man and woman, pilgrims; they were lying together, both grey, dirty, and old —they writhed like worms, made noises, murmured, and the sun pitilessly lighted up their naked blue legs and wizened bodies. It struck such a blow to my soul. Lord, thou creator of beauty, how art thou not ashamed? I felt utterly wretched——
"Yes, you see what things happen. Nature—the devout considered her the work of the devil—cruelly and mockingly torments man; she takes away the power and leaves the desire. All men with a living soul experience that. Only man is made to experience the whole shame and horror of that torment, given to him in his flesh. We carry it in ourselves as an inevitable punishment—a punishment for what sin?"
While he said this the look in his eyes changed strangely, now childishly plaintive, now hard and stern and bright. His lips trembled, his moustache bristled. When he had finished, he took a handkerchief from the pocket of his blouse and wiped his face hard, though it was dry. Then he smoothed his beard with the knotted fingers of his strong peasant's hand, and repeated gently: "Yes, for what sin?"]
Once I was walking with him on the lower road from Dyulbev to Ai-Todor On; he was walking with the light step of a young man, when he said to me more nervously than was usual with him: "The flesh should be the obedient dog of the spirit, running to do its bidding; but we—how do we live? The flesh rages and riots, and the spirit follows it helpless and miserable."
He rubbed his chest hard over the heart, raised his eyebrows, and then, remembering something, went on: "One autumn in Moscow in an alley near the Sukhariov Gate I once saw a drunken woman lying in the gutter. A stream of filthy water flowed from the yard of a house right under her neck and back. She lay in that cold liquid, muttering, shivering, wriggling her body in the wet, but she could not get up."
He shuddered, half closed his eyes, shook his head, and went on gently: "Let's sit down here.... It's the most horrible and disgusting thing, a drunken woman. I wanted to help her get up, but I couldn't; I felt such a loathing; she was so slippery and slimy—I felt that if I'd touched her, I could not have washed my hand clean for a month —horrible. And on the curb sat a bright, grey-eyed boy, the tears running down his cheeks: he was sobbing and repeating wearily and helplessly: 'Mu-um ... mu-um-my ... do get up.' She would move her arms, grunt, lift her head, and again—bang went her neck into the filth."
He was silent, and then looking round, he repeated almost in a whisper: "Yes, yes, horrible. You've seen many drunken women? Many—my God! You, you must not write about that, you mustn't."
"Why?"
He looked straight into my eyes and smiling repeated: "Why?" Then thoughtfully and slowly he said: "I don't know. It just slipped out ... it's a shame to write about filth. But yet why not write about it? Yes, it's necessary to write all about everything, everything."
Tears came into his eyes. He wiped them away, and, smiling, he looked at his handkerchief, while the tears again ran down his wrinkles. "I am crying," he said. "I am an old man. It cuts me to the heart when I remember something horrible."
And very gently touching me with his elbow, he said: "You, too—you will have lived your life, and everything will remain exactly as it was, and then you, too, will cry worse than I, more streamingly,' as the peasant women say. And everything must be written about, everything; otherwise that bright little boy might be hurt, he might reproach us—'it's untrue, it's not the whole truth,' he will say. He's strict for the truth."
Suddenly he gave himself a shake and said in a kind voice: "Now, tell me a story; you tell them well. Something about a child, about your childhood. It's not easy to believe that you were once a child. You are a strange creature, exactly as if you were born grown-up. In your ideas there is a good deal of the child-like and the immature, but you know more than enough of life—and one cannot ask for more. Well, tell me a story....'
He lay down comfortably upon the bare roots of a pine tree and watched the ants moving busily among the grey spines.
In the South, which, with its self-asserting luxuriance and flaunting, unbridled vegetation, seems so strangely incongruous to a man from the North, he, Leo Tolstoi—even his name speaks of his inner power—seemed a small man, but knitted and knotted out of very strong roots deep in the earth —in the flaunting scenery of the Crimea, I say, he was at once both out of place and in his place. He seemed a very ancient man, master of all his surroundings—a master-builder who, after centuries of absence, has arrived in the mansion built by him. He has forgotten a great deal which it contains; much is new to him; everything is as it should be, and yet not entirely so, and he has at once to find out what is amiss and why it is amiss.
He walked the roads and paths with a businesslike, quick step of the skilled explorer of the earth, and with sharp eyes, from which neither a single pebble nor a single thought could hide itself, he looked, measured, tested, compared. And he scattered about him the living seeds of indomitable thoughts. He said to Suler once: "You, Liovushka, read nothing which is not good out of self-conceit, while Gorky reads a lot which is not good, because he distrusts himself. I write much which is not good, because of an old man's ambition, a desire that all should think as I do. Of course, I think it is good, and Gorky thinks it is not good, and you think nothing at all; you simply blink and watch what you may clutch. One day you will clutch something which does not belong to you—it has happened to you before. You will put your claws into it, hold on for a bit, and when it begins to get loose, you won't try to stop it. Tchekhov has a superb story,The Darling—you are rather like her."
"In what?" asked Suler, laughing.
"You can love well, but to choose—no, you can't, and you will waste yourself on trifles."
"Is everyone like that?"
"Everyone?" Leo Nicolayevitch repeated.
"No, not everyone."
And suddenly he asked me, exactly as if he were dealing me a blow: "Why don't you believe in God?"
"I have no faith, Leo Nicolayevitch."
"It is not true. By nature you are a believer, and you cannot get on without God. You will realize it one day. Your disbelief comes from obstinacy, because you have been hurt: the world is not what you would like it to be. There are also some people who do not believe out of shyness; it happens with young people; they adore some woman, but don't want to show it from fear that she won't understand, and also from lack of courage. Faith, like love, requires courage and daring. One has to say to oneself 'I believe,' and everything will come right, everything will appear as you want it, it will explain itself to you and attract you. Now, you love much, and faith is only a greater love: you must love still more, and then your love will turn to faith. When one loves a woman, she is, unfailingly, the best woman on earth, and each loves the best woman, and that is faith. A nonbeliever cannot love: to-day he falls in love with one woman, and next year with another. The souls of such men are tramps living barren lives—that is not good. But you were born a believer, and it is no use thwarting yourself. Well, you may say beauty? And what is beauty? The highest and most perfect is God."
He hardly ever spoke to me on this subject, and its seriousness and the suddenness of it rather overwhelmed me. I was silent.
He was sitting on the couch with his legs drawn up under him, and breaking into a triumphant little smile and shaking his finger at me, he said: "You won't get out of this by silence, no."
And I, who do not believe in God, looked at him for some reason very cautiously and a little timidly, I looked and thought: "The man is godlike."