Tolstoy; shook him to the point of “crushing his faith in goodness, in everything,” and made him deny even his art:
“Truth is horrible… Doubtless, so long as the desire to know and to speak the truth exists men will try to know and to speak it. This is the only remnant left me of my moral concepts. It is the only thing I shall do; but not in the form of art, your art. Art is a lie, and I can no longer love a beautiful lie.”[1]
Less than six months later, however, he returned to the “beautiful lie” with Polikushka,[2] which of all his works is perhaps most devoid of moral intention, if we except the latent malediction upon money and its powers for evil; a work written purely for art’s sake; a masterpiece, moreover, whose only flaws are a possibly excessive wealth of observation, an abundance of material which would have sufficed for a great novel, and the contrast, which is
- ↑ Letter to Fet, October 17, 1860 (Further Letters: in the French version, Correspondence inédite, pp. 27-30).
- ↑ Written in Brussels, 1861.
concerning his health. This physical condition enables one the better to understand his obsession by the thought of death. In later years he spoke of this illness as of his best friend:
“When one is ill one seems to descend a very gentle slope, which at a certain point is barred by a curtain, a light curtain of some filmy stuff; on the hither side is life, beyond is death. How far superior is the state of illness, in moral value, to that of health! Do not speak to me of those people who have never been ill! They are terrible, the women especially so! A woman who has never known illness is an absolute wild beast!” (Conversations with M. Paul Boyer, Le Temps, 27th of August, 1901.)
