Gerardo wrote: >There's a reference to folding and music in an essay by Tolstoy titled What is >Art? Wow! What does it mention in regard to both?
This needs some clarification: In their article 'Leo Tolstoy and the Art of Origami' in British Origami 186 of October 1997, Misha Litvinov and Sergei Mamin quote, presumably in translation, from the first draft of Tolstoy's essay 'What is Art?' (Leo Tolstoy - The Complete Works, v.30, Moscow, 1951), 'This winter a lady of my acquaintance taught me how to make cockerels by folding and inverting paper in a certain way, so that when you pull them by their tails they flap their wings. This invention comes from Japan. Since then I have been in the habit of making these cockerels for children.' And 'The person who invented these cockerels must have been enchanted by his own discovery, and the joy is transferred to others. And that is why the making of a paper cockerel, strange as it may seem, is real art. I cannot refrain from observing that this was the only new work in the sphere of paper cockerels that I have encountered during the last sixty years. At the same time, the poems, novels and musical opuses that I have read during the same period run to hundreds, if not thousands. This is because cockerels do not matter, you might say, whereas poems and symphonies do. But I think the reason lies in the fact that it is much easier to write a poem, paint a picture, or compose a symphony than to invent a new cockerel.' Unfortunately these passages did not make it into the final published version of the essay. See https://www.gutenberg.org/files/64908/64908-h/64908-h.htm As you can see Tolstoy does not make any comparison between the process of folding and that of playing music. The statement that 'These cockerels come from Japan' is dubious and probably ultimately derives from the 1885 article in La Nature. If you want more info about Tolstoy's cockerels you can find it in the entry for 1888 at https://www.origamiheaven.com/historyoftheflappingbird.htm. Dave
