The thirty-five chapters of Tolstoy’s voluminous treatise about life and death, which was later given the final title On Life, present the philosophical foundations underpinning his new worldview. He invested a great deal of mental energy in the exposition of his ideas, writing over 2,000 pages before the manuscript was complete in August 1887.99 Sonya agreed to copy it out, which helped to create a peaceful atmosphere between them during its composition. Although she still could not accept the fundamental proposition that one should reject the ‘material, personal life’ in favour of the life of the spirit and ‘universal love’, as she noted in her diary,100 she liked the fact that it was not tendentious like his earlier religious writings. Nevertheless, a work which replaced religious doctrine with reason and personal conscience never stood a chance of being approved by the censor. It had been planned that the 600 copies printed in 1888 would constitute a new thirteenth volume of Tolstoy’s collected works, but the Holy Synod ordered their confiscation. All but three copies were burned, and the first publication of On Life was the French translation which appeared in 1889. The Archbishop of kherson, who had examined the treatise, confided in a letter to one of Tolstoy’s acquaintances that the Holy Synod was now seriously considering anathematising him.101
After The Death of Ivan Ilych, which had won many accolades from critics, Tolstoy wrote only two major artistic works in the late 1880s: the play The Powers of Darkness, and the novella The Kreutzer Sonata. He had first tackled the dramatic genre back in the 1860s, but had taken neither of his efforts back then very seriously. Now he was drawn towards popular drama. The books published by The Intermediary had already immeasurably improved the calibre of literature available to the peasantry, and Tolstoy wanted to transform the crude repertoire of drama on offer to the masses. He began in the spring of 1886 with a comedy on the evils of alcoholism called The First Distiller. It was published by The Intermediary and then staged in June at the open-air theatre attached to a porcelain factory outside St Petersburg. Despite the rain, 3,000 workers made up an enthusiastic audience. Two years later it was banned by the theatrical censor for featuring imps and devils, and an act set in hell.102
The Powers of Darkness, which is also drawn from peasant life, is a much more serious work. Based on a recent criminal case involving murder and adultery heard in the Tula court, it was completed in the autumn of 1886. The theatrical censor immediately banned it. This was a setback, as the script had already been typeset at three different printers, and Tolstoy had agreed that the play could be performed for the actress Maria Savina’s benefit night – he himself was very keen to see it staged. Sonya fired off a letter to the government’s head of censorship, Evgeny Feoktistkov, who expressly forbade its performance, but did now consent to its publication. Over 100,000 copies were printed in the first months of 1887, including an edition with The Intermediary which sold for three kopecks.103 Meanwhile, Chertkov started a sophisticated public relations operation. As anticipated, the reading he organised at the home of Countess Shuvalov, using his formidable society connections, soon set people talking. Not only was it reported positively in the press, but soon the Tsar’s curiosity was aroused. A special reading was arranged for him in the Winter Palace on 27 January, which was attended by the Empress, grand dukes and duchesses, and other members of the court. Alexander III declared that he liked the play very much, and ordered it to be staged by the Imperial Theatres. He was soon forced to back down, however, after being reprimanded by Pobedonostsev. The Chief Procurator had been horrified to learn of the Tsar’s irresponsible attitude to the ‘crude realism’ and ‘denigration of moral feeling’ in this appalling play – he told the Tsar he had never seen anything like it.104
There was much worse to come. The Kreutzer Sonata, a worthy successor to Anna Karenina in terms of its association of carnal love with extreme violence, would be his most scandalous work yet. It owed its inspiration to several sources. First of all there was an anonymous female correspondent who wrote to complain to Tolstoy in February 1886 about the distressing situation of women in contemporary society, and their debasement by men.105 Then there was the acquaintance who told a story about once sitting in a train carriage opposite a man who confessed that he had been unfaithful to his wife. And there was a direct musical stimulus: on several occasions in 1887 Tolstoy’s son Sergey, a fine pianist, accompanied Lev and Misha’s violin teacher Yuly Lyasotta in performances of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9, the kreutzer Sonata, both in Moscow and at Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy certainly knew Beethoven’s kreutzer Sonata very well, and it was one of relatively few opuses to feature on the list of his favourite musical works later compiled by Sergey.106 It is the first of the sonata’s three movements which has the greatest parallel with the story. The frenzied dialogue between violin and piano in its central presto section performed by Pozdnyshev’s wife and her male violinist partner suggests to Pozdnyshev a dialogue of a different kind, which provokes him to fits of jealousy he can eventually no longer control.
On one of the occasions when the sonata was performed at the Tolstoys’ home, the painter Repin was present, and Tolstoy even toyed with the idea of his friend accompanying his story with a painting.107 Tolstoy would have certainly discussed his ideas for the story with Repin, for he found himself posing for another portrait in the summer of 1887 during the painter’s stay at Yasnaya Polyana. They had been acquainted for seven years by this point, but Repin had bided his time, clearly wanting to get to know Tolstoy better before fixing him on canvas. The portrait, which depicts him sitting calmly in a chair with a book in his hand, dressed in black, seemed to many to be reminiscent of an Old Testament prophet.
Another oblique source for The Kreutzer Sonata were certain events in Tolstoy’s own family life which touched a raw nerve. In the autumn of 1887 his second eldest son Ilya proposed to his sweetheart Sofya Filosofova. Tolstoy was a concerned father, as the couple did not have very good prospects and were both very young: Ilya was twenty-one, Sofya was twenty. Ilya had failed to graduate from his lycée, so was ineligible for university, and he had returned from spending two years in the army without any plans for earning his living. The Tolstoys were friends with his fiancée’s family, but they were well aware she was no better off: her father worked at the Moscow art school where Tanya had trained. Tolstoy wrote Ilya several letters entreating him to consider carefully the step he was about to take, but his son’s heart was set. There were further reasons why Tolstoy should have marital relations at the forefront of his mind at this time. In September 1887 he and Sonya celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and his wife was pregnant again. Their son Ivan (Vanechka) was born on 31 March 1888, a month after Ilya’s marriage. On Christmas Eve of that year their first grandchild Anna was born.
Apart from the Tolstoys’ eldest child Sergey (who had left Moscow University and was now working for the Tula peasant bank), only Ilya lived away from home at this time.108 In the spring of 1889 Tolstoy went to visit him and his family, and was appalled to find coachmen, carriages, horses and other trappings of a comfortable lifestyle which he felt they should abjure. Ilya was not the only one of his sons with whom Tolstoy seriously fell out during these years.109 His third eldest son Lev, then in his last year of school, constantly argued with him. Tolstoy also seriously risked falling out with his daughter Masha, whom his follower Pavel Biryukov proposed to at the end of 1888. Sonya was not prepared for her daughter to marry a ‘Tolstoyan’, even if he was of noble background, and she blocked it. Biryukov went away to lick his wounds but reappeared in Tolstoy’s life in 1891 after sailing to Japan with the future Nicholas II on his nine-month ‘grand tour’.110 Masha accepted her lot meekly. Since she was Tolstoy’s favourite daughter, whom he relied upon for assistance and moral support, he was secretly glad, and he himself would later thwart Masha’s romantic dreams on more than one occasion in a selfish attempt to keep her near him. Tolstoy had little to do with his youngest children Andrey, Misha and Alexandra, eleven, nine and four respectively, who barely saw their father, let alone baby Vanechka. Unlike the elder children, whom he had personally taught, the youngest came under the care of tutors and governesses, and were essentially brought up by Sonya.