Leo Tolstoy

Katkov published The Cossacks immediately. The next issue of Russian Herald contained ‘Polikushka’, a short story mostly written abroad. The reading public welcomed the return of a favourite author. The critics admired The Cossacks and praised the vivid, nearly ethnographic portrayal of life in the settlement and the characters of Marianna, Lukashka and especially Yeroshka, the charismatic drunken old braggart and guardian of Cossack common law, lore and wisdom. Fet believed that The Cossacks was Tolstoy’s best work so far. Turgenev was equally ecstatic, though much less appreciative of Olenin’s spiritual quest. He recognized it as Tolstoy’s self-portrait, but felt no personal sympathy for the author. Still, Turgenev was happy to greet the return of a wayward son of Russian literature and thankful for the card loss that had compelled Tolstoy to pick up his pen again.

The only person who was dissatisfied was Tolstoy himself, as he wrote in his diary in January 1863: ‘Corrected the proofs of The Cossacks – it’s terribly weak. Probably for that reason the public will be pleased with it’ (Ds, p. 158). Though he had contemplated writing a sequel to the story if it were to be well received, Tolstoy never returned to The Cossacks, in spite of the public’s nearly universal enthusiasm. By adding a subtitle – A Caucasus Tale of 1852 – Tolstoy distanced himself from his narrative in time and placed it in the period preceding the Sebastopol stories. ‘Who is this person who wrote The Cossacks and “Polikushka”? And what is the use of discussing them?’ he wrote to Fet in early May 1863. ‘“Polikushka” is drivel on the first subject that comes into the head of a man who “wields a good pen”, but The Cossacks has some pith in it, though it is bad’ (Ls, I, p. 115). The ‘pith’ was Tolstoy’s passionate attempt to dissolve himself in a wild and natural environment. Describing Olenin’s fourteen-hour walks around the settlement, Tolstoy writes that no thought ever stirred in him during those strolls and he came home ‘morally fresh, strong and completely happy’ (CW, VI, p. 88).

In the same letter Tolstoy told Fet that he was working on the story of a horse known as ‘The Strider’. Most of it is told in the first person of the horse. Criticism of social conventions from a ‘natural’ point of view had been popular since the eighteenth century, and horses, with their proximity to humans, could serve as ideal observers of their habits. Nevertheless, ‘The Strider’ was not a satirical allegory. Instead it conveyed Tolstoy’s empathy with the plight of the animal and admiration for its calm acceptance of the order of life, decay and death. Tolstoy nearly completed the story, but did not publish it for more than twenty years until his wife rediscovered the manuscript in his papers. Work on ‘The Strider’ was halted when Tolstoy finally began writing his magnum opus.

Tolstoy drafted fifteen beginnings before he felt he could proceed. He was not yet sure of the plot, the names of the main characters, or the title of the book, but was certain that it was going to be a masterpiece. Never before, and arguably never after, was he so confident in himself. In October 1863 he wrote to Alexandra Tolstoy:

I’ve never felt my intellectual powers, and even all my moral powers, so free and so capable of work. And I have work to do. This work is a novel of the 1810s and 1820s, which has been occupying me fully since the autumn . . . Now, I am a writer with all the strength of my soul, and I write and I think as I have never thought or written before. (Ls, I, p. 118)

Preparing the first chapters for publication, Tolstoy informed Fet, with his usual self-denigration, that the new book, although he ‘liked it more than his previous work, still seemed weak’, but could not resist adding that what was to follow would be ‘tremendous!!’ (Ls, I, p. 193).