Tolstoy

Tolstoy had started The Kreutzer Sonata in 1887, but most of the work on it took place in the spring and summer of 1889. One book which made an impact on him during this time was a practical guide to gynaecology and midwifery called Tokology: A Book for Every Woman, which was issued by the Sanitary Publishing Company in Chicago in 1883 (‘tokology’ comes from the Greek word for obstetrics). It had been sent to him by its author Dr Alice Bunker Stockham, who had been brought up as a Quaker, and was one of the very first women to qualify as a doctor in the United States. Having specialised in gynaecology, she came to believe that women should not have continual pregnancies, and that men should control their sexual urges.¹¹² She also advocated abstinence from alcohol and tobacco and campaigned against prostitution. The book was of interest to Tolstoy for religious rather than medical reasons, he later told his daughter Tanya, and he wrote in November 1888 to tell Alice Stockham in his slightly creaky but elegant English that it was ‘truly a book, not only for woman but for mankind’:

Without labour in this direction mankind cannot go forward; and it seems to me especially in the matter treated in your book in chapter XI [‘Chastity in Marital Relations’ – Stockham discouraged sexual relations during pregnancy], we are very much behindhand. It is strange, that last week I have written a long letter to one of my friends [Chertkov] on the same subject. That sexual relation without the wish and possibility of having children is worse than prostitution and onanism, and in fact is both. I say it is worse, because a person who commits these crimes, not being married, is always conscious of doing wrong, but a husband and a wife, which commit the same sin, think that they are quite righteous.¹¹³

Tolstoy had indeed just written to Chertkov to castigate himself for the fact that it was too late to atone for having lived ‘like an animal’.¹¹⁴ In October 1889, the month in which his sister Masha decided to take the veil (she spent a year living with 400 nuns at a convent in Tula before moving to the convent next to Optina Pustyn), Alice Stockham came to visit Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana.¹¹⁵ She probably quickly discovered that they were not in complete agreement about everything – she was not as uncompromising as Tolstoy, for example, when it came to condemning all sex that was not for procreative purposes,¹¹⁶ but they enjoyed rewarding conversations about the American sects which practised chastity. In 1892 a translation of her book with an introduction by Tolstoy was published in Russia. It was because Stockham viewed childbirth in such sacred terms that she promoted the idea of sexual continence. Nevertheless, her novel ideas about a spiritualised form of human intimacy were not always well received. In her later book on the ‘ethics of marriage’, her ‘method of promoting marital happiness [whereby] sexual intimacy may take place without completing the act’ received withering scorn from a critic writing for a scholarly journal.¹¹⁷

Completion of the ninth and final draft of The Kreutzer Sonata provoked the question of where it could be published. Chertkov wanted the story for The Intermediary, Sonya wanted it for the new edition of the collected works, while Tolstoy now only cared about renouncing his copyright and avoiding arguments. On this occasion Tolstoy’s story started circulating in samizdat even before it was submitted to the censor. The manuscript was taken to St Petersburg by Tolstoy’s niece Masha kuzminskaya, who arranged a reading attended by thirty friends, including Alexandrine and Nikolay Strakhov. After another late-night reading at the offices of The Intermediary, the editorial staff portioned the manuscript amongst themselves and then sat up all night to copy it before returning it to the kuzminskys the next morning. Within a few days, much to Tolstoy’s chagrin (he was only ever content to disseminate his work after the proofreading stage, which always involved him making myriad corrections), 300 lithographed copies appeared, which themselves were soon copied and distributed further. The story soon became the hottest property in St Petersburg, and sold for the exorbitant sum of ten, and sometimes even fifteen roubles (Sonya sold Tolstoy’s entire collected works for eight roubles).¹¹⁸