Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

The Kreutzer Sonata was translated into the main European languages and became perhaps the most popular work by Tolstoy in the West. In Russia, where it was blocked by the censors, the novella was distributed in thousands of handwritten copies, and it was read aloud and debated passionately. “It sometimes seemed that the public, forgetting its personal cares, lived only for the literature of Count Tolstoy … The most important political events rarely captured everyone with such force.”

The “Tolstoyans” (followers of Tolstoy who lived in quasi-socialist communes, working the land, practicing nonviolent resistance to evil and moral self-perfection) discussed The Kreutzer Sonata with particular fervor. The young women in these communes swore, after a collective reading, that they would never marry, and if they were forced, they would rather drown themselves. There were instances of young Tolstoyans castrating themselves to escape the temptation of marriage.

Tolstoy’s wife was deeply wounded by the popularity of The Kreutzer Sonata: she thought—not without reason—that the whole world interpreted it as a direct reflection of their family situation. Sophia was told that even Emperor Alexander II said, “I feel sorry for his poor wife”²³ upon reading the work.

So Sophia had a brilliant idea: she would go to St. Petersburg to get permission for publication of The Kreutzer Sonata from the tsar. If she succeeded, everyone would realize she was no victim.

Her plan worked. Alexander received her in the palace and after a friendly chat gave his consent to the publication of the novella in the next volume of Tolstoy’s collected works. Sophia was triumphant: “I, a woman, got what no one else could achieve.”

She was especially pleased that Alexander found her “young and beautiful” at forty-seven. Naturally, that provoked displeasure in Tolstoy, who was pathologically jealous. Hearing his wife’s joyous account of her meeting with the emperor, Tolstoy grumbled angrily that “before he and Sovereign had ignored each other and now this new turn of events could create problems.”

Tolstoy’s jealousy finally brought his family to the brink of disaster, in a classic example of life imitating art. Like the protagonist in his novella, Tolstoy grew jealous of a musician, the composer and pianist Sergei Taneyev.

The Neoclassicist Taneyev was often called the Russian Brahms (even though he abhorred Brahms’s music), and after the death in 1893 of his teacher and idol Tchaikovsky, Taneyev became the guru of musical Moscow. As a composer, Taneyev always stood apart: he had a special knowledge of the polyphonic technique of the old masters (Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso), and he used it in his own work.

Short, heavyset, bearded, nearsighted, and dumpy, Taneyev was a freethinker. During the census of 1897 he intended to fill in the religion question with “heretic not believing in God.” He also openly despised the Romanovs. He liked to tell the story of how in 1881, during the celebrations of the coronation of Alexander III, he was asked to conduct a concert in Moscow in the presence of the emperor, and he “intentionally put on a boot with a hole specially for the tsar.” “Alexander III gave me a gold ruble,” Taneyev recalled with a laugh, “and I immediately gave it to the doorman as a tip.”²⁴

One of his favorite writers was Tolstoy, whom he had met in the early 1890s. Tolstoy was a fair amateur pianist and even composed a sweet little waltz, written down by Taneyev, who was a guest at Yasnaya Polyana in the summers of 1895 and 1896.

Neither man liked the late Beethoven, Wagner, or the “modernists” Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy. But Tolstoy found Palestrina, adored by Taneyev, boring, and he was rather skeptical about Taneyev’s music, unabashed at telling him so to his face.

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Soon, Taneyev became “disgusting” to Tolstoy, and in his diary Tolstoy compared the clumsy, shy, and kindly composer to a rooster: his wife had invented an “affair” for herself with Taneyev, and Tolstoy could not stand it.

Tolstoy ignored the fact that Taneyev was a completely asexual virgin. Sophia’s tenderness toward the eccentric composer was more maternal than anything else. Taneyev had a calming effect on Sophia, and lofty music, which he embodied, gave her the illusion of an emotional harbor, a respite from the stormy atmosphere created by her tyrannical husband.

A controlling person, Tolstoy found the situation intolerable: he could not sleep, he wept, he kept arguing with Sophia, trying to separate her from that “fat musician.” Sophia fought back aggressively, “I will love people who are good and kind, and not you. You’re a beast.” It went on for years, while the unsuspecting Taneyev calmly continued visiting the Tolstoy house and Sophia attended his concerts in Moscow.