16th December –
I have not written for three days. I was not well. I have been reading the Gospels but could not arouse in myself that understanding of them, that communion with God, which I experienced before. I used often to think that man cannot help having desires. I always had and still have desires. First I wished to conquer Napoleon, I wished to give peace to Europe, I wished to be released from my crown: and all my wishes were either fulfilled and as soon as that happened ceased to attract me, or became impossible of fulfilment and I ceased to wish for them. But while my wishes were being fulfilled or becoming impossible, new wishes arose, and so it went on and goes on to the end. I wished for the winter – it has come; I wished for solitude – and have almost attained it; now I wish to describe my life, and to do it in the best way possible, that it may be of use to others. And whether this wish is fulfilled or not, new wishes will awaken. Life consists in that. And it occurs to me that if the whole of life consists in the birth of wishes and the joy of life lies in their fulfilment, is there no wish which would be natural to man, to every human being, always, and would always be fulfilled or rather would be approaching fulfilment? And it has become clear to me that this would be so for a man who desired death. His whole life would be an approach to the fulfilment of that wish and the wish would certainly be fulfilled.
At first this seemed strange to me. But having considered it I suddenly saw that it really is so; that this alone, this approach to death, is the only reasonable wish a man can have. A wish not for death itself, but for the movement of life which leads to death. That movement consists in a release from passions and temptations of that spiritual element which dwells in every man. I feel this now, having freed myself from most of the things that used to hide from me what is essential in my soul – its oneness with God: used to hide God. I arrived at it unconsciously. But if I placed my welfare first (and this is not only possible, but is what ought to be) and considered my highest welfare to lie in liberation from passions and an approach towards God, then everything that brought me nearer to death – old age, and illness – would be a fulfilment of my one great desire. That is so, and I feel it when I am well. But when I have indigestion, as was the case yesterday and the day before, I cannot awaken that feeling, and though I do not resist death I am unable to wish to draw nearer to it.
Well, such a condition is one of spiritual sleep. One has to wait quietly. I will now go on from where I left off. What I write about my childhood I recount mainly from hearsay, and often what was told me about myself gets mixed up with what I experienced; so that I sometimes do not know what I myself experienced and what I heard from others.
My whole life from my birth to my present old age makes me think of a place enveloped in a thick mist, or even of the battlefield at Dresden: everything is hidden, nothing visible, and suddenly here and there little islands open out, des éclaircies23 in which one sees people and objects unconnected with anything else and surrounded on all sides by an impenetrable curtain. Such are my childish recollections. For the time of my childhood these éclaircies very very rarely open out amid the sea of mist or smoke, afterwards they occur more and more frequently; but even now I have times that leave no memories behind. In childhood there are very few memories, and the farther back the fewer there are.
I have spoken of the clearings that belong to my early life: Sophia Bénkendorf’s death, the good-bye to my parents, and Constantine’s mimicking, but several other memories of that period open out now as I think of the past. For instance, I don’t at all remember when Kóstya24 appeared and we began to live together; but I well remember how once when I was seven and he five we went to bed after service on Christmas eve and taking advantage of the fact that everybody had left our room, we got into one bed together. Kóstya in his little shirt climbed over to me and we began playing a merry game which consisted in slapping one another on our bare bodies; and we laughed till our stomachs ached and were very happy, when suddenly Nicholas Ivánovich, with his huge powdered head, entered wearing his embroidered coat and his orders, and rushed towards us with staring eyes, in horror which I could not at all explain to myself, and separated us and angrily promised to punish us and to tell our grandmother.
Another occurrence I well remember happened rather late – when I was about nine; it was an encounter in grandmother’s room, and almost in our presence, between Alexéy Grigóre-vich Orlóv25 and Potëmkin. It was not long before grandmother’s journey to the Crimea and our first journey to Moscow. Nicholas Ivánovich had taken us as usual to see grandmother. The large room, the ceiling of which was ornamented with stucco-work and paintings, was full of people. Grandmother’s hair had already been done. It was combed back from the forehead and very skilfully arranged on the temples. She sat at her dressing-table in a white powder-mantle. Her maid stood behind her adjusting her hair. She looked at us with a smile, continuing her conversation with a big, tall, and stout General decorated with the ribbon of St Andrew, who had a terrible scar across his cheek from mouth to ear. This was Orlóv, ‘Le balafré’.26 It was there I saw him for the first time. Grandmother’s Anderson hare-hounds were beside her, and my pet Mimi jumped up from her skirt and leaping at me put its feet on my shoulders and licked my face. We came up to grandmother and kissed her white, plump hand. She turned it round and her bent fingers caught my face and caressed me. In spite of her perfumes I was aware of her disagreeable smell. She went on looking at Balafré and speaking to him.
‘A fine fellow,’ she said, with her strong German accent, pointing to me, ‘you had not seen him before.’
‘They are both fine fellows,’ said the count, kissing my hand and Constantine’s.
‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ she said to her maid who was putting her cap on for her. That maid was Márya Stepánovna, painted red and white, a kind-hearted woman who always caressed me.
‘Où est ma tabatière?’27
Lanskóy came up and handed her an open snuff-box. Grandmother took a pinch and looked at her jester Matrëna Danílovna, who was approaching her.…
(The story breaks off here, and was left in this unfinished state when Tolstoy died.)
1 A trading port on the Sea of Azov.
2 Presumably standing for ‘Alexander Pávlovich’ (Alexander, son of Paul).
3 Iván Grigórevich Latýshev – a peasant of the village of Krasnorechínsk, whom Fëdor Kuzmích met and became acquainted with in 1839, and who, after the latter had lived in various places, built him a cell in a wood away from the road, on a hill above a cliff. In this cell Kuzmích began his diary. L. T.
4 ‘A fortunate accident.’
5 Fóti (1792–1838). An archimandrite who enjoyed much influence in court circles.
6 G. F. von Parrot (1767–1852), Member of the Russian Academy of Science. His letters to Alexander I were published in 1894–5.
7 Baroness B. J. Krüdener (1764–1824), pietist and authoress, at one time a friend of Alexander I.
8 The exceedingly harsh Minister to whom Alexander entrusted the government when he himself began to cease to exercise power.
9 The grandmother was Catherine the Great. The father was her half-mad son, afterwards the Emperor Paul, who was assassinated.
10 Márya Antónovna Narýshkina, at one time Alexander I’s mistress.