Page:Leo Tolstoy - Father Sergius and Other Stories and Plays - ed. Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright (1911).djvu/15

 Rh ground that its author was "not yet sufficiently expert in expression!" For the next six years he seems not to have taken any interest in the drama; but in 1870 we find him writing to Fet:—

"There is much, very much, I want to tell you about. I have been reading a lot of Shakespear, Goethe, Púshkin, Gógol and Molière, and about all of them there is much I want to say to you."

A few days later he again wrote to the same friend:—

"You want to read me a story of cavalry life. … And I don't want to read you anything, because I am not writing anything; but I very much want to talk about Shakespear and Goethe, and the drama in general. This whole winter I am occupied only with the drama; and it happens to me as usually happens to people who, till they are forty, have not thought of a certain subject, or formed any conception of it, and then suddenly, with forty-year-old clearness, turn their attention to this new, untasted subject—it seems to them that they discern in it much that is new. All winter I have enjoyed myself lying down, drowsing, playing bézique, snow-shoeing, skating, and, most of all, lying in bed [ill] while characters from a drama or comedy have performed for me. And they perform very well. It is about that I want to talk to you. In that, as in everything, you