What is Art? by Leo Tolstoy; Unabridged MP3 Audio Book; Narrator Geoffrey Blaisdell

What Is Art? is the result of fifteen years of reflection about the nature and purpose of art.

Tolstoy claims that all good art is related to the authentic life of the broader community and that the aesthetic value of a work of art is not independent of its moral content. The book is noteworthy not only for its famous iconoclasm and compelling attacks on the aestheticist notion of "art for art's sake" but even more for its wit, its lucid and beautiful prose, and its sincere expression of the deepest social conscience.

Tolstoy is an author critics typically rank alongside Shakespeare and Homer. A sustained consideration of the cultural import of art by someone who himself was an artist of the highest stature will always remain relevant and fascinating to anyone interested in the place of art and literature in society.

Count Lev (Leo) Nikolayevich Tolstory (1828–1910) was born in 1828 about two hundred miles from Moscow. His mother died when he was two, his father when he was nine. His parents were of noble birth, and Tolstoy remained acutely aware of his aristocratic roots, even when he later embraced doctrines of equality and the brotherhood of man. After serving in the army in the Caucasus and Crimea, where he wrote his first stories, he traveled and studied educational theories. In 1862 he married Sophia Behrs and for the next fifteen years lived a tranquil, productive life, finishing War and Peace in 1869 and Anna Karenina in 1877. In 1879 he underwent a spiritual crisis. Tolstoy then sought to propagate his beliefs on faith, morality, and nonviolence, writing mostly parables, tracts, and morality plays. He died of pneumonia in 1910 at the age of eighty-two.