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Audiobook edition · 9 h 2 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if beauty and pleasure tell us less about art than the feeling it passes from person to person?
At an opera rehearsal, Leo Tolstoy watches workers, singers and directors toil. The effort troubles him: what makes art worth its cost? In What Is Art?, he tests European theories of beauty, rejects pleasure as a sufficient answer, and asks what artistic expression actually does between people.
His answer is direct: art passes feeling from one person to another. From there, Tolstoy builds a demanding argument about sincerity, imitation and who art serves. He judges Wagner, Beethoven, French poets and his own novels, while bringing Christian moral standards to bear on the value of the feelings art shares.
What you’ll discover
- The cost behind art Begin with the labor of an opera rehearsal and the question it raises about art's purpose.
- Feeling as the test Explore what Tolstoy means by infection, and why shared emotion matters more to him than beauty.
- Sincerity against imitation Follow his distinction between clear, individual expression and work that merely looks like art.
- Famous names under scrutiny Meet a critic willing to challenge celebrated artists and apply harsh standards to his own novels.
- Art beyond the few Consider his insistence that art belongs to everyone, not only to a refined circle.
Who will love it
This book suits readers who enjoy a strong argument, anyone curious about why we value music, painting and stories, and people who like testing their taste against a bold thinker.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Art must justify its human cost
- Beauty cannot explain what art does
- Art carries feeling between people
- Shared beliefs guide judgments of art
- Class privilege narrows what art expresses
- Technique cannot manufacture sincere feeling
- Real art makes feeling contagious
- Future art belongs to everyone
- Judge connection and goodness separately
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What Is Art?
by Leo Tolstoy · 1897
Tolstoy watches a six-hour opera rehearsal and asks what art is worth to the people who pay for it.
Challenging2–5 hours to read20 languages
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In short
What do you owe to a painting, a symphony or a poem? Leo Tolstoy begins with newspaper coverage and the costs of art, then describes a conductor abusing performers through a six-hour opera rehearsal.
What Is Art? at a glance
- Reading time
- About 5 h3 h 55 min fast, 5 h 55 min slow
- Length
- 71,200 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1897by Leo Tolstoy
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Art costs far more than we admit
Tolstoy begins with a plain look at what art demands. Newspapers fill columns with reviews. Governments grant millions to academies and theaters. Hundreds of thousands of workers spend their lives serving this one activity.
Then he takes you backstage at an ordinary opera rehearsal. A procession of Indians with tinfoil halberds must be repeated again and again. The conductor shouts that his players are asses and swine, and they take it in silence. One phrase is sung twenty times in six hours.
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- 15-minute summary
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Details
- First published
- 1897
- Language
- English
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Tolstoy, Leo. What Is Art? Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/what-is-art.
Tolstoy, L. (2026). What is art? Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/what-is-art (Original work published 1897)
Tolstoy, Leo. What Is Art? Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/what-is-art.
@book{tolstoy2026what,
author = {Tolstoy, Leo},
title = {What Is Art?},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/what-is-art},
note = {First published 1897}
}
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What is What Is Art? by Tolstoy about?
It asks what art is and what it is for. Tolstoy rejects beauty as the aim of art, defines art as the passing of felt emotion between people, and judges art by how clearly it moves people and whether it unites them.
What is Tolstoy's definition of art?
Art is a human activity in which one person, having lived through a feeling, deliberately passes it on by outward signs such as sounds, lines, colors or words, so that others are infected by the same feeling.
Why does Tolstoy criticize Wagner and Beethoven?
He treats them as examples of art made for a narrow circle. He sees Wagner's Ring as a skilled counterfeit of borrowed myth and effects, and Beethoven's late works as unclear, so neither passes feeling to ordinary listeners.
The author
Leo Tolstoy
1828–1910 · Russian novelist and moral philosopher
Leo Tolstoy was a Russian author born in 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana, where he lived for much of his life. He wrote novels, stories, and essays. War and Peace appeared in 1865–1869 and Anna Karenina in 1875–1877. He died in 1910 at Astapovo, Russia.
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