From the time of his conversion until his death in 1910, Tolstoy spent much of his time working the fields as a peasant and writing both fiction and nonfiction promoting Christian anarchism. Tolstoy's later works include The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), a novella about a dying man who finds meaning in his life only in the minutes before his death, and The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), a meditation on nonviolence that profoundly influenced Mohandas Gandhi (p. 560), with whom Tolstoy briefly corresponded during the final months of his life.
The selection in this chapter is taken from the book-length essay What Is Art? (1897), Tolstoy's most complete elaboration of his post-conversion aesthetic theory. In this selection, Tolstoy criticizes the popular belief among intellectuals that "great" art must be incomprehensible to average people. Tolstoy argues quite the reverse; only art that can be universally appreciated deserves to be called great.
As soon as ever the art of the upper classes separated itself from universal art, a conviction arose that art may be art and yet be incomprehensible to the masses. And as soon as this position was admitted, it had inevitably to be admitted also that art may be intelligible only to the very smallest number of the elect, and, eventually, to two, or to one, of our nearest friends, or to oneself alone, which is practically what is being said by modern artists: "I create and understand myself, and if any one does not understand me, so much the worse for him."
The assertion that art may be good art and at the same time incomprehensible to a great number of people is extremely unjust, and its consequences are ruinous to art itself; but at the same time it is so common and has so eaten into our conceptions that it is impossible sufficiently to elucidate all the absurdity of it.
Nothing is more common than to hear it said of reputed works of art that they are very good but very difficult to understand. We are quite used to such assertions, and yet to say that a work of art is good but incomprehensible to the majority of men is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good, but that most people can't eat it. The majority of men may not like rotten cheese or putrefying grouse—dishes esteemed by people with perverted tastes; but bread and fruit are only good when they please the majority of men. And it is the same with art. Perverted art may not please the majority of men, but good art always pleases everyone.
It is said that the very best works of art are such that they cannot be understood by the mass, but are accessible only to the elect who are prepared to understand these great works. But if the majority of men do not understand, the knowledge necessary to enable them to understand should be taught and explained to them. But it turns out that there is no such knowledge, that the works cannot be explained, and that those who say the majority do not understand good works of art still do not explain those works but only tell us that, in order to understand them, one must read, and see, and hear these same works over and over again. But this is not to explain; it is only to habituate! And people may habituate themselves to anything, even to the very worst things. As people may habituate themselves to bad food, to spirits, tobacco, and opium, just in the same way they may habituate themselves to bad art—and that is exactly what is being done.
Moreover, it cannot be said that the majority of people lack the taste to esteem 5 the highest works of art. The majority always has understood, and still understands, what we also recognize as being the very best art: the epic of Genesis,[126] the gospel parables, folk legends, fairy tales, and folk songs are understood by all. How can it be that the majority has suddenly lost its capacity to understand what is high in our art?
Of a speech it may be said that it is admirable, but incomprehensible to those who do not know the language in which it is delivered. A speech delivered in
Chinese may be excellent and may yet remain incomprehensible to me if I do not know Chinese; but what distinguishes a work of art from all other mental activity is just the fact that its language is understood by all, and that it infects all without distinction. The tears and laughter of a Chinese infect me just as the laughter and tears of a Russian; and it is the same with painting and music and poetry when it is translated into a language I understand. The songs of a Kirghiz[127] or of a Japanese touch me, though in a lesser degree than they touch a Kirghiz or a Japanese. I am also touched by Japanese painting, Indian architecture, and Arabian stories. If I am but little touched by a Japanese song and a Chinese novel, it is not that I do not understand these productions but that I know and am accustomed to higher works of art. It is not because their art is above me. Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and comprehensible to everyone. The story of Joseph translated into the Chinese language, touches a Chinese. The story of Sakya Muni[128] touches us. And there are, and must be, buildings, pictures, statues, and music of similar power. So that, if art fails to move men, it cannot be said that this is due to the spectators' or hearers' lack of understanding; but the conclusion to be drawn may and should be that such art is either bad art or is not art at all.
Art is differentiated from activity of the understanding, which demands preparation and a certain sequence of knowledge (so that one cannot learn trigonometry before knowing geometry), by the fact that it acts on people independently of their state of development and education, that the charm of a picture, sounds, or of forms, infects any man whatever his plane of development.
The business of art lies just in this—to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible. Usually it seems to the recipient of a truly artistic impression that he knew the thing before but had been unable to express it.
And such has always been the nature of good, supreme art; the Iliad, the Odyssey,4 the stories of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the Hebrew prophets, the psalms, the gospel parables, the story of Sakya Muni, and the hymns of the Vedas5 all transmit very elevated feelings and are nevertheless quite comprehensible now to us, educated or uneducated, as they were comprehensible to the men of those times, long ago, who were even less educated than our laborers. People talk about incomprehensibility; but if art is the transmission of feelings flowing from man's religious perception, how can a feeling be incomprehensible which is founded on religion, i.e., on man's relation to God? Such art should be, and has actually always been, comprehensible to everybody because every man's relation to God is one and the same. And therefore
The Iliad and the Odyssey: ancient Greek epic poems written in the seventh or eighth century bce and attributed to the poet Homer.
Vedas: ancient Sanskrit texts considered sacred to Hinduism.
the churches and the images in them are always comprehensible to everyone. The hindrance to understanding the best and highest feelings (as is said in the gospel) does not at all lie in deficiency of development or learning, but, on the contrary, in false development and false learning. A good and lofty work of art may be incomprehensible, but not to simple, unperverted peasant laborers (all that is highest is understood by them)—it may be, and often is, unintelligible to erudite, perverted people destitute of religion. And this continually occurs in our society in which the highest feelings are simply not understood. For instance, I know people who consider themselves most refined and who say that they do not understand the poetry of love to one's neighbor, of self-sacrifice, or of chastity.