degree my veritable I is despised and disregarded by all those about me.”[1]
If those who loved him best so misunderstood the grandeur of the moral transformation which Tolstoy was undergoing, one could not look for more penetration or greater respect in others. Tourgenev with whom he had sought to effect a reconciliation, rather in a spirit of Christian humility than because his feelings towards him had suffered any change,[2] said ironically of Tolstoy: “I pity him greatly; but after all, as the French say, every one kills his own fleas in his own way.”[3]
A few years later, when on the point of death, he wrote to Tolstoy the well-known letter in which he prayed “his friend, the great writer of the Russian world,” to “return to literature.”[4]
All the artists of Europe shared the anxiety and the prayer of the dying Tourgenev. Melchior de Vogud, at the end of his study of Tolstoy, written in 1886, made a portrait of the writer in peasant costume, handling a drill, the pretext for an eloquent apostrophe:
“Craftsman, maker of masterpieces, this is not
- ↑ A letter to a friend, published under the title Profession of Faith, in the volume entitled Cruel Pleasures, 1895.
- ↑ The reconciliation took place in the spring of 1878. Tolstoy wrote to Tourgenev asking his pardon. Tourgenev went to Yasnaya Polyana in August, 1878. Tolstoy returned his visit in July, 1881. Every one was struck with the change in his manner, his gentleness and his modesty. He was “as though regenerated.”
- ↑ Letter to Polonski (quoted by Birukov).
- ↑ Letter to Bougival June 28, 1883.
