She arrived with the first raj's of sun, to spend the entire spring and summer with her sister; Marya Tolstoy and her children also moved to Yasnaya Polyana.f Other guests appeared, turning up for a few clays or staying for weeks: Sergey, Prince Gorchakov's daughters, the author Sologub and his two boys, Prince Lvov, Dyakov, Bibikov. . . . Tolstoy was still working, but intermittently. Sometimes his family saw him emerge from his study wearing a far-off expression, absent-minded and happy—it was hard for him to get his bearings in real life after spending hours in the company of his heroes. "Leo was always tense," Tanya later wrote, "he had a 'high spirit' as the English say, bold and gay and full of energy." When he was pleased with himself his eyes gleamed, he rubbed his hands together and said, with a grimace of gleeful ferocity, that he had left "a piece of his life in the inkwell." In the evenings, to
f Valerian, Maiya Tolstoy's husband, bad died on January 6, 1865, and his widow was living in a "free union" with Viscount Hector de Kleen, a Swede.
relax, he played solitaire with Aunt Toinette and attached great importance to the outcome; if he won, that meant the next part of the hook would go well. lie often read aloud what he had written during the day. His voice was warm and winning; as soon as he spoke his listeners were under a spell; Sonya had to steel herself afterward to venture a criticism: the story dragged here, too much repetition there, that passage was too raw for her taste. . . . She did not carc much for the military sccnes and was not afraid to say so. But he seldom took any notice. Ilis confidence in his craft was growing. His concept of litcra ture was becoming clearer. According to him, the "novelist's poetry-" lay "first, in the interest created by juxtaposed events; second, in the portrayal of customs and manners against a background of historical fact; third, in the beauty and vividness of situations; fourth, in the characters of the people."10 Now a thousand leagues away from the theories of ideological art he later claimed to champion, he wrote to his young colleague Boborykin, in July 1865, "The aims of art are incommensurable (as the mathematicians say) with the aims of socialism. An artist's mission must not be to produce an irrefutable solution to a problem, but to compel us to love life in all its countless and inexhaustible manifestations. If I were told I might write a book in which I should demonstrate beyond any doubt the correctness of my opinions on every social problem, I should not waste two hours at it; but if I were told that what I wrote would be read twenty years from now by people who arc children today, and that they would weep and laugh over my book and love life more because of it, then I should devote all my life and strength to such a work."
His reading during that period confirmed his views. He admired Victor Hugo's Les MLserahles, an epic, sweeping, rushing novel in which imaginary people also came face to face with real ones. Nor was he insensitive to the intelligence and sobriety of Merimee's Chronique du rdgne de Charles IX, although he considered its author "devoid of talent." But he hated Consuelo, "a heap of rubbish, crammed full of scientific, philosophical, artistic and moral phrases, a pastry made of sour dough and rancid butter, stuffed with truffles, sturgeon and pineapple."11 His dream was to make 1805 as broad in scope, as serene and profoundly graceful as the Iliad and Odyssey. "I am transported by joy at the thought that I can crcate a great work," he wrote.
This feeling of plenitude was deflated, however, when he emerged from his study—a cool, vaulted room that had been used as a storeroom in Prince Volkonsky's day—and saw the wretchedness of the peasants. Tliat year (1865) there was a terrible drought in the land. Nothing would grow in the rock-hard, glaze-cracked fields. The live-
stock were gaunt, the anxious muzhiks had little to eat and were praying for rain. "We have pink radishes on the table, beautiful yellow butter, plump golden bread on a white tablecloth," wrote Tolstoy to his friend Fet. "Our ladies in their muslin gowns are so happy, sitting among the green plants in the garden, because it is hot and they are in the shadow. But beyond, the evil devil famine is already hard at work, covering the fields with weeds, crazing the arid soil, tearing the soles of the peasants' calloused feet and splitting the animals' hoofs, and will so shake and agitate us all that we, too, under the shade of our lime trees, with our muslin gowns and our lumps of butter on our flowered plates, will get what's coming to us."12
As summer drew near, he began to fear an uprising. Under the merciless sky, he imagined the poor coming to demand justice from the rich, the panic-stricken ladies hiding behind drawn shutters, the doling- out of surplus food under the threat of scythes and pitchforks. Although he loved the muzhiks, he could not forget that he was a lord. Their friend, to be sure, but not their equal. Haunted by such grim forebodings, he told his father-in-law what was in his mind, and received an immediate answer: "God preserve us from such a catastrophe as that! It would be more dreadful than the Pugachev uprising. But I think everything will turn out all right, there will be nothing but minor, local expressions of discontent and a few cases of suffering from famine, which will take the form of an unjustified resentment of the nobility."13
As Yasnaya Polyana was not bloodied by revolution in the ensuing weeks, Tolstoy grew calm again and began to consider the question from a theoretical point of view. In the night of August 12-13, 1865 he had an illumination, and upon waking, he wrote in his notebook:
"The formula Property equals theft will remain true longer than the English constitution, as long as there are men. It is an absolute truth, but there arc relative, accessory truths arising from it. The first of these concerns the attitude of the Russian people toward property. They deny the most tangible form of property, that which is least dependent upon work, that which creates most obstacles to the acquisition of property by others—namely, land. . . . This is not fancy, it is fact, borne out in the Cossack communities. It is understood equally well by the Russian scholar and the muzhik who says, 'Enlist us in the Cossacks, but let the land be free.' There is a future for such an idea. The Russian revolution can be built upon nothing else. The Russian revolution will not be directed against the tsar and despotism, but against the ownership of land."
Three days before, on August 10, 1865 to be exact, this enemy of
land ownership had purchased seventy-five acres from his neighbor Bibi- kov, in the village of Telyatinki, for the very attractive price of 280 rubles.t His pleasure was as intense, one may suppose, when he was dreaming of a socialist republic in which meadows, fields and woods would belong to all, as it was when he was riding over the property of which he had just become sole owner. To add to one's worldly goods while sighing after holy equality—wasn't that the essence of modern man? The main thing was to feel guilty now and then. After his profession of faith on the abolition of property, Tolstoy set down the following sentence, undated: "Every man lies twenty times daily."
When he tired of manipulating serious thoughts, he looked at his wife and children and sister-in-law and felt rejuvenated. With her sparkling eyes, black curly hair, large expressive mouth and slender waist, Tanya was the life of the family. A funny word or an affectionate glance from her could calm her sister's tantnun or bring to her brother-in- law's lips one of those broad smiles that suddenly made him so attractive. In the evening she sang, accompanied by him at the piano. Their mutual friend Fet, moved by the purity of her voice, dedicated a poem to her: "You Sang Until Dawn."