The Journal of Leo Tolstoi (First Volume — 1895–1899) · 72

372. In another place Tolstoi says: “Playing the fool (like Christ) i.e., the purposeful representing of yourself as worse than you are, is the highest quality of virtue.” (Journal, May 29, 1893.)

373. An omission in the copy in possession of the editors.

374. Tolstoi wrote to V. G. Chertkov as early as December 13, 1898: “I absolutely cannot occupy myself with anything else than with Resurrection. Just like a shell, when it gets to the earth, falls more and more quickly, in the same way I now, when I am nearing the end, I cannot think—no, not that I cannot: I can and[379] even do think—but I don’t want to think about anything else but about it.”

375. At this time the emigration of the Dukhobors to Canada had not yet been accomplished. Tolstoi took an active part in the affair: he addressed various people with the request for contributions for this purpose, he carried on a correspondence with friends in England in regard to a place of settlement for the Dukhobors, he sent letters to the authorities to try to remove obstacles which were in their way, he saw agents who suggested places of settlement, he carried on a correspondence with the Dukhobors themselves, etc.

376. February 15, 1899, Tolstoi wrote to V. G. Chertkov: “My back hurts all the time and I am weak and I am disgusted with Resurrection, which I can’t touch.”

377. The retired officer addressed himself to Tolstoi with the question whether the Gospels were not against military service. Tolstoi’s answer was printed in the leaflets of The Free Press, No. 5, 1899, and in 1906 in Petrograd in the publication, Obnovlenia, No. 130 (which was confiscated).

378. A group of representative Swedish intellectuals addressed themselves to Tolstoi with a letter as to the means of attaining universal peace. In this letter on the one hand, they expressed the thought that universal disarmament could be attained by the surest path of each separate individual refusing to take part in military service, and on the other hand, they acknowledged that the Peace Conference fixed for The Hague at the[380] instigation of the Russian Government was useful to the attainment of universal peace....

379. In the middle of February, 1898, the students of the University of Petrograd, in the form of a protest against the beating of people in the streets, decided on the day of the student holiday, February 8th, as a peaceful-minded group of students, to cease work. They were soon joined by students of other higher schools in Petrograd and later in Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov, Jurev, Odessa, Tomsk, Kazan, Riga and Novaia Alexandria. In this way the studies of several thousand men and women students were suspended. The representatives of the Moscow and Petrograd student bodies came to Tolstoi with the purpose of obtaining his opinion and sympathy for the student movement.

380. Sinet, an artist, who refused military service on religious grounds and was sent to the Algerian disciplinary battalion and who escaped from there. Tolstoi called Sinet the first religious Frenchman, therefore, because he was the first Frenchman he met who believed truly as he did.

381. In his letter to V. G. Chertkov of July 9, 1899, Tolstoi wrote, “The matter of the translations worry me. I can imagine, therefore, how they worry you. To-day I thought this: To drop all contracts with the translators and print the following in the newspaper....” Further on Tolstoi expounds the project of his letter to the newspapers, that he, in the matter of translation, decided to destroy the contracts with the publishers of the translations and to refuse the royalty of the first printing of these translations. And yet the[381] need of the Dukhobors was so great that “having no means of employing cattle, they have hitched themselves and their wives to the plough and are ploughing with human power to till their land.” For this reason, Tolstoi drops his plan: “I ask all the publishers who will print this novel and the translators of it, as well as the readers of the novel, to remember those people for whom this publication has been begun and as far as their strength and their desire go, to help the Dukhobors by giving their mite to the Dukhobor fund in England.”

382. Taking no part in 1899, in the work of organising help for the famine-stricken peasants, Tolstoi directed the contributions received for this purpose from various people, to be sent to those who were occupied on the spot in giving help to the inhabitants.

383. Originally in English.

384. This thought was maintained in the book then being read by Tolstoi: Vergleichenden Uebersicht der Vier Evangelien, von S. G. Verus, Leipzig, 1897. In the letter of Biriukov of August 1, 1899, Tolstoi wrote thus about the significance of Verus’ book: “This supposition or probability is the destruction of the last suburbs which are susceptible to attacks from the enemy, so that the fortress of the moral teaching of the good, flowing not from a source which is only temporary and local, but from a totality of the whole spiritual life of humanity, be unshaken.”

385. Countess S. N. Tolstoi.

386. See Note 384.

387. This thought is developed more in detail by Tolstoi[382] in the Legend of the Stones (see The Reading Circle, Volume II).

388. Alfred B. Westrup. Plenty of Money. N. Y., 1899.

389. Countess O. C. Tolstoi, born Dieterichs, first wife of A. L. Tolstoi.

390. The artist, Julia Ivanovna Igumnov, who lived a long time in Yasnaya Polyana. At this time she helped Tolstoi to copy his manuscripts and his letters.

391. A. D. Arkhangelsky, a student in the Moscow University, who lived as a teacher in Tolstoi’s house.

392. These chapters on Resurrection were sent to the publishing house of Niva to be set up.

393. An interrogation point in the copy at the disposal of the editors.

394. Living at this time with the Tolstois in Moscow, Countess O. K. Tolstoi, in a letter to V. G. Chertkov on November 22nd, 1899, described Tolstoi’s illness in this way: “Yesterday we lived through a terrible evening and night. In the evening after dinner, Tolstoi went to his room to lie down, and after several minutes we were all attracted by terrible groans from him... he was taken with severe stomach pains which were very severe from four o’clock in the morning to seven in the evening. He suffered terribly and at first nothing helped.” Tolstoi suffered especially from vomiting which lasted twenty-eight hours. His doctors were P. S. Usev and Prof. M. P. Cherinov. “Both medicine and feeding,” another person wrote to Chertkov from Moscow, December 5, 1899, “is given now by entreaty and persuasion, now by tears and now by deception, which is[383] even more depressing than tears. To-day everything is better: pains and appetite and strength.” Tolstoi got out of bed December 6th and little by little began to walk. But the following days he had pain and felt weakness.

395. An omission in this place in the copy in possession of the editors.

396. This word in the original is underlined twice.

397. From Derzhavin’s Ode, “God.”

398. The exact title of the book by M. A. Engelhardt is Progress, As an Evolution of Cruelty, issued by F. F. Pavlenkov, Petrograd, 1899. To the author of this book, M. A. Engelhardt (1858–1882), Tolstoi wrote, in 1882, a very remarkable letter on the problem of non-resistance to evil by violence.

399. The journal, Niva.

400. The novel, The Forged Coupon.

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