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Title: What Is Art? (Penguin Classics) by Leo Tolstoy, Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky ISBN: 0-14-044642-7 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Insufferably bad
Comment: Tolstoy has the aesthetic/philosophical insight of a thin-lipped Puritan. His conclusions are dogmatic and authoritarian. What is art, according to Tolstoy? That which gives communal emotional expression in glory of God. All else is vanity, alas: mere self-indulgent Hedonism. Follow the precepts in this book and watch your horizons begin to narrow. The fact that Tolstoy was a distinguished novelist and that he spent so much time thinking about these matters is of no consequence. As many have said before, Tolstoy was a very good novelist but a very bad philosopher.
Rating: 2
Summary: Tolstoy Important but Unreliable about Art
Comment: Tolstoy was a great writer, and his late period of "saintly" simplicity and "solidarity" with the Russian peasants (whom he continued to use on his land) is important to understand as an example of something--I'm not sure what. Maybe as an example of the contradictions of that kind of utopianism (see Isaiah Berlin's great essays on Tolstoy). Also, What is Art?, which dates from this last period, makes some important reminders about the social context of art. BUT ...
It is also the classic example of Philistinism, casually dismissing great works of art because they don't conform to St. Leo's late ideal of simple, straightforward form and content. The previous reviewers make clear the dangers of this kind of attitude--when they don't understand a painting or poem, it couldn't possibly be because there's something lacking in their response. It must be because the work is decadent or wrong. Such an attitude ultimately leads not to the simple purity Tolstoy envisioned, but to the sort of dumbing down we have in American television, cinema, and "beach" novels. "I know what I like" has become the manifesto of boorishness, adding self-righteousness to poor taste.
Tolstoy's What is Art? is worth reading, but keep in mind that his descriptions of music by Wagner or Beethoven, various novels, etc., are ridiculous caricatures that have little to do with the real thing. Furthermore, it's difficult not to see "St. Leo" as incredibly hypocritical, staying in all summer reading the latest novels while his peasants work in his fields, and then criticising the novels because they're remote from the common life of the peasants.
If...you've ever been baffled by a Monet exhibit or a Beethoven sonata, it doesn't mean that these are no good and you may as well go back to your sitcoms and soaps. It means you need to look and listen again, and maybe think a bit. The rewards are there if you're willing to get off your intellectual butt.
Rating: 5
Summary: Confused about art? This is your guide written by a genius!
Comment: Do you have thoughts like "well, maybe it's just me... They say Monet is great, but perhaps I just don't understand it..." I say, maybe it's your own gut that tells you what is the true art and what is not!
This work by Tolstoy is a summary of his 15 year spiritual journey and research of art and what it's all about. And who is the author! A genius himself! In this piece he tells us in plain language that the whole art of his century (with a few exceptions) is a product of a rotten class of people, a select few, whose main concerns were far from being common with the feelings of any normal human being. "Art, nowadays, is for pleasure, not for bringing moral values in the form of genuine feelings to a reader". This is basically the general idea of the work. At first, you feel dumbfounded reading this, but after a few pages, his statements start to make sense. Only a true moral feeling expressed in the right form, not necessarily beautiful, but understandible and to the point, is a true piece of art.
Now, let's go back and think for minute: do I really like Sheakspeare or is it the literary criticism the makes me feel that I am not a fully cultured person unless I acknowledge Sheakspeare as the greatest of all, or at least one of the greatest writers (playwrights) ever? Even if I think that he was too verbose and vague to begin with? That sometimes you read him and whole paragraphs go by without you fully understanding what he's talking about? Mind you, he wrote for the theater, which means characters' sentences need to be pretty concise and clear, so that the audience could follow them. Anyway, Tolstoy will help you understand this problem.
His main idea, again, is for art to convey the feelings of fraternity and love to the reader, not sexual desires, fake patriotism, shovinism or those exquisite feelings of the upper class. Art is about compassion, love, oneness of all people and good healthy humor. I totally agree with that.
One more thing: in this work, Tolstoy confronts the idea of goodness with the idea of beauty, saying that for the sake of beauty, the contemporary artists disregard goodness. This a very controversial statement, in my opinion, but there is a point there...
Also recommended: of course, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Resurrection, Childhood, Boyhood & Youth, as true standards of literature, by which you can judge the works of others. All other fiction by Tolstoy is just as great and easy to read, especially his short stories, such as "Master and Man", "The Forged Coupon", etc. His other less known works that are revolutionary by their essence, are "My Confession", "What is My Belief (Religion)" and especially (really hard to find) "Critique of Dogmatic Theology", where he expounded his views on religion and traditional Church Christianity with all its absurd, useless dogmas, which only divert your attention from what Christ really taught. This is a very controversial work, which was prohibited in Russia of his day, but which is certainly worth reading. By the way, why doesn't Everyman's Library publish it?
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Title: Anna Karenina (Modern Library Classics) by Leo Tolstoy, Leonard J. Kent, Nina Nikolaevna Berberova, Constance Black Garnett ISBN: 067978330X Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 10 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy by Donna Tussing Orwin ISBN: 0521520002 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Notes from Underground (Vintage Classics) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Richard Pevear, Fyodor M. Dostoevsky, LuAnn Walther, Larissa Volokhonsky ISBN: 067973452X Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: September, 1994 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: A Confession and Other Religious Writings (Penguin Classics) by Leo Tolsyoy, Jane Kentish, Leo Tolstoy ISBN: 0140444734 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1988 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue by William A. Dyrness ISBN: 0801022975 Publisher: Baker Book House Pub. Date: November, 2001 List Price(USD): $21.99 |
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