TOLSTOY'S RELATION TO HIS WIFE
After his departure Leo Nikolaevitch never for a minute repented what
he had done, and never considered the idea of his return to Sofya
Andreyevna. When his daughter Alexandra Lvovna several days
afterwards asked him whether he could regret his action, he answered:
"Of course not. Can a man regret something when he _could not_ act
differently?"
And why he could not act differently he told her openly in his letter
of the 29th October: "For me, with this spying, eavesdropping,
everlasting reproaches, disposing of me according to caprice,
everlasting control, pretence of hatred for the man who is nearest
and most necessary to me, with this obvious hatred for me and
affectation of love ... such a life is not merely unpleasant for me,
but utterly impossible. If anyone is to drown oneself it is not
she but I.... I desire one thing only, freedom from her, from
the falsity, hypocrisy and malice with which her whole being is
saturated.... All her behaviour to me not only shows a lack of love,
but seems to have been unmistakably aimed at killing me...."
These words broke from Leo Nikolaevitch like the irrepressible shriek
from the tortured soul of a man who had for long years been
accustomed to hide in himself the deepest and most poignant of his
sufferings. And therefore after giving vent for once to his need to
speak out to his favourite daughter, he at once hastens to comment:
"You see, dear, how bad I am. I do not conceal myself from you."[22]
This letter is important for us, Leo Nikolaevitch's friends, because
it raises a little corner of the curtain with which for the last ten
years of his life he scrupulously covered from the eye of man the
inner tortures he experienced. Were it not for this "human document"
it might have been supposed that, having attained the marvellous
height of spiritual illumination which distinguished the latter
period of his life, Leo Nikolaevitch was thereby saved from the
possibility of feeling insult and experiencing spiritual pain. Now
we know that if in his diary, in his correspondence and in
conversation with his friends he abstained for the most part from any
complaints of the bitterness of his position, preferring to note his
own mistakes and weaknesses, he did this not because he was at that
time free from the common human characteristic of feeling pain
inflicted upon him. We now see that to the very end of his days he
had not ceased to be for us ordinary people a comrade capable of
feeling the same mortifications and sufferings as we. For that reason
we ought to be grateful to fate which for one instant revealed before
us in that letter the deep spiritual wound which Leo Nikolaevitch
bore away with him when he left his wife. But at the same time it
would be quite a mistake to suppose that though he left Sofya
Andreyevna he retained any evil feeling towards her and was not
capable of forgiving her. On the contrary, almost at the same time as
the letter to his daughter which we have quoted, he wrote his wife a
touching, warm-hearted letter which leaves not the slightest doubt of
his real love for her. And on the following day he wrote to his two
elder children: "Please try and soothe your mother, for whom I have
the most sincere feeling of compassion and love." And he not only
pitied Sofya Andreyevna, but had so much real love for her that he
could with a pure heart forgive her, and himself beg her forgiveness.
Altogether the last letters of Leo Nikolaevitch to his wife, which
have, by the way, been published by her,[23] strikingly reveal some
characteristic peculiarities in his relations with her during the
latest period of their life together. The most conspicuous
peculiarity is that in spite of the very painful crises Leo
Nikolaevitch had passed through in his family relations, the habitual
and extremely delicate consideration in his behaviour to Sofya
Andreyevna never left him for one minute. Consequently when telling
her the causes of his departure, he does not without necessity touch
upon those of his impulses which were disagreeable to her. Avoiding
them as far as possible, he accentuates those of his motives which
had a general character and did not wound her vanity. He only alludes
to the points in which she had been to blame towards him when it is
quite unavoidable, and touches on those questions as gently and
carefully as possible.
I will quote those of his letters which directly concern his
departure, beginning with one written thirteen years before he
actually went away, at a time when he was intending to leave his
family but did not do so. He directed that this letter should be
given to his wife after his death, which was done.
I
"_June 8, 1897._
"Dear Sonya,
"For a long time past I have been worried by the inconsistency of my
life with my convictions. To make you change your life, your habits
in which I have trained you, I could not; go away from you hitherto I
could not either, thinking that I should deprive the children while
they were small of at least that little influence I might have on
them, and should be grieving you; nor can I any longer continue to
live as I have lived these sixteen years, at one time struggling and
irritating you, at another myself, succumbing to the temptations to
which I am accustomed, and by which I am surrounded; and I have
determined now to do what I have long wanted to do--go away: in the
first place, because for me with my advancing years this life becomes
more and more oppressive, and I long more and more for solitude; and
secondly, because my children are grown up, my influence is not now
needed in the house, and all of you have interests more vital to you
which will make you feel my absence less.
"The chief thing is that just as the Hindus when close on sixty go
away into the forest, as every religious old man longs to devote the
last years of his life to God, and not to jests, to puns, to gossip
and to tennis, so I, entering on my seventieth year, long with my
whole soul for peace, for solitude, and if not for complete harmony,
at least not the glaring discord between one's life and one's
convictions, one's conscience.
"If I were to do this openly there would be entreaties, upbraidings,
arguments, complaints; I should lose courage, perhaps, and not carry
out my decision although it ought to be carried out. And therefore
please forgive if my action hurts you, and in thy soul do thou,
Sonya, especially, let me go with a good will; do not look for me,
don't lament over me, or complain against me; do not blame me.
"That I have gone away from you does not show that I was displeased
with you. I know that you literally could not see and feel as I do,
and therefore could not and cannot change your life and make
sacrifices for what you do not recognise. And therefore I do not
blame you, but, on the contrary, with love and gratitude remember
the thirty-five long years of our life, especially the first half
of the time, when with a motherly self-sacrifice, which is part
of your nature, you so vigorously and firmly bore that which you
considered your vocation. You have given me and the world what
you could give--you have given a great deal of motherly love and
self-sacrifice, and one cannot but value you for it. But in the later
period of our life--the last fifteen years--we have grown apart. I
cannot think that I am to blame, because I know that I have changed
neither for my own sake nor for other people's, but because I could
do nothing else. I cannot blame you either for not following me, but
I thank you and think of you, and always shall think of you, with
love for what you have given me.
"Farewell, dear Sonya,
"Your loving
"LEO TOLSTOY."
(Cf. _Letters to his Wife_, p. 524.)
II
"_Yasnaya Polyana._
"_October 28, 1910._
"My going away will grieve you. I am sorry for it, but do understand
and believe that I cannot act differently. My position in the house
is becoming, has become, unbearable. Apart from everything else, I
cannot any longer live in the conditions of luxury in which I have
been living, and I am doing what old men of my age commonly do--they
retire from worldly life to spend their last days in solitude and
quiet. Please understand this and do not come after me if you find
out where I am. Your coming in that way would only make your and my
position worse and would not alter my decision.
"I thank you for these forty-eight years of faithful life with me,
and beg you to forgive me for anything in which I have been to blame
towards you, even as I with all my soul forgive you for anything in
which you may have been to blame towards me. I advise you to resign
yourself to the new position in which my departure places you, and
not to have any ill-feeling against me.
"If you want to communicate with me, give everything to Sasha. She
will know where I am and will forward anything that is necessary; she
cannot tell you where I am, because I have made her promise not to
tell anyone."
(_Letters to his Wife_, p. 590.)
III
"_Shamordino._
"_October 31, 1910._
"A meeting between us and still more my return is now utterly
impossible. For you it would be, as everyone declares, highly
injurious, and for me it would be awful, since now, in consequence of
your excitement, irritation and morbid condition, my position would,
if that is possible, be worse than ever. I advise you to resign
yourself to what has happened, to settle down in your new position,
and above all to attend to your health. To say nothing of loving, if
you don't absolutely hate me you ought to enter a little into my
position. And if you do that you not only will not blame me, but will
try to help me to find peace and the possibility of some sort of
human life, to help me by controlling yourself, and you will not wish
me to come back now. Your mood as at present, your desire to commit
suicide and efforts to do so, show more than anything your loss of
self-control, and make my return unthinkable at present. No one but
yourself can save all who are near you, me and above all yourself,
from sufferings such as we have endured in the past.[24]
"Try to direct all your energies not to bringing about what you
desire--at present my return--but to bringing peace to your soul, and
you will get what you desire.
"I have spent two days at Shamordino and Optina Pustyn, and am going
away. I will post this letter on the way. I do not say where I am
going, because I consider separation essential both for you and for
me. Do not think that I am going away because I do not love you: I
love and pity you with all my soul, but I cannot do otherwise than I
am doing.
"Your letter I know was written sincerely, but you are not capable of
doing what you would wish to. And what matters is not the fulfilment
of any of my desires or demands, but only your balance, your calm,
reasonable attitude to life. And while that is lacking my life with
you is not thinkable. To return to you while you are in such a state
would be equivalent to committing suicide. And I do not consider that
I have a right to do that. Farewell, dear Sonya. God help you. Life
is no jesting matter, and we have no right to throw it away at our
own will, and it is unreasonable, too, to measure it by length of
time. Perhaps those months which we have left to live are more
important than all the years lived before, and we must live them
well."
* * * *
And from the touching interest which Leo Nikolaevitch displayed after
he went away in everything relating to Sofya Andreyevna, questioning
everyone about her with the greatest emotion and solicitude, it was
perfectly clear that, though he recognised before his conscience that
to live together with her any longer was impossible, yet in his soul
he was fully reconciled with her.
FOOTNOTES
[22] I permit myself to quote this letter without asking
Alexandra Lvovna's permission to do so, because it has already,
without our previous knowledge, appeared in print in the historical
journal, _Facts and Days_ (Petrograd, 1920), and because it makes a
less one-sided impression in connection with the other contents of
the present book.
[23] "Letters of Count L. N. Tolstoy to his wife, 1862-1910"
(Kushnerev & Co., 1915).
[24] The words "sufferings such as we have endured in the
past" have been left out of Tolstoy's letters by Sofya Andreyevna
without any indication of an omission.