f Or $283,100.
ten thousand rubles, some with five thousand. Tolstoy contemplated the money with a mixture of loathing and joy.
Meanwhile, in London, Sergey had succeeded in interesting the Quakers in the fate of the Dukhobors, whose doctrines were closely allied with their own; and in St. Petersburg, the government, exasperated by the stir being made over the affair both in Russian society and in the foreign press, authorized the sectarians to emigrate to Canada where tracts of uncleared land were being placed at their disposal by the State. It then remained to find the balance of the amount required for the transport and resettlement of nearly seven thousand emigrants. Despite Tolstoy's efforts, the subscription did not yield enough. Then, once more violating his own principles, he decided to retain his rights to the books he was then writing, sell them at the highest possible price to both Russian and foreign publishers and use the money to help the sectarians. Even though this infringement of his own rules was being made to further a humanitarian undertaking, he was aware of its gravity and apologized to Chertkov: "Although these writings do not satisfy my present aesthetic requirements (they arc not accessible to all in their present form), there is no harm in their substance and they may even be of some use to readers. Therefore I think it would be good to sell them at the highest possible price, publish them without waiting for my death and transfer the money to the Dukhobors' emigration committee."7
In this charitable design he hurried Father Sergey to completion and returned to his long novel, Resurrection. Before it was finished he had sold it to the publisher Marx for his review Niva, for the "exorbitant" (in Sonya's own words) sum of one thousand rubiest per sixteen-page sheet.
There are scores of entries in his notebooks to prove that he cared enormously about Father Sergey. Prince Kasatsky, a brilliant lieutenant of the cuirassiers, becomes engaged to the very beautiful Marya, a young lady of the highest society who is a great favorite with the court, only to learn that, the previous year, she had been the mistress of Tsar Nicholas I. Horrified, Kasatsky leaves her, takes holy orders and becomes something of a saint—bather Sergey, whom pilgrims comc to see in his hermitage. In spite of his apparent serenity, Father Sergey must wrestle with two temptations: concupiscence, and a sort of "monastic ambition" or pride in saintliness, which prevents him from finding true salvation. One night, a pretty woman from the neighboring town who has had a little too much to drink makes a bet with some
JOr $2830.
friends that she can seduce the anchorite. She enters his retreat, brushes against him, excites him. And Father Sergey, about to fall, cuts off one of his fingers with an ax. Having punished his flesh, he now believes he will be freed of the demon forever. But later he succumbs to the advances of a sensual and stupid merchant's daughter. Then, horrified at his sin, he runs away and loses himself among the masses of the humble, poor and nameless. Convicted of vagabondage and deported to Siberia, he finds happiness at last in his physical debasement: "He works his employer's vegetable garden, gives lessons to the children and nurses the sick."
After writing this story, which combines elements of The Kreutzer Sonata and What I Believe, Tolstoy could not make up his mind to publish it.* It is brutal, disconcerting, provocative; it may be taxed with absurdity and it is not exempt from melodrama; but by transcending them, the tale achieves greatness. How often was Tolstoy himself tempted to cut off a finger in order to stifle his burgeoning desire? How many times did he dream of finding release from the burdensome glory of apostlchood by running away and living like a muzhik? From Father Sergey to Father Leo, there is only the thickness of a sheet of paper.
And it was himself again that he featured in Resurrection, under the name of Nckhlyudov. Himself—or, at least, the ideas that disturbed him, the remorse that gnawed at him, the indignation that rose up in him at the world in its present state.
The idea for this novel came to him in June 1887 when his friend Koni, who was visiting Yasnaya Polyana, told him the most singular case of his career on the bench. He was representing the State at the St. Petersburg court when a young aristocrat came to him with a com plaint against the prison administration, which refused to give a scaled letter to a woman convict, Rosalie Oni, on the ground that all letters must be read before being distributed. Koni explained to his client that those were indeed the prison regulations and, his curiosity aroused, made an inquiry into the woman's case. He learned that Rosalie, a sharecropper's daughter, had been taken in at her father's death by the owner of the estate, who had kept her on as a house-servant. At sixteen she had been seduced by the son of her benefactress, and when she became pregnant she was driven out of the house. Forced to make a living somehow, she soon became a prostitute of the lowest sort. One of her clients accused her of stealing a hundred rubles from him, and she was arrested and put 011 trial. It so happened that one of the mcin-
0 It was not published until after his death.
bcrs of the jury was the very man who had seduced her and brought about her downfalclass="underline" Koni's young visitor himself! He had rccognizcd his victim in that faded, abandoned woman and, overcome by remorse, offered to marry her to atone for his error. But before the marriage could take place, Rosalie Oni died of typhus in prison.
Listening to this tale, Tolstoy felt himself half-sick with emotion. He, too, had seduced a servant in his youth—Gasha. He, too, had a bastard child by a peasant woman, at Yasnaya Polyana. He, too, was a swine, like the young aristocrat Koni was telling him about. He asked the judge to write out the cruel tale for the Intermediary. In the spring of 1888, Koni still had not done so and Tolstoy spoke to him again, asking him to cede the rights to the story, which Koni was more than willing to do. However, it was not until December 1889 that Tolstoy began what he first called "Koni's story." Then he put it aside for nearly five years. In 1895, in a burst of energy, he wrote a full but relatively short first draft. As with War and Peace, he wanted to build his work on a foundation of unimpeachable documentation. Through the offices of his friend Davydov, State representative at the court of Tula, he was able to visit the prisons, question the prisoners, study the machinery of the law courts. After revising his first draft during the summer months he read it to some friends, and his confidence faltered: "I am now convinccd that it is no good," he said, "the ccnter of gravity is not in the right place, the agricultural question weakens the story. I think I am going to abandon it."
And for another three years he did not touch the manuscript. His scheme to help the Dukhobors sent him excitedly back to his characters, and this time he stuck to them throughout the summer and autumn of 189S. As he progressed, the story expanded. He introduced all the great guiding principles of his life and wrought them into one virulent whole, one scorching testament. "I thought it would be very good to write a long novel in the light of my present opinions," he had noted a few years earlier. Now he was sure the lx)ok would be good. A cargo of dynamite. Enough to blow up the whole rotten old world. Remember to thank God who had enabled him, at the age of seventy (i.I.l.) to carry' out this strenuous undertaking! He wrote to his disciples Shkarvan and Abrikosov: "I am very busy . . . with my novel Resurrection. I am so taken up with it that I can think of nothing else, day and night. I think it will be important."8 And to Chertkov: "As a projectile gathers speed ncaring the earth, so I, as the end of my novel approaches, can think of nothing else—absolutely nothing else -but that."9