By April 11 Tolstoy was home for Sofia and quite anxious. He wrote his friend Golokhvastov that “Up to now all is well, but I’m awaiting my wife’s childbirth, and for some reason I’m afraid this time.”LII Perhaps he was afraid because his sister-in-law had just had a miscarriage or because Sofia had told him that she was afraid. He also wrote a short note, sometime pre-delivery in April, to Fet: “We every day wait and worry ever more and more.”LIII
Even so, he once more rushed off to Moscow and made his final appearance on April 13 before the literacy committee, where he learned the committee would not offer an official decision.LIV
On that date, there was no stenographic record taken of the meeting, and the president of the committee asked Tolstoy to write an article about what had been said there. Tolstoy didn’t write it, but he did query Nikolai Nekrasov about providing Notes of the Fatherland with an article about his argument with “the Moscow pedagogues.”LV This argument became instead his important essay “On Popular Education” that he published in September.
He complained to Strakhov:
I’ve been recently occupied with something quite different—schools of literacy. The Moscow Literacy Committee got me involved in the cause, and made the old pedagogical ferment rise in me again.LVI
Strakhov tried to remind him of the folly of fighting this pedagogical battle, but Tolstoy wouldn’t listen. It’s hard not to feel, with Strakhov and Sofia, how fruitless this pursuit was. Tolstoy was wanting to be distracted. His friend and his wife were right, all of it came to nothing, and he eventually renounced it himself.
On the other hand, I believe it would have been sensible for the committee to have listened to Tolstoy on these matters, despite his losing his temper. He fussed about being called names (“a reactionary and a Slavophile”), and delivered a couple of shots about school systems that I believe must have been true then because they’re true today:
[…] People who know nothing and have no talents—who don’t even know the people they have undertaken to educate—have got their hands on the whole business of public education, and what they are doing makes your hair stand on end.LVII
He had just written and redone his Azbuka, the most influential book there would ever be for Russian literacy. He was hands down an expert, and he couldn’t resist the bait of an argument. It’s true that this particular educational dispute came to nothing and that Anna Karenina came to something. We know what he should have devoted himself to, but it turns out he was able to do it all.LVIII
He concluded his touchy letter to Strakhov:
But don’t forget your promise—come and see us in summer. There is something ironical about the tone of your last letter. Please don’t allow this with me, because I love you very much.LIX
Tolstoy responded with annoyance here to Strakhov’s tone and once in a while elsewhere. Their friendship was imbalanced, affectionate but a bit condescending on Tolstoy’s part; on Strakhov’s, affectionate but awed and earnest. In any case, we don’t know what Strakhov said, because the letter that spurred Tolstoy’s reproach hasn’t survived, but Strakhov’s immediate reply to Tolstoy’s letter was: “It means I wrote you very poorly if you find something ironical in me. Maybe I jokingly spoke of the Academy, but not about you. [Tolstoy was recently made a member.]… You’re mistaken.” Strakhov promised to come to Yasnaya Polyana on July 1. “Then finally I’ll become acquainted with your new novel. How I await this!” How surprising that Strakhov, who would regularly be rolling up his sleeves to proofread the galleys of the novel, still didn’t know its contents. Strakhov directly and forcefully addressed Tolstoy’s pedagogical ideas, rightly complimented the old Yasnaya Polyana articles, and then got some of his dignity back by chiding Tolstoy about the literacy contest: “And now you undertake to wrestle with this filth. I will say straight off that this is unpleasant for me in regard to you. […] It’ll be sad for me if your strength and time is wasted on an argument and repelling all the mud. […]”LX
Anna Karenina seemed nowhere in Tolstoy’s mind when Sofia gave birth to their fifth son, Nikolay, on April 22, and Tolstoy wrote his brother to beg him to come for Nikolay’s christening.LXI The week after Nikolay’s birth, Tolstoy drafted “A Grammar for Village Schools.”LXII “The attraction of pedagogy corresponded with the cooling to the begun novel,” writes Gusev.LXIII He had also gotten himself involved in governance of the Krapivensky County school board.LXIV
In May, Tolstoy wrote Strakhov about what would become the long essay “On Popular Education”:
Now I’m even writing an article, that is my pedagogical profession de foi. […] Whether I’m mistaken or not, I’m firmly convinced that I can put the business of the people’s education on such footing that it isn’t now and hasn’t stood anywhere in Europe, and that for this nothing is needed besides [not having] someone who doesn’t love or know this business undertake it. […]
My novel lies there. […]LXV
Educational issues had detached Tolstoy from the novel and now he seemed to want to kill the story in his imagination. By May 20, he was asking Strakhov, who was champing at the bit to read Anna Karenina, to read the education article. He concluded: “Tell me, please, and advise.”LXVI
Strakhov’s answer is unknown, but we can guess what it was. Sure, Strakhov must have said, why not?
At the end of May, the Kuzminsky family arrived; sister-in-law Tatyana and her children would stay until the end of August. The obvious and neat parallel, as Sofia would point out in My Life, is Levin’s hosting of his sister-in-law Dolly’s family, the Oblonskys. Sasha Kuzminskiy and Stiva Oblonsky were otherwise engaged, Stiva in Moscow, Kuzminskiy in the Caucasus. Sofia made no pretense that situations in Anna Karenina had nothing to do with their lives. She was proud of how their family life made its appearances in the novel. Of “The Summer of 1874,” for example:
We were all terribly delighted by the arrival of the Kuzminskijs, and our customary happy summer life started up with all the bathing, wagon rides, jam-making, children, and everything Lev Nikolaevich describes in his novel Anna Karenina, with certain variations. For example, the thunderstorm that caught Kitty and her child in the forest was the same kind of storm that caught Serezha and me in the forest closest to our house, i.e., Chepyzh, while Levin’s fright was Lev Nikolaevich’s.
Again, when I took two of our children to communion, it wasn’t Tanja, but Lelja, who said to the priest in English: “Please, some more for Lelja.” And there were many variations like that.LXVII
For Sofia, a happy summer took place at home, not in Samara.
Tolstoy wrote Strakhov, “I have now finished my article and it seems to me it successfully speaks clearly and truly.”LXVIII More importantly, he told Strakhov he was writing to the printer to suspend publication of Anna Karenina: “I can’t think about that writing now.”LXIX
Tolstoy had pressed the pause button in the hope that his responsibility for the novel would disappear—a miscarriage. What would continue for three more years was his feeling of the novel being not only a burden on him but less important than other activities in his life.
Perhaps as he moved toward his realization of the Anna we know in the novel, he saw a portend of his own depression. His Confession will describe suicide’s pull on him during this coming period. His “light,” “simple” novel became heavy when he seriously contemplated suicidal Anna.
Sometime between June 10 and 15, Tolstoy wrote a consoling letter to his sister Maria about an injury he heard she had suffered. He said that he and his family were fine, not counting the death of Petya and the now imminently expected death of Auntie Tatyana Alexandrovna, which came on June 20.LXX
On the day of Auntie’s death he apologized in a letter to Strakhov for asking him for favors when Strakhov was busy. Please, he wanted to know, was the public education article okay? “The request is that you read it through with a pencil in hand and making use of cross-outs tell me whether it’s worth publishing somewhere? […] As for myself, of course,
everything you do I will be happy with. Even if you burn the article or do nothing.—The closer comes the time of meeting with you [which is two weeks], the more I’m joyful and expectant, how very important (you are) for me and for my writing that is and will be.”LXXI
That very day, writing from St. Petersburg, Strakhov determinedly leaned on Tolstoy to return to Anna Karenina, which Strakhov still hadn’t lain eyes on. And it was not because Tolstoy’s educational work wasn’t important. Strakhov wrote:
I’ll be in Moscow on July 3, estimable Lev Nikolaevich. Decidedly, it’s impossible to wander about more than a month and I need to be in Petersburg again by July 29. I propose now to be at your service; couldn’t I help you with the editing of the novel?
I read with terror that you were stopping publication—you’re torturing us with expectation. That which you write about the importance of your pedagogical work, it shows how ardently you’re attracted by it. Sometime in 1862 I first read your Yasnaya Polyana with excited praise (this was in Time); consequently you cannot doubt my sincere sympathy with your pedagogy; but you exaggerate it, leaving behind your higher art.
About both I terribly want to speak with you, and I don’t even want to write because it feels like everything can’t be written.LXXII
Strakhov knew that as much as he loved the man and appreciated the education articles, the best thing he could do was help Tolstoy do what Tolstoy could do better than anyone.
Tolstoy wrote Sergei about their aunt’s death and asked him to come to the burial on June 22.LXXIII After the funeral, he wrote a confession to Alexandrine:
[…] Yesterday I buried Auntie Tatyana Alexandrovna. […] she faded away little by little, and had already ceased to exist for us 3 years ago, so much so that (I don’t know whether this was a good or a bad feeling), I avoided her and couldn’t see her without a feeling of agony; but now that she’s dead (she died slowly, and painfully—like a childbirth), all my feeling for her has returned with still greater force. […] All’s well with my family. You predicted a girl for me, but a boy was born, just like the one we lost, and although he’s called Nikolay, we involuntarily call him Petya, like the other. I’m in my summer mood—i.e., I’m not occupied with poetry and have stopped publishing my novel and want to give it up, I dislike it so much. […]LXXIV
His haunting image of Auntie had become, it seems, a waking nightmare. Dread seems to have descended on him; he made an effort to regain the philosophical attitude about death that he had had on March 6.
To his brother Sergei, he wrote again: “I didn’t think I’d be so sad about Auntie. It’s impossible to learn about dying from her. She lived like a child and so she died—at least for us. What she thought in her last moments, no one knows. She only said when she was asked how she wanted to be shifted, ‘Just a moment, just a moment, and soon you can shift me as you like and all will be well.’ ”LXXV
Tolstoy wanted something to be revealed about death, not simply calm resignation after the slow, painful descent that preceded it. (Her quiet acceptance would become in the next decade exactly what he would celebrate in his fictional characters.) In one of his summer letters to Sergei, he told him that the house was full, and it was “boring.” He mentioned their sister, who was back in Europe and in need of money.LXXVI Maria, with her out-of-wedlock daughter, was dependent on them for financial support, and they both worried about her. She would soon closely identify herself, installment by installment, with the heroine of her brother Lev’s novel.
In early July, Strakhov made his visit to Yasnaya Polyana. Strakhov read the novel for the first time and was crazy about it, and in consequence Tolstoy became momentarily reinspired and began reviewing the typeset chapters.
Then he again threw them down.LXXVII
Tolstoy worked instead on the education essay, but, as we see in his letter to Golokhvastov, all was confusion in the Tolstoy house: “We now have no one besides an English nanny and we need a master for the boys and a governess for the girls.”LXXVIII As if of no importance, or perhaps to parry Golokhvastov’s asking again about Anna Karenina, he mentioned at the end: “I’m stopping my publication, and I cannot force myself to deal with it in the summer.”LXXIX
Usually the summer travels and the suspension of routine freed him; this summer so far, though, he was home conducting business, and the novel promised only more obligation.
In a fretful mood, he wrote Fet: “I’m amazed that you didn’t receive my letter, dear Afanasy Afanasich. […] It’s terribly sad when you arrive at this present age, as you and I have, to feel oneself more and more alone […]. This is not a depression. […]”LXXX That is, he knew Fet would presume it was a depression, but he needed to tell Fet to resist saying so. “Strakhov spent five days with me, and despite his awkwardness speaking, I was pleased with him, but constantly, I think, annoyed him by remembering you.”LXXXI
In the letters to Fet and Golokhvastov, it seems that Tolstoy was having his revenge on the snake who had tempted him to go back to the novel.
Strakhov, his ears probably burning from Tolstoy’s peeved mentions of him, undauntedly wrote to Tolstoy on July 23 with full accurate critical praise of Anna Karenina. Tolstoy wanted to condemn the novel to the trash; in good conscience Strakhov wouldn’t let him do so. He told Tolstoy that he had another meeting to attend and so wouldn’t be back to Yasnaya Polyana until the 6th or at the latest the 8th of August. (It’s not clear that Tolstoy’s trip to Samara with his son Seryozha had been planned for that time yet.) Ever since reading Anna Karenina two weeks before, wrote Strakhov, “Your novel hasn’t left my head. Every time you write I’m struck by the amazing freshness, the absolute originality, as if I’ve suddenly leapt over from one period of literature into another. You correctly noticed that in some places your novel recalls War and Peace; but this is only where there are similar subjects. As soon as there’s another subject, it appears in a new light, even never seen, never having happened before in literature. The development of Karenina’s passion is a miracle of miracles. It’s not complete, I think, what you have shown of (many parts are not written) the relations of the world to this event. The world enjoys (what an amazing feature!) the temptation tempting him; but the reaction presents itself partly false, hypocritical, partly sincere and deep. I don’t know very well what you will have there, I don’t dare or think to—to develop your theme; but it has to be something very interesting, very deep; on this point, everything turns its attention and will demand from you a decision, judgment.”
In the manuscript that Strakhov had in hand, it was complete, more or less: Anna has died:
As for me, the inner story of passion is the main thing and explains it all. Anna kills herself from the egotism of the idea, serving completely that very passion; this is an inescapable outcome, a logical deduction from that direction which drew her from the very beginning. Oh, how strong, how irresistibly clear!
All this is taken by you with the very highest point of view—this is felt in every word in every detail, and you probably don’t value this as you ought, and maybe you don’t notice it. […]
Strakhov appealed to Tolstoy’s competitiveness:
You are obliged, in the full thought of the word, to publish your novel in order to kill off this [i.e., Turgenev’s “falseness” in Smoke] and similar falseness. How aggravated Turgenev has to be! He is a kind of specialist in love and women! Your Karenina at once kills off all of his Irinas and similar heroines (as they’re called in Torrents of Spring). And for Boborykin, Krestovskiy, and other such novelists this will be a useful and fruitful lesson. But reading you will be endlessly insatiable—really, such a topic!
With all my soul I wish you resolve and strength. For me now it’s very clear the story of your novel. You got heated up writing it, got distracted, and it became boring to you. […]
By some of your words I see that you are thinking through various things, in comparison with which the subject of your novel sometimes seems to you insignificant (as for me it has ess
ential, first-level importance!). Here there’s one way—get down to business and don’t leave off until you finish. If you don’t finish your novel, I will blame you simply for laziness, an unwillingness to force yourself a little bit. […]LXXXII
“Strakhov’s praises did not have much effect on Tolstoi,” says the biographer Boris Eikhenbaum.LXXXIII But I think Strakhov’s praises did indeed have quite a bit of an effect. Strakhov made Tolstoy confront what was really and truly there—the miraculous creation of Anna and how her depression leads to her suicide.
Tolstoy answered the novel’s champion:
Even before I received your letter, I took your advice, that is, I took up the work on the novel; but what was printed and typeset, I so much didn’t like, that I finally decided to destroy the printed sheets and redo everything from the start concerning Levin and Vronsky. And they will be as they are but better.LXXXIV I hope as of the fall to take up this work and finish it.LXXXV
Ambitious. Hopeful. That’s the spirit!
Except that he still didn’t feel like actually working on it.
While putting it off, was it tumbling around in his head? For Tolstoy, composition was not divine or beautiful. He didn’t think of his fiction as a gift to the world, though Strakhov correctly thought of it that way. The novel troubled Tolstoy. And if, as he said, he was seeing new possibilities for Vronsky and Levin, that meant a lot was going to have to change.
Creating Anna Karenina Page 15