ABSTRACT
L. Tolstoy’s What is Art? is a work that writers in aesthetics often note but rarely study with sympathy. It was written after his religious conversion, when he repudiated much of his earlier life, including his work as an artist. This is considered eccentric, and the explanation for his eccentricity - or so it is thought - lies ready to hand in his religious conversion. Troyat’s interpretation is in conflict with Tolstoy’s explicit view. One of his main points in What is Art? is that no art has value, whatever its content, unless it has what he calls 4infectiousness’. The function of art is to express what the whole being of man, will, heart and spirit, has experienced. It is valueless so far as it attempts to spin its purposes out of itself.
