November 20, 1910

There is a literalism in Slavic writers which has only a slight correspondence in westerners. I think of Nicolai Gogol who gave up writing because he felt it was sacrilegious. A distraught Rossetti buried his creative output in his wife's coffin. And dug it back up later. Whereas Gogol died. Dostoievsky seems to have written from bitter experience whereas Dickens, with comparable tragic inspiration, was able to compartmentalize.

Leo Tolstoy (September 9, 1828 to November 20, 1910) is an exception. Thoreau gave it all up, knowing Mrs. Emerson would still do his laundry. Tolstoy gave up a lot of money, even though doing so, greatly added to the physical housekeeping burdens faced by -- his wife. 

So perhaps we should not be too surprised to find that Tolstoy was very confident about his assessment of moral dilemmas. He was asked, we read in Icon and Axe (James Billington, 1966) :

"Is there not a difference between the killing a revolutionist does and that which a policeman does?" Tolstoy answered, "there is a much difference as between cat-shit and dog-shit. But I don't like the smell of either one or the other."

Nor did his wife . She had to clean it up.