t His sister.
0 The Arsenyev estate.
Landlord's Morning had been smashing successes; Youth, which had just come out in the first issue of The Contemporary for 1857, had already gleaned some words of praise. It seemed to Tolstoy, however, that the friends who had read the manuscript or proofs had been more reticent than on previous occasions. Druzhnin, for example, whose opinion he highly valued, had written on October 6, 1856, "None of our other writers could have grasped and portrayed the agitated and disorderly time of youth better than you." But he found some chapters too "long-drawn-out" and said the author must guard against his propensity for analysis as against the plague: "One occasionally feels that you are about to write: X's thighs showed that he wanted to take a trip to India." He also criticized Tolstoy's style, heavy, almost "ungram- matical," cncumbcrcd by never-ending sentences. Like Druzhnin, Pana- yev also begged the author to lighten his "otherwise admirable" text. On December 5, 1856 he wrote, "Your phrases arc too long and obscure, the same words keep recurring."! On this point Tolstoy conceded that Druzhnin and Panayev were right, he did not have Turgcncv's diaphanous style. But his desire to approach ever closer to the core of truth in beings and things prevented hiin from caring about the elegance of his language. He piled up his relative clauses one on top of the other, twisted his syntax, peppered his sentences with increasingly specific epithets, in order to capture some subtle nuance. Asking him to lighten his style was tantamount to asking him to change his vision of the world, to change himself. Then, too, even though he agreed with Druzhnin, lie could not curc himself of his "mania" for sketching in a charactcr by beginning with some detail of physiognomy and proceeding by induction from matter to soul, from data to idea. In this connection his notebooks for 1856 are filled with curious observations. "For mc," he wrote, "the back is an important mark of physiognomy, and especially the place where the neck joins the back; no other part of the body so clearly reveals lack of self-confidence and false sentiment." And also, "A straight back is a sign of passionate temperament." Or, "The physiology of wrinkles can be very telling and accurate."04 In Youth he had put this theory to the test even more than in his previous work. "Dubkov," for example, "had the sort of hands that often wear rings and belong to people who like to do things with their hands and love beautiful things.""5 Again, "Sofya Ivanovna had that singular, florid complexion one encounters in very stout old maids who are short and wear corsets."50
f On Dcocmber 6, 1856, Panayev wrote to Turgenev, in rcfercncc to Youih, that "Me [Tolstoy] simply docs not know how to write. His sentences are all two yards long. The thought is admirable, its expression often thoroughly obscure. . . "
In painting the third panel of his triptych he had, as in Boyhood, combined the story of his friends, the Islenyevs, with his own. In particular, the Islcnyev father's second marriage with "a young beauty," Sofya Zhdanov, had given him the idea for the episode of Nikolenka's father and "la belle Flarmande." As for Prince Nekhlyudov, he was to become one of the author's favorite aliases. Aunt Toinette, Dmitry and many others had posed for some of his characters; but however great the charm of these half-real, half-fictional figures, the real hero of Youth was its narrator. Ilis relentless digging down into his self, to eject admirable and ignoble features pell-mell and reveal the naked man, compelled even the most superficial reader to venture into his own lower depths.
Aksakov wrote, in The Russian Tatler, "Here analysis assumes the form of a confession, a pitiless exposure of all the seething activity of the human soul. And yet this self-indictment is perfectly healthy and straightforward, there is no hesitation about it, it is tainted by no involuntary desire to excuse what goes on within. . . . There is something sickly, weak, uncertain about Turgcncv's analysis, whereas that of Count Tolstoy is sound and uncompromising."
Tolstoy left before he had seen this notice, and that of Basistov in the St. Petersburg News: "To present the hero of Youth as typical of Russian youth is an insult to both society and youth." For the time being, he was planning to continue the series, but his ideas were not yet ripe.J Besides, he was unable to concentrate on anything inside the stagecoach. His mind flitted from one thing to another. He sighed for Mme. Mengdcn ("She is delightful, a relationship with her might be most enjoyable.") and was sorry he had behaved so badly to Valerya ("I should like to write to Mile. Vcrgani and tell her I am not the guilty part)', if there is one"57). He would have been greatly surprised to learn that the girl he was berating himself for having compromised would soon be married to someone else; but it would probably have astonished him less to be told that, accustomed as he was to using the events of his own life as his raw materials, this romantic interlude would bccomc, two years later, a novel.®
On February 4 Leo Tolstoy stepped out of the stagecoach, exhausted, at Warsaw, after covering 900 miles in five days, or 180 miles a day. The sun was rising in front of him, "setting the houses alight with bright colors." He immediately sent a telegram to Ivan Turgenev, an-
t 'I'his projcct was subsequently abandoned.
• Valerya Arsenyev married A.' A. Talysin, future magistrate at Orlov; in Family Happiness Tolstoy described what would have happened had he carried out his first matrimonial plans.
nouncing his arrival in Paris. Nekrasov was there, too—double cause for rejoicing. He continued his trip by rail, went through Berlin without stopping and set foot on Frcnch soil 011 February 9, 1857,! in the crush, smoke and racket of the Gare du Nord.
f February 9, Old Style (Julian calendar), February 21, New Style (Gregorian).
PART III
Travel, Romance and Pedagogy
I. Discovery of Europe
Tolstoy first went to the Hotel Mcurice, which was then located at 149. rue de Rivoli; the following day, he rented a furnished apartment in a pension at No. 206 on the same street. 'Ilie rooms were sunny, but cold. No Russian double windows, none of those excellent tile stoves with serfs to bank up their fires; no samovar steaming around-the-clock. The pale sun of dying winter shone 011 the Tuileries. Birds chirped in the bare branches of the trees. The music of the French language was pleasing to the car. Sitting down to the table d'h6te, the traveler found himself among a score of pemionnaires who immediately engaged him in a conversation "studded with witticisms and word-play."1 He was sorry, however, that lie had not brought a servant with him, and had so few friends in this big city. Turgenev and Nekrasov came to see him on the evening of his arrival. Both disappointed him. "Turgenev is unbelievably touchy and soft," he noted, and "Nekrasov looks gloomy."
Ivan Turgenev, who lived with his daughter Paulinette and her gov erness at No. 208, rue de Rivoli, two doors away, was very unhappy indeed, because Pauline Viardot was neglecting him for a newcomer, the painter Ary Scheffcr. Nevertheless, he wanted to make a festive occasion of his meeting with the "troglodyte" and, as the Carnival was in full swing, dragged Tolstoy, still worn out after his trip, to a costume ball at the Op6ra. On the evening of February 9 (21),* 1857 Tolstoy scratched one word in his diary: "Madness." The next day, he wrote to his sister:
"The little Frenchmen are very droll and nice when they are out for fun, which assumes monumental proportions here. An ordinary Frenchman dresses himself up as a wild Indian, daubs paint all over his face