Evening, February 4. Nicholskoe.
In the morning I wrote this diary and later tried to write, but could do nothing; had no desire. Undoubtedly if there be strength and capacity to write, then one ought to serve God.
It is just as gloomy. I do not pray enough, hourly.
February 5, Nicholskoe. If I live.
February 5, Nicholskoe.
Still the same intellectual, creative, weakness. But I think it is almost hopeless. There was a search at Chertkov’s. S. arrived.
I thought: I, a worker, am I doing the work commanded? In this is everything. Lord, help me.
Feb. 6. Nicholskoe.
In the morning Gorbunov arrived; in the evening a telegram that the Chertkovs are leaving on Thursday.[173] I prepared to go with Sonya.[174] Am just going. Health better.
Feb. 7. Petersburg.
Went to Chertkov. It is joyous there. Then to Yaroshenko.[175]
... I pray that I do not abandon here or anywhere the consciousness of my mission, to be fulfilled by kindness.
Feb. 8. Petersburg. If I live.
I was alive, but made no entries the two days. To-day, Feb. 10.
It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, silence. I was at Stasov’s and Tolstoi’s.[176] Did nothing bad, but nothing good either. Rather some good. Lord keep me from a spell, but I am better. Have thought nothing.
Again at the Olsuphievs in Nicholskoe, Feb. 16.
I returned on the morning of the day before yesterday, and fell ill. Yesterday I was better, wrote on art. Good.
... Women do not consider the demands of reason binding upon themselves and cannot progress according to them. They haven’t got this sail spread. They row without a rudder.[177]
I am again feeling unwell and very sweetly sad. Wrote a letter to the Chertkovs and to Posha. Am not working.
Feb. 17. Nicholskoe.
I do not feel well. I tried to write on art....
... Received letters; an adaptation of On Life from the American.[178] Wrote two letters to Sonya yesterday and sent them to-day.[179]
Having been thinking even before Petersburg:
1) (For The Appeal): To describe the condition of the factory workers, the servants, soldiers, agricultural labourers in comparison with the rich, and show that it all comes from....
2) In the Middle Ages, in the XIth Century, poetry was general—the people and the masters, les courtois et les vilains; then they separated and les vilains began to mimic the masters’ and the masters the people’s. A union ought to take place again.
3) A hundred times I have said it to myself and have written it down: the real and only salvation from all sorrow is the knowledge of one’s mission, the anxiety whether you have done that for which you were sent.
4) Nearly every husband and wife reproach each other for things for which they do not consider themselves guilty. But on the one side there is no ceasing to accuse, nor on the other to vindicate.
5) They do not run after a poet or a painter so much, as after an actor, and especially after a musician. Music calls forth a direct physical effect, sometimes acute, sometimes chronic.
6) We absolutely falsely ascribe intelligence and goodness to talent, and the same to beauty. In this lies great self-delusion.
7) It came into my head with remarkable clearness that in order to always feel good, it is necessary always to think of others, especially when you speak with some one.
8) The movement of life, the broadening of a separate being gives time. If there would be no movement, no enlarging of love, then there would be no time; as to space, it is the representation of other beings. If there were no other beings, there would be no space. (All nonsense, unthought).
9) Women are deprived of a moral sense for a motor. They haven’t got this sail spread and therefore it does not carry.
Feb. 18, Nicholskoe. If I live.
Feb. 18. Nicholskoe.
Forty-five years ago I was in battle.[180]
I feel a great sinking in energy. I am very weak, cannot work. But is it not possible to live unceasingly before God, doing His work in proportion to His strength. I shall try. Help me, Lord. I shall take up the letters. Here demands are made, and it is possible to fulfil His work.
Evening. Indisposed. Apathy, weakness. Am not taking up the essay,[181] wrote letters. Just now a letter from Biriukov. I answered it.
February 19. Nicholskoe.
I am just as apathetic, but am not worried. Wrote letters. Wrote to every one. I am going to bed, it is past twelve.
To-day, Feb. 20, Nicholskoe. Seven o’clock in the evening.
I still feel just as badly; constipation and heart-burn. I fell asleep in the morning. Then, not trying to work, I took a walk. Extreme weakness. My soul is calm, only it is a bore that I am unable to work. The house is full of people.
... Yesterday I wrote many letters.
I walked and thought:
There is no greater cause for error and confusion of ideas, the most unexpected ones, and inexplicable in any other way, than the recognition of authorities, i.e., the infallible truthfulness or beauty of certain persons, of books or of works of art. M. Arnold[182] was a thousand times right when he said that the business of criticism lies in detaching the good from the bad, from all that has been written and done, and mainly the bad from that which is recognised as splendid, and the good from that which is recognised as bad, or is not recognised at all. The most striking instance of this error and its terrible consequences, holding back for ages the forward movement of Christian mankind, is the authority of the Holy Scriptures and the Gospels. How many of the most unexpected and remarkable absurdities, sometimes necessary for its own justification, sometimes not necessary for anything, are said and written in the text of the Holy Scriptures.... The same thing happens in the Greek Tragedies, in Vergil, Shakespeare, Goethe, Bach, Beethoven, Raphael and in the new authorities.
Perhaps I omitted the 21st. To-day, perhaps the 22nd. February, Saturday. Nicholskoe.
Yesterday I did not work. I read through the first draft on art—pretty good. I went for Yushkova’s[183] dress. It was a nice trip. In the evening they spoke about Art and then I heard the brothers Konius[184] who arrived....
To-day I am a little better in my health, I went on skiis and felt weak at heart and uneasy when I went far. It is evening now. I feel like writing letters.
I thought for The Appeal when I looked at the numberless sons of N. in their overcoats: He is bringing them up, “making” men of the world of them. What for?
You will say: you live as you do for the sake of the children. What for? Why bring up another generation of the same cheated slaves, not knowing why they live, and living such a joyless life?
Feb. 23. Nicholskoe. If I live.
February 23, Nicholskoe.
To-day I wrote willingly and eagerly all morning and it seems to me I advanced on the essay on art. Then I took a walk before dinner. There is still a pile of people. No serious talk. Yesterday there was music.... To-day an amateur theatrical. Tania and Michail Adamovich played very well.[185] It is now evening. The day has passed almost without heart-burn.
February 24. Nicholskoe.
To-day I arose apathetic and fell asleep again right after luncheon. After one, I went to meet the riders. Came home, dined. Am struggling successfully with heart-burn. Went for a walk in the evening.
Read and am reading Aristotle (Bénard) on æsthetics. Very important.
Thought during these days:
1) Thought; why is it impossible to even speak to some people ... about truth and good—so far are they away from it. This is so, because they are surrounded by such a thick layer of temptations that they have become impenetrable. They are unable to struggle with sin, because they do not see the sin for the temptations. In this lies the principal danger and all the horror of temptations.
2) They say to me when I condemn religious propaganda: You also are preaching. No, I do not preach—mainly because I have nothing to preach. Even to atheists I am not going to preach God (if I preached, I erred). I only draw conclusions from what people accept, pointing out the contradictions which are enclosed in what they accept, and which they do not notice.
3) ... a general, respectable, clean, correct, with thick eye-brows and important mien (and uncommonly good-natured, but deprived of every moral motive sense) gave me the striking thought, as to how and by what means those most indifferent to social life, to the good of society—as to how just those people rise involuntarily to the position of rulers of people. I see how he will manage institutions upon which a million lives depend, and just because he likes cleanliness, elegance, refined food, dancing, hunting, billiards and every possible kind of amusement, and not having the means to keep himself in those regiments, or institutions, or societies where all this exist, is advanced little by little as a good and harmless man and made a ruler of people. All are like N. and their name is legion.
4) I am reading Aristotle. He says in Politics (Book VII, Chapter VIII): “Dans cette république parfaite, où la vertu des citoyens sera réele, ils s’abstiendront de toute profession méchanique, de toute spéculation mercantile, travaux dégradés (dégradants?)[186] et contraires à la vertu. Ils ne se livreront pas davantage á l’agriculture. Il faut du loisir pour acquérir la vertu” ...[187]
All his æsthetics has for its end ( )[188] virtue. And we with the Christian understanding of the brotherhood of man want to be guided by the ethical and æsthetical conception of the ancients!!
Feb. 25. Nicholskoe. If I live.
February 25. Nicholskoe.
I am alive. I have written a little—not as easily as yesterday. The guests have departed. Went for a walk twice. Am reading Aristotle. To-day I received letters ...
Yesterday, while walking, I prayed and experienced a remarkable sensation which is perhaps similar to that which the mystics excite in themselves by spiritual works; I felt myself to be a spiritual, free being bound by the illusion of the body.
Feb. 26. Nicholskoe. If I live.
Feb. 26, Nicholskoe.
I am alive. I am writing, so as to keep my resolution. To-day I wrote letters all morning, but I had no energy for work.
Went to Mme. Shorin.[189] I had a good talk with her. Perhaps even to some purpose. Just as Anna Michailovna[190] said to-day, that I helped her. And thanks be.
I copied the letter to Posha.
Feb. 27. Nicholskoe.
Wrote this morning poorly, but cleared up something or other. Am well. Took a walk. Spoke with Tania. And that is all.
Yesterday was Feb. 28. Nicholskoe.
I have written nothing. In the morning I worked badly. Received a letter from Chertkov and Ivan Michailovich and wrote to both. Walked and went to Safonovo.[191]
This morning I thought of something which seemed to me important, namely:
1) I wiped away the dust in my room and walking around, came to the divan and could not remember whether I had dusted it or not. Just because these movements are customary and unconscious I could not remember them and I felt that it was impossible to. So that if I dusted and forgot it, i.e., if I did an act unconsciously; then it is just the same as if it never existed. If some one conscious saw it, then perhaps it could be restored. But if no one saw it, or saw it unconsciously; if the whole complex life of many people pass along unconsciously, then that life is as if it had never existed. So that life—life only exists then, when it is lit by consciousness.
What, then, is this consciousness? What are the acts which are lit by consciousness? The acts which are lit by consciousness are those acts which we fulfil freely, i.e., fulfilling them we know that we might have acted otherwise. Therefore, consciousness is freedom. Without consciousness there is no freedom and without freedom there can be no consciousness (if we are subjected to violence and we have no choice as to how we should bear that violence, we do not feel the violence).
Memory is nothing else than the consciousness of the past, of the past freedom. If I were unable to dust or not to dust, I would not be conscious of dusting, if I were not conscious of dusting, I would not have the choice of dusting or not dusting. If I did not have consciousness and freedom, I would not remember the past, I would not unite it into one. Therefore the very basis of life is freedom and consciousness—a freedom-consciousness.
(It seemed to me clearer when I was thinking.)
... To-day I could not write anything in the morning at all—fell asleep. I took a walk both in the morning and in the evening. It was very pleasant.
I thought two things:
1) That death seems to me now just as a change: a discharge from a former post and an appointment to a new one. It seems that I am all worn out for the former post and I am no longer fit.
2) I thought about N as a good character for a drama; good-natured, clean, spoilt, loving pleasure but good, and incapable of conceiving a radical moral requirement.
3) There is only one means for steadfastness and peace: love, love towards enemies.
Yes, here this problem was presented to me from a special, unexpected angle and how badly I was able to solve it. I must try harder. Help me, Father.
March 2, Nicholskoe. If I live.
I am alive. Entirely well. To-day I wrote pretty well. In the evening after dinner I went to Shelkovo. It was a very pleasant walk in the moonlight.
Wrote a letter to Posha. Received a letter from Tregubov. He is irritated because they intercept the letters. But I am not vexed. I have understood that one has to pity them, and I pity truly. To-morrow we go. We have been here a whole month.
Yesterday was March 3rd. Moscow.
In the morning I did almost nothing. I stumbled up against the historic course of art. I took a walk. After dinner I left. I arrived at 10.
March 4, Moscow.
Got up late. Handled my papers, wrote letters to Posha, Nakashidze. Went to the public library, took books. In the evening Dunaev and Boulanger were here. It is now late. I am going to bed. S. is at a concert.
March 5. Moscow. If I live.
Heavens, how many days I have skipped: To-day, March 9. Moscow.
Out of the four days, I wrote two days on art and to-day pretty much. I wanted to write Hadji Murad very much and thought out something pretty well—touching. A letter from Posha. Wrote to Chertkov and Koni about the terrible thing that happened to Miss Vietrov.[192] I am not going to write out what I have noted.
I am still in the same peaceful, because loving, mood. As soon as I feel like being hurt or wearied I remember God and that my work is only one, to love, not to think of that which will be—and I feel better right away.
Tania is going to Yasnaya.
To-day, March 15, Moscow.
Lived not badly. I see the end of the essay on art. Still the same peace. I thank God. I have just now written letters. It is evening. I am going into the tedious drawing-room.
Almost a month I have not written (20 days), and I have lived the time badly, because I worked little. Wrote all the time on art, became confused these last days. And now for two days I haven’t written.
I have not lost my peace, but my soul is troubled, still I am master of it. Oh, Lord! If only I could remember my mission, that through oneself must be manifested (shine) divinity. But the difficulty is, that if you remember that alone you will not live; and you must live, live energetically, and yet remember. Help me, Father.
I have prayed much lately that my life be better. But as it is, the consciousness of the lawlessness of my life is shameful and depressing.
Yesterday I thought very well about Hadji Murad—that in it the principal thing was to express a deception of trust. How good it would have been, were it not for this deception. Also I am thinking more and more often of The Appeal.
I am afraid that the theme of art has occupied me lately for personal, selfish and bad reasons. Je m’entends.
During this time I made few notes and if I had been thinking about anything I have forgotten it.
1) The world which we know and represent for ourselves, is nothing else than laws of co-relation between our senses (sens), and therefore, a miracle is a violation of these laws of co-relation, it therefore destroys our conception of the world. In the crudest form, it is thus: I know that water (not frozen) is always liquid. And its specific gravity is less than that of my body. My eyes, hearing, touch, demonstrate to me liquid water; and suddenly a man walks on this water. If he walked on the water, then it proves nothing, but only destroys my conception of water.
2) A very common mistake: To place the aim of life in the service of people and not in the service of God. Only in serving God, i.e., in doing that which He wants, can you be certain that you are not doing something vain and it is not impossible to choose whom you are to serve.
3) Church Christians do not want to serve God, but want God to serve them.
4) Shakespeare began to be valued when the moral criterion was lost.
5) (For The Appeal.) We are so entangled that every one of our steps in life is a participation in evil: in violence, in oppression. We must not despair, but we must slowly disentangle ourselves from those nets in which we are caught; not to tear ourselves through,—that would entangle us worse—but to disentangle ourselves carefully.
6)[193]
I am in a very bad physical condition, almost fever, and the black gloom that comes before, but up to now the spiritual is the stronger. Escorted Maude’s colony.[194] Ivan Michailovich is still free.[195] Everything is all right.
Have been ill. With calmness I thought that I would die. To-day I wrote well on Art. They have taken Ivan Michailovich. There was a search at Dunaev’s.[196] It is all right with the exiles.[197]
Outwardly I am entirely calm, inwardly not entirely. It is enough to bear in mind that everything is for the good, and when I bear that in mind as I do now—it is good.
To-day May 3. Yasnaya Polyana.
Almost a month I have made no entries. A bad and sterile month.
I cut out and burned that which I wrote in heat.[198]
It is not one month that I have made no entries, but two and a half. I have lived through much, both the difficult and the good.[199] Have been ill. Very severe pains—I think in the beginning of July.[200]
I worked all this time on the essay on art, and the farther I get the better. I finished it and am correcting it from the beginning.
Masha married.[201]...
We do not quiet, moderate passion, the source of the greatest calamities, but kindle it with all our strength and then we complain that we suffer....
Good letters from Chertkov. A Kiev peasant was here, Shidlovsky.[202]
I feel that I am alone—that my life not only does not interest any one, but that they are bored and ashamed that I continue to occupy myself with such trifles.
I thought during this time:
1) A type of woman—there are men such also, but mostly it is women who are incapable of seeing themselves, as if their necks were stationary and they could not look back at themselves. It isn’t exactly that they don’t want to repent: but they can’t see themselves. They live as they do and not in another way, because this way seems good to them. And therefore if they do anything it is because it seems good to them. Such people are terrifying. And such people may be intelligent, stupid, good, wicked. When they are stupid and wicked it is terrible.
2) With a low moral standard, a firmness of judgment. The acts of all the best people are explained by what I would have done. Christ preached out of vanity, condemned the Pharisees from envy, etc.
3) The second condition of art is novelty. To a child everything is new and therefore it has many artistic impressions. The new for us, is a certain depth of feeling, that depth in which a man finds his separate individuality from all. That is for indifferent art. For the highest, novelty lies only in religion, as religion is the most advanced world point of view.
4) (For the drama.) They bring to the table a man in tatters and they laugh at the inconsistency of it and at his awkwardness. Revolt.
5) When it happens that you thought of something and then forgot what you thought, but you remember and know the character of your thoughts: sad, dismal, oppressive, joyous, keen—and even remember their order: first it was sad, and then it became calm, etc.,—when you remember things that way, then it is exactly what music expresses.
6) A theme: A passionate young man in love with a mentally diseased woman.
7) God gave us His spirit—love, reason—in order to serve Him; but we use His spirit to serve ourselves—we use the axe to plane the handle.
I feel fully well and strong physically, but morally, weak. I feel like working and am able. I am going to make notes.[203]
July 17. Yasn. Pol. If I live.
July 17. Y. P.
Got up late, worked badly. There is neither concentration nor capacity to embrace everything. Nevertheless I have advanced. Masha came with Kolia ...
Yesterday I talked about love with N: that we madly kindle this passion and then we suffer from its exaggerations and excesses.
Went on my bicycle to Yasenki. I love this motion very much. But I am ashamed.
A letter from Chertkov; he is very ill. I value him very much. And how not value him.
It is now 10 o’clock. The Shenshins have left just now. I feel solemn and gloomy.
July 18, 1897. Y. P. If I live.
I skipped three days. To-day July 21. Y. P.
I am working well enough. I am even satisfied with my work. Though I change much. Everything has come to a head and has gained much. I have been reviewing everything again from the beginning.
The life around me is very wretched....
I do not know why: whether from the stomach or the heat or from excessive physical exercise—but in the evenings I feel very weak.
A good speech by Crookes as to how a microscopic man would look upon the world.[204]
Yesterday Novikov was here and he brought splendid notes by Michael Novikov.[205] Wrote letters: to Carus,[206] Ivan Michailovich. A letter from Evgenie Ivanovich.[207]
July 22. Y. P. If I live.
July 28. Y. P.
Six days that I haven’t written. Three or four days ago at night, I had an attack of cholera morbus and the day after I was absolutely ill and for two days I have been very weak and have written very poorly. To-day I am a little better.
The children were here: Iliushin’s family.[208] They are sweet grandchildren, especially Andrusha. Whatever notes I made, I will not write out to-day. Longinov[209] was here, a friend of Mme. Annenkov’s and to-day Maude and Boulanger.
July 29. Y. P. If I live.
During this time a pile of guests[210] ... two Germans, decadents; a naïve and a somewhat stupid one.... There were here: Novikov, the scribe, a very powerful man, and Bulakhov,[211] also a powerful one morally and intellectually. I live very badly, weakly. Very little goodness. To-day the Stakhoviches[212] and the Maklakovs[213] arrived also.
I continue to work on my essay on art and, strange to say, it pleases me. Yesterday and to-day I read it to Ginsburg, Sobolev, Kasatkin[214] and Goldenweiser. The impression it produces on them is exactly the same as it produces on me.
A letter from Crosby with a joyful letter from a Japanese.[215] From Chertkov good letters. The correspondence has been very neglected.
I am entirely alone and I weaken. I often say to myself that one must live serving, but when I enter life, though I do not exactly forget, yet I scatter myself.
I have written down much, but to-day I have no time to write it out.
Father, help me. I weaken.
I am going to write absolutely every day.
Aug. 8. Y. P. If I live.
A peasant was here who had his arm torn by a tree and amputated. He ploughs with a loop attached.
Aug. 9.
Stakhovich arrived. Read the essay. The tenth chapter is bad. I worked pretty much. Have written poor letters. I must write to Posha and to Ivan Michailovich.
There is noted in the book:
1) A servant makes life false and corrupt. As soon as you have servants, then you increase your wants, complicate life and make it a burden. Instead of joy when you do things yourself, you have vexation and the principal thing, you renounce the main duty of life; the fulfilment of the brotherhood of man.
2) The æsthetic and the ethical are two arms of one lever: to the extent that you lengthen and lighten one side, to that extent you shorten and make heavier the other side. As soon as a man loses his moral sense, he becomes particularly responsive to the æsthetic.
3) People know two Gods: one whom they want to force to serve them, demanding from him by prayers the fulfilment of their desires, and another God, one whom we ought to serve, to the fulfilment of whose will, all our desires ought to be directed.
4) It is a common phenomenon that old people love to travel, to go far and to change places. Is it not a foreseeing and a readiness for the last journey?
Aug. 15. Y. P.
I am continuing to work. Am advancing.
Lombroso was here—a limited, naïve little old man. The Maklakovs. Leo arrived with his wife.[216] Boulanger—a nice man. Wrote letters to everybody: Posha and Ivan Michailovich and Van-der-Veer. The oppressive Leontev[217] was here.
There was something I wanted to write very much, but have forgotten....
A revolting report concerning the missionary congress in Kazan.[218]
There is noted: “Woman’s character”—and I remember that it was something very good. Now I have forgotten. It seems to me that it was that the peculiarity of woman’s character is that her feeling alone guides her life, and that reason only serves her feeling. She cannot even understand that feeling can be made subservient to reason.
2) But there are not so many women—as there are such men—who do not hear, do not see, the unpleasant, do not see it just as if it didn’t exist.
3) When people haven’t the power to get rid of superstition and they continue to pay tribute to it, and at the same time when they see that others have freed themselves, they grow angry at those who have freed themselves. “But I suffer when I commit stupidities and he is free.”
4) Art, i.e., artists, instead of serving people, exploit them.
5) From the time I became old, I began to confuse people, ... belonging or being marked in my mind as one type. So that I do not know N, N N, but I know a collective personality to which N, N N, belong.
6) We are so accustomed to the thought that everything is for us, that the earth is mine, that when we have to die, we are surprised that my earth, something belonging to me, will remain and I won’t. Here the principal mistake is in thinking the earth as something acquired and complementary to me, when it is I who am acquired by the earth, an appendage to it.
7) How good it would be if we could live with the same concentration, do the work of life—principally; communion among people—with that concentration with which we play chess, read music, etc.
Aug. 16. Y. P. If I live.
More than a month I have made no entries. Things are the same and the work has been advancing all the time. And it could advance still more as to form, but there is absolutely no time. Such an amount of work! A typist is making the final copy on a Remington. I have reached the 19th chapter, inclusive.
During this time the important thing was the expulsion of Boulanger.[219]
My work has been interrupted occasionally only by a letter to the Swedish papers about the Dukhobors[220] on the occasion of the Nobel prize.
Also ill health interrupted: a terrible boil on the cheek. I thought it was a cancer, and I am happy that it was not very unpleasant to think that: I am receiving a new appointment; one which in any case, isn’t slipping past me.
St. John was here.[221]
My work was interrupted also by the arrival of the Molokans from Samara—in reference to their children which were taken away.[222] I wanted to write abroad and even wrote a very violent, and what seemed to me, strong letter, but changed my mind. It was not to be done before God. I have to try again.
To-day I wrote letters: to the Emperor,[223] to Olsuphiev,[224] to Heath,[225] and to E. I. Chertkov,[226] and saw the Molokans off.
I wanted to write from my notebooks, but it is late. I am going to bed.
Sept. 20. Yasn. P. If I live.
Sept. 20. Y. P.
Let me write even a few words. The boil still bothers me very much. I have no full liberté d’esprit. I wrote the Swedish letter to-day, and in the evening translated it into Swedish[227] with the Swede.
I am not writing from the notebook, but I will note that which entered my head with special vividness.
Our life is so arranged that all our care for ourselves, the use of our reason (our spiritual forces) for the care of ourselves, brings only unhappiness. And yet this egotism is necessary in order to live a separate life. That is His mysterious will. As soon as you live for yourself, you perish; when you live beyond yourself, there is peace and joy both for yourself and for others.
Sept. 20. Y. P. If I live.
To-day Sept. 22. Y. P.
... Yesterday I finished the translation with Langlet.
To-day I was busy with Art, but it didn’t go at all, and therefore the preceding did not please me.
S. arrived to-day.
At night I thought of the separation of lust from love, and that ether is a conception outside of the senses.
It is now past twelve in the morning. I am waiting for Ilya and Andrusha. I have just now written a letter to the editor of the Tagblatt Stockholm, and to Chertkov.
September 23. Y. P. If I live.
I am working all the time on Art. The abscess is going away. I should have liked more peace. Yes ...
To-day Oct. 14. Y. P.
... I am still writing on art. To-day I corrected the 10th chapter. I cleared up the vague parts.
I must write out the notebooks; I am afraid I have forgotten much.
1) There is no greater prop for a selfish, peaceful life, than the occupation of art for art’s sake. The despot, the villain, must inevitably love art. (I have jotted down something on this order, but I can’t recall it now.)
2) I imagined clearly to myself how joyous, peaceful, and fully free a life could be, if one gave oneself entirely to God, i.e., in every instance in life to seek only one thing: to do that which He wants—to do that in sickness, in offence, in humiliation, in suffering, in all temptations and in death—which would then be only a change in appointment. Weakness, the non-fulfilment of that which God wants—what happens then? Nothing: There is a return to the consciousness that only in its fulfilment is life. The moments of weakness—they are the intervals between the letters of life, not life. Father, help me.
3) I saw in my sleep how I think, I say, that the whole matter lies in making an effort, that very effort which is spoken of in the Gospels: “The Kingdom of God is attained by effort.” Everything that is good, everything that is real, every true act of life is accomplished through efforts; make no effort, swim with the current and you do not live. But, however, the ... doctrine preaches that effort is sin, it is pride, it is relying on one’s own strength: the lay doctrine says the same thing: effort by oneself is useless; organisation, surroundings do everything. What error! Effort is more important than anything. Every least little bit of effort: the conquering of laziness, greed, lust, wrath, depression—is the most important of important things; it is the manifestation of God in life; it is Karma; it is the broadening of one’s “self.” Whatever had been marked off is guess work.[228]
4) Details for Hadji Murad: 1) The shadow of an eagle over the slope of a mountain; 2) at the river, on the sands, are tracks of horses, animals, people; 3) riding into the forest, the horses snort keenly; 4) from behind a clump of trees a goat jumped out.
5) When people are enthusiastic about Shakespeare, Beethoven, they are enthusiastic about their own thoughts, dreams, which are called forth by Shakespeare, Beethoven, just as people in love do not love the object of their love, but what it calls forth in them. In this enthusiasm, there is no true reality of art, but absolute boundlessness.
6) Only then can one understand and feel God when one has understood clearly the unreality of everything material.
7) Not long ago, in the summer, I felt God clearly for the first time; that He existed and that I existed in Him; and that the only thing that existed was I in Him: in Him, like a limited thing in an unlimited thing, in Him also like a limited being in which He existed.
(Horribly bad, unclear. But I felt it clearly and especially keenly for the first time in my life.)
In general, I don’t know why, but I haven’t the same religious feeling which I had when I formerly wrote my Journal for no one. The fact that it was read and that it can be read, kills this feeling. But the feeling was precious and helped me in life. I am going to begin anew from the present date, the 14th, to write again as before—so that no one will read it during my life time. If there will be thoughts worth it, I can write them out and send them to Chertkov.[229]
8) A man incapable of repentance has no salvation from his sins. Even if his sins are pointed out to him, he only gets angry at those who point them out, and a new sin is added.
9) All attempts to live on the land and feed oneself by one’s own labour have been unsuccessful, and could not help being unsuccessful in Russia, because it is necessary for a man of our education feeding himself by his own labour, to compete with the peasant—who fixes the prices, beating them down by his offer. But he was brought up for generations in stern life and stubborn work, while we were brought up for generations in luxurious life and idle laziness. From this it does not follow that one ought not to try to feed one’s self by one’s own labour, but only that it is impossible to expect its realisation in the first generation.
10) All calamities which are born from sex relations, from being in love, come from this, that we confuse fleshly lust with spiritual life, with—terrible to say—love; we use our reason not to condemn and limit this passion, but to adorn it with the peacock feathers of spirituality. Here is where les extremes se touchent. To attribute every attraction between the sexes to sex desire seems very materialistic, but, on the contrary, it is the most spiritual point of view: to distinguish from the realm of the spiritual everything which does not belong to it, in order to be able to value it highly.
11) Everything that I know is the product of my senses. My senses demonstrate to me my limits, coming in contact with the limits of other beings. This sensation, or the knowledge of limits, we recognise and cannot recognise otherwise, than as matter. And in this matter we see either only matter or beings who like us are bound by limits. The beings near to us in size, from the elephant to the insect, we know—we know their limits. The beings that are far from us in size, like atoms or like the stars, we recognise as matter only. But besides these two kinds of beings which we know by our senses, we must inevitably acknowledge still other beings (not spiritual beings like us,—that is obvious) not recognisable by our senses, but which are material, i.e., they also form limits. Such beings are atoms, ether. The presence of these beings, the admission of which is demanded by our reason, undoubtedly proves that our senses give us only a one-sided and a very limited knowledge of other beings and of the outer world. So that we can imagine for ourselves such beings endowed with such senses (sens) for whom ether would give the very same reality, as matter for us.
(It is still unclear, but understandable.)
12) If we would always remember that our tongue was given us for the transmission of our thoughts, and the capacity of thinking for the understanding of God and His law of love, and that therefore you must talk only then when you have something good to say! But when you cannot say anything good, cannot keep back the bad—then be silent, even all your life.
13) As soon as you have a disagreeable feeling towards a man, it means there is something you don’t know. And you ought to find out: you ought to find out the motives of that act which was disagreeable to you. And as soon as you have understood the motives clearly then it can anger you as little as a falling stone.
14) You get angry at a woman because she does not understand—or she understands, but does not do that which her reason tells her. She is unable to do it. Just as a magnet acts on iron and does not act on wood, so are the conclusions of reason not binding on her—have no motor power. For her feeling is binding, and the conclusions of reasons are so only when they are transmitted by authorities, i.e., by the feeling of the desire not to remain behind others. So that she will not believe and will not follow an obvious demand of reason, if it be not confirmed by an authority; but she will believe and follow the greatest absurdity if only every one does it. She cannot do otherwise. But we get angry. There are also many men like that—womanish.
15) One has to serve others, not oneself, if only for the reason that in the serving of others there is a limit and therefore it is possible here to act rationally, build a house for him who is without, buy cattle, clothes; but in the serving of oneself there is no limit: the more you serve, the worse it is.
16) Time is only for the body: it is the relationship of beings with the various limits seen by us, to beings whose limits we do not see; to the movement of the sun, the moon, the earth, to the movement of the sands in the hour-glass. And therefore time is for that which we call the body, for that which has limits; but for that which has no limits: for the spiritual—there is no time. Therefore you remember only those times in which you lived spiritually. (Unclear, but was clear.)
17) We suffer from ourselves, from the demands of our “self,” and we all know that the only means for not suffering from that “self,” is to forget it. And we seek forgetfulness in distractions, in occupations with art, science, in wine, in smoking—and there is no real forgetfulness. But God made it so that there should be only one real forgetfulness, one that is real and always at hand—in the care for others, in the serving of others.
But I forgot this and I live a terribly selfish life, and therefore I am unhappy.
18) I went past the out-houses. I remembered the nights that I spent there, and the youth and the beauty of Duniasha (I never had any relation with her), her strong, womanly body. Where is it? It has been long nothing but bones. What are those bones? What is their relation to Duniasha? There was a time when those bones formed a part of that separate being which had been Duniasha. Then this being changed its centre and that which had been Duniasha became a part of another being, enormous, inconceivable to me in magnitude, which I call earth. We do not know the life of the earth, and therefore we think it dead, just like an insect who lives one hour thinks my body dead, because he does not see its movement.
19) Space is the relation of various limited beings among themselves. It exists. But time is only the relation of the movement of living beings among themselves, and the movement of matter which we consider dead.
20) The most horrible of all is intoxication: of wine, of games, of money greed, of politics, of art, of being in love. It is impossible to speak with such people as long as they haven’t slept it off. It is terrible.[230]
The letter to Stockholm has been printed.
Oct. 15. Y. P. If I live.