Page:Gorky - Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi.djvu/50

 Karatayev, nor an Akim, nor a Bezonkhy, nor a Neklyudov; all these men were created by history and nature, not exactly on Tolstoi's pattern, he only improved on them in order more thoroughly to support his teaching. But, undeniably, Russia as a whole is—Tiulin above and Oblomov below. For the Tiulin above look at the year 1905, and for the Oblomov below look at Count A. N. Tolstoi, I. Bunin, look at everything round about you. Beasts and swindlers—we can leave them out of consideration, though our beast is exceedingly national—what a filthy coward he is for all his cruelty. Swindlers, of course, are international.

In Leo Nicolayevitch there is much which at times roused in me a feeling very like hatred, and this hatred fell upon my soul with crushing weight. His disproportionately overgrown individuality is a monstrous phenomenon, almost ugly, and there is in him something of Sviatogor, the bogatir, whom the earth can't hold. Yes, he is great. I am deeply convinced that, beyond all that he speaks of, there is much which he is silent about, even in his diary—he is silent, and, probably, will never tell it to anyone. That "something" only occasionally and in hints slipped through into his conversation, and hints of it are also to be found in the two note-books of his diary which he gave me and L. A. Sulerzhizky to read; it seems to me a kind of "negation of all affirmations," the deepest and most evil nihilism which has sprung from the soil of an infinite and unrelieved despair, from a loneliness which,