Leo Tolstoy was a Russian writer from the 1800s, best known for his larger-than-life novels, which are still considered some of the greatest books ever written. He wasn’t just a novelist, though; later in life, he became almost like a moral philosopher, questioning wealth and violence, living a much simpler life than his fame would suggest.His ideas about nonviolence went on to influence people like Gandhi. And in his final years, he turned his attention to art itself, writing ‘What Is Art?’Ask most people what art is for, and you’ll usually get one of two answers: it looks beautiful, or it took a lot of skill. Both answers are true, and both also miss something. A perfectly skilled painting can leave you completely cold.Just a short, three-minute song written by someone with no formal training can make you cry on a train. So skill and beauty clearly are not the whole story. Something else is happening when art actually works.
Quote of the day
To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling – this is the activity of art.
Leo Tolstoy
What does the quote mean?
This line comes from Tolstoy’s 1897 book What Is Art?, where he spends nearly two hundred pages arguing against the popular idea that art exists mainly to give pleasure or show off skill.First, the artist genuinely feels something, be it grief, joy, fear, or longing. Second, they call that same feeling back up inside themselves, well after the original moment has passed. Third, they use some tool to carry it out of themselves.Tolstoy called this quality “infectiousness,” and for him it was the entire test of whether something counted as art. Not whether it was pretty. Just whether it actually passed a feeling from one person to another.He gives a simple example in the book: a boy who has just seen a wolf tells the story to his friends. If he tells it in a flat, factual way, it’s just a report. But if he genuinely relives the fear while telling it, and his friends end up scared too, that retelling has become art. The wolf doesn’t need to be in the room. The fear does.
How is this idea still relevant today?
Our lives today are surrounded by content on social media, including things that look like art, polished, algorithm-optimized, technically flawless, and often completely forgettable a minute after you scroll past them. Tolstoy’s idea is different from this usual, as it doesn’t ask “was this well made?” It asks “did something in me actually move?”For example, a shaky, amateur phone video of a real moment, be it grief, joy, or an act of courage, can go viral across the internet and move millions, while a big-budget production with none of that honesty sinks without a trace.Tolstoy’s real point, in the end, is less about technique and more about honesty.
