Sample
notes
 Isaiah
Berlin - 'Tolstoy on Art
and Morality'
Open University radio broadcast
1. T's views on A extreme
- but he asks important Qs
which disturb society
2. 1840s Uni of Kazan debate
on purpose of A
T believes there should be
simple answers to probs of
life
3. Met simple & spontaneous
people & soldiers in Caucasus
Crimean Sketches admired
by Turgenev & Muscovites
but T didn't fit in milieu
4. Westernizers Vs Slavophiles
- T agreed with Ws but rejects
science (Ss romantic conservatives)
5. 2 views of A in mid 19C
- A for art's sake/ A for society's
sake
6. Pierre (W&P) and Levin
(AK) as egs of 'searchers for
truth'
7. Natural life (even drunken
violence) better than intellectual
8. T's contradiction - to
be artist or moralist
9. T's 4 criteria for work
of art
a) know what you want to
say - lucidly and clearly
b) subject matter must be of essential interest
c) artist must live or imagine concretely his material
d) A must know the moral centre of situation
10. T crit of other writers
Shkspre and Goethe - too
complex
'St Julien' (Flaubert) inauthentic
Turgenev and Chekhov guilty of triviality
11. What is Art? Emotion
recollected and transmitted
to others [Wordsworth]
Not self-expression - Only
good should be transmitted
12. But his own tastes were
for high art - Chopin, Beethoven, & Mozart
T Argues he himself corrupted
13. Tried to distinguish
between his own art and moral
tracts
14. 'Artist cannot help burning
like a flame'
15. Couldn't reconcile contradictions
in his own beliefs
Died still raging against
self and society
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