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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: which show the invariable consistency with which he lauded my
father's literary talents. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same of
my father's attitude toward Turgénieff.
In this, too, the want of dispassionateness in his nature
revealed itself. Personal relations prevented him from being
objective.
In 1867, apropos of Turgénieff's "Smoke," which had
just appeared, he wrote to Fet:
There is hardly any love of anything in "Smoke" and hardly any
poetry. The only thing it shows love for is light and playful
adultery, and for that reason the poetry of the story is repulsive.
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