Tolstoy (61 page)

Tolstoy had started
The Kreutzer Sonata
in 1887, but most of the work on it took place in the spring and summer of 1889. One book which made an impact on him during this time was a practical guide to gynaecology and midwifery called
Tokology: A Book for Every Woman,
which was issued by the Sanitary Publishing Company in Chicago in 1883 ('tokology' comes from the Greek word for obstetrics). It had been sent to him by its author Dr Alice Bunker Stockham, who had been brought up as a Quaker, and was one of the very first women to qualify as a doctor in the United States. Having specialised in gynaecology, she came to believe that women should not have continual pregnancies, and that men should control their sexual urges.
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She also advocated abstinence from alcohol and tobacco and campaigned against prostitution. The book was of interest to Tolstoy for religious rather than medical reasons, he later told his daughter Tanya, and he wrote in November 1888 to tell Alice Stockham in his slightly creaky but elegant English that it was 'truly a book, not only for woman but for mankind':

Without labour in this direction mankind cannot go forward; and it seems to me especially in the matter treated in your book in chapter XI ['Chastity in Marital Relations'—Stockham discouraged sexual relations during pregnancy], we are very much behindhand. It is strange, that last week I have written a long letter to one of my friends [Chertkov] on the same subject. That sexual relation without the wish and possibility of having children is worse than prostitution and onanism, and in fact is both. I say it is worse, because a person who commits these crimes, not being married, is always conscious of doing wrong, but a husband and a wife, which commit the same sin, think that they are quite righteous.
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Tolstoy had indeed just written to Chertkov to castigate himself for the fact that it was too late to atone for having lived 'like an animal'.
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In October 1889, the month in which his sister Masha decided to take the veil (she spent a year living with 400 nuns at a convent in Tula before moving to the convent next to Optina Pustyn), Alice Stockham came to visit Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana.
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She probably quickly discovered that they were not in complete agreement about everything—she was not as uncompromising as Tolstoy, for example, when it came to condemning all sex that was not for procreative purposes,
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but they enjoyed rewarding conversations about the American sects which practised chastity. In 1892 a translation of her book with an introduction by Tolstoy was published in Russia. It was because Stockham viewed childbirth in such sacred terms that she promoted the idea of sexual continence. Nevertheless, her novel ideas about a spiritualised form of human intimacy were not always well received. In her later book on the 'ethics of marriage', her 'method of promoting marital happiness [whereby] sexual intimacy may take place without completing the act' received withering scorn from a critic writing for a scholarly journal.
¹¹⁷

Completion of the ninth and final draft of
The Kreutzer Sonata
provoked the question of where it could be published. Chertkov wanted the story for The Intermediary, Sonya wanted it for the new edition of the collected works, while Tolstoy now only cared about renouncing his copyright and avoiding arguments. On this occasion Tolstoy's story started circulating in samizdat even before it was submitted to the censor. The manuscript was taken to St Petersburg by Tolstoy's niece Masha Kuzminskaya, who arranged a reading attended by thirty friends, including Alexandrine and Nikolay Strakhov. After another late-night reading at the offices of The Intermediary, the editorial staff portioned the manuscript amongst themselves and then sat up all night to copy it before returning it to the Kuzminskys the next morning. Within a few days, much to Tolstoy's chagrin (he was only ever content to disseminate his work after the proofreading stage, which always involved him making myriad corrections), 300 lithographed copies appeared, which themselves were soon copied and distributed further. The story soon became the hottest property in St Petersburg, and sold for the exorbitant sum of ten, and sometimes even fifteen roubles (Sonya sold Tolstoy's entire collected works for eight roubles).
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It was agreed that
The Kreutzer Sonata
would be published first in an ephemeral weekly newspaper which did not have such strict censorship, and then handed over to Sonya,
¹¹⁹
but rumours that it would be banned even from this publication started spreading at the beginning of December 1889. They were confirmed later that month.
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In the detailed review of the story Pobedonostsev sent his colleague Evgeny Feoktistov in February 1890, he conceded it was a 'powerful' work, and that he could not in good conscience ban a story which promoted chastity in the name of morality, but the overwhelmingly bleak message this sent out about the future of the human race made it unacceptable for publication. Alexander III enjoyed the story as much as
The Power of Darkness
when it was read to him at the Winter Palace, but his wife was shocked—as Theodore Roosevelt would be when translations reached the United States later that year. As US Attorney General, he forbade the distribution of the newspapers which printed it. By February 1890 illegal copies of
The Kreutzer Sonata
were being read all over Moscow, as we know from statements by Anton Chekhov, who had largely left his medical career behind and was by now a celebrated writer. He had been publishing under his own name in Russia's most prestigious literary journals for twelve years at this point, and was just beginning to appear on Tolstoy's radar. In the letter that Chekhov wrote to his friend Alexey Pleshcheyev about
The Kreutzer Sonata,
his typically incisive, clear-sighted observations bring a breath of fresh air into a debate that was highly charged:

Did you really not like
The Kreutzer Sonata
? I don't say that it is a work of immortal genius—I'm not able to judge that—but I do consider that, compared to most of what is being written today both here and abroad, it would be hard to find anything to compare with the importance of its theme and the beauty of its execution. Aside from its artistic merits, which are in places stupendous, we must above all be grateful to the story for its power to excite our minds to their limits. Reading it, you can scarcely forbear to exclaim: 'That's so true!' or alternatively 'That's stupid!' There is no doubt that it has some irritating defects. As well as those you have listed, there is one for which it is hard to forgive the author, and that is his arrogance in discussing matters about which he understands nothing and is prevented by obstinacy from even wanting to understand anything. Thus his opinions on syphilis, foundling hospitals, women's distaste for sexual intercourse and so on, are not only contentious but show what an ignorant man in some respects he is, a man who has never in his long life taken the trouble to read one or two books written by specialists on the subject. But at the same time the story's virtues render these faults so insignificant that they waft away practically unnoticed, like feathers on the wind, and if we do notice them they serve merely to remind us of the fate of all human endeavour without exception, which is to be incomplete and never entirely free of blemishes.
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Chekhov undertook his momentous journey to study the notorious penal colony on the island of Sakhalin in the summer of 1890, and when he came back that autumn he was able to read the afterword that Tolstoy had now written—also in samizdat. In response to the furore caused by his story, Tolstoy clarified that chastity was merely an ideal, and that he was not advocating the end of the human race. The time Chekhov spent in Siberia changed him, and also his view of Tolstoy's story, as in the letter he wrote in December 1890 to his great friend Alexey Suvorin (editor of
New Times),
his outlook was quite different:

Before my trip,
The Kreutzer Sonata
was a great event for me, but now I find it ridiculous and it seems quite absurd ... To hell with the philosophy of the great men of this world! All great wise men are as despotic as generals and as rude and insensitive as generals, because they are confident of their impunity. Diogenes spat in people's beards knowing nothing would come of it; Tolstoy lambasts doctors as scoundrels and exposes his ignorance of the important issues because he is another Diogenes whom no one will arrest or criticise in the newspapers...
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By the spring of 1891
The Kreutzer Sonata
had still not been published, and Sonya decided to take matters into her own hands. Despite the personal affront she felt with regard to the content of
The Kreutzer Sonata,
she was keen to see it in print—in her edition. Accordingly, she had gone ahead and had the story typeset in Moscow, but a decision was made on 25 February that neither the story nor the afterword Tolstoy had written could be included in the thirteenth volume of his collected works. On 1 March, the day after the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Alexander II, Tolstoy was even formally anathematised for the first time in a sermon read in Kharkov, which was then published.
The Kreutzer Sonata
was condemned as an 'incoherent, filthy and amoral story'. Ten days later Sonya received word about the ban, and on 28 March she set off for St Petersburg with the intention of petitioning for an audience with the Tsar, so she could ask him personally for permission to publish
The Kreutzer Sonata.
It was granted on the proviso that the story was only published as part of the multi-volume collected works that were less readily available to vulnerable younger readers. Alexander III was, in fact, very gracious, and in an apparent nod to rumours that Vladimir Chertkov was the illegitimate son of Alexander II, Sonya noted in her diary that their tone of voice and manner of speaking were somewhat similar.
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Empress Maria Fyodorovna, who also received Sonya, was just as solicitous as her husband.
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The thirteenth volume of Tolstoy's collected works appeared in June 1891.
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Naturally Pobedonostsev was furious when he learned of the Tsar's leniency.
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That Alexander III was consistently indulgent towards Tolstoy's subversive activities makes one wonder whether he was protected by his friendship with the influential Chertkov. There is certainly an eerie resemblance between photographs of the young Alexander III and Vladimir Chertkov—perhaps they really were half-brothers.

Sonya's trip to St Petersburg was another nail in the coffin of the Tolstoys' marriage. Tolstoy regarded the very idea of petitioning the Tsar as demeaning, and he wished for no profits to be made from his writing. Sonya, on the other hand, felt bound to earn money even if just to pay for the upkeep of their nine children. Unceasing arguments now led Tolstoy to make a decision to renounce all his property. In April 1891 the entire family gathered at Yasnaya Polyana to sort out the allocations on an equal basis. Sergey, for example, received Nikolskoye, which had once belonged to Tolstoy's brother Nikolay, but was obliged to pay his sister Tanya and his mother a certain sum of money over the next fifteen years. Lev received the Samara estate and, as the youngest, three-year-old Vanechka by tradition received the bulk of Yasnaya Polyana, along with Sonya. Masha, as her father's devoted daughter and follower, renounced her share (although she would change her mind when she eventually married in 1897).
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The arguments with Sonya continued when Tolstoy insisted she send to the press a letter announcing his renunciation of the copyright on his writings. It finally appeared in all of Russia's major newspapers on 19 September 1891.
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The whole experience of dividing up his estate reminded Tolstoy of a famous literary antecedent, and he told his children to go away and read
King Lear.
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It was probably the only time in his life that he actually recommended Shakespeare, but he had clearly been ruminating on
King Lear
for a while. In 1888 he had talked about the play to the campaigning journalist William Stead, who arrived in Yasnaya Polyana that May fresh from his audience with Alexander III in St Petersburg (he seems to have been the only man ever to have interviewed a Russian tsar). Stead was anxious to quiz Tolstoy about English authors: 'Shakespeare, of course, came first,' he later recalled. 'He said that most of his plays were translated into Russian, and some of them were very popular. "Which most?" I asked. "
King Lear,
" said he, instantly; "it embodies the experience of every Russian
izba
."'
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The nearest British equivalent to Tolstoy in terms of his zeal to expose the hypocrisy of Victorian society, and focus attention on poverty and vice, Stead was a controversial figure, but also a committed pacifist (he was on his way to take part in a peace congress in New York in 1912 when he went down with the
Titanic
).
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The character of King Lear at the end of Shakespeare's play, meanwhile, is English literature's nearest equivalent to the holy fool
(yurodivy)
—that peculiarly Russian form of sainthood to which Tolstoy aspired, and which is not encountered in any other religious culture.