_July 28th._ The other day we walked in the woods. Tolstoi sat down on his camp stool, which was given him by N. He sighed and said: “Yes, poor fellow!” Then he turned to Marie Lvovna and asked: “Masha, who’s the poor fellow?” “I do not know, papa.” “Buddha. N. bespattered Socrates, and now he is going to do the same to Buddha.” Yesterday Tolstoi was showing us a portrait group of the Tolstoi brothers, and, pointing to his brother Nicolay, said: “He was my beloved brother. He was the man of whom Turgenev justly said that he had not a single one of the faults which one must have in order to be a writer. And I, although it is wrong of me, must say of my son Leo, that he, on the contrary, has all these faults, but none of the gifts, which are needed for a writer.” Ilya Lvovich said to Mme. Stakhovich that a writer must himself experience everything in order to tell it to others. Tolstoi replied: “Mere technique is sometimes enough to describe what he has experienced. A real writer, as Goethe justly observed, must be able to describe everything. And I must say that, although I am not very fond of Goethe, he could do it.” To-day Tolstoi was enthusiastic about Mozart’s operas, particularly about _Don Juan_. Together with the extraordinary richness of its melody, he rates very high its power to give in music the reflection of characters and situations. Tolstoi recalled the statue of the commander, the village scene, and especially the duel. He said: “I hear there a presentiment, as it were, of the tragic _dénouement_, together with the excitement and even the romance of the duel.” ... Then Tolstoi turned the conversation to the importance and province of form in art: “I think that every great artist necessarily creates his own form also. If the content of works of art can be infinitely varied, so also can their form. Once Turgenev and I came back from the theatre in Paris and discussed this. He completely agreed with me. We recalled all that is best in Russian literature and it seemed that in these works the form was perfectly original. Omitting Pushkin, let us take Gogol’s _Dead Souls_. What is it? Neither a novel nor a story. It is a something perfectly original. Then there is the _Memoirs of a Sportsman_, the best book Turgenev ever wrote; then Dostoevsky’s _House of the Dead_, and then, sinner that I am, my _Childhood_; Hertzen’s _Past and Thoughts_; Lermontov’s _Hero of our Time_....” _August 1st._ Tolstoi talked with Marie Alexandrovna Schmidt in my presence about a certain Khokhlov who went mad. Tolstoi told me his story briefly, and then said: “What a riddle insanity is! What is he--alive or dead?”