Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1910-11-22
Tribute to ToIStoi Is Paid
By William Dean HOWellS

NEW YORK, Nov. 2U.-William Dean
Howells paid the following tribute to
Count To.stoi:
~ think he was a very great man and
a very good man-perhaps, the greatest
and the best Of his time. In a sense,
there is nothing to add to that. and more
over, l have written of what Tolstoi has
meant to me in my literary passions.
The fact that he is dead now does not
alter the significance of his work and of
himself.
And yet, perhaps, this dramatic, this
painfully terrible dramatic end, may call
for something more than l have already
said. 1t is true that Turgeniev once ad-
vised Tolstoi to stock to his writing and
forget his theories of conduct but II is
mistake to consider Tolstoi the man and
the creative artist as two separate en-
titles that may divorce from each other.
Who attempts too divorce art and life
makes a grave error.
TOLSIOI A REALIof.
"Tolstoi was a realist in art and in
life. 1t is perhaps difficult to estimate
what his influence has been on con-
temporary humanity, but I should say 1t
has been very great. He believed in taxi
ing the life of Christ for an example for
a precept, not the dogmas of the schools
and that seems to be the tendency of the
younger Christianity. In letters, l can
not say that he left a cult, although Ii
may be that three of his books-Peace
and War, Anna Karenina and Resurrec-
ton will never be surpassed. But you
know Shakespeare left no school, nor
Milton. nor Shelly. Zeola did, He was
tremendous fellow, Zeola, but he is
somewhat extinct now. And, that's It;
the lesser man has mannerisms or even
a manner and a manner can be caught,
taken up, initiated, even absorbed, but
great personality is incommunicable.
'T don't pretend to try to explain Toll
stoi's later days. l had never met him.
never communicated with him, but it
seems to me that he believed what he
lived and that he tried to live what he
believed. 1t was unfortunate that his
belief forces itself into such poignantly
dramatic expression. There he sat at
one end of the table in peasants clothes,
eating coarse food while woman stood
at the other side of the table and served
delicate viands to his family.
There is this about such poverty as
that-that it is imaginative in this sense
and dramatic in form, rather than real
The man experienced poverty; he lived
the life of the poor, wore their clothes
and ate their food but he could not feel
the dread that is never listed from the
poor-the dread of actual want tomor-
row. 1t was impossible that he should
actually want. We see that in every
circumstance of his death. Strive as he
might he did not die a peasants death,
unattended, cold, bare.
A VERY GREAT MAN.
''Yet he was a very great man and
very good man-perhaps have said, the
greatest and the best OF his time"
Henry George, Jr., representative-elect
and son of the famous single tax advo-
cate, whose views in many respects
were similar to those of Tolstoi, said:
81 last saw Tolstoi in the flesh on
June is. 1909, at his ancestral estate,
called Yasanaya Poliana, in the govern
ment (province) of Tulain, in the heart
of Russia. He was then In his S1st year
and spoke of his waning powers, al
though to me he appeared to be a man
of full mental power, yet delicate in
health.
His abandonment 81 home can be de-
scribed either to a further waning of
his power, especially mental power, or
else to the development of some phase
of his philosophy of self-abnegation.
mean by this latter that when he was
by the Greek church
and by decree of the Holy Synod. his
body when the breath had passed from
1t was not to be buried in consecrated
ground. He may have believed II better
for all his kith and kin that he should
die apart from them and so departed
from his home on feeling the approach
OF dissolution