Wherever one looked, mourners knelt or stood with their heads bent, singing ‘Eternal Memory.’ The solid tree trunks rang aloud with the hymn, which gathered now like a great wave and poured through the woods. Photographers snapped pictures from a thousand angles, and cinematographers cranked their strange, modern machines. A sharp wind made everyone huddle as close together as possible.
Sofya Andreyevna insisted that nobody should speak at the grave. No priest would utter the usual words. There would be no ceremony. Even in his death, Leo Nikolayevich was pointing the way to a new world – a world without false praise, empty ceremonies, foolish disguises. He did not require the blessings of authority.
But an old man, a muzhik, took it upon himself to stand on a stump and deliver a brief sermon about the ‘dear man who had changed their lives.’ Everyone listened in awe. Though his speech was that of an ‘uneducated’ man, it was eloquent and simple. That a peasant – one of the Russian muzhiks so honored by Leo Tolstoy in his writing – should deliver the final words on his behalf seemed wholly just.
At one point several policemen rode through the crowds on black horses. It was a horrible intrusion, but they were immediately surrounded by muzhiks and forced to get off their animals and kneel. To my relief, they obliged.
Suddenly it was snowing. Just a fluff, at first, but soon it thickened, and the gravediggers became anxious. With a signal from Sergey, they began to pour dirt on the coffin, and the crowds – singing ‘Eternal Memory’ even more loudly – began to leave.
‘I feel so empty,’ I said to Masha.
She put her arm through mine. ‘Let’s go inside, Valya. There will be tea and food. I’m freezing!’
‘I’m going with you, Masha,’ I said, holding my ground. ‘Is that all right?’
‘Where?’
‘To Petersburg?’
She turned to me with a strange, bright sweetness. ‘I would like that,’ she said. ‘But come along now.’
Walking back to Yasnaya Polyana in the midst of the crowd, we said nothing more about where we were going or why or when. We were carried along, buoyed up, by a thousand singing voices, men and women who loved Tolstoy as much as we did, who understood, as he did, that death was simply one of life’s many noble transformations, and that nothing mattered in the world but love.
42
J. P.
ELEGY
Afterword
The Last Station is fiction, though it bears some of the trappings and affects of literary scholarship. It began half a decade ago when, browsing in a used bookstore in Naples, I stumbled upon Valentin Bulgakov’s diary of his last year with Leo Tolstoy. Soon I discovered that similar diaries were kept by numerous other members of Tolstoy’s inner circle, which had grown remarkably wide by 1910. I read and reread the memoirs and diaries of Vladimir Chertkov, Sofya Andreyevna Tolstoy, Ilya and Leo, Sergey, Tanya, and Alexandra (Sasha) Tolstoy, Dushan Makovitsky, and others. Reading them in succession was like looking at a constant image through a kaleidoscope. I soon fell in love with the continually changing symmetrical forms of life that came into view.
A novel is a voyage by sea, a setting out into strange waters, but I have sailed as close as I could to the shoreline of literal events that made up the last year of Tolstoy’s life. Whenever Tolstoy speaks in this novel, I quote his actual words or, less often, I create dialogue based on conversations reported indirectly. Elsewhere, I have freely imagined what might have, could have, or should have been said.
In addition to the diaries mentioned, I have relied for chronology and circumstantial details on well-known biographies of Leo Tolstoy by Aylmer Maude, Edward A. Steiner, Ernest J. Simmons, Henri Troyat, and A. N. Wilson. Anne Edwards’s life of Sofya Andreyevna Tolstoy was also useful. I would refer the interested reader to the book I depended on for bibliographical information: Leo Tolstoy: An Annotated Bibliography of English-language Sources to 1978 by David R. Egan and Melinda A. Egan (Metuchen, N.J., and London, 1979).
All quotations from Tolstoy’s writings – including those from his letters and diaries – have been ‘Englished’ by me, based on previous translations. In this way, I was able to make his voice conform – in cadence and diction – with the Tolstoy of my invention.
I owe a considerable debt to Professor R. F. Christian of the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He is among the great Tolstoy scholars of this century, and he was kind enough to read my novel in manuscript and provide detailed suggestions and corrections. I am also grateful to Gore Vidal, who offered encouragement, friendship, and practical advice throughout its composition. As always, Devon Jersild, my wife, was my closest reader.
About the Author
Jay Parini is Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College, Vermont. His six novels also include Benjamin’s Crossing and The Apprentice Lover. His volumes of poetry include The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems. In addition to biographies of John Steinbeck, Robert Frost and William Faulkner, he has written a volume of essays on literature and politics, as well as The Art of Teaching. He edited the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature and writes regularly for the Guardian and other publications.
By the same author
SINGING IN TIME (poetry)
THEODORE ROETHKE: AN AMERICAN ROMANTIC (criticism)
THE LOVE RUN (novel)
ANTHRACITE COUNTRY (poetry)
THE PATCH BOYS (novel)
AN INVITATION TO POETRY (textbook)
TOWN LIFE (poetry)
JOHN STEINBECK (biography)
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2007
by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE
First published in Great Britain
by HarperCollins Publishers in 1992
This digital edition first published in 2008