when I had absolutely everything I wanted: a handsome family, ample means, fame constantly increasing, the respect of my neighbours, health, strength of mind and body, apparently everything. So long as I fancied life had some meaning in it, although I knew not how to express it, the reflection of life in art gave me pleasure, and it was pleasant to me to look upon life in this mirror called art. But when I tried to discover the meaning of it all, the mirror struck me as tantalizing, or as simply nothing at all.” This was in 1881. Evidently a mental and moral crisis was approaching. Twenty years previously he had been tormented by similar doubts, and, after much torturing self-analysis, had come to the conclusion that his writings were of no use to the people at large (in his mind the sole true test of their utility), and simply the product of egoism and self-glorification, “It is plain to me,” he wrote in 1861, “that the compiling of magazines and books, the immense and ceaseless process of printing and publishing may be profitable enough for authors, printers, and publishers, but bring no benefit to the people, and therefore stands self-condemned.” But then he had married. The happiness of a well-assorted match and a tranquil family life drew him quite away from all seeking after a general theory of life, and, as Tolstoi himself characteristically puts it, “although I considered all writing to be rubbish, I went on writing, nevertheless, for I had tasted of the seduction of writing, the seduction of the enormous literary renown of work which was really worthless.”
But now, after an interval of twenty years, all the
41
