What is Art? I Like Tolstoy's Answer

What I felt I try to give you to feel

I thoroughly enjoyed reading ‘Anna Karenina.’ It’s full of sweeping images and grand drama.

I read Anna Karenina in Moscow some years ago when it was relatively peaceful.

You feel the emotions seeping through the pictures Tolstoy paints with his words.

In one of his books, Tolstoy tries to answer the question, ‘What is art?’ He is not the first or last to try, but I really like his answer.

"Art begins when a man, with the purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.”

What is Art, L. Tolstoy

Art starts with the feelings of the artist. It succeeds when he communicates it so that other people also feel it.

Applied to storytelling, this is something entirely different from telling the audience what you or a character in your story feels.

This is about feeling it yourself first and letting this feeling come through in the story you are telling.

Example: I won’t tell you that the boy is angry. Instead, I will feel my anger inside and tell you how he is clenching his fists or slamming the door. Or even how he makes his cup of tea. It will make you feel his anger without me telling you he is angry.

Have a good week full of art,

Rudolf

✨ P. S.: How does a storyteller find stories to tell? Once, I read a story about a haunted house 5 miles from where I live. I walked there, reread the story, and tried to locate the haunted house. Watch me doing that in the new video on my YouTube Channel.