Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/322

308 from this time a new world of joys and sorrows had been revealed to Fedka,—the world of art; it seemed to me that I was witnessing what no one has the right to see,—the unfolding of the mysterious flower of poesy.

To me it was both terrible and delightful; just as if a treasure-seeker should find the lady-fern in bloom.

The pleasure consisted for me in suddenly, unexpectedly, discovering the philosopher's stone, for which I had been vainly seeking for two years—the art of expressing thought.

It was terrible, because this art would bring new demands and a whole world of desires incompatible with the sphere in which the pupils live—or so it seemed to me at the first moment.

There could be no mistake. This was not chance, but conscious, creative genius. I beg the reader to peruse the first chapter of the story, and notice the abundant touches of true creative talent scattered through it. For example, the scene where the woman complains angrily of her husband to her neighbor, and yet this woman, for whom the author feels a lively antipathy, bursts into tears when the neighbor reminds her of the breaking up of her home.

For the author who writes with the intellect and memory alone a quarrelsome woman would be created only as a foil for the peasant: from simple desire to torment her husband she would have necessarily called in the neighbor. But in Fedka the artistic feeling was expressed in the woman also, and so she weeps, and fears, and suffers; in his eyes she is not to blame.

Afterward there is a little side-play, when the neighbor puts on the woman's cloak ; I remember that I was so extremely struck by it that I asked him, "Why the woman's cloak?"

Not one of us had suggested to Fedka the idea of having the neighbor put on the woman's cloak.

He replied:—

"Why, it's more lifelike."

When I asked him, "Might we not say that he put