July 3, 1908(from a diary).—The day before yesterday I received a letter full of upbraidings for my wealth and hypocrisy and persecution of the peasants, and, to my shame, it hurt me. To-day I have been sad and ashamed all day. Just now I went for a ride, and it seemed so desirable, so joyful to go away like a beggar, thanking and loving everyone. Yes, I am weak, I cannot perpetually live in my spiritual self, and as soon as one does not live in it, everything vexes one. One thing is good, that I am dissatisfied with myself and ashamed, but I must not be proud of it.
July 9, 1908(from a diary).—I have passed through very painful feelings; thank God that I have passed through them. An innumerable multitude of people, and all this would be joyful if it were not all poisoned by the consciousness of the senselessness, sinfulness, nastiness, luxury, servants, and poverty and overstrained intensity of labour around. Without ceasing I suffer misery from it, and I alone. I cannot help wishingfor death, though I hope as far as I can to make use of what is left.
January 12, 1909(from a diary).—It grows more and more difficult. I do not know how to thank God that, together with the growing difficulty, the strength to endure it grows also. Together with the burden there is also the strength, and there is incomparably more joy from the consciousness of strength than pain from the burden. Yes, for His yoke is easy and His burden is light.
May 6, 1907(from the letters).—It is hard for you. God help you to bear your trial without reproaches to others and without infringement of love for them. It is always a great help to me, when anything is difficult, to think and to remember that it is the material—and necessary, good material—upon which I am called to work, and not before men but before God.
July 21, 1909(from a diary).—Last night Sonya has been weak and irritable. I could not go to sleep till after two o'clock. I woke up feeling weak, I was awakened. Sonya did not sleep all night. I went to her. It was something insane. "Dushan poisoned her," etc. I am tired and cannot stand it any more and feel quite ill. I feel I cannot be loving and reasonable, absolutely cannot.At present I want only to keep away and to take no part. There is nothing else I can do, or else I have seriously thought of escaping. Now then, show your Christianity.C'est le moment ou jamais.But I awfully want to go away. I doubt if my presence here is of any use to anyone. Help me, my God, teach me. There is only one thing I want—to do not my will, but Thine. I write and ask myself: Is it true? Am I posing to myself? Help me, help me, help me!
July 22, 1909(from a diary).—Yesterday I did not eat anything and did not sleep. As usual I felt very wretched. I am wretched now, but my heart is melted. Yes—to love those that do us evil, you say; will try it. I try, but badly. I think more and more of going away and making a settlement about property.... I don't know what I shall do. Help, help, help! This "help" means that I am weak, bad. It is a good thing that I am at any rate conscious of this....
July 26, 1909(from a diary).—After dinner I spoke of Sweden; she became terribly, hysterically irritated. She wanted to poison herself with morphia. I tore it out of her hands and threw it under the stairs. I struggled. But when I went to bed andthought it over calmly I decided not to go. I went and told her. She is pitiful; I am truly sorry for her. But how instructive it is! I did nothing except inwardly work at myself. And as soon as I started on my own self, everything was solved. I have been ill all day....
August 28, 1909(from a diary).—Dreadfully, dreadfully miserable and oppressed; depression partly produced by letter from Berlin, in reference to Sofya Andreyevna's letter and the article in thePetersburg News, saying that Tolstoy is a deceiver and a hypocrite. To my shame I did not rejoice at being reviled, but was hurt, and the whole evening was agonisingly depressed. Go away? More and more often the question presents itself.
August 29, 1909(from a diary).—Painful feeling and desire (a bad one?) to run away, and uncertainty what is my duty to God. In calm moments, as now, I know that what is necessary above all is to do nothing, to bear all, to remain in love.
September 4, 1909(from a diary).—The false judgment of men about me, the necessity for remaining in this position—however hard it all is, I begin at times to understand its beneficial effect on my soul.
November 15, 1909(from a diary).—The misery, almost despair, at my idle life in senseless luxury, in the midst of men who are overworked and deprived of the essentials, of the possibility of satisfying their first needs, keeps growing more intense. It is agonising to live like this, and I do not know how to help myself and them. In weak moments I long to die. Help me, O Father, to do Thy will up to the last minute. Meditation about myself which I am learning, and to which I am giving myself up more and more of late, has advanced me much, very much; but, as always, true progress in goodness ... only reveals one's imperfection more and more.
January 8, 1910(from the letters).—I live wrongly in wealth, though myself I have nothing, but with those who live in wealth.
January 8, 1910(from the letters).—If man grows weak he is weaker than water. If he grows strong he is stronger than rock. What strengthens me most in difficult moments is the sense that the very thing that is worrying one is the material on which we are called to work, and the material is the more precious the more difficult the moments.
March 19, 1910(from the letters).—In bad moments think that what is happening toyou is the material on which you are called to work. To me at any rate this thought and the feeling evoked by it is a great help.
April 13, 1910(from a diary).—I woke at five and kept thinking how to get out, what to do, and I don't know. I thought of writing—and writing is loathsome while I remain in this life. Speak to her? Go away? Change? By degrees ... it seems as though the last is the only thing I shall and can do, and yet it is painful. Perhaps, certainly, indeed that is good. Help me, Thou Who art in me, in everything, and Who exists and Whom I implore and love. I am weeping now as I love.
April 14, 1910(from the letters).—You ask whether I like the life in which I find myself. No, I don't like it. I don't like it because I am living with my own people in luxury while there are poverty and want around me, and I cannot get away from the luxury, and I cannot help the poverty and want. For this I do not like my life. I like it in that it is in my power to act, and that I can act, and that I do act in the measure of my strength in accordance with the teaching of Christ, to love God and my neighbour. To love God means to love the perfection of goodness and to approach it as far as onecan. To love one's neighbour is to love all people alike as one's brothers and sisters. It is this, and this alone, that I am striving for, and since, little by little, however poorly, I am approaching it I do not grieve, but only rejoice. You ask me too, if I rejoice, at what do I rejoice, and what joy do I expect? I rejoice that I can carry out to the measure of my strength the task set me by my Master; to work for the setting up of that Kingdom of God to which we are all striving.
June 4, 1910(from a diary).—I had a good ride; I came back and found the Circassian who was taking Prokofy. I was horribly distressed and thought of going away, and now at five in the morning I don't look on that as impossible.
July 2, 1910(from the letters).—All will be well if we do not grow weak.... Very painful, but the better for that.
July 16, 1910(from the letters).—I feel well ... a little weaker than usual, but still well.... Why, really when I am calm I actually feel that in all this there is more of good than bad, incomparably more. It is absurd even to compare the little unpleasantnesses, agitations, privations, and the sense of growing nearer to God.
July 20, 1910(from the letters).—I am grateful to you for having helped and helping me to bear the trial that I have deserved and that is needful for my soul.... And please do help us both not to grow weak and not to do anything of which we shall repent.
July 29, 1910(from the letters).—We will each of us try to act as we ought, and it will be all right. I am trying with all my might, and I feel that that is the only thing that matters.
July 31, 1910(from the letters).—If only we do not ourselves spoil things all will be as it ought to be—that is, well.
August 7, 1910(from the letters).—I am sorry for her, and she is undoubtedly more to be pitied than I, so that it would be wrong of me to increase her sufferings out of pity for myself. Though I am tired I am really all right. Ever nearer and nearer comes the revelation of the certainly blessed, fore-divined mystery, and getting near it cannot but rejoice me.
August 9, 1910(from the letters).—The nearer one is to death, or anyway the more vividly one thinks of it (and thinking of it is thinking of one's own true life which is independent of death), the more important the one needful work of life becomes, andthe clearer it is that for the securing of that non-infringement of love with anyone, I must not undertake anything, but onlydo nothing.
August 14, 1910, morning (from the letters).—I know that all this present particularly morbid state may seem affected, intentionally worked up (to some extent that is so), but the chief point is that it is anyway illness, perfectly obvious illness, that deprives her of will and self-control. If it is said that she is herself to blame for this relaxation of her will, for giving in to her egoism, which began long ago, the fault is of the past, of long ago. Now she is quite irresponsible and one can feel for her nothing but pity, and it is impossible, for me at any rate, utterly impossible,contrecourir(to run counter to) her, and so unmistakably increase her sufferings. I do not believe that the complete vindication of my decision opposed to her wishes would be good for her, and if I did believe it I still could not do that. Apart from the fact that I think that I ought to act in this way, the point is that I know from experience that when I insist, I am miserable, and when I give way I am not only light-hearted, I am even joyful.... I have been ill for the last few days, butto-day I am much better. And I am particularly glad of it to-day, because there is anyway fewer chances of one's saying or doing wrong when one is physically well.
August 14, 1910, evening (from the letters).—I agree that one ought not to make promises to anyone, and especially to a person in the state in which she is now, but I am bound now not by any promise, but simply by pity, by compassion, which I have been feeling particularly strongly to-day as I wrote to you. Her position is very painful, no one can see it and not sympathise with it.
August 20, 1910; Kotchety. (From the letters.)—Without exaggeration I can say that I recognise that what has happened was inevitable, and therefore profitable for my soul. I think so at any rate in my better moments.
August 25, 1910; Kotchety. (From the letters.)—Of myself I may say that I am very well here, even my health, which was affected too by agitation, is far better. I am trying to behave as justly and firmly as possible in regard to Sofya Andreyevna, and it seems as though I am more or less successful in my object of calming her.... I am often terribly sorry for her. When onethinks what it must be for her lying awake alone at nights, for she gets no sleep for the greater part of the night, with a confused but painful consciousness that she is not loved, but is burdensome to everyone except the children, one cannot but pity her.
August 28, 1910; Kotchety. (From the letters.)—Do not think that it is easy for me to advise the manly, serene and even joyful endurance of suffering because I do not myself experience it. Do not think that, because all men are liable to sufferings which may be regarded as objectless torments, or as trials, the mild and religious endurance of which may, strange as it sounds, be transmuted to a greater spiritual blessing. We are all liable to these trials, and often to much harder ones than those which you are enduring. May God who lives in you help you to be conscious of yourself. And when there is that consciousness there is no suffering and there is no death.
August 30, 1910; Kotchety. (From the letters.)—Sofya Andreyevna went away from here yesterday, and took a very touching farewell of me and Tanya and her husband, with evident sincerity begging forgiveness of all with tears in her eyes. She is inexpressibly pathetic. What will happenlater I cannot imagine. "Do what you ought before your conscience and God, and what will be will be," I say to myself and try to act on it.
September 9, 1910; Kotchety. (From the letters.)—She was very much irritated, not irritated (ce n'est pas le mot, that is not the right word), butmorbidlyagitated. I underline that word. She is unhappy and cannot control herself. I have only just been talking to her. She came thinking I should go away with her, but I have refused without fixing the date of my going away, and that greatly distressed her. What I shall do later I don't know. I shall try to bear my cross day by day.
September 16, 1910(from the letters).—I am still as before in a middling condition physically, and spiritually I try to look upon my painful or rather difficult relations with Sofya Andreyevna as a trial which is good for me, and which it depends upon myself to turn into a blessing, but I rarely succeed in this. One thing I can say: not in my brain but with my sides, as the peasants say, I have come to a clear understanding of the difference between resistance which is returning evil for evil, and the resistance of not giving way in those of one's actions whichone recognises as one's duty to one's conscience and to God. I will try.
September 18, 1910(from the letters).—I understand now from experience that all that we call suffering is for our good.
October 6, 1910(from the letters).—She is ill and all the rest of it, but it is impossible not to pity her and not to be indulgent to her.
October 17, 1910(from the letters).—Yesterday was a very serious day. Others will describe the physical details to you, but I want to give you my own account from the inside. I pity and pity her, and rejoice that at times I love her without effort. It was so last night when she came in penitent and began seeing about warming my room, and in spite of her exhaustion and weakness pushed the shutters and screened the windows, taking pains and trouble about my ... bodily comfort. What's to be done if there are people for whom, and I believe only for a time, the reality of spiritual life is unattainable. Yesterday evening I was almost on the point of going away to Kotchety, but now I am glad I did not go. To-day I feel physically weak, but serene in spirit.
October 26, 1910(from a diary).—It is very oppressive for me in this house of lunatics.
October 26, 1910(from the letters).—The third thing is not so much a thought as a feeling, and a bad feeling—the desire to change my position. I feel something unbefitting, rather shameful, in my position. Sometimes I look upon it as I ought, as a blessing but sometimes I struggle against it and am revolted....
October 27, 1910(from a diary).—It seemsbadbut is really good; the oppressiveness of our relations keeps increasing.
October 29, 1910(from the letters).—I am waiting to see what will come of the family deliberation—I think, good. In any case, however, my return to my former life has become still more difficult—almost impossible, owing to the reproaches which will now be showered upon me, and the still smaller share of kindness which will be shown me. I cannot and will not enter into any sort of negotiations—what will be will be—only to sin as little as possible.... I cannot boast of my physical and spiritual condition, they are both weak and shattered. I feel most of all sorry for her. If only that pity were quite free from an admixture ofrancune(resentment), and that I cannot boast of.
October 29, 1910; Optin Monastery. (From a diary.)—I have been much depressed allday and physically weak.... As I came here I was thinking all the time on the road, of the way out of my and her position, and could not think of any way out of it, but yet there will be one whether one likes it or not; it will come, and not be what one foresees. Yes, think only of how to avoid sin, and let come what will come. That is not my affair. I have taken up ... theCircle of Reading, and, just now, reading Number Twenty-eight was struck by the direct answer to my position: trial is what I need, it is beneficial for me. I am going to bed at once. Help me, O Lord.
November 3, 1910; Station Astapovo. (From a diary; the last words written by Leo Nikolaevitch in his diary.)—Fais ce que doit adv....[30]And it is all for the best both for others and for me.
The extracts from the diary and letters of Tolstoy that have been quoted, though far from exhausting all the material, show sufficiently clearly what Leo Nikolaevitch had to endure in connection with his family and domestic conditions in the course of the last thirty years of his life. In it of course all aspects of his spiritual growth are nottouched upon, the whole course of his inner development during that period is not explained. But what is revealed to us in these extracts is sufficient to excite the warmest sympathy for Leo Nikolaevitch in his great and prolonged ordeal, and to inspire the deepest respect for his touching ability to blame himself for everything, and always to strive not towards what he desired but towards his duty. At the same time there is here revealed to us in its general features the path by which he came to the conviction that if we suffer spiritually we are ourselves to blame.
As is the case with everyone for whom the true meaning of life is revealed, after Leo Nikolaevitch's inner awakening at the beginning of the 'eighties, his spiritual consciousness could not, of course, remain at the same point. And indeed from the fragments we have quoted we see that up to the very last days of his life it was growing and becoming more perfect, as he became more and more penetrated with purity and strength.
Becoming convinced that in spite of all his sufferings he could not draw his wife to take part in his efforts, Leo Nikolaevitch began to experience the most agonisingdistress, which, as we see from his diary of 1884, sometimes became so acute that he hardly had the strength to endure it. He even had moments almost of despair and as it were revolt against his fate, especially when he learned from experience that his wife was too far away from him spiritually to be his companion in the reorganisation of their lives. It was at such a moment that there broke from him that agonising cry of a tortured heart, that she would for ever remain a millstone round his neck and his children's. But at the same time he tried to accept these sufferings with meekness and submission as a trial laid upon him, and to behave with love and patience to her who evoked them. So about the same time, on one of those exceptionally rare occasions when in conversation with me he permitted himself to touch on his relations with his wife, he spoke approximately as follows:
"It is impossible to blame Sofya Andreyevna. It is not her fault that she does not follow me. Why, what she clings to so obstinately now is the very thing in which I trained her for many years. Apart from that, in the early days of my awakening I was too irritable and insisted on trying to convince her that I was right. In thosedays I put my new conception of life before her in a form so repellent and unacceptable to her that I quite put her off. And now I feel that through my own fault she can never come to the truth by my way. That door is closed for her. But, on the other hand, I notice with joy that by ways peculiar to her alone, and quite incomprehensible to me, she seems at times to be gradually moving in the same direction."
About the same time Leo Nikolaevitch wrote to me:
"'He who loves not his brother, he dwelleth in death.' I have learned, but to my cost. I did not love, I had malice against my neighbours, and I was dying and dead. I began to be afraid of death; not afraid exactly, but bewildered before it. But love had but to rise up and I rose up again. I had forgotten Christ's first precept, 'Be not wrathful.' So simple, so small and so immense! If there is one man whom one does not love one is lost, one is dead. I have learned that by experience."—(Letter, December 28, 1885.)
At that period of his life Leo Nikolaevitch wrote in his diary the reflection which has already appeared in print concerning the chloroform of love, which expresses withremarkable vividness his recognition of the way we ought to help men who have gone astray: "At first I thought, Can one point out to people their mistakes, their sins, their faults, without hurting them? We have chloroform and cocaine for physical pain, but not for the soul. I thought this, and at once it came into my head, it is untrue—there is such a spiritual chloroform. They perform the operation of amputating a leg or an arm with chloroform, but they perform the operation of reforming a man painfully, stifling the reform with pain, exciting the worse disease—vindictiveness. But there is a spiritual chloroform, and it has long been known,—always the same—love. And that is not all: in physical disease one may do good by an operation without chloroform, but the soul is such a sensitive creature that an operation performed upon it without the chloroform of love is never anything but injurious. Patients always know it and ask for chloroform, and know that it ought to be used.... The sick man is in pain and he screams, hides the sore spot and says, 'You won't heal me, you won't heal me, and I don't want to be healed, I would rather get worse if you cannot heal me without pain....' And he is right ...you cannot drag a man straight out when he is tangled in a net—you will hurt him. You must disentangle the netting gently and firmly first. This delay, this disentangling, is the chloroform of love.... This I almost understood before, now I quite understand and begin to feel it...."
(Tolstoy's diary, January 25, 1889. Cf.Biography of L. N. Tolstoyby P. I. Biryukov, Vol. III. chap. iii.)
Striving to work out in himself a patient and loving attitude to the erring, beginning with those who were nearest to him, Leo Nikolaevitch from the earliest days of his domestic ordeal applied all his spiritual forces to avoiding giving way to his spiritual sufferings and throwing the blame for them either on people or on external circumstances. And this consciousness was continually strengthened and confirmed in him, helping him to bestow less and less pity on himself and more and more pity on those at whose hands he suffered. At first, as we have seen, such resignation to destiny was attained only with the greatest spiritual effort; but gradually he succeeded in conquering himself more and more by means of this incessant struggle carried on for many years. Such, anyway, is, it seems to me,the general deduction which may be drawn from his diary and letters. This deduction is confirmed too by the immediate impression which many of those to whose lot it fell to be in close relations with Leo Nikolaevitch in his later years carried away from personal intercourse with him. Even the expression of his face during this last period often seemed lighted up with a peculiar spiritual radiance. Such in its most general features is my conception of the consistent growth of Leo Nikolaevitch's inner consciousness after his spiritual awakening in so far as that growth is connected with his domestic sufferings and going away from home. This conception has been formed, on the one hand, on the basis of my personal intimacy and my spiritual unity with Leo Nikolaevitch as well as my long, intimate acquaintance with his family; and, on the other hand, on an attentive study of all that Leo Nikolaevitch has at various times expressed in his letters.
But the secret of another man's soul is too great and too intricate for anyone to be able to assert with confidence that he has fully grasped it even on any one side. And therefore while expressing here my personal opinion so far as it can have significance for anyone, I feel great satisfaction in the factthat I have been able to a considerable extent to incorporate Leo Nikolaevitch's own words in this book. And thus it will be possible for the reader to draw his own conclusions; at least from those notes of Leo Nikolaevitch's which I have here brought into connection with my argument, and to correct for himself anything in which it may seem to him that I am mistaken. I should like to conclude with two more thoughts of Leo Nikolaevitch's which show his comprehension of the spiritual significance of suffering.
"For a man living a spiritual life suffering is always an encouragement to becoming more perfect and more enlightened, and getting nearer to God. For such people suffering can always be transformed into the business of life."—(Circle of Reading.)
"The cross that is laid upon us is that at which we ought to work. Our whole life is this work. If the cross is illness, then bear it well, with submission; if it is injury at the hands of men, know how to return good for evil; if it is humiliation, be meek; if it is death, accept it with gratitude."—(The Way of Life.)
FOOTNOTES[26]To what precisely Leo Nikolaevitch ascribed his realisation that in 1870 the "cord had snapped" in the relations between him and his wife I am not in a position to state with certainty. I can only say for the information of the reader that I heard from Leo Nikolaevitch that their relations began to change for the worse from the time when Sofya Andreyevna, contrary to his principles and desire, refused to nurse her second daughter Marya Lvovna, born 1870, and engaged a wet nurse for her who was taken away from her own baby.[27]It may interest the reader to know that on June 18 Sofya Andreyevna gave birth to her youngest daughter, Alexandra.—Translator's note.[28]At that period Leo Nikolaevitch's attitude of disapproval of property was beginning to take definite shape. In consequence he did not wish to make use of the revenues from his estate in Samara, considering it unjust to make the peasants work for him and his family. Even the income which his family received from the Yasnaya Polyana estate and from the sale by Sofya Andreyevna of his works he considered as unjust, though he did not yet see clearly how he ought to act in the matter, considering his duties to his family.[29]Compare entry for June 7.[30]An unfinished French proverb; translated in full it means, "Do what you ought and let come what may."
[26]To what precisely Leo Nikolaevitch ascribed his realisation that in 1870 the "cord had snapped" in the relations between him and his wife I am not in a position to state with certainty. I can only say for the information of the reader that I heard from Leo Nikolaevitch that their relations began to change for the worse from the time when Sofya Andreyevna, contrary to his principles and desire, refused to nurse her second daughter Marya Lvovna, born 1870, and engaged a wet nurse for her who was taken away from her own baby.
[26]To what precisely Leo Nikolaevitch ascribed his realisation that in 1870 the "cord had snapped" in the relations between him and his wife I am not in a position to state with certainty. I can only say for the information of the reader that I heard from Leo Nikolaevitch that their relations began to change for the worse from the time when Sofya Andreyevna, contrary to his principles and desire, refused to nurse her second daughter Marya Lvovna, born 1870, and engaged a wet nurse for her who was taken away from her own baby.
[27]It may interest the reader to know that on June 18 Sofya Andreyevna gave birth to her youngest daughter, Alexandra.—Translator's note.
[27]It may interest the reader to know that on June 18 Sofya Andreyevna gave birth to her youngest daughter, Alexandra.—Translator's note.
[28]At that period Leo Nikolaevitch's attitude of disapproval of property was beginning to take definite shape. In consequence he did not wish to make use of the revenues from his estate in Samara, considering it unjust to make the peasants work for him and his family. Even the income which his family received from the Yasnaya Polyana estate and from the sale by Sofya Andreyevna of his works he considered as unjust, though he did not yet see clearly how he ought to act in the matter, considering his duties to his family.
[28]At that period Leo Nikolaevitch's attitude of disapproval of property was beginning to take definite shape. In consequence he did not wish to make use of the revenues from his estate in Samara, considering it unjust to make the peasants work for him and his family. Even the income which his family received from the Yasnaya Polyana estate and from the sale by Sofya Andreyevna of his works he considered as unjust, though he did not yet see clearly how he ought to act in the matter, considering his duties to his family.
[29]Compare entry for June 7.
[29]Compare entry for June 7.
[30]An unfinished French proverb; translated in full it means, "Do what you ought and let come what may."
[30]An unfinished French proverb; translated in full it means, "Do what you ought and let come what may."
In view of the fact that Leo Nikolaevitch's diaries and letters have not yet been published in their entirety, I think it essential to make a note in connection with the character of the extracts which I have made from them in this book. These passages have been selected with the special object of illustrating Leo Nikolaevitch's attitude to suffering in general and to his own sufferings in particular. Owing to this, their context is inevitably one-sided and cannot give a general idea of his prevailing spiritual mood during the last thirty years of his life. That general mood, in spite of the conditions which oppressed Leo Nikolaevitch externally, was doubtless one of joy in life, in accordance with the characteristics of his nature, and filled with inner satisfaction, as all those who were in close communication with him for any length of time during that period can testify. And in this fact,i.e.in his preserving those characteristics in spite of all the trials to which he was subjected throughout that whole period, I see one of the most remarkable aspects of his heroic endurance.
Indeed one has but for one moment to enter in spirit into his position at that time to be truly amazed at what he succeeded in attaining in his inner life. Love for freedom in general and for personal independence was to an exceptional degree characteristic of his powerful personality. The demands of creative work attracted him to prolonged absences far from home in the midst of the most varied natural scenery, and the most different strata of humanity. The working of his mind after his spiritual awakening required the closest association with working people. For the satisfaction of his spiritual needs he required the possibility of receiving unhindered in his house all and each of those with whom he would have liked to hold intercourse, without any limitation or restriction, and consequently to show hospitality, to seat at his table on occasions, to put up for the night both the peasant of the district who had come to pay him a visit, and the passing pilgrim weary from the road, and the visitor who had come from afar seeking spiritual intercourse and help.... And of all this so needful to Tolstoy as artist and thinker, and above all as a man leading a spiritual life,—of all this he was deprived, thanks to the egoism of his family and the class prejudices ruling in his house, in whicha woman's self-will was paramount. Being completely indifferent to his spiritual needs and callous to his sufferings, Sofya Andreyevna expected him in his old age, as in the first period of their life, to be continually at her side in spite of the spiritual change that had taken place in her husband, and only rarely agreed to his being absent for short intervals, and then with the greatest difficulty. Leo Nikolaevitch could not refuse these demands of hers without destroying the very small share of domestic peace without which his life in the home would have lost any sort of meaning. And in spite of all the oppressiveness of these domestic conditions, which defy description in words and, lasting as they did over thirty years, for us ordinary people would have been truly shattering, Leo Nikolaevitch, far from giving way to despair, did not even complain of his fate. On the contrary, he blamed himself for his sufferings, ascribing them to his own imperfection, and making the utmost effort to perform his family duties as irreproachably as possible. "I am all right, quite all right," he often said and wrote to his friends. At times he even displayed a childlike gaiety, and sometimes jested at the very circumstances which caused him the most suffering.
This remarkable circumstance I explainsolely by the fact that Leo Nikolaevitch firmly made it his aim to do nothing but the will of God. This, and only this, he set before him as his fundamental task, and for the sake of carrying it out he consciously denied himself the satisfaction of his personal needs and any self-gratification during the whole of that second long period of his married life. And denying himself all the so-called joys of life, he incidentally attained true spiritual joy and peace, true blessedness.
The subject of Leo Nikolaevitch's inner life is, however, outside the limits of our present investigation and I have referred to it only that the reader might not receive a quite mistaken impression that Leo Nikolaevitch was lacking in that courageous joy in life affecting all around him, which, on the contrary, he possessed in the highest degree.[31]
FOOTNOTE[31]As I am touching upon the general mood of Leo Nikolaevitch's spiritual life, I foresee that the extracts I have made from his diaries and letters will in many readers arouse a feeling of regret that they have hitherto not had the opportunity of reading this precious material in its entirety. And therefore I think it needful to state that the principal obstacles to the continuation of the series of issues of Tolstoy's diaries, begun several years ago, and to the systematic publication of all his writings, are now happily overcome, and the first complete edition of all Tolstoy's works is at the present time being zealously prepared for the press.
[31]As I am touching upon the general mood of Leo Nikolaevitch's spiritual life, I foresee that the extracts I have made from his diaries and letters will in many readers arouse a feeling of regret that they have hitherto not had the opportunity of reading this precious material in its entirety. And therefore I think it needful to state that the principal obstacles to the continuation of the series of issues of Tolstoy's diaries, begun several years ago, and to the systematic publication of all his writings, are now happily overcome, and the first complete edition of all Tolstoy's works is at the present time being zealously prepared for the press.
[31]As I am touching upon the general mood of Leo Nikolaevitch's spiritual life, I foresee that the extracts I have made from his diaries and letters will in many readers arouse a feeling of regret that they have hitherto not had the opportunity of reading this precious material in its entirety. And therefore I think it needful to state that the principal obstacles to the continuation of the series of issues of Tolstoy's diaries, begun several years ago, and to the systematic publication of all his writings, are now happily overcome, and the first complete edition of all Tolstoy's works is at the present time being zealously prepared for the press.
The personality of Leo Nikolaevitch's wife, Sofya Andreyevna, is connected in the closest way with the account I have given of his leaving home. I have consequently been compelled to touch upon her relations with her husband. While describing the agonising sufferings to which Leo Nikolaevitch was subjected in his family circle, I have to my regret been forced to state a great deal which appears as an attack upon the character and behaviour of his wife. And therefore, to prevent any misunderstandings on the part of readers with regard to my personal relations with her, I wish to speak out openly upon the subject.
It would perhaps have been natural for me, as a friend of Leo Nikolaevitch's, to feel bitterness and hostility towards the person who had been for him such a heavy cross during the last thirty years of his life. And it would be natural for the reader to suppose that under the influence of such feelings I could not be free from prejudice in regard to Sofya Andreyevna, and could nothelp, even against my will, laying the colour on thick in describing her deficiencies. There will no doubt be ill-wishers who will say that, moved by resentment, I find a satisfaction in laying bare in an exaggerated form the mistakes and failings of a person who caused me much suffering. But in spite of the naturalness of such suppositions, they would in the present case be mistaken. In reality my attitude to Leo Nikolaevitch's wife is quite different.
First of all, as in Leo Nikolaevitch's lifetime I never forgot, so after the death of both of them I never can forget, that Sofya Andreyevna was his wife,i.e.occupied quite an exceptional position in regard to him, and for the first half of their life together was the person nearest to him in the world. This circumstance alone has inspired, and still inspires, a peculiar strictness toward myself in my behaviour to her and circumspection in my judgments of her. Moreover, having been a close witness of the wonderfully loving solicitude with which Leo Nikolaevitch behaved to his wife, never losing hope of the possibility of her spiritual awakening, I could not on my side help being infected by this attitude, at least so far as not to feel ill-will or prejudice against her.
Apart from that, I do not on principle acknowledge a man's right to judge another. The character and behaviour of this or the other person depends on so many external and internal circumstances for which the person is not in the least responsible; and the most secret region in our inner consciousness, in which we really are answerable to our own conscience, is so entirely beyond the reach of any outside eye that we have neither the power nor the right to judge any but ourselves. In relation to anyone else we can judge only their actions, laying completely aside, as not within our competence, the question of the degree of their responsibility for committing them. With this point of view every censure, irritation, or vexation with anyone, to say nothing of wrath or revenge, appears merely as the sign of our own imperfection, against which, when looked upon as such, it is easier to struggle than when such feelings are regarded as legitimate.
In view of these two circumstances, though I have, willy-nilly, in the present work to exhibit Sofya Andreyevna in an unfavourable light, I have not done so from personal ill-will to her, nor in a spirit of censure, but simply through the necessity of giving afaithful picture of what Leo Nikolaevitch had to endure.
I know that many will fail to understand my true motives and will severely censure me. I resign myself to this in advance. But I confess it grieves me, grieves me deeply, that by this present book I shall be bound to cause pain to those members of Leo Nikolaevitch's family who are still alive and who are nearest to him—his children. An old friend of their father's, I have always been conscious of being a friend of the family as well, and I naturally attach particular value to good relations with them. If they feel bitter against me, I beg them to believe that, whether mistakenly or not, I have, in any case, sincerely felt myself morally bound to act in the way I have acted, for reasons set forth in the Introduction. I beg them also to consider that the present publication of the truth I knew about their father's family life was, so to speak, forcibly wrung from me by all the untruths on the subject which for many years were persistently circulated all over the world, both in speaking and writing, by their own mother and their two brothers, Ilya Lvovitch and Leo Lvovitch. These two made it a kind of profession to give public lectures on thesubject. Quite recently I came across, in one of the most popular foreign newspapers, the ParisFigaro, a series of articles by Leo Lvovitch Tolstoy in which he strives to cover the memory of his father with shame and ignominy, in contradistinction to that of his mother, whose image he idealises till it becomes utterly distorted. He is so careless with the facts that, under the influence of his notorious envy and enmity for his father, he tells absolute untruths about him and definitely slanders him, though perhaps without meaning to do so. Such pernicious attacks upon Leo Nikolaevitch made in the world's Press by some of his nearest relatives give me reason to hope that his other relatives will not be surprised when they find, as their father's champion upon the same arena, one of his most intimate friends, who is able to speak more freely concerning the relations between their parents than those who are naturally constrained by the bonds of blood relationship.
It goes without saying that Sofya Andreyevna, like everyone else, had her virtues and her defects, but at the same time it will be readily understood that if Leo Nikolaevitch was reduced to the necessity of leaving her, it was not her good qualities which drovehim to it. And therefore, in describing the causes of his departure, I have inevitably been forced to dwell upon the negative sides of her character.
In this brief narrative exclusively devoted to one definite event in the life of Leo Nikolaevitch and the internal and external circumstances connected with that event, I have not made it my aim to draw a general and complete picture of the characters of Leo Nikolaevitch and Sofya Andreyevna. The limited range of my special task laid upon me the necessity of keeping strictly within the limits of those of their characteristics and peculiarities which in one way or another threw a direct light upon the incident described. There could be no question of an all-round and to any extent exhaustive account of the characters of those persons, apart from the fact that such a task is far beyond my capacity. The most important and perhaps the most difficult aspect of the task which actually lay before me consisted in exhibiting in their full force the circumstances which in the end compelled Leo Nikolaevitch to take his final step, with perfect truthfulness, exaggerating nothing, of course, but at the same time concealing nothing from false delicacy. This I havetried to do as conscientiously, carefully and truthfully as I can. Though I might from the natural perhaps, but in the present case misplaced, sensibility have smoothed over the extremes of Sofya Andreyevna's behaviour, and have softened the real character of her attitude to Leo Nikolaevitch, yet in doing that I should have deprived the motives of his departure of reasonable basis and inevitability, and should have set forth Leo Nikolaevitch's impulses in a more or less distorted form—and that, of course, was inadmissible.
Even in the lifetime of Sofya Andreyevna Tolstoy I did at one time entertain the idea of publishing the truth about Leo Nikolaevitch's leaving home in her interests. I cherished the hope that from such a truthful account she might derive some conception of how much Leo Nikolaevitch suffered at her hands, how he struggled with himself, how self-sacrificingly he returned her good for evil, how persistently, in spite of everything, he believed in the divine spark in her soul, and how he rejoiced and was touched at the slightest gleam of that spark. And who knows, I said to myself, perhaps such a presentation before her eyes of what really happened, in contradistinction to thefantastic inventions with which she screened the truth from herself—perhaps this truthful picture of what Leo Nikolaevitch really did endure, might help her in time to recognise the truth, to come to herself, and to become one in soul with him who loved her so that he laid down his soul for her?
But at the time I did not decide to do this, and now I do not regret it. Apart from any external influences, there is no doubt that after Leo Nikolaevitch's death there appeared at times a certain inner softening in Sofya Andreyevna, though only of brief duration. So it was, for instance, immediately after his death, when, in the presence of several persons, she repeated in spiritual agonies that she had been the cause of his death. And though a prolonged period followed after it during which she displayed, at least in words, her former indifference or even hostility to Leo Nikolaevitch, yet before her own death, as those near her relate, she again expressed regret for the wrong she had done him. And if outwardly she repented but little, yet who can say what were her thoughts and reflections in her soul, and especially what passed in her consciousness during those dying hours and minutes when man, cut off from communication with those around him, in completesolitude before his Maker, knows that he is departing this life?
And though as she left this world Sofya Andreyevna carried with her the answer to this question, nevertheless we have no grounds for denying the possibility that the cherished hope which Leo Nikolaevitch never lost, that sooner or later she would be one with him in spirit, was realised at last before her death. Let us, too, look with a spirit of love and compassion upon the errors, the defects and the spiritual limitations of the companion of Leo Nikolaevitch's life. But at the same time let us boldly look the truth in the face, in no way softening the magnitude of the sufferings endured by Leo Nikolaevitch by concealing the true attitude of his wife to him, or by depicting her behaviour in a softened light. If we keep in mind the great divine love with which he loved her soul, then in face of the naked truth we shall not condemn, but shall sincerely compassionate, her whose destiny it was to serve as the instrument of his severest trials. And we shall understand that those trials which in the end exhausted Leo Nikolaevitch's physical forces and brought about his death were obviously needful to the manifestations in him of the fullness of spiritual strength received from him by God.
Printed in Great Britain byRichard Clay & Sons, Limited,Bungay, Suffolk.
Printed in Great Britain byRichard Clay & Sons, Limited,Bungay, Suffolk.
[Illustration: Title page]