Note † — Chapter IX · Actual and Possible Misapprehensions

When Tolstoy applies his criterion to the judgment of particular works of art, he is able to deduce striking results: “Christian Art, that is, the Art of our time, must be catholic in the direct sense of that word—that is, universal—and so must unite all men. There are but two kinds of sensations which unite all men—the sensations which arise from the recognition of man’s filial relation to God and of the brotherhood of men, and the simplest vital sensations which are accessible to all men without exception, such as the sensations of joy, meekness of spirit, alacrity, calm, etc. It is only these two kinds of sensations that form the subject of the Art of our time, which is good according to its contents.” Tolstoy in fact denied the value of all human endeavours except those which tend directly to the union of men. It may be suspected that his religious enthusiasm was due to his belief that Religion had this tendency. He distinguished, it will be remembered, very sharply between Religion and religions; a distinction with which many besides Tolstoy have consoled themselves. But his essential aim, his single value, was the union of men. All other things are of value only in so far as they tend to promote this, and art shares the general subordination. Even a joke, for Tolstoy, is only a joke so long as all men may share in it, a truly revolutionary amendment. The sharing is more important than the merriment. On these principles he surveys European Art and Literature. With magnificent defiance of accepted values, and the hardness of heart of a supreme doctrinaire, one after another of the unassailables is toppled from its eminence. Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, etc., are rejected; Wagner in especial is the object of a critical tour de force. In their place are set A Tale of Two Cities, The Chimes, Adam Bede, Les Miserables (almost the only thing in French literature of which Tolstoy could approve), and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.† All art which does not directly urge the union of men, or whose appeal is suspected to be limited to cultured and aristocratic circles, is condemned. “All who are not hand in hand with me are against me,” thought Tolstoy, under the urgency of his sense of human misery. Any diversion of art from a single narrow channel seemed to him an irreparable waste. Remembering no doubt how deeply he had been affected and influenced in the past by the things which he now deplored, he came in the end to assign unlimited powers to art when rightly directed. But, if we think of the other things which he also invoked to the same end, there is a ring of despair in his final cry: “Art must remove violence, only Art can do this.”