Primary sourceBook1897
What Is Art?
Leo Tolstoy · 1897
Tolstoy's 1897 book arguing that true art communicates feeling and unites people morally, rejecting much celebrated art, including his own novels.
Tolstoy's own theory of art, in which he judges even his own earlier novels by his strict moral standards.
About this source
What it is
What Is Art? is a book by Leo Tolstoy, completed in Russian in 1897 and first published in English in 1898 due to censorship problems in Russia.
Why it matters
Tolstoy argues that art is anything that communicates feeling from one person to another, rejecting beauty as the basis of art. He judges art by strict Christian moral standards, dismissing accepted masters such as Beethoven, Wagner, Shakespeare and Dante, and even much of his own earlier fiction. The book shows Tolstoy's late turn toward radical Christian ethics, the same views that led to his excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901.
Look closer
- Why might a famous novelist reject his own earlier novels as bad art?
- What does Tolstoy mean by saying art should be accessible to everyone, not just an educated elite?
- Do you agree that a feeling's sincerity matters more than its moral content for something to be 'good' art?
This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Leo Tolstoy on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.
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