This roar of approval reawakened Tolstoy's interest in the theater. He began to attend performances, less to admire other dramatists than to confirm his suspicions of their shortcomings. Shakespeare was still his pet hate; after seeing the Italian actor Rossi in King Lear and Hamlet, lie announced that he was revolted by "such affectation." On April 18, 1896, he walked out of a performance of Wagner's Siegfried before the end of the second act, muttering, "Fit for a circus, idiotic, pretentious!" He later explained to his intimates that German folklore was "the most stupid and tedious" of all and that the composer's music was utterly shapeless. "You listen," he said, "but you cannot tell
whether the orchestra has already started to play or is still tuning up."8 Excited by all the clumsy mistakes he found in the world's most famous dramatists, he set to work on a play of his own, The Light Shines in the Darkness. It was a semi-autobiographical analysis of the conflict between a man animated by a fervent sense of Christianity and those around him, especially his wife, who wants to go on living according to the law of the world. Curiously, when writing these four acts Tolstoy unconsciously exaggerated his hero to the point of caricature. After a few weeks he may have realized that his argument was in danger of blowing up in his face, and he put the play away unfinished. Or, unable to find the right ending for it, he may have decided to wait until his life provided material for a denouement.
Death was all around him. Nagomov, his niece Varya's husband; Strakhov the critic, who had been his admirer and friend . . .ft Funerals alternated with baptisms and weddings. Some of the latter, he thought, were as sad as the former. The year before (July 10, 1895), his son Sergey had married a Miss Rachinsky; this year it was the other son, Leo, who married a Miss Wcsterlund (May 15, 1896); his daughter Tanya was in love with Sukhotin and to Sonya's great displeasure was compromising herself by seeing him too often. What was it made them all run like lunatics after common terrestrial love? He seemed to be the only person who was capable of denying himself a pleasure. On May 2, 1896 he suddenly decided not to touch his bicycle again. "I have stopped riding my bicycle," he proudly wrote. "I cannot understand how I could be so carried away [with this sport]!"10 Tanya, guessing the real reason for his sacrifice, wrote in her diary, "Papa has given up his bicycle. I am happy for him because 1 know how much he loves to deny himself things; and for myself as well, because now we will not need to worry about him all the time or wait up all evening while he is out in the rain or send people out looking for him everywhere, etc."11
In May 1896, Tsar Nicholas II came to Moscow for his coronation, and Tolstoy thanked heaven he was at Yasnaya Polyana during these festivities, which he could not condone. Nothing seemed more absurd to him than the revelry among the common people which always accompanied the official installation of a tyrant on his throne. 'The inanity and ignominy of this ritual make me unspeakably miserable," lie wrote.12 rIlie tsar had commanded all his subjects to take part in the celebrations, so a fair was planned for May 18 011 the Khodanka parade- grounds outside Moscow. It was huge. The police were soon overwhelmed; the crowd that milled back and forth between the candy
J Author's italics.
and vodka stands was so enormous that over two thousand persons were killed in the crush. This catastrophe was universally hailed as a bad omen: the reign had been baptized in blood. Nevertheless, that same evening Nicholas II attended the ball at the French Embassy. "Dreadful occurrence in Moscow on the Khodanka parade-grounds," wrote Tolstoy. "Three thousand persons crushcd to death. I do not know how to react to this event. I am not in condition, I am losing my grip."13
A few lines earlier the same day he had noted, "Tanayev annoys me with his air of moral self-satisfaction, his artistic obtuseness (deep- seated, not just superficial) and his position as cock-o'-the-walk in this house." A burst of spleen, quickly repressed. Sergey Ivanovich Tanayev, pianist and composer, was a friend of the family of long standing. He had already come to Yasnaya Polyana the previous year. In 1896, wanting to spend the summer with the Tolstoys, he rented the pavilion in which the Kuzminskys usually stayed, for one hundred and thirty rubles, and thus became part of the master's daily life.
lie was a little man of forty, chubby and awkward, who wore his clothes too tight, had tiny eyes, a pug nose and a falsetto voicc. A limp beard encircled his puffed-up doll's chccks. Absent-minded and bashful, he was utterly lacking in poise. Young women intimidated him, especially if they were pretty. An old nanny lived with him, brushed his clothes and made his morning tea. He played with the children on the croquet lawn, went on walks and picnics, dined joyously at the big table with twenty other guests, played chess with the master of the house, charmed everyone with his simple manners and kindliness and, in the evening, never refused when asked to give a little concert. He had a very light touch on the piano and an unaffected sensitivity that delighted his audience. Even Tolstoy, who was increasingly coming to suspect music of being in league with the devil, could not suppress his emotion when he heard certain pieces. Annoyed with himself, he pooh- poohed Tanaycv's favorite composers, said that Bach and Beethoven were overrated and wondered whether art in general were a necessary part of experience. Impassioned debates ensued, involving the whole family.
It was Sonva's opinion that life was not worth living without music and poetry. When Tanayev played Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words she clasped her hands to her bosom and had to choke back her tears. Vanichka's death had left such a void in her heart that she had an unconscious need to transfer her excess affection to someone else. By a natural reflex of self-defense she clung to whatever was still able to give her pleasure: music, which she had always loved, and the company of a man younger than herself, refined, discreet, reassuringly ugly.
The consolation she had been unable to accept from her husband—a genius, to be sure, but so excessive, obstinate, sectarian, so selfish and sententious—she found in the company of this artist, whose opinions on every subject coincided with her own. She delighted in their serious, high-minded, poetic conversations; when he looked at her, she felt younger; when his fingers touchcd the piano, her feet left the ground; sometimes it seemed to her that Vanichka was encouraging her in this newfound affection; perhaps, if he had lived, he would have been like Tanayev. . . . She was so ccrtain of the innoccncc of her feelings that she did not even try to hide them. Her daughters, from youngest to eldest, looked on with disapproval. Tanya (thirty-two) observed that her mother pinned a rose on her blouse before the musician's arrival. Sasha (twelve) was horrified to hear her reciting, with bcatific gaze, a poem by Tyutchev that began with the lines:
Oh, how much more timid and tender love grows
As our days draw on toward their close.
The girl thought these lines must surely be connected in her mother's mind with that disgusting Tanayev. She was delighted to learn that Papa, who was always right, considered that this decadent poet's glorification of "senile, toothless" love was "repulsive." In fact, Tolstoy had long been aware of Sonya's pitiful attempts at coquetry. Although he loudly proclaimed his indifference to public opinion, he could not stand the idea of being made a fool of by his wife. He was willing to accuse himself of the most heinous crimes, revile and ridicule himself and her for the love of Christian sclf-mortification, but not to be mocked at behind his back. Strange coincidence, that his final downfall should comc at the hands of a musician, just like that of the criminal hero of The Kreutzer Sonata. Had he been giving voice to a premonition when he wrote the book? Was this the price of the humiliation he had inflicted upon Sonya five years before when he published it? But there was nothing of Trukhachcvsky in Tanayev. Oh, his colleagues would have a good laugh at his expense! Sentences from the book leaped up before his eyes: '"Hie moment his gaze crossed my wife's I saw the hidden beast in them thumb its nose at their position and all our social conventions."