Leo Tolstoy’s What Is Art? argues that art is defined by the transmission of feeling rather than beauty, and that much celebrated art fails this test. The deck covers his critique of aesthetic theories, his account of religious and universal art, and his judgments on specific works.
1 / 85
Chapter 1 · Question
What dilemma does the Russian lady's attitude toward the peasants' church art illustrate?
WakeCards · wakecards.com · Big ideas. Quick review.
Chapter 1 · Answer
The lady disbelieved church doctrine but wished the peasants to keep their blind faith, since their lives were poor and bare with little art or poetry. The introduction uses this to pose the problem: a false, antiquated view of life is supported by art we enjoy and prize. Should the error be screened to preserve the art, or should the art be sacrificed for truthfulness?
WakeCards · wakecards.com · Big ideas. Quick review.
Arrow keys move between cards. Space or Enter flips.
All questions and answers
Every card in the deck, in reading order. Click a chapter to expand. The reviewer above uses the same content.
Introduction (part 1)4 cards
What dilemma does the Russian lady's attitude toward the peasants' church art illustrate?
The lady disbelieved church doctrine but wished the peasants to keep their blind faith, since their lives were poor and bare with little art or poetry. The introduction uses this to pose the problem: a false, antiquated view of life is supported by art we enjoy and prize. Should the error be screened to preserve the art, or should the art be sacrificed for truthfulness?
Chapter 1
What did reformers like early Christians, Mohammedans, and Puritans do to art, and why?
They perceived that art bound people to the old faith, so they were angry with it: they chipped the noses from statues and images, opposed ceremonies, decorations, stained-glass windows, and processions, and were ready to banish art altogether. They also saw art depraved men through dramas, drinking-songs, novels, pictures, and dances that awakened man's lower nature. Yet art always reasserted her sway.
Chapter 1
What did the artist companion say about the indecent pictures at the Bodkin Gallery?
She remarked with conscious superiority that from an artist's point of view the subject was of no consequence. The pictures being very well executed were artistic and therefore worthy of attention and study; morality had nothing to do with art. The narrator, by contrast, found such things attracted him and made him restless and nervous, and suggested the subject-matter was objectionable.
Chapter 1
What does the introduction say about the definition of beauty given by aesthetic writers?
It amounts merely to this: beauty is a kind of pleasure received by us, not having personal advantage for its object. It follows that beauty is a matter of taste, differing among different people, and to attach special importance to what pleases me and others trained like me repeats the old mistake that divides society — like declaring my race, nation, church, or family the best. It indicates ignorance and selfishness.
Chapter 1
Introduction (part 2)3 cards
According to the chapter, what is the one great quality making a work of art truly contagious?
The chapter states that sincerity is the one great quality making a work of art truly contagious. If an artist is genuinely actuated by a feeling and impelled to communicate it—not for money or fame but because he must share it—he will not rest until he finds a clear way of expressing it. Such a man, drawing from the depths of his nature, is sure to be original.
Chapter 2
How does the chapter distinguish science from art?
The chapter says science investigates and brings to human perception the truths and knowledge a given society considers most important, while art transmits these truths from the region of perception to the region of emotion. Science demands preparation and sequence, so trigonometry cannot precede geometry; art instead makes understood and felt what in argument might be inaccessible, infecting any man whatever his plane of development.
Chapter 2
Why does the chapter say people of "our circle" cannot distinguish true art from counterfeits?
The chapter says many people of upper and middle class society live unnatural lives, in conventional relations and artificial surroundings, so they have lost the simple sense of infection with another's feeling that is the essence of art. Lacking this inner test, they mistake other things for art, seek external guides like recognised authorities, or accept what merely produces a physiological effect or an intellectual puzzle.
Chapter 2
Introduction (part 3)4 cards
According to the introduction, what is the destiny of art in our time?
The introduction concludes that art's destiny is to transmit from the realm of reason to the realm of feeling the truth that human well-being consists in being united together, and to establish in place of the existing reign of force the kingdom of God, that is, of love, which is recognized as the highest aim of human life.
Chapter 3
How does Tolstoy's view judge Romeo and Juliet as art?
Tolstoy admits Romeo and Juliet infects, though artificially, only those carefully educated to it. It is not universal art, reaching only a minority, and its subject-matter is the attractiveness of love at first sight, which Tolstoy calls sensuality. The moral deduced from consequences belongs to moral science, not art; art's subject-matter is the feeling transmitted.
Chapter 3
Why does Tolstoy consider his own novel Resurrection bad art?
Though Resurrection is a masterpiece that infects readers with feelings Tolstoy approves of, he judges it exclusive art laden with details of time and place. It lacks the simplicity and compression required of universal art; things are mentioned that could be omitted, and the style is not simple, with long involved sentences. It appeals mainly to the leisured class.
Chapter 3
What does the introduction say about art being progressive?
The introduction states that, on Tolstoy's view, art is not stationary but progressive. Though the highest religious perception found expression eighteen hundred years ago and produced unmatched art, and similar cases exist in the East, the subject-matter of art improves over long periods. We should no longer esteem poems appealing to destroy foes, since religious perception bids us have no foes.
Chapter 3
CHAPTER II4 cards
What two questions does Tolstoy say society must answer about art?
Tolstoy argues society must determine whether all that claims to be art is really art, whether all art is good (as his society presupposes), and whether art is important enough to justify the sacrifices it requires. He adds it is even more necessary for the conscientious artist to know this, so he can be sure his work has valid meaning and is not mere infatuation.
Chapter 4
How does Tolstoy show that defining art as 'producing beauty' is unclear?
The ordinary man calls art the manifestation of beauty, yet cannot say what separates a good ballet from a bad one, or why costumiers and cooks are excluded. Tolstoy notes Renan and Kralik count costume, taste, smell, and touch as arts, and that after 150 years since Baumgarten, 'What is beauty?' remains unsolved, each new aesthetician answering differently.
Chapter 4
What does Tolstoy say the Russian word krasota means compared with European usage?
Tolstoy argues krasota means only what pleases the sight: a man, horse, house, or view may be beautiful, but deeds, thoughts, and music are called good or bad, not beautiful. In European languages, he says, 'beau' and 'schön' have absorbed the sense of 'good,' yielding phrases like 'belle âme,' and this usage is spreading into Russian.
Chapter 4
Why does Tolstoy object to art being supported by forced labor and public money?
Tolstoy argues every ballet, opera, or picture requires the unwilling labor of thousands at harmful, humiliating work, and artists are maintained by rich patrons or government subsidies collected from people who may sell their only cow and never receive art's pleasures. He says once equal rights are dimly perceived, this cannot continue without first deciding whether art is good enough to redeem the evil.
Chapter 4
CHAPTER III3 cards
How do Sulzer and Mendelssohn differ from Baumgarten on art's aim?
Sulzer and Mendelssohn contradict Baumgarten's main position: for them art's aim is not beauty but goodness. Sulzer says only what contains goodness is beautiful, and art should serve educating moral feelings toward social welfare. Mendelssohn says art carries forward the beautiful, obscurely felt, until it becomes the true and good, aiming at moral perfection. Their ideal is a beautiful soul in a beautiful body.
Chapter 5
What three kinds of beauty does Winckelmann identify?
Winckelmann separates art's mission from goodness, making external, visible beauty art's sole aim. He names three kinds: beauty of form; beauty of idea, expressed in the position of the figure in plastic art; and beauty of expression, attainable only when the first two conditions are present. Beauty of expression is art's highest aim, achieved in antique art, so modern art should imitate ancient art.
Chapter 5
How does Kant ground aesthetic judgment?
Kant posits a judging capacity (Urteilskraft) forming judgments without reasonings and producing pleasure without desire, alongside pure reason (truth) and practical reason (goodness). Subjectively, beauty is what pleases generally and necessarily, without reasonings or practical advantage. Objectively, it is the form of a suitable object perceived without any conception of its utility. Schiller follows Kant, calling art a game.
Chapter 5
CHAPTER IV4 cards
What two fundamental conceptions do all aesthetic definitions of beauty lead to?
Tolstoy says they reduce to two: one holds beauty as something existing independently—a manifestation of the Perfect, Idea, Spirit, Will, or God—accepted by Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Cousin and others. The other holds beauty to be a kind of pleasure we receive that has no personal advantage as its object, favored chiefly by English aesthetic writers.
Chapter 6
Why does Tolstoy say the objective definition of beauty collapses into the subjective one?
The author argues that we call something absolutely perfect only because its manifestation gives us a certain pleasure. So the objective definition is nothing but the subjective conception differently expressed: both amount to calling beauty that which pleases us without evoking desire. He concludes there is no objective definition of beauty.
Chapter 6
How does Tolstoy describe the method actually used by existing aesthetics to define art?
The author argues aesthetics works backwards: a certain class of works pleasing a particular circle (Phidias, Homer, Raphael, Bach, Shakespeare, Goethe) is first accepted as art, then a definition is framed to cover them. He cites Folgeldt, who drops the demand for morality because Romeo and Juliet and Wilhelm Meister would fail it, and Muther widening his standard to include the Decadents and Symbolists.
Chapter 6
What analogy does Tolstoy use to show that defining art by pleasure is mistaken?
He compares it to food: no one claims the importance of food lies in the pleasure of eating, or that cayenne-spiced dinners, Limburg cheese and alcohol are the best human food because they please us. Likewise, people understand eating's meaning as nourishment only when they stop treating pleasure as its aim; the same applies to art and beauty.
Chapter 6
CHAPTER V4 cards
How does Tolstoy define art in this chapter?
Tolstoy defines art as a human activity in which one person consciously, by external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, so that others are infected by them and experience them too. He contrasts this with speech, which transmits thoughts rather than feelings, and insists art is a means of union among men, not a source of pleasure.
Chapter 7
Why does Tolstoy reject the 'expression of emotions' definition of art?
Tolstoy says the experimental definition (Véron's) is inexact because a man may express his emotions through lines, colours, sounds, or words without acting on others by that expression. In that case the mere manifestation of feeling is not art. Art requires that the feeling be transmitted so others are infected by it, not merely expressed.
Chapter 7
What is Tolstoy's main objection to the physiological-evolutionary definition?
Tolstoy argues the physiological-evolutionary definition (Schiller, Darwin, Spencer) treats the derivation of art rather than the artistic activity itself. Its variant, based on pleasurable excitement of the nervous system (Grant Allen), is also inexact because it would include many non-art activities, such as preparing handsome clothes, pleasant scents, and even victuals—as neo-aesthetic theories did.
Chapter 7
Why does Tolstoy say Sully's definition of art is inexact?
Tolstoy says Sully's definition—producing objects or actions giving pleasure to producer and spectators apart from personal advantage—is inexact because it would include conjuring tricks and gymnastic exercises, which are not art. It also fails because many genuine works of art, such as gloomy, heart-rending scenes in poetry or plays, give the producer no pleasure and the audience an unpleasant sensation.
Chapter 7
CHAPTER VI3 cards
According to Tolstoy, what determines whether a feeling transmitted by art is good or bad?
Tolstoy argues that art's value depends on the religious perception of life held by a society. Feelings that bring people nearer to the ideal their religion indicates are good; feelings that estrange them from it are bad. Religion, as the highest comprehension of life available to a society's foremost members, serves as the basis for valuing human sentiments.
Chapter 8
How did art get judged in classical Greece and Rome, per Tolstoy's examples?
Tolstoy argues that among the Greeks, whose religion placed life's meaning in earthly happiness, beauty, and strength, art transmitting joy and energy of life was good, while art conveying effeminacy or despondency was bad. Among the Romans, who saw meaning in national well-being, art expressing joy at sacrificing personal welfare for the common weal was good.
Chapter 8
Why did upper-class Europeans after the Middle Ages lose a religious basis for judging art?
Tolstoy argues that after doubting Church doctrine—exposed through the Crusades, papal abuses, and classical learning—the rich and powerful could not accept true Christianity, since its teaching of brotherhood and equality negated their privileges. Left with no religious view of life, they involuntarily returned to a pagan view placing life's meaning in personal enjoyment, judging art by beauty and pleasure.
Chapter 8
CHAPTER VII4 cards
According to Tolstoy, what did upper classes adopt as the standard of good art after losing faith in Church Christianity?
The author argues that once the upper classes lost faith in Church Christianity, beauty—defined as the pleasure received from art—became their standard of good and bad art. An aesthetic theory then arose among them justifying this conception, claiming art's aim is to exhibit beauty, and its partisans asserted this view was no invention of their own but existed in the nature of things and was recognized even by the ancient Greeks.
Chapter 9
Why does Tolstoy say the Greeks seemed to unite beauty and goodness?
The author argues the Greeks' conception of the good was not yet sharply divided from the beautiful because of their low moral ideal compared with the Christian one. Though Socrates subordinated beauty to goodness, Plato spoke of spiritual beauty, and Aristotle demanded art have a moral influence (katharsis), they could not dismiss the notion that beauty and goodness coincide, producing the compound word kalokagathia.
Chapter 9
What does Tolstoy claim about the supposed 1,500-year gap in aesthetic science?
The author argues nothing of the kind happened: the science of aesthetics neither did nor could vanish because it never existed. The Greeks, like everyone everywhere, considered art good only when it served goodness as they understood it. Tolstoy says the Greeks never had a science of aesthetics; it was erected on an obsolete Greek view of life by eighteenth-century men, especially shaped by Baumgarten.
Chapter 9
How does Tolstoy explain why Baumgarten's aesthetic theory was so readily accepted?
The author argues the theory suited the upper classes because it justified the false position in which they lived. He compares it to Malthus's population theory and Marx's theory, which are accepted credulously however unfounded because they justify existing conditions. He says such theories pass uncriticised and are preached, perhaps for centuries, until the conditions they served are destroyed or their absurdity becomes too evident.
Chapter 9
CHAPTER VIII4 cards
What does Tolstoy claim about the scope of upper-class European art?
The author argues that upper-class European art is falsely taken as universal art, when in fact it is only the art of a small section of Christendom. Two-thirds of humanity (Asia and Africa) know nothing of it, and within Christian society hardly one percent use it while ninety-nine percent live and die crushed by toil, never tasting it.
Chapter 10
How does Tolstoy answer the claim that the masses will eventually understand upper-class art?
The author argues this is unjust: many works that delighted upper classes when produced were never later understood or valued by the masses, remaining pastimes for rich people. He adds that the crowd, especially the half-spoilt town crowd with perverted taste, can be accustomed to any art energetically thrust upon it, but that does not make it the people's art.
Chapter 10
Why does Tolstoy say working people cannot receive upper-class art even if given access?
The author argues upper-class art is strange in its very nature, transmitting feelings of people far removed from laborious life. What is enjoyment to the rich is incomprehensible or repugnant to a working man; subjects like honour, patriotism, and amorousness evoke bewilderment, contempt, or indignation. Even free access in galleries and concerts would not elevate him, and might pervert him.
Chapter 10
What dilemma does Tolstoy pose about art's accessibility, and how do 'clever and immoral people' avoid it?
The author argues that if art is a vital spiritual blessing essential for all, it should be accessible to everyone; since it is not, either art is not so vital, or what we call art is not the real thing. He says clever and immoral people avoid the dilemma by denying the common people's right to art, calling its enjoyers the elect or Uebermenschen and the rest a vulgar herd meant to serve them.
Chapter 10
CHAPTER IX4 cards
According to Tolstoy, what three results followed from upper-class art's perversion?
The author argues three results followed: art was deprived of its varied religious subject-matter; having only a small circle in view, it lost beauty of form and became affected and obscure; and chiefly, it ceased to be natural or sincere, becoming thoroughly artificial and brain-spun.
Chapter 11
What makes an art-product genuine, per Tolstoy's comparison with thought?
The author argues an art-product is genuine only when it brings a new feeling, however insignificant, into the current of human life, just as a thought-product is real only when it transmits new conceptions rather than repeating what was known. This explains why children and youths are so strongly impressed by works that first transmit unfamiliar feelings.
Chapter 11
Why does Tolstoy say religious perception yields fresh feelings while enjoyment does not?
The author argues enjoyment has limits fixed by human nature, while humanity's forward movement, voiced by religious perception, has no limits. Each advance in religious perception produces new feelings, as with the Greeks, the Hebrew prophets, and medieval poets. Feelings from the desire for enjoyment, by contrast, are limited and were long ago experienced and expressed.
Chapter 11
What three feelings does Tolstoy claim form almost all the subject-matter of rich-class art?
The author argues the feelings of the wealthy classes amount to three insignificant and simple feelings: pride, sexual desire, and weariness of life. Pride dominated early exclusive art, as in Renaissance laudations of popes, kings, and dukes; sexual desire then entered more and more; and discontent with life appeared later, expressed by Byron, Leopardi, and Heine before becoming fashionable.
Chapter 11
CHAPTER X4 cards
According to Tolstoy, why did art of the upper classes become obscure and affected?
Tolstoy argues that because the upper classes lost belief, their art became poor in subject-matter and increasingly exclusive. Artists composing for a small circle—popes, kings, courtiers—aimed only at those people, so they were drawn to allusions comprehensible only to the initiated. This exclusiveness, he says, grew until obscurity itself was elevated to a merit and condition of poetry.
Chapter 12
What does Mallarmé say is the charm and aim of poetry?
Mallarmé holds that poetry should always contain a puzzle, and that naming an object destroys three-quarters of the poem's enjoyment, which lies in guessing gradually. He says allusion and suggestion are the dream, and that evoking an object to reveal a state of soul—or the reverse—constitutes the symbol. Tolstoy quotes this from Jules Huret's literary inquiry.
Chapter 12
Which French poets does Tolstoy cite as leaders of the obscure movement, and who criticized it?
Tolstoy names Baudelaire and Verlaine as the celebrated leaders, followed by Mallarmé, whom he calls the most important of the young poets. He also lists Symbolists and Decadents such as Moréas, Morice, Régnier, Maeterlinck, and Gourmont. He notes the French critic Doumic had not accepted the dogma and called for an end to the 'theory of obscurity.'
Chapter 12
How does Tolstoy judge Baudelaire's and Verlaine's poems and their fame?
Tolstoy finds their work affected, obscure, and often unintelligible, citing Baudelaire's prose poems and Verlaine's Ariettes as examples he cannot understand. He says Baudelaire's feelings are evil and low, deliberately expressed with eccentricity, and calls both versifiers far from skilful in form and contemptible in subject-matter. He finds their great celebrity incomprehensible.
Chapter 12
CHAPTER XI3 cards
Why does Tolstoy say upper-class art arose from a different source than universal art?
The author argues universal art arises when someone of the people, having experienced a strong emotion, feels the need to transmit it to others. Upper-class art, by contrast, arises chiefly because wealthy people demand amusement and pay well for it, seeking feelings that please them. Since art cannot be produced at will but must generate spontaneously, artists devised methods of producing imitations to meet that demand.
Chapter 13
Why does Tolstoy reject realism as a measure of art's quality?
The author argues the chief characteristic of art is infecting others with the feelings the artist experienced, and infection is not identical with describing the accessories of what is transmitted — superfluous details usually hinder it by diverting the receiver's attention. He compares valuing art by realism to judging food's nutritive quality by its external appearance, saying it shows we are talking of a counterfeit, not a work of art.
Chapter 13
How does Tolstoy use Hannele to illustrate effectfulness replacing aesthetic feeling?
The author argues that to transmit pity for a persecuted girl, the playwright should either have a character express the pity infectiously or describe the girl's feelings correctly. Instead, Hannele's author kills the girl on stage, darkens the theatre, and shows her pursued and beaten to dismal music. Tolstoy says the audience feels excitement — pity plus relief that they are not suffering — which is not aesthetic feeling, like watching an execution.
Chapter 13
CHAPTER XII3 cards
What three conditions does Tolstoy say produce counterfeit art?
Tolstoy names three cooperating conditions: (1) the considerable remuneration of artists and the professionalism this produced, (2) art criticism, and (3) schools of art. He argues professionalism first weakens and eventually destroys art's chief quality, sincerity, since the professional artist must continually invent subjects to live by his trade.
Chapter 14
What does Tolstoy say art schools can and cannot teach?
Tolstoy argues no school can evoke feeling in a person or teach the unique manner of expressing it, since the essence of art lies in exactly those things. Schools can only teach how to transmit feelings experienced by other artists in those artists' ways. He says this spreads counterfeits and dulls the capacity to understand true art.
Chapter 14
How does Tolstoy use Beethoven to illustrate criticism's harm?
Tolstoy says Beethoven, once deaf, could not hear and perfect his work, so he published 'artistic ravings.' Criticism, having declared him great, seized on these abnormal works with special gusto and attributed to music the power to describe what it cannot. Wagner then praised this late period and built his own theory and music upon it, spawning further imitators.
Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV2 cards
How does Tolstoy answer the defense that failed works are needed for real ones?
He compares it to a baker excusing bad bread by saying that without hundreds of spoiled loaves there would be no well-baked ones. He grants that where there is gold there is also much sand, but says that is no reason for talking a lot of nonsense in order to say something wise.
Chapter 16
What does Tolstoy's comparison of the child's story with Zola and Kipling show?
Tolstoy says reading celebrated novels by Zola, Bourget, Huysmans, and Kipling did not touch him; he saw the author's intention from the first lines and felt no artistic impression. An unknown writer's tale of a widow, flour, a hen, and rye-flour Easter cake held him because he was infected by the feeling the author had experienced and transmitted.
Chapter 16
CHAPTER XV4 cards
What single indication does Tolstoy give for distinguishing real art from counterfeit?
Tolstoy says the one indubitable indication is the infectiousness of art: if a person, without effort and without changing his standpoint, experiences a mental condition uniting him with the author and with others who share the work, then the object is a work of art. However poetic, realistic, or interesting a work may be, it is not art if it fails to evoke this distinct feeling of joy and spiritual union.
Chapter 17
On what three conditions does the degree of art's infectiousness depend?
Tolstoy lists three conditions: the greater or lesser individuality of the feeling transmitted; the greater or lesser clearness with which it is transmitted; and the sincerity of the artist, meaning the force with which the artist himself feels the emotion he transmits. He then argues all three reduce to sincerity, since a sincere artist expresses what he actually felt, which is individual, and is driven to find clear expression.
Chapter 17
What does Tolstoy say is the chief characteristic of the feeling produced by real art?
Tolstoy argues the chief peculiarity is union: the receiver of a true artistic impression feels so united with the artist that the work seems his own, expressing what he had long wished to express. Real art destroys the separation between receiver and artist, and also between the receiver and all others who receive the work. In this freeing of personality from isolation and uniting it with others lies art's chief characteristic and attractive force.
Chapter 17
Which of the three conditions does Tolstoy call most important, and why?
Tolstoy says sincerity is the most important, because it includes the other two: a sincere artist expresses the feeling as he experienced it, and since each person differs from everyone else, that feeling will be individual; sincerity also impels the artist to find clear expression. He claims sincerity is always present in peasant art, which explains its power, but is almost entirely absent from upper-class art, produced by artists driven by covetousness or vanity.
Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII4 cards
According to the chapter, what are the two organs of human progress?
The author argues that art is one of two organs of human progress: by words man interchanges thoughts, and by the forms of art he interchanges feelings with all men—past, present, and future. Because it is natural to use both organs, perverting either causes evil: the organ's proper work goes undone, and the perverted organ acts harmfully.
Chapter 19
What is the first consequence of art's perversion, per the chapter?
The author argues the first consequence is the enormous expenditure of working people's labour on useless and mostly harmful things, plus the waste of priceless lives. Millions labour 10–14 hours setting type for pseudo-artistic books or serving theatres and galleries, while children spend years on scales, exercises, verses, and drawing, becoming physically and morally deformed and losing the capacity to produce real art.
Chapter 19
What perplexity does art's perversion cause in peasants and children?
The author argues peasants and children understand praise only for physical strength (Hercules, conquerors) or moral strength (Buddha, Christ, martyrs). They are perplexed to see singers, painters, and dancers honoured and paid far more than saints. Tolstoy cites peasants asking why Pushkin was honoured, and his own childhood amazement at artists exalted to the level of heroes and saints.
Chapter 19
What fourth consequence follows from the false relation to art?
The author argues upper-class people, meeting contradictions between beauty and goodness, put the ideal of beauty first and free themselves from morality's demands—claiming morality, not their art, is antiquated. He says this appeared long ago but is now expressed with especial impudence by Nietzsche and his adherents, decadents, and English aesthetes like Oscar Wilde, whose art denies morality and lauds vice.
Chapter 19
CHAPTER XVIII4 cards
According to Tolstoy, what caused the art of upper-class society to fall into a lie?
The author argues the cause was that upper classes stopped believing in Church teaching but refused to accept true Christian teaching in its real principles of sonship to God and brotherhood to man. Living without belief, some turned to hypocrisy, some to open disbelief, some to agnosticism, and others to the Greek worship of beauty, proclaiming egotism as a religious doctrine.
Chapter 20
What does Tolstoy say is the only cure for the illness of art?
The author argues the malady's cause was non-acceptance of Christ's teaching in its full meaning, so the only cure is acknowledging that teaching fully. He claims such acknowledgment is now not only possible but inevitable, since the meaning has become accessible to all and modern life is already permeated by its spirit, consciously or unconsciously.
Chapter 20
What religious perception does Tolstoy say defines the aim of life in our time?
The author argues the religious perception of our time consists in acknowledging that the aim of life, both collective and individual, is the union of mankind. He says it is already sufficiently distinct that people need only reject the false theory of beauty, which treats enjoyment as art's purpose, and religious perception will naturally become the guide of contemporary art.
Chapter 20
How does Tolstoy compare contemporary art to a prostitute, and what contrast does he draw?
The author argues the art of his circle has become a prostitute: always adorned, always saleable, enticing and ruinous. Real art arises occasionally from the artist's inner need to express accumulated feeling, like a child conceived in love, and needs no ornaments. Counterfeit art, like prostitution, is produced continually for gain, and its consequences are perversion, unsatisfying pleasure, and weakened spiritual strength.
Chapter 20
CHAPTER XIX4 cards
According to Tolstoy, on what foundations will the art of the future arise?
Tolstoy argues the art of the future will not develop from present-day upper-class art, which has entered a blind alley after abandoning religious perception. Instead it will arise on completely new foundations: transmitting feelings embodying the highest religious perception of the times—feelings drawing men together in brotherly union, or universal feelings that can unite all men.
Chapter 21
Who will appraise art in the future, and by what standard?
Tolstoy argues the appraisement of art will no longer fall to a separate class of rich people but to the whole people. For a work to be esteemed good, approved, and diffused, it must satisfy the demands of the great masses living in the natural conditions of laborious life—not the demands of a few people in identical, often unnatural conditions.
Chapter 21
Why does Tolstoy say secure maintenance harms an artist's productiveness?
Tolstoy argues art is not a handicraft but the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced, and sound feeling is engendered only when a man lives the full natural life of mankind. Security and luxury remove the artist from the struggle with nature for maintenance, depriving him of the most important and natural feelings. He calls no position more injurious to productiveness.
Chapter 21
What subject-matter and form will the art of the future have, per Tolstoy?
Tolstoy argues its subject-matter will be feelings drawing men toward union or already uniting them, plus the simplest feelings of common life open to all—fairy-tales, songs, riddles, jests, sketches—rather than exclusive feelings like pride and satiety. Its form will prize brevity, clearness, and simplicity over bulkiness, obscurity, and complexity, making art open to everyone.
Chapter 21
CHAPTER XX4 cards
What evidence does Tolstoy give that art consumes enormous labor and money?
Tolstoy notes that newspapers devote space to theatre, music, and art reviews; governments grant millions of roubles in Russia and twenty million francs in France to academies, conservatoires, and theatres; huge buildings are erected for museums and schools; and hundreds of thousands of workmen spend their lives supplying art's demands. He argues hardly any activity except the military consumes so much energy.
Chapter 22
How does Tolstoy describe the treatment of performers at an opera rehearsal?
Tolstoy recounts attending a rehearsal where the conductor repeatedly rapped his stick and scolded musicians and singers with words like 'asses,' 'fools,' and 'swine' at least forty times in an hour. Performers, demoralized and accustomed to luxury, submitted silently. Tolstoy contrasts this with a workman being scolded for a genuinely needful task, arguing the opera's purpose is worthless.
Chapter 22
What is Tolstoy's verdict on the opera's plot and the ballet?
Tolstoy calls the opera one of the most gigantic absurdities: an Indian king disguises himself as a minstrel, the bride falls for the minstrel, then discovers he is the king, and everyone rejoices. He says no such Indians existed, people don't converse in recitative, and the ballet, with half-naked women making voluptuous movements, is simply a lewd performance.
Chapter 22
Why does Tolstoy say art's importance is doubtful and its definition unclear?
Tolstoy argues art is used to justify sacrificing millions' labor, men's lives, and love between people, yet art itself grows vaguer. Critics contradict each other, and artists of every school—romanticists, parnassians, decadents, symbolists—disown one another, as do naturalists and psychologists. Excluding what critics deny is art, scarcely any art remains, so it is hard to say what good art is.
Chapter 22
CHAPTER XX4 cards
How long did Tolstoy work on this subject before finishing the book?
Tolstoy says the subject occupied him for 15 years. He does not mean he wrote the book continuously for 15 years; he began writing on art 15 years earlier, believing he could finish without a break. His views were then too unclear, so he restarted the work six or seven times, each time setting it aside before finally completing it.
Chapter 23
According to Tolstoy, how are science and art related?
Tolstoy argues science and art are as closely bound as the lungs and heart, so if one organ is vitiated the other cannot act rightly. True science investigates the truths a society considers most important; art transmits those truths from perception to emotion. He compares them to a barge with kedge-anchors: science gives direction, art causes actual progression, so false science causes false art.
Chapter 23
What does Tolstoy claim about modern science's two divisions?
The author argues that the science of the upper classes studies only what is wanted or pleasant to scientists, not everything impartially. One division—theology, philosophy, history, political economy—justifies the existing order as immutable; the other, experimental science, pursues curiosity or technical improvements unrelated to human life. He says the first is harmful because it occupies ground true science should hold, the second because it diverts attention and its gains often injure mankind.
Chapter 23
What does Tolstoy say real science should study?
The author argues real science should study how man's life should be established: questions of religion, morality, and social life. It lies in knowing what to believe, how associated life should be constituted, how to treat sexual relations, educate children, use land, and treat foreigners and animals. He says such science is dismissed as unscientific by defenders of the existing order and by those engrossed in experimental science.
Chapter 23
M.4 cards
How does Tolstoy explain the success of Baudelaire, Verlaine, and the Decadents?
The author argues that upper-class art had become a mere amusement with an ever-more-limited subject matter, so artists felt everything had been said. To freshen a stale form, Baudelaire and Verlaine invented new forms, dressed with previously unused pornographic details, and critics and the upper-class public hailed them as great writers. He says this explains the success of all the Decadents, not just these two.
Chapter 24
What examples does Tolstoy give of celebrated poems with no meaning?
Tolstoy cites a sonnet by Mallarmé, printed in 'Pan' in 1895, as not exceptional in its incomprehensibility, and says other Mallarmé poems and his prose volume 'Divagations' are impossible to understand, evidently by design. He also quotes a song by Maeterlinck and asks who went out, who came in, who is speaking, and who died.
Chapter 24
How does Tolstoy answer those who dismiss new art as insane?
He says this attitude is unjustifiable: the new art is spreading and has won a firm position in society, and if we may judge art bad merely because we do not understand it, then labourers who do not comprehend Goethe, Schiller, Hugo, Dickens, Beethoven, or Raphael could use the same argument against what we admire. He concludes he can only say the new art is incomprehensible to him.
Chapter 24
What does the amateur's diary report about the 1894 Paris exhibitions?
The diarist describes Pissarro as comparatively comprehensible though out of drawing, with no subject and improbable colour splashed everywhere. At the Symbolists he saw a wooden relief of a naked woman squeezing blood from her breasts, explained as 'La Terre,' a heart swimming in a yellow sea called 'Illusion perdue,' and a profile with leeches called 'Le Mal.' Tolstoy uses this to show painting outstrips poetry in unintelligibility.
Chapter 24
M. Montesquiou.4 cards
What does Tolstoy claim about his recapitulation of The Nibelung's Ring compared with reading the librettos?
Tolstoy states that the impression from his recapitulation is incomplete, but however incomplete it is, it is infinitely more favourable than the impression resulting from reading the four booklets in which the work is printed. He thus argues that his summary presents the work better than the work presents itself.
Chapter 25
How does the footnote describe the aim of Louise Maude's translations in the appendices?
The footnote says the translations in Appendices I, II, and IV are by Louise Maude. Her aim was to keep as close to the originals as the obscurity of meaning allowed. Therefore the sense, or absence of sense, has been more considered than the form of the verses.
Chapter 25
According to the summary, what does Siegfried do after tasting the dragon's blood?
After killing the dragon, Siegfried puts his finger, smeared with the dragon's blood, to his lips. This enables him to know men's secret thoughts and the language of birds. The birds tell him where the treasure and ring are and that Mime wishes to poison him; hearing Mime's intention, Siegfried kills him.
Chapter 25
What happens to Brünnhilda at the end of the Third Day?
Brünnhilda takes the ring from Siegfried's hand, and when his corpse is carried to the pyre she gets on a horse and leaps into the fire. The Rhine rises and its waves reach the pyre; three nymphs seize Hagen when he throws himself in for the ring, and one of them holds the ring.
Chapter 25
Source and licence
Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #64908 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.
Version: Public domain edition. Retrieved 2026-10-29. Cards reviewed 2026-10-29.
These cards paraphrase the text for study. They are not a substitute for reading the book, and they do not reproduce long passages.
Turn your own notes into cards
Upload a PDF, Word, or text file and get question-and-answer cards for closed-notes practice. Five cards are free, no signup.