Note 23 — PART XI

I leave this as it stood in the first edition, but after it was written I heard from Tolstoy twice on the subject. First, my friend Paul Boulanger wrote from Yásnaya Polyána (24th June 1901, O.S.), during an illness of Tolstoy’s as follows:⁠—

“You ask why Tolstoy did not mention Ruskin in What is Art? He asks me to reply that he did not do so: first, because Ruskin attributes a special moral importance to beauty in art; and, secondly, because all his writings, rich as they are in depth of thought, are yet not bound together by any one ruling idea.”

After Tolstoy’s recovery, a letter (undated) reached me on 17th August 1901, in which he wrote:⁠—

“I have forgotten what I wrote you about Ruskin, and fear it was not correct. I have lately read an excellent book about him, Ruskin et la Bible, I think by Brunhes. Ruskin’s chief limitation was that he could never quite free himself from the Church-Christian outlook upon life. At the time he commenced his work on social questions, when he wrote Unto this Last, he freed himself from the dogmatic tradition, but a cloudy Church-Christian understanding of the demands of life—which made it possible for him to unite ethical with esthetical ideals—remained with him to the end and weakened his message. It was also weakened by the artificiality, and consequent obscurity, of his poetic style. Do not imagine that I deny the work of this great man, who has quite rightly been called a prophet. I always was charmed and am charmed by him, but I point out spots which exist even on the sun. He is specially good when a wise writer, in accord with him, makes extracts from him, as is done in Ruskin et la Bible (which read), but to read all Ruskin consecutively, as I did, greatly weakens his effect.”