Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Gorky, Maxim . Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library
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XXII

He talks most of God, of peasants, and of woman. Of literature rarely and little, as though literature were something alien to him. Woman, in my opinion, he regards with implacable hostility and loves to punish her, unless she be a Kittie or Natasha Rostov, i. e., a creature not too narrow. It is the hostility of the male who has not succeeded in getting all the pleasure he could, or it is the hostility of spirit against "the degrading

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impulses of the flesh." But it is hostility, and cold as in "Anna Karenin." Of "the degrading impulses of the flesh" he spoke well on Sunday in a conversation with Tchekhov and Yelpatievsky about Rousseau's "Confession." Suler wrote down what he said, and later, while preparing coffee, burnt it in the spirit-lamp. Once before he burnt Leo Nikolaevich's opinions on Ibsen, and he also lost the notes of the conversation in which Leo Nikolaevich said very pagan things on the symbolism of the marriage ritual, agreeing to a certain extent with V. V. Rosanov.