Leo Tolstoy is one of the most famous writers and philosophers in the world. His views and beliefs formed the basis of a whole religious and philosophical movement, which is called Tolstoyism. The literary heritage of the writer amounted to 90 volumes of fiction and journalistic works, diary notes and letters, and he himself was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Nobel Peace Prize.
"Fulfill all that you have determined to be fulfilled"
Genealogical tree of Leo Tolstoy. Image: regnum.ru
Silhouette of Maria Tolstoy (nee Volkonskaya), mother of Leo Tolstoy. 1810s Image: wikipedia.org
Leo Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 in the estate of Yasnaya Polyana, Tula province. He was the fourth child in a large noble family. Tolstoy was orphaned early. His mother died when he was not yet two years old, and at the age of nine he lost his father. The aunt, Alexandra Osten-Saken, became the guardian of the five Tolstoy children. The two older children moved in with their aunt in Moscow, while the younger ones stayed in Yasnaya Polyana. It is with the family estate that the most important and dearest memories of Leo Tolstoy's early childhood are connected.
In 1841 Alexandra Osten-Saken died and the Tolstoys moved in with their aunt Pelageya Yushkova in Kazan. Three years after the move, Leo Tolstoy decided to enter the prestigious Imperial Kazan University. However, he did not like to study, he considered exams a formality, and university professors - incompetent. Tolstoy did not even try to get a scientific degree, in Kazan he was more attracted to secular entertainment.
In April 1847, Leo Tolstoy's student life ended. He inherited his part of the estate, including his beloved Yasnaya Polyana, and immediately went home without receiving a higher education. In the family estate, Tolstoy tried to improve his life and start writing. He drew up his educational plan: to study languages, history, medicine, mathematics, geography, law, agriculture, natural sciences. However, he soon came to the conclusion that it is easier to make plans than to carry them out.
Tolstoy's asceticism was often replaced by revelry and card games. Wanting to start the right, in his opinion, life, he made a daily routine. But he did not observe it either, and in his diary he again noted dissatisfaction with himself. All these failures prompted Leo Tolstoy to change his lifestyle. The opportunity presented itself in April 1851: the elder brother Nikolai arrived in Yasnaya Polyana. At that time he served in the Caucasus, where the war was going on. Leo Tolstoy decided to join his brother and went with him to a village on the banks of the Terek River.
On the outskirts of the empire, Leo Tolstoy served for almost two and a half years. He whiled away the time hunting, playing cards, and occasionally participating in raids on enemy territory. Tolstoy liked such a solitary and monotonous life. It was in the Caucasus that the story "Childhood" was born. While working on it, the writer found a source of inspiration that remained important to him until the end of his life: he used his own memories and experiences.
In July 1852, Tolstoy sent the manuscript of the story to the Sovremennik magazine and attached a letter: “…I am looking forward to your verdict. He will either encourage me to continue my favorite activities, or make me burn everything I started. ”. Editor Nikolai Nekrasov liked the work of the new author, and soon "Childhood" was published in the magazine. Encouraged by the first success, the writer soon began to continue the "Childhood". In 1854, he published a second story, Boyhood, in the Sovremennik magazine.
"The main thing is literary works"
Leo Tolstoy in his youth. 1851. Image: school-science.ru
Lev Tolstoy. 1848. Image: regnum.ru
Lev Tolstoy. Image: old.orlovka.org.ru
At the end of 1854, Leo Tolstoy arrived in Sevastopol, the epicenter of hostilities. Being in the thick of things, he created the story "Sevastopol in the month of December." Although Tolstoy was unusually frank in describing battle scenes, the first Sevastopol story was deeply patriotic and glorified the bravery of Russian soldiers. Soon Tolstoy began to work on the second story - "Sevastopol in May". By that time, nothing was left of his pride in the Russian army. The horror and shock that Tolstoy experienced on the front line and during the siege of the city greatly influenced his work. Now he wrote about the meaninglessness of death and the inhumanity of war.
In 1855, from the ruins of Sevastopol, Tolstoy traveled to sophisticated Petersburg. The success of the first Sevastopol story gave him a sense of purpose: “My career is literature, writing and writing! From tomorrow I work all my life or I give up everything, rules, religion, decency - everything ”. In the capital, Leo Tolstoy completed "Sevastopol in May" and wrote "Sevastopol in August 1855" - these essays completed the trilogy. And in November 1856, the writer finally left military service.
Thanks to truthful stories about the Crimean War, Tolstoy entered the St. Petersburg literary circle of the Sovremennik magazine. During this period, he wrote the story "Snowstorm", the story "Two Hussars", finished the trilogy with the story "Youth". However, after a while, relations with writers from the circle deteriorated: “These people disgusted me, and I disgusted myself”. To unwind, in early 1857, Leo Tolstoy went abroad. He visited Paris, Rome, Berlin, Dresden: he got acquainted with famous works of art, met with artists, observed how people live in European cities. Travel did not inspire Tolstoy: he created the story "Lucerne", in which he described his disappointment.
Leo Tolstoy at work. Image: kartinkinaden.ru
Leo Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana. Image: kartinkinaden.ru
Leo Tolstoy tells a fairy tale to his grandchildren Ilyusha and Sonya. 1909. Krekshino. Photo: Vladimir Chertkov / wikipedia.org
In the summer of 1857 Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana. In his native estate, he continued to work on the story "The Cossacks", and also wrote the story "Three Deaths" and the novel "Family Happiness". In his diary, Tolstoy defined his purpose for himself at that time as follows: “The main thing is literary works, then family obligations, then household chores ... And to live for yourself is enough for a good deed every day”.
In 1899 Tolstoy wrote the novel The Resurrection. In this work, the writer criticized the judicial system, the army, the government. The contempt with which Tolstoy described the institution of the church in Resurrection provoked a backlash. In February 1901, the Holy Synod published a resolution on the excommunication of Count Leo Tolstoy from the Church in the journal Tserkovnye Vedomosti. This decision only increased Tolstoy's popularity and drew public attention to the writer's ideals and beliefs.
Tolstoy's literary and social activities became known abroad as well. The writer was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902 and 1909 and for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902-1906. Tolstoy himself did not want to receive the award and even told the Finnish writer Arvid Järnefelt to try to prevent the prize from being awarded, because, “if that happened… it would be very unpleasant to refuse” “He [Chertkov] took the unfortunate old man into his hands in every possible way, he separated us, he killed the artistic spark in Lev Nikolayevich and kindled condemnation, hatred, denial, which are felt in Lev Nikolayevich’s last articles years his foolish evil genius urged him on".
Tolstoy himself was burdened by the life of a landowner and a family man. He sought to bring his life in line with his convictions, and in early November 1910 he secretly left the Yasnaya Polyana estate. The road turned out to be unbearable for an elderly person: on the way he fell seriously ill and was forced to stay at the house of the caretaker of the Astapovo railway station. Here the writer spent the last days of his life. Leo Tolstoy died on November 20, 1910. The writer was buried in Yasnaya Polyana.
Leo Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 in the Tula province (Russia) into a family belonging to the noble class. In the 1860s, he wrote his first major novel, War and Peace. In 1873 Tolstoy began work on the second of his most famous books, Anna Karenina.
He continued to write fiction throughout the 1880s and 1890s. One of his most successful later works is The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Tolstoy died on November 20, 1910 in Astapovo, Russia.
First years of life
September 9, 1828, in Yasnaya Polyana (Tula province, Russia), the future writer Leo Tolstoy was born. He was the fourth child in a large noble family. In 1830, when Tolstoy's mother, nee Princess Volkonskaya, died, the father's cousin took over the care of the children. Their father, Count Nikolai Tolstoy, died seven years later, and their aunt was appointed guardian. After the death of his aunt, Leo Tolstoy, his brothers and sisters moved to the second aunt in Kazan. Although Tolstoy experienced many losses at an early age, he later idealized his childhood memories in his work.
It is important to note that the primary education in Tolstoy's biography was received at home, lessons were given to him by French and German teachers. In 1843 he entered the Faculty of Oriental Languages at the Imperial Kazan University. Tolstoy failed to excel in his studies - low grades forced him to move to an easier law faculty. Further academic difficulties led Tolstoy to eventually leave the Imperial Kazan University in 1847 without a degree. He returned to his parents' estate, where he planned to take up farming. However, this undertaking of his ended in failure - he was absent too often, leaving for Tula and Moscow. What he really excelled at was keeping his own diary - it was this lifelong habit that inspired Leo Tolstoy for most of his writings.
Tolstoy was fond of music, his favorite composers were Schumann, Bach, Chopin, Mozart, Mendelssohn. Lev Nikolaevich could play their works for several hours a day.
One day, Tolstoy's older brother, Nikolai, came to visit Leo during his army leave, and convinced his brother to join the army as a cadet in the south, in the Caucasus mountains, where he served. After serving as a cadet, Leo Tolstoy was transferred to Sevastopol in November 1854, where he fought in the Crimean War until August 1855.
Early publications
During his Junker years in the army, Tolstoy had a lot of free time. During quiet periods, he worked on an autobiographical story called The Childhood. In it, he wrote about his favorite childhood memories. In 1852 Tolstoy submitted the story to Sovremennik, the most popular magazine of the day. The story was gladly received, and it became Tolstoy's first publication. Since that time, critics have placed him on a par with already well-known writers, among whom were Ivan Turgenev (with whom Tolstoy became friends), Ivan Goncharov, Alexander Ostrovsky and others.
After completing the story "Childhood", Tolstoy began to write about his daily life in an army outpost in the Caucasus. The work "Cossacks" begun in the army years, he finished only in 1862, after he had already left the army.
Surprisingly, Tolstoy managed to continue writing during active battles in the Crimean War. During this time he wrote Boyhood (1854), the sequel to Childhood, the second book in Tolstoy's autobiographical trilogy. At the height of the Crimean War, Tolstoy expressed his opinion about the striking contradictions of the war through the trilogy of works "Sevastopol Tales". In the second book of the Sevastopol Tales, Tolstoy experimented with a relatively new technique: part of the story is presented as a narration from the point of view of a soldier.
After the end of the Crimean War, Tolstoy left the army and returned to Russia. Arriving home, the author enjoyed great popularity on the literary scene of St. Petersburg.
Stubborn and arrogant, Tolstoy refused to belong to any particular philosophical school. Declaring himself an anarchist, he left for Paris in 1857. Once there, he lost all his money and was forced to return home to Russia. He also succeeded in publishing Youth, the third part of an autobiographical trilogy, in 1857.
Returning to Russia in 1862, Tolstoy published the first of 12 issues of the thematic magazine Yasnaya Polyana. In the same year, he married the daughter of a doctor named Sofya Andreevna Bers.
Major novels
Living in Yasnaya Polyana with his wife and children, Tolstoy spent much of the 1860s writing his first known novel, War and Peace. Part of the novel was first published in Russkiy Vestnik in 1865 under the title "1805". By 1868 he had produced three more chapters. A year later, the novel was completely finished. Both critics and the public have debated the historical validity of the novel's Napoleonic Wars, coupled with the development of the stories of its thoughtful and realistic yet fictional characters. The novel is also unique in that it includes three long satirical essays on the laws of history. Among the ideas that Tolstoy also tries to convey in this novel is the conviction that the position of a person in society and the meaning of human life are mainly derivatives of his daily activities.
After the success of War and Peace in 1873, Tolstoy began work on the second of his most famous books, Anna Karenina. It was partly based on real events during the war between Russia and Turkey. Like War and Peace, this book describes some biographical events in the life of Tolstoy himself, this is especially evident in the romantic relationship between the characters of Kitty and Levin, which is said to be reminiscent of Tolstoy's courtship of his own wife.
The opening lines of Anna Karenina are among the most famous: "All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina was published in installments from 1873 to 1877, and was highly acclaimed by the public. The fees received for the novel rapidly enriched the writer.
Conversion
Despite the success of Anna Karenina, after the completion of the novel, Tolstoy experienced a spiritual crisis and was depressed. The next stage of the biography of Leo Tolstoy is characterized by a search for the meaning of life. The writer first turned to the Russian Orthodox Church, but did not find answers to his questions there. He concluded that the Christian churches were corrupt and, instead of an organized religion, promoted their own beliefs. He decided to express these convictions by founding a new publication in 1883 called The Mediator.
As a result, for his non-standard and contradictory spiritual beliefs, Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church. He was even watched by the secret police. When Tolstoy, driven by his new conviction, wanted to give away all his money and give up everything superfluous, his wife was categorically against it. Not wanting to escalate the situation, Tolstoy reluctantly agreed to a compromise: he transferred to his wife the copyright and, apparently, all deductions for his work until 1881.
Late fiction
In addition to his religious treatises, Tolstoy continued to write fiction throughout the 1880s and 1890s. Among the genres of his later work were moral stories and realistic fiction. One of the most successful of his later works was the story The Death of Ivan Ilyich, written in 1886. The protagonist struggles to fight the death hanging over him. In short, Ivan Ilyich is horrified at the realization that he wasted his life on trifles, but the realization of this comes to him too late.
In 1898 Tolstoy wrote Father Sergius, a work of fiction in which he criticizes the beliefs he developed after his spiritual transformation. The following year, he wrote his third voluminous novel, Resurrection. The work received good reviews, but this success is unlikely to match the level of recognition of his previous novels. Tolstoy's other late works are essays on art, a satirical play called The Living Corpse, written in 1890, and a story called Hadji Murad (1904), which was discovered and published after his death. In 1903, Tolstoy wrote a short story "After the Ball", which was first published after his death, in 1911.
Old age
During his later years, Tolstoy reaped the benefits of international recognition. However, he still struggled to reconcile his spiritual beliefs with the tensions he created in his family life. His wife not only disagreed with his teachings, she did not approve of his students, who regularly visited Tolstoy in the family estate. In an effort to avoid the growing discontent of his wife, in October 1910 Tolstoy and his youngest daughter Alexandra went on a pilgrimage. Alexandra was a doctor for her elderly father during the trip. Trying not to flaunt their private lives, they traveled incognito, hoping to evade unnecessary inquiries, but this was sometimes to no avail.
Death and legacy
Unfortunately, the pilgrimage proved too burdensome for the aging writer. In November 1910, the head of the small Astapovo railway station opened the doors of his house for Tolstoy so that the ailing writer could rest. Shortly thereafter, on November 20, 1910, Tolstoy died. He was buried in the family estate, Yasnaya Polyana, where Tolstoy lost so many people close to him.
To this day, Tolstoy's novels are considered among the finest achievements of literary art. War and Peace is often cited as the greatest novel ever written. In the modern scientific community, Tolstoy is widely recognized as having a gift for describing the unconscious motives of character, the refinement of which he advocated by emphasizing the role of everyday actions in determining the character and goals of people.
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Lev Nikolaevich,
Your letter received 1) and ordered to reconsider the case of Bodiansky 2) . If possible, of course, he will be released. Do not think that I did not pay attention to your first letter. I couldn't answer it because it hurt me too much. You consider evil what I consider good for Russia. It seems to me that the lack of "ownership" of the land among the peasants creates all our disorder.
Nature has implanted certain innate instincts into man, such as the feeling of hunger, sexual feeling, etc., and one of the strongest feelings of this order is the feeling of property. You can't love someone else's on a par with your own, and you can't court, improve land that is in temporary use, on a par with your own land.
The artificial castration of our peasant in this respect, the destruction of his innate sense of property, leads to much evil and, most importantly, to poverty.
And poverty, to me, is the worst of slavery. And now the same serfdom - for money you can crush people in the same way as before the liberation of the peasants.
It is ridiculous to talk to these people about freedom, or freedoms. First, bring their level of well-being to that, at least, the smallest edge, where the minimum contentment makes a person free.
And this is achievable only with the free application of labor to the land, i.e., with the right of ownership of the land.
Sorry.
Yours P. Stolypin
Published: Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy.
Anniversary collection. - M.; L., 1928. - S. 91-92.
Notes to the letter:
In response, Tolstoy sent the following letter:
P.A. Stolypin
January 27, 1908. I [snaya] P[olyan]
Petr Arkadyevich
For the first time, although I wrote about an important, necessary, general matter, I also wrote for myself: I knew that there was one chance in a thousand for the matter to be done, but I wanted to do what was possible for this. Now I am writing about the same thing, but not at all for myself and not even for a common cause, but only for you, for the fact that I wish you good, true good, because I love you.
Why, why are you ruining yourself by continuing the erroneous activity you started, which cannot lead to anything except to worsen the situation of the general and yours? A brave, honest, noble person, as I consider you, tends not to persist in a mistake, but to recognize it and direct all his efforts to correct its consequences. You made two mistakes: first, you began to fight violence with violence and continue to do so, worsening and worsening the situation; second, they thought in Russia to calm the agitated population, both expecting and desiring only one thing: the destruction of the right to land ownership (as outrageous in our time as serfdom was half a century ago), to calm the population by destroying the community, to form a small land own. The mistake was huge. Instead of taking advantage of the consciousness that still lived among the people of the illegitimacy of the right of personal land ownership, a consciousness converging with the teaching of the relationship of man to land by the most advanced people of the world, instead of exposing this principle to the people, you thought to calm him down by luring it into the basest, oldest, obsolete understanding of the relationship of man to the earth that exists in Europe, to the great regret of all thinking people in this Europe.
Dear Pyotr Arkadievich, you can, reading up to this point, throw the letter into the basket and say: how tired I am of this old man with his unsolicited advice, and if you do this, it will not upset me at all, will not offend me, but I will feel sorry for you. Life is not a joke. We live here once. Because of the partie pris* one cannot unreasonably ruin one's life. You, in your terrible bustle, may not see it. But I can clearly see from the outside what you are doing and what you are preparing for yourself in history - but God bless history - and in your soul.
I am writing to you because there is not a day that I do not think about you and am not surprised to the point of complete bewilderment at what you are doing, doing something similar to what a thirsty person would do who, seeing the source of water, to which the same thirsty go, would go away from it, assuring everyone that it is so necessary.
Both of your mistakes: the struggle with violence and not the resolution, but the affirmation of land violence, are corrected by the same simple, clear and most, no matter how strange it may seem to you, usable measure: by recognizing the land as the property of the whole people and by establishing the land corresponding to the comparative advantages a tax that replaces taxes or part of them. This measure alone can calm the people and render powerless all the efforts of the revolutionaries, who are now relying on the people, and make unnecessary those terrible measures of violence that are now used against the tyrants. I can’t, I can’t understand how, in your position, one can hesitate for even one minute in choosing: to continue that painful, fruitless, and terrible activity of yours, or immediately win three-quarters of the entire Russian people, all the progressive people of Russia and Europe and immediately become, instead of an obstacle to moving forward, on the contrary, an advanced figure who is starting or at least trying to implement what all of humanity is moving towards and is ready for, and even China, and Japan, and India.
I know that you are not an otocratic ruler and that you are connected by relations with the Sovereign, and with the Court, and with the Duma, but this cannot prevent you from trying to do everything you can. After all, the enforcement of land liberation is not at all so terrible as its enemies usually represent. I can very vividly imagine how the Czar can be convinced that the gradual imposition of a tax on land will not cause any particular disorder, but, by the way, will be a more powerful barrier against the efforts of revolutionaries than millions of police and guards. I can imagine even more vividly how this project can seize the Duma and win over the majority to its side. You would have le beau rôle in this matter. You, who suffered so cruelly from assassination attempts and is revered as the most powerful and energetic enemy of the revolution, you would suddenly take the side of the revolution, but the side of the eternal, violated truth, and in this way you would remove the soil of the revolution. It may very well be that, no matter how gently and cautiously you acted in proposing such a new measure to the government, it would not agree with you and remove you from power. As far as I understand you, you would not be afraid of this, because even now you are doing what you are doing, not in order to be in power, but because you think it is fair, properly. Let them remove you 20 times, slander you in every possible way, everything would be better than your current situation.
I repeat what I said at the beginning: everything that I write, I write for you, wishing you well, loving you. If you've read this far, then please do this. Remember who you have the closest person to you, who loves you, your soul - whether your wife, daughter, your friend - and, without reading this whole long boring letter to him, tell him in short words what I am writing and suggesting to you, and ask him, this loved one, his opinion and do what he tells you. If he loves your soul, there can be only one advice from him.
I beg you one more thing: if this letter causes you an unkind feeling towards me, please suppress it. It would be very painful to think that my very kind feeling towards you caused the opposite in you.
January 28, 1908 [g.]
Loving you Leo Tolstoy
P.S. Nikolaev is waiting for your call.
I would also like to say that what I propose is not only the best, in my opinion, what can be done now for the Russian people, not only the best that you can do for yourself, but this is the only good way out for you from that situation, in which you are placed by fate.
L. T [Tolstoy]
Before sending this letter, I carefully read yours. You write that the possession of property is an innate and indestructible property of human nature. I completely agree with this, but the establishment of a single tax and the recognition of land as the common property of all people not only does not contradict this property of people to own property, but one thing completely satisfies it, satisfies [because] it is not “sacred”, as they like speak (only the divine is sacred), and there is only one true legal right to property: the right to own the works of one's labor. Namely, it is precisely this right that is violated by the appropriation by people of the illegal right to own land. This illegal right most of all robs people of their legal right to the works of their labor. Possession of land upon payment of the tax imposed on it does not make this possession less strong and firm than possession by bill of sale. Rather the opposite.
Once again I ask you to forgive me for what I could say to you unpleasant, and do not bother to answer me if you do not agree with me. But please don't bear any ill feelings against me.
L. T [Tolstoy] (Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. - M .; L., 1928. - S. 93-95).
1) In October 1907 L.N. Tolstoy turned to P.A. Stolypin with a request to release his follower A.M. from prison. Bodyansky. At the end, Tolstoy made a note: “I am very sorry that you did not pay attention to my letter” (Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. - M .; L., 1928. - P. 91).
2) Bodyansky Alexander Mikhailovich (1842-1916) - landowner of the Yekaterinoslav and Kharkov provinces. In 1907, he was brought to justice for the book he published “The Dukhobors. Collection of stories, letters, documents and articles on religious matters. (Kharkov, 1907); The edition of the book was confiscated. At the beginning of February 1908, the Kharkiv judicial chamber in a closed session sentenced him to 6 months in prison. From December 1908 he served his sentence, having spent two and a half months in prison.
The electronic version of the document was provided by the Foundation for the Study of the Heritage of P.A. Stolypin
On the serene morning of May 26, 1861, on a visit to Fetu came to his estate Stepankovo in one carriage Turgenev and Tolstoy. The day passed as usual: a joint walk to the nearest grove, a leisurely exchange of news, a light supper.
It all started the next day. Here is how Fet talks about it:
“In the morning, at our usual time, that is, at 8 o’clock, the guests went to the dining room, in which my wife occupied the upper end of the table at the samovar, and I, waiting for coffee, fit at the other end. Turgenev sat on the right hand of the mistress, and Tolstoy on the left. Knowing the importance that Turgenev attached at that time to the education of his daughter, my wife asked him if he was satisfied with his English governess. Turgenev began to pour out in praise of the governess and, among other things, said that the governess, with English punctuality, asked Turgenev to determine the amount that his daughter could dispose of for charitable purposes.
“Now,” said Turgenev, “the Englishwoman demands that my daughter take the thin clothes of the poor into her hands and, having made them with her own hands, return them according to their belongings.
- And you think this is good? asked Tolstoy.
- Of course, this brings the philanthropist closer to the urgent need.
- And I think that a dressed-down girl, holding dirty and fetid tatters on her knees, plays an insincere, theatrical scene.
- I beg you not to say that! Turgenev exclaimed with flared nostrils.
“Why should I not say what I am convinced of? Tolstoy answered.
I didn’t have time to shout to Turgenev: “Stop!” - when, pale with anger, he said: “So I will force you to be silent with an insult.”
With these words, he jumped up from the table and, clutching his head with his hands, walked excitedly into another room. A second later, he returned to us and said, turning to my wife: “For God's sake, excuse my ugly act, which I deeply regret.” With this, he left again.”
It would seem that a meaningless squabble, even just a verbal squabble. And it's hard to believe that this could be the cause of a long-term quarrel between the two great Russian writers. But more on these assumptions later. In the meantime, about how events developed in the future.
Perhaps there were deeper, personal motives for this outburst of temperaments. So, during Turgenev's life in exile in Spasskoye-Lutovinovo, a "dangerous friendship" began between him and Tolstoy's beloved sister Maria Nikolaevna, who lived next door. But due to Turgenev's special attitude towards women, she broke up, leaving a deep mark in the heart of Mary ...
So, after this kitchen quarrel, the former friends immediately left Stepanovka: Ivan Sergeevich went to his place in Spasskoye, and Tolstoy went to Novoselki, from where, immediately, on the morning of the next day, that is, on May 27, he sent a note to Turgenev demanding a written apology: “... write me a letter that I could send to Fetam,” Lev Nikolaevich wrote in it.
Turgenev did not object to the world peace, and on the same day, May 27, he answered Tolstoy's message. True, in it he not only apologized, but also put an end to their friendship.
"1861. May 27. Spasskoye.
Gracious sovereign Lev Nikolaevich! In answer to your letter, I can only repeat what I myself considered it my duty to announce to you at Fet: carried away by a feeling of involuntary hostility, the reasons for which are now out of place, I offended you without any positive reason on your part and asked you for forgiveness. What happened this morning showed clearly that any attempt at rapprochement between such opposite natures as yours and mine cannot lead to anything good; and therefore I fulfill my duty to you all the more willingly, since this letter is probably the last manifestation of any kind of relationship between us ... "
It would seem that the incident has been settled ... But then, as if by the command of evil fate, the letter sent by Turgenev to Tolstoy was returned to him in the evening of the same day. Ivan Sergeevich sends the same letter to Tolstoy again, having previously made a postscript on it with the following content: “Ivan Petrovich (I.P. Borisov) just brought me a letter that my man foolishly sent to Novoselki, instead of sending it to Boguslav. I humbly ask you to forgive this unpleasant oversight. I hope that my messenger will find you still in Boguslav.”
But Tolstoy, who did not receive an answer to his letter sent immediately after the quarrel, was so angry that the next day he sent a courier to Spasskoe challenging Turgenev to a duel. And immediately after this message, he sent another one, in which, according to Sofya Andreevna, he said that “he does not want to shoot himself in a vulgar way, that is, that two writers arrived with a third writer, with pistols, and the duel would have ended with champagne , but wants to shoot for real and asks Turgenev to come to Boguslav to the edge with guns.
In the morning, a letter arrived from Turgenev, in which he said that he did not want to shoot himself, as Tolstoy suggested, but wanted a duel according to all the rules. To this, Lev Nikolaevich wrote to Turgenev: “You are afraid of me, but I despise you and never want to have anything to do with you.”
Summer passed ... In September, Turgenev left for Paris. Tolstoy, who was living in Moscow at that time, somehow being in a pleasant mood, sent a letter to Turgenev through the bookseller Davydov, in which, regretting that their relationship was hostile, he wrote in particular: “If I offended you, forgive me, I am unbearably sad to think that I have an enemy."
However, this letter reached the addressee with a great delay. And while Lev Nikolaevich was seized with humility, Turgenev experienced another attack of hostility towards Tolstoy and, under the influence of these antipathetic feelings, wrote him a far from friendly letter.
“... I found out that you ... call me a coward who did not want to fight with you, etc. But since I consider your act like that after what I did to make amends for the words that escaped me, - and insulting and dishonest, I warn you that this time I will not leave him unattended and, returning to Russia next spring, I will demand satisfaction from you ... ”- such a message was sent to Tolstoy on September 26 from Paris by an angry Turgenev.
So, instead of peace - aggravation of enmity. But Tolstoy, in a letter dated October 8, refused this attack and at the same time asked for an apology. But this letter did not affect the hostile relations between Tolstoy and Turgenev...
Their quarrel lasted no less than seventeen years! Finally, on April 6, 1878, Tolstoy sent a letter to Turgenev in Paris, thereby taking a step towards reconciliation.
“Lately,” Lev Nikolayevich wrote, “remembering my relationship with you, I, to my surprise and joy, felt that I had no enmity towards you. God bless you for the same. To tell the truth, knowing how kind you are, I am almost sure that your hostile feeling towards me has passed even before mine.
If so, then please give each other a hand, and please completely forgive me for everything that I have been guilty of before you.
It is so natural for me to remember only one good thing about you, because there were so many good things about me. I remember that I owe my literary fame to you, and I remember how you loved both my writing and me. Perhaps you will find such memories of me, because there was a time when I sincerely loved you.
Sincerely, if you can forgive me, I offer you all the friendship that I am capable of. In our years there is only one blessing - love relationships between people. And I will be very happy if they are established between us.
Gr. L. Tolstoy.
According to Annenkov, Ivan Sergeevich, reading this message from Tolstoy, wept. And then, immediately, he responded to this first message of his former friend in seventeen years.
“May 8, 1878. Paris.
Dear Lev Nikolaevich, I received your letter only today... It made me very happy and touched.
With the greatest desire I am ready to renew our former friendship and I firmly shake the hand you extended to me. You are absolutely right in not assuming in me hostile feelings towards you; if they were, they disappeared a long time ago, and only a memory of you remained, as a person to whom I was sincerely attached; and about the writer, whose first steps I managed to welcome before others, each new work of which aroused in me the liveliest interest. I sincerely rejoice at the end of the misunderstandings that have arisen between us. I hope to get to the Oryol province this summer - and then, of course, we will see each other. Until then, I wish you all the best - and once again I shake your hand in a friendly way.
Iv. Turgenev.
Lev Nikolayevich's meeting with Turgenev took place on August 8, 1878: Tolstoy met Ivan Sergeevich in Tula. Turgenev spent two days in Yasnaya Polyana...
On September 2 of the same year, Turgenev once again visited Tolstoy's Yasnaya Polyana estate. This time he was there for three days.
Thus ended the seventeen-year confrontation between the two giants of Russian and world literature.
Dear and dear Sonya.
Your rapprochement with T[aneev] is not only unpleasant for me, but terribly painful. By continuing to live under these conditions, I poison and shorten my life. For a year now, I have not been able to work and do not live, but I am constantly suffering. You know it. I said this to you both with irritation and with entreaties, and lately I haven't said anything at all. I tried everything, and nothing helped: the rapprochement continues and even intensifies, and I see that this will continue to the end. I can't take this anymore. For the first time after receiving your last letter, I made up my mind to leave. And for three days I lived with this thought and experienced it and decided that, no matter how hard it would be for me to be separated from you, I would nevertheless get rid of this terrible situation of humiliating suspicions, twitching and tearing of the heart and I would be able to live and do at the end of my life what I think needs to be done. And I decided to leave, but when I thought about you, not about how it would hurt me to lose you, no matter how painful it was, but about how it would upset you, torment you, how you would suffer, I realized that (I) I can't do it, I can't leave you without your consent.
The situation is this: continue to live as we now live, I nearly I can not. I say nearly I can’t, because every minute I feel like I’m losing my self-control 1 and every minute I can break loose and do something bad : I cannot think without horror of the continuation of those almost physical sufferings which I experience and which I cannot but experience.
You know this, maybe you forgot, you wanted to forget, but you knew, and you are a good woman and you love me, and yet you didn’t want to, I still don’t want to think that you couldn’t save me, and yourself, from this unnecessary, terrible suffering.
How to be? Decide for yourself. Think for yourself and decide what to do. The way out of this situation seems to me the following: 1) and the best thing is to end all relationships, but not little by little and without considering how it will seem to someone, and in such a way as to free yourself completely and immediately from this terrible nightmare that choked us for a year. No dates, no letters, no boys, no portraits, no mushrooms An. Yves 2., not Pomer[antseva], 3 but complete liberation, as Masha freed herself from 3[under], Tanya from P[opov]. - It's one of the best. Another way out is for me to go abroad 4, having completely parted with you, and to each live his own life independent of the other. This exit is the most difficult, but still possible, and still 1000 times easier for me than continuing the life that we have led this year.
The third way out is that, having also stopped all relations with T[aneev], we both go abroad and live there until the thing that was the cause of all this passes.
The fourth is not a way out, but the most terrible choice, which I can’t think of without horror and despair, this is the one, assuring myself that this will pass and that there is nothing important here, to continue to live like this year: you myself, without noticing it, to look for all the ways of rapprochement, to see, observe, guess and suffer - not jealousy, maybe there is this feeling, but it is not the main thing. The main thing, as I told you, is shame for you and for yourself. The same feeling that I experienced in relation to Tanya, with P[opov], with S[takhovich], but only 100 times more painful. The fifth way out is the one you suggested: I should stop looking at it the way I look at it, and wait for it to go away by itself, if it happened, as you say. I tried this fifth way out and made sure that I could not destroy in myself that feeling that tormented me, as long as the reasons for it continued.
I experienced this for a year and tried with all the strength of my soul and could not and I know that I cannot, but on the contrary, blows, all in one and the same place, brought the pain to the highest degree. You write 5 that it pains you to see Gur[evich], 6 despite the fact that the feeling you associated with her had no semblance of foundation and lasted for several days. What should I feel after 2 years of hobbies and having the most obvious reasons, when, after everything that happened, you arranged daily in my absence - if they were not daily, then it was not from you - dates? 7286
287 And in the same letter you are writing, as it were, a program for our future life, so as not to interfere with you in your studies or joys, when I know what they are.
Sonya, my dear, you are a good, kind, fair woman. Transfer yourself to my position and understand that it is impossible to feel otherwise, as I feel, that is, excruciating pain and shame, and think, my dear, of the best means to save yourself, not so much from me from this, but from yourself from even worse torments. which will certainly come in one form or another if you do not change your view of the whole matter and make an effort. I am writing you this third letter. The first one was irritated, 8 I leave the second note 9 . You will see from it better my former mood. I left for Piragovo in order to give both you and yourself the freedom to think better and not fall into irritation and false reconciliation.
Think carefully before God and write to me. In any case, I'll be there soon, and we'll try to discuss everything calmly. If only it did not remain as it is; worse than this hell can not be for me. Maybe that's what I need. But you probably don't need to. True, there are two more ways out - this is my death or yours, but both of them are terrible if this happens before we have time to untie our sin.
I open the letter to add one more thing: If you do not choose neither the first, nor the second, nor the third way out, that is, you do not completely interrupt all communications, do not let me go abroad so that we can stop all communications, or you will not leave with me abroad for an indefinite time, of course, with Sasha, and if you choose that vague and unfortunate way out, that you must leave everything as it was and everything will pass, then I ask you never to talk to me about this. I will be silent, as I have been silent lately, waiting only for death, which alone can save us from this torment.
I'm leaving too, because, having not slept for almost 5 nights, I feel nervously weak to such an extent, only to go down 10 and I burst into tears, and I'm afraid that I won't be able to endure a meeting with you and everything that can get out of it.
I cannot attribute my condition to physical ill health, because all the time I felt fine and there are no stomach or biliary suffering. 287
288 1 Crossed out: In any case, if I continue to live like this, then I probably won't last a year.
2 Anna Ivanovna Maslova, sister of F. I. Maslov, Chairman of the Moscow Court of Justice. S. I. Taneyev was friendly with the entire Maslov family; in their estate Selishche, Oryol Province. he often spent the summer months.
3 Yuri Nikolaevich Pomerantsev (1878-1933) - one of Taneyev's students, later a composer and conductor.
6 S. A. Tolstoy had a clash with Tolstoy about L. Ya. Gurevich in connection with the fact that Tolstoy gave his story “The Master and the Worker” to the Gurevich magazine. See vol. 53 about this.
8 Previous letter.
9 This letter from Tolstoy is unknown.
10 To calm down, Tolstoy went to Pirogovo. The letter remained undelivered.
