 | Yasnaya Polyana School — Chapter 10 : Afternoon SessionBy Leo Tolstoy (1862) |
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| Yasnaya Polyana School — Chapter 10 : Afternoon SessionBy Leo Tolstoy (1862) |
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Father of Christian Anarchism
: In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "Only by recognizing the land as just such an article of common possession as the sun and air will you be able, without bias and justly, to establish the ownership of land among all men, according to any of the existing projects or according to some new project composed or chosen by you in common." (From: "To the Working People," by Leo Tolstoy, Yasnaya P....)
• "You are surprised that soldiers are taught that it is right to kill people in certain cases and in war, while in the books admitted to be holy by those who so teach, there is nothing like such a permission..." (From: "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer," by Leo Tol....)
• "It usually happens that when an idea which has been useful and even necessary in the past becomes superfluous, that idea, after a more or less prolonged struggle, yields its place to a new idea which was till then an ideal, but which thus becomes a present idea." (From: "Patriotism and Government," by Leo Tolstoy, May 1....)
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Chapter 10
The scholars after dinner gather for the first lesson of the second session, just as they did for the morning, and wait for the teacher in the same way.
As a general rule this lesson is devoted to sacred or Russian history, and all the classes take part in it. By the time this lesson begins, generally the twilight is coming on. The teacher stands or sits in the middle of the room, and the scholars gather around him as in an amphitheater; some on benches, some on chairs, some on the window-seats.
All these evening lessons, and especially this first one, have an absolutely different character from those of the morning, a character of calm dreaminess and poetry.
Come into the school at dusk; no lights are visible at the windows, it is almost quiet; only the snow newly tracked in on the stairs, a subdued murmur, and a slight motion behind the door, and perhaps some little lad seizing the balustrade and running up-stairs two steps at a time, give proof that school is in session.
Come into the room.
It is almost dark behind the frosted windows; the older and better scholars pressing together, crowding close to the teacher, and lifting their pretty heads, look him straight in the face. The independent little housemaid, with preoccupied face, always sits in a high chair and seems to swallow every word. The more mischievous and younger the children are, the farther away they manage to get. But they all listen attentively, even seriously; they behave themselves as well as the older ones; but, notwithstanding their attention, we cannot help being conscious that they will not be able to repeat anything of what they hear, although they remember much of it. One leans on another's shoulder; another stands by the table. Occasionally one of them, stretching over to the very middle of the throng across the back of some one else, scratches some figure with his finger-nail on some boy's back. Rarely will any one look at you.
When a new story begins, all sit still as death and listen. If it happen to be one they have heard before then, here and there conceited voices are heard from those who cannot refrain from reminding the teacher. However, if the old story is one they like, they will urge the teacher to repeat it in full, and they will not let him be interrupted.
"Can't you be patient! hush!" they will cry to the mischievous urchin.
It hurts them to have the character and artistic quality of the teacher's tale interrupted. During the last weeks it has been the story of the life of Christ. Each time they have insisted on hearing the whole of it. If any part were omitted, then they themselves added their favorite ending the story of Peter's denial and the Savior's sufferings.
It would seem as if there were no one alive in the room, not a motion can it be that they are asleep?
If you should go round in the twilight and look into the face of any youngster whatever, you would find him sitting with his eyes fastened on his teacher's face, his brow drawn into a frown of attention, and ten times he will shake off his mate's hand thrown over his shoulder. If you should tickle him in the neck, he would not even smile, but would shake his head as if to drive away a fly, and again give all his attention to the mysterious and poetic tale, how the veil of the temple was rent, and darkness covered the face of the earth, and it seems to him both painful and delightful.
From : Wikisource.org
Father of Christian Anarchism
: In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From: Anarchy Archives.)
• "It usually happens that when an idea which has been useful and even necessary in the past becomes superfluous, that idea, after a more or less prolonged struggle, yields its place to a new idea which was till then an ideal, but which thus becomes a present idea." (From: "Patriotism and Government," by Leo Tolstoy, May 1....)
• "The Government and all those of the upper classes near the Government who live by other people's work, need some means of dominating the workers, and find this means in the control of the army. Defense against foreign enemies is only an excuse. The German Government frightens its subjects about the Russians and the French; the French Government, frightens its people about the Germans; the Russian Government frightens its people about the French and the Germans; and that is the way with all Governments. But neither Germans nor Russians nor Frenchmen desire to fight their neighbors or other people; but, living in peace, they dread war more than anything else in the world." (From: "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer," by Leo Tol....)
• "You are surprised that soldiers are taught that it is right to kill people in certain cases and in war, while in the books admitted to be holy by those who so teach, there is nothing like such a permission..." (From: "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer," by Leo Tol....)
Nathan Haskell Dole (August 31, 1852 – May 9, 1935) was an American editor, translator, and author. He attended Phillips Academy, Andover, and graduated from Harvard University in 1874. He was a writer and journalist in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. He translated many works of Leo Tolstoy, and books of other Russians; novels of the Spaniard Armando Palacio Valdés (1886–90); a variety of works from the French and Italian. Nathan Haskell Dole was born August 31, 1852, in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He was the second son of his father Reverend Nathan Dole (1811–1855) and mother Caroline (Fletcher) Dole. Dole grew up in the Fletcher homestead, a strict Puritan home, in Norridgewock, Maine, where his grandmother lived and where his mother moved with her two boys after his father died of tuberculosis. Sophie May wrote her Prudy Books in Norridgewock, which probably showed the sort of life Nathan and his older brother Charles Fletcher Dole (1845... (From: Wikipedia.org.)
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Chapter 10
