On December 28, 1857 Tolstoy, who was still in Moscow, went to a banquet held by Professor Kavelin to unite all the literary factions in favor of the abolition of serfdom. Instead of running to join in the fraternal accolade, the Slavophils stayed home and sulked. Even so, there were one hundred and eight persons present, and numerous speeches were made. All those toadying words about enlightened authority, selfless nobles and honest muzhiks filled Tolstoy with insurmountable nausea. "I am tired of conversation and discussion and haranguing," he said. "What is useful to the State is harmful to men." For him, a man bitten by politics was lost forever to the empire of pure thought. The artist should concern himself with eternal problems, not those of the moment. "There cannot be art in politics, for politics, whose goal is to prove, can only be partial."6 Nekrasov and his group disagreed. Reading the text of Albert, which Tolstoy had submitted to him, the director of The Contemporary was exasperated by such "reactionary" sentences as "Beauty is the sole and incontestable good of this world." ITe wrote to the author at once to express his displeasure: "I feel bound to tell you that your story is no good and must not be published. . . . Not only has the theme been worked to death, but it is an unpopular one, and so difficult that it is virtually impossible to handle. . . . Ah, write more simple stories."7
Chilled by this admonition, Tolstoy returned to Albert, revised it, and noted grimly 011 December 25, 1857: "I shall publish it." He had previously formed an association, with Turgenev, Grigorovich and Os- trovsky, which gave The Contemporary exclusive rights to its members' writings. But lately he had begun to disapprove of the review's radical tendencies. Nekrasov's criticism of Albert tipped the scales, and he deserted to the art-for-art's-sake camp led by Druzhnin and Botkin. On February 17, 1858 he notified Nekrasov that he was repudiating the agreement which, he said, was "invalid." As a parting offering he proposed cither Three Deaths or the revised version of Albert. Nekra- sov unwillingly agreed to release his chief contributor and publish the latter story, which he still disliked. The critics were severe. The contemporary press claimcd that "the observations of a half-demented man" were not a fit pretext for a work of art, and that the "unfinished psychological study" made "no impression" on the reader.8 Tolstoy went on working, in spite of this drubbing—as usual, on several stories at once: Three Deaths, which he was continually revising, Family Happiness, based on his relationship with Valerya Arsenyev, and The Cossacks,f which he hoped to make into something as sweeping and luminous as an epic by Homer. "The Iliad has forced me to revise my whole concept of the story," he had written on his return to Russia.®
Living with him in Moscow were his sister—who, separated from her husband, had grown bitter and difficult—his brother Nicholas, his nephews and his dear Aunt Toinette; but family life was not enough for him. He wanted action. His first outlet for his excess energy was the gymnasium on Dmitrovka Street. "It was worth tire trip," wrote Fet, "to see Tolstoy's fierce concentration, trying to leap over a vaulting-horse in his gymsuit." A large portion of his time was also devoted to music: he arranged concerts and even drew up the regulations for a chamber music orchestra to 1>e directed by his former rival for Va- lerya's affections, the French pianist Mortier de Fontaine; the project fell through for lack of funds. The lights of the theaters, drawing rooms and ballrooms drew him out almost every evening. He dressed with particular care, tied his white cravat, put on his new coat from Sharmer, his beaver-collared overcoat and a top hat, took up a silver-pommeled stick and strode resolutely toward the door. "He had an imposing bearing," Mrs. Sytin wrote in her memoirs, "there was something attractive in his very ugliness. His eyes were full of vitality and energy'. . . . He always spoke in a strong, clear voice and with great feeling, even on trivial subjects. At his arrival, everything suddenly sprang to life." Did he realize how attractive he was? Far from it. As always, women fascinated and troubled him, he was enamored of four or five at once and could not make up his mind to love any.
First, he suffered a relapse for Dyakov's sister—his childhood sweetheart, the charming Alexandra Obolensky; "so lovely," he wrote, "dancing the lancers with her little head tilted to one side." He was furious because she was married, he hung around her, making veiled allusions to his condition which she pretended not to understand. "Beyond any
f He callcd the novel variously The Caucasian Story, The Fugitive, The Cossack and The Cossacks.
doubt, this woman tempts me more than any other." (November 6, 1857.) "She can do what she likes with me and I'm grateful to her. Some evenings I am passionately in love with her and come home full of joy or sorrow, I can't tell which." (December 1, 1857.) "1 love her and become idiotic in her presence." (December 4, 1857.) That day, however, he also noticed that Katcrina Tyutchcv, the poet's daughter, had been particularly sweet to him. On New Year's Eve: "Miss Tyutchcv is imperceptibly beginning to make an impression on me." January 1: "Katcrina is very sweet." January 7: "Miss Tyutchcv—nonsense!" January 8: "No, not nonsense! Little by little, this feeling is taking hold of me entirely." January 19: "Miss Tyutchev is continually in my thoughts." January 20: "I feel that all I want is her love, but I have no compassion for her." January 26: "Went to see Miss Tyutchev, prepared to love her: she is cold, trivial, aristocratic. Nonsense!" March 8: "Went to see Miss Tyutchev: so-so." March 31: "I dccidcdly do not like Miss Tyutchcv." A few months later he found her "ugly and cold," but wondered whether he ought not "marry her without love."10 While he was following the twists and turns of this unrewarding idyl, he continued to sigh after Princess Lvov, whom he had loved a great deal in Paris and rather less in Dresden. He was also keeping a close watch on Princess Sherbatov, of whom lie wrote that it had been a long time since he had seen "anything as fresh as she."11
But all the while he was fluttering back and forth between the matrons and the maidens, his heart really belonged to a spinster: aunt- grandmother, babushka Alexandra Tolstoy. She was in Moscow for a few days. Leo called on her often, chatted with her, found her "delicious," "unique," even dreamed of marrying her, then sobered up in a flash and noted, with chilling cruelty: "She has grown old and ceased to be a woman for mc."12 This did not, however, prevent him from seeing her the next day with renewed pleasure. They even set out together for Klin, where they spent a few days with a relative of theirs, old Princcss Volkonsky. After Alexandra had gone back to St. Petersburg, the fire her presence had dampened was rekindled in a flash. On Easter Monday, March 24, 1858, he wrote to her: "Christ is risen, beloved friend and babushka. Although I did not take communion . . . T feel so light-hearted that I cannot refrain from sitting down for a chat with you. When all is chaos inside me, you make mc feel ashamed of myself, even when you're not there. . . . Where does it comc from, that warmth of yours that gives happiness to others and lifts them up above themselves? How happy it must make you to be able to dispense joy to others so easily, so freely. . . . When I look at myself, I see I am still the same: a daydreaming egotist, incapable of becoming anything else. Where is one to look for love of others and self-denial, when there is nothing inside oneself but love of self and indulgence? . . . My ambition is to be corrected and converted by you my whole life long without ever becoming completely corrected or converted."