This done, he set off with his sister Marya to spend the winter in Moscow, took a furnished apartment on Pyatnitskaya Street and plunged back into the literary world. His spirits were at a low ebb. "I was not able to leap over contingencies as I had done in the past," he wrote to Botkin on October 21, 1857, "and I saw to my horror that the painful, senseless and dishonest reality I lived in, far from being an accident, a regrettable incident affecting only myself, was in fact the law of all life. . . . Farewell, youth!" In this unhappy frame of mind, Moscow soon became hateful to him. At Aksakov's, he detected the stink of "base literary intriguing"; the "extremely man-of-lcttcrs" side of Fet's "conceited and empty" personality disappointed him; his childhood playmate Lyubov Bchrs was "dreadful, balding and debilitated"; and when he looked in the mirror he could not recognize himself, either: "Good God, how old I have become! Everything bores me, I don't feci anything, even about myself. ... I am prepared, within the limits of my powers, to bear this sad burden of cxistcncc."3
A trip to St. Petersburg only added to his dejection. Talking to Nekrasov and the other writers on The Contemporary, he managed to persuade himself that his popularity was 011 the wane. His latest works had been all very well, no doubt, but they disappointed the admirers of the Sevastopol Sketches and Youth, who were expecting another thunderclap of truth from him, while he was wasting his time and talent in trivia.
"At first Petersburg gave me a feeling of bitterness, then it disgusted me completely," he wrote on October 30, 1857. "People have already forgotten about me, or are beginning to, and that made me very sad at heart. But now I feel better, I know I have a lot to say and the ability to say it forcefully."
In spite of this proudly penned declaration, he was not overconfident about the future. He soon realized that the literary fashion in Russia had changed. Since Alexander II's accession to the throne, the public, aroused by his promises of reform, were clamoring for books reflecting the social problems of the time. Panaycv, the champion of "art for art's sake," reported to Botkin on June 28, 1857 that "According to my observations, borne out a millionfold by the facts, the Russian public is now demanding more serious reading matter. . . . Yes, yes, my dear old Vasily Petrovich, the time has come when the most fragrant, the most nobly inspired work of art will go unnoticcd if it does not deal with the problems of the day, the living, essential concerns of the present. Sad, but true."
As though he had read the letter, Tolstoy himself wrote to Botkin, from Moscow, on November 1, 1857: "I must tell you that as a result of the new trend in literature most of our old acquaintances, including yours truly, no longer know what they stand for and are going around looking as though they had been spat upon from head to foot. Nckra- sov and Panayev do not even dream of writing their own things any more, and content themselves with handing over piles of money to Melnikov and Saltykov.* Saltykov, by the way, has explained to mc that the golden age of belles-lettres is at an end (not only for Russia, but in general) and that nobody in Europe will ever read Homer or Goethe again. This is all tripe, of course, but it is enough to drive you out of your senses to hear the entire world suddenly proclaiming that the sky is black when you see it blue, and in the end you begin to wonder whether there is something the matter with your eyes."
Tolstoy's anxiety about his future as a writer was so acute that he was expecting to see the day when, outdistanced by his young colleagues and unable to adapt to their form of social art, he would simply have to give up writing: "Thank God I did not listen to Turgenev when he told me an author must be an author and nothing else," he wrote in the same letter to Botkin. "Literature must not become a crutch, as Walter Scott said. . . . Our literature, that is, poetry, is a phenomenon outside the law, if not positively aberrant, and that is why it would be unjustifiable to base one's entire life on it."
Turgenev, to whom Botkin showed this letter, wrote straight back to Tolstoy on November 25 (December 7), 1857: "No matter how I cudgel my brains I cannot make out exactly what you are, if not an
• Melnikov-Pechersky (1819-1883), author-ethnographer; wrote In the Forests. Saltykov-Shchcdrin (1826-1889), novelist; wrote The Golovlyw Family.
author. Philosopher? Founder of a new religion? Civil servant? Businessman? Do be kind enough to help me out of my predicament by informing me which of the alternatives I propose suits you best. I am joking, of course, but joking aside, I would like to sec you sail out into the open at last, full speed ahead." And Botkin himself, worried by Tolstoy's state, begged him to consider that it was natural, after such a cruel war and humiliating defeat, for the public to want books denouncing the flaws of Russian society: "Is it possible," he went on, "that you can lose your faith in poetry and want to abandon it because of this, when your heart is already inside the gates of the kingdom? I resent your being upset by the vulgar rant of common mortals who deny the powers of poetry and art because they are incapable of experiencing them."4
It was poor psychology on the part of Botkin and Turgenev to imagine that Tolstoy honestly intended to put down his pen. His fur)' and despair were principally designed to alarm his friends, and subsided in direct proportion as their anxiety mounted. At the same time as he was threatening to abandon literature, he was also making plans to found a literary magazine whose aim would be to protest against the invasion of the rightful territory of Art by legislation and sociology. His friends in Moscow and St. Petersburg eventually dissuaded him from this venture, but he still could not find himself. On the one hand, he was passionately interested in the emancipation of the serfs and aspired to serve the people by his writing; on the other, he claimed allegiance to pure acstheticism and lived in terror lest the new novel become a weapon of political propaganda.
'llie battle was raging all around him. People were rabidly in favor of emancipation, or dead against it. The selfishness of the propertied classes was clashing with the ideology of those who had nothing to lose. "Ninety per cent are against emancipation, and all for different reasons," Tolstoy wrote to Botkin. "Some arc panicky and nervous and don't know whom to trust because they are rejected by people and government alike; others—the hypocrites—hate the very thought of emancipation but are in favor of the form: still others—the ambitious, the empire builders—are the nastiest of all, because they refuse to understand that they arc citizens and as such have no more or fewer rights than their neighbors; and others—the majority—are simply bull- headed and cowed. They say: we do not want to discuss the matter and we shall not; let them do as they like, take everything away or leave us as we are. There are also a few English-type aristocrats, and there are the Westerners and the Slavophils. . . . But there is no one acting out of sheer goodness, anxious to win over and reconcile people to each other in a happier world. As for belles-lettres, it has become plain that there is no place for them. But don't imagine this will stop me from loving them: more than ever."5
When Russia learned, from the cdict of November 20, 1857 to the districts of Kovno, Vilna and Grodno, that 'I'sar Alexander II approved the action of committees of aristocrats wishing to adopt measures preparatory to the emancipation of their serfs, the liberals' hopes soared again. "I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart 011 this great event," Kolbasin wrote to Turgenev. And Annenkov, also to Turgenev: "The day is approaching when we shall be able to say as we die, 'I believe that now at last I have become a decent man.'" And Turgenev to Tolstoy: "The event so long awaited is now at hand, and I am happy to have lived to see it."