Leo Tolstoy

If I were to live in the past, or at least be conscious of and remember the past, I would not be able to live a timeless life in the present as I do now. How then is it possible not to rejoice in the loss of memory. Everything I had worked for in the past, for example the inner work expressed in my writings, is in me to live by and to use, and I cannot recall the work itself. Amazing. And I think that this joyous change happens to all old people: all your life concentrates in the present. How nice! (CW, LVIII, p. 121)

What marked the life he was now living was tension between the desire to escape and an acute consciousness of his duty to stay. In July 1910 he started keeping a diary ‘for himself only’, which he tried to hide from Sofia. ‘I am bearing up and will bear up as much as I can, and pity and love her. God help me’ (Ds, p. 477), he wrote on 8 September. Tolstoy reproached himself for unkind feelings towards his wife, reminding himself two weeks later that ‘The main thing is to remain silent and remember that she has a soul – that God is in her’ (Ds, p. 478). On 25 October he confessed to a ‘sinful desire on my part that she should give me an excuse to go away. That’s how bad I am. I think of going away and then I think of her situation, and I feel sorry and I can’t do it’ (Ds, p. 483).

The same day he spoke about his intention to leave with Alexandra. On the next day, he sought advice from Maria Schmidt, one of the very few Tolstoyans who understood the reasons he chose to stay in the family and who was friendly with Sofia. Schmidt was appalled. ‘It is a weakness, it will pass,’ she allegedly told him. ‘It is weakness’, replied Tolstoy, ‘but it won’t pass.’⁴ The next day, as Tolstoy recorded, ‘nothing special happened. Only my feeling of shame increased, and the need to take some step.’ On the evening of 28 October, already far away from Yasnaya Polyana, he wrote one of the most frequently quoted diary entries in literary annals:

Went to bed at 11.20. Slept until after two. Woke up, and again as on previous nights, I heard the opening of doors and footsteps . . . It was Sofia Andreyevna looking for something and probably reading. The day before she was asking and insisting that I should not lock my door. Both her doors were open, so that she could hear my slightest movement. Day and night, all my movements and words have to be known to her and to be under her control. There were footsteps again, the door opened carefully and she walked through the room. I don’t know why, but this aroused indignation and uncontrollable revulsion in me. I wanted to go back to sleep, but couldn’t. I tossed about for an hour or so, lit a candle and sat up. Sofia Andreyevna opened the door and came in asking about ‘my health’ and expressing surprise at the light, which she had seen in my room. My indignation and revulsion grew. I gasped for breath, counted my pulse: 97. I couldn’t go on lying there and suddenly I took the final decision to leave. (Ds, pp. 469–70)

Shortly before his marriage, gendarmes had raided his estate searching for clandestine publications. Nearly half a century later, his own wife was raiding his working table and his bedroom looking for papers she thought he was concealing from her. Tolstoy woke up Alexandra, her friend Varvara Feokritova and his doctor Dushan Makovitsky, who helped him to pack. Having written a farewell letter to Sofia, he left the house before six o’clock, accompanied by Makovitsky and leaving Alexandra behind to deal with the inevitable consequences.

Dr Makovitsky had been living at Yasnaya Polyana for the past six years. After Tolstoy’s illnesses in Gaspra, Sofia had insisted on having an in-house medic. Although he was not fond of doctors, Tolstoy agreed to this because Makovitsky was an ardent Tolstoyan. His professional abilities may have been questionable, but his love and devotion to his patron were not. From the time of his arrival until Tolstoy’s death, Makovitsky performed the role of a Russian Eckermann or Boswell, carefully documenting every sentence pronounced by his host.

To run away, however, was not enough. A fugitive must go somewhere. Tolstoy’s favourite characters just disappeared, but this solution worked only in fiction. Heading to a railway station, Tolstoy asked Makovitsky where he could go to be ‘further away’ from home (Mak, IV, p. 398). Makovitsky suggested Bessarabia, where they could stay with a Tolstoyan they both knew and liked, and then try to get abroad. Tolstoy was considering other options. He wanted to see his sister Maria, the only person he knew and loved from childhood who was still alive.