Leo Tolstoy

HALF the ignorance or misunderstanding of this greatest living figure in literature comes of the attempt to judge him as we judge the specialised Western novelist—an utterly futile method of approach. He is a Russian, in the first place. Had he come to Paris with Turguenieff, he might have been similarly de-nationalised, might possibly have developed into a writer pure and simple; the world might so have gained a few great romances—it would have lost infinitely in other directions. Turguenieff wished it so. “My friend,” he wrote to Tolstoy from his deathbed, “return to literature! Reflect that that gift comes to you whence everything comes to us. Ah! how happy I should be if I could think that my prayer would influence you.... My friend, great writer of our Russian land, hear my entreaty!” For{8}

once, the second greatest of modern Russians took a narrow view of character and destiny. Genius must work itself out on its own lines. Tolstoy remained a Russian from tip to toe—that is one of his supreme values for us; and he remained an indivisible personality. The artist and the moralist are inseparable in his works. “We are not to take ‘Anna Karènina’ as a work of art,” said Matthew{9}

LEO TOLSTOY, FROM A SKETCH BY VICTOR PROUT

(Reproduced by kind permission of Mr. F. R. Henderson)