and Peace the artist was recaptured by his philosophical[1] and educational preoccupations; he wished to write a spelling-book for the people; he worked at it feverishly for four years; he was prouder of it than of War and Peace, and when it was finished (1872) he wrote a second (1875). Then he conceived a passion for Greek; he studied Latin from morning to night; he abandoned all other work; he discovered “the delightful Xenophon,” and Homer, the real Homer; not the Homer of the translators, “all these Joukhovskys and Vosses who sing with any sort of voice they can manage to produce, guttural, peevish, mawkish,” but “this other devil, who sings at the top of his voice, without it ever entering his head that any one may be listening.”[2]
“Without a knowledge of Greek, no education! I am convinced that until now I knew nothing of all that is truly beautiful and of a simple beauty in human speech.”
This is folly, and he admits as much. He goes to school again with such passionate enthusiasm
- ↑ While he was finishing War and Peace, in the summer of 1869, he discovered Schopenhauer, and was filled with enthusiasm. “I am convinced that Schopenhauer is the most genial of men. Here is the whole universe reflected with an extraordinary clearness and beauty.” (Letter to Fet, August 30, 1869.)
- ↑ “Between Homer and his translators,” he says again, “there is the difference between boiled and distilled water and the spring-water broken on the rocks, which may carry the sand along with it as it flows, but becomes more pure and fresh on that account.”
