Leo Tolstoy about creativity and craft (Anna Karenina, What is Art?)

Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina and aesthetic treatise What is art? are analyzed in terms of their reflection in the writer's views on art and craft, art and imitation. Tolstoy conceptualized the artist Mikhailov and the amateur Vronsky as special psychological types. Mikhailov's image is externally prosaic, it is deprived of the romantic traits of the chosen, the "prophet". In contrast, the portrait of Vronsky during his life with Anna in Italy, when he was interested in Italian painting, reproduces the artistic image of a patron, a freelance artist, who devoted himself to art. Theatricality of Vronsky's everyday behavior was intended to convince others and himself in his special mission. Mikhailov is modest and natural in his life entirely devoted to creativity. Being a wonderful portrait artist, he does not write portraits; a new picture on the Gospel story requires a complete immersion and dedication from him. It was Plato, "Tolstoy's spiritual brother" (S. Frank) who reflected on the ability of an artist to concentrate spiritually and exceed themselves in an irrational impulse. In the dialogues "Ion" and "Phaedrus" Plato gave an interpretation of the creative process as one of divine inspirations, or "mania". Tolstoy is close to Plato's understanding of creativity as a divine "obsession". The artist's work is shown in the novel as an all-consuming process, full of anxieties, doubts and insights; the "creativity" of a dilettante - as a pastime, a tribute to the secular fashion. Vronsky finds inspiration in the finished art forms. The purpose of his efforts is the mastery of the technique of famous Italian artists, of the existing "genres of painting". Tolstoy contrasts "technique" and genuine art as a way of "unveiling" that hide the "limits of content" from the artist and the viewer. Art is to expose the "core" of the human soul, penetrate the visible "covers" of the invisible, "intelligible" world. Through the external features a true artist begins to see the spiritual image, which is already close to Plato's world of "ideas". In his aesthetics Tolstoy is often close to Plato. According to Plato, the most authentic world is that of "ideas". The real world is only a reflection of the ideal world, the root cause of all things. Art is an imitation of the real world ("shadow' of the world), the latter being an imitation of the world of "ideas" itself. Plato's idealism is part of the aesthetics of Tolstoy. Plato's understanding of creativity as a reflection of the "intelligible" appeals to Tolstoy. An example of Tolstoy's understanding of art as penetration into the world of the invisible and the "infinite" is Mikhailov's paintings: his picture on the Gospel story "Exhortation by Pilate" and the portrait of Anna Karenina. In the perception of art as an ability to see subtle nuances, small details, Tolstoy is "slightly" close to a Russian painter K. Bryullov, who was quoted in the What is art? treatise. The art of nuances ("slightly") is not taught in schools, it is not a "technique", but a sign of a true artist who is able to see the ontological content through the external features.

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