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70 Tolstoy; shook him to the point of “crushing his faith in goodness, in everything,” and made him deny even his art:

“Truth is horrible… Doubtless, so long as the desire to know and to speak the truth exists men will try to know and to speak it. This is the only remnant left me of my moral concepts. It is the only thing I shall do; but not in the form of art, your art. Art is a lie, and I can no longer love a beautiful lie.”

Less than six months later, however, he returned to the “beautiful lie” with Polikushka, which of all his works is perhaps most devoid of moral intention, if we except the latent malediction upon money and its powers for evil; a work written purely for art’s sake; a masterpiece, moreover, whose only flaws are a possibly excessive wealth of observation, an abundance of material which would have sufficed for a great novel, and the contrast, which is