O que é Arte?: A Polêmica Visão do Autor de Guerra e Paz (Portuguese Edition) - Livro de bolso

During the decades of his world fame as a wise man and preacher, as well as author of War and Peace and Ana Karenina, Tolstoi wrote prolifically in several essays and polemics, on the themes of morality, social justice and religion. They culminated in What Is Art?, which was published in 1898. Although Tolstoi perceived the question of art as a religious issue, he considered and rejected the idea that the art shows and reinvents itself through beauty. To the author, good art should communicate to people the good feelings rather than show what is beautiful, because both are contradictory and cannot coexist in harmony, good is eternal and beauty is temporary. He wanted to purify the art of all feelings that are not good, all false and enslaving mysteries, everything is ambiguous, irrational, contradictory. Hence, condemns various artists, like Nietzsche, Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Rafael, Michelangelo, Bach and Beethoven. The work took fifteen years to complete and inserts itself in a series of controversial books and treaties in which the author explains his ideas and thoughts, anxieties and wraths, in an attempt to influence (and thus transform) the society in which he lived.