num_pages: 230
description: During the decades of his world fame as sage &amp; preacher as well as author of War &amp; Peace &amp; Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote prolifically in a series of essays &amp; polemics on issues of morality, social justice &amp; religion. These culminated in What is Art?, published in 1898. Although Tolstoy perceived the question of art to be a religious one, he considered &amp; rejected the idea that art reveals &amp; reinvents through beauty. The works of Dante, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Baudelaire &amp; even his own novels are condemned in the course of Tolstoy's impassioned &amp; iconoclastic redefinition of art as a force for good, for the improvement of humankind.
language: English
title: What Is Art?
titlecomplete: What Is Art?
genres: Essays, Art, Russia, Philosophy, Literature, Russian Literature, Classics, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, 19th Century
ratings_count: 2971
publisher: Penguin Classics