The Last Days of Tolstoy Part 2

CHAPTER I

LIFE AT YASNAYA POLYANA

A few days after the foregoing letter was written Leo Nikolaevitch left Yasnaya Polyana.

At first sight it may seem that if he did well in remaining so long with his wife, he ought not to have abandoned her in the end; or, on the contrary, if he was right in going away, it was a mistake not to have done so sooner.

That is how many do reason. Some--the majority--commend him for his departure, considering that thereby he "atoned" for his supposed weakness and inconsistency in the past. Others--a small minority--commend him, on the contrary, for remaining so many years with his wife, but consider his going away a proof of his inconsistency.[7]

It seems to me that in any case Leo Nikolaevitch's friends who were able to estimate at its true value the self-sacrifice with which he remained a voluntary prisoner in his wife's house for so many years ought, more than anyone, to have that confidence in him of which he was worthy. They might at least be confident that if, after all this, he did decide to go away, he must have had good grounds for doing so; especially since such an explanation is far more natural and credible than the supposition that Leo Nikolaevitch, who had so successfully endured this prolonged ordeal and had displayed such striking stoicism and self-sacrifice, on the eve of his death suddenly, for some reason, broke down and was false to his conscience.

In regard to the question of whether he was to remain with his wife or go away, Leo Nikolaevitch was guided not by any one impulse, but by many, and often contradictory, impulses.

On the side of not leaving his wife he had various considerations which are touched on in my letter to Dosev. The chief of them was his consciousness that in remaining he was fulfilling the demands of love in regard to Sofya Andreyevna, and was trying to do her good, while he was performing an act of self-sacrifice for the benefit of his own soul.

He had also, in the course of the last thirty years of his life, many grounds for going away; and though, until the time was ripe, they could not outweigh those that kept him with his family, yet in themselves they were very weighty.

On one side he was painfully conscious--and ever more painfully as time went on--of all the injustice, all the sinfulness of the surroundings of his home life, which were those of a rich landowner in the midst of the poverty around him, and he never forgave himself for his partic.i.p.ation in those surroundings. Some months before his death he wrote, as is well known, in the introduction to his novel, _There are No Guilty in the World_: "The complicated conditions of the past, my family and its demands, have not let me out of their clutches"; and, at once, with the fear of self-justification characteristic of him, hastened to add "or rather I had not the ability nor strength to free myself from them." But recognising at that time the hopelessness of his position, Leo Nikolaevitch found a good side in the fact that it was so painful to him. "Being without any desire for self-justification, or any fear of the liberated peasants, and also without the peasants' envy and bitterness against their oppressors, I am in the most favourable position for seeing the truth and being able to tell it. Perhaps it was just for this that I have been placed by fate in this strange position. I will try, as far as I know how, to take advantage of it. This at least to some extent, anyway, alleviates my condition."

On the other hand, he was at times much distressed by the consciousness of the false position in which he was placed before men, and before the peasants especially, by the external conditions of his life, which were so directly opposed to his convictions. He was well aware that the majority of people condemned him for taking part in that life. But he was resigned even to that, finding a spiritual blessing in his humiliation before men. In his _Circle of Reading_[8] he said: "What is called religious folly, _i.e._ conduct which provokes censure and attack, is intelligible and desirable as the sole proof of one's love for G.o.d and one's neighbour." "The condemnation by man of your actions," he says in a private letter, "if your actions are not due to selfish motives, but to doing the will of G.o.d, is far from requiring you to justify them; on the contrary, this condemnation is a benefit, in that it gives you certain conviction that you do what you are doing not for the praise of men, but for the sake of your soul, for G.o.d."[9]

But above all Leo Nikolaevitch had to suffer directly from his wife's antagonism and disagreement with regard to what was for him more precious than anything. This hostility on the part of his wife often reached the point of unconcealed hatred of him, making him at times despair of the possibility of softening her heart at all. As years went on the spiritual rift between them became complete. Leo Nikolaevitch had periods of such doubt and depression of spirit that he felt quite hopeless, and was ready to run away from home. One of these periods I have referred to above, but even at the beginning of the 'eighties Leo Nikolaevitch had moments when he could scarcely restrain himself from going away.

It was so, for instance, in the summer of the year 1884. In his diary of that time we find such entries: "If only I could have confidence in myself.... I cannot go on with this savage life. Even for them"

(the members of his family) "it would be a benefit. They will reconsider things if they have anything like a heart.... I said nothing, but I felt horribly depressed. I went away, and meant to go away altogether, but her being with child made me turn back half way to Tula.... It was horribly painful.... It was a mistake not to go away. I think it will be bound to happen sooner or later."[10]

After 1884, as Leo Nikolaevitch's spiritual forces developed further and gained strength, he did succeed to some extent in bearing patiently the insults and suffering inflicted upon him, and learnt to resign himself to the painfulness of his position, extracting gain for his inner life from all that he endured. But how hard it still was for him may be seen, for instance, from the confession that broke from him in conversation with a friend of his, the peasant M. P.

Novikov, when the latter visited him on the 21st October, 1910: "I have never concealed from you that in this house I am boiling as in h.e.l.l, and I have always dreamed of going away, and longed to go somewhere into the forest to a keeper's hut, or to a village to some lonely peasant's hut, where we could help one another. But G.o.d has not given me the strength to break away from my family. My weakness is perhaps a sin, but I could not for the sake of my personal satisfaction make others suffer, even although they are members of my family...."

During this time everything that was painful in Leo Nikolaevitch's relations with Sofya Andreyevna, and which had grown with the decades, began to develop with increased rapidity. In this brief but terribly concentrated period of his life much which his goodwill towards her had prevented him from observing in Sofya Andreyevna before began to be apparent to him. At first it was very difficult for him to see his way in his complicated position and among all the varied feelings and impulses which rose up in his soul. He had not only to bear his old, long familiar cross, but also to deal with new, quite unforeseen trials before he had time to see clearly what att.i.tude he ought to take up to them.

These exceptionally complicated conditions must be kept in view in order to follow Leo Nikolaevitch's spiritual experiences of that period with any degree of accuracy. It was difficult for him to understand his own state of mind, and he exercised the greatest circ.u.mspection in order not to act prematurely nor precipitately. It is all the more necessary for us to be extremely circ.u.mspect in examining the various spiritual states which followed each other and were interwoven in him at that time. It is impossible to approach the very complicated workings of his soul with ready-made theories, or to offer a rough-and-ready explanation of Leo Nikolaevitch's behaviour on the lines of one's personal bias--whether domestic, religious, social, or otherwise; and least of all can one be guided by information or argument coming from his domestic circle, whose vanity was so deeply wounded by his departure. In order really to understand Tolstoy and his behaviour in this most important period of his life, it is above all needful to free oneself from the slightest partiality, narrowness and one-sidedness, to be ready to look the truth in the face and as far as possible to weigh attentively all the conditions and circ.u.mstances, not taken separately, but in combination and in all their complex interaction.

FOOTNOTES

[7] I have come across references to my letter to Dosev as though it proved that, for all my devotion to Leo Nikolaevitch, I considered that he ought not to have left his wife. But there is nothing of the sort in my letter, the main drift of which is merely that no one has the right to set himself up as a judge of Leo Nikolaevitch in the matter. I indicated in detail how sound were the reasons impelling him to remain in Yasnaya Polyana while he did remain there; but at the same time, in the very same letter, though it was written before Leo Nikolaevitch went away, I made several allusions to the possibility that in the end he would think it necessary to go.

[8] _Circle of Reading_, May 17.

[9] 1907.

[10] June 17-24, 1884.

CHAPTER II

CHANGE FOR THE WORSE IN HIS WIFE'S ATt.i.tUDE TO HIM

And so in the last few months before Leo Nikolaevitch left Yasnaya Polyana he was subjected in an intensified form to all the agonising conditions which had for many years made him long to get away from his family. What went on around him in Yasnaya Polyana, particularly in the management of the estate, seemed to be purposely calculated to wound, insult and revolt him more and more in his most sacred feelings. In her relations with the peasants Sofya Andreyevna, far from restraining herself through consideration for her husband, behaved with peculiar injustice and harshness as though to spite him.[11]

At one time she would try to impress on the peasants that she was acting with the consent and approval of Leo Nikolaevitch himself; at another she would boast before him that his championship had no influence on her arrangements. It is easy to imagine how unutterably painful all this was for him. It is sufficient to recall how he sobbed when he chanced to come across a policeman on horseback dragging along a Yasnaya Polyana peasant caught in the Tolstoys'

forest, an old man whom Leo Nikolaevitch knew well and respected.

Fully realising that he would not in the least improve the position of the peasants by going away, Leo Nikolaevitch went on regarding such spectacles as a bitter trial laid upon him, and confining himself to protesting warmly on every possible occasion. In the same way, that is as a trial laid upon him, he continued to look upon the false position in which he was placed in the eyes of the public by his apparent acceptance of what was done in Yasnaya Polyana. On this subject he not only continually received abusive letters which he accepted as a useful exercise in humility, but also from time to time persons wishing him well addressed him with censure and exhortation.

A letter written by Leo Nikolaevitch at the beginning of 1910 in answer to an unknown student who had written to persuade him to leave his privileged surroundings, is characteristic:

"Your letter touched me," wrote Leo Nikolaevitch; "what you advise me to do is my cherished dream! That I should be living at home with my wife and daughter in horrible, shameful conditions of luxury in the midst of the poverty around us tortures me unceasingly and ever more and more; and not a day pa.s.ses on which I do not think of carrying out your advice."

At the same time a third and most painful trial, consisting in his wife's immediate att.i.tude to him, was intensely accentuated. The mournful recital of those spiritual agonies which shattered his health, and which she systematically inflicted on him in the last months of his life, will be set forth in its time and place. No one can imagine what he had to endure and to suffer at that time. On one occasion, calling in D. P. Makovitsky,[12] Leo Nikolaevitch said to him: "Dushan Petrovitch, go to her" (Sofya Andreyevna) "and tell her that if she desires my death she is going the right way to bring it about."[13] In a touching letter of July 14, 1910, to Sofya Andreyevna, Leo Nikolaevitch, after making her every concession he considered possible, adds in conclusion: "If you will not accept these conditions of a good and peaceful life, then I will go away....

I will certainly go away, because it is impossible to go on living like this."

It will be readily understood that with such a position of affairs Leo Nikolaevitch began to foresee more and more definitely the possibility that in the end he would have to leave Yasnaya Polyana.

In a moment of openness he said to his friend, the peasant Novikov: "Yes, yes, believe me, I tell you frankly I shall not die in this house. I have made up my mind to go to a strange place where I shall not be known. And perhaps I may come straight to die in your hut....

I want to prepare for death in peace, and here they think of me as worth so many roubles. I shall go away, I shall certainly go away."

Only a final decisive shock was needed. In his same letter to the student he says about going away: "This can and ought only to be done when it is essential, not for the supposed external objects, but for the satisfaction of the inner need of the soul,--when to remain in the old position becomes as morally impossible as it is physically impossible not to cough when one cannot breathe.... And I am near to that position, and every day I get nearer and nearer to it."

But Leo Nikolaevitch still did not go away, and remaining continued to be subjected on an increased scale to the tortures to which he had been subjected since the 'eighties. And he remained still for the same reasons as had restrained him for thirty years. He knew that he would not alleviate the position of the peasants of the district by going. From his painful position in the eyes of men he drew a profitable lesson in humility. His wife's att.i.tude to him a.s.sisted in him the development of true love for those who hated his soul. And therefore the more intense these trials became with the pa.s.sage of time, the more painfully they were reflected in his soul, the more difficult it became for him to deal with them--the more insistent from the spiritual point of view became the moral duty not to forsake his post, but to endure to the end.

FOOTNOTES

[11] At the beginning of the eighties of the last century, Leo Nikolaevitch's feeling against property in general, and the ownership of land in particular, began to take shape, though it was only somewhat later that it was fully fixed and confirmed. He renounced all property for himself personally in 1894, acting as though in that respect he were dead, that is, leaving the possession of his former property to those whom he regarded as his heirs, that is, his family. After this Sofya Andreyevna began to manage the estate of Yasnaya Polyana, while his children divided the land and property between them. Later on Leo Nikolaevitch felt, he said, that he had made a mistake in giving up the land to his "heirs" instead of to the local peasants, and at the desire of his family confirming the transfer by legal act.

[12] An intimate friend who shared the views of Leo Nikolaevitch, a doctor who lived in the Tolstoys' house from the year 1904. He was of Slovak nationality, and in 1920 left Russia and returned to Czechoslovakia, where he died in 1921.

[13] From one of the diaries and letters of Tolstoy's friends and household of the times.

CHAPTER III

THE HISTORY OF THE WILL

In order to understand why Sofya Andreyevna's att.i.tude to Leo Nikolaevitch was so exasperated, and what impelled her to treat him so cruelly, it is essential to have some conception why he found it necessary about this time to make a will, leaving all his writings free to the public.

The story of Tolstoy's will is so complicated and full of details that a separate circ.u.mstantial account of it is required. Here I will only briefly state the most essential facts.