ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1883, Turgenev had known himself to be dying. "I have had all the happiness which I could have wished," he told a friend. "I have worked, I have had success; I have loved, I have been loved. It is bad to die before one's time; but for me, it is time." And as he lay on his bed, his mind thronged with memories of the past, his thoughts reverted continually to Tolstoy. Of A Confession, he had written: " It is a remarkable work on account of its sincerity, truth, and passionate conviction; but it is based entirely upon false ideas, and, in the last analysis, leads to the most sombre negation of all human life." Since then, only strange rumours had reached him; amongst them, that Tolstoy had definitely abandoned art. Realizing at last, despite all their misunderstandings and all their quarrels, not only that Tolstoy was a very queer fellow, though undoubtedly a genius and " the kindliest of men," but an artist "the latchet of his shoes he was not worthy to stoop down and unloose," he addressed to him the most moving appeal that one writer has probably ever written to another.
