ABSTRACT
No work of art attains its climax of beauty until those who contemplate it can forget that it is an artificial creation, and are able to regard it as naked truth. Tolstoy's writings often produce this sublime illusion. They seem vividly real. Were all artists like Tolstoy, people might readily come to believe that art is a simple matter; sincerity, a self-evident affair; imaginative writing, nothing more than a faithful account of reality, an effortless transcription. The original texts of his works show that Leo Tolstoy was not a man to whom writing came easily. He was one of the most painstaking and diligent of penmen; his literary frescoes were mosaics, laboriously pieced together out of millions upon millions of details, out of countless minute and particular observations. Tolstoy does not create dream worlds; he describes realities. Consequently, when he is telling a tale, we do not seem to hear an artist speaking, but the facts telling their own story.
