Page:Leo Tolstoy - Father Sergius and Other Stories and Plays - ed. Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright (1911).djvu/26

 20 slightest strengthening or weakening of the sound beyond what is needed, destroys the perfection, and, consequently, the infectiousness of the work. So that the feeling of infection by the art of music, which seems so simple and so easily obtained, is a thing we receive only when the performer finds those infinitely minute degrees which are necessary to perfection in music. It is the same in all arts: a wee bit lighter, a wee bit darker, a wee bit higher, lower, to the right or the left, in painting—a wee bit weaker or stronger in intonation, or a wee bit sooner or later, in dramatic art—a wee bit omitted, over-emphasized, or exaggerated, in poetry—and there is no contagion. It is only obtained when an artist finds those infinitely minute degrees of which a work of art consists, and only to the extent to which he finds them."

Confronted by words such as these, it is amazing that any one can pretend that Tolstoy was indifferent to quality in the forms of art; but not less amazing is the assertion that only what is directly moralizing was considered by him fit subject-matter for art. On this point his words are decisive when he includes among the subject-matter suitable for good art "the simplest feelings of common life."

The truth is that, in spite of certain prepossessions which tend to confuse the matter, and in