Note 261 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Compare with the above Tolstoi’s opinion on the same subject: ‘He is violently hostile to all rhymed verse. Rhythm and rhyme chain down thought, and all that is opposed to the most complete formation possible of the idea is an evil.... Tolstoi ... regards the decline in our esteem for poetry in verse as a progress.’—Raphael Löwenfeld, Gespräche über und mit Tolstoi. Berlin, 1891, p. 77.