Sample notes

Isaiah Berlin - 'Tolstoy on Art and Morality'
Open University radio broadcast

1. T's views on A extreme - but he asks important Qs which disturb society

2. 1840s Uni of Kazan debate on purpose of A

T believes there should be simple answers to probs of life

3. Met simple & spontaneous people & soldiers in Caucasus

Crimean Sketches admired by Turgenev & Muscovites but T didn't fit in milieu

4. Westernizers Vs Slavophiles - T agreed with Ws but rejects science (Ss romantic conservatives)

5. 2 views of A in mid 19C - A for art's sake/ A for society's sake

6. Pierre (W&P) and Levin (AK) as egs of 'searchers for truth'

7. Natural life (even drunken violence) better than intellectual

8. T's contradiction - to be artist or moralist

9. T's 4 criteria for work of art

a) know what you want to say - lucidly and clearly
b) subject matter must be of essential interest
c) artist must live or imagine concretely his material
d) A must know the moral centre of situation

10. T crit of other writers

Shkspre and Goethe - too complex
'St Julien' (Flaubert) inauthentic
Turgenev and Chekhov guilty of triviality

11. What is Art? Emotion recollected and transmitted to others [Wordsworth]

Not self-expression - Only good should be transmitted

12. But his own tastes were for high art - Chopin, Beethoven, & Mozart

T Argues he himself corrupted

13. Tried to distinguish between his own art and moral tracts

14. 'Artist cannot help burning like a flame'

15. Couldn't reconcile contradictions in his own beliefs

Died still raging against self and society