"I wanted to show myself in public so they could see how little I resemble a victim; I wanted people to talk about me; I did it instinctively! I was sure my appeal to Alexander III would be successful; I have not yet used up all my talent for arousing sympathy in others, I conquered the tsar with my words and the intensity of my feelings. But for the public, I also needed the authorization to publish The Kreutzer Sonata. ... If the book had been inspired by me, if it did portray my relations with Leo Nikolayevich, I should certainly have done nothing to further its circulation, anyone who thinks for a moment will realize that. The tsar speaks of me in the most flattering terms. . . . According to Princess Urusov, who had it from Zhukovsky, the emperor said I was simple, sincere and engaging; he had not supposed 1 was still so young and good-looking. All this is highly flattering to my woman's vanity and revenges me upon my husband who, far from trying to make me attractive in the eyes of society, has constantly sought to debase me."24
While she was trumpeting her triumph all by herself in her corner, he was piling up stores of hostile notes about women: 'To say that a woman has as much strength of character as a man, or that one can find in women what one can expect to find in men, is to deceive oneself." (June 17, 1891.) "A pretty woman says to herself, 'He is learned, intelligent, virtuous and he does what I say, therefore I am superior to learning, intelligence and virtue.'" (August 1891.)
He was not pleased with what he had written during the last few years. Now, even The Kreutzer Sonata did not satisfy him: "To stir up so much mud, there must have been something culpable in my reasons for writing it," he said to Chertkov. For relaxation, he had put together a pleasant little comedy in the meantime, called The Fruits of Enlightenment, which Tanya produced at Yasnaya Polyana at the end of December 1889,® then played at Tula and Tsarskoye-Selo in April 1890, as the tsar had authorized the performance of the play by amateurs only. He had also written, or rather tossed off. a large number of articles and tales of the early Christians, such as Walk in the Light, and a long story, The Devil—yet another illustration of the negative influence of women, in which, through the diabolical workings of sensuality, a simple peasant girl drives a married man to suicide.t
• Tanya had just returned from a trip through France and Italy with her brother Serge)' and the Olsufyevs.
f The Devil was suggested to Tolstoy by the story of Friederichs, an official in Tula who had assassinated his peasant-mistress Stepanida, and by his own affair with a serf before his marriage.
But the work by which he set most store in this period was On Life. Originally, the essay was to have been entitled On Life and Death, but as he progressed, the author came to the conclusion that death did not exist. Throughout the thirty-five chapters of the essay he explains that true life does not begin inside a man until his animal, individual conscience is no longer supreme, in short, until he stops thinking about himself. Rebirth is dictated by love of one's neighbor. Seen in this light, even pain is useful because it opens the way to a higher existence. As to death, man fears it because he mistakes the demands of his animal instincts for the fundamental disposition of his soul. At the close of his meditation, thus, Tolstoy had acquired the same certainty as Ivan Ilich breathing his last: "Where is death? What death? lie was not afraid any more because there was no death any more. Instead of death, there was light."
Sonya was so fond of On Life that, with the help of Professor Tas- tevin, she translated it into French. Earlier, she had written in her diary, "I am copying Lyovochka's study On Life (and Death). When I was young, very young, before my marriage, I aspired to the good described in it with all my heart and soul, the fruit of total self-denial and the gift of oneself to others. I aspired to the ascetic life. But fate gave me a family and now I live for that."-'3
She was so happy every time her ideas approached those of Lyovochka. Why was she forever having to look after a thousand material details, the household accounts, the children's education, Michael's nightshirts, Audrey's shoes, meals for the teachers and servants, while he forged ahead unfettered, his head in the clouds, heedless of everyone and everything? Sometimes she raged at her husband, striding far ahead of her, in such a hurry, and sometimes at her family, who were holding her back and preventing her from catching up with him.
3. Famine and Strife
After the flareup over The Kreutzer Sonata the couple's relations were poisoned by resentment, in spite of all their conciliatory efforts. As Tolstoy's audience grew, he suffered increasingly from the conflict between his principles and his instincts. He continually saw himself in a false position, because he was eating, because he was loving, bccausc he was breathing, bccausc he could not forget that he had a body. After proclaiming the necessity for chastity in marriage, he held Sonya to blame for the fact that at the age of sixty-three he still desired her. And although she was very glad to have preserved at least this power over him, she despaired because she no longer had any place in his thoughts. He seldom spoke to her about his plans, did not share his work with her, listened in irritation when she presented some domestic problem to him, often upbraided her grossly, even in front of the children, and went out of his way to avoid being alone with her, cxccpt when in the grip of a sudden need of affection. In his eyes she personified two dreadful sins: lust and cupidity. All the money in the house passed through her hands, she was soiled by it; whereas he longed to have no possessions at all. True, he had turned over the supervision and management of the estate to Sonya, but he was still its legal owner. Everything in the deeds and abstracts, both land and buildings, was in his name. How was he to square that with his vow of poverty? While he was posing as a martyr to riches and comfort, Sonya complained that the family was dumping all the dirty work on her shoulders and then sniffing contemptuously at her for doing it. "I feel as though I am caught in a vise and cannot get out," she wrote on December 11, 1890 in her diary. "This business of managing the property, which has been imposed upon me in the name of Christian principles, is the heaviest cross God has given me. If saving one's own soul means damning that of others, then Lyovochka will be saved. But isn't that perdition for both of us?"
An incident that same winter of 1890 shattered the last vestiges of harmony between them. For some time, muzhiks had been cutting down the birch trees in one of the Tolstoy forests and taking the wood. Sonya, losing patience, decided to lodge a complaint with the district chief. It was her intention—approved by Lyovochka—to release the culprits as soon as they had been judged. They were sentenced to six weeks in prison and a fine of twenty-seven rubles. But when Sonya requested their release, she was told that this was a criminal case and it would be quite impossible either to withdraw the complaint or to change the sentence. Tolstoy promptly had an attack of remorse. Once again, property had engendered evil. And it was he, the apostle of abandonment of all worldly goods, who was responsible for a conviction for theft! He ought to have given all his trees to the poor wretches, since they needed them, instead of which he had delivered them into the hands of justice, whose utility he denied in his writings. Naturally, he had acted at the instigation of his wife! He rebuked her vehemently. She retorted that it had been his idea in the first place to give the muzhiks a scare by sending them up before the police.