 | Yasnaya Polyana School — Chapter 14 : Utility And BeautyBy Leo Tolstoy (1862) |
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| Yasnaya Polyana School — Chapter 14 : Utility And BeautyBy 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....)
• "People who take part in Government, or work under its direction, may deceive themselves or their sympathizers by making a show of struggling; but those against whom they struggle (the Government) know quite well, by the strength of the resistance experienced, that these people are not really pulling, but are only pretending to." (From: "A Letter to Russian Liberals," by Leo Tolstoy, Au....)
• "...for no social system can be durable or stable, under which the majority does not enjoy equal rights but is kept in a servile position, and is bound by exceptional laws. Only when the laboring majority have the same rights as other citizens, and are freed from shameful disabilities, is a firm order of society possible." (From: "To the Czar and His Assistants," by Leo Tolstoy, ....)
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Chapter 14
Why he leaped from the terrible murder of the countess to that question, God only knows; but everything
the sound of his voice, the seriousness with which he asked the question, the silent interest of the other two
made it evident that there was a legitimate and vital connection between this question and the conversation that had preceded. Whether this connection lay in the fact that he responded to my explanation that the crime was rendered possible by lack of education, I had spoken to them of that, or because he verified it in himself, as he transported himself into the mind of the murderer, and remembered his favorite occupation (he had a wonderful voice, and a great talent for music), or whether the connection consisted in the fact that he felt that now was the time for perfect honesty of expression, and all the questions that demanded elucidation arose in his mind; at all events, his question did not surprise any of us.
"But why have drawing? why learn to write well?" I asked, for I really did not know how to explain to him the advantage of art.
"Yes, why have drawing?" he repeated thoughtfully.
He had actually brought up the question, "What is the good of art?"
I dared not, I could not answer.
"What is the good of drawing?" exclaimed Semka. "You learn to make sketches, you can do anything with it!"
"No, that is sketching; but why draw figures?"
Semka's healthy nature had no difficulty in replying.
"Why this stick? Why a linden?" he asked, still thrusting at the linden.
"Well, then, why the linden?" I asked.
"To make rafters of!" exclaimed Semka.
"Well, then, why don't we have it cut down next summer?"
"Yes; why not?"
"No: but in reality," continued Fedka, obstinately, "why do we let the linden grow?"
And we proceeded to talk about the fact that not everything is for use, but that there is such a thing as beauty, and that art is beauty, and we understood each other; and Fedka understood perfectly why the linden is allowed to grow, and why we sing.
Pronka agreed with us, but he understood better what moral beauty was, goodness, in other words. Semka understood by means of his quick intellect, but he could not see how there could be beauty without use; he doubted, as often is the case with people of large intellect, who feel that beauty is strength, but who do not feel in their soul the need of this strength; like them, he wanted to get at art by means of the intellect, and he was striving to kindle in himself this fire.
"To-morrow we shall sing the Cherubim Song," said he; I remember my part."
He has the correct ear, but no taste, no feeling for music.
Fedka, however, perfectly understood that the linden was beautiful for its foliage in summer, and good to look at, and that was all that was needed.
Pronka understood that it was a shame to cut it down, because it was also a live thing: "You see it is just the same as blood when we drink the sap from a birch!"
Semka, though he did not say anything, was apparently thinking that there was not much use in it when it was rotten. It seems strange to me to be repeating what we said then, but I remember that we talked over everything, as it seems to me, that could be said about use and about beauty, both plastic and moral.
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.)
• "There are people (we ourselves are such) who realize that our Government is very bad, and who struggle against it." (From: "A Letter to Russian Liberals," by Leo Tolstoy, Au....)
• "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....)
• "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....)
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 14
