* * *
Tolstoy continued on the novel into April of 1873 but had to apologize to both Strakhov and Golokhvastov for his long-overdue letters. “I did answer you right away,” he wrote Strakhov, “but I didn’t send the letter, and since then two weeks have passed.”
I didn’t send it because I wrote about something that was premature […]. Sometime I’ll send you this letter or show you. […]
As for myself, that is, about myself right now, I won’t write, or again I wouldn’t send the letter: I’m taking on myself the highest commanded duty—I’m tormented and finding in this torment everything—not joy but the purpose of life.XL
He wrote Golokhvastov as well that he had decided against telling him something that was “premature.”XLI
And though his dear sister-in-law Tatyana knew that he was working on a new novel, he didn’t mention it in his postscript to Sofia’s April letter to her except to say, “I’m very busy with work, which in no way resembles Berlin wool [a kind of embroidery].”XLII
Sofia noted in her diary that “Lyovochka is writing his novel, which is going well.” She preceded it with two sentences that evoke the remoteness of Yasnaya Polyana and the long hold of winter: “It snowed all morning, 5 degrees above zero, no grass, no warmth, no sun, none of the bright aching joy of spring, for which we have been waiting so long. My heart is as cold, gloomy, and sad as the countryside.”XLIII
There’s no indication in Tolstoy’s letters of this time, however, that he felt low or that the weather was cold. His head was in the story he had begun writing, through which he was discovering “the purpose of life.” Sofia was as usual watching him closely, and in her memoir she assessed his mood and health as poor.
She recalled him as having “frequent coughing spells,” and that he “sometimes ran a fever at night. He became gloomy and couldn’t work. And so I took the firm decision to go with him and the whole family [that summer] to Samara Gubernia to the plot of land we had recently purchased so Lev Nikolaevich could drink koumiss there, which had cured him once already. I couldn’t let him go without us, remembering how hard our {earlier} separation was on me.”XLIV
Again, he himself didn’t mention gloominess or coughing fits, but, as Sofia recalled, “preparations [for the trip] got underway.” They invited friends and relatives to join them, and “Everybody had fun looking at these summer plans.” According to Alexandra Popoff, Sofia’s most recent biographer, “Tolstoy went to Moscow to buy forty-three items on Sophia’s shopping list. Despite his simple tastes, he patronized the most reputable stores, making quality purchases and overspending, habits he ascribes to Pierre in War and Peace [and to Stiva in Anna Karenina]. Meanwhile, to save on expenses, Sophia was sewing clothes for the children.”XLV
In her memoir Sofia explained why, that spring of 1873, Tolstoy had to take over the shopping duties:
Since I was nursing Petja at the time, I couldn’t go anywhere, and Lev Nikolaevich took it upon himself to purchase in Moscow everything needed for the trip. He went there on the 20th of April and brought home things that were splendid, solid, and expensive. Marvellous trunks from Tsimmerman’s, bags and belts. He bought hats for the children and a beautiful grey felt Mousquetaire hat for me, replete with grey feathers. In a fine store he ordered for me an expensive grey alpaca coat with a cape, and shoes to go with it.
He showed my outfits to Mme Sushkova and Mlle Tjutcheva, asking their opinion. They approved. At the time I paid little attention to my appearance and realised that Lev Nikolaevich wanted me to be fashionably dressed (comme il faut), and this meant a lot to him. I, however, was tormented by a single thought: to get everything done in time. […]XLVI
Sofia was pleased and flattered (she mentions “expensive” twice). She wrote that she didn’t concern herself with her appearance “at the time,” but it’s impossible to find a photo or painting of her where she doesn’t seem conscious of and comfortable with her fashionable self.XLVII
In Anna Karenina, Stiva Oblonsky seems to know and appreciate shops; he knows the best ones. Though we never see Stiva shop, we know that he has many decided opinions about where to get what is needed for his dinner party. We know Anna has a dressmaker, and perhaps we could imagine her shopping in Petersburg or Moscow or Italy, but Tolstoy never describes her doing so. In one draft he seems to have been about to write a description of Karenin in a toy shop (more on this later), and we know in the novel that Anna has shopped for and bought toys for Seryozha’s ninth birthday. In the 1880s and for the rest of his life Tolstoy would become so committed to simplicity and feel so much guilt about his wealth that it’s hard to imagine him in 1873 enjoying himself in a shop. We’ll see, however, that for the next several years he would be an impulsive buyer of horses and property.
The most poignant detail of Sofia’s recollection of this April, though, is about her baby at the breast, Petja. For Sofia, her husband’s shopping expedition brought to mind the little son who would die that fall.
Having returned home with the goods, Tolstoy went back to Moscow at the beginning of May, “finishing his arrangements with the printing of the new edition of his works in eight volumes,” writes Gusev. “Tolstoy decided to publish himself, without the use of a publisher. In this edition there had to be everything that was in the edition of 1864, plus War and Peace, some material from the Azbuka and some pedagogical articles from Yasnaya Polyana, not included in the 1864 edition.”XLVIII
At the printer’s to discuss those eight volumes, Tolstoy seemed to feel that he shouldn’t have to look at or touch the material again. He was petulant about proofreading this edition and groaned in anticipation of the job.
He was glad the family would be going away for the summer; he planned for them to depart on May 15.
Though he had had a breakthrough with Anna Karenina, he doesn’t seem to have thought of it as a major or consuming project, as the Peter the Great novel was to have been, or as revising and repackaging the Azbuka would be. He liked the thought of this novella-sized Anna Karenina, perhaps because he figured that it would not consume his time or energy. He believed that he could put it aside for the summer and resume it without a hitch.
In early May, Tolstoy took his three oldest children with him to bid farewell to his sister, Maria, and his brother Sergei at their estates while Sofia stayed home with the youngest three.
After Tolstoy and the children had returned home, Tolstoy received a woeful letter from his sister-in-law Tatyana about her four-year-old daughter, Dasha. He later recounted to Tatyana herself and her husband, Sasha Kuzminskiy, how he broke the news to Sofia:
I’m coming from Tula with the letters. Sonya happily meets me. And I say: “Big sorrow, big, big sorrow!” She says: “Hannah died [their former governess now working for Tatyana’s family].” I say: “From Kutais, but not Hannah.” Not thinking for a moment, she said, as if she had read the letter, namely these two words: “Dasha died.”
How is this? How was she able to know this?
She was terribly upset, so much so she isn’t able to talk about it.
[Our son] Seryozha is sorry for you. And [our daughter] Tanya lay down for a long time on the bed and cried.
Goodbye, dear friends, let God help you pass well through this heavy stage in life.
Any set of parents would reflect on this event and grieve, fearing for their own; Lev and Sofia had to look at each other and at their lively brood and count their lucky stars. Tolstoy’s condolences were full of grief and perhaps also of foreboding:
Beloved friend Tanya! I can’t describe to you the impression that the news produced on me about the death of my charming cutie (as it pleases me to think now), my favorite Dasha! I never would have thought this death would so strike me. I felt it, as you and your children are close to me. The whole day I could not think about her and about you without tears. I’m experiencing the feeling that, probably, now torments you: to forget or remember and with horror to ask yourself, Is it really true?XLIX
H
e described reading her, Tatyana’s, letter and crying. Having expressed all his sympathy, he began recommending religion. He said that he knew how she felt by remembering his brother Nikolai’s death but that of course the death of a child was more “majestic and mysterious.”
* * *
A week before that letter to his sister-in-law, Tolstoy finally confessed to Strakhov that he was writing something new; he withheld, however, even a vague description of its subject: “I’m writing a novel which has no connection at all with Peter the First. I’ve been writing for more than a month now [eight weeks, in fact], and have finished it in draft form [or “roughly,” he should have said, as in I have dozens of pages and a rough idea of how it goes]. This novel—I mean a novel, the first in my life [for his own reasons, Tolstoy didn’t categorize War and Peace as a novel]—is very dear to my heart and I’m quite absorbed by it, but in spite of that, philosophical problems have been occupying me very much this spring. In the letter which I didn’t send to you, I wrote about this novel and about how it came to me unwittingly, thanks to the divine Pushkin, whom I happened to pick up and reread with new enthusiasm.”L
In a postscript, he requested: “Please don’t tell anyone that I’m writing.” Strakhov answered that he of course wouldn’t and was enthusiastic in any case about whatever this novel was.
Tolstoy was pleased by the thought of a long, work-free summer on the Samaran steppe, but he was distracted by Sofia’s ill health; and she was distracted, she recalled, by her husband’s and Petya’s poor health and Tatyana’s terrible news. The trip was postponed to early June.
In the meantime, Tolstoy tried to make hay with his collected edition’s version of War and Peace. Back in late March, when he was too shy to send the letter to Strakhov about the birth of Anna Karenina, he explained: “I’ve started to prepare a second edition of War and Peace and to strike out what is superfluous—some things need to be struck out altogether, others to be removed and printed separately. Give me your advice if you have time to look through the last 3 volumes. And if you can remember, remind me of what is bad. I’m afraid to touch it, because there is so much that is bad in my eyes that I should want to write it again after refurbishing it. If you could recall what needs changing and if you could look through the arguments in the last 3 volumes and tell me that this and that needs to be changed, and that the arguments from page so and so to page so and so need to be cut out, you would oblige me very much indeed.”LI
Tolstoy considered Strakhov the most astute critic of War and Peace and knew that his own proofreading and revising of War and Peace was going too far. He needed to restrain himself and felt that with Strakhov’s help he might do so. But it was not as if he could ever put himself in a good or contented frame of mind by rereading his published work. By habit, by character, he was a renouncer. Tikhon Polner, one of his biographers, remarks:
Other people’s thoughts and opinions on any subject served only as a starting point for the independent workings of his mind. In almost every instance the material was discarded. He was never satisfied to say, “No”; he always had to add, “No, it’s impossible.” He had a habit of saying, “Not only has it never been that way, it never could have been.” He settled in every one of his thoughts as if it were a fortress, and no efforts of adversaries could dislodge him from the position he occupied. As time went on, new ideas appeared. Ideas just as arrogant, just as self-confident, just as final—and then, without a struggle, the old ideas gave up the stronghold to the newcomers and disappeared without leaving a trace.LII
Tolstoy almost always eventually renounced not only others’ ideas but the best ideas he himself ever had, from writing fiction to raising a family to advocating for education and social change.
While he composed a work, his judgments were ruthless, but his published work almost always became immediately stale, “bad in my eyes.” He would become so agitated by it that he could not read it the way he would have read anybody else’s book. He couldn’t keep his nose to the page and plow ahead; he couldn’t stop second-guessing his earlier self’s artistic decisions and personal opinions. He never reread for pleasure the final versions he had made of War and Peace or Anna Karenina.LIII
He knew, somewhere in his real pride, that War and Peace was an astounding feat. But he could never not feel smarter now than he had been when he wrote the narrative. The deep and comprehensive way he appreciated other authors, he never managed with his own work. He wept and laughed over others’ creative works; and as he composed his own, he felt them deeply: “I often feel more strongly not what I have actually felt, but what I have written and felt in describing my characters. They too have become my memories, as if they had been actual experiences,”LIV he told a late-in-life friend, the composer Alexander Goldenweiser. But he didn’t or couldn’t reread his books. He worked on his fiction until it was “ready,” and then he published the book and his sense of it got tangled up with, it seems, unpleasant memories. In 1873 Tolstoy didn’t admire the energy and vitality of War and Peace. He saw its errors and waywardness.
As we encounter Tolstoy’s peeved denunciations of Anna Karenina and its heroine, we will realize that his expressing dissatisfaction with his work was habitual, and that his criticisms are only contrary or bewildering rather than illuminating.
On May 4, he made it clear how much he counted on Strakhov’s help: “I’m still busy correcting War and Peace. I’m cutting out all the arguments [that is, the long discourses on history] and the French [about 12 percent of the text, which he was hastily translating into Russian, not cutting]; and I would dearly like your advice. May I send it to you to look through when I’ve finished?”LV Strakhov agreed to do so; he never seems to have turned down any of Tolstoy’s many requests for help.
At the very end of May, when the family was practically ready to set out on the 900-mile journey to the farm in Samara, Tolstoy wrote Strakhov: “I’m very, very grateful for your offer to look through War and Peace. You wouldn’t believe how valuable it is to me.[…] I haven’t finished volumes 4, 5, and 6 yet, and I’ve been cutting out bad things here and there. I would have sent you my corrected copy of those parts which are finished straightaway, but the books have gone to Samara with half our possessions. I’ll very soon correct the rest in Samara and send it to you, taking advantage of your invaluable offer.”
He admitted to Strakhov that he was in a rush, unable to maintain creative focus, and for the first time acknowledged, in writing, the likelihood of Anna Karenina’s delay: “My novel is also at a standstill, and I’m losing hope of finishing it by autumn.”LVI
He then groused about the Azbuka (called “Primer” below), which Strakhov, a former schoolteacher, had already helped him proofread:
The Primer is an inscrutable mystery to me: if I meet anyone, especially anyone with children, I hear genuine praise, and complaints that there’s nothing of mine to read, but nobody buys the Primer, therefore nobody needs it. I’ve now thought of sending it to the zemstvos and having it sewn up in 12 small booklets. As you can see from my letter, I’m in a very cold, practical frame of mind, which is always the case with me in summer; I’m worried about the sale of books, printing, the harvest etc.
He asked Strakhov to tell him which parts of the Azbuka he should include in the collected edition.
His routine of getting into a “very cold, practical frame of mind” seems to mean that he didn’t mix the creation part of writing with the business side. He customarily took the summers off. He would read, ride, welcome guests, but he wouldn’t “work” on the writing. We should be awed by how much Tolstoy wrote; yet we will keep noticing how unsteadily he worked at Anna Karenina, how often he took time off from it. Writing was one of Hercules’ labors for him. He did it, as did Hercules, because, being the greatest in the world, he had to.
On June 2, 1873, writes the biographer Rosamund Bartlett, “sixteen members of the Tolstoy household gathered in the drawing room, shut the doors and sat in silence for a few moments t
o prepare for the journey ahead, then completed the ritual by getting up and crossing themselves.”LVII
Before Tolstoy hustled out of the door of his study, what had he done with the Anna Karenina manuscript? Had he set it on his desk under a paperweight or perhaps tucked it into an envelope or folder in a drawer or tossed it on a shelf? Had it been sent ahead in a trunk with the War and Peace galleys? The exact situation of it was unremarked on by Tolstoy or, in their memoirs, by Sofia or the children. Wherever that Anna Karenina manuscript was, he did not work on it all summer. Bartlett resumes: “A caravan of carriages and carts then transported them to Tula to catch a train, and in Nizhny Novgorod they boarded the steamer for Samara.”
Before he hopped aboard, Tolstoy wrote to the Moscow News about his “sound” method of teaching literacy and asked the editors to publish the letter, which they did on June 7 while the Tolstoy family was riding on the steamer on the Volga. He declared in this public letter that he had figured out what the best method was twelve years ago, had written about it in his Yasnaya Polyana magazine, and that he could demonstrate it to the Moscow literacy committee (and he would in the early winter of 1874). Even though he had got that grievance off his chest, the lack of public understanding of his pedagogical theories and experiences would continue to stick in his craw.
3 Summering in Samara
I had come to believe that the serious biographer must physically pursue his subject through the past. Mere archives were not enough. He must go to all the places where the subject had ever lived or worked, or traveled or dreamed. Not just the birthplace, or the blue-plaque place, but the temporary places, the dream places.
—Richard HolmesI
Creating Anna Karenina Page 7