discord of his latter years—the discord between his unpitying vision, which saw the horror of reality, and his impassioned heart, which continued to expect love and to affirm it?
We have all known these tragic conflicts. How often have we had to face the alternative—not to see, or to hate! And how often does an artist—an artist worthy of the name, a writer who knows the terrible, magnificent power of the written word—feel himself weighed down by anguish as he writes the truth![1] This truth, sane and virile, necessary in the midst of modern lies, this vital truth seems to him as the air we breathe… But then we perceive that this air is more than the lungs of many can bear. It is too strong for the many beings enfeebled by civilisation; too strong for those who are weak simply in the kindness of their hearts. Are we to take no account of this, and plunge them implacably into the truth that kills them? Is there not above all a truth which, as Tolstoy says, “is open to love”? Or is the artist to soothe mankind with consoling lies, as Peer Gynt, with his tales, soothes his old dying mother? Society is always face to face with this dilemma: the truth, or love. It resolves it in general by sacrificing both.
Tolstoy has never betrayed either of his two faiths. In the works of his maturity love is the torch of truth. In the works of his later years
- ↑ “I write books, which is why I know all the evil they do.” … (Letter to P. V. Veriguin, leader of the Doukhobors, 1898. Further Letters.)
