Leo Tolstoy

This ending and the whole story of a penitent intellectual and a good-hearted prostitute saving each other with mutual love and understanding was familiar to readers of Russian literature. In Anna Karenina Tolstoy had striven to rewrite Madame Bovary. In Resurrection he offered his own version of Crime and Punishment. In spite of his admiration for Dostoevsky as a person, Tolstoy disliked his narrative technique, ‘monotonous language’ and forced plots. He once noted, with surprise, that Dostoevsky, who had often fallen in love, could never describe love in a convincing way. He also agreed with Strakhov, who once said that Sonya in Crime and Punishment was implausible and found himself unable to believe in her.

The day he finished Resurrection, Tolstoy, in a familiar manner, remarked in his diary: ‘It is not good. Not revised. Too hurried. But I am free of it and it does not interest me any more’ (Ds., p. 345). He continued, however, to be interested. The following year he expressed his intention to continue the novel. In July 1904 he wrote of his strong desire to write ‘a second part of Nekhlyudov. His work, tiredness, nascent grand seigneurism, temptation by a woman, fall, mistakes and all against a background of the Robinson community’ (Ds, p. 378). This urge to return to the finished and published text betrays dissatisfaction. Usually Tolstoy was in need of ‘scaffolding’ while writing, but having published the work he began denigrating it to be able to liberate himself and forge ahead. This time publication of the novel did not release him.

Chekhov described Resurrection as ‘a remarkable work of art’, but thought that the story lacked a real ending, and ‘to write so much and then let everything be resolved with a text from the Gospels’ was ‘too theological’. He found the description of ‘princes, generals, aunts, peasants, prisoners, guards . . . the most interesting’, and the relations between Nekhlyudov and Katyusha ‘the least interesting’. The majority of twentieth-century readers and critics have agreed with this assessment, with the exception of the universally admired seduction scene, the erotic power of which disgusted Sofia so much that she considered it inappropriate for their grown-up daughters.

In the same letter in which he discussed Resurrection, Chekhov expressed his attitude to the author:

I am afraid of Tolstoy’s death. If he were to die, there would be a big empty place in my life. To begin with, because I have never loved any man as much as him. I am not a believing man, but of all beliefs, I consider his the nearest and most akin to mine. Secondly, while Tolstoy is in literature, it is easy and pleasant to be a literary man; even recognizing that one has done nothing and never will do anything is not so dreadful, since Tolstoy will do enough for all of us. His work is the justification for the enthusiasms and expectations built up around literature. Thirdly, Tolstoy takes a firm stand, he has an immense authority, and so long as he is alive, bad taste in literature, vulgarity of every kind, insolent and lachrymose, all the bristling, exasperated vanities will remain in the far background, in the shade. Nothing but his moral authority is capable of maintaining a certain elevation in the so-called mood and tendencies of literature. (Ch-Ls, IX, pp. 29–31)

Chekhov died in 1904, six years before Tolstoy, and this letter was published in 1908. The elder writer, who had just turned eighty, was moved to tears: ‘I never knew he loved me so much’ (Mak, III, 39). He loved Chekhov as well, but could never establish with him any kind of kinship and suspected him of emotional coldness. In a similar way, Tolstoy believed that the artistic perfection of Chekhov’s prose surpassed anything that previous writers, including Turgenev, Dostoevsky and himself, had been able to achieve, but he deplored Chekhov’s lack of religious beliefs and serious moral purpose. There was, however, one exception.

‘The Darling’ is written with the laconic precision typical of the late Chekhov. Over a few pages he traces the entire life of a woman, Olga, who is first married to a theatre impresario, then to a timber merchant, after whose death she begins to cohabit with a vet who is separated from his wife and son. All her partners are described as hopelessly boring, but each time Olga is completely reborn, becoming first an ardent fan of the dramatic arts, then a respectable housewife with a deep understanding of the subtleties of the timber trade, and then a passionate animal lover. Finally she finds consolation in an attachment to the vet’s son and becomes interested only in classical education and homework. Never in her life can she develop her own interests or opinions, borrowing instead from those she loves.