It's been six days since I entered the clinic, and now six days since I'm almost satisfied with myself. […] Here I am completely alone, no one interferes with me, here I have no service, no one helps me, therefore, nothing extraneous has an influence on my reason and memory, and my activity must necessarily develop. But the main benefit is that I clearly saw that a disorderly life, which most of the secular people take as a consequence of youth, is nothing but a consequence of early depravity of the soul.
Solitude is equally useful for a person living in society, as society is for a person who does not live in it. Separate a person from society, he ascends into himself, and how soon his mind throws off his glasses, which showed him everything in a false form, and how his view of things becomes clear, so that it will even be incomprehensible to him how he did not see everything before . Leave reason to act, it will show you your purpose, it will give you the rules with which you can boldly go into society. Everything that is in conformity with the pre-eminent ability of man - reason, will be equally in accordance with everything that exists; the mind of an individual is a part of everything that exists, and a part cannot upset the order of the whole. The whole can kill the part. To do this, shape your mind so that it is consistent with the whole, with the source of everything, and not with a part, with a society of people; then your mind will merge into one with this whole, and then the society, as a part, will not have an influence on you.
It is easier to write ten volumes of philosophy than to apply any one principle to practice.
A passion for the sciences begins to manifest in me; although this is the noblest of human passions, but no less than that, I will never indulge in it one-sidedly, that is, completely killing the feeling and not engaging in application, only striving to form the mind and fill the memory. One-sidedness is the main cause of human misery. […]
Chapter X outlines the basic rules and the most dangerous mistakes concerning pre-criminal proceedings.
At the beginning of this chapter, she asks herself a question. Where do punishments come from, and where does the right to punish come from? To the first question, she answers: "Punishments come from the need to protect the laws." The second answer is also very witty. She says: "The right to punish belongs to laws alone, and only the monarch, as a representative of the whole state, can make laws." In all this "Instruction" we are constantly presented with two heterogeneous elements that Catherine constantly wanted to agree on: namely, the consciousness of the need for constitutional government and pride, that is, the desire to be the unlimited ruler of Russia. For example, when she says that in monarchical government only the monarch can have legislative power, she takes the existence of this power as an axiom, without mentioning its origin. The lower government cannot impose punishments, because it is part of the whole, and the monarch has this right, because he is the representative of all citizens, says Catherine. But is the representation of the people by the sovereign in unlimited monarchies an expression of the totality of the private, free will of citizens? No, the expression of the general will in unlimited monarchies is this: I endure a lesser evil, for if I did not endure it, I would be exposed to a greater evil.
It is very scary to take on such a topic as "The Diaries of Leo Tolstoy." First, hundreds of smart people have spent years studying the life and work of Lev Nikolayevich. Is it possible to say something new or interesting? Secondly, the power of Lev Nikolaevich began to dissolve me in itself, absorb and subordinate me to its will. She barely got out, it was not easy to comprehend what the diaries were for Tolstoy himself.
My wonderful literature teacher once resolved the ethical dilemma, “is it good, is it possible to read other people’s letters and diaries”, saying that within the framework of studying literature, it’s good and possible, because it was the will of the authors themselves, otherwise they would destroy this intimate part of their literary heritage. Lev Nikolaevich was not against the publication of his diaries, but he revised his attitude to this issue several times. In his declining years, he did not want to leave the diaries of his youth. In them, in his opinion, there was too much "nasty", but then he changed his mind and kept it. But some of the material was still removed from the diaries at the request of his wife, Tolstoy removed more than four dozen places where he spoke unflatteringly about her.
The writer's diaries are not his novels. In the diaries you come across something completely different. It's amazing how the artistic word differs from everyday writing in the mouth of one and the same person, in our case, a brilliant writer. And even if we are talking about sublime things: about God, about philosophy, about the Spirit and the soul - it comes out unbearably dull and flat. It was with such feelings that I dug into Tolstoy's diaries. The writer encouraged me with sharp remarks addressed to someone or outbursts of self-flagellation.
Young Leo begins his diary in a clinic in Kazan. The diagnosis of neurasthenia brought the young man to the hospital bed. To some extent, Tolstoy had problems with the emotional sphere throughout his life. The most severe bouts of depression, panic attacks (remember even the “Arzamas horror”), phobias (he was afraid to pick up babies to the point of trembling) - all this happened. And he had to turn to doctors for help and be seriously treated.
Probably, if you give Tolstoy to be torn apart by psychiatrists and psychologists, they will disassemble him into atoms. And if you give it to anthropologists or sociologists, not to mention literary critics and historians - and even more so. What if you manage to crack through this tough nut and understand what kind of person Tolstoy was, what is the mystery of his talent?!
There is just no point in such proceedings. Because Tolstoy is a phenomenon. And a phenomenon, as we know, is something that exists without our previous knowledge about it and without further interpretations. A phenomenon is alive, interesting and valuable only as long as it is complete. Plunging into the world of Tolstoy's diaries, I became convinced that, most likely, this is the right idea. But at the same time, I had almost no chance not to slide into vulgarity and banality, drawing some conclusions of my own.
Oddly enough, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin came to the rescue, because he gave a very interesting definition of Tolstoy and, in the context of this problem of understanding the phenomenon, it seems to be the most accurate. In a conversation with Gorky about Tolstoy, he once exclaimed: “What a block, huh? What a hardened human being! This, my friend, is an artist ... And, you know, what else is amazing? Prior to this, there was no real muzhik in literature.” The epithets "lump" and "hardened human being" are somehow inhuman. Lenin perceived Tolstoy as a phenomenon, not dividing in him a man and a writer. Of course, he used it for selfish purposes, dragged the “mirror of the Russian revolution” to Olympus and used it for utilitarian purposes. He very sharply swept aside all the "non-format" - Tolstoy-squishy, non-resistance to evil by violence and vegetarian rice patties. But at the same time, the first edition of the complete works of Tolstoy after the revolution (in 90 volumes) was initiated by Lenin, instructing: “Tolstoy will have to be completely restored, printing everything that the tsarist censorship crossed out.” However, the volumes containing the writer's diaries and letters came out prudently in a small print run - only 5,000 copies. Out of harm's way, the workers and peasants will suddenly read it and be embarrassed by a weak mind.
Let's get back to the diaries. It all starts with “programmatic” statements: you need to come up with rules , tofulfill rules, oh, I didn’t follow, I was busy with other things, I need to come up with rules , tofulfill rules to enforce the rules...
But rereading his early diaries from time to time, the writer is satisfied and decides to continue, because he sees in this occupation an undoubted benefit for himself, only he is able to discern the signs by which he determined his growth in these entries.
The degree of detail in Tolstoy's description of his life is very modest. But if they meet, then only mean remarks or omissions at all, this does not mean that the author has gone on a spree, is idle or barking, although this has happened. Most often, this means that a gigantic inner work is being done, ideally T t creative process. There is a gap of 13 years, with occasional digressions. Shortly after the writer got married, the diary was abandoned. Perhaps partly because Tolstoy gave the diaries to his young bride to read before the wedding? And there was everything. Including card debts, and drunken parties, and passions, and Tolstoy's promise: "In my village I will not have a single woman, except for some cases that I will not look for, but I will not miss." Thus, the diary was “defiled” twice, in my opinion, by the fact that it was read by another person, and by the fact that now it would be necessary to write something else in it, because after marriage there came another, better, “clean” stage of life. Tolstoy preferred to remain silent. But it was an extremely active, fruitful period in every sense.
Desperate to comprehend the greatness of Tolstoy, I succumbed to simple curiosity, decided to find out how he reacted to his birthday. Many people love their birthday. Some hate. With age, this day has another meaning - an exciting milestone, summing up for a certain period.
Tolstoy is almost indifferent to such sentiments. Here, for example, is the entry for August 28, 1852: “I am 24 years old; and I haven't done anything yet. I feel that it is not for nothing that for eight years now I have been struggling with doubt and passions. But what am I assigned to? This will open the future. Killed three snipe." And here is an excerpt from an entry made almost forty years later on his birthday: “August 28. Yasnaya Polyana. 90. I am 63 years old. And ashamed, h That that 1890: 63 = 30, and that 28 years of my marriage, that these figures seemed to me something significant, and I was waiting for this year as significant. I got up late…” It seems to me that Tolstoy let the line down every day, assessing himself strictly and constantly. Therefore, there is no binding to dates, anniversaries, he does not expect anything from them.
In the diaries one can find frequent and very harsh criticism of oneself, for the slightest error or imperfection - merciless self-flagellation. Tolstoy is sharp on the tongue and in relation to other people. He spares neither friends, nor relatives, nor famous colleagues. The entry dated August 25, 1862 made me laugh: “Melancholy at home. Wrote an article. Went to walk and drive. Krasnokutsky (bad thoughts). Pleshcheev (poor nature). Pogodin - glorious old age and life. A wonderful night ... Kokhanovskaya is a bitch, and all the bitches dried up in the crinoline. Or the line completely discouraged: “I read the second part of Dead Souls, luridly” (08/28/1857).
The phenomenon of Tolstoy remains a mystery to me, but the accumulated knowledge creates the illusion of understanding. Yes, you can find out that Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy - lost his mother early, was a well-educated person, although he did not graduate from the university, he was constantly engaged in self-education in all areas, read a lot, translated, wrote moralizing and religious-philosophical articles, huge novels, fairy tales, searched for God, unraveled the meaning of life, had endless doubts, built schools, published a magazine, plowed and sowed, collected money to send sectarians abroad, argued with the church and authorities, created his own doctrine, became a father of many children, played chess perfectly, skated masterfully skated, fought bravely, was treated with koumiss for depression, quarreled with the classics, became a classic himself, lived a long life, did what he wanted, and felt bound … But you open his novel and disappear. And I no longer want to understand Tolstoy. I manage to find myself when I read his books. They do not have answers to questions, but there are new questions that move forward.
Tolstoy's diaries are his personal punishment cell, where he brought up his spirit. In his notebooks, a soft, lonely, insecure young man learned to be tough for a start, at least with himself, learned to separate feelings from thoughts, comprehended the secrets of being. In order to survive, to survive, he learned to control the violent power of the gift he had received. In order not to burn out, not to perish under its weight and pressure, he was aware in his diaries that so far he was coping with it.
In addition, I agree with the idea that a sentimental person cannot create something significant, he will not have enough strength, such a writer will not be able to kill his heroes, even if he requires a plot, he will regret everyone, flood with tears and honey. In order to create epochal, deep, penetrating books, one needs a will free from excessive sentimentality. Tolstoy was hypersensitive from birth. That is why he was able to ingeniously describe experiences, the finest emotional nuances of his characters: men and women, old people and children, animals. And he had to be tempered in order to be able to express all this. And if you want to experience the influence of the energy that Tolstoy had to deal with, read his diaries, everyday, at first glance, entries, after a while they suddenly become transparent, you can look into the abyss and shudder.
Diary - 1847
Diary - 1850
Diary - 1851
Diary - 1852
Diary - 1853
Diary - 1854
Diary - 1855
Diary - 1856
Diary - 1857
Diary - 1857 (Travel notes in Switzerland)
Diary - 1858
Diary - 1859
Diary - 1860
Diary - 1861
Diary - 1862
Diary - 1863
Diary - 1864
Diary - 1865
Diary - 1870
Diary - 1871
Diary - 1873
Diary - 1878
Diary - 1879
Diary - 1881
Diary - 1882
Diary - 1883
Diary - 1884
Diary - 1885
Diary - 1886
Diary - 1887
Diary - 1888
Diary - 1889
Diary - 1890
Diary - 1891
Diary - 1892
Diary - 1893
Diary - 1894
Diary - 1895
Diary - 1896
Diary - 1897
Diary - 1898
Diary - Dialogue
Diary - 1899
Diary - 1900
Diary - 1901
Diary - 1902
Diary - 1903
Diary - 1904
Diary - 1905
Diary - 1906
Diary - 1907
Diary - 1908
"Secret" diary 1908
Diary - 1909
Diary - 1910
"Diary for oneself"
Diary - 1847
March 17.[Kazan.] It's been six days since I entered the clinic, and it's been six days since I'm almost satisfied with myself. [...] Here I am completely alone, no one interferes with me, here I have no service, no one helps me, therefore, nothing extraneous has an influence on reason and memory, and my activity must necessarily develop. But the main benefit is that I clearly saw that a disorderly life, which most of the secular people take as a consequence of youth, is nothing but a consequence of early depravity of the soul.
Solitude is equally useful for a person living in society, as society is for a person who does not live in it. Separate a person from society, he ascends into himself, and how soon his mind throws off his glasses, which showed him everything in a false form, and how his view of things becomes clear, so that it will even be incomprehensible to him how he did not see everything before . Leave reason to act, it will show you your purpose, it will give you the rules with which you can boldly go into society. Everything that is in accordance with the pre-eminent ability of man - reason, will be equally consistent with everything that exists; the mind of an individual is a part of everything that exists, and a part cannot upset the order of the whole. The whole can kill the part. To do this, shape your mind so that it is consistent with the whole, with the source of everything, and not with a part, with a society of people; then your mind will merge into one with this whole, and then the society, as a part, will not have an influence on you.
It is easier to write ten volumes of philosophy than to apply any one principle to practice.
18th of March. I have read Catherine's "Instruction" and, since I have generally given myself the rule, when reading any serious essay, to ponder it and write out wonderful thoughts from it, I am writing here my opinion on the first six chapters of this wonderful work.
[...] The concepts of freedom under monarchical rule are as follows: freedom, she says, is the ability of a person to do everything that he should do, and not be forced to do what he should not do. I would like to call what she understands by the word must and must not; If by the word “what ought to be done” she understands natural right, then it clearly follows that freedom can only exist in a state in whose legislation natural right does not differ in any way from positive right, the idea is absolutely correct. [...]
March 19 A passion for the sciences begins to manifest in me; although this is the noblest of human passions, but no less than that, I will never indulge in it one-sidedly, that is, completely killing the feeling and not engaging in application, only striving to form the mind and fill the memory. One-sidedness is the main cause of human misery. [...]
21 March. Chapter X outlines the basic rules and the most dangerous mistakes concerning pre-criminal proceedings.
At the beginning of this chapter, she asks herself a question. Where do punishments come from, and where does the right to punish come from? To the first question, she answers: "Punishments come from the necessity of protecting the laws." The second answer is also very witty. She says: "The right to punish belongs to laws alone, and only the monarch, as a representative of the whole state, can make laws." In all this "Instruction" we are constantly presented with two heterogeneous elements that Catherine constantly wanted to agree on: namely, the consciousness of the need for constitutional government and pride, that is, the desire to be the unlimited ruler of Russia. For example, when she says that in monarchical government only the monarch can have legislative power, she takes the existence of this power as an axiom, without mentioning its origin. The lower government cannot impose punishments, because it is part of the whole, and the monarch has this right, because he is the representative of all citizens, says Catherine. But is the representation of the people by the sovereign in unlimited monarchies an expression of the totality of the private, free will of citizens? No, the expression of the general will in unlimited monarchies is this: I endure a lesser evil, for if I did not endure it, I would be exposed to a greater evil.
March 24. I have changed a lot; but still not reached the degree of perfection (in studies) that I would like to achieve. I do not fulfill what I prescribe for myself; what I do, I do not do it well, I do not sharpen my memory. For this I am writing here some rules, which, it seems to me, will help me a lot if I follow them. 1) What is appointed to fulfill without fail, then fulfill it, no matter what. 2) What you do, do it well. 3) Never consult a book if you forgot something, but try to remember it yourself. 4) Make your mind constantly act with all its possible strength. 5) Read and think always out loud. 6) Don't be ashamed to tell people who are bothering you that they are bothering you; first let him feel, and if he does not understand, then apologize and tell him this. In accordance with the second rule, I want to finish commenting on Catherine's entire mandate.
[...] Chapter XIII deals with needlework and trade. Catherine rightly notes that agriculture is the beginning of all trade and that in the land where people do not have their own property, agriculture cannot flourish; for people usually care more about things that belong to them than about things that can always be taken away from them. This is the reason why agriculture and commerce cannot flourish in our country as long as there is slavery; for a man who is subject to another, not only cannot be sure of permanent possession of his property, but cannot even be sure of his own fate. Then: "Skillful farmers and artisans should be given bonuses." In my opinion, it is equally necessary in the state to punish evil, as it is to reward good.
March 25. It is not enough to turn people away from evil, they must also be encouraged to do good. Further, she says that those peoples who are lazy due to the climate should be accustomed to activity by depriving them of all means of subsistence, excluding labor; he also notes that these peoples are usually inclined to pride, and that this very pride can serve as a tool for the extermination of laziness. Peoples that are lazy in climate are always endowed with ardent feelings, and if they were active, the state would be more unhappy. Catherine would have done better if she had said: people, not nations. And in fact, applying her remarks to private individuals, we find that they are extremely true.
It is very rare to trace the beginning of the literary activity of a great writer: for the most part, writers destroy their first experiments, and even more so do not leave youthful diaries. In this regard, Leo Tolstoy is a unique figure in Russian and world literature. We know the history of the creation of the first work written by the author of the novels "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina", and moreover: diaries have come down to us that allow us to understand how the first signs of genius appeared in the most ordinary representative of his time.
Tolstoy's diaries are unique. Neither Chekhov, nor Dostoevsky or Pushkin, nor any other Russian classic has such diaries. In them, the future author of great novels appears as he really was, without embellishment. It is interesting that these records did not come down to us against the will of the “Yasnaya Polyana elder”. Even during his lifetime, Tolstoy gave the "go-ahead" for the publication of these records, although nothing prevented him from destroying them, creating for future generations the image of a sinless genius.
It is largely because of these notes that many do not believe in Tolstoy's sermons: it is difficult to separate the 25-year-old author of Childhood, who goes on a carouse, plays cards, goes to gypsies, hunts with pleasure, and an 80-year-old old man who preaches non-resistance to evil by violence , vegetarianism, opposed to the killing of animals.
Tolstoy begins to keep a diary in 1847, at the age of 19. At that time, the young count had already become the owner of the Yasnaya Polyana estate after the division of the property of his father, who died early. He is in the hospital with a venereal disease and reflects on life. The first entry in the notebook reads: "... I clearly saw that a disorderly life, which most of the secular people take as a consequence of youth, is nothing but a consequence of the early depravity of the soul ..."
Tolstoy decides to drastically change his life and establishes for himself several dozen "rules of life", which were strictly systematized and which in no case could be violated. Among them there are also very practical ones, such as, for example, rule number 9: "Be more concerned with yourself than with the opinions of others." There are naive ones, as, for example, in the section “Rules for submitting to the will of feelings of love” (“Step away from women”) or from the section “Rules for submitting to the will of feelings of self-interest”: “Always live worse than you could live.”
After the establishment of the “Rules of Life”, Tolstoy leaves the hospital and ... continues to live his former life: cards, gypsies, debts, idleness. Soon he has to leave for the Caucasus, and this was not so much an act of a patriot as a desire to escape from social life and debts: he does not even have money to pay a tailor for a military uniform.
However, in the Caucasus, the life of the young count remains the same. The diary from 1947 to 1954 is a mixture of self-flagellation, despair, naive, contradictory philosophical calculations, reports on the implementation (and more often failure to comply) of more and more new “rules of life”: “... Had women, turned out to be weak in many cases - in simple dealing with people, in danger, in a card game, and still obsessed with false shame. I lied a lot ... "; “... I lost in addition to what was in my pocket. I was lazy a lot; and now I can’t collect my thoughts and I’m writing, but I don’t feel like writing ... ”; “... Fell in love or imagined that he had fallen in love, was at a party and was confused. I bought a horse that does not need at all ... "; “... I live absolutely bestially; although not completely dissolute, he left almost all his occupations and was very depressed in spirit ... ”; “... I came to Moscow with three goals. 1) Play. 2) Get married. 3) Get a seat. The first is bad and low The second, thanks to the clever advice of brother Nikolenka, he left until love, or reason, or even fate, which cannot be counteracted in everything ... "; “... I went hunting, dragged myself behind the Cossacks, drank, wrote a little and translated Since November, I have been treated, I sat for two whole months, that is, until the new year, at home; I spent this time, although boring, but calm and useful - I wrote the entire first part (“Childhood”).
For many researchers of Tolstoy's work, it still remains a mystery how a 25-year-old young man who did not stand out in any way from the general mass of people of his time was able to create such a work as "Childhood". The fact is that no one before Tolstoy made his debut in this way. In this work, the writer tries to analyze the events from his childhood and understand the nature of human psychology, the reasons that created him the way he is. For modern culture, this approach to creating a literary work does not seem to be something surprising, but in those days it was a real breakthrough. Moreover, the theme itself was unusual: the mysterious world of childhood was not a subject of attention for writers, artists, philosophers, and Tolstoy was the first to do this.
But that is not all. The idea of the story itself would not be worth anything without Tolstoy's style, which impressed his contemporaries no less than anything else. In the story of the 25-year-old author, unique artistic techniques have already been implemented, which he will later widely use in his great novels. It is in the story "Childhood" that Tolstoy first uses a technique that critics would later call "the dialectic of the soul." Describing the state of the hero, he uses an internal monologue that allows him to convey abrupt changes in the state of the hero: from joy to grief, from anger to a sense of shame. The author penetrates deeply into the psychology of the child, seeks to find the internal rather than external reasons for his actions.
There are two main characters in the story: Nikolenka Arteniev and an adult who remembers his childhood. The conflict is the very comparison of the views of the child and the adult author. This distancing makes it possible to make events significant and important for Tolstoy's contemporary life, to analyze Russian life as a whole.
Tolstoy's prose instantly became part of Russian culture because, on the one hand, it was innovative, and on the other hand, it absorbed all the best from Russian literature: masterfully created portraits of heroes, landscapes painted to the smallest detail, descriptions of the atmosphere of an old landowner's estate, its life.
Tolstoy sent the manuscript of "Childhood" to Nekrasov, to the most influential literary magazine of that time, Sovremennik. The editor changed the title: the story was published under the title "The Story of My Childhood". This infuriated Tolstoy. In a letter to Nekrasov, he writes: “The story of MY childhood will not be of interest to anyone!” and makes some cheeky remarks. However, he sent this letter not to Nekrasov, but to his brother, to show how he could speak with the famous poet.
In subsequent years, Tolstoy would write a continuation of "Childhood" - the stories "Boyhood" and "Youth", fall on the bastions of Sevastopol during the siege, risk his life, create the "Sevastopol Tales" that glorified him, return to Moscow as a star of the first magnitude, but soon disappear into his estate to create novels that have become world classics. And yet, the story "Childhood" remains the first, and therefore one of the most important creations of the Russian classic.
Tolstoy will repeatedly return to the Caucasian period of his life in literary works. About his diaries of that time, he writes: "... sorted out his old notebooks, incomprehensible, but cute game ...". True, there is another statement about them in a letter to A. A. Tolstoy dated May 3, 1859: “In the Caucasus, I began to think in a way that only once in a lifetime do people have the power to think.”
Leo Tolstoy is an absolute classic. And, like any classic, it is not only often read, but too often not read. We have collected some non-trivial quotes from the diaries of the great writer. And after more than a hundred years, many of them remain relevant.
1. About life
Retracted. Was at the gym. Strongly refreshed. I went. Enjoyed. I decided that I needed to love and work, that's all. How many times! Dear loved.
Had arrived. Tired. Didn't love and didn't work.
2. About the ministry of the writer
I thought that if I serve people by writing, then one thing I have the right to do, what I must do, is to expose the rich in their lies and reveal to the poor the deceit in which they are being kept.
3. About love
21st of June. 1910 We have been given one, but the inalienable blessing of love. Just love, and everything is joy: the sky, and the village, and the people, and even himself. And we are looking for good in everything, but not in love. And this search for him in wealth, power, glory, exclusive love - all this, not only does it not give good, but probably deprives him.
Today 17. 97. Yasnaya Polyana
I also thought today, quite unexpectedly, about the charm - precisely the charm - of nascent love, when against the background of cheerful, pleasant, sweet relationships this little star suddenly begins to shine. It's like the smell of a linden tree suddenly smelling, or the shadow of the moon beginning to fall. There is still no full color, no clear shadow and light, but there is joy and fear of the new, charming. It's good, but only when for the first and last time.
Terribly lonely is the position of one who does not feel his unity with all separate beings. When you think about all the people, creatures living separately, horror takes over. It calms and pleases even when you embrace them with reason and love.
4. About creativity
Life is constant creativity, that is, the formation of new higher forms.
When this formation, in our opinion, stops or even goes back, that is, the existing forms are destroyed, it only means that a new form, invisible to us, is formed. We see what is outside of us, but we do not see what is in us, we only feel it (if we have not lost consciousness and do not recognize the visible external for our whole life). The caterpillar sees its drying up, but does not see the butterfly that will fly out of it.
5. About the nature of man
One of the greatest misconceptions about a person is what we call, we define a person as smart, stupid, kind, evil, strong, weak, and a person is everything: all possibilities, there is a fluid substance, etc.
This is a good theme for a work of art and very important and kind, because it destroys evil judgments - cancer - and suggests the possibility of all that is good. The workers of the devil, confident in the presence of evil in a person, achieve great results: superstition, executions, wars. God's workers would achieve great results if they had more faith in the possibility of goodness in people. […]
How good it would be to write a work of art in which it would be clear to express the fluidity of a person, that he, one and the same, is either a villain, or an angel, or a sage, or an idiot, or a strong man, or a powerless creature.
Each person, like everyone else, imperfect in everything, is nevertheless more perfect in one thing than in another, and he presents these perfections as a demand on another and condemns.
6. About repression
From the famous article "I can not be silent"
You say that you are fighting the revolution, that you want to restore calm, order, but if you are not wild animals, but at least a little kind and reasonable people, you cannot believe what you say. How! you will bring peace by destroying in people all the last remnants of Christianity and morality, committing - you, representatives of power, leaders, mentors - all the greatest crimes: lies, betrayal, all kinds of torment and the last, eternally disgusting to any person who has not lost the last the remnants of morality are not murder, but murders, endless murders, dressed in some kind of false clothes, under which murders would cease to be crimes.
(You) say that this is the only way to extinguish the revolution, to calm the people. How can you believe that, without satisfying the demands, the definite demands of the entire Russian people and the demands already recognized by the majority of people, the demands of primitive justice itself, the demands for the abolition of landed property, without even satisfying other demands of the youth, on the contrary, irritating the people and youth, you can you calm the country with murders, prisons, exiles? You cannot fail to know that by doing this, you not only do not cure the disease, but only increase it, driving it inside. Because it's too clear. Children cannot see this.
You say that the revolutionaries have begun, that the atrocities of the revolutionaries can only be suppressed by the same measures. But no matter how terrible the deeds of the revolutionaries: all these bombs, and Plehve, and Sergei Alexandrovich, and those unfortunate, unintentionally killed by the revolutionaries, their deeds, both in the number of murders and on their motives, are almost hundreds of times smaller and in number and, most importantly, less morally bad than your atrocities. In most cases, in the affairs of revolutionaries there is, albeit often childish, thoughtless, a desire to serve the people and self-sacrifice, but most importantly, there is a risk, a danger that justifies in their eyes, the eyes of addicted youth, justifies their atrocities. Not so with you: you, starting with the executioners and up to Pyotr Stolypin and Nikolai Romanov, are guided only by the meanest feelings: lust for power, vanity, self-interest, hatred, revenge.
7. About art
What I thought about art is that in nothing conservatism hurts so much as in art.
Art is one of the manifestations of the spiritual life of man, and therefore, just as if an animal is alive, it breathes and releases the product of respiration, so if humanity is alive, it manifests the activity of art. And therefore, at every given moment, it must be - modern - the art of our time. You just need to know where it is. (Not in the decadents of music, poetry, the novel.) But you need to look for it not in the past, but in the present. People who want to show themselves as connoisseurs of art and for this purpose praise the past art - classical and scold modern - this only shows that they are not at all sensitive to art.
He vividly imagined the inner life of each individual person. How to describe what each separate "I" is? But it seems that it is possible. Then I thought that this, in fact, is the whole interest, the whole meaning of art - poetry. […]
Music, like any art, but especially music, arouses the desire that everyone, as many people as possible, participate in the pleasure experienced. Nothing stronger than this shows the true meaning of art: you are transferred to others, you want to feel through them.
8. About your own laziness
How miserably the days pass!
Here is the current one. Like, not a single memory, not a single strong impression. I got up late with that unpleasant feeling on waking that always affects me: I did a bad thing, I overslept. When I wake up, I feel like a cowardly dog in front of the owner when he is guilty. Then I thought about how fresh the moral forces of a person are when they wake up and why I cannot always keep them in this position. I will always say that consciousness is the greatest moral evil that can only befall a person. It hurts, it hurts a lot to know in advance that in an hour I will be the same person, the same images will be in my memory, but my gaze will change independently of me, and at the same time consciously. I read "Horace". My brother told the truth that this person is similar to me. The main feature: nobility of character, loftiness of concepts, love of glory, and a complete incapacity for any kind of work. This inability comes from unaccustomed, and unaccustomed - from education and vanity.
9. About progress and civilization
Human progress is usually measured by its technical, scientific success, believing that civilization leads to good. This is not true. Both Rousseau and all those who admire the savage, patriarchal state are just as right or just as wrong as those who admire civilization. The benefit of people living and enjoying the highest, most refined civilization, culture, and the most primitive, wild people is exactly the same. It is just as impossible to increase the welfare of people by science - civilization, culture, as to make sure that on a water plane the water in one place would be higher than in others.
An increase in the good of people only from an increase in love, which by its very nature equalizes all people; scientific and technical progress is a matter of age, and civilized people are just as little superior to uncivilized people in their well-being as an adult person is superior to a non-adult in his well-being. The only blessing comes from an increase in love.
10. About the revolution
The revolution has done in our Russian people that they suddenly saw the injustice of their position. This is a fairy tale about a king in a new dress. The child who said what is, that the king is naked, was a revolution.
A consciousness of the untruth they are suffering has appeared among the people, and the people have a varied attitude towards this untruth (for the most part, unfortunately, with malice); but all the people already understand it. And it is impossible to eradicate this consciousness. And what does our government do, trying to suppress the indestructible consciousness of the untruth endured, increases this untruth and causes more and more malicious attitude towards this untruth.
11. About the appointment of Russia
Russia's world-wide people's task is to introduce into the world the idea of a social order without landed property.
"La propriété c'est le vol" will remain more true than the truth of the English constitution as long as the human race continues. This is an absolute truth, but there are also relative truths arising from it - applications.
The first of these relative truths is the view of the Russian people on property. The Russian people denies the most durable property, the most independent of labor, and the property that, more than any other, restricts the right to acquire property by other people, land property.
This truth is not a dream - it is a fact - expressed in the communities of peasants, in the communities of Cossacks. This truth is understood equally by a learned Russian and a peasant - who says: let them write us down as Cossacks and the land will be free. This idea has a future. The Russian revolution can only be based on it. The Russian revolution will not be against the tsar and despotism, but against landed property. She will say: from me, from a man, take and tear what you want, and leave all the land to us. Autocracy does not interfere, but promotes this order of things. - (I saw all this in a dream on August 13.)
12. About church and state
I read the newspaper about executions and atrocities, for which executions, and it became so clear the corruption committed by the church - the concealment of Christianity, the perversion of conscience, and the state - legitimization, not only justification, but also the exaltation of pride, ambition, greed, humiliation of people and, in particular, all violence, killings in war and executions.
It would seem that this is so undoubtedly clear, but no one sees, does not want to see it. And they - both the church and the state, although they see ever-increasing evil, continue to produce it. Something similar happens to what would be done by people who only know how to plow and have only tools for plowing and who can only exist by plowing if these people plow fields on which seedlings have already sprouted.
If the deeds of church and state could be needed in their time, they are clearly destructive in our time and continue to be done.
At night I thought about how it would be good to clearly define those villainous positions that not only a Christian, but just a decent person - not a villain who wants to feel not a villain - cannot fulfill.
I know that a merchant, a manufacturer, a landowner, a banker, a capitalist, a harmless official, like a teacher, a professor of painting, a librarian, etc., lives as a thieves, robbed, but a distinction must be made between the thief himself and the robber and the one who lives as a thieves. And these same thieves and robbers should be distinguished from the rest, clearly show the sinfulness, cruelty, shamefulness of their activities.
And such people are legion. 1) Monarchs, ministers: a) internal affairs, with police violence, executions, pacifications, b) finances - taxes, c) justice - courts, d) military, e) confessions (deception of the people), and all employees, all the army, all the clergy. It's millions, after all. Just let them know what they are doing.
