Music

What Is Tolstoy’s ‘What Is Art?’

Taking a look at Tolstoy’s rebuke of great artists of the past invites reflection on what art is really for.
What Is Tolstoy’s ‘What Is Art?’
"Count L.N. Tolstoy in His Work-room," 1891, from the painting by Ilya Repin. Public Domain
Raymond Beegle
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When a great mind aims at truth, he sometimes strikes a bull’s-eye. When a great mind is off the mark, it is often far off the mark. Consider Pythagoras and his celebrated theorem about the dimensions of a triangle—on the mark—and his belief, as well, that it is a sin to eat beans.

Leo Tolstoy had an equally wide range of ideas, some arguably closer to the truth than others. “What is Art,” his exhaustive study of the meaning and purpose of art, written over a period of 15 years, captures the magnitude and diversity—as well as the incongruity—of his views. I have read it many times over 60 years and marveled at how it occasionally strikes the center of the target, and occasionally misses it altogether.

Tolstoy on Beauty

Tolstoy’s essay begins with a rogue’s gallery of 78 prominent intellectuals from the 17th century to the author’s own time. He cites their various aesthetic theories. Among them, he stated:
Raymond Beegle
Raymond Beegle
Author
Raymond Beegle has performed as a collaborative pianist in the major concert halls of the United States, Europe, and South America; has written for The Opera Quarterly, Classical Voice, Fanfare Magazine, Classic Record Collector (UK), and The New York Observer. Beegle has served on the faculty of the State University of New York–Stony Brook, the Music Academy of the West, and the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria. He taught in the chamber music division of the Manhattan School of Music for 31 years.