The Second Journey Abroad — His Brother's Death
In February 1860, Fet wrote to Tolstoy to consult him as to an
intention which he had of buying some land and devoting himself to
agriculture. Tolstoy's answer was very sympathetic, he approved of
Fet's plans, offered his help, mentioning certain lands for sale, and after this businesslike part of the letter, of no general interest, he expressed the following important thoughts about some works of Turgenev and Ostrovskiy:
I have read "On the Eve". This is my opinion. To
write stories is in general a mistake, and especially so
on the part of those who feel unhappy and do not exactly
know what they desire from life. However, "On the Eve" is much better than "A Nest of Nobles", and there are in it excellent negative characters: the artist and the father. The other characters not only fail to be types, but their conception, their situation, is not typical, or else they are quite trivial. However, this is Turgenev's usual mistake. the young lady is wretchedly drawn: "Oh,how I love you...she had long eyelashes...." In general, it always astonishes me in Turgenev that with his intelligence and poetic sensitiveness he is not able to avoid insipidity, and that even in his methods. There is more of this insipidity in his negative methods, reminding one of Gogol. There isno humanity, no sympathy with the characters, but monsters are represented whom he abuses but does not pity. This painfully jars with the liberal tone and bearing of all the rest. This method may have been good in times gone by and in those of Gogol. Besides, one must add that if one does not pity one's most insignificant characters, then one should cut them up like mincemeat, or else laugh them down till one's sides ache; but not treat them as Turgenev does, filled with spleen and dyspepsia. In general, however, no one else now could write such a story, although it will not meet with success.
"The Tempest" by Ostrovskiy is to my mind a pitiful
work, but it will succeed. Neither Ostrovskiy nor
Turgenev is to blame, but the times....Another thing is
now required. It is not for us to learn but to teach
Tommy and Mary at least a little of what we know. Goodby
dear friend.
Tolstoy had arrived at the conclusion that a man endowed with
brains and enriched with knowledge must, before deriving pleasure
from them for himself, give a share in the benefit of them to those
who are deprived of both. Accordingly, he had devoted to the
school the time he had free from his work on the estate. In these
occupations he passed the winter of 1859-60. At the same time, while doing reading, serious reading, he had come to the following conclusions:
1st February [1860] -- I have read La degenerescence
de l'esprit humain, and about there being physically a
higher degree of intellectual development. In this
state I mechanically thought of prayer. Prayer to whom? What! is God conceived so clearly that one can beseech and communicate with Him? If I do conceive such a one He loses all magesty for me. A God whom one can beseech and serve is the expression of the weakness of one's mind. God is God precisely because I cannot imagine the whole of His being. Besides, He is not a being but a Law and a Power.
Let these lines remain as an indication of my
conviction of the power of the mind.
Then he reads Auerbah's storie, "Reynard the Fox" by Goethe, and finally about the same time he jots down the following thought:
A strange religion is mine and that of our time, the
religion of progress. Who said that progress was good? It is merely the absence of faith and the striving after lines of activity -- represented as faith. Man requires an impulse - Schwung -- Yes, that is it.
These thoughts were fully developed in his educational works, as we shall see later on, and also in the self-analysis contained in his confession quoted above.
Tolstoy's friends were watching his literary career with
intense interest, treating condescendingly and half-jokingly "the
foolishness and eccentricity", as they called them, of those
manifestations of the deep inner growth in Tolstoy, which most of
them wholly failed to understand.
Thus, Botkin casually wrote to Fet on March 6, 1860: