The next day Masha and Valerian joined the two writers. Turgenev was full of attentions for the young woman; he must not have noticed her bad breath! He thought her pretty, with her childish face and frank, open expression and her unaffected manner. He had even dedicated a short story to her: Faust. After all, that fool of a Valerian deserved no better than he got, since he had been ncgleeting his wife for some time. "I like the relationship between Masha and Turgenev," Tolstoy wrote. And he went back to Yasnava Polyana, convinced that he had renewed a friendship with his colleague that would stand the strain of time.
When he saw him again a month later, he changed his mind. His animosity flared up without apparent reason, like a brushfirc after long smoldering. "He is a man of no consequence, cold and unpleasant. I feel sorry for him, but I shall never be able to be his friend." (July 5, 1856.) "His whole life is an attempt to ape simplicity. I am decidcdly repelled by him." (July 8, 1856.) "He refuses to do anything, 011 the pretext that an artist is powerless. But 110 man can avoid the material side of life—the muzhik for us, like the bank for the English." (Notebooks, July 31, 1856.)
In August of 1S56 Turgenev left for France. The moment he was out of sight Tolstoy began to miss him. There was a mysterious bond between these two that strengthened with absence, for Turgenev, settled into the Viardots' home at Rozay-cn-Brie, was also haunted by the thought of his loving tormentor. With melancholy benevolence he analyzed the other man, whose superiority seemed still more patent from afar. To be sure, he did not underestimate his own talent: he knew (he had heard it so often!) that his style was the most elegant in all
Russia; but since reading Childhood, Boyhood and the Sevastopol Sketches, he felt that everything he wrote himself was artificial and false. Ilis books turned out to be works of art, those of the other man were chunks of life. Was this the beginning of his decline? Was that young boor with the glittering eyes going to relegate him to oblivion? He felt it coming, it made him sad, but he did not protest against the judgment of posterity. Out of intellectual integrity, he felt he must confess himself to Tolstoy.
"You are the only man in the world with whom I have had misunderstandings," he wrote from Francc, "and they arose precisely bccausc, with you, I did not want to remain within the limits of a simple friendship. I wanted to go further and deeper. But I plunged ahead recklessly, collided with you and upset you and then, seeing my error, drew back, too suddenly, perhaps. And that is why a 'breach' grew up between us. Then, too, I am much older than you. I have followed a different path. . . . Your whole life is facing forward, mine is built on the past.f . . . You are too solidly planted on your own feet to become a disciplc of anything! I can assure you that I never thought you were malicious or dreamed you were capable of literary jealousy. I saw in you (forgive the expression!) a considerable amount of confusion, but never anything evil. And you are far too perceptive not to know that if either of us has anything to envy the other, you are surely not the one. In a word, we will never be friends in Rousseau's sense, but we will love each other and rejoice in each other's success and, after you have settled down and all that is surging around inside you has subsided a little, then, I am certain of it, we shall meet again as joyfully and openly as on the day I met you for the first time, in St. Petersburg."29
He hoped his words would mollify his correspondent—but they only- irritated him. By what right, thought Tolstoy, was this "European" preaching to him? He might criticize and revile himself in front of a mirror, but he would not allow anyone else to make reflections on any aspect of his character. "Received a letter from Turgenev yesterday, and it did not please me," he wrote in his diary.30
A few days later, further explanations from Turgenev arrived in reply to a letter from Tolstoy:31
"I know I care for the man in you (for the author, it goes without saying), but there are many things in you that rub me the wrong way and, in the end, I have found it more convenient to remain at a distance. . . . From afar my heart is full of fraternal sympathy for you, even tenderness. . . . Once you liked my work, and it might even have
t Ivan Turgenev was thirty eight at the time, Tolstoy was twenty-eight.
had some influence upon you before you found yourself. Now it is pointless for you to study me, all you will see is the difference in the way we work, the mistakes and hesitations. What you must study is mankind in general, and your own heart, and the truly great writers. As for mc, I am only the exponent of a period of transition, meaningful only for individuals who are themselves in a state of transition."32
And, as though to warn Tolstoy against the temptation of dogmatism which was already threatening him, he wrote on another occasion:
"Would to God your horizon may broaden every day! The people who bind themselves to systems are those who are unable to encompass the whole truth and try to catch it by the tail; a system is like the tail of truth, but truth is like a lizard: it leaves its tail in your fingers and runs away, knowing full well that it will grow a new one in a twinkling."33
After hanging back, Tolstoy finally let himself be swayed by Turgenev's solicitude. He also recovered his former fondness for Aunt Toinette, whom he had been hating for her retrograde attitude toward serfdom. "Aunt Toinette is an amazing woman! Now there's a case of love that endureth all!" (Diary, July 1, 1856.) Even Yasnaya Polyana seemed pleasant to him, now that he had temporarily given up the idea of freeing the muzhiks and no longer needed to try to argue with them. He read, wrote, hunted, savored the beauties nature spread before him. What was missing from this idyllic tableau? A woman, to be sure! Solemnly and persistently, Tolstoy began to wonder whether the time had not come for him to marry.
Early in the summer, when his friend Dyakov came to Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy poured out his matrimonial projects to him. Since, at last hearing, Dyakov's own sister was the woman he claimed to be in love with, his friend was greatly surprised to learn that the object of his passion was 110 longer Alexandra Obolensky, but a certain Valcrya Arscn- yev. This young person, an orphan, lived with her sisters Olga and Gcnia on the estate of Sudakovo, five miles from Yasnaya Polyana. An aged aunt and a companion, Mile. Vergani—French, according to the rule- mounted guard over the three maidens. As a neighbor, Tolstoy had known them for years. But he had recently come down from Moscow in the company of Mile. Vergani, who had succeeded in quickening his interest in little Valcrya. He had gone to Sudakovo several times, vaguely paid court to the twenty-year-old maiden whom everyone was desperate to marry off, and now could not decide whether to propose or bow out. When consulted on this point, Dyakov, whose chief aim was probably to divert Tolstoy's attention from his sister, said he must lose no time: "He advised me to marry Valerya. When I listen to him, I, too, believe it would be the best thing for me to do. Can it be money that is stopping me? No; simply lack of opportunity. Then he took mc back to the turning for Sudakovo." And Tolstoy, with a shove from "the best friend in the world," set off down the path that led straight to matrimony, certain that he was striding toward happiness. But when he actually came face to face with the girl, his ardor cooled. He had never really looked at her before. She was chubby, colorless, she had porcclain eyes. "A pity she has no bone, no fire," he wrote that evening. "A wet noodle. Sweet, though—her smile is sickly and submissive."34