He does not forget to do so, in his writings on art. The negative portion of this statement—brimming over with insults and sarcasms—is so vigorously expressed that it is the only part which has struck the artist. This method has so violently wounded the superstitions and susceptibilities of the brotherhood that they inevitably see, in the enemy of their own art, the enemy of all art whatsoever. But Tolstoy’s criticism is never devoid of the re constructive element. He never destroys for the sake of destruction, but only to rebuild. In his modesty he does not even profess to build anything new; he merely defends Art, which was and ever shall be, from the false artists who exploit it and dishonour it.
“True science and true art have always existed and will always exist; it is impossible and useless to attack them,” he wrote to me in 1887, in a letter which anticipated by more than ten years his famous criticism of art (What is Art?).[1] “All the evil of the day comes from the fact that so-called civilised people, together with the scientists and artists, form a privileged caste, like so many priests; and this caste has all the faults of all castes. It degrades and lowers the principle in virtue of which it was organised. What we in our world call the sciences and the arts is merely a gigantic humbug, a gross superstition into which we com-
- ↑ This letter (October 4, 1887) has been printed in the Cahiers de la Quinzaine, 1902, and in the Further Letters (Correspondance inédite), 1907. What is Art? appeared in 1897-98; but Tolstoy had been pondering the matter for more than fourteen years.
