Читальный зал

Что такое искусство?

Leo Tolstoy

Aesthetic treatise written over fifteen years and published in 1897–1898. It rejects definitions of art by beauty or pleasure and defines it as an activity by which one person consciously transmits to others feelings he has lived through, infecting them with them. It condemns as false art much elite art — including Wagner, the Symbolists and some of his own works — and defends a universal art, intelligible to all, uniting people in brotherhood. First published in full in Aylmer Maude's English translation.