Following Leonid and Makarios, starets Ambrose was then head of the hermitage, and he was reputed to be something of a saint.7 Persons suffering in body or soul, illiterate peasants and tormented intellectuals, wealthy merchants, military officers, great ladies, unwed mothers and starveling beggars, all came in search of enlightenment from the admirable old man. His advice was solicited with regard to a job to take or turn down, a projected marriage, a religious vocation, a family
feud, a love betrayed, a hidden crime. Sometimes starets Ambrose guessed the trouble before the suppliant even had time to confide in him, and banished it with a soothing word.
'l'olstoy had high hopes for their meeting. The travelers reached Optina-Pustyn at night and slept in the convent hostelry. Early next morning Prince Obolensky dropped over from his nearby estate to invite them to dinner the following day—to what desert did one have to flee to escape one's social obligations? 'Iliis disappointment was followed by a much larger one: 'I'olstoy took an immediate dislike to starets Ambrose, who received them in his cell. He was a tall, stooped, lean man with keen eyes and a deeply lined face ending in a little beard. He had not read the count's books, but he had heard of Levin's confession to the priest in Anna Karenina. It had been spoken of most highly. Emboldened by the compliment, Tolstoy plunged into an interrogation of the Gospels. Perhaps his questions were too aggressive: the starets became withdrawn and curt and replied evasively. They parted in mutual dissatisfaction.
This unfortunate occurrence did nothing to weaken Tolstoy's religious beliefs and may even have strengthened his conviction that it was the common muzhik and not the exceptional being who was best qualified to perceive the mind of God.
A few months later, on December 26, 1877, Sonya noted that her husband had begun to write a philosophical-religious work in a large bound notebook. "The object of what I am writing in this big book," he told her, "is to demonstrate the absolute necessity of religion." To those who claimed that social laws, "and especially socialist and communist laws," were superior to Christian laws, he replied: "If the Christian doctrine, which has been implanted among us for centuries and is the basis of our society, did not exist, then neither would there be any moral law or law of honor or desire for a more equitable distribution of earthly wealth, or aspiration to goodness and equality, all of which exist in all men."
This might almost be an echo of Pascal's remark: "The Christian religion alone, being a mixture of internal and external, is proportionate to all. It elevates the lowly within and humbles the proud without."
But while Sonya was under the impression that her husband was wholly engrossed in inscribing his theological reflections in "the big notebook," he was still consigning more secular observations to his private journal. The novelist was continually tugging at the coatslceve of the thinker. Country life supplied material for comment and sketches. At first these were only thumbnail descriptions of nature, in telegraphic notation: "Vaporous heat. Toward evening, luminosity in
the air. Hurts the eyes. Eyes go for rest to the dark green line of the forest. Mosquitoes spin, whining." (June 23, 1877.) "A downpour, the wind at a sharp angle. A linden uprooted. Mud and dirt. Puddles 011 the road gleam blue." (July 8, 1877.) "Sparkling day. Cold. Rain. It smells of wet straw." (August 25, 1877.)
Then he began to embroider and improvise upon these practice scales. Names appeared, dates, embryonic outlines. Once again Tolstoy wanted to write a work of fiction, although he did not abandon his mystical daydreams. But what would be the tlicmc? It would have to be sufficiently serious and vast to stand comparison with War and Peace and Anna Karenina. After letting his mind roam in all directions, he returned to the idea of the Decembrist uprising.
In January 1878 he asked Alexandra Tolstoy to send him information about General Perovsky, whom she had known personally; he was a former military governor of the province of Orenburg and a confidential friend of Nicholas I. "Now I am deep in my readings on the 1820s and I cannot tell you how much pleasure I derive from them," he wrote to Alexandra. "It is both odd and appealing to me to think that a period I can remember—183c—is already part of history.8 The figures in the picture suddenly stop wavering and shifting, and everything freezes into the solemn immobility of truth and beauty. I feci like a (mediocre) cook wandering through a loaded marketplace, eying the huge choice of vegetables, meat and fish, and dreaming of the dinner he is going to serve! . . . This is so important to 111c! ... As important as your faith is to you. I am tempted to say, even more important. But nothing could be that!"9
In fact, the theme was still not clear in his mind. He admired the Decembrists for their noble aspirations and disapproved of their trying to impose them by force. He hated Nicholas I for putting down the insurrection so brutally, but recognized that maintaining order was essential to society. Also, he wanted to bring the common people into his book, but they had played a very small part in events. One day he said to Sonya, "All these things will take place on Olympus. Nicholas Pavlovich [Tsar Nicholas I] will live among the aristocrats like Jupiter among the gods; the muzhiks will be transported to the governments of Samara and Irkutsk. One of the conspirators of December 14 will be living with these emigrants, and that will make the connection between the simple life and the aristocrats. Like a drawing, my book must have a background, and that will be provided by my present religious position. . . . For instance, one could treat the uprising of December 14 without judging anyone, either Nicholas Pavlovich or the conspirators, simply understanding both sides and portraying them."
In his letters he often spoke of this desire for impartiality. "In this story there must be no guilty party." (Letter to Alexandra Tolstoy, March 14, 1878.) "It is a great blessing that I do not take sides, and can love and sympathize freely with all." (Letter to Alexandra Tolstoy, September 5, 1878.)
With this principle as his point of reference, he began the first chapter, twice. "Yesterday morning," Sonya wrote in her diary, "Lyovochka read me the beginning of his new book, which is conceived on a scale as vast as it is fascinating. The action begins with a trial about land between an owner and his muzhiks, the arrival in Moscow of Prince Chernishcv and his family, the laying of the cornerstone of Holy Savior Cathedral, and the apparition of a pious old man. . . ,"10 But to write the next part, he needed more than printed documentation. There were still survivors of the conspiracy around; he wanted to meet them and hear in their own words the story of the aborted coup d'etat, their imprisonment, their exile to Siberia. . . .
In February 1878 he went to Moscow to meet two Decembrists, Svistunov and M. I. Muravyev-Apostol, who had been imprisoned in Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress and sent to the convict colonies at Chita and Pctrovsk. The old men recounted their ruined lives with a mixture of nostalgia and pride. Some people justify their lives by their work; theirs were justified by their sense of the ill-treatment they had suffered.
From Moscow, Tolstoy went to St. Petersburg, where he saw his old and dear friend babushka Alexandra. They had long, mystical conversations, no doubt, and Alexandra was very happy to see Leo back in the Church. However, there was something impetuous and insistent in the neophyte's zeal that gave her cause to fear he would soon abandon the rank and file of the faithful. They also talked about the 1820s and the prominent figures of the day, whom the maid of honor had had the good fortune to know at first hand. Tolstoy took advantage of his trip to the capital to ransack the libraries. He was refused permission to examine the secret files of the Third Section, but he was allowed to visit Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress, where most of the Decembrists had been incarcerated, with his brother-in-law Stepan Bchrs. Baron Maidel,t the prison governor, showed the author the irons in which some of the prisoners had been shackled fifty-three years earlier, and told him how one of them (Svistunov) had tried to kill himself, first by leaping into the Neva and then by eating broken glass. When Tolstoy said he would like to take a closer look at the cells in the Alexis