Has anyone read Tolstoy's What is Art?

>>9895072
Yes, but more importantly I've read it absolutely rekt by Orwell:
http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lear/english/e_ltf

seems similar to the concept of "deathworks," art and cultural works that have the freudian death drive and are made to destroy

File: wagaecuccccc.jpg (253KB, 2048x1447px)

253KB, 2048x1447px

>>9895254
Thanks for this. I'll probably read this first, since it is shorter, and keep it in mind while I read Tolstoy's piece. But right now I gotta go to work

>>9895254
Had a breif skim through before I'm due to leave...Seems to rest on a tenuous assertion that Tolstoy was an asshole in real life and that this is basis enough to discredit his whole opinion on the importance of morals. Did Orwell ever consider that, despite perhaps the occasional slip, Tolstoy was trying, with admirable sincerity, to live a proper Christain life?

As I said, just taken from my skim through it. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'll read over it in detail tonight

>>9895254
Orwell completely invalidates his own point as he clearly also has a personal dislike against Tolstoy in the first place. Tolstoy at that point of writing What Is Art was an incredibly radical christian to the point where he disavowed his own masterpieces alongside most other great works of art simply because they didn't align with his own viewpoint. What Is Art is an interesting read but it shouldn't be taken seriously due to its highly personalised Christian viewpoint of what is 'good' and what isn't. Orwell was just looking for an easy way to shit on Tolstoy and his Christian views but it just makes him look like a petty moron.

>>9896025
>What Is Art is an interesting read but it shouldn't be taken seriously
> Orwell was just looking for an easy way to shit on Tolstoy

this

>>9896556
thanks boyo

My main complaint is that when an author says other authors should put something important in their work they always bring up something important to them. I went on Brandon Sanderson's page once and saw him talking about "Writing for Social Justice". Even before we get to the point of discussing whether teaching morals or ways of thought the goal of art, there's still expression and bias in art. You could call art pure bias, the impressions of one person of how the world is.
When you get to how the world "should" be I think you're crossing a barrier between guiding the reader to discover more about themselves and their own feelings so they can reach their own conclusion on what they what to do, and forcing your own conclusion of what they should do on them.
It's distasteful, I think, to spend an entire work talking about your feelings and your teneous grip on reality and then suddenly expect the reader to empathize with your "cause". That may be why you wrote it, but that's not why they are reading it.
It's no better than being sly about telling people what they want others to do. I want hear what the reader has to say about my work and their experience with it, and their own conclusion. Why should art have to have a goal when it can have an exploration?

>>9896025
The christian viewpoint wasn't just christian, he was saying that religious perception tends to bring to light the highest sense of morality and duty to people and it was the duty of the artist to lead this kind of idea as did the vanguards of any of the other religions did. Christian brotherhood simply meant universal brotherhood and so in that way it can still be taken very seriously. He was a bit harsh on the renowned works of art though in what seemed an attack based from the scholars who circlejerk those works in fruitless discursions.

I especially liked the end where he talks about shifting perspectives on what is currently prevailing in politics, science and the like, not acquiescing to what is only a flawed system of working and resigning your fate to what fickle methods and theories currently prevail.

>>9895072
Nobody takes his utilitarian moralism seriously.

>>9895072
Every true reader of Lyovochka knows where he expounded his actual aesthetic theory.

Who here know?

>>9897314
t. pedobear

>>9896674
If writers have no moral duty, then what worth is their work to humanity? Why should we take time out of our short lives to read their book? For pleasure alone? Pleasure is idle.

As a Christian, Tolstoy was obviously implying what is good for humanity is contained in the teachings of Christ. Therefore good art, according to Tolstoy, consists of those works which invoke the moral values instilled within Christianity. These thoughts are largely in accordance with what Plato advocated (hence why Tolstoy's work is mentioned in the notes of my edition of The Republic). The difference being, of course, that the Greeks preceded Christianity. We could say then, that this moral order which should be replicated in art is the very same moral order we as a civilisation have been trying to apprehend since the very beginnings of history.

I think, as long as your morals are in accordance with those which have been fostered by Western civilisation and upheld by tradition, then your work is valid as meaningful art

Tolstoy's philosophy is there to make you think, but in most cases you're probably gonna disagree with him, and that's alright, because he was mostly wrong on things,. However, his different point of view served a purpose.

>>9898356
Well, that's a nice way of pussyfooting it

>>9897557
Same person here. I'm reading the intro just now, and came across a quote which puts it succinctly:

"You cannot piece together a puzzle-map as long as you keep one bit in a wrong place, but when the pieces all fit together, then you have a demonstration that they are all in their right places. Tolstoy used that simile years ago when explaining how the comprehension of the text, "resist not him that is evil," enabled him to perceive the reasonableness of Christ s teaching, which had long baffled him. So it is with the problem of Art. Wrongly understood, it will tend to confuse and perplex your whole comprehension of life. But given the clue supplied by true "religious perception," and you can place art so that it shall fit in with a right understanding of politics, economics, sex-relationships, science, and all other phases of human activity."

Do you see the harmony which is given to life when one applies Tolstoy's vision? As long as everything in your life, including art, follows the same "religious perception", then you can live a life which is free of contraction. Each section of life is rationally in accordance with the other under one unifying idea. I think it's beautiful, not to mention sensible.