YASNAYA POLYANA, 14 JUNE 1910
My dear Sonya,
1. I promise to give nobody the diary I am writing at this time. I shall keep it with me.
2. I shall ask for the return of my previous diaries from Chertkov, then I shall keep them, probably in a bank.
3. If it worries you that unfriendly biographers will, in the future, make use of those pages written in the heat of the moment registering our conflicts and struggles, I would remind you, first, that these expressions of passing emotion, in my diary as in yours, cannot pretend to present an accurate portrait of our relations. Nevertheless, if it still worries you, I shall happily take this opportunity to say, in my diary or in this letter, what my relations with you were really like and what your life has been, as I have seen it.
My relations with you and view of your life are as follows: just as I loved you when you were young, I have never stopped loving you in spite of the many causes of alienation between us. And so I continue to love you. Putting aside the issue of our sexual relations, which have ceased (a fact that can only add to the sincerity of our expressions of love), those causes were as follows: first, my growing need to withdraw from society, something which you neither would nor could follow me in, since the principles that led me to adopt my convictions opposed yours in quite basic ways. This seems, to me, perfectly natural and I cannot hold it against you. Further, in recent years, you have become increasingly irritable, even despotic and uncontrollable. This could hardly help but inhibit any display of feeling on my part, even cut off those feelings themselves. That is my second point. Third, the chief and fatal cause was something of which we are both innocent: our completely opposing ideas of the significance and purpose of life. For me, property is a sin, for you it is a necessary condition. In order not to have to separate myself from you, I have forced myself to accept circumstances that I find painful. Yet you saw my acceptance as a concession to your point of view, and this only increased our misunderstanding.
As for my view of your life, here it is:
I, a debauched person by nature, deeply depraved in my sexual appetite, and no longer in my first youth, married you, a girl of eighteen who was spiritually pure, good, and intelligent. In spite of my dreadful past, you stayed with me for nearly fifty years, loving me, living a life full of worry and anguish, giving birth to children, raising them, caring for them, and nursing me, without succumbing to any of the temptations that a beautiful, solid, and healthy woman is always exposed to; indeed, your life has been such that I have absolutely nothing to reproach you with. As for the fact that your moral development did not run parallel to mine, which has been unique, I cannot hold this against you, since the inner life of any person is a secret between that person and God, and nobody else can call that person to account in any way. I have been intolerant of you. I was deeply mistaken, and I confess my error.
4. If my relations with Chertkov upset you too much at present, I am willing to give him up, though I must say that to do so would be more unpleasant, even painful, for him than for me. But if you demand this of me, I shall comply.
5. If you do not accept these terms for a quiet and decent life, I shall withdraw my promise not to leave you. I shall simply go away, and not to Chertkov, you can rest assured! In fact, I would lay down as an absolute condition that he must not follow and settle near me. But go I certainly shall, for I simply can’t continue to live like this. I might well have continued with this life had I been able to look at all your sufferings unmoved, but I’m not capable of that.
Stop, my dove, tormenting not only those around you but yourself, for you suffer a hundred times more than they do. That is all.
26
Chertkov
Dr Nikitin brought the infamous Rossolimo down from Moscow to examine Sofya Andreyevna. Her attempts at suicide have upset the household, and Leo Nikolayevich insists that Makovitsky’s advice be followed. Makovitsky puts considerable store in these head doctors, and Rossolimo is accounted the best of them; he has made excursions into the minds of every grand duke and duchess in Russia. Even the Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna, an intimate of my mother, has consulted him over a matter of some peculiar dreams. Rossolimo is what he is: an Italian and a mountebank. I distrust anyone who affects a waxed mustache with twirled ends or who dresses like the head waiter of a Roman trattoria.
Rossolimo examined Sofya Andreyevna for two hours, peering into her eyes with instruments like sextants, tapping her joints with a tiny wooden hammer, asking her improbable questions. Leo Nikolayevich looked on in awe. He has on occasion expressed what I consider an inordinate faith in doctors, but Rossolimo is the limit. Leo Nikolayevich took me aside. ‘Rossolimo is astonishingly stupid,’ he said, ‘in the way of all scientists.’ I listened intently as he paced the floor but offered no comment. I tread lightly these days. ‘I don’t know why Dushan brought him down here.’
‘Perhaps they are old friends,’ I said.
Before tea, Rossolimo talked with Leo Nikolayevich. ‘I have determined the causes of her mental illness,’ he said. ‘The countess is suffering from double degeneracy: paranoiac and hysterical, chiefly the former.’ He went on to cite the economic, cultural, physiological, and biological sources of her problem, while Leo Nikolayevich drummed his fingers on his desk, yawning violently.
‘What about lack of faith? Surely that has some bearing on her condition?’
‘Indeed,’ Rossolimo said. ‘The want of a fulcrum is often a source of instability.’
‘A metaphor, Doctor!’ Leo Nikolayevich cried. ‘This is much to your credit.’
Rossolimo seemed quite happy now, having been praised by the greatest author in all of Russia. ‘Indeed, a ship without a rudder is no ship, is it?’
‘Certainly not,’ Leo Nikolayevich said. ‘Nor is a windmill without the wind.’
Rossolimo was not sure what Leo Nikolayevich meant by this, but he agreed that wind is essential for all windmills and quickly changed the subject to hot-air balloons, a topic of some interest to him but none to us. After a big meal, he left Yasnaya Polyana quite pleased with himself.
Leo Nikolayevich has been feeling guilty ever since he signed the new will, but at least he has been brought around. It galls him that the countess still controls the rights to everything published before 1881. He cannot bear that works written for the love of God should be used to support the lavish style of life to which his wife and children have grown accustomed. He is convinced that Sofya Andreyevna’s greed on behalf of the family will only increase with the years, and that she is capable of getting her hands on all of his copyrights after his death.
Now the complete works of Leo Tolstoy will, upon his death, make their way into the public domain, though I shall edit and reissue everything first. In order to safeguard the will from Sofya Andreyevna’s intervention, he has assigned the copyright to Sasha, with strict instructions to let the public have free access to the material. If Sasha – whose health has been fragile in recent months – should die, the copyright devolves on Tanya, with the same proviso.
Leo Nikolayevich came secretly to Telyatinki to revise the will in his own hand, but, maddeningly, a crucial phrase was omitted, one that is needed to ensure the will’s validation in a future court of law: ‘I, Leo Tolstoy, being of sound mind and in full possession of my memory.’ Our lawyer insisted that this phrase be included, and we could not risk being in possession of a flawed will. So a final draft was composed for recopying by Tolstoy.
Yesterday we met in the wood outside Grumond. Leo Nikolayevich frequently rides Delire in the afternoons, so such a meeting did not draw his wife’s suspicion. I did not tell Bulgakov about our plans. He lives in Sofya Andreyevna’s pocket, though the poor lad does not realize it. I would prefer to acquire a new secretary, but Leo Nikolayevich admires Bulgakov. ‘He is headstrong,’ he says, ‘but he reminds me of myself when I was younger.’