twenty times, successively entitled Caucasian Novel, The Fugitive, The Fugitive Cossack, The Demoted, The Terek Line and The Cordon, amputated of a final romantic passage in which Lukas was seen fleeing to the mountains and Olenin wedding Maryanka; by what miracle did the finished product acquire that air of a quickly written, smooth and flawless book?
Contemporary reaction was reticent, at first. Alexandra Tolstoy wrote to her nephew: "My friends, Boris and others, were enchanted; others criticized The Cossacks for a certain crudeness which, they say, inhibits the aesthetic response. ... I personally said to myself, with a small sigh, that what is lacking in your scenes is the sun, for all that is light in them comes from yourself. While one is reading, the book is satisfying, a very accurate and truthful photograph, but when one has finished, one is left thirsting for something bigger, 011 a more elevated level. It is as though your universe were nailed to the floor, as someone said. Well, that may come one day."
Some of the critics, too, were rather starchy. In The Times, Polon- sky praised the author for capturing "the very breath of the Caucasus" in his story, but thought the hero, Olenin, only a "pale copy of the characters of Pushkin's day," and said that several episodes, such as Abrek's death at the hands of Lukas or the repurchase of the corpse or the skirmish between Cossacks and mountaineers, were "stories within a story." Golovachev, in The Contemporary, thought Tolstoy was a "good storyteller, not lacking in skill," but a superficial observer and no thinker at all. In Fatherland Notes, Mrs. Salias de Tournemir expressed her indignation at Tolstoy for daring to "romanticize drunkenness, piracy, theft and blood-lust" and allowing Olenin—"the representative of civilized society"—to be "debased, degraded, defeated . . ."
In the St. Petersburg News, on the other hand, Annenkov declared Tolstoy's work "a capital achievement in Russian literature, able to sustain comparison with the greatest novels of the last decade," and said that "a score of ethnographical articles could not give a more complete, exact and colorful picture of this part of our land."
In the meantime, Ivan Turgenev was writing to Fet from Paris: "I have read The Cossacks and was carried away. . . . The character of Olenin is the only thing that detracts from the overall impression, which is magnificent. To mark the contrast between civilization and primitive, unspoiled nature, there was no necessity to trot out this individual who is incessantly preoccupied with himself, boring and unhealthy."
Fet himself was in raptures: "How many times I mentally hugged you as I read The Cossacks, and how many times I laughed at your derogatory remarks about the book," he wrote to Tolstoy. "You may write other books that arc very fine, but The Cossacks is a sort of mastcqjiece. After The Cossacks it is impossible to read a book on the life of the people without bursting out laughing, 'lbe ineffable superiority of talent!"
Although he claimed to be impervious to the opinions of others, such high praise encouraged Tolstoy to show what he could do in a larger work. For some months his thoughts had been occupied by a subject that was not yet clearly defined. On October 17, 1863 he wrote to Alexandra Tolstoy, "I have never felt my mental and even moral powers so free and ready for work. And the work is there in front of me: all this autumn I have been completely taken up with a novel about the years 1810 to 1820."
3. The Creat Labor
At first, Sonya was skepticaclass="underline" Leo changed his mind too often for her to believe he would continue the big historical novel he was working on. "Story about 1812," she wrote on October 28,1863. "He is very involved with it. But without enjoyment." And three weeks later: "He is writing about Countess So-and-So, who has been talking to Princess Whosit. Insignificant." But soon afterward, seeing him persevere, she instinctively realized that her role was beginning. She was filled with reverence for her husband's talent, and did not, of course, try to exert a direct influence on the book. She did express her opinion 011 the pages he gave her to copy. He listened to her suggestions, as he did to Tanya's and those of his friends and critics, and, most of the time, paid no attention to them. But although Sonya may have contributed nothing to the novel, she contributed a great deal to the novelist. In the past, he had always thrown himself headlong into all kinds of different activities, skipping from one to another as the mood took him, blowing hot and cold for religion, gymnastics, high society, soldiering, agriculture, art for art's sake, sociology, pedagogy—writing several books at once, dropping the admirable Cossacks to dash off a mediocre play. And in spite of his success in the literary world, he liked to think of himself as an amateur. Whatever the object he coveted, his passion did not seem able to outlast the possession of it. "Inconstancy, hesitation, laziness, those are my enemies," he wrote on the eve of his great decision. And suddenly, this prodigious dilettante plunged into a project that held him fast for six full years. If lie was able to muster the determination and patience to undertake such a task, the reason, beyond any doubt, was that Sonya had succeeded in creating the atmosphere of peace and quiet that was necessary for the work to mature in him. Had she not kept such jealous guard over his peace of mind and body, he might have abandoned War and Peace by the wayside. After all, he was not forced to write by material necessity. Unlike Dostoyevsky, he did not live 011 the income from his books; no publisher was hounding him for his copy at fixed deadlines. Being without constraint made it all the more difficult for him to resist the temptations that drew him away from his work.
One by one, ruthlessly, Sonya eliminated them. To relieve her husband of the burden of domestic affairs, she took over the management of the estate; she did not want him to clutter up his mind with money matters, so she also appropriated the household accounts; and she took on the education of their offspring single-handedly. No one, children, parents, friends or servants, must disturb the master when he was in the study he had arranged for himself on the ground floor. With the schools shut down, the teachers dismissed, the ledgers never out of sight and a bunch of keys at her waist, Sonya found herself, at twenty, responsible for everything that affected, directly or indirectly, the daily life of Leo Tolstoy. She was the buffer state between him and the outside world. When he raised his eyes from his manuscript, she was what he saw. Everything he knew of the world came to him through her. Dedicating herself body and soul to her role of warden, she was satisfying a twofold desire: to help her husband in the immense task he had undertaken, and to put him completely in her power, to bury him, far from foreign eyes, deep in the family thicket. More or less consciously, she relieved her jealousy by serving the cause of Literature.
The total understanding that the couple had been unable to achieve by themselves, even after repeated explanations, both written and oral, was created for them by fictional characters. Absorbed in the fate of his heroes, Tolstoy became less conccrncd with himself. By distributing his contradictory emotions among a cast of imaginary characters, he forged his own unity and thereby his balance. Significantly, as soon as he began work on the book, toward the end of 1863, the entries in his diary became shorter and less frequent. He no longer had either the time or the inclination to analyze himself. Imaginary joys and sufferings occupied all his thoughts. In 1865, he closed the notebook in which he had made a habit of relating his life and did not reopen it for more than thirteen years.* But before doing so, he recorded this statement: "My relationship with Sonya has grown stronger and steadier. We love each other, that is, we arc more precious to each other than any other human being and we face each other with equanimity. We have no secrets and no shame."1 And later, "Not one person in a million, I dare