Leo Tolstoy

He died two months later. Tolstoy was moved deeply enough to agree, in spite of his hatred of public ceremonies, to give a speech at Turgenev’s commemoration in Moscow. The appearance of Tolstoy’s name in the announcement made the authorities ban the event altogether. At the same time this final manifestation of Turgenev’s desire to guide him and his excessive rhetorical flourish irritated Tolstoy. Much later he repeated the formula ‘the great writer of the Russian land’, sarcastically adding ‘and what about water?’³ Still, he partially ‘heeded’ Turgenev’s request. After several years he resumed writing prose, but always regarded this as being subordinate to his role as a moral and religious preacher.

The people who were most alarmed by Tolstoy’s evolution were the members of his family. In May 1881, in the wake of the riots and Jewish pogroms that followed the assassination of Alexander II, Tolstoy recorded his impression of one family conversation:

Seryozha [Sergei, his eldest son] said: ‘Christ’s teaching is well known, but it is difficult’. I said: ‘You would not say it is difficult to run out of a blazing room through the only door . . .’ They began to talk. Hanging is necessary, flogging is necessary, to prevent the people from rioting – that would be terrible. But hitting Jews – that’s not a bad thing. Then without rhyme or reason, they talked about fornication and with relish. Somebody is mad – either them or me. (Ds, p. 175)

Two months later he was appalled by an ‘enormous dinner with champagne’ at which all the Tolstoy and Kuzminsky children wore belts that cost the equivalent of a month’s salary for the hungry and overworked peasants around them. He discussed it with Tatiana Kuzminsky, who used to understand him better than others. After that he contemplated ‘until morning’ about his irreparable rift with the people who were so close to him, writing in despair, ‘They are not human beings’ (Ds, pp. 176–7).

His wife was the main culprit. She was accustomed to shifts in his ‘fickle opinions’, but this crisis threatened the very foundations of her life. Initially Sofia was inclined to interpret it in line with her old fears. After one of their quarrels in 1882, she recorded in her diary that, for the first time in twenty years of living under one roof, Leo had spent the night in a different bed. She was convinced that if he would not come to her, it meant that he loved another woman. Finally he appeared and they reconciled in the usual way. Sofia came to realize that her family problems were not caused by other women, but that did not make her any happier or less jealous.

The couple’s ensuing quarrels and misunderstandings soon became public, engendering divisions among Tolstoy’s admirers that are still alive today. Some blame Sofia, who refused to ‘follow’ her great husband in his spiritual quest, thus turning their lives into an everyday hell. Others exonerate her. She was responsible for the well-being of eight children (as Tolstoy’s religious convictions evolved, she had given birth to three more sons, Andrei in 1877, Mikhail in 1879 and Alexei, who later died at the age of four, in 1881) and could ill afford to accommodate the whims of the genius. In truth, however, the roots of this family tragedy went deeper.

Married at the age of eighteen, Sofia felt a sense of mission no less important than that of Leo’s. While he had renounced his previous life to become a great writer, she had done the same in order to become the wife of a great writer. Copying the manuscripts of War and Peace, she recorded her nearly religious attitude to his art:

It is great delight for me. Morally, I am experiencing the whole world of impressions and thoughts by copying the novel. Nothing affects me as strongly as his thoughts and his talent. It started to happen not long ago. Did I change myself or is the novel really so good – I can’t tell. I write quickly enough to follow the novel and slowly enough to grasp all the interest, think over, feel and discuss his every thought. We often speak about the novel and he for some reason (which makes me proud) listens to my thoughts and strongly believes in them. (SAT-Ds, p. 80)

Twenty years later, in October 1886, she reacted to his profound and intimate thoughts in a very different way:

I often wonder why Levochka puts me in the position of always being guilty without guilt. Because he wants me not to live, but to suffer all the time looking at the poverty, sickness and misfortunes of the people, and wants me to seek them if I do not meet them in my life. This is what he demands from the children as well. Is it necessary? . . . If you meet such a person in the course of your life, help him, but why search for him? (SAT-Ds, p. 112).