What Is Art (1897) is the culmination of Tolstoy’s spiritual crisis after writing Anna Karenina. As an aesthetic philosophical tract on the nature of art, it’s certainly controversial, but also incredibly thought-provoking.
In the latest episode of Hardcore Literature, and in anticipation of the upcoming Anna Karenina Book Club Lecture Series, let’s talk about Tolstoy’s theory of art.
What Is Art? (The Tolstoy Podcast)
Timestamps:
- 1:30 – Tolstoy’s definition of art as religious consciousness
- 1:55 – Tolstoy damning Shakespeare, Cervantes, Beethoven, Wagner
- 5:20 – Tolstoy’s creation of character and consciousness
- 6:23 – How, when, and why Tolstoy wrote What Is Art?
- 7:30 – Levin and Tolstoy’s spiritual crisis
- 9:30 – Tolstoy’s tumultuous relationships with Turgenev and Tchaikovsky
- 16:13 – Tolstoy vs “art for art’s sake”, Baudelaire, Pater, and Wilde
- 19:00 – Does art have a duty to be moral?
- 24:00 – authentic art vs counterfeit art
- 33:00 – novels that have nothing to say (pride, sexual lust, and the tedium of living)
- 37:00 – art infects us with sincere religious experience
- 44:00 – where do you find your godliness?