This letter, courteous as it was, nevertheless seemed the height of
f Turgcnev's plan to translate The Cossacks with Pauline Viardot never materialized.
insolcncc to Tolstoy and he complained to Fet: "Received an epistle from Turgenev yesterday. You know, I have decided to keep away from him and temptation. He really is an unpleasant trouble-seeker."18
This curious association of Ivan Turgenev and "temptation" provided Tolstoy with one more reason for hating the man who was morally and physically irritating to him.
Turgenev, however, continued his efforts in France on his friend's behalf. War and Peace appeared on the Paris booksellers' shelves in 1879, in a translation by Princess Paskcvich.17 Turgenev immediately began to sound the drums, send copies to the most important critics (Taine, Edmond About) and call 011 his friends to create a wave of enthusiasm.
"One must hope they will grasp all the power and beauty of your epic," he wrote to Tolstoy. "The translation is somewhat faulty, although conscientious and faithful. I have been rereading your very great work for the fifth or sixth time, and with renewed pleasure. Its structure is very foreign to everything the French arc fond of and look for in a book, but truth ever prevails. I trust there will be, if not a smashing triumph, at least a slow but sure invasion."18
A fortnight later he sent Tolstoy an extract from a letter Flaubert had written after reading War and Peace:
" ITiank you for giving me 'lolstoy's novel to read," he wrote. "It is first-rate. What a painter, what a psychologist! The first two volumes are sublime, but the third falls off terribly. He repeats himself! And he philosophizes! At last we see the man—the author and the Russian— whereas until then we had seen only Nature and Mankind. There arc some things in him that remind me of Shakespeare. I uttered cries of admiration as I read, and one is a long time reading! Yes, it is powerful, very powerful."
Turgenev added: "I think, 011 the whole, you will l>c satisfied. . . . There have not been any individual reviews yet, but three hundred copies (out of five hundred) have already been sold."
But once again, Turgenev and his congratulations came at the wrong time. Just then, Tolstoy did not want to hear another word about his novels. The Decembrists, for which he had compiled a vast documentation, appealed to him less and less. After starting over ten times and telling Sonya that the characters were beginning to come to life in his mind at last, he shut the manuscript up in a drawer, for good.
"My Decembrists are God knows where now," he wrote to Fet on April 17, 1879, "and I have forgotten all about them."
Was it fear of being asphyxiated under the mountain of historical detail, or lack of sympathy for the characters' political ideas, or the
difficulty of writing objectively about a period so close to him, or discouragement in the face of the sheer size and complexity of the undertaking? All these were behind Tolstoy's refusal, but even more, there was his growing desire to renounce the pleasures of the pen and devote himself to the mysteries of religion. For they had not seen the last of each other! His first step had been to return to the Church and adhere blindly, a la muzhik, to the Orthodox ritual. This phase of obedience had lasted nearly two years, to the satisfaction of Sonya and Alexandra. Tolstoy's children marveled at the athletic ease with which the model penitent prostrated himself in front of the icons. Yet, at the very moment his forehead touched the dusty floor of the little church of Yasnaya Polyana, a seed of doubt began to sprout in his heart. Perhaps he had taken a wrong turning. lie had never been one to follow in the footsteps of the common herd or submit to a rule that he had not invented. He had questioned even-thing he had ever learned, before teaching it to others in his own way. This spirit of dissension, independence and domination ill accorded with the self-effacement demanded of the faithful. No matter how sternly he ordered himself to respond automatically in thought and deed, his intelligence rebelled.
On May 22, 1878 he wrote in his diary, "Went to mass Sunday. I can find a satisfactory explanation for everything that happens during the service. But wishing 'long life' [to the tsar] and praying for victory over our enemies arc sacrilege. A Christian should pray for his enemies, not against them." This was the beginning of schism.
Other parts of the service gradually began to come into conflict with his common sense, and even with the teachings of Christ. After refusing to let himself question a single word of the dogma, he now began to pick it to pieces, word by word, not as a skeptic but in the manner of one of the early Christians, still illuminated by the historical proximity of the Lord. He admired the ctliical laws preached by the apostles, but he did not believe in the resurrection of Christ because he could not imagine it actually happening. He also balked at the celebration of the miracles—Ascension, Pentecost, the Annunciation, the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin. To his mind all that was a product of cheap imagery, unworthy of the cause of God. "To reinforce the teachings of Christ with miracles," he wrote in his notebook, "is like holding a lighted candle in front of the sun in order to see it better."19
Still more absurd and pointless, in his opinion, were the mysteries, especially baptism and Eucharist. And besides, why did the Orthodox Church, whose mission should be to bring about an alliance between all men, treat the Roman Catholics and Protestants—who worshiped the same God—as heretics? Why, in the same breath as it commanded
the faithful to be charitable and forgive those who trespassed against them, did it pray for the victory of the Russian army over the 'l urks? Why was the Church, champion of the poor and disinherited, swathed in gold and precious stones and damasks?
Hereafter, every time Tolstoy went anywhere, he made a pilgrimage to see some ecclesiastical dignitary. In June 1879, with Fet, he went to the holy city of Kiev, ran from cell to ccll and hermitage to hermitage, confided all his doubts to the monks, to the anchorite Anthony, to Metropolitan Makarios of Moscow, to Bishop Alexis of Mozhaysk, to Leonid the archimandrite. These eminent personages sympathized with his desire to raise himself to a higher level of spirituality at which all the inconsistencies and implausibilities of the different churches would melt away, but they warned him against undermining, by ill- considered criticism, a tradition that had been tried and accepted by the people. All too often, they told him, setting one angle straight will throw a whole edifice out of kilter, especially if the house is an old one. The imperfections of the Orthodox religion were of small consequence; the main thing was that it remain intangible throughout the centuries. "What have they done?" wrote Tolstoy. "They have cut up the teachings into shreds and tacked their idiotic, vile explanations- hateful to Christ—onto every morsel. They have blockcd the door for others and won't go inside themselves."20
He wrote to Strakhov:
"They are all admirable, intelligent people; but my convictions are growing stronger and stronger, I am straining my brains, thrashing about, struggling with all my soul and I am suffering, but I thank God for my suffering."21