What is art?: Tolstoy's criteria in the light of works by Mikhail Bulgakov and Friedrich Durrenmatt

Widely criticized since its first appearance in 1898, Tolstoy's What is Art? (Chto takoe iskusstvo?) remains of interest not so much for the author's own definitions of art as for his fundamental approach. His question is, of course, an old one, which has given rise to whole theories of aesthetics, some of which he mentions, and dismisses, in his essay. He himself spent a lifetime trying to determine what art should be, and indeed wrote other articles on the subject. But the strength and originality of What is Art?-for all its undoubted prejudice, exaggeration and sheer dogmatism-lies precisely in Tolstoy's attempt to cut through differing views to ask the simple question: why do we put …