Hello and welcome back to hardcore literature.

Today we're talking about one of the most interesting, potentially most controversial, treatises on the theory of art, at least the most controversial that I have come across.

It's really difficult and not difficult in the sense of it wrestling with ideas that are hard to

conceptualize, hard to relate to. It's actually ostensibly a very easy book. We're talking about

What is Art by Leo Tolstoy? It is difficult in the sense that this book, which is not very long, if you've got the

Pavia and Volokonsky Penguin edition, it's only maybe 120 pages, not counting the appendices.

You can read it in a night or two.

You will cover it in notes.

If you're anything like me, you'll pull it apart, you'll talk about it,

you'll think about it endlessly. But what is art by Leo Tolstoy is difficult because one moment

you'll find yourself nodding along, vehemently agreeing, if not with how he conceptualises these

aesthetic ideas, but with the essence of his ideas, you'll probably agree with the sentiment.

And then the very next page, you'll vehemently disagree.

You'll say absolutely not.

And of course, I'm going to disagree with Tolstoy.

One moment, he's talking about how art is a manifestation of love, religious consciousness,

and union brotherhood. And if we're taking religion away from the secular,

away from the formal religions, and we're talking about religion or religious consciousness more as a

spirituality, then I kind of agree with that. We'll get into this a bit more. But then the very

next page, Tolstoy will damn almost everybody. Shakespeare, Servantes, Wagner, Beethoven, towards the end of what is art.

Tolstoy spends a lot of time tearing apart Beethoven's ninth symphony.

He tears apart Wagner's ring cycle.

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