Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 09 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/482

viii autumn of 1887, one friend of Count Tolstoy offered me, on the author's behalf, the unabridged Manuscript; another friend offered me the present complete translation, and it seemed wiser to substitute it in the Complete Works of Count Tolstoy, for the imperfect version. I was requested to correct and rewrite certain parts (i.e. make a new translation of them), which I did. Perhaps the most curious and interesting point connected with the affair is the explanation which was given to me of the Swiss firm's real reason for not publishing Part II. That firm is revolutionary, anarchistic in politics, and it published Part I. because it regarded the sentiments therein contained as suited to the aims of that faction. (This judgment evidently coincides with the judgment of the Russian censor!) But Part II. would not have made a good "campaign document," so it was practically suppressed, exactly as the censor would have suppressed undesirable matter. Of a truth, extremes do meet! It is difficult for an outsider, an impartial judge, to perceive in what particular this procedure on the part of the revolutionists differs from the procedure of the censor's office to which they so strongly object, unless it be that the revolutionists are more sweeping in their condemnations, that they "out-Herod Herod," to use a phrase which ought to meet even their views of the case.

It may add to the reader's interest if he will try to read the last half, with one eye on the censor and one on the revolutionists, after the good old Russian fashion mentioned in the "Byliny" (Epic Songs) as the peculiarity of Nightingale the Robber, who kept "one eye on Kieff, one on Tchernigoff."

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