What Is Art?
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Aylmer Maude
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors (errors confirmed in specific reviewed passages; not a full review or an exclusion count)
- Extent:
- ~94,300 words · 448 passages
- Aylmer Maude — translator, translator’s preface
Cite this work
- APALeo Tolstoy. (n.d.). What Is Art? (Aylmer Maude, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/leo-tolstoy/what-is-art
- MLALeo Tolstoy. What Is Art?. Translated by Aylmer Maude. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/leo-tolstoy/what-is-art.
- ChicagoLeo Tolstoy. What Is Art?. Translated by Aylmer Maude. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/leo-tolstoy/what-is-art.
Reference to the reproduced edition. SigPhi is the digital reproduction, not the publisher. Year, publisher and translator are included when recorded; “n.d.” means the year is unknown. Responsibility for an introduction or note depends on the passage cited.
What it is about
What Is Art? (1897).
Context and history
Tolstoy, after his conversion, decides that art is only worth anything if it transmits feelings that unite people, and on that criterion condemns Shakespeare, Wagner, Beethoven and his own novels. It is an uncomfortable, sincere book: few authors have repudiated their own work so wholeheartedly.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
The preview is hidden because the digitized text is not reliable enough. The full work remains available.