Knowing that Turgenev admired George Sand, Tolstoy once declared, during a dinner at Nckrasov's, that if her heroines had actually existed it would have been necessary, to set an example, "to lash them to the hangman's cart and drag them through the streets of St. Petersburg." Turgenev began to protest and received a volley of such scathing sarcasm that he had not recovered three days later. "I nearly quarreled with Tolstoy," he wrote to his friend Botkin. "A lack of education will always show in some form or other. ... At a dinner at Nckrasov's he said such nasty and insulting things about G. Sand that I cannot repeat them. The argument grew very heated. In a word, he disgusted us all and showed himself in his worst light."8 Nor was George Sand the young officer's only pet aversion. lie was not above attacking Iler- zen, the exiled revolutionary, whose review, The Bell, was smuggled over the frontier. And Shakespeare and Homer, whom lie called "phrase-makers." But storm and sneer as he might, his friends on The Contemporary forgave all. And their very indulgence exasperated him.
Disenchanted with the Westerners, he dccided to join the Slavophils: he went to see Milyutin and Kavelin, became friendly with Aksakov, Gorbunov and Kireycvsky, listened to them professing their faith in the superiority of the good old Russian traditions over the veneer of European culture, and quickly perceived that they were no better than their opponents. "Their views are too narrow and unrealistic," he wrote. "By dint of arguing and preaching their aims have become considerably distorted, as always happens in a group of intellectuals." He also disliked them for their attachment to the Orthodox religion, which he condemned for its "monstrous perversion of the truth and historical inconsistency." And lastly, he could not respect them because they were protected by the government, whilst the censor "smothered" the Westerners.9 Decidedly, he could not make up his mind which side to join. He agreed with nobody. Why was that? Very simple: both Westerners and Slavophils had one fault in common—they were bourgeois, the priests of a godless religion.
"These men, my literary brothers, saw life in the following way," lie wrote, years later, in Confession. "Life in general, they said, was moving forward; this progress was due chiefly to the thinkers and, foremost among them, the artists and poets, in other words, to us. Our vocation is to edify mankind. This principle granted, these men should then have asked themselves one fundamental question: what are we, and what arc we to teach? Instead of which, their method was to avoid the issue by- affirming that one need not know anything in order to teach, since artists and poets teach unconsciously."
The relatively comfortable circumstances of these "professional" writers, their cosmopolitan culture, their love of the pleasures of the table and their refined manners offended him as an insult to the majesty of the Idea. Forgetting that he himself was a hard drinker and inmate of certain houses of ill repute, he accused them of being "amoral men, most of them wicked, with petty natures." He who had never sacrificed a hair to defend a conviction attacked Turgenev, who had braved and borne exile for his obituary on Gogol. Applauded from his first word by every writer of his time, he denounced their "literary conniving."10 For him, the only things worthy of respect in Russia were the aristocracy and the people; he was a member of the former, and was attracted to the latter. Through the veins of a noble coursed the entire history of the country, and through those of a muzhik, all the wisdom of the earth. Between these two true beings, a third had insinuated itself, a new and entirely artificial, useless and untrustworthy creature: the intellectual. The intellectual was not nourished on experience but on books. He claimed the right to instruct his fellows and he had never fought or plowed a field. Most of the time, his pen produced nothing but falsehood.
"Lies!" The word was recurring increasingly often in Tolstoy's conversation and in his diary. He soon moved out of Turgenev's apartment: his host's feminine sensitivity, elegant dress, love of order and gourmet's pretensions gave Tolstoy an imperious desire to live in a shambles and feast on sour cabbage. But after moving into a dark ground-floor apartment in Officer's Street, he continued to harry his friend every time they met. Suddenly, in the midst of the most trivial conversation, Turgcnev would feci himself transfixed by a gaze as keen as a scalpel, the look of a man determined that nobody was going to put anything over on him, and knew that Tolstoy was on the warpath again. A word, the flicker of an eyelid or quiver of a nostril had convinccd him that his partner was not being sincere. "Ivan Sergeyevich Turgencv told me," wrote Garshin, "that he had never experienced anything so disagreeable as that piercing look which, coupled with two or three venomous remarks, was enough to drive a man mad unless he had considerable self- control." After scenes of this type, Turgcnev, shattered and tearful, would complain to his friends. "There is not one natural word or gesture in him," he moaned faintly. "He is forever posing, and I cannot understand this ridiculous affection for a wretched title of nobility in a man as intelligent as he is. . . . You can boil a Russian officer in laundry soap for three days without dissolving that way they have of coming all lordling and cadet over you; no matter what varnish of education you try to paint onto an individual like that, the brute in him always shows through. . . . And to think that all that vulgarity is aimed solely at gaining attention!"11
One clay he was talking to Panayev in this vein and the latter remarked, "You know, Turgenev, to listen to you ranting away like this, I would think you were jealous of him if I didn't know you so well."
"Why should I be jealous of him? Why? Give me one reason!" cricd Turgcnev.
And he suddenly burst out laughing.
And Tolstoy, while furiously condemning the faults of this literary pontiff, could not bear to be out of his sight. If Turgenev went home in a huff, his young collcaguc would racc after him, dogging his heels like a "woman in love."12 The reconciliation was as necessary as the quarrel. Without a victim, what executioner would not die of boredom? The ups and downs of this friendship are recorded with meticulous detail in his diary. "February 7, 1856. Quarreled with Turgenev." "February 13. Dinner at Turgenev's; we made up." "March 12. Quarreled with Turgenev, this time for good, I think." "April 20. Went to see Turgenev and had a most amusing talk with him." "April 25. Pleasant visit to Turgenev. Must book him tomorrow for dinner." "May 5. Insulted everyone; Turgenev went home. ... I am depressed." And when Turgenev, at the end of his rope, retreated to his country home at Spasskoyc, the repentant troglodyte wrote to Aunt Toinette, "Now he is gone, and 1 feel that I was beginning to care for him a great deal, even though we did nothing but argue. Without him, I am perishing of boredom."13
He did not like St. Petersburg, he did not feci at ease among his fellow writers, whatever their persuasion, and he was going out more from habit than desire. His evcr-indulgcnt superiors had transferred him to the School of Pyrotechnics, where he did not even need to put in an appearance. All that remained of his military' carccr was his uniform. He devoted every minute of his free time to literature. On January 12, 1856 the third Sevastopol sketch (Sevastopol in August) was published in The Contemporary. For the first time, the initials L.N.T. were replaced by the author's name in full, "Count Leo Tolstoy." An editor's note stated that Childhood, Boyhood, Sevastopol in December and other stories previously printed under the initials LJsf.T. were by the same author. While working on Youth, he dashed off a few shorter tales: Two Hussars, The Snow Storm, A Landlord's Morning. And just to prove to himself that he belonged to no school or part)', he gave some of his manuscripts to the Westerners at The Contemporary and some to Katkov's Russian Herald, a reactionary Slavophil periodical. Since he was not dependent on his writing for a livelihood, he did not have to cater to public, critics or colleagues; he could do as he pleased, break down doors, bang his fist 011 the table, speak out loud and true. Diplomacy was not his cup of tea, and flattery still less. They would have to take him as he was. And, true enough, the very people who were exasperated by his conduct were subjugated by his art. There was never a false note in the praise that hailed each new work. He despaired of finding an enemy worthy of him.