Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/227

Rh Or, "Long ago men noted the frequent apparition in Russia of self-taught men of talents, but the phenomenon is not explained by all in the same way."

Or, "Three hundred years have passed since the land of the Czechs became a dependency of the German Empire."

Or, "The village of Karacharevo, scattered along the mountain flank, is situated in one of the most fertile grain-producing governments of Russia."

Or, "The road wandered wide and lost itself;" or it is a popular exposition of something in natural science on a single printed sheet, filled half full of flattries addressed by the author to the muzhik.

If you give such a book to any one of the children, his eyes begin to grow dull, he begins to yawn.

"No, it is too deep for us, Lyof Nikolayevitch," he will say, and he will give you back the book. For whom and by whom such "popular books" are written remains a mystery to us. Of all the volumes of this kind read by us not one was retained except the "Dyedushki" of the old story-teller Zolotof, which had a great success in school and at home. Some are simply wretched writings, composed in a miserable literary style, and as they find no readers in the ordinary public, are therefore consecrated to the common people. Others are still more wretched—written in a style which is not Russian, a style lately invented, pretending to be "popular," like that of Kruilof's "Fables." Still others are sophistications of foreign books designed for the people but lacking the elements of popularity.

The only books comprehensible for the people and adapted to the taste of the people are those not written for the people, but proceeding from the people folk-tales, proverbs, collections of songs, legends, poems, enigmas, like the recent collection of Vodovozofs.

Without having had experience of it, one cannot believe how much fresh zeal they put into the constant reading of all books of this kind, even the narratives of the Russian people, the heroic legends and poems, the