The Wives: The Women Behind Russia's Literary Giants (14 page)

It’s his vocation, writing the novels, that I love, value, and feel so enthusiastic about, while these ABCs, arithmetics, and grammars I despise.… What’s lacking in my life now is Lyovochka’s work, which I always enjoyed and admired. You see, Tanya, I am a true writer’s wife, so close to my heart do I keep our creative work.
248

By the year’s end, Tolstoy returned to the novel, although reluctantly and still lacking inspiration.
The Russian Herald
, which had published
War and Peace
, was now producing
Anna Karenina
in installments. In February 1875, at the height of the work on the novel, the couple’s youngest son, Nikolai, died from meningitis at ten months. During their grieving, Tolstoy’s editor and friend, Nikolai Strakhov, wrote that the reception of a published installment nearly exceeded that of
War and Peace
. The news left Tolstoy almost indifferent. Sophia wrote listlessly, “Lyovochka’s novel is being published, people say it’s awfully successful, and I feel strange: we have such grief here, and everyone is celebrating us.”
249
Tolstoy was revising completed parts for publication and adding new chapters, and she was copying daily. His fiction gave her a sense of purpose and helped fill the void.

Daughter Tanya, then eleven, would recall her mother settling down at her desk in the evenings. Although behind her was a long day, it was clear “from the expression of concentration on her face, that for her the most important time … was just beginning.…” Occasionally, Tolstoy approached Sophia as she was copying and looked over her shoulder. “Then my mother would take his big hand and kiss it with love and veneration, while he tenderly stroked her dark, shining hair, then bent to kiss the top of her head.”
250
The couple’s seven-year-old son, Ilya, remembered hearing the name “Anna Karenina” in their house, later realizing it was “a title of a novel on which both
papa
and
maman
were at work.”
251

In early 1876,
The Russian Herald
published an installment, which contained the chapters with Levin’s proposal to Kitty, drawn from their own betrothal. It also had a chapter on Anna Karenina’s close escape from death when she develops puerperal fever after the birth of her daughter. Tolstoy drew it from Sophia’s experiences: she had contracted this infection in 1871 after giving birth to their second daughter, Masha.

At thirty-two, having never traveled, Sophia dreamed of a holiday abroad. Although Tolstoy promised to consider a European vacation, he was clearly reluctant to leave Yasnaya: “It’s very likely that we shall go abroad soon, and probably to Italy, which is so repulsive to me, but less so than Germany. In Europe it seems to me that I could only live in England, but people go away from there for their health, and there is no point in going there.”
252
The final argument against the trip was the expense, which, apparently was not a problem when in September 1876 Tolstoy purchased purebred English stallions for their Samara estate. Tolstoy then owned three hundred horses and was passionately interested in breeding, having employed a team of keepers and grooms for his stud farm. Several years later, when he cooled off to the project, most of the expensive stallions died of neglect.

In spring of 1877,
Anna Karenina
was making an “astonishing, wild success.”
253
The chapters produced an “explosion” in literary circles, and reviews were ecstatic. Every installment was an
event anxiously anticipated by the public. Strakhov quipped that each piece was announced in the press with an urgency similar to reporting a war. Publication of
Anna Karenina
made Tolstoy the most celebrated and prosperous Russian novelist. The magazine deal and a separate edition of
Anna Karenina
published in 1878 brought him 20,000 rubles, money he used that same year to buy an additional 10,800 acres in Samara.
254
But already in 1881 (the date Tolstoy considered his spiritual conversion), his views shifted to another extreme, inspiring him to renounce his wealth as futile.

When Tolstoy was finishing
Anna Karenina
, Sophia began to notice a major spiritual change in him: “One could already sense some anxiety rising within Lev Nikolaevich, his dissatisfaction with life, his search for more meaning, and the need of a more spiritual, religious life for himself.”
255
The novel’s epilogue projects Tolstoy’s own doubts and suicidal thoughts. Unlike a decade earlier, after he completed
War and Peace
, his depression was deeper and would change him more profoundly.

In March 1877, Tolstoy told Sophia what was making him happy: “First of all you do, and secondly my religion.”
256
Recording a positive change in his mood, she commented in her diary, “After a long struggle between lack of faith and the longing for faith, he has suddenly become much calmer.” At first, Tolstoy became devotedly Orthodox, obeying all commands of the Church. To accommodate him, Sophia introduced strict observance of all Orthodox customs in the household, while suspecting that Tolstoy’s new enthusiasm would not last. Indeed, the family soon witnessed Tolstoy’s period of piety end as abruptly as it had begun.

Strakhov, who had accompanied Tolstoy on a pilgrimage to Optina Pustyn monastery in 1877, was stunned when on his next visit to Yasnaya he found Tolstoy “in a new anti-Church phase.”
257
While Tolstoy’s spiritual search was complex, his conversions were sudden and astonishing to people around him. A recent devotee of the Orthodox Church, he became its most vocal critic, accusing it of alliance with the state and describing its history as a series of “lies, cruelties, and deceptions.”
258
(Tolstoy was ahead of his time
by pointing out the major ills that plagued their official Church—its intolerance of people who practiced other religions and its support of government policies, such as capital punishment and war. Tolstoy’s insistence that the Church must not submit to political power would make him into an arch-enemy of the government and the Orthodox Church.)

Tolstoy asserted his new beliefs in a series of non-fictional works, beginning with
An Investigation of Dogmatic Theology
, and, in addition, undertook a laborious translation of the four Gospels. In 1879, Sophia reported the new developments to sister Tanya: “Lyovochka is working, or so he says, but alas! He is writing religious tracts, reads and thinks until his head aches and all this to prove how inconsistent the Church is with the teaching of the Gospels. There will be hardly ten people in Russia interested in this.… I only wish … this passes as a malady.”
259
But Tolstoy’s religious quest would occupy him for the rest of his life: during the following decades, he would return to literature only sporadically.

Tolstoy’s attacks on traditional religion offended Sophia, and his pressure on her to accept his new beliefs created a rift: “No argument would force me to separate from the Church. I could not accept Lev Nikolaevich’s view of Christianity and religion in general.… I felt that Lev Nikolaevich was right, but only on the matter of his personal self-perfection.… His renunciations of the Church and the existing social order I could not accept … my soul could not take it.”
260
Unable to sympathize with his non-fiction (“it pains me, but I cannot change myself”
261
), she resigned as Tolstoy’s copyist.

Around this time, Tolstoy began to criticize his family’s lifestyle as not austere enough. By 1879, the couple had six living children. The eldest, Sergei, was expected to enter university and Tanya had to make her society debut. But Tolstoy’s ideas about their children’s future had changed radically. While in the past he himself had sought the best foreign teachers and governesses for their children, he now disapproved of their education and social success and also objected to the family’s move to the city, which had been long decided. (In 1882, with a change of heart, Tolstoy
himself bought their house in Moscow.) According to daughter Tanya, it was Tolstoy who took her to the first ball. A short while later, he condemned entertainment, criticizing people of their class and everyone else who was rich.

The change in Tolstoy occurred at the peak of his fame, affecting his views, character, and writing; it also turned Sophia’s life upside down. She feared having to raise their children on her own—at a time when the older boys needed their father to guide them. On December 20, 1879, she gave birth to their seventh living child, Misha. Painful nursing and sleepless nights lay ahead and, as she admitted to her sister, she had no more capacity for motherhood.
262
At thirty-five, after almost two decades in the country, Sophia wanted to experience society and travel, and to explore her own talents and needs. But with all this she had no sympathy from Tolstoy, who instead expected her to abide his new ascetic ideals.

Tolstoy was gradually becoming more aloof, his mood darkening. In his major non-fiction work of the time,
A Confession
, he depicted their previous life as a series of mistakes, decrying his literary vocation, fame, wealth, position as a landowner and family man. His literary work was a thing of the past. To an acquaintance who admired
Anna Karenina
, Tolstoy replied, “I assure you that this vile thing no longer exists for me.”
263
He referred to himself as a writer in the past tense: “I
was
a writer, and all writers are vain and envious—I at least was that sort of writer.”
264
His friends Strakhov and poet Afanasy Fet were appalled to learn that he had left fiction for religious writing, as was Turgenev.

Beginning to assert his religious views with the zeal of a convert, Tolstoy insisted that everybody “can and must” agree with him.
265
In Petersburg he quarreled with his relative Alexandrine, who was stunned by his abuse of Orthodoxy. He called it a bunch of lies; when she protested, he left Petersburg without saying good-bye. Tolstoy would later soften his intolerant ways; but in the late 1870s and early 1880s, he refused to compromise.

Describing how Tolstoy’s change of vocation affected her, Sophia would remark: “Certainly, it was impossible not to regret the end
of activity by such a great artist, as Lev Nikolaevich, and I could not but regret the end of my happiness.”
266
Tolstoy’s new tendency to moralize was “insufferably boring”
267
to her, and there was no sense of togetherness after he had left his literature behind.

Tolstoy now visited prisons, courts, and houses of detention, sympathizing only with the oppressed. “His disapproval and condemnation turned also against me, our family, and everyone who was rich and not unhappy.”
268
Tolstoy cared for the suffering of humanity but was insensitive to the needs of his own family. For Sophia, the opposite was the case. She did not care for the humanity as an abstraction, but sympathized with people who were close to her, not only her family. Over the years, she had provided free medical help in Yasnaya. Although she was helping the very poor whom he idealized, Tolstoy ignored her efforts: “In all this I was alone because Lev Nikolaevich rejected medicine; not only did he have little sympathy for my work, he mocked it, which upset me terribly.”
269
Her knowledge of medicine came from observing her father in childhood; later, she consulted Florensky’s
Family Medicine
to treat her family, guests, servants, teachers, etc. As her patients recovered, Sophia’s fame grew. With no medical help in the entire district, peasants drove from afar to see her with a variety of ailments. She was often summons to help with difficult childbirths in nearby villages, saving her patients where a midwife would fail.

In 1883, a peasant looking for medical help came to Yasnaya in Sophia’s absence, telling Tolstoy she was a good healer. Coming from a peasant, the praise got Tolstoy’s attention, and he wrote Sophia that he “felt flattered.”
270
Charity was at the core of her life, and she could not disagree with Tolstoy on Christ’s teachings, especially the most important among them: helping one’s neighbor. Friction between them arose when Tolstoy insisted that his own interpretation of the Gospels must be followed in daily life.

Having rejected the entire metaphysical side of Christianity, Tolstoy stripped the Gospel down to five moral imperatives, of which the principle of non-resistance was most important. Tolstoy argued that no physical force must be used to compel any human being.
271
His doctrine had far-reaching consequences, requiring him to renounce property, since it had to be protected by the law, and this in turn led to rejection of all government institutions.

Tolstoy’s religious maxims generated discord in his own family, not unity and peace. Back in 1881, he began to give away his property and cash. Pilgrims and peasants poured into Yasnaya, asking for, among other things, livestock and seed for planting. When Sophia tried to restrain this distribution, Tolstoy quoted from the Gospel: “Give to him that asketh thee!” Sophia feared Tolstoy had lost his mind, observing in a letter to her sister that this religious-philosophical mood was “most dangerous.”
272

Tolstoy did not care how his money was used: his goal, in fact, was not to help the poor but to feel “less guilty.” As daughter Tanya observes, “Giving away everything he possessed meant freeing himself from a sin—the sin of ownership.”
273
Sophia, with her middle-class upbringing, did not share his sense of guilt as a noble and believed her God-given responsibility was to provide for her own family rather than strangers.

In his unfinished play
And the Light Shineth in Darkness
, Tolstoy describes the actual drama that took place between him and Sophia when he announced his intention to give their land to the peasants.
274
Like the hero of his play, Tolstoy had several plans for divesting himself of property: he considered giving it up altogether, leaving a plot for himself and family, or transferring everything to his wife. Tolstoy (like the hero of his play) expected his wife’s endorsement when declaring that their family should support themselves by physical work. Sophia dismissed Tolstoy’s plan as unfeasible, explaining that both of them were not young and strong anymore. Their children, raised as nobles, would be morally confused and unable to lead a life they did not believe in.